YouSaid · the spoken record

Dan Balz

lines on the record: 41
first: 2016-03-27
most recent: 2016-03-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, that's absolutely right. And there's no foreseeing if the Democrats win the White House. The president is going to be dealing with a Republican House and probably a Republican Senate and lots of Republican governors. I mean, it is a red and blue country, and whoever is smart enough to figure out how to go through that maze might be rewarded, but it's going to take tremendous effort.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In campaigns, or a kind of a small bore message. And I think that's the frustration that people feel. And it's why after we get through an election, things settle in and one side or the other or both sides feel let down.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Donald Trump has it in what I would say is a negative way, but it's a message that resonates. Bernie Sanders has a big message. And the reality is people want on either side a kind of winner-take-all notion. If we win, we get to do these things. And therefore, they looking for a candidate who says, yes, we're going to win and we're going to do all the things that I'm talking about. The system will not allow it right now. The system, you know, the political system is too divided, but it is not a system that rewards practicality or a kind of...”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a terrible dilemma, and you really can see it in her candidacy. I mean, I remember having a conversation with Anne Lewis, who's a longtime friend of hers ago, and I said, how do you explain, I mean, what's the core of Hillary Clinton? And she pointed me to what Secretary Clinton now often says in public, this John Wesley, do all you can in every way you can every day you can. I mean, it's just that kind of you get up every morning and if you can only get forward one inch, you do that and then another inch the next day. That's not an aspirational message. That's a practical message. And people want to be inspired. I mean, that's one of the realities of life. People want to look to leadership that is inspiring and that in one way or another says we can do terrific things. We can build a great country or whatever the slogan is. President Obama had it.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, our editorial page has been very, very harsh about his agenda. And I obviously don't speak for the editorial page or write the editorials or know what they're going to say, but they've been very tough on them. But I think your point is correct that in general, the news coverage has been much tougher on Hillary.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, there is that risk, you know, on the one hand, the rules are the rules, and it behooves every candidate to figure out how to take maximum advantage of the rules. I think what Sanders is hoping is that he can create a kind of a wait-a-minute sensibility within the party that would in one way or another try to go against the inexorable rules of delegate math. But that's very difficult. Given the kind of sensibility at the grassroots of the Democratic Party, he has an audience that's prepared to hear that argument that he's going to make, and it will create an additional problem for her.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The interesting thing though is that up until now they have been somewhat reluctant to sort of play that delegate math. They've done it a little bit, but I remember in 2008 when you all, and I remember Pluff in particular said, you know, this is now, we have a lead in pledge delegates. This is all about delegates. And here's why Hillary Clinton can't catch up and change the narrative of that race even as she began to win some primaries. And in a sense, you're going to hear that more and more from the Clinton campaign. But it doesn't take away the questions about her as a candidate.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, Bernie Sanders would have to win, not just win states, he has to win states by a big, big margin in order to get a big enough split in the delegates. That's the challenge he faces. So she is, I mean, it would be hard to imagine a circumstance under which she is denied the nomination unless something totally dramatic or unexpected happens.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think there's any doubt about that. I mean, it's funny because in some ways she is now using the playbook that you all used against her in 2008, which is to say that this is a numbers game. It's not a matter of who wins which state. It's simply a matter of accumulating delegates. And because of the democratic rules of proportionality, once you get a lead in pledge delegates, let's put aside super delegates. That's a whole other issue. But once you get a lead in pledge delegates, it is very hard to.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For every problem she has a solution, a particular solution, but she doesn't have a kind of overarching of the problem that Bernie Sanders does. And because of that, I think it's been very difficult for her to settle on a message. And I think that to some extent, as you watch that evolve, you have this feeling that its words and sentences and paragraphs that are written by committee or that are straight out of a focus group or a poll tested as opposed to the directness of Bernie Sanders.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By all types of Democrats, but there is pent up frustration on the left and the Democratic Party. And Sanders has capitalized on that. I think the second is, and I think you've said it yourself, Bernie Sanders has a very simple and direct message. He has a diagnosis of what he thinks is wrong and a prescription for fixing it. You can argue about whether that's a realistic prescription, but there's no doubt that what he is saying comes straight from inside Bernie Sanders and that he's thought about it for a long time and is delivering it authentically. She has had a great deal of trouble crystallizing a message. She has a lot of messages. She has a lot of ideas. She's a programmatic person.