Pod Save America - “Welcome to the Panderdome.” (LIVE from Des Moines)

Episode Date: June 10, 2019

Trump caves on his Mexican trade war, and the race to win Iowa brings 19 Democratic candidates to Cedar Rapids. Des Moines Register pollster Ann Selzer joins Jon, Jon, Tommy, Dan, and Connie Schultz on stage in Des Moines, Iowa.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Connie Schultz. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm former Des Moines resident Tommy Vitor. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. I'm Dan Pfeiffer Later in the show we'll talk to the legendarily accurate pollster

from the Des Moines Register about her brand new 2020 primary poll Ann Seltzer is here Eat shit Mark Penn What's that? I said eat shit, Mark Penn. That's a deep cut for U08 fans. Anyway, we'll get there.

I mean, they should know. Not that you're holding a grudge. All right, so over the weekend, President Trump backed off his threat to launch a trade war with Mexico because Mexico promised to take a series of actions on immigration that they had already basically agreed to months ago.

Those actions involved sending additional National Guard troops to their country's southern border and allowing more asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while their claims are heard in the U.S. Trump also said that Mexico agreed to buy, quote, large quantities of agricultural product from our great patriot farmers, a statement that has not been verified by Mexican officials, the State Department, the White House, or any document or human being anywhere. Has anyone asked the great patriot farmers? I do not believe. So, Connie, the president said this morning that if Barack Obama had made this deal, quote,

the corrupt media would be hailing it as incredible and a national holiday would be immediately declared. I don't remember any national holidays. They are truly the enemy of the people. Is there any evidence that Trump actually won some real concessions here from Mexico? No. Let's address first of all what he said about journalists. I'm wearing my Ray Gunn pin,

American news journalist. From my friend Sarah Benzing, an Iowa native, of course. You know, I've been a feminist all of my life. There's a reason I'm saying this. For five decades, I'm older than five decades, but for five decades, I realize now I had all this training for being a journalist in the Trump era because we were always called hateful and angry, which wasn't true, and now we're being called hateful and angry as journalists.

And I do worry about what he says about journalists. Tonight I'm going to ignore it because it's so much more fun just to ignore it for a moment. One of the things I always used to tell my kids, I tweeted this out earlier today when I saw some of the stories of Trump, he never trusts somebody who makes himself the hero of all of his

stories. And this is exactly what he does over and over again. He accomplished nothing, but he's pretending that he did. He created the crisis. We're all in triage all the time. This is what he does. And it appeals to people who, you know, he mistakes fear for respect. People who fear him do not respect him.

And what worked for him on his television show, just wildly humiliating people and embarrassing people, is not the way you lead a country. Yeah, no. Tommy, it seems like what Trump really wanted was for Mexico to accept what's called a safe third country treaty. And that means that would give the U.S. the legal ability to reject asylum seekers if they hadn't tried to apply for asylum in Mexico first. So he didn't get that. Why do you think he backed off his tariff threat

if, as we're saying, he got none of the things that he actually wanted and they already agreed to these steps months ago? I honestly, this is not a joke, I don't know that if he knows what they were negotiating for or what he ultimately got. I sincerely think that, like Connie was saying, this is his tried and

true method. He sends a bunch of crazy tweets. He manufactures a crisis. We saw this with North Korea. He threatens fire and fury. He holds a summit where nothing is accomplished. And then he declares victory to get back from North Korea's summit. And he says the threat from North Korea's nuclear weapons program is now over. In fact, we know now that they've been building one new nuclear weapon every single month based on our own intelligence estimates. So the threat is worth.

So what's so bizarre about this is he just renegotiated NAFTA. He now has to get that through Congress. And they're using authorities to threaten these tariffs that are normally reserved for national security issues. Like he's saying that German cars or, you know, things from Mexico or some sort of national security risk and threatening to slap tariffs on them. So what he's telling the world is that we're a completely unreliable trading partner and that you can't actually cut a deal with us because we don't know what we want. We're going to screw

with you either way. So here's what we do know. There's no way that whatever happened over the last week is going to fix the immigration crisis because Mexico is not at fault for what's happening in this immigration crisis. There's these Central American countries where the quality of life is so bad and people are so

desperate that they're fleeing. And he's actually making the situation in those countries worse by cutting off aid, cutting off funds that will go to good governance. So what he's betting on is that he can declare victory, Fox News will repeat his propaganda, and that by the time all the facts are gathered, the press and the public will have moved on by necessity because he'll have manufactured some other issue. So I think he got exactly what he wanted out of this, whether or not it was this specific provision from Mexico or not. Dan, do you think that the pressure from Republican senators

or the business community or the fact that these tariffs could have caused real economic damage, even though his tariffs already have been causing economic damage, that the Mexico tariffs would just be a bridge too far? Do you think he actually backed off because he was maybe a little scared? I think he was looking, he

without giving it much thought, he launched us into another international trade confrontation with no plan of escape, no idea of how we would get out of it. And the problem he faced at the end of this week was not only were Republican senators getting very uncomfortable, whether they would actually do anything to ease their discomfort is a different question, but they were expressing it publicly. McConnell, I think, sent a very strong message to Trump.

A group of business leaders who had been funding a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign in support of his new NAFTA bill threatened to pull the money if this happened. Because what was unique in this situation, which I think was worth pointing out, is that what is happening with China is poorly thought out and absurd,

but it's at least within the confines of what a normal trade dispute is, right? We are using trade enforcement tools to try to combat what we view as unfair trade practices. What is happening here is we are now using our trade tools to combat a completely unrelated problem, right? We are trying to use tariffs to beat over the head one of our closest allies who's on our southern border with

a problem we don't like. And the time we find this is really important is he did accomplish what he wanted in the sense that here is a man who is staring down the barrel of potential impeachment. There's massive, you know, there's a, it wasn't that long ago the report was released that documented all of his obstruction of justice. And we're not talking about that. We're talking about was released that documented all of his obstruction of justice. And we're not talking about that. We're talking about first the threat he made, then his supposed resolution,

and then today we're talking about his Twitter temper tantrum about why he is not getting the credit he feels is due for solving the problem that he created. Yeah. I want to just make sure we're also remembering how this whole thing, what's driving this.

