Power Politics Episode 2 - A Mishpacha Podcast

Moria how do you see it Super Bowl stock market polling what do these have in common this is all prediction [Music] welcome to power Politics the mishpacha podcast exploring the flashpoints of American and global current affairs and how they impact the Jewish Community I'm Benjamin rose with editor at large and I'm Maury litwack a two-decade veteran of political campaigns at Capitol Hill join US Weekly as we delve into these critical topics and more on power Politics on today's program we will talk about how faulty and biased polling fed the Red Wave narrative that crested before it reached the shores of the Potomac also the supporters of Israel in the U.S have the right to voice their opinions on how Israel runs its foreign policy and if so where should the lines be drawn and will all of Donald Trump's legal woes combine to knock him out of the presidential race or could even find himself on trial all this plus more lit wax in my influencer of the week and our fearless forecast coming up in this edition of power politics so we're going to talk about polling today and as a political journalist Mori I plead guilty when looking for story ideas I have to admit a good poll is one of the easiest news hooks for me to build a piece around but after several poor Performance Cycles by the pollsters I'm wondering if I shouldn't be revisiting that kind of concept and what really drove that home to me was an article in the New York Times that appeared last week where the times noted Senate races in several States Washington State Arizona Nevada Pennsylvania and New Hampshire where pollsters all showed Republicans leading or within the margin of error and all in states where they eventually lost some buy big margins the times singled out two culprits in particular Trafalgar group and Insider Advantage who were both identified with the Republican party but they were also critical of democratic polls such as data for Progress that fed the narrative the best quote from the story that I saw and I'll get to a second one later but the best quote I saw was Stephen law who's the CEO of Republican Senate leadership fund which invested 280 million dollars into the midterms that's not a poultry sum he said these frothy polls had a substantial distorting impact on how people spent money on campaign strategy and on people's expectations going into the election that's a mouthful in one sentence maurya how do you see it Super Bowl stock market polling what do these have in common this is all prediction the art of predictions and the the art of forecasting when you look at political polling it has an unfortunate track record as of late of being wrong I remember tweeting out probably a couple years ago asking the people who I engage with on social media do they believe any poll is there a pollster they believe is there a poll in particularly they believe and there was wide ranging skepticism and that continues to be the case so I think when you look at and talk about polling there's the internal skepticism within those running campaigns and then there's the external skepticism within the constituencies that make up the electorate one of the best ways to think about polling and talk about polling is you have to remember that a ring occurs to your phone asking you a question saying Benjamin do you agree with this position what do you think of this person one out of ten this five out of six this whatever it may be and you have to realize that so many times those answers are not necessarily truthful answers so many times people are not willing to give those answers in the way the pollsters may like and then we take that information and it reminds me of the game of telephone that we've all watched kids play we played as kids which is one person says to the next person whisper something in there and then it goes to the next person next person next person and then you end up with a garbled mess that's what polling has become right now so why do politicians keep doing it and why do the public keep listening I think the same reason why you have CNBC that is producing analysis after analysis I think for two years now about whether there's gonna be a bear Market or a bull market or bear Market or bulmer the same reason you have ESPN that is feeding analysis about who's going to win the Super bowl or the World Series or the World Cup or anything else like that there's a desire to have predictions there's a desire to sort of hear this out and analyze and put information into it the difference though is that I don't think the average NFL or baseball coach or the average business is following and tracking those predictions of those analysis and then making decisions here whereas what you're saying and you're reading about is it appears that the campaigns and the elected officials are following analysis that is so often wrong they're not only following it they're falling for it another great quote from Stephen law said I would get to this is he said that all of these effervescent polls and getting us about a big red wave LED some Republican candidates to believe all they had to do was play to late night cable and the hardcore base instead of reaching out to Independent voters who decided the election that's a serious condemnation coming from a fellow who spent 280 million dollars on Republican Senate candidates and going forward this has to be corrected because if it isn't the Republicans and any other party that follows this is going to be in a very difficult position at the end of the day it's that knock on the door so our elected officials knocking on doors are the elected officials taking the time to actually see voters and hearing what voters have to say it is short-sighted to believe that the conservative analysts or the liberal analysts are going to be the ones who you have to cater to as an elected official or to get elected so I think that quote is incredible and probably accurate in the sense that it just requires that knock on the door and I'm not surprised that so many people lost when there were just these wild assumptions starting two years ago that there was going to be a red wave and that there's sort of this automatic occurrence of election which just didn't occur speaking about knocking on