Obama political strategist and Uber SVP David Plouffe tells Glenn Thrush that Hillary Clinton has a 98 percent chance of being the Democratic nominee and that she’s a much better candidate today than in '08. Plouffe warns Clinton not to allow outside voices to dictate or influence campaign strategy and to stick with her team and the plan. On the Republican side, Plouffe suggests that efforts to coalesce around one alternative to Trump are too little too late — "It needed to happen two, three weeks ago” — and that the nomination is completely in Trump’s control: “If he can land the plane, he wins.” So how does a Trump/Clinton matchup end? Listen to the full interview to find out! Get every episode of “Off Message" by subscribing on iTunes.
GLENN THRUSH: So we have lured David Plouffe into a residence in Southwest Washington, D.C. It's like a four-room suite. It's entirely empty. The loudest noise is the buzz of the refrigerator.
DAVID PLOUFFE: I don't think this is going to end well.
GLENN THRUSH: He's looking in the other room just to see if FBI agents are there. We have presented you with a suitcase and we're waiting for the cash.
Welcome, David.
So I was perusing Wikipedia before I came in, because I realized I've read your book, I've talked with you 10,000 times, and I never looked at your Wikipedia page. And the first thing I realized about you that I didn't know is Wikipedia says you're Jewish. You are not apparently Jewish, right?
DAVID PLOUFFE: No. I may be honorary Jewish, but no, I was raised Catholic, went to Catholic school, and now am a practicing Episcopalian.
GLENN THRUSH: That is good. We'll leave it at that. Okay? I have no--
DAVID PLOUFFE: No further inquiries.
GLENN THRUSH: --no further inquiries about the Episcopalian thing. Has anyone ever made an Episcopalian joke? I don't think so.
DAVID PLOUFFE: Not that I'm aware of.
GLENN THRUSH: The other thing I saw was about your dad, who passed away in 2012. He sounded like a really interesting person, and I hadn't realized there was sort of a military connection, which I guess isn't too surprising, considering you grew up in Delaware. Tell me a little bit about your father.
DAVID PLOUFFE: Well, he grew up in Massachusetts. Went to Natick High. Went to Boston College. Actually, interestingly enough, given what I'm doing now, he drove a taxi to put himself through college in the streets of Boston. And, oh yeah, he was a captain in the U.S. Army in the sort of late '50s, early '60s, and worked on some really interesting things. He had a physics degree, which I can now reveal here.
But then he went to work for DuPont, which most people did in Delaware at the time. He found himself in Delaware.
GLENN THRUSH: Didn't Dan Pfeiffer's father also work at DuPont?
DAVID PLOUFFE: He did. He did.
GLENN THRUSH: Did they know each other?
DAVID PLOUFFE: No, but my father knew of Mr. Pfeiffer.
GLENN THRUSH: Oh, [unclear]--
DAVID PLOUFFE: Yes. Well, he was a very high-ranking executive, Mr. Pfeiffer. My dad worked his way up. He started on the factory floor and ended up, actually, in the marketing department when he retired.
GLENN THRUSH: That's amazing. I remember being in--when you were in the West Wing and I had a visit there with Mike Allen, and Mike presented you with this marketing textbook, and he said something to you, like, "You've gone viral, David." And I said something like, "You've gone bacterial," you know.
But obviously--well, first of all, were you math‑y in school? Were you pretty good at math?
DAVID PLOUFFE: I enjoyed math quite a bit, but I didn't come from a political family. My father and my mother both voted for Reagan in '80 and '84 and--but it's interesting. They became what you might consider more progressive through the years.
GLENN THRUSH: Really?
DAVID PLOUFFE: And, yeah. And so, you know, one of the joys of my life was in 2008. They got very into the Obama campaign, and not just because I was working on it. They just got into it, and, you know, they both passed away now but to be alive then and kind of experience it, that was really exciting.
But, yeah, so my sort of--you know, for a while, my brother was running a used car dealership and I was in politics, so I felt bad for my parents, because their two apples had not turned out too well.
GLENN THRUSH: That's kind of the Joe Biden--like, it seems like a very Joe Biden kind of thing, right?
DAVID PLOUFFE: Well, it's Delaware. It's true. In fact, I was the best man at my younger brother's wedding and at the time part of my roast to him was I appreciated that he's done the only profession that makes me look good, running a used car dealership.
GLENN THRUSH: But the physics stuff, I mean, you've made your reputation as being somebody who valued analytics, it was a data-driven operation. I have heard you described, positively, by people as being Spock-like, on your worst days.
Did your father sort of share any of that stuff with you? Where did you kind of come at that data approach?
DAVID PLOUFFE: Well, I probably got into it--this is to all the people I work with now at Uber. They won't understand what I'm saying now, but, you know, we used to have these things called box scores in the newspaper.
GLENN THRUSH: Oh yeah.
DAVID PLOUFFE: And so I got very much into sports, and batting averages, and ERAs, and I would work with him on--you know, I was very into math and calculus, and just always was very--really interested in that. But any sort of numbers.
GLENN THRUSH: Strat-O-Matic? Did you play Strat-O-Matic?
DAVID PLOUFFE: I played All-Star Baseball, which was the one you spun, and the 1 was the home run.
GLENN THRUSH: And where you also had, like, if it was a Mike Schmidt card, let's say--which I imagine you valued.
DAVID PLOUFFE: Nice choice, Mike Schmidt. He had a big 1.
GLENN THRUSH: He had a big 1 and it was wide, but triples would be like a tiny little sledge.
DAVID PLOUFFE: And 10 was a strikeout, and there was a lot of 10s on Mike Schmidt's card.
GLENN THRUSH: Right.
DAVID PLOUFFE: So I played that incessantly, and would actually like to get my son into it, but it probably isn't quite as stimulating as kids today would like.
GLENN THRUSH: [Unclear].
DAVID PLOUFFE: Right.
GLENN THRUSH: And you were a big Phillies fan growing up.
DAVID PLOUFFE: Huge.
GLENN THRUSH: It's always baseball, man. Like all the people who are really into politics are baseball fans. I was the same thing. I was a Mets fan. I used to take the box score every day and I used to reenact the games in the back yard.
DAVID PLOUFFE: Yeah. Well, you know, it was fascinating for me. So in 2008, you know, within a week period, my daughter was born, my second child, and then--well, Phillies win the World Series on a Thursday night, Barack Obama is elected President on a Tuesday night, and my daughter was born just after midnight on Friday morning. So I will never have a week like that.
I will tell you, though, in 2007, when we were deep in the primary and working really hard, one of the only moments of real joy I had that year was when the Mets collapsed and the Phillies made the playoffs. So I just had to say that to you, because in Philadelphia, it matters more that the Mets collapsed than the Phillies won.