It's racism from the president. Yeah. And right now, there's a seven-minute video that the New York Times posted earlier this week. A 10-month-old baby died in the Rio Grande. A 7-year-old child died in the Rio Grande. Parents are now crossing in the river trying to avoid because they still want asylum and they don't feel like they can go through the normal checkpoints and they're losing their lives and they're so they're getting rescued repeatedly now by um u.s officials because they're not going to

they're trying not to let them drown because the river is very unpredictable all of this is happening because the president doesn't want brown people from Mexico in this country. And I don't want us to be started yet. I think that's such an excellent point because I was thinking about, like, all right, so how do Democrats respond to this one? How should they? Because as usual, when Trump does something like this, there's a million different ways to respond and to attack him, right? There's the temper tantrum. There's all the crazy things he says on Twitter. He's attacking the press.

We're now an unreliable trading partner. There's a national security angle. But it does seem like the fundamental issue here at the core right now is the fact that there are people trying to seek asylum in our country who are coming from violence, poverty, desperate, and they're willing to make this journey either across the Rio Grande or they're trying to go through Mexico, and we are saying, this country is saying for the first time, no, you cannot come here.

Lovett, do you think that should be part of the Democrat response? Yeah. What would you do? If you're running one of these Democratic campaigns and you have a candidate out there who's going to be talking about what just happened this weekend, what do you say? You're John Lovegege. You're running for president.

What do you got? That's also a great episode title. So first of all, it does seem as though Trump is a little bit like Cher in Clueless when she gets on the highway. I love it because I have no idea where this is going right you're not the only one seen that movie many times i have no idea where it's going it's he he he he steers the car onto the highway is not ready to be on the freeway gets himself off the freeway, and then is like, did you see that? I successfully got us off of the freeway and back on to surface streets. Where's my parade?

There you go. Hero of your own story. Hero of my own story. Hero of your own story. Listen, as we've learned, look, there's a lot of different ways to be gay. I don't think Mayor Pete would have told that story. And that's what pride is all about. Now, to make a serious point, you know, this is all a manufactured crisis. It starts from trying to use immigration as a wedge issue.

But even if you start from the premise that our immigration system is in crisis, there are massive broken... Our immigration system is a broken system. It is a broken system in which we have millions of people living in our country as second-class citizens. And Donald Trump has not made any of that better. He knows it's a problem that he wants to talk about. It's a problem he wants to demagogue. But he has been president now for two and a half years. He will be president for four years when he faces re-election. And there's no part of the immigration crisis that you can point to and say that his

hateful rhetoric, his cruel approach has made any difference. It's made it worse? It's made every aspect of it worse. If you care about immigration on Donald Trump's terms, Donald Trump has failed. Before you even get to the more decent and humane, economic, reasonable terms that we would approach, that any Democratic candidate would approach the issue.

And, you know, there was an interesting moment that I don't think got enough attention, where he was talking about the trade war with China, I believe. It's hard to keep track of what frenetic part of the circus we're in, which ring. But he made a point about that he might loosen up some of the interior enforcement of immigration rules, like E-VerVerify to give the farmers a break. And it's amazing in the Donald Trump mindset, like who deserves compassion, right? It's big agribusiness that's suffering, but not the individuals who are being separated from their families or dying as they cross the river or dying in American custody. And, you know, there's a... Well, there also, and, you know, there's a report out this week, too, that ICE is deporting veterans

without thinking twice about it. And it's all, like, you know, if you really did care about undocumented immigrants, if you really thought that that was a serious problem worth solving, you might be talking more about the companies and consumers that profit off the labor of those people. But, of course, they don't,

because they don't really care. So, anyway, that's the start of a stump. I of course they don't because they don't really care. So anyway, that's the start of a stump. I'll work on it. Honestly, I watched 19 speeches today. I could do it. I think the challenge for any Democratic candidate is to go to your original question. Hey Dan, fuck you.

Boys, boys. Connie, I am so you. Boys, boys. Connie, I am so sorry. It's okay. Love it, as you can tell, is very good at being a candidate. So far, I've made all this about me. I think that the challenge always with Trump is he wants to move the conversation to immigration.

And if you're a Democratic candidate, you have all these other things to talk about. And so you're forced with the choices. Do you play his game? Do you respond on immigration? And I think when you play Trump's game, you automatically lose. And that is a lesson we hopefully learned. We definitely learned in 2016. A lot of people avoided it in 2018.

It's harder to ignore Trump if you're running against Trump. It's easier if you're a congressional candidate in California in 46 or whatever. And so I think you have to, instead of playing Trump's game, you've got to call out his game. You've got to tell voters why he is raising this issue. And that he is lying about immigration. He's exaggerating the threat.

He's lying about who these immigrants are because he wants to distract you. He wants to scare you. He wants to distract you. He wants to distract you from the trillion dollar tax cut that he gave Wall Street and hedge funds. He wants to distract you. He wants to scare you. He wants to distract you. He wants to distract you from the trillion-dollar tax cut that he gave Wall Street and hedge funds. He wants to distract you from the fact that under his presidency, you pay more for your Amazon Prime subscription

than Amazon pays in federal taxes. And he wants to distract you from the fact that he's got lobbyists running his government who are making it easier for companies to pollute your air and water. And on top of that, he is taking tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars and putting them in his pocket by running a money laundering scam out of his hotels and golf clubs. You have to move

the, I think it's very important for Democratic candidates to move the conversation back to what we know matters to people. Love it. Feel free to use any of that. Feel free to use any of that. Thank you, Dan. Honestly, again, I watched 19 candidates speak in Iowa today. They could use that. We'll get to it.

We'll get to it. We'll get to it. Okay, yeah, we will get to that right after this. Now it's time for OK Stop. We'll roll a clip and the panel can say OK Stop at any point to comment. What if Babar wasn't just a sweet young elephant, but actually a conniving, entitled little boy? Jared Kushner recently sat down

for an interview with Axios. Let's see how he did. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she has called President Trump a racist. Have you ever seen him say or do anything that you would describe as racist or bigoted? So the answer is no. Okay, stop. I just want to say that I do believe Jared Kushner has resting collusion base.

That's all. That's what I would call it. You can't not be a racist for 69 years, then run for president and be a racist. Okay, stop. I agree with Jared Kushner. He has been a racist the whole time. That is how you do that.

It's a classic, if not racist for 65 years, then not racist now, contrapositive. When a lot of the Democrats call the president a racist, I think they're doing a disservice to people who suffer because of real racism in this country. Was birtherism racist? Look, I wasn't really involved in that. I know you were. Okay, stop.

That is not an actual answer to the question. You do not have to experience something firsthand to have an opinion on it. Were the Nazis bad? I don't know, I wasn't alive then. I wasn't there for that. Okay. Racist.

