Pod Save America - “Trumpism fuels a pandemic.”

Episode Date: March 12, 2020

Donald Trump’s disastrous Oval Office address fails to calm Americans, Republicans fight Democratic proposals to provide economic relief, Joe Biden inches closer to an insurmountable pledged delegate lead, and Bernie Sanders vows to debate on Sunday. Then Governor Gavin Newsom talks to Dan about what the state of California is doing to battle the coronavirus pandemic.Have questions/comments/concerns? Text us at [phone]

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, we'll talk about President Trump's Oval Office address, about what the World Health Organization has now declared a global pandemic, how his administration is handling the response, and what Democrats can do about it. We'll also talk about Joe Biden's big victories on this week's fairly substantial Tuesday, and what it all means for the rest of the Democratic primary and the general election. And Dan will talk to Governor Gavin Newsom about how he's been responding

and the state of California have been responding to the threat of coronavirus. If you want to hear more about the global response to the coronavirus, check out Pod Save the World. Here's a preview from Tommy. Quote, this episode motherfucking slaps. response to the coronavirus check out pod save the world here's a preview from tommy quote this episode motherfucking slaps these are just getting he was i go ahead i just can't i can't believe you even said that like i read it it was and it's very off brand for the uh pod save the world pitches

which are very substantive and serious, which are always like, how to solve a global pandemic, what is happening in South Sudan, and why human rights are the fundamental challenge of our time on Pod Save the World this week. Tommy was hoping, apparently Tommy doesn't think that I read our housekeeping items ahead of time

because he was hoping that I would read it for the first time on air and not know that it was there. But I did, and I kept it. I'm glad we could do this bit from Anchorman. Yeah. In that episode that motherfucking slaps, you'll also get up to speed on the pandemic.

You'll learn why the Saudi-Russia oil price wars are rocking the global economy and how Vladimir Putin might be president for life. So it's a good news episode. Check it out. A few other notes from us. You may have seen that because of coronavirus, we are canceling the upcoming Pod Save America and Love It or Leave It March tour dates in San Diego, Phoenix and Seattle. We are hoping to reschedule once we can ensure everyone's health and safety. Full refunds will be available at the point of purchase, and ticket holders will receive an email with more instructions. We are very bummed out, but everyone's health comes first,

and we can't be holding gatherings. Actually, when we decided to cancel it, we just did it voluntarily, but the state of California has now said no gatherings over 250 people. So there you go. On the plus side, we will be doing our group thread for sunday's democratic debate between joe biden and bernie sanders we'll all be doing it from home uh so join us at crooked.com slash group thread starting at 5 p.m pacific 8 p.m eastern uh so that's great all right let's get to the news donald trump delivered a primetime oval office Office address about the threat of coronavirus on Wednesday night,

where he made a number of policy announcements, three of which had to be corrected immediately after the speech. Trump said that he was issuing a 30-day ban on all travel from Europe to the U.S., but the Department of Homeland Security quickly clarified that the ban doesn't apply to U.S. citizens, the immediate family of U.S. citizens, or permanent U.S. residents. Trump then said that the travel ban would apply to trade and cargo. The White House later said that was wrong. Trump said that health insurers have agreed to waive all copayments for coronavirus treatments. The insurance industry later said that was only for testing.

On the day the Dow Jones hit bear market territory for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis, Trump also called for the Small Business Administration to provide stopgap loans to affected businesses, delayed the April 15th tax deadline for most Americans, and urged Congress to pass a payroll tax cut. So, Dan, what'd you think of the speech? Would you like to start with your grade for style or substance? Look, I want to be fair here

because we want to be an honest broker in the situation. But on a rhetorical level, a political level, an economic level, on a substantive level, it was an absolute fucking disaster. Yeah. It is without a doubt the worst nationally televised address that any American president has ever given. out the worst national televised address that any American president has ever given. It had the opposite effect of everything he possibly could have intended because he and his administration and his White House team are too fucking stupid to do the basics of their jobs. He stated the policy wrong, which then led to mass gatherings at airports during a pandemic in Europe. to mass gatherings at airports during a pandemic in Europe.

I mean, like, and we wake up the next morning and the market has to stop trading because it crashed so quickly because the president inspired so little confidence in himself and his administration. It was a disaster. He really just honestly needs to shut the fuck up and stop talking. We obviously don't agree with Trump on much.

We have different politics than him. But just from a basic nuts and bolts level of like how to put together a speech like that and roll out policy announcements, like the fact that he issued these three policy announcements that were wrong, that they had to be clarified immediately after, it really does show that in case you just thought it was like dumb donald trump and he had just like sort of incompetent people working around him no no he has really fucking stupid people working around him like the the idea that an oval office primetime address would not get forget about even fact check like you know him lying about oh the best economy ever all this bullshit like basic Like, basic policy pronouncements. Where was the policy staff?

Why didn't DHS, why didn't the Department of Homeland Security see the speech in advance? Like, Stephen Miller, Jared Kushner were working on the speech. What the fuck were they doing, letting a speech go out with policy announcements that weren't checked? And again, it's not like Trump is sitting there proposing his big plan for the economy. It's a fucking global pandemic, an urgent health crisis. The speech finishes. I get a call for i'm

from a friend of mine whose son is in paris and he and his wife are panicking because they don't think they can get their son home from paris because he just said no flights from europe and i had to then wait and find that the dhs clarified it and then they calmed down but you're seeing pictures today at charles de gaulle airport in paris and it's like mayhem and panic because a bunch of people are trying to buy like three thousand dollar tickets home because they didn't know that it uh that it didn't apply to American citizens I mean that is and that's just one small tiny piece of how badly he has fucked this up it is he did not have to give that speech last night he did not have to you could have given it tomorrow night you could have given it next week. He was basically living in a Fox News bubble about this, finally recognized that

there was some level of panic and decided to give a speech without having any idea what he was going to say. And that is the worst fucking thing you can do. You give a speech when you have something to say. You don't say you're going to give a speech and then reverse engineer a bunch of policies so you have something to say. And when you do that, and you're already bad at your job and have staffed the government with the dregs of the Fox News green room, this is what we end up with. And more people will be sick because of this. More people are going to lose their retirement and their economic well-being and their jobs because of this, because the president opened his mouth without thinking. And we should say, too, it's not just, even the policies corrected and clarified are not even close to the scope of what's necessary

to address this crisis. I mean, he's talking about a ban from Europe for 30 days. He accepted the United Kingdom for reasons we don't know, even though the United Kingdom has more cases of coronavirus than any of the other European countries outside of Italy or any of the countries that are part of the ban. So also it doesn't address the fact that we probably have more cases in this country and he never addressed testing. The biggest crisis we have right now is that we do not have available testing that's ready and available for everyone who needs a test.

On Friday, Trump told us when he was at the CDC, everyone who needs a test can get one. That is 100% false. It was false at the time. It remains false today. It was false at the time. It remains false today. There was Senator Lankford, a Republican senator, said that after a briefing today, we're two weeks away from safe, reliable, fast testing for everybody. Two weeks away.

This has been spreading through the United States of America for weeks. People cannot get a test if they need one unless they say that they were traveling to one of the infected countries in many places. There are not enough. It boggles my mind every morning I wake up and we still don't have available testing and people cannot, people in the government, people in charge cannot tell us why.

