The NPR Politics Podcast - 2020 Update: Candidates Differ On How They Will Or Will Not Take On Trump

Episode Date: February 11, 2019

As Senators Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren officially announce they are running for president, the Democratic hopefuls are trying to prove they are the one to beat President Trump. But each of them have a different strategy for taking him on. This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, political reporter Asma Khalid, and Congressional correspondent Scott Detrow. 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 Lily from St. Paul, Minnesota, where I just stood in a snowstorm to watch Amy Klobuchar announce her candidacy for president. This podcast was recorded at 12.37 p.m. on Monday, February 11th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. All right, here's the show. I hope she's warm now, finally. That announcement was like something out of the Empire Strikes Back. There was so much snow. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast, and over the weekend, even more Democrats made it official and joined the race for President of the United States.

I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. And I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. And Scott and Asma, I'm here all alone in Studio 34 because you guys are out on the road reporting. So tell me where you've been. Well, I've been out in New Hampshire. I spent Saturday with Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown. And you may not think of him necessarily as a presidential candidate because he has not officially declared what he's doing, whether he's in or he's out, but he's certainly mulling a run. And so he's been going on this listening tour to a bunch of key early voting states. And I was with him on Saturday to just

get a sense of what his message is and how folks are responding to him. And Scott, you are currently in a car. Is that right? You know, a new campaign has started if I'm taping a podcast sitting in a parked car. Luckily, I am in South Carolina where sitting in a parked car when the engine off is much less of a problem than it would be in Iowa or New Hampshire at this time of year. I'm in Sumter, South Carolina, where I've been following around Cory Booker for the last few days. He got into the race about a week ago, and this was his first campaign swing. He was in Iowa and then here in South Carolina. We're going to get to what both of the people you were following around were talking about later in the pod. But first, let's start with the newest candidate with her hat in the ring, Senator Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota. On an island in the middle of the mighty Mississippi, in our nation's heartland, at a time when we must heal the heart of our

democracy and renew our commitment to the common good. I stand before you as the granddaughter of an iron ore miner, as the daughter of a teacher and a newspaper man, as the first woman elected to the United States Senate from the state of Minnesota to announce my candidacy for president of the United States. It was so snowy. I don't know what the definition of a blizzard is, but I think that was officially a blizzard. I just know that somewhere in the distance,

I think I saw Luke Skywalker on a tauntaun. This may smell bad, kid. Probably it'll keep you warm. She wasn't wearing a hat though, which is rather impressive. I was like, I don't know that I could be out in those conditions without actually being properly equipped for winter. So props to her. The best part was she just kept talking about the Mississippi River, which was behind her, but not visible because of all the snow. I think that that's kind of key to what Amy Klobuchar's message was in her announcement speech. She really had this pitch about geography, talking about the fact that she represents this place that is in the

middle of the heartland, the Mississippi River is, you know, smack dab in the middle of the country. And she talked about that. She talked about her working class roots as well, her grandpa being somebody who was an iron ore miner. And I would say that, you know, in a field that's fairly crowded already amongst Democrats, we've seen a lot of Democrats enter who are from fairly coastal places. And part of what we see Amy Klobuchar trying to do, I think, is this idea that she represents a place that is just geographically different than what we're seeing from other candidates. And I think another appeal that she had, and at least got people thinking about her as a

presidential candidate a lot more than they had before, was if you look at her re-election, and if you look at the map, it's just a very stark visual. We've talked so much about how Democrats win in the cities and suburbs and lose the rural areas. She won so much of Minnesota, not every county, but a big chunk of it. She won in the city. She won in the rural areas in the northern part of the state. So I think just like Sherrod Brown, she has part of a pragmatic message to voters looking to see someone who can win and say, hey, it's you know, Minnesota is not as tough of a state as Ohio is for Democrats, but it's increasingly getting more competitive. And both of them can say, I have a message that has a proven track record of appealing to Midwestern voters and a lot of Republicans, too. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I think one of her early campaign stops is going to be in Wisconsin, not an early voting state, but certainly part of that so-called blue wall that Trump knocked down in 2016. So speaking of President Trump, he had some thoughts on Twitter about Klobuchar's announcement. Let me just read that. Well, it happened again. Amy Klobuchar

