The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it Resolved: Bernie Sanders is a Compelling Candidate to Beat Donald Trump in the 2020 US Presidential Election

Episode Date: February 19, 2020

Can Bernie Sanders beat Donald Trump? On this episode of the Munk Debates Podcast, New York Magazine columnist Jonathan Chait and The Intercept's DC Bureau Chief Ryan Grim debate the motion Be it resolved, Bernie Sanders is a compelling candidate to beat Donald Trump in the 2020 US Presidential Election. SOURCES: MSNBC, CNN, The Guardian, CCTV, bitesizedhistory, CBC  Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I think it's time for this toxic binary zero-sum madness to stop. We're not an imperial power. We're a revolutionary power. We are no longer in a world where you can plot out moves statesmen to statesmen like a chessboard. You don't know anything about my background to where I came from. It doesn't matter to you because fundamentally I'm a mean white man. We can't do this to the next generation because America will cease to exist. Welcome to the Monk Debates podcast. Every episode we provide you with a civil and substantive debate on the big issues of the day. Free of spin, focused on the facts and animated by smart conversation,

arming you with enough information to make up your own mind. Today's debate, be it resolved, Bernie Sanders is a compelling candidate to beat Donald Trump. So you expand the base talking to working people and young people, and we expose Trump for the fraud that he is. You do that. I think I can win. I can defeat Trump. And every poll that I have seen suggests that we are ahead of Trump. And I think that is the correct way to go forward. Bernie Sanders certainly thinks that he can win the next U.S. election. And he's not alone. Hello, I'm your moderator, Rudyard Griffith. while the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary results have catapulted Bernie Sanders into frontrunner status as the U.S. Democratic Party nominee, as the one who might go head to head against President Donald Trump in the upcoming 2020 U.S. presidential election. Sanders campaign is energizing young progressive voters. He's promising a political revolution that will usher in universal health care, child care, and pharmacare. All of this would be paid.

for by a wealth tax on Wall Street and by big corporations. But not everyone's happy with Sanders' early surge. Moderate Democrats question whether Bernie and his progressive agenda can beat Trump. In fact, they believe making him their presidential nominee will all but guarantee Trump's reelection. But if Senator Sanders is a nominee for the party, every Democrat in America up and down the ballot, blue states, red states, purple states, will have to carry the label Senator Sanders has chosen for himself. He's criticizing him. He calls himself a Democratic socialist. So who's right? Does Sanders have the winning formula to paint the White House blue?

Or is ideology, not pragmatism, leading the Democratic Party to certain disaster this November? On this week's Monk Debate podcast, we dive into these high-state questions by debating the motion, be it resolved. Bernie Sanders is a compelling candidate to beat Donald Trump in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Arguing for the motion is DC Bureau Chief of the Intercept, Ryan Grimm. He's the author of We've Got People from Jesse Jackson to AOC, the end of big money and the rise of a movement. Arguing against the resolution is New York Magazine columnist and U.S. political commentator Jonathan Chait. Jonathan, Ryan, welcome to the Monk Debate podcast.

Thank you. Thank you. Well, as per convention, Ryan, I'm going to put two minutes on the clock, and we're going to look to you for your opening remarks in this debate. debate. The argument that I would make about this question comes down to one about risk, because that's ultimately what we're talking about, risk and reward. And so, you know, for the last 30 or 40 years, this has been a debate that's been going on inside the Democratic Party, which is that the center has said, look, we are a center-right country. You know, the best we can do at this point is raise as much money as we can, craft the best messaging that we can,

get it, you know, get it up on television in front of voters, match Republicans toe to toe in congressional distance throughout the country, and we can kind of stop the slide toward tyranny. And in the moments where we take power, we can try to kind of inch the ball forward. Whereas the left has made a bit of a different argument saying that, no, like you're playing on the wrong field here. What you ought to do is expand the electorate or transform the electorate, make sure that you're getting out more students, you're getting out more working people, and you're moving more working people in your direction. And in order to do that, you offer some compelling vision, which you can't necessarily do if the donors who are funding the strategy runs up against those interests. And so,

you know, back in the in the 1980s, this was this was a debate that played out against the backdrop of the Reagan Revolution. But now it's playing out against the backdrop of the backtrop of the Reagan Revolution. But now it's playing out against the backdrop of both climate oblivion and absolute runaway wealth and income inequality. And those are factors that were not present in the 1980s, and they have to be taken in as risk factors now. And in order to kind of make the right choice about which direction to go, you have to understand what failure would mean. And so there are now multiple ways that this society can fail.

