Latest / Pod Save America / “Welcome to the Panderdome.” (LIVE from Des Moines)

Transcript

“Welcome to the Panderdome.” (LIVE from Des Moines) · Pod Save America

0:24
Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau.
0:30
Speaker 2: I'm Connie Schultz.
0:33
Speaker 3: I'm Jon Lovett.
0:38
Speaker 4: I'm former Des Moines resident Tommy Vitor.
0:43
Speaker 3: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
0:48
Speaker 1: Later in the show, we'll talk to the legendarily accurate
0:51
Speaker 1: pollster from the Des Moines Register about her brand new
0:55
Speaker 1: 2020 primary poll. And Seltzer is here.
0:57
Speaker 4: Eat shit, Mark Penn. What's that? I said eat shit,
1:05
Speaker 4: Mark Penn. That's a deep cut for U08 fans.
1:09
Speaker 1: I mean, they should know.
1:10
Speaker 2: Not that you're holding a crutch.
1:13
Speaker 1: All right, so over the weekend, President Trump backed off
1:16
Speaker 1: his threat to launch a trade war with Mexico because
1:18
Speaker 1: Mexico promised to take a series of actions on immigration
1:21
Speaker 1: that they had already basically agreed to months ago. Those
1:25
Speaker 1: actions involved sending additional National Guard troops to their country's
1:28
Speaker 1: southern border and allowing more asylum seekers to stay in
1:31
Speaker 1: Mexico while their claims are heard in the US. Trump
1:34
Speaker 1: also said that Mexico agreed to buy, quote, large quantities
1:36
Speaker 1: of agricultural product from our great patriot farmers. A statement
1:41
Speaker 1: that has not been verified by Mexican officials, the State Department,
1:43
Speaker 1: the White House, or any document or human being anywhere.
1:46
Speaker 5: Has anyone asked the great patriot farmers?
1:48
Speaker 1: I do not believe. So, Connie, the president said this
1:53
Speaker 1: morning that if Barack Obama had made this deal, quote,
1:56
Speaker 1: the corrupt media would be hailing it as incredible and
1:59
Speaker 1: a national holiday would be immediately declared. I don't remember
2:04
Speaker 1: any national holidays. They are truly the enemy of the people.
2:08
Speaker 1: Is there any evidence that Trump... actually won some real
2:12
Speaker 1: concessions here from Mexico?
2:13
Speaker 2: No, let's address first of all what he said about journalists.
2:16
Speaker 6: I'm wearing my Ray Gunn pin, American News Journalist.
2:23
Speaker 2: From my friend Sarah Benzing, an Iowa native, of course.
2:26
Speaker 2: You know, I've been.
2:29
Speaker 6: A feminist all of my life. There's a reason I'm
2:32
Speaker 6: saying this. For five decades, I'm older than five decades,
2:36
Speaker 6: but for five decades... I realize now I had all
2:40
Speaker 6: this training for being a journalist in the Trump era
2:42
Speaker 6: because we were always called hateful and angry, which wasn't true,
2:45
Speaker 6: and now we're being called hateful and angry as journalists.
2:49
Speaker 6: And I do worry about what he says about journalists.
2:51
Speaker 6: Tonight I'm gonna ignore it because it's so much more
2:53
Speaker 6: fun just to ignore it for a moment.
2:54
Speaker 2: One of the things I always used to tell my kids,
2:56
Speaker 2: I tweeted this out earlier.
2:57
Speaker 6: Today when I saw some of the stories of Trump,
3:00
Speaker 6: he never trusts somebody who makes himself the hero of
3:03
Speaker 6: all of his stories. And this is exactly what he
3:06
Speaker 6: does over and over again. He accomplished nothing, but he's
3:13
Speaker 6: pretending that he did. He created the crisis. We're all
3:16
Speaker 6: in triage all the time.
3:17
Speaker 2: This is what he does.
3:18
Speaker 6: And it appeals to people. He mistakes fear for respect.
3:24
Speaker 6: People who fear him do not respect him. And what
3:27
Speaker 6: worked for him on his television show, just wildly humiliating
3:31
Speaker 6: people and embarrassing people, is not.
3:33
Speaker 2: The way you lead a country.
3:35
Speaker 3: No.
3:36
Speaker 1: Tommy, it seems like what Trump really wanted was for
3:40
Speaker 1: Mexico to accept what's called a safe third country treaty.
3:44
Speaker 1: And that means that would give the U.S. the legal
3:46
Speaker 1: ability to reject asylum seekers if they hadn't tried to
3:49
Speaker 1: apply for asylum in Mexico first.
3:51
Speaker 4: So he didn't get that.
3:53
Speaker 1: Why do you think he backed off his tariff threat if,
3:57
Speaker 1: as we're saying, he got none of the things that
4:00
Speaker 1: he actually wanted and they already agreed to these steps
4:02
Speaker 1: months ago?
4:03
Speaker 4: So, I mean, I honestly... This is not a joke.
4:06
Speaker 7: I don't know if he knows what they were negotiating
4:09
Speaker 7: for or what he ultimately got. I sincerely think that,
4:14
Speaker 7: like Connie was saying, this is his tried-and-true method. He
4:19
Speaker 7: sends a bunch of crazy tweets. He manufactures a crisis.
4:22
Speaker 7: We saw this with North Korea. He threatens fire and fury.
4:25
Speaker 7: He holds a summit where nothing is accomplished, and then
4:28
Speaker 7: he declares victory. They get back from North Korea's summit,
4:30
Speaker 7: and he says, the threat from North Korea's nuclear weapons
4:32
Speaker 7: program is now over. In fact, we know now that
4:35
Speaker 7: they've been building one new nuclear weapon every single month
4:38
Speaker 7: based on our own intelligence estimates, so the threat is worth.
4:42
Speaker 7: What's so bizarre about this is he just renegotiated NAFTA.
4:47
Speaker 4: He now has to get that through Congress.
4:50
Speaker 7: They're using authorities to threaten these tariffs that are normally
4:53
Speaker 7: reserved for national security issues. He's saying that German cars
4:58
Speaker 7: or things from Mexico or some sort of national security
5:01
Speaker 7: risk and threatening to slap tariffs on them. What he's
5:04
Speaker 7: telling the world is that we're a completely unreliable trading
5:06
Speaker 7: partner and that you can't actually cut a deal with
5:08
Speaker 7: us because we don't.
5:09
Speaker 4: Know what we want. We're going to screw with you
5:12
Speaker 4: either way. So here's what we do know.
5:15
Speaker 7: There's no way that whatever happened over the last week
5:19
Speaker 7: is going to fix the immigration crisis because Mexico is
5:22
Speaker 7: not at fault for what's happening in this immigration crisis.
5:25
Speaker 7: There's these Central American countries where the quality of life
5:28
Speaker 7: is so bad and people are so desperate that they're fleeing.
5:31
Speaker 7: And he's actually... making the situation in those countries worse
5:33
Speaker 7: by cutting off aid, cutting off funds that will go
5:36
Speaker 7: to good governance. So what he's betting on is that
5:40
Speaker 7: he can declare victory, Fox News will repeat his propaganda,
5:44
Speaker 7: and that by the time all the facts are gathered,
5:46
Speaker 7: the press and the public will have moved on by
5:48
Speaker 7: necessity because he'll have manufactured some other issue. So I
5:52
Speaker 7: think he got exactly what he wanted out of this,
5:54
Speaker 7: whether or not it was this specific provision from Mexico
5:57
Speaker 7: or not.
5:58
Speaker 1: Dan, do you think that the pressure from Republican senators
6:03
Speaker 1: or the business community or the fact that these tariffs
6:08
Speaker 1: could have caused real economic damage, even though his tariffs
6:12
Speaker 1: already have been causing economic damage, that the Mexico tariffs
6:15
Speaker 1: would just be a bridge too far? Do you think
6:16
Speaker 1: he actually backed off because he was maybe a little scared?
6:18
Speaker 3: I think he was looking.
6:20
Speaker 5: Without giving it much thought, he launched us into another
6:24
Speaker 5: international trade confrontation with no plan of escape, no idea
6:28
Speaker 5: of how we would get out of it.
6:29
Speaker 3: And the problem he.
6:30
Speaker 5: Faced at the end of this week was not only
6:32
Speaker 5: were Republican senators getting very uncomfortable, whether they would actually
6:35
Speaker 5: do anything to ease their discomfort is a different question,
6:40
Speaker 5: but they were expressing it publicly. McConnell, I think, sent
6:42
Speaker 5: a very strong message to Trump. A group of business
6:44
Speaker 5: leaders who had been funding a multi-million dollar advertising campaign
6:49
Speaker 5: in support of his new NAFTA bill threatened to pull
6:52
Speaker 5: the money if this happened. Because what was unique in
6:55
Speaker 5: this situation, which I think was worth pointing out, is
6:57
Speaker 5: that What is happening with China is poorly thought out
7:01
Speaker 5: and absurd, but it's at least within the confines of
7:04
Speaker 5: what a normal trade dispute is. We are using trade
7:08
Speaker 5: enforcement tools to try to combat what we view as
7:12
Speaker 5: unfair trade practices. What is happening here is we are
7:14
Speaker 5: now using our trade tools to combat a completely unrelated problem.
7:19
Speaker 5: We are trying to use tariffs to beat over the
7:22
Speaker 5: head one of our closest allies who's on our southern
7:25
Speaker 5: border with a problem we don't like. In the time before,
7:27
Speaker 5: I think this is really important, is he did accomplish
7:30
Speaker 5: what he wanted in the sense that here is a
7:32
Speaker 5: man who is staring down the barrel of potential impeachment.
7:35
Speaker 5: There's massive, you know, there's a, it wasn't that long
7:39
Speaker 5: ago the report was released that documented all of his
7:41
Speaker 5: obstruction of justice. And we're not talking about that. We're
7:44
Speaker 5: talking about a, first the threat he made, then his
7:49
Speaker 5: supposed resolution, and then today we're talking about his Twitter
7:53
Speaker 5: temper tantrum about why he is not getting the credit
7:56
Speaker 5: he feels is due for solving the problem that he created.
7:59
Speaker 6: I want to just make sure we're also remembering how
8:03
Speaker 6: this whole thing, what's driving this. It's racism from the president.
8:09
Speaker 6: And right now, there's a seven minute video that the
8:12
Speaker 6: New York Times posted earlier this week.
8:14
Speaker 2: A ten.
8:16
Speaker 6: Month old baby died in the Rio Grande. A seven
8:18
Speaker 6: year old child died in the Rio Grande. Parents are
8:20
Speaker 6: now crossing in the river, trying to avoid, because they
8:24
Speaker 6: still want asylum, and they don't feel like they can
8:26
Speaker 6: go through the normal checkpoints, and they're losing their lives.
8:30
Speaker 2: And so they're getting.
8:31
Speaker 6: Rescued repeatedly now by U.S. officials because they're trying not
8:36
Speaker 6: to let them drown because the river's very unpredictable. All
8:39
Speaker 6: of this is happening because the president doesn't want brown
8:43
Speaker 6: people from Mexico in this country. And I don't want
8:45
Speaker 6: us to be scared of that.
8:46
Speaker 3: Thank you.
8:52
Speaker 1: I think that's such an excellent point because I was
8:55
Speaker 1: thinking about, like, all right, so how do Democrats respond
8:58
Speaker 1: to this one? Because as usual when Trump does something
9:01
Speaker 1: like this, there's a million different ways to respond and
9:04
Speaker 1: to attack him, right? There's the temper tantrum. There's all
9:07
Speaker 1: the crazy things he says on Twitter. He's attacking the press.