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, you're absolutely right. I mean, the Sanders phenomenon is one of the things. Hillary Clinton comes out of, in a sense the centrist part of the Democratic Party at a time the centrist part of the Democratic Party barely exists. And so she has been forced to adapt to a Democratic party that is different from the roots of her husband's campaign and presidency. It has been, I think, hard for her to do that. In a sense, she's been playing on Bernie Sanders' turf or Elizabeth Warren's turf or whoever's turf you want to describe it, but on turf that is uncomfortable for her. And she's had, I think, a very hard time kind of reconciling where she has been, particularly where she has been in public on issues, and where the party is now. There is just a President Obama is well liked by...”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he was talked out of that in part because his folks said, if you do that, you will tear apart the convention and we will spend the next six weeks trying to bring the party back together. And that's what the Republicans may well face under almost any scenario. Fortunately for them, the convention is in July rather than in late August. But it's going to be, I mean, it could be a raucous, rowdy convention.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, they have two choices, or they have two emotions. That they will have to wrestle with. One is the anger they will feel about Donald Trump being denied the nomination, and that will be significant. But the other is the anger they might feel at the prospect of, let's say, Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders becoming president of the United States. And one of those emotions is going to win out when they decide whether they will go and vote. It's possible that many would stay home. And in that case, it would be devastating for the Republican Party. But it may well be that the combination of eight years of President Obama and the prospect of another Democrat in the White House, be it Sanders or Clinton, is enough to bring them to the fore in November. But it would take a while to get there. It would be, I mean, you remember...”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Would be close enough to trump to be able to overturn it. It will be very hard to deny him the nomination even if he's somewhat short of the twelve thirty seven”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We talk about a brokered convention, but there aren't any brokers anymore. Right. There's nobody to broker it. There's nobody who has that stature to bring the warring sides together and say, let's get this worked out. I think the only way that Trump would be denied the nomination is if he was well short of 1237 and there were, in a sense, an organized coup to prevent him from getting it. I mean, the convention can do what it wants. The convention will write its own rules on the eve of the convention. We can't say at this point exactly what those rules will be. We think we sort of know what they are because of the way they've been in the past. But the rules committee will write those rules. They'll be voted on. They'll be voted on by the RNC and then the full convention, and then we'll see what happens. But who would be strong enough at that point? Who would be able to become the consensus anti-Trump candidate? It's hard to say right now who that would be and whether they...”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's right. I mean, if it's those two, then I think that the consequences of a kind of campaign like that whoever wins that election has an almost impossible task at trying to govern. I mean, it will take a Herculean effort after a campaign like that to try to govern. And I don't know, I mean, one thing we know about Hillary Clinton is she is dogged about trying to get things done. I mean, if she becomes the president of the United States, she's going to work hard at trying to make the system work. But we also know that the hostility to her that's built up over the last 20 years will make that very, very difficult if Trump becomes the president, if he's the nominee and wins in the fall, the opposition to him will be, I think, even more significant.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And yet the country seems to like divided government. I mean, in one form or another bad period in American politics in which each election cycle it seems to drive things farther down or farther apart and at some point you have to think well you know collectively the country will say enough of that we've got to get some things done but I don't know that we're there at this point I mean if you you know if you look forward to the fall campaign it has all the earmarks of being even more negative than 2012 by far more negative than 2008 and one in which instead of appealing to the better angels it's going to be attack after attack after attack”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fears and opposition to the Obama agenda in the midterm elections to great effect and been able to win big victories. But they can't deliver on the promises as long as you've got the President of the United States there with the veto pin.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think very much so. And I think directly related to that is this total lack of trust of every institution in the country with the exception of the military probably. And if you think about what the quote unquote Republican establishment has tried to do vis- ⁇-vis Trump, you see the kind of utter futility, at least up to this point, of their ability to affect anything with a good swath of the Republican electorate. The Republican electorate, the Trump voters have no faith in those leaders. They're not listening to them. And as a result of that, the attacks on Trump just sort of fade away. Now, if he becomes the nominee, we're into a different situation because with the broader electorate, he's very unpopular and he would have to do something about it. But he has benefited from the failure of the Republican leadership in a sense to deal honestly with their own people about what could be done. I mean, they've stowed.