The NPR Politics Podcast - Anti-Impeachment Democrat To Switch Party; Dispute Could Upend Democratic Debate

Episode Date: December 16, 2019

New Jersey Democrat Rep. Jeff Van Drew is expected to switch parties and become a Republican. Democrats still appear to have more than enough support to impeach President Trump later this week.Also, a labor dispute at Loyola Marymount University may mean Democrats refuse to take the stage at a debate scheduled to be held at the university Thursday night. Culinary workers there are striking over what they see as an inadequate contract with the school's dining provider. The seven Democratic candidates who have qualified for the debate all said they will not cross a picket line.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Nico and PJ. We're at home in Seattle decorating our live baby Christmas trees. Just like kittens, we planned to buy one tree but ended up with two. They were just too cute. We named one Fran and the other Domenico Montrenaro. This podcast was recorded at 2 35 p.m on, the 16th of December. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Hopefully, both of our trees are still alive. Okay, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.

I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Tim Mack. I cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, not Tree-naro, senior political editor and correspondent, though I'm glad there's a tree out there named after me. I hope it's not the first one that dies. Keep watering it, but don't water too much. We want Domenico's tree to make it through Christmas. And that one can stay up all year. All right. So later this week, the House of Representatives is going to vote

on impeachment, on two articles of impeachment against President Trump. And it is almost certain that they are going to vote to impeach the president of the United States. But there is still some drama. There are still some questions about how many Democrats will vote for it, how many Republicans will vote for it. And just today, there is news of a Democrat who is no longer a Democrat who was going to vote against it, still will vote against it, but now says he's a Republican, right, Tim? Well, there's a congressman named Jeff Van Drew, and he is or was a Democrat from New Jersey. He is one of those moderate Dems. He

didn't vote to start the impeachment inquiry. He's one of just two Democrats who declined to join other members of his party to do that. And now it's coming out that he's considering or will switch parties and become a Republican. Now, he comes from a district that supported Trump by a significant amount in 2016. And that's not something that he could just look the other way on. And he made the decision that he's going to become a Republican rather than stay a Democrat and vote against these articles. What's more fascinating to me, to be totally honest, and yes, Trump will use Van Drew on the campaign trail probably. And if there are other Democrats who come out against impeachment, but there are those 30 Democrats now who are in

districts that Trump won that, you know, they're still on board for the overwhelmingly most part voting for impeachment. And that tells you about where the center is in the House. You know, the other thing that this says to me is that here is somebody who found that there wasn't a lot of room to be a Democrat who opposes impeachment, even though all of these members from Trump leaning districts are the majority makers. They're the reason that Democrats control the House. Ultimately, the money, the Democratic energy, all of the things that, you know, are required for reelection, those things are not going to be with someone like a Van Drew. Right. And it's pretty notable that among the 30 or so Democrats that are representing districts that were won by President Trump, the vast majority of the people who have made their positions on impeachment known have said they

are going to support the articles of impeachment. There are very few defections, at least that are publicly known right now. It shows you just how hardened people are. I mean, we have our new poll out today from NPR, PBS NewsHour and Marist that shows the country is, guess what, split on impeachment, right? We have 48% of people opposing the president's impeachment, 47% in favor of the president's impeachment, pretty much exactly where it was before the public aspect of the impeachment hearings and proceedings began. And when we asked people before the public process, if there was anything they could possibly think of that could maybe at some way change their mind, two thirds of people said already at that point they were locked in. No. And that's exactly what has played out here. And when

you look at the president's approval rating, 42 percent is his approval rating, basically exactly where it's been over the entirety of his presidency, historically low for a president. And guess how many Republicans are approving of the job he's doing? Ninety one percent, a very high level. So the anomaly, it seems, are people like Congressman Van Drew, are people like Congressman Justin Amash, who earlier this year decided he wasn't going to be part of the Republican Party because he felt that the president had committed impeachable acts just based on the results of the Mueller report. Okay. So this gets to a question of what we're expecting for the vote. Are we expecting defections? Are we expecting any Republican defections? How many Democratic defections

