Transcript of Why the Race Is So Close In the Rust Belt

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Store or sleepnumber.com I'm John King and this is all over the map. Today we return to Wisconsin and to Michigan to the outskirts of two once booming midwestern industrial cities. These are both considered must win states for Kamala Harris and the race. Look at the numbers effectively tied in both of them. Today we're going to hear from two voters who've made up their minds about this election. They give you a very clear picture of why this race is anything but easy to call. We're in the final days here, now a little over a week out. It's a cliche, but every vote does count, especially in the battleground states. And the math is really complicated, the most complicated in the 10 times I've done this, 10 times I've covered presidential elections. The math comes comes down to the moods and the votes of voters like these.

The energy is different. It's a lot different from when we were here last time.

Eric Jones is an entrepreneur in Milwaukee, does a little bit of real estate, does a few other things as well. We've sat down with him several times over the past year. Eric has an ear to the ground. He's constantly popping up in the community, talking to everybody. This time he asked us to meet him at a bakery and a coffee shop. A new favorite of his, a small black owned business called Confectionally Yours.

It shows what we like to call here the new Milwaukee. Milwaukee has Gotten a lot of negative press, and I don't think it really shows the spirit of the city or what's going on.

Eric is a Democrat, and he's very much a political science geek. He does my job for me. He's a reporter on the ground there, interested in why people think and why they vote the way they do. He sees a city with a bit of divide right now. A new black mayor, a thriving downtown. But where he lives on the north side, the community looks. Feels like it's forgotten. People feel like they've been forgotten. And when we first met him, he was a little pessimistic about things. Now he's much more optimistic. Joe Biden was the Democratic candidate then, and Eric's view was he was in trouble because the community was slumping and people were in bad moods. Now Eric says the city feels better, and because of that, he thinks Harris is going to do better.

It feels like a photo finish if I ever saw one. There's a lot of energy, at least on at least one side. There's a lot of activity, and I think the Democratic base is more rejuvenated and a lot more spirited. Conversations in the barbershops were before a lot of people thought that the election was a done deal, and nobody feels that way anymore.

Well, let's break that down some. So is that all the Biden Harris switch? Is it all that?

I believe so. I believe that the dynamic has shifted, because in a weird way, Donald Trump was the young guy, and he played on the age of President Biden. Now that dichotomy's completely switched. I think the Vance selection was more to rile up his base because he thought he had it and he doesn't have it anymore. The energy of his supporters is different, and I think they know it, that it's not in the bag the way it was before.

So if I were here after the Biden Trump debate and I asked you, who's gonna win Wisconsin?

You would say, Donald Trump. It would've been easy.

And now you say.

If I was a gambling man, I would probably put my money on Harris.

Sounds like you wouldn't put it all on Harris.

No, no, no, no, I wouldn't. And the reason is because if everybody turns out, she'll win a little more easily. We know that the GOP supporters, they're going to be out in droves, and we know where they're coming from, which are going to be the rural counties up north in the west, where with southeastern Wisconsin, the Democratic strongholds, those are more the Metropolitan areas. And my fear is that some people will not vote because they think they have it in the bag or they just aren't voting for anybody because it's too close to call for them. So they don't vote at all.

So let's walk through some of that. Trump thinks he's gonna do better in the black community this time. Talks about it all the time. When you're in the barbershop, is there evidence of that?

Yeah. They'll say, I had more money when he was the president. And you could ask a follow up question like, well, how did you have more money? And they're gonna say, well, a stimulus check. And it's like, well, you do know anybody that was president would have done that because we were reacting to a global pandemic. It wasn't economic policy. It comes down to how people perceive the facts of the matter. And if people are not doing their homework, I feel like that helps Trump because he's more of an image guy than a substance guy. And I think he banks on people feeling a certain way but not understanding why they feel that way.

If you could have a two minute conversation with the vice president and say, you know, madam Vice President, I need a little help from my debates and arguments at the barbershop. I need you to talk about this or do that, what would that be?

It would be to make people see that you're a president and a candidate that is looking forward because your past is not going to help your future. Right. So a lot of the policies and things that I think would be good for Americans, like how she champions the middle class. I believe you have to talk about how you're financially going to help the people who need the help. And I think that the adage, which I don't think is true, is that wealthy people vote for their pocketbook. I think most people actually vote for their pocketbook. They just don't understand how their pocketbook actually works in relation to what they're voting for.