I mean, it's like this, this is the nightmare scenario, right? We have, Trump has been operating in a situation where all of the crises he faced were ones of his own making

and they were political in nature. And this is a true governmental crisis a true crisis that will would test even the most well-functioning and well-staffed government and he is 100 not up to the job it's yeah i don't know i mean do you think like do you think he has any grasp of how serious this crisis is? Or does he know and not care, not know what to do? Like, I just, you know, it's always tough to figure out what's going on in his fucking addled mind. But I don't know.

What do you think? Yeah, I don't know. Same way. I think the fact that he gave the speech last night recognizes at least that he is beginning to understand the political crisis he faces, not necessarily the public health crisis that the country and the world faces. And ultimately, like everything else, it is Trump first, America last. And so he is thinking about ways in which he can help himself, not ways in which he can help solve the problems for the country, regardless of whether it helps or hurts him politically. And the policies

that he offered just bespeak a massive ignorance to what's happening in America. And it's not surprising because he has been watching Fox News. And Fox News would make you think that this is all an impeachment hoax, as Trish Reagan from Fox Business said the other day, or it's Democrats fanning the flames for political gain as opposed to an actual public health crisis. I mean, the NBA canceled its season last night. Yeah. I mean, this is a very real thing. As you said, the governor of California recommended the cancellation of every family of 250 people. This is a real crisis, but his policies are about preventing infected people from coming to America, not trying to stop the spread of disease among Americans, which is what the true problem is, right? That is what's happening in California, in Seattle, in New York. And that is like, ultimately, Donald Trump is a germaphobic xenophobe. And that is the worst

possible set of characteristics you could have to deal with a crisis like this. He looks at this and sees it as an immigration problem, not a public health problem in the United States. Because he's unwilling to admit the crisis because I think he thinks it's bad for him. I mean, trying to ask constructive questions here. What do you think we would be doing differently if Obama was in charge right now and we were at the White House? What would that have addressed looked like last night? How would it have differed tonally, substantively? I know you don't have all the policies, but what do you think?

Well, I'm not sure he would have given it last night. Yeah. Right. I think we would have waited until we had, well, I think this would have gone one of two ways. He would have given the speech two weeks ago at the front end, or we would be waiting until we had very specific sets of things we could do. It would have certainly included a set of recommendations for what the Congress should do to help deal with the economic fallout and stop the spread of disease. Very similar. And I know we'll talk about this very

similar to what the Democrats in the house put forward today. I think it would be, would have had very specific recommendations on how people prevent the spread of disease in their own families and communities around social distancing. I mean, we worked in the white house during a near pandemic during the H1N1 flu of

2009. And the amount of like, I very much remember President Obama spent doing videos and PSAs in press, telling people to do things as simple as sneeze into their elbow, right? And to do elbow bumps instead of shaking hands and fist bumps. And all of those things, because that, like he, we understood we understood that we had a bully pulpit. We had a megaphone that we could communicate important information to people. And he used it for that. And that's what I think a President Obama would have done last night. It would have been to try to very forthrightly describe the situation America was in, to give people usable, actionable advice on how to prevent the spread of disease in their homes

and their communities. And it would be a recommendation of a list of things that the country needed Congress to do to prevent the further spread of disease and help the economy recover. That's one of the things we would have done. And we certainly would have not stated the policies wrong and certainly would have been coordinating with the global community. Because the thing we forgot to mention is that Trump forgot his administration did not tell Europe that he was going to institute a travel ban. So now they are furious at the United States. And I also think President Obama would be on the phone or in meetings or in video conferences with leaders of the world talking about coordinated global action to try

to stop the spread of disease. Donald Trump will not do that, cannot do that, because he is an isolationist who has no interest in the relationship with the other leaders in the world who would be being involved in collective action to stop it. He reportedly doesn't even want to get in a room with Nancy Pelosi to negotiate an economic recovery package because he's still mad at her over impeachment. So he won't get in a room, let alone coordinate a global response with other world leaders. I also think Barack Obama would be on the phone every day with every medical expert and insurance industry CEO and drug company CEO moving heaven and earth to get testing up and running faster. And look, if there were barriers to that, he would be telling the American people, here's where we are on testing. Here's why we still can't get ramped up yet. Here's the timeline.

Here's what we're hoping for. Here's what I'm going to do. Here's what I need help with Congress for to push this. We would know that the heart of this problem is that we're not testing fast enough as other countries have started ramping up testing. Look, South Korea has fucking drive-through testing right now. China had like – the number of new cases yesterday was in the tens because of all the measures that they instituted, many of which were dramatic. It is possible to mitigate the risk here and to stop the spread of this or at least slow the spread of this because we see other countries are doing it and it's just it's pretty enraging to look at other countries with drive-through testing talking about how they're slowing the spread of cases and we're just not doing that here and we don't even get an explanation from our leaders about why we're not

doing that here i believe the cdc director was in front of congress yesterday and he said the reason that we don't have drive-through testing is he didn't want to affect the relationship between patients and their providers, which, you know, I tweeted about it and asked a bunch of doctors like what that means. And no one thinks it makes any fucking sense. So I do think like President Obama would be doing a lot to address the actual core problem here. But I also think the tone would be different too, right? And I do think it's very challenging to figure out what is the right tone on this, right? You do not want to spark panic, but you also don't want to downplay the severity of this. Jay Inslee is the governor of Washington, and they instituted a ban on gatherings with 250 people or more in Seattle, in the Seattle region,

which is where one of the outbreaks is. And one of the reporters asked him at a press conference, is there a penalty? What's the penalty for holding a gathering of more than 250 people? And Jay Inslee said, the penalties are you might be killing your granddad if you don't do it. And like, you know, a lot of people looked at that statement like, wow, but that's where we are right now. That's how serious this is. And you didn't hear anything like that level of seriousness from Donald Trump throughout this whole crisis. no it's i mean it is just it is a massive government-wide failure and it starts at the top so now this moves to congress where republicans have been told by trump that they should pass a payroll tax cut that lasts until the election um the white house has also

floated tax bailouts for airlines and cruise industry and the hotel industry. But the whole thing has so far fallen flat on Capitol Hill. Senate Republicans are reportedly worried that the tax cuts cost too much money, while Democrats correctly argue that a payroll tax won't help workers who are laid off because of coronavirus and that it will be less impactful than more direct measures like paid medical leave expanded unemployment insurance food security food assistance free coronavirus testing that includes the uninsured protections for health care workers expanded medicaid for poorer americans who who can't access health care so dan it looks like the house democrats will pass a bill today with these measures called the Families First Coronavirus Response Act.

The question is then what? House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy said this morning he's against the Democratic proposal. I believe the White House has called this radical left proposals, what I just talked about. You know, sick leave, food assistance for people. They're calling this radical socialist left proposals. So the Senate Republicans, House Republicans, and Donald Trump are now against this package. How much leverage do the Democrats have to make sure enough help gets to the right people? I mean, they have a lot of leverage here, right? Like there is no response bill can be passed without Nancy Pelosi's okay. And they should

use that leverage. And I do think it's a balance between ensuring that we get something that actually matters, that will make a real impact in people's lives. And what the White House has talked about in terms of a broad-based payroll tax cut is in and of itself insufficient, because it does nothing for the people who are going to lose their jobs in this process. It's not going to help people get more access to testing. It's not going to help people who don't have insurance or are therefore unable to get checked out or get care or any of those things. But they have that leverage and they should use it. And I think it's very smart of them to get that bill out there now and let that be the sort of the basis by which we

have this conversation. Because Trump doesn't have a plan. The Senate Republicans don't have a plan. Let this be the thing that they work off of. And so I think that they should push very aggressively. And I think it is just notable that – let's flip this around. So let's imagine it is March of 2012, and the economy has just taken a massive hit in a similar situation. Could you imagine John Boehner and Paul Ryan and the Republicans putting forward a massive economic rescue package in Obama's election year? Election year? No. No, I can't. I mean, that's silly. Of course not.

