Pod Save America - "Secret poll results."

Episode Date: February 3, 2020

Republicans block witnesses, sealing up President Trump's impeachment trial in the Senate. The Des Moines Register cancels its highly anticipated Iowa poll the weekend before the caucus. Then, Jon, Jon, Tommy, and Dan talk about what they've seen and heard observing candidates on the ground in Iowa over the past few days.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. We are recording this in Des Moines, just hours away from the very first primary contest of the 2020 election, the Iowa caucuses. We've all been driving around the state for the last couple days trying to hit up as many candidate events as we can and talk to some caucus goers and volunteers. You're going to hear some of those conversations in a bit, and we'll talk about what the race looks like as we head into the final day. But first, we should talk about what appears to be the end of Donald Trump's impeachment trial. On Friday, Senate Republicans voted to make this the only

impeachment trial in history where the public was not allowed to hear from new witnesses or consider new evidence. The vote failed 51 to 49 with Mitt Romney and Susan Collins as the only two Republicans who voted with the Democrats. A number of Republicans, including Lamar Alexander, Marco Rubio, and Rob Portman, basically said that even if the president

was guilty of bribing a foreign government to investigate his political opponent, he shouldn't be held accountable for it. And the rest of them just said he didn't do anything wrong. So the final vote to acquit Trump will be held on wednesday right after he delivers the state of the union on tuesday night so uh all's well that ends well guys

what what are your thoughts on the entire republican party officially endorsing uh soliciting foreign interference in our elections i don't think it's good yeah not great yeah not great all right listen we should just let you all know all right we've been in des moines for three days and i gotta say we've been going surprisingly hard you just made it sound like spring break going surprisingly hard to events and council bluffs where we watched pete do q's and a's sure it's been hard for me to read the stories because i just don't want to read the new york times both sides take and then uh fly off the handle and tweet for seven hours about it but it was our best chance probably with like an earned media driven campaign to educate the american people about our corrupt venal president who abuses power at every chance

most of the country agrees that he did what we all think he did which was uh abuses power at every chance. Most of the country agrees that he did what we all think he did, which was abuse his power to try to get down on Joe Biden. They don't think it's right, but they want him to serve out his term. We probably hit the limits of a Fox News controlled right-wing media ecosystem, and the rest of it is going to have to be messaging to those people with paid ads and social media and other new unique ways to get to them because the media filter protected Republicans as always. The Democrats did exactly what they needed to do based on the old rules of politics. They convinced three quarters of the country that there should be witnesses and the Republicans didn't care. And they convinced a majority of Americans that he should be removed from office. Yes.

I know there's different polls out here and there. It's not a big majority, but all the polls, if you do all the averages right now, there's a slim majority of Americans who think that the President of the United States should be removed from office. Just to be clear,

I was referring to the one out today, the NBC one today, which is 46 said remove, 49 said serve out. But this wasn't a failure. It wasn't a failure of evidence or compelling messaging from the Democrats. They succeeded at convincing the country that there should at least at bare minimum be a real trial. And it's worth exploring, I think, why that did not result in witnesses.

Because a lot of the takes on this has basically been either Republicans are just horrible, like they're just bad people and they don't care, or that they are in the thrall of this cult of Trump. And I think both of those are oversimplistic explanations for what happened. Cory Gardner is not insane. He knows that his best political play is to stick with Trump because the structures of American politics help protect him from the will of the majority. That's why McConnell did this. It's why all these other Republicans did it. And that is a problem that is much harder to solve than just getting rid of Trump. congresswoman from New York who decided to go from being seen as a moderate to full MAGA and just light her hair on fire during the trials with a bunch of other much crazier members of

Congress. And it resulted in her raising millions and millions of dollars. So this has become a strategy for these people to raise as much money as they can from Trump's base as quickly as they can. I also just think, to Dan's point, Tommy's point, it's this whole time, there's been a lot of beseeching of these Republicans, why they won't show courage, why won't they show courage, why won't they be brave. And it is a symptom of how broken our politics is that doing the right thing in this case, on an issue in which there is broad majority support requires political bravery. And that's because of the incentive structures of right-wing media. That's because of what Trump will do. That's because of where this support for impeachment may be distributed, right? Where are the people who support impeachment? Are they in the places where these senators think they need

votes? And the other piece of this too is, you know, I've seen a lot of people talking about how the failure to have witnesses at this trial is a constitutional crisis. It's a constitutional crisis. It's a fundamental failure of the systems, of the levers of power to restrain the executive. And I think that there is some truth to that. these senators fail to do what is necessary to hold Trump accountable, to have basic rules of the road for our elections, it's that there's an assumption that these senators won't pay a political price for it. And we can hem and haw all we want, we can be angry all we want, but thinking more and more about how do we change those incentive structures so that senators can be a check against presidents of their own party, I think it's one of the hardest and biggest challenges we face for one of our two parties. We just got to vote them out. Look, I do think this is a problem or it should be a problem for

some of these Senate Republicans. At the end of the day, and we've said this before, a number of these Senate Republicans who are up in 2020, Collins, Tillis, McSally, Gardner, they're going to run campaigns saying that they're an independent voice in Washington, that they're not completely tied to Trump. They can't do that anymore. This is now, I mean, there's a million examples since Trump has taken office

why this is no longer the Republican Party but the party of Trump, but this is sort of the final nail in the coffin of that, that they cannot distance themselves from Donald Trump and his behavior and his approval anymore. And to Tom, you're right. The calculus was, we probably can't distance ourselves anyway from Donald Trump. So we might as well stick with them and then at least get the fundraising out of it and at least get the base support out of it. But we've been talking about the politics of all this. I think it's worth just noting how serious the consequences of what just happened are.

Like it has now been, you know, there's been a stamp of approval by the United States Congress that any president who has enough votes to make sure that he's not convicted in the Senate, can solicit foreign interference in an election, can investigate an American citizen for no reason whatsoever, can launch a political investigation, whether it's your political opponent, whether it's a private citizen, doesn't matter, they're not going to hold the President of the United States accountable for that kind of behavior. And even some senators who think it was an abuse of power, or who at least think it was wrong or inappropriate think well it's wrong and appropriate but i guess there's nothing we can do to hold him accountable or they refuse to hold him accountable and and they and they then say well that's what

the election is for but of course he's trying to rig an election if he if he can rig if he can rig the election to win how are we supposed to rely on the election as a means to check the president yeah heads republicans, tails Democrats lose. Like that is the system that has been set up here. I was really struck by Lamar Alexander was on Meet the Press this morning. And he was supposed to be even- It's fun watching these guys answer questions, by the way. That's the only satisfying thing from all this.

