92. DNC Special: The Attack Dog (Bob Mulholland)

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0:42Hello, welcome to The Rest is Polities. I'm me, Alistair Campbell. I'm with me, Rory Stewart, and listeners might notice it's a bit noisy. And it's noisy because we're in a hotel, Higher Regency in Chicago, which is one of the big, big, big hotels where hundreds, if not thousands of delegates are staying. And we're sitting, talking to a delegate who many times has been a superdelegate by the name of Bob Mulholland, who is something of a legend in Democrat politics, because he has been around a long, long time. He's sitting here wearing his first delegate badge, and it's dated 1978. Memphis, Tennessee.

1:20Right. Bob, welcome to the rest of this politics. Tell us a little bit about your first convention and what it was like, because you'd come back from the Vietnam War. Yes. Well, I got out of Vietnam in 68 and traveled around the world, including in Scotland, London, Ireland, et cetera, et cetera. And I kind of wandered for a while, like many of my colleagues in that war, we became so disillusioned. But I got attracted to Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda and Jerry Brown. And these were big anti-Vietnam War campaigners. Jerry, not so much. But Jerry, and I keep in touch with him, he's 85 now. He, to me, represented the first politician post-World War II that understood the changes, like Tony Blair saw the changes in the UK.

2:02And so eventually I volunteered for Jerry Brown. What was the big change that you were spotting? Well, ultimately, they got called the best and brightest, their McNamara crowd, LBJ. And they misunderstood that, yes, we won World War II, but the wars after World War II were not World War II. We were not getting to some capital where the enemy would surrender. And Jerry Brown said once, and I told him this years ago, and he couldn't remember saying it, but when the boat people were happening out of Vietnam, Jerry Brown, he was governor at the time, he said someday there will be boat people from around the world and i thought brilliant brilliant so you're a super delegate at this for a long time now i'm a regular district level i got elected by my local people okay so just tell us what do the delegates do i know this convention is a bit different but just tell us what is the role of a delegate at a convention well under the national rules of the democratic party and the republican party and recognized by the u.s supreme court each of the national parties creates their own process, comes up with a number of delegates, in our case, Democrats over 4 ,000, Republicans over 2 ,000, and they have a national convention and they have votes.

3:14Now, in the past, there may be dozens and dozens of votes. Some conventions, they shut down and move to another city, but we're a little more organized now. and without the delegates on a Thursday night after her voting a majority goes to one candidate in our case this particular convention which is very unusual she gets up there and at some point in her speech Kamala Harris says I officially accept the nomination that's when under the federal party rules the federal law she is the official nominee of the party and from that day on, her campaign can spend money that was donated to her campaign for the general election, not for the primary.

3:54In some of the previous conventions, when there's been division or there's been a choice, how different is the mood then? I was a Ted Kennedy delegate. John Kennedy came through my neighbor when I was 13 and he was taken away from us three years later. So I was a big Kennedy fan. And that was a disaster. And remind us who Ted Kennedy was running against. Jimmy Carter, he was the president and he was elected in 76. No one expected him to be elected, but he was a smart guy, knew how to work the caucuses and a delegate process. And it became so messy and the press loved it. In the end, when Carter was officially nominated, Ted Kennedy didn't even shake his hands.

4:34He was so angry. I don't know what the hell, but he thought all kinds of shenanigans were up and he thought it was a disgrace. But from a voter's point of view, watching that, they go, oh, OK. And of course, in that last year, Soviets invaded Afghanistan, oil embargo, the Iran hostages. It was just one problem after another where no president could have anticipated all that happening on his watch. And then just to fast forward, you then became a major campaign strategist for the Democrats, initially in California and then working national campaigns. Tell us how you cut your teeth in politics and what your own philosophy of campaigning was.