They'd be calling for tax cuts and getting rid of regulations is what they would have done. And even if Obama supported everything they want to do, they would rather hurt the economy and Obama than help the country. And the Democrats are different that way. It's a fundamental difference between the two parties. But I don't – I mean, like, you know, there's always the question like, so let's play this out. Democrats have this package. The Trump people say, no, we want a payroll tax cut, maybe a bailout for some of these industries. This is what we're going with. Nancy Pelosi says, no, we passed our bill.

We're not signed. I'm not passing any kind of bill that doesn't include these specific direct, these specific measures that are going to help people affected by the virus and by the economic fallout. That is my priority. We got to pass this and I'm not going to pass anything that doesn't do that. Then Donald Trump and the Republicans say Democrats are obstructionist. Democrats are standing in the way. The radical left socialist Democrats are standing in the way and hurting Americans by standing in the way of progress and any kind of relief for people and blah, blah, blah. What happens then? What do you do if you're the Democrats? Look, I think Democrats should be willing to negotiate on – like this is obviously their starting offer. And there could be other – like a payroll tax cut in and of itself,

depending on how it's constructed and everything, it's not offensive. It's just not sufficient. Yeah. Right. And so there is room for negotiation here. And certainly Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats understand that, which is why they pass this bill first. And if there is something that they can pass that actually helps. And I think, I think it's important that paid leave be a part of it. I think obviously free testing has to be a part of it. All of, but if they can, like they should be willing to negotiate. But if Donald Trump decides that he would rather just paint the Democrats as obstructionists than actually get something done, that would be cutting off his nose to spite his face. Because in a situation like this, the reality on the ground is much more impactful

than any rhetoric from Trump. What do you think is going to hurt more politically? The fact that nothing is going to be done to help people and maybe stabilize the economy? Who's that going to affect? Donald Trump or Nancy Pelosi, or a bunch of tweets from Donald Trump. And so this is where the democratic leverage lies, which is Donald Trump needs something to happen and he can't get anything done without Nancy Pelosi. So he better get over himself and get in a room and figure it out because otherwise he is going to be running for reelection as an impeached, unpopular president who lost by 3 million votes with an economy that is hurtling towards recession in the middle of a crisis. Yeah, because people aren't going to sit there and say, where's my payroll tax cut holiday?

They are going to be sitting there and saying, why can't I afford the treatment that I need right now? Why am I not getting paid when I'm forced home from work because of this coronavirus? Why are there not protections for the healthcare workers who are handling this? Why is there not available testing right now? That's what people are going to be saying when they're sitting home. And if Donald Trump, if they know that Donald Trump and the Republicans are standing

in the way of that, that's not going to be too good for them. No. That is where the leverage is. And I'm just very glad to have Nancy Pelosi in charge right now. Yeah, everyone should. Imagine if we hadn't won the House in 2018 right now, what would be happening? That's right.

So what's the right message from Democrats as a party? Let's broaden this out here, because that was a legislative strategy. But how should, you know, Joe Biden's giving a speech probably as we're recording this. I think it starts at 10 a.m. Pacific Coast time. You know, Bernie Sanders is out there talking about this as well. And then we have the whole rest of the party, everyone who goes on TV, everyone talks about this. What do you think the right message is at this point?

Well, I think we have to be leaders and we have to use the platforms that we have to provide people with the important, actionable information that Donald Trump is not providing. That, I think, is what we expect to see from Joe Biden later today when he has his remarks. It's what we've seen from many members of Congress, from Democratic governors for sure. But I also think we have to be very clear about who is responsible for the failures in the system, and that is Donald Trump. And we should not back away from that because some people will scream unity, or you'll get etiquette lectures from cable news pundits, et cetera.

People need to understand who is responsible for the failures here. And that is the Trump administration. And helping solve the problem comes first, but we don't have to pretend like politics is gone because the Republicans and Trump are not going to put politics away. Yeah, I mean, they're going to scream, don't be political, don't be partisan. Guess what? Donald Trump should not be in office right now.

The people that Donald Trump has hired to work in the white house should not be in the white house right now during a crisis so yes i am doing absolutely everything possible to make sure that they are not in office at least come november because we are in the middle of an urgent public health crisis and uh potentially an economic crisis that's coming and these people are not cut out for the job and lives depend on it so that's what i'm trying to do make sure they're not there anymore so like in the sense like don't be political yes i'm going to be political in that sense because they are going to get people killed you know and it's not even a it's it is not an exaggeration because you referenced this before but like donald trump and sean hannity and rush limbaugh and all the propagandists out there, they've already tried to downplay this crisis.

They've already tried to downplay the public health aspect of it. Don't worry. It's going away. We have 15 cases. It's going down to zero. It's going to be fine. These are all things that they're saying. That is going to lead to more people refusing to do social distancing or other things. And that is going to keep this disease spreading at an unnecessary speed. That is what they are doing. So yes, I want to get them out of office and I will be doing everything I can to do that. I mean,

the Fox news, Trump just nexus of like whitewashing this whole thing and trying to say like, don't worry, is just so stupid, right? It's so dangerously stupid because the Venn diagram of people most vulnerable to this disease

and Fox News viewers are two perfectly overlapping circles. Like that is what we are talking about here. And like the giving a potentially fatal disease to each other to own the libs is probably the ultimate manifestation of Trumpism in 2020. It's not, I mean, it's not even funny. It's just, it's fucking sad. It's fucking sad. So before we get to the primary and leave this topic, let's talk about how coronavirus will affect the actual act of campaigning in 2020.

Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have canceled rallies this week. Trump still did his. But even Trump, after last night, the White House announced they were canceling his events in Colorado and Nevada this week. How does this change the campaign? And will Trump be able to hold off on doing his rallies for long? The Trump part is a very interesting question because he talked about elderly people not gathering last night. That was like one thing he said that was somewhat useful. And I went with that Donald Trump is an elderly person, primarily supported by elderly people. So having rallies seems to run counter to anything and everything you would do in the middle of a coronavirus

pandemic. And I think it's going to be a real test. In terms of like the nuts and bolts of the campaign, rallies provide a couple of things, right? They are an organizing opportunity for campaigns. It's where they get people to sign up to be volunteers, to register to vote. That's where they get people's data so that you can reach out to them for GOTV and volunteer recruitment later on. And every missed rally affects that, right? It affects your ability to build an organization. For the context of Joe Biden's campaign, like right now, it makes it, I don't think it's, it's not a sort of a devastating blow that you can't have rallies in March for an election in November, but Trump is well ahead in data accumulation and volunteer recruitment. And so that matters. But ultimately, the other part of rallies that you