9:10
Speaker 1: We're now an unreliable trading partner. There's a national security angle.
9:14
Speaker 1: But it does seem like the fundamental issue here at
9:17
Speaker 1: the core right now is the fact that there are
9:21
Speaker 1: people trying to seek asylum in our country who are
9:24
Speaker 1: coming from violence, poverty, desperate, and they're willing to make
9:29
Speaker 1: this journey either across the Rio Grande or like they're
9:32
Speaker 1: trying to go through Mexico, and we are saying, this
9:34
Speaker 1: country is saying for the first time, no, you cannot
9:36
Speaker 1: come here. Lovett, do you think that should be part
9:39
Speaker 1: of the Democrat response or like what?
9:41
Speaker 3: Yeah.
9:44
Speaker 1: What would you do? If you're running one of these
9:46
Speaker 1: Democratic campaigns and you have a candidate out there, who's
9:50
Speaker 1: going to be talking about what just happened this weekend.
9:51
Speaker 4: What do you say? You're John Lovegege. You're running for president.
9:55
Speaker 3: What do you.
9:59
Speaker 1: Got? you got?
10:08
Speaker 3: That's also a great episode title. So first of all,
10:14
Speaker 3: it does seem as though Trump is a little bit
10:16
Speaker 3: like Cher in Clueless when she gets on the highway.
10:24
Speaker 1: You know he's like I have no idea where this
10:27
Speaker 1: is going you're not the only one I've seen that
10:30
Speaker 1: movie many times I have no idea where it's going.
10:32
Speaker 3: It's he he steers the car onto the highway is
10:39
Speaker 3: not ready to be on the freeway gets himself off
10:42
Speaker 3: the freeway and then is like did you see that
10:47
Speaker 3: I successfully got us off of the freeway And back
10:50
Speaker 3: on to surface streets. Where's my parade?
10:54
Speaker 2: There you go. Hero of your own story.
10:55
Speaker 3: Hero of my own story.
10:58
Speaker 4: Hero of your own story. Listen.
11:04
Speaker 3: Listen, as we've learned, look, there's a lot of different
11:06
Speaker 3: ways to be gay. I don't think Mayor Pete would
11:08
Speaker 3: have told that story.
11:09
Speaker 8: And that's what pride is all about.
11:13
Speaker 3: Now.
11:21
Speaker 3: To make a serious point, this is all a manufactured crisis.
11:26
Speaker 3: It starts from trying to use immigration as a wedge issue.
11:30
Speaker 3: But even if you start from the premise that our
11:32
Speaker 3: immigration system is in crisis, there are massive broken... Our
11:38
Speaker 3: immigration system is a broken system. It is a broken
11:41
Speaker 3: system in which we have millions of people living in
11:43
Speaker 3: our country as second-class citizens. And Donald Trump has not
11:48
Speaker 3: made any of that better. He knows it's a problem
11:50
Speaker 3: that he wants to talk about. It's a problem he
11:51
Speaker 3: wants to demagogue. But he has been president now for
11:54
Speaker 3: two and a half years. He will be president for
11:55
Speaker 3: four years when he faces re-election. And there's no part
11:59
Speaker 3: of the immigration crisis that you can point to and
12:00
Speaker 3: say that his hateful rhetoric, his cruel approach has made
12:05
Speaker 3: any difference.
12:06
Speaker 1: It's made it worse.
12:06
Speaker 3: It's made every aspect of it worse. If you care
12:09
Speaker 3: about immigration on Donald Trump's terms, Donald Trump has failed.
12:13
Speaker 3: Before you even get to the more decent and humane... economic,
12:19
Speaker 3: reasonable terms that we would approach, that any democratic candidate
12:22
Speaker 3: would approach the issue. And there was an interesting moment
12:25
Speaker 3: that I don't think got enough attention where he was
12:27
Speaker 3: talking about the trade war with China, I believe. It's
12:30
Speaker 3: hard to keep track of what frenetic part of the
12:34
Speaker 3: circus we're in, which ring. But he made a point
12:37
Speaker 3: about that he might loosen up some of the interior
12:40
Speaker 3: enforcement of immigration rules like E-Verify to give the farmers
12:45
Speaker 3: a break. And it's amazing in the Donald Trump mindset, like,
12:49
Speaker 3: who deserves compassion, right? It's big agribusiness that's suffering, but
12:53
Speaker 3: not the individuals who are being separated from their families
12:56
Speaker 3: or dying as they cross the river or dying in
12:58
Speaker 3: American custody. And, you know, there's a.
13:00
Speaker 1: Well, there also, and, you know, there's a report out
13:02
Speaker 1: this week, too, that ICE is deporting veterans without thinking
13:08
Speaker 1: twice about it.
13:09
Speaker 3: And it's all like, you know, if you really did
13:11
Speaker 3: care about undocumented immigrants, if you really thought that that
13:13
Speaker 3: was a serious problem worth solving, you might be talking
13:16
Speaker 3: more about the companies and consumers that profit off the
13:19
Speaker 3: labor of those people. But of course they don't because
13:22
Speaker 3: they don't really care. So anyway, that's the start of
13:26
Speaker 3: a stump. I'll work on it. Honestly, I watched 19
13:29
Speaker 3: speeches today. I could do it.
13:33
Speaker 5: I think the challenge for any Democratic candidate is to
13:36
Speaker 5: go to your original question.
13:39
Speaker 3: Hey, Dan, fuck you.
13:45
Speaker 9: Boys, boys.
13:47
Speaker 3: Connie, I am so sorry.
13:48
Speaker 2: It's okay.
13:51
Speaker 1: Lemon, as you can tell, is very good at being
13:53
Speaker 1: a candidate.
13:57
Speaker 3: So far I've made all this about me.
14:00
Speaker 5: I think that the challenge always with Trump is he
14:03
Speaker 5: wants to move the conversation to immigration. And if you're
14:05
Speaker 5: a Democratic candidate, you have all these other things to
14:07
Speaker 5: talk about. And so you're forced with the choices. Do
14:10
Speaker 5: you play his game? Do you respond on immigration? And
14:13
Speaker 5: I think when you play Trump's game, you automatically lose.
14:16
Speaker 5: And that is a lesson we hopefully learned. We definitely
14:18
Speaker 5: learned in 2016. A lot of people avoided it in 2018.
14:19
Speaker 5: It's harder to ignore Trump if you're running against Trump.
14:22
Speaker 5: It's easier if you're a congressional candidate in California in
14:26
Speaker 5: 46 or whatever. And so I think you have to,
14:28
Speaker 5: instead of playing Trump's game, you've got to call out
14:29
Speaker 5: his game. You've got to tell voters why he is
14:32
Speaker 5: raising this issue, right? And that he is lying about immigration.
14:37
Speaker 5: He's exaggerating the threat. He's lying about who these immigrants
14:39
Speaker 5: are because he wants to distract you.
14:40
Speaker 3: He wants to scare you.
14:41
Speaker 5: He wants to distract you. He wants to distract you
14:43
Speaker 5: from the trillion dollar tax cut that he gave Wall
14:46
Speaker 5: Street and hedge funds. He wants to distract you from
14:48
Speaker 5: the fact that under his presidency, you pay more for
14:50
Speaker 5: your Amazon Prime subscription than Amazon pays in federal taxes.
14:53
Speaker 5: And he wants to distract you from the fact that
14:54
Speaker 5: he's got lobbyists running his government who are making it
14:58
Speaker 5: easier for companies to pollute your air and water. And
15:00
Speaker 5: on top of that, he is taking tens of millions
15:02
Speaker 5: of dollars of taxpayer dollars and putting them in his
15:04
Speaker 5: pocket by running a money laundering scam out of his
15:07
Speaker 5: hotels and golf clubs.
15:09
Speaker 3: You have to move the.
15:10
Speaker 5: I think it's very important for Democratic candidates to move
15:11
Speaker 5: the conversation back to what we know.
15:13
Speaker 3: Matters to.
15:16
Speaker 10: People.
15:16
Speaker 11: All right. Love it.
15:18
Speaker 3: Feel free to use any of that.
15:21
Speaker 4: Feel free to use any of that.
15:22
Speaker 3: Thank you, Dan. Honestly, again, I watched 19 candidates speak
15:25
Speaker 3: in Iowa today.
15:27
Speaker 4: Thank you to use that.
15:28
Speaker 3: We'll get to it. We'll get to it. We'll get
15:30
Speaker 3: to it.
15:31
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, we will get to that right after this.
15:33
Speaker 3: Now it's time for OK Stop. We'll roll a clip
15:40
Speaker 3: and the panel can say OK Stop at any point
15:42
Speaker 3: to comment.
15:43
Speaker 4: What if Babar.
15:45
Speaker 3: wasn't just a sweet young elephant, but actually a conniving,
15:47
Speaker 3: entitled little boy. Jared Kushner recently sat down for an
15:54
Speaker 3: interview with Axios. Let's see how he did.
15:59
Speaker 10: Let's see.
16:00
Speaker 11: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she has called President Trump a racist. Have
16:07
Speaker 11: you ever seen him say or do anything that you
16:10
Speaker 11: would describe as racist or bigoted?
16:13
Speaker 10: So the answer is no.
16:15
Speaker 4: Okay, stop.
16:18
Speaker 3: I just want to say that I do believe Jared
16:20
Speaker 3: Kushner has resting collusion base. That's all. That's what I
16:30
Speaker 3: would call it.
16:36
Speaker 12: You can't not be a racist for 69 years, then
16:38
Speaker 12: run for president and be a racist.
16:39
Speaker 1: Okay, stop. I agree with Jared Kushner. He has been
16:45
Speaker 1: a racist the whole time.
16:47
Speaker 4: That is how you do that.
16:50
Speaker 3: It's a classic, if not racist for 65 years, then
16:56
Speaker 3: not racist now, contrapositive.
17:01
Speaker 12: When a lot of the Democrats call the president a racist,
17:03
Speaker 12: I think they're doing a disservice to people who suffer
17:07
Speaker 12: because of real racism in this country.
17:09
Speaker 10: Was birtherism racist?
17:12
Speaker 12: Um, look, I wasn't really involved in that.
17:15
Speaker 10: I know you were.
17:16
Speaker 4: Okay, stop.
17:18
Speaker 5: That is not an actual answer to the question. It
17:21
Speaker 5: is not, you do not have to experience something firsthand
17:23
Speaker 5: to have an opinion on it.
17:25
Speaker 3: Were the Nazis bad? I don't know, I wasn't alive then.
17:27
Speaker 13: Yeah.
17:29
Speaker 1: I wasn't there for that, okay.
17:32
Speaker 10: Racist. Like I said, I wasn't involved.
17:35
Speaker 2: Okay, stop. Why do we keep doing these interviews? I mean,
17:48
Speaker 2: I love Jonathan, I do, but why?
17:51
Speaker 3: I will say, I have given Jonathan Swan a fair
17:55
Speaker 3: amount of shit over the years. Tweet to tweet, we've
17:58
Speaker 3: exchanged words.
18:00
Speaker 6: Bad words.
18:01
Speaker 3: Good words, bad words, ideas about questions. We've had a.
18:07
Speaker 13: Spirited.
18:08
Speaker 3: A spirited discussion. I think he's doing great here. He's
18:12
Speaker 3: now followed up twice on... And I think he may
18:14
Speaker 3: follow up a third time. He will.
18:16
Speaker 6: All right.
18:17
Speaker 2: Let's watch.
18:19
Speaker 10: Was it racist?
