Pod Save America - “Get it together.”

Episode Date: February 6, 2020

Iowa is still too close to call as the candidates try to break through in New Hampshire, Mitt Romney votes to convict as Trump is acquitted, and the President’s State of the Union should be a wake up call for Democrats. Then Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg talks to Dan about his post-Iowa strategy.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, Dan talks to Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. But first, we'll talk about the results of the Iowa caucus, which we almost completely have three days later. We'll also talk about where the race goes from here, the end of Trump's impeachment trial, which he is currently celebrating on television as we are recording this. And we'll also talk about the State of the Union that he delivered on Tuesday. A few housekeeping notes on this week's Pod Save the World.

Tommy and Ben talked about what happens in the UK now that Brexit is real, the expansion of Trump's Muslim ban, and why Jared Kushner still sucks, even if Bibi Netanyahu's mad at him right now over settlements. Also, the pre-New Hampshire primary debate is Friday night, which is the night that you really want to have a debate because people really love to stay home and watch. As always, we'll be doing our group thread with live commentary from Crooked HQ.

You can find us at crooked.com slash group thread or on the Crooked Media YouTube channel starting at 8 p.m. Eastern and 5 p.m. Pacific. Dan, I also believe you have something to say about your book. I do. I just first I want to just thank everyone. Last week, I put out a pretty plaintive appeal for people to buy the book because I feel

really passionate about it and people very generously did. And so I'm just very grateful for how nice and supportive our fans are. And I hope people continue to do so because we have less than two weeks to go. We also have an important announcement, which is my first book event is on February 19th. It at New York city at the 92nd street. Why?

And we finally have a moderator and we have the best possible moderator that anyone could ask for Alyssa master Monaco. Nice. We'll be in conversation together. So that will be a lot of fun. And if you are in New York City, come check us out on February 19th at the 92nd Street Y. And you can get information on how to get tickets at untrumpingamerica.com. We are making progress on the bet with the publisher. We got work to do. We got a ways to go to catch up to Donald Trump Jr. So we'll leave you all with that parting thought. Okay, let's talk about Iowa one last time, maybe ever,

where there was one more twist as the results kept coming in on Wednesday night. With about 97% of precincts reporting, Pete Buttigieg has 26.2% of state delegate equivalents, and Bernie Sanders has 26.1%. Elizabeth Warren has 18.2%, Joe Biden's at 15.8%, and Amy Klobuchar is at 12.2%. So Bernie leads in the actual vote total in both the first alignment and final alignment, and the New York Times projects he'll most likely remain the leader in votes when the rest of the precincts come in. But after a bunch of really good results for Bernie from the satellite caucuses that came in last night, the New York Times now projects that based on the remaining precincts, Bernie is also a slight favorite to eke out a win among state delegate equivalents as well.

In terms of pledged delegates to the convention, as we always say, this is a race for delegates. In terms of pledged delegates to the convention, as we always say, this is a race for delegates. The Times estimates that Bernie could end up with 13. Pete could also end up with 13. Warren would get eight. Biden would get six. And Klobuchar would get one. So we're waiting for results from one remaining satellite caucus. For people who don't know, these are caucuses that were held in non-traditional locations like overseas or in a nursing home.

They were developed this year in order to increase accessibility for people because caucuses aren't always accessible to everyone. The Sanders campaign did a lot of really good work organizing these satellite caucuses. And the one that's still out there is likely to be really good for Bernie. And then the other regular precincts out there are still likely to be good for Pete. But anyway, the Times right now at least thinks that Bernie might end up with the edge. Either way, Dan, doesn't it seem like it was definitely too early for Pete to declare victory on Monday night?

Maybe. I mean, he took a gamble. And that gamble may turn out to be wrong. I'm hesitant. I trust Nate Cohn as much as I trust any other data expert, Nate, of which we have multiple choices. But yes, it was technically too early. I think his data told him he was going to win. That may not be the case. data, told him he was going to win. That may not be the case. But he, by all definitions, achieved everything he needed to achieve. And I think he's going to have to answer some questions over the next few days if it turns out, as the New York Times and others are predicting, that Sanders is going to win on all three measures of potential victory in this state. On the most important measure, which is pledge delegates, which is separate and apart from the three counts that we're talking about, they're going to tie.

And so they're both now tied in the delicate count you need, but it turns out that maybe Bernie Sanders won the state. Yeah. I mean, look, this is maybe it's a small thing, but this is what I was saying last time we recorded. Like,

I just think it would have been so much better for Pete to sort of declare, you know, we don't have all the results yet, but we know that we did way better than expected. And we, you know, we're in the lead or we're close to the lead or something a little more hedged probably would have been better, especially if it turns out that Bernie wins on all three counts, which like you said,

we don't know yet, though we do know probably in the vote count, it's almost certain that Bernie wins. But yeah, I think it does get you and will get him if it turns out Bernie wins, probably a bunch of criticism for declaring it a little too early. I think it's probably going to be inconsequential in all ways, because even if Sanders comes out a little bit ahead, I don't know that any real voter is going to be inconsequential in all ways because even if Sanders comes out a little bit ahead, I don't know that any real voter is going to care whether Pete did that or not. And well,

like you said, they split the delegates even at the end of the day anyway. So all of this clusterfuck was so that the two of them could get the same number of pledge delegates to the convention. Yeah. So I, I think like, I think this is going to be a bone of contention for the other campaigns.

And I think that's something Pete is going to have to answer for in some way, shape, or form. But I'm just not sure it's going to really matter that much in the end. I think Pete and Bernie are the big winners of the Iowa caucus. Both of them probably suffered the most from the clusterfuck that was the counting, because they didn't get their full moment in full prime time with millions of people watching to declare their victory, co-victory, strong support. But they both were far and away the leaders. And we're already seeing some movement for both of them in the New Hampshire polls and national polls after that. So whether he ends up first or second, clearly Pete had, like you said, a very strong performance in Iowa. What do we know about why he did well?

He definitely had a much stronger organization in the state than I think people realize. I don't think there are any questions about whether it was good. that he lost alignment one, lost alignment two, and either came very close on state delegate equivalents or one state delegate equivalents means he had a widespread and deep organization that was helping him in some of these smaller areas where you get a disproportionate amount of delegates for winning those caucuses with smaller groups of people. So that's the positive sign. It also shows that he has real appeal. Here is both the negative and the positive of it. The short-term challenge for him is he clearly benefited mightily from Biden being much weaker than anyone imagined. There was an assumption

that Biden was going to reach viability in a whole bunch of places. By the way, it was an assumption because his campaign manager said that, said, we believe he's going to be viable in like 90, 95% of precincts, which is very, very far from the truth. And because he was not, Pete benefited from Biden not being viable and Klobuchar who was viable in more places

than people thought, but not everywhere. He actually benefited mightily and Klobuchar, who was viable in more places than people thought, but not everywhere. He actually benefited mightily from Klobuchar surging from 3% to 12% or whatever. So there were more Klobuchar supporters who were able to come to him. The challenge for him in the short term is Biden and Klobuchar are still on the ballot in New Hampshire. And so he's not going to get their votes if they don't do well. The good news for him is it's an indication that he has the ability to consolidate those voters going forward if either of them were to fall off or drop out. And so he's got a real claim to being the alternative to Bernie. And some forecasters and election folks have already done some initial analysis of the actual results by precinct and turnout and all that. It seems that Pete was strong in the suburbs, but also had a decent showing in both urban and rural areas. white voters, strong with Hillary Clinton voters, strong with women, middle-aged voters,

second to Bernie among young voters, and second to Bernie among non-white voters, which was interesting, even though there aren't many in Iowa. Nate Cohn also pointed out that turnout, in his analysis of the precincts that are in, turnout tended to increase more in Buttigieg precincts, which were well educated suburban precincts. And we should say that that sort of matches with what we saw in 2018 in the midterms all over the country is that where there was a turnout surge for Democrats, it was not necessarily in more working class sort of Obama Trump districts. It was in the suburbs in well educated college educated districts around the country. We talk about this in the wilderness as well. And so that's something to note going forward and what kind of coalition you put together.

