The Daily - Inside the Mind of a Super Tuesday Voter

Episode Date: March 3, 2020

In the weeks leading up to Super Tuesday, Senator Bernie Sanders was the only candidate to win across multiple states. With his more moderate competitors splitting the vote, his success was built on a coalition of union workers, Hispanics and the college-educated.Then South Carolina happened. Now, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is banking on a different coalition — this time, of suburban, black and older voters. Is the contest for the Democratic nomination now a two-person race? Guest: Brian Keane, a 52-year-old Democratic voter from Arlington, Va, who spoke with Michael Barbaro about his experiences with Mr. Biden and his thoughts on the 2020 election. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading: Here’s what’s at stake in the 14 states (as well as American Samoa and Democrats Abroad) voting on Super Tuesday.Senator Klobuchar and Mr. Buttigieg both dropped out of the race after the South Carolina primary. Can their backing for Mr. Biden help him capture the moderate vote?Mr. Sanders’s strength has complicated the Democratic establishment’s effort to coalesce support around a single candidate.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. In the first weeks of the Democratic primaries, Bernie Sanders was the only candidate to win big, and to win repeatedly. We won the popular vote in Iowa. We won the New Hampshire primary. And according to three networks in the AP, we have now won the Nevada caucus.

In Nevada, he did it through sheer popularity by proving he'd built a coalition, one made up of union workers, people with college degrees, and Hispanic voters. In Iowa and New Hampshire, he did it by narrowly beating out his moderate rivals, who split the majority of the vote, with the leading moderate candidate, Joe Biden, losing support and stumbling badly. The only gas that powers a candidate to the nomination is these delegates.

And Sanders now has 43 of them. That's more than his closest rival, Pete Buttigieg, at 26. And now you can see Sanders also has more than triple the number of delegates of most other people in this race. All of this left Sanders the frontrunner. Down-ballot Democrats are very worried about Bernie ending up at the top of the ballot, but there's speculation that the rest of the folks, the moderates and others, can't get it together and they can't stop Bernie. And the only one who could walk away from Super Tuesday today

as the likely Democratic nominee. Then came South Carolina. Just days ago, the press and the pundits had declared this candidacy dead. Now, thanks to all of you, the heart of the Democratic Party, we've just won and we've won big because of you. And for the first time, Joe Biden offered a vision of a different coalition. This one made up of black voters, older voters and suburbanites. Joe Biden lapped the field with 48 percent of the vote, winning every single county in the state, crushing Bernie Sanders by

more than a two to one margin with everyone else trailing badly. Biden's big win helped him close the delegate gap considerably with Sanders. It's very close. But South Carolina was just three days ago. Despite Biden's big night, the confetti could stop for him on Super Tuesday as Sanders is much better organized and positioned to take a potentially commanding delegate lead. And so the question now is, will Sanders sweep? Or will the moderate wing of the party coalesce around Biden? And will the voters who had left him come back in time for Super Tuesday?

It's Tuesday, March 3rd. We are on a residential street in Arlington, Virginia. It's a quite lovely neighborhood of colonial houses. I think, safe to say, well-off. An affluent suburban community. Can I do one of my favorite things? Which is what? To look up how much these homes sell for.

You would not be the first New Yorker to do that. Okay, so this house right behind us. Four beds, three baths. 2,600 baths. 2,600 square feet. Estimated price, $1.3 million. $1.3 million. This house here, $1.3 million. Yeah.

No one's ever going to invite me to their home after hearing that. I think there's a tree back there. Is it this way? I still got a Christmas tree. Cute dog. Hi. You must be Brian. I'm Brian.

I'm Michael. Hey, Michael. Jess, Claire. Jess, how are you? Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Claire? Brian Keene.

How are you? Nice to meet you. May we come in? Of course, of course, Michael. Nice to meet you. So on Sunday night, I went with my colleagues Jessica Chung and Claire Tennesketter to meet Brian Keene at his house in Arlington, a suburb about 15 minutes outside Washington, D.C.

So cute in here. It's got a fire going on. We get there. I'm Coretta. Nice to meet you. And he introduces us to his kids. So you met Tommy, and this is Julia. Hi.

And this is Maddie. And this is Jack. Hello. And you met Cap Coretta, right? I just wanted to. And this is Jack. Hello. And you met Cap Corina, right? I just wanted to. All five of them. And his dog, a yellow lab named Annie. And then we sit down in his living room.