5:16What made you distinctive as a campaigner? What are your three big ideas in campaigning? Attack, attack and attack. You know, Mitt Romney ran against Barack Obama, President Obama in 2012. He said, if you're explaining something in a campaign, you're losing. And it's very hard, particularly for these type of delegates. You know, these are activists. They think a president should go out every day and talk a long time about an issue. Well, the American voter gives you about 30 seconds a day. In the last two weeks, they give you a couple minutes. And you better not occupy their time explaining the economic programs of the Democratic Party platform.

5:53That is way beyond what they're interested in. It's really like in the UK, people felt good about Tony Blair. People felt good recently about Keir Starmer. And life is about a contrast. and Jimmy Carter was a victim of all kinds of crisis. So there was no way Reagan was not going to win. So I'm a big believer in spending, you know, even a reporter asked you a question to explain something, immediately shift to point out that the other guy's a bum. And I'm not sure. So when Michelle Obama says, when they go low, we go high, what was Bob Mueller thinking? I'm glad you mentioned that because President Clinton said one day, oh, Democrats need to stay above the fray or something like that.

6:35And then within a few days, I'm in the media attacking the hell out of some Republicans. And some reporter says, hey, President Clinton said you should. I said he was talking about the people on deck, not about those of us below deck. And I'm a big believer. A lot of Republicans over the years after they retired will say to me, God, I just regret it every time you're in the paper attacking me and stuff. But, you know, voters are voters. They don't pay much attention to all the positive news. They really are all ears to anything negative about somebody else. But you campaigned against Governor Schwarzenegger when he ran in California.

7:14Yeah, I did. And he's, of course, a bit of a national treasure. But if you were going negative on Governor Schwarzenegger, what would you have said about him that was negative? Well, we've actually interviewed him on the show. He's one of your predecessors on the show. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, he was on Meet the Press. And Arnold Schwarzenegger had two or three propositions on the ballot of special election. And we beat him. Labor and Democrats beat him. And I was quoted in a paper that he's been reduced to a 14 year old French poodle and meet the press. He's deceased now, but he asked Arnold, hey, Bob Mulholland said this.

7:48And Arnold said this. Trust me, I don't pay attention to Bob Mulholland, which I thought somebody called me and I had not seen it live. But I said, hey, mission accomplished. I got the guy responding to me. And it was a good summary because he had just lost three important measures. Reagan had done something like that when he was governor, Proposition 1. And he was surprised when he got rejected because they get into office and then they start thinking everybody loves me. And then they start pushing measures and the voters say, wait a minute, not so fast, buddy. I was very struck because you gave me a remarkable moment of insight.

8:21When I was interviewing Governor Schwarzenegger, I suddenly discovered that I was taller than him, despite the fact he describes himself as being the height of Alistair. He's five, nine and three quarters. And I was quoted in the paper and boy, did it piss him off. I said he wears the same inserts as North Korean leader Kim does. Oh, God. And he actually had different sizes. So depending on who he was going to meet with, if he was going to meet with, like the Mexican president at the time was the tall guy, those lifts were much, much higher. If you look at what's going on now, though, so Trump, he believes in attack, attack, attack.

8:59Yes, he does. Right. So do you have a respect for him for the fact that that's how he campaigns? I remember I was up in New Hampshire at the same hotel as him in 2016. And he's coming through the lobby and there were 17 candidates. Nine of them were governors or foreigners. There was no way he wasn't going to win. I said to him, hey, Donald, you're going to win. Hey, thanks a lot. But he's become kind of a nincompoop. You can attack somebody and the voters will say, yeah, yeah, I didn't know that about that guy. But in his case, I think Trump is just way overboard. Like over the weekend saying, oh, I'm prettier or whatever.

9:33Better looking, yeah. Yeah, better looking. I thought, God, nobody in America, even his wife's going to believe that. Especially his wife. Yeah, especially his wife. Who doesn't live with him? He doesn't live with him in years. So if you were attacking Donald Trump, if you were in charge, what would be your message about Trump that you'd want to land? I wouldn't talk much about the 34 convictions of felon. I would focus on he's a man who is convicted for sexually assaulting a woman. And that's why 30 women over the years have said he has groped them or sexually assault them. In fact, he brags about it.

