Pod Save America - “Send your calculators to Manchester.”

Episode Date: February 10, 2020

Democrats try to break out of the pack in the last debate before the New Hampshire primary, Joe Biden hits Pete Buttigieg on his experience, Bernie Sanders coasts, Mike Bloomberg rises, and Donald Trump hands Democrats a gift with his budget. Then Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager Faiz Shakir talks to Jon F. about their strategy for the rest of the primary.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's pod, I talk to Bernie Sanders' campaign manager, Fad Shakir. But first, we'll recap the Democratic debate that took place on Friday, the state of play one day before the New Hampshire primary, and what Donald Trump's team sees as their biggest vulnerabilities in this campaign. But first, Lovett, how was the show this weekend?

We had a fantastic Lovett or Leave It. Emily Heller came by to run through the debates we quiz lewis vertell on his oscars trivia and he is a real savant and franklin letter came by to talk about how hollywood has been changing and it was uh it was a great show after a shit week fantastic fantastic i'm halfway through it i was listening to it. Oh, wow. Yeah. Wow. It's very good. Wow. Where'd you give up? Good monologue. Now you know. Glass half empty kind of guy. I got to work.

It's a 15-minute commute. What can I say? One last scheduling note. All four of us will be doing a post-primary pod on Wednesday, which will take the place of our usual Thursday pod this week. So be on the lookout for that on Wednesday afternoon. Hopefully this time we have some results to talk about. Yeah, I literally can't believe New Hampshire is tomorrow.

All right, let's talk about some news on Friday night. ABC News hosted the eighth debate in the Democratic presidential primary at St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. Seven candidates took the stage. Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Tom Steyer and Andrew Yang. This is the first time we had a debate just a few days away from actual voting.

And with so many undecided or uncertain voters in New Hampshire, this one could have a real impact. Bernie Sanders entered this debate as the New Hampshire frontrunner. He faced questioning and criticism over his identification as a Democratic socialist, the cost of his plans and his ability to get things done here's a clip of Bernie defending his political approach I must confess I don't get too many newspaper editorial support the Conway endorsement I did we're very proud of that there we we go. But let me just say this, I think the question started off with Secretary Clinton's critique. I think, quite honestly, as we face one of the great political crises facing America, our job is to look forward and not back to 2016.

And I hope that Secretary Clinton and all of us can come together and move in that direction. Now, second of all, in terms of Republicans, let me say that in my own great state of Vermont, if my memory is correct, Amy, I got 25% of the Republican vote. And, in fact, there were periods when I was in the House of Representatives, a number of years, where I passed more amendments on the floor of the House in a bipartisan way than any other member of the House. And that is when you bring people together on an issue. There are many conservative Republicans, for example, who are concerned about civil liberties, at least they used to be concerned about civil liberties. There are Republicans, as you know, who are concerned about the high cost of prescription drugs. There are ways

that we can work with Republicans on issues where we have a common basis. Guys, how would you describe Bernie's overall strategy at the debate and how well do you think he executed on that? I thought he came in deciding he was going to be bigger. He was just going to, whatever punch came his way, he was going to go bigger. Hillary Clinton attacked me. Let's look forward. You think that I can't win. Well, here's the issues I believe we'll win on. And, you know, you had Pete and you had Bernie and you had Biden, all of whom had this, I think, obligation to behave as the front runner on the stage, to demonstrate their bigness and their leadership and their ability to bring the party together. And I thought, honestly, I thought Bernie just really did an exceptional job of actually doing that.

I think an important thing to know when you're evaluating how these guys operate in Iowa versus New Hampshire is that Iowa is a caucus that's supposed to run with only Democrats and a very active small selection of Democrats at that. In New Hampshire, if you're undeclared or you're an independent, you can vote in the New Hampshire primary. So in 2016, Bernie romped with independent voters. He had 73% of independent voters. So I think what you just heard from him was a much bigger, like Lovett said, attempt to talk about a political philosophy that was more inclusive

in an effort to potentially reach those people. Yeah, I think if you spend a lot of time online, which unfortunately we do. Yeah, I can't stop that. You will see some Bernie supporters seem like their chief goal is to defeat the Democratic establishment. And Bernie does not seem like that at all. Did not seem like that in that debate stage at all. Did not seem like that when we saw him speak in Iowa. We went to his event. He looks like it's more important to him to defeat Donald Trump and that he order to be the nominee, it is clear, has to expand their current coalition. None of them have captured sort of the wide array of Democratic voters or even independents and a few Republicans that are going to be necessary to both win the nomination and defeat Donald Trump in November. November. And so if you hope to lead the party and you hope to beat Donald Trump, you necessarily have to start appealing to people who haven't been with you in the past. People who have watched

Bernie Sanders in Congress for a long time know that he is far more pragmatic than you might perceive from the coverage of Bernie Sanders, the revolutionary. And part of that's by Bernie's own design. He talks about political revolution. But what was the hard part about getting the Affordable Care Act passed it wasn't fucking Bernie Sanders vote even though he's for Medicare for all he told Barack Obama I'm on board with the ACA you can count on my vote it was fucking Joe Lieberman and all the conservative Democrats you know so he does have this pragmatic streak in him from being in Congress all this time and I wonder if he'll emphasize that more as we go on. He also did it later in the debate where he talked about how he'd gotten

the most amendments passed of anybody on that stage, which is the kind of thing you would normally mock a US Senator for saying at a presidential debate because it is so Senate-ese and it is so in the weeds. But I think he's just trying to speak to an ability to work with people who are not necessarily his natural political allies and get things done. I also just think because so much of the primary debate is around ideological maneuvering,

one of the things and the fact that I think a lot of the focus on Bernie in 2016 was the parts of being president he didn't talk about as much, whether it was foreign policy or criminal justice reform or the parts that he kind of has fleshed out more in the last few years. One of the things I was struck by just watching him on that debate stage is how good he is now as a candidate, just how strong and effective he is

at responding to questions, putting in a little bit of humor. He's just a really, really good debater. I think he's good, but everyone else sucks at attacking him. No one has come close to figuring out. They're all pounding Mayor Pete, but they're not touching Bernie. Yeah, you Bernie. Except for Biden tried a little bit.

Well, I was going to say- Not the most deft debater so far. In that one moment, I thought Biden did his best job at attacking Medicare for All that he's done in any of these debates and he really hit the cost. But Bernie is very deft at pivoting away from, oh, you're going to raise taxes on middle-class families and just saying, well, this is what we spend on healthcare right now. Other countries can figure this out. Why can't we? Why are we spending two times more than all these other countries? And there's just no follow up from the other candidates then after Bernie, you know, he, he basically dodges the question

and no one follows up and says, well, what are you going to do about middle-class tax increases? And they just let them go. Yeah. So, which is which is you know which is their yeah that's their that's their issue and only klobuchar uh was willing to immediately raise her hand when asked if people thought that being a democratic socialist right a political problem that's right it's like hey guys you're all running against him yeah he's kicking your ass at the moment like i'm not taking a side here but if you want to win this thing you should consider going after the guy who's winning right um and we want to do this for all the candidates, but 538 and Ipsos polled 1,850 likely Democratic primary voters before and after the debate, the same voters. Bernie

received the highest marks of any candidate for his debate performance. His favorability rating went up and the share of people considering voting for him went up two and a half points to 45.5%. Let's talk about Pete Buttigieg, who probably took most of the criticism at the debate from his fellow candidates on his lack of experience, on his lack of support among voters of color, and on his record as mayor of South Bend, particularly around policing and criminal justice. Here's an exchange between Pete and Joe Biden over what kind of experience is relevant in this race. And as to experience, I just bring a different perspective.

Look, I freely admit that if you're looking for the person with the most years of Washington establishment experience under their belt, you've got your candidate and of course it's not me. The perspective I'm bringing is that of somebody whose life has been shaped by the decisions that are made in those big white buildings in Washington, D.C. Somebody who has guided a community written off as dying just a decade ago through a historic transformation. Somebody who knows what it means to be sent to war on orders that come out of the situation room. We need a perspective right now that will finally

allow us to leave the politics of the past in the past, turn the page, and bring change to Washington before it's too late? Vice President Biden, here is his answer. The politics of the past I think were not all that bad. I wrote the Violence Against Women Act. I managed the $900 billion Recovery Act, which in fact put millions and millions of dollars into his city before he came and helped save his city. I was able to do it, I was able to pass the chemical weapons ban, arms control, and I was the first major leader holding public office to call for same-sex marriage. So I don't know what about the past of Barack Obama and Joe Biden was so bad. What happened? What is it that he wants

to do away with? We were just beginning. It was just the beginning of what will be the future of moving this country beyond where it is now in significant ways. And there's ways to do that. And one of the ways to do that is to make sure you have someone who knows how to get things done and can lead the free world at the same time. Mayor Buttigieg, respond, then Senator Sanders. Those achievements were phenomenally important because they met the moment. But now we have to meet this moment. And this moment is different. So I thought that the way that Pete handled Biden's rejoinder,

and I think Biden probably ended in a stronger place than he began, because I think saying, I don't know what's so bad about the politics of the past might not be the most effective line. But I thought that the way that Pete handled the Obama years, meaning those, you know, accomplishments were important then, but now is a different moment, was probably the best way he or anyone has handled the Obama years that I've seen in this primary or even in 2016. But what did you guys think about sort of Pete's performance and how he handled all the criticism? Pete's a very good debater consistently. I rarely feel like there's a question that he's not

prepared for. The one exception in this debate, I think, was the question about his record on policing and race and stuff. And I thought he had a hard time with that. But like Biden is trying to make Pete's critique an attack on Barack Obama. And I think that could be an effective strategy. But it's also sort of laden with this frustration that Biden has about his full 30 plus year record and feeling like he's being criticized by Pete without any appreciation for how hard it was to do things in a different era with a lack of political support. That said, the quote, the politics of the past were not all that bad, really made me cringe because for a lot of people, they were pretty bad. And I think you can say the Obama administration was pretty good.