18:21
Speaker 12: Look, I know who the president is, and I have
18:23
Speaker 12: not seen anything in him that is racist.
18:25
Speaker 10: So, again, I was not involved in that. Did you
18:27
Speaker 10: wish he didn't do that?
18:29
Speaker 12: Like I said, I was not involved in that.
18:31
Speaker 10: That was a long time ago.
18:32
Speaker 11: The other issue that often gets brought up in this
18:34
Speaker 11: conversation is that he campaigned.
18:35
Speaker 3: Okay, stop.
18:37
Speaker 1: So, Connie, I was going to ask, since we have...
18:40
Speaker 1: an actual real journalist on stage. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist.
18:46
Speaker 1: If you were interviewing someone like Jared Kushner, what is
18:50
Speaker 1: the strategy? Is it like Swan just did and you
18:53
Speaker 1: follow up like five times as he keeps giving you
18:56
Speaker 1: the same bullshit answer? Or are you looking to like
18:59
Speaker 1: maybe just ask a more substantive question?
19:01
Speaker 6: I would start quoting back Donald Trump to him and
19:05
Speaker 6: make him respond to every single statement.
19:08
Speaker 1: I like that.
19:09
Speaker 11: That was pretty good.
19:13
Speaker 2: That was good.
19:13
Speaker 9: But, you know.
19:14
Speaker 1: The quotes are hard.
19:15
Speaker 2: I'm a feminist and I'm mean and hateful, so.
19:18
Speaker 10: Muslims, would you describe that as religiously bigoted?
19:22
Speaker 12: Look, I think that the president did his campaign the
19:24
Speaker 12: way he did his campaign.
19:25
Speaker 3: He did.
19:26
Speaker 10: But you wish he didn't. You wish he didn't make
19:27
Speaker 10: that speech. I think he's here today and I think
19:30
Speaker 10: he's doing a lot of.
19:31
Speaker 3: Good things for you.
19:31
Speaker 4: Okay, stop.
19:33
Speaker 3: I think he's here today.
19:34
Speaker 4: I think he's here today.
19:37
Speaker 3: I think he continues to exist on our plane of reality.
19:40
Speaker 2: I think.
19:41
Speaker 4: I'm not sure.
19:41
Speaker 3: I think.
19:43
Speaker 4: Can we talk about that tie?
19:44
Speaker 7: He looks like he just said something really awful to
19:48
Speaker 7: Brendan Fraser in school ties.
19:49
Speaker 3: He looks like the.
19:51
Speaker 7: Meanest prep school boy who has ever walked the land.
19:55
Speaker 5: It's so nice of him to do this interview between
19:57
Speaker 5: biology and social studies.
20:03
Speaker 3: There's a poor shorter Jew doing the work for him,
20:05
Speaker 3: I'm sure. LAUGHTER Sorry.
20:14
Speaker 2: No, you're not.
20:16
Speaker 3: Sorry.
20:17
Speaker 4: I'm not sorry.
20:18
Speaker 11: In June the 8th, 2016, you were sent an email
20:22
Speaker 11: with an offer of help for the Trump campaign.
20:25
Speaker 10: From the Russian government. I'm sorry, which email are.
20:28
Speaker 1: You talking about? We got so many offers from so
20:33
Speaker 1: many countries.
20:35
Speaker 7: I'm sorry, the email I was interviewed about by 15
20:38
Speaker 7: committees in.
20:38
Speaker 3: Bob Mullen, I don't know what you're talking about.
20:42
Speaker 10: The email from Ron Goldstone. Look, Jonathan, my question to
20:48
Speaker 10: you is... Okay, stop.
20:50
Speaker 3: Before we get to the question, I just do want
20:51
Speaker 3: to point out that when he says, what email are
20:54
Speaker 3: you talking about, it does seem to be the moment
20:56
Speaker 3: where where Jared Kushner has truly come to understand that
20:59
Speaker 3: this wasn't the softball he was counting on.
21:02
Speaker 1: This wasn't five things you didn't know about Jared Kushner.
21:07
Speaker 3: This wasn't a tour of Ivanka's interior decoration. This may
21:13
Speaker 3: well be, and this is important for history, the very
21:16
Speaker 3: first obstacle Jared Kushner has faced in his life. This
21:21
Speaker 3: might be it. Thank you. He has to. Listen, all right.
21:32
Speaker 10: Listen.
21:34
Speaker 3: This guy, it is not enough that he got to
21:37
Speaker 3: buy his way into Harvard, that he married his way
21:40
Speaker 3: into one of the most important and powerful roles on earth,
21:42
Speaker 3: one for which he is totally unprepared. It is so
21:45
Speaker 3: unacceptable for him to do that while also not having
21:49
Speaker 3: Jewish skin. His skin is so good. And it's like,
21:52
Speaker 3: as a Jewish person, I find that offensive.
21:58
Speaker 11: Why didn't you pick up the phone and call the FBI?
22:00
Speaker 11: It was an email that said Russia, that said the
22:02
Speaker 11: Russian government was trying to help.
22:04
Speaker 12: Let me put you in my shoes at that time, okay?
22:06
Speaker 12: I'm running three companies.
22:07
Speaker 10: I'm helping run the campaign.
22:09
Speaker 12: I get an email that says, show up at four
22:11
Speaker 12: instead of three to a meeting that I'd been told
22:12
Speaker 12: about earlier that I didn't know what the hell it
22:14
Speaker 12: was about. But the reality is, is that The meeting
22:16
Speaker 12: was a total waste of time.
22:17
Speaker 10: I need to stop you there.
22:18
Speaker 3: This is.
22:19
Speaker 11: We're talking about Russia here. They are a long-term adversary
22:22
Speaker 11: of the United States. Decades of hostility, including spying. Does
22:26
Speaker 11: it not set off at least some alarm bell when
22:29
Speaker 11: you see an email saying that the Russian government wants
22:31
Speaker 11: to help?
22:33
Speaker 12: Like I said, the email that I got on my
22:35
Speaker 12: iPhone at the time basically said, show up at four.
22:37
Speaker 10: I didn't scroll down.
22:38
Speaker 1: Okay, stop.
22:40
Speaker 3: I didn't scroll down. This is... one of the most
22:46
Speaker 3: successful efforts to disrupt our democracy in American history. It
22:51
Speaker 3: has upended our institutions. It helped with Donald Trump in
22:54
Speaker 3: charge of our government. A foreign adversary was able to
22:58
Speaker 3: influence our country and buy off our president. And the
23:02
Speaker 3: reason we're in this mess is because this motherfucker is
23:06
Speaker 3: claiming he didn't scroll down.
23:14
Speaker 1: And yet, and yet, By saying that, he's about to
23:17
Speaker 1: walk into a trap.
23:18
Speaker 3: Is it a trap? Has Jonathan Swan set an Australian
23:21
Speaker 3: trap for Jared Kushner?
23:25
Speaker 10: Would have thought about that. It had Russia in the
23:27
Speaker 10: subject line. Again, I would.
23:30
Speaker 1: Give that 200 different lines a day.
23:31
Speaker 3: Okay, stop.
23:32
Speaker 1: It had Russia in the subject line. Didn't need to
23:38
Speaker 1: scroll down, pal.
23:39
Speaker 4: Didn't need to scroll down.
23:39
Speaker 3: It said Russia in the subject line.
23:44
Speaker 12: I don't know, it's hard to do hypotheticals, but the
23:46
Speaker 12: reality is that we were not given anything that was salacious.
23:50
Speaker 1: Wow.
23:50
Speaker 4: What do you got, Dan?
23:51
Speaker 5: His answer for why he didn't call the FBI was
23:53
Speaker 5: they didn't give us the goods.
23:56
Speaker 3: Right. It's like saying, like, listen, you can rob a bank.
24:00
Speaker 3: If the vault is empty, it's fine. You just go home.
24:04
Speaker 3: Everybody pretends it didn't happen. You wipe it off.
24:06
Speaker 4: You start again.
24:09
Speaker 3: And that's OK Stop.
24:11
Speaker 13: All right.
24:22
Speaker 1: Since we're here in Des Moines, let's talk about the
24:24
Speaker 1: Iowa caucuses. Easy applause line. Very easy to pander to
24:30
Speaker 1: these folks. So as we speak, the biggest event of
24:35
Speaker 1: the campaign just ended in Cedar Rapids so far. The
24:40
Speaker 1: state party's Hall of Fame celebration featured 19 of the
24:45
Speaker 1: 23 Democratic candidates for president and comes on the heel
24:49
Speaker 1: of a brand new Des Moines Register poll that shows
24:51
Speaker 1: a pretty tight race with Joe Biden in first at 24%,
24:54
Speaker 1: followed by Bernie Sanders at 16%, Elizabeth Warren at 15%.
24:56
Speaker 11: Wow.
24:56
Speaker 10: Wow.
25:02
Speaker 1: Just let me get through the names. Pee-poo to judge
25:06
Speaker 1: at 14%. Kamala Harris at 7%. Beto O'Rourke and Amy
25:13
Speaker 1: Klobuchar at 2%, and everyone else at 1% or lower.
25:17
Speaker 1: Clap for the 1% or lower.
25:18
Speaker 3: Let's hear it for the stragglers, everybody. There's always got
25:24
Speaker 3: to be a last kid on the bus.
25:28
Speaker 1: Tommy, you lived in this state for about a year
25:30
Speaker 1: as Barack Obama's Iowa press secretary. Tommy got more applause
25:36
Speaker 1: than the one percenters. What's it like being part of
25:41
Speaker 1: a campaign in this state? What does it take to win?
25:43
Speaker 1: And how would you have been approaching the Hall of
25:47
Speaker 1: Fame dinner today if you were on one of those campaigns?
25:50
Speaker 4: How did Barack Obama approach the Hall of Fame dinner? Well,
25:52
Speaker 4: I'll tell you, Dan.
25:53
Speaker 7: So, I mean, look, the year I spent in Iowa
25:56
Speaker 7: was the greatest experience of my professional life.
25:58
Speaker 4: That's obviously....
26:01
Speaker 7: If we had lost, I probably wouldn't be saying that, but,
26:04
Speaker 7: you know. So, I mean, I got here a year
26:06
Speaker 7: out of the Cox's. There were six of us.
26:07
Speaker 4: At the time. By the end, I think we had
26:10
Speaker 4: about 200 staffers.
26:11
Speaker 7: So, you're working on a startup that's a part of
26:15
Speaker 7: another startup that when you get to the general election
26:17
Speaker 7: turns into a Fortune 500 company.
26:19
Speaker 4: So, it's like.
26:20
Speaker 7: enormous growth in pulling together this organization that's just really cool.
26:26
Speaker 7: What's great about the Iowa caucus process in my mind
26:29
Speaker 7: is that it's just retail politics and town hall meetings
26:32
Speaker 7: all the time. So I think I read somewhere that
26:34
Speaker 7: candidates have done 400 events already. I went to 73
26:38
Speaker 7: counties with Obama and I watched him go from not
26:42
Speaker 7: that great of a candidate at one point, like a
26:44
Speaker 7: guy whose speech was a little too long, a little unfocused,
26:48
Speaker 7: to an excellent one because he was constantly speaking. He
26:51
Speaker 7: was taking hard questions on ethanol and drone strikes and
26:55
Speaker 7: the Patriot Act. It really sharpens your message and just
26:59
Speaker 7: makes you a better candidate. An event like tonight's, it's
27:04
Speaker 7: tough to break through.
27:06
Speaker 4: One way you do it is you organize.
27:09
Speaker 7: If you have a great infrastructure, if you have a
27:11
Speaker 7: ton of volunteers, you can do a pre-rally or a post-rally.