Of course, again, you know, one of the big challenges for Pete going forward is when you move to a place like Nevada with a heavy Latino population, when you then move to a place like South Carolina with obviously a very heavy black population, you know, Pete has not shown in the polls yet that he can sort of attract much support from people of color though you know i guess uh in the initial estimates 15 to bernie's 40 something percent in iowa you know i guess it's a start but it certainly seems like he has to build on that and build with uh young people as well yeah for sure let's talk about bernie uh who will almost certainly win the most votes um and is leading in the polls in new hampshire right now what did you see is the strength for bern leading in the polls in New Hampshire right now.

What did you see as the strengths for Bernie in the results in Iowa? And what do you think his challenges are going forward? Well, his strengths certainly were that he got the most votes. The most caucus girls came out for him. And I was very impressed by the strategy his campaign brought to organizing. If he wins a state delegate equivalency, he's ultimately going to do it because they very cleverly organized pockets of voters in the satellite caucuses. And I remember getting a call from a Wall Street Journal reporter a couple weeks out from the caucus asking me about... They had just talked to the Sanders campaign about their strategy. And she was telling me that their campaign had spent a special amount of effort organizing these different pockets of

voters who live close to each other and therefore have a disproportionate impact in certain precincts. You saw this in one of the satellite caucuses. Well, I think it was the first satellite caucus in Iowa that was near a, I think it was a meatpacking plant where people were going to have to work at night. And there were only 15 people showed up. 13 of them were people of Ethiopian descent who were working in that plant. And Bernie got, I think, 13 of the 15 caucus goers. And that's worth delegates. And you heard the same things where the Spanish language caucus, Bernie's campaign crushed. In other parts where there were pockets like that, Bernie did very well. So that's a sign of a very well-organized campaign. sign of a very well-organized campaign. The hard part for Sanders in this, and I should admit for both Bernie and Pete, we are looking for dark linings and very silver clouds. They both did incredibly well in Iowa. Pete beat all expectations. Bernie went in with expectations to win and certainly got the most caucus scores. So they both should feel incredible at how they did.

The hard part for Sanders is his argument, and especially if you listen to his campaign, you listen to his campaign manager on David Plouffe's podcast, they talked about the need for high turnout, how their campaign was banking on high turnout. And their formula for success was getting new caucus goers there, people who only Sanders could attract the politics. And on that measure, they did not succeed. As of right now, with 97% of precincts reporting, there are a total of 172,000 caucus goers, which is almost exactly the same as it was in 2016, which compares very poorly to 2008, very poorly to 2008, which was 240,000 caucus goers. And so that is a potential blow to Sanders's electability argument going forward, because that's his claim. I can bring people into the political process that others cannot. He did not succeed doing that in Iowa. I will say

with one caveat in his defense here is he probably brought a lot of those people into the process last time. Right. I think it's important to note that relative to the other candidates in the primary, Bernie led on first-time caucus goers and led on young caucus goers. And in many instances, first-time caucus goers were young. And so in comparison to the other Democratic candidates, he did great. But part of Bernie's challenge in this race is going to be if he ends up not being as strong with some more moderate, suburban, formerly Republican voters that, you know, we do need that we won in 2018. And one of the reasons why we won the House in 2018 he will need to make up for those voters by expanding the electorate by adding more young people to the democratic coalition by adding more

voters in general to the democratic coalition um in order to make up for some more moderate people who might not go for him and i should say by the way moderates are different from independents which he does win yeah but independents are sometimes ideologically all over the place. Anyway, so he might have to make up for some of these voters. And he so far has not shown with his coalition that he can do that yet. He did not show that in Iowa. I am very interested to see what happens in a primary electorate where everyone votes as opposed to these fucking crazy caucuses in New Hampshire and South Carolina and places like that. But you're right. I think that's a big challenge. You noted this at the beginning of your answer.

It has been said many times that Iowa is not a diverse state, but to the extent that there are communities of color in Iowa, which there are, Bernie did much, much better than any other campaign in organizing and turning out communities of color, which I also think is not just a strength for him, but also a comment on Biden, who up until now and in the polls has shown such strength with black voters, at least. So let's talk about Elizabeth Warren, who came in a solid third. She was a few points ahead of Biden, but several points behind Sanders and Buttigieg. What does Warren need to do in New Hampshire? What does her path forward look like? Look, she is in a tough position because the story is rapidly becoming Sanders versus Buttigieg, with Biden looming in South Carolina and Bloomberg looming after that.

And she has to be in that story. Because when you fall out of the post-Iowa conversation, you lose certainly campaign donations, but also you may lose some of your voters who start consolidating towards the candidates where they feel like they can have the greatest impact on the nomination. Now, the good news for her in that is that she has very passionate supporters. So she may be less vulnerable to that than some other candidates. But I think this debate on Friday night is huge for her. She has to change the trajectory whereby I think this debate on Friday night is huge for her. She has to change

the trajectory whereby I think she is coming in second in New Hampshire. And that's going to be challenging, but she's certainly got to beat Biden. And if she can beat Buttigieg in New Hampshire and it can be Sanders-Warren, then she's got an argument to be the alternative to Sanders, who I still think is the head and shoulders favorite to be the nominee right now. Sanders, you said? Yeah, Sanders is. And so we're sort of competing to see who can be the alternative to Sanders in New Hampshire, I think is, I don't want to say it's Warren's last chance, but it's her best chance to put herself in that position. And if she does poorly there,

it's hard to explain because the largest media market in New Hampshire is Boston, her home state. herself as this unity candidate, that if there's a fight between sort of the Biden and Bernie wings of the party, she can sort of draw voters from both sides, that she can bring in Hillary Clinton voters and Bernie Sanders voters together. The challenge is if that's your message, then you're not going to really be drawing many contrasts with yourself and the other candidates on stage, which is often how you get back into the story is to mix it up a little bit. Like what would you be telling her ahead of New Hampshire? What's her best bet on how to stand out in that debate?

