Pod Save America - “The Great Impeachment Bake Off.”

Episode Date: December 2, 2019

The next phase of impeachment begins as the Judiciary Committee plans hearings, the 2020 primary is wide open with two months until Iowa, and Pete Buttigieg debates his opponents over free college.

Hey guys, Tommy Vitor here. I'm hosting a new podcast called World Corrupt with my friend Roger Bennett from the Men in Blazers podcast. Soccer is a game that has often been called the world's most important, least important thing. Yet November's World Cup will force fans to confront and grapple with the complexities of the tournament. It was awarded via corruption and built with atrocious labor practices that have left a reported 6,500 migrant workers dead. Each week on World Corrupt, Roger and I will explore what it means to be a fan and responsible citizen of the world while watching the world's most popular sporting event. New episodes of World Corrupt drop each Saturday in the Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor.

All of us had a different tone and I forgot my name. Yeah, well, you know, look, we haven't done this in a while. Welcome back. It's been a couple of days. On today's pod, we'll talk about what's at stake in the next phase of impeachment, and we'll check in on a 2020 primary that is as unsettled as ever, heading into the final two months before the Iowa caucus says we are two months away. Almost exactly.

Woo! Speaking of Iowa, Tommy, I believe you have a new episode out tomorrow. You want to tell us what this one's about? I do, John. Well, episode three, we're going to check back in with some of the field organizers we've met along the way. We're going to talk about the chase for big endorsements. That means elected officials and some people who might surprise you. You'll have to listen to find out.

And then we're going to talk about all the reasons people think the Iowa caucuses are terrible undemocratic and otherwise shouldn't go first cool all right well tune in everyone uh and of course we have a favor to ask please help fight voter suppression in the 2020 election by donating to fair fight which is Stacey Abrams's organization that has already helped Democrats win in Kentucky and Louisiana uh you've already helped us pass 1.5 million. Started with a $1 million goal. Then we wanted to go to a $2 million goal. And on the way to 2 million, we're already at 1.5.

We would love you to help us get to 2. Get us that last half a million. Go to votesaveamerica.com slash fair fight to chip in today. This is something that really makes a difference, which we've already seen in the 2019 election. That's right. Unless you don't care about that. Right.

Unless you want Trump to win. Right. That's right. Okay. Let's get to the news. Today, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff is expected to send his colleagues a draft of the report on their committee's impeachment investigation. I don't think it's going to be too good for Donald Trump. Can't wait to find out where Adam Schiff came down on this whole thing.

We're out of the prediction business, but I feel safe on this one. Did you see that shit last week? That's crazy. So he's going to circulate the report. The Intelligence Committee will then vote on whether to approve the report and send it to the House Judiciary Committee, which is the committee charged with drafting articles of impeachment as they consider this judiciary will be holding their first impeachment hearing on wednesday of this week which seems like it will be a schoolhouse rock for impeachment uh they're gonna have a bunch of

constitutional experts testifying about it'd be like cool schoolhouse rock except if like some of the cartoons were on pcp sure yeah you know what i mean or nerdy professors like how does a bill become a law well first it passed the house then matt gates comes at it with a box of pizza for a while charges it yeah yeah one thing is goons in the house all gathered together try to beat it like a pinata so what they're going to try to do is have a number of constitutional experts testify on what constitutes an impeachable offense and what the process should look like. Guys, what do we think the goals are for House Democrats in this next phase of impeachment? What is sort of an ideal process look like from now until the full House votes on articles of impeachment? I'm not entirely sure.

I mean, look, so this hearing on the 4th is this panel of constitutional experts. They're going to focus on defining an impeachable offense, which I guess is setting the mood music to understand why the charges against President Trump are in fact impeachable. Like Lovett, I am less than hopeful that it's going to be a staid and thoughtful, substantive affair.

I think it will probably be. And why is that? Because you have goobers like Louie Gohmert, Matt Geitz, Jim Jordan, and Doug Collins. Those are four Republican members of Congress who are four of the worst of the worst people in the entire body who are going to do everything they can to distract, to make stupid process arguments, to otherwise trip up Jerry Nadler, who, you know, like, let's hope he is as good at this as Adam Schiff was. But I think it'll be harder because of the Judiciary Committee's makeup and rules. So, you know, he won't be able to rule with an iron fist the way Schiff was. Yeah, I mean, I guess part of it is that the Judiciary Committee now has to do two things. So on the one hand, it's like, Adam Schiff and the Democrats just spent like it was like a

Great British Bake Off and they made like a beautiful cake. And now the Judiciary Committee is going to kind of like cut it up and serve it and be like... Is it a technical challenge? This was a technical challenge. They did not know what was going to be in their baskets. Who was the showstopper? challenge they did not know what was going to be in their baskets who was the showstopper the shows that's interesting question who was a showstopper uh i think patriotism uh no i guess all i guess we just don't totally understand that like what the judiciary views its role like what is success for the judiciary committee is it simply kind of taking what adam schiff did in the committee and uh you know, putting it on the legal legs? Or is it, are we going to hear a bunch of other impeachable offenses? We learned

last week or the week before Time Runs Together that they were going to look into some of the lies that Donald Trump may have put in writing in the Mueller report. Like, at least we just don't fully understand the scope of what judiciary is going to do yet. Yeah. I think this is all about raising the stakes of what Trump did, because Democrats have proven pretty convincingly to most people who've actually been watching this closely and aren't, you know, partisan Republicans who've had their brain addled by Fox News that Donald Trump did what he's accused of doing. Witnesses testified, witnesses that worked in his own administration testified that he did this. And so I think the question left is, okay, he did this. Is it in fact impeachable? And we have said many times that, you know, trying to rig an election, foreign interference, using the powers of the presidency to target your political opponents. These are some of the things that the founders worried about when they wrote the constitution