And it isn't only losing two Republicans in an election. Ryan, thank you for that opening statement. Interesting thoughts for us to digest. Okay, Jonathan, two minutes, same for you on the clock. Let's have your opening argument against our resolution today. It's an extraordinarily important election, much more than a normal one, because Donald Trump is an aspiring authoritarian who's made a lot of progress on his authoritarian agenda. And it's not an exaggeration to say.

say the health of the republic requires defeating him in this election. Bernie Sanders is an extraordinary risk. All the politicians who are running against him are at risk of losing. But Sanders is really a much higher risk than the others. He's just flouted the best practices of politicians at every level by running on a series of highly unpopular positions, taking away private insurance from everyone to have Medicare for all, abolishing ICE, giving health care to the undocumented, letting prisoners and even terrorists vote. And the problem is compounded by several things. One is his socialist label.

So the unpopular specifics are packaged in an unpopular label of socialism. One poll had it 19% approve of socialism and 53% against. That's just, that's horrific. And what makes it even worse is his long history of a far left association, some of them on video. I think what surprised me about the church. for the Soviet Union is the strong degree of friendship and openness that both Soviet officials and ordinary citizens gave to us. And then when you add in high levels of satisfaction with the economy, I think he's making

it almost trivially easy for Donald Trump to say he's a radical, he's going to take away everything you've got. And you may not like some of the things I do. You may not like some of the things I say. but he's going to upset the whole apple cart. The economy's good and why take a chance on a complete radical out of the mainstream? So I think Democrats need to follow some of the better practices and try to frame the election on favorable turf, not on highly unfavorable turf as Sanders would do.

Jonathan, thank you for that opening statement. Okay, let's have a round of rebuttals here and just to get an opportunity for both of you to probe each other's arguments and kind of pull out what you feel as your core contention with one another. So Ryan, could you start for us? What have you heard from Jonathan that you fundamentally object to? There's two things. One is the idea that people vote based on issues. In other words, Donald Trump ran on a series of issues that were wildly unpopular.

The wall didn't even pull terribly well, even with among some of his own base, until it became kind of a proxy for your support for Trump. but the Muslim ban, for instance, pulled terribly, and it was a central plank of Trump's campaign, and he won anyway. We in some ways overthink the way that voters make decisions when we poll them issue by issue

and then aggregate all of those issues into one place and say, well, the candidate that has these issues that polled in the 60s is going to win, and the candidate that has these issues that polled in the 30s or 40s is going to lose. That's just not how it works. this is going to be a completely unprecedented election. If Bernie Sanders is the nominee, bizarrely, he will have absolutely unlimited money.

And I don't mean the $27 coming from his supporters. I mean that Michael Bloomberg has pledged to spend billions of dollars to elect whoever the Democratic nominee is. And if Bernie Sanders needs help winning over voters in the suburbs, Michael Bloomberg will focus group ads to death and be absolutely plastering those suburbs in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. So in a normal year where he might be unelectable against an incumbent president with unemployment at 3% and the economy doing well, these are not normal times. The second thing we could return to later, which is the point that I was making earlier about both inequality and climate change. Thanks, Ryan. Okay, Jonathan, same opportunity for you. What have you heard from Ryan here in the opening of this debate that you think he's got wrong or you think there's a different way, a different insight that needs to be explored? Right. He's expressing an analysis of the 2016 election and he really starts correctly at the first point, but the first point is completely wrong.

The idea that Trump actually had lots of unpopular positions is not actually true. Trump, unlike other Republicans, jettisoned the most unpopular elements of the Republican agenda. He said, I'm not going to cut Social Security. I'm not going to cut Medicare. I'm not going to cut taxes for the rich. I'm going to raise taxes for the rich. I'm going to be tough on business. I'm going to raise my own taxes.

And actually, he put himself closer to the center. He was seen as being closer to the center than Hillary Clinton and much closer to the center than other Republicans. Ryan mentioned one supposedly unpopular business. that he had, which was the Muslim ban. But that was not an unpopular position. Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.