Like I said, I wasn't involved. Okay, stop. Why do we keep doing these interviews? I love Jonathan, I do but why? I will say, I have given Jonathan Swan a fair amount of shit over the years tweet to tweet, we've exchanged words

bad words good words, bad words, ideas about questions we've had a spirited discussion Good words, bad words, ideas about questions. We've had a spirited discussion. I think he's doing great here. He's now followed up twice, and I think he may follow up a third time. He will. All right. Let's watch.

Was it racist? Look, I know who the president is, and I have not seen anything in him that is racist. So again, I was not involved in that. Did you wish he didn't do that? Like I said, I was not involved in that. That was a long time ago. The other issue that often gets brought up in this conversation is that he campaigned on the body. So, Connie, I was going to ask, since we have an actual real journalist on stage. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. an actual real journalist on stage.

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. If you were interviewing someone like Jared Kushner, what is the strategy? Is it like Swan just did and you follow up like five times as he keeps giving you the same bullshit answer? Or are you looking to like maybe just ask a more substantive question? I would start quoting back Donald Trump to him

and make him respond to every single statement I'm a feminist and I mean in hateful so Muslims would you describe that as religiously bigoted look I think that the president did his campaign the way he did his campaign and I think you wish president did his campaign the way he did his campaign. He did. But do you wish he didn't make that speech? I think he's here today, and I think he's doing a lot of good things for us. Okay, stop.

I think he's here today. I think he's here today. I think he continues to exist on our plane of reality. I'm not sure. I think. Can we talk about that tie? He looks like he just said something really awful to Brendan Fraser in school ties. He looks like the meanest prep school boy who has ever walked the land.

It's so nice of him to do this interview between biology and social studies. There's a poor, shorter Jew doing the work for him, I'm sure. Sorry. No, you're not. Sorry. I'm not sorry. In June the 8th, 2016, you were sent an email with an offer of help for the Trump campaign from the Russian government. I'm sorry, which email are you talking about? Okay, stop.

We got so many offers from so many countries. I'm sorry, the email I was interviewed about by 15 committees in Guatemala, I don't know what you're talking about. The email from Ron Goldstone. Look, Jonathan. No, no, no. My question to you. My question to you. Okay, stop. Before we get to the question, I just do want to point out that when he says, what email

are you talking about, it does seem to be the moment where Jared Kushner has truly come to understand that this wasn't the softball he was counting on. This wasn't five things you didn't know about Jared Kushner. This wasn't a tour of Ivanka's

interior decoration. This may well be, and this is important for history, the very first obstacle Jared Kushner has faced in his life. This might be it. He has to... Listen, all right.

Listen. This guy, it is not enough that he got to buy his way into Harvard, that he married his way into one of the most important and powerful roles on Earth, one for which he is totally unprepared. It is so unacceptable for him to do that while also not having like Jewish skin. His skin is so good and it's like as a Jewish person, I find that offensive. Why didn't you pick up the phone and call the FBI? It was an email that said Russia, that said the Russian government was trying to help.

Let me put you in my shoes at that time, okay? I'm running three companies, I'm helping run the campaign, I get an email that says show up at four instead of three to a meeting that I'd been told about earlier that I didn't know what the hell it was about. But the reality is, is that the meeting was a total waste of time. I need to stop you there. This is, we're talking about Russia here. They are a long-term adversary of the United States.

Decades of hostility, including spying. Does it not set off at least some alarm bell when you see an email saying that the Russian government wants to help the campaign? Like I said, the email that I got on my iPhone at the time basically said, show up at 4. I didn't scroll down. Okay, stop. I didn't scroll down. This is one of the most successful efforts

to disrupt our democracy in American history. It has upended our institutions. It helped with Donald Trump in charge of our government. A foreign adversary was able to influence our country and buy off our president. And the reason we're in this mess is because this motherfucker is claiming he didn't scroll down

and yet and yet by saying that he's about to walk into a trap is it a trap has Jonathan Swan set an Australian trap for Jared Kushner. Would have thought about that. It had Russia in the subject line. Again, I would give that 200 different lines a day. Okay, stop. It had Russia in the subject line. Didn't need to scroll down, pal. Didn't need to scroll down.

It said Russia in the subject line. I don't know. It's hard to do hypotheticals, but the reality is that we were not given anything that was salacious. Wow. What do you got, Dan? His answer for why he didn't call the FBI was they didn't give us the goods. Yeah.

Right. It's like saying, like, listen, you can rob a bank. If the vault is empty, it's fine. You just go home. Everybody pretends it didn't happen, you wipe it off, you start again. And that's OK Stop. All right.

Since we're here in Des Moines, let's talk about the Iowa caucuses. Easy applause line. All right. Since we're here in Des Moines, let's talk about the Iowa caucuses. Easy applause line. Very easy to pander to these folks. So as we speak, the biggest event of the campaign just ended in Cedar Rapids so far. The state party's Hall of Fame celebration featured 19 of the 23 Democratic candidates for president and comes on the heel of a brand new Des Moines Register poll that shows a pretty tight race with Joe Biden in first at 24%, followed by Bernie Sanders at 16%, Elizabeth Warren at 15%. Just let me get through the names.

Pete Buttig judge at 14%. Kamala Harris at 7%. Better at work and Amy Klobuchar at 2%. And everyone else at 1% or lower. Clap for the 1% or lower. Let's hear it for the stragglers, everybody. There's always got to be a last kid on the bus. Tommy, you lived in this state for about a year

as Barack Obama's Iowa press secretary. Tommy got more applause than the one percenters. What's it like being part of a campaign in this state? What does it take to win? And how would you have been approaching the Hall of Fame dinner today if you were on one of those campaigns? How did Barack Obama approach the Hall of Fame dinner?

Well, I'll tell you, Dan. So, I mean, look, the year I spent in Iowa was the greatest experience of my professional life. That's obviously... If we had lost, I probably wouldn't be saying that, but, you know. So, I mean, I got here a year out of the caucuses. There were six of us at the time.

By the end, I think we had about 200 staffers. So you're working on a startup that's a part of another startup that when you get to the general election turns into a Fortune 500 company. So it's like enormous growth in pulling together this organization that's just really cool. enormous growth in pulling together this organization that's just really cool. What's great about the Iowa caucus process, in my mind, is that it's just retail politics and town hall meetings all the time. So I think I read somewhere that candidates have done 400 events already. I went to 73 counties with Obama, and I watched him go from not that great of a candidate, you know, at one point, like a guy whose stump

speech was a little too long, a little unfocused, to an excellent one because he was constantly speaking. He was taking hard questions on ethanol and drone strikes and the Patriot Act. And like, it really sharpens your message and just makes you a better candidate. So, you know, an event like tonight's, it's tough to break through. One way you do it is you organize. So if you have a great infrastructure, if you have a ton of volunteers, you can do a pre-rally or a post-rally. You can pack the room with your people so that when you get up there, you get the loudest applause and all the national reporters notice and they don't realize you packed the room necessarily and it looks like momentum.