You were here 2016 and 2020. Hillary Clinton just lost Wisconsin. There were a lot of questions about turnout in the black community. Joe Biden wins, had better turnout. Where are we now? As we get into the final days.

Of this one, the turnout will be better than Clinton. I feel it has to be Obama level and Biden didn't get Obama level. So I'm not sure that the turnout from last time will be good enough. It's way too close to the next. It should be. And that's what I would tell her. You have to Focus on what you're going to do for the future and how you're going to not only help the middle class, but heal a very divided and broken country.

So in the final weeks to that point, it's GOTV engagement, keeping people engaged as much as you can get them to vote early. In terms of your phone, your mailbox, your tv, what are you seeing in these final weeks?

I see a lot of work. Even on my timeline, I constantly see people advertising, canvassing jobs, a lot of door knockers. I get phone calls a couple times a day about the campaign. It just seems that there's a energy, a passion, almost a rage of enthusiasm, where if they lose, they're gonna go down fighting, and it won't be because of lack of effort or resources being put to the fight.

Is there any Trump presence, or is he just counting on. People are unhappy about the economy. People don't like the prosecutor thing. Are they actually working it, or are.

They just hoping to get it?

I haven't seen the boots on the ground, but that doesn't mean they're not here. I actually live in a suburb, and I'm surprised because I don't really see the number of Trump signs in an affluent part of the county that I thought I would see. And what that tells me is either people are quiet about the support, like they were with Hillary Clinton, where the exit poll said they voted for Hillary and the ballot box said, no, they didn't, or there are a lot of undecided people, and I don't know who that helps, because I was used to a certain level of fervor and energy that they had when he was president that I haven't seen. But that doesn't mean they're not working where my eyes can't see.

So let me circle back as we close to where you started. You see a photo finish.

Mm.

You don't think it should be.

No, I don't. I don't think it should be you. You can't own a gun. You can't vote in an election. If you're a felon, you shouldn't be allowed to be president and have control of the greatest military in the world. If I got a felony and I couldn't even buy a gun.

But if you say that in the barbershop, what happens?

Everybody agrees with me.

Even the guys are going to vote for Trump.

Yeah, because most of the guys that vote for Trump that are in the barbershop, they're law enforcement. I had a really spirited conversation with a member of the Washington Police department. And there was my barber's cousin, actually. He says to me, are you a Christian? And I said, yeah, so what are you voting for? And I said, madame Vice President, of course. And he said, how can you say that as a Christian? And I said, because I have ethics. And my ethics won't allow me to vote for a misogynist, racist crook because of certain topics like abortion or things. The good Old party feels that they have a monopoly over the Christian vote. The Democratic Party feels they have a monopoly over the black vote. The problem is there are a lot of blacks that are Christians and the black church is one of the strongest institutions in the community. So you have this tug of war in a city that I'm pretty sure the black vote will decide who wins that city and more than likely the presidency. So you have this tug of war of ethics. And I'm talking to a police officer and I'm saying, so officer, you're telling me to vote for the felon that hasn't been sentenced yet over the prosecutor?

Think about this. If you were at work, would you tell me to trust the felon or the prosecutor? And then he kind of, that's the problem. It's a Rubik's Cube because you have the party that's supposed to be for law enforcement, law and order and the Bible saying vote for this 34 time felon that some massaging is an open racist because you're voting for the party, not the person. And that's what I've noticed. The line has been in this election more than the previous elections. He's been in. Before they were saying Trump's the best person. Now they're saying vote for the topics that our party backs because they know he's not a safe back anymore. It's not the easiest thing to perpetuate when you got a 34 time felon, that's the head of your ticket.

Anything else you want to add?

I'll say this. Hopefully regardless of who wins, as a nation we can heal because we have not been as divided since Reconstruction. My fear is that if the losing side doesn't take the loss well, we all lose and our way of life will not be the same. And that's my fear. So hopefully, regardless of who wins, we as a nation can handle it the right way. We know one side can. I'm a little worried of the other side can. And I'll leave you with that.

When we come back, a lifelong Democrat suddenly turned Trump supporter and an example of why Michigan, his Harris is to lose.

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Here, this is what we build. This is what you build the wheels? I did my wheel alignment.

So you actually helped build this very car?

Yeah, I'm doing my own car.