We did a lot of important things uh you know with the with the difficult congress to work with for most of that time but i don't know i'm not sure that biden won that exchange personally yeah i just don't i've just never seen anyone be defensive on behalf of the past before like of the past like i have um the whole the i believe it was the 2008 primary yeah there's one candidate who is a little bit uh changes a better message those are the vibes that i get every time i see the hits on the buddha judge experience stuff right is that we we saw it in 2008 as like a gift every time hillary went after Barack Obama's, you know, thin record at that point, didn't have a lot of experience in Washington or even in legislative experience.

But every time we turn that around on Hillary Clinton and said, well, people are sick of politics and usual as Washington. The only difference is we now have an incredibly inexperienced president in the White House who we're trying to beat. And I do wonder if I, and I don't know if this is true or not, but I wonder how much experience is valued or not valued now versus back in 2008. This moment, I think, captures for me, I think, what makes these debates so like enervating, like you at the end of it, you're just sort of a little bit sad and a little bit tired because I don't know which argument is more successful, ready on day one to be the leader of the free world, or I have experience outside of Washington, but they're both fake arguments, right? They're not the real arguments for these candidates. Like it reminds me actually of when,

when Republicans would say, oh, well, if Sarah Palin's not ready, why is Barack Obama ready? You know, she was a statewide leader for two years. He was a statewide leader for two years. Well, because he's got the temperament, the intellectual curiosity, the willingness to learn, the judgment, the sense of leadership. He's really fucking smart. He has a set of ineffable qualities that matter a great deal that are hard to describe and hard to be objective about. Mayor Pete is a very, very smart person. He does have experience in the heartland, but the campaign he's building does not look dissimilar to the one that Hillary Clinton could have built that any mainstream Democratic politician who spent 30 years in Washington could have built. It's a rhetorical

argument. I have my experience outside of Washington. You have it inside of Washington. I don't know. I don't know that that's entirely true, at least when I think when I think back to the Obama campaign. Right. Like Barack Obama emphasized not just his experience and the type of experience he had, but his judgment. Right. And I think that's where he had a leg up on most other people as he was correct on the Iraq war. Right. And so that people saw his judgment as a substitute for maybe longevity in Washington. But there were times where Barack Obama did things as president where I thought to

myself, if he had been in Washington for 30 years, he would not have made that decision because he has more political courage from not being in Washington for that long. Like when it looked like the Affordable Care Act would fail and a lot of his advisors who had been in Washington for years and years and years told him to pull the bill and just do nothing because he wouldn't get reelected. And he said, I don't care if I'm reelected. I'm just going to push this. That comes from not spending your whole life in Washington, that kind of political courage. Yes, sure. I think that's a place where his instincts as a politician and person align with having been outside of the system. That's very true. You look at someone like Bernie Sanders, who has been in Washington for a very, very long time,

and he has the same- He would show that same political character. And all that's a way of saying, I think this debate is very frustrating because it's a bunch of rhetorical back and forths, while the actual real question of who would be a better president, who would do a better job in the situation room is basically unexamined. I think the rhetorical debate sort of is the debate, right? I mean, since day one, Joe Biden's been saying, I'm going to restore the soul of this nation. Pete said, it's time to turn the page and it's time for generational change. Who decides when you're ready to be president? Well, like enough voters vote for you. And that's the only way to decide.

No one's really ready. Even if you're vice president, that is clearly the best preparation to be president of the United States because you've seen the job up close. But who knows? It's up to the voters. I did think that there was, that was contentious. But there was a very powerful moment, I thought, when the moderates tried to bait Mayor Pete into attacking Biden and saying that he was somehow hamstrung because of the investigation into him and Hunter Biden. And Pete powerfully defended him from Trump's attacks on his son and looked the most angry I've ever seen him. Real emotion.

He seemed like viscerally angry at the idea of Trump trying to divide a father and son. And I appreciated that moment because it felt real. Going back to a point you made, Tommy, like it's interesting again with Pete, just like it was with Bernie. Like none of the other candidates, the hits that the other candidates leveled at Pete were not, I thought, as effective as that moderator question about racial disparities in South Bend that he had the most trouble answering. And I actually think I think the bigger trouble for Pete is not so much this experience question, because I think he can parry that well. It's for the Democratic Party of which, you know, black voters are the core constituency of the party. And also everyone's worried about electability, like thinking, can he build any support whatsoever within the black community?

And he hasn't been able to yet. And then he um things in his record that give people concern about that and i don't and and you know the moderator pointed that out and a couple people on stage pointed that out they have since in new hampshire and i wonder if that's going to be one of the biggest challenges for him even more so than his experience challenge yeah i mean the story of this debate might be the the attacks not made right because bernie was also pressed on uh his on his past support of pro-gun laws. And he, I thought, answered it very well, where he said, the world has changed and my views have changed. But no one really dug in on that. And you'd think that would be one area where you might be able to make up some ground. And similarly, Warren took a glancing shot at Bernie

and really everyone on the stage but Amy Klobuchar by saying she doesn't have a PAC or an outside group supporting her. But she didn't say, Bernie, you're saying you're more pure than us, but you have this Our Revolution group that's running ads for you. Nobody dug into that. So it surprised me that there were some whiffs. And also, so in that 538 poll, voters said Pete tied for second with Klobuchar in debate performance. He picked up nearly six points in potential support, which was more than any other candidate Let's talk about Amy Klobuchar who had a fantastic debate She once again made a very strong case for her brand of pragmatic politics and the kind of experience she brings to the race Which she talks about in this clip in response to that Pete answer that we just heard

I am listening to this about meeting the moment. And my first thought is I'm a fresh face up here for a presidential debate, and I figure, Pete, that 59, my age, is the new 38 up here. The second thing I think about is this, and that is— Standing with the new 50. Okay, there you go. Meeting the moment, meeting the moment. We had a moment the last few weeks, Mayor, and that moment was these impeachment hearings. And there was a lot of courage that you saw from only a few people. There was courage from Doug Jones, our friend of Alabama, who took

that tough vote. There was courage, there was courage from Mitt Romney, who took a very, very difficult vote. There was courage, as took a very, very difficult vote. There was courage, as I read today, about Lieutenant Colonel Vindman being escorted out of the White House. What he took, took courage. But what you said, Pete, as you were campaigning through Iowa, as three of us were jurors in that impeachment hearing, you said it was exhausting to watch and that you wanted to turn the channel and watch cartoons. It is easy to

go after Washington because that's a popular thing to do. It is much harder as I see Senator Shaheen in the front row, such a leader, it is much harder to lead and much harder to take those difficult positions because I think this going after every single thing that people do, because it's popular to say and makes you look like a cool newcomer. I just I don't think that's what people want right now. We have a newcomer in the White House and look where it got us. I think having some experience is a good thing.

I have to say, you know, there's very few political consultants that would tell you that the way to go is to defend Washington experience. But I thought it was, and maybe this is just, we've served in, we've been in Washington as staffers, right? But like, I found it very persuasive. I found it real and authentic. Like she was genuinely upset about this. Let's neo-shill, we're neo-lib-shills, let's neo-lib-shill out here. No, but I agree completely.