And he obviously did the wrong thing, but he was one of the rare Republican senators who said that Trump actually did something wrong. but so Chuck Todd was asking about this and he said well instead of calling if he wanted an investigation to buy instead of calling Ukraine he should have called the Attorney General which is also an abuse of fucking power you can't do that you can't do that you can't call the Attorney General and say investigate my opponent it doesn't work that way oh my god Bill Clinton had a fucking conversation with Lta lynch on a tarmac and it was the biggest scandal for a fucking couple and he wasn't president that was seen as inappropriate a hello conversation and now they're saying oh well not foreign governments but he could have just called up

bill barr and said investigate joe but guess what that would have been fine now i wish shit is happening now i wish bill clinton had just harangued Loretta Lynch on the tarmac to get more investigations. I just think, you know, a lot of people on Twitter and other places have been hoping and praying and saying out loud that they think Republicans will do the right thing. And I just think it's not a Trump era problem. It's just a historical misread of what Republicans always do in this situation. Like when Barry Goldwater ran and was seen as a crazy, fringy, shockingly right-wing candidate, Richard Nixon went all in to support him knowing that he needed their base next time

when he wanted to run. And it was a brilliant strategy that helped him get elected. Like rinse, repeat on these things. They're always going to appeal to the most fervent part of your base. Yeah, the only way out of this, and this is the transition to our next topic,

is defeating as many elected Republicans as humanly possible. That's it. That's the only hope here. And then doing something very aggressive after you have it, right? That's right. The reason we end up in this situation is structural political advantages for Republicans. And if Democrats get into power, they have to take aggressive action for structural political reform. This is a different conversation if there are two Democratic senators from the Washington, D.C. in the Senate. And this is why, you know, the presidential race is obviously the most important thing. And we're focusing on all the time. But flipping the Senate is also incredibly important, too. You know, Brian Schatz always tweets at least a couple times a week, pick a Senate race, adopt a Senate race. We need to keep the House, we need to flip the Senate, and we need to take the presidency and the party needs to come

together, no matter who wins this nomination. So votesaveamerica.com, which is another plug for that, which we just rolled out again last week. Yeah, whenever you see a tweet about what one campaign surrogate sent about another, delete it, delete the app, go to votesaveamerica.com. Yeah, exactly. Think about how angry you were about this impeachment about the acquittal next time you're about to send a tweet about what one fucking supporter said yeah next time uh hillary clinton does a photo shoot with vogue holding bernie sanders head uh just don't buy that copy of vogue it's just no don't get involved you know what i mean it's just she's on a journey and she's gonna finish that journey but you don't have to go on that journey.

Thanks for putting a fine point on that. Too specific? Way to bring the temperature down. All right, let's talk about Iowa, where we are. So we were all excited to talk about the final Des Moines Register poll today, but it's been canceled, just like so many other things. Cancel culture comes for the Des Moines Register. Cancel culture came for the Des Moines Register. been cancelled just like so many other things after one of the Iowans who was polled said that mayor Pete Buttigieg was missing from the list of candidates to choose from that person happened to

be a supporter of Pete's they called the campaign the campaign called the register the register investigated and they decided not to release the poll out of an abundance of caution apparently one of the call operators had enlarged the font size of the list which cut pete's name off but since the list of candidates is constantly randomized every time they call a new supporter this also could have happened to other candidates we don't know um but to be safe they just decided to nix the whole poll so uh the polar coaster has malfunctioned uh what do you guys think whole poll. So the polar coaster has malfunctioned. What do you guys think? I love it. It feels like one of those new polar coasters where you like flip upside down at some point during a twist and we're just hanging there. Or we fell out. We don't know. Yeah. I mean, listen, in some ways, look, I feel really badly for the Des Moines Register. They probably put a lot of money,

a lot of time and resources into this poll.'ve done heroic work covering like 4 000 campaigns with not a very big staff so this sucks for them it sucks for ann seltzer who's meticulous and a great pollster and you know i think it probably speaks to her character and the way she treats her job that she would scrap a poll that probably cost 100 grand um that said maybe it's good that you won't have a bunch of Iowa Democrats like picking, wanting to pick a winner in the very end and going with who they think has momentum in that moment. Now, if you're like an Amy Klobuchar,

right. And you're banking on a last minute surge or you're a Bernie Sanders and you want to, you know, just put away the field and this poll would have helped you shown that that sucks. But I don't know, like we all voted without polls before.

It's okay. Everyone's going to be survived. love it i think it's i think it's like fun a bit like there's been this especially when electability is on everyone's mind especially when there are so many candidates and nobody really feels like they know what's going to happen tommy in your iowa series talk to adesu about this about like if the purpose of iowa is to be a place where you can do grassroots politics is that if that's the value of it then not doing well in polls making it harder for you to do well in polls in the future is a dangerous disruption of that process of just letting people decide without the weight of other people's decisions in their minds so i think it's great would this be a good time to talk about the results of our iowa poll from three days ago there's a new cbs tracker out this morning in iowa that shows it a little closer or why don't

we just say what polls we what we thought it was going to be and just say say what we hope you know instead of data uh let's just go with feelings yeah what do you what good is that no it's gonna be great okay we're gonna go feelings. I have counted the yard signs I've seen. Polls don't care about your feelings. So anyway, no, look, everyone is very excited about it in our world of people who talk about this for a living. But I agree with you guys. I think in the end, like, if we're down one poll, especially a poll that had such outsized importance, right? This wasn't just any poll. And we've had a lot of polls of Iowa over the last couple of weeks.

And, you know, a good majority of them have Bernie Sanders in the lead. A few others maybe show Biden a little bit stronger. It's still unclear. But it's almost perfect that in a race this unpredictable, that the one thing that was supposed to help predict it more than anything is now not with us. The last remaining political institution that everyone had faith in, the Maresher poll, has collapsed. Maybe the military can start doing polls. I mean, it does sort of raise this kind of hard to think about question is this probably happens all the time.

It's just this time it happened to happen to a supporter who was well-wired enough in the Buttigieg campaign to call and speak to someone about it. And so maybe all polls are wrong. Great, Dan. Thanks for that. Not our poll because it's online, so that can't happen. So you know what? All right. So instead of going into the polls, we're just going to do traditional punditry based on, again, our feelings.

But not really. Not just our feelings. Our experiences because we have been here. For three days. For three days we've been here. So we are experts. Ask us anything. I was thinking just...

At least Tommy's been here. He's been here a lot in the whole series. The rest of us are the people we have always hated. We have parachuted into Des Moines. We've mostly talked to people who also parachuted into Des Moines and hear our thoughts on the race. And when we try to get places in Des Moines, we just follow Tommy. I've been producing you guys. Okay. So, so far our team has been able to check out events with

Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden, and Andrew Yang. So let's go through one by one and talk about how we think these campaigns are doing. And let's, let's start with the Andrew Yang event that we went to last night here in And let's start with the Andrew Yang event that we went to last night here in Des Moines. Start with Andrew Yang because, as the Yang Gang reminds us, sometimes we forget to talk about him so much. So last night in Des Moines, we went to this event at the Marriott.

We talked to some people at the event, and we'll let you guys hear that now, and then we'll talk about our own reactions. I am Ashraf, and I am from Iowa Iowa City but I live in Ames, Iowa right now. I've been a Yang Ganger since early 2019, I'd say February. He's the only person talking about automation. Now it's going to take a big amount of our workforce that doesn't go to college and that's going to really suck. No one's really talking about that. This is my personal opinion. I don't speak for all the people who are supporting Andrew Yang.

But I would personally probably vote for Bernie. However, a lot of Andrew Yang supporters are disenfranchised Trump supporters. And they do not care about the liberal agenda at all. So they would most likely just leave. I don't really think there's going to be a caucus for Trump because he's the only person, but they're just probably going to leave and vote for Trump. My name is Caleb Wolf and I'm from Colfax, Iowa. I'm committed to caucusing and I'm a precinct captain. I'm an independent and I have no trouble with voting for a Republican. Honestly, if it ends up going to Sanders or Warren, I'll probably vote Trump. From a financial perspective, I've looked at the numbers that Bernie is pitching. I think they're a little bit sketchy, to be honest.