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“of President Obama and everything that was good about the country would be washed away and people at Obama rallies thought every bit of progress that had been made over the last half century would be reversed if Mitt Romney and the Republicans took power.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That didn't happen at all, and we have been on that circuit ever since in which the passions on both sides have so intensified and the hostility toward the opposition. I mean, I think that's the other thing that debates politics is, you know, it's a rough game. It always has been. Campaigns are rough. But I think that in the past, The bad feelings toward the opponents didn't exist to the degree they do now. I mean, I remember going around in 2012 and asking people at Obama rallies and Romney rallies, what happens if the other guy wins? And there was this sense of almost Armageddon or the Apocalypse that Republicans thought another four years.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's absolutely right. And you could see in those rallies in the fall of 2008 that anger building and that resentment building. And I think if you put that together, if you put the overlay of the Republican leadership decision early in Obama's presidency basically to resist anything he tried to do, that combination snapped the country back in the opposite direction of what we thought was happening. I mean, I think you and I have talked about this. There was a feeling in early 2009 that the combination of the sense of a barrier broken with Obama and goodwill about his presidency, along with the depth of the problems, economic problems that the country was facing, that there might be a moment in which people would kind of come together to try to solve these problems.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“over the years from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party and yet have not gotten much in return. I mean, the Republican economic orthodoxy is tax cuts that are skewed to the upper incomes. And along comes Trump in basically taps into economic frustration and also the cultural frustration. I mean, we know that this is a country that's changing rapidly and more diverse and more tolerant. And there are a lot of people who are alarmed by that, who fear that it is taking away what made America great, quote, Trump's. Yeah. It took quote as hat. And so I think”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You absolutely could, and I think one of the interesting things is we all kind of put that aside in the fall of 2008 because the election of Barack Obama was a historic moment for all the obvious reasons. And I think that there was a feeling that the country was in one way or another, if not coming together, had a good feeling about his election. There were a lot of people who did, but as we know, as we should have known at the time and knew fairly quickly after, there were a lot of people who didn't. And that polarization has been there. And so that has contributed to it. So I did a piece a few weeks ago about kind of the roots of the Trump constituency and the degree to which a lot of them are in that kind of white working class blue-collar group who haven't seen their wages rise, who have gravitated.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“that the country is divided, that there is a lot of the country, a lot of voters who are disaffected, who are alienated, some are really angry, some are moderately angry. There's a lot of resentment. There are a lot of people who think they have not been paid attention to. And I think that's the core that Trump constituency. Everybody could see that coming. I mean, we all knew that was kind of out there. You could see it in every poll or every focus group or every conversation, not just in the last year, year and a half. I mean, you could see it in the 2012 campaign when we were out on the trail. And that's on top of that.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's probably not accidental that he was a reality TV star for a decade before that, so he understands modern media. He understands Twitter and what it can be. I had a conversation with Newt Gingrich, the former speaker recently, and he said something to the effect of, you know, Trump understands that every Instagram is good, every tweet is good, the more volume, the better, whether it's good or bad for him. You just keep feeding that. And he's been amazing at that.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He seems to understand it better than any other candidate. He's come at it in a very unconventional way, as you know, and has made that, in a sense, the conventional way to do it, but nobody else can quite do it. I mean, his ability to dominate a news cycle or a week of coverage has been quite extraordinary. And to some extent, the media has been complicit in that because he's a controversial character and controversy drives news coverage. He knows that Direct conversation with journalists, particularly television journalists live on the air, not only fills time and brings attention to them, but then creates the narrative for at least the rest of that day. And he's been brilliant at it.