27:14
Speaker 7: You can pack the room with your people so that
27:16
Speaker 7: when you get up there, you get the loudest applause
27:18
Speaker 7: and all the national reporters notice and they don't realize,
27:20
Speaker 7: you pack the room necessarily and it looks like momentum.
27:25
Speaker 4: You can... You sneaky bastards.
27:29
Speaker 7: I mean, like, how do you break through when you
27:31
Speaker 7: have 19 people speaking?
27:33
Speaker 4: You light yourself on fire. What would you say?
27:36
Speaker 2: I mean, you listen to them.
27:37
Speaker 4: What would you.
27:39
Speaker 7: What I think people are looking for in Iowa right
27:42
Speaker 7: now is an electability message for second and third.
27:46
Speaker 4: So I think that I would try.
27:47
Speaker 7: To talk about why I was uniquely qualified to to
27:49
Speaker 7: beat Donald Trump and really spell out how I would
27:51
Speaker 7: do that. And I would try to anchor it in
27:54
Speaker 7: who I was and my values and the things I
27:56
Speaker 7: believed in and make people think me over the other
28:00
Speaker 7: great candidates who were also in that room right then.
28:02
Speaker 7: It's also a part of the campaign though where Iowa
28:05
Speaker 7: is just a better portion of the campaign because it's early,
28:09
Speaker 7: you're not taking shots at each other yet, it's not
28:11
Speaker 7: ugly and messy like it gets at the end.
28:13
Speaker 4: So you have to be positive and more optimistic and hopeful.
28:16
Speaker 7: So it's hard to distinguish yourself by you know, mounting
28:19
Speaker 7: an attack on your opponent.
28:20
Speaker 4: So it just, it makes it all that much harder.
28:22
Speaker 4: But yeah, I love Idaho.
28:29
Speaker 1: Connie, I saw you tweeted this morning that this is
28:31
Speaker 1: your third time here in as many months. The first
28:34
Speaker 1: two times you came here, I'm guessing you came with
28:36
Speaker 1: your husband, Senator Sherwood Brown, when he was considering a
28:38
Speaker 1: run for president.
28:41
Speaker 2: He's a great plus one.
28:45
Speaker 1: Outstanding plus one. What do you think From all the
28:49
Speaker 1: conversations that you both had with voters, what are voters
28:53
Speaker 1: looking for in a candidate this time around?
28:55
Speaker 6: One of the things I've been thinking about a lot
28:58
Speaker 6: is what do they care about? And in some ways,
29:00
Speaker 6: it hasn't changed all that much. They care an awful
29:02
Speaker 6: lot about health care still. The younger voters, I spend
29:05
Speaker 6: a lot of time with millennials because I teach at
29:07
Speaker 6: Kent State, care a lot about climate control and student debt, right?
29:12
Speaker 6: I don't really know the value of polling this early,
29:15
Speaker 6: to be honest with you, because it's not an indicator
29:18
Speaker 6: of anything yet, except that some have bigger name recognition, right?
29:24
Speaker 6: I do think, when we say the word electability, I always,
29:29
Speaker 6: I'm careful about that, because we have different.
29:31
Speaker 2: Ideas of what electability is, right? It is loaded.
29:35
Speaker 6: And if you're a woman or a person of color,
29:37
Speaker 6: you can feel opposition to that notion. pretty quickly if
29:41
Speaker 6: the names that keep popping up that are all the
29:43
Speaker 6: white guys.
29:43
Speaker 2: Who are running.
29:44
Speaker 4: I am.
29:49
Speaker 6: Curious though because Iowa may be doing it differently and
29:51
Speaker 6: I know you're going to talk to a little bit
29:53
Speaker 6: about that.
29:54
Speaker 2: How many in this room, I wonder, intend to participate
29:57
Speaker 2: in the caucus?
30:03
Speaker 6: Oh, yeah.
30:06
Speaker 3: Connie, you've made such an important point, which is that
30:08
Speaker 3: victory in Iowa does run through Pod Save America.
30:16
Speaker 1: Dan, what's the... So there's, you know, 23 candidates in
30:19
Speaker 1: the field right now. Mary Ann! You got a Mary
30:24
Speaker 1: Ann fan out there?
30:24
Speaker 6: Great.
30:25
Speaker 1: Mary Ann's fan? What's the lowest you can finish here
30:30
Speaker 1: and still realistically... hope to continue your campaign and actually win.
30:34
Speaker 1: How many, this is what the pundits call it, how
30:36
Speaker 1: many tickets out of Iowa are there?
30:38
Speaker 4: Well, let's talk about what the pundits talk about.
30:42
Speaker 3: This is an important.
30:44
Speaker 5: Point to understand how that question is decided is, Iowa
30:49
Speaker 5: is unique in the sense that you have to get to,
30:52
Speaker 5: to get delegates, you have to reach viability in an
30:54
Speaker 5: individual precinct.
30:56
Speaker 3: You have to get to 15%.
30:56
Speaker 4: And so, there will be.
30:59
Speaker 5: Candidates who have support.
31:01
Speaker 4: 15% in each.
31:02
Speaker 3: In each place, right, in order to get it.
31:05
Speaker 5: And for the candidates who do not reach that 15%,
31:08
Speaker 5: they can then after that go caucus for one of
31:10
Speaker 5: the candidates who have, right, or put someone who hadn't
31:14
Speaker 5: got there over to 15%. And so that means that
31:16
Speaker 5: in a field with, you know, take 2008 when Tommy
31:20
Speaker 5: was here. You know, there were, what, eight candidates in
31:22
Speaker 5: that field, but only three of them got any amount
31:25
Speaker 5: of delegates coming out. In this case, if there were
31:29
Speaker 5: five candidates who get more than a tiny handful of
31:32
Speaker 5: delegates coming out of here, it would be a miracle.
31:35
Speaker 5: And so you're really looking at maybe five tickets out
31:37
Speaker 5: of here.
31:38
Speaker 1: And even that's the very upper end of it.
31:41
Speaker 3: It could easily be four, right? That's like when Lieberman
31:43
Speaker 3: was like, it's a three-way tie for third.
31:46
Speaker 6: Yeah.
31:47
Speaker 3: And like. The saddest thing ever said by a candidate.
31:51
Speaker 1: That was where the term Jomentum was coined.
31:54
Speaker 5: Which I think it's important that sure lots of people
31:57
Speaker 5: who do not get delegates will stay in the race
32:00
Speaker 5: because they're already on the ballot in New Hampshire and
32:02
Speaker 5: South Carolina. But they were essentially out of the race
32:05
Speaker 5: because the press will have written them off, right? And
32:10
Speaker 5: therefore this field is gonna narrow twice. It's gonna narrow
32:14
Speaker 5: probably to 10 candidates when the third, when the DNC
32:17
Speaker 5: puts in place new debate rules for the third debate,
32:20
Speaker 5: which are going to be harder to get. And then
32:23
Speaker 5: it'll narrow again, coming out of Iowa one more time,
32:26
Speaker 5: New Hampshire, and then we'll head into super Tuesday eventually.
32:29
Speaker 1: So let's talk about, uh, strategies for the different candidates
32:33
Speaker 1: and sort of the different tiers here based on, uh, uh,
32:37
Speaker 1: Ann's poll that we're going to talk about soon. So
32:39
Speaker 1: if you are love it, if you are, if you're
32:41
Speaker 1: Joe Biden, uh, And you are, you're in first right now.
32:47
Speaker 1: You're the front runner. Joe Biden did not show up
32:50
Speaker 1: to the event tonight. He was attending his granddaughter's high
32:53
Speaker 1: school graduation. How do you, what is your strategy to
32:58
Speaker 1: stay in first? You know, without appearing like a traditional
33:03
Speaker 1: front runner where you're, you know, it's a coronation and
33:06
Speaker 1: we know all the dangers that come with front runner status.
33:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good question. What I actually think is
33:12
Speaker 3: that having watched all the speeches today and Biden couldn't
33:16
Speaker 3: be there for totally legitimate reason. Um, and, and thinking
33:20
Speaker 3: about this poll that we're going to talk about, you
33:21
Speaker 3: step back and you say, all right, well, what's happening here?
33:24
Speaker 3: And yeah, Joe Biden's the front runner, but there's a
33:27
Speaker 3: lot of people with not double digits, right? You have,
33:29
Speaker 3: you know, Joe Biden in the twenties and then you
33:30
Speaker 3: have Bernie and Pete and, and, and Warren in the
33:33
Speaker 3: mid teens.
33:34
Speaker 1: All within a point of each other. They're basically tied
33:36
Speaker 1: the three of them.
33:37
Speaker 3: The margins for, and you know, all the talk about
33:40
Speaker 3: who's ahead and who's not fundamentally, uh, anyone could win.
33:45
Speaker 3: Anyone could win. Biden could slip by a few points.
33:48
Speaker 3: Warren could collect some of those points. And all of
33:50
Speaker 3: a sudden, it's a different looking race. And all of
33:52
Speaker 3: a sudden, she's the front runner. She's the one trying
33:53
Speaker 3: to keep people off the coast. I know where your
33:56
Speaker 3: heads are at.
33:57
Speaker 8: I know.
33:57
Speaker 4: I know.
33:58
Speaker 3: But I think if you step back, and this was
34:01
Speaker 3: my sincere experience watching all of them speak today, is
34:04
Speaker 3: I think all the polling and all of that is
34:06
Speaker 3: incredibly important about understanding where people's heads are at. But
34:09
Speaker 3: sometimes it's hard to talk about not the mistakes they're
34:11
Speaker 3: making or the things that they're saying we wish they
34:12
Speaker 3: wouldn't say, but what's missing? What are the words that
34:14
Speaker 3: aren't being used? And some of them are doing a
34:17
Speaker 3: better job of telling a story than others. But the
34:19
Speaker 3: reason that Barack Obama was able to come from 30,
34:21
Speaker 3: 40 points behind Hillary Clinton and surpass her in 2008
34:25
Speaker 3: is because he had a.
34:26
Speaker 4: Story, told a story.
34:27
Speaker 3: And it was a story that really was compelling. It
34:31
Speaker 3: sounds a little bit like Game of Thrones season eight,
34:33
Speaker 3: which is a a damning critique of what I'm about
34:35
Speaker 3: to say.
34:36
Speaker 1: Are you saying that Barack Obama is Bran in this story?
34:41
Speaker 3: Listen, he didn't have a super strong record, but he
34:45
Speaker 3: had a compelling message.
34:47
Speaker 1: Talking to a Hillary 08 staffer over here.
34:51
Speaker 3: I think we're all still searching for a candidate who's
34:53
Speaker 3: telling a story that captures just exactly how everybody's feeling
34:57
Speaker 3: and what they want to hear from a leader about
34:59
Speaker 3: what it means to run against Trump, defeat Trump, what
35:01
Speaker 3: Trump represents, how he got to be president, and how
35:03
Speaker 3: we defeat him.
35:03
Speaker 4: I think it's a very hard story to tell.
35:05
Speaker 3: I don't think anybody knows what it is.
35:06
Speaker 4: I think it's very hard.
35:08
Speaker 3: It's a very hard thing to capture all of that,
35:09
Speaker 3: certainly in a five-minute speech, but I think in listening
35:11
Speaker 3: to all those 19 candidates today, I think everyone is
35:14
Speaker 3: still searching for that story that captures the economic fears
35:18
Speaker 3: people have, the fears we have about slipping out of
35:20
Speaker 3: a democracy, which is a very serious thing and very
35:23
Speaker 3: hard to capture, and If a candidate can do that,
35:26
Speaker 3: if a candidate can tell that story, all the polling,
35:29
Speaker 3: all of it will melt away and we will see
35:30
Speaker 3: that person, I think, rise above. I do think that
35:33
Speaker 3: there's still an.