and I care a lot about is their message opportunities, right? They're where you can drive news coverage and say things. And Biden and Bernie will both have to be very creative about ways in which to get your message out without rallies. I do think in the context of the primary, it really freezes things. It's not totally evident. We're in this place where, and we'll talk about it, where the campaign is in a certain stage and now no one can do the sort of active campaigning that you would require to change the dynamics of the race. And so it's probably frozen in a place that is very favorable to Joe Biden. Yeah. And look, a lot of this depends on how long this lasts and how long we're sort of locked down. And, you know, if you read the advice from medical experts and people who are really studying this,

we could be at the very beginning of this, partly because we've been so far behind on testing. But, you know, this is sort of the period where, you know, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are still sort of going at it. They're still primary. You know, there's I wouldn't say there's a period of calm before the conventions, because obviously, you know, if Joe Biden wraps this thing up next week or in the coming weeks, you know, he's already, as you mentioned, far behind Trump on organization and everything else. And so he's got to do a lot to catch up. But there's a difference between not having campaign rallies and not having a lot of active campaigning in the spring of 2020 than there is as we're getting into the summer of 2020 and the fall of 2020, right? Like if we're

still here in September, that's a very different world and a very different campaign. The conventions themselves might be at risk. If the disease is still spreading throughout the country, without a doubt, there will not be a gathering of tens of thousands of Democrats in Milwaukee. And what that means is that the most important, most watched speech that our nominee gives will not happen, at least in its traditional form. And the party and the campaign will have to be very creative about ways in which to get the message out, but you're going to lose perhaps your best chance to tell your story to the country before election day. Yeah. All right, let's talk about this week's primary, where the results of six contests known as Fairly

Substantial Tuesday made it almost certain that Vice President Joe Biden will end up with the most pledged delegates and become the Democratic nominee in Milwaukee, if there is a Milwaukee convention. Biden is currently leading in Washington and has already won Missouri, Mississippi, Idaho, and Michigan, the biggest delegate prize where Bernie Sanders won an upset victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016 and needed to do the same in 2020. After falling behind Biden's 90 delegate lead by at least another 70 delegates, Sanders announced that he's staying in the race. And looking forward to this Sunday's one on one debate with Joe Biden, Biden used his speech to call for unity and to turn to the general election challenge against Donald Trump. and to turn to the general election challenge against Donald Trump. Here's a clip.

And I want to thank Bernie Sanders and his supporters for their tireless energy and their passion. We share a common goal, and together we'll defeat Donald Trump. We'll defeat him together. We're going to bring this nation together. We're regenerating a democratic base, the Democratic Party, the African-American community, high school educated folks like the ones I grew up with in Claymont, not far from here. In my old neighborhood, labor, suburban women, veterans, firefighters, union members, and so many more. People of every economic station, the poor who are struggling, and they are struggling in this environment, the middle class who worries about whether or not

they're going to be able to hang on and stay there, maintain their economic security. They're the reason Jill and I got involved in this campaign in the first place. And they're the reason why I became a Democrat so long ago. Dan, what'd you think of the speech? It was great. I think it's one of the best speeches Biden has given, certainly in this campaign and perhaps in much of his political career. The tone was exactly right. The message was right. And it was delivered with, I think, strength and emotion, which is really hard to do in what was essentially an empty arena because they canceled the rally portion of it for all the reasons we've been talking about on this podcast. And so I thought he hit all the right marks. Look, I've always been a fan of rallies because of the energy.

Look, I've always been a fan of rallies because of the energy. But as I watched him deliver that speech, I thought, you know, maybe a campaign without a bunch of rallies is a good thing because I thought his tone was perfect. I thought on Super Tuesday, Biden was just yelling and screaming a serious, sober moment right now with this virus spreading and this pandemic and the economy cratering. And I think what people are going to be looking for, what they're looking for now, what they'll be looking for even more in the days ahead is sort of some serious competence. You know, at another point in that speech, Biden said tonight we're a step closer to restoring decency, dignity and honor to the White House. At this moment, there's so much fear in the country. There's so much fear across the world. We need presidential leadership that's honest, trustworthy, truthful and steady. For a very large chunk of voters out there, particularly some of the swing voters that we need, that is a message that is enough for them. That is the message that is going to say, OK, if Joe Biden can deliver on that, what he just said, that is enough for me. I am ready to vote for him instead of Donald Trump. It is not all he needs. It is not completely sufficient. There's a lot more work he has to do

with a lot of other groups of voters, 100 percent%. But for a big chunk of people out there, I think that's exactly what they wanted to hear. What do you think about that? Yeah, I think that's right. And I think it is, I don't know that just like in a laboratory, you and I would design a campaign that was built on the idea of decency. No, we would not. Right? You're thinking like, what's the best way to beat Trump? It's not sufficient. But when you take on an incumbent, as our friend David Axelrod always says, you want the replacement, not the replica. And so what is your biggest point of contrast with Trump?

And you're going to be your most successful when your biggest point of contrast with your opponent lines up with your greatest strength. One thing people know about Joe Biden is that he is a decent human being, that he cares about people, that he has been through tragedy in his life and come out on the other side. And he like he like that is his greatest point of contrast with Trump. There was an argument where it's like, well, wouldn't a stronger point of contrast be a younger Democrat or someone like Pete Buttigieg, who has not been part of the political establishment for a long time, or someone like Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris, who are very different in experience and policy than Trump or everything like that. But Biden also was very different

than Trump. They were personally the diametrically opposite people, right? And making that a center, not the entire campaign, because you're going to need policies and you're going to need vision to undergird it. But as a foundation, the difference in character between the two men, I think is a huge asset. And I thought that they used it very effectively in that speech. Yeah, well, I think there's two main things people are looking for in a president that Trump's not offering right now. And one is decency and dignity and honor and honesty, all the things that Biden just spoke about in that clip. The other thing that you and I have talked about is a president who will not just focus on himself, but focus on you, focus on people care about you. And there was a hint of that in Biden's speech when he talked

about sort of the kids I grew up with near here, the working class communities I grew up in. He's talked about himself as middle class Joe. I think the other element to the message that Biden, I've seen him do it before, but he needs it now. In addition to just, I'm going to restore decency and dignity and competence, which I think is going to be baked in for a lot of people, even though a lot of people want that, is I'm going to fight for you. I care about you. I know what you've gone through and Trump doesn't care about you, but I do. And then there's a policy, you know, primarily economic. And I think it's more natural Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders territory. But and we're going to talk about sort of what Biden can do to reach out to and attract support from Bernie Sanders supporters. But I think that is a

key part of this whole equation. So what kind of voters are giving Biden these wins? What is driving his success in these primaries? I mean, it is fundamentally two things. It is the fact that he is winning north of two-thirds of African-American voters, and that is giving him a massive delicate advantage, particularly in the South, in states like Mississippi on Tuesday night, but then South Carolina, Virginia, North Carolina, et cetera, in the South in states like Mississippi on Tuesday night, but then South Carolina, Virginia, North Carolina, et cetera, in the previous contest, and suburban voters. He is seeing a surge in the same group of voters that delivered the House to Democrats in 2018.

He is benefiting from the post-Trump realignment in the electorate. Yeah, particularly suburban women. It's not huge. It's not as big as age, but there's a bit of a gender gap between he and Bernie as you go through all these states. And it's women in the suburbs. These are the women who have been organizing resistance groups since the day that Trump was elected, organized the Women's March.

