The NPR Politics Podcast - 2020 Update: Biden Speaks As 2020 Decision Nears; Candidates Target Big Tech at SXSW

Episode Date: March 12, 2019

Former Vice President Joe Biden addressed a friendly crowd of union firefighters as he appears on the verge of launching a campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Over the weekend South by Southwest became a major presidential forum. Democrats competed with each other to be the tough-on-tech candidate. This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, Congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Ryan from Watertown, Massachusetts, currently in Austin, Texas, for the 2019 South by Southwest Conference. Right now I'm standing in line to hear Pete Buttigieg speak. This podcast was recorded at 1219pm on Tuesday, the 12th of March. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, like which 2020 candidate I'm supporting or the amount of tacos I've eaten today. I hope it's a lot of tacos. One taco for every declared candidate. Oh my God, you would be so sick. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.

This morning, Joe Biden gave a big speech in a room full of people holding signs that said, run, Joe, run. And over the weekend, the South by Southwest conference became a major presidential forum as candidates got tough on big tech companies. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And both of you were at the Biden event this morning. Mara, you got there very, very early.

Yes. I don't know why, but I did. And I thought it was a really interesting event. You could see it as a dress rehearsal for an announcement speech, which everyone seems to think is going to come in the next couple of weeks. There was the Run Joe Run yellow and black signs on everyone's seat. The firefighters, of course, have been longtime supporters of his. There's the run, Joe, run chants. And then there was Biden telling them, gee, save that enthusiasm. I might need it in a few weeks. I appreciate the energy you showed when I got up here. Save it a little longer. I may need it in a few weeks. And then it had all the elements of a stump speech.

That's what defines us. In America, everybody gets a shot. That's what the next president of the United States needs to understand. And that's what I don't think this current president understands at all. I was there too. I was not yet awake when Mara got there because I slept through my alarm. Didn't have time for coffee, but I sat next to Mara, so I was good on that front. And Mara, we were talking before the event just how it's this weird kind of split screen world in 2020 right now. On one hand, the Democratic Party, its candidates in terms of message,

tone, so many things are moving away from Biden. But on the other hand, everyone's waiting for Biden. He's leading the polls. He's really dominating the conversation. And into that, he gives this pseudo stump speech. And, you know, how would you define what the core message was? First of all, I thought the audience was a proxy for Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the kind of white working class voters. In this case, it was a mostly male audience. So you're saying there were a lot of white guys there. A lot of beefy white guys. Yes, but more important, they represented a demographic in those key states that the Democrats have to win back as they also simultaneously energize their younger,

diverse base. It is not an either or, but they have to get back one or more of those key states. And Biden gave the kind of speech that is making Democrats say he's a guy who can go to those states, his home state of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and talk to that audience. He talked about the middle class and unions built the middle class. Because when I look around this room, I see the people who built this nation. Country wasn't built by Wall Street bankers and CEOs and hedge fund managers. They're not necessarily bad. They didn't build this country.

It was built by the great American middle class, and unions built the middle class. I disagree with Scott a little bit. When you say the Democratic Party is moving away from Biden, I don't think Biden's problems in the nominating battle are going to be ideological. I don't think it's that he's a centrist. I think maybe that he's older. He's been around a long time. And then there are much bigger, more fundamental questions about him that I hear from Democrats. Can he perform? Is he a good candidate? He's great on paper, has a tremendous amount of experience. And can he raise the money? This sounds, by your telling, to be sort of vintage Joe Biden, which is super passionate and kind of all over the place. He was either, Mara and I were saying that he was either speaking at a two or a 12 the whole time. It was either very whispered and then yelling and then whispering again. Again, very,

that's how he's carried himself for decades and decades. That's who he is. I would say the, again, throughout this 40 minute or so speech, the little pockets of stump speech, he was talking about the middle class. He was contrasting last year's tax cuts with this budget proposal that came out of the White House this week saying this is, you know, they're having the middle class pay for rich people's tax cuts. That's one message. Also, the importance of America's place in the world. That's something a lot of candidates have been talking about. And he also made this other third pitch that I've been hearing from Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and a lot of other candidates. You know, the idea that this is not who America is. President Trump's approach to politics does not reflect American values.