10:05And also I would use a lot of diversionary tactics. I'd pop up a$20 ,000 cable ad, Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach there, about him taking the fifth a hundred and some times in one of his divorces. And I'd pop up another one in Wisconsin. You need to have diversion. How does diversion work as a tactic? Well, like last night, the Trump hotels down the street. I wasn't involved. But it's at nighttime. Somebody had a big, like a Superman thing. It said Project 2025 headquarters. And then it had Harris Waltz right on the wall. So somebody living here in the condo is thinking, what the heck's going on out here?

10:42Big truck on the street. I would do things like that. You know, led by donkeys in the UK. Yeah. They do that stuff. They're very good at that. Yeah, I've used helium balloons above Republican candidates. I've used big banners like, for instance, when the Rodney King riots happened, President Bush, he came to L.A. And I had two guys, two staff people, hold a banner up. It's not 12 jurors. It's 12 years of Bush. And that got on page eight of the New York Times the next day. and the Bush people were just livid because they'd come in to help. Page eight. You can't be happy with page eight, Bob. It's got to be page one.

11:14Well, they were livid because— Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They were livid because— I get page one a lot. But they were livid because they felt they'd come in to help on the Rodney King rights. Yeah, you got it. Yeah. But my attitude is never give a Republican politician a break. Never. Only say a good word about them at their funeral. You know a lot about British campaigns, right? Yeah, I know. You've been to lots of Labour conferences. You guys are a little too timid for me. Do you think so? Yeah, yeah. I think your laws are different. And some of your guys over there, they read some of the things I said, God, Bob, you'd be sued over here for saying that.

11:42I go, really? Like what? Some things I've said about politicians. Yeah, I think we're pretty rough. But I think our public, they want the rough stuff. But if it gets too rough, they turn off. Whereas I think a lot of Americans want it rougher. Yeah, but women are the difference. And I think I've said this about Trump. A lot of women in America in 2020, especially of their teenage daughters, they thought, you know, I don't want Trump on my TV for the next four years. I don't want my daughters seeing this is what a man is. And that works to Trump's detriment. In fact, you can read a lot of articles that Trump's staff are trying to say, hey, you know, they already got your name.

12:16Let's talk about things that's going to help us. Because a woman in Pennsylvania, my home state, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, if she's not a hardcore Democrat or a hardcore Republican, she just wants the country to function. She's going to see Kamala Harris as a more friendly face on TV. So you've got a situation now where Joe Biden was going to be the candidate. He's gone. Kamala Harris is in there now. And what seems to be happening is that there's a real sense of kind of hope and positivity. Does that not suggest that maybe she does need to do a bit of the positive, not just the attack, attack, attack?

12:50She is a woman more likely, more has to be more positive. It's very tough for a woman to be angry on TV in America. Very tough. Because? Well, we are prepositioned. Oh, I don't like that. Fill in the gap. Why a man looks like, oh, he's responding to something that somebody wronged him or something. So we got the best of all worlds. We have a two front war here. We have President Biden announcing things in the White House, doing things. And then we have the candidate who's not burdened by everyday government. You know, a president is like got this secretary of this secretary that. Hey, we got a problem in the Middle East.

13:32We got a problem over in Asia, Taiwan. She doesn't have to do any of that. And she's young. So this is the best of all world. Now, Trump doesn't have a job, but you do notice he's not doing as many events as he used to. He seems to be slowing up. What was the lesson that you took from Hillary Clinton's loss? And what should Kamala Harris avoid in order not to suffer the fate of Hillary Clinton? That was a simple one. She should have never hired Robbie Mook as the campaign manager. That guy, along with Jim Messina, comes up with a so-called software program that tells them everything they know.

14:05And the day after Labor Day, first Monday of September, Robbie Mook in 2016 stopped polling. Stopped polling because he knew everything he needed to know. Barack Obama, even when he was running re-election, he polled 6 ,000 people a night, six nights a week, in seven key states. So if there was a problem in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, different message. If there was a problem in Milwaukee, different message. So Trump didn't win that. We lost that. But that was sort of technological arrogance. They believed too much in a particular software program. And what was strange about it is Bill Clinton is a very good politician.