And look, I've been saying this, but when you get to the suburbs, there's that cohort of voters who are sort of liberal in nature, but just haven't participated in politics as much before Trump was elected. And then there's a group of more moderate voters, the folks I spoke to in Phoenix, who were Romney Clinton voters, who used to be Republicans. And because Trump has become president and the Republican Party has become radicalized over the last 10 years, maybe longer, they they're more moderate now and they're willing to vote for a more moderate Democrat. And that's that's how he's doing. is beating Bernie is in 2016, Bernie was crushing Hillary Clinton among rural and non-college educated white voters. Not that those voters make up a large part of the Democratic coalition anymore, but they still make up, you know, around a third of the Democratic coalition, which I know is hard to believe. And in 2016, Bernie was crushing with those voters. Now, Joe Biden is mostly beating him among those voters.

There's a few places where they're running a little closer, but especially in Michigan, some of the counties in Michigan, Joe Biden, which is where he won every single county, Joe Biden crushed Bernie among non-college white working class voters. And Bernie's entire, and we'll talk about this, but Bernie's entire electability case, or one part of his electability case, rested on the fact that he could do better with white working class voters than Hillary did. And that somehow made him more competitive in the election against Trump. And Joe Biden has been winning those voters. So let's talk about Bernie Sanders.

What went wrong for Bernie Sanders both in Michigan and elsewhere? Well, it is two – I'd say it's three fundamental things. One, Bernie Sanders is doing as poorly and in some cases worse with African-American voters in 2016. He had four years to solve that problem and he did not. And there's a question about whether it was ever possible to solve it when running against Barack Obama's vice president.

But if you were in a meeting in the Sanders headquarters the day after the 2016 primary came to an end and you said, if we are running again in four years, how do we have a different outcome? The A number one on that list is improve our performance to African-American voters. Because you cannot win the Democratic primary because of how the party is made up and how delegates are allocated without doing very, very well with African-American voters. So that's one.

Two is Sanders had a coalition that allowed him to do very well in a multi-candidate field. And they were not prepared for the fact that the race narrowed much sooner than they thought. And if Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, and all these other people had still been in the race on Super Tuesday, then Sanders probably would have almost certainly ended where we thought he would end, which is with a substantial, if not insurmountable, delicate lead.

substantial, if not insurmountable, delegate lead. And the third issue is in an election where electability was the most important issue to a vast majority of voters, he was unable to convince a majority of Democratic voters that he was the most electable or particularly electable. And I think a whole series of things that happened between Nevada and South Carolina, most notably the controversy around, which I think in some ways was particularly unfair, but the controversy around his comments on Castro really hurt his electability case. And voters concerned about electability flocked to Joe Biden when it became clear there was one alternative to Sanders. Yeah, and we have talked about electability, complained about it, talked about how hard it is to measure, how a lot of it is wrapped up in sexism and racism and all the problems with electability we have been talking about from the beginning of this race. electability we have been talking about from the beginning of this race and yet like fear fear of losing to donald trump is the overriding emotion that has driven the entire primary and i think

it's fair to say that democratic voters retreated to traditional notions of what electability has always meant um at the last minute and you know you can say it's fair or not, but that seems to be what happened here. And it seems to have happened, you know, by pretty big margins in a lot of these states. And I wonder, I've always wondered, like, if this was a 2008 situation, where we're sitting here in Donald Trump's second term as president, and we know that a Democrat has a good chance of winning this election, and Donald Trump's not running as president. And we know that a Democrat has a good chance of winning this election. And Donald Trump's not running again. And we don't have to worry about that. Would Bernie Sanders have won that? Would Elizabeth Warren have won that primary? Would

Kamala Harris have won that primary? I think it's very possible. I think we've talked, you know, Barack Obama, part of the reason he won in 2008 is a lot of primary voters were more willing to take a risk because they knew that whatever was going to happen, George W. Bush was not going to be president for a third term. So, you know, the one thing that the Bernie campaign is pointing to is he's just crushing Biden among younger voters. And it's not just 18 to 29. I think in a lot of states, he's beating him even with voters 30 to 44. It's usually Biden's winning everyone 45 and up. And so why hasn't that been enough to sort of carry him to victory or at least made him more competitive, you know, when he has promised this sort of increase in youth turnout?

And the Sanders campaign is saying, by the way, that if you look state by state in raw numbers, we're seeing more young people at the polls than we did in 2016 in some of these states. Because other groups are turning out at a higher rate. And so while the raw numbers are up, the overall percentage of the electorate is either the same or down. And that is the challenge for Sanders. And it's a pretty big blow to his electability argument, which is he should be turning out, not like, yes, he is turning out young voters in a larger number than 2016, but not in a number that would suggest that he is bringing a wave of new young voters into the process. Even in much of the states in Super Tuesday, he lost among first-time Democratic primary voters to Biden. And that's very specific.

And I think one of the narratives that needs to be turned on its head that everyone believed in, the Sanders campaign pushed, we certainly bought, was that Sanders was a candidate who would benefit from a high turnout election. That is actually not the case. Biden is the one who has benefited

from higher turnout in all these places. Bernie has the highest floor, but the lowest ceiling of the two candidates who remained. And so he is a candidate who can win at 35%, but he has not demonstrated the ability to get from 35% to 51% anywhere in the country. Yeah. I mean, the fact that the turnout surge happened in the suburbs and it happened among more middle-aged Americans who are more moderate or, you know, at the very least who lived in the suburbs and didn't necessarily, you know, weren't as young as some of the Bernie voters, that's his problem, even though more young people might be turning up in raw numbers.

So, you know, on the flip side of this, how concerned should Joe Biden and the Democratic Party as a whole be about his support among young voters in the general election? Massively concerned. Yeah. It's a huge issue. There is no margin for error in this election. This is not a national election. The ability for Joe Biden to be president is going to depend on a number of factors, but one of those factors is certainly turnout among young people in places like Madison, Wisconsin, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, and State College, Pennsylvania, and Tallahassee, Florida, and everywhere else where there are universities, or in urban areas in these swing states where young people make up a disproportionate part of the population. So it is a huge thing because it's not that they were going to vote for Trump. It's that they may not vote. And so I think job number one, or at least near

the top of the list for the Biden campaign, has to be thinking about how he can make an explicit and substantive appeal to these voters. And that is about- Come on, Pod Save America. Just, sorry. I'm not going to respond to that. Something in my throat. Yes. That would be one option, but I have some other ideas too that we could talk about, or there's other suggestions, but it has to be, I think it's two things. One is, I think it is policy, right? Like policy matters to young voters and we should not be dismissive of that. And Biden's inability to win over those voters or even do, I think,

acceptably well among those voters is not because he is older, because Bernie Sanders is also in his late 70s. And it's not just because he sometimes talks. There was a line in the New York Times about how Biden struggles with young voters because he talks about deceased senators and record players. And that's not it. It is that young people raised in the shadow of the recession of a very specific and realistic set of concerns and fears about the economy and have been impacted by the economy in ways that people over the age of 45, who were more economically stable when 2008 hit, have not. They have a deeper concern about climate change. And he's going to have to find ways to address those. And Bernie Sanders succeeded with those voters, even though he was the oldest candidate running, because he spoke to those concerns. And Biden can learn a lot from that.

