Latest / Pod Save America / “Plans vs. Pipe Dreams.” (Debate recap special!)
Transcript
- 0:20Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
- 0:22Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
- 0:24Speaker 3: We're all here for the Big Post Debate Spectacular. Before
- 0:28Speaker 3: we dive in, we do have some exciting news. The
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- 0:36Speaker 3: we finally got the green light to hint at what's coming.
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- 0:47Speaker 3: which is just fantastic.
- 0:49Speaker 2: Fantastic.
- 0:50Speaker 3: We've got Sarah Lazarus on board now writing it. Brian Boitler,
- 0:54Speaker 3: as always. The whole crew here. It's fantastic. You can
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- 1:02Speaker 3: our new podcast. We're really excited about it and we
- 1:04Speaker 3: think you will be too. Also, little plug for the
- 1:07Speaker 3: 2019 elections that are coming up in a month. Democrats
- 1:10Speaker 3: have a chance to make big gains in Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi,
- 1:13Speaker 3: and Virginia where we need to flip just four seats
- 1:16Speaker 3: to win the legislature and the chance to draw fair
- 1:18Speaker 3: congressional districts in 2021. Gun reform, all kinds of good
- 1:24Speaker 3: stuff could come from winning Virginia. So, Head to votesaveamerica.com
- 1:28Speaker 3: where you can donate to our Fuck Gerrymandering Fund and
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- 1:34Speaker 3: do right from the comfort of your home.
- 1:38Speaker 1: All right, let's get to the news.
- 1:40Speaker 3: Last night in Westerville, Ohio, the Democrats held their fourth
- 1:44Speaker 3: and largest primary debate in history, featuring 12 candidates. Joe Biden,
- 1:48Speaker 3: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Andrew Yang,
- 1:51Speaker 3: Cory Booker, Beto O'Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, Julian Castro, Tulsi Gabbard,
- 1:56Speaker 3: And Tom Steyer shared the stage for three hours.
- 1:59Speaker 1: Three hours.
- 2:00Speaker 2: That's normal, right? Usually you get more people in debates
- 2:03Speaker 2: as they go on in primaries. You know what's funny, though?
- 2:07Speaker 2: And they get longer.
- 2:07Speaker 3: Right before Iowa, there will be a seven-hour debate with
- 2:10Speaker 3: all 50 candidates.
- 2:11Speaker 4: I will say, though, even though there were a lot
- 2:13Speaker 4: of people on the stage and it was three hours long,
- 2:16Speaker 4: it actually only felt like three hours.
- 2:18Speaker 2: It felt like five to me. It felt like exactly
- 2:22Speaker 2: three hours.
- 2:24Speaker 1: One hour in.
- 2:25Speaker 3: I saw John Harwood tweet, well, that's an hour. We
- 2:27Speaker 3: got two left. And I nearly started crying.
- 2:31Speaker 1: It was long.
- 2:34Speaker 3: It was hosted by CNN and the New York Times.
- 2:37Speaker 3: The moderators were Anderson Cooper and Aaron Burnett of CNN
- 2:39Speaker 3: and Mark Lacey of the New York Times. So, guys,
- 2:41Speaker 3: this was the first debate where Elizabeth Warren was, if
- 2:44Speaker 3: not a frontrunner, co-frontrunner. And she was, you know, it's
- 2:50Speaker 3: a tie. It's like a tie in the average right now.
- 2:52Speaker 5: Two-way tie for first.
- 2:53Speaker 1: Two-way tie for first between her and Biden.
- 2:55Speaker 3: And she was challenged more than she ever has been
- 2:59Speaker 3: before by almost every candidate on stage.
- 3:04Speaker 2: Which is a lot of people.
- 3:06Speaker 1: It's a lot of people.
- 3:07Speaker 3: So let's listen to her first exchange with Pete Buttigieg
- 3:10Speaker 3: and Amy Klobuchar over, you guessed it, Medicare for All.
- 3:15Speaker 6: Your signature, Senator, is to have a plan for everything.
- 3:18Speaker 6: Except this. No plan has been laid out to explain
- 3:22Speaker 6: how a multi-trillion dollar hole in this Medicare for All
- 3:26Speaker 6: plan that Senator Warren is putting forward is supposed to
- 3:29Speaker 6: get filled in.
- 3:30Speaker 7: And a part of that is we've got to stop
- 3:32Speaker 7: Americans from going bankrupt over health care costs.
- 3:35Speaker 6: Senator Klobuchar, do you want to respond?
- 3:37Speaker 8: Yes, I do. And I appreciate Elizabeth's work. But again,
- 3:41Speaker 8: the difference between a plan and a pipe dream is
- 3:44Speaker 8: something that you can actually get done. And we can
- 3:47Speaker 8: get this public option done and we can take on
- 3:49Speaker 8: the pharmaceutical companies and bring down the prices. But what
- 3:53Speaker 8: really bothers me about this discussion, which we've had so
- 3:56Speaker 8: many times, is that we don't talk about the things
- 3:58Speaker 8: that I'm hearing about from regular Americans.
- 4:01Speaker 3: OK, first question. Why do we keep having these exchanges
- 4:05Speaker 3: every single debate? Will we be having them forever about
- 4:08Speaker 3: Medicare for All?
- 4:11Speaker 2: What a good question. Well, I feel like there's two
- 4:14Speaker 2: parts of it.
- 4:15Speaker 6: One is.
- 4:16Speaker 9: I.
- 4:19Speaker 4: Guess here's the question I had when I watched that exchange.
- 4:22Speaker 4: So we've had this conversation four times now in four
- 4:26Speaker 4: different debates.
- 4:27Speaker 2: Almost verbatim.
- 4:28Speaker 4: And there are two parts to it. The one part
- 4:31Speaker 4: is the... public option candidates trying to find a way
- 4:37Speaker 4: to criticize Medicare for all without seeming like wet blankets.
- 4:41Speaker 4: And I think each time they've been trying different tacks
- 4:43Speaker 4: at this. And then the second piece of it is
- 4:45Speaker 4: that Elizabeth Warren is refusing to say something very specific,
- 4:49Speaker 4: and everyone on that stage knows what's going on. She
- 4:51Speaker 4: does not want to say on camera that, according to
- 4:55Speaker 4: the Bernie plan, taxes will rise for the middle class
- 4:57Speaker 4: because she is making a bigger argument that, on the whole,
- 5:00Speaker 4: costs for the middle class will go down, and she
- 5:02Speaker 4: does not want to create video of herself saying that,
- 5:04Speaker 4: which will be used as a cudgel in the general
- 5:07Speaker 4: to misleadingly tell middle class voters that she's going to
- 5:12Speaker 4: cost them more money because her broader point is correct.
- 5:14Speaker 4: Under Medicare for All, even if your taxes go up,
- 5:17Speaker 4: overall your health care costs will go down further than
- 5:20Speaker 4: your taxes will go up because the costs will be shifted,
- 5:22Speaker 4: will be progressive and shifted up towards the wealthy. And
- 5:25Speaker 4: we've kind of been trapped in a loop on this,
- 5:27Speaker 4: but the difference is with this debate is this time
- 5:30Speaker 4: I think we had the most sophisticated debaters coming at
- 5:33Speaker 4: her on this, which are Amy Klobuchar and Mayor Pete,
- 5:38Speaker 4: two people that if they were a high school debating
- 5:41Speaker 4: team would be fucking, I think, like ferocious.
- 5:44Speaker 2: Yeah, they would be. I mean, they may be our one.
- 5:47Speaker 2: They see, these guys smell some blood in the water
- 5:50Speaker 2: here politically for Warren, right? I mean, There's two parts
- 5:53Speaker 2: of this. One, there's the cost of Medicare for all,
- 5:56Speaker 2: which is an attack on both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
- 6:00Speaker 2: But the critique for Warren is broader and it becomes
- 6:03Speaker 2: about her credibility. I was just reading a gaggle Biden
- 6:06Speaker 2: did today, Wednesday morning, where he is doubling, tripling down
- 6:09Speaker 2: on this and just hammering her at a stop in Columbus, Ohio. So,
- 6:12Speaker 2: you know, that's why Pete is focused on the cost
- 6:14Speaker 2: of Medicare for all and the lack of specificity. Michael
- 6:17Speaker 2: Bennett is running, I think, like a million dollars worth
- 6:19Speaker 2: of ads against Medicare for all. in iowa and i
- 6:23Speaker 2: think it becomes even more challenging for warren and everybody
- 6:26Speaker 2: on stage knows this because the contrast of her answer
- 6:29Speaker 2: with bernie just being like yep gonna raise taxes it's
- 6:31Speaker 2: part of the plan it is pretty stark when you're
- 6:34Speaker 2: like toe tapping for 10 15 30 minutes or your
- 6:38Speaker 2: her entire cnn interview after the debate was about this too.
- 6:42Speaker 3: Bet she wishes that uh Bernie never said that about
- 6:44Speaker 3: the taxes going up. And if you'll notice, Bernie said
- 6:47Speaker 3: that once before a couple of debates ago and has
- 6:49Speaker 3: not said it since.
- 6:50Speaker 1: Dan, what do you think?
- 6:51Speaker 5: The ultimate irony of this is Elizabeth Warren's going to
- 6:54Speaker 5: dance around this in every debate until the end of time.
- 6:56Speaker 5: And then if she's the nominee, the Trump campaign will
- 6:58Speaker 5: just create a deep fake of her saying it, run
- 7:01Speaker 5: an ad on Facebook, it'll get 10 million views, and
- 7:04Speaker 5: Mark Zuckerberg will refuse to take it down. So that's
- 7:06Speaker 5: where we're ending it.
- 7:07Speaker 3: Do you think it's sustainable, Dan, for her to continue
- 7:10Speaker 3: with this answer.
- 7:13Speaker 1: For the whole primary.
- 7:14Speaker 5: No, I don't think it's sustainable because it's not about
- 7:17Speaker 5: the financing of Medicare for all. That's no part of
- 7:21Speaker 5: the actual conversation. People are harping on this because it
- 7:24Speaker 5: is the first crack in the armor that she has offered.
- 7:28Speaker 5: She has put so much and so successfully put so
- 7:30Speaker 5: much stock in to this persona as a incredibly courageous policy-oriented,
- 7:36Speaker 5: detail-oriented person who planned for everything. And here we have
- 7:39Speaker 5: on her biggest, most expensive plan, a huge hole, and
- 7:42Speaker 5: she's dancing around it, obviously. And it makes her look
- 7:45Speaker 5: like a typical politician. And the fact that she has
- 7:47Speaker 5: seemed different than other politicians has been her strength. And
- 7:49Speaker 5: so people are going to keep hammering this on her.
- 7:52Speaker 5: And the other point about this conversation, both this question,
- 7:56Speaker 5: the larger Medicare for All conversation, as it relates to
- 7:58Speaker 5: Elizabeth Warren, is it's a proxy for electability. They want
- 8:02Speaker 5: to say that Medicare for All is bad politically, and
- 8:06Speaker 5: it makes her more likely to lose if she's the nominee.
- 8:10Speaker 5: And they're proving that because she can't answer a fundamental
- 8:13Speaker 5: question that everyone knows will be asked every single day
- 8:16Speaker 5: by every reporter in the general election.
- 8:19Speaker 3: Let me ask, what would you guys do if you
- 8:22Speaker 3: were on the Warren campaign next time you face this question?
- 8:27Speaker 3: I mean, or eventually to get out of this box, right?
- 8:30Speaker 3: You were saying it's not sustainable. It did seem like
- 8:34Speaker 3: You know, the strategy on both sides was pretty apparent
- 8:36Speaker 3: last night. We talked about the strategy on the public
- 8:38Speaker 3: option side. For Bernie and Elizabeth Warren, the strategy was
- 8:44Speaker 3: every time the public option folks sort of got into
- 8:47Speaker 3: the details about cost and sort of accused Warren of
- 8:51Speaker 3: not being honest about the taxes, they would sort of
- 8:55Speaker 3: bring it back to the system is fundamentally broken. Private
- 8:59Speaker 3: insurance companies are awful. They make money by denying care.
- 9:04Speaker 3: There's a lot of people in this country who can't
- 9:07Speaker 3: afford health insurance. So they brought it back to the
- 9:09Speaker 3: problem with the current private health insurance.
- 9:12Speaker 1: But that's where they went. They didn't go anywhere else.
- 9:16Speaker 1: Where would you go?
- 9:17Speaker 5: I think there would be benefit in Elizabeth Warren being
- 9:19Speaker 5: honest about this. She is exactly right, to be very clear.
- 9:23Speaker 5: She is right about costs. And it is dumb and
- 9:28Speaker 5: sort of operating in a Reagan-esque political frame to think
- 9:32Speaker 5: about this in the context of taxes only and not
- 9:35Speaker 5: overall costs for families. But it is also a fact
- 9:38Speaker 5: that every policy has winners and losers. And there will
- 9:40Speaker 5: be some people whose taxes go up more than their
- 9:43Speaker 5: healthcare costs come down. And I think she would, because
- 9:47Speaker 5: she has been so honest about all of her other policies,
- 9:49Speaker 5: having an answer that took on more aggressively the problem
- 9:54Speaker 5: with the framing of that question but then gave a
- 9:56Speaker 5: little ground on taxes will go up for some people.
- 10:00Speaker 5: almost entirely the wealthy. I just think when she says
- 10:06Speaker 5: the same answer over and over again in every debate
- 10:08Speaker 5: for the rest of time, that is not going to
- 10:09Speaker 5: wear well. And so there needs to be some sort
- 10:12Speaker 5: of pivot that gives a little ground here.
- 10:14Speaker 1: And I do think to.
- 10:16Speaker 3: the original question about like, why do we keep going
- 10:19Speaker 3: over this time and time again? It's a proxy for electability,
- 10:21Speaker 3: but also we've all been in primaries before. It is
- 10:25Speaker 3: difficult to find policy differences in a primary. When you
- 10:28Speaker 3: do find a policy difference, it becomes the opportunity to
- 10:32Speaker 3: differentiate yourself from the other candidate. I mean, we spent
- 10:35Speaker 3: a month in 2008 in the primary arguing with Hillary
- 10:40Speaker 3: Clinton over a gas tax. holiday remember because it was.
- 10:45Speaker 4: Weird yeah because it was 2008 feeling in my stomach.
- 10:47Speaker 3: It was a we made it a huge deal we
- 10:50Speaker 3: made the individual mandate in the health care plan an
- 10:53Speaker 3: enormous deal not just the.
- 10:55Speaker 5: Primary individual individual mandate versus automatic enrollment.