doors I also noticed an article a couple of months ago that talked about Ron DeSantis and how he knocked on not he personally knocked on doors but how Republicans knocked on doors at the scientist's behest and they were able to get several hundred thousand new voters registered and that's what turned things around the reason why DeSantis did that is because in the first race that he won for governor four years earlier he only won by 36 000 votes this time he won by uh over a million votes or of a very substantial margin so he realized that listen we have to get more people signed up for the Republican party so knocking on doors isn't only just to introduce yourself to the voter but it's also to get voters on the voting rolls and I know that's a very important topic that you've worked on for many years you know let's look at the right and left here in this election what do DeSantis and Stacey Abrams have in common exactly what you're just talking about which is an ability to register voters get them to the polls get them voting and that's what this is all about it's just funny that the political polling and campaigning I don't even understand when you when you bring up a number like that a hundred thousand voters or the numbers in Georgia I don't understand how a pollster could possibly even analyze that data in a realistic way or understand where a hundred thousand voters are going to end up on Election Day who've never voted before I don't even follow how that's possible yeah and when you've got so many new voters then that's going to skew the uh the polls personally I like pollsters in Israel here I answer polls I get them all the time on my cell phone I'm very happy to uh also tell the truth and say who I'm going to vote for and who I'm not going to vote for but I guess a lot of other people have trouble with that yeah I don't know if I would answer a pollster I don't know if I would I'm very involved in politics and many times when I get to their election day there are some candidates still I'm thinking about what I'm gonna do with where am I going to vote for them and that may say prize people but there's a lot of people on the ballot and so it's incredible to me that we keep falling for this every election of this is what the polls say so it's going to be sort of a fate accompli I don't know I can't believe that we continue to do this and I just feel also that there used to be a better art in science to this than what's currently occurring it's not in my Fearless forecast later on but uh I would forecast storms and clouds and a lot of skepticism going forward for the uh the polling profession pollsters will definitely have to go back to the drawing board and uh especially after the 2020 presidential election uh when basically a lot of people thought that Donald Trump was going to be re-elected and turned out he wasn't or uh at least most people think so but not everyone and Donald Trump has been under investigation for the better part of the last year for what happened on January 6 2021 another interesting article I saw on that topic this week was written by Doug lachane who's one of the top Democratic strategists in America but was a very balanced article he had a great lead it said in the New Year Merrick Garland who's the U.S attorney general will face two unprecedented scenarios he could become the first attorney general in American history to indict a former president as well as the first attorney general to be impeached by Congress so we know that the house select committee on the January 6th the Insurrection if you want to call it that or buy it if uh you prefer tone downward unanimously recommended four criminal charges against the former president for attempting to block the peaceful transfer of power whether that case is heard or not but whether it results in an indictment is going to be one of the topics that our guest talks about today thrilled to have with us Dan Huff was a senior advisor to president Trump in the white house he was General Deputy assistant secretary for enforcement at HUD he served as counsel to the chairman of both the Senate and House Judiciary committees and prior to coming to Washington he was a management consulting with McKenzie and Company New York he's a graduate of the Columbia Law School his work has been featured in numerous Outlets including Wall Street Journal political Fox News he serves on the board of the U.S Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington I believe now he's a bit of a tech entrepreneur as well so uh with us welcome Dan thank you for having me it's an honor to be here Dan we always always like to ask our guests a little bit about who they are you have a um it's almost like a wish list for someone who doesn't want to be a lawyer in a law firm but wants to go out and do incredible things with his legal mind so how did you get started in this share us a little bit your journey in politics well I grew up in Boston when I was a little kid my parents would take me around to show me all of the great locations where historical things happened uh the Boston Tea Party the old meeting houses Etc and that really infused in me a love of country and I read later you know in Jewish history courses that you know America was really the first place that Jews could live sort of totally open from the beginning notice from the beginning of the country and it made me very proud of the country and want to you know work to improve it and that's what got me interested in politics and really I suppose it began in law school I did an internship in Washington got very interested in the policies and that opened the door for me later to come down and work on the Senate Judiciary Committee and then the house Judiciary Committee and then in turn led to uh a leadership position at HUD and eventually probably the Pinnacle the Capstone the greatest job I've ever had working for president Trump directly in the White House sounds incredible what did you do in the white house so we did stuff on the books and off the books on the books I helped run the office of presidential Personnel there's an important idea in Washington and it is 100 true that Personnel is policy if you can pick the people you can essentially pick the direction which the policy goes and the office