In particular, $16 trillion towards the economy and trying to get to zero emissions very quickly seems like a band-aid solution. It seems like we're not actually going to be able to get there in a way that is safe economically for our country to still progress relative to China and other countries. My sister is also a precinct captain, and my parents are canvassing for Yang. There's actually my entire extended family are Yang supporters. My name is Ann, Ann Halt. I'm from Ankeny, Iowa, which is right outside Des Moines. I have been following Andrew all day. My outfit is I've got blue lipstick because that's Andrew's color. I've got a nice wool scarf, blue and pink and white because Andrew wears a scarf. And I've

got a nice vest on and boots on because that's all Iowa and I've got buttons and I'm holding Andrew on a stick. I have an 8x10 picture of Andrew with his math button on and I put it on a stick just because he needs to be on a stick. Not just a stick, a yardstick. Today this is my fourth event and altogether I've been to maybe 10 events in the last two months. The favorite part of his platform is of course the Freedom Dividend. I believe that the Freedom

Dividend will solve or try to solve a lot of the problems that we have today. Poverty, I can't buy this, I can't buy that, and it also rewards homemakers and caretakers a value. Well, what am I going to do with $1,000? I've thought about that in my head. I want to keep the $1,000 in the economy. I want to do things that I normally wouldn't do, like get a manicure, get a massage,

maybe donate some money, maybe buy supplies for the food bank, things like that. I don't personally need it in my pocket, pocket per se, but I will put the money back in circulation because that's the point of the dividend. I'm a Republican, and I'm jumping the fence to caucus for Andrew. I have caucused in the Democratic before many, many, many, many years ago, so this is a big step for me. This means a lot to me to go from a Republican to a Democrat. All right. So what'd you guys think of the Yang experience last night? Love it. So Andrew Yang is very charming and he has a great presence on

stage and he has a incredibly strong message. Whatever, you know, there's a reason he has survived this race with a good, solid amount of support past a lot of people that others thought were going to be front runners, were going to have a shot at the nomination. Two things that I appreciated a lot about seeing him. One is, he talks about economic issues. Yes, he has a very 30,000 foot view case about automation and the changing economy and how that led to Trump. But when he actually gets to talking about economic issues and how it affects towns, he says things that you don't hear other people talking about. He says, has the mall by you closed? What do you do if you lose your job working retail and there's not a job to replace it? He speaks very specifically about problems and

changes that people can see in their communities. And I think that that's really valuable. And whether or not he's the nominee, I hope we see other candidates talk that way too. The second piece of it was I thought there was a really emotional way that he talked about the, what does he call it? The freedom dividend? What does he call it? The thousand dollars a month, the check. And it was talking about the ways in which we don't reward or value work like coaching Little League, volunteering your community, being an activist, taking care of a elderly parent or a child with a disability. And that work currently in our society isn't valued and isn't paid for. But with this, you could receive an income for doing that kind of work.

I found that really moving and a part of the case for a universal basic income that I hadn't heard him make before. And so I just genuinely was moved by the emotional way he made that case. Yeah, I think like five minutes in, you get the appeal of Andrew Yang. He's funny, he's charming, he's personable. He talks like a human being. You could tell that people just liked him. I mean, I think he diagnoses a lot of the challenges we face economically. I think he loses me a little bit when he blames it entirely on automation or when he literally says like, you know, when the robot truck armies will soon be upon us, like half joking, but not really. I also wonder if the UBI, the hit this freedom dividend is both not enough for people

who would lose, they lost a job and are really struggling and way too much money for us to afford because it's not means tested. So like, those are some of the challenges, but you, you get why people like him. The event itself was big and rowdy. It was probably like half out of state people that happens in Des Moines events. There's a lot of political tourists here right now, present company included. But like, I think no one's worked harder in the closing days and Andrew Yang in Iowa,

he did a 17 day bus tour, four or five stops a day. His campaign success is a testament to the power of his message and him as an individual. I hope he has a bright future in the party. I hope the party finds a way to bring all of his voters into the party and welcome them with open arms and not make them feel excluded in any way because there's a lot of energy there. I was struck by the crowd. Even granted that, like in every event we've seen, there are a lot of political tourists, but it was a very different crowd than a typical Iowa crowd

or any of the other Iowa crowds we've seen on this trip. Younger, the most diverse crowd by far, and a lot of people who, when Andrew Yang asked who they had caucused for, there were people who had caucused for Trump last time. There were people who had not caucused at all. And he has definitely struck something with people who were disenchanted with, you know, quote unquote, politics as usual. And there's a lesson the rest of the Democrats can all learn from that if Andrew Yang does not end up being our nominee. And I think, Tom, I hope we welcome the Yang gang with open arms into the Democratic Party. Yeah, that was my thought, too, is that I hope every Democratic candidate or wherever the eventual nominee is listens to an Andrew Yang stump speech because I hadn't really listened to.

I mean, I've seen him on the debate stage. I've heard clips before, but I hadn't listened to a whole speech. First of all, I thought he was very funny. There's one of the funniest speeches I've heard from any candidate. The cycle. He's self-deprecating. He's charming. He speaks like a normal human being, all those things that we were just saying. I agree with Tommy that I think it's not just automation that's the source of all

of our economic problems, though it is certainly a big part of it. I have some issues with universal basic income as well. I think there are other ways to sort of address those same challenges. as well. I think there are other ways to sort of address those same challenges. But it struck me that his speech was speaking to something very big that's going on. And it's a speech that could reach people who don't pay attention to politics very closely. And it sort of speaks to a this feeling of anxiety and malaise in the country that a lot of people feel that like sort of, you know, their kids aren't going to have the same future they did and that things are getting out of control. And it's not just about Donald Trump or our politics, but it's something deeper than that. And I was sort

of trying to listen to that for all of the candidate speeches, whether they hit on that. And he certainly did more so than most of the people I heard from. It was a long event, did go on for quite a while. Yeah, I would, you know, look, it's a little late for this note, but I would say he gave an incredible 35 minute stump speech and, but he spoke for about an hour. My, my note to every campaign would be to ditch the majority of your pre-show. We don't need two videos. We don't need several warmup speakers. It's true for Bernie, true for others. It gets redundant and it gets very long. It's a whiny little note,

but it's like, I'm not sure what the value is to you for keeping people in a space for two hours instead of one. Look, it's a note we always used to get to Barack Obama too, so it's not a... He didn't listen,

so I'm sure there are many staffers telling him this. Do you remember in the last days before the 2008 caucus, I remember going to Hillary Clinton events and being like, she's speaking for an hour and oh my god it was obama and then obama was doing the exact same thing you just they want

to hit everything because they're getting all these questions they want to make sure they touch every single thing that they've heard and they're tired so they're kind of on autopilot and just every word that they've ever said before it comes out this is the part of the campaign where they're tired and they're like emotional i think andrew yang broke down at an event recently talking about what it's meant for him to campaign in Iowa. His wife came forward in this really brave moving way to talk about dealing with a sexual assault when she was pregnant. And it was clearly like she had been, the way that news had been treated and respected meant something to him. And he talked about that last night. So it's like, I'm really glad we went to

the event. Me too. Me too. All right. So the first event we went to when we got here was Friday afternoon. We went to a Pete Buttigieg event in Council Bluffs. So let's hear a little bit from that. I'm Kate Kavars from Council Bluffs, Iowa. I'm 17. I'm a senior in high school. Yeah. Because I will be 18 Council West Iowa. I'm 17. I'm a senior in high school.