14:43politician in fact tony blair interviewed by the times of london in 97 uh the editor said why do you like bill clinton so much tony said well he got himself re-elected and that's you know the bottom line and and hillary and bill been around but yet they didn't have a campaign manager and they took terry mcgallis the governor oh robbie mooc but that was a huge mistake and i don't know why bill clinton didn't step in because he was smarter than that i think bill clinton was saying well it's hillary's campaign we would have been in the office she would have been in eight years and we wouldn't have those three judges.

15:13Which was your best ever convention and why? This will be the one because... Oh, you see what he did there, Roy? You see what he did? This will be the best one because, like I mentioned, Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter. My God, it was a field day for the press. In 1984, I was a Gary Hart delegate and Walter Mondale. Walter wins New Jersey on the last day. Hart wins California. Mondale doesn't have enough. super delegates in a few days union leaders came out and he was the nominee and then he got to the convention in san francisco and says i'm gonna raise your taxes uh the other guy will too but he won't tell you and i remember telling the guy next to me why don't we just shoot ourselves tonight this is this is ridiculous so so um obviously 88 we had a huge fight between jesse jackson and michael dukakas the governor of massachusetts 92 i was actually a jerry brown delegate because he's from california and i know jerry but you know jerry and bill clinton fighting in the street had a debate one day and my god i thought we're gonna need some intervention going on here but you love a good fight oh yeah i do but i also respect the voters right and i know the voters they're not listening and reading every new york times report we're no longer around with walter cronkite you know today the anchors on tv after their 10 minutes of news eight minutes of that they themselves are at a table selling irons, new microwaves.

16:40What the hell happened to Walter Cronkite? So there were two alternatives on this convention. There was the possibility that it would have been a contested convention where Vice President Harris would have been running against the governor of Pennsylvania and the governor of Arizona and this and the other. And the other option was this. I guess, presumably, with the benefit of hindsight, this looks like the right answer. Yeah. And I told some reporters, you know, presidential historians, 50 years from now may find out that joe biden had a political trap for trump spend the first six months trump spending money tens of millions attacking him as the old guy and it turns out the old guy is trump and and you can tell by trump's event he is really really angry like hey who set me up in this trap now i'm against this good-looking young woman who's the vice president i was supposed to run with the guy in with the walker and and he's not as i'm reported oh i don't think biden did it i said well i don't know but uh this worked out perfect for us what's the best that can come out of this week oh harris's speech on thursday night yeah usually that's our biggest audience it'll be her first camilla harris first conversation with millions of american voters and i think most americans who aren't hardcore left or hardcore right will find it oh she seems to be reasonable she seems to be somebody i could have over for dinner and she's a cook so you really could get her early to do the cooking why as i always say about trump if you had him over for dinner for an hour that guy would not shut up to tell you how he's the greatest this greatest that greatest baseball player greatest president ever and yeah he'd be saying he's the greatest cook not that he could cook give us um for british this is a bit of a sense of what's happening behind us so this we're inside a huge hotel there are kind of desks all around offering passes dnc you've got your straps what kind of people are here who are they what are they doing there might be well over a thousand delegates here in this hyatt region d and uh many of them now are at mccormick place at caucuses environment economic and other stuff and you notice i'm not there but i'll be going to the veteran i'll be going to the veteran one tomorrow no some people like speeches you know if we had a governor over there to be interesting so some might be down here talking about policy some might be talking how can i get my spouse into the convention tonight how can i get my dog in you're not getting your dog in well it's a service dog you're still not getting your service dog in and um georgia is also here and tonight the georgia state party is having their party california is having their party on uh wednesday nights every state has a different party so all the delegates will come to the party yeah we won't be but they know and the The delegates mostly know each other and the delegates tend to be senior party officials from the state.