You can... You sneaky bastards. I mean, like, how do you break through when you have 19 people speaking? You light yourself on fire. What would you say? I mean, you listen to them. What would you... What I think people are looking for in Iowa right now

is an electability message for second and third. So I think that I would try to talk about why I was uniquely qualified to beat Donald Trump and really spell out how I would do that. And I would try to anchor it in who I was, in my values, in the things I believed in, and make people think me over the other great candidates who are also in that room right then.

It's also a part of the campaign, though, where Iowa is just a a part of the campaign though where Iowa is just a better portion of the campaign because it's early, you're not taking shots at each other yet, it's not ugly and messy like it gets at the end. So you have to be positive and more optimistic and hopeful. So it's hard to distinguish yourself

by mounting an attack on your opponent. So it makes it all that much harder. Yeah, I love Iowa. on your opponent. So it just, it makes it all that much harder. But yeah, I love Idaho. Connie, I saw you tweeted this morning that this is your third time here in as many months. The first two times you came here, I'm guessing you came with your husband, Senator Sherwood Brown, when he was considering a run for president. He's a great plus one. Thank you, President.

Thank you, Senators here. It was a great plus one. An outstanding plus one. What do you think, from all the conversations that you both had with voters, what are voters looking for in a candidate this time around? One of the things I've been thinking about a lot is what do they care about? And in some ways it hasn't changed all that much. They care an awful lot about health care still.

The younger voters, I spend a lot of time with millennials because I teach at Kent State, care a lot about climate control and student debt, right? I don't really know the value of polling this early, to be honest with you, because it's not an indicator of anything yet, except that some have bigger name recognition, right? I do think when we say the word electability, I'm careful about that because we have different ideas of what electability is, right? It is loaded.

And if you're a woman or a person of color, you can feel opposition to that notion pretty quickly if the names that keep popping up that are all the white guys who are running. Right. I am curious, though, because Iowa may be doing it differently, and I know you're going to talk to us a little bit about

that. How many in this room, I wonder, intend to participate in the caucus? Oh, yeah. Connie, you've made such an important point, which is that victory in Iowa does run through Pod Save America. Dan, what's the... So there's, you know, 23 candidates in the field right now. Mary Ann!

You got a Mary Ann fan out there? Great. Mary Ann's fan? What's the lowest you can finish here and still realistically hope to continue your campaign and actually win? This is what the pundits call it. How many tickets out of Iowa are there? Let's talk about what the pundits

talk about. This is an important point to understand how that This is an important point to understand how that question is decided. Iowa is unique in the sense that you have to get to, to get delegates, you have to reach viability in an individual precinct.

You have to get to 15%. And so there will be candidates who have support. 15% in each precinct. In order to get it. And for the candidates who do not reach that 15%, they can then, after that, go caucus for one of the candidates who have, right?

Or put someone who hadn't got there over to 15%. And so that means that in a field with, take 2008 when Tommy was here. There were, what, eight candidates in that field, but only three of them got any amount of delegates coming out. In this case, if there were five candidates who get more than a tiny

handful of delegates coming out of here, it would be a miracle. And so you're really looking at maybe five tickets out of here, and... And even that's the very upper end of it. It could easily be four, right? That's like when Lieberman was like, it's a three-way tie for third. The saddest thing ever said by a candidate.

That was where the term jumentum was coined. I think it's important that sure, lots of people who do not get delegates will stay in the race because they're already on the ballot in New Hampshire and South Carolina. But they were essentially out of the race because the press will have written them off, right?

And therefore, this field is going to narrow twice. It's going to narrow probably to 10 candidates when the DNC puts in place new debate rules for the third debate, which are going to be harder to get. And then it'll narrow again coming out of Iowa, one more time New Hampshire, and then we'll head into Super Tuesday eventually. So let's talk about strategies for the different candidates

and sort of the different tiers here based on Ann's poll that we're going to talk about soon. So if you are, love it, if you're Joe Biden, and you're in first right now, you're the frontrunner. Joe Biden did not show up to the event tonight. He was attending his granddaughter's high school graduation. What is your strategy to stay in first without appearing like a traditional frontrunner where it's a coronation and we know all the dangers that a traditional frontrunner where you're, you know, it's a coronation and we know all the dangers that come with frontrunner status?

Yeah, that's a good question. What I actually think is that, having watched all the speeches today, and Biden couldn't be there for a totally legitimate reason, and thinking about this poll that we're going to talk about, you step back and you say, all right, well, what's happening here? And, yeah, Joe Biden's the frontrun runner, but there's a lot of people with now double digits, right? You have, you know, Joe Biden in the twenties, and then you have

Bernie and Pete and Warren in the mid teens. All within a point of each other. They're basically tied the three of them. Yeah. The margin's four. And you know, all the talk about who's ahead and who's not fundamentally, uh, anyone could win. Anyone could win. There's not, fundamentally, anyone could win. Anyone could win. There's, you know, Biden could slip by a few points. Warren could collect some of those points. And all of a sudden, it's a different looking race. And all of a sudden, she's the front runner.

She's the one trying to keep people off the coast. I know where your heads are at. I know, I know. But I think if you step back, and this was my sincere experience watching all of them speak today is I think all the polling and all of that is incredibly important about understanding where people's heads are at but sometimes it's hard to talk about not the mistakes they're making or the things that they're saying we wish they wouldn't say but what's missing

what are the words that aren't being used and some of them are doing a better job of telling a story than others but the reason that Barack Obama was able to come from 30-40 points behind Hillary Clinton and surpass her in 2008 is because he had a story, he a story, and it was a story that really was compelling. It sounds a little bit like Game of Thrones season eight, which is a damning critique of what I'm about to say.

Are you saying that Barack Obama is Bran in this story? Is that what you're saying? Listen, he didn't have a super strong record, but he had a compelling message. Talking to a Hillary 08 staffer over here. I think we're all still searching for a candidate who's telling a story that captures just exactly how everybody's feeling and what they want to hear from a leader about what it means to run against Trump, defeat Trump, what Trump represents, how he got to be president, and how we defeat him. I think it's a very hard story to tell. I don't think anybody knows what it is. I think it's very hard.