Because I will be 18 for the election, so I get to caucus. You're a precinct captain. Yes. That's a big responsibility. Yeah. Can you tell us what your responsibilities are that night? So essentially, I have to be there at like 5 o'clock and help people get checked in, make sure that everyone is comfortable with the process.

I've been training a lot of people leading up to it, making sure that they're comfortable with the process. And when we get in there, I'm basically like the leader of Pete's Corner. Like I'll set up, I will like lead the charge, if you want to put it that way. Make sure that everyone has their preference cards filled out, knows the rules, make sure everything like runs smoothly. And then your team fights like the Biden people? Yeah, all the other, to make sure everything runs smoothly. And then your team fights the Biden people? Yeah, all the other people. Like fist fight? Well, no. You know, I feel pretty confident.

I've met a lot of people. I've been canvassing for a couple days now in our precinct, and there's a lot of support. A lot of people are ready to see Mayor Pete. So for a lot of people, he was kind of the candidate on the edges of the stage for a long time, but he never really was that for me. I knew from the get-go, I was like, that's my guy. Would you say your name for us? Darlene Kofod.

Darlene, when did you choose Pete and why? I didn't choose Pete until later, probably around Thanksgiving time of this year. I went to one of his town halls. As a boomer, I fell in love with him. Really? And I don't mean that romantically. No, no. He's America's favorite grandson. Well, partially, but his rules of the road are what my generation grew up with. Civility, decency, knowing how to agree to disagree. We called it being an adult. You got to remember, I'm an old hippie chick. I grew up with activism. Right. So Joe Biden doesn't give you that same feeling of someone that would restore

civility like Amy Klobuchar. They don't do it for you I'm not genuinely asking politics as usual is their problem they've been there how long and done what right my name is Haley Kreitzinger and I'm from Council Bluffs Iowa we have a lot of things in common when it comes to concerns about the country and I love the fact that he is of a younger generation and can reach more people that way. And I think it's time that we do get someone with a more new attitude about how this country should be ran. And I think that he's perfect for it. I think that he talks about what he wants to get done and not what everybody else is doing wrong. And I take it you're committed to caucusing for Pete?

I'm so committed. And when did you make up your mind? Probably after I actually got to ask him a question and he answered it and looked me in my eye and you could tell it was sincere and he's compassionate. And I think that he just understands what a lot of people are going through and everybody else just pushes it aside. I think that he just understands what a lot of people are going through and everybody else just pushes it aside. I've loved him for a long time.

But being able to actually talk to him and find out some of the issues that we've both had growing up with certain things like being gay. And there's a connection there with people that have these interests and these things that they want help with. This is my first caucus. All right. So, Dan, what'd you think of Pete's message? Pete's message is very familiar to us. He has been incredibly disciplined this entire campaign. It comes through in every answer on a debate stage. You know, he's been omnipresident in the media for well over a year now.

And so we've seen it. I think, and we'll talk about this as we talk about Warren and Sanders and Biden and everyone else, but everyone has come to an electability message at the end here trying to explain how they could win. And the thing I was struck by about Pete's message is he's reading the stage directions out loud where he's basically saying, I'm the head and the heart candidate. You can love me, but I can also win. And I think I mentioned this to you guys, but

I was talking to someone who was thinking about running for president. I was trying to explain to them that that was the lane given this field was to be the head and the heart candidate, the electable candidate who gives you passion. But never in my mind did I ever consider you would say those words out loud. You would just communicate it. But I would say to Pete's credit and his great success, it may be that in and he's very savvy about media in this area that maybe in this era you can't get nuance through. And so you just have to tell people directly the thing. And but it like other than that fact, it's the Pete message that took him from zero to a top tier contender. And it has worked and he has stuck to it. I will say just on that note, you know, we often talk about how voters have become pundits

and for voters who have become pundits, Pete is a very appealing candidate because he does speak right as they're sitting there calculating, okay, who is the best, most electable person? Who's the best person to win? What's the message to win? Like he sort of just spoon feeds them that message and he did that in that event he said you know vice president biden says we need to go backwards bernie sanders says we need to go all the way left or it doesn't count i'm trying to tell you that we can uh you know do both and look to the future and so he sort of has a an in-between vibe there yeah it was so explicit it was so explicit he's like he might as well have gotten up there and said i know you like el like Elizabeth Warren, but you don't think she can win. And I know you think Joe Biden can win, but you're not sure he's going to be the best kind of

president. Here I am, Pete Buttigieg, the perfect person for everyone in Iowa who feels that way. Like all he needed to do was say their names. He said everything but their names, which I thought was interesting. I think he said Biden and Sanders. He said Biden and Bernie. their names he said everything but their names which i thought was interesting he said i think he said biden and bernie yes but well he said biden in another place he didn't explicitly link biden to the you don't want him to be president and explicitly link warren too i don't think she can win but that is clearly the subtext of what he's saying you know watching pete you see someone who's incredibly smart who's thought very hard about the best path for him to win i think about what he said to Axios,

where he talked about how you're, you know, why he's in this race and the space he sees for himself in it. And then there's just this question, like, does he bring the kind of heart, pathos, gut energy and enthusiasm when he's up there? And it's like all the pieces feel there, but there's this a little bit of it feeling like somebody saying all these things

without the like, you know, when you go see Bernie, you just see someone who is incredibly intense and engaged in what he's saying. And with Mayor Pete, it's almost there, but it just feels like he's 90% pushing the words forward, I guess. That makes sense. I thought the positioning of the message was probably the smartest of any candidate in this close, which is Biden is the same playbook. Bernie is a revolution. What I'm proposing is actually the most dramatic increase in health care in history. What I would be proposing is the greatest increase in access to affordable college education since the GI Bill.

Like these are huge, big things. Don't let them tell you that we need to go maximalist. And I think like that probably appeals to a lot of people intellectually. That appeals to me. I think you might love it. That like question is whether the messenger and the message are all going to fit together in a way that people makes them decide to take the plunge. It was the event we went to.

So Council Bluffs is two hours away from Des Moines. It's basically Eastern Omaha. It's like 2 p.m. on a Friday. There are maybe 300 people there. Very conspicuously older crowd. Lots of seniors. And that again could have been because it's a work day inm on a friday there are maybe 300 people there uh very conspicuously older crowd lots of seniors and that again could have been because it's a work day in the middle of the day but not a bad size by any means some of the people we talked to like they clearly liked that he uh is not seen as divisive uh i think he's run a very good iowa campaign i think he's

got a good team i just have no clue where he will land in this closing. Yeah. So he said, he said this morning, he did, uh, you know, full round of Sunday interviews this morning. And he said, obviously we need to do really well. Um, you know, his campaign has been saying like that they need to place, uh, at the top in Iowa. What do we think? Like, I guess, what does Pete need to do to continue on after Iowa? The think, other than winning, right? So, that's good. Winning is definitely good. I think the second best place for Pete is to be ahead of Biden.