An article in The Intercept, Ryan's own publication, said in 2016, majority of Americans now support Donald Trump's proposed Muslim ban. ban. So I think he really began with this complete misread that Trump took all these unpopular positions and he won anyway. So therefore, politicians don't need to worry about taking unpopular positions. That's just not what happened. And that's really led Democrats along this incorrect and very dangerous path. Thanks, Jonathan. Okay, guys, let's start digging into this debate. And maybe, Ryan, let's start with New Hampshire and the results of our, of the most recent, the first primary in the Democratic nomination process.

You know, some people would say there were some numbers that came out of that primary. They're a little disconcerting for Bernie Sanders. Very low support amongst seniors, a Democratic Party where if you add up Buttigieg's support with Warren, the so-called moderates, you know, the rate of two to one seem to be the popular choice of Democrats. So you probably have a different view. I want to hear it. what's what's the alternative analysis for why Bernie Sanders and Democrats should take

courage out of his results in the New Hampshire primary? Well, so it appears that the turnout from that election will end up slightly eclipsing the 2008 turnout numbers and significantly beating 2016 turnout numbers. And my sense is that elderly turnout will turn out to have been significantly down. And that's a result. of a couple things, but particularly it's the attitude among a lot of Democratic primary voters that is one, exhaustion with the year-long primary, and two, a vote-blue no matter who attitude, that none of these candidates are kind of blowing away a lot of voters, and so they think to themselves, well, look, you guys just sort this out, tell me who the candidate is, and then I'm going to

work my tail off in the general election against Trump. And if that's your attitude that you're okay with whoever emerges from the primary, then you're less motivated to go out. to vote on primary day. If you very much care who is going to be the winner of the primary, then you're more motivated to go out to vote. So in some ways, it's almost an unfair advantage for Sanders. So I think you're going to see not only a higher turnout vis-a-vis 2018, but you're going to see a transformation of that electorate to one of more young people turning out to vote, which

would be a mark of success for Bernie Sanders. The other point that intertwines with it that was mentioning earlier is the runaway, wealth inequality that we did that we that we that started to balloon in the 1980s that uh is reaching levels that we haven't had before as you continue to have this this exploding uh inequality you're you're you're if you don't do something to turn it around you're either going to get a bernie sanders style candidate um or you're going to get a donald trump style candidate who was much more effective in his authoritarianism and so even if you're able to beat this Donald Trump, there are more waiting in the wings. We're seeing it, we're seeing it all over the globe.

You're listening to the Monk Debates podcast. Be it resolved, Bernie Sanders is a compelling candidate to beat Donald Trump. Arguing for the motion is the Intersex D.C. Bureau Chief Ryan Grimm. Arguing against the motion is New York Magazine columnist Jonathan Chait. Jonathan, address this issue, this idea that Ryan surfaced, because it's definitely out there in the public conversation, which is that the stakes are just bigger this time around, and that past analogies to 2016, previous elections don't hold. So that a lot of the metrics that you're applying to Sanders belong to an era of politics that most American voters have moved on from. Right. Well, I would say we have two very important tests of this theory.

that are very, very recent of this era that we're discussing. And the first is the Democrats in 2018. There was a big debate. This exact same debate played out within the Democratic Party. And the left was making the theory that you have been hearing from Ryan, which is Democrats need to inspire people with bold left-wing positions. That's the only way you'll get the big turnout, the energized turnout that gets people to the polls and gets the blue wave and topples the house. And what the Democratic Party instead did was they said, no, we're not going to expose our

with a series of unpopular positions, we are going to hold the election on the terms that we want. We're going to run against the unpopular things that Donald Trump and the Republicans are doing, taking away people's health care, Trump's totally unacceptable behavior. The left, including Ryan in his publication, were saying, this is never going to work. These people don't know what they're doing. They're not going to win the House. And the experiment is completely clear. The Democratic centrist were correct, and the left was wrong.

