The NPR Politics Podcast - Bernie Sanders and Mike Bloomberg Face Debate Attacks

Episode Date: February 26, 2020

In a chaotic CBS debate in South Carolina, candidates of all stripes attacked Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders as he continues to pull away from the pack. He faced questions about his praise for educational advancements in Cuba under the Castro regime and the cost of his domestic policy proposals.Former New York City Mike Bloomberg once again faced criticism for his comments toward women. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren accused him of telling an employee to terminate her pregnancy, which Bloomberg denies.This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, demographics and culture correspondent Juana Summers, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Juana Summers. I cover the campaign. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And the time now is 10.51 p.m. on Tuesday, February 25th. The CBS News Democratic debate just wrapped up in South Carolina. Juana, there's a lot of noise behind you. There is. I am here in the debate hall where candidates are still doing TV interviews as things have just wrapped up and giving their take on how things went tonight.

So as is a grand tradition in this podcast, Juana, can you tell us who was on the stage and how long they spoke? All right, here we go. Most speaking time was Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders with just over 15 minutes, followed by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg with 13 and a half minutes. Amy Klobuchar, the senator from Minnesota, was just about the same time, followed by Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren with 12 minutes and 51 seconds. Then former Vice President Joe Biden. Following him was former South Bend

Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg with 11 minutes and 44 seconds. And with the least speaking time was the billionaire hedge fund investor Tom Steyer with seven minutes. And you know, we have a really amazing team who puts together these numbers and does this math. But honestly, I don't know how they did it. How do you calculate a debate talking time when there is so much crosstalk? There was so much crosstalk tonight. I would like to bring Mr. Steyer in on this conversation. Mr. Steyer, please. And just a production note here, that was not us layering audio. That was what was really truly happening on the debate stage. And it happened a bunch of times. So guys,

other than that, what stood out to you from this debate? The thing that jumped out at me is that this was the first time that Bernie Sanders took a lot of attacks from multiple opponents. Up until now, he's been treated either ignored, treated with kid gloves. The last debate, all the center-left candidates formed a circular firing squad with Mike Bloomberg in the center of it. But tonight, Bernie Sanders was vetted by his fellow candidates and by the moderators. And this is the first time we've seen that. And there's a reason for that, of course. Well, he's the front runner. Yeah. He won or we don't know what happened in Iowa, but basically won three states in a row. And now there's South Carolina

coming up on Saturday and Super Tuesday immediately after that. Yeah. And, you know, the center left candidates always knew that it was better if one of them was the alternative to Bernie Sanders. They've never been willing to coalesce around one alternative. But it's interesting to me that it took so long for the other candidates to think that Bernie Sanders was their obstacle rather than each other. And Juana, Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Senator and fellow progressive, she even drew distinctions with Sanders. Bernie and I both want to see universal health care, but Bernie's plan doesn't explain how to get there,

doesn't show how we're going to get enough allies into it, and doesn't show enough about how we're going to pay for it. I dug in, I did the work, and then Bernie's team trashed me for it. We haven't heard something quite like this from Senator Elizabeth Warren before. It was clear even in this debate that she is intent on keeping up the fight with Mike Bloomberg. But at the same time, as Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders continues to rise, he's someone that's her friend. They share a lot of policy ideals. She has to contend with the fact that he is urgently rising. And if he continues to rack up delegates, he could soon have an insurmountable lead that would then deny her the nomination. She painted herself as the more accomplished progressive in this race.

You know, so much of this Democratic primary has been about this amorphous idea of electability. And one attack that candidates, including Pete Buttigieg, brought against Bernie Sanders was the idea that he is not electable. I am not looking forward to a scenario where it comes down to Donald Trump with his nostalgia for the social order of the 1950s and Bernie Sanders with a nostalgia for the revolutionary politics of the 1960s. This is not about what coups were happening in the 1970s or 80s. This is about the future. This is about 2020. We are not going to survive or succeed,

and we're certainly not going to win by reliving the Cold War. This was a nod to something that Senator Sanders said in an interview with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes, where he was asked about Cuba, and although he condemned much of the Castro regime, he did suggest that there were good literacy programs. This is something that Bernie Sanders has been saying for more than 30 years. And what's interesting to me is that he has doubled down on it in recent days. He said it to Anderson Cooper. He said it both on 60 Minutes and in a CNN town hall. And those comments have gotten howls of protest from Democrats who have

to run in congressional districts in Florida, for instance, where saying anything good about Fidel Castro is a disqualifying act. And what Pete Buttigieg tried to hammer home in a lot of attacks on Sanders. He said, you know, that kind of rhetoric, quote, adds up to four more years of Donald Trump and Kevin McCarthy. We have a House and Senate to worry about. Democrats are running away from your platform as fast as they can. Yeah, and this is a pattern that we've heard from Pete Buttigieg all along this week as he's been in South Carolina. He has started talking about just how risky it would be for the party writ large up and down the ballot to nominate Bernie Sanders and talking about the fact that his politics aren't representative of a lot of people in this country. It's a message I think we're going to hear him continue to make across the state as he