GLENN THRUSH: Well, Chase Utley got us back this year too. That was the dirtiest play I've ever seen.
DAVID PLOUFFE: It was fair.
GLENN THRUSH: Oh, come on.
DAVID PLOUFFE: And if he was on the Mets, you would be, you know, worshiping him right now.
GLENN THRUSH: Hey, as the Clinton people I know would say, typical Obama response.
So let's talk a little bit about--well, let's just back up. Bridget Mulcahy, my producer, is looking at my like, we only have so much time and Thrush wants to talk about calculus with David Plouffe. But you were a good calculus student?
DAVID PLOUFFE: I think I was good. I probably didn't apply myself as I should have. But, yeah, I was. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed--I enjoyed just the puzzle that that was, and I've always enjoyed numbers, whether it be box scores, election outcomes, you know, even things like barometric pressure. I've always been kind of drawn to numbers.
I find a lot of people who are into politics and in baseball also kind of are into the weather, so we're talking in the middle of a tornado warning here in D.C., and I find that quite interesting.
GLENN THRUSH: So you'd be looking at, like, the barometric pressure dropping and stuff.
So onto--well, obviously what you're doing is you're trading in probabilities, right? That's what this is all about. That's what the baseball game is about, our probabilities things are going to happen. So it's a way of sort of calculating uncertainties, right?
DAVID PLOUFFE: Right.
GLENN THRUSH: So let's talk about uncertainty now. Hillary Clinton has just won Nevada, surprised the hell out of her own people. You know, we were talking to staffers who were in tears the day before, didn't think they were going to pull it off. The Bernie people seem pretty stunned right now.
Is this race over on the Democratic side?
DAVID PLOUFFE: It's not over yet. I will tell you what's interesting about that observation, generally. We live in a world where we know more than we've ever known, data-predictive modeling getting better and better, and yet we get surprised in politics every week. I love that. It's kind of like sports in that way. You can have all the data and all the models and you get surprised.
No, listen. I think she'll do very well in South Carolina and I think she'll have a good Super Tuesday. And so, to me, the most important date in the entire primary has always been March 15th, where you have five big states. A new day on the calendar--Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, Florida, and Ohio. You know, I think if she wins all of those or four of those, at that point--you know, no one likes talking about delegates but it is how these are decided. And so this isn't like boxing, where you can fall behind in rounds and have a knockout. If somebody gets up 7 rounds in a 12-round fight, they're going to win. And so I think she's in a very, very strong position. I'm sure Bernie Sanders will do quite well in Massachusetts, which is a primary, do well in Minnesota and Colorado caucuses. But I think she's--
GLENN THRUSH: I just got off the phone with a senior Sanders person who said, quote/unquote, the linchpin for them is Michigan.
DAVID PLOUFFE: Well, it may be, but here's the thing. Let's say Hillary Clinton has a very good March 1st. She wins Virginia. She wins Georgia. She wins Texas. Let's say Bernie Sanders wins Michigan, 52 to 48. The delegates are basically split. And so what's fascinating is on the Clinton side they may be where we were in '08, which is you may still lose some contests along the way, but you've got a delegate lead that's impenetrable.
GLENN THRUSH: And Joel Benenson keeps coming to our office, only now working for her, telling us how impossible it is for Bernie to win, right?
It is interesting to watch this thing play out and see the script flipped. I mean, even the Iowa/New Hampshire dynamic. Obviously things are working differently. But to be down in South Carolina--I've been down there three times in the last couple of weeks--it's like '08 never happened, and that was one of the most bitter contests. You know, I'm the guy that Bill Clinton screamed "shame on you" at, you know, in Charleston last time, and the Clintons lost their shit in South Carolina. I mean, you guys did a real number on them. The fairy tale comment was amplified.
How do I put this? Now that you're kind of a volunteer [unclear] with the campaign, do you feel any twinge of regret about the way that that went down?
DAVID PLOUFFE: Not one bit.
[Laughter]
DAVID PLOUFFE: Not one bit. I will say, before I get to that, it is interesting. So that's, again, politics. I'm sure the Clintons have a different view of caucuses now than they did eight year ago.
GLENN THRUSH: Oh yeah.
DAVID PLOUFFE: They won the two. And so, look at this. In the first three states, she wins Iowa, lost it last time; loses New Hampshire, won it last time; now wins Nevada but also wins the delegates. So three things happened that hadn't happened before. She's probably going to win South Carolina. So it's remarkable.
GLENN THRUSH: What, did you win by 26 points last time?
DAVID PLOUFFE: We won by 28, if I recall.
GLENN THRUSH: I mean, she could--you know, I don't think it's going to be quite that much, but she could come really close.
DAVID PLOUFFE: She could, and Sanders looks like he's waving a white flag down there.
By the way, so Sanders has run a remarkable race. I mean, to get where he's gotten, no one probably, I would assume, including even himself, might have, in an honest moment like a year ago or even eight months ago, would have imagined he'd put together a campaign like this.
GLENN THRUSH: Two months ago they were saying, you know, call up Tad Devine. Get him on the record. Tad will admit it, you know.
Let's talk about Sanders with African American voters. Does he have a real problem?
DAVID PLOUFFE: I don't think he has a problem. I just think Hillary Clinton has strength. So, listen. We saw, even in '08, we were trailing with African American voters right up until January of '08, and then once we won Iowa and the thing got more real, we were able open things up in South Carolina, and then we opened up a national lead. So she's very strong.
So I don't think this is about Sanders' weakness. I think it's the fact that she is going to perform very well with the African American vote on Saturday in South Carolina, I think she'll perform well with the African American vote and Latino vote throughout the South on the 1st, and I think that also has import on the 15th, where, again, I think on March 15th, if she sweeps those five states or does four of the five--you know, again, I'm sure Bernie Sanders will go on to win some states, but the delegate race will be largely settled.
GLENN THRUSH: Okay. If we're going to do All-Star Baseball in here, and we're kind of looking at the size of the home run here, I mean, I know you hate to do this stuff, but if you were to sort of put probability on Hillary getting the nomination, what would it be at this point in time?
DAVID PLOUFFE: Ninety-eight percent.
GLENN THRUSH: So you feel that confident that's who it's going to be.
DAVID PLOUFFE: I do, and partially because we went through this last time, so you just have a great understanding for what the process is and what it isn't. And it is not about winning certain states or momentum, or winning the press cycle. It's about delegate acquisition.
GLENN THRUSH: Which is what she fundamentally understands--
DAVID PLOUFFE: This time.