and created the impeachment clause in the constitution. And so I think the hope is, you know, we can educate the public about why it's so important. I think the obstacles they have or what Tommy just laid out is that there are far more clown, there are a lot more clowns on the Republican side of the judiciary committee than they were in the Intel Committee. And I think even on the Democratic side, you know, people who are on the Intel Committee tend to be a bit more serious and staid. And so, you know, look, my hope is that Nadler and all the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee take note of how well the House Intel Committee conducted the hearings and how Democrats did not launch into, no one launched into big speeches to hear themselves talk and try to get sound bites everyone took it very seriously almost every single democratic member they did fantastic jobs

people in the judiciary committee should follow that example yeah raise the stakes but also i think lowering the bar which by that i mean gotta get in between the stakes of the bar it doesn't have you don't have to commit a crime to be impeached. An impeachable offense is actually far short of a criminal act. If you look back in terms of the Constitution and the founding documents that better define it than the Constitution. Yeah. I mean, part of the process for just one example, bribery, the way it was written in the Constitution, is not how we understand bribery as a legal term today with the law. Like in the Constitution, they included bribery and high crimes along with high crimes and misdemeanors for impeachable offense.

And it meant simply using your public office for personal gain. That's what bribery is. You have Jared Grease, the zoning guy. Right. And then you're good to go. You build the building. guy right and then you're good to go and build the building um do you think it's gonna be more challenging to hold media attention without any new bombshells or fact witnesses in this in this phase well yeah that's a good good warning the uh it's also just the thing that inured

the intelligence committee hearings from republican kind of showmanship winning the day is there were just fascinating, important pieces of testimony that, you know, we didn't know what Sondland was going to do. Then he went further than people expected. There was fascinating, dramatic testimony from career bureaucrats no one had ever heard of. They did a great job in pushing back against Republican talking points throughout that hearing. You know, absent that driving purpose, I do worry what happens when also, by the way, like, you know, they added Jim Jordan as a ringer to the Intelligence Committee because they looked at their lineup and they realized they didn't have the kind of showman that they needed.

Right. And this is a committee that has multiple just it is a barbershop quartet of goons. And they are going to do everything they can to make this a mess. And what we saw when NABDA was in charge of hearings like this, that had been more successful than it was in the Intelligence Committee. Yeah, I'm a little bit worried about our attention span. I mean, there's not going to be anything new. This probably won't be taken live from start to finish the way the other hearings were. I'm also a little bit worried about the Democrats' desire to be perceived as fair by the media, the referees. There's all this conversation right now about whether Trump will or will not participate. And I think that's

a fair discussion. I think it's fair for Trump to say, you know, to make that decision on his own. But, you know, the Judiciary Committee, I think, has been shown to be a little more worried about optics of fairness and the media that's being offered, even though a quarter of Congress has access to the depositions that are happening and it gets reported as a reasonable thing to do. So that makes me a little nervous. Yeah. I mean, to me, that goes, it goes back to the stakes, right? Like there's a reason that Democrats have decided that what Trump did may warrant impeachment right before an election where we may be able to vote him out of office. And that reason is he's trying to rig that election. He has tried in the past. And if he gets off, he will continue to try to do that. And that is a serious, extremely serious situation, which warrants his impeachment. And that has to be on everyone's mind. To your point, Tommy, Nadler did invite Trump and his attorney to participate in Wednesday's impeachment hearing and question the witnesses.

The president has declined to participate, at least for this hearing. Nadler has given Trump and the Republicans on the committee until Friday, December 6th, to decide whether they want to call any witnesses or mount any kind of defense of Trump whatsoever in future hearings, which there will be. Why do we think that Trump has decided that for now, at least, he's not participating? And is this a smart move? Yeah, I mean, it seems very hard for me to imagine them participating, in part because what we saw in the Intelligence Committee hearings, I think, is instructive for the way Trump handles these things. There were two kinds of questions. There were the real legal questions from the committee lawyer, And then there was the fanfare drama, Ukraine hoax. Where's the, you know, shift light, all that kind of Fox News noise. And that's actually, I think,

where they were far more successful. They really, you know, didn't have very much luck in actually substantively attacking this case. I mean, the only Republican who had a chance of perhaps engaging with this in seriousness was Will Hurd. And by the end, he just was like, he opened up his brain like a briefcase, took his brain out and just sort of like threw it away. We're like, sorry, I'm retiring. Don't need that anymore. I give up. I'm out. But so, you know, the lawyer, the White House lawyer's response to the Wednesday was was basically like, why are we going to participate in basically school? That's right. This sounds like school to me. We don't do school. But so I don't really think the Wednesday hearing is matters very much in terms of whether Trump participates or not, but whether or not they want to add legitimacy when they don't really have much of a substantive argument. I think it's hard to imagine. Yeah. Participation is going be Rudy Giuliani, Bernie Kerik, and a bouncer from the

4040 Club just cracking his knuckles at the day. And they already have lawyers. Jim Jordan's his lawyer. Let me just like one, I don't think it's totally unreasonable of the Trump team to say in this instance, hey, it's weird for us to participate in a hearing where we don't know the witnesses yet. That to me would feel like a bit of a setup. I might not participate in it either. But like bigger picture, I don't know why. I don't see the political upside to participation for them. They know he's guilty.