Right. You talked about the petty meanness of our politics and how it's a sin to say anything nice about a Republican. But did he talk specifically about policy? Did, you know, like many of the Democratic candidates who are already running for president are talking about Medicare for all. They're talking about a $15 minimum wage. They're talking about child care for all. Was there any like, I'm Joe Biden, and if I will be your presidential candidate, this is what I would propose? No, but I don't think that was his intention today. I think you will hear all of those things from Biden when he announces. And I think that you will find nuances of differences between one fell swoop the way Bernie wants to. But yes, I would expect him to be for some kind of public option Medicare buy-in. And he will have a vigorous climate change agenda. Joe Biden

will have a robust policy agenda. I think the big question for Democrats, because their first, second and third priority is defeating Donald Trump. Who's the best candidate that can do that? Who's the candidate that can fire up the base and get back some of those key Rust Belt states? Can Biden do this? Can he perform? It's not so much his numeric age. It's his energy level.

And that's where I am finding from talking to Democrats that there are a lot of questions. Yeah, I think so. I think there's a lot of uncertainty about one key issue. Every poll that comes out now polls this early take them with enormous granite boulders of salt. It's just name ID. There's a Twitter account that I'll retweet it so people can find it. That compares polls out this many days advance of the last three presidential elections that I think is pretty helpful. But they're not predictive. Yeah. That being said, he is on top of all of them by a lot. A big poll came out in Iowa over the weekend, the Des Moines Register's poll, which is pretty good, pretty on point. It has Joe Biden,

27 percent, Bernie Sanders, 25 percent. Everybody else in single digits. The thing that I saw in that poll that made me think, yeah, this is probably just about name ID, is that people's second choice, all the Bernie people, a big chunk of them said they'd be for Biden. If Bernie wasn't in, same with Biden for Bernie. I don't think there's a lot of ideological Bernie to Biden crossover. So that made me think maybe this is just name ID. But that's the question. We don't know. And if Biden gets in the race and is running against other candidates, other candidates are campaigning against him. That kind of soft idea of, oh, what if Joe Biden ran in the race? A popularity that 2015 Hillary Clinton is very familiar with. Does that go away

and get hardened or does that stay? We know that Bernie Sanders, when he comes in second in that poll, some share of those Bernie Sanders people are like ride or die Bernie Sanders supporters, like they will they will be Bernie people forever and always. Does Biden have people like that? Yes, I think there are a lot of people who feel he is the best shot to defeat Donald Trump. And the difference this year, of course, is that Bernie Sanders doesn't need as many votes as quite sure. But Biden, I think, is broadly acceptable to the Democratic Party. And that was one of the big questions that we had about Bernie Sanders before he officially launched his campaign. It's similar to the question that we currently have about Joe Biden. You know, Asma Hall and I, we were talking to so many voters in early states, and a lot of them were saying, you know, I supported Bernie Sanders last time, but this

time I'm supporting somebody else. And we were thinking, okay, well, who's left for Bernie Sanders if he gets in? And the answer so far seems to be a whole lot of people. He has raised tens of millions of dollars in the opening hours alone of his campaign. He has had big rallies. He has had the biggest rallies. He and Kamala Harris are the two people with massive rallies. He has had big rallies. He has had the biggest rallies. He and Kamala Harris are the two people with massive rallies. He certainly seems in the opening weeks of his campaign to be validating that front runner status that that we were looking at Bernie Sanders having in 2020, which is, of course, the polar opposite of the early days of his 2016 campaign before he really caught fire. And he is running his campaign like he is a frontrunner. This is a very different Bernie Sanders approach. You don't think so?

I think he's trying to correct some problems. I wouldn't say he's running as a frontrunner. He's trying to reach out to black voters. He's trying to reach out to African-American voters. He's trying to correct some impressions like, yes, he is actually a Democrat. Yes, he will support the eventual nominee. He talks about his own nominee. He's acting like somebody who wants to win. Yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah. But I don't think he's acting like a front runner. He talks about his growing up in Brooklyn, his marching for civil rights. So he's correcting some problems. I wouldn't say he's running as a front runner because he's still calling for a political revolution. He hasn't changed his message since 1971. Though he has a pretty powerful argument

that he's been making that if you look at what he ran on in 2016 when he was an outlier in the Democratic Party, you know could be a victim of his own success because if you want a $15 minimum wage or Medicare for all, Bernie Sanders is not your only choice. Okay, we are going to take a quick break. And when we come back, a look at Biden's potential competitors and their take on big tech companies. This message comes from NPR sponsor, Rothy's. Rothy's is the everyday flat for life on the go that comes in four fashionable styles for women. The flat, the point, the loafer, and the sneaker. Fun designs and patterns while still looking polished and professional, with new colors launched every few weeks. Best of all, Rothy's are made from recycled plastic water bottles

and completely machine washable, so you can feel good about wearing them. Go to rothys.com and enter code WEEKLY to get your flats and free shipping. This season on Invisibilia. Should we empathize with our enemies? Femmoids should f***ing die. Is it okay to have machines control our emotions? I should be kind of creeped out, but at the same time, I'm like, well, thank God I live in this day and age. No easy answers, just the right questions. Invisibilia, back on March 8th. And we're back. And let's talk tech, because all the big names, Warren, Klobuchar, O'Rourke, they all showed up at South by Southwest this past weekend.