of presidential Personnel is responsible for picking all of the political appointees across Administration so in the executive branch the large majority of people who work in the agencies and so forth are what are called Career employees they are there irrespective of the president irrespective of politics however the policy layer the people who actually steer the organization in One Direction or other are appointed by the president and the office that oversees that is in the white house and it's called the office of presidential Personnel so I helped run that I was an advisor there there's a lot of legal issues that arise in terms of you know who can be hired and who can be fired and what can you know if someone resigns you can you move around so that was kind of like the core thing but sort of off the books president Trump really loved the work that we did there and I worked for probably the greatest manager that I've ever met John mcentee he ran the office president Trump trusted John was close to John and because of that we were often in the Oval Office with the president advising on all sorts of matters and finding Creative Solutions to many different problems which was just exhilarating so how does President Trump performing president Trump find a creative solution to getting out of the legal difficulty that he's in well one thing that he does I think well is that he drags things out and that's important he makes them fight for every inch and the reason that works is because you never know what may happen right in New York City he was being investigated by the D.A there and you know he fought for every inch he dragged it out and at a certain point the D.A switched and the new D.A dropped that particular investigation there are other ones but my point is I think that's one tactic if they're coming after you make them fight for every inch he basically uh made everyone wait a long long time to release his tax forms he did but the way this all turned out actually I think just displays the bad faith in which the Congressional committee operate I actually wrote a piece about this in the Wall Street Journal like a year ago the thing that happened here is they said the entire time we need it because it was a legislative purpose right the way the law is set up the IRS cannot give out people tax information as a general rule it's guarded very closely and the reason for that is that the government wants people to feel comfortable giving their uh sensitive personal financial information to the IRS for purposes of taxation without worry that it'll be used against them in some other context they're supposed to be sort of a you know a real wall and the Congress broke that wall on a claim of uh essentially legislative need but in the end of the day what did they legislate over what really happened what did they discover all they did in the end was in the waning days of the Democrat control of Congress they released it essentially to embarrass the former president which he says to say like they've gone to the courts and said we really need this this is very important we have a proper legislative purpose and in the end we'll really came of it nothing every president releases their tax returns Trump made an issue of not doing it why I'm not sure actually why he didn't want to release it but either no obligation to do so and and the people who were put to vote had the opportunity to draw a negative inference right like in law if you're supposed to produce certain documents and you don't ultimately the judge or the jury's entitled to draw a negative inference that's essentially the punishment oh you don't want to show me something it's probably meh so when Trump didn't want to release it people were free to draw a negative and for instance I don't want to vote for him maybe he says taxes Etc but that question was put directly to the public and they voted in 2016 for him so as far as I'm concerned I think that you know he ran the risk of a negative inference people were entitled to draw that and sort of no harm done what does Merrick Garland do now if he indicates Trump Lindsey Graham Senator Lindsey Graham from South Carolina already said that there's going to be rides in the street if he doesn't and there's real evidence against the president if there is then he looks like he's not doing his job so what does he do well he lets the special counsel do his work and hope this Federal Council doesn't come out with a finding prior to the election I suppose if uh he's not going to find anything I mean look my personal feeling about all this is that it's essentially a lot of nonsense but for those people who think that there's something there what he does is he lets the special counsel work and he stays clear of the Special counsel's Operation so in other words Merrick Garland in a sense hides behind the special counsel and shields himself politically yes I mean that's the only but you know I don't have a great deal of faith in Merrick Garland and the reason for that is you know he used to have a good reputation when he was nominated to the Supreme Court I mean remember people used to tell me oh look at all these things he's done and I didn't believe it because I sort of feel like the Liberals essentially stick together and so you know on the cases that matter he will be a reliable vote for the left no matter sort of what the merits of the case are but putting that point aside the real tell of the sort of person he is is that if you recall toward the beginning of the administration there were a lot of angry parents going to school boards and saying you know like this is happening in our schools we don't like this indoctrination that's occurring and a letter was sent by to the justice department essentially reminding people that their rhetoric if it goes too far could be prosecuted and when he was brought in front of the Judiciary Committee for oversight and asked about that like your intimidating people you're telling them they can't speak their mind he said essentially that all we were doing was reminding them of their obligations oh that's nonsense if you get a letter from the IRS commissioner telling you before you file your taxes I just want to remind you that failure to file a proper leak and subject to these penalties what