GLENN THRUSH: --that she did not understand last time.
DAVID PLOUFFE: Right. So you need--to use a business term, you bid a business model to succeed, based on the rules of the contest, and the rules of the contest are delegate acquisition.
GLENN THRUSH: And when you--I know you don't want to speak--this was a [unclear] conversation and we reported on it last year. You met with her at her place on Whitehaven. You can tell me to jump in a lake. But was that part of what the conversation was, getting her to really understand that this is a numbers game and that it's all about delegate acquisition?
DAVID PLOUFFE: Well, I think that was apparent to her right after '08. So, yeah, I think the two things she really took out of that were--well, three: I need to build a stronger grassroots campaign and organization, I need to utilize technology in a much more focused and central way to the campaign, and I need to be focused on delegates.
And my sense is, in the general election, what you need to carry forward is this is not a national campaign. You're basically running for governor in eight to ten states, and so that has to be the approach, and that headquarters is basically there to service the states.
That tried to be what we did in both of our campaigns, and it wasn't perfect, but that orientation is really, really important.
GLENN THRUSH: Well, you can see it geographically when you go up to Prudential Plaza, and you'd see the state rooms lining. I mean, it was sort of the dominant aspect of kind of the state focus. You'd even sort of see state memorabilia all over the place, which was something you did not see in Boston when you went to the Clinton campaign. I think you saw empty Valium bottles and vodka.
But that really has changed. Robbie Mook, who is her campaign manager, somebody who, over the years, has been somewhat close to you, you guys have a good relationship, he did a pretty damn good job in Nevada and a pretty damn good job in Iowa. I mean, how would you sort of assess the ground operation, looking at it?
DAVID PLOUFFE: Very strong. So if their ground operation was not as strong as it was, or even, say, what they had in '08, she would have lost Iowa. So I think that the organization on the ground really saved them.
GLENN THRUSH: [Unclear].
DAVID PLOUFFE: Right. Whether it's worth five points in Nevada, I don't know, but it was worth close to that. So he's done a great job. And, you know, these are hard. So, you know, after the New Hampshire loss you're just in the barrel. You're in the penalty box, it sucks, but you've just got to put your head down and know that, okay, let's dig out Nevada. Even if we lose that we'll win South Carolina. We'll have a good March.
These things are--you know, Robbie has a steadiness to him, and I think he's more strategic than tactical, and I think that's really important in that position, and I think he's done a great job. And my sense is, I watched a little bit of her town hall last night when I landed here in Washington, and I haven't done much of that, and it was really--I thought she was very effective. I thought she was very strong. I think she was connecting. So I think she's hitting her stride out there too.
GLENN THRUSH: Well, she's better, I think, with the African American stuff. But back to Robbie for a second. The flames were really licking him after New Hampshire. I wrote a story talking about kind of a potential staff shake-up. That was true at the time, and I think Joel Benenson, your old friend, has had issues connecting with the Clintons.
Do you think Robbie is in good shape now, and do you think people ought to just leave him alone?
DAVID PLOUFFE: Yeah. I think you build your team, and you stick by your team, and you run.
I mean, listen. So I will tell you--in '08 we were the neophyte. We didn't have a lot of political barnacles, so we were pretty much able to run the campaign we wanted to run. And we had plenty of doubters in the Democratic Party, many, who thought trying to win states like Virginia and Indiana and Florida was crazy. But we were able to do our own thing. It was harder in '12, because you become more the establishment.
So it's got to be very hard for the Clintons. They've been on the scene for decades. So any time things go wrong, they have dozens of people, you know, in their email box, and probably calling, saying, "Told you so. You've got to do this. You've got to do this."
And one of the tests for her is--so they had a moment of trial now, after New Hampshire. You know, I'm sure there will be another one in the primary--maybe not. There will be many in the general. You're going to have your valleys, and that's always a test. And if the thing you do is so internal tension, and allow voices from the outside to really, I think, affect the campaign in a negative way, you may not win.
I mean, running for President is one of the hardest things in the world, if not the hardest. You're going to be tested in ways you can see and not see. And, you know, every day is not going to be a good day. In fact, many of them are going to be horrific, and you're going to think you can't even get out of your own way. But you've got to stick with your team, and you've got to stick to the strategy.
GLENN THRUSH: Part of that is--I mean, you've used in the--I mean, that was sort of a mantra around the White House. I remember during the Gulf Spill, we're in the barrel today. We're not necessarily going to be in the barrel tomorrow. Of course, you were in the barrel for, like, 45 days.
But that is an issue, having covered her in '08, that is not her characteristic. When things go wrong she seeks multiple inputs.
One of the things that I recall, and I probably wrote it one of the e-books, I don't know if it was you, but you guys took away Obama's, or asked him to not look at his iPad so much, right? That was you, right?
DAVID PLOUFFE: I would never do that.
GLENN THRUSH: But to sort of cut out these external inputs, and dare I mention the name Valerie Jarrett--I will not discuss that--but there was a sense, from perhaps others on the campaign, that Valerie was bringing in external things.
Do you think Hillary would be wise if they would be a little bit more disciplined about the number of people being talked to externally?
DAVID PLOUFFE: Well, I will now. You mentioned Valerie. You know, I traveled with her a lot of '12, and she was actually, I think, a very helpful influence, in terms of making sure the President was not, you know, reading everything that was written. She had a good perspective there.
Yeah, I think--listen. You don't want to be so cloistered that you think you're the only geniuses in the world and you are immune to outside advice, but you've got to limit that. It's hard running for President. It takes everything you have, as a candidate, just to execute every day.
GLENN THRUSH: Right. But you could tell. I mean, you knew Barack Obama when--not when he was a nobody, but you knew him when he was a freshman Senator. It's got to be extremely hard, given the structure of their world and the fact that these guys have been really on top of the game for three decades now, to have somebody to say, "Let's cut down the inputs."
DAVID PLOUFFE: Right, but you need to do that. And, you know, so let's say, in the general election, assuming she's the nominee, and I think she will, so that will be a challenge, right? So you have your data and your modeling and your polling and your theory of how win a battleground state. And then someone who is a governor two, you know, terms ago, or a decade ago, says, "I think you're all wrong." That will be the test. You want to be respectful but, on the other hand, it's your race, it's a different time, different opponent, and technology and data have gotten so much better.
So that will be the test. Are you going to listen? And I think they will, and I think Robbie's built a campaign to assure that. But that will be a test, because there will be moments when there's some bad bullshit public poll that comes out, that shows them tied in Pennsylvania, and, with all due respect, Ed Rendell will call, and say, "You've got to knock off Virginia and come here for three days."
GLENN THRUSH: And everybody's knees turn to water.