- 10:58Speaker 3: Right and so that like this is why this kept
- 11:01Speaker 3: this keeps getting brought up because there aren't a ton
- 11:04Speaker 3: of other big issues going forward where the candidates have
- 11:08Speaker 3: big disagreements i do think then to your point about
- 11:12Speaker 3: where Warren should go from here. I think if she
- 11:14Speaker 3: is more granular about taxes and costs and specific about
- 11:20Speaker 3: the plan, it will also give her the opportunity to
- 11:24Speaker 3: point to the other candidates and say, you have trade-offs
- 11:27Speaker 3: in your plan as well. Like, I don't know that
- 11:30Speaker 3: either Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren have been sharp enough
- 11:33Speaker 3: on the deficiencies or the trade-offs in the other plans because, yeah,
- 11:38Speaker 3: there's trade-offs on Medicare for all. There's costs, there's taxes,
- 11:40Speaker 3: there's all this kind of stuff. There's also trade-offs in
- 11:42Speaker 3: Pete's plan, in Amy Klobuchar's plan, in Biden's plan, right?
- 11:45Speaker 3: Like they don't cut costs in the healthcare system as
- 11:47Speaker 3: much as the Sanders and Warren plan. Their plans are
- 11:49Speaker 3: more expensive. Other people are going to pay more out
- 11:52Speaker 3: of pocket in their plans than they are in Sanders
- 11:54Speaker 3: and Warren. Like they're just, you know, there's trade-offs.
- 11:57Speaker 4: This was, I think, the most sophisticated debate we've had,
- 11:59Speaker 4: but it's still not really getting at the pros and
- 12:01Speaker 4: cons of a public option versus Medicare for all and
- 12:04Speaker 4: why they actually do believe it is a better system
- 12:07Speaker 4: in which people transition from private insurance. One thing I
- 12:09Speaker 4: was thinking about when I was watching them is like,
- 12:11Speaker 4: Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg are really fucking smart. And
- 12:16Speaker 4: Pete specifically, I think, has thought a lot about how
- 12:19Speaker 4: can I be on the attack without giving ground on policy?
- 12:22Speaker 4: How can I go after Elizabeth Warren without seeming like
- 12:25Speaker 4: I'm throwing a wet blanket on boldness? It's the same
- 12:27Speaker 4: thing what he tried to do with Beto later on.
- 12:30Speaker 4: And this is the one place where the script is
- 12:32Speaker 4: kind of flipped. For the past three debates, what we've
- 12:34Speaker 4: seen is, I think, the bolder, more left candidates attacking
- 12:37Speaker 4: kind of the moderation, and lack of kind of, and
- 12:44Speaker 4: the nuance of some of the other candidates on the stage.
- 12:46Speaker 4: And this is the one place where that sort of
- 12:47Speaker 4: is flipped, where what they're actually doing is they're saying,
- 12:50Speaker 4: you're being political. You're the political one now. I'm the honest,
- 12:53Speaker 4: bold change maker.
- 12:54Speaker 2: You're political.
- 12:55Speaker 4: And I think that's why ultimately it's such a good
- 12:57Speaker 4: attack and why it's not sustainable for her to stay
- 12:58Speaker 4: where she's at.
- 12:59Speaker 5: The other reason we go around the bend on this
- 13:01Speaker 5: is the debates and the conversation and the campaigns are
- 13:04Speaker 5: always focused on legislation you pass, which is really a
- 13:08Speaker 5: dumb way to think about the president. So we know
- 13:09Speaker 5: having worked there, that you can do so much more
- 13:12Speaker 5: with executive authority. Obviously, they spend time talking about foreign policy,
- 13:15Speaker 5: which is something presidents can do on their own, but
- 13:17Speaker 5: there should be more of a conversation, but not about
- 13:19Speaker 5: the bills that no candidate is likely to pass in
- 13:21Speaker 5: the form in which they're proposed, and more about how
- 13:24Speaker 5: they would go about fixing the health care system on
- 13:25Speaker 5: their own. How would they repair Obamacare? Who would they
- 13:27Speaker 5: appoint to these jobs?
- 13:28Speaker 3: Which would be a very refreshing question and debate.
- 13:31Speaker 5: The pen and phone debate.
- 13:33Speaker 3: Asking them all, let's say that Mitch McConnell holds the
- 13:36Speaker 3: Senate and there's a Republican Senate, what are you going
- 13:38Speaker 3: to do to improve the health care system?
- 13:39Speaker 1: It would be very interesting.
- 13:41Speaker 3: I do think back to your point, Lovett, there's a
- 13:42Speaker 3: difference between Klobuchar and Pete, which I want to raise here.
- 13:46Speaker 3: Klobuchar has been moderate from the start. This has been
- 13:51Speaker 3: her whole theory of the case. maybe she hasn't made
- 13:54Speaker 3: the argument as sharply as she has, as she did
- 13:57Speaker 3: last night in the fourth debate, which I thought she
- 13:58Speaker 3: was very sharp. Pete, Pete back in February was arguing
- 14:02Speaker 3: that Medicare for all is the compromise position and the
- 14:05Speaker 3: center of the political debate because it involves private hospitals
- 14:09Speaker 3: and doctors, but public, a public payer and a lot
- 14:12Speaker 3: of liberals and people on the left side. Oh, that's
- 14:14Speaker 3: a very interesting way to frame it for Pete. Pete
- 14:17Speaker 3: also said many times about Republicans that, it's time to
- 14:20Speaker 3: stop worrying about what the Republicans will say because they'll
- 14:22Speaker 3: accuse us of being crazy socialists no matter what kind
- 14:24Speaker 3: of policies we propose. So we might as well propose
- 14:27Speaker 3: the policies that are right. So the fact that he
- 14:30Speaker 3: came out of the gate and became so popular by
- 14:33Speaker 3: being this bold, progressive truth teller, and now he's looking
- 14:38Speaker 3: to be the more moderate alternative to Joe Biden, I
- 14:41Speaker 3: think opens up a vulnerability for him as we go
- 14:45Speaker 3: forward that Warren or Sanders or some of the other
- 14:48Speaker 3: more progressive candidates could easily exploit.
- 14:50Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, he probably benefits by being one of
- 14:53Speaker 2: many people attacking Elizabeth Warren last night. But I was
- 14:55Speaker 2: surprised that we saw so much angry Pete last night because...
- 15:00Speaker 2: I don't think it served him well. I don't know
- 15:02Speaker 2: that it did. I mean, look, we'll find out. I
- 15:04Speaker 2: don't know that it did either. I mean, Dan, I
- 15:05Speaker 2: saw you talking about this on Twitter. Like, he has
- 15:07Speaker 2: two choices. When you're in third or fourth place, you
- 15:09Speaker 2: have the choice of attacking and losing or not attacking. So, like,
- 15:12Speaker 2: you have to do something to shake up your campaign. But,
- 15:16Speaker 2: I mean... To John's point, I think if you're going
- 15:18Speaker 2: to attack someone's honesty and credibility when you yourself have
- 15:21Speaker 2: changed significantly on policy, that's a challenge. And when you're
- 15:25Speaker 2: going to sound a little bit harsh in tone, when
- 15:28Speaker 2: you have been sort of bring everybody together, this is
- 15:31Speaker 2: why they hate Washington, stop the food fights guy. It
- 15:34Speaker 2: felt a little disjointed with the previous part of his campaign.
- 15:37Speaker 5: I think I have a different take. I don't think
- 15:39Speaker 5: he came off as angry. I think this was his
- 15:41Speaker 5: best debate. And I say that not because his performance
- 15:45Speaker 5: was as good, right? Because that's often how we judge.
- 15:46Speaker 5: We're like, well, Cory Booker was incredibly likable and he
- 15:48Speaker 5: had some good moments. He knows what his strategy is.
- 15:51Speaker 5: He knows what he thinks his lane is, and he
- 15:53Speaker 5: executed it aggressively. He is trying to change the dynamic
- 15:57Speaker 5: of a race. He's really, of the most of the
- 16:00Speaker 5: canceling stage there, have no plan to win, right? They
- 16:03Speaker 5: just really don't. He has a path. He has figured
- 16:06Speaker 5: it out.
- 16:06Speaker 1: That is 100% true. He does.
- 16:09Speaker 5: It has required him to make some adjustments from where
- 16:12Speaker 5: he was.
- 16:13Speaker 1: But.
- 16:15Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 16:16Speaker 3: You just sort of yadda yaddaed over that.
- 16:18Speaker 5: But every candidate does that, right? And I think we
- 16:22Speaker 5: should watch it very carefully. There's an existential question about
- 16:24Speaker 5: how much these debates matter in terms of changing public opinion,
- 16:27Speaker 5: but they are very helpful in understanding how candidates see
- 16:30Speaker 5: the race.
- 16:30Speaker 3: The question is, are the adjustments... natural and do they
- 16:33Speaker 3: seem authentic or do they seem calculated and i don't
- 16:36Speaker 3: and i don't know you're right like that we are
- 16:38Speaker 3: we are way too in this we pay attention to
- 16:40Speaker 3: this way too closely it is very possible that for
- 16:43Speaker 3: most people who watch the debate they just saw a
- 16:45Speaker 3: really strong performance from pete he executed on a lot
- 16:48Speaker 3: of answers very very well but there's a little bit
- 16:52Speaker 3: of like you know for the last couple weeks a
- 16:55Speaker 3: lot of pundits out there being like pete's got a
- 16:58Speaker 3: get into that moderate lane. Pete's got to be more
- 17:01Speaker 3: aggressive in these debates. And then he shows up and
- 17:04Speaker 3: he's in the moderate lane and more aggressive in these debates. And,
- 17:06Speaker 3: you know, I saw Liz Smith, his communications person on
- 17:09Speaker 3: Twitter last night, tweet out. She's like, for all the
- 17:12Speaker 3: people who are saying that Pete couldn't throw or take
- 17:15Speaker 3: a punch, tonight shows you otherwise. And it's like, okay, well,
- 17:19Speaker 3: that's even more leaning into like, all right, you told
- 17:22Speaker 3: us to do this and now we're doing it.
- 17:24Speaker 4: Well, I actually think what's more important to me is not,
- 17:28Speaker 4: did he throw a punch or not? And even not
- 17:30Speaker 4: what were the attacks? What was he trying to say
- 17:32Speaker 4: about Warren or Beto or any other people he kind
- 17:35Speaker 4: of mixed it up with? It's more, what does it
- 17:36Speaker 4: say about him as a candidate, right? So the aggressiveness
- 17:39Speaker 4: is a means to get attention. What is he saying?
- 17:42Speaker 4: So when he goes after Elizabeth Warren about being evasive,
- 17:45Speaker 4: he's saying, I'm the honest Midwestern truth teller. When he
- 17:48Speaker 4: goes after Beto on guns, he's saying, I'm the only
- 17:52Speaker 4: one being honest about what we can actually achieve, right? Like,
- 17:54Speaker 4: you start to see the attacks are a vehicle for
- 17:57Speaker 4: the message that he's now trying to say. And I
- 17:59Speaker 4: think it's actually, we have seen debate after debate, the
- 18:03Speaker 4: more moderate candidates struggle to figure out how to not
- 18:07Speaker 4: fall into the, to seem kind of, you know, squishy
- 18:10Speaker 4: compared to Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. It's happened again
- 18:13Speaker 4: and again. I think that to me is the takeaway
- 18:15Speaker 4: on Pete, that he is thinking about how to be
- 18:17Speaker 4: a angry.
- 18:18Speaker 2: Bold, moderate. I thought Pete was like aggressive and compelling
- 18:23Speaker 2: on Syria, for example. Yes. He knew his shit. He
- 18:25Speaker 2: was righteous.
- 18:26Speaker 1: It was his best moment.
- 18:27Speaker 2: It worked.
- 18:27Speaker 1: And maybe the best moment of the night. Yeah.
- 18:29Speaker 2: It was really impressive. I just do think like, you know, he,
- 18:33Speaker 2: the front runners in Iowa are like 20, 21, 22%.
- 18:36Speaker 2: He's sitting at 14%, which is really kind of great
- 18:39Speaker 2: place to be at this point in the race. And
- 18:42Speaker 2: there is a risk. If suddenly all the Warren people
- 18:45Speaker 2: are like, what the fuck? He was being a dick
- 18:46Speaker 2: to her last night. And all the Biden people think that.
- 18:49Speaker 2: And all the Beto people. You know, it's like there
- 18:51Speaker 2: is a risk to being too negative too early.
- 18:53Speaker 5: Oh, for sure.
- 18:54Speaker 3: Look, I think he was not as aggressive as Castro
- 18:59Speaker 3: was with Biden in the last debate. Or as we're
- 19:01Speaker 3: going to talk about, Biden was with Warren at the
- 19:03Speaker 3: end of last night's debate over the fucking Consumer Financial
- 19:07Speaker 3: Protection Bureau issue.
- 19:08Speaker 1: Which was, like, way too much.
- 19:09Speaker 2: That was bad.
- 19:09Speaker 3: But there were, like, I think Pete's walking a fine
- 19:12Speaker 3: line here, and I think there were flashes of annoyance
- 19:15Speaker 3: and aggressiveness that were a little much, but he mainly
- 19:19Speaker 3: kept it.
- 19:20Speaker 1: He mainly kept it in the right place.
- 19:21Speaker 3: It was a diffuse.
- 19:25Speaker 2: Tool that he was using.
- 19:26Speaker 4: It was like, now's the time where I'm going to
- 19:29Speaker 4: make this point by contrasting myself with you, but if
- 19:31Speaker 4: you actually, like, dig into the actual, you're like, what
- 19:34Speaker 4: are you actually saying here? What is your actual disagreement?
- 19:36Speaker 4: It's not really, I kind of, it falls.
- 19:38Speaker 2: Apart in your fingers.
- 19:38Speaker 3: Well, that's my thing is that I think, I think
- 19:40Speaker 3: Warren was maybe not as prepared as she'll be next
- 19:43Speaker 3: time to sort of tear into some of Pete's inconsistencies.
- 19:48Speaker 1: Well, that's the question.
- 19:49Speaker 3: I don't think she handled them as well as she
- 19:50Speaker 3: could last night.
- 19:51Speaker 5: I think that's the question for Pete, which is now
- 19:54Speaker 5: he has, like, the page has turned. For a long time,
- 19:57Speaker 5: he was the inspiring, good news, non-threatening candidate, right? And
- 20:02Speaker 5: now people, he's making a play for other people's supporters.
