Delta Politics - with Mike Murphy
b'The Pandemic has either caused a crack-up in our politics or accelerated the crack-up that was well under way. And just when it looked like things were stabilizing, the politics of Covid have evolved along with the Delta variant. Ground zero for how this is playing out right now is California. \\n\\nCalifornia is home to approximately 40 million people and the 5th largest economy in the world. It\\u2019s about to have an election on whether to re-call its incumbent governor, Gavin Newsom. How California voters have experienced government regulations \\u2014 from lockdowns, mask mandates, school closings, and not to mention double-standards \\u2014 shapes the political environment there.\\n\\nIs this a harbinger of what\\u2019s to come to our national politics? To help us understand what\\u2019s going on in California is the strategist who masterminded the last successful recall election. Mike Murphy was the chief strategist for Arnold Schwarzenegger\\u2019s election in 2003, which was a re-call of then-Governor Gray Davis.\\n\\nMike\\u2019s campaign resum\\xe9 goes well beyond California. His past clients include the successful gubernatorial campaigns of Mitt Romney in MA, Jeb Bush in FL, John Engler in Michigan and Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin. And that doesn\\u2019t include all the Senate races he\\u2019s worked on.\\n\\nMike has also worked on campaigns in Europe and Canada. And he was the chief strategist on John McCain\\u2019s maverick presidential primary campaign in 2000 and remained a close advisor to the late-Senator McCain for years.\\n\\nToday, you can catch Mike on the top-rated podcast, \\u201cHacks on Tap\\u201d with David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs. He\\u2019s a political analyst on MSNBC and NBC, and he co-authors a weekly newsletter with his latest political analysis: hacksontap.bulletin.com. At the University of Southern California, he is the Co-Director of the USC Center for the Political Future.\\n\\nThis episode covers a lot of pandemic-related political trend analysis. But first, given the tragic news out of Afghanistan this past week, the episode begins with Mike\\u2019s thoughts on President Biden and this crisis. Regardless of what one thinks of President Biden\\u2019s policy in Afghanistan, a lot will depend on how our president performs in reassuring the American public and our allies abroad.\\n\\nThis episode begins with a discussion on President Biden and Afghanistan and then the second half looks at political trends during the Delta phase of covid.'