They're not. They have their goons on this committee who can undercut witnesses or try to make it about CrowdStrike or Joe Biden or Hunter Biden or whatever nonsense they're going to do to distract. And then Trump, knowing that this is ultimately a messaging war about the election, can say what he wants to say on Twitter, on television, over the screaming hum of a helicopter, unchecked by Jerry Nadler or the rules of a committee. Yeah, I think there's also the possibility that they believe that the Senate is going to be friendlier territory because Mitch McConnell runs the Senate and the Republicans. And so if they participate in the Senate trial, maybe it'll be more favorable conditions for them. and the reason I think that is because when you dig through the polling both the polling that we did and some of the polling that's come out it has surprised me at least that um you know when you ask people uh you know what concerns you most about what Trump did the cover-up the obstruction

him hiding something that worries people even more than some of the things that he did. And I think that him not participating and him refusing to testify, him refusing to provide witnesses, him refusing to provide exculpatory evidence, I think it makes him look guilty to people. And I think Democrats need to, and if you want to keep people's attention in this new phase, you have to change the story a little bit from what we had before. And before, during the Intel hearing, it was all about Trump and Ukraine and all the stuff that he did. This can be about Trump knows he's guilty. The Republicans know he's guilty. They're not trying to mount a defense. If he thinks that he's innocent, he would come testify or he would have witnesses testify. He would provide some evidence. He is not doing any of these things.

And there is a reason for that. What is the president hiding? evidence. He is not doing any of these things. And there is a reason for that. What is the president hiding? It's interesting. Also, you know, they're not. We saw this during the previous hearings. We'll see this again. They're not really thinking strategically in terms of what is their long term plan for avoiding political repercussions of impeachment. They seem very much kind of day to day thinking through this. Like, you know, they made this, you know, they hung their hat on hearsay in the early part of the Intelligence Committee hearings. And of course, they knew that by the early part of the next week, we'd be hearing people who heard the call directly. And so now you think, OK, well, they're just thinking about whether or not they should participate in the Judiciary Committee hearings. But in part, what they're doing by

obstructing as they're setting up the possibility of genuinely new and important revelation in the trial, that there's a possibility we may hear from some of these people in the Senate trial that Trump barred from speaking earlier and their favorite defense that this is a snooze won't be available. Also, you know, there's some evidence over the weekend that Republicans don't necessarily see it as a political plus that he is not participating. Tom McClintock, California Republican who's on the Judiciary Committee, said, quote, I think it would be to the president's advantage to have his attorneys there. That's his right.

He also said that John Bolton and Mulvaney should absolutely testify. But of course, Trump has to weigh that against the enormous catastrophic damage that would have been due to the doctrine of executive privilege. But, you know, you have these moments where the Republicans, because, like you said, they have like a day-to-day strategy, are not always on the same page. And so you have these moments when they're in interviews, when they're asked a question about something that's happening in the future around impeachment strategy, and they accidentally tell the truth before they're pulled back. And in McClintock's case, it's like, yeah, he should probably participate because he looks guilty otherwise.

You know, it's so funny. You know, there's obviously, you know, Fox News exists because there's this claim that the mainstream media was biased against against conservatives. There is a kind of quality that's a natural resting place for the media, which is to constantly be wondering if what Democrats are doing is working, because it's a kind of a, it's the flip side of the kind of whatever media coin that if they are, if there is some innate, if people in the mainstream press are more likely to be liberals than they are to be conservatives, they tend to see these fights from the point of view of Democrats.

And so the question is always, are Democrats going too far? What will happen with Democrats? But it's a reminder when you see the kind of whatever cross purposes Republicans are speaking at that the same vexing questions as to what the politics of impeachment actually are and the fact that none of us really know. It applies to them just as much as it applies to Democrats. Yeah. Early on, they said if Trump actually did withhold military aid to get dirt on Joe Biden, yes, that would be incredibly troubling. And now Lindsey Graham is like ripping his shirt off, screaming like he'll never, ever vote to impeach. He doesn't care what the facts say.

He won't even read the transcript. Well, on that note, you know, a bunch of polling came out last week, basically showed the public opinion on impeachment hasn't really moved since October. There's still a slight majority of voters who believe the president should be impeached and removed from office. The average is 48.8% support impeachment, 43.5% opposed, according to 538, percent support impeachment 43.5 percent opposed according to 538 average of all the impeachment polls um democrats are almost all in favor republicans are almost all opposed independents are split uh and you know i bring this up because this appears to be the current measuring stick for reporters to determine whether impeachment is a success um what was your reaction to uh some of the polling over the, you know,

basically a lot of it came out in that last week, right before Thanksgiving? I'll just say, if the polling got here slowly over the course of six months, like if the polling had been earlier in the Ukraine, when the Ukraine news started breaking, if the polling had been more anti-impeachment and ended to this place, people would be saying, wow, this is, we're at the end of Nixon here. But basically, the status quo anti of most of the country thinking Trump is a criminal, with his base continuing to support him no matter what, and then some squishiness around whether or not impeachment is, whether it's not, it's too far. The fact that we've been here from the very beginning has meant these polls don't have very much impact,

but it's staggering. You know, a plurality of the country wants this guy removed from office immediately. It's hot. I mean, and look, we've been here for a little while since the Ukraine matter. But if you look at the polls since last spring and summer, when we were all calling for impeachment too,