- 20:06Speaker 5: He's trying to take down Biden and Warren because he
- 20:08Speaker 5: is the one candidate who is most likely to benefit
- 20:11Speaker 5: from the fall of both of them. And if you
- 20:14Speaker 5: talk to reporters, you talk to people in the campaigns,
- 20:17Speaker 5: almost universally, the candidate in the campaign that all the
- 20:20Speaker 5: other campaigns are most annoyed with is Pete. And so
- 20:25Speaker 5: I think there's going to be several counter punches over
- 20:27Speaker 5: the next few days, and we'll have to see whether
- 20:28Speaker 5: they're ready for it.
- 20:29Speaker 6: All right.
- 20:30Speaker 3: Warren was also challenged on her wealth tax by Beto
- 20:32Speaker 3: O'Rourke and Amy Klobuchar.
- 20:34Speaker 1: Let's take a listen.
- 20:35Speaker 10: I think we need to be focused on lifting people up.
- 20:38Speaker 10: And sometimes I think that Senator Warren is more focused
- 20:43Speaker 10: on being punitive or pitting some part of the country
- 20:46Speaker 10: against the other instead of lifting people up and making
- 20:50Speaker 10: sure this country comes together around those solutions.
- 20:53Speaker 8: I want to give a reality check here to Elizabeth
- 20:56Speaker 8: because no one on this stage wants to protect billionaires,
- 20:58Speaker 8: not even the billionaire wants to protect billionaires. We just
- 21:02Speaker 8: have different approaches. Your idea is not the only idea.
- 21:07Speaker 8: And when I look at this, I think about Donald Trump,
- 21:09Speaker 8: the guy that after that tax bill passed, went to Mar-a-Lago,
- 21:13Speaker 8: got together with his cronies and said, guess what? You
- 21:16Speaker 8: guys all got a lot richer. That was the one
- 21:20Speaker 8: time in his presidency he told the truth. So we
- 21:23Speaker 8: have different ways. I would repeal significant portions of that
- 21:26Speaker 8: tax bill that helped the rich, including what he did
- 21:29Speaker 8: with the corporate tax rate, including what he did on
- 21:31Speaker 8: international taxation.
- 21:33Speaker 2: You add it all up.
- 21:34Speaker 8: You got a lot of money that one helps pay
- 21:37Speaker 8: for that child care, protects that dignity of work, make
- 21:40Speaker 8: sure we have decent retirement and make sure that our
- 21:43Speaker 8: kids can go to. Thank you. It is not one idea.
- 21:46Speaker 9: This was a moment where.
- 21:48Speaker 4: I was like, I don't understand what we're arguing about.
- 21:51Speaker 4: Elizabeth Warren does not support the Trump tax cuts.
- 21:55Speaker 5: What she is responding to is this idea that if
- 21:56Speaker 5: you're not for Warren's wealth tax, then you are pro-billionaire,
- 22:00Speaker 5: which is an argument that both Bernie, who has a
- 22:02Speaker 5: similar wealth tax, and Warren have made, certainly implicitly and
- 22:06Speaker 5: sometimes explicitly. And Klobuchar's position, which I think she delivered
- 22:09Speaker 5: very well, is there are other ways to get that.
- 22:12Speaker 5: And no one here is pro-billionaire. Even Tom Steyer is
- 22:14Speaker 5: taxing himself at $ 50 million in order to run a campaign.
- 22:17Speaker 3: I thought Klobuchar's answer was the sharper one there and
- 22:20Speaker 3: made sense. Well, we can talk about Beto's answer in
- 22:22Speaker 3: a second.
- 22:23Speaker 4: What Amy Klobuchar is saying there is we can do
- 22:25Speaker 4: a lot of good by repealing the Trump tax cuts,
- 22:28Speaker 4: but I don't think anyone on that stage really disagrees
- 22:30Speaker 4: with that. She made a compelling argument for why we
- 22:32Speaker 4: should repeal those tax cuts, but I don't understand.
- 22:34Speaker 3: Because she's just saying, I don't think the wealth tax
- 22:37Speaker 3: works and the way to get the money we need
- 22:39Speaker 3: is to repeal the Trump tax cuts.
- 22:40Speaker 4: I guess that's what I'm saying. She didn't make an
- 22:43Speaker 4: argument against Elizabeth Warren's plan. She made an argument for
- 22:46Speaker 4: something that everybody on that stage would do anyway.
- 22:48Speaker 1: That's true.
- 22:49Speaker 3: No one has, no one except for Beto's weird argument
- 22:53Speaker 3: was talking about why the wealth tax specifically is bad.
- 22:57Speaker 3: The reason that, and we didn't play the first part
- 22:59Speaker 3: about Beto's answer, the reason that Beto's answer was so
- 23:01Speaker 3: fucking confusing and basically nonsensical was they asked Beto, do
- 23:05Speaker 3: you support a wealth tax? And he said, yeah, I
- 23:08Speaker 3: think that's part of the solution. And then he was like,
- 23:10Speaker 3: I'm worried that Elizabeth Warren is punitive.
- 23:13Speaker 5: He's trying to make the point that Elizabeth Warren is
- 23:15Speaker 5: too divisive.
- 23:16Speaker 2: Right.
- 23:17Speaker 1: But he didn't have the facts to, he didn't use.
- 23:19Speaker 3: The substance for it.
- 23:20Speaker 5: This is also Pete's argument. This was implicit throughout the
- 23:22Speaker 5: entire debate. And Klobuchar, to another extent, is we need
- 23:27Speaker 5: a candidate who can unify the country when this is
- 23:30Speaker 5: all over, both to win the election and fix all
- 23:32Speaker 5: the fucking problems Trump did. And the argument, which I
- 23:34Speaker 5: think is unfair, but is that Warren is too divisive
- 23:37Speaker 5: to do that. I just think the wealth tax is
- 23:38Speaker 5: a terrible way to make that argument.
- 23:40Speaker 1: Maybe the worst way to make the argument.
- 23:42Speaker 3: The polling on the wealth tax is, latest polling from
- 23:45Speaker 3: June is 66% of people in this country think it's
- 23:47Speaker 3: a good idea.
- 23:48Speaker 2: It'll bring the country together.
- 23:50Speaker 3: Specifically, Elizabeth, the question is Elizabeth Warren has proposed a
- 23:54Speaker 3: wealth tax. It's very specific. 66% agree, 30% disagree.
- 23:59Speaker 1: 55% of Republicans think it's a good idea. 43% disagree.
- 24:03Speaker 3: Warren, you could talk all day long about the vulnerabilities
- 24:06Speaker 3: of Medicare for all and the position on taking Medicare
- 24:08Speaker 3: for all. There are no political vulnerabilities in being for
- 24:11Speaker 3: a wealth tax.
- 24:11Speaker 1: There just aren't.
- 24:12Speaker 5: It should be in the Democratic Party platform in the
- 24:14Speaker 5: 2020 convention, whether Elizabeth Warren's a nominee or not.
- 24:16Speaker 3: There's no data that shows it. Show me data that
- 24:17Speaker 3: shows it's politically problematic.
- 24:19Speaker 2: I'm no policy wonk, but I think hammering billionaires is
- 24:22Speaker 2: pretty good politics. And let's take a moment.
- 24:24Speaker 1: You don't even need the polls.
- 24:25Speaker 2: Even the billionaire on stage thinks it's good politics.
- 24:27Speaker 4: Let's take a moment to say, I think it's so
- 24:29Speaker 4: exciting because Tom Steyer spent $ 48 million to get on
- 24:31Speaker 4: that stage. And it was so nice of everybody to
- 24:33Speaker 4: kind of make him part of it. Because when you
- 24:35Speaker 4: pay for a VIP ticket like that, sometimes you don't
- 24:37Speaker 4: know if you're really going to feel like it was
- 24:39Speaker 4: worth it. But then the fact that Amy made a
- 24:41Speaker 4: joke about him, made him part of the show, I
- 24:44Speaker 4: think was really cool.
- 24:45Speaker 2: Divisive tie? I kind of liked it. Plaid tie?
- 24:48Speaker 1: I like a plaid tie.
- 24:49Speaker 5: I think there's a backstory to the tie.
- 24:50Speaker 2: Yeah, he wears it all the time.
- 24:52Speaker 1: Wonderful.
- 25:04Speaker 3: Later in the night, Warren was even challenged by Kamala
- 25:06Speaker 3: Harris on her reluctance to call on Twitter to ban
- 25:09Speaker 3: Donald Trump's account.
- 25:11Speaker 1: Let's take a listen.
- 25:12Speaker 11: Senator Warren, I just want to say that I was
- 25:14Speaker 11: surprised to hear that you did not agree with me
- 25:17Speaker 11: that on this subject of what should be the rules
- 25:20Speaker 11: around corporate responsibility for these big tech companies, when I
- 25:23Speaker 11: called on Twitter to suspend Donald Trump's account, that you
- 25:28Speaker 11: did not agree. And I would urge you to join
- 25:31Speaker 11: me because here we have Donald Trump who has 65
- 25:34Speaker 11: million Twitter followers and is using that platform as the
- 25:38Speaker 11: president of the United States to openly intimidate witnesses, to
- 25:43Speaker 11: threaten witnesses, to obstruct justice.
- 25:47Speaker 8: And he and.
- 25:48Speaker 11: His account should be taken down.
- 25:50Speaker 8: We saw in El Paso.
- 25:52Speaker 11: That that shooter in his manifesto was informed by how
- 25:55Speaker 11: Donald Trump uses that platform. And this is a matter
- 25:58Speaker 11: of corporate responsibility. Twitter should be held accountable and shut
- 26:02Speaker 11: down that site. It is a matter of safety and
- 26:04Speaker 11: corporate accountability.
- 26:05Speaker 2: Thank you.
- 26:06Speaker 5: Senator Warren, you can respond.
- 26:08Speaker 7: So, look, I don't just want to push Donald Trump
- 26:10Speaker 7: off Twitter. I want to push him out of the
- 26:12Speaker 7: White House. That's our job.
- 26:15Speaker 11: Join me in saying that his Twitter account should be
- 26:17Speaker 11: shut down.
- 26:18Speaker 7: Let's figure out. No.
- 26:20Speaker 3: So we didn't hear the very beginning of that, but
- 26:23Speaker 3: that whole thing started with Elizabeth Warren talking about sort
- 26:26Speaker 3: of breaking up Facebook and tech regulation. And then Kamala
- 26:30Speaker 3: sort of gets herself ready and says, you know, Senator Warren,
- 26:35Speaker 3: I called on Twitter to take down the account and
- 26:38Speaker 3: I saw that you refused to join me on this.
- 26:40Speaker 1: Why?
- 26:40Speaker 3: So she, she specifically decided to just kind of take,
- 26:43Speaker 3: make a challenge to Elizabeth Warren about this issue.
- 26:46Speaker 1: Why do we think she did this?
- 26:47Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, so I, I, criticized this line, maybe
- 26:52Speaker 2: a little too harshly on Twitter, heard from some folks
- 26:54Speaker 2: on Kamala's team. Look, I like Kamala Harris a lot.
- 26:56Speaker 2: I thought she had a really great line on the
- 26:59Speaker 2: assault weapons ban when she brought up reproductive health. I
- 27:01Speaker 2: thought it was really compelling and powerful. Those are big,
- 27:05Speaker 2: important issues, right? The fact that we have a white
- 27:08Speaker 2: nationalist president who is inciting violence against others, I think
- 27:11Speaker 2: is a big, important issue that is worthy of discussion
- 27:14Speaker 2: on that stage. But I think the solution of shutting
- 27:16Speaker 2: down his Twitter account by appealing to Jack Dorsey is
- 27:20Speaker 2: small and will not solve it. I mean, just he'll,
- 27:22Speaker 2: he can go on Facebook, he can go on Instagram,
- 27:24Speaker 2: he can do big rallies, he can hold a press conference, right?
- 27:26Speaker 2: Like we have to beat Donald Trump by appealing to voters,
- 27:29Speaker 2: not by appealing to Jack Dorsey, in my opinion.
- 27:31Speaker 1: So, right.
- 27:32Speaker 2: But like, this is a debate. Everything is planned and
- 27:35Speaker 2: designed for political advantage. And so even just from like
- 27:38Speaker 2: a tactical perspective, I don't think strategically this was the
- 27:43Speaker 2: issue I would have taken up against Elizabeth Warren or
- 27:45Speaker 2: I'm not dismissing the issue of abuse of people on Twitter,
- 27:49Speaker 2: but I don't think it's going to drive a lot
- 27:51Speaker 2: of support her way. It seemed sort of pre-calculated and
- 27:54Speaker 2: it seems smaller than the issue of the way Facebook
- 27:58Speaker 2: specifically has distorted our democracy. And like, it wasn't also
- 28:01Speaker 2: just like one little moment, right? Like when you say
- 28:03Speaker 2: something like that, you know, all the reporters going to
- 28:05Speaker 2: pick it up because they live on Twitter. And I
- 28:07Speaker 2: watched her post-debate interview on CNN and on MSNBC and
- 28:11Speaker 2: And this was the focus of both of those conversations,
- 28:13Speaker 2: like three questions in a row on both networks. So
- 28:16Speaker 2: it's just not the thing I would have wanted to
- 28:17Speaker 2: be talking about today.
- 28:18Speaker 4: I was also pretty critical of it. And, you know, actually,
- 28:21Speaker 4: you know, Kara Swisher, I talked to her on Love
- 28:22Speaker 4: It or Leave It about this. And she actually makes
- 28:24Speaker 4: a really good argument for why Trump's account should be
- 28:27Speaker 4: taken down from Twitter. Actually, the argument she's really making
- 28:30Speaker 4: is Twitter should enforce its rules. And by any fair,
- 28:33Speaker 4: objective reading of Twitter's policies, Donald Trump violates them all
- 28:35Speaker 4: the time. And he does so in a way that
- 28:37Speaker 4: incites violence and hate. and could even lead to genuine
- 28:41Speaker 4: harm and threats and fear for people. And it does
- 28:45Speaker 4: every single day. That's absolutely true. Elizabeth Warren was making
- 28:49Speaker 4: a larger argument about the structural problems in our economy,
- 28:52Speaker 4: the ways in which big tech companies and monopolies are
- 28:55Speaker 4: influencing our politics and influencing our society, and the dangers
- 28:59Speaker 4: that that poses and the importance of regulation. And Kamala
- 29:04Speaker 4: Harris was saying that Donald Trump should be banned from Twitter.
- 29:07Speaker 4: And Twitter should observe its its terms of service.
- 29:10Speaker 2: Fine. But she was also using it as an opportunity
- 29:13Speaker 2: to draw contrast. Right.
- 29:14Speaker 4: She didn't make an argument for removing Trump from Twitter.
- 29:17Speaker 4: She took an opportunity to try to kind of put
- 29:20Speaker 4: Elizabeth Warren on notice to draw a contrast to make
- 29:23Speaker 4: a moment out of it. And I found that ultimately not.