DAVID PLOUFFE: Well, and you've just got to calmly say, "No, because our numbers show that we're in good shape. Now, if you have advice for us, we're all ears, but we're not going to jettison our campaign strategy."
I mean, that would be like me--listen, in ten years from now, when I offer my observations about how to win the Iowa caucuses, it won't be worth a damn dime. Okay.
GLENN THRUSH: Well, that's funny. You said this a couple of weeks ago when we chatted. I was like--you said, "I'm like a year and a half away from being completely useless," right, like everything's changing so quickly.
DAVID PLOUFFE: It's changing so quickly. So, you know, I think--you know, yeah. I mean, I remember--I remember when we were going through some debates in the White House. You know, there was one around contraception, as you know, and there was some suggestion that somehow we had just cost ourselves the ability to win Ohio and Pennsylvania. And that was people thinking about Ohio and Pennsylvania from the 1980s.
GLENN THRUSH: Yeah. That's true.
DAVID PLOUFFE: So it's just things change very, very quickly.
GLENN THRUSH: When you look at her as a candidate, and you said you watched the town hall--and, by the way, I think the focus--it's pretty interesting. The focus on the African American community has clarified her message in a way that I don't think was clear before. It's really interesting the way you'll get something and it kind of crystallizes, reminds--sometimes a candidate needs to be reminded of who the hell they are, right?
Do you think, in general, so far, if you're looking at her performance, do you think she is comparable to '08, better, or worse?
DAVID PLOUFFE: She's better. Now, you know, everyone talks about sort of the post-Ohio-to-June Hillary Clinton, and there's no doubt she was campaigning with a little bit more freedom and looseness. But I think she's much better now.
But sometimes it does take that. I look back to our primary. You might remember, we were kind of stumbling around the wilderness in Pennsylvania, lost that, and heading into Indiana and North Carolina. Reverend Wright re-emerged, and if you remember, we had a battle--
GLENN THRUSH: He gave the speech at the National Press Club.
DAVID PLOUFFE: Never forget it.
GLENN THRUSH: It just blew the shit up, yeah.
DAVID PLOUFFE: Right. By the way, no one's had that moment in this campaign yet. That was--that was a very, very difficult situation. But maybe someone will be tested like that.
But you remember we had a debate around suspending the gas tax--
GLENN THRUSH: Yes.
DAVID PLOUFFE: --in Indiana, and I think we, and certainly then-Senator Obama kind of got our mojo back, because that was kind of--the kind of fight, why we got into this race, that this was kind of a phony answer to something, as opposed to a real solution. So sometimes you need something like that kind of snap back and be reminded about what your core message is.
GLENN THRUSH: One last thing on her and then I want to go on to Trump, because you said there were some interesting things about Trump, particularly about kind of the debates and what a match-up would be like.
The one observation--and I've written about this, and this is the opinion of a lot of people who are close to her--the one sort of structural deficiency that she seems to have built into this campaign is we don't have a strategist in the way that--now, you guys sort of divided that command. It was very clear that Ax was the message guy, and you, obviously, played a role in that, but you were more operational.
Do you think--now, Joel is the chief strategist, but he's also the pollster, and that was a setup that they had with Mark Penn. But, clearly, that was a negative, in retrospect. For a lot of the Clinton people, Mark Penn was sort of a negative force who dominated. He influenced too much.
Do you think there is a need for one more piece internally, like a strategist kind of sitting at the center of this? I mean, would you recommend that they add a bit?
DAVID PLOUFFE: Well, I don't have a tremendous amount of visibility into how that's set up. I will say this: if you step back and say the advertising over the last couple of weeks, has that been strong? I think it has been. Her remarks, their sort of strategy around Nevada and South Carolina--I mean, that seems to be working pretty darn well.
So I think the output is more important than the internal drama. But I do think, you know, you do need to make sure that it's not a conference call or a meeting of ten equals. This general election, no matter who's on the other side, will be brutal and tough.
GLENN THRUSH: And I think it's more than ten.
DAVID PLOUFFE: So whatever it is, I think, you know, you have to have--and listen. You know, David Axelrod and Barack Obama had a unique relationship, and, you know, there was just a lot of trust there, and he really got his voice. You know, I came from an advertising and messaging background, so, you know, that was something that was quite natural to me, even though my primary responsibilities were around electoral strategy and organization. I think that you do need to figure out whether it's one voice, two voice. There has to be--you know, there's the big call, and the big meeting, and then there's the real meeting and the real call. That's a little bit flip, but you can't make decisions with ten people. I mean, it's actually impossible, whether you're in politics, business, or family, it's impossible. So you've got to figure out, and, you know, the question is, who is she talking to? And listen, they've got enormous--Joel Benenson, Mandy, Jim Margolis, Jen Palmieri--these are super-smart--I've worked with almost all of them, intensively. These are super-smart people.
So I don't think it's necessarily, you know, is there a missing person from the outside. It's you've got to commit to something, and what's the structure going to be--
GLENN THRUSH: And that's getting back to what you said before, kind of cutting out some of the external inputs and trusting the people who are the engine internally, right?
DAVID PLOUFFE: Yes.
GLENN THRUSH: And that trust is really--I mean, she's been in a lot of campaigns. Trust is a difficult commodity for somebody's who's been through a lot of the things that she has been through.
DAVID PLOUFFE: But this one is going to work out just fine, so this is an interesting period. Iowa, a very close win. Bernie wins New Hampshire, and I think there must have been a sense of, oh, here we go again. But they've stabilized, and again, people say, "How can you say that? There's only been three." Well, she's going to win South Carolina--we're just going to debate about how large the margin is--and I think she's set up for a very good March 1 and 15.
So the truth is, I think on the morning of March 16th, she will be able to look back and say, "You know what? My team weathered the storm. We weathered the storm. The strategy worked." And that's how you build trust. And you go through something like that, you're just more likely to trust the team the next time you have a moment of trial or tribulation.
GLENN THRUSH: One last thing and then we'll move on. Her online fundraising hasn't been anything approaching what you guys were able to do, what Bernie was able to do. And, by the way, in 2008, people seem to forget she did very well with online fundraising for a really long period of time.
Why do you think she's struggling with it? And I guess that dovetails into the conversation about, kind of, youth vote.
DAVID PLOUFFE: Well, she's got, you know, just great digital talent. I mean, Teddy Goff is the best person I've ever met, and he's the lead strategist in this. So this is not about anything sort of technical.
Listen. We struggled, as you know, in 2012.
GLENN THRUSH: That's right.
DAVID PLOUFFE: Our online fundraising, I mean, the actives and the volunteerism was there early, but the fundraising did not kick in until we got into the spring and early summer.