What if it ends up Bernie, Warren, Pete, Biden? You think Pete goes on? I think they are. I mean, I don't want to fast forward this conversation, but I think they're all going forward. I think none of the top four will be out of this race before South Carolina. It feels like a muddle forward scenario. I'm sorry. Let me flip that then.

What if it's Bernie Warren, Biden, or Biden, Warren, and Pete's fourth? If Pete is a distant fourth, I think he would still compete in New Hampshire. He was leading New Hampshire polls like a month ago. He has the money to do that. It's seven days from now. So why not? Right. And that seven days from now. So why not? Right. And that's the typical path.

There's very few people who actually accumulate delegates here actually drop out after Iowa because Iowa and New Hampshire are so close. For all of them, the thing that is interesting is Bernie, Warren, Pete clearly have the ability to raise enough money to stay alive through South Carolina. Biden has not yet demonstrated the ability to raise that much money, but he is the only candidate who must stay through South Carolina because that is what he has designated as his firewall. So I think, absent a very, very disappointing show for Pete, I think in particular, you're going to see all four most likely advance. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about Elizabeth Warren, who we saw briefly on Friday night, where she greeted some volunteers at a bar in Des Moines right after she flew in from Washington. Yeah, my name's Ingrid Gronstal Anderson. I live in Des Moines currently. I'm from Carroll, Iowa, originally. My name is Margaret Acosta-Weirich.

I'm from Iowa City originally, but I live in Des Moines now. I think there's a lot of concern in the Democratic Party about electability. And I think that if 2016 taught us anything, it's that electability, no one knows what that means. It's a myth. Yeah, it's a myth. We elected the least electable person. Not me personally, but the collective us. So I think picking a candidate by trying to guess what other people are going to want is not a super successful strategy. And I think that Senator Warren has a mix of a vision with really practical policy chops behind it. Both of us are attorneys, and so we actually look at the plans and look at sort of the substance behind what she's saying and I think she really checks both of those boxes as a vision for change but an actual implementation strategy to to do that yeah

the actual plans having actual ideas behind how we're going to accomplish things other candidates I feel like have given us sort of fairy tales about what we can accomplish if we just vote for them and that's not enough for me I need to know what your plan is I need to know how you're going to accomplish these things and she's the only one me. I need to know what your plan is. I need to know how you're going to accomplish these things. And she's the only one I felt like who gave me really solid answers at this point in the race who stole a lot. And I think that one thing I've heard from all the Democrats that I've talked to who are planning to caucus is whoever the candidate is,

they're going to work their asses off to try to get them elected. So I think there's some unity in the party in that respect. You know, I had like two seconds with Senator Warren and my one question I had for her was how is Bailey? And she said he's a very good boy We agree. He's a very good boy Wally poor on Mission, Kansas Angela Walsh Fisher Roland Park, Kansas Well, I think obviously 2020 is a very important election and we have to do

whatever we can to change how things are going in Washington. And Elizabeth Warren, I think, is the candidate to get it done, honestly, and to beat Donald Trump. And I like her vision and her plans. And, you know, we're from Kansas. It's traditionally a red state, but we've seen, you know, we were able to elect Shereece Davids to Congress and so we're very happy about that and we feel like in Kansas a woman can win so we feel like she's the candidate for us. Yeah I mean I think we can't predict who's going to be electable and you see a lot of misogyny and racism and trying to project who will be quote-unquote electable and I think if you look at 2018, it was the year of the woman,

and I think we're going to see it again in 2020. Yeah, Ian Kuhn from Milwaukee, Iowa. I'm Taylor Larrick. I actually met the local organizer back in March and introduced her to Ian, and now both of us are planning on caucusing for Elizabeth, and we actually volunteered with the campaign too. I think the progressive agenda is really important to me,

that, like, now is the time that we need to do something. Like, that's a very historical point in history, I feel like, of just needing to, like, not have politics as usual. Like, we can't, you know, have the same things going on. Like, in terms of, like, corruption, like, it was a big draw, like, in her plan and her, for me at least um yeah i think i think she has like the tactics and like the plans and the coalitions and like you know generally just good like wholesome like intentions to like execute those and make them happen you know it's interesting and you definitely learn how to talk to the media.

For example, I was at the Liberty and Justice celebration dinner back in November, and I got interviewed by the Daily, the New York Times Daily. But unfortunately, I did not make it into the final cut. Everybody in the final cut was, I think, over 60 years old. So I guess don't sleep on the youth vote. Thanks, Michael Barbaro. So Warren didn't really give much of a speech. She kind of just thanked everyone because she wanted to spend most of the time at the bar

doing a selfie line. We're actually going to go to a Warren event today so we can actually hear the whole stump speech. Tommy, you've spent probably the most time with her staff from your On the Ground in Iowa series. What are they thinking right now? What is sort of their, what's their path on Monday here? You know, I mean, I think they've been deeply frustrated by the amount of time she's had to spend out of state for impeachment. And so she did this really quick event at a bar,

very cleverly, I think, to just get some news footage of her in the state that could get on the, you know, local news the next morning and on the internet, just to show some momentum, show that she's back. She's in Indianola right now, which is where we all saw Bernie the other day. Bernie had a couple hundred people. I'm told that there's a thousand people

at this Warren event now. She's gonna do a big rally in Ames later this afternoon, which is north of Des Moines and then Des Moines in the afternoon. I think her team, they don't know what's gonna happen like anyone else, but they feel incredibly confident that they invested in the biggest, baddest organizing team earliest. And that there's more command and control over that organization than say Bernie's, which is more a strategy where

you empower volunteers to do things on their own. So they're incredibly professional. They're organized in some ways. They remind me of, of our campaign in 2008. That's what I was going to ask you. More than, yeah. I mean, like, you know, doing this Iowa series, like part of the reasons I loved it was getting to know all these FOs was great, but it also, you know, these were our friends on 2008. So it felt like going back in time. friends on 2008. So it felt like going back in time. One of the things that someone on her campaign told me when we were at the bar is a group of voters that they're particularly counting on are people who did not participate in 2016, but voted in Iowa in 2018. And people who were,

you know, like a lot of you who are listening to this podcast, inspired to start getting involved in politics because of the election of Donald Trump and our new voters and have been organizing the last couple years

and participated in the 2018 midterms and a lot of these special elections around the country. And they think that that group of voters in Iowa, you know, if turnout's bigger,

maybe they're not showing up as much in the polls, that those people could help put them over the top. So I thought that was interesting. It is an interesting sort of math question for them, right? Which is there were 80,000 more people who caucused in 2008 than caucused in 2016. Who are those people? Who do they support? Are they people who were for Obama and then just didn't, just felt less engaged eight years later, who then have been reawakened by Trump? If we end up with a caucus turnout like 2008, which a lot of people are expecting,

who makes up that gap between 08 and 16 is the most important question of this whole thing. I think they're also just betting on that there are people who will go into caucus night worried about her quote-unquote electability and if they see a big crowd of people in her corner that will eliminate those concerns the other thing i've been struck by is we've just this is all anecdotal peggy noonan yard sign bullshit but like all everywhere we've gone we have been uh are you feeling sorry by that no i'm just'm just, I think you're going to make the same point as me. I have been struck by how many Warren and Pete out-of-state volunteers we have run into everywhere we go. And like, obviously you're out of state. And Bernie too.