So, with your permission, we'll start. Yes. Tell me who you are and what you do. So, my name is Brian Keene, and I'm 52 years old. We're here in Arlington, Virginia. So Brian, like a lot of people in Arlington, used to work on Capitol Hill. His wife is a partner at a law firm that represents, among many clients, the Democratic National Committee. He now runs a nonprofit organization and a software company, both of them focused on renewable energy.

So tell me about the politics of this community, Arlington, Virginia. Sure. It's a wealthy community. And it's a very well-read community, if you will. And the reason a lot of people kind of live here is because of the politics. And so they moved to Washington. Certainly that's why I came here, because of the politics. And so they moved to Washington. Certainly, that's why I came here, because I love politics. What's the kind of character of people's political identification, if you could summarize it? It's pretty easy to assume that they're left of center. And you said left of center. My sense of this community is that that

center word is important, that it's left of center, but it's not liberal, liberal. I went back and looked at the 2016 primary for Arlington County and saw that Hillary Clinton won this county by a two to one ratio over Bernie Sanders. It wasn't really even close. He got 32 percent. She got twice as much, 66 percent. We have a sense that if we're going to be voting, we understand that you want to vote for somebody who can be elected. And so you don't want to kind of just say like, oh, let's just go crazy and vote for Mr. Potato Head because I think he's great and see what happens. But in the most recent polling, which was conducted before South Carolina,

Sanders is actually leading the state of Virginia with about 28% of the vote. Joe Biden has 19% and Michael Bloomberg has 17%, which, as you can probably gather, is not welcome news to Brian. Well, Dana, look, let's be clear. The establishment is freaking out. The establishment is worried.

Wall Street is worried. The drug companies are worried. The insurance companies are worried. When he and his friends hear Sanders going after the establishment. You know, when you say Washington's the problem, he's probably talking about us. And that's not really well received. They hear that as him going after them. Yes, like any industry town would be, right?

So if you're going to say the car manufacturers stink, I think Detroit would take umbrage to that. And he's just a little mean. I don't think I'd like him as my neighbor. What about as your Democratic nominee? I mean, what do you... I think it would be really, really bad for the party. Wow.

I don't think for every... And I really, really think Trump is bad for the party. Wow. I don't think for every, and I really, really think Trump is bad for America. A socialist revolution is not what we're asking, we need. And when, if we have a nominee to stand up against Trump that says we need a socialist revolution, we're going to lose. And we will lose our Senate,

we'll lose any strong candidates we have in the Senate, and we have a lot of strong candidates. You mean it will trickle down over the whole party? Oh, yeah. Badly. Badly. This is how you hear a lot of establishment Democrats talking right now. That a Sanders nomination would trigger

a meltdown inside the party. Given what you just laid out, who do most of your neighbors tend to support in this primary? So it's been all over the board, though. Like, it just moves so fast. And my personal thing is so interesting, though, because I've always, my heart has always been like,

I'm a Joe Biden guy at heart. What do you mean? I love the guy guy but can you win and then in that case it's like so i need to go with a guy that's a person who's going to win and so now i'm like ping-ponging back and forth of who can win who can win and i have to give up the guy i love you know take it you you say i'm a joe guy with so much conviction that I kind of want to go back to understand what you mean by that. Okay. Well, I came to Washington, D.C. to go to college here at American University.

And this is a long story. I'm going to tell my long story. Please tell a long story. We didn't come here for a short story. You're asked for it. But at American University, where he was the head of an undergraduate group that brought speakers to campus. And Joe Biden was one of them. This was in 1988.

And Biden had just dropped out of his first presidential run after being caught plagiarizing a speech. And then he had a brain aneurysm that he barely survived. And so the speech he gave for the Kennedy Political Unit, AU, was his first speech after having been driven out of the race and his aneurysm. Wow. So he shows up. You're there, obviously. Right.

So I'm there. I'm just a senior in college. I'm a kid. And he shows up. He gets out of his car. And he's like my best friend. He's like, Brian, it's so great to see you. You have no idea how glad I am to see you.

And I'm like, Senator Biden, so nice to meet you. No, you have no idea how glad I am to meet you. To see you. Not meet you. He's very good. It's like in case he has met me before. He's like, so glad to see you. And it was like, we're best friends.