- 29:27Speaker 4: I just didn't find it reflected well of Kamala Harris,
- 29:30Speaker 4: who I think is a much better candidate than that,
- 29:32Speaker 4: who's had incredibly strong debates in the past, who can
- 29:34Speaker 4: make a compelling argument against Donald Trump, who can be bigger.
- 29:38Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's pretty simple. If Kamala Harris had said,
- 29:43Speaker 3: by the way, you know, now that we're since we're
- 29:45Speaker 3: talking about tech, big tech and its responsibility, I've called
- 29:49Speaker 3: on Jack to shut down Donald Trump's account. And I
- 29:52Speaker 3: hope everyone on this stage will join me in saying that.
- 29:56Speaker 3: I don't think she would have gotten any criticism over it.
- 29:58Speaker 3: I don't think anyone would have thought it was small.
- 30:00Speaker 3: I never begrudge someone for taking a position that they
- 30:06Speaker 3: really believe in and are passionate about, even if it's
- 30:08Speaker 3: something that I disagree with because they just genuinely believe
- 30:11Speaker 3: in it. Where I worry is when candidates seem like
- 30:15Speaker 3: they are trying to calculate a moment or a lane
- 30:19Speaker 3: or a position or something like that. And look, I
- 30:21Speaker 3: realize that's campaigns. You do that in campaigns, right? But
- 30:23Speaker 3: sometimes it's clumsier than other times, right? Like we just
- 30:26Speaker 3: said that Pete's, I believe that Pete's, transition here has
- 30:30Speaker 3: been a little clumsy and a little obvious. And I
- 30:32Speaker 3: think in that moment, Kamala Harris getting herself ready, turning
- 30:37Speaker 3: to Elizabeth Warren, pointing to her to try to bring
- 30:39Speaker 3: up the contrast was what that was about. Like I,
- 30:42Speaker 3: like I said, if she had just stood up and said,
- 30:44Speaker 3: everyone on the stage should join me in this, it
- 30:46Speaker 3: would have been different.
- 30:47Speaker 1: It would have been different.
- 30:48Speaker 2: It was a stunt.
- 30:49Speaker 4: It is the definition of a stunt. It was a
- 30:51Speaker 4: pre-planned moment for her to not just make a case
- 30:54Speaker 4: for something important, which is trying to de-platform, uh, violent
- 30:59Speaker 4: and racist rhetoric. It was about trying to take a
- 31:02Speaker 4: shot at Elizabeth Warren. And at a time when Elizabeth
- 31:05Speaker 4: Warren was making a pretty big and important argument about
- 31:08Speaker 4: large forces in our society, in our economy, the place
- 31:12Speaker 4: where she's strongest as a candidate.
- 31:15Speaker 2: And I.
- 31:19Speaker 4: Find it really disappointing because I think one of the
- 31:22Speaker 4: things we've talked about many times is how strong a
- 31:23Speaker 4: candidate we believe Kamala Harris to be. We saw that
- 31:26Speaker 4: in the first debate when she really struck at Joe
- 31:29Speaker 4: Biden in a way that showed the kind of strength
- 31:30Speaker 4: she has as a candidate. But what we've also talked
- 31:32Speaker 4: about all along is we sometimes don't understand the larger
- 31:35Speaker 4: justification for why she's running for president. And the question
- 31:38Speaker 4: I would have for Senator Harris would be, what does
- 31:42Speaker 4: this say about the kind of president you'll be that
- 31:44Speaker 4: you think this is the big issue to draw contrast
- 31:47Speaker 4: with on Elizabeth Warren?
- 31:49Speaker 1: I mean, yeah.
- 31:49Speaker 3: And look, every candidate, this is the problem as we
- 31:52Speaker 3: get this deep into the primary, is that all of
- 31:56Speaker 3: the candidates who are not frontrunners are being told by
- 31:59Speaker 3: everyone they know and everyone who's working for them and
- 32:02Speaker 3: everyone who's consulting them that, like, you've got to draw
- 32:04Speaker 3: a contrast. You've got to have a moment to get
- 32:07Speaker 3: out front here. And it's not just Kamala.
- 32:08Speaker 1: Like, a lot of them are doing that.
- 32:10Speaker 3: And, you know, it's tough to watch because so many
- 32:13Speaker 3: of them seem preplanned. And it's just like it's an
- 32:16Speaker 3: extra level of artifice on the process that I think is,
- 32:20Speaker 3: you know, it's just obvious sometimes.
- 32:23Speaker 5: The only other thing I would add to this very
- 32:24Speaker 5: long conversation about this topic is that.
- 32:27Speaker 1: I.
- 32:27Speaker 5: Mean, is if we're thinking about what to be really
- 32:32Speaker 5: concerned about in the behavior of tech companies as relates
- 32:34Speaker 5: to politicians and Donald Trump, it is Facebook's policy that
- 32:38Speaker 5: allows politicians, most notably Donald Trump, to lie in ads.
- 32:42Speaker 2: Yeah, right.
- 32:43Speaker 5: And basically use Facebook's immense amount of data to target
- 32:47Speaker 5: disinformation that the voters at Facebook tells them are most
- 32:50Speaker 5: likely to fall for that disinformation.
- 32:52Speaker 1: And that is.
- 32:54Speaker 5: like a massive threat to democracy. And I don't think
- 32:57Speaker 5: that should be a point of contrast between the candidates,
- 32:59Speaker 5: but I think it is an issue that should be
- 33:00Speaker 5: raised and Facebook should have to be held accountable for.
- 33:02Speaker 5: And the presidential candidates can help do that.
- 33:06Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
- 33:06Speaker 3: All right. We talked about Pete earlier, who was particularly
- 33:09Speaker 3: dominant and more aggressive than usual. And in one of
- 33:12Speaker 3: his most praised moments of the night, I think rightly,
- 33:15Speaker 3: he and fellow veteran Tulsi Gabbard debated the role our
- 33:18Speaker 3: military should play in defending our Kurdish allies in Syria.
- 33:20Speaker 1: Let's take a listen.
- 33:21Speaker 9: The slaughter of the Kurds being done by Turkey is
- 33:25Speaker 9: yet another negative consequence of the regime change war that
- 33:28Speaker 9: we've been waging in Syria. Donald Trump has the blood
- 33:31Speaker 9: of the Kurds on his hand, but so do many
- 33:35Speaker 9: of the politicians in our country from both parties who
- 33:38Speaker 9: have supported this ongoing regime change war in Syria that
- 33:42Speaker 9: started in 2011, along with many in the mainstream media
- 33:46Speaker 9: who have been championing and cheerleading this regime change war?
- 33:51Speaker 6: Respectfully, Congresswoman, I think that is dead wrong. The slaughter
- 33:54Speaker 6: going on in Syria is not a consequence of American presence.
- 33:58Speaker 6: It's a consequence of a withdrawal and a betrayal by
- 34:02Speaker 6: this president of American allies and American values. Look, I
- 34:06Speaker 6: didn't think we should have gone to Iraq in the
- 34:07Speaker 6: first place. I think we need to get out of Afghanistan.
- 34:10Speaker 6: But it's also the case that a small number of
- 34:13Speaker 6: specialized special operations forces and intelligence capabilities were the only
- 34:18Speaker 6: thing that stood between that part of Syria and what
- 34:21Speaker 6: we're seeing now, which is the beginning of a genocide
- 34:24Speaker 6: and the resurgence of ISIS. Meanwhile, soldiers in the field
- 34:27Speaker 6: are reporting that for the first time they feel ashamed,
- 34:30Speaker 6: ashamed of what their country has done.
- 34:33Speaker 3: So, Tommy, first of all, what's wrong with Tulsi's argument?
- 34:37Speaker 3: And what is her overall, it's hard to pin down
- 34:40Speaker 3: her worldview here.
- 34:41Speaker 2: Yeah, so she's saying that Turkey is invading Syria and
- 34:46Speaker 2: killing the Kurds, our allies, because of a, quote, regime
- 34:49Speaker 2: change war that we've been waging in Syria.
- 34:52Speaker 1: Yeah, she said that a lot. She used that phrase
- 34:54Speaker 1: a lot.
- 34:54Speaker 2: Yeah, she referred to a regime change war in Yemen
- 34:56Speaker 2: as well. That's just not accurate, right? When Obama was president,
- 35:00Speaker 2: he called on President Assad to go. but there was
- 35:03Speaker 2: no effort to march towards Damascus and take him out.
- 35:08Speaker 2: That never happened. So she's just totally wrong. In fact,
- 35:12Speaker 2: the northeastern part of Syria has been occupied by these
- 35:16Speaker 2: Kurdish forces, and things have been relatively safe and relatively
- 35:20Speaker 2: calm there since basically the Kurds and the international coalition
- 35:26Speaker 2: waged this campaign against ISIS and took back Raqqa and
- 35:29Speaker 2: all these other places. So I don't know what the
- 35:30Speaker 2: fuck she's talking about. And then she starts talking about
- 35:34Speaker 2: how the New York Times and CNN smeared her for
- 35:38Speaker 2: calling for. So it's like it's just so loaded with grievance.
- 35:42Speaker 2: And to use this moment on this huge stage when
- 35:45Speaker 2: you are a veteran and you have experience serving the
- 35:49Speaker 2: military and some knowledge of the region and to make
- 35:53Speaker 2: it about yourself and the way you were treated by
- 35:55Speaker 2: a CNN commenter just so misses the point. I couldn't
- 35:59Speaker 2: believe it. Yeah.
- 36:00Speaker 3: And I think the reason that Pete's answer was so effective,
- 36:03Speaker 3: aside from the fact that he just delivered it really
- 36:05Speaker 3: well and was strong and forceful, um, was anytime someone
- 36:10Speaker 3: on stage makes an argument that seems like Trump's argument,
- 36:13Speaker 3: which she basically did it. And then you can say,
- 36:16Speaker 3: don't make Trump's argument, you know, is a pretty powerful moment.
- 36:19Speaker 3: And I think Pete seized on that pretty, pretty quickly.
- 36:22Speaker 2: Yeah. It's interesting.
- 36:22Speaker 4: You know, the, the, the first applause line of the night,
- 36:25Speaker 4: I made fun of him earlier, but sharply, uh, but
- 36:27Speaker 4: like Tom Steyer's The first time the audience broke and
- 36:30Speaker 4: agreed to applaud when they were kind of, I think,
- 36:32Speaker 4: maybe told not to. And to the chagrin of the
- 36:34Speaker 4: candidates with their prepped applause lines, just sort of going
- 36:37Speaker 4: into just fucking crickets.
- 36:38Speaker 1: That was awkward.
- 36:38Speaker 5: Where's our laugh track? Yeah, really tough.
- 36:40Speaker 4: But it was when he said, let's remember where every
- 36:43Speaker 4: person on the stage is a decent person who would
- 36:44Speaker 4: be a far better president than Donald Trump.
- 36:46Speaker 2: And we should all just keep that in mind.
- 36:47Speaker 4: Like it was it was, I thought, a very gracious
- 36:49Speaker 4: way for Tom Steyer to introduce himself and a reminder, too,
- 36:52Speaker 4: of like the stakes. I think sometimes in these debates,
- 36:55Speaker 4: especially with so many people on stage, you lose sight
- 36:57Speaker 4: of that. And what Pete did was, I think, recenter
- 37:01Speaker 4: the focus on the actual stakes of this and just
- 37:04Speaker 4: how damaging Donald Trump is and how unpatriotic he is.
- 37:08Speaker 4: And I think that was incredibly powerful and probably the
- 37:10Speaker 4: best moment Pete's had across all the debates.
- 37:13Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree.
- 37:14Speaker 3: Another heated exchange was between Pete and Beto O'Rourke, who
- 37:17Speaker 3: continued the fight they've been having about Beto's proposal to
- 37:19Speaker 3: have the government buy back every assault weapon in America.
- 37:22Speaker 2: Let's listen.
- 37:23Speaker 10: I want to make sure we have universal background checks
- 37:25Speaker 10: and red flag laws and that we end the sale
- 37:28Speaker 10: of these weapons of war. But to use the analogy
- 37:30Speaker 10: of health care, it would be as though we said, look,
- 37:32Speaker 10: we're for primary care, but let's not talk about mental
- 37:34Speaker 10: health care because that's a bridge too far. People need
- 37:37Speaker 10: that primary care now. So let's save that for another day. No,
- 37:40Speaker 10: let's decide what we are going to believe in, what
- 37:42Speaker 10: we are going to achieve. And let's bring this country
- 37:45Speaker 10: together in order to do that. Listening to my fellow Americans,
- 37:48Speaker 10: to those moms who demand action, to those students who
- 37:51Speaker 10: march for our lives, who, in fact, came up with
- 37:53Speaker 10: this extraordinary, bold peace plan that calls for mandatory buybacks.
- 37:57Speaker 10: Let's follow their inspiration and lead and not be limited
- 37:59Speaker 10: by the polls and the consultants and the focus groups.
- 38:02Speaker 10: Let's do what's right while we have time to do
- 38:04Speaker 10: what's right.
- 38:05Speaker 6: The problem isn't the polls. The problem is the policy.
- 38:08Speaker 6: And I don't need lessons from you on courage, political
- 38:13Speaker 6: or personal. Everyone on this stage is determined to get
- 38:16Speaker 6: something done. Everyone on this stage recognizes, or at least
- 38:20Speaker 6: I thought we did, that the problem is not other
- 38:23Speaker 6: Democrats who don't agree with your particular idea of how
- 38:26Speaker 6: to handle this. The problem is the National Rifle Association
- 38:29Speaker 6: and their enablers in Congress, and we should be united
- 38:32Speaker 6: in taking the fight for that.
- 38:33Speaker 3: All right, so who is more persuasive here on this,
- 38:37Speaker 3: Beto or Pete?
- 38:38Speaker 5: I think Beto. Beto was making an argument about policy
- 38:42Speaker 5: with passion. Pete was making an argument about legislative strategy
- 38:46Speaker 5: and how the Republicans react to our proposals, which, as
- 38:50Speaker 5: we've noted in the terms of Pete's awkward transitions, is
- 38:53Speaker 5: the exact opposite of the argument that he made through
- 38:55Speaker 5: the beginning of this campaign, that we should say what
- 38:57Speaker 5: we believe and then make that sell to voters and
- 39:00Speaker 5: not try to change our rhetoric to adjust to the
- 39:02Speaker 5: Republican talking points that are coming.