a very significant defeat for Mr. Trump, a historic accomplishment for the Democrats. CNN can now project that Democrats will win the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Democratic Centress won 40 seats and flipped the House in their favor. 100 percent of the seats that were flipped, were flipped by people following that exact centrist playbook. The left did manage to win some primaries and did put up some candidates to try to flip some red seats running the strategy, the populist strategy that Ryan's describing, but none of them won. The second test we had of this theory was in Britain. To Britain now, where the labor leader Jeremy Corbyn is apologizing today for his party's

disastrous performance on Thursday's election. Now, the loss is its biggest in more than eight decades. You had a lot of transnational leftists arguing that. that Corbyn and Sanders were basically following the same model. Again, they're the ones who drew the parallel. They're the ones who said, Corbin's victory is going to show you what Bernie Sanders can do. And because the public is fed up with capitalism,

because inequality has driven them to a point of desperation, they're open to these radical solutions. And this is going to inspire the kind of turnout that's going to just shock the experts and it's going to win. That it's just absolutely failed. Again, I'm not talking about antiquated. events. I'm talking about things that have happened in the last two years. And I don't see how we could have any clearer tests. I also just want to point to a more direct piece of data that bears on the point

that I think Ryan is making, which is inequality, desperation, people being so fed up with the state of the economy, they need radical and will tolerate radical solutions on the far left or the far right, and it's got to be one of the other. If we directly measure what people say about the economy, they've grown increasingly satisfied since 2016. So to whatever extent that was true in 2016, and to whatever extent that was true in 2018, it's less true now. Public satisfaction with the economy is at a 20-year high.

It was before the dot-com bubble bust that people were this satisfied in the late 1990s. So really, I just think this is at odds with what the data is telling us, but what people actually want, not what we want them to want. Okay, well, let's unpack that. And Ryan, if you can, and just touch on those three points that, you know, moderates were essential to flipping the House in favor of the Democrats, that Corbyn and Sanders, there's an analog there, and it didn't end too well for Corbyn in terms of the whopping majority that Boris Johnson ultimately won. and just finally this sense of American enthusiasm for economic conditions under Trump

and how Sanders in some ways is uniquely vulnerable on that front. Brexit, to me, seems to be a wild card thrown into that that isn't translatable across the ocean, so I don't really want to weigh in too deeply on that one. But on 2018, that is something I follow extremely closely. I was one of the first people talking about a blue wave in early, early 2017, because I was doing a lot of on the ground reporting on the resistance, the people who were pushing back against Donald Trump. And it's just not accurate at all to say that the left argued that the establishment approach to taking back the House of Representatives would fail. That's just not true. Like my assumption, and I said it publicly, was that it would work.

the wave was going to lift any Democrat into control of the House of Representatives. And so that's why the contests in the primaries were so essential. Any Democrat that won those primaries was probably going to be lifted into the House of Representatives. And so the Democratic Party spent extraordinary resources beating back progressive candidates in districts across the country. And so unless I'm missing some, I count four progressives who beat establishment Democrats in open primaries. And so two out of those four contests where a progressive beat a centrist in the primary for the right to run in the general. What also gets overlooked is what the progressive energy did to the platforms of the people who run.

The argument that is made is that Medicare for all makes people either unelectable or much more difficult to be elected. But what that ignores is that of the Democrats who won, many, many, many of them ran on Medicare for all. They won on Medicare for all. So not just Katie Porter and Mike Levine, Katie Hill, who recently resigned but flipped a district in California, ran on Medicare for all. Harley Ruda ran on Medicare for all.

Cherise Davids ran on Medicare for All and abolishing ice. She even came out for abolishing ice during the primary. She beat a progressive with centrist support. But centrist had been redefined. Tonyo Delgado and New York, Medicare for All supporter, flipped a Republican district. Haley Stevens, Michigan, flipped a Republican district. And that's a significant chunk of the 40 seats that were flipped. What it shows is that in a district occupied by a Republican, a lot of Democrats

ran on the platform of Medicare for all and were elected. Okay, Ryan, let's have Jonathan come back on that. So Jonathan Ryan's painting a picture here, a different interpretation that progressive Democrats, more radical Democrats, not only can win, but do win when they're given the chance by a party that's dominated by, in Ryan's view, moderates who are kind of out of time. with the mood in the country right now, which is demanding things like a radical addressment of economic inequality, like Medicare for all. You've got strong feelings on those points, Jonathan, so come in on it.