But for those three have been the most dominant. And now obviously your out-of-state volunteers cannot caucus for you. cannot caucus for you, but it is a sign of both your general enthusiasm among your supporters and your organization that you can put together these out-of-state efforts that people are coming in and knocking doors and making phone calls. And there's, like you see in the bars of Des Moines,

real enthusiasm for those candidates. I think with Warren, though, they've had people in smaller towns building organizations very early on. So I think their strength is broadest, but, uh, you know, APNYB,

uh, just never fails you. What is that? Anecdotal Peggy Noonan yardside. Let me throw a pundit question at you guys, which is this. Obviously, if somebody comes in a distant fourth,

that is very bad. There's a, there are bad outcomes that can happen to people. So without that, that, that caveat aside, it's top notch analysis. Wait,

no, here's my question. That was a caveat. That's not the analysis yet. All right. And it's not even analysis. It's a question. You're going to do the analysis.

That's the beauty of a question because there's this sort of expectation around Bernie's surge. And because Elizabeth Warren had this surge like two months ago and it sort of dropped a little bit is she poised better than anyone else to have a surprise that would be good for is there anyone else better position that if they do well would gain more from it than Elizabeth Warren yeah I don't know anyone I think that among the top four among the top four obviously I sort of think it's any of the three that aren't Bernie. Like, I think if Joe Biden, after all these polls showing him sort of lagging and people thinking we're going to get to Joe Biden in a second, like doesn't have the best organization. You don't see a lot of enthusiasm. If suddenly Joe Biden is like second or first in the caucus, I think Joe Biden gets a huge boost from that.

I agree that Warren gets a huge boost as well. And Pete, by the way, like we said, if Pete comes in second place or Pete wins, you know, from that. That's true. I agree that Warren gets a huge boost as well. And Pete, by the way. Like, if Pete comes in second place, or Pete wins, you know, like that, any of those people. Any winner is going to get it. Huge. Any winner other than Bernie is going to get a gigantic boost.

Bernie will also get a boost. But it's just, it is the, like, in the 538 outlet, their model, the bigger the surprise of the victory, the bigger the bounce. Yeah, we should just pause on this, which is to say you don't necessarily have to win Iowa to be seen as a winner coming out of Iowa because of the expectations game, where if you surprise people with your finish or you're seen as doing well among a constituency that's important, that can let you spin out a narrative that helps you going forward.

The thing to watch out for is whoever comes in fourth, spinning the three-way tie for second. I guess the reason I say that is only because it feels like a lot of her challenges have been around this sort of a slight downtick in her polling after the kind of healthcare sort of issue sort of plagued her for a few weeks, plus the electability question that's plagued her for a while so that over-performing for her sends such an important signal. I think overperforming for her could bring back – like she's the only candidate who has had voters and then lost them, right? And so there are these people who left her to go to Bernie or left her to go to Pete or someone else. And if she were to exceed expectations and become the story coming out of this, you could get some of those people back. The hard part is that the State of the Union is Tuesday and the impeachment trial ends on

Wednesday. So the winner of the Iowa caucus or the proverbial winner of the Iowa caucus will get less attention on the two most important days for that person than would otherwise happen. Shame on you for erasing the John Delaney supporter who left him, came back, left him, came back, and finally left him. All right, let's talk about Joe Biden. Michael and Elijah went to his event in Cedar Rapids on Saturday.

We're going to see him here in Des Moines later today on Sunday. Let's listen to some of the folks that Michael and Elijah talked to. Arlene English, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I'm a longtime Biden supporter. I think a lot of that stems from his foreign policy experience and gravitas. I think we're seeing a lot of things in foreign policy that are unraveling unnecessarily. And I feel like we need, we've got a lot of work to do to get our credibility back. I would not be nervous with Warren. And I like her a lot. And I like what she has to say.

But I'm not sure the country's ready for it. But I wouldn't be nervous with her. I would be nervous with Bernie. Yeah, James Jelps from Anamosa, Iowa. Originally, now I'm living in Marion. I spent 30 years in Hollywood and 20 years in Iowa City. I'm a caucus captain. Don't take no rocket scientist to figure out he's the most qualified. I mean, if that means anything anymore.

For one thing, we can't go on like we're going on now. That's quite evident. And so I talk to people and say, look, be reasonable here. Don't shoot yourself in the foot, you know. And that's what's happening. My name is Kim Sleazer, and I'm from Marion, Iowa. My name is Addie Sleazer. I am still undecided.

I thought I was decided and then I watched the impeachment hearings this week and I was super disappointed and I'm veering to Joe now. I was going to caucus for Pete but I'm concerned that we need to have somebody as our candidate that knows the system and can really dig in and get us a victory. I guess I need to feel comforted a little bit that, first of all, he's not going to bend and break to what's coming. Whoever is running against Trump, it is going to be ugly. And I'm disappointed in that because I think we're a better country than that.

But I'm just not sure there are a lot of people that could stand up to Trump, and I'm hoping he can tell me something today that will make me believe that he can and that he can win. I was just telling a group of people outside, we've been going now since June, and it's an amazing experience, and I feel so honored. It almost chokes me up because it's so grassroots democracy, and I love being a part of that. And I'm a teacher, and so anytime I can learn something and take kids with me to learn.

And so taking my children with me has been such a moving experience for me as an American. But also just to see them learn like they have and meet the candidates and see the candidates interact with them has been really inspiring for me. This is not my first caucus year, and I've done this before, but this is really the first time they've been of age where they could go with me and understand what was happening. And I told Addy, too, I know that there's been some talk for years and years and years that we're going to lose our first in the nation status. And I think maybe we should because this is such a great experience. Why shouldn't every state or more than Iowa get this chance?

Because it is so extraordinary. And to meet the candidates in person, I was at Barack Obama's first rally in Cedar Rapids when he ran, and just seeing that come full circle, I mean, extraordinary. So although I love the experience, I wish other people could also take part in it and take their kids. Okay, so Biden for me is sort of the big question mark, maybe of all these candidates, because we, you know, like I said earlier, anyone you talk to here in Iowa,

they say they probably have the weakest organization of the top four candidates. You don't see a ton of enthusiasm. And yet, you know, he could be the candidate that a lot of people decide to come home to in the end a lot of undecided people might say oh i think joe biden's the most electable i'll give my little uh anecdote when i was flying here i was sitting next to uh sitting next to an iowan on on the plane and he said i've been undecided this entire time i really like all the top four or five candidates i could go with any of them i'll vote for any of them as the nominee it's fine it's great he's like but when joni

ernst came out of the senate uh impeachment trial and said well now we just heard about joe and hunter biden it'll be interesting what iowans do about this when she gave that bullshit fucking talk he he uh he was like that made me decide I'm going to actually caucus for Joe Biden. I heard that from an Iowa state senator that I ran into last night who said that at her very progressive church, there were a lot of people saying that Joni Ernst really pissed them off and sent them to Biden. Yeah. And, you know, when I first heard people opine that that might happen, I sort of rolled my eyes like, is that really going to push people towards him? But this guy was like, yeah, it really pissed me off. And it made me think they're scared of Joe Biden.

