The Daily - The Third Democratic Debate

Episode Date: September 13, 2019

Just 10 candidates qualified for the stage in Houston, but that didn’t change some recurring themes: Joe Biden was again the target of fierce scrutiny, and health care was a central point of contention. But what else did we learn?Guest: Alexander Burns, who covers national politics for The New York Times.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading:Attacks on Mr. Biden highlighted the divide over the Obama legacy, with the former vice president repeatedly invoking his old boss’s name.Many Democrats hoped that defeating an unpopular, rampaging president would be relatively simple. But party officials are wary of some potential vulnerabilities that this debate re-emphasized.Here are six takeaways from the contest.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. Just 10 Democratic candidates qualified for the third debate in Houston. Alex Burns on what a debate looks like when it gets less crowded. It's Friday, September 13th. Okay, so we are going to talk about the debate. I was actually here for Brexit.

And we're going to do it in a manner that might allow us to be done by midnight. Okay. That'd be great. And yeah, that's the plan. Alex, I wonder if there was a meaningful difference in this third Democratic debate because the field has narrowed so much? I think there's a huge difference that now we're down to a group of people who have really demonstrated that Democratic voters are considering them seriously for the presidency. In the first couple of debates that we had, the stage was so cluttered with people who were essentially these

bit players who existed solely to attack other candidates or raise drama or tension of various kinds. You had John Delaney, who seemed like he was solely there to attack Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. You had Eric Swalwell, a congressman from California whose sole purpose was to taunt Joe Biden about being in his late 70s. We didn't have that in this debate. Or a lot of it. Or a lot of it. So take us into the debate, if you would. Good evening, everyone.

Thank you for this great welcome here at Texas Southern. We are so excited to be here. We're so excited for the debate. I can tell you guys are. So you have 10 candidates on stage. Former Vice President Joe Biden. Joe Biden, the frontrunner, is in the center. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. To his left and right, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Joe Biden, the frontrunner, is in the center.

To his left and right, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Spread out across the rest of the stage, you have the folks who are really fighting for a bigger toehold in this race. California Senator Kamala Harris. You have Kamala Harris, Julian Castro, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O'Rourke, Pete Buttigieg, and Andrew Yang. Ladies and gentlemen, your 10 candidates. And what we see over the course of almost three hours, this is a real marathon of a debate, was the candidates not just sorting themselves in polarizing binary questions the way we saw earlier in the debate season. You had them going through really the biggest issues where there is a general democratic consensus on where the country needs to go and then drawing out and refining what their own specific visions are. You didn't hear just straight policy laundry lists the way I think we heard more of earlier in this process.

You heard people talking more in depth about subjects like health care, like guns, like trade, like foreign wars, like race and education. This is big stuff in the Democratic Party. And when you are at this phase of the process where they really are looking at a group of people, almost any one of whom they might realistically be able to see as the president, they do want to hear answers in something of a more sober and thoughtful tone. So let's talk about some of the more meaningful moments with that in mind. Well, really, the first big exchange of the night was over health care. Out on the campaign trail, you have outlined big differences over how far to go and how fast to go. Joe Biden, right out of the gate. Are Senators Warren and Sanders pushing too far beyond where Democrats want to go and where the country

needs to go? That'll be for the voters to decide that question. Let me tell you what I think. He's asked about the policies of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and he delivers this obviously prepared line, alluding to the way Warren talks about her support for single payer. I know that the senator says she's for Bernie. Well, I'm for Barack. I think the Obamacare worked.

He questions the practicality of single payer, demands to know how they would pay for it. I think we should be in a position of taking a look at what costs are. What you see on the more progressive side of that exchange is his challengers not giving an inch. So let's be clear about health care and let's actually start where Vice President did. We all owe a huge debt to President Obama. You see Warren pivot, I think, very fluidly from saying we all owe a huge debt to Barack Obama, but now we need to go beyond that. And I believe the best way we can do that is we make sure that everybody gets covered

by health care at the lowest possible cost. You see this pretty tense exchange between Biden and Bernie Sanders. In the United States of America, we are spending twice as much per capita on health care. Talks about how the Canadians pay so much less for health care than we do. And Biden shoots back in this, I think, very sort of politically traditional way. This is America. This is America. And Sanders does not give an inch. Yeah, but Americans don't want to pay twice as much as other countries. And they guarantee health care to all people.