19:21Yeah, some guy I won in my recent election in my congressional district. I got the most votes. And some young guy says, hey, Mulholland, you know, you've been at this for a long time. When are you going to move out of the way for us young guys? I said, when you get more votes than me, you don't get moved out if you get more, less votes. You know, you got to organize in this business. So a lot of organizing is going on here. A lot of deals are being made. A lot of people saying, hey, you're in a safe state. Can you think of coming over to our state for a month? We'll provide housing at a friend's house, all that other kind of - To help you campaign.

19:55Yeah, help their campaign. So nobody cares about Illinois because the Democrats are going to win Illinois. And so the idea is to get people presumably into Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. Yeah, and every convention has been a good recruiting tool. It's about 17 ,000 people signed up to be volunteers here. They all thought they'd be on the stage meeting the presidents and stuff like that. some of them are at the airport meeting people coming off their baggage. But that's a way to get in. And some of them will grab a sleeping bag and go somewhere. So these are people who love the Democratic Party, are fascinated by politics, and some of them will want eventually to be state congresspeople or congresspeople or eventually senators.

20:34Absolutely. A lot of people who are high up will tell you if you talk to them, I first campaigned for Kennedy or I first campaigned for Bill Clinton, and then they hired me, and then they did. Yes. So if you're an ambitious young person who wants to be a congressperson in the future, one route through is to volunteer for the Democratic National Convention to be here, make your name. Yeah. As former Senator Rockefeller of West Virginia said, you know, when I was 18, my dad took me aside and I think it was four kids. Son, you want a 218 million dollar inheritance or do you want to try to work for a living?

21:08And Jay Rockefeller would he'd always speak to us groups and he paused for 10 seconds. I'll take the inheritance dad but most of us have to work our way up and Jay spent 12 million dollars he was a Vista volunteer in West Virginia he's not from West and he got credential there and then he ran for governor or senator he spent 12 million dollars of his own money I guess out of that 218 million easy come easy go but he still needed to establish himself as an Yeah, because, you know, if you're Eisenhower in 52, Supreme Allied Commander, and you run and you get the nomination and you know what he said for his cause?

21:48The Korean War was going on. Ike says, I will go to Korea. That's all he had to say. Right. He swept in. Even before he swore in, he went to Korea and the war was over soon. You know, MacArthur screwed that up by keeping it going up to China for some stupid reason. God. And then the Chinese, a million people. But simple causes. Bill Clinton was I'm a new kind of Democrat. And that allowed a lot of middle Americans like Tony Blair did in the UK. Oh, he's not one of the radical guys. And that makes a big, big impact. When when, you know, Jesse Jackson, he ran and then that appears to be too radical for most American people.

22:28So a guy like Tom Bradley was the mayor of L.A., L.A., Southern California. A lot of white people saw him for years. Reasonable guy. And he almost became elected governor. So at the moment, Trump's kind of casting around trying to get different attack lines. And they've come up with this idea now that it's a communist camera. Does that work or not? No, I don't think so. Yes, that kind of stuff would work with a left-wing candidate back in the 60s and 70s with the Cold War. It would have worked. Yeah. I mean, most voters, you know, given American public education not the best, are probably trying to figure out what communism is or what does that mean.

23:02You know, when I grew up, you knew about the Cold War and stuff. Trump is trying. I'm sure he's doing a lot of polling. And ultimately, he may have the best Achilles heel against her, whatever that is. And he thinks it's immigration, doesn't he? Yeah. Obviously, President Biden made some moves the last month, which slowed that up. And that's our Achilles heel. I guarantee. Me, if I was in charge, I'd shut it down completely and say no more asylum, particularly on Ukrainian men. I don't know why they're coming here for asylum. So you think if you were in charge, you'd get ahead of it, go very tough on immigration before the election to neutralize it?