I mean, you know, look, if Joe Biden was running a really nimble campaign, the fact that Donald Trump is being impeached because he was so scared of running against Joe Biden would be a pretty great issue for you, right? If you were really being nimble and able to make that the focus of your electability message, we'll see if they've achieved that. I've always wondered if late-breaking caucus goers will decide that they're going to default to what they believe electability means and that it's the former vice president of the United States over other candidates. We shall see. Yeah. I mean, there has been sort of this running debate in political circles between a lot of people who think the Biden campaign has been

underperforming, right? Just in the basic nuts and bolts of politics. Do you have enough precinct captains? Are you doing a good job fundraising? Are you leveraging your media opportunities in the right way? And the Biden campaign, who has been very confident in how they've been doing and saying that a lot of the people who are overly obsessed with Twitter and overly engaged are not focused on the real things that matter. And I think we're going to get the answer to that question on Monday night. I would just say, you know, there's Joe Biden, the brand, there's Joe Biden, the candidate, there's Joe Biden, the campaign. It seems to me that where Joe Biden in the polls is right now as a front runner or near front runner,

depending how you look at it, has been about Joe Biden, the brand, not Joe Biden, the candidate, and not necessarily Joe Biden, the campaign. Whether that is enough to overcome the incredible organization and more enthusiastic volunteers of other campaigns, we just don't know. Nobody knows. Before we knew that the Des Moines Register poll had been shredded like late night Enron CPAs, been shredded like late night Enron CPAs. We were talking amongst ourselves about it. And the question we had as we were kind of trying to guess the numbers was we just, the Biden number was the hardest one to predict because we just honestly don't know. I would add one more factor to the message before it is Joe Biden, the person. And put aside whatever you think about his debate performances or the state of his thumb speech is Democrats love Joe Biden. They know Joe Biden. They think he is without a doubt,

and they are correct, a truly decent human being. And when you're making a decision in these moments, that is going to be whether it's at a caucus site in Iowa or in the voting booth down the line, that's going to help him a lot. Because when people are choosing between people they like, like Joe Biden is in that conversation and they know him well. Yeah. I think the challenge for Biden is if we have sort of a muddled finish where there's a bunch of people clumped together and no clear winner, if he can't raise money quickly and online without doing events and coming off the trail, that's going to be very hard. And he's been burning through money fast. Yeah. He has $9 million in the bank and no demonstrated ability to raise

money quickly. And you can't really afford to leave the trail now that the voting starts because you've got seven days in New Hampshire, you got another 10 days till Nevada, and then 10 days till South Carolina, and you can't do a five day swing in California raise money. Bernie just rings that online cash register. And just one more uncertainty in all of this is, let's say Joe Biden does underperform in the Iowa caucus. What does that mean for the strong polling he's showing in other states? Will that change or will it remain the same? And just I don't think anybody can confidently say what will happen.

And specifically in the African-American vote, because as long as he maintains that commanding lead among that community, He is at least the co-frontrunner to be the nominee because that is the path to accumulating pledged delegates is through primarily African-American congressional districts where you can net serious numbers of delegates where people are splitting them in more diverse districts around the country. Finally, let's talk about the frontrunner in Iowa right now, Bernie Sanders. We went to his event in Indianola on Saturday. Our team also went to the Bernie Sanders Bon Iver concert in Clive on Friday night. So let's hear from some people there. My name's Marona Bebe. I'm from Cedar Falls, Iowa.

Burke Wallace from Waverly, Iowa. Well, I was really drawn to his consistency at the end. Well, I was really drawn to his consistency at the end. I was actually pretty torn between a handful of the candidates up until fairly recently. And that's really what it came down to because a lot of the policies that a lot of the people have been introducing are fairly similar. I just feel like Bernie is more trustworthy because he's been saying the same stuff for years and years and years. Yeah, I'm definitely not one of those people who's Bernie or bust. You know, I'm going to support whoever is the Democratic nominee, regardless of who it is. Obviously, I have some people that I prefer over others, but at the end of the day, I just don't want four more years of Trump. No four more years of Trump. After I come back from being abroad, I'm definitely, whoever is the Democratic nominee, that's who I'm going for.

Sofia Rodriguez, and I'm from Des Moines, Iowa. I was kind of struggling between the two of them, but I think since I have a history, well, Bernie Sanders was the politician that really got me involved in politics back in 2016, so I feel like I have a loyalty to him, and I think that Bernie Sanders has more charisma to him, to say. So I just I would prefer to see him as my president. But if not, I'd love Elizabeth Warren as well. So Bernie and Warren have such more progressive ideas and values where I feel like Biden or Pete Buttigieg are much more moderate candidates where they can appeal to. They're very moderate. They could easily be Republicans if to say so. And I think

that Bernie and Warren just bring so much more progressive ideas, so that's what gets me going. My name is Derek Eden, D-E-R-E-K-E-A-D-O-N, and I live in West Des Moines. And who are these folks who are here with you? This is my daughter Aubrey, who's seven, and on my shoulders is Maddox, who's four. Do you plan on caucusing on Monday? Yes. And do you have your mind made up that you're doing it for Bernie? I'll be caucusing for Bernie. I endorsed him a couple weeks ago. I used to work for Julian Castro's campaign, and I've just been really impressed with his

consistency and excited to see what happens on Monday. You know, at a certain point, I think in October, my wife asked, well, you know, I don't think Julian's going to be viable in our precinct or, you know, and he might not make it all the way through Iowa. So who are you going to caucus for? And I think, you know, I think like a lot of Iowans that consider themselves progressive, it was the choices between between Bernie or Warren. To me, Bernie's kind of consistency, especially on Medicare for All,

kind of his authenticity with working class voters, it really resonates with me, my background. And I think the energy that we're seeing from his campaign, all the people here, all the new people that he's bringing in, that's what we need as Democrats. You know, for too long we've been going after this small segment of the electorate, swing voters, and we need to expand, in my opinion. My name is Olivia George. I'm from Des Moines. My name is Autumn Ellisor. I'm from Des Moines. Marissa Dumont from Des Moines.

from Des Moines. Marissa Dumont from Des Moines. Bernie's stances on almost everything align with my personal beliefs and like effectively I just decided like I can either hope that you know like we can achieve all these radical things that Bernie thinks that we can or I can kind of like be defeatist and go for a more moderate candidate and I chose to hope and it's working out really well so that's what's up. When Bernie was our age, he was doing what we were doing. And he was out in the streets, he was getting arrested. And I feel like a lot of us really resonate with that. And also, Bernie has, without fail,

been unwaveringly supportive of solving issues that face young people particularly. Like, I don't have health insurance. I don't know if I'm going to be able to pay off my student loans. So, like, I feel like he understands issues facing us and he's willing to address them. All right. Hi, what's your name and where are you from? I'm Michael Barbaro. I'm from Brooklyn, New York. And why are you here today? I wanted to attend a Bernie rally in order to better educate myself as a podcaster. So, you know, my thought listening to Bernie's whole stump speech, which is the first time I heard his speech in its entirety, is it was a speech that was not just for his supporters,

but for most Democrats in the party. Like whatever you think of Bernie Sanders, if you just heard that speech in isolation, he talks about why electability is important, why beating Trump is important, why Trump is the most dangerous president of our time. He goes through a list of issues. He talks in big value statements about those issues. Nothing seems too radical or too left. Like it actually seemed like a speech that a mainstream Democrat could like, which made me think Bernie is thinking about maybe past Iowa and what it would be like to try to win the Democratic nomination.