GLENN THRUSH: Because people perceived the threat, right?
DAVID PLOUFFE: Right.
GLENN THRUSH: That's the stuff that always motivates people.
DAVID PLOUFFE: Right. And I think--listen. So right now I think a lot of people think, you know, yeah, maybe Bernie won New Hampshire but she's going to be okay, so there's the urgency question. And then, listen, Hillary Clinton's great strengths, I think, as a general election candidate and as a President--strength, solidity, she's very rational. Primaries are about excitement. And so I think that's going to be more challenging for her.
But it will be there because, okay, I didn't sleep much in '08 or '12 because I thought the difference between a President Obama and McCain or President Obama and Romney was so profound and would affect the world in so many ways that we had to win. But the differences between her and whoever is on the other side will be the widest we've seen since probably Johnson and Goldwater.
So anybody out there that doesn't want to see, you know, whether it's Trump or Cruz or Rubio, is going to come with guns a-blazing, to help her.
GLENN THRUSH: It seems like we're into the world of counter-intuitives now. I think starting off, people were talking about Trump as being an absolutely dream draw for her. He's such an outrageous character. Now you're starting to hear people--I spoke with a couple of pretty prominent people in Ohio the other day who said that Trump could really be tough.
Is your view that Trump is a weak general election candidate or that he could cause her real trouble?
DAVID PLOUFFE: I don't think we know yet, and I think all of us should have learned by now not to get out over ourselves with Trump. My sense, though is this, that he could completely implode. So you say, well, how could someone, you know, really ferociously and viciously attack the last former Republican President and get into a worldwide verbal tango with the Pope and come out okay? Well, he did.
But general elections are a different thing, and when you get close, people take that decision very seriously. What happened with McCain and Palin, the price McCain paid was people thought, you know what? The decision you just made about who would become President if something happened to you is so important, and you clearly just did it for political reasons. It killed him on sort of judgment.
So my sense is that it may be that enough swing voters say, "No way, no how," on temperament first, and then on positions.
So I think that's a likely possibility, that Hillary Clinton could beat Donald Trump by an unheard of margin, nationally, of six to ten points. But if that's not the case and he's competitive, where he'll be competitive is in the Upper Midwest, in the Ohios, the Wisconsins, maybe Pennsylvanias of the world, maybe Iowa and Minnesota, even potentially. But you look at the Colorados and Nevadas and Virginias and Floridas of the world--
GLENN THRUSH: It's going the other way.
DAVID PLOUFFE: I think so. So from an electoral college standpoint, I don't see a Trump path, but he's the only one left that, I think, causes a lot of uncertainty. Whether it's Cruz or Rubio, you kind of know what you're taking, what you're getting. I think the electoral strategy is quite clear. I think both of them would lose, you know, in an electoral college battle to Hillary Clinton.
Trump is a wild card, and you just don't know. And even in Virginia, I think Trump would, in a general election, do very, very poorly in Northern Virginia, very pool in Henrico County. But does he over-perform Romney and McCain, for instance, and even Bush in the southwestern part of the state? He could. We just don't know.
GLENN THRUSH: And it depends on how beat up he is.
Okay. So let's look at the Republican side. He's really run the table. And now we have kind of the--we have a Napoleonic imperative here. He's got 40 percent, or 35 percent, or 30 percent, and his enemies are divided equally as 22 and 22 percent, and they are strong enough to survive but not strong enough to combine and defeat him, right?
(A) What do you think the probability is that he's going to win the nomination, and (B) what kind of event could possibly occur at this point to change the trajectory?
DAVID PLOUFFE: Well, I'll combine those two questions into this. Remarkably, this is completely in his control. If he can land the plane, he wins.
So this notion, by the way--I mean, first of all you can tell the venom. So I don't think any of Cruz, Rubio, Kasich--they do not think Donald Trump being the Republican nominee is a good outcome, but even a worse outcome is one of the other ones becoming the nominee. And if you're Kasich, why would you get out? You've got Ohio and Michigan.
GLENN THRUSH: And you also have a story to tell [unclear]--
DAVID PLOUFFE: Right, but, okay, let's say it's March 2nd. I think the chances of this happening are zero. But let's say it's March 2nd, and Ted Cruz and John Kasich say, "You know, good old Marco deserves to go mano a mano with Donald Trump." It's too late. March 1 just happened, people are already voting, in Ohio, they'll be voting in Florida and North Carolina. Like, people are voting in the March states. So it's too late. It needed to happen two, three weeks ago.
That's my view. Now, Trump--who knows? Tuesday night he could do something. It's hard to top attacking the Pope or George Bush, or calling Ted Cruz a little whiny baby, or whatever he did. But he could do something so detrimental and destructive, or he just doesn't run a disciplined campaign.
But I was interested. I saw Senator Mark Warner earlier today. So he's going to Virginia again on Monday, and he's going to a small town outside of Roanoke. Very smart. That's one thing he didn't do in Iowa. He basically bounced around the Iowa cities, and Cedar Rapids, and Davenports. He wasn't, like, you know, thinking about, you know, I need to get out of those areas, I think because it was probably inconvenient for him.
You know, I saw that Ivanka Trump taped a message about how to participate in the Nevada caucus--really smart. So it seems like they're running a more professional campaign. So if he would just prepare for the debates even a little bit--and not be Donald Trump, so be crazy, say whatever stuff, but just be prepared a little bit--he's going to be their nominee. It's crazy to think that. I don't see, because, just like on the Democratic race, from a delegate acquisition standpoint, he could be in such a strong position by mid March that even with big states to come, like Pennsylvania and New Jersey and California, the die is cast.
GLENN THRUSH: It's so funny. So we're sitting here two weeks, ten days after everybody is talking about this being the craziest election of our lifetime, and we probably have two candidates.
DAVID PLOUFFE: Probably. I mean, I think--but listen. What if Trump loses Texas, he underperforms in Georgia, he doesn't win Virginia, you know, Rubio wins Florida, Kasich wins Ohio and Michigan, somehow Rubio wins North Carolina or maybe Cruz wins Missouri--I'm not sure any of those things would happen. But there's a scenario, okay? But to my point, Trump is in control of his destiny. If he runs a smart, disciplined campaign for the next three weeks, he is, almost assuredly, going to be the Republican nominee.
GLENN THRUSH: Wow. So Rubio--the Rubio people sort of fancy themselves as the neo-Obama crowd. I mean, Rubio uses the language of that and those guys are very flinty and they have a strategy of laying in the weeds. Do you think they just blew it and made a mistake, strategically?