And look, I think there are some policies that, whether it's Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or some of the other more progressive candidates in the primary have proposed that Biden could potentially adopt. I also think that Joe Biden, because so much of his message was centered around electability and decency and dignity and competence and all that, he has not really talked as much about the agenda he has already proposed. And at the risk of lighting my mentions on fire, Joe Biden is running on the most progressive platform of any Democratic would-be nominee in history. If he is the nominee, if he takes that stage in Milwaukee and he's the Democratic nominee, his platform will be more progressive than Hillary Clinton's and Barack Obama's in both of his terms. And, you know, he's got a, like the sunrise movement is not happy with, with, with Joe

Biden's climate plan. I know that, right. They've, they've, they've given it a poor grade. It is a $1.7 trillion climate plan. No Democrat has ever proposed that much spending that much money on trying to combat climate change. And yes, I realize it's an emergency and he could do more. I realized that, um, he should talk more about, uh, you know, he's got, he's got very progressive

plans that the campaign has talk more about uh you know he's got he's got very progressive plans that the campaign has not talked about and i think one strategy would be you know talking about them more and doing some advertising around them and another strategy would be like rolling them out again perhaps with a few policies that he borrows from some of the more progressive candidates um to send a signal to the party that he really cares about getting younger people to support him and that he cares about party unity. Yeah, I think you guys talked about this on Monday's podcast, but the suggestion that Biden adopt the Inslee-Warren climate plan, I think, is a superb idea.

Yeah, I think so too. And look, the reason I think this is important that he, the youth turnout thing is very important. And I also think it's African-American turnout as well, because we have seen Joe Biden win African-Americans by crushing margins against Bernie Sanders, but we have not seen black turnout up in many of these states. And so I think in a state like Michigan, the suburban surge of voters, it was enough to carry Gretchen Whitmer to victory in 2018 as the governor of Michigan.

She won by a good margin. And I think in a state like Michigan, that could be enough for Joe Biden. I'm not sure. But go next door to Wisconsin. The suburbs of Milwaukee are notorious for being stubbornly Republican. They have not moved like other suburbs around the country, around metro areas have moved.

And so I don't think Joe Biden can count on that same suburban surge in the suburbs of Milwaukee. So then what do you do to win Wisconsin? Well, then you have to drive youth turnout in the college towns. You have to cut the Republican margins in rural areas. And you have to boost African-American turnout in cities like Milwaukee. And that is going to be a big challenge in that state specifically. And that is why in 2018, while Gretchen Whitmer wins her race for governor in Michigan by about 10 points, Tony Evers in Wisconsin barely wins over Scott Walker. And I think that's, you know, so that that's why these are important. And we shouldn't all be we've been talking a lot about the suburban surge and how it matched 2018. And we won in 2018. So maybe now Joe Biden's fine. No, it's a different race with Donald Trump at the top of the ticket. He's going to increase turnout a lot among his voters. And now Biden needs every last voter in the Democratic coalition that he can get.

Yeah. I don't want to rain on your parade, but I actually don't think it would be enough in Michigan. It may not be. I'm just saying there was a path for, Gretchen Whitmer showed that there's a path. It's just what we have not yet experienced and we have to recognize, and our friend David Plouffe talks about this a lot, which is that Trump is going to turn out more people. First, there's a large pocket of non-voters who demographically model out as Republicans in Michigan as well as Wisconsin. And so Trump is going to turn out a bunch of people he did not turn out in 2016 and did not turn out in 2018. And so the raw number of votes we're going to need to win is going to be well North of what it was in 16 and 18. And so that you were exactly right about that. Wisconsin

is even harder than Michigan, but we like, you're right. We need youth turnout. We need African American turnout. We need to keep the Romney Clinton Republican voters. We have to keep, we have to, we have to do everything. And this is going to come down to 100,000 to 200,000 votes across three to four states. And there is zero margin of error. We have a much bigger, much more diverse coalition than the Republicans. And that is why it's harder for us. That's always why it's been harder. Diverse in terms of background, diverse in terms of ideology. always why it's been harder. Diverse in terms of background, diverse in terms of ideology. They are much more ideologically aligned. They are all older white people in the Republican side.

It is just much easier to run a campaign when you have a homogeneous mix of voters in your coalition. We do not. In many ways, that's a good thing for us because the Democratic Party looks more like America, but it makes it much harder to have a story and have a candidate that appeals to that broader coalition. And that's why we always have harder challenges. So let's talk about where the progressive movement goes from here. Jonathan Chait wrote a piece about how Bernie's campaign was based on a misreading of the 2016 election, the idea that Hillary lost and white working class voters abandoned her because she wasn't enough of an economic populist. What do you think of Chait's argument? And what would you be doing if you were like running Justice Democrats right now? Or if you were AOC, like what is next for the progressive movement?

Like Chait has been making this point for a long time. He makes it with, I think, joy in that article. Because he was proven right by a lot of this, by at least how the 2020 primaries played itself out. And there is some truth to it, that the politics changed a lot from 2016 to 2020, and whether Bernie Sanders was right about what happened in 2016. And I think there is some merit to the fact that a more explicitly populist economic argument from Hillary Clinton would have been beneficial. Whether it would have been enough to win with all of the

headwinds that she faced from Jim Comey to Russia to everything else, I do not know the answer. But we lost the economic argument in 2016, and that is one of the reasons at least why Donald Trump is president. So I understand that theory. I think as we look at 2020, I think the question for the left are the following things. why it is that their economic message that is so powerful with younger voters and was very persuasive to Hispanic voters, at least in the West, just failed miserably with African American voters. Why is that? Because the theory of a class-based economic message means it should work across the entire working class, regardless of race and geography? And why is it not work with African-American voters, a group who had suffered as much, if not more than anyone, at the exact forces that Bernie Sanders talks so passionately and eloquently about?

Is it a question of policy? Is it a question of message? Is it a question of messenger? Is simply that Bernie Sanders was an imperfect messenger for that group of voters. And so I think that's step number one. role does socialism play in this? Which is, is there an alternative scenario where you run on Bernie Sanders' policies, but under the banner of the Democratic Party and capitalism, which is what Elizabeth Warren was trying to do? Because you think about 2016, and some of the reports are that Bernie Sanders would not have run for president in 2016 if Elizabeth Warren had done so. You have Elizabeth Warren, someone who is a Democrat in good standing. She has relationships within the party. She is a proud member of the Democratic Party. And she advocates for the vast majority of the same policies that Sanders does.

But she argues for them in the context of the democratic political tradition. And it does not wrap them in a very politically dangerous label of socialism, which is funny because the policies that both she and Sanders advocate for are not socialist. That's the craziest thing. They are the extensions of, as Sanders himself has argued, the New Deal policies that have been central to the Democratic Party since Franklin Roosevelt. And Bernie Sanders' Fox News town hall, which I thought he did an excellent job in, and having the crowd boo the Fox News hosts for some of their questions, I think was very enjoyable, even if I have a general opposition to Democrats helping Fox News. But he's asked this question about these very popular policies like Medicare for All in the context of whether they lead to Stalinism, which is not something that would happen if they were pitched in the context of capitalism, right? Fixing what is

wrong with capitalism. Because you can be a capitalist country and have universal healthcare. You can be a capitalist country and have a strong social safety net. You can be a capitalist country and have free college because it happens. And that is a possibility. And I think where America needs to go. And so for all of the parts of the left who have embraced the democratic socials of America, who advocate for socialism, which is more important, right? The idea of bringing socialism or democratic socialism like Finland has, to use Bernie Sanders' example, or is it to get these policies in place? My guess is ultimately you have a better chance of getting Medicare for