I thought it was very notable that very early in the speech, he made it 100% clear that if he was not the nominee, which he hoped he would be, he would get behind whoever that person was, which if you're on Twitter, you understand the surrogate war context for that. But that is, it's a very, he's addressing a concern that some number of Democrats has. He does it very early. And it was very smart, I thought. It was also explicit. It was just such an explicit call to unity was, and it's what you say when you think you're going to win. To John's point, he also said, talked about Medicare for all. And he said it in a way that I, maybe he says it this way on the stump. He doesn't, he hasn't said it in this way exactly in the debate. He said,

we're going to improve and expand Medicare to all. And I found it to be just a subtle distinction in how he talks about Medicare for all. But, you know, Medicare for all as a phrase is, you know, we're all well versed in it. We've heard it a million times. But if you're just listening to somebody talk about this as an issue, not as a shibboleth, not as an indicator of where a person is in the ideological wars online, he was describing it in the most practical, moderate-sounding way you can describe single-payer health care. I also think we sometimes forget that Bernie has been able to prepare for this day since 2016. And that's a real head start. I mean,

there's a lot of really good, well-run campaigns and great staffers out there on other campaigns. But in some way, I felt like the last several weeks I've spent with the Bernie people, like they seem the most confident. They seem like they've been thinking through things for a long time, doing things in non-traditional ways when it comes to the media. They're kind of the most ready for prime time right now. Like the number of surrogates they've had in the state this past couple of weeks that are high wattage, you know, they had 7,000 people watching Vampire Weekend and Bernie last night. They had AOC last week. And like, you know, surrogate events don't mean that all those people are going to caucus for you. But the Bernie folks told me that of the 800 or so people that went to her

AOC's Iowa City event, they got 300 additional volunteer shifts out of those people. So that adds up over time. And they're also telling press about a specific focus on Latino voters because 3,000 Latino voters in Iowa caucused, but there's 50,000 registered Latino voters. And if you can close that gap, that's a huge number of new people. And Bernie actually does well with Latino voters. So they have a strategy. They've been thinking about it. We'll see if they can execute. We'll see if I'm just being spun.

Very possible. But it's really impressive to see them not tommy not our not tommy vitor i do say one one last thing before we go about um how the results are judged on monday night uh if you've listened to tommy series you know that the iowa democratic party will for the first time they're gonna it's basically gonna be four different results the results of the first alignment the it's basically going to be four different results. The results of the first alignment, the results of the final alignment, which is when anyone who doesn't meet that 15% threshold sort of realigns to their second choice candidate. They will release the state delegate

equivalents and then the number of pledged delegates to the conventions. So obviously, there could be different winners among all those different categories. What do you guys think, what should matter the most as we are judging the strength of these different campaigns heading out of Iowa? Delegates should matter because that's how you get the nomination. I think the raw number who has the most votes will probably be the one that gets the most attention. Because even though delegates do matter, Iowa represents a tiny percentage of the overall delegates you need to reach the majority of pledged delegates. So it's a drop in the bucket

relatively. So the person who gets the most votes will be seen, I think, by a lot of press as the person who wins Iowa. It's also likely it's the same person who succeeds in all of those. Okay. Yeah, I mean, look, the winner of the nomination is the person who gets the most delegates, period, right? And so the Iowa Democratic Party and Troy Price and his team have done a great job preparing for this day,

have been really trying to focus reporters' attention on state delegate equivalents and the ultimate pledge delegates that will come out of Iowa. That said, if there's a split result, say, let's say Andrew Yang gets the most raw vote total and Bernie wins the delegates. Of course, the Yang campaign would spin that they had the most votes. And who is going to hear that spin and say, no, no, no, no. This state delegate equivalent thing, which me, Tommy Vitor, having worked in Iowa for over a decade, still can't understand or explain to you is more important.

So it could be kind of a muddled mess. Now, if someone runs away with it, it won't be a problem. But look, credit to the Iowa Democratic Party for trying to release more data and be more transparent. But it does leave more avenues for spin you can also see the pete campaign trying to focus people on uh counties in iowa that went from obama to trump and make that an electability narrative which is clever but we'll see if that works expectations i think is going to determine what happens right like if someone else wins the raw vote total and sanders wins delegates that other person is probably going to get a bigger boost.

Right. Yeah, no, I mean, I think you're right. The campaigns will be able to spin different results as good for them, and they should, right? I do think as we leave Iowa, it's good for everyone who's sort of been paying attention to a primary for the first time to remember that it is a race for delegates, because we went through this back in 08 too where you know sometimes the clinton campaign would say oh we won bigger states with more populations you know with and then we'd say we had to say something which which is true you know but what happens is say something you know and it's fine to spin however you want to spin but everyone we should we'll say this a million times between now and the and uh and the convention it is a race for delegates the person with the most delegates

wins the nomination um and obviously if you get a majority of pledged delegates you clinch the nomination but we also could end up with this a situation where you get to the convention and someone has a plurality of delegates right but? That's almost, that's highly likely. That's highly likely with this many candidates. Yes, with this many candidates. And it would be, at least in my opinion, pretty fucking crazy to have the person who won the plurality of delegates, who has the most delegates,

to not have that person, that candidate, win the nomination. And so the way the delegates are allocated is different in each state, and it's weird, and it's not like the Republicans in a lot of states where it's just winner-take-all. So just keep an eye on the candidate-delegate totals as we go from state to state because those are most important. This is sort of the advantage of having Iowa first because it is the only state where you get delegate answers at the same time. And every other state, which just runs a primary, the AP or whoever just calls it and it says, you know, Clinton wins X state.

And it takes a long time to get the congressional district by district data to determine delegate allocation. We had this problem for us in Nevada in 2008 where they called the state for Clinton. She had even though it was a caucus, she had the most raw vote. Even though it was a caucus, she had the most raw vote. And then a few hours later, we did the math, and it turned out that we had won this congressional district up in the northern part of the state, and we actually netted more delegates in there. But it was impossible. It was very hard to spin the reporters on that. Well, and that's what's important is because if that happens – it might not happen in Iowa. It might happen in Nevada.

It might happen in some other state. Someone winning the popular vote but another candidate winning one more delegate than that doesn't mean it was rigged or unfair or anything like that. That's the way this is, and everyone signed up for this ahead of time, knowing the rules. This is not rigged.

These are the rules, and I do think that's an important distinction. Yeah. Okay, well, we will record one more bonus pod on Tuesday morning, right after we know the results of Iowa. And, yeah, we'll talk to you then.

Listen to this episode pretty quick because it turns into a pumpkin. And listen to my Iowa series. What's wrong with you? Hurry up. Listen to Tommy's Iowa series. Please. All right, guys. I'm sorry about my joke about Vogue. It was probably too much.

Bye, guys. Bye. Bye. Pod Save America is a product of Cricket Media. The senior producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer

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