Joseph Knowles lives just outside of Detroit. Clinton Township, it's called, Just across the Detroit line in Macomb County. He's a United Auto Workers union man. Had a good union job at a Jeep plant run by the multinational automaker Stellantis until this month. Just a few weeks ago, Joseph and 1,100 of his colleagues got laid off. His community is blue collar, working class prefab homes, small little patches of grass, but they're well kept. Used to be a very reliably democratic community. Now it's going for Trump. And Joseph, well, he exemplifies why you.

Mentioned your wife and kids. How many kids you got?

I got four boys.

How are they dealing with all this? It's got to be tough.

Well, I haven't really talked to my kids about it and the only reason why is because I don't want them to have to even have to think about it. They see that I'm home every day so they see my car out there all day, so they know something's different. So I think they got an idea. I just haven't had to sit down and talk to them yet about it. Just don't want them to be worrying about that. My wife, look, my wife, she's. She made decent money and she's gonna hold us up until we figure this out, so. Yeah.

And who do you blame?

Well, I'm gonna say this. I got three people I wanna blame, and I'm gonna start with Solantis first, only because, I mean, you made a lot of money and I help make yo billions of dollars a year. But I take the second blame. I will put it on Joe Biden or the Democratic Party because of the EV mandates. I feel like the company would have to invest millions of dollars, billions of dollars into this EV thing and nobody wants it. So, you know, that's where the money went to. And I feel like they lost money in that and we had to take a hit for that. And the third person I blame is Charles. And that's how you president. And I blame him. It's because he had opportunities doing a negotiation, contra negotiation last year to airtight some of these cuts that we're going through. There's too many loopholes in there and I feel like we are being exploited to do that because of that focusing.

More on wages than on security. I want to talk about your politics a little bit.

Okay.

You were for Trump before this, before the layoff decision.

I started because like I said, 2022 is when I started looking into Trump because I started seeing the changes in automotive. And at that point I was a Democrat. And I've been a Democrat really since I was 18 years old. Matter of fact, that's how I was raised to be. I was taught to be a Democrat. You know, I watched my mom being together with my grandfather, everyone Democrat. So I just thought, this is it. This is where you're supposed to be. And then you knew it. It was just not culture to be Democrats until like two years ago. And I started seeing the change. I started seeing where the focus point was, that I didn't feel, you know, like I was part of that focus point anymore.

So how long have you been voting for president?

Since I was 18.

Since you're 18. Do you remember your first vote for president?

Who was this for? It was John Kerry.

John Kerry.

John Kerry was a wonderful president at that time.

So you did. Kerry, 2004.

Yeah.

Obama twice.

Obama twice.

Clinton.

I voted for Harry Clinton. Yes.

And Joe Biden the first time.

Joe Biden the first time, yes.

And so Donald Trump this time. Why?

Well, that's a lot. Let me explain the reason why I is Trump now. What just set me over the edge, it would be the immigration. I started seeing a lot of immigrants coming into the country and they were getting some of the services and they get money and housing, and I seen that get priority. And some of the issues that we was having wasn't getting looked at. So that was it. And then I started seeing everything going up with the economy. I'm just looking at eggs like we buy from like Walmart. We get a box of eggs when it comes like I was 60 in there, it was like $20 just for 60 eggs. And that milk was high. And I'm looking at everything just getting high then was I started making a little bit more money with the overtime, all that. But I don't, I have, I don't, I don't see where it going anymore. So I'm working on these extra hours. It's not worth it. It's not. I don't see where they added up at, so.

And even when they had to switch from Biden, Harris doesn't make any difference to you?

I didn't like that process though. I didn't like the process because I didn't know nothing about Harris. And then out the blue, I saw that Joe Biden was dropping out of the election. I see that she's been next in line, but normally there's a primary, there's some steps to that. You know, we get to pick. And I might would have considered if I would just being able to get it vetted correctly. It just wasn't done correctly, in my opinion.

Is the Trump vote because you got mad at Biden about EVs and about inflation, cost of living, or do you look at Trump and say, you know, my world would get better in these ways?

Okay, honestly, it was, I was upset. I'm seeing that I thought the Democratic Party was for the working class, the average Joe like me. That's what I thought. And so yes, it would start off as anger because I don't see the difference anymore. And you know, I don't feel like I'm priority anymore. So then I look into Trump. Now, I wasn't a trump man in 16 or the last when he was the president, only because the world, it was a lot going on and I don't know if he actually helped the situation. But then I started. It started affecting my home now because I'm not being able to take care of my family. So I knew that Trump was gonna run again. And I felt like, let me look into Trump. And then I started looking some of his policies. He started saying how he was gonna kind of reverse some of the EV mandates, and I started saying how he was going to help bring the cost of food down. These are things that hit home. And then when he was going to trial and going to court and getting prosecuted, I know how that feel.