This is a conference where tech is king, and they were there to say that tech has a problem. Yes, and this has been such a cosmic shift over a long period of time with a lot of different reasons where Democrats especially, but both parties for years were all about Silicon Valley, hyping it up, talking about how great it was, showing off the products they had. This is the future. This is democracy in action. That is not the case right now. And you really knew it for sure when just before this conference, Elizabeth Warren came out with a massive plan that would regulate big tech, that would treat them as utilities, just like the gas and the electric company, and would also put a plan in place that if they get too big, would break them up like standard oil, like the railroads. Right. And there are two parts to that critique. One is, as Scott just described,

the incredible 360 or 180 that we've done about before. The internet was the road to democracy. Now the internet is a tool of corporate and state surveillance. And Russian interference. And Russian interference. But there's another economic argument that bigness is one of the reasons we have a slow-growing, unequal economy. In other words, when there's too much monopoly power, there's not enough innovation,

and that means there's not enough growth. That's going to be one of the big economic debates of our time. So a lot of the candidates were at South by Southwest, and a lot of them talked about their own plans to break up big tech. A lot of these plans existed before. Amy Klobuchar talked about something, I believe she's talked about before, of putting more taxes on when big tech companies sell your data.

But I think this was another example of Elizabeth Warren coming out with a big, bold plan and setting the philosophical agenda for the day. She has done that with big, you know, family leave, child care, family care plan. She has done that with saying, I'm not even going to meet with donors. You know, a lot of different things. Elizabeth Warren has come out, said, I'm doing X, and other candidates have had to respond or follow suit. And ironically, it doesn't seem to be helping her in terms of her position in the polls, but she is setting the agenda. You know, they are talking about cracking down on these big tech companies, as you talked about before. Democrats and tech

companies were were closely allied and tech company employees and executives have been major donors to Democrats. Does this get awkward or problematic, or is it like just not worth it to worry about for these candidates? I think tech companies have ties to the Democratic Party that are based on things other than antitrust policy. In other words, their views on social issues. I think there are a lot of tech companies who say that they have a responsibility to deal with privacy and surveillance. And I don't see the tech companies, you know, en masse deserting the Democratic Party and going to the Republicans. But I do think this is a really important debate. And, you know, I agree, the romance is gone. But the romance is gone in general, you know, to say that Facebook and Google and Twitter are going to solve all our problems.

Yeah, I think especially if you look at the year that Facebook in particular has had, if you look at the reputation that Twitter now has compared to five, 10 years ago, I mean, I think that the overall mindset has turned. And, you know, I wonder if this could be a powerful argument for Democrats, because if you look throughout American history, populist messaging and anti-big companies, trust busting, it worked pretty well for both Roosevelt's among other candidates. And certainly the big tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, Google are the standard oils of our time. You can really make that argument. And Democrats have an opportunity to poach, to eat off the other guy's plate. The Republicans have usually been the party of small business. Democrats could take some of that back. And this is the part of the podcast where I

mentioned that Amazon and Facebook are among NPR's many financial supporters. Okay, one other thing that happened at South by Southwest, as we heard from Ryan and our timestamp at the very top of the show, there were a bunch of events with presidential candidates, many of them CNN-sponsored and televised town halls. What did we learn from these? I would say that Pete Buttigieg, the Democratic mayor of South Bend, Indiana, gay, married veteran, did himself the most good. He was very good in the Q&A format, really crisp, really down to earth. And I think it's very, very hard for a mayor to get the nomination, but he did raise a lot of money after that town hall. And I think that he impressed a lot of people. So I think he used that format and that forum better than any of the other ones so far. Of the candidates who you had never heard of before this contest,

I think he has so far in the first two months or so gotten the most low-level buzz and a lot of people saying, well, that's an interesting guy. And he'll probably, because of that, get himself onto the debate stage because there are certain criteria, thresholds you have to cross, certain number of donors, certain points in the polls. He'll probably make it. And circling back to Joe Biden and his age, one of the things that Buttigieg talks about that has seemed to be picking up steam is the idea of, he calls it like generational justice, talking specifically to millennial voters. Okay, I think we are going

to leave this conversation here. For all I know, by the time we get back next time, there could be another person running for president. Tune in for next week's weekly 2020 chat. All right. Until then, head to npr.org slash politics newsletter to sign up for a weekly roundup of our best online stories and analysis. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Scott Detrow.

I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.