It's a very hard thing to capture all of that, certainly in a five-minute speech, but I think in listening to all those 19 candidates today, I think everyone is still searching for that story that captures the economic fears people have, the fears we have about slipping out of a democracy, which is a very serious thing and very hard to capture. And if a candidate can do that, if a candidate can tell that story, all the polling, all of it will melt away and we will see that person, I think, rise above. I do think that there's still an opening for that person. That's all I was trying to say. Listening to John, it occurred to me that what we're not really seeing yet, for all kinds of reasons, and there are attempts at it, I know, but I was thinking of another HBO series, Chernobyl. Have you seen it? It's fantastic.

But the basic premise of it is if we say it's not happening, it's not happening, which is what Trump does all the time. Trump is Russia. He's the Soviet Union in that. We want somebody, I get a sense from people, they want to think that you're actually meaning what you say and that you're saying what you mean.

And that you're willing to speak hard truths because you've decided what's even more important than getting this next job is saving the country. I really... I am in full agreement with that. And so after having watched all 19 speeches today as well, there were many candidates today

who I thought did, you've got your Trump zinger, right? You've got your, if it's not about Trump, you've got some other line that the consultants gave you because they thought it's going to be a great quote on Twitter and it's going to get a bunch of retweets and it's going to be

printed in the newspaper and all that kind of stuff. Or some people did the litany of issues. We're going to do this issue, they're going to do that issue. And so they go through the whole thing. And then there's a lot of people talking about why they can beat Trump. I do think the candidates that did the best today were the

candidates that told a story. They told a story about why they were running for president in the first place and what differentiates them from the rest of the field. I think it's always important in any primary to differentiate yourself from the rest of the field, but in a primary that is filled with 23 candidates, you

better be waking up every single day thinking, why am I different than all of these other candidates? Why should I be president when we have one of the most talented, diverse fields of candidates running for president ever? Why me? And that doesn't mean that everything you say should be me, me, me, me, me, but you have to think about that story. And then the other thing that you just mentioned is some of the speeches today, I thought to myself, this speech could be given in 2016, in 2012, in 2008. I think you need to have a case for your candidacy

that matches the urgency of the moment that we're in right now. And so far, I don't know that I've heard any candidate give that speech yet. I think it takes guts to do it, doesn't it? It does take guts to do it. I mean, to do that, you really are gonna have to put it down and do it now.

And it is gonna be a risk. But what's the risk really right now? Well, and you know what? And all these issues are important, but to do that, you have to sort of like put down the polls, right? You know that health care is the most important. Put down Twitter. What's that? Put down Twitter.

Put down the Twitter, right? And also, like, you know health care is the most important issue. You've got to talk about health care. You know that people's economic concerns are the most important thing. You know all that, right? You have to figure out a way to weave that in. But there's also something going on in our country, in our democracy, that's bigger than any one single issue.

And I want to hear someone talk about that. And it's not just about Trump. It's about things that have led us to Trump. It's hard because what we're talking about is someone demonstrating like genuine, like genuine generational leadership that captures the urgency of this moment. And the reason it's hard to say what it is is because the person who says what it is is the kind of person who should be president of the United States. And that's what I mean. All the polls, all the speeches,

all the questions about someone's got a lot of plans and someone's got a great zinger, all of it melts away when you hear something that transcends all of it and is bigger and reaches people in a deeper way. Right beneath the surface of all the anger and the enthusiasm is a deeper way because right beneath the surface of all the anger and the enthusiasm is a lot of genuine pain. This country is in pain. And that's right there beneath the surface

and it's very hard to tap into. And if one of them can touch it and really tap into it, and it's probably Marianne Williamson. End of thought. You know, I lost my thought when you did that. Oh, no, I just remembered it.

I'm getting so excited about this, because I care so much about this issue here. I don't think anger is the right caliber, is the other thing. I don't, because of what you just said. The activists are angry, right? Those who are really paying attention every day to the politics of it are angry, especially the ones on Twitter. But people in my neighborhood, in the city of Cleveland, they're scared, and they're worried about their children, and their neighborhoods,

and they're worried about education. So much so, I hear that all the time from my students, who are, like me, a third of them are first-generation college kids. They came from families who didn't even know how to launch them into the college environment, let alone how to help them get to the next step. Anger is not going to do what they need to hear right now for them to have faith in you. If you're angry, then you're angry like I am. Okay, I get it. You're got a temper like I do. How can you get me past this? How do you help me find what comes next? I mean, that's the, that challenge for any candidate is to, is to channel anger into

activism, channel it into hope. And like we, like obviously we're in this incredibly unique, very dangerous moment right now, but when Barack Obama ran and won on a hope and change message, we were in the middle of on a hope and change message, we were in the middle of a financial crisis. We were in the middle of a war in Iraq we should never have been in. The Bush administration, through incompetence, allowed an American city to drown. People were angry then, too, but Obama met that anger with hope, not with more anger. I think sometimes we have this sort of false debate between anger and hope here, right?

But Obama made sure to acknowledge the very real anger that people felt. He just didn't leave them there. And I think that's important because... He didn't exploit it. Yeah, because pretending that people aren't angry is not the way to go either, right? You acknowledge that people are angry. You acknowledge that people are scared, that fear that you were talking about. But then you say, I get that you're angry.

I get that you're afraid. But the only way this country has ever moved forward is if we somehow come together and then like keep pushing and we fight you know i keep thinking about one speech by brock obama as we're talking and it's a speech about race remember when he had to give that speech in philadelphia he decided there's just no turning away from this i'm going to meet this head-. He was addressing fears of people. He was addressing outrage and anger, right? And he left us, he picked us up in one place and he left us somewhere else. And there was also, there was a, it was courageous to give that speech because he said a lot of very controversial things about race. He took on that controversy about his pastor in a very difficult

way. And I remember him saying to me after the speech, he said, I don't know if I can get elected president saying the things I did today about race, but I also know that I don him saying to me after the speech, he said, I don't know if I can get elected president saying the things I did today about race, but I also know that I don't deserve to be president if I'm too afraid to say what it is I really believe. You know? And it's like... What did you think? What did you say to him in response? How did you feel about that speech?

Because I saw the speech and I, you know, I always say, like, the parts of that speech that I worked on were the parts that any politician could have given. You know, I gave him an open and ending, all this kind of stuff, but the lines like, you know, I could no more disown Reverend Wright than I could my own grandmother. Like, all the really tough things that he said about race, you know, he wrote all those things himself, and I remember when I first got the draft back with all of his writing and all the things he said, I was just like, holy shit, I can't believe he's actually going to say this tomorrow. He sent it to

me and to Axrod and Valerie and a couple other people and he said, you can make small edits to this if you want for language and stuff like this, but this is what I want to say and I'm sure about it and if we win, we win and if we lose, we lose. So can we all have a moment of silence?