I think this is really hard. And I wish, there's not an obvious answer, right? Like all these people, she has a very smart campaign. And if there was an obvious answer, you would see it. I, at the time, agreed with that unity message. I thought it could be, it is her, agreed with that unity message. I thought it could be... It is, I think, her best electability message, which is, I'm the candidate who can, as you said, get Sanders supporters and Clinton supporters in because we need a united party. Now, that message,

for whatever reason, did not propel her in Iowa. Now, it came late. It came very late. And there is, I guess, a question would be, is that message to inside every process oriented? Is that not a thing that most voters think about? Certainly, some like the Iowa caucus goers, there was a thought to me because these are very intensely politically engaged people who would go stand in a gym, ballroom, whatever, for three hours on a Monday night to caucus. When you get to New Hampshire, that may be less viable. I think it has to be... There's also a very hard message, but I think your best argument is I am electable Sanders. Basically, you can have everything you like about Bernie Sanders and everything you like about people to judge in one person. Yeah. You can imagine at least one or two candidates in New Hampshire going after Bernie a little bit more than

anyone has in previous debates, probably on that notion on electability. We think that, but maybe Biden will, but we've thought that in every debate for two months and no one has done it. And it's very reminiscent of how about 2016, the Republicans, which is to my point, everyone wants to be the alternative to Bernie. So it's like Warren, if she wants to be alternative to Bernie, has to take out Pete and Biden. Right. And if Biden wants to be alternative to Bernie, he's got to take out Pete and Warren. And by the time everyone gets to the place where they get to take on Bernie, he has a head of steam and is headed towards the nomination. Right. No, I agree.

All right. Let's talk about Joe Biden, who finished a distant fourth place and then said on Wednesday, quote, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. We took a gut punch in Iowa. He then hit Sanders for being a socialist instead of Buttigieg that it's a risk to, quote, nominate someone who's never held an office higher than a mayor of a town of 100000 people in Indiana. He also asked what Pete didn't like about the Obama administration, the Obama-Biden administration, since Pete has criticized Biden's record in the past. How weak was Biden's performance in Iowa? And what do you think of his strategy now? Can he afford a second or third place finish in New Hampshire? What do you think?

Can he afford a second or third place finish in New Hampshire? What do you think? I mean, his performance was disastrous in Iowa. He's the former vice president of the United States with 100% name ID, who is now run in Iowa three times, and he failed to reach viability in large portions of the state. Yeah. And it would be one thing if his campaign knew that was going to happen, right? Because this is demographically a terrible state for Biden. Everyone has done that from the very beginning, but I think they actually had the wrong information. And that's really scary. That is a campaign failure. That's a data failure. That's an organizational failure. And even though there have been, quote unquote, heads rolling from his Iowa team, which I think

is probably, obviously, it was a poor performance, but I don't think that's an Iowa-specific problem. Anyone could have looked at this. We have talked about it and said this was a very tough state for him, and he had very limited resources. And he spent a lot of that money, although not as much as some of the other candidates, but on a percentage basis of his overall money, a lot of money on a state where he came in a distant fourth. And that's very problematic. Now, as long as he maintains huge support among African American voters, he is still in a very strong position to have a shutout the nomination. The question we'll see over time is if he continues to struggle in the next two contests, whether that is still true in South Carolina next month. The risk for Biden was always that if he was going to base his entire rationale on electability,

and that that electability argument was purely based on what the polls showed of who has the best chance of defeating Trump, which in Biden's defense, most of the polls to this day still show when you do general election matchups, Biden does best against Trump, although Sanders is close behind him. The risk of basing your entire argument on that and most of your candidacy is that when the first votes start coming in or when you have the first caucus, if you don't perform well, your electability argument, which was the central argument of your campaign, is destroyed or at least takes a big hit. And so, you know, my question is, as he goes to New Hampshire, you know, he's sort of he also hit Pete for not being able to get much support among communities of color. And, you know, he's he's going after Bernie. I'm just wondering if electability based

on polls, and I'm the best one to take on Trump, is still a message that's going to resonate after people just saw him finish so poorly in Iowa, or he has to rely on some other message? I mean, I think we don't know. We really will have to see. The Iowa thing was such a mess that the truth is, as we were saying, Bernie and Pete suffered the most from the Iowa Democratic Party's rank and competence. Biden probably benefited the most because there was that one hour where we were driving back from Ankeny after we visit our caucus site. And Twitter and cable were just a disaster for Biden. What a disaster. I mean, overreaction, for sure. But was like, he's coming in fourth. Should he drop out? What does this mean? And the narrative of the night

would have been Bernie and Pete did great, and Biden did miserably. And that has been sort of confused and moved on. And so he has not suffered from that as much as he might. And I think that voters around the country probably have not consumed that in the way they would had it been a barely functional caucus system, which it was not. Yeah. And look, and I think, you know, we all know New Hampshire likes a comeback. New Hampshire likes to sometimes do the opposite of what Iowa does. If I were Biden, I would, you know, there was a town hall, there was a series of town halls in CNN last night. You know, he gave one answer about how he overcame stuttering again. And it sort of ends with this call to, you know, he says, we just have to reach out a little more for people. We don't do it enough. We have to heal this country.

It was a very powerful answer. He had people in the audience crying. He's, you know, I think we've talked about this before, but there is the, you know, Joe Biden, the happy warrior who really can connect with people on an emotional level that if he brings that Joe Biden to New Hampshire and is very sharp and is sharper in this debate, then, you know, I think that is his sort of one last hope here, because I do think we've seen this with campaigns, you know, for a very long time, many different kinds of campaigns that when you plan on, OK, we're going to lose the first state or we're going to lose the first couple of states. But don't worry, we have the strong state down the road where we're going to come back.

In Biden's case, that's South Carolina. It sounds good in theory when you plan it. But dealing with a media narrative after you've just lost is is really tough. It's tougher than you think it's going to be when you start putting these plans together on the campaign. And it's tough enough that he had to deal with one after Iowa, which, as you said, was obscured by the clusterfuck in Iowa. But if he has to deal with another one in New Hampshire and potentially another one after Nevada, then I think he's in real, real trouble. If the Biden campaign asked for my advice, what I would say is you have to take your foot off the brake. They have been playing not to lose from the very beginning. They have limited access to Biden. They have tried to run essentially a Rose Garden or front runner campaign.

They are not the front runner right now. Bernie Sanders is the front runner. And Biden has a set of challenges. So this is not a pitch from the DuPont of America, although he is welcome. But he should be out there all the time doing interviews, talking to people, doing long town halls, holding press conferences. And there was 100% risk in that because he has made gaffes in his life and on this campaign trail. But it is clear that what he is currently doing is not working. So you have to try something else.

And a scrappy underdog Biden is, I think, a more appealing, potentially more successful candidate than the cloistered front runner candidate that we saw throughout Iowa. That's right. I think that I agree with that. Dan, before we move on to Trump, do you have any other thoughts on what seems like it could be the very last Iowa caucus? Most likely, I like it could be the very last Iowa caucus? Most likely, I think now to be the very last Iowa caucus. As we were about to start recording this, Tom Perez sent out a tweet. Enough is enough.