they're really trying to do is make you steer very far from the line which if you look into cases like New York Times against Sullivan about Free Speech the Supreme Court talks about the importance of not forcing people to steer very far away from the line of letting the people speak openly and he did that and that letter was clear obviously designed to intimidate people and to sit there under oath and tell people and pretend like you don't know what you did is ridiculous and shows that he's not a serious person so I don't have have any real faith that he's gonna do the right thing here he will be subject to the political pressure and frankly you know maybe it's good that he's not overseeing the investigation they have a special counsel I don't really know that guy's reputation but perhaps he can withstand it better than girl looking at the other side of the coin now that the Republicans are in control of the House of Representatives did they start investigating Hunter Biden they've already said that they want to do that and I think it is worth looking into I mean particularly because we know now that the FBI went out of its way to essentially block a thorough a study of that prior to the 2020 election that thing had been litigated and gone through and really investigated you might say well this is a waste of our time let's focus on something else but you have this email where someone's talking about you know a point for the big guy it's certainly suspicious that's what you'd call him the talmud regime the Dover and you know there's probable cause to look into it more and it was essentially squelched for political reasons so I think they absolutely go look at that as well as a whole bunch of other things but that's a very serious matter how does this guy without a lot of experience suddenly get paid millions of dollars I mean there's a a reasonable inference here that needs to be investigated and frankly if he is clean and nothing happened he should be exonerated so I think it's a good uh thing for them to look at Dan if you were the house Judiciary chairman and there is now a majority how do you think of that I think for our audience in particular with your background what are day one day two you know as we're recording this uh McCarthy still isn't speaker uh so I don't know what that exactly that means but what does that look like from the Chairman's perspective and how he looks at sort of the all-encompassing thing does the house become a uh basically just an investigative body or is it is there something else that we're missing as you know obviously when you control the house and you're not in control of the senate or the White House the easiest thing is to do oversight because the legislative process is much more difficult even if you pass something in the house you may need a super majority in the Senate the president May veto it so the Temptation is to uh you know lean heavily on oversight I think actually if it were me what I would do is I would try to have a healthy mix and try to find ways to compromise and compromise doesn't mean like I want to do a hundred and you want to do zero so let's meet at 50. it might mean like I really want thing a and you really want thing B and we can just pair then right so you're not watering down your principle on an issue you just sort of putting together packages of perhaps unrelated things that could move together so that's one thing I would look at on the oversight side I think what's really important is strategically you can get bogged down and spend a great deal of time trying to send subpoenas to the administration which will be ignored and fought and litigated and never ever produced anything because what will happen is if you issue a subpoena and it's not complied with the process is the house votes on it and can refer to the justice department and ultimately the way to enforce a subpoenas for the U.S attorney of DC to essentially go into court and seek contempt against the person who's not appearing well is the U.S attorney answers to the attorney general is the attorney general going to send someone to enforce a subpoena against a White House official obviously not as basically a total waste of time the only thing it does is get some headlines it's theater so on the oversight side what I would do if I were chairman is I would focus my time on subpoenaing people outside of the administration who could build the case that the Republicans want my personal opinion is that we should be fighting the culture wars every day so I would be subpoenaing not the head of the Department of Education or subordinate within that agency what I'd be doing is I would be subpoenaing the head of school committees and I would be bringing in kids who say that they've been essentially uh punished for speaking their minds in public schools and say how do you answer that because the head of a school board who you know try to shut down parents who are upset or try to bully kids they're not gonna have the justice department defending their subpoenas I think that's something that most people wouldn't do actually there's a little sort of a novel approach that I think could be very valuable here instead of getting bogged down there's a lot of sort of ways to kind of bank shot it and go with things from the side that can't be obstructed as easily let's do one more before we go we we appreciate Dan being here Dan what do you see happening in two years give us your political prediction what's happening in the presidency who's going to win what's happening I don't want to get too much into the prediction business but I'll tell you to me the lay of the land I think that the Republicans have a very tough slog for two reasons one is the mail-in ballots once you have a situation where you can essentially mail out ballots even to people who didn't ask for them on a mass scale you invite abuse as just one small example you could imagine a ballot harvesting in the sense of people go to say low propensity voters maybe they're in nursing homes they're not that aware of what's going on they say hey we'll help you fill out your ballot is that technically illegal ah no but the left is much better at organizing and doing that sort of thing and you think about Trump he only lost by 46 000 votes across three