Because we used to have a president who wrote his own speeches. Good ones. What is so important there is that Obama wasn't afraid to lose the campaign. Right. Is that true? Yes. He did. He was not afraid to lose it. So there we are.

And when I watched the 19 speeches today, you did not get a sense yet that people were willing to put it all on the line, that they were not afraid to lose, which is kind of crazy because 18 of them

were going to lose. Yeah, I mean, Connie, I remember sitting on the floor of our, at that time, pretty shitty campaign office in Des Moines and hearing on a polling call that we were in fifth campaign office in Des Moines, and hearing on a polling call

that we were in fifth place in the Des Moines media market. We were losing to Bill Richardson. I was like, boy, I gotta update that resume. Like, this is rough. But then Obama would come here and we'd go on the road, and he just had this mantra. It was sort of a joke that he would have with Gibbs or Dan or whoever was translating.

They joked they would get pins that just said, fuck it. He's like, why not say what you're going to say and say what you think? Like, what is the downside? He used to say, if we don't win, I'll have a pretty great book to write, right? And like, that, that, look, he's a politician. They're all cautious to some degree, but he was willing when he went at that debate and he said, yes, I would speak to North Korea and Iran and Cuba without preconditions. And the entire democratic establishment came down on him like a ton of bricks and acted like it was somehow weak

to have a conversation with someone you don't like. He got on a call that night and told everybody, if you walk this back, you are fired, right? Like, this is what I believe. I don't care what these morons at the Center for Foreign Policy think tank money from Gulf Arab States think this is what I want to do

and that I think people got that over time and I should say by the way I think there are probably five or six candidates in the race that I think can get there that I have seen flashes of this from all of them that there are pieces of this kind of who are they?

I'm not do it I've seen flashes of this from all of them, that there are pieces of this kind of... Who are they? I'm not... Do it! Do it! More to the point, Jon. More to the point, Jon. It's time we say, who doesn't have it? Yeah, right.

Sorry, I felt you could just... No, I just... You opened the door and I... Yeah, I know, I know. Make your list, Arya. We want to let everyone be able, give everyone the information they need, everyone make their own decisions. We'll stay out of it.

Straight shooter. Call me. Straight shooter. Straight shooter. It's my time to shine. Let's go through the names. You want to have one more point? One more point?

Yeah, I do. Look, another point about just, one of the things I think was most fascinating about 2008 is all of this, everything is saying, what everyone's saying is true about the kind of campaign Barack Obama won. But ultimately what is so amazing about 2008 and I think should tell something to all

of these candidates is 2008 ended up turning on a financial crisis that obviously caught everybody off guard. And Barack Obama's case for why he'd be the right president wasn't rooted in his stable leadership of the Treasury Department and the financial system, and how to manage TARP and the bailouts in the United States through the deepest financial crisis that almost sent us into the Great Depression. But by the time we got to that crisis, he had been so steadfast in defining who he was, what he cared about, the kind of president he would be, the issues that mattered, the story.

The story was so sure that he was the state... Against John McCain, someone who had been in the Senate for decades, someone who had run against the establishment, was by then seen as someone people knew, someone they could trust, someone they could understand, someone that they felt they could rely on even through a crisis, even though he didn't have the same amount of experience as every single other person he ran against.

And, you know, I think the analogy to that of what we're going through is we don't know what the full weight of the propaganda apparatus that Donald Trump is going to throw at us will look like ultimately. We can get a sense of it, but we don't really know. We don't know what specific attacks he'll choose. We don't know which candidate we will have. We don't know who the vice president, we don't know anything. We don't know what will be in front of voters when they actually make that decision. But now is the moment when these candidates can tell that story about who they are

in a way that can handle the buffets of the actual race to come. Well done. When we come back, we will have Tommy's interview with Ann Seltzer. Our guest tonight is a pollster and president of the firm Seltzer & Co., which is conducting Iowa polls on the 2020 caucuses for the Des Moines Register, CNN, and Mediacom. Ann Seltzer.

for the Des Moines Register, CNN, and Mediacom, Ann Seltzer. Thank you for being here. My pleasure. I was telling Ann backstage that my world would literally stop in 2008 when one of her polls came out, because it was not just like, oh, here's another poll. It was like, this is the only poll that matters. You're so good at it.

You're the gold standard. So thank you for being here and not like crunching numbers or whatever you do during your free time. So you released a new poll last night. Once again, we were all at dinner and time stopped as we all read it like nerds because that's who we are. So the top lines were 24% for Biden, 16% Bernie, 15% Warren, 14% Mayor Pete, Kamala Harris at seven, the rest were lower. What did you think the main headline out of this

latest survey was? Well, I can tell you what we were aiming for, and I think it worked out for us. We wanted to divine some tears to the field because our last poll in March had a duopoly of Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders and then mush after that. And we wanted to figure out enough ways of measuring the field that if we could define a top tier and define a bottom tier and maybe some things in the middle, that would be very helpful. So you read the top tier. And more than that, I think we were able to show that the Biden sitting at the top has some underlying weakness to it. Why do you think that? I think that because we asked a question about how enthusiastic are you about your first choice? Are you extremely enthusiastic, just very enthusiastic, you know, mildly enthusiastic? And we separated out the supporters of Joe Biden and then the supporters of all other candidates

and put them in one big clump and looked at their answers and compared them. 29% of Joe Biden's supporters said they were extremely enthusiastic. For this other clump, 43%. So that says, and there was a bigger group of the Biden supporters that described themselves as mildly enthusiastic. So that's a little bit of weakness there. For Bernie Sanders, also a little bit of weakness in that he was more popular, more likely to be a first choice among people who said that they would probably caucus rather than definitely caucus. And we think of the people who will definitely caucus as that's the core. And the problem is... Hearing you guys ooh and ah about relative support is just the funniest shit.

So, I mean, you sort of hinted at it. I mean, one of the quirks of the Iowa caucus system is this 15% viability threshold in these precincts. And, you know, in my mind, that was so important. Like our Iowa caucus director, Paul Tooze, literally wrote on the walls, respect and power include. Our mantra was, if you speak ill of another candidate, you're fired, you're out of here.

It was like that serious about it. Did you register a candidate that you thought like, okay, that this person is the strong second choice among Iowa caucus goers? Well, one of the people who didn't get into double digits, but was a popular second choice was Kamala Harris. And so while she didn't sort of end up in our top four, she's really on the bubble there. We did one other thing, which is if somebody wasn't named as your first or second choice, we asked, well, are you actively considering each of these people you've not named? So I had to go through that list again. And this was really reflective of the way things are in Iowa, particularly with this field. You talk to people, you say, well, who are you thinking about? And they go, oh, well, let me tell you who my favorites are, plural. Favorites, that usually implies like one or two, but no, we wanted to know who was on

the list. And so we added together how many people were there. There were five candidates that a majority of likely caucus goers said they were either a first choice, second choice, or they were actively considering, and it's the four you named plus Kamala Harris. Interesting. How many people do you have to call to get, was it 600 respondents? Is that right?