In light of the problems that have emerged in the implementation of the delegate selection plan and in order to assure public confidence in the results, I am calling on the Iowa Democratic Party to immediately begin a re-canvas. Jesus. Yeah, we may never get results from this. Look, this is an absolute clusterfuck from top to bottom. And it's deeply concerning that the Iowa Democratic Party is so messed up because we need to win a Senate seat there. We have to defend congressional seats there. There are opportunities to pick up state legislative seats there. And everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong. And now the people who made the app deserve blame, but also the fact that there was no backup plan for a malfunctioning app. Every election day since the invention of the internet, some portion of the election day technology has not worked. Some volunteers not forget how to use it. There have been lack of Wi-Fi. There have been bugs. And every good campaign has a plan. And we know you don't need an app to do this because

in 2016, 2008, they phoned the results in. So the fact that there was not capacity to do that while depending on an app that required you to bypass the security settings to put it on is insane. And the supporters of Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg have every right to be furious about this. I think it's important to recognize that they should be furious at the incompetence, not some sort of grand conspiracy to screw either of their candidates. conspiracy to screw either of their candidates. But people should be very mad. And the people in Iowa, from the organizers to the volunteers to the caucus girls who stood in line to the candidates should be furious. And I think that this is I thought this was going to be the last Iowa caucus no matter what. I think this is without a doubt cinches it that the next Democratic primary process, which will hopefully start in 2028 uh will not start in iowa yeah i mean look the app

was a failure the iowa democratic party's handling of the caucus was a fucking epic disaster you know it's just like lack of training lack of communication the failure to set up the phone lines the failure to listen this was reported the other day to the DNC's cybersecurity chief who reportedly urged them not to use the shadow app. I mean, I don't I don't know how Troy Price remains the chair of the Iowa Democratic Party to this day. I mean, and like you said, when you fuck things up this badly, people aren't going to trust you and they're going to get suspicious and it's going to breed conspiracy theories. And I agree that that doesn't mean that those conspiracy theories are correct, or that you should spread them around at all. And in fact, I think, like you said, there clearly couldn't have been a grand plan to rig this thing, because it didn't really go well

for anyone. And as we've said many times, the two people that were most hurt by all this were Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg, because neither of them got the coverage about, you know, basically two people getting the most delegates out of the state than they would have if they hadn't been this fucking clusterfuck. So it is it's just it's just a mess. It's just a mess. And, you know, it's good to see that Perez tweeted that out. I'm sure he's he's he's quite frustrated himself. You know, the tough part that a lot of people don't know is that these state parties, they have most of the power, not the DNC, right? We have a decentralized system, and some state parties are really well run and very good, and some are not. And clearly, this was a pretty massive failure on behalf of the IDP.

And the deep concern as you head into election 2020 is the Iowa party is, because of the caucus, one of the absolute best funded and was thought to be one of the best organized. And so it is concerning in Iowa and also should cause folks around the country to double down and see what they can do to help and strengthen state parties, not just in the battleground states, but all across the country. Let's move on to the grand finale of Donald Trump's impeachment trial, in which there was one last surprise. While every single Democrat voted to convict the president, including those who had at least been considering acquittal, like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema and vulnerable Senate Democrats like Doug Jones, every single Republican voted to acquit except one, Senator Mitt Romney of Utah. Let's play a clip of his very powerful speech. The grave question the Constitution tasks Senators to answer is whether the President committed an act so extreme and egregious that it rises to the level of a high crime and misdemeanor.

Yes, he did. The President asked a foreign government to investigate his political rival. The President withheld vital military funds from that government to press it to do so. The president delayed funds for an American ally at war with Russian invaders. The president's purpose was personal and political. Accordingly, the president is guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust. What he did was not perfect. No, it was a flagrant assault on our electoral rights, our national security, and our fundamental values. Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one's oath of office

that I can imagine. An appalling abuse of public trust and assault on our electoral rights. Pierre Delecto, welcome to the resistance. I want to talk at all about Romney, but before we do, Dan, why do you think those three Democrats voted to convict, especially Doug Jones, who's in the reddest state of any Democrat running and up in 2020. Because Trump is a criminal who committed the highest and most serious abuse of power in the history of the United States, exceeding even what Nixon did in Watergate. I mean, I believe that. We should give people credit from Romney to Joe Manchin to Doug Jones to Kyrsten Sinema or anyone else who we thought might not vote who did the right thing. And so it's a credit to them. It's a credit to the case that Adam Schiff and the House managers put on.

I also think if you want to look at the politics of it, I think they also made the right political move. And this is obviously most relevant to Doug Jones because he's the most endangered Democrat in the Senate, which is we live in an incredibly polarized time. And if Doug Jones voted to acquit Trump, he would deflate Democratic turnout in a state where he needs sky-high African-American turnout to win. And the Republicans would just attack him the same way. There wouldn't be one fewer dollar spent by the Koch brothers or Trump-affiliated organizations in the NRA. Their job is to take him out because he's a Democrat. And so I think doing the right thing that also happens to be the thing that your voters, your base wants you to do is better politics than looking like a weasel. Looking

like a weasel is never good politics. And it's taken a lot of Democrats in red states a long time to realize that. And I'm very excited to see that Doug Jones did the right thing and did it proudly. Yeah, I was just, I was so proud of Doug Jones. And you could sort of see this coming in some of the questions he's asked and some of his public statements leading up to this. But, you know, and this isn't just on impeachment. This is on a number of issues. Doug Jones, I don't know if everyone has the full really understands how difficult a position Doug Jones is in, how, you know, close it was that he won the last election and how difficult it's going to be to win reelection as a Democrat in Alabama of all states in 2020. And I think he has said to himself, I mean, you had nailed all the politics of it, but I also think he has said to himself,

you know, I have a couple of years here and my first obligation is to do what I believe is right on every single issue. And I think he's done that. And I think that's if we had more Doug Jones is in politics, I think we'd be a lot better off. And so, you know, if you if you want to contribute to his reelection campaign, I would urge everyone to do that because he's going to have a tough race. Also, same thing. You know, Joe Manchin has pissed us off in the past. He did the right thing. Kyrsten Sinema has been very moderate, more moderate than I think a lot of people thought on a whole bunch of issues. She did the right thing. And so I'm really proud of every single Democrat in our party from, you know, the Joe Manchins to the Adam Schiff's to everyone else who participated in this process and did the right thing. I really am proud of the party. Let's talk about Mitt Romney.

Do you think he took this vote, Dan, just to prove you wrong about him? I will say that there's a section in my book which is going to maybe not have aged well now that he has done this. But the good news is there's two weeks before it comes out. And so by the time the book comes out, I'm sure we'll have done something that once again validates my view of

him. Look, all credit to Mitt Romney. He did the right thing. It is not easy to stand alone in your party. And we should give him credit for it. He absolutely did it. And it's significant because he became the first senator in American history to vote for removal of a president of their own party. And that's a big deal. When a Republican does something that we like, where, you know, everyone online is like, oh, well, you can't lionize him suddenly. Or everyone else is like, oh, well, you never liked him in the past. Why do you like him now? And all this bullshit. Look, people are fucking complicated and nuanced and have different kinds of motivations. And, like, I wouldn't vote for Mitt Romney today, right, still.