The political strategist in me was like, are she me the most in the 2008 primary is for me I watched Barack Obama take on Washington as the problem and I just and it was a totally valid critique and I see why it's popular but I would always think the problem isn't Washington the problem is republicanism yeah democrats are terrible and a whole bunch of things. But we have a crisis in this country. It's about republicanism. And that's only grown more true in the years since. I mean, they've moved even further to right and become, you know, a toxic drag on the country, if not the planet. But Amy Klobuchar is there saying, hey, you know, you're going after Washington because it's easy, because it's popular. We have a crisis in our institutions. People don't trust our institutions. They don't trust our political system. They don't trust anything really except the military, maybe a few other bastions of trust. And it is, I think,

a little bit refreshing to see someone, despite the obvious political implications, say, hold on a second. This is more nuanced than that. There are people in Washington really, really trying and doing hard things. And to ignore that because it's a quick soundbite and it's part of the message of your campaign about the heartland and because it seems so authentic, I just really appreciated it. It is very clear that Amy Klobuchar has no time for Mayor Pete and genuinely dislikes him. She seems to drill his lack of experience at every pass. I, too, was surprised to hear such a passionate defense of Washington. But the line, we have a newcomer in the White House and look what it got us. You could see that working with some people.

Now, you know, love it. I think like the Bernie critique of the defense of Washington would be, yes, it's mostly a Republican problem. But this crop of Democrats have been a problem, too, right? They voted for the Iraq war. You voted for the Afghanistan war. We go way back to Vietnam when, you? They voted for the Iraq war. You voted for the Afghanistan war. We can go way back to Vietnam when Democrats escalated that war. I'm being a dork on foreign policy because I'm reading a book on Nixon, but that's where we are. But I mean, I thought Klobuchar in this debate, people online like to make fun of pundits for saying she did well,

but there was a moment where she got a hostile question about some of her tough on crime policies. And she pivoted to an answer where she gave specific ways that she would pay for opioid treatments, including by wringing money out of these horrible organizations that peddled them to people. And then she folded that into a broader narrative of like common sense policies and honesty and telling the listeners like how she would actually do things. And it was a very, very impressive debate forum. She has sort of captured this, give me a break, moderate, middle ground, common sense vibe that you often hear at debates

better than I think anybody else. Well, and so here's my question about Klobuchar long-term. So in that poll, in the 538 poll, she had the second best performance tied with Pete. Her favorability goes up. Her potential support goes up three points. But it goes from 13% to 16% of voters who are now considering voting for her. And this, to me, is sort of indicative of her larger challenge, right?

She's gaining in the polls, especially in New Hampshire. She raised $2 million right after the debate. She's getting big crowds in New Hampshire. She raised $2 million right after the debate. She's getting big crowds in New Hampshire now. If it gets her from a fifth place finish in Iowa to fourth or even to third in New Hampshire, which is possible, then I guess what is her path from there, right? She then is bunched up with, and we'll talk about this one, I guess, more when we get to New Hampshire, but Klobuchar, Biden, Buttigieg, Bloomberg sort of lurking out there, all of these moderates, they're not really, you know, moderate progressive center left candidates who are just sort of bunched up there. And like, how does one of them break out? How does Klobuchar break out?

Or how does the dynamic change fast enough? I can see this process changing over the next few weeks, but the voting's here. It's happening. And so, okay, Amy Klobuchar slowly climbs to the front of the pack. What if that happens? It's in process on Super all he could be in fifth in New Hampshire. And like, obviously, it is not good for Joe Biden to be in fifth in New Hampshire. No, but that's not good for your campaign. But I have to pay for that analysis. But, you know, no, but like political coverage of the primary treats it like a narrative problem. But it's a math problem. And the question isn't what happens if Joe Biden finishes in fifth. The question is, will his support stay with him in a state like South Carolina, even if that happens? And nobody knows the answer to that.

Right. Nobody. stay with him in a state like South Carolina, even if that happens? And nobody knows the answer to that. Nobody. So I look at this and I think, I don't know how it's possible for someone like Amy Klobuchar to pass two candidates in time and do so while not dividing all of those delegates. And also, we've talked for many months in the race about Pete Buttigieg not having adequate support among voters of color. Amy Klobuchar is right down there with him. She does not have any more. Yeah. I mean, I would, in her defense, I bet most voters don't know who she is outside of the early states. More so than Pete. All of these candidates that aren't named Bernie

Sanders have a game theory problem where Bernie has a very hard core base that has not left him and doesn't seem like it's going to. And all of them are splitting the leftover voters in various percentages. Like I think that Klobuchar, if she has a surprise second or third in New Hampshire, then needs to get to Nevada and South Carolina and formulate a message. It's basically Biden had his chance. We're moving on from him. Yeah. Because, you know, look to your point, love it. Like super Tuesday is coming up on March 3rd. It's 15 jurisdictions, if you count like Americans abroad and everything. And that's a third of the pledged delegates. They need to make huge progress that day to actually make progress towards winning the nomination.

I mean, the good news for all of these folks is that like only 4% of total pledged delegates are up for grabs in the first four states. So like that part of the race is not even really started. This is all momentum thing. And she's, you know, arguably gaining momentum at exactly the right time. So let's talk about Elizabeth Warren, who was very on message, wasn't allowed as much speaking time by the moderators and didn't really go after her rivals except somewhat obliquely during this exchange about money and politics that Tommy referenced earlier. Look, I don't think anyone ought to be able to buy their way into a nomination or to be president of the United States. I don't think any billionaire ought to be able to do it. And I don't think people who suck

up to billionaires in order to fund their campaigns ought to do it. I heard everyone here talking about, as Democrats, we all want to overturn Citizens United because we want to end this unlimited spending. Yeah, except everyone on this stage, except Amy and me, is either a billionaire or is receiving help from PACs that can do unlimited spending. So if you really want to live where you say, then put your money where your mouth is and

say no to the PACs. Look, I think the way we build a democracy going forward is not billionaires reaching in their own pockets or people sucking up to billionaires. The way we build it going forward is we have a grassroots movement funded from the grassroots up. That's the way I'm running this campaign. If you think it's the right way to run a campaign, go to ElizabethWarren.com and pitch in five bucks. Because understand this, our democracy hangs in the balance if we have to fund through billionaires that we're just going to be in America better and better for anyone else so you know Tom Steyer is

like I did not spend 40 million dollars to be insulted I am a customer. His Disney experience. Yeah, my Disney. This was not the Disney VIP experience I was promised, ABC. So, you know, it was a hint of a shot at Bernie there because of Our Revolution, which is an outside group that functions, you know, effectively as a pack for him. Though they would say it's not about spending a lot on ads. They're doing voter registration stuff. But still, that's the structure of it um what what did you guys think of that because i think it is also indicative of her larger strategy in the debate which was she just she didn't want to take sort of direct shots at any of her rivals she wanted to stick with the message that she is

the unity candidate she stuck with her corruption message like she was she is the most message disciplined candidate of all um but i don't know was that is that enough now probably not i i mean look first of all uh i don't get all these people criticizing warren for not getting very many questions from the moderators i found that so i didn't even see that who's criticizing for that a lot of people in the post-event coverage i. I mean, yes, your job is to jump in, but also their job is to spread out the questions evenly. Yeah. I don't think it was a very well-moderated debate in a lot of different ways, but that's a different conversation. I mean, I think this answer speaks to the challenge Warren has had for a while, right? Because she tried the wine cave hit on Pete, where she drilled him for raising

money from billionaires and that backfired. And frankly, at the time, I thought it was probably a pretty strong hit, but it didn't seem to work. So she walked it back there. Then she obliquely mentions Bernie Sanders, a group that's helping him, an outside group, but didn't really go after him there because it's not entirely clear to me that the voters that they both are targeting care that much about outside spending or money. And so it's just sort of an answer that's kind of for no one. Like it, it speaks to her core anti-corruption message. And I thought she did that well, a number of times, like her,

her argument she made about the NRA and the lack of gun legislation, how that's because the NRA has bought off a lot of candidates, et cetera, was like a very compelling point. But I don't know that any of it like distinguished her or led me to believe that she was going to break out. Yeah. I mean, I think the challenge with the unity candidate message is that the flip side is she's getting squeezed by both sides, right? So there are a lot of Warren voters or people who, and we met, we met a lot of them in Iowa, people who are deciding between Warren and a Pete Buttigieg or Warren and an Amy Klobuchar, even though we have these ideological lanes, right? People, actual voters don't necessarily see it that way.

And then on the other side, she has lost a lot of her support over the last several months to Bernie Sanders. And in order to be the unity candidate, you have to make a case that the candidate to your left and the candidates to your right cannot win. And that's why you must be the unity candidate. You can't just do it by like, hey, I'm here. And can't you just see that?

Because other candidates have tried this. Kamala Harris tried to sort of be a unity candidate. Cory Booker tried to be a unity candidate. Cory Booker tried to be a unity candidate. And unless you make the case that what the party needs is a unity candidate, because if we go with Bernie, we're going to lose. Or if we go with Amy Klobuchar and Pete, we're going to lose. Then, you know, then people won't understand that message. Yeah, I don't believe anybody watching this debate would know they were watching someone make a case for a unity candidate.