it was at like 30, 40, 45. Like it did have that bill. The Ukraine story hit and it changed it. Yeah. And I just think that when we did our poll on impeachment, which was back in October with change, it was the number that really sticks in my mind still is 94 percent of Democrats and Democratic leaning independents were supportive of the inquiry. leaning independents were supportive of the inquiry. 94% of Republicans and Republican leaning independents were against the inquiry and 2% of people didn't have their mind made up. Well, so though I do think one, the polling came right after Gordon Sondland had testified. I don't know that it fully captured, you know, people understanding what he did or said. And then we

hit this sort of frozen week with the holiday where there isn't new polling. So I think we might see things change still. Was I disappointed that it didn't move enormously? A little, sure. I'd love to see it move more, but did I expect it to move more? No. I think the key thing is the hardest part of this process, this education process that we're undergoing about Trump's criminality, is getting to the least well-informed, least partisan people. We need them to understand what Donald Trump did and what happened. And it's very hard to do when they're not paying attention. But there are persuadable voters out there. FiveThirtyEight said that one in four people are persuadable. And these are all the least liberal, least conservative, least well-informed individuals. And so that's the process and it's getting to

those people. And I think, unfortunately, that's not going to be easy through earned media. It's going to have to be through paid media and TV ads and digital spends. And frankly, the whole course of the campaign could be about these issues. So we have some time here. We got to get Jerry Nadler on TikTok. And we should set this expectation now. We may never reach those people because by virtue of the fact that they are not that partisan and don't pay attention that much, these may be voters

who don't pay attention to much of what's going on in Washington and politics until it's time to vote in November. And that's just, I mean, we're dealing, we're going to talk about this in the primary too.

There is a, you know, we talk about sort of like partisan bubbles a lot, but we don't necessarily talk that much either, but maybe this election's in November and I don't know what's going on. It seems like he did something bad, but I don't care. It's also, I think, one lesson that's an unfortunate lesson that Republicans learned and Democrats have slowly been learning, too, is people take signals from leaders as to what's partisan and what's not. And the way Trump has successfully kept Republicans in line mostly throughout impeachment, including the people that were the most gettable, the Will Hurds, really does, I think, ultimately matter in that the process is partisan as long as Republicans don't participate in it. And as long as Republicans don't participate in it, they can claim the process is partisan and call it sort of a classic political fight in Washington. And it's literally been the strategy of the Republican Party since Mitch McConnell decided to obstruct everything that Barack Obama did since 2009. And it was effective and it worked.

And I think, you know, it's really, really hard to break the back of those who look for those signals. But the reality is that one in five respondents in the recent Quinnipiac polls said they could still change their minds on impeachment, right? So there's lots of work that can be done. The challenge that we face as Democrats is that no one trusts the government, no one trusts the media. They think all politicians are bad. That's in large part thanks to decades of Republican efforts to undermine those institutions. But it's an uphill climb. But look, stepping back, I wouldn't want to be Donald Trump going into a reelection with these numbers. Yeah. And I do think we may be underestimating what it's going to feel like to most of the

country when they wake up one morning, turn on the news, read the paper and see Donald Trump has been impeached by the House of Representatives. That might break through. You know, that's going to be different than any of these hearings that some people didn't watch. I also think there was some data in all the polling that we got that shows that it might be making some difference. The CNN poll found that 53 percent say Trump improperly used his office to gain political advantage, which was up from 49 percent who said the same in October.

The Reuters Ipsos poll was interesting. It's just before the hearings, it found that net support for impeachment was three points. That increased to four points after the first week of hearings, five points after the second week of hearings, and the latest poll right before Thanksgiving showed it at seven points. So there is some polls are showing some movement, but I think it's going to be slight. And I think, what does all this mean for the Democrats, right? Because I do think we have to set expectations now. We can't say that a win for us is if we suddenly convince all of these independents and persuadable voters. No, no. Because it just might not happen, you know? Or a single Republican.

Right, exactly. That just can't be the yardstick for success here. It's got to be just educating the people about who Donald Trump is, the ways he's bending the government to advance his political interests and make that part of the narrative that we use to beat him in an election. Yes, I totally agree. It's also, you know, whenever we're defining success, we're talking about this in political terms. And I think one of the lessons of what we've seen so far is we're doing our best when we're not even engaging on those terms. Right. If the question is like if the question to a Democrat is what does success look like in impeachment? I think the answer is we are here to demonstrate what Donald Trump did and what he did wrong. Right. Like success is simply doing everything we can to avoid this political pundit version of impeachment and stay completely focused on

the substance and the facts and let success or failure be determined by our ability to get that in front of people. If Republican politicians want to be accomplices in his crime, then that's good information for the voters to know when they go to the polls in November. That's the answer. And as Matt Gaetz switches license plates on a uh non-discrete passenger van in a parking garage somewhere in dc what okay who's he kidnapping what's happening there no he's just making it he's just you know getting a getaway car oh oh getaway okay he's got bedding the van led me to believe this was a kidnapping i was like the a team what's happening here i didn't know where that was matt gates has has kidnapped jerry nadler and guys it's a comedy all right let's talk about 2020 please with two months to

go until the iowa caucuses the race for the democratic nomination is still wide open which dan balls of the washington post wrote about this weekend quote what continues to define the democratic race is the absence of a candidate who has truly captured the imagination of voters. He also wrote that the phases of the campaign where the progressive candidates seem to be rising this past year were a, quote, misleading indicator of where the party's electorate was on issues like health care and that, quote, more than in some past campaigns, Democratic voters appear torn between heart and head. Many are looking for a candidate who will inspire them while also being somewhat risk averse. Wanted to get your reaction to this

piece because I think it's a pretty accurate summary of where the media narrative is right now, whether it's an accurate summary of where the race is right now. I leave that to you guys, but it's certainly not just Dan Balls writing this. I think he pretty much sums up where most of the punditocracy is. Yeah, I mean, look, I do think this is something we've observed a lot, which is that a lot of voters are taking a game theory approach to how they make this decision. They want to choose someone that they think their neighbor will also choose. Therefore, that person is the most electable. You know, the race is pretty it's a it's a toss up right now. Right. And at this point, at this point in 2008, Hillary Clinton was beating Obama by like 20 points in the national polls.