states so think about that like do you think Wisconsin I think was what was it 16 or 20 000 votes you lost by you don't think that there could be 30 000 people in nursing homes in Wisconsin where organized Democrats could have gone and said hey we'll help you fill out your ballot so so and normally those people would never get balanced because it never would have been mailed to them but once you're in the business of sending a ballast to anybody on your list the opportunities for that sort of Mischief arise and again the Democrats are much better at capitalizing on that than the Republicans so that sort of structural problem one structural problem two is there's been about 40 Years of indoctrination of liberal indoctrination starting in you know elementary schools and then high schools and then secondary education and so you have just an electorate that's just been brainwashed to be much more left-leaning and angry about it in a way that I think you know previous generations weren't and the Republicans did not do a good job frankly over the last 20 or 30 years of combating that when they had the chance I mean even the Secretary of Education toward the very end he started doing something about you know anti-conservative bias on University campuses well what were you doing for the first three and a half years it was a strategic blunder and I think it's costing us now so I think those are going to be the two big hurdles uh you know on the other hand the left is maybe overplaying their hand with some of the really outrageous stuff they're doing I think it's sort of things are turning toward the left but they may overplay their hands the last thing I want to say unrelated to your question is that I've known you for a number of years now Mori and I've always been struck it and I guess that you're good takes your good political takes but your dedication to community work to community service to really being like a public servant for the Jewish community and a lot of the times and situations where it's not been so easy so I want to thank you for all the work that you've done very kind words and an old colleague from Capitol Hill Dan huff and we appreciate him being on the program we appreciate his uh his insights and I think the listeners also learned a lot so we appreciate you thank you Dan thanks for having me excellent interview with Dan Huff my take away from it and maybe it's just confirming what I already think but I think these investigations are a waste of time for the most part I understand if there's criminal Behavior you have to look into it and you can't allow that to go unmonitored on the other hand you take a look at the whole January 6th and I introduced this is was it a riot was it an Insurrection whatever you call it Trump lost even though he didn't admit it he was disgraced in a sense by by losing and let him go you're spending an entire year in Congress when there's so many important issues that have to be solved in America trying to investigate the former president and like Dan was saying he's probably never going to be charged Dan also said the same thing about investigating Hunter Biden he said oh fine look into it but if the guy didn't do anything wrong so just exonerate him and get over it and don't waste time on needless investigations I think people are much more interested in solving the inflation crisis oil prices uh Social Security viability for the long term uh the debt limit competition with China these are things that I want to see Congress working on not meaningless investigations trying to pin someone they don't like to the wall Dan highlighted again the difference between theater and tactics I think it's important just because when he was talking about what he would do if he was in charge okay look there's a lot of theater and then there's the tactics and tactically speaking I mean could you imagine Congress pulling someone's local school board or their local University or somewhere else and talking about things I I'll never forget when I was in Congress and we talked about steroids in baseball and we spent months doing that with absolutely no real impact but it was great theater when you hear someone talk about that the difference between tactics and strategy and theater it's very insightful so I always like when we can peel the onion and learn a little bit and also when we look back at this six months from now or eight months from now it'll be interesting to see whether or not they took that advice or not it'll also be interesting to see if Merrick Garland really does indict Donald Trump basically Dan felt that Garland's credibility has been compromised and he doesn't expect an indictment but I think it's for the voters to decide in 2024 if they want him to be president again based on his conduct on that day and based on his track record as president based on any other competition that might run against him okay so now we're up to our influencer of the week or person of influence however you want to say it this week I'm going to pick a very controversial person his name is itamar Ben gevir we've heard a lot about him he's the new national security minister of Israel now the reason for my choosing him is not necessarily because I agree or disagree with what the person did it's just that the person did something that caused a big Ruckus we know that itamar Ben bevere ascended uh the Temple mount harabite on the fast of the tenth of Taves and he was there for a total of well there were two reports once at 13 minutes and once at 15 minutes which is hardly enough time to even say shiman schmones right so uh he wasn't up there for a long time it's not like he threw rocks at anyone in the walk for anything like that but there was a round of condemnations by the US by Jordan Egypt Saudi Arabia the UAE turkey Qatar Bahrain France and the UK just to mention the ones that caught my eye so anyone who's got the ability to bring down the Wrath of the world on him like he did and to call attention to himself deserves to uh be the influencer of the week and the reason why he did it is very simple basically Israel is trying to reassert its uh sovereignty over Jerusalem it's trying to reassert its control over uh the West Bank and make sure that it also restores its deterrence and this is part of