I don't think anyone would have any idea. You have to be really in the weeds on that. Also, just her debate performance was very good. And it looked a lot like her previous debate performances. It looked like every single one. She's incredibly disciplined. And she has her message and she's delivering it. But if she's going to become the Democratic nominee, she has to change something. And she has to deliver something different in these debates. I don't know if that involves being really explicit, like just really coming out and saying it, which is that I don't think Bernie can bring this party together. He's alienated too much of the center left.

And I don't believe Amy Klobuchar can bring this party together because there's a core of young people who really want something more progressive. I'm the only one that can bring this whole party together. There I said it. Does she explode if she says that? I don't know. I don't know what happens. But it is, you know, the wine cave thing was the last time she really went on offense in the debates. And I did at the time think it worked, although my.

I mean, it may have worked in hurting Pete a little bit. I don't know if it helped her. Right. Well, the thing I remember most of that is that they went back and forth a couple of times. They were the two. They were really smart interlocutors really going at each other. And then Amy Klobuchar came in and and seemed bigger than the both of them. And then, you know, she obviously directed her fucking Death Star at Pete

because that's the only planet she wants to blow up. But nonetheless, I don't think it ultimately made her look a little bit small that time. So I don't know what to say. I have to say, to Pete's credit, he does not get enough credit for being the only one on the stage who's consistently shot out by like four or five candidates. Like Steyer tries to belittle him at every pass.lobuchar goes after him warren hit him here bernie kind of just like grunts at him from time to time it's there's very yeah there's very little downside to hitting the candidate that the internet doesn't like yeah that's true is what people uh it's what you sort

of realize in the in these debates i also forget about what actual voters think but the people if you're not popular with the people on the internet, you can get shots taken at you in a debate like this and you are just fine. That's also true. I also do think that there's the internet, then there's Democratic voters, and then there's the candidates. I don't think there's anything on which the internet and these seven people on that stage agree on more than on not liking Pete. Right, no, definitely. I mean, Amy Klobuchar, there's somebody like Pete in her life at some point that she remembers. Yeah.

And she does not like. RT, if you agree. All right, let's talk about Joe Biden, who was pretty feisty and came out swinging against both Bernie on socialism and Pete on experience and African-American support. He also kicked off the night with a little expectation setting. Let's play a clip. This is a long, long race. I took a hit in Iowa and I'll probably take it here. Traditionally, Bernie won by 20 points last time. And usually it's the neighboring senators who do well. But I'm no matter what, I'm still in this for the same reason. We have to restore the soul of this country, bring back the middle class, and make sure we bring people together. And so it's a simple proposition. It doesn't matter

whether it's this one or the next. I've always viewed the first four encounters, two primaries and two caucuses, as the starting point. And then later in the night, Biden had a nice moment when he praised Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman. Let's play that clip. One of the things that I think is really important is we have to be authentic with the American people about what we're going to do and how we're going to do it. And by the way, Colonel Vindman got thrown out of the White

House. They walked out. I think we should, at the same time, he should be pinning a medal on Vindman and not on Rush Limbaugh. And I think I think we should be doing now. I think we should all stand and give Colonel Vindman a show of how much we supported him. Stand up and clap for Vindman. Get your get up there. Who we are. That's who we are. We are not what Trump is. So, you know, I did see a few stories that some of Biden's New Hampshire supporters were disappointed that he sort of acknowledged that he might lose tomorrow. Did you think he needed to set expectations like that?

I would say leave it to your staff to do the margin of victory expectation setting for the other candidates. That's to me is a little inside baseball and probably not where I would have gone. It's also probably pretty demoralizing for your staff. It's also the first thing you're going to say. I mean, it wouldn't be my opening salvo. Into midway through his second answer, something clicked and he remembered he was supposed to be high energy and his energy changed for a while but man to come out there and say it's great to be here i lost in iowa i'm gonna lose here too and i think that's fine that's cool at a moment when i actually think pete didn't do that great a job in his first answer but bernie did a really strong big kind of emotional answer that set the stakes of the election and then you go to joe biden and it's like how is this the first thing

you're gonna say like yeah i mean you can tell that like there's there's two things that end up deciding these primaries there's momentum and then there's demographics and clearly biden's team is looking at new hampshire and they're like i know that we just lost badly in iowa but there's no fucking way we're going to win this state and so we can't if we make it this big comeback hit narrative and then we fall short it's going to look worse and if we just tell everyone really clearly that we don't think we're going to win this and then we're going to look towards nevada and south carolina where there's more voters of color both latinos and african americans in south carolina and the biden people think that the demographics will save them there that's also in question but that may be true i just think it's very hard to make when you're

the former vice president with yeah 100 i agree i agree. I also think like the Vindman thing, I think was a smart attempt to manufacture a moment, but I just like, don't know that many people knew what he was talking about, even in the room. Now, like there, to your point, love it about Biden's energy. There's like kind of, there's sort of low energy Biden that you sometimes see. There's also like kind of yelly, angry, defending my record Biden. And then the Biden we all love was when, you know, there was a question, I think to Amy Sometimes there's also like kind of yelly, angry, defending my record Biden. And then the Biden we all love was when, you know, there was a question, I think, to Amy Klobuchar about Hillary Clinton saying no one liked Bernie.

You know, he smelled bad. He used to fart at his desk all the time, like whatever the quote was. And Biden walked over and he put his arm around him, gave him a hug and like flashed that smile. And I was like, oh, that's Joe Biden. That's great. People love that. Meanwhile, though, Hillary and Biden worked that out because while bernie was distracted she slashed

his tires but the uh but uh the other piece about this too is you know should he acknowledge that he's not gonna do well in new hampshire or not a candidate with more felicity in these debates could do it right say you know as asked a question about why he underperformed in iowa could say something like yeah you know did worse than i wanted and i may not do so great here but i'm not in this i'm in this for the long haul and a minute for the long haul for reasons x y and z right there's a there's a way to there's a way to take on that attack and acknowledge that you're about to come in fourth uh to a uh a mayor from south bend indiana which is which is not a neighboring state

of New Hampshire. Right. Which is going to be his problem when he said, oh, well, the neighboring state candidates always win. It's going to be harder

if Pete Buttigieg does well and comes in second place or first, or if Amy Klobuchar passes him. Yeah, I mean, love it. I'm not sure why he'd mention a 1998 drama

from the WB, but look, point taken. That's it. Here, here's what I say. Okay. Maybe you could do your expectation setting in New Hampshire in an interview with John DeSteso or like some nerdy journalist.

You don't have to do it as the first thing you say on the biggest debate stage. That's not your core message. The most important debate. I would say too, the most important debate of the campaign. Yep. And look, I thought he was better at this debate

than he's been, but I think at this point, better is not good enough because he is in some serious trouble and needs. Again, it's similar to what we were talking about with Klobuchar, which is at this point, Klobuchar, Pete or Amy, and right now Pete's sort of in the lead on this,

needs to break out in such a big way in the center left part of this primary or Warren, I guess, that it has to be clear that everyone coalesces behind them. And to do that, you need a big change and you need to make that happen. And I don't think Biden has done anything yet to make that happen. So let's talk about where the race went after the debate. We've had an avalanche of polling. Five thirty eight has the averages at twenty six point one percent for Bernie Sanders, 21.1% for Pete, 12.8% for Warren, 12.2% for Biden, and 9.6% for Klobuchar.

More importantly than the actual numbers are the trends. Bernie has been holding steady or rising slightly, depending on the poll. Buttigieg got a big bump after Iowa that has now looked like it receded a bit in a couple days after the debate. Warren is holding steady and Klobuchar is gaining clearly and Biden is falling. So but despite Sanders lead, the back and forth over the weekend was mostly between Biden and Pete, which started with this brutal video released by the vice president's campaign. Barack Obama called Joe Biden. Best vice president America's ever had.