announced that she is running for president, talking proudly about fighting global warming while standing in a virtual blizzard of snow, ice and freezing temperatures. Bad timing. By the end of her speech, she looked like a snowman, parentheses woman, exclamation point. Do we do we have a moment for some environmental policy fact checking here? Should we stick to the politics? Well, I think she did. She herself did actually. Exactly. She responded and said science is on my side at real Donald Trump and then went on to say that she looks forward to debating him on climate change. And it was also pretty cold for Elizabeth Warren's official campaign launch. Now, of course, the Massachusetts senator had not that long ago launched an exploratory committee that seemed like it was not really exploring much except waiting a little while until a big speech.

And she gave that speech on Saturday in Massachusetts. We can't afford just to tinker around the edges of tax credit here or regulation there. Our fight is for big structural change. And, you know, Tim, shortly after she officially announced her candidacy, President Trump was also talking about her, you know, talking about the fact that she officially had entered this race. And he made some comments on Twitter that some people saw as a reference to the Trail of Tears, again, mocking her claims of Native American ancestry. And the Trail of Tears, we should remind people, is this policy during the 19th century that was a forced relocation of thousands of Native American families. Many people died in that process. Let me just read that tweet. It says, Today, Elizabeth Warren, sometimes referred to by me as Pocahontas, joined the race for president.

Will she run as our first Native American presidential candidate? Or has she decided that after 32 years, this is not playing so well anymore? See you on the trail, Liz! And just to make it clear here, TRAIL was in all capital letters, as if to emphasize that word, which is why a lot of people thought he might have been referencing the Trail of Tears. In other earlier tweets related to Warren, he has also referenced massacres of Native Americans in ways that are meant to be funny. And this gets to one of the issues in this campaign, which is how are these candidates going to deal with President Trump? And also, how are they going to frame their pitch as someone who can beat him in the general election? We'll talk about how they're doing

that after this break. 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.

The world is complicated, and for many of us, history class was a long time ago. That's where we come in. I'm Randha Dilphatta. I'm Ramteen Arablui, and we're the hosts of ThruLine, NPR's new history podcast. Every week, we'll dig into forgotten stories from the moments that shaped our world. Throughline, history like you've never heard it before. And we're back. So during 2018, we talked a lot about how candidates were or were not talking about

President Trump. Now we are in an election cycle where these candidates are competing to eventually take on President Trump. And I wanted to talk to you guys about how they are both framing themselves around him, but also just how they're framing themselves. And we have a big list. Yeah. Scott, do you want to start with Cory Booker? You've spent the weekend following him around South Carolina. Yeah, I mean, every candidate has to make a decision of how they're going to stand out from the crowd.

And Cory Booker has made a calculated decision. It's certainly in line with his long career as a mayor and senator and social media star. But he is really distinguishing himself as running. You know, he talks about all sorts of policy, but he keeps saying more than any specific policy, my campaign is all about uniting the country, talking about big themes like love and empathy and coming together. And he's very clearly positioning himself as like this anti-Trump candidate saying, I'm not going to go after my opponents. We need to heal in this country. I have great ideas, some of which I've gotten into law, some of which I implemented in Newark. But when are we going to see that the cancer on the soul of our country is the divisions that

exist between us in a nation that's united, that claims to be one nation under God? Well, we need to put the indivisible back into that one nation under God. It's so interesting, though, to hear of a guy who's running really with this message of unity and healing, because I've had a lot of questions in the past couple years after Trump's election, whether that was entirely what Democrats want. And maybe Democrats haven't figured out exactly what they want. But do they want somebody who's giving this kind of like Barack Obama, 2008-esque message, right? Or do they want somebody who's going to fight back against what Donald Trump has to say and fight back against some of

his policies? And I don't know the answer to that. You know, seeing him talk for maybe six or seven hours total over the last two days, he didn't say the word Trump once. That was notable to me. And that comes in contrast to the way Elizabeth Warren has been talking about the president. She, over the weekend, was in Iowa and delivered some remarks that seemed basically custom designed to get a rise out of the president. You know, here's what bothers me. By the time we get to 2020, Donald Trump may not even be president. In fact, he may not even be a free person. Some people took that to be a suggestion that she was saying or implying that maybe he would be in prison.