23:34I'm a big believer and a little bit what Kamala Harris did. I'm a big believer. The guy says I'm for putting a stoplight on this corner. I'm for putting up a stoplight on that corner. He said something about tips and waiting. She said, I'm for that. You match them. Because the way our system works, three branches of government. And I tell this to new candidates. Campaigning is about getting a date. In office is trying to keep the marriage together. and most people especially in america don't even remember what your promises were unless it was like i'm gonna cut taxes by 20 but most voters just need to feel good about it your intentions are good and it doesn't mean you're going to follow through all the promises and maybe there's some you can't but you make a reference if you're running for re-election in our case we got a brand new candidate and unlike britain or germany had a recession we never had a recession but i always remind people uh what bill clinton said years ago is just because things are okay you don't necessarily run on that because voters are we're not in a graduate class at yale we're in the american political system and people aren't reading the pages of your biography or or your platform or your manifesto they just get a sense of who you are by hearing something on the radio newspapers and then seeing you on TV.

24:57And if you look like you got fangs on TV, they're against you. If you look like a nice person, they're for you. So she's nice and he's got fangs. Oh God, he's got fangs. And he's got the orange skin and he says stupid things and, you know, Roger Ailes used to tell candidates, show me a candidate with a cause and I'll show you a candidate hard to beat. And a cause could be, I will go to Korea and he didn't have to fill it in. Oh, that guy won World War II, so he knows how to do things. A teacher running for school board in America, she just puts, I'm a teacher. People automatically, oh, she's better qualified than the guy that says business owner.

25:33Final one from me, Tim Walsh, the vice president. I love the guy. Tell us a little bit about what makes him attractive. I don't know him and I was surprised about her selection, but I quickly realized, even though she didn't really know him that well, I quickly realized Tim Walsh is a great guy because he's from the Midwest, but he was an Army veteran 24 years. He was a coach, and we've seen a lot of good comments from his former players and stuff. And he was a congressmember in a district that Trump won by 15 points. And that told me that guy has the ability to be the Walmart greeter. Does somebody, oh, this is a nice guy, and then he becomes a governor.

26:13Well, that tells you a lot. And even Kamala, who didn't know him that well, thinks you know him that well, that told her a lot. this guy connects to people. And so I think he's going to be a great. And he's a little bit older, but he's much younger than Trump. So I think it's a great ticket. My last one, Bob. Keir Starmer, Labour. Yes. What's your take so far? Oh, I love the guy. I love the fact that when the street riots happen, within a week, somebody's announcing that people have pled guilty and they're sentenced. And I'm thinking, that's what the American people would like to hear for sometimes.

26:43I think Keir Starmer is the perfect contrast to the Tories as well as to Corbyn. and I think most British voters are comfortable with them but the future is the future and the voters will soon forget who the Tories were and then they'll start hey you better fix my problems LBJ got elected in 64 huge landslide he told his staff the next day we better move my agenda in Congress because every day I'm going to be losing support because a smart politician knows that they're swept in, not because or all because of their manifesto, but because of the conditions, the time, and the contrast. But the day after, all of a sudden, the same voters who just swept in say, hey, you know, I didn't know the guy who's doing, here's an example.

27:30Obama wins in 08. In 2012, three million fewer white people voted for him. And he had saved the American economy, save the U.S. auto industry. But what happened in 08 was September 15th, the Lehman brothers. Once that happened, McCain and Palin, they were always behind. And some of the Barack people think, oh, it's because of his great campaigning. No, no, no. It was get-even time for the recession. And people losing half their stock value and their home values and everything else. Well, Bob, thank you for your time. Okay, no problem. And just remember, if you see any rival podcasts, you just tell them to...

28:06Thank you, Bob. And just an attack, attack, attack. Yeah. Have you learned that? Have you got that? Yeah, I mean, you know, basically I tell new candidates, there's three things you do when you first announce. You say where you came from, you say what you've done in life, and you say what I'm going to do in this office for you. So for me, if I was running for office, I would start out, not that I would, I was born 3.1 miles north of Independence Hall. Because most Americans would say, they wouldn't necessarily know it was in Pennsylvania, but at least they'd say, oh, that guy was close to Independence Hall.