The Iowa polls were tighter, but it wasn't until that result that Obama shot up and eventually overtook her. So I just think people are moving around a lot. Like I, I don't, I don't know what else to say right now. It's hard to predict. It's just going to be very fluid through the Iowa caucuses. Yeah. I mean, it's a it's I thought it was a good piece. I think it sort of captures a feeling that we've all had. It's also in some ways pretty simple. If there was a clear person who should who could unite the party as the front runner, they'd be winning in a way that was unequivocal. And that's not been the case. I also do think, though, you know, I think sometimes narratives are taking things that are happening in parallel and trying to put them in order, right? Like, oh, you know, there was this wave that happened. And, you know, there was this first, there was the coming of the liberals, and there was the coming of the moderates.

And actually, you know, you look at Biden's numbers that have ultimately been, I think, steadier than people thought, at least nationally. And maybe part of it is also, you know, what does it take for someone to change their mind? Right. You know, we follow every undulation in the race. Meanwhile, if you're just paying attention, right, whatever facts led you to support Joe Biden, they haven't changed enough to get you to change your view, right? That the race is actually... He's been, I think CNN did- Totally consistent.

CNN did an average of 10 polls or something, and 30%, barely moved outside 30%. They said he got a bump over 30 when he announced, and then he went below significantly after that first debate when Kamala Harris roughed him up. And since then, he's been steady. And what's interesting is the other person, and this sort of ruins the narrative of like the rise of the moderates, the other person who's been very, very steady is Bernie Sanders, who's averaged around 16% in those same 10 polls that CNN averaged.

So you got Biden at 30, Bernie at 16. And the only real movement that's happened in this primary is the rise of Elizabeth Warren. And then now she's lost some altitude after this Medicare for all thing, which we can talk about. And then sort of the rise of Pete Buttigieg early in the race, then he sort of fell down to earth. And now he's sort of back on top, at least in Iowa, New Hampshire. And beyond that, it's been a bunch of other candidates, Kamala Harris, Cory Book booker all the rest trying to break into that top tier and and not really succeeding that's basically been the whole race

and and and also i think part of it too is it's like there is like a little bit of a mario kart effect in that when you're in the lead in mario kart uh you don't get as good items you know do you say mario mary i say mario because i'm uh because i'm trash from island uh but uh uh you know every time one of like you know warren rose to the front and then all of a sudden every red shell was coming for her like yellow banana what am i gonna do with this yeah then you're getting nothing yeah green shell green shell what are you what am i marksman what am i american sniper i can't use this green shell i mean i do think look i think you can i love that game i know it's really fun i think that the um i think you can overdo the whole like moderate lane progressive lane

and you know you can see that there's another piece in the washington post this morning by lynn vaverick and john sides who are two great political scientists at ucla lynn's been on wilderness um and they're doing the know, they did this whole thing where the second choices of all these candidates, it's like, if you support Bernie, who's your second choice? A huge chunk is Joe Biden. If you support Joe Biden,

who's your second choice? A huge chunk is Bernie Sanders. Same thing with Warren. Same thing with Buttigieg. All of these like progressive moderate lanes are all mixed when you ask people their first and second choice. I think what we're talking about here, at least with Warren, is the Medicare for all fight.

And I do think she's probably lost some altitude, not just because Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar and Joe Biden and a bunch of other candidates have sort of attacked her about Medicare for all on the debate stage and in their own ads. ads. But Republicans and the insurance industry have been spending, which I didn't even realize until I read this long piece about it in the Washington Post, like a ton of money in a lot of swing states just running ads against Medicare for all and eliminating private insurance. And that, I think, has had an effect on some voters. So it's not that she's too progressive in general, or Bernie is because Bernie's been steady. It's a specific attack on eliminating private health insurance and Medicare for all. I also think in Iowa, it's a proxy for an electability argument. And so I think people like Michael Bennett, who is not someone we've talked about a ton on the show, I think he ran a million dollars in ads in Iowa against Medicare for all.

Oh, really? Yeah, I see. So you're seeing that there's a lot of headwinds for her on this policy issue and on the electability conversation generally. So for most of the primary Medicare for all has been the issue that most exemplified the moderate versus progressive battle. But over the weekend, Pete Buttigieg started running an ad in Iowa about his college affordability plan, where he dings Warren and Sanders for their free college plans with this line. And I think we have a clip of the ad. I believe we should move to make college affordable for everybody. There's some voices saying, well, that doesn't count unless you go even further, unless it's free, even for

kids and millionaires. But I only want to make promises that we can keep. Look, what I'm proposing is plenty bold. I mean, these are big ideas. We can gather the majority to drive those big ideas through without turning off half the country before we even get into office. And that, I think, is the best governing strategy, as well as what it's going to take in order to win. And Lord knows we've got to win. I'm Pete Buttigieg, and I approve this message. Interesting music there. Upbeat. Upbeat. Upbeat. Upbeat. Just so you know the difference between the plans. Under Warren's free college plan,