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have to be in the moment, and that requires greater attention to every poll that comes out. I think what frustrates me is not only is a lot of public polling not terribly reliable, but every poll seems to get seized upon as if it is new information and therefore the most important and reliable information. And so there are swings back and forth based on one particular poll. Maybe it's an outlier. Maybe it's accurate. Nobody knows at that moment. And I think that more so than ever, that tends to dictate the way coverage moves. And we've seen it in this campaign more than any because there are just so many polls that come out and because cable news and the big news organizations are following and competing for attention, and so they're looking for things that they can grab readers with.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The ways in which it's changed are the media has totally changed, the nature of the way political campaigns has changed, and the country has changed. And so we cover it in a much more minute way today. We cover everything that moves, whether it deserves to be covered or not. And we have, I think, a greater difficulty stepping back even a half a step or two steps to keep the larger questions in mind as we are trying to follow it.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I know, thank you. It's not different in this respect. I mean, covering politics is still particularly presidential politics. you know a quadrennial exercise in trying to understand where the country is and kind of what the collective hopes and dreams and fears and concerns of voters are and then trying to match that with candidates who are doing the same thing in other words they're trying to you know they're trying to match their appeal to where they think the country is and so it's an effort to tell that story and you know we tell it on a”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I looked at him a few years ago. They are, once I started reading, they're still so vivid because, as you know, I mean, that week was... An extraordinary week in American political history.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was unbelievable week for me. I mean, because I spent a lot of, you know, I spent the early evenings at the convention hall. And then later in the evening watching the clashes on the streets. Yeah.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, the first convention I covered was Chicago 68. I had just graduated from Illinois and had gone to work for my hometown paper. I was 1A in the draft, so my days were numbered in one form or another. So I went back home and spent the summer at home working for the paper there. We had one credential for the convention, and nobody wanted it. And, you know, I was the junior person on the staff. And so I said, well, I'd love to go. So I spent the week in Chicago.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the 70s. Very active beat. I mean, the wage and price controls and the Russian grain deals and budget issues. And it was not quite Watergate. The beat I was on was not quite Watergate. But it was a stimulating time.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now with Politico, one of my oldest friends, and we were on the paper together, and a third friend named Don Ruter drove out here to Washington to cover the March on the Pentagon. And so we were in the thick of it. The other thing that happened to me during those years was I got a summer internship here in Washington. My congressman at the time was one John B. Anderson. Oh, yes. Later became well known for running for the Republican nomination in 1980 and then running as an independent. So I worked in Washington for a summer, and it was that combination of journalism and Washington that stimulated in me a kind of a desire to be a Washington reporter. I more or less stumbled into political reporting when I went to the post in 1978. I had spent five and a half years at National Journal.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were covering those. Yeah, I was covering those. And in the fall of 67, the march on the Pentagon, Roger Simon, who you know well. Yes, Greg College.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It came later. I mean, The year I started at the Daily Line, I was 1965, the fall of 1965. You know, Vietnam was an issue at that point on many campuses. It had not quite come to the U of I at that point. But it did later. And in my last couple of years on the paper there, there was a lot of activity, a lot of anti-war protest.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everything about it. I loved reporting. I loved writing. I loved watching, you know, this was in the old days of hot type, of being in the composing room when the compositors and the printers were putting the pages together. I think there was something infectious about it. You felt like you were part of watching unfolding history. And this was back in the 60s when history was really unfolding on college campuses. So almost everything about it kind of captivated me, and I kept at it.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I grew up in Illinois, I grew up in Freeport, home of one of the or site of one of the Lincoln Douglas debates up in the northwest part of the state. Yeah. And went to the University of Illinois for college, and my brother, who also later became a journalist, urged me when I was a freshman at the end of my freshman year. He said, you should go to work for the student newspaper, the Daily Alina, which was a five-day a week kind of independent newspaper that we ran. And I did that in my sophomore year and got hooked on journalism.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, always being how far back do you go? I mean, it's hard to recall exactly when it kind of crystallized. Until college. I mean, it was really in college that I focused on becoming a reporter. I saw some reference to something my mother had saved years ago that when I was much younger I said I wanted to be a writer or something but that was a pretty unfocused thing. It was in college.”
2016-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 37 - Dan Balz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source