And after that, she was asked by reporters and she said, well, yeah, look at all these investigations. He's under investigation in so many different ways. And even for her, it's been a bit of a departure. You know, we talked earlier about the fact that she went after President Trump quite hard during the 2016 campaign when he was not the president. Then she's gone after him quite a bit on Twitter. But ever since she's talked about running for president, ever since she launched her exploratory committee in December. If you listen to what she said on the campaign trail, she has really, I would say, rather been sort of hesitant to explicitly call the president on. And it's been a departure from the way that she's previously talked about him. So that's part of what I thought was so interesting about her comments here,

was that it was kind of one of the few times we have heard her explicitly talk about the president out on the campaign trail. And Asma, you were out with Sherrod Brown, the senator from Ohio. He is not officially a candidate yet. But how is he framing himself? Yeah, you know, kind of, I would say, akin to what we're hearing a little bit from Amy Klobuchar, which is this idea that he represents the middle of the country. And this is what you hear from a lot of Senator Brown's big supporters,

is that, you know, look, this guy won Ohio in the 2018 midterms. He won it by about seven points or so. And this is a state that Hillary Clinton lost during the 2016 election. And so the logic is like, look, if he can win Ohio, which is a more conservative state than some of the other neighboring areas like, you know, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. Then he could likely win some of those other states. And then in theory, he could then likely win the White House as a Democrat. You know, one of the things I think, though, that's really interesting about Sherrod Brown's message and who he is and what he represents is that he really has this philosophy that there shouldn't be a divide between the idea of exciting the progressive base and also kind of reaching out to workers, specifically white working class folks who did not necessarily come out for Hillary Clinton in 2016. But one thing

that really struck me, I was out at an event with him in Concord at a bookshop, is he was asked about something that I would venture to say we're going to hear a lot about in this campaign cycle. There was a woman in the crowd, Lizzie Shackelford, who basically asked him, you know, in a field this crowded, she's like, I like your message, I like your economic ideas, but how are you going to make it through a Democratic primary, just given the fact that Democratic primary voters seem like they're leaning towards wanting somebody who's not a white man? My biggest concern, though, is how he will win the primary at a time when Democrats are really looking for change from white men. Rather blunt.

I think the race is about ideas, and I think Democrats understand that. And I'll say this. If we're in the race, I will be the only one on stage that's had a long time F from the NRA, only Democrat on stage that voted against NAFTA. I'll be the only Democrat on stage that voted against the Iraq war. I'll be the only Democrat on stage that voted against the Defense of Marriage Act and support of marriage equality. In that explanation, I heard both his sort of push that I have looked these progressive credentials and I've had them for a really long time. You know, he's talking there about the

Defense of Marriage Act, which he did not vote for in the mid 1990s. But the other thing, to your point, Tam, is that he has also just been around Congress for a long time. And he pitches this as experience and maybe coming off of the heels of Donald Trump being in office for a couple of years, that's a message that I will say I heard from a few voters that they really want. They want someone who understands how government works. And, you know, I think you talk to voters, you look at 2018, and there's certainly a deep desire from a lot of Democrats to have a more diverse representation in terms of the candidates they nominate and elect to office. I think there's a lot of pride from the Democratic base at just how diverse the field already is here.

But I'm in South Carolina this week, and it really stands out because it's the first state to vote in the primaries that is much more representative of the country. There's a large chunk of the Democratic electorate that is African American. But what was notable to me is talking to voters, talking to Booker and talking to Harris's campaign as well, and other state officials, they are very quick to say, just because these two candidates are black does not necessarily mean that one of them is a given to win this state. A lot of black voters I talked to said, I'm looking at all of the candidates and the race of the candidate is not my top deciding factor as I make up my mind over the next year. Well, we're going to leave it there for now. And we will be back as soon as there's political news

you need to know about. President Trump has a rally tonight along the southern border. He'll be in El Paso. And also there are discussions happening here in Washington over the border security funding fight and the possible government shutdown at the end of this week. So there is a lot to follow and we will be back as soon as there's news. Until then, head to npr.org slash politics newsletter to subscribe to a weekly roundup of our best online analysis. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.