35:34
Speaker 4: Opening for that person.
35:35
Speaker 3: That's all I was trying to say.
35:38
Speaker 6: Listening to John, it occurred to me that what we're
35:40
Speaker 6: not really seeing yet, for all kinds of reasons, and
35:43
Speaker 6: there are attempts at it, I know, but I was
35:46
Speaker 6: thinking of another HBO series, Chernobyl.
35:47
Speaker 2: Have you seen it?
35:48
Speaker 4: It's fantastic.
35:50
Speaker 6: But the basic premise of it is if we say
35:53
Speaker 6: it's not happening, it's not happening, which is what Trump
35:55
Speaker 6: does all the time.
35:56
Speaker 2: Trump is Russia. He's the Soviet Union in that.
35:59
Speaker 6: We want somebody, I get a sense from people, they
36:02
Speaker 6: want to think that you're actually meaning what you say
36:05
Speaker 6: and that you're saying what you mean and that you're
36:08
Speaker 6: willing to speak hard truths because you've decided What's even
36:13
Speaker 6: more important than getting this next job is saving the country.
36:18
Speaker 11: I am.
36:22
Speaker 1: In full agreement with that. And so after having watched
36:27
Speaker 1: all 19 speeches today as well, there were many candidates
36:30
Speaker 1: today who I thought did, you've got your Trump zinger, right?
36:35
Speaker 1: you've got your, if it's not about Trump, you've got
36:38
Speaker 1: some other line that the consultants gave you because they
36:41
Speaker 1: thought it's going to be a great quote on Twitter
36:44
Speaker 1: and it's going to get a bunch of retweets and
36:45
Speaker 1: it's going to be printed in the newspaper and all
36:47
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Or some people did the litany
36:51
Speaker 1: of issues. We're going to do this issue, they're going
36:53
Speaker 1: to do that issue, and so they go through the
36:54
Speaker 1: whole thing. And then there's a lot of people talking
36:56
Speaker 1: about why they can beat Trump. I do think the
36:59
Speaker 1: candidates that did the best today were the candidates that
37:02
Speaker 1: told a story. that told a story about why they
37:05
Speaker 1: were running for president in the first place and what
37:07
Speaker 1: differentiates them from the rest of the field. I think
37:09
Speaker 1: it's always important in any primary to differentiate yourself from
37:13
Speaker 1: the rest of the field, but in a primary that
37:15
Speaker 1: is filled with 23 candidates, you better be waking up
37:19
Speaker 1: every single day thinking, why am I different than all
37:21
Speaker 1: of these other candidates? Why should I be president when
37:25
Speaker 1: we have one of the most talented, diverse fields of
37:27
Speaker 1: candidates running for president ever?
37:29
Speaker 10: Why me?
37:30
Speaker 1: And that doesn't mean that everything you say should be me, me, me, me, me,
37:34
Speaker 1: but you have to think about that story. And then
37:35
Speaker 1: the other thing that you just mentioned is some of
37:38
Speaker 1: the speeches today, I thought to myself, this speech could
37:41
Speaker 1: be given in 2016, in 2012, in 2008. Like, I
37:46
Speaker 1: think you need to have a case for your candidacy
37:48
Speaker 1: that matches the urgency of the moment that we're in
37:51
Speaker 1: right now. And so far.
37:54
Speaker 4: I don't know that I've heard any candidate give that
37:57
Speaker 4: speech yet.
37:57
Speaker 2: I think it takes guts to do it, doesn't it?
37:59
Speaker 1: It does take guts to do it.
38:00
Speaker 2: I mean, to do that, you really are going to
38:02
Speaker 2: have to put it down and do it now.
38:04
Speaker 6: And it is going to be a risk. But what's
38:07
Speaker 6: the risk really right now?
38:09
Speaker 1: Well, and you know what? And all these issues are important,
38:11
Speaker 1: but to do that, you have to sort of like
38:13
Speaker 1: put down the polls, right? You know that health care.
38:16
Speaker 4: Is the most important.
38:16
Speaker 2: Put down Twitter.
38:17
Speaker 4: What's that?
38:17
Speaker 3: Put down Twitter.
38:18
Speaker 1: Put down the Twitter, right? And also, you know health
38:20
Speaker 1: care is the most important issue. You've got to talk
38:22
Speaker 1: about health care. You know that people's economic concerns are
38:25
Speaker 1: the most important thing.
38:26
Speaker 4: You know all that, right?
38:27
Speaker 1: You have to figure out a way to weave that in.
38:29
Speaker 1: But there's also something going on in our country and
38:31
Speaker 1: our democracy that's bigger than any one single issue. And
38:36
Speaker 1: I want to hear someone talk about that. And it's
38:38
Speaker 1: not just about Trump. It's about things that have led
38:40
Speaker 1: us to Trump.
38:41
Speaker 3: It's a really... It's hard because what we're talking about
38:45
Speaker 3: is someone demonstrating genuine generational leadership that captures the urgency
38:55
Speaker 3: of this moment. And the reason it's hard to say
38:57
Speaker 3: what it is is because the person who says what
38:59
Speaker 3: it is is the kind of person who should be
39:00
Speaker 3: president of the United States. And that's what I mean.
39:05
Speaker 3: All the polls, all the speeches, all the questions about
39:10
Speaker 3: someone's got a lot of plans and someone's got a
39:12
Speaker 3: great zinger, all of it melts away when you hear
39:17
Speaker 3: something that transcends all of it and is bigger and
39:21
Speaker 3: reaches people in a deeper way. Because right beneath the
39:25
Speaker 3: surface of all the anger and the enthusiasm is a
39:27
Speaker 3: lot of genuine pain.
39:29
Speaker 10: That's right.
39:30
Speaker 3: Country is in pain. And that's right there beneath the
39:34
Speaker 3: surface and it's very hard to tap into. And if
39:38
Speaker 3: one of them can touch it and really tap into it,
39:40
Speaker 3: and it's probably Marianne Williamson, end of thought.
39:47
Speaker 2: You know, I lost my thought when you did that. Oh, no,
39:51
Speaker 2: I just remembered it.
39:52
Speaker 6: I'm getting so excited about this because I care so
39:54
Speaker 6: much about this issue here. I don't think anger is
39:56
Speaker 6: the right caliber is the other thing. Because of what
39:59
Speaker 6: you just said, the activists are angry, right? Those who
40:02
Speaker 6: are really paying attention every day to the politics of
40:05
Speaker 6: it are angry, especially the ones on Twitter.
40:07
Speaker 2: But people in my neighborhood, in the city of Cleveland,
40:10
Speaker 2: they're scared, and they're worried about their children and.
40:14
Speaker 6: Their neighborhoods and their work. And they're worried about education.
40:18
Speaker 6: So much so, I hear that all the time from
40:19
Speaker 6: my students who are like me. A third of them
40:23
Speaker 6: are first generation college kids. They came from families who
40:26
Speaker 6: didn't even know how to launch them into the college environment,
40:29
Speaker 6: let alone how to help them get to the next step.
40:33
Speaker 6: Anger is not going to do what they need to
40:35
Speaker 6: hear right now for them to have faith in you.
40:37
Speaker 2: If you're angry, then you're angry like I am. Okay,
40:39
Speaker 2: I get it. You've got a temper like I do.
40:41
Speaker 2: How can you get me past this? How do you
40:44
Speaker 2: help me find what comes next?
40:47
Speaker 5: I mean, that challenge for any candidate is to channel
40:54
Speaker 5: anger into activism, channel it into hope. Obviously, we're in
40:58
Speaker 5: this incredibly unique, very dangerous moment right now. But when
41:01
Speaker 5: Barack Obama ran and won on a hope and change message,
41:05
Speaker 5: we were in the middle of a financial crisis. We
41:08
Speaker 5: were in the middle of a war in Iraq we
41:09
Speaker 5: should never have been in. The Bush administration, through incompetence,
41:13
Speaker 5: allowed an American city to drown. People were angry then, too,
41:16
Speaker 5: but Obama met that anger with hope, Well.
41:19
Speaker 1: And I think sometimes we have this sort of false
41:21
Speaker 1: debate between anger and hope here, right? But Obama made
41:25
Speaker 1: sure to acknowledge the very real anger that people felt.
41:28
Speaker 1: He just didn't leave them there. And I think that's
41:31
Speaker 1: important because... He didn't exploit it. Yeah, because pretending that
41:33
Speaker 1: people aren't angry is not the way to go either, right?
41:36
Speaker 1: You acknowledge that people are angry, you acknowledge that people
41:38
Speaker 1: are scared, that fear that you were talking about, but
41:40
Speaker 1: then you say, I get that you're angry, I get
41:42
Speaker 1: that you're afraid, but the only way this country has
41:45
Speaker 1: ever moved forward... is if we somehow come together and
41:48
Speaker 1: then keep pushing and we fight.
41:50
Speaker 6: I keep thinking about one speech by Barack Obama as
41:52
Speaker 6: we're talking, and it's his speech about race. Remember when
41:55
Speaker 6: he had to give that speech in Philadelphia? He decided
41:58
Speaker 6: there's just no turning away from this. I'm going to
42:00
Speaker 6: meet this head on.
42:01
Speaker 2: He was addressing fears of people. He was addressing outrage
42:05
Speaker 2: and anger, right? And he left us. He picked us
42:08
Speaker 2: up in one place, and he left us somewhere else.
42:11
Speaker 1: And there was also a It was courageous to give
42:14
Speaker 1: that speech because he said a lot of very controversial
42:16
Speaker 1: things about race. He took on that controversy about his
42:18
Speaker 1: pastor in a very difficult way. And I remember him
42:20
Speaker 1: saying to me after the speech, he said, I don't
42:22
Speaker 1: know if I can get elected president saying the things
42:25
Speaker 1: I did today about race, but I also know that
42:27
Speaker 1: I don't deserve to be president if I'm too afraid
42:29
Speaker 1: to say what it is I really believe.
42:30
Speaker 9: You know?
42:32
Speaker 4: And it's like... What?
42:35
Speaker 2: What did you say?
42:38
Speaker 3: What did you think?
42:39
Speaker 2: What did you say to him in response? How did
42:41
Speaker 2: you feel about that speech?
42:42
Speaker 1: Because I saw the speech and I, you know, I
42:44
Speaker 1: always say, like, the parts of that speech that I
42:47
Speaker 1: worked on were the parts that any politician could have given.
42:50
Speaker 1: You know, I gave him an open and ending, all
42:52
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff. But the lines like, you know,
42:54
Speaker 1: I could no more disown Reverend Wright than I could
42:56
Speaker 1: my own grandmother. Like, all the really tough things that
42:59
Speaker 1: he said about race, you know, he wrote all those
43:01
Speaker 1: things himself. And I remember when I first got the
43:02
Speaker 1: draft back with all of his writing and all the
43:05
Speaker 1: things he said, I was just like, holy shit, I
43:07
Speaker 1: can't believe he's actually going to say this tomorrow. But
43:11
Speaker 1: he sent it to me and to Axrod and Valerie
43:14
Speaker 1: and a couple other people, and he said, you can
43:15
Speaker 1: make small edits to this if you want for language
43:18
Speaker 1: and stuff like this, but this is what I want
43:20
Speaker 1: to say, and I'm sure about it, and if we win,
43:23
Speaker 1: we win, and if we lose, we lose.