So I started more relating to him on that, too. It made me to be more interested in him even more, because I saw seeing him getting prosecuted.

So you don't think he's done any of those things? Whether it's the, you know, one of them was a civil lawsuit. A woman said that he sexually assaulted her. One was the fraud. One was the fraud case in New York. And then there's the election stuff.

Okay. So I don't know nothing about the sexual thing, honestly. I mean, just hearing a lot, bits and pieces. I don't know much about that. I think you got to dot it like, 36 times or for, like, fraud money and all that. I don't know much about that. And to be honest with you, I really don't care. Only because I feel like that's part of the game. When you're rich, I feel like there's ways that you will find ways to get money. You know what I mean? So I don't find that as a priority to me. That wasn't a priority to me.

Do you think he'll get your job back?

I hope so.

Is that how it factors to you? Or do you just think he's, you know, you were mad at Biden and so you went and took a look and you found some things you like. And is it like, I'm gonna give it a chance, or do you think of yourself now as a Republican or a Trump Republican, or is it just in this one election? I'm gonna give this a chance.

Well, I'm independent now. Don't realize I don't have a lot of conservative ways. I do believe that Trump will fix what's going on right now. I think at this point, now you see what's going on. I think he learned from some of the mistakes or some of the things he could and couldn't do in his first last election. I just believe that this time he's going to get it right.

What's your sense in your plant? If there were a vote for Harris or Trump, what's your sense of how it would go?

I think most People vote with Trump. And this is the first thing I'm always hearing everybody talking about. Trump said that he is going to not tax overtime. Where in the factory. We have to work 10 to 15 to 20 hours of overtime a week at times. Sometimes it gets there. And no tax on that, we'll be perfect. That would change all our lives.

And you think he'll do that, or you think it's just a promise? I mean, he said in the first term he was gonna repeal and replace Obamacare. He didn't do it. He said he was gonna build the wall in Mexico, was gonna pay for it. They didn't build much wall.

No, he tried to do that. It was like, he tried to get like, what, 2% of it up and it got blocked, you know, so look, he made the effort into building the wall. I didn't think that you can build a whole wall for the whole border of Mexico in the US I didn't believe that was going to be possible at one time anyhow.

If you meet a friend from Detroit from the business who says, you know, but Joe, wait, Trump's a racist, what do you say?

No, he's not a racist. I haven't. I never thought that Trump was a racist.

But you hear it from people, right?

I hear all the time, I hear all the time that Trump races. And I gave a lot of people even. It's a shame on me, you know, shaming me for even considering voting for Trump. And I'm just like, this is my comeback on that would be, hey, we've been voting the same way with Democratic all our lives and nothing changing. So let's try something different. Let's try something different. I don't think Trump is a racist, though.

Do you get grief in your family? You mentioned you Democratic Party.

Oh, yeah. So when they saw that, went to his rally in war, oh, man, I took it from my mom, from my auntie, cousins, my sister. They came at me, you know, how you do this? He did this to women. How you do this in January 6th and how you do all this? I like looking at the situation we in right now. I don't hear anything from Harris and I ain't hear anything from Biden either about how can it change my life right now? That's what I care more about, the politics and things that are going on behind the closed door. I don't know nothing about that. All I care about right now is how am I going to be able to take care of my wife and kids. That's the main important thing. In my life, that's the thing that I'm responsible for. And at this point now, I'm desperate. So I'm willing to try anything right now to make sure that I can fulfill my responsibility. That's all I care about.

You would acknowledge he says some pretty wild things sometimes. You went to one of his rallies, so you probably heard something.

He didn't say nothing wild at the rallies?

No, no, no. That was the exception rally.

Then he says things like he's going.

To round up all the illegal immigrants and throw them out. Do you favor that?

All right. I don't want to come off as saying that. That's on me. But if you were hearing illegally in any other country, if I were to go into another country and I crossed the wrong way, I'd probably be locked up. I don't mind Trump doing whatever he need to do to enforce the law in this country. So if that means escorting as many people out that don't supposed to be here, I'm fine with that. I don't care how you do it. Just get them out. Now. If it's done legally and they cross correctly, I have no problem with it. But if you do it the wrong way, I think you should get round up and just thrown out. I had no problem with that because it jeopardized my way of providing for my kids if they take jobs. So I don't care, because I. Believe me, if I feel like if I. If I ever walk into another country and I do the exact same thing that other. The other immigrants are doing, I think I would get treated a lot worse.