But Pete Buttigieg doesn't think much of the vice president's record. Let's compare. When President Obama called on him, Joe Biden helped lead the passage of the Affordable Care Act, which gave health care to 20 million people. And when park goers called on Pete Buttigieg, he installed decorative lights under bridges, giving citizens of South Bend colorfully illuminated rivers. Both Vice President

Biden and former Mayor Buttigieg have taken on tough fights. Under threat of a nuclear Iran, Joe Biden helped to negotiate the Iran deal. And under threat of disappearing pets, Buttigieg negotiated lighter licensing regulations on pet chip scanners. Both Vice President Biden and former Mayor Pete have helped shape our economy. Joe Biden helped save the auto industry, which revitalized the economy of the Midwest, and led the passage and implementation of the Recovery Act, saving our economy from a depression. Pete Buttigieg revitalized the sidewalks of downtown South Bend by laying out decorative brick. And both Biden and Buttigieg have made hard decisions. Despite pressure from

the NRA, Joe Biden passed the assault weapons ban through Congress. Then he passed the Violence Against Women Act. And even when public pressure mounted against him, former Mayor Pete fired the first African-American police chief of South Bend. And then he forced out the African-American fire chief to, we're electing a president. What you've done matters. So that's what you call in politics, taking the dump truck full of opposition research, backing up and just just dumping out the whole thing tough tough tough hit on decorative brick as well yeah the decorative lights didn't get the only hit there decorative brick took a let's beautify our downtowns people so that video now has almost

five million views um what did you most of them made me clubbers what did you what did you guys think when you saw it well i think i think that's a video that comes from a very angry campaign staff and that normally you would want that kind of thing to come out from a super pack and not your campaign because it's going to really anger a lot of pete supporters and maybe turn off some other democrats it was also a little bit discordant because the first three issues were kind of campy and belittling and silly, like decorative lights. And then the end was like very serious issues about firing. Yeah. They tried to get two different arguments in there. Yeah. And, but you know, the biggest problem with this ad, you know, 5 million is

nothing to sneeze at, but they have no money to put it on TV. And I guarantee you that the vast, vast majority of those 5 million viewers are not in New Hampshire. So I just, you're going to have a limited effectiveness with an ad like that. I guess they, I read that they spent some money to target it on Facebook in New Hampshire for New Hampshire voters. And, but you're right that, you know, nothing, nothing more than that. You know, I think it's, it's, it's one of these ads that it could end up hurting Pete. And, you know, we, we have seen Pete decline a little bit after the debate in some of these polls. And is that what happened at the debate? Is that this ad? Is that whatever the back and forth has been over the weekend between some of these candidates

and Pete? We don't know. But it may succeed in sort of bringing Pete down to earth a bit. But I don't know that it helps Joe Biden at all. Yeah, I mean, I had two thoughts when I saw it. One, this is a debate about Pete that was coming and it hasn't happened or he's been really strong in debates about brushing off these lines of attacks. And Joe Biden has not been able to land a punch like this. I mean, I think it's the most

effective thing Joe Biden has done to contrast himself with Pete Buttigieg. And it is remarkable that in an ad they were clearly planning to release right after the debate, it was a hit. Biden didn't really land in the debate because I don't think they believe that Joe Biden can successfully land a hit like that and respond effectively during debate, which I think is a very bad thing. That said, I'm surprised how long it took to get to this point where somebody was taking this hard shot at Mayor Pete, because the fact that he was the mayor of a small town and didn't get that many votes is a very big liability for him. Yeah. And it's good that, you know, he's going to deal with it now that someone's making him deal with it now, because if he wins the nomination, certainly Donald Trump will make

him deal with that. Yes. Everyone decries negative politics, but I want these guys to brutalize each other in the primary because Donald Trump's going to do 10 times worse. And let's not kid ourselves. You know, the interesting thing, I think generally, you know, I agree. This ad is more likely to help someone not named Joe Biden than Joe Biden. The beneficiary might be Bernie Sanders right now. It's an in-kind contribution to the Sanders campaign. Yeah. I think, you know, it's notable that CNN's last tracking poll, half of the voters had

definitely decided. 21% said they're leaning towards someone. 28% said they're still trying to decide. So there's a lot of room to make up ground here. Those are huge numbers of undecided or uncertain voters. So then I guess it brings me to the question, like, why is no one seriously challenging Bernie, who's the frontrunner for not just the New Hampshire primary,

but the frontrunner for the nomination right now by far, and could end up cruising to the nomination at this rate. And, you know, if you look at the vote totals, right, if you add up what Klobuchar and Biden and Pete, and maybe some of Warren's supporters who don't want to back Bernie, have in New Hampshire at this point, it is far more than Bernie Sanders. And yet no one's really going after him. Yeah, I think it's what we've been talking about. Biden, Klobuchar, Pete, Bloomberg, all believe they're competing for the same pool of people.

And so they're fighting amongst themselves for a number of, I think, valid reasons. As part of a broader strategy, Elizabeth Warren has not picked fights with Bernie Sanders. If you're on pure ideological grounds, she is the natural person to go after him. There was a look at how people voted in Iowa, and it's very clear that people in 2016 who voted for Bernie, a lot of them went to Warren. It's true that Warren seems to be losing support to Bernie Sanders, so that is the same pool of voters. And she doesn't seem to want to pick that fight,

in part because I do think one of the things that's been very hard, and it's actually something Pete's been really deft at, it is hard to punch left without seeming like a scold, without seeming like you are a wet blanket raining on the parade, to combine two underused analogies. Looking through sort of the news stories from the weekend, you know, Biden said about Bernie,

I'll tell you what, it's a bigger uphill climb running as a senator or a congressperson or as a governor on a ticket that calls itself a democratic socialist ticket. He said that either in an event or to a reporter. Buttigieg said, I think it will be a lot harder to defend socialism. But the bigger concern I have is further dividing the country. When the campaign says that either you're for a revolution or you must be for the status quo, most of us don't see where we fit in that picture. I think those are both fair arguments, but there's no money behind them. There was money behind sort of anti-Sanders ads in Iowa. There is zero dollars behind any ads that are contrasting anything with Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire right now. I don't get it. I also just, one of the reasons I think it's been hard is you look at Bernie Sanders, when you look at the head-to-heads in places like Wisconsin, he may not do as well as Joe Biden, although now it's about even, he does perform well against Trump. Also, just looking at that stage, Bernie Sanders has an incredible confidence,

as do the people who support him. There is a sense that this is, that they believe they can win wholeheartedly and they're very confident in what they're putting forward. The only other two people on that stage that have the same confidence, I believe, are Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, who all seem to know who they are.

Joe Biden, Joe Biden's kind of lurching electability attacks or anti-democratic socialist attacks or anti-Pete attacks, Pete's attacks on Bernie. They all they all feel like politics because they are. But you look at someone like Bernie Sanders and he's responding to those who are attacking his electability, which is running a really good campaign. I will say the other person that is running a general election message that seems confident is Pete Buttigieg. Right. Like it's a very different message than Bernie Sanders. But he's out there talking about sort of how to unite the different factions in the party, you know, and why how we need to expand the coalition to win in November.

But again, it is, you know, when seen next to Bernie Sanders message is very, very different. Yeah. I'm just surprised that people aren't running a hard electability message against Bernie right now. I could make a case against every candidate running right now about why they are not particularly electable. And it literally keeps me up at night. But I think the easiest one to make is probably against Bernie Sanders, because you can point to concern among the, you know, Trump, Obama, Trump voters or the moderates who think his views are too far to the left. And, and you could see in research and we've all seen the same research out there, uh,

that they are the most predisposed to not vote for him. That would worry me a lot. Look, I think Bernie can overcome it with messaging by running a good campaign. I'm not trying to write him off now, but it's an argument you could easily make. And I think the other thing you'll probably see is after I think we have to write off the Iowa results a little bit as kind of inconclusive because it was such a fucking mess. argument that Bernie can bring out all these new people and young people and really start a revolution and thus enact a sweeping political agenda that way is true or not. And that might be an area he starts to people going after. Bernie Sanders has two options to win. He either juices turnout and brings in new voters and young people more than ever before and says,

forget all those moderates, the Obama Trump voters, the Romney Clinton voters, forget all them. We don't need them. I'll replace them with new voters. Or he has a message and he can prove that his message and campaign can appeal to those Obama Trump voters or Romney Clinton voters. But you got to do one or the other, right? And you have to at least part of this prime and all the candidates have to do this. But part of this primary is proving that you can put together this coalition, because if you can't, then that's when we're in trouble. So let's talk for a minute about Mike Bloomberg, who's sort of lurking out there, who has begun to climb in the polls because he spent a couple hundred million dollars on ads, and because the Democratic primary after Iowa looks more unsettled than ever. He's now fourth place in national polling averages, right behind

Elizabeth Warren, and he's beginning to pick up some endorsements from moderate House Democrats who flipped red seats in 2018, Haley Stevens and Mikey Sherrill, along with his first Democratic governor, Rhode Island's Gina Raimundo. And he may make the next debate if he can hit double digits in a few more polls. How real is this, guys? What's Bloomberg's path here? I mean, so far, he has 2,000 staffers. 2,000. His campaign announced, I think, last week that they're going to double their ad spending, which will put it around, I think, $600 million for TV and digital ads alone. So what he needs to have done is juiced his numbers in Super Tuesday states and in specific congressional districts to above mostly a 15% level, because that's the only way

he's going to actually get delegates out of these Super Tuesday states. And he has to rack up enough delegates through Super Tuesday and then March 17th to be able to beat Bernie or whoever is in the lead at that point. Because by March 17th, we will have allotted 61% of pledged delegates. So he needs to win in a lot of places to get delegates on Super Tuesday. I think be able to make an argument. Not come in second, like win.