DAVID PLOUFFE: Well, to be fair to them, I mean, how do you handle the Trump phenomenon? I mean, I wouldn't know how to handle it. So let's be fair. This is very, very complicated. I think that, you know, they had their goal, if I remember, to go three, two, one. They went three, five, two, and then they went two. And, you know, I will give Senator Rubio credit. I mean, he bounced back after the New Hampshire debate debacle very well. So I think that would'a, could'a, should'a.
The Trump thing is a living, breathing, growing organism that there are no rules for how you deal with it. I mean, my understanding is he's not even running any advertising in Super Tuesday states. So, you know, I work for Uber now. We talk about how Uber has disrupted the transportation market. He's disrupted politics.
Now the question is, maybe only Donald Trump could run this kind of race, but he's doing it completely different. So I have a lot of sympathy for these Republican candidates, who are dealing with something--there's no playbook for this. We've never seen anything like this. But Donald Trump did not create the conditions for his rise. He's tapping into them.
GLENN THRUSH: Right, but he has this unique set of attributes that allow him to capitalize on it, that you can't think of someone else possessing, right? So it's the man meeting the moment.
These attributes--I mean, these environmental conditions, how you describe them? I mean, on the Democratic side there's a little bit more of like an ennui and a scratchiness. On the Republican side there's full-blown, freak-out, scared shitless anxiety, right, and that's what he's tapping in on, and he's giving real big, fat, simple answers to very complex questions, right? It's like, how does this flame burn itself out? I mean, does it burn itself out?
DAVID PLOUFFE: Well, he is--it's interesting, you know, Ronald Reagan was known as the Teflon President. Trump has proven himself to be the Teflon candidate. It's quite remarkable. And I think that--well, listen, and I find this interesting, because when I was in the White House, obviously, we had our share of challenges with a Republican Congress, and they blocked a lot of things we wanted to do, and contributed to a debt ceiling crisis. But yet the grassroots Republican voters think the Republican leadership in Congress has rolled over for Obama, has not impeached him. They're as angry at the Republican establishment as they are at President Obama and the Democrats. And so they're hankering for someone from the outside, who tells it like it is, who's tough. I think Trump's toughness cannot be overstated enough as the reason he never backs down, ever, on anything. And people are looking for that in the Republican Party.
GLENN THRUSH: Okay. So here's the thing. I was talking to Sharpton the other day--always a fun conversation--and he knows Trump for like 30 years. They talk. And he is dead certain that the minute Trump wraps up enough delegates that he tacks fast to the center.
My question is, it seems like he would have to do that to be competitive at all, but isn't that kryptonite? Like the minute he does that, doesn't he lose his credibility?
DAVID PLOUFFE: For anybody else. So yeah, you could see him at a press conference, and, you know, he won't move to the center on everything, but on a few issues, and Glenn Thrush might be in the press conference and say, "Wait. Donald Trump. You've now changed positions on X, Y, and Z." And he'll say, "Right, Glenn, I have. I was in a primary and I did what I needed to do. Now I'm trying to win a general election. You want to call it flip-flopping? You want to call it--call it whatever, what you want. That's what I'm doing." So he'll be transparent, he'll own it, and maybe that will be a bridge too far for some conservatives, and they'll sit out, or they'll hope for a third party.
GLENN THRUSH: But he's telling it like it is.
DAVID PLOUFFE: Yes. That's exactly what he'll do. And so he'll do what no politician has been able to do, which is, he will turn flip-flopping somehow into a virtue, or something he can survive. I think Reverend Sharpton is right about that.
GLENN THRUSH: What position do you see him--if you were to look at one or two positions that he might flip-flop on, what would you identify?
DAVID PLOUFFE: Well, you know, it's interesting. You know, I would say this. Trump has been the least predictable of the Republicans, so he has said he wouldn't just throw out the Iran deal. He has said he believes--now, this is the one thing he tried to clean up--he believed the mandate has some virtue. He doesn't want people on the streets.
So you could see him, like, nodding towards climate change, for instance. I think it's hard for him to do anything on immigration, given what a big part of his primary that's been. You could see him on tax policy, where he said he wants to get rid of carried interest going even further, and saying, "Actually, I do think we should have some revenue from raising taxes on the wealthy." You know, you could see him on education spending.
So I think he'll do some things that are against Republican orthodoxy, some of them being complete reversals from what he did, some of them being more just shades.
GLENN THRUSH: In terms of just sort of modally, he's very Rudy Giuliani to me. Like he's a very familiar cast of kind of things, but a lot of flexibility moving within the, like, tough as hell but everything else is kind of negotiable. Right?
DAVID PLOUFFE: Right. The one thing that's not is toughness and certainty. You know, those are his hallmarks.
GLENN THRUSH: How do you attack him? Like if you're her, if you're running her campaign--and you knew I was going to get around to that--I mean, give me one or two ways that you think he could be undermined.
DAVID PLOUFFE: Well, I mean, I'll be honest. I'm glad I'm not there, because I don't know if I have the chops for dealing with this. This is a whole different level of kung fu, okay, and jiu jitsu.
GLENN THRUSH: [Unclear].
DAVID PLOUFFE: No, it's true. But I think, you know, it's a general election, you've got to generate a huge Democratic turnout, including amongst young people, which I think is her biggest electoral challenge in the fall, and you need to raise the stakes for swing voters. So I'm not sure that you somehow say, "He's not a strong person. He's a weak person." You know, I think you'd point out the fact that you can't trust him. So this is where she has some trust issues, according to polling. If he does flop all around, that will be something you could take advantage of if you're smart about it.
[Overlapping speakers]
GLENN THRUSH: [Unclear].
DAVID PLOUFFE: Right, which you don't know where this guy's going to be. The only thing he cares about is winning. He doesn't care about people.
But I think at the end of the day you're just going to want to paint the pictures on the issues. So, basically, we can have more bellicosity and war, or we can put diplomacy first. We can kick 20 million people off health care or not. We can do something about a warming planet or not. We can believe in education. We can have a more fair and tolerant and just society. Those are big issues. And Trump will try and shade them--and that's why I think definition is important here. Every general election, whoever defines the race and their opponent first, generally wins.
GLENN THRUSH: Which is what you were able to do in 2012, with Romney, with the Bain Capital stuff.
DAVID PLOUFFE: As George Bush was to John Kerry in 2004. As Bill Clinton did to Bob Dole in 1996. So even if this is an open-seat race--
GLENN THRUSH: Hold on. In the Old West stuff, no one's got a quicker draw at high noon than this dude does, so she's got to draw really fast, because he is already starting at this stuff, and he has got an ear for this like I've never seen before, in terms of finding a weakness.