and Bernie's too, but this is the details for Warren's, any American could go to a two or four year public college without paying a dime in tuition or fees, which is a $1.25 trillion investment over 10 years that she'd pay for with her wealth tax on people with a net worth of over $50 million. Under Pete's plan, tuition at a two or four year public college would be free for families earning

up to $100,000, which he says is 80% of all families, and tuition would be reduced for families earning between $100,000 and $150,000. This is a plan that costs $500 billion over 10 years, paid for by higher taxes on the 1%. Warren, Sanders, and Pete have also all called for expanding Pell Grants so that students could get help with books and living expenses as well. And they're all going to invest more in historically black colleges and universities. colleges and universities. But Pete's shot at free college caused all kinds of controversy on Twitter over the break, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who said, who accused Buttigieg of channeling a Republican talking point about subsidizing rich kids. What did you guys think? I was thinking about this. It's a really sort of complicated political question to unpack,

because as we've seen throughout, this is actually very similar to the healthcare debate in that the political arguments and the policy arguments kind of get mixed up and you kind of get the worst of both. Right. So I think you sort of separate the politics and the policy. Pete Buttigieg's plan is progressive. It is also true that what we're talking about. One reason why it's progressive? It was Bernie Sanders' plan in 2017 that he introduced in the Senate. That's it. And I've seen a lot of people being, I think, too critical of Pete's plan in that for the vast majority of people, it's equally generous, right? It's going to provide free college for most people. Now, the question, what happens at the higher tax brackets? And this to me is actually an important policy debate that's been unfolding. And you have kind of two democratic schools of thought. One says we need to do the most good as efficiently as possible, that that's what it means to

be practical. It doesn't make sense to tax people, then turn around and use it to send rich kids to college. That just makes the program more expensive. It makes it less popular. Nobody wants to run around saying that they're going to get free college to millionaires. The more effective measure is something that is means tested, costs less, it does more good. And that has been, I think, a democratic consensus approach to policy for a long time. What has changed in part because of Obamacare, because in part because of the politics of Republicans, is a bunch of more liberal members of the party looking at the democratic record and saying, hold on a second, we've been biting off our nose to spite our face.

When we do these means tested, more complicated policy solutions, we get all the pain associated with doing big things. But because the benefits are diffuse, a little bit harder to understand, you're not sure who's getting them, who's not. Because they're not universal, there's less of a universal buy-in from everybody from the wealthy to the upper middle class to the middle class to the working class to the poor. They point to a lot of democratic tax proposals that have an income tax credit here, a working tax credit there, that makes the system complicated to understand who exactly is fighting for you.

That's the kind of policy fight. Yeah, that is. No, that accurately represents. But it's also, I mean, I think a lot of people are sort of, it's a philosophical fight. It's a fight about a philosophical approach to policymaking, which is that if you make a program universal, it's going to get the most support and going to be the hardest to unravel. That's one piece. The other piece is that there's probably a legitimate critique that Pete's cutoff for getting free college is too low. So when he says we shouldn't be giving free college to millionaires, there are in fact a bunch of people between his cutoff level, like $100,000 a year, and a millionaire who wouldn't get free college under

his plan. And so that seems misleading or insufficient. I think on the policy front, there's a good, and this is not a lot of the arguments that I saw on Twitter, but on the policy front, there's a good argument against Pete's plan based on what you just said, right? Which is like, you know, if you're a family making $200,000 a year, so look, it's average four-year tuition at a public university is $10,000 a year, right? So it's $40,000 over four years. So if you're a family making $200,000 a year, you got a couple of kids like, yeah, maybe it could be a bit more generous in that regard. Now, he still says, and you know, I haven't run the numbers, but that 80% of people would get to that 80% of families would get free college under this plan. There's a lot of people, right?

But you're right. You could argue that it's not generous enough. I do think some of the people on Twitter are being like, oh, does Pete also hate public parks and libraries and stuff like that? Like, okay, the cost of a rich person walking into a public library or a public park is a little bit different than, you know, tuition at a four-year university. Well, right. But I mean, this is the philosophical question that I actually think it's a really interesting debate, right? Because the point that now, now this is, I think it's worth pointing out too, that there's a way in which Pete is being so disingenuous. It's like the reason the politics are toxic is in part because of the argument you

are currently making. You are making the argument toxic. Right. Because he's had this plan for a while and no one said anything about it until he decided to take the shot in the ad, which is important to him. Right. And also, I mean, so, so yes, he's conflating the richest of the rich with a huge number of people that won't get it. But even taking that on, even, even you take it on Pete's, the political argument he's making. Okay. so you don't want 1% of students to be eligible to this because you don't like the message it sends. But of course, the cost of 1% is about 1% of the program. Yeah, but I get that, what he's saying. But there's also, I mean, we just talked about the totals of each of the plans, right? So it's, I think, and this would be a better argument from

him because I think you're right. He's exaggerating it. And his spokesperson, Liz Smith, did so even worse on Twitter. Well, they want the fight, clearly. She said, if you think that a worker who didn't go to college should pay for college for a CEO's kid,

then Pete Buttigieg isn't your candidate. That's just incorrect because a worker who didn't go to college will not be paying for this plan because whether it's Pete's plan, Bernie's plan, or Warren's plan, they're all paid for by taxing rich people in the top one percent so a worker is not paying for it i think the better argument is you know they're what warren's plan is 1.2 trillion over 10 years pete's is 500 billion over 10 years i think you can make an argument