Like, I don't agree with him on a whole bunch of positions. I'm really glad we beat him in 2012 right like he's gonna do a number of things that really piss us off in the future i get that but someone can do a whole bunch of bad things have a whole bunch of bad positions and still do a really good courageous thing and that's what he did and i wouldn't underestimate the courage of what he did either like i try to put you know, in this bizarro world where we have this Democratic president who is delivering on all these really important things that we care about, whether it's health care or raising wages or we like their position on immigration or anything else. And yet they turn out to be some kind of a criminal and start breaking

laws and trampling institutions, even as they start delivering on liberal policy. And imagine every single person in the party saying, no, we're still with this president. And you're the lone person that says, no, I'm going to convict and remove that president from office. That's I would like to believe that I would do that. But that's a hard thing. It's a really hard thing. And I think, you know, Romney deserves a lot of credit for it. It also was, by the way, like going through this whole impeachment thing, Donald Trump can make you crazy and the right wing media machine can make you think you're crazy. Right. Like at some point you're like, I know he broke the law here. I know he's a criminal.

I know that Adam Schiff's case is right. But like, am I crazy that there's no other Republicans in the country that can stand up and say that this is wrong? And Mitt Romney going out there and just saying so calmly that, of course, this is an appalling abuse of power. Of course, this is an assault on our electoral rights. Of course, this person deserves to be removed from office. And hearing that from the man who was the leader of the Republican Party and their nominee in 2012, say this about the current Republican president, it was like a breath of fresh air and makes you realize like, oh, yeah, we're not fucking crazy and just partisan hacks. Like, we're right right about this we're absolutely right about this and it's susan collins and lisa murkowski and the rest of them who are political cowards in

this situation um what what do you think is the political significance of romney's decision you know i imagine the biggest effect it has is not on trump but collins cory gardner martha mcsally tom tillis joni ernst, who decided to go the other way and are up in 2020 in some pretty tough states. Look, most of the people you just mentioned are going to need the votes of people who pulled the lever for Mitt Romney in 2012 and pulled it for Hillary Clinton in 2016 to win. And the fact that Mitt Romney just validated the concerns of the Democrats and made them look like Trump flunkies is bad for them. Now, it'll be up to the Democratic Party, Democratic super PACs, and the candidates running

in those races to weaponize this information, but it does really help. I think it also helps the vulnerable House Democrats who were elected in very purple or red districts, because now they can say that their concerns were validated by the 2012 Republican nominee. And so I think that is helpful in all ways. It's also going to make Trump insane for the next nine months to 100 years. Which it already has. He's been tweeting about Mitt Romney. Don Jr. is calling on him to be excommunicated from the party. It has clearly triggered all the Republicans in all the ways that we could have predicted. No, look, I think it is up to the voters that Susan Collins needs to win.

And all these other people are sort of the more college educated, moderate voters who don't really like Trump, but are still sort of Republican in nature, or at least pretty moderate, you know, and these are the voters that I talked to in Arizona in the wilderness. And one of their big problems, these are Romney Clinton voters that I talked to is, and they kept saying this to me, like, I just can't believe that there are no Republicans that will stand up to this guy. You know, John McCain was our senator. He used to do it once in a while. We like Kyrsten Sinema. We're pretty moderate. How are there no Republicans in the party that stand up to this guy? And you start running ads in Arizona about Martha McSally, who's supposed to be more moderate and not standing up to Donald Trump while Mitt Romney, 2012 nominee, does. And you put that ad in Maine and you put that out about Susan Collins and you

keep running Mitt Romney's words in some of these ads, it's going to target those specific voters, and it could help. And like you said, at the very least, the idea that impeachment is going to hurt some of these vulnerable Democrats becomes much less likely now that you have Mitt Romney on board. So that's impeachment. One update here on impeachment. We started recording this podcast at about 9.15 Pacific time this morning because we watched the first 10 to 15 minutes of Trump's insane victory celebration. And if I read my text correctly at 10.20, it seems to still be going on. And according to Tommy, he's reading the Lisa Page, Peter Strzok text out loud to the members of Congress. So it seems like he's taking the sort of post-State of the Union victory lap that most presidents

take. It's so funny looking at my phone, Tom. He's just like, this is so crazy. He's still going. What a fucking nutcase. Okay. All right. Finally, trump gave his third and hopefully last state of the union address on tuesday night it was an hour and 15 minute speech that was light on facts and heavy on pizzazz uh trump gave out trump gave out a scholarship he reunited a deployed soldier with his wife he awarded rush limbaugh the presidential medal of Freedom and told people that this is the greatest economy ever in the history of the world. Let's play a clip. We are advancing with unbridled optimism and lifting our citizens of every race, color, religion and creed very, very high.

Since my election, we have created 7 million new jobs, 5 million more than government experts projected during the previous administration. The unemployment rate is the lowest in over half a century. And very incredibly, the average unemployment rate under my administration is lower than of our country. If we hadn't reversed the failed economic policies of the previous administration, the world would not now be witnessing this great economic success. So you and I were both on a flight home from Iowa and missed the speech, but I finally read it last night, and I will say that it worried me in this way. If he manages to shrink that down to a stump speech and deliver the message consistently, which, you know, with him is a gigantic if. I think it could be very effective in the 2020 campaign at doing the two

things he needs to do. One, keep his base excited and to give permission to the voters who don't like him personally to vote for him because they think he's taking the economy in the right direction. What did you think? What did you watch instead? Or did you just look at Twitter the whole time? Well, we had no televisions on our, no screens on our flight. And so I, yes, I sat there and scrolled through Twitter and followed the State of the Union that way. And that was it. That was my life on the flight home from Des Moines. I watched The Den of Thieves, which is a very rewatchable heat ripoff that was quite enjoyable and much better than this. And also, like Trump, very crime heavy. right. And when you suggest that maybe giving a speech about the economy is more persuasive to all the voters you need than reading Lisa Page's text out loud, which is what he's doing today. Yeah, right. Exactly. But yeah, I have since watched it and I have since read it and it should scare the living

shit out of Democrats because right now, as we sit here in the beginning of February 2020, Trump is winning the economic messaging battle and the person who wins the economic messaging battle will be the next president of the United States. And so we have a lot of work to do to get a message delivered and persuade people about why Trump is wrong. Yeah, I mean, look, there was a number of things he did in that speech. You know, he is clearly in his campaign has been telling reporters this. They're trying to reach out to black voters, which, you know, look, we all know that he's not going to have much success with that. But some of it might not even be getting black voters to support Trump this time, but sort of showing some other voters that, look, he's trying. You know, this was the whole purpose of the Super Bowl ad around criminal justice reform. Trump was obviously populist on economics, as he often is, as he's

talking about the economy and he's talking about sort of the trade deals and manufacturing and all that. He made vague promises on health care that were all bullshit, but he was saying the right things. Right. Even though he's lying, which is always a danger because no one fucking fact checks this guy anymore or people don't see the fact checks. He promised to, you know, protect Medicare and Social Security, which, of course, as we know, he's got a plan to cut Medicare and Social Security in the second term. But he's going to lie about that. We saw a preview of the socialism attack that he's going to level in the general election, no matter who the Democratic candidate is, no matter who the

Democratic nominee is. He's talking about how socialism, you know, he talked about Venezuela, how socialism destroys nations. You know, socialism will destroy your health care. Look, it was all there, the makings of a reelection message for him that cobbled together just the right coalition that he needs to eke out another victory. And I don't know, do you have thoughts on what the best message is for Democrats in response to this kind of message? I can tell you what I think the best message is not, which is what so many Democrats did, ourselves included, did on Tuesday night, which is he's just taking credit for Obama's economy. Right.