When you don't pay out of pocket and you don't pay premiums, maybe you have run into people who love their premiums. I haven't. It's been a while since you have had Democratic candidates so openly debating two such drastically different views of the health care system. It wasn't personal. It wasn't the kind of theatrical exchange that we saw at a couple moments in the first two rounds of debates. But it did really get to the heart of what is the question, hang over the Biden candidacy, which is, do voters want a path back to something that they feel is a happy kind of normalcy? Do Democrats want to turn back the clock to the Obama administration, which they really liked, or do they feel like that was all well and good and now we need to go a good deal further than

that? We're not going to know for a while who actually has the better end of that argument, but it was a stark and civil and sophisticated display of the differences on the issue that polls still show is the most important one to voters. Healthcare. Healthcare. What can you say after this exchange about which plan from these three candidates costs more? Because all three of them are sort of convincingly arguing that the other one has it all wrong. Your logic, your math, it's not right. Mine is.

What's happening here is they are talking about cost in entirely different ways. Nobody's yet said how much it's going to cost the taxpayer. I hear this large savings. Joe Biden thinks that telling people that their taxes went up, but they're no longer paying premiums to private healthcare companies,

and so you're actually saving money, is not a good bet politically. That Americans don't like taxes, that to tell people who are making $30,000 or $70,000 a year your taxes are going to go up to pay for your single-payer health care doesn't compute as a political proposition. Under my legislation, people will not go into financial ruin because they suffered with a diagnosis of cancer. The Bernie Sanders perspective is, and this is a perspective that Elizabeth Warren spelled out as well, is that what Americans care about is how much money is in their bank account

at the end of the month. And it's just a question of whether they're paying it as taxes to the government or whether they're paying it as checks to an insurance company. Is it possible that they're both right, since they're doing kind of apples and oranges mathematics here? Yeah, it is. What's not possible is that they're both right that the other person's plan is totally toxic and radioactive and that their own plan is the obvious way forward. They can't both be right about that, but they are essentially sizing up more or less fairly

the vulnerabilities on each side. Okay, let's move on to the next moment that you think stood out. What was that for you? I want to turn to the deadly mass shootings here in this country. You have this really vivid, detailed exchange between Beto O'Rourke and Cory Booker over gun control. On August 3rd, in El Paso, Texas, two things became crystal clear for me and I think produced a turning point for this country. You have O'Rourke, who has really taken on a different kind of persona as a candidate since the mass shooting in El Paso last month, talking about the scourge of gun violence needing to go much further than most other Democrats have recommended.

to go much further than most other Democrats have recommended. When we see that being used against children, hell yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47. Requiring Americans who own assault-style rifles to give them up, to sell them back to the government. Look, I grew up in the suburbs. It was about 20 years ago that I came out of my home when I moved to inner city Newark, New Jersey and witnessed the aftermath of a shooting.

You then hear Cory Booker not exactly criticizing or pushing back on Beto O'Rourke, but explaining that he's taking a different path. For me, it's why I was the first person to come out for gun licensing. A federal gun registry, and then sort of gently pushing back on the moral authority that O'Rourke really claimed for himself on the issue. And I'm happy that people like Beto O'Rourke are showing such courage now, but this is what I'm sorry about. I'm sorry that it had to take issues coming to my neighborhood or personally affecting Beto to suddenly make us demand change. You've not seen quite such a robust Democratic debate

about what to do on gun control in quite some time, that you not that long ago had a real sense across the party that it was an issue where you had to proceed with caution. You don't hear a lot of folks on that stage saying, we should just tighten up the loopholes and background checks and call it a day. You don't have too many voices saying, not so fast. Right. And there wasn't the typical refrain from candidates defending safe gun owners, hunters, you know, friends, neighbors, family members who use it responsibly. No, there's not this sense that Democrats need to engage in this kind of cultural signaling to the middle of the country that, you know, I may want background checks, but I respect your right to own guns X, Y and Z. Everyone up here favors magazine limitations, which, by the way...

Even Amy Klobuchar, who in so many ways was this voice of Midwestern moderation on stage, was much more gentle in this particular moment that she said, you know, let's focus on the things that unite Democrats, not these issues where there may be less consensus in the party, talking about voluntary buybacks, talking about background check stuff

that's already been put to the Senate. So what's the next moment for you? I want to turn now to our troops overseas and to America's longest war in Afghanistan. You have this pair of exchanges over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that really get a little bit more deeply into foreign policy than we've seen so far in this race. You have the moderators ask several of the candidates, alluding to President Trump's talks with the Taliban, whether they think it's time to get out of Afghanistan, whether they would leave even without a peace deal with the Taliban. Would you keep that promise to bring the troops home starting right now with no deal with the Taliban? Yes. Elizabeth Warren says yes. She says, time to come home. And I think more than most voters would have heard her on other questions,