Anything else you want to add?

I just. I think it's a lot of us hurting. So Israel, somebody need to help us out. I don't really care about who wins, really. I do want Trump to win and I'm voting for Trump, but I just want to be able to take care of my family. That's all we want, is to take care of our families.

Thank you for your time. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Time once again to bring in my sidekick on the road, Allie Malloy, the senior producer for all over the Map. I call her Allentown Ally. I do that because she talks Pennsylvania all the time and she roots for all the wrong teams. But there's another reason I love the term. It's because Allie, like me, is from a blue collar family. Allentown is like Dorchester. People work with their hands, people work hard. Our dads were both in unions, so we're blue collar kids who happen to have pretty cool jobs.

Very True, very true. So, John, there's a reason why the Blue wall was called a wall. It was so reliable, and in 2016, it came crashing down. And everything since has made it even more confusing in a way in 2020 and in the midterms. Like, how do you even explain that?

Yeah, this is a. This is just one of these giant questions, because the blue wall states, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, they are getting older, they are getting whiter, which tells you they should be getting more Republican. Trump won in 2016, and everybody said, see you, told you so. The demographics are changing and the Republicans can win. But what has happened since then? In the midterm elections, the Democrats did well. You know, in 2020, Joe Biden did well and won them all. In 2022, Democrats did even better. And those states now all have Democratic governors, and they've made Democratic gains at the legislative level. So it's kind of counterintuitive. And so, you know, the demographics tell you, Democrats be worried. But Governor Evers, Governor Whitmer and Governor Shapiro tell you there's a way to do this, there's a way to keep it, but it requires different coalitions. It's complicated.

John, obviously, a huge part of the Blue Wall is that union vote. It used to be obviously very solidly Democratic. We heard from our voters in Michigan that our UAW members, that they believe that it's actually a 50, 50 split among Trump and Harris voters. Joseph is one of those people that is for Trump, obviously. How do you think we got there?

There are a number of reasons. You know, globalization has everybody anxious. And after Trump won in 2016, that was the five alarm fire in the Democratic Party. How are we losing these states that have been ours for a long time? And how is this guy making inroads? How's a rich guy from a penthouse in Manhattan making inroads with blue collar union workers? And a lot of people said, well, it's demographics. Look, those states are becoming older and wider. Other people said, you know, Trump is a populist. He's talking more about jobs. These workers think he can do the. And then there's the frustration of the union leadership. We want our members, they would say, to vote on issues like organizing issues that are important to labor unions, to organize labor as an institution. And a lot of their members were saying, no, we're voting on guns, or we're voting on social issues like gay rights or abortion rights. And now Trump on transgender rights. So the social and the cultural issues have cut into what the Democrats and the labor leaders want And Trump is great at finding a difference, finding a divide, finding dissatisfaction, finding anger about something and blowing it up, you know, of putting it on steroids.

It's a preexisting condition. Nothing's new with Trump, but he finds the preexisting conditions and he maximizes his advantage with them. And that's what he's doing here. And so if you're Joseph and you just lost your job, you're mad. And it is human nature to want to be mad at somebody, to find out who did this to me. And Joseph says, number one, corporate greed. So he's mad at the company first, but I didn't have to ask him if he was mad at anybody else. He brought it up himself. Second, blame on Joe Biden and the EV mandates. The numbers are that there are more auto manufacturing jobs in the United States today than at any point during the Trump presidency. But there is a big debate about EVs, and about whether the business has made too many, whether it's moved too fast, whether it's selling them, whether they're sitting on car lots, whether the infrastructure is in place in the country or the exception, acceptance of them is in place in the country to have this big shift. So when things go bad in the industry, Trump says, aha, it's Joe Biden's fault. And a lot of the workers go, aha, I think you're right.

And that's Joseph Knowles.

Well, and also important to note that he was for Trump before he even got laid off.

Yeah.

He was already starting to look around because he sensed the mood. And then he lost his job, and he was like, I was right to look around.

Yeah.

So it reaffirmed his search for something different.

John, a lot of people in our business like to put people in boxes, specifically demographic blocks. Well, one of my favorite things about this project is we've learned that that is kind of bullshit. And we've heard from these two men. They're both black, roughly the same age, from Rust Belt Cities, but they have very, very different politics. In what way do these men represent a larger trend?