That is not a good message. We went through this ourselves in the Obama first term because in the first year or so when the economy was really bad and we would ask people in polls who they blamed for the state of the bad economy, it was overwhelmingly George W. Bush and not Obama. Wall Street, George W. Bush, not Obama, because people understood he had just gotten there. But by the time we were running for reelection, that number had shifted. And so we are not going – even though Trump is 100% doing the Trump thing of taking the work of someone else and sticking his name on it, we're not going to convince people this was Barack Obama's economy. this was Barack Obama's economy, in part because everyone, ourselves included, were so alarmist about what Trump's impact would be on the economy by putting – it actually is a great credit to Obama's economy that we can put an incompetent lunatic in charge of it, and it is still fine.

So kudos, Barack Obama. I think instead we have to reframe this about what the measure of success of the economy is. And it is not the stock market. It is not corporate profits. It is the economic security of individual people. And I've said this before, but the message that I think a Democrat needs to adopt, and not just a Democrat, every Democrat, is that under Trump, corporations have never made more money and they never paid less in taxes. But average everyday Americans, their wages have barely budged while the costs of healthcare, college, retirement, homes have gone way up. And under Trump, you pay more for your Amazon Prime subscription than Amazon pays in federal

taxes. If that's the kind of economy you want, reelect Trump. If you want one where middle class families have a chance to succeed and where healthcare is more affordable and college is more affordable, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, then elect a Democrat. So I agree with all that. Here's the challenge as I see it, and I think it was illustrated very well on Tuesday night. So Gretchen Whitmer, very well on Tuesday night. So Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic governor of Michigan, delivered the State of the Union response. You may not know this because it received almost zero coverage in all the aftermath of the State of the Union in her speech, which was a very good speech

and basically had a message that was very much in line with what we've talked about. You know, she said, when the president says the economy is strong, my question is strong for whom? She said, listen to what people say, but watch what they do. She's basically trying to make the case that, yeah, he said a lot, but look at his record. He has been an effective president. You know, so she sort of went through basically examples of what happens when voters allow Democrats to govern by highlighting a lot of the different Democratic governors around the country and some of the great things they're doing, whether it's on infrastructure or minimum wage or health care, expanding health care. And so, you know, her speech was right on target. The tough part is and, you know, Matt Iglesias pointed this out in a great piece at Vox after the speech.

Gretchen Whitmer had a great message and is the message that we probably want. It is very hard to get a sort of meat and potatoes economic message covered when you have things happen like Donald Trump put on the show he put on in the State of the Union. And then what's the biggest thing that gets covered from the Democratic response is Nancy Pelosi ripping up the speech. And look, I tweeted this right after she did it. I thought it was successful in one important regard, which is the conversation after the speech was all about Nancy Pelosi ripping up the speech and not about Donald Trump's economic message. And so in a way, she, in a very Trumpian way, almost in a good sense of the Trumpian way, she stole the spotlight away from Donald Trump. But you just know,

we've already seen it. We've seen it after Iowa. We've seen after the State of the Union that like what gets covered and what people sort of consume about politics and about the race is always the more, you know, Trump doing something offensive or, you know, whether it's Nancy Pelosi ripping up a speech or something else and the actual policy and the message never fucking gets through to people. Now, I know that you can solve a lot of that with paid advertising, but certainly not all of it. And I just wonder, like, you know, at some point we have to figure out how to be both

wonder, at some point we have to figure out how to be both on message and win the economic messaging war, but do so in a creative way that breaks through the noise of politics. And also, I think that means being incredibly disciplined as Democrats, not just our politicians, but all of us in the message that we deliver every single day. Yeah. this is, I mean, do not get me wrong. This is a incredibly complicated challenge. Just winning the economic argument is hard given that the measure of success that the media puts on the economy is the unemployment rate and the Dow Jones average, both of which are quite strong. And Trump, finding ways to get your message out in the Trumpian media environment is very, very hard. I think you're right. Some of this is paid advertising. Some of it is doing a jujitsu

on what Trump says and does. And we've talked about this before, but you have to call out Trump's game about what he's trying to distract you from and get your message out there. It's really going to be, it's like your plan is not going to get great coverage. But your critique of Trump and why you would better can if you take – instead of following Trump down the rabbit hole, you explain why Trump is trying to take you down the rabbit hole. But it's very hard. That's why we're going to need an incredibly adept candidate. We also are going to need a candidate in a campaign who inspires millions of people to carry that message forward themselves. Yes. On social media, in conversations as volunteers at the door, in conversations at work by the water cooler or on the lunch table. And right now, Trump has a massive platform advantage on the primary

conduits of online political conversation, Facebook and Twitter. The algorithms benefit him. His people have been more motivated to share and create content there. And Democrats are going to have to step up. And the thing we have to think about, and David Plouffe has made this point to us before, is in 2016, it was not hard to get Democrats to share negative content about Trump. We didn't do it enough, but people would do that. It was very hard to get people to share positive content about the nominee, about Clinton. And we're going to have to do both this time because we continually, we chase Trump down these rabbit holes. And the last two days are the perfect example where I am 100% for Nancy Pelosi ripping

up the speech. If Nancy Pelosi wanted to turn the speech into an origami crane and throw it into the audience, she could do that too. She has earned that right. But now we're in this massive civility debate about whether Nancy Pelosi did that or not. And that's not on Nancy Pelosi. No, it's predictable. And you just knew it was going to happen. Right. But we engage in it, right?

Like now we're mad about it. And then we are rightfully furious that Donald Trump is giving the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh and people are yelling about it. Convincing people that Trump did a bad thing by doing that is not going to win us one additional vote. So people should feel free to yell about it. It is offensive. Rush Limbaugh, despite his recent health news, has said horribly racist and misogynistic things. I mean, he has just been a horrendous person in the public arena. But we have to make sure that we are focusing our energy not just on that, but on the set of things that matter to our voters, because a big fight over

Rush Limbaugh actually helps Trump. It doesn't help us. We are playing his game. He is pulling us onto the issues that matter to his voters in pulling us onto the issues that matter to his voters in a way for the issues that matter to our voters. None of us have all the answers, but we have to really be thinking and working on how we get to tell the story of this campaign on our terms, not his. Yeah. And meanwhile, you can see the vulnerabilities that Trump has in that speech and where they know they have vulnerabilities. Right. At one point, he talks about prescription drugs. He says, you know, Chuck Grassley's got some bill.