really gets into her personal connection to the issue, talking about her brothers having served in the military and having a sense of what a war does to people as a result of that. They will do anything we ask them to do, but we cannot ask them to solve problems that they alone cannot solve. It is a really stark difference between her and a couple of the other leading candidates in the race that she says, bring the troops home now. You know, I served under General Dunford, way under General Dunford in Afghanistan. Pete Buttigieg comes in with a personal story of his own, in some ways a much more immediate personal story about having served in Afghanistan himself. And today, September 12th, 2019, means that today you could be 18 years old, old enough to serve, and have not been alive on 9-11. He, too, says it's time to come home. He doesn't say let's bring the troops home tomorrow. We have got to put an end to endless war. even four years ago when I think you would have heard a much more reserved Hillary Clinton talking

about under what conditions and when the U.S. ought to get out of Afghanistan. In some respects, it's probably a statement on where President Trump has moved on this issue that these aren't candidates who are preparing to run a general election, worried that the Republican is going to trash them for wanting to get out of Afghanistan. President Trump himself wants to get out of Afghanistan. I think there used to be, not that different from what we were just talking about on guns, this sense among Democrats that you really had to worry about going into a general election not being perceived as a hawk, not being perceived as somebody who was going to be pretty willing to use military force.

And it does seem, at least right now, like there's a sense from most of the candidates on stage that that's not such a great concern, that the American people are tired of these wars. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. So a final moment, Alex. I'll give you one more. I think we have to talk about Julian Castro and Joe Biden. You look, I agree that Barack Obama was very different from Donald Trump.

Donald Trump has a dark heart when it comes to immigrants. There is friction between the two, almost the entire debate building to this moment where they clash over immigration policy, where Biden is challenged by one of the moderators on the Obama administration's record of deporting millions of illegal immigrants. And Castro comes at him. last time is every time something good about Barack Obama comes up, he says, oh, I was there, I was there, I was there. That's me too. And then every time somebody questions part of the administration that we were both part of, he says, well, that was the president. I mean, he wants to take credit for Obama's work, but not have to answer to any questions. Accusing him of trying to use Obama as this convenient prop and underpinning all of this is the division, the debate within the party about just how liberal they ought to be on immigration. That Julian Castro has called for decriminalizing border crossing, really changing the whole legal framework around immigration, not just pulling back the abuses of the Trump administration, but going much, much further in redrawing how American immigration works. We have heard Joe Biden in previous debates talk about how a crime is a crime

and we're going to enforce the border and that's how it works. Are you prepared to say tonight that you and President Obama made a mistake about deportations? Why should Latinos trust you? Mr. President sent a legislation to desk saying he wants to find a pathway for the 11 million undocumented in the United States of America. We did not hear him go quite as far tonight, but Biden is still clearly uncomfortable defending all of the substance

of the Obama administration's record on this front. This is the president who's done a great deal, so I'm proud to have served with him. What I would do as president is several more things. He pivots away from it. He talks about how, well, we didn't put kids in cages like the Trump administration, or the actual story there is somewhat more complicated. Yeah, but you didn't answer the question. Did you make a mistake with those deportations? The president did the best thing that was able to be done at the time. How about you?

I'm the vice president of the United States. He doesn't say those deportations were the right thing to do and I would do them again. sense across the Democratic coalition and clearly even in this case recognized by Joe Biden that just switching back to the policies of the Democratic Party circa 2016 is not going to be satisfying to most of the party's voters. As we're talking, it occurs to me that none of the expected and kind of familiar dynamics really played out tonight. It wasn't a night where the top three candidates went after each other. Biden after Warren, Sanders after Warren or Biden. It just that wasn't the feel of it. It felt much more like a fulsome debate between basically all 10 candidates. I think it was the kind of debate that people claim they want to see in politics. It was really

focused on policy. It was fluid. It was complicated. So in that respect, I think it was a pretty impressive debate. I'm not sure that it was the kind of debate that we're going to look back on as any kind of turning point in this race. We didn't see the clash that we were expecting between Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren. They definitely detailed some of their differences, but you didn't see either one of them trying to take out the other one. There was no moment in this debate of the kind that we saw back in June between Kamala Harris and Joe Biden where it just felt like, oh, my goodness, this is a different race now. Senator Kamala Harris. Thank you. It's great to be back at TSU.