that's a lot of money in between there could we use use that extra money to pay for, you know, anti-poverty stuff or health care or any of the other things that we need to do out there as opposed to using those subsidies for wealthier people? Look, I think a lot of what's driving the ferocity of the attacks on this plan and on Pete generally is the same as what's driving the viciousness of the attacks on his team doing a dance to high hopes. Right. It's like he's doing better. People are nervous and they're mad at him and they're lashing out. So, okay. It is what it is, the political fight. But I do think it's gone a little too far. People are like, this is how we're going to create an entrenched elite class by sending millionaires kids to non-public institutions. It's's gotten completely absurd. Like I do think there's some disingenuous to the argument made by Pete. You're exactly right that no one attacked him back

until he started running this TV ad. But, you know, a lot of people might argue that tax dollars are fungible. So in some ways you are asking lower income people to pay for the tuition of rich kids because, right, all tax dollars go into the same pot. But this attack is going to come in a general election like we should figure out a way to deal with it on substance i just

think yeah it's like money is not free here you know and like 700 billion dollars difference between the plans like i think you can you can make an argument that that 700 billion dollars it's better spent on poor and working class americans than people over $150,000, families making over $150,000 a year on college. You can make that argument. Now, I think you're right. I don't think Pete has zeroed in on that argument. He's made a much simpler one that can be taken as disingenuous as well.

But I think there's an argument there for sure. The other thing that I want to point out on the means testing thing is it has long been a democratic argument that universal programs are more politically popular because they're universal. That's Social Security. That's Medicare. No one wants to touch either of those things because wealthier people get them, too. But I will say Medicaid is very means tested. In fact, it only goes to the poorest people. The last poll taken on Medicare last month, 74 percent of Americans have a favorable view of Medicaid. 74% of Americans have a favorable view of Medicaid. We just won two governorships in deep red states because the Democrat, both moderate Democrats, by the way, defended the Medicaid expansion.

Medicaid is extremely popular, even though it's for only low-income people. So I don't necessarily know that. It's not a perfectly clear. There are arguments to be made on both sides. I mean, look, we talked about this recently, that because there was so much good stuff inside of the Recovery Act, a lot of people didn't know how much good it did on energy or that their tax credit may have come from the stimulus bill. And we talk about how Republicans were able to use the complexity of Obamacare to undermine Obamacare, right? Medicaid is very popular. Medicaid is very popular, but we've also seen that it took until the threat of the candidates to magnify to a huge degree their policy differences. And in reality,

those differences may not be as large, right? Like, yes, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have more progressive college tuition plans than Pete Buttigieg, but they're all sort of, they're all going to make college a lot more affordable for a lot of people who need it. It's going to be free for a lot of people who need it. And I think as I watch all of these profiles and read all this stuff, Elizabeth Warren is more pragmatic than I think even her campaign presents. She's done a lot of wheeling and dealing in the Senate. So has Bernie Sanders.

And I think Pete is more progressive than he is even presenting himself as right now because he's trying to carve out this lane for him. He's the one who started the primary talking about, you know, getting rid of the Electoral College and the filibuster and all those other things. So I think these candidates are closer together than they are trying to appear right now in order to win a primary. And that's just something that people should keep in mind. Yeah, I think that's true. I also do think, though, this is the ideological debate right now at the core of the Democratic Party. It's do you add a public option or do you go for single payer? Do you do universal programs in the spirit of of Medicare, Social Security and public schools? Or do you expand on the, you know, the social safety net by doing more means tested and practical additions, right?

Like, I think that that's a really good philosophical place for the party to be. I mean, that's just where we are. Yeah. Okay. One last story from over the break. On Friday, the New York Times ran a brutal piece about Kamala Harris's campaign, including quotes from a resignation letter signed by former state operations director Kelly Mellenbacher. Quote, this is my third presidential campaign and I've never seen an organization treated staff so poorly. With less than 90 days until Iowa, we still do not have a real plan to win. Times went on to say, quote, even to some Harris allies, her decline is more predictable than surprising. In one instance after another, Ms. Harris and her closest advisors made flawed decisions about which states to focus on,

Harris and her closest advisors made flawed decisions about which states to focus on, issues to emphasize, opponents to target, all while refusing to make difficult personnel choices to impose order on an unwieldy campaign. This piece is sourced to more than 50 current and former campaign staff members and allies, most of whom spoke on background or off the record. Tommy, what'd you think of that story? Man, it's weird. I mean, there's been a couple stories like this about the Harris campaign. It's weird that you see a sort of rolling shakeup story. Usually something happens, you know,

like a change is made, someone is fired, a new strategy is put in place. This doesn't seem to go away. And it's a huge problem. It's a huge problem. Your ability to run a campaign is in many ways the best proxy for your ability to run a government. And this is going to get wide circulation among Iowa caucus goers in New Hampshire,

everywhere else. So, you know, look, all 50 people quoted in that story are doing her an enormous disservice. That said, if clearly the strategy to date has not worked. Clearly a lot of people feel deeply mistreated. Clearly there have been challenges in the campaign from the beginning that were not rectified fast enough. But man, it was shocking. The article, just to be honest, when I read it, I was having incredible 2008 Hillary Clinton campaign flashbacks. I mean, really you could go through and change the names. And I felt like I was having incredible 2008 Hillary Clinton campaign flashbacks. I mean, really, you could go through and change the names. And I felt like I was reading a story about 2008 because it was people being disloyal