all done or having a progressive candidate with Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren's positions if you're not doing it under the banner of socialism. And look, I think they also need to realize that on the policy front, so much of what the progressive movement has done over the last 10 years is working. Joe Biden, if he's the Democratic nominee, will not have the most progressive platform of any nominee in history because Joe Biden woke up one day and decided to just have a progressive platform. It's because progressives, Bernie Sanders, AOC, others have pushed these issues and moved the Overton window for years. I mean, I keep thinking about sitting down with those voters in Phoenix who all voted to a person for Mitt Romney, Mitt Romney voters, and they didn't like Medicare for All, but every single one of them said, I'd love a public option, absolutely public option. We need it in healthcare. And, you know, for people who are pretty young,

they might not think that's a big deal or not think it's sufficient. But you and I were there when we tried to pass a public option in as part of the Affordable Care Act in 2009. And the entire Republican Party said it was socialism and we couldn't get Democrats on board. And Joe Lieberman killed it. And a bunch of other moderate conservative Democrats tried to kill the public option. And now we have former Republican voters sitting around saying, yeah, I really want a public option. And the reason they're saying that is because of Bernie Sanders and because of the progressive movement. And they should take a minute. And I know they're upset right now, and I totally understand that. But what you guys are doing is working. It's just not going to happen as fast or as quickly as you want it to. And I do think they have a good strategy where like AOC launching a primary against Joe Crowley in a safe blue seat is totally okay. You know, and if Crowley ran a better campaign, maybe he would have won, but

we know we're going to get that seat anyway. So you might as well have the most progressive member you can have in that seat. I think what Jessica Cisneros did against Henry Cuellar in Texas, who's super right wing, that was a good thing. What Marie Newman is trying to do with Dan Lipinski in Illinois, who voted against the ACA, she's a challenger there. That's great too. I hope really progressive candidates continue to challenge Democrats who are in safe blue seats, so that in a safe blue seat, we have the most progressive Democrat we can. I think where they had problems in 18 is running really progressive candidates in red or purple districts who almost all of them lost the primary because they just weren't a fit with the electorate.

And that's OK. Change happens slowly over time. And I think I know that AOC gets that. She gets that better than most lefty politicians that I've encountered. So what happens next for Bernie? On Wednesday, he gave a press conference where he admitted that Tuesday's results were tough, but said he's staying in the race and looking forward to Sunday's debate. He conceded that he's winning the ideological debate, but losing the debate about electability that we just talked about. And then he laid out a series of questions that he intends to ask Joe Biden at the debate on Sunday. Here's what he said.

On Sunday, I very much look forward to the debate in Arizona with my friend Joe Biden. And let me be very frank as to the questions that I will be asking Joe. Joe, what are you going to do for the 500,000 people who go bankrupt in our country because of medically related debt? And what are you going to do for the working people of this country and small business people who are paying on average 20% of their incomes for health care. Joe, what are you going to do to end the absurdity of the United States of America being the only major country on earth where health care is not a human right? Are you really going to veto a Medicare for all bill if it is passed in Congress? So what did you think of Bernie's remarks and sort of his message there?

I thought his tone was exactly right for the situation he was in. It sounded very different than the tone of his campaign in 2016 when Hillary Clinton got to a similar insurmountable delegate lead. It seemed very realistic about the prospects. And I think and I believe and I guess also hope that Sanders' plan is to use the debate to give Biden an opportunity to make a pitch to his voters, which then makes it easier for Sanders to support Biden, which I think he would do under all scenarios, he said so, but do it in a way that brings as many of his supporters along. And so he's given Biden the roadmap. He told him the questions, right? He's trying to land the plane.

Yeah. And so Biden's got to come with some good answers to those questions. The Medicare for all veto question is the most trickiest, I think, because of the way Biden answered that question on Lawrence O'Donnell last week. Well, and the way it was, I like Lawrence O'Donnell. It was a really bad question. There's no universe where there's a Democratic Congress and they suddenly surprise the Democratic president with a piece of legislation. There would have been a lot more planning and strategy and coordination between President Joe Biden and the Democratic Congress

over what exactly a healthcare reform bill looked like. I don't think he answered it in the best way, but I think he has an opportunity to sort of clarify that at the debate, and I hope he does. And I hope he really, I mean, I'm sure his debate prep team is listening to all those questions from Bernie and figuring out sufficient answers there.

How do you think each candidate should handle this debate, which, as we've been recording, has just been moved from Arizona to Washington, D.C.? Oh, really? I didn't realize that. This is breaking news right here. Yeah, Michael just texted me while we were talking, D.C. Oh, really? I didn't realize that. This is breaking news right here. Yeah, Michael just texted me while we were talking, Sam. I think that they should use

the platform they're going to have to talk about the coronavirus, what should be done, what Trump has not done, give actionable information to people. I think every person with a platform, every politician with a platform should do that. And use the opportunity to talk about, to raise the stakes in the election and then have the conversation that Bernie Sanders said he wants

to have. And he called Joe Biden, his friend, if they, I think if it is a friendly, a substantive, friendly exchange. And I think it would, that every, the party itself and our nominee will be better off for it. Yeah. Paul Wallman in the Washington Post said that the debate could be the difference between, Joe, you need to go farther to fight inequality, which is why my proposal is better. And Joe, you're a corporate sellout. Nobody should vote for you. Now, Bernie has never come close to saying the latter sentence anyway. So it's obviously hyperbole here. But I do think you're right. There is a way to have a debate on Sunday that is a productive debate about issues and their record and what they're going to do,

hopefully mostly about the future and what they're going to both do for the country going forward, that I think could help bring both of their supporters together, bring the party together, and as I was saying, land this plane. I realized that could be just me being naive and optimistic. I get that. But that's what they should both try to do. Because, I mean, we actually haven't talked about this, but, you know, it is extremely hard, almost impossible at this point, for Bernie to actually win this nomination

by winning the most pledged delegates. It's not mathematically impossible just yet, but we're pretty close. Yeah, I think Nate Cohn said he'd have to win every state remaining. And win it. Yeah, I was going to say, and win it by like 10 points, which, you know, I think, I think what Bernie's thinking is he had this one debate, which is the first one-on-one debate. He wanted to take the opportunity because on Tuesday, he's got a series of states that aren't, that he's not polling well in, but especially Florida, where he's polling maybe

worse than he's polled in any state yet. And there's a ton of delegates there. And Joe Biden, if he even comes close to his polling margins in Florida, could mathematically end the race on Tuesday. So I think that's just where we are. And again, Bernie Sanders has said, and we agreed with him when he said this, the whole primary, the person with the pledged delegate lead should be the nominee. And credit to him for saying that. But it looks like after Tuesday, that will be the case. At least we're not going to have to have a contested convention via video conference.