Let's put it on the floor for a vote. I'll sign it. We know that's never going to happen because Mitch McConnell is never going to let it happen because the Republicans don't want to lower prescription drug prices. Trump knows intuitively he needs to do something about prescription drugs or at least look like pretend he's doing something on prescription drugs. So let's fucking hold him to it. Right. The Democrats have a great bill on prescription drugs. Democratic candidates should be doing things around prescription drugs. You talk to voters all around the country, all kinds of voters from all different backgrounds. They will all tell you that it is one of their chief concerns in their lives, no matter what the economy is doing,

that they can't fucking afford their medicine. We should be talking about that. Talking about that is a hell of a lot more valuable than yelling about a civility debate, about a ripped up speech or Rush Limbaugh or anything like that. It is going to require discipline. And part of that discipline is also making sure that we don't fucking rip each other to shreds through this nomination battle. And again, I will say that so far, the candidates and their immediate campaigns have been doing a good job about this. Post-Iowa, I have more concerns about watching everyone's fucking supporters online go after each other. And we will lose. We will lose if we tear each other apart. That is the fastest way for Trump to become president,

the fastest way if we start doing this. And so, you know, I just this was a week where the end of this week after watching that speech, after watching everything post Iowa, I'm just like we have to fucking get our shit together because this guy is going to be tough to beat. And he is beatable. He is fucking beatable. The votes are there. But it will not happen if we chase him down rabbit holes or tear each other apart on the way to November. And so we have to decide what is most important here. And what I believe is most important is getting this fucking guy out of office. And I think most everyone who's listening does too. So now we just need to work to make it happen. And I think most everyone who's listening does too. So now we just need to work to make it happen. You know, we're having, we've been having this year long debate about who's the best candidate, who's the most electable. And obviously no one knows the answer and voters are very split on it and sort of deeply

uncertain about the answers that they have come to. But I think one important thing to remember is that however you rank those candidates in your mind, the weakest of those candidates with a unified Democratic Party has a better chance of beating Trump than the strongest of those candidates with a divided Democratic Party. And so it is very important that we do not lose this election this spring by tearing each other apart in ways that cannot be put back together. And you're exactly right. The candidates have done, to date, an excellent job. And I think particular credit goes to

Bernie Sanders, who has, I think, perhaps been the most explicit about his support for the nominee, if it is not himself. Now, he's doing that in part because some of his surrogates have raised some real concerns, but the candidates are doing a good job and I hope that continues. Yeah. I mean, look, every single last one of these candidates needs part of the other candidates or at least most of the other candidates coalition in order to win this race. That is just the fucking math. You cannot win it with your own supporters. Every single one of these Democratic candidates has that challenge right now to expand beyond your base of supporters in order to unify. And when I say the Democratic Party, I don't mean the fucking official establishment Democratic Party. I mean the coalition of voters

that are needed to defeat Donald Trump. Most will be Democrats. Some will be independents. A few will be Republicans. Many will be new voters who belong to no party. But that coalition that has to, you know, you find that coalition in the Sanders campaign, in the Warren campaign, in the Biden campaign, in the Buttigieg campaign. They are scattered all to different candidates right now. We have to all come together in the end here or else Donald Trump will win a second term. And everyone just has to keep that in mind. All right. When we come back, we will have Dan's conversation with Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. We are now pleased to be joined by former mayor and Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. Welcome back to Pod Save America. Thanks. Good to be back with you.

I want to start with asking you where you and your campaign believe the race in Iowa stands. Senator Bernie Sanders declared victory earlier today. You declared essentially victory on Monday night. Do you believe you won Iowa? Well, we're still, of course, waiting as we speak for more information on the state delegate equivalents, but there is no question that Monday was a huge win for this campaign and for our vision. Just a year ago, we started with no national name recognition, no money, hadn't run for president before, wasn't personally wealthy. We just had this big idea and through the last year have been working to earn support for it. And the other thing we're so thrilled about is not just where

we came down on the top line, but the fact that this came by way of folks in different kinds of communities. We succeeded in Democratic counties, counties that flipped from President Obama to Trump. We were in rural areas, suburban areas, urban areas. And that's how we're showing, not just telling, our ability to bring together the majority that's going to be needed to defeat Donald Trump in the fall. the majority that's going to be needed to defeat Donald Trump in the fall. Do you have a reaction to DNC Chairman Tom Perez's request that the Iowa Democratic Party recanvass the results? Does that ultimately matter here? You know, I think we've come to the point now where we'll continue to look for the verified numbers in Iowa, but I'm also in New Hampshire, knowing that New Hampshire is a place that

famously thinks for itself, and they're not going to let Iowa or anybody else tell them what to do. And so we're not resting on our laurels, even though we are thrilled by what happened in Iowa for us. Even as that process plays out, our focus now has to be on the immediate future and the need to make sure that we earn strong, strong support up here too. It certainly feels like the campaign is heating up, at least in how the candidates are talking about each other. Vice President Biden came out swinging in New Hampshire yesterday, taking on both you and Senator Sanders, among others. I was interested by one thing that

Vice President Biden said. I want to get your reaction to it. The Vice President took something you said about the Vice President being part of a broken political system and an old way of doing things. And he suggested that was a critique of the Obama administration, considering that that's what he's been doing for the last eight years. What is your reaction to that? Was that your intention to wrap in Barack Obama into that broken politics? to wrap in Barack Obama into that broken politics? Of course not. I was a strong supporter of President Obama and the extraordinary work that the White House and administration did. And at the same time, I think the achievements of the Obama administration mattered because of how they met the moment. Now we are in this moment. And the question is, who is going to be the

president who can lead us in the face of challenges, some of which even a few years ago we weren't thinking about much from the kind of cybersecurity and election security threats that we're facing to global health security issues to the way that a gig economy and technological changes profoundly shifting what it's like to be an American worker. We need to be ready to look to the future now more than ever. And that's both true of how we're going to govern and how we're going to win. Because, you know, history has told us that when faced with a new challenge in order to earn the White House, you have to be looking to the future. That is always how Democrats have won and earned the White House. And it's the focus of our campaign, too. You know, obviously, all of much or at least much of what this campaign about has been about is sort of comes out of the question that is very rightfully on voters mind, which is who is the best person to beat Trump? And how do we actually get that done? And are you suggesting in this that

it is better to be an outsider to have your chance to be Trump? Is it better to like, is Vice President Biden and maybe some of the other candidates too tied to the system? And why I'm trying to get to what the specific weakness that you're highlighting there is. Consider this every single time in the last 50 years that the Democratic Party has won the White House, we've had a candidate who was new in national politics, who either did not have an office in Washington or hadn't for very long, and who was opening the door to a new generation of leadership. That is how we win every time. And in a moment like this with so much on the line, I think the risk we can't afford to take is to believe that we can go up against someone like Donald Trump, who presents just a

fundamentally new kind of political challenge, and succeed by falling back on the familiar. I know you're tired of answering this question, but you know, the time is coming close here. You know, throughout this campaign, there's been this narrative and discussion about how you could expand your appeal to communities of color. And I think throughout the campaign, you've said that once they get to know you, you believe you have a good chance of doing better. You know, time is getting close. We are two weeks away from the Nevada caucuses, you know, less than a month away from South Carolina. What specifically is your campaign going to do to build on your success in Iowa to expand your appeal? Well, right now, we're getting a whole new look, especially from voters around the country,

but especially voters of color who have shared with me the whole time that so many folks' top priority is to make sure that we beat Donald Trump. I mean, if you think about it, nobody is feeling the pain of living under this president more than Americans of color. And so I think there is a very strong pragmatic focus in addition to what's in our plans, what's in our policies, and even how they feel about us personally. A lot of us just can't win. We have begun the process of proving that in Iowa, and that continues as we go through New Hampshire. And I think that gets us a whole new look. As that takes place, it's my responsibility to make sure that I'm communicating both the story of who I am and what we've done in our city, making sure people meet and see the African-American supporters and elected officials and Latino supporters that we have from our