Sure. Let me quote some of the things that progressives were saying about the Democratic Party strategy before the 2018 election. Quote, their theory of the cases to recruit old white guys who are longtime establishment insiders who are run on a boring agenda Democrats would have run on 20 years ago, Adam Green. The DC D-Triple C is doing it wrong, Neil Shraca. In district after district, the national party is throwing its weight behind candidates

who are out of step with the national mood. That was a piece that Ryan himself wrote. The DCC's failure to understand the shifting progressive electorate is costing the party, Zephyrite Teachout. These critiques of the Democratic Party were widespread. They were very strident in their view that the Democratic Party was not going to win back the House and its strategy was totally wrong. Our revolution's candidates went over 22 in flipping seats.

Justice Democrats were 0 and 16 and brand new Congress went 0 and 6. I'd also just like to circle back to the Corbyn point because I guess Ryan wasn't making it. But a lot of people were. A lot of people were explicitly linking Corbyn's presumed success to what they saw happening in the United States. You know, again, in the Intercept, quote, here in the United States, meanwhile, the Corbin-esque Sanders has become the most popular politician in the country and would probably win the Democratic presidential nomination. The American left is found a new hero in the outline. How Jeremy Corbyn is inspiring the American left in HuffPost, UK. Bertie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn might create a revolution in the nation.

On and on and on and on and on. So this was really an important point for Sanders supporters. Corbyn's presumed success was their test of their theory. And I just don't think we can discard it. You're listening to the Monk Debates podcast. be it resolved, Bernie Sanders is a compelling candidate to beat Donald Trump. Arguing for the motion is the intercepts D.C. Bureau Chief Ryan Grimm. Arguing against the motion is New York Magazine columnist Jonathan Chate.

If you like this podcast, make sure to check out our other episodes, including debates on everything from impeachment to social media to Iran, to whether China is a threat to liberalism. All free to download or stream on our website, monkdebates.com. Ryan, I don't want to belabor this point too much, but I think there is something core to the debate here that people need to hear. Is it correct that you're arguing

that this is a moment where ideology and expediency align with one another? Is that a fair characterization of your position? What I do know is that if the ideology doesn't triumph, then we're all finished. You know, do you understand what I mean by that? Yeah. So it might not be.

It might be the case that some Kamala Harris-type candidate cooked in a lab is a couple points more electable than Bernie Sanders is. That's entirely possible. What he's trying to do has, if it's been done, it's only been done by Donald Trump in 2016, which is to kind of motivate people in the right places to come out who haven't participated in politics and create a new base for yourself that gives you a mandate for real change. Accomplishing something that's never been done before, you'd be a fool to say it's easy. But as I started by saying, if we don't do it, then what's the plan?

Let's shift guys a little bit to the future now in terms of these upcoming primaries and caucuses. And maybe start with you, Jonathan. and give us a sense of where you think this race is going to go between now and Super Tuesday, March 3rd, and how you see this dynamic, this kind of high stakes fight within the Democratic Party between the moderates, now seemingly represented by Pete Buttigieg and Amy Kubishar versus Bernie Sanders. I don't know. I don't have any special prognosticating skill as to what's going to happen. I think Ryan and I agree that the political science and research shows that moving, you know, far to the left or the right can shave a few points off your expected total.

And in a country this closely divided, that could very well be the difference between winning and losing. Again, it doesn't mean that Bernie Sanders is doomed, but it turns a very winnable election into one you're more likely than not to lose. Jonathan, just what do you reply to Sanders supporters who, you know, talking about electability, point to those critical swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, where Sanders is currently leading Trump in the polls. He's also leading in the national polls. We know that. He's got 1.4 million donors. I mean, that's, that is an incredible political accomplishment in terms of creating a movement. Why discount those? They seem like real tangible assets that Sanders is bringing not only to this primary battle, this fight for the nomination, but to the

general election. They are. They are. He has some assets. I think trial heat polls at this stage during the primary don't tell us very much. They tell us a lot about how a candidate stands with relation to other candidates in their party and whether they've been attacked. They don't really hold up very well a poll taken in the middle of a primary for trial heat. So it's worth a little bit, but it's not really, it doesn't really tell you very much that that Bernie Sanders is winning or some other candidate is winning. I think a lot of the same polls have also found that Joe Biden across the range of polls runs a few points ahead of Bernie Sanders against Donald Trump. I don't think that necessarily means that Biden is more electable than Sanders. I think most political

scientists, they don't listen to the trial he's right now. That's not great, great evidence. We don't have perfect evidence, but the tried and true idea of don't advocate a lot of really unpopular things is a pretty good rule to go by. And Bernie Sanders is advocating more really unpopular things than any candidate who's been a nominee that we have on record since Barry Goldwater. But Barry Goldwater is a pretty good parallel. That's really the closest you can look at. I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.