Oh, that would be, that would be bad, Dan. That'd be very bad. So, you know, you might be wondering what should everyone else do in the meantime, while we're still in this primary waiting for it to end. And we got a coronavirus, uh coronavirus fear all over the place. Well, two things. We are $100,000 away from reaching our goal for the Leave It All on the Field Fund. This is the fund that is going to help put organizers on the ground and support organizers in states across the country. Again, like even if this primary ends next week, Joe Biden would already be behind

Donald Trump in organizing and making sure that he's got the campaign he needs. And so we need to recruit and train organizers all over the country, help people, help the Democratic Party build the ground game that we need. You can go to votesaveamerica.com slash field. Again, we're only $100,000 away. So it'd be great if you could help. Also, on Tuesday, the date of the primary in Illinois, Arizona, Ohio, and Florida. It's not just a presidential primary. There's a big primary in Illinois that I just mentioned. Democrat Marie Newman is running in a primary race against conservative Democrat Dan Lipinski in the Illinois third. Lipinski voted against the Affordable Care

Act. He's anti-choice, and he's bad on LGBT rights, and yet somehow he's still a Democrat in Congress. In 2018, you might remember, Marie Newman lost to Lipinski by just over 2,000 votes. So you can learn more, volunteer, or donate to Marie at marienewmanforcongress.com. Just two little things that you can do while you're hanging around waiting for this to end.

All right. So with that, when we come back, we will have Dan's interview with Governor Gavin Newsom. We are now pleased to be joined by California Governor Gavin Newsom. Governor Newsom, welcome to Pod Save America. Good to be here. Good to be with you. Governor Newsom, you made a very big announcement about how California was dealing with the coronavirus. Can you tell our listeners what you announced today and why you announced it? Well, just in an effort to protect public health, moreover, to slow down this rate of transmission of COVID-19, we want to see the postponement or

the cancellation all over the state of California of gatherings that are non-essential, that are greater than 250 people. And the whole idea is to, and forgive me for using this kind of language, but it's direct. We want to maximize inconvenience to the issues that are non-essential so that we can minimize the impact on things that are essential in our lives. So that's the point of this. So that's any gatherings over 250 people. And is that a recommendation from the state of California? Yeah, it's a recommendation, but it was followed up with an executive order, which directs that guidance. Look, I have the legal authority to enforce,

but that enforcement comes with me triggering. And this might sound hysterical, but it shouldn't. But you can trigger a martial law and enforce. I don't believe we need to do that. The vast majority of people I've talked to up and down the state, health directors, overwhelmingly were supportive of this director, business community, overwhelmingly supportive. So we expect no deviation from this. I think the only deviation will be some people will want to go to smaller numbers within communities, be below 250 threshold. And there has been some conversation about large theme parks like Disneyland and elsewhere. Any update on that? Yeah, they'll be making an announcement very, very shortly, other theme parks as well.

We put this announcement out late last night, and the theme parks had some protocols and processes they wanted to advance on their own. They're going to make those announcements momentarily, and I would expect they're moving in the direction and the spirit of our directive. Obviously, a response to a pandemic like this requires cooperation between state and federal governments. How has your interaction with the Trump administration been? Are there things that you need that they have not yet provided you? Bottom, you know, it's interesting. California was front and center on this going back to late December when we first had our initial contact with the administration.

For one reason, we were willing to do what other states were not willing to do. And with all due respect, what other states still are unwilling to do, and that's to repatriate Americans. A lot of states, so let's be specific here, the state of Texas won't take any repatriated people off this Grand Princess cruise line that are not Texans. Contrast that to California, that took in not only, or is taking in not only people off that ship from overseas and from other states, but we also took six flights from overseas in January. And so we've had a framework of engagement with the administration and as a consequence have been developing a partnership where to answer your question,

everything we've asked for, we've gotten with one caveat that we have all been frustrated by the testing protocols. And I want to make this clear. These test kits do not allow you to test. You need a test kit, but you also have to have an extraction kit, what they call this RNA kit, which is about these reagents, these chemicals that allow the testing kit to be fully functional. And one of the mythologies out there that is being perpetuated across the board, because it's not socialized broadly with the public, or for that matter, even with policymakers that I think are unaware of this, is that we are having a backlog on the reagents. So when you hear the test kits,

that's one thing, but you have to know there's other points of that protocol and there's an ingredient list, so to speak, that has to be also part of that conversation. Quest and these other commercial labs will absolve that anxiety because as they ramp up, they have automated systems that will provide for full comprehensive testing. But until they're fully functioning and they're in real time doing so, this remains an impediment to fully testing what we want in terms of the total numbers. Do you have a sense of what is causing the slowdown, both on the test kits and the reagents specifically, as you're talking about? Is there something that could be done to speed it up that is not being done? Well, they're working in real

time on it, the best I can say. And it's been a point of frustration. Look, we have over 8,000 tests that we have in our 18 labs in the state of California. Right now, we have none of them are backlogged. Yesterday, when I talked to you this time yesterday, we had 180 that were backlogged because some of our clinics didn't have the reagents and the RNA extraction kits. We were able to shift through some of those labs, excess kits that existed in other labs, but the federal government needs to provide more of those kits. But the good news is we transitioned from state and community labs and federal labs into the commercial market. The commercial markets like Quest that operates in California, down in San Juan Capistrano, they're already doing 1,200 tests a day. They'll have capacity for 5,000 by the 24th of this month because they have these new automated processes.

And so we're going to see this migrate away from the anxiety I just expressed that got us here to a different protocol that gives me more confidence moving forward. Obviously, in addition to the health impact, which I know is your focus and everyone else's primary focus, the coronavirus has serious economic consequences. How is California thinking about those consequences? What do you guys want to do about it? And what do you want to see the federal government do to help minimize the economic repercussions of this? Remarkably, a few weeks ago, I was doing my state-of-the-state talking about record low

unemployment, record high reserves, and an operating surplus of $5.6 billion. And clearly, we're in the middle of our budget negotiations. We're going to have to augment them. We assumed the S&P would be at 3,120 by the end of Q1 of this year. Obviously, the markets have dropped significantly. So that is the economic health of the state budget. But the economic reality of households and medium and small businesses is what concerns me the most. And in state budget, but the economic reality of households and medium and small businesses is what concerns me the most. And in that respect, we are doing, we just waived under an emergency declaration executive order last night, the week-long delay for getting unemployment insurance, the week-long delay of getting disability insurance slash sick leave.

And we did similarly what the federal government did to waive penalties and fines associated with delay and getting your taxes done. And in addition to that, we are working hand in glove with Speaker Pelosi and with our congressional representatives to make sure that whatever the package that comes out in negotiation, the federal level, really is honing in on hourly workers, on the most vulnerable Americans, those that are most impacted in the hospitality and retail restaurant industries, to make sure that they're secured. Governor, one last question before I let you get back to what I know is a very busy day, but where should people go to get the most up-to-date and accurate information?

people go to get the most up-to-date and accurate information? I mean, I think the most immediate and still most reliable is local health departments, because you have to contextualize conditions where you are. By the time it feeds up the state, certainly by the time it feeds up the federal government, conditions can change. So I always maintain, and perhaps that's a former mayor saying that, that the more immediate sites are local. That said, this coronavirus.gov is a pretty good aggregated site just broadly of how one should conduct themselves in terms of their own social distancing strategies, their families, and their businesses. And it actually is remarkably, I think, a comprehensive site the federal government is providing. remarkably, I think, comprehensive site the federal government is providing. Governor Newsom, thank you so much for being on Pod Save America,

and good luck with everything you're dealing with right now. My pleasure. We'll get through this, and I appreciate the good work you guys are doing, telling the truth about what's going on out there. Thank you, Governor. Thanks to Governor Gavin Newsom for joining us today. And Dan, I'll talk to you soon. All right. Bye, everyone. Bye. Pod Save America is a product of Cricket Media.

The executive 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 Tanya Sominator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Reston, and Elisa Gutierrez for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.