Well, the biggest trend is, you know, the old rules don't apply, the old labels don't apply, the old playbook doesn't apply. Some of it is things are just changing under our feet every day. And some of that's Trump. He has redefined the Republican Party. He has repopulated the Republic. It is a different Republican Party today than just five, six, eight years ago. And so when you have change, you have to deal with it. Population is Shifting, that's another change. Education. We've talked about this in prior episodes. Education is now a dividing line. But here you have two men who are voting. Like a lot of people vote. Men, women, white, black, Asian, Latino, gay, straight. How do I feel? How is my life? How am I doing? How do I feel when I look my kids in the eye? Eric, when we first met him, was down. He said, why is all the money going downtown and not coming out here to the north side? There used to be factories looping around here. Now they're brownfields. He's more optimistic now. He sees things coming back far from finished, but he sees the building blocks, and that translates into your politics.

Joseph is the flip side.

Yep.

He's lost his job. He thinks his union failed him, the institution failed him. He thinks Joe Biden's EV policies have something to do with that. Anybody out there listening? Maybe you're having a debate. Is he right or is he wrong? I get that. I respect the debate. In his world, he's on the ladder to the American dream, and the trap door just opened. So he's mad. He's mad and he wants to blame somebody. It is human nature and understandable. You're optimistic about the economy. Let's keep what we got. You're pessimistic about the economy. Let's change what we got. There you go.

We keep talking about election math, but what does it say about this race, 2024, that we're a week away about? And Michigan and Wisconsin are still such.

Huge question marks, and Pennsylvania and Arizona and North Carolina and Georgia and Nevada. Look, you know, I always say that this is really complicated, so my bosses have to pay me money to do this. Politics, in the end, is the first math we learned. It's addition and subtraction. It's who has the most. When you add them all up at who has the most. But underneath that, the coalition math is changing. I was gonna say has changed so dramatically, it just is changing constantly. The education level, Trump's inroads with the black community, with the Latino community. This is the first presidential election since the Dobbs decision. We don't really know what it's gonna do to the math in a presidential election. So in our travels, I drive you nuts with this. It's like, okay, so if you take the 2020 race, you know, what does Trump need to do better to win in 2024? What does Harris need to do to match Biden's coalition or improve upon it? Well, you also know she's going to lose Somewhere. Right. The numbers tell us she's going to lose at least a modest number of black men from the Biden coalition.

Probably a modest number of Latino men from the Biden coalition. Okay, okay. You know you're going to have some subtraction, so where can you make it up? How much can you afford to lose? And if you're getting worried you're losing too much, where can you get new addition to make up for the subtraction? Well, does that come with more suburban women? Does that come with slightly higher turnout among African American? So that's what we've been living. And so when you meet an Eric Jones, he was going to vote for a Democrat, so he's not a plus. But as an evangelist, he might be right. He might be a calculator. He's out there getting other people for you because he's optimistic now and he's saying, you gotta vote. You were gonna stay home because you were mad. No, no, no. Look, things are getting better. You gotta vote. Joseph Knowles is a gift for Trump. And it hurts Kamala Harris because he's a black man from a Democratic family who's always voted Democratic. So it's minus one right there. And then if he's talking to friends at the grocery store, at the union hall and say, hey, we gotta try something different, you know?

Yeah, okay. You all think I'm nuts for supporting Trump, give it a chance. What we have isn't working. He's at least one. The question is, does he help Trump more? The one thing I do know in this, my 10th presidential campaign, is this is the most complicated coalition math of any of these races. And that's what makes our job fascinating. That's why you have to get out from behind the desk in Washington and get out in America and take some notes. And yes, do some math.

And pretty soon your favorite saying, Count the votes.

Count the votes. One at a time till we're done. This podcast version of all over the Map is a CNN Audio production. Our show producers are Grace Walker, Jesse Remedios and Allie Molloy. Our editor is Graylynn Brashear, and our senior producers are Dan Bloom and Hayley Thomas. Dan Dezzulla is our technical director, and Steve Lichtai is executive producer of CNN Audio. Support from Nikki Robertson, Jacqueline Calo, Alex Manassari, Robert Mathers, John Dayanora, Laney Steinhardt, Jamis Andrest, Nicole Pesaru and Lisa Namorow. Special thanks to Wendy Brundage and Katie Hinman. I'm John King. Thanks for listening.

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