Now, I believe backstage I said, don't ask me for any numbers. Okay, never mind. Okay. A lot. Okay, never mind. Okay. A lot. A lot of people. So, I mean, like, I guess what I'm trying to get at is it is so hard to pull the Cox's. The 2008 Iowa Cox's are a good example. I said F Mark Penn earlier.

And that was in part because, you know, in 2008 we had these wildly different visions of what the caucus universe would be like or how many people would turn out. The Edwards people said it's going to be 150,000. It's going to be the same people who came out last time, older, whiter, same folks. The Clinton people thought it would be a little bit more. Our bet on the Obama team was that we were going to grow the caucus universe. We were going to get people of color, younger people. These predictions are not predictions. They're spin born of political necessity,

but you have a very different job where you actually have to divine that universe. How are you able to call it right when no one else is? Well, I hope it is always the case, but I think that one of the ways that I'm different from a lot of other pollsters is I don't put any artificial assumptions between me and the data. So a lot, and the story that I tell on the day that our poll was

released in 2008, I got a call from a key Clinton operative who said, I've knocked on 99 doors and I don't find this lurking Obama support, and I've always trusted your polls until now, so explain yourself. And I said, well, okay, give me more data. Tell me about the 99 doors. He said, oh, we're going to people who've caucused before and registered Democrats. And I said, well, you're blinded to what's happening. So we make no assumptions and let

our data tell us. And believe me, in the editorial room of the Des Moines Register, it was quite a decision looking at our poll data that said close to 60% were going to be first-time caucus attenders. No one would create a likely voter model that said 60%. But our data told us. And the entrance poll that night said it was 57%, so we were right. And... But this is still happening in a lot of polls, that when people are doing polling by panels,

how do you make a panel look like a future electorate? Well, you look backwards and you say, well, in the past, this is the kind of people who showed up. And when you do that, you have made an assumption that may or may not hold. So my method has always been to let my data tell me what's going to happen in the future. And so far, my data has treated me well. Your data is good. So complicating your job is the fact that this year, to make the caucuses more accessible,

the Democratic Party has added a virtual caucus option. Can you give us just a quick explanation of how that might work and how you will factor that in? Yeah. So in addition to everybody showing up on caucus night and trying to break into 23 preference groups inside the high school gym, there will be six virtual caucuses in the run-up. And people get the idea this would be kind of breezy. You'll sign on to your computer and you'll sort of say, here's who I want. and then you sign off and off you go. No, they're going to be like regular caucus meetings that you register for, and if you register for it, you're committed now. You can't decide you're going to show up on caucus night. So there will be a regular party business and

they will run through the list of candidates five times and asking you five times to say who your next candidate choice is and so on and so on and so on. There's a whole lot of calculations they've got to do to figure it out. They are treating everyone who participates in this virtual caucus as though it is one giant precinct and they're allocating 10% of the delegate equivalents to that. So no matter how many people decide to caucus that way, it will be 10% of the delegate equivalents, as I've been told under the current version of the rules by the state party chair just the other day. So that may change yet, but that's the way the rules, as I understand it, confirmed by the state party chair have said. That sounds confusing. So just like stepping back a little bit, Obama won Iowa pretty

convincingly in 2008 and 2012. I think a lot of us really felt like the state was trending blue. There's some progressive things happening on the state level. Then Trump won the state in 2016, including, you know, almost every county, but like those traditionally blue river counties that I really thought were Democratic strongholds. The state swung back a bit in 18 with strong victories by Abby Finkenauer and Cindy Axne. Yeah.

What's your sense of where Iowa is trending politically today? Well, I think 2018 was the product of pent-up, what had been sleeping activism. And that's the word I'd use for some work I did with the Grinnell College National Poll, to sort of measure activation, that there were people who said, I'm not going to sit back and let others do the heavy lifting. I'm going to get engaged. I'm going to get involved. And the group most likely to say they were going to go get people to vote and help them vote were Democratic women. So what I saw after the midterms and when the presidential candidates started coming

and reporters call me and talk to me and report to me what they see happening is that those early events were feeling like the run-up right to caucus night, that there was big crowd sizes and an intensity, an urgency, an excitement in the air that didn't feel like it was early in the caucus season and so it had a feeling as though Iowans decided they can Iowa Democrats they can do it and they showed that they could do it by flipping two congressional districts, and so it's still there. One district we did not flip is Iowa's 4th District.

Congressman Steve King, we're not big fans. J.D. Scholten made... J.D. made a hell of a run at him, but fell short. I mean, the seat is like the great white nationalist whale for people that want fewer bigots in Washington, I guess. Do you think that district is winnable for a Democrat? Boy. J.D. Scholten came very, very close.

And how much of that was J.D. Scholten came very very close and how much of that was J.D. Scholten and how much of that was the districts ready to be done with Steve King but I'm always reminded of a couple I met who were from Ottawa which is over on the Missouri River chatting with them at O'Hare Airport

and they're going on and on about Steve King and what great constituent service it is and 15 minutes on that so in the governor's race you'll be voting O'Hare Airport, and they're going on and on about Steve King and what great constituent service it is. And 15 minutes on that, I said, so in the governor's race, you'll be voting for the Republican candidate. And they said, oh no, we're Democrats. And I, so I, you know, that's always filed away in my mind that Steve King had a very strong presence in that district. He started doing town halls after not doing those for a while. So he's a fighter. We'll see.

He's going to have a primary. And that, I think, he may not win the nomination. So the 4th District is always fascinating. Yeah, good answer. Last question. From now until Caucus Day, journalists, bozo pseudo-pundits like me will be complaining about polls, talking about polls, trying to interpret them when they haven't taken math since junior year of high school. What do you wish people understood

about polls and polling that you see them getting wrong all the time? Well, one of the questions that is just a little bit annoying is they say, what do these polls really mean? We shouldn't pay any attention to it. They shouldn't even be doing these polls. They're meaningless. And then the iteration of that is, well, do you expect these numbers to last through the caucuses? And I go, if we thought they'd last,

we'd stop polling. You know, it's, it's, these are numbers that help make sense of the field. And what I, I like people to think about is what if there weren't any polls and you didn't know where these 23 candidates, how did they rank? Who was getting traction, who wasn't getting traction. You know, it's really helpful, certainly for reporters, which is what my poll is paid for to do, to guide how that's supposed to go. But it's also helpful for the readers to have an idea of how this race is shaping up. Yeah, agreed. Ann Tilser, thank you so much for your work, for being here tonight. Thank you so much for your work, for being here tonight. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Keep going, Ansel, bye. You guys want to play a game? Des Moines. You're like a sweet kid surrounded by puppies who thinks dogs must naturally love you because you don't realize your mom is standing behind you dangling pork chops and milk bones. Face it. Yes, we're in Iowa and we're going to talk about pandering.