- 39:05Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 39:05Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's pretty clear if you were
- 39:08Speaker 3: to be inside the Buttigieg campaign that none of them
- 39:12Speaker 3: were happy with Pete blurting out that Beto's position on
- 39:15Speaker 3: this was chasing a shiny object. It's just a dismissive
- 39:19Speaker 3: thing to say. It's also, again, looking at the polling
- 39:21Speaker 3: like we did on the wealth tax, mandatory buybacks, surprisingly
- 39:27Speaker 3: to me, is a position that a little over half
- 39:30Speaker 3: the country agrees with.
- 39:31Speaker 2: Right.
- 39:32Speaker 3: It is not a very unpopular position. It's in fact,
- 39:35Speaker 3: you know, it's not like a whole bunch of Republicans
- 39:37Speaker 3: are for it. I'm sure it's harder in swing states
- 39:39Speaker 3: and swing districts, but it's not terribly unpopular. So to
- 39:43Speaker 3: call it a shiny object. does open you up to
- 39:46Speaker 3: charges of, are you too worried about the polls, which
- 39:49Speaker 3: Beto accused him of being, and then to come back
- 39:52Speaker 3: at that by saying, I don't need any lessons in
- 39:56Speaker 3: courage from you, referencing his military service, struck me as
- 40:00Speaker 3: a little much, particularly when Beto started the debate by
- 40:05Speaker 3: praising Pete and Tulsi Gabbard for their military service and
- 40:08Speaker 3: was making a point purely about polls and didn't even
- 40:11Speaker 3: say the word courage, actually.
- 40:14Speaker 11: Yeah.
- 40:15Speaker 2: Seems right. You know, but but but it's interesting.
- 40:17Speaker 4: Like this was one of those times where I was like,
- 40:19Speaker 4: I'm trying to like Pete is so I just see
- 40:22Speaker 4: what Pete's trying to avoid saying in the answer. And
- 40:25Speaker 4: it's and you know, the like, does Pete think like
- 40:29Speaker 4: if if he could make policy in a vacuum, would
- 40:31Speaker 4: he support what Beto's doing?
- 40:33Speaker 2: I don't know.
- 40:33Speaker 4: I don't know the answer because he didn't want to
- 40:35Speaker 4: address the actual substance of it. He didn't want to
- 40:37Speaker 4: actually get.
- 40:38Speaker 3: Said he did, which was funny. He was like, this
- 40:39Speaker 3: isn't about the politics. This is about the policy, which
- 40:41Speaker 3: I don't think is workable.
- 40:42Speaker 2: Well, which is interesting, right?
- 40:44Speaker 4: And then it was this sort of kind of confusing
- 40:46Speaker 4: conversation about the enforcing of the law, which I found
- 40:49Speaker 4: like very kind of weird question and weird conversation that
- 40:53Speaker 4: really I think was pretty hard to follow and didn't
- 40:55Speaker 4: leave much of an impression.
- 40:56Speaker 2: But it's interesting. I think the thing that I contrast
- 40:59Speaker 2: this with is what Pete said.
- 40:59Speaker 4: Earlier about like, you know, after Donald Trump is gone,
- 41:04Speaker 4: the country will be incredibly divided. Do you really want
- 41:08Speaker 4: to create even more division by going for Medicare for all?
- 41:13Speaker 2: I think that's a more honest argument, right?
- 41:15Speaker 4: Basically saying like, I don't think it's worth the political
- 41:17Speaker 4: capital to do Medicare for all. I'd rather do a
- 41:19Speaker 4: public option and something else. I find that, I think,
- 41:21Speaker 4: at least worthy of a debate. But his pushback, it
- 41:25Speaker 4: was just sort of a diffuse, I'm being honest, you're
- 41:29Speaker 4: being politically unrealistic. Your boldness is a sign of ordinary politics.
- 41:35Speaker 4: My lack of boldness is a sign of the fact
- 41:37Speaker 4: that I tell it like it is, but it just
- 41:39Speaker 4: wasn't telling it like it is because he was dancing
- 41:41Speaker 4: through the various pitfalls of what he was saying.
- 41:43Speaker 2: I'm sure there are people who think that the courage
- 41:46Speaker 2: line was strong and well-delivered and compelling and sets Pete
- 41:50Speaker 2: up well to throw a punch at Donald Trump that
- 41:52Speaker 2: may or may not involve his military service. There are
- 41:55Speaker 2: probably others who think that Beto O'Rourke's framing of making
- 41:58Speaker 2: this about victims of gun violence and March for Our
- 42:01Speaker 2: Lives felt bigger and made it not about him or
- 42:04Speaker 2: the politics of the moment. Stepping back, I think they
- 42:07Speaker 2: both landed some blows. It got them some attention, which
- 42:11Speaker 2: I think probably net benefits both campaigns. But like longer term,
- 42:15Speaker 2: Beto O'Rourke has done a lot of great work on
- 42:19Speaker 2: raising the issue of gun violence and gun control in
- 42:22Speaker 2: this campaign. If he cannot find another chapter in this campaign,
- 42:27Speaker 2: another set of issues to talk about, it will be over.
- 42:30Speaker 2: And they need to know that, you know, like these candidates,
- 42:34Speaker 2: like they all have to make the next debate Or
- 42:36Speaker 2: they're probably, their campaign is not going to be able
- 42:39Speaker 2: to raise any more money and they will essentially have
- 42:41Speaker 2: to shut down. And like, if I were his team,
- 42:43Speaker 2: I would be trying to figure out what is that
- 42:45Speaker 2: next thing? How do I broaden this message that I've
- 42:47Speaker 2: been delivering on guns about a whole other set of issues?
- 42:51Speaker 5: I think there's a real debate to be had about
- 42:53Speaker 5: the feasibility of mandatory buybacks, right? Like it is a
- 42:56Speaker 5: position that I support. I think Democrats should advocate. But
- 42:59Speaker 5: there are real questions. How are you going to get
- 43:01Speaker 5: these guns? What's the process? The penalty for people not
- 43:03Speaker 5: doing it?
- 43:04Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 43:04Speaker 5: And like, even Elizabeth Warren, right, and Bernie Sanders have
- 43:06Speaker 5: not adopted this position, right? So this isn't necessarily a
- 43:10Speaker 5: progressive litmus test.
- 43:12Speaker 3: And also, we should note that Castro made a very interesting,
- 43:15Speaker 3: Julian Castro made an interesting point on this, which is,
- 43:17Speaker 3: I don't want to give the police another reason to
- 43:19Speaker 3: be going door to door in communities, especially communities of color,
- 43:24Speaker 3: poor communities, with, you know, the problems we have with
- 43:27Speaker 3: police violence, trying to take back guns, which is not
- 43:29Speaker 3: an argument I'd heard before, and, you know, interesting that
- 43:31Speaker 3: he erased it.
- 43:32Speaker 5: I think there are two elements of this. I think
- 43:35Speaker 5: it is good when Democrats take positions that move the
- 43:37Speaker 5: Overton window on these things. And I think this has
- 43:39Speaker 5: done that because it is insane, not just that people
- 43:42Speaker 5: can buy AR-15s and other weapons of war, but that
- 43:45Speaker 5: there's tens of thousands of them rolling around in our streets.
- 43:50Speaker 5: My problem with Pete's argument is the Democratic argument that
- 43:56Speaker 5: most annoys me. It is 90s pre-Obama argument that we cannot,
- 44:02Speaker 5: there are certain things we cannot say because they will
- 44:06Speaker 5: upset Republican voters. That if we say this, they will
- 44:09Speaker 5: turn out against us, or it'll make the NRA want
- 44:11Speaker 5: to spend more money, or the Koch brothers want to
- 44:13Speaker 5: spend more money. And any discussion around 2020 that doesn't
- 44:18Speaker 5: begin with the premise that a Republican voter will turn
- 44:21Speaker 5: out is wrong. We should just say what we believe.
- 44:25Speaker 3: One person who's made that argument quite eloquently is Pete Buttigieg.
- 44:29Speaker 2: Again. Pete should have just rolled out 30 to 50
- 44:34Speaker 2: feral hogs and said, what the fuck are you going
- 44:36Speaker 2: to do about that?
- 44:38Speaker 3: Look, the same people, the same strategists and pundits who
- 44:41Speaker 3: told Pete that he's got to be more aggressive and
- 44:42Speaker 3: be in the moderate lane were also concerned when he
- 44:45Speaker 3: made that argument about Republicans are going to call us
- 44:48Speaker 3: crazy socialists anyway, so we might as well say what
- 44:50Speaker 3: we believe. And they were concerned about that, and then
- 44:52Speaker 3: they've been pushing him to the moderate lane, and then
- 44:54Speaker 3: he did it.
- 44:54Speaker 1: This is my problem with this.
- 44:56Speaker 4: I mean, they do maybe align in this specific way,
- 44:59Speaker 4: that he does genuinely believe in a moderate approach to governing,
- 45:04Speaker 4: and it is his sincere belief that that's what we
- 45:06Speaker 4: should be doing.
- 45:07Speaker 2: But I don't... Until we get to packing the courts.
- 45:08Speaker 1: Well, no, but love it.
- 45:09Speaker 3: See, that's interesting, because if Pete's only arguments last night were.
- 45:15Speaker 3: I'm for my Medicare for all who want it plan
- 45:18Speaker 3: because I just think it's too expensive to do.
- 45:20Speaker 2: I think it's a better plan.
- 45:21Speaker 3: I think it's a better plan. I don't like mandatory
- 45:23Speaker 3: buybacks only because I think it's unworkable. Then he would
- 45:27Speaker 3: be fine. I would not be criticizing it. But he
- 45:30Speaker 3: keeps bringing in it's too divisive. It's a shiny object.
- 45:34Speaker 3: He keeps bringing the politics of this into his argument.
- 45:38Speaker 3: And that's where his problem is because previously he said
- 45:41Speaker 3: that politics shouldn't matter. If his only critiques of these
- 45:44Speaker 3: progressive positions are policy-based, that's totally fine. Bringing the politics
- 45:48Speaker 3: into it is refuting himself from earlier in this campaign.
- 45:51Speaker 2: I'm trying to think of any way to square it.
- 45:53Speaker 4: Is there any way you can actually make this consistent
- 45:56Speaker 4: from what he said before about not adopting Republican talking
- 45:58Speaker 4: points and then not wanting to be too divisive?
- 46:00Speaker 5: I mean, every candidate has this problem, right? Elizabeth Warren
- 46:04Speaker 5: has made not doing fundraisers a big part of it.
- 46:07Speaker 5: She did a bunch of fundraisers. They gave her her
- 46:10Speaker 5: first $ 10 million in seed money for this campaign. Bernie
- 46:13Speaker 5: has gun positions that don't, that he's trying to square
- 46:15Speaker 5: the circle on Kamala Harris has supported Bernie's co-sponsor Bernie's
- 46:19Speaker 5: Medicare for all bill. Now it's a different, like everyone
- 46:22Speaker 5: has this problem. The question is how well is Pete
- 46:24Speaker 5: going to be able to execute this and are people
- 46:27Speaker 5: going to effectively call him out on it?
- 46:29Speaker 1: Right.
- 46:29Speaker 3: And that is, if you don't effectively call them out,
- 46:31Speaker 3: then it's your problem.
- 46:34Speaker 1: You didn't figure it out.
- 46:35Speaker 2: Democratic primary 2020.
- 46:36Speaker 3: Um, All right, let's talk about Bernie Sanders, who appeared
- 46:41Speaker 3: in this debate just a few weeks after suffering a
- 46:43Speaker 3: heart attack. He got questions about his health and his age,
- 46:46Speaker 3: but he was also very sharp and energetic in this debate,
- 46:49Speaker 3: I thought. Here he is challenging Joe Biden's record.
- 46:53Speaker 12: Joe, you talked about working with Republicans and getting things done.
- 46:57Speaker 12: But you know what you also got done?
- 46:59Speaker 1: And I say this as a good friend.
- 47:01Speaker 12: You got the disastrous war in Iraq done. You've got
- 47:05Speaker 12: a bankruptcy bill, which is hurting middle class families all
- 47:08Speaker 12: over this country. You've got trade agreements like NAFTA and
- 47:12Speaker 12: PNTR with China done, which have cost us four million jobs.
- 47:16Speaker 3: I'll say one thing about that exchange. We've been talking
- 47:19Speaker 3: about sort of the right way to go after Biden.
- 47:21Speaker 3: A lot of people have gone after Biden in a
- 47:23Speaker 3: whole bunch of different ways in this primary. To me,
- 47:26Speaker 3: going after his policies and his record, especially Iraq, trade deals,
- 47:32Speaker 3: the bankruptcy bill, is, I think, probably with voters, the
- 47:35Speaker 3: most effective way to go after Joe Biden.
- 47:37Speaker 2: A lot of people are waiting. I think a lot
- 47:38Speaker 2: of people think that foreign policy and experience is Biden's strength, right?
- 47:42Speaker 2: Certainly Joe Biden does. He said it last night on stage.
- 47:44Speaker 2: The challenge for him is that when he was asked
- 47:47Speaker 2: last night to articulate what he would do differently in Syria,
- 47:51Speaker 2: it wasn't the most coherent thing I've ever heard, nor
- 47:55Speaker 2: was it particularly compelling. He often makes the point about,
- 47:57Speaker 2: I've met with Putin, I've met with Erdogan. Like, Maybe
- 48:01Speaker 2: that works. It's certainly simple for voters to understand, but
- 48:04Speaker 2: like I didn't come away blown away by the net
- 48:08Speaker 2: impact of that experience. And then Bernie consistently drops the
- 48:12Speaker 2: fucking hammer on the Iraq war vote and that he
- 48:15Speaker 2: has not figured out how to counter that yet. We're
- 48:18Speaker 2: on like round three or four of that exact same criticism.
- 48:21Speaker 5: Do you think voters still care about that?
- 48:25Speaker 1: Uh, it's a great question.
- 48:26Speaker 3: I'm sure it's, I'm sure it's diminishing in the minds
- 48:29Speaker 3: of some voters and especially for younger voters who are,
- 48:32Speaker 3: you know, have aged into the electorate and weren't really
- 48:34Speaker 3: around during the Iraq war debate, maybe less so, but I.
- 48:37Speaker 2: Think there's probably, it's like issue five or six after
- 48:40Speaker 2: one through four being electability. But I do think that
- 48:43Speaker 2: there are a bunch of anti-war activists in Iowa that
- 48:45Speaker 2: still can be pretty influential.
- 48:47Speaker 3: Um, what do we think of Bernie's performance in general
- 48:49Speaker 3: before we get to Biden stuff?
- 48:51Speaker 6: Great.
- 48:52Speaker 5: We should get his doctor's.
- 48:53Speaker 2: Yeah. He looked good.