Win. He has to keep growing and he has to grow faster than he has been growing because if he keeps growing at this rate, he can't do it. I think truly nobody knows. I think we'd all like to believe that organic politics of persuasion and convincing people to support you and work for you and volunteer for you because you've put the time in on the ground and met people and built a campaign naturally by dint of your ideas and talent is something that would win the day. But who knows? I do think it's probably a mistake for him to have given all 2,000 people identical white helmets and white armored suits and the same taser. I think that probably creates the wrong impression. But

I am genuinely surprised at this point how effective blanketing the airways with ads can be. It was hard for me to wrap my head around an effective strategy that involves skipping all four early primary states. Wrapping my head around that strategy gets a lot easier when the IAO results were so inconclusive and so disastrous and so just terrible. So I think, obviously, the ads and the money

that's spent on the ads is the biggest factor here, for sure. But even though Tom Steyer is not as big of a billionaire as Mike Bloomberg is, he has also completely saturated the airwaves to less effect, I would say, than Mike Bloomberg. But in South Carolina. In South Carolina. He could put up some real numbers. I guess what I'm saying is the additional thing that Bloomberg has going for him that I think we might underestimate aside from all the money is his name ID is very high in the country. For a lot of people, they think of Mike Bloomberg. Yes, he's a billionaire, but he's also, and Trump sort of had this in 2016. It was

sort of under the radar too. He's just a rich, successful guy in business, right? And a lot of people in this country, they see a rich, successful guy in business and they think, oh, well, he got rich, so maybe he can make sure that America's economy is okay. And they see him as a three-term mayor of New York City, our biggest city, right? And so he does have some credentials going for him, aside from just the billions that I think would give some people a look at him. Of course, the challenge, you know, his biggest challenges are would give some people a look at him. Of course, the challenge, you know, his biggest challenges are he used to be a Republican. He endorsed George W. Bush in 2004. His stop and frisk policy was a fucking disaster. You know, and so he had, you know, but I guess what has to set up for Bloomberg is if this thing is a complete mess heading into Super Tuesday, like if, you know, Bernie does well

in New Hampshire and Pete doesn't do as well. If someone else wins Nevada, if someone else wins South Carolina, if there's no clear non-Bernie leader at all, by the time we get into Super Tuesday and Mike Bloomberg is in all these Super Tuesday states doing really well, then that's, I guess that's his play. But as you said, Tommy, it's, it's one play because if what happens on Super Tuesday is then Bernie dominates all those states and Bloomberg comes in second. Now, finally, we have the anti-Bernie and it's Bloomberg. It's not going to be enough at that point because 40 percent of the delegates were just given. Yeah, look, I mean, the T-shirts at Bloomberg rallies say I like Mike, which I get it. That rhymes. But I think it also probably tells you a story about enthusiasm.

You know, people aren't like dying to get out there and support willing it into existence to Bloomberg's credit. He's not attacking other candidates yet. But I mean, I've been talking to some people who are on the ground in Super Tuesday states who say he's omnipresent there. And it's not just TV ads. It's, you know, a 60 day head start on staffing and organizing and, you know, getting endorsements from the right politicians. So he's also appears to be a safe place for moderate Democrats to kind of park an endorsement and not worry that they're going to get attacked for it just at some point i'll have to get down in the dirt with the rest of us and do some politics well which is all about a debate all the be part of this process all the outrage about him coming to the debate stage i don't't quite get. I mean, I get it's repugnant

that anyone gets to buy a debate stage slot, but there's Tom Steyer, Ben, for a while. He's been there for a while. His seat lies flat, too. That's one of the nice things about the seat he bought. If I were Bernie or Warren or any of these candidates, I'd want Bloomberg on stage to be able to sort of take a shot at him and force him to answer some questions as opposed to just be on television, not having to answer anything.

The candidates on that stage, on the debate stage, have been put through their paces, and they have all gotten stronger as candidates. Yeah, for sure. For having been and spent so much time. Just about all of them. Just about all of them. But Mike Bloomberg, Mike Bloomberg doesn't have that. When you see clips of Mike Bloomberg, some of them are pretty fucking rough. He has not practiced this. He is a billionaire who has been surrounded by people that work for him for a very long time. And,

you know, look, I don't think it's likely that Bloomberg is the nominee, but if there's even a chance, he's got to be put through his paces. He's got to talk to real people. We got to see him on that stage. He's got to be, he's got to be in it. And I suspect that that will be a tough debate for Mike Bloomberg because you can tell that Bernieernie and elizabeth warren and maybe some others loaded don't have a lot of time for someone who buys the nomination and again look if if mike bloomberg is our nominee i will do literally everything in my power to ensure that he wins but i have a very hard time living in a country where you can drop a billion dollars to get the nomination that feels like like some Banana Republic shit to me.

Well, the Banana Republic shit is all around us right now. I would like to see Warren and Bernie just treat Mike Bloomberg like a porterhouse for two. All right. There's one last story about Trump's campaign that I want to cover before we go. On Saturday, the New York Times published a wide-ranging piece on the president's campaign strategy. According to the article, Team Trump is, quote, turning to address his re-election bid's greatest weaknesses with an aggressive, well-funded, but uncertain effort to win back suburban voters turned off by his policies and behavior. Specifically mentions an effort to win back suburban women, upper-income white voters,

and black men. And it uses Trump's Super Bowl ad on criminal justice reform as an example. I think what's interesting here is the part of the story that talks about how he's trying to juice turnout among his base with all kinds of crazy immigration ads on Facebook that we've talked about before, but that the Trump folks, the Trump folks realize that just more turnout is not enough, that the only way he can win is to win back some suburban voters that they lost in 2018 in the midterms. What, if anything, do you think that says about our Democratic nomination fight, what Trump's team thinks their weaknesses are? I think it says less about who our candidate will be and more about the kind of basics we need to get back to whoever that nominee turns out to be. You know, I feel like I feel like this reminded me to think about this

kind of three tranches one is what they'll do to excite their base and get them out the other is what they're going to do to demoralize and demobilize democrats but there is this third piece of it yeah which is those uh those swing voters that they don't exist and they hold this whole thing out there again that there's like no swing voters that it's just about tyranny side you can go listen to the wilderness. I looked into this. I've met them in person. There are fucking swing voters that change between elections. It is why we won in 2018 because people switch parties. Right. And just that that it isn't just enough for them to make make core Democrats stay home or have their core people tamer out or even

just demobilize the middle. They need those people to win. And those are the people we've persuaded in 2018 on a health care message, not just about what we would do, but just about how dangerous Trump is. I think they're running a really smart campaign and it should make all of us very worried. That article said they have $200 million in the bank. They way outspent everybody else during impeachment, which seems to have almost entirely blunted the impact of all the messaging Democrats tried to do. I think having a tailored appeal to African-American voters to try to just chip away the Democratic advantage on the margins is probably pretty smart. I think, you know, part of that is an appeal to white people too, right? I mean,

they're trying to tell a bunch of white men and women who are, you know, educated upper income that voting for Trump doesn't mean they support a racist. They're trying to sell that point, even though he is, um, you know, he has a great economy that he's taking credit for. And I think we should all just be clear eyed about what an advantage that is. And so right now we are in the midst of a primary, we're fighting each other and we are looking incompetent. And look, this was always going to be a rough patch for the democratic party because you always look like a joke during your primary. The Republicans did in 2016 as Trump was rising, but we have a, it's 60, 40 at best that he's going to get reelected. And I think everyone needs to understand that and,

you know, focus our efforts and be clear-eyed about the challenge. But incumbency is an incredibly powerful advantage, and they're running a pretty simple but seemingly smart campaign so far. Yeah, I mean, Lovett, you talked about getting back to basics. I think all of us who want Trump out of the White House were handed an incredible gift today. Trump released his budget. It increases spending on only the military, NASA and his border wall, while it cuts Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, environmental protection, food stamps, the Children's Health Insurance Program, education and housing. We have seen through all of the research, all the polling, the biggest, the most damaging hit on Trump is a hit about him cutting Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, things that really matter to people's lives. We could also throw in education and housing in there, right? And, you know, a pollster to John Bel Edwards, who's the Democratic governor in Louisiana,

who just won that race, told Greg Sargent at the Washington Post this morning that Medicaid expansion itself, they found in Louisiana, was a huge win among suburban moderate voters in this deep south state of Louisiana. And so when we think about, I think sometimes we think about, oh, how do we get these suburban voters back? You immediately think, oh, they're all these like mushy moderates and we'll never get them and we should be true to our values. No, no. These people in the suburbs, they care a lot about cuts to education, cuts to Medicaid, cuts to health care. They care a lot. And every single Democrat from Bernie Sanders to, you know, Mike Bloomberg can all talk about these issues and can talk about how Trump's going to make these cuts. And, you know, and I see some of it today, but I think getting back to a

message that is both in line with our values as Democrats and progressives, but also can build a bridge to some of these suburban voters that we successfully did in 2018 is paramount. And we have to get back to that as soon as possible. I also think we have to wrap our heads around the fact that we might only be able to reach them with that message through paid media. Yeah. Because one thing that we Democrats and the press corps generally have been unable to do is detach ourselves from the daily Trump show of outrages and slights and tweets and bullshit. And but we, Pete's right when he says, like, you want to just change the channel from impeachment to watch cartoons.