DAVID PLOUFFE: He does, but I think--so here's the great thing about where we are today in terms of politics. Their campaign will know exactly, in Virginia, in Ohio, in Florida, in Iowa, in Nevada, in Colorado who is a danger to not turn out, who is a firm Clinton supporter, who is an actual available swing voter, what concerns them about Trump, and you basically are running a campaign to those people.
GLENN THRUSH: So this is where the metrics--this is where you kick the stuff up to a different--
DAVID PLOUFFE: Yes.
GLENN THRUSH: --to a level even unseen.
DAVID PLOUFFE: A level of sophistication and knowledge about the electorate in the battleground states that just gets advanced every four years. And, you know, so if I know Glenn Thrush, if I know this is what Glenn Thrush is concerned about, maybe you're truly undecided--you've got concerns about Clinton, concerns about Trump--I'm going to run a campaign to you.
GLENN THRUSH: It sounds very similar to kind of the caucus approach, where you're talking about ones, twos, and threes.
DAVID PLOUFFE: Our view, in the Presidential races, in the general election, is we basically wanted to run it like a small state rep race. We wanted to get that level of granularity on voters.
GLENN THRUSH: That is an enormous expense.
DAVID PLOUFFE: Yeah. Well, and it only works with passionate people on the ground, because you can't just buy this. The money is important, but what matters is the troops on the ground who will go out there and talk to their neighbors, and that is--and I think the more we spend time behind our devices all day long, the more people cherish and value and trust human one-on-one interaction.
GLENN THRUSH: A couple more things and I'll let you go. By the way, thanks for taking the time.
Let's talk about the youth thing. The one thing that her victory in Nevada seems to buy her, I think--and I presume their using the time and resources, intelligently--is to figure out some way to at least erode this incredible gap. I forgot what the number was, but it's 7 to 1 in the under 30s in Nevada. That's unacceptable. I mean, that's unheard of, and it was worse in New Hampshire.
How does she begin to start making--clearly she's not going to dance as fast as Bernie on this stuff, but how does she begin to at erode this gap?
DAVID PLOUFFE: Well, you know, you see, in some of her appearance, she's acknowledging it straight on, which is, "I know I haven't done as well with young people, and they've got legitimate concerns about the country and also questions for me." So I think that's healthy. They're not trying to hide it under the rug.
My suspicion is, under 30, she'll do better in South Carolina. I think you'll see her do better in Texas. I think you'll see her do quite well in Georgia. So we shouldn't over-extrapolate just based on a couple of early contests.
GLENN THRUSH: Which were lily-white states.
DAVID PLOUFFE: But what matters at the end of the day--and so I think you'll see her share of vote under 30 get better, but Sanders will still do very, very well there. So the question is, if you're the nominee, how do you put that back together. So I have no doubt, if Hillary Clinton is the nominee--you know, Bernie Sanders, I think, in a debate, said this, "No matter what happens, we need to come together." He'll do the right thing.
GLENN THRUSH: Bernie Sanders, as a surrogate, getting out in the field is going to be useful.
DAVID PLOUFFE: I'm sure everyone will. The stakes are so enormous. But that's not enough, meaning, you know, in Des Moines, Iowa, there's, you know, I don't know, 250, 300 people under 30 who are really involved in the Sanders campaign. Same thing in Manchester. Same thing in Columbus, Ohio. Same thing in Tampa, Florida. You've got to go out there and talk to those people, invite them to meet with your campaign. Hear them out, hear their criticisms, and make sure they understand that the shared goal of a more prosperous and fair economy, one that's growing, for everyone, the right kind of foreign policy, you share that. You may not agree with everything she's ever said or done, and that the stakes are huge and that they're welcome in the campaign.
I think it's going to take a campaign within a campaign--
GLENN THRUSH: That's interesting.
DAVID PLOUFFE: --to get that right. And then even if Bernie Sanders had never emerged in the way he did, the part of the Obama coalition that I've always thought would be the hardest for her is people under 30.
GLENN THRUSH: Because you were able to capitalize on that.
DAVID PLOUFFE: He had a unique relationship, and what's fascinating about it--in '08 we know, there was sort of a giddy enthusiasm. Young turnout was huge. In '12 it was not giddy enthusiasm, but turnout amongst people under 30 in battleground states was up in most of them. That surprised the hell out of people, even us.
GLENN THRUSH: Really? Was that because of your data operation?
DAVID PLOUFFE: It was because they--no. I think it was a sort of steely resilience on behalf of young people where they said, "Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are very different. One understands the future I want to live in. One doesn't." And, yeah, we had good data, we had good organizing, great organizers on the ground, but they sort of took it upon themselves. They did it. They turned out.
And so, for her, I think the combination of the stakes--I do think if Trump's the candidate there will be a lot of young people that just can't imagine him representing ourselves in the world. But it's going to take an enormous amount of attention, because how does--I mean, I think Hillary Clinton, if she runs against Donald Trump, again, that's the one where there could be certain states maybe closer than we think and others may break open. But against the Republican nominee, she should win an electoral college majority. But how does a Virginia win of two to three points, or an Ohio win of two to three points become a tie ballgame where you use by a half a point? You miss your marks on turnout amongst young people, maybe you don't get quite the African American share and turnout, and you begin to see that.
You know, Barack Obama was very, very strong with suburban women. I think that's a place that Bernie Sanders--I mean, sorry, Hillary Clinton can do very well, but it's going to take work. So the Obama coalition is the Obama coalition. It is not a Democratic coalition.
GLENN THRUSH: That is really interesting. Now, a lot of people give you shit for OFA and the DNC, and I think, quite rightly. I think OFA did not turn out to be the national transformational organization that you guys promised, and I'm not going to litigate that too much.
DAVID PLOUFFE: Well, I'd be happy to litigate that.
GLENN THRUSH: No. I don't want to.
DAVID PLOUFFE: Well, listen. OFA played a key role in passing health care. OFA played a key role in organizational efforts around Wall Street reform, around the Recovery Act, and helping the President get re-elected.
GLENN THRUSH: But it has not--
DAVID PLOUFFE: So to me--well, yeah, it hasn't convinced Republicans to join Barack Obama and sing Kumbaya and dance with unicorns in a field, okay? It hasn't done that. But let me tell you something. It put steel in the spine, or helped put steel in the spine of a lot of Democrats. It did a lot of great organizing. But it's hard. It's hard.
GLENN THRUSH: When you talk about the Obama coalition not corresponding directly to the Clinton coalition, she's got to create her own coalition, essentially, is what you're saying, right?
DAVID PLOUFFE: Yes.