Like, this is amazing. Thank you. Good evening and welcome to tonight's program. My name is Brian F. Keene and I am the director of the Kennedy Political Union. Then we go to the lecture hall. political union. Then we go to the lecture hall. Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. first entered public service in 1970 when he was elected to the council of Newcastle County, excuse me, in New Jersey, in Delaware. Sorry. And ladies and gentlemen, Senator Joseph Biden. He gives this unbelievable speech. Most of we public officials when

we're about to speak somewhere we start off and we say I'm really happy to be here. Well folks I'm happy to be here I'm happy to be anywhere in light of the last eight or ten months. And he kept going. I don't see no leader right now in the Democratic Party who's able to unite everyone, the southern conservative, the northern liberal. He took every single question that was there. Well, the answer is yes. No, I'm serious. I'm serious. I'm serious. Don't make me laugh.

The answer is yes, I do see the possibility of uniting us so that we can win. They actually had to shut it down. They were like, you know, we got to close the room. Senator, thank you very much. Exactly. Yeah, we're done. Thank you. We're done. Thank you. And so they shut their room down. And so it's now like 11 o'clock at night now.

And he says, hey, is there like a bar around here? And so I said, well, actually, there's a tavern on campus. He said, oh, do you got time? Let's go get a beer. While you're having the proverbial beer with a politician in real life. And the guy was just great. It's just me and Joe. And then he just says to the bartender, he's like, hey, how late are you guys open till?

Last call might be 2 o'clock. Oh, great, great. Can I borrow your phone? Yeah, so he gives him his phone. And he joked, got tiles. And he goes, hey, Bo, it's dad. I'm here at American University with Brian Keene. Come on, I'll get Hunter.

Come on over. And let's have a beer with Brian Keene at American University. So the boys came over and really he was calling for a ride. So, but it was, and I was like, that was unbelievable. It was like the best night of my life. This is actually not the end of the story. To make this long story longer, that was 1989. So fast forward to 2007,

there's rumors that he's going to run for president. So I'm taking the Amtrak, and I get to 30th Street Station, and I go up the escalator. And I'm like, I think, and just to myself, I'm like, I think that's Joe Biden over there. And there's a guy just holding the newspaper. He's holding it up. And I said, excuse me, Mr. President. And he folds the newspaper down, and he looks at me. he looks me in the eye and he goes, American University.

Wow. And I go, oh, my God, how do you remember that? Like, that was 1989. He goes, that was a great night, wasn't it? How are you, man? How's it going? How are you? Like, I said, well, are you running for president?

He's like, well, why not? I think, like, why not? And so we got coffee, and then we waited in line for the Amtrak, and it was unbelievable. What impression did he leave you with? That he is the best politician. He loves people, and actually, that is what the job is. And if you love people, you're going to do well by people. So this time around, 2020, did you know right away, did it feel like he was going to be your candidate? Well, and I said to my wife, I said, well, I got to be with Joe. Like, we're like best friends, you know? And she's like, you don't talk to the guy. But I think it's amazing that there's a person that can make you feel like that.

Right, in the race. Yes. So Joe enters 2020, I said, well, I got to be with Joe. Probably because of the relationship you'd had, probably because of his politics, all of it. Yeah, yeah. And that he is a Democrat's Democrat to me. We'll be right back.

Tell me about what's happened since then. So I love Joe. Joe's my guy. But he has not been a strong candidate. I think he doesn't look good. I think he's not sounding good. And Joe Biden, who is a great guy, is playing by a rule book that was written in 1980, maybe, 1972. And that's really concerning to me because Donald Trump's going to fillet him very quickly. I mean, we're seeing, you know, these debates.

Joe Biden's version of kind of hand-to-hand combat is to just say it louder, is to yell. Things that touch people's lives. I agree. Let me, she should reference me. I agreed with the great job she did. And I went on the floor and got you votes. I got votes for that bill.

I convinced people to vote for it. So let's get those things straight, too. I kind of feel like I'm walking through a nursing home and seeing an old friend and he's just yelling at me. And it's like, you're an old friend. Why are you yelling? Like, he just says it louder, you know, and it's like, stop yelling. Senator Klobuchar, I'm going to come to you in 45 seconds. I'm the only guy that's not interrupted here, all right?

I'm going to interrupt now. It costs $30 trillion. And it's like, he doesn't know how to take on his opponents without just yelling it. And he was stumbling around these words. I agree that everybody wants to stay in fact. Anyway, my time's up. I'm sorry. Thank you, Vice President. You just felt he was faltering.

Yeah. So as you're confronting what you see as his weaknesses, you're watching these debate performances, it sounds like you're starting to flirt with other candidates around this time. And where is your eye starting to drift? To everybody, actually. And then along comes Bloomberg. And there's a guy who not only,

he really does understand social media. And he has the money to understand social media. And that's really kind of cool. And on an electoral level, he really can go toe-to-toe with Trump on that and put his money behind the whole thing to win this thing. So when it comes to Bloomberg, for you he has this combination of values and resources.