It felt belittling to a U.S. senator. But I think he's right that people are exhausted by what's happening in the country and we need to reach them with these core issues that matter or else they're just going to decide that nothing's going to change in my life. Yeah. And take that exhaustion and say your exhaustion is because of the guy in the White House who's tweeting nonstop and getting in fights with everyone. And wouldn't you like a country where instead of that bullshit, you have a responsible Democratic president working to solve these problems? Okay, when we come back, I will talk to Bernie Sanders campaign manager, Faz Shakir. On the phone, we have Bernie Sanders campaign manager, Faz Shakir.

Faz, welcome to the pod. Thank you, John. Appreciate you having me. Of course. Congrats on the strong showing in Iowa. That's pretty exciting for you guys. So, I wish we could leave Iowa in the past, but, you know. You guys said on Sunday that you're requesting a partial re-canvas of the Iowa results, about 30 to 40 precincts that could move the state delegate equivalent total in Bernie's favor. How much faith will you guys have in the final outcome here once the re-canvas is done?

And, you know, considering all the inaccuracies we've seen so far, do you think the state delegate equivalent should be used to allocate the pledge delegates to the convention? From my perspective, no. It's been a shoddy process. It's been handled incompetently by the Iowa Democratic Party. And who knows how long it's been handled incompetently, but certainly this time, the manner in which the votes were counted were pretty poor. They had one job to do, and they couldn't seem to execute it and put in the proper amount of time and thought into it. And so from my perspective, we are going to fight for every vote that we got. We're going to fight for every delegate we were owed. And I think at the end of this process, likely, you know, if they do the re-canvas of the worksheets that were turned in by caucus precinct chairs, I think what you'll end up finding is that we gained some delegates there.

And who knows if there's others whose accounts were wrong as well. Your question, John, was whether the whole calculus of the state delegate equivalence is worth anything. And from my perspective, not much. No. I mean, at the end of the day, probably we have, you know, in Bernie Sanders, a candidate won by 6,100 votes. In most other primaries or caucuses, that's enough to declare you the winner. But by some mathematical equation that no one understands, we are not, we have not been declared the winner in Iowa yet. And at the end of the day, I think when this process is all over, John, probably what's going to happen is us and the Buttigieg campaign end up with the same number of national delegates to the convention. And so would you suggest that

if they don't use SDEs to calculate pledged delegates to the convention, that maybe they should use the final alignment on popular vote? to the convention, that maybe they should use the final alignment on popular vote? Yeah, I think that's always a good way to go. It's called democracy. Generally, when people show up and they vote, and you count them up and you say, hey, this one got more than the other one, let's award that person the winner. That seems like a good approach to me. That's certainly what we expect to be the outcome of the New Hampshire primary, is that people will show up, they will vote. If we got more votes than the other people, then we should be hopefully declared the winner. So that doesn't seem to me like a problem,

but I hope the Iowa Democratic Party reassesses, given all of the challenges that they've experienced and the incompetent way that it has been handled, that we assess from a popular vote perspective how to dole out national delegates. So looking at Iowa, you guys were able to increase youth turnout over even 2008 levels. You dominated in communities of color and working class areas of bigger cities. I saw two areas of potential concern for your campaign. First, overall turnout was low. The percentage of first-time caucus goers was even lower than in 2016, and only about 30% of those first-timers caucused for Bernie.

Second, Bernie struggled against Pete and Biden in some of the suburbs and in a lot of these Obama- Trump counties. How do you think about those two challenges as the race moves on? Well, I'm glad I'm having this conversation with you, John, because you went through 2007 through 2008 with Obama. You know, my perspective on this is a couplefold, right? One is that in 2007-2008, when you had a very large turnout in the Iowa caucus, it wasn't just that Barack Obama was inspiring a bunch of people and that they all turned out, and that's why we had a giant caucus rain what would also happening in fact where a number of other dynamics one

hillary without their organizing purple her vote and dot edwards without their organizing his people and all three of you actually brought a lot of people at the caucus am i wrong about that now that's very true right so i'll put it basically the cumulative effort of a lot of people inspiring and motivating a bunch of people to come out, and the overall turnout ended up being high. Of course, it was in the wake and the end of the Bush presidency, so I think enthusiasm to move on and turn the page was strong.

Now, I have a couple of thoughts on the turnout in Iowa. One is that it felt to me personally, being out there, that there's a lot of people who feel pretty happy with the choices that they've got between them in this primary. And it felt to me a bit that there were some people who were saying, you know, we're just going to let us know when you've got a primary winner and we're going to get behind that winner, and then we're going to go beat Donald Trump.

So I think that there were a large number of people who were just kind of like, let's see how this sorts itself out. I don't have a particularly strong favorite. The other thing I would say is, from our perspective, yeah, I want turnout to be higher. It was not higher. It was a little bit higher, I guess, than 2016. My view is, you know, it should be a warning sign to Democrats in general that we are, need to be doing a better job of trying to motivate across the entire party. That's why a lot of people try to assign this just to Bernie Sanders. I think this is a joint endeavor, just as it was in 2008. All of us need to be pushing and kicking the tires, being hard on ourselves about what are we all doing collectively to drive turnout up. So that needs to be done, and hopefully as we get through this primary calendar, we're

going to be continually engaging in every effort we can. The last thing I'd say here, John, about it is we got a bunch of young people to turn out, and that was good. I mean, when you had, I think, if I remember the numbers correctly per some polls that I've seen, you know, when Obama was, you know, winning the caucus in Iowa back in 2008, you had about 20 percent or so of people under the age of 29 who composed that electorate, and here we had roughly 24 percent, a higher number than then, or even a higher number by last time in 2016. So we did see a lot of youth turnout, which was great, and that is the future

of this party, of course. So there's one shining kind of glimmer of hope and an otherwise middling performance by our Iowa electorate standards. Yeah. So, you know, obviously turnout and increased turnout is one side of the equation that Democrats absolutely need to win. The other side is persuasion, right? And a lot of that persuasion, at least in 2018, happened in a lot of these suburbs, some of which had gone for Trump or had gone for Romney and then came back home to the Democrats. Do you think they'll come around to Bernie if he's the nominee or how do you think about reaching out to some of those voters? Because, you know, I did a lot of these focus groups recently. I sat in outside of Phoenix with a bunch of Romney Clinton voters. They're ready to vote Democrat. They were worried about, you know, Bernie being too far to the left. They didn't say they definitely wouldn't vote for him, but they're worried about it.

You know, I sat with some voters outside of Miami who didn't vote in 2016. These are non-voters or third party voters. They expressed some concern about the socialist label like how do you guys see going forward the challenge of sort of persuading some voters who may have been for democrats in eighteen but might be a little worried about you know bernie is a nominee so i thought i've always felt strongly that one of bernie's great appeals within you know a general election um perspective is that he can bring independence uh... no-party preference voters, young voters, first-time voters into the political process. And certainly if you track the 2016 primary, that is in fact what he was doing as the course of that primary went on. I mean, he was winning in Michigan and Wisconsin places, not in the major urban areas. He was doing

strong in the urban areas. But you get around around that state, he was outperforming by large numbers in those areas. And I think we will continue to see that. I think he has an appeal to working-class folks all over these rural and suburban areas. And I think what will end up happening is we will have this debate over socialism, as you say. And I'm eager to have it. I'm ready to take on Donald Trump as a corporate socialist. That will be, in fact, what you hear from this campaign all the time, that if you want to have a debate about socialism,

it's about who does the government serve and work on behalf of, who does it dole money out to. Right now we have a government that doles out billions in federal contracts, billions in tax subsidies, deregulation. All of it goes to benefit large corporations in the top 1%. And the question right now, we have a society that is socialism for the rich, is do you want to change that? Do you want to fundamentally take that on and deliver for a working class,

democratic socialism or working class programs that will help benefit you, whether you need health care education housing on down the line that can we finally reorient this government to work for the working class that's where i think it ends up being a a label that we lean into to help explain and understand and while i know that there's concern about a socialism label i know that there's one thing much more popular than that label and that is bernie sanders yeah that people know who he is and what he's about they if you have everybody go around a look one thing you know about bernie fenders either medicare for all

or he takes on you know the billionaire class something along those lines those are those are what they know about him and you look at the head-to-head polls with donald trump any stacks of quite well i know they're gonna come after us with a bunch of negative advertising the will prepare for it because we've built this kids kate his case on a backbone of spying. It's a strong spying. People know who he is and what he's about. Do you think that the Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin path to 270 is easier for you guys than Arizona or Florida or even a Georgia and a North Carolina just because of the demographics and