Because if there's one thing I know about the people of this state, you are the smartest, hardest-working, best-looking people this side of the Mississippi River. Yes, Iowa takes your role as first in the nation seriously, but so do the candidates who suck up to you like you're a criminal president who ranks pardon requests based on compliments. Over the years,

you in Iowa have received some of the most egregious, ostentatious, high fructose corn syrup, sickly sweet pandering the world has ever known. And you're proud of it, too. You like it. You know there are studies that show

that people know when they're being sucked up to and they don't care. They still like it. You know there are studies that show that people know when they're being sucked up to, and they don't care. They still like it. This guy knows. And so we thought we'd have our own little caucus tonight to see just who is the best panderer in Iowa history in a game we're calling Welcome to the Panderdome. Here's how it works.

Each of our hosts will read a pander from their card. Without knowing who did the pander, the audience will decide who pandered best. As the audience decides, you guys will make a case for your pander. You'll read your pander and defend it. At the end of the round we will reveal who you chose as president and who you dismissed. Are you ready? John kick us off. At a campaign event I busted out an acoustic guitar and forced a crowd to sing along to the following lyric. Iowa, Iowa.

Winter, spring, summer, or fall. Come see, come dance with me at the beautiful Iowa Waltz. Was that recently? Well, we don't know when. You don't know yet. Throughout the years. I just want everyone to know I said Iowa three times in that.

He did say Iowa three times. He used the guitar. Played the years. In years? Throughout the years. I just want everyone to know I said Iowa three times in that. He did say Iowa three times. Three times. He used the guitar. Played the guitar. Connie, you're up. All right. In my home state, I upset a lot of local farmers by coming out against corn-derived biofuels. But here in Iowa, a place known for its corn, I did a complete 180 and supported them,

proving I care more about Iowa than my actual constituents. So that's like a pretty cool one. That's someone who was so hypocritical on your behalf. Tommy, you're up. At the Iowa State Fair, I ate a pork chop on a stick because that's what we think you people like. You're a bunch of popsicle eating for every meal

reduced to that stick loving people You and me for Tommy you stick loving people Dan you're up. I Happy Iowa State Fair. I ate three pork chops on a stick in 30 minutes. Because I love you three times as much as Tommy does.

Three pork chops on a stick in 30 minutes. Truly disgusting. Alright, so now you guys are just going to vote based on applause. Here we go. Was it the guitar solo? The bioheels flip-flop? Meat on a stick?

Meat on a stick? Three times the meat on a stick. I want you all to know that that was surprisingly revealing because I believe you selected as your president Scott Walker who flipped on biofuel. Yeah, face what

you did. We didn't tell them who Scott Walker was. Oh, Scott Walker was the flip on biofuel. He flipped on biofuel and then Martin O'Malley played the guitar. Donald Trump ate the stick. Fuck. John Kasich

ate three pork chops. That guy can eat. Tommy, I think you've been eliminated. That's fine. I have to pee. Leave it in. Leave it in. All right.

Now, you're down to three candidates. Which pander will win you over? John, kick us off. I made my mother move to Des Moines. Connie? I made my entire family move to Des Moines. Dan? I threw my alma mater under the bus with this tweet.

Love my alma mater, but rooting for a Hawkeyes win today. Hashtag Rose Bowl. Wow. Wow. All right. All right. All right. Who was your...

Tommy, come back out. Come on out, Tommy. Honestly, it sounded pretty bad. I was worried about coming back out. Sounded like you lost the crowd for a minute. This isn't New Orleans. I'm fine. All right.

So, was it moving... My mother. Moving the mother. My mother had to move. He moved his mother to Des Moines. Is that a good pander? Moving the mother. My mother had to move. He moved his mother to Des Moines. Is that a good pander? Moving the whole family. I love them.

Saying, fuck my loyalty to the school I went to. I'm going Hawkeyes. Well, congratulations, Iowa. You've chosen Carly Fiorina as your president. And sadly, sadly, you're saying goodbye to Dick Gephardt. Chris Dodd didn't... Son of a milkman. What'd you say?

Son of a milkman. Son of a milkman, Dick Gephardt, hit the road. And it was Chris Dodd who moved his family to Iowa. Why not Dodd? What? Why not Dodd? Why not Dodd, as they say. No one gets these references.

God, we're old now. That works so well. So we are down now to our final two panders. I love this game. This game. It's a kid. It's a kid. Connie, please kick us out. Final two. Final two.

Me? You. I feel like this is a big reveal. I once made a comment that I thought it would have been great if my wife gave birth in Iowa. Dan, what do you think? I once said the following sentence about Iowa. I'm driving through these beautiful fields. I want to grab that corn like you've never seen. So rich, so beautiful. Now, let's think about this. All right?

Do you think it was wanting... Do you think Connie wanting her wife to give birth in Iowa? Or was it wanting to grab life by the corn? So I've got to say, I think that's pretty close. Travis is out there with a microphone. There's somebody that I thought might be helpful. It's like a real salt-of-the-earth guy. Someone who knows a thing or two about winning campaigns in the heartland.

Travis, are you out there? Can we get the lights up in the house? Sir, what is your name? My name? Yeah, sir, what is your name? Connie Schultz's husband. Connie Schultz's husband. Guys, give it up for Senator Sherrod Brown. Hi, honey.

I did think if I... I thought if I sat back far enough, you wouldn't find me, but... No, we found you. Oh, we found you. Help us decide. What do you think is a better pander? Wanting one's wife to give birth in the state or wanting to just grab that corn? Honey, think this through.

I like the wife giving birth at any age in the state. Okay, okay, okay. So is that your choice? Yeah, that's my choice. Yeah. Congratulations, your president is Donald Trump. But don't worry, your second choice was also Donald Trump. That's our game.

Thank you Connie for playing. Thank you Senator Brown for playing. Thank you Des Moines. Thank you to Connie Schultz. Thank you Ann Seltzer. Thanks Jerry Brown. We love you. We'll be back. We'll see you next time.