- 48:54Speaker 5: I mean, he was really strong. And this was a
- 48:56Speaker 5: very important debate for Bernie because his campaign, because he'd
- 49:01Speaker 5: fallen behind Warren in the polls, there'd been some polls
- 49:04Speaker 5: that show him getting closer to the single digits in
- 49:08Speaker 5: some cases. And there'd been this sort of narrative of,
- 49:11Speaker 5: is this over for his campaign? And so he needed
- 49:14Speaker 5: a strong showing. And he has put together, he had
- 49:17Speaker 5: really good cash on hand numbers to come out.
- 49:18Speaker 3: He had a good fundraising quarter. anyone else is the
- 49:20Speaker 3: most cash on hand.
- 49:21Speaker 5: He had a good debate performance and he's going to
- 49:23Speaker 5: cap off this week with the endorsements of AOC, Rashida
- 49:28Speaker 5: Tlaib and Ilhan Omar at a rally in Queens. And
- 49:31Speaker 5: so he has reasserted himself as a force in this race.
- 49:34Speaker 5: And that was incredibly important. If he had had a
- 49:37Speaker 5: like a mediocre debate performance, it could have been pretty
- 49:41Speaker 5: devastating to his chances.
- 49:42Speaker 3: Bernie is not going anywhere. That was that much clearer
- 49:46Speaker 3: from last night. He is in this for the long haul.
- 49:48Speaker 3: And look, I think, back to the Medicare for All discussion,
- 49:52Speaker 3: his response, I thought, on Medicare for All punching back
- 49:56Speaker 3: at Biden and Buttigieg and Klobuchar was even stronger than
- 50:00Speaker 3: Warren's last night because he had this moment where he
- 50:02Speaker 3: said the Democratic Party has to have the guts to
- 50:05Speaker 3: to take.
- 50:05Speaker 1: On the insurance companies and the drug companies.
- 50:08Speaker 3: And I saw someone was conducting a focus group somewhere
- 50:11Speaker 3: of Democratic voters. And they said that the focus group
- 50:13Speaker 3: of voters much preferred Bernie's response actually to Warren's response
- 50:17Speaker 3: to Pete and Amy, which I thought was interesting.
- 50:21Speaker 4: Yeah, I think we saw, it's funny, because long before
- 50:23Speaker 4: we got to the health question, right, you can ask
- 50:25Speaker 4: Bernie and Biden health questions. They will answer those questions
- 50:28Speaker 4: not in that moment, but in how they perform, right?
- 50:30Speaker 4: That is what we were looking at. And Bernie was
- 50:31Speaker 4: incredibly strong, I thought. You know, the moment I actually,
- 50:34Speaker 4: I forgot to mention, which I think is important is
- 50:36Speaker 4: Elizabeth Warren. I think for the first time connected, she
- 50:39Speaker 4: made an argument against private insurance. She talked about how
- 50:42Speaker 4: in her work in bankruptcy, you discover just how, how
- 50:44Speaker 4: many medical related bankruptcies are for people with insurance, which
- 50:48Speaker 4: I think is one of the most compelling and important
- 50:49Speaker 4: arguments for Medicare for all, not just a public option.
- 50:52Speaker 4: But what Bernie did, I think in the healthcare section,
- 50:55Speaker 4: and I think what Bernie did was there was show
- 50:57Speaker 4: why his, he's so strong. And I think sometimes I,
- 50:59Speaker 4: myself do this and we all do this. You get
- 51:01Speaker 4: into the, kind of the tactics and the strategy, but
- 51:03Speaker 4: then you realize, wait, what actually makes a candidate incredibly
- 51:06Speaker 4: strong in a debate is they have a compelling and
- 51:09Speaker 4: faithful rationale for their candidacy that makes them unassailable, right?
- 51:14Speaker 4: Bernie can make that incredibly strong argument because it is
- 51:17Speaker 4: something he has said forever. It is consistent. It is
- 51:20Speaker 4: incredibly strong. It speaks to his values. It speaks to
- 51:22Speaker 4: his genuine philosophical disagreement with the kind of politician Joe
- 51:26Speaker 4: Biden is. And it means that the candidates are debating
- 51:29Speaker 4: not on garnish, not on little things, not on things
- 51:31Speaker 4: on the outskirts, but like they're facing each other kind
- 51:33Speaker 4: of chest to chest, big stuff versus big stuff. And
- 51:37Speaker 4: I think that's why we've seen Bernie have such strength.
- 51:49Speaker 3: So at one point, Biden and Warren tangled over the
- 51:53Speaker 3: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
- 51:55Speaker 1: Let's listen to that clip.
- 51:57Speaker 5: I agreed with.
- 51:59Speaker 13: the great job she did. And I went on the
- 52:01Speaker 13: floor and got you votes. I got votes for that bill.
- 52:05Speaker 13: I convinced people to vote for it. So let's get
- 52:08Speaker 13: those things straight, too.
- 52:10Speaker 1: Senator Warren, do you want to respond?
- 52:15Speaker 7: I am deeply grateful to President Obama, who fought so
- 52:21Speaker 7: hard to make sure that agency was passed into law.
- 52:25Speaker 7: And I am deeply grateful to every single person who
- 52:31Speaker 7: fought for it and who helped pass it into law.
- 52:35Speaker 7: But understand.
- 52:37Speaker 1: You did a hell of a job in your job.
- 52:39Speaker 7: Thank you. But understand this. It was a dream big,
- 52:46Speaker 7: fight hard. People told me, go for something little. Go
- 52:51Speaker 7: for something small. Go for something that the big corporations
- 52:56Speaker 7: will be able to accept. I said, no, let's go
- 53:00Speaker 7: for an agency that will make structural change in our economy.
- 53:05Speaker 7: And President Obama said, I will fight for that. And
- 53:09Speaker 7: he sometimes had to fight against people in his own administration.
- 53:13Speaker 3: We have to be willing.
- 53:15Speaker 7: To make good, big structural change.
- 53:19Speaker 3: Why do you think Joe Biden got so mad there?
- 53:22Speaker 2: I don't know. That was so bad.
- 53:24Speaker 1: It was bad.
- 53:24Speaker 2: The angle I was watching, we were all watching from,
- 53:27Speaker 2: I think he gestures at her and it looks so aggressive.
- 53:31Speaker 2: It sounded so petty and so condescending of all the
- 53:34Speaker 2: things to grab credit for. I don't know why he
- 53:37Speaker 2: would lurch for credit for the formation of the CFPB.
- 53:40Speaker 2: What are you doing, man? And her response was poised
- 53:44Speaker 2: and devastating. And like he, he really had a bad
- 53:50Speaker 2: moment there.
- 53:50Speaker 3: I'm surprised it's not getting more attention because I mean,
- 53:53Speaker 3: and look.
- 53:54Speaker 2: It seems sexist. It seems condescending.
- 53:55Speaker 3: We criticized Castro for going too hard to Biden last debate.
- 53:59Speaker 3: And I thought this was the same kind of aggressive tone.
- 54:02Speaker 3: It's the same thing. And it was bad, you know,
- 54:05Speaker 3: and I just and also it's like I'm talking even
- 54:08Speaker 3: thinking about voters minds.
- 54:09Speaker 2: Right.
- 54:09Speaker 13: Like.
- 54:11Speaker 3: I got these votes for you for like an agency
- 54:14Speaker 3: that's good for everyone that we all agree on. Like,
- 54:16Speaker 3: why are we making it about like, I got the,
- 54:18Speaker 3: like as if like he was reluctant, but because he
- 54:20Speaker 3: was a good soldier, he wouldn't got the votes.
- 54:22Speaker 2: Voters well-versed in the whip count process. Right. What are
- 54:25Speaker 2: you talking about?
- 54:25Speaker 3: Right.
- 54:26Speaker 4: Like, have you, do you believe you've been robbed of
- 54:28Speaker 4: your credit for Elizabeth Warren's signature achievement?
- 54:31Speaker 1: I know what it is.
- 54:32Speaker 3: He's thinking to himself, I have been a good progressive
- 54:36Speaker 3: Democrat for, My whole life, I was a good foot
- 54:38Speaker 3: soldier in the Obama administration. I did everything I was told.
- 54:41Speaker 3: And now I'm running for president. Everyone's telling me I'm
- 54:44Speaker 3: this corporate stooge, moderate, who doesn't care about anything. That's
- 54:47Speaker 3: what's in his mind and the mind of his campaign.
- 54:50Speaker 3: And every once in a while, there's these, you know,
- 54:52Speaker 3: he can't control these flashes of anger where he, you know,
- 54:56Speaker 3: talks about that and how angry he is.
- 54:58Speaker 5: Putting aside Biden's reaction to Warren, which I think is
- 55:01Speaker 5: problematic for all the reasons you guys said, I think
- 55:04Speaker 5: the point he's trying to make is it was really...
- 55:06Speaker 5: fucking hard to pass the bill that CFPB was in.
- 55:10Speaker 5: And whenever there was trouble getting something through the Senate,
- 55:13Speaker 5: Biden would go to the Senate and he would deliver
- 55:16Speaker 5: the votes. He did that on a whole range of things.
- 55:18Speaker 5: And I think Ryan Grim from The Intercept tweeted he
- 55:19Speaker 5: covered the CFPB for a year or so and never
- 55:25Speaker 5: ran into Biden in that process. I think it is
- 55:26Speaker 5: true that in the formation, the policy development, the staffing
- 55:31Speaker 5: of the CFPB, that was not something Biden was involved in.
- 55:33Speaker 5: It wasn't in his policy portfolio. But it is true
- 55:36Speaker 5: when we needed votes from a pretty conservative group of
- 55:39Speaker 5: Democratic senators. Biden delivered those. I don't think he made
- 55:43Speaker 5: his point well, but like that is true.
- 55:46Speaker 3: It also is a point that came up like if
- 55:48Speaker 3: he had been directly accused by Elizabeth Warren or a
- 55:51Speaker 3: moderator of you didn't care about the CFPB or you
- 55:54Speaker 3: weren't there on that fight. And then he responded, say, actually,
- 55:57Speaker 3: I was out there getting those votes. It would be
- 55:59Speaker 3: totally legitimate to say that. But it sort of came
- 56:01Speaker 3: out of nowhere.
- 56:03Speaker 5: He's responding to the meta-conversation, not the actual fact.
- 56:07Speaker 1: That's exactly right, which was the reason.
- 56:09Speaker 4: It was a little problematic. There is a real lesson
- 56:15Speaker 4: that Biden could offer there. Passing Dodd-Frank, Elizabeth Warren brought
- 56:20Speaker 4: an incredibly bold and innovative idea. To me, before or
- 56:24Speaker 4: long before Elizabeth Warren was a candidate, to me, just
- 56:26Speaker 4: from our time in the White House, it was always
- 56:27Speaker 4: to me an inspirational case of democracy, because here she
- 56:31Speaker 4: was just a thinker, an intellectual who had this idea
- 56:34Speaker 4: for an agency that could protect consumers. And through politics,
- 56:39Speaker 4: through the Obama administration, through victories in elections, there was
- 56:42Speaker 4: an administration that was willing to embrace it and fight
- 56:44Speaker 4: for it. And then it took an incredible amount of
- 56:46Speaker 4: horse trading and difficult politics to get Dodd-Frank through. In fact,
- 56:51Speaker 4: the Consumer Financial Protection Agency had to be downgraded to
- 56:55Speaker 4: a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau because because in the fight
- 56:59Speaker 4: to get it through, you had to make compromises that
- 57:02Speaker 4: downgraded it just a bit to put it inside of
- 57:04Speaker 4: another agency just to get it done. And then after that,
- 57:07Speaker 4: Elizabeth Warren, who was supposed to run the agency, got dinged.
- 57:10Speaker 4: And so she wasn't able to even run the agency
- 57:12Speaker 4: she created, again, just because of just bargaining and politics
- 57:17Speaker 4: that takes place, which I think Joe Biden has a
- 57:19Speaker 4: case to make on why that's important and why he
- 57:21Speaker 4: has expertise in it.
- 57:22Speaker 3: What do we think of Biden's performance overall? I mean,
- 57:24Speaker 3: I do think that he had a few really strong
- 57:27Speaker 3: moments when he was asked about his age and he said,
- 57:30Speaker 3: you know, one of the reasons I think I'm running
- 57:33Speaker 3: for president is because my age and with age comes wisdom.
- 57:36Speaker 3: Another when, you know, Tom, you were talking about this
- 57:38Speaker 3: with foreign policy, his record on foreign policy, you could
- 57:41Speaker 3: ding a few times. But when he said, look, I've
- 57:44Speaker 3: met with Erdogan, I've met with Putin, I've been, you know,
- 57:47Speaker 3: like he did a better job last night than usual,
- 57:51Speaker 3: I thought, talking up his experience and, and his wisdom
- 57:55Speaker 3: that came with experience.
- 57:57Speaker 2: Right.
- 57:57Speaker 3: Um, so I thought he had some good moments there,
- 57:59Speaker 3: but again, I think on other answers, he, you know,
- 58:03Speaker 3: some of the other answers I couldn't follow again.
- 58:06Speaker 1: I just couldn't follow.
- 58:06Speaker 2: Like I have a ton of respect for Joe Biden.
- 58:09Speaker 2: I think he's incredibly smart. He is experienced. He does
- 58:12Speaker 2: have wisdom that comes for age, but like, I just can't,
- 58:14Speaker 2: I can't grade him on a curve. You know, he
- 58:16Speaker 2: had a shitty week and I'm waiting for him to
- 58:18Speaker 2: walk into one of these debates and seem sharp and
- 58:20Speaker 2: on his toes and on top of everything and to
- 58:22Speaker 2: do it with a smile and, like the Joe Biden
- 58:24Speaker 2: who debated Paul Ryan and Sarah Palin did, with that big,
- 58:27Speaker 2: beaming Joe Biden smile that could make every political shot
- 58:33Speaker 2: go down easier. And instead, you get the pointing at
- 58:36Speaker 2: Elizabeth Warren shouting moments, which I think are just going
- 58:40Speaker 2: to nullify anything else that happened that night.
- 58:44Speaker 5: I think Biden has begun to make a turn, right?
- 58:47Speaker 5: And it is not a smooth turn.
- 58:50Speaker 1: Move in an ocean liner.
- 58:51Speaker 5: But he is... Deciding to make his experience an asset.
- 58:56Speaker 2: Right.
- 58:56Speaker 5: Which is something we've been talking about a long time.