some of the appeal you just talked about that Bernie has for a lot of these working class voters? Look, I think he has a unique appeal amongst all of the candidates in the field to win those voters because of his positions on trade in particular, right? He's fought every trade agreement that has hurt and cost those communities greatly. He's been consistent through the course of his life on that. And then when you look at his pro-union labor record, you know, in this field alone, he stands out by far. And so I do think that he's got an appeal to working class, blue collar backgrounds that have historically been associated with, you know, Michigan and Pennsylvania, Ohio and Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, those states, of course. But as the nature of the workforce in America has changed, John,

you've also noticed, and we all appreciated, that Latinos and people of color comprise the workforce of America. And that is one of the reasons you see him performing quite well among the Latino population. So when we get into Nevada, I think he's going to be very strong. We get into California, places in Texas, places in Florida. So I would not for a moment discount the strength of Arizona. When you get into places that are going to be in a general election, his ability to win over working class voters from all colors, all genders, of all types, is the appeal. And I think it works in a lot of ways that the pundit class doesn't always fully appreciate. So when I, speaking of the pundit class, when I saw Bernie speak in Iowa and then watch that debate on Friday,

you know, I heard a general election message from someone who is more interested in fighting Trump than fighting the Democratic establishment. You know, I don't want to get you in trouble here, but you know, you obviously have some establishment ties in your past. How much time do you spend thinking about the role you guys would play in leading the party and bringing the party together if Bernie is the nominee and just how much work that's going to be from your campaign the people in your campaign they're gonna be charged with that effort yeah i took first of all i do believe that there's a hunger and a desire apart of the entire democratic primary and seemed like the electorate take

to unify to get to a place where we start taking on chopin as we have started to perform better and polls that we we did well in Iowa and hope to do well here in New Hampshire, that I think it's incumbent upon us, and really the whole field, to start thinking about what is the proper messaging that takes on Donald Trump and brings us all together and starts to expand our base. Because as much as I've heard this unify the party rhetoric from a lot of candidates, we all agree with it, it's insufficient to just be a unity candidate.

You've got to grow the Democratic Party. And if we aren't thinking about how we're growing, we aren't doing our job right. And so, yes, you've heard us make those efforts. We are constantly trying to solicit ideas from people all across the spectrum. One thing I'm sure that unites all of us is we want to get this lunatic out of the White House. If anyone's got an idea about what are the best ways to do that, what kind of research and what kind of messaging works best, we're always going to want that and entertain it.

We may have different ideas about what the proactive agenda is, what are the solutions we want to put before the American public and have them support and join. That is what this primary has been about. But I don't think there's going to be much of a challenge on unifying our party to criticize and critique Donald Trump. So looking ahead to Nevada, which you mentioned, were you surprised that the Culinary Workers Union, which is the biggest union there, is sending out flyers attacking Medicare for All? particularly when you start, let's say, start the clock in early 2016 or 2015 when Bernie Sanders started to run for president, and you look to where we have come over the past four years and the amount of popular support that has grown just within Democratic Party ranks,

and I think also exists in independent ranks out there, and the amount of dysfunction in the health care system that we have all witnessed and continues to remain despite our best efforts to try to improve upon the health care system. Still too many Americans going into bankruptcy, still too many people struggling with not going to the doctor because they can't afford it, and feeling like we've made all this progress over hundreds of years, been talking about Medicare for all or versions of it, universal health care for hundreds of years, a hundred years in the Democratic Party. And to feel like, you know, we're starting to finally make progress.

We're building a coalition that we could finally deliver the solution that we have all long wanted and needed, but felt like the political will or votes, quite frankly, weren't there. And now we have this opportunity to fully like deliver on the solution that american needs with the but that we need all of the political momentum behind it uh... so i would hope and call on all of our you know allies across the border you know if you if you have your concern jerry conference but let's not work to undermine something that is

going to it didn't increasing in popularity and something the American public deserves and needs. I mean, do you think that these workers have sort of a valid concern? They say, you know, we worked really hard to negotiate these plans and we're worried about changing them. I mean, what would you say to like an average worker who's like, hey, this is what I want. You know, Medicare for All sounds like a nice idea. I'm sort of worried about this. You know, what can I expect? You got to start this conversation, John, by saying saying let me talk to you about work the workforce in america your wages have just

not gone up about for forty five years it's basically stayed stagnant and as much as you might feel and be proud of the health care that you've gained there's a problem when wages and benefits what let's talk about your 401k where the heck did that go let's talk about you what used to be a defined pension program where did did that go? You know where that went? That got swallowed up by health care. And every labor negotiator in America will tell you when they go into a negotiation, the first thing that's on the table is health care. It dominates the conversation. And anytime they ask for wage growth or pensions or anything else, the trade-off is, well, no, you're going to get it in your health care. If you want health care coverage, then you give up everything else.

And that has been the course of the last 45 years. So even when you get slight pay increases, it's swallowed up by health care inflation. And so I think we have to have this mindset of the fact the working class and the working class is just struggling very, very hard out there. And if we could take health care off the table for them, we open up the great possibilities of greater wage growth, better retirement security, child care, other things that they need for their lives that they cannot get right now because health care is looming like a dark, stormy cloud over their heads all the time. Yeah. Last question, Michael Bloomberg. Obviously, you know, I can understand why it is

distasteful for a billionaire to be able to buy a spot in a debate stage. But I sort of wondered, from a political standpoint, I would have thought that you guys and Elizabeth Warren and maybe some of the other candidates would actually want a chance with Mike Bloomberg on stage to be able to ask him some tough questions about his record as opposed to right now where he's just on the air and doesn't have to really respond to anything. Well, let me respond to that a couple of ways. One is, first of all, not afraid of taking on Mike Bloomberg.

We'd love to take him on, put him on a debate stage. We'll have it out with him. You know our differences pretty plainly and clearly with the billionaire who's trying to buy his way into office. But I will say that the Bloomberg effort to get on the debate stage is everything that's wrong with the politically dysfunctional process that we've got right now. that we've got right now. So we go through an entire year in which you have Cory Booker and, let's say, Tulsi Gabbard or Julian Castro or a bunch of other candidates trying to compete to get grassroots donations up to a certain point and meet polling thresholds so that they could be on a debate stage. And at some point, the DNC says, up, you're cut out because you didn't meet it. Now, along comes a billionaire at the very end of the process. He skips everything and says, I'm going to jump to the front of the line and now change

the rules for me because I want to be on the debate stage. And from our perspective, what the hell is that all about? Why are you changing the rules for a billionaire? Why don't you just impose the same rules? So why can't Bloomberg with the billion dollars that he's got to spend, why doesn't he go and acquire some grassroots donations and meet a threshold, just like everybody else? How much pain would that cost him? It's just ludicrous to me. Why would you have to change the threshold? We're all trying to compete. We've all been competing for a long period of time, and now you're going to change the rules for that guy? It doesn't make any sense, but it tells you, quite frankly, John, the problem with the whole damn system is if you've got a lot of money, and he's got a lot of

money, he's putting it into the DNC, he's putting it into state parties, putting it into hiring a bunch of staff all the way through November 2020, literally trying to buy his way into the presidency. And we change the rules to accommodate him. We say, oh, you know what? He's got a lot of money. So we got to find a way to figure out a path for him to be on the debate stage. That's what happened. You and I both know it, right? That is exactly what happened. We got at the got away that to allow him to be on their input it's a disgrace i've helped you could have kept the payroll that corey booker had to abide by and he would have just had to spend the money to meet it

you buy your donors fair and squarely tom steyer did you know what all things about our fire at that another billionaires trying to buy it way but but what time did that Bloomberg has not done is he went to Iowa. He campaigned on the ground. He's gone to South Carolina. He's gone to New Hampshire. He has held town hall meetings. And as you mentioned, he has spent money to acquire and build grassroots support so that he could be on the debate stage.

And he has done it. I might have my critiques about billionaires trying to work their will, but at least he played by the same rules as everybody else. And for that, we should applaud that. And now here we're going to change it just because Michael Bloomberg has expressed desire to be on the debate stage. And by the way, when he gets on the debate stage, and you probably feel the same way, John, is that it gives you some added credibility and probably some amount of more attention, because now you've elevated yourself onto the debate stage, which I'm happy to have the debate with him about. He'll probably earn it anyway with his polling threshold, but we shouldn't have changed the rules

just to accommodate him. Faz, thank you so much for calling in. I know you're really busy. Best of luck in New Hampshire tomorrow, and come back again soon. It's great to chat with you. Yeah, thank you, John. Appreciate it, and congrats on the success with the pod. chat with you. Yeah, thank you, John. Appreciate it.

And congrats on the success with the pod. Thanks to Fazz for joining us today, and we will see you Wednesday after the results of the New Hampshire primary. Hopefully. Hopefully. Let's not count our chickens before they never get counted. Send your calculators to Manchester,

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