In fact, Kamala Harris did not go after Joe Biden almost at all. But first, I have a few words for Donald Trump, who we all know is watching. So President Trump... She focused from her opening statement to the end of the debate as much as she could on President Trump. And I plan on focusing on our common issues,

our common hopes and desires, and in that way, unifying our country, winning this election, and turning the page for America. And now, President Trump, you can go back to watching Fox News. Pretty clearly a shift in strategy there, away from trying to be somebody who voters will appreciate for beating up on the frontrunner to somebody who is more explicitly pitching themselves as a general election candidate,

as a unifying character. And Biden himself, I don't know that we are going to look back on this debate as one that particularly changed the trajectory of his candidacy. He did not have a terrible moment like he did with Harris in that first debate, but he was also a far from dominant figure. Make sure that we bring in to help the teachers deal with the problems that come from home. You did not have some big moment, big powerful moment of Joe Biden laying out his vision for the country in a way that would probably make people say, you know, my doubts about him are gone. There were moments when he was clear and crisp and forceful. They don't know quite what to do. Play the radio, make sure the television, excuse me. And there were more moments where he was, you know, kind of meandering and interrupting himself and shifting his focus mid-answer. Make sure you have the record player on at night,

the phone, make sure the kids hear words. We're just not at the stage of this race where you are going to have, it seems, the two or three or four top candidates trying to knock each other totally out of the race on that stage. Many of these campaigns still see themselves in the stage of introducing themselves to the public, that there are people like a Cory Booker or Julian Castro and Amy Klobuchar who may still be making a first impression on many people. There are other candidates, somebody like an Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris, to some extent Pete Buttigieg, who have made a first impression, but now they're trying to show people, I'm not just an interesting or likable character.

I'm somebody who you can and should see as your next president. And until those candidates feel like they have sufficiently introduced themselves on their own terms, I think you're going to see real reluctance by a lot of them to define themselves in terms of a conflict with somebody else. I've known what I wanted to be since second grade. I wanted to be a public school teacher. And I made it as a special needs teacher. But at the end of that first year, I was visibly pregnant. And back in the day, that meant that the principal wished me luck and hired someone else for the job. So there I am. What am I going to do? I said, I'll go to law school. And I, with a bunch of tenant leaders in Newark, New Jersey in 2002, took on the political

machine. And boy, did they fight back. And we lost that election. And here's a bit of advice to everybody. If you're going to have a spectacular failure, have a documentary team there to capture it, because it made for an Oscar-nominated documentary called Street Fight. But then, unfortunately, another setback, it lost in the Oscars to a movie called

March of the Dagnab Penguins, for crying out loud. I grew up in a single-parent household on the west side of San Antonio, going to the public schools. Eventually, my brother Joaquin and I became the first in our family to become professionals. My father grew up on a peanut farm in Asia with no floor, and now his son is running for president. That is the immigration story that we have to be able to share with the American people.

When our daughter was born, I had this expectation we were going to have this perfect, perfect birth. And she was really sick. When she was born, they had a rule in place that you got kicked out of the hospital in 24 hours. She was in intensive care and I was kicked out. And I thought this could never happen to any other mom again. That is what motivated me to go into public service. You know, as a military officer serving under Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and as an elected official in the state of Indiana when Mike Pence was governor, at a certain point when it came to professional setbacks, I had to wonder whether just acknowledging who I was was going to be the ultimate career

ending professional setback. I came back from the deployment and realized that you only get to live one life and I was not interested in not knowing what it was like to be in love any longer. So I just came out. I had no idea what kind of professional setback it would be, especially because, inconveniently, it was an election year in my socially conservative community. What happened was that when I trusted voters to judge me based on the job that I did for them, they decided to trust me and re-elected me with 80% of the vote.

they decided to trust me and re-elected me with 80% of the vote. And you do wonder watching an event like that, what voters will take away, whether it will be the policy differences, whether it will be those powerful personal stories, and how they will react when, inevitably, the race actually does get much nastier. This moment won't last forever.

Thank you, Alex. Thank you. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. The resolution before us represents the necessary next step in our investigation of corruption, obstruction, and abuse of power. On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee voted to move ahead with a possible impeachment of President Trump by approving a set of rules

for investigating his conduct. That investigation could be a precursor to impeachment down the line. Some call this process an impeachment inquiry. Some call it an impeachment investigation. There's no legal difference between these terms, and I no longer care to argue about the nomenclature. legal difference between these terms, then I no longer care to argue about the nomenclature. Thursday's vote was cast along party lines, with Democrats supporting it and Republicans opposing it, calling it a backdoor to impeachment. Now comes this resolution that's supposed to be setting up a basis for impeachment, or as we'd say in Texas, this is fixing to be an impeachment. It isn't now, but maybe it's fixing to be. And the Trump administration said it had repealed regulation that gave the federal government sweeping authority

to protect rivers, lakes, streams, and wetlands from pollution. As a result, polluters will no longer need a permit to discharge potentially harmful substances into those bodies of water. The regulation created by President Obama had upset companies, farmers, and homeowners, particularly in rural regions, who said it was overly broad and allowed the government to regulate their private property. Tomorrow on The Daily, you can hear the next episode of the 1619 series with Nicole Hanna-Jones. We're also releasing 1619 as a standalone series, with a new episode publishing later today. You can subscribe to the series by searching for 1619 wherever you listen.

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