43:25
Speaker 2: So can we all have a moment of silence? Because
43:28
Speaker 2: we used to have a president who wrote his own speeches.
43:31
Speaker 1: That's right.
43:32
Speaker 3: Good ones.
43:33
Speaker 5: Like, what is so important there is that Obama wasn't
43:36
Speaker 5: afraid to lose the campaign.
43:38
Speaker 4: Right.
43:38
Speaker 2: Is that true?
43:39
Speaker 11: Yes.
43:40
Speaker 1: He did.
43:41
Speaker 4: He was not afraid to lose it.
43:42
Speaker 1: So there we are.
43:43
Speaker 5: And when I watched the 19 speeches today, you did
43:47
Speaker 5: not get a sense yet that people were willing to
43:50
Speaker 5: put it all on the line, that they were not
43:52
Speaker 5: afraid to lose, which is kind of crazy because 18
43:55
Speaker 5: of them are going to lose.
43:56
Speaker 8: Yeah.
43:56
Speaker 7: I mean, Connie, I remember sitting on the floor of
44:00
Speaker 7: our at that time, pretty shitty campaign office in Des Moines,
44:04
Speaker 7: and hearing on a polling call that we were in
44:06
Speaker 7: fifth place in the Des Moines media market.
44:09
Speaker 4: We were losing to Bill Richardson. I was like, boy,
44:12
Speaker 4: I got to update that resume. Like, this is rough.
44:16
Speaker 7: But, like, then Obama would come here, and we'd go
44:18
Speaker 7: on the road, and he just had this mantra. It
44:20
Speaker 7: was sort of a joke that he would have with
44:21
Speaker 7: Gibbs or Dan or whoever was translating. Like, they joked
44:24
Speaker 7: they would get pins that just said, fuck it. He's like,
44:26
Speaker 7: why not say what you're going to say and say
44:29
Speaker 7: what you think?
44:29
Speaker 4: What is the downside?
44:30
Speaker 7: He used to say, if we don't win, I'll have
44:32
Speaker 7: a pretty great book to write.
44:36
Speaker 4: Look, he's a politician. They're all cautious to some degree.
44:39
Speaker 7: But he was willing when he went at that debate
44:42
Speaker 7: and he said, yes, I would speak to North Korea
44:44
Speaker 7: and Iran and Cuba without preconditions. And the entire democratic
44:48
Speaker 7: establishment came down on him like a ton of bricks
44:51
Speaker 7: and acted like it was somehow weak to have a
44:52
Speaker 7: conversation with someone you don't like. He got on a
44:55
Speaker 7: call that night and told everybody, if you walk this back,
44:57
Speaker 7: you are fired.
44:58
Speaker 3: Right?
44:58
Speaker 7: Like, this is what I believe. I don't care what
45:01
Speaker 7: these morons at the Center for Foreign Policy think tank money.
45:06
Speaker 4: From Gulf Arab states think. Like, this is what I
45:09
Speaker 4: want to do. And, like, that, I think people got
45:12
Speaker 4: that over time.
45:13
Speaker 1: And I should say, by the way, I think there
45:15
Speaker 1: are probably five or six candidates in the race. that
45:18
Speaker 1: I think can get there, that I have seen flashes
45:20
Speaker 1: of this from all of.
45:21
Speaker 4: Them, that there are pieces of this kind of.
45:23
Speaker 2: Who are they?
45:23
Speaker 1: I'm not... Do it!
45:29
Speaker 3: Do it! More to the point, John. More to the point, John.
45:33
Speaker 3: It's time we say, who doesn't have it?
45:37
Speaker 8: Yeah, right.
45:38
Speaker 2: Sorry, I felt you could just.
45:39
Speaker 1: No, I just... You opened the.
45:40
Speaker 2: Door and I.
45:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, I know.
45:42
Speaker 4: Make your list, Aria.
45:43
Speaker 1: We want to let everyone be able to give everyone
45:44
Speaker 1: the information they need. Everyone make their own decisions. We'll
45:47
Speaker 1: stay out of it.
45:48
Speaker 5: Straight shooter.
45:50
Speaker 3: Straight shooter. It's my time to shine. Let's go through
45:53
Speaker 3: the names.
45:54
Speaker 7: You want to have one more point?
45:58
Speaker 8: Yeah, I do.
45:59
Speaker 3: Look, another point about just.
46:02
Speaker 3: One of the things I think was most fascinating about
46:04
Speaker 3: 2008 is all of this, everything is saying, what everyone's
46:07
Speaker 3: saying is true about the kind of campaign Barack Obama won.
46:09
Speaker 3: But ultimately, what is so amazing about 2008, and I
46:12
Speaker 3: think should tell something to all of these candidates, is
46:14
Speaker 3: 2008 ended up turning on a financial crisis that obviously
46:18
Speaker 3: caught everybody off guard. And Barack Obama's case for why
46:21
Speaker 3: he'd be the right president wasn't rooted in his stable
46:24
Speaker 3: leadership of the Treasury Department and the financial system and
46:27
Speaker 3: how to manage TARP and the bailouts and the United
46:31
Speaker 3: States through a through the deepest financial crisis that almost
46:34
Speaker 3: sent us into the Great Depression. But by the time
46:35
Speaker 3: we got to that crisis, he had been so steadfast
46:38
Speaker 3: in defining who he was, what he cared about, the
46:40
Speaker 3: kind of president he would be, the issues that mattered,
46:43
Speaker 3: the story. The story was so sure that he was
46:46
Speaker 3: the state... Against John McCain, someone who had been in
46:48
Speaker 3: the Senate for decades, someone who had run against the establishment,
46:52
Speaker 3: was by then seen as someone people knew, someone they
46:55
Speaker 3: could trust, someone that they could understand, someone that they felt...
46:59
Speaker 3: they could rely on even through a crisis, even though
47:01
Speaker 3: he didn't have the same amount of experience as every
47:03
Speaker 3: single other person he ran against. And, you know, I
47:05
Speaker 3: think the analogy to that of what we're going through
47:08
Speaker 3: is we don't know what the full weight of the
47:10
Speaker 3: propaganda apparatus that Donald Trump is going to throw at
47:13
Speaker 3: us will look like ultimately. We can get a sense
47:15
Speaker 3: of it, but we don't really know. We don't know
47:17
Speaker 3: what specific attacks he'll choose. We don't know which candidate
47:19
Speaker 3: we will have. We don't know who the vice president,
47:21
Speaker 3: we don't know anything. We don't know what will be
47:23
Speaker 3: in front of voters when they actually make that decision.
47:25
Speaker 3: But Now is the moment when these candidates can tell
47:28
Speaker 3: that story about who they are in a way that
47:30
Speaker 3: can handle the buffets of the actual race to come.
47:33
Speaker 1: Welcome. When we come back, we will have Tommy's interview
47:41
Speaker 1: with Ann Seltzer.
47:45
Speaker 10: Our guest tonight.
47:55
Speaker 7: Is a pollster and president of the firm Seltzer & Co.,
47:57
Speaker 7: which is conducting Iowa polls on the 2020 caucuses for
48:00
Speaker 7: the Des Moines Register, CNN, and Mediacom, and Seltzer.
48:09
Speaker 4: Thank you for being here.
48:10
Speaker 2: My pleasure.
48:12
Speaker 4: I was telling Anne.
48:13
Speaker 7: Backstage that my world would literally stop in 2008 when
48:18
Speaker 7: one of her polls came out because... It was not
48:21
Speaker 7: just like, oh, here's another poll. It was like, this
48:23
Speaker 7: is the only poll that matters.
48:26
Speaker 4: You're so good at it. You're the gold standard.
48:28
Speaker 7: So thank you for being here and not like crunching
48:31
Speaker 7: numbers or whatever you do during your free time.
48:34
Speaker 4: So you released a new poll last night.
48:37
Speaker 7: Once again, we were all at dinner and time stopped
48:39
Speaker 7: as we all read it like nerds because that's who
48:40
Speaker 7: we are. So the top lines were 24% for Biden,
48:43
Speaker 7: 16% Bernie, 15% Warren, 14% Mayor Pete, Kamala Harris at seven,
48:47
Speaker 7: the rest were lower. What did you think the main
48:50
Speaker 7: headline out of this latest survey was?
48:53
Speaker 9: Well, I can tell you what we were aiming for,
48:56
Speaker 9: and I think it worked out for us. We wanted
48:58
Speaker 9: to divine some tiers to the field because our last
49:03
Speaker 9: poll in March had a duopoly of Joe Biden and
49:07
Speaker 9: Bernie Sanders and then mush after that. And we wanted
49:12
Speaker 9: to figure out enough ways of measuring the field that
49:16
Speaker 9: if we could define a top tier and define a
49:19
Speaker 9: bottom tier and maybe some things in the middle, that
49:21
Speaker 9: would be very helpful. So you read the top tier.
49:25
Speaker 9: And more than that, I think we were able to
49:27
Speaker 9: show that the Biden sitting at the top has some
49:32
Speaker 9: underlying weakness to it.
49:35
Speaker 4: Why do you think that?
49:36
Speaker 9: I think that because we asked a question about how
49:38
Speaker 9: enthusiastic are you about your first choice? Are you extremely enthusiastic,
49:43
Speaker 9: just very enthusiastic, mildly enthusiastic? We separated out the supporters
49:51
Speaker 9: of Joe Biden and then the supporters of all other
49:54
Speaker 9: candidates and put them in one big clump and looked
49:57
Speaker 9: at their answers and compared them. 29% of Joe Biden
50:01
Speaker 9: supporters said they were extremely enthusiastic for this other clump.
50:05
Speaker 10: 43%.
50:08
Speaker 9: So that says, and there was a bigger group of
50:13
Speaker 9: the Biden supporters that described themselves as mildly enthusiastic. So
50:17
Speaker 9: that's a little bit of weakness there. For Bernie Sanders,
50:20
Speaker 9: also a little bit of weakness in that he was
50:24
Speaker 9: more popular, more likely to be a first choice among
50:27
Speaker 9: people who said that they would probably caucus rather than
50:31
Speaker 9: definitely caucus. And We think of the people who will
50:34
Speaker 9: definitely caucus as that's the core.
50:37
Speaker 2: And the probables.
50:38
Speaker 7: Hearing you guys ooh and ah about relative support is
50:41
Speaker 7: just the funniest shit.
50:44
Speaker 4: So, I mean, you sort of hinted at it.
50:46
Speaker 7: I mean, one of the quirks of the Iowa caucus
50:47
Speaker 7: system is this 15% viability threshold in these precincts.
50:51
Speaker 4: In my mind, that was so important.
50:53
Speaker 7: Our Iowa caucus director, Paul Tooze, literally wrote on the walls,
50:57
Speaker 7: respect and power include. Our mantra was, if you speak
51:00
Speaker 7: ill of another candidate, you're fired, you're out of here.
51:03
Speaker 4: It was that serious about it.
51:05
Speaker 7: Did you register a candidate that you thought, okay, this
51:11
Speaker 7: person is the strong second choice among Iowa caucus goers?
51:15
Speaker 9: Well, one of the people who didn't get into double
51:18
Speaker 9: digits but was a popular second choice was Kamala Harris.
51:22
Speaker 9: And so while she didn't sort of end up in
51:28
Speaker 9: our top four, she's really on the bubble there. We
51:31
Speaker 9: did one other thing, which is if somebody wasn't named
51:33
Speaker 9: as your first or second choice, we asked, well, are
51:36
Speaker 9: you actively considering each of these people you've not named?
51:40
Speaker 2: So I had to go through that list again.