do we think might happen? You know, there's this term whipping. Maybe you should explain what that is. Yeah. Whipping is where party leadership goes to its members and said, we need your support on this. We're going to lobby you. We're going to advocate that you take a certain position on the vote. Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have said that they view this vote as a vote of conscience, that each lawmaker needs to make their own mind up about whether the president's conduct is impeachable. So they say they say they're not going to be whipping on this vote. Republicans, however, are whipping very heavily on this vote and are stressing to their members they need to vote no on impeachment. Before we go to the break, Tim, I'm hoping you can just lay out for us

what to expect this week. Like, get our date book out. What's going on? Well, it's going to be a very busy week, but let's just zoom in on impeachment itself. The House Rules Committee will meet on Tuesday to set the parameters of the debate and discuss any proposed changes to the articles of impeachment. Lawmakers in those committees can make their views on impeachment heard. That's expected to be a very long meeting. And then House Democratic leaders have said that they're going to have a floor vote. The full House will vote on Wednesday on these articles of impeachment, depending on how long lawmakers make speeches on the floor. And of course, you know, lawmakers love to make speeches on the floor, at least the ones in deep blue or

deep red districts want to make their voices heard. We could see a vote either Wednesday or Thursday. Depends on how strong the jet fumes are to get out of town. Well, they do really want to get out of town, but they also have to do, don't forget, this week they're expected to also vote on a government spending package and the USMCA trade deal. But what a week though. I mean, step back. The president of the United States is going to be impeached by the House of Representatives, and he's going to be facing a trial in the Senate in the same year that he's going to stand for reelection. Yeah. Tim, we are going to let you get back to work. Thank you. And we are going to take a quick break. And when we return, what to expect at the Democratic debate this week. This message comes from NPR sponsor Doctors Without Borders.

Doctors Without Borders teams confront hard facts in conflict and crisis zones. When others look away, they step in to act. In emergencies and their aftermath, they provide essential health care, run hospitals and clinics, perform surgery, battle epidemics, carry out vaccination campaigns, and more. Information on their efforts and campaigns in over 70 countries can be found at doctorswithoutborders.org. When it's too cold to go out or too icy to make it out of the driveway, where do you go to find just the right movie, just the right book, just the right show to binge? Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR can help you keep warm and keep up at the same time. Join us twice a week on Pop Culture Happy Hour. And we're back and we are joined now by Danielle Kurtzleben. Hi. Hello. Danielle is our policy maven on the desk. But here's the other thing.

She's also the namer of names. I don't know how I got this role. It just sort of happened. It was foisted upon me. But it is a grand tradition of debate preview podcasts that Danielle lists everyone who will be on the stage. And here's the thing about this debate stage. There are fewer people on it. It's smaller. Guys, this is going to be amazing. More time for them all to talk at each other. That sounds like I'm joking, but I'm really genuinely excited about it.

Okay. We have seven, not ten people on the stage. Here's who we have. Former Vice President Joe Biden, South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, businessman Tom Steyer, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, and entrepreneur Andrew Yang. All right. It took more than one breath still. Sorry, not sorry. I'm not redoing that. Move it along. Okay. But so here's the list. They're going to be on the stage. Maybe. If anyone is on the stage because there is a labor dispute on the campus of the college where the debate is supposed to take place. Democrats do not cross picket lines. And Danielle, can you just explain what's going on here?

Right. Very briefly. So the debate is supposed to be held at Loyola Marymount University, but there has been a labor dispute for a while now with Unite Here Local 11, which represents about 150 food service workers on the campus. By the way, our colleague Juana Summers has done great reporting on this. You should go look it up. Anyway, the university subcontracts out its food service operations to a company called Sodexo. So a bunch of Sodexo workers are unhappy with their contract. And so they have been picketing for a while. And so now, as you said, the Democratic candidates are saying they don't want to cross picket lines.