And let me remind you also. that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. You have a candidate who ever has a really radical theory of government. We need to change everything in a big way. We had to roll back the New Deal. And he didn't really care about the polls. He thought he could mobilize this invisible majority that didn't see enough at stake in the election

between mushy centrist to come out. But if you gave them a real contrast, they would come out to vote. And he had this massive, passionate fan base. And he really did. Goldwater people were just nuts for him. And they would raise tons of money and knock on all the doors and get out the vote. But again, there were lots of reasons Goldwater lost, but he was catastrophically unpopular and seen as totally unacceptable. So I think to the extent that that's the closest we can come to of a candidate winning a nomination and running way far away from the center and just flouting what all the polls said people wanted, that's the best case you can point to.

And it's a pretty bad case. Ryan, why is Sanders not the 2020 equivalent of Barry Goldwater? Well, Trump is no LBJ. They may share some spiritual similarities here and there. But, you know, he took office in November of 1963 after the assassination of Kennedy. And so he had one year between the time he took office and the election. And he passed not only the tax cut that Kennedy couldn't get through. But 1964 was one of the great liberal hours, civil rights legislation, you know, working class legislation.

He was at the height of his career popularity at that point. But John, it also makes a fair point. That's true. Yep. You're right. And it's not going to be a 20 point blowout. I didn't mean to suggest that Sanders would lose by 23 points or whatever it was the Goldwater lost by. The country is much more polarized and the floor is higher for both parties.

So no one's going to get. below 43% even if they ran naked through the streets. You know, it's just locked in. So, Ryan, final question for you before we go to closing statements. You know, do you feel that Sanders is going to get a fair deal from the Democratic Party itself? And there's some controversial potential kind of minefields that he's going to have to pick his way through, including the possibility if you end up in a brokered convention that the, that while the superdelegates won't vote in the first round, they are scheduled. to vote in the second round at that convention. Can Sanders win within his own party or within

the Democrat? Well, no, I don't think he'll get a fair deal, nor do I think he really is entitled to one. I mean, he's trying to rest power from a group of people, and that group of people is under no obligation to treat the usurpers fairly. I always kind of pushed back against this idea that Sanders is being treated unfair. Not because he wasn't, but because you shouldn't expect that he's going to be. It doesn't mean that the establishment is going to be able to effectively coalesce behind a Sanders alternative or that the hostility towards him on cable news is actually necessarily going to make it impossible for him to win.

I do think he has a path. He's sort of like a shark to me in this race, in the sense that if he's slowly, slows down, then he's finished. He has to keep swimming. But as long as he keeps swimming, you know, if he moves from whatever he had in New Hampshire to another win in Nevada, 30% in Nevada, and then he can then if he can pull off a win in South Carolina, which I don't think is out of the realm of possibility at this point, and then he can, you know, win again across a lot of states in Super Tuesday, he's not going to have the kind of momentum effect that people are looking for because in order to have momentum, you have to have the media, you know, relaying to the

public that you're winning. And as you're seeing, that's not happening. You know, there are, there are many ways to find reasons that you should just discount. Bernie Sanders, say, winning New Hampshire, for instance. Well, actually, the real story of the New York Times said was that the, that Amy Klobuchar, you know, bumped from fifth place in Iowa to third place in New Hampshire. And so that is actually Amy Klobuchar won. And so he's going to have to continue to chuck along, which means that it's going to be harder for him, you know, to consolidate 50% of the delegates. And if in the two weeks before the convention, he had a bad run of press, you know, the party could justify, you know, finding a quote-unquote unity candidate.

He has an extraordinary amount of obstacles in front of him, which if he overcomes, he then has the massive obstacle of trying to unseat an incumbent with a surging economy. There have been very, very few incumbents who have kind of taken over from the other party and then only served one term. Jimmy Carter did that, but to find another example, you have to go back to the like Grover Cleveland's. It just doesn't happen much. If one party takes over from the other, they tend to get two terms. And even if he can pull all that off, the chance of him taking the Senate is extraordinarily difficult. Final question, Jonathan, who else at this point other than Bernie Sanders?