the cat and mouse game that we're going to see a lot over the next couple months we're going to see Israel take small steps to try to see exactly what they can get away with and what they can't you know condemnations by Foreign Nations nobody likes them but they're not really that serious when it comes down to it but we're going to see more of this and to me this was a test by Ben giver and the Nintendo Administration to see exactly what the reaction of the other side would be we know there is one rocket by Hamas fired supposedly at Israel which landed in Gaza as many of the Rockets do thank God and we're going to see more of this going on so that's my influence with the week Marvin Greer my influence of the week is more domestic to where I live not involving any foreign policy not involving anything that Global but Israeli speaks to the American concern when it comes to travel as was widely reported Southwest Airlines had I don't know 80 90 some insane number of cancellations and the entire American public was focused on this for days worried about travel worried about their loved ones and things like that and just nightmare stories all over the place and the influence of the week for me is Secretary of Transportation Peter budget who came out publicly again and again in a forceful way he demanded that Southwest Airlines reimburse passengers he asked to fix it and he became sort of the front-facing hero of this on the issue the reason why I believe he's influenced over the week on this is because this to me is a a rare opportunity for an elected official or an appointed official in his case to put himself on the front of the news he's someone who is growing in influence I mean you have to remember that only a few years ago he was a mayor of a very small town a very small one and he has since gone to be a leading force and he gots out those Airlines to respond to him on this as well and will continue to do so the reason to me is the influence of the week is because to be able to command that attention as a Cabinet secretary certainly one that is not its Secretary of State or the Attorney General one who gets the news daily is remarkable I just think that you got to continue to look at him as someone who is going to um be looked at as a Democratic presidential candidate as he was previously as a Democratic leader he has a lot of things on his side including the fact that he is able to go on TV and moments notice and command attention and command media response and I also saw where Southwest Airlines decided that they're comping 25 000 points to every person who out of flight cancel during the course of the holiday season yeah so obviously Buddha judge did his job it's interesting when we look at these influencers like you mentioned people may not like the individuals they may not respect the politics or the policies or anything else like that but these are people who are able to influence an entire week influence politics foreign policy and they make the news are you ready for your Fearless forecast I think the Fearless forecast and I feel like I'm going to get myself in trouble here because last week I was asked about the McCarthy speakership and I responded that I thought it was mainly political uh a spin and I thought it was going to be pretty much a cakewalk and as we're recording this it's the Cakewalk and he's still I think on three rounds he wasn't able to make it but I am going to double down on the Kevin McCarthy thing in a bigger way which is I'm going to say that not only is he speaker and sort of sticks it out to be speaker but on top of that I believe that he consolidates power within the house Republican base there nationally he becomes the sort of force to be reckoned with on the Republican scene because as much as you know a DeSantis may be the voice as much as Trump may be the voice Etc in politics the ability to have opponent the ability to have someone you're on the other side of on a day-to-day basis is extremely powerful and there's only going to be one guy between the president the Senate Majority Leader and the Republican party and that's going to be be soon to be speaker McCarthy so my Fearless forecast is not only is he elected speaker but when you look back you see he is sort of in the way Gingrich was perceived in the 90s which was um the Republican Party a lot of it ended up going and running through him my Fearless forecast is that I believe this is the time where McCarthy not only uh may get elected by razor thin margin to be speaker but going forward it's full steam ahead just because he will be able to control the narrative in a place where he is the only thing standing between the Democratic party and what they want to get done by the time the saris will know for sure as far as my Fearless forecast will have to wait an extra week but my Fearless forecast is that Joe Biden announces on or about January 17th which is Dr Martin Luther King Day in America that he's running again for president and I think he's going to choose that date for a couple of reasons number one he'll find a way to honor Dr King's memory in that regard because Biden does have a good record on these relations and his work on behalf of the African-American community in America it also ties in with his decision or the Democratic party's decision but it was Biden's inspiration to make South Carolina the first primary state in 2024 we know that South Carolina gave Biden his uh big victory that catapulted him into the lead after people were writing him off and also South Carolina has a very huge African-American population as well so I think Biden picks that day on or about to announce that he's going to run again in 2024. I love that your forecast has a specific date does that a specific time also on it uh I'm very impressed High Noon hey noon you heard it here first you are listening to power politics unpacking the Power Players shaping our world podcast enjoyed this episode leave us a rating and share with your friends have a topic you'd like us to discuss or a guest to suggest we'd love to hear from you drop us a line on Twitter at the mishbacha OR at mishbahad.com forward slash powerpolitics this episode was produced by Jag and Detroit podcasts with sound design by Cedar media Studios see you next week [Music]