That's the appeal. Yeah, and as such, he could win. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And what about his candidacy so far, if anything, has given you any reservations, given you pause? That he so quickly got off message and kind of got sidetracked. In the debates. Yeah, in the debates. And to me, the problem there is, oh, so now you're going to go one-on-one with Trump.

Maybe you're not the guy. This is a problem. And this is all game day decision for me, right? So it's elections Tuesday. So, you know, can Trump destroy Bloomberg? Can he destroy Biden? Yes and yes, perhaps. destroy Bloomberg and he destroyed Biden.

Yes and yes, perhaps. Who has kind of the better heart? And I think I have that answer because Joe's the guy. I love Joe. Who has the money to be able to do this? Bloomberg does. But Biden's picture in South Carolina, game changer for me. Really?

Yeah. Why? I didn't believe he was going to be able to do that. I didn't believe him when he said, it's a firewall. And the numbers are unbelievable. It's like, wow, Joe did it. So then you come back to Bloomberg and it's like, well, I don't know. It sounds like the thing that matters most to you was just victory. It was seeing Joe Biden, this person who was faltering on stage,

you didn't like the way he was presenting, suddenly seeming electable because he had won an election. It's no, no. The winning was really important. But that speech... Thank you, thank you, thank you, South Carolina! ...really grabbed me.

Let me talk directly to Democrats across America, especially those who will be voting on Super Tuesday. And it was hopeful, and it laid out an agenda. If Democrats want to nominate someone who will build on Obamacare, not scrap it, take on the NRA and gun manufacturers, not protect them, stand up and give the poor a fighting chance for the middle class to get restored, not raise their taxes and keep the promises we make, then join us.

And if the Democrats want a nominee who's a Democrat, a lifelong Democrat, a proud Democrat, A lifelong Democrat. A proud Democrat. An Obama-Biden Democrat. Join us. And so now he's back.

So here's the deal. Let's get back up. We're decent, we're brave, we're resilient people. We can't believe again. We're better than this, mama. We're better than this, president. So get up, take back our country. This is the United States of America. There's nothing beyond our capacity if we do it together. God bless you all.

And may God protect our troops. Thank you, thank you, thank you. If we do it together, God bless you all. And may God protect our truth. Thank you, thank you, thank you. So at the moment, it is Sunday night, almost 9 o'clock. You are leaning toward Joe Biden. Okay. What are the odds that you change your mind between now and Super Tuesday? It's really amazing. Because I'm just so back and forth and back and forth every day and

every hour of every day. So I want to talk about what I'm hearing you say, because I think this is a larger question happening in Virginia on Super Tuesday. And a part of the reason why we're here, which is that it seems like, aside from defeating Trump, which is your number one priority, a big priority for you is not having Bernie Sanders be the nominee. Is that fair to say? A equals B and B equals C. Because if my number one issue is to beat Trump, then we need the candidate who can do that. So that's really the calculus that's happening here. But I'm hearing you waffling over these two moderate candidates, Biden and Bloomberg.

And the latest polling has Sanders with close to what he had in 2016 in Arlington. Biden and Bloomberg are around 20% too, because they're sharing a lot of voters. So if on Super Tuesday, Sanders sweeps a bunch of these states, and he wins in places like Virginia, it will likely have been because Biden and Bloomberg split the vote. And I wonder if you're thinking about that at all. I am thinking about that. I think every other election has been like, oh, I don't watch the polls. I just vote. You know, I vote my heart. I am thinking about that. I think every other election has been like, oh, I don't watch the polls. I just vote. You know, I vote my heart. I vote the issues, you know. But now we're all watching the polls. We're all kind of gaming. It's unbelievable, right? We all think we're on

CNN. And it's like, this is crazy. But we feel like we have to because the end game is which of these candidates can beat Trump. And that's why. So I'm going to be looking at the polls. And I may actually delay my actual vote on Tuesday until like usually I vote before I go to work. But I may vote after work, depending on afternoon polling or, you know, because if I want to vote for the candidate, if it looks like Virginia can, let's see if I can say this right. Sorry for the... No, no, go ahead. But if it looks like Bloomberg and Biden are, if one of them is going to knock off Sanders in Virginia, I will vote for who can do that.