51:42
Speaker 9: And this was really reflective of the way things are
51:45
Speaker 9: in Iowa, particularly with this field. You talk to people,
51:48
Speaker 9: you say, well, who are you thinking about? And they go, oh, well,
51:50
Speaker 9: let me tell you who my favorites are, plural. Favorites,
51:54
Speaker 9: that usually implies like one or two, but no, we
51:57
Speaker 9: wanted to know who was on the list. And so
52:00
Speaker 9: we added together how many people were there. There were
52:03
Speaker 9: five candidates that a majority of likely caucus goers said
52:07
Speaker 9: They were either a first choice, second choice, or they
52:08
Speaker 9: were actively considering, and it's the four you named plus
52:12
Speaker 9: Kamala Harris.
52:12
Speaker 4: Interesting. How many people do you have to call to get,
52:16
Speaker 4: was it 600 respondents? Is that right?
52:21
Speaker 2: Now, I believe backstage I said, don't ask me for
52:23
Speaker 2: any numbers.
52:24
Speaker 3: Okay, never mind.
52:26
Speaker 4: Okay.
52:26
Speaker 1: A lot.
52:27
Speaker 4: A lot of people. So, I mean, like, I guess
52:29
Speaker 4: what I'm trying to get at.
52:30
Speaker 7: Is it is, so hard to pull the caucuses. The
52:36
Speaker 7: 2008 Iowa caucuses are a good example. I said F
52:39
Speaker 7: Mark Penn earlier, and that was in part because in
52:42
Speaker 7: 2008 we had these wildly different visions of what the
52:45
Speaker 7: caucus universe would be like or how many people would
52:47
Speaker 7: turn out. The Edwards people said it's going to be 150,000.
52:50
Speaker 7: It's going to be the same people who came out
52:52
Speaker 7: last time, older, whiter, same folks. The Clinton people thought
52:56
Speaker 7: I'd be a little bit more. Our bet on the
52:59
Speaker 7: Obama team was that we we're going to grow the
53:01
Speaker 7: caucus universe. We're going to get people of color, younger people, right?
53:04
Speaker 7: And like these predictions are not predictions. They're spin born
53:08
Speaker 7: of political necessity, but you have a very different job
53:10
Speaker 7: where you actually have to divine that universe.
53:12
Speaker 4: How are you able to call it right when no
53:15
Speaker 4: one else is?
53:16
Speaker 9: Well, I hope it is always the case, but I
53:20
Speaker 9: think that one of the ways that I'm different from
53:23
Speaker 9: a lot of other pollsters is I don't put any
53:26
Speaker 9: artificial assumptions between me and the data. So a lot,
53:31
Speaker 9: and the story that I tell on the day that
53:35
Speaker 9: our poll was released in 2008, I got a call
53:37
Speaker 9: from a key Clinton operative who said, I've knocked on
53:41
Speaker 9: 99 doors, and I don't find this lurking Obama support,
53:44
Speaker 9: and I've always trusted your polls until now, so explain yourself.
53:47
Speaker 9: And I said, well, okay, give me more data. Tell
53:50
Speaker 9: me about the 99 doors.
53:51
Speaker 3: He said, oh.
53:53
Speaker 9: We're going to people who've caucused before and registered Democrats.
53:57
Speaker 9: And I said, well, you're blinded to what's happening. So
54:01
Speaker 9: we make no assumptions and let our data tell us.
54:05
Speaker 9: And believe me, in the editorial room of the Des
54:07
Speaker 9: Moines Register, it was quite a decision looking at our
54:11
Speaker 9: poll data that said close to 60% were going to
54:14
Speaker 9: be first-time caucus attenders. No one would create a likely
54:19
Speaker 9: voter model that said 60%, but our data told us.
54:24
Speaker 9: And the entrance poll that night said it was 57%,
54:27
Speaker 9: so we were right. But this is still happening in
54:38
Speaker 9: a lot of polls, that when people are doing polling
54:41
Speaker 9: by panels, how do you make a panel look.
54:44
Speaker 2: Like a future electorate?
54:47
Speaker 9: Well, you look backwards and you say, well, in the past, this.
54:50
Speaker 2: Is the kind of people who showed up.
54:51
Speaker 9: And when you do that, you have made an assumption
54:56
Speaker 9: that may or may not hold. So my method has
54:59
Speaker 9: always been to let my data tell me what's going
55:04
Speaker 9: to happen in the future.
55:05
Speaker 2: And so far, my data has treated me well.
55:07
Speaker 4: Your data is good.
55:08
Speaker 3: So.
55:13
Speaker 7: Complicating your job is the fact that this year, to
55:15
Speaker 7: make the caucuses more accessible, the Democratic Party has added.
55:19
Speaker 4: A virtual caucus option.
55:20
Speaker 7: Can you give us just a quick explanation of how
55:23
Speaker 7: that might work and how you will factor that in?
55:26
Speaker 9: So in addition to everybody showing up on caucus night
55:28
Speaker 9: and trying to break into 23 preference groups inside the
55:32
Speaker 9: high school gym, there will be six virtual caucuses in
55:38
Speaker 9: the run-up. And people get the idea this would be
55:41
Speaker 9: kind of breezy. You'll sign on to your computer and
55:42
Speaker 9: you'll sort of say, here's who I want. And then
55:45
Speaker 9: you sign off and off you go. No, they're going
55:47
Speaker 9: to be like regular caucus meetings that you register for.
55:50
Speaker 9: And if you register for it, you're committed now. You
55:54
Speaker 9: can't decide you're going to show up on caucus night.
55:57
Speaker 9: So there will be a regular party business and they
56:02
Speaker 9: will run through the list of candidates five times and
56:05
Speaker 9: asking you five times to say, who your next candidate
56:08
Speaker 9: choice is, and so on and so on and so on.
56:10
Speaker 9: There's a whole lot of calculations they've gotta do to
56:12
Speaker 9: figure it out. They are treating everyone who participates in
56:16
Speaker 9: this virtual caucus as though it is one giant precinct,
56:21
Speaker 9: and they're allocating 10% of the delegate equivalence to that.
56:26
Speaker 9: So no matter how many people decide to caucus that way,
56:29
Speaker 9: it will be 10% of the delegate equivalence. As I've
56:33
Speaker 9: been told under the current version of the rules, by
56:36
Speaker 9: the state party chair just the other day. So that
56:39
Speaker 9: may change yet, but that's the way the rules, as
56:43
Speaker 9: I understand it, confirmed.
56:44
Speaker 2: By the state party chair have said.
56:46
Speaker 4: Whew, that sounds confusing.
56:50
Speaker 7: So just like stepping back a little bit, Obama won
56:53
Speaker 7: Iowa pretty convincingly in 2008 and 2012. I think a
56:56
Speaker 7: lot of us really felt like the state was trending blue,
56:59
Speaker 7: there's some progressive things happening on the state level.
57:02
Speaker 4: Then Trump won the state in 2016, including.
57:06
Speaker 7: Almost every county, but like those traditionally blue river counties
57:09
Speaker 7: that I really thought were Democratic strongholds.
57:12
Speaker 4: The state swung back a bit in 18.
57:14
Speaker 7: With strong victories by Abby Finkenauer and Cindy Axne. What's
57:21
Speaker 7: your sense of where Iowa is trending politically today?
57:26
Speaker 9: Well, I think 2018 was the product of.
57:32
Speaker 2: Pent up what had been sleeping activism.
57:36
Speaker 9: And that's the word I'd use for some work I
57:39
Speaker 9: did with the Grinnell College National Poll to sort of
57:42
Speaker 9: measure activation, that there were people who said, I'm not
57:45
Speaker 9: going to sit back and let others do the heavy lifting.
57:49
Speaker 9: I'm going to get engaged. I'm going to get involved.
57:51
Speaker 9: And the group most likely to say they were going
57:53
Speaker 9: to go get people to vote and help them vote
57:56
Speaker 9: were Democratic women. So what I saw after the midterms
58:07
Speaker 9: and when the presidential candidates started coming and reporters call
58:11
Speaker 9: me and talk to me and report to me what
58:13
Speaker 9: they see happening is that those early events were feeling
58:17
Speaker 9: like the run-up right to caucus night, that there was
58:20
Speaker 9: big crowd sizes and an intensity, an urgency, an excitement
58:25
Speaker 9: in the air that didn't feel like it was early
58:27
Speaker 9: in the caucus season. And so it had a feeling
58:30
Speaker 9: as though Iowans decided they can, Iowa Democrats, they can
58:35
Speaker 9: do it. And they showed that they could do it
58:39
Speaker 9: by flipping two congressional districts, and so it's still there.
58:47
Speaker 7: One district we did not flip is Iowa's fourth district.
58:52
Speaker 7: Congressman Steve King, we're not big fans.
58:57
Speaker 3: J.D.
58:58
Speaker 4: Scholten made.
59:04
Speaker 7: JD made a hell of a run at him, but
59:07
Speaker 7: fell short. I mean, the seat is like the great
59:10
Speaker 7: white nationalist whale for people that want fewer bigots in Washington.
59:15
Speaker 12: I guess.
59:15
Speaker 4: Do you think that district is winnable for a Democrat?
59:19
Speaker 13: Boy.
59:22
Speaker 2: J.D.
59:23
Speaker 9: Scholten came very, very close. And how much of that
59:25
Speaker 9: was J.D.
59:26
Speaker 3: Scholten?
59:27
Speaker 2: And how much of.
59:27
Speaker 9: That was the district's ready to be done with Steve King.
59:32
Speaker 9: But I'm always reminded of a couple I met who
59:34
Speaker 9: were from Ottawa, which is over on the Missouri River,
59:38
Speaker 9: chatting with them at O'Hare Airport, and they're going on
59:41
Speaker 9: and on about Steve King, and what great constituent service
59:45
Speaker 9: it is, and 15 minutes on that. I said, so
59:47
Speaker 9: in the governor's race, you'll be voting for the Republican candidate,
59:51
Speaker 9: and they said, oh no, we're Democrats. And so that's
59:57
Speaker 9: always filed away in my mind that Steve King had
1:00:00
Speaker 9: a very strong presence in that district. He started doing
1:00:04
Speaker 9: town halls after not doing.
1:00:06
Speaker 2: Those for a while. So he's a fighter. We'll see.
1:00:09
Speaker 9: He's going to have a primary. And that, I think,
1:00:13
Speaker 9: he may not win the nomination. So the 4th District
1:00:17
Speaker 9: is always fascinating.
1:00:18
Speaker 4: Good answer.
1:00:20
Speaker 3: Last question.
1:00:24
Speaker 7: From now until Caucus Day, journalists, bozo pseudo-pundits like me
1:00:29
Speaker 7: will be complaining about polls, talking about polls, trying to
1:00:32
Speaker 7: interpret them when they haven't taken math since junior year
1:00:35
Speaker 7: of high school. What do you wish people understood about
1:00:39
Speaker 7: polls and polling that you see them getting wrong all
1:00:42
Speaker 7: the time?
1:00:44
Speaker 9: Well, one of the questions that is just a little
1:00:47
Speaker 9: bit annoying is they say, what do these polls really mean?
1:00:50
Speaker 9: We shouldn't pay any attention to it. They shouldn't even
1:00:53
Speaker 9: be doing these polls. They're meaningless. And then the iteration
1:00:58
Speaker 9: of that is, well, do you expect these numbers to
1:01:02
Speaker 9: last through the caucuses? And I go, if we thought
1:01:04
Speaker 9: they'd last, we'd stop polling. These are numbers that help
1:01:10
Speaker 9: make sense of the field. And what I'd like people
1:01:13
Speaker 9: to think about is what if there weren't any polls
1:01:16
Speaker 9: and you didn't know where these 23 candidates, how did
1:01:20
Speaker 9: they rank?