- 58:57Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 58:58Speaker 5: Like trying to align the age question. And now he's
- 59:01Speaker 5: leaning into it in a way, which is I've been
- 59:02Speaker 5: here to do all these things because I have this
- 59:04Speaker 5: experience to do all these things. I am the person
- 59:06Speaker 5: best suited not only to beat Trump, but to fix
- 59:08Speaker 5: the problems that Trump has created. And that's a very
- 59:11Speaker 5: good argument to make. I think the problem for Biden
- 59:16Speaker 5: that Tommy has pointed, I think very rightfully pointed out,
- 59:19Speaker 5: is Biden has lost the happy part of Happy Warrior.
- 59:21Speaker 7: Yeah.
- 59:21Speaker 5: And that is very understandable. Like, his family has been
- 59:26Speaker 5: in the crosshairs from the President of the United States
- 59:28Speaker 5: for the last two weeks.
- 59:29Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
- 59:29Speaker 5: His son, who is incredibly important to him. I mean,
- 59:33Speaker 5: Joe Biden's connection to his children is so incredibly close
- 59:38Speaker 5: and born in tragedy. And his son, who has struggled
- 59:40Speaker 5: in his life, you know, and struggled in the public
- 59:43Speaker 5: eye because of who his father was, is now being
- 59:46Speaker 5: tweeted about by the president of the United States. Like,
- 59:47Speaker 5: I think I'm not trying to grade him on a curve.
- 59:50Speaker 5: I'm just trying to create context for why we may
- 59:52Speaker 5: not see the smile and the ability to laugh the
- 59:55Speaker 5: stuff off that we've seen from Biden in the past.
- 59:58Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 59:59Speaker 3: But I also think it's and I don't think this
- 1:00:00Speaker 3: is necessarily an age thing because Bernie Sanders is a
- 1:00:04Speaker 3: year older and just had a heart attack a couple
- 1:00:05Speaker 3: of weeks ago and was as sharp as they come
- 1:00:08Speaker 3: in this debate. But it's just this I don't know
- 1:00:11Speaker 3: if it usually happens to Biden when he's getting a
- 1:00:13Speaker 3: little angry about things that he becomes a little less
- 1:00:17Speaker 3: coherent on some of these answers. Like he almost gets
- 1:00:19Speaker 3: so ready to go that he just starts, you know,
- 1:00:22Speaker 3: blabbing a little bit.
- 1:00:23Speaker 1: It's just I think you.
- 1:00:25Speaker 3: I don't know. Look, it may not cost him among
- 1:00:28Speaker 3: his supporters, but we can all see the trend lines
- 1:00:30Speaker 3: in the race, and he does need to sort of
- 1:00:32Speaker 3: expand the universe of people who are supporting him at
- 1:00:34Speaker 3: some point, or at least not lose any more.
- 1:00:38Speaker 2: But I don't know.
- 1:00:38Speaker 3: I don't know if it serves him well. I think
- 1:00:40Speaker 3: he's got to find a way to be sharper.
- 1:00:43Speaker 5: I've been involved with prepping Biden for TV shows and
- 1:00:45Speaker 5: interviews in the past, and he's someone who's pretty resistant
- 1:00:48Speaker 5: to prep. I mean, he knows what he wants to say,
- 1:00:53Speaker 5: and he feels like he knows how to say it better,
- 1:00:54Speaker 5: and he's usually right. He clearly has submitted to the
- 1:00:58Speaker 5: prep process here. And it makes sense. He, as we've
- 1:01:00Speaker 5: said before, he has the best debate preppers in all
- 1:01:03Speaker 5: of democratic politics working for him, but it sort of
- 1:01:05Speaker 5: feels like he has 120 seconds worth of things to say.
- 1:01:08Speaker 5: And he's trying to get him into 60 seconds.
- 1:01:10Speaker 3: And he knows that.
- 1:01:11Speaker 1: And it's like, he's like.
- 1:01:12Speaker 5: In that answer where he was going through his accomplishments,
- 1:01:15Speaker 5: which should have been a very, very powerful moment. He
- 1:01:17Speaker 5: tried to fit so many things in that you like
- 1:01:19Speaker 5: saying you accomplish 12 things is not twice as good
- 1:01:22Speaker 5: as saying you accomplish six things.
- 1:01:23Speaker 2: Right.
- 1:01:24Speaker 5: And I think that has been a problem. And, Maybe
- 1:01:26Speaker 5: as these debates go on, he'll be able to get
- 1:01:27Speaker 5: into a more natural balance between having the strategic benefits
- 1:01:32Speaker 5: of being involved with a very good debate prep process
- 1:01:35Speaker 5: and still maintaining the authenticity that has been core to
- 1:01:38Speaker 5: his political appeal for decades now.
- 1:01:40Speaker 1: A few more candidates who we haven't talked about yet.
- 1:01:42Speaker 1: We should.
- 1:01:44Speaker 3: How effective was Cory Booker's strategy of constantly calling for
- 1:01:48Speaker 3: democratic unity and focusing on Donald Trump? That was pretty
- 1:01:52Speaker 3: much his play last night.
- 1:01:54Speaker 5: Cory Booker, once again, was great.
- 1:01:56Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 1:01:56Speaker 5: He was likable. He had moments that caused people to clap.
- 1:02:00Speaker 5: And as far as I can tell, he did nothing
- 1:02:02Speaker 5: to advance his path to the presidency. I do not
- 1:02:06Speaker 5: understand his theory of the case, his plan to win,
- 1:02:09Speaker 5: how to change the dynamic of the race where he
- 1:02:11Speaker 5: is at 3% in the polls. And I know, you know,
- 1:02:13Speaker 5: we've said this before, his campaign says organize, organize, organize.
- 1:02:16Speaker 5: And that is incredibly important. But you have to organize
- 1:02:18Speaker 5: for something. You have to have a rationale. And it
- 1:02:21Speaker 5: just is not... I have, from the very beginning, as
- 1:02:23Speaker 5: someone who really likes Cory Booker a lot, and I
- 1:02:25Speaker 5: think he offers... a lot, both in this presidential race
- 1:02:28Speaker 5: and in American life, I have yet to figure out
- 1:02:33Speaker 5: what is his case for himself to be president? Why
- 1:02:36Speaker 5: him over everyone else?
- 1:02:37Speaker 2: I get the, everyone on the stage is a good person.
- 1:02:40Speaker 2: Everyone here is better than Donald Trump. I get the,
- 1:02:43Speaker 2: I respect the sentiment and I respect the strategy there.
- 1:02:47Speaker 2: I do think though, and so maybe it did work
- 1:02:50Speaker 2: for him. It hasn't to date, but maybe it did
- 1:02:52Speaker 2: this time. I do think though that as we're you know,
- 1:02:56Speaker 2: we pointed out that Pete has sort of changed strategy
- 1:02:59Speaker 2: over time and it's a bit discordant. It's worth noting
- 1:03:01Speaker 2: that after the last debate, I believe, Cory Booker went
- 1:03:04Speaker 2: on TV and said that people are worried that Joe
- 1:03:07Speaker 2: Biden is too old and might fumble the ball before
- 1:03:09Speaker 2: he gets over the goal line, right? Which is a
- 1:03:11Speaker 2: pretty stark contrast to the tone we see on the
- 1:03:14Speaker 2: debate stage. So like, to me, it's interesting. He always
- 1:03:17Speaker 2: seems sort of like kind of annoyed or bemused by
- 1:03:20Speaker 2: the question. It's like an odd It rubs me in
- 1:03:23Speaker 2: an odd way, but I really like him as well.
- 1:03:26Speaker 5: He feels like an outside observer to this presidential campaign.
- 1:03:31Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 1:03:31Speaker 4: There was a moment during one of the little scuffles,
- 1:03:36Speaker 4: I think one with Pete, and Booker comes in once
- 1:03:40Speaker 4: again to say, see, this is what I'm talking about.
- 1:03:43Speaker 4: We have to not do Donald Trump's work for him
- 1:03:47Speaker 4: or whatever the specific line was. And it was an opportunity,
- 1:03:49Speaker 4: I think, to kind of enter the debate.
- 1:03:52Speaker 13: Right?
- 1:03:52Speaker 2: Say what you think. Say why you think.
- 1:03:54Speaker 3: It was on the guns thing.
- 1:03:55Speaker 2: It was on the guns. Say why you think Mayor
- 1:03:57Speaker 2: Pete's full of shit. That's what you think. Your face
- 1:03:59Speaker 2: says that you think Mayor Pete's full of shit.
- 1:04:00Speaker 1: Well, he said it last week.
- 1:04:02Speaker 2: He also thinks, right, he also thinks that Beto came
- 1:04:04Speaker 2: to the issue too recently.
- 1:04:06Speaker 1: Yeah, he has problems with both of them.
- 1:04:07Speaker 5: Those would have been interesting things to say. I would
- 1:04:09Speaker 5: have wanted to hear them.
- 1:04:09Speaker 4: And I guess, like, to me, I think I've always
- 1:04:12Speaker 4: found the promise of Cory Booker as a candidate quite real.
- 1:04:16Speaker 4: And I think it's... And it's something he kind of
- 1:04:18Speaker 4: shows you little glints of. And when he talks about
- 1:04:21Speaker 4: love and embracing people you disagree with and a deeper
- 1:04:25Speaker 4: understanding of what it means to be part of politics.
- 1:04:29Speaker 4: I talked to him about it when I interviewed him.
- 1:04:32Speaker 4: I keep waiting for the meat on the bone that says, okay,
- 1:04:35Speaker 4: if you have this different take, show me what it
- 1:04:38Speaker 4: means in policy. Show me what it means in politics.
- 1:04:40Speaker 4: Show me what it means in how you conduct yourself
- 1:04:42Speaker 4: as a candidate. And because he sort of stays to
- 1:04:44Speaker 4: these platitudes in the debate, you never see it. And
- 1:04:47Speaker 4: I've just been waiting to see it. And once again,
- 1:04:49Speaker 4: I didn't.
- 1:04:50Speaker 3: I guess if I were trying to guess what the
- 1:04:55Speaker 3: Booker campaign strategy is and what Booker's strategy was last night,
- 1:04:59Speaker 3: they're all trying to become the alternative to the third
- 1:05:01Speaker 3: alternative to Biden and Warren Bernie.
- 1:05:04Speaker 1: A fourth alternative, right?
- 1:05:06Speaker 3: And Booker's case is, I'm going to be the one
- 1:05:10Speaker 3: who is all about bringing this country together and not
- 1:05:13Speaker 3: attacking my fellow candidates.
- 1:05:14Speaker 1: I mean, like you said.
- 1:05:17Speaker 3: He has not been there all along because he has
- 1:05:19Speaker 3: been taking shots here and there. But last night, clearly
- 1:05:21Speaker 3: his strategy was, I'm going to be the guy that
- 1:05:23Speaker 3: when all these people are fighting and taking shots at
- 1:05:24Speaker 3: Warren or Biden or whatever else, I'm going to stand back.
- 1:05:27Speaker 3: And people are going to want that. People are going
- 1:05:30Speaker 3: to want someone who can bring someone together and talk
- 1:05:32Speaker 3: about love and talk about unity and all that kind
- 1:05:34Speaker 3: of stuff. So I think that's his plan. Whether it works,
- 1:05:36Speaker 3: who knows. Julian Castro, he'd been more aggressive in past debates.
- 1:05:42Speaker 3: Last night, I think he was much more subdued. I think, look,
- 1:05:45Speaker 3: as someone who had criticized him in the past for
- 1:05:47Speaker 3: being too aggressive, I really liked the Julian Castro that
- 1:05:50Speaker 3: showed up last night. I thought he did a great job.
- 1:05:53Speaker 3: I thought he, you know, he had a lot of
- 1:05:54Speaker 3: really strong answers and I thought, you know, I thought,
- 1:05:58Speaker 3: but it, it, again, it's a question for, you brought
- 1:06:01Speaker 3: up Dan, for Castro, for Booker, for Beto, um, for
- 1:06:06Speaker 3: a lot of these candidates, like what's your plan to
- 1:06:08Speaker 3: get out of two, 3%. And I think this isn't
- 1:06:11Speaker 3: an easy, it's not an easy thing to solve, right?
- 1:06:14Speaker 3: Because if it was, You'd just be like, okay, attack
- 1:06:16Speaker 3: other candidates. And that's how I get it. But there
- 1:06:18Speaker 3: are risks with attacking other candidates. There are risks with
- 1:06:20Speaker 3: being too aggressive that we've talked about a lot. On
- 1:06:22Speaker 3: the other end of the spectrum, there's risks with not
- 1:06:26Speaker 3: standing out and just giving bad answers. And when you're
- 1:06:29Speaker 3: in these campaigns, you're like, how do we get attention,
- 1:06:31Speaker 3: like Tommy said, without coming across as too aggressive or
- 1:06:35Speaker 3: unfair or too calculated? And that's a really tough challenge
- 1:06:38Speaker 3: at this stage of the race.
- 1:06:39Speaker 2: It's really tough.
- 1:06:40Speaker 4: And it's tough not because it's not really a tactical question.
- 1:06:45Speaker 4: Part of the issue is that the three front runners
- 1:06:48Speaker 4: represent the kind of broad ideological divisions of the Democratic movement.
- 1:06:55Speaker 4: You have Joe Biden representing the center to center left.
- 1:06:58Speaker 4: You have Bernie representing the left and you have Elizabeth
- 1:07:01Speaker 4: Warren toward Bernie. But but basically saying that I will,
- 1:07:05Speaker 4: you know, pretty left, pretty, pretty.
- 1:07:07Speaker 2: No, but but I was a pretty left while.
- 1:07:09Speaker 5: Establishment friendly left.
- 1:07:11Speaker 4: Establishment friendly left saying, you know, she's capitalist. Bernie's a
- 1:07:14Speaker 4: democratic socialist. But I'm but I'm but I'm not a
- 1:07:16Speaker 4: moderate like Joe Biden. And so into that, I think
- 1:07:18Speaker 4: all of these other candidates have struggled for months and
- 1:07:21Speaker 4: months to find a way to get into that conversation
- 1:07:27Speaker 4: and show why they are uniquely suited to be the nominee.
- 1:07:30Speaker 4: And I think we see various efforts to.
- 1:07:33Speaker 1: Andrew Yang.
- 1:07:36Speaker 3: Andrew Yang, on stage again last night, continues to raise
- 1:07:39Speaker 3: a good amount of money, continues to poll higher than
- 1:07:43Speaker 3: some of the other candidates on the stage last night.
- 1:07:46Speaker 1: What do we think? How did Yang do?
- 1:07:48Speaker 5: With the possible exception of Donald Trump running on racism,
- 1:07:51Speaker 5: Andrew Yang is the most successful single-issue candidate in history.
- 1:07:54Speaker 3: Well, they all talked about universal basic income last night.