You have a sclerotic billionaire in Michael Bloomberg with some really heavy baggage around his stop and frisk and perceptions of fame amongst a black community. You have in Pete Buttigieg, America's first openly gay candidate for leadership of a national party. And who knows how American voters are going to deal with that in a general election? And I think Amy Klobuchar is pulling the single digits amongst black and Hispanic voters. So isn't this somehow all a little bit preordained for Sanders? I don't think it's preordained. He's clearly more likely to win the nomination now than anybody else is, but he still only got 25% of the party. He isn't really showing any signs yet of expanding it.

So his biggest asset is that all the center-left alternatives are just piling into one another and they haven't been able to consolidate. But if they manage to get down to one of those candidates, I think that, candidate has got a pretty good chance to beat him. We're not talking about Bernie Sanders versus generic Democrats at this point. We're talking about Bernie Sanders against very specific Democrats. Each of the ones that are still in contention have debilitating weaknesses that outstrip those of Bernie Sanders. And they don't have the potential to expand the electorate in the way that Sanders does. The other point to think,

think about is that we spend a lot of time in the media talking about the the Obama to Trump voters and who can get the Obama to Trump voters back. So these are people who voted for Obama 0812 and then they flipped over to Trump in 2016. But a roughly equal number of voters jumped Obama to third party, whether it was Gary Johnson or Jill Stein in 2016. And if and a lot of those came back in the 2018 midterms. So they're not against voting for Democrats for the rest of their lives. These are winnable types of voters. There's a certain pathology in Washington where if you vote third party, you're kind of written out of polite discourse. And so you can't be analyzed dispassionately anymore. You can be lectured, but you can't be kind of pandered to or appealed to

to try to get you back into the coalition. And you speak from experience as a Nader voter, right? So this is correct. Somebody like Bernie Sanders, who's trying to appeal to those third-party voters who felt disenfranchised by both of the candidates, is likely able to pull a lot of those back in. And the same message that is able to pull those third-party candidates, those third-party voters back in is probably also going to work on some segment of those Obama-to-Trump voters. Getting close on time here, so I'm just going to put, let's say, a minute on the clock for each of you. Jonathan, start with you just a quick closing statement.

Any kind of key points that you want to go out on this debate on? Yeah, I think it's worth hitting the third party issue because this is something that Democrats tend to do when they've been in power. They get complacent. They decide they're always going to have power. So you had dissatisfaction in 1968 when Democrats had been in power for two terms. You had that when Bill Clinton had been in office two terms. You had, you know, Ryan and others voting for Ralph Nader because who cared if George W. Bush

ran. You had this again in 2016 because Barack Obama had been in office for two terms and no one was scared of Republicans anymore. And then when Republicans get an office, people start remembering what scares them about Republicans and those appeals don't work. So I don't really think that's really part of the calculus either way. I guess I'll just end on that point because I think I sort of summarized the main ones. Okay, last word to you, Ryan. You get the final say in this debate. My last point would be to touch on what Jonathan talked about with the Bernie Sanders running on unpopular positions.

When Andrew Yang started running on universal basic income, even among Democrats, it was polling pretty terribly. But talking about it and having articles written about it and ended up boosting it, you can change people's perceptions. You can produce the will of the people. People's will comes from somewhere. the platform that Democrats ran on and won on in 2018, if you had presented that to Rahm Emanuel in 2006, 8, 10, 12, 14, even 2016, and told him, this is what the median Democratic House candidate is going to run on. He would have told you, in a James Carville-style rant, that you were headed for absolute political, oblivion. be in. The world was changed. And it was changed in part by the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016 and then

changed again by radicalization of Donald Trump taking office. But what it shows you is that these are not static questions. And things that are unpopular can be popular. And so even though, yes, a lot of D-Triple C candidates ended up winning in 2018, they won on a platform that the left would have salivated over just four years earlier. Thank you, Ryan. Well, look, Jonathan Ryan, this is one of the big issues that not only the Democratic Party is going to be grappling with in the weeks and months to come, but American voters are going to have to focus on it here in Canada. We have that old kind of saw that we're living beside an elephant and when it rolls over, you've got to get out of the way. So we're paying close attention. We appreciate your civil and substantive debate with us, the insights that you've shared. Thanks a lot, guys, for a great conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Well, that wraps up today's debate.

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