to the campaign, people airing their public grievances, and people feeling as though they really had no other choice because things were being so mismanaged. So, you know, the people speaking do a great disservice when they undermine their campaign by talking to a reporter. But that said, the fact that so many are putting themselves in that position tells you something is incredibly unhealthy inside of that campaign. We've had, what, 20-something candidates now, campaigns? Two campaigns have consistently had a lot of leaks to reporters about what's going on in the campaign in the process, Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. And a lot of the other candidates,

whether you're at the top of the polls, like whether it's Warren or Buttigieg or Sanders, you don't hear a lot about internally about their campaigns, or people who've struggled, Cory Booker, Beto O'Rourke dropped out, like you just you didn't hear a lot about the internal machinations of theirs campaign. It is one of the most important things when you're building a campaign is to have a culture where people don't feel like when something goes wrong, you go run to a reporter. And it does seem like, I mean, 50 people is a lot of people, but it does seem like in her case, there is a lot of issues with some of these consultants, you know, that are on her campaign. And I feel bad for a lot of the younger staffers on that campaign. Right. That have to deal with that. But look, to me, like we've said this from the beginning.

Kamala Harris, I think, is one of the most talented politicians out there. I think she is charismatic and she is brilliant. And she like, you know, I just I've always been a huge fan of Kamala Harris. like, you know, I just, I've always been a huge fan of Kamala Harris. And I think we've all sort of been worried since the beginning of the, of the campaign that this enormous talent and the candidate has not been served completely well by at least some measure of people around her. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I've been on campaigns where on the Edwards campaign in 2004, we were not winning. We were struggling to raise money at one point to try to make our financial disclosure about the amount of money we had on hand look better. We delayed a paycheck from before Christmas to after it. So there's a lot of grounds for bitching and moaning and

carpeting on that campaign, but no one did it because there was an internal culture and people liked each other and they felt loyal to the candidate and to each other ultimately. Because when you're one of 50 people calling back the New York Times to shit on the campaign strategy, you're making the likelihood that you and your best friends have a job in a couple of weeks considerably lower. So it's weird. I've never seen anything like it. Yeah. And also at a certain point uh it's it's it's weird i've never seen anything like it yeah and also at a certain point it's it's not just that it's okay so there's clearly no why do you do that right it's like well you don't do that if you feel like you're part of the team and that you're rising and falling together you do that because you're you don't think it's your fault and you don't feel like

you're being heard you don't feel like your views are being represented you feel like the candidates being misserved and all of that yes it ultimately yes it falls on the people that Kamala has put in place. But ultimately, she determines who that team is. And that team clearly is not serving her well at this point. Yeah. And look, it doesn't necessarily mean you always lose. I mean, I was on the Carrie campaign in the primary was a fucking viper pit. And it was way worse

than than the kamala harris's campaign there were firings and people quit and everyone went to the reporters all the time and when it got to the point by when we won the primary we were like what we won the primary but to the point john at least you guys made choices right like jim jordan was fired robert gibbs quit like it was shook up john mccain in 2007 things were shook up they changed their strategy they invested all in new hampshire and like then they could sort of move on from there what's remarkable to me is they made this decision to fire half their staff in baltimore and go to an iowa first strategy and move people out but move a bunch of people out there many many months ago and then this story pops up like a month

later. That's the weirdest part. Yeah. There's been every, every four or five weeks, it feels like there's been an internal Kamala Harris process story that is detrimental to the campaign. And, you know, in contrast that to the Obama campaign in 07 and 08, I can count on one hand, the number of really bad process stories we had, because you can remember them because they made you feel so bad. You know, I remember that like, it's like a Nagourney, Jeff Zeleny story in the New York Times in the fall when we were losing to Hillary.

And everyone was wondering like, who talked? Because no one ever, no one ever really talked, you know? And look, this is just, this is a cautionary tale for everyone else who is working on another campaign.

And also the Kamala Harris campaign. Don't, don't call reporters back. Don't email them back. Politely decline. If you want your candidate to win. They are, you should be friendly to reporters. Don't call reporters back. Don't email them back. Politely decline. If you want your candidate to win. They are. You should be friendly to reporters. They are not your friends.

You tweeted this and a bunch of reporters in New York Times texted me. Be like, tell your buddy to shut up. Yeah, right. Because they know. Because guess what? Their job is to get the story. And a lot of them are very good at it. Our job is to not give them the story.

Giving them the story does not help the campaign. Politely decline. It's tough. Sorry, reporter friends. You know, it is interesting. We're finally starting to see some of the winnow not help the campaign. Politely decline. It's tough. Sorry, reporter friends. You know, it is interesting. We're finally starting to see some of the winnowing of the field we thought would happen. Joe Sestak dropped out. I mean, look.

Well, I have a whole other section about Steve Bullock. Steve Bullock dropped out today. So things are changing. Finally, things are winnowing. I'm just thinking about it now that I'm no longer a camp. You know, I'm no longer. I'm a journalist now. And my view is campaign aides.

Keep reaching out. Call me. Speaking your truth. Blow those whistles. Yeah, me. All right. We need to know. All right.

We care about the truth here. Crooked media. Whistleblower. Leak, leak, leak, leak, leak. All right, everyone. That's it. We don't have a guest today. So we're just we're out right now.

Happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving. Great to be back. It's great to be back. We will. We'll see you on Thursday. Bye, guys. Bye. Bye. Pod Save America is a product of Crooked Media.

The senior producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Carolyn Reston, Tanya Sominator, and Katie Long for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmel Cohnian, Yael Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as a video every week.