1:01:21
Speaker 2: Who was getting traction? Who wasn't getting traction?
1:01:24
Speaker 3: You know, it's really.
1:01:26
Speaker 9: Helpful, certainly for reporters, which is what my poll is
1:01:30
Speaker 9: paid for to do, to guide how.
1:01:34
Speaker 2: That's supposed to go.
1:01:35
Speaker 9: But it's also helpful for the readers to have an
1:01:37
Speaker 9: idea of how this race is shaping up.
1:01:40
Speaker 10: Agreed.
1:01:41
Speaker 7: Ansel, sir, thank you so much for your work, for
1:01:43
Speaker 7: being here tonight.
1:01:47
Speaker 4: Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
1:01:49
Speaker 3: You guys want to play a game? Des Moines. You're
1:02:00
Speaker 3: like a sweet kid surrounded by puppies who thinks dogs
1:02:02
Speaker 3: must naturally love you because you don't realize your mom
1:02:04
Speaker 3: is standing behind you dangling pork chops and milk bones.
1:02:16
Speaker 3: Face it. Yes, we're in Iowa, and we're going to
1:02:20
Speaker 3: talk about pandering. Because if there's one thing I know
1:02:25
Speaker 3: about the people of this state, you are the smartest,
1:02:27
Speaker 3: hardest working, best looking people this side of the Mississippi River. Yes,
1:02:35
Speaker 3: Iowa takes your role as first in the nation seriously,
1:02:38
Speaker 3: but so do the candidates who suck up to you
1:02:40
Speaker 3: like you're a criminal president who ranks pardon requests based
1:02:43
Speaker 3: on compliments. Over the years you in Iowa have received
1:02:47
Speaker 3: some of the most egregious, ostentatious, high fructose corn syrup,
1:02:51
Speaker 3: sickly sweet pandering the world has ever known. And you're
1:02:57
Speaker 3: proud of it too.
1:03:00
Speaker 1: You like it.
1:03:00
Speaker 3: You know there are studies that show that people know
1:03:03
Speaker 3: when they're being sucked up to and they don't care.
1:03:07
Speaker 3: They still like it. This guy knows. And so we
1:03:14
Speaker 3: thought we'd have our own little caucus tonight to see
1:03:16
Speaker 3: just who is the best panderer in Iowa history in
1:03:20
Speaker 3: a game we're calling Welcome to the Panderdome.
1:03:27
Speaker 4: Here's how it works.
1:03:28
Speaker 3: Each of our hosts will read a pander from their card.
1:03:31
Speaker 3: Without knowing who did the pander, the audience will decide
1:03:35
Speaker 3: who pandered best. As the audience decides, you guys will
1:03:39
Speaker 3: make a case for your pander. You'll read your pander
1:03:42
Speaker 3: and defend it. At the end of the round, we
1:03:46
Speaker 3: will reveal who you chose as president and who you dismissed.
1:03:53
Speaker 3: Are you ready? John, kick us off.
1:03:58
Speaker 1: At a campaign event, I busted out an acoustic guitar
1:04:01
Speaker 1: and forced a crowd to sing along to the following lyric. Iowa, Iowa, winter, spring, summer,
1:04:07
Speaker 1: or fall. Come see, come dance with me at the
1:04:11
Speaker 1: beautiful Iowa Waltz. Was that recently? Well, we don't know when.
1:04:17
Speaker 1: You don't know yet. Throughout the years. I just want
1:04:21
Speaker 1: everyone to know I said Iowa three times in that.
1:04:24
Speaker 3: He did say Iowa three times.
1:04:25
Speaker 4: He used the guitar.
1:04:27
Speaker 1: Played the guitar.
1:04:28
Speaker 3: Connie, you're up.
1:04:29
Speaker 2: All right.
1:04:31
Speaker 6: In my home state, I upset a lot of local
1:04:34
Speaker 6: farmers by coming out against corn-derived biofuels. But here in Iowa,
1:04:40
Speaker 6: a place known for its corn, I did a complete
1:04:42
Speaker 6: 180 and supported them proving I care more about Iowa
1:04:47
Speaker 6: than my actual constituents.
1:04:48
Speaker 3: So that's like a pretty cool one. That's someone who
1:04:52
Speaker 3: was so hypocritical on your behalf. Tommy, you're up.
1:04:59
Speaker 7: At the Iowa State Fair, I ate a pork chop
1:05:01
Speaker 7: on a stick because that's what we think you people like.
1:05:04
Speaker 7: You're a bunch of popsicle-eating-for-every-meal, reduced-to-that, stick-loving people.
1:05:13
Speaker 1: Vote for me.
1:05:15
Speaker 3: Vote for Tommy, you stick-loving people. Dan, you're up.
1:05:21
Speaker 5: At the Iowa State Fair, I ate three pork chops
1:05:24
Speaker 5: on a stick in 30 minutes. Because I love you
1:05:27
Speaker 5: three times as much as Tommy does.
1:05:31
Speaker 3: Three pork chops on a stick in 30 minutes. Truly disgusting.
1:05:36
Speaker 3: All right. So now you guys are just going to
1:05:38
Speaker 3: vote based on applause. Here we go. Was it the
1:05:41
Speaker 3: guitar solo? The bio-heals flip-flop. Meat on a stick. Meat
1:05:56
Speaker 3: on a stick. Three times the meat on a stick.
1:06:03
Speaker 3: I want you all to know that that was surprisingly
1:06:06
Speaker 3: revealing because I believe you selected as your president Scott Walker,
1:06:12
Speaker 3: who flipped on biofuel. Now, face what you did.
1:06:16
Speaker 1: We have to tell them who Scott Walker was.
1:06:20
Speaker 3: Oh, Scott Walker was the flip on biofuel. He flipped
1:06:23
Speaker 3: on biofuel, and then Martin O'Malley played the guitar. Donald
1:06:28
Speaker 3: Trump ate the stick.
1:06:31
Speaker 1: Fuck.
1:06:36
Speaker 3: John Kasich... A three pork chop. That guy can eat. Tommy,
1:06:45
Speaker 3: I think you've been eliminated.
1:06:47
Speaker 5: That's fine.
1:06:48
Speaker 4: I have to pee.
1:06:52
Speaker 3: Leave it in. Leave it in.
1:06:54
Speaker 4: All right.
1:06:55
Speaker 3: Now, you're down to three candidates. Which pander will win
1:07:02
Speaker 3: you over? John, kick us off.
1:07:04
Speaker 1: I made my mother move to Des Moines.
1:07:09
Speaker 3: Connie?
1:07:11
Speaker 2: I made my entire family move to Des Moines.
1:07:24
Speaker 3: Dan?
1:07:25
Speaker 5: I threw my alma mater under the bus with this tweet.
1:07:28
Speaker 5: Love my alma mater, but rooting for a Hawkeyes win today.
1:07:31
Speaker 3: Hashtag Rose Bowl.
1:07:37
Speaker 8: Wow.
1:07:39
Speaker 3: All right. All right. All right. Who was your... Tommy,
1:07:45
Speaker 3: come back out.
1:07:46
Speaker 1: Come on out, Tommy.
1:07:47
Speaker 4: Honestly, it sounded pretty bad. I was worried about coming
1:07:50
Speaker 4: back out. Sounded like you lost the crowd for a minute.
1:07:54
Speaker 3: This is in New Orleans. I'm fine. All right. So,
1:07:58
Speaker 3: was it moving.
1:07:59
Speaker 1: My mother. Moving the mother. My mother had to move.
1:08:02
Speaker 3: He moved his mother to Des Moines. Is that a
1:08:04
Speaker 3: good pander?
1:08:04
Speaker 10: Yes.
1:08:07
Speaker 3: Moving the whole family.
1:08:08
Speaker 2: I love them.
1:08:13
Speaker 3: Saying, fuck my loyalty to the school I went to,
1:08:16
Speaker 3: I'm going Hawkeyes. Well, congratulations, Iowa. You've chosen Carly Fiorina
1:08:26
Speaker 3: as your president. And sadly, sadly, you're saying goodbye to
1:08:32
Speaker 3: Dick Gephardt. Son of a milkman. Son of a milkman.
1:08:38
Speaker 3: Dick Gephardt hit the road. And it was Chris Dodd
1:08:43
Speaker 3: who moved his family to Iowa.
1:08:46
Speaker 4: Why not Dodd?
1:08:47
Speaker 3: Why not Dodd?
1:08:48
Speaker 1: No one gets these references.
1:08:50
Speaker 2: That works so well.
1:08:51
Speaker 3: So we are down now to our final two panders.
1:08:56
Speaker 2: I love this guy.
1:09:00
Speaker 1: You.
1:09:00
Speaker 3: I feel like this is a big reveal.
1:09:19
Speaker 6: I once made a comment that I thought it would
1:09:21
Speaker 6: have been great if my wife gave birth in Iowa.
1:09:27
Speaker 3: Dan, what do you think?
1:09:29
Speaker 5: I once said the following sentence about Iowa. I'm driving
1:09:32
Speaker 5: through these beautiful fields. I want to grab that corn
1:09:35
Speaker 5: like you've never seen.
1:09:36
Speaker 3: So rich, so beautiful.
1:09:42
Speaker 8: Wow.
1:09:44
Speaker 3: Now, let's think about this, all right? Do you think
1:09:52
Speaker 3: it was wanting, do you think Connie wanting her wife
1:09:55
Speaker 3: to give birth in Iowa? Or was it wanting to
1:10:03
Speaker 3: grab life by the corn? So I gotta say, I
1:10:08
Speaker 3: think that's pretty close. Travis is out there. With a microphone,
1:10:11
Speaker 3: there's somebody that I thought might be helpful. Someone, it's
1:10:13
Speaker 3: like a real salt of the earth guy. Someone who
1:10:16
Speaker 3: knows a thing or two about winning campaigns in the heartland. Travis,
1:10:20
Speaker 3: are you out there? Can we get the lights up
1:10:24
Speaker 3: in the house? Sir, what is your name?
1:10:34
Speaker 1: My name?
1:10:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, sir, what is your name? Connie Schultz's husband. Connie
1:10:37
Speaker 3: Schultz's husband. Guys, give it up for Senator Sherrod Brown.
1:10:47
Speaker 3: Hi honey.
1:10:53
Speaker 8: I did think if I, I thought if I sat back.
1:10:55
Speaker 2: Far enough you wouldn't find me, but.
1:10:57
Speaker 4: No, we found you.
1:10:59
Speaker 3: Oh, we found you. Help us decide, what do you
1:11:03
Speaker 3: think is a better pander? Wanting one's wife to give
1:11:07
Speaker 3: birth in the state or wanting to just grab that corn?
1:11:12
Speaker 2: How do you think this through?
1:11:13
Speaker 8: I like the wife giving birth at any age.
1:11:26
Speaker 1: In the state.
1:11:27
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, okay. So is that your choice? Yeah, that's
1:11:32
Speaker 3: my choice. Congratulations, your president is Donald Trump. But don't worry,
1:11:42
Speaker 3: your second choice was also Donald Trump. That's our game.
1:11:50
Speaker 3: Thank you, Connie, for playing. Thank you, Senator Brown, for playing.
1:11:56
Speaker 4: Thank you, Des Moines.
1:11:57
Speaker 3: Thank you to Connie Schultz. Thank you, Ann Selzer. Thanks,
1:12:00
Speaker 3: Jerry Brown. We love you. We'll be back.