Hmm. So to be clear, Brian is saying that on election day, he is going to watch the early results come in before he goes to place his own vote. And his logic is that he's going to try to limit the chance that a moderate split would lead to a Sanders win in Virginia. I think I'm being part of the solution because I'm putting so much frigging effort into this thing. I mean, it's unbelievable. And it is, it's amazing. And I think actually so many people are in my neighborhood and my

friends, like, it's really amazing. And there are people saying like, so what should I do? What am I doing? They're really thinking this through. As Brian is talking, what he's describing about the efforts that he and his friends and his neighbors are making is reminding me of what happened to the Republicans back in 2016. During the same time that year, the establishment was paralyzed by Donald Trump's success with voters in the primaries. They were terrified of it, but they didn't really know what to do about it and kind of did nothing really. And then Trump basically ran away with Super Tuesday. And after that, by the time party leaders got organized and tried to stop him,

it was too late. And people like Brian are a bit like the Democratic version of the Never Trump movement. They see Sanders as the Trump of the left, and they're trying to do everything within their power to avoid that from happening on their side. I keep thinking about the way you've talked about Sanders and the risk he poses to the Democratic Party. If Sanders becomes the nominee, if it came down to it in a general election, Sanders versus Trump, what would you do?

So for me, that's really going to depend on his number two. There's an automatic I'm going to be voting for the Democrat coming out of your mouth right now. Correct. I might take some solace in a youthful vice president who, you know, Elizabeth Warren could get me for sure. For sure. Do you ever think you'd be in the position of imagining the frontrunner in the Democratic presidential primary being a person that you can't instantly say I'd vote for? I could never imagine that the Democrats would nominate someone who's not a Democrat. So that's really the answer. And I don't think we'll nominate someone who's not a Democrat. And I don't think we'll nominate someone who's not a Democrat.

Do you think that it's inevitably hard for someone who lives in a community of expensive houses in suburban Virginia to ever really understand why people might want to break the system? No. I totally understand why people would want to break the system? No. I totally understand why people would want to break the system. And I really know the system doesn't work for so many people. I mean, millions and millions of people. And that it's not a perfect union. I mean, it really isn't. But we are trying to create a perfect union. That's kind of the beauty of the country. To use the language of revolution, it's not responsible, it's not helpful, it's not really what we should be doing, especially against Trump.

Well, thank you very much for your time. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Today, I am ending my campaign and endorsing Joe Biden for president. I'm delighted to endorse and support Joe Biden for president. I'm delighted to endorse and support Joe Biden for president. Tomorrow, March 3rd, 2020, I will be casting my ballot for Joe Biden.

On Monday night, three former Democratic candidates for president endorsed Joe Biden simultaneously in a show of force by the party's moderate wing as they seek to block Bernie Sanders from becoming the nominee. I believe, and it's the reason I'm up here, that we are never going to out-divide the divider-in-chief. Because if we spend the next four months dividing our party and going at each other, we will spend the next four years watching Donald Trump tear apart this country.

At a rally in Texas, one of the 14 states to hold its primary today, Amy Klobuchar, who had dropped out of the race hours before, was joined by Pete Buttigieg, who dropped out a day earlier, and Beto O'Rourke, who left the race in November. We need somebody who can beat Donald Trump. And in Joe Biden, we have that man. We have someone. Sanders, appearing on CNN, dismissed the endorsements and suggested that they would have little impact. From day one, we have been taking on the establishment. And let me be very clear, it is no surprise.

They do not want me to become president because our administration will transform this country to create an economy and a government that works for all of the people. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. There is a point in any epidemic where you believe you can no longer contain the virus, or like if it was influenza, and you have to shift your resources to saving lives. The coronavirus has now infected people on every continent except Antarctica. But global health officials said it was still possible for individual countries to contain the epidemic.

But in doing that, you're accepting that you can no longer affect the course of the disease. You can no longer change the shape of the epidemic. And you're purely moving in that sense to save as many lives as you can. Now, WHO does not believe that we're there yet. During a news conference, the leaders of the World Health Organization said that the time for such containment was running out and urged countries to take every possible precaution. And if we're lucky and if we do the job really well,

we may get the opportunity. We just might get the opportunity to interrupt transmission. In Europe, the EU raised its alert level from moderate to high as the number of infections surged, reaching 18 of the EU's 27 nations. In South Korea, infections have doubled since Friday to more than 4,300.

And in the U.S., as of Monday night, authorities had reported 100 cases and, in Washington state, six deaths from the virus. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.