They don't want to get on stage while this dispute is happening. What's crazy about this is the head of the DNC, the Democratic National Committee, is Tom Perez, who's a former labor secretary under President Obama. And he is actually trying to negotiate a deal with the labor union so that this debate can actually go on. So if the debate happens, it will be Thursday night, co-sponsored, moderated by the PBS NewsHour and Politico. Now, programming note, this is the same night that the new Star Wars movie comes out. OK, so Domenico, you know, before you were talking about this PBS NewsHour Marist poll that we have about impeachment, but you guys also did a horse race question, a question about the Democratic field. Yeah. For the first time, we asked what Democratic voters preferences are on who they would vote for. And Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are in the lead. You have Biden with 24 percent, Sanders at 22 percent, followed by Elizabeth Warren at 17, Pete Buttigieg at 13, Andrew Yang at five. And then you have Mayor Bloomberg, Klobuchar, Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker at all at four percent. So there's a clear top tier here of four candidates, which we've been seeing repeatedly. But Biden and Sanders starting to kind of break through a little bit is really

interesting, especially considering the coalitions that are supporting each of these top four candidates. Also interesting because the last couple of weeks, at least of the Democratic coverage, has been all about fighting between Buttigieg and Warren. Well, and there's reason for that, because if you look inside our poll, you know, Buttigieg leads with college educated whites overall. Meanwhile, Sanders leads with progressives overall. Second place in both of those, Elizabeth Warren. So she's fighting this sort of two front battle where she's trying to peel off support from Bernie Sanders and she's having to stop this support from being peeled away from her, from Pete Buttigieg when it comes

to college educated whites. So it's really become a difficult balance for her. It's not just Warren and Buttigieg. You also have plenty of Sanders supporters, Sanders surrogates taking aim at Buttigieg as well. For example, on their college affordability plans, you had New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is a supporter of Bernie Sanders, come out swinging against Pete Buttigieg on his plan. Really, you have quite a few progressives really taking aim at him lately. So I guess, Danielle, if my next question is what policy fights are we looking to have teased out on the Democratic debate stage on Thursday? Is college affordability one of those?

Yeah, I mean, I can only speak for me. You guys might have your own pet issues. But I got to say, in any of these debates, I am excited to see really what daylight breaks out between any candidates. I do want to at least hear them get into health care a bit because, you know, there has been some reporting from out on the campaign trail that Elizabeth Warren, I mean, if you're a reporter, you go to these events, you hear the same stump speech over and over again, which means you're a reporter, you go to these events, you hear the same stump speech over and over again. Of course. Which means you're attuned to changes.

And Elizabeth Warren has apparently been starting to talk about choice in her stump speech in terms of health care. Very interesting. Yes. Now she is back. That sounds like Buttigieg. Well. And Joe Biden. Yeah.

So it does. But not entirely. Elizabeth Warren, to put a finer point on this, still backs single payer, but she put out this transition plan weeks ago that says single payer would pass by my third year as president. But beforehand, we would do a transition plan, and that transition plan would essentially do public option or help you transition into Medicare or single payer, essentially. Now, so I'm wondering how much people try to pin her down on that. Similarly, you know, Pete Buttigieg still backs his Medicare for all who want it, public option plan. He has been making this argument. I trust you to choose the health care that's best for you. And the arguments that I know the online left, I realize

Twitter is not real life, but the online left has been making against him is like, cool, except health care is very complicated. Like even many of the smartest among us cannot figure out their insurance. So I can imagine a few more arguments coming out. I mean, there's an obvious political reason for why she's sort of maybe making a little bit of a hedge here, because she was leading the Democratic primary. I think most people thought at that point she may be the person who is going to catch fire and win the nomination. And she's since dropped off as more scrutiny has come because of her Medicare for all plan. And look, our poll showed that it's popular with Democrats, but unpopular with a broader electorate. All right. We are going to leave it there. We have a politics podcast live show coming up in Chicago on January 10th. There are still some tickets available in conjunction

with WBEZ in Chicago. Just go to nprpresents.org. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover politics. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.