- 1:07:58Speaker 1: He put that in the debate. He made that a
- 1:08:00Speaker 1: debate issue last night.
- 1:08:01Speaker 5: And it got a very serious discussion in front of
- 1:08:03Speaker 5: what I assume was millions of Americans and put it
- 1:08:06Speaker 5: squarely in the middle of the policy discussion in this country,
- 1:08:08Speaker 5: and for that, he should be applauded.
- 1:08:10Speaker 3: Dan, apparently Elizabeth Warren went up to him after the
- 1:08:12Speaker 3: debate last night and said, could you please send me
- 1:08:14Speaker 3: the data on UBI and the details of your plan
- 1:08:17Speaker 3: and everything, because.
- 1:08:17Speaker 2: I'm really interested. He was pumped about it. Dan, what
- 1:08:20Speaker 2: you just said about Steve Forbes is disgraceful, and I
- 1:08:23Speaker 2: think you need to apologize. Don't arrest Steve Forbes.
- 1:08:25Speaker 5: Tommy won't admit this, but he voted for Steve Forbes.
- 1:08:28Speaker 1: Forbes head. Look.
- 1:08:29Speaker 2: Flat tax Tommy. You see these debates.
- 1:08:31Speaker 5: We all.
- 1:08:35Speaker 2: Offer some subjective opinion about what we think happened or
- 1:08:38Speaker 2: what voters will think. But then there's a bunch of
- 1:08:40Speaker 2: data in terms of fundraising and polling. And Andrew Yang
- 1:08:43Speaker 2: is an unmitigated success story. Andrew Yang, two years ago,
- 1:08:47Speaker 2: was a guy with one big idea about universal basic income.
- 1:08:51Speaker 2: And now he's duking it out on stage with Elizabeth
- 1:08:53Speaker 2: Warren about automation. That's pretty unbelievable.
- 1:08:56Speaker 4: Yeah, it's interesting. These debates can be very frustrating, but
- 1:09:01Speaker 4: just stepping back, we've seen actually really good and interesting
- 1:09:04Speaker 4: shifts in the policy discussion as a result of this primary,
- 1:09:07Speaker 4: whether it's sort of UBI leading to a discussion of
- 1:09:10Speaker 4: UBI versus a jobs guarantee, both incredibly big, would be
- 1:09:13Speaker 4: incredibly bold and new policies.
- 1:09:16Speaker 2: The wealth tax.
- 1:09:17Speaker 4: I think Beto has moved the debate on guns. I
- 1:09:19Speaker 4: think Julian Castro moved the debate on immigration. We can
- 1:09:23Speaker 4: be critical of some of the ways in which he's
- 1:09:24Speaker 4: moved it, but he's certainly- And police reform. And police
- 1:09:26Speaker 4: reform as well. And I'm forgetting a few, but we've
- 1:09:30Speaker 4: seen that in this debate. There has been genuine policy
- 1:09:35Speaker 4: focus in these campaigns. And I actually think one of
- 1:09:38Speaker 4: the interesting things in these debates, I think partly because
- 1:09:40Speaker 4: I think moderators have been a little cowed by Twitter
- 1:09:42Speaker 4: and afraid to be called frivolous The debate questions have
- 1:09:45Speaker 4: been such big policy questions. That's why we have big
- 1:09:47Speaker 4: immigration questions, big health care questions. But actually, there hasn't
- 1:09:50Speaker 4: been a lot of like.
- 1:09:51Speaker 1: Ellen and George Bush.
- 1:09:52Speaker 2: Well, yeah. Yeah, sure, sure. No, it's not perfect.
- 1:09:55Speaker 4: But I think one of the reasons we've seen it
- 1:09:58Speaker 4: stay at these sort of big policy levels is because
- 1:10:00Speaker 4: there's been such a focus on policy from the candidates.
- 1:10:03Speaker 1: And finally, let's end where we began.
- 1:10:05Speaker 3: Tom Steyer. First debate. First time on the stage. What
- 1:10:12Speaker 3: do we think? How did Tom Steyer do?
- 1:10:14Speaker 1: He did good. I mean, he did.
- 1:10:17Speaker 5: He has a message. He delivered it.
- 1:10:20Speaker 3: It's a lot like Warren and Bernie's message.
- 1:10:22Speaker 1: Very close.
- 1:10:23Speaker 2: There's something interesting about a billionaire saying, tax me more.
- 1:10:25Speaker 5: It's the Roosevelt traitor to their class argument, which Trump
- 1:10:29Speaker 5: pretended to be.
- 1:10:29Speaker 2: A lot of eye contact. I'm not sure how I
- 1:10:31Speaker 2: feel about it. A lot of eye contact with me specifically.
- 1:10:35Speaker 1: Yeah, no, staring into your soul.
- 1:10:36Speaker 2: Me and Tommy Sties were locking eyes all night long.
- 1:10:39Speaker 3: Someone told him like, look, on that stage, you're not
- 1:10:41Speaker 3: talking to the other candidates or the audience. You're talking
- 1:10:43Speaker 3: right into that camera, which is, you know, the piece
- 1:10:45Speaker 3: of advice that you do give people who are prepping
- 1:10:47Speaker 3: for debate. But he took that advice and he ran
- 1:10:49Speaker 3: with it.
- 1:10:50Speaker 2: But yeah, in terms of just like success, right, along
- 1:10:52Speaker 2: the same lines as Andrew Yang, I mean, Tom Steyer
- 1:10:55Speaker 2: spent shitloads of money to run ads and get donors.
- 1:10:58Speaker 2: $ 47 million. Got himself on the stage. So he had
- 1:11:01Speaker 2: a very expensive strategy. He executed it. And here he is. Yeah.
- 1:11:03Speaker 4: I mean, it's also, I'm very glad that, that the
- 1:11:05Speaker 4: billionaire on that stage is not saying we need to
- 1:11:07Speaker 4: be nicer to billionaires.
- 1:11:08Speaker 2: We need to be more moderate. We need to attack
- 1:11:10Speaker 2: the center. It's not the kind of.
- 1:11:11Speaker 1: It's not Howard Schultz.
- 1:11:12Speaker 8: Right.
- 1:11:13Speaker 2: It's not the, right. It's not Howard Schultz.
- 1:11:14Speaker 4: It's not, I'm fiscally, I'm fiscally conservative, but socially liberal. It's,
- 1:11:18Speaker 4: it's actually, I think a bet that basically you want what,
- 1:11:22Speaker 4: it's implied, but it's basically saying you want what Elizabeth
- 1:11:24Speaker 4: Warren is offering, but you don't think she can win.
- 1:11:27Speaker 2: Take a look at me. I'm a businessman like Trump.
- 1:11:29Speaker 3: Yeah, but the tough, implied there that you don't think
- 1:11:32Speaker 3: she can win is because you have all the same
- 1:11:34Speaker 3: policy positions as her. Basically, you don't think she can
- 1:11:37Speaker 3: win because she's a woman. I mean, I'm not saying
- 1:11:39Speaker 3: Tom Steyer said that, but what I didn't get from
- 1:11:42Speaker 3: him last night is what is, why you and not,
- 1:11:46Speaker 3: Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, what specifically are you going
- 1:11:50Speaker 3: to do differently than the two of them since your
- 1:11:51Speaker 3: message is so similar? What, you know, what qualifications do
- 1:11:54Speaker 3: you have? I guess he said, you know, I started
- 1:11:56Speaker 3: a business. So if you like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth
- 1:11:59Speaker 3: Warren's message and policies, but you like the idea of
- 1:12:01Speaker 3: a businessman in the White House, then I guess you
- 1:12:03Speaker 3: got Tom Stein.
- 1:12:03Speaker 4: We like someone who can make the arguments they're making
- 1:12:05Speaker 4: from a, while pushing, while batting down the arguments that
- 1:12:09Speaker 4: they don't understand how the world works, right? That's sort of,
- 1:12:11Speaker 4: that's the, I think the fair reading of it.
- 1:12:14Speaker 5: I mean, we've had basically like a full day worth
- 1:12:18Speaker 5: of debates in this primary.
- 1:12:20Speaker 13: Yeah.
- 1:12:20Speaker 5: Like, hours at a time. And, like, with the exception
- 1:12:25Speaker 5: of Klobuchar and Pete tonight, almost no other candidate who's
- 1:12:29Speaker 5: not in the top three has had any success making
- 1:12:31Speaker 5: an argument for why them, why not the others. And so,
- 1:12:34Speaker 5: the fact that Tom Sire did not do that only
- 1:12:36Speaker 5: does not mean that he is failing where others have succeeded.
- 1:12:38Speaker 5: He's just doing as well as most everyone else in
- 1:12:41Speaker 5: the same tier he's in.
- 1:12:42Speaker 3: Well, which brings me to the final question. Do we
- 1:12:43Speaker 3: think this debate, you know, will... Do we think this
- 1:12:47Speaker 3: debate will change the race in any way? Has this
- 1:12:50Speaker 3: changed the race or reshaped the race in any way?
- 1:12:52Speaker 3: You know, I do think it's notable that both Buttigieg
- 1:12:56Speaker 3: and Klobuchar came out swinging last night, and that's going
- 1:12:59Speaker 3: to get most of the attention today. Most of the
- 1:13:01Speaker 3: headlines today are moderates fight back last night, which has
- 1:13:05Speaker 3: been what moderates have been trying to do for the
- 1:13:06Speaker 3: last three debates and haven't really done successfully until last night.
- 1:13:10Speaker 3: So I do wonder if it was a bit more
- 1:13:12Speaker 3: of an important debate than usual.
- 1:13:13Speaker 5: I think it's a preview for what's to come. I
- 1:13:15Speaker 5: think we see the race has been the exact same
- 1:13:18Speaker 5: place since the very beginning with the exception of Elizabeth
- 1:13:20Speaker 5: Warren rising from third or fourth to second. And now
- 1:13:24Speaker 5: we're seeing, I think what the campaign can look like.
- 1:13:26Speaker 5: I think for the first time we've seen people land
- 1:13:29Speaker 5: a punch on Elizabeth Warren who otherwise has been untouched
- 1:13:32Speaker 5: and flawless. And I still think by any measure, she
- 1:13:35Speaker 5: was excellent last night, delivered her points, but there was
- 1:13:37Speaker 5: some weakness. You could see some cracks where people might
- 1:13:40Speaker 5: be able to exploit it over time. And so I
- 1:13:42Speaker 5: don't think this debate is going to change the poll numbers.
- 1:13:44Speaker 5: But I think we know more about how the candidates
- 1:13:47Speaker 5: are thinking about the race than we have at any
- 1:13:49Speaker 5: point before now.
- 1:13:50Speaker 2: I agree. Can I say.
- 1:13:51Speaker 5: One more thing?
- 1:13:52Speaker 1: You sure can.
- 1:13:52Speaker 5: I think the most important thing that happened last night
- 1:13:55Speaker 5: with the most consequences for the race is not what
- 1:13:58Speaker 5: happened in the debate. It's the release of the Q3
- 1:14:02Speaker 5: FEC reports.
- 1:14:03Speaker 2: We haven't talked about that.
- 1:14:05Speaker 5: Which showed Bernie Sanders with the most money, Elizabeth Warren
- 1:14:09Speaker 5: and Pete Buttigieg behind, but was still in the 20s
- 1:14:13Speaker 5: of millions of dollars. And Joe Biden, co-front runner, as
- 1:14:16Speaker 5: you called him, with less than $ 9 million, which is devastating.
- 1:14:21Speaker 2: Pretty shocking stuff.
- 1:14:23Speaker 5: Joe Biden's path to nomination is to be able to
- 1:14:27Speaker 5: organize and advertise in the Super Tuesday states. Because of
- 1:14:31Speaker 5: his high name recognition, how well known he is in
- 1:14:34Speaker 5: the party, and his broad base of support, his path
- 1:14:38Speaker 5: to nomination involves racking up delegates in everything that happens
- 1:14:43Speaker 5: after the first four states. And right now, he does
- 1:14:45Speaker 5: not have enough money to run a full campaign in
- 1:14:48Speaker 5: two of the four states, let alone four states and
- 1:14:50Speaker 5: everything that comes after. And he has shown zero ability
- 1:14:52Speaker 5: to raise money online. So he does not have the
- 1:14:56Speaker 5: capacity that a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or even
- 1:14:58Speaker 5: a Pete Buttigieg would have to refill his coffers. And
- 1:15:01Speaker 5: I think that is a fundamental game changer that's going
- 1:15:04Speaker 5: to cause the Biden community to make some very serious,
- 1:15:06Speaker 5: very hard decisions about where he's.
- 1:15:08Speaker 2: Going to play. If one of these candidates had just
- 1:15:10Speaker 2: bit the head off an Ellen doll like Ozzy Osbourne
- 1:15:13Speaker 2: and spit it out on stage, this thing would be over.
- 1:15:18Speaker 2: That last question. Ellen.
- 1:15:22Speaker 1: Who's your weirdest friend?
- 1:15:23Speaker 2: Skip climate. They're like, climate cheats? No. Reproductive race? No.
- 1:15:27Speaker 2: Weirdest friend. Everyone say John McCain all at once. Skip
- 1:15:31Speaker 2: the rest of the question.
- 1:15:32Speaker 1: John McCain and then for Cory Booker, someone who ate meat.
- 1:15:37Speaker 2: Which Sarah Lazarus predicted verbatim.
- 1:15:40Speaker 1: It was amazing.
- 1:15:42Speaker 2: John, your wife Emily said that I'm her weirdest friend.
- 1:15:45Speaker 1: Yeah, that's always been true. That's always been true.
- 1:15:47Speaker 5: You're all of our John McCain.
- 1:15:49Speaker 1: I think that was part of your speech at our wedding.
- 1:15:51Speaker 2: That's true. That's true. We're like when a turtle and
- 1:15:53Speaker 2: a rabbit become friends at the zoo.
- 1:15:54Speaker 1: All right, everyone.
- 1:15:58Speaker 3: Again, we will have NoPod Thursday because this pod is
- 1:16:01Speaker 3: out Wednesday. And then we will see you next week.
- 1:16:04Speaker 3: Pod Save America is a product of Crooked Media. The
- 1:16:07Speaker 3: senior producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller.
- 1:16:10Speaker 3: It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is
- 1:16:13Speaker 3: our sound engineer. Thanks to Carolyn Reston, Tanya Somanator, and
- 1:16:17Speaker 3: Katie Long for production support. And to our digital team,
- 1:16:19Speaker 3: Elijah Cohn, Narmel Coney, and Yale Freed, and Milo Kim,
- 1:16:22Speaker 3: who film and upload these episodes as a video every week.