community helping to tell our story and continuing to make clear the plans for what it is I believe we need to do as a country to create a more inclusive reality, to create greater economic empowerment, to establish justice in everything from health equity to policing. And we'll continue to be sharing that message all the way through up until the votes. But I think there is a whole new opportunity to get that message out to voters who may have looked favorably on things like the Douglas plan and what I've had to say on policy issues, but were also skeptical and had plenty of reasons to be skeptical about our ability to put together the team and organization to beat Donald Trump, at least

had reason to be skeptical until we showed what we were able to show in Iowa and plan to show right here in New Hampshire, too. You know, it's felt like in the party, we've been arguing about state delegate equivalents and Iowa Democratic Party rules and apps and all these other things the last few days. And then I think Tuesday night, we got a reminder of what looms ahead of us in November. And whoever the nominee is, whether it's you or someone else, is going to have to take on Donald Trump. And Donald Trump stood on that stage from the State of the Union and offered what was not particularly factual, but very powerful argument for staying the course due to a very strong economy. If you were the nominee, what is your plan to take on the economic argument with Trump and win it? Well, part of why I'm ready to challenge this

president on the economy is that I come from the exact kind of community that he's been targeting. I'm from a city that was an industrial community in the heart of the so-called Rust Belt that is full of people who are wondering when this Wall Street economy he's celebrating is actually going to get to us. I live in a middle-class neighborhood in the industrial Midwest and can speak to the experience of so many people who he is saying ought to be celebrating, but are finding that they can't get ahead, have to fight just to hold on to what they've got, because even when wages are growing to the extent that they are, and wage growth has been

remarkably slow, just as job growth, though the president won't admit it, is slower than it's been in the Obama administration. The sense of that is that even when wages do go up, they're not keeping pace with the cost of health and the cost of long-term care and the cost of saving for retirement, the cost of housing and education. And people know that. They're not going to be fooled on that,

especially when I'm up there standing right next to him as not a millionaire, but somebody who comes from the middle class and can speak directly to the hypocrisy of this president. The first time you were on Pod Save America was almost a year ago and very far from where you are now. I don't think you – I think you were pretty clearly probably at zero in the polls. And a lot of this seemed theoretical. But now, obviously, thanks to everything that's happened since then, and of course, your strong showing on Monday night, you're now one of the frontrunners or

one of the top contenders for the nomination. I'm wondering if you, and this may seem presumptuous, but I'm wondering if you've thought about the kind of person that you would be looking for in a vice president where you'd become the nominee. Well, we're not getting ahead of ourselves. But the thing to think about, first of all, is that this is the one decision you make as a candidate that's actually a presidential decision. Because if you win, the entire country lives with that choice that you made. And so the most important consideration is, is this somebody who could do a good job leading the country in the event that I were killed or unable to serve as president? Everything else takes a backseat to that. Now, I will say also that there are so many extraordinary leaders in our party who I think can beat that bar. And the other things I'm thinking about are balance, diversity,

different experiences, the ability to have a shared worldview, but perhaps a different perspective that can help make clear why it is that Americans from all walks of life stand to benefit from turning the page on this presidency and building a better future. And I'm looking forward to the process of not only in terms of a running-made choice in a future vice president, but if elected, building a cabinet that will truly reflect the American experience and the different voices of those who are impacted by the choices made in our country's government. Also, when you were on Pod Save America a year ago, we talked, it was right after you had come out in support of potentially changing the composition of the Supreme Court, you'd come out for the abolition of the filibuster. And a year later, I want to know whether you would still commit to,

were you become president, pushing Democrats in Congress to take on court reform and getting rid of the filibuster? Absolutely. Look, those and other problems in our democracy, from the need for a 21st century Voting Rights Act to gerrymandering to issues around the Electoral College itself. These issues don't always sizzle because they sound like they're just about process, but democracy is the issue of how we deal with all our other issues. And when we see the situations that we're in where the vast majority of Americans expect certain things, from action on gun violence to making health care available to everybody, and it still doesn't

happen. It shows you that our democracy has gotten to be so warped that it's no longer responsive to the people. The filibuster is part of that, and the politicization of the court, I think, is part of that, too. And so so that remains something that having led the field in opening up some of these topics for conversation will be a commitment for me throughout the campaign and throughout my presidency. Were you surprised by Mitt Romney's decision to vote to remove President Trump? Does that give you some hope that there might be opportunities of compromise with Republicans for you to be president? Or do you think he's an anomaly? I think it is striking. At least I got the sense that this is a very sincere decision that he made to follow his conscience rather than stay in lockstep with his party.

made to follow his conscience rather than stay in lockstep with his party. Now, I don't know whether that means much changes policy-wise, and it's on policies that I disagree with him almost all of the time. But it is important to have some measure of goodwill on the other side. And one of the reasons that I think we're in crisis is there is so little goodwill or good faith in the Senate GOP today. He represents perhaps an exception to that. But again, at the same time, you know, being able to stand up to your own party in the face of these kinds of abuses should be table stakes when it comes to integrity in the Senate. And I would have our expectations be too high that that represents any kind of moderation from his policy views.

I know you're very busy and you've got to get back out there on the campaign trail. But before you go, I wanted to ask you, put aside who came out with more state delegate equivalents or whatever in that count. But I just want to get your personal reaction to how it felt in Iowa. your personal reaction to how it felt in Iowa? Because I had the great privilege of being with President Obama when his faith in the people of Iowa was validated on that January 9, 2008. What was your personal reaction to someone, a gay American with your background, your unique set of credentials of presidency to be at least a top contender in Iowa, number one or two, depending on how you count it? Well, it's an extraordinary moment and one that shows me that when you put yourself forward and eye to eye have conversations with Americans,

with voters, sometimes one at a time and spend a year earning that trust, demonstrating not just what you believe in, but who you are, that if you have a compelling vision, then you have a shot. And I don't think anybody would have believed that we would have had any kind of easy path to this point, looking at where we were a year ago in terms of everything from organization, resources, money, and yes, even just my profile. from organization resources, money, and yes, even just my profile. And so it's an extraordinary validation of the fact that when you do have that kind of intimate campaigning, that really gives people a chance to kick the tires on your ideas, but also understand who you are and what makes you tick, that people will take you seriously. They will give you a chance and

extraordinary results can happen. Pete Buttigieg, thank you so much for joining us and good luck out there in New Hampshire. We hope to talk to you seriously. They will give you a chance, and extraordinary results can happen. Pete Buttigieg, thank you so much for joining us, and good luck out there in New Hampshire. We hope to talk to you soon. Thank you. Good to be back with you. Thanks to Pete Buttigieg for joining us today. We will be doing our group thread on Friday night for the New Hampshire debate, like we said. And then on Monday, we'll be back to our normal schedule.

Lovett, and that's Leo barking for a ball that he has been chasing around the entire recording. On Monday, Tommy and Lovett and I will be doing a post-debate recap episode. And then on Wednesday of next week, all four of us will be talking about the results from New Hampshire. Have a great weekend, everyone. Get some rest. I'm not booking my flight to LA for that until I make sure that the New Hampshire Secretary of State can count the votes.

We're not doing another pod without the results again. I think that's very wise, Dan. I think it's very wise. All right, I'll talk to you. Bye. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a product of Crooked Media, All right. I'll talk to you. Bye. Bye, everyone.