GLENN THRUSH: A couple of last questions. In terms of the--as you kind of look back on your experience in the White House, and we talked about this extensively in other settings, the President is obviously very concerned about his legacy, and he's had a pretty energetic last couple of years. When you kind of look back at that 2011-2012 period, do you have any regrets about any decisions that you guys made, specifically kind of the tacking to the center after the 2010 midterms?
DAVID PLOUFFE: Well, I would dispute that we tacked to the center. I think that there was a bunch of important things that got done in the lame duck of 2010, that were the right things to do for the country, including some progressive goals like Don't Ask, Don't Tell, that have eluded us for decades.
No, and I think--listen. The period around the debt ceiling, which is like losing the New Hampshire primary is still hard for me to talk about. It was a very ugly period.
GLENN THRUSH: It was a very bad period.
DAVID PLOUFFE: But here's what happened. The President of the United States, and the Speaker of the House, decided, on their own--it's kind of the way you'd want it to be in a screenplay--to try and reach and agreement, and had that agreement been reached, it would have been very good for the economy. Most people think it would have added to growth in a significant way. It would have added jobs. It was the right thing to try and get done.
My suspicion is most House Republicans would tell you--maybe not the extreme right, but a lot of them probably think they should have taken both the deals that they might have been able to get.
Now, obviously, I have deep regret, the fact that we almost crashed through the debt ceiling wall. It hurt the economy. It hurt confidence. It was a very ugly period. But the pursuit of that, I still think, was the right thing. But we didn't do it because we wanted to tack to the center. He did it because he thought it was the right thing for the economy.
And then, you know, it was--you know, I'll never forget, during that period, we had the debt ceiling, and then in August, if I recall, the jobs report was zero, which was, in a way--
GLENN THRUSH: And it took people by surprise. You expected like 150.
DAVID PLOUFFE: Now, of course, in the revisions‑‑by the way, bigger margin of errors in the jobs revisions than, like, the Gallup poll, so don't get me started on that. But anyway, at the moment it was just--it fit into the storyline. Talk about being in the barrel. So that was a tough period.
GLENN THRUSH: Well, I don't know if you heard my podcast with the President.
DAVID PLOUFFE: I did.
GLENN THRUSH: One of the things that really, I think, took Hillary Clinton by surprise was his discussing, I think, his appreciation for what she went through in 2008. And a lot of people interpreted that, as I did, him sort of questioning Bernie Sanders' experience.
Do you think he--I mean, he's not going to--I mean, he's left open the door to endorsing. Do you think he favors her to Sanders?
DAVID PLOUFFE: I've been around long enough not to answer that question. He has spoken about this, you know, when he's asked about it, his views of both of the candidates. I think it's very important to him that he be succeeded by a Democrat, both to protect his legacy but I think he's even more focused on building on it. And, you know, but I think he's right to kind of let the primary play out.
GLENN THRUSH: I mean, one of the things I have noticed is--and Sanders said something. I asked Sharpton about this. Sanders said something about Hillary sort of hugging him just in order to get black votes. I presume you don't agree with that assessment.
DAVID PLOUFFE: No. It was offensive and wrong, and I understand in the heat of a campaign we all say things we'd regret. But there's no doubt. I mean, I think that--listen. Senator Sanders voted for a lot of key Obama agenda items. I think he has been a good supporter. There's no doubt that, you know, he's probably been less robust in his embrace over the last eight years than Hillary Clinton has been. So for those of us that have worked, you know, so passionately for that project, you know, that doesn't go unnoticed.
But again, I think that--so, listen. My guess is if he had it to do over again, he'd take that particular comment back. But, you know, he has been a strong supporter of most of the President's agenda, but there's no doubt that I think--and again, this is one of those things. Would you have guessed, eight years ago, that Hillary Clinton would be embracing this President and what he's done so strongly? But she has. And I think--by the way, I don't think she thinks about that first through the prism of politics. I think she happens to agree with almost everything we've done.
GLENN THRUSH: And that's exactly the point I want to end this on.
It seems to me, at this point in time, that this process, as tough as it has been, has actually kind of brought them together in a way that nothing else has. I mean, she was genuinely touched by the comments that he made about her dancing backwards in heels, right? She was. And it seems to me that she seems to be, insofar as she's relying so heavily on African American support, which won her Nevada, I think she has a greater appreciation for what he may have dealt with as the first black President.
I mean, do you think these guys are appreciating‑‑and, you know, no one was a more vicious hand-to-hand combatant than you. But, I mean, do you think that this process is actually sort of giving them a better understanding?
DAVID PLOUFFE: Well, yeah, I think it strengthened but it was always there. I mean, I'll never forget, you know, after I think we secured the nomination on June 3rd, and I remember that night, then-Senator Clinton gave a speech and didn't seem to, in our view, sort of realize that we had won. And, you know, his was, "Guys, just knock it off, okay? She'll do what she needs to do. This is hard. None of you guys are running, you know. You're like in the room doing strategery but you're not running. You don't know what it's like." He's always been that way.
And, you know, I remember when I talked to him about the possibility that he'd pick Hillary Clinton. You know, it was like, "Really?" And he just, yeah. You know, he's talked about why and I don't need to expound on that.
So I think that--I mean, I will say this. It is a fascinating moment in American history, so that Clinton-Obama primary is probably one of the more interesting elections we've had as a country, in ways more interesting than the two general election wins we had, much more so from just a character and history. And serving under him as Secretary of State, if she ends up being elected President, it's a remarkable--I'd assume, if we still have books and movies in 50 years, they will be many about that period.
But the other thing I think is--listen. My strong suspicion is that Barack Obama will go down as one of our more consequential Presidents. So I think he should go down as one of our greatest Presidents. But even those‑‑consequential is different than greatest.
GLENN THRUSH: Great.
DAVID PLOUFFE: So in the last 100 years, who were truly consequential Presidents? Well, clearly Franklin Roosevelt. Dwight Eisenhower was, as a general, probably not as a President. Maybe you throw the combined Kennedy-Johnson years.
GLENN THRUSH: I don't think maybe.
DAVID PLOUFFE: And then Barack Obama, I think, on that level--and Reagan, of course. And I think that's where--
GLENN THRUSH: Not Bill Clinton?
DAVID PLOUFFE: Bill Clinton was a very good President, very good, but again, I think what you've seen with--and partially this is--you know, Bill Clinton came in after George H. W. Bush, different than George W. Bush. But the point is tax policy, health care that's eluded the country for 100 years, making a firm move towards leading the country in the world on climate change, gay marriage, trying to do everything you can for the immigrant community, foreign policy fundamentally change. Like, things have moved in a fundamental direction, in a consequential way.
So I think that--and