is looking for momentum. He also frequently points out he's the only person to have bested Bernie Sanders in any contest so far. Obviously, those results in Iowa were a little muddled, but that's the point he's making about his own electability as well. And Sanders' defense on all this was essentially like, who cares? I have condemned authoritarianism, whether it is the people in Saudi Arabia that the United States government has loved for years. Cuba, Nicaragua, authoritarianism of any stripe is bad. But that is different than saying that governments occasionally do things that are good. This is something that Bernie Sanders has been saying over and over again

throughout his entire career. He is very consistent. That's part of his brand. That's one of the reasons that he's popular. But other Democrats feel that this would be a drag on their own reelection if they're identified with him at the top of the ticket. So last debate, Michael Bloomberg, former New York mayor, was at the center of most of the attacks. He was back on the debate stage tonight. He made a very weird, I think it was a joke, where he wondered why it is that they all decided to show up again after his amazing debate performance last time. How did he do this time? He did better. There's no doubt about that. He was in such a deep hole because he was perceived to have stumbled so badly in the first debate. There's no doubt he did better. He defended

himself. He tried to introduce pieces of his biography and his record in New York City. The question I have is, was his performance in South Carolina enough to make up for the damage he did to himself in Nevada? While he may have done better, one of the things I find that's interesting is, despite the fact that Bernie Sanders is certainly now the frontrunner in this race, all of the other candidates on stage continue to batter Mike Bloomberg for his extreme wealth, his record on policing, his behavior toward women. It is clear that a number of these candidates on stage, Elizabeth Warren in particular is one of them, see his very candidacy and the fact that he has entered this race and the way in which he's entered it,

kind of going past the four early states and parachuting into Super Tuesday, they see it as an affront to their own candidacies. And they made that really clear this evening. But, you know, it's still true that as long as Bloomberg, Buttigieg, Warren, Klobuchar and Biden stay in this race, none of them are going to be the nominee. I mean, that's just a fact. As long as the alternative to Bernie Sanders is split three, four or five ways, Sanders has a clear path. At one point in the debate, Elizabeth Warren came after Bloomberg and said that he had funded Republican candidates for the Senate, including a Republican candidate who ran against her for the Senate. And then later, at a later point in the debate, Bloomberg piped in and sort of defended himself and was also talking about the majority makers, the more moderate House members that were elected in 2018.

Of course, he used a share of his significant wealth to help get some of those candidates elected. But the way he talked about it is in the category of maybe a Freudian slip. All of the new Democrats that came in and put Nancy Pelosi in charge and gave the Congress the ability to control this president, I got them. That was a slip of the tongue. We don't know was he's going to say I bought them. He certainly invested in them. And a lot of those people who flipped red districts to blue got a lot of support from Mike Bloomberg. But you're going to see that clip played again and again. Yeah, there's still a lot of awkwardness among this field of candidates and among Democrats who are trying to decide who

they want to be their party's nominee about Mike Bloomberg's money. And whether this was intentional or not, it was certainly some additional transparency about how he spent his money to help those in the party in these down ballot races. All right, we are going to take a quick break. And when we get back, what this debate might mean for the voting that's going to happen on Saturday. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Google. From Connecticut to California, from Mississippi to Minnesota, millions of American businesses are using Google tools to grow online. The Grow with Google initiative supports small businesses

by providing free digital skills workshops and one-on-one coaching in all 50 states, helping businesses get online, connect with new customers, and work more productively. Learn more at google.com slash grow. You might know Nick Kroll from his very raunchy animated show on Netflix, Big Mouth.

Are you the puberty fairy? The puberty fairy? I'm the hormone monster. I'm not a fairy. Well, now he's starring as a romantic lead in a movie set at the Olympics. Actor and comedian Nick Kroll, next time on It's Been a Minute from NPR. And we're back. And Vice President Joe Biden

was asked the kind of question that I don't think any candidate really wants to be asked, which is, you've bet a lot on getting support from black voters here in South Carolina. Are you going to actually be able to win them? I intend to win South Carolina and I will win the African-American vote here in South Carolina. Mr. Biden, will you continue if you do not win South Carolina? You have said that South Carolina will determine the outcome of this presidential race. If you don't win South Carolina, will you continue? I will win South Carolina will determine the outcome of this presidential race. If you don't win South Carolina, will you continue in this race? I will win South Carolina. This was probably Biden's best debate. You know, he has really hurt himself by turning in one

lackluster performance after another, not just on the debate stage, but also on the campaign trail. But I thought he was, you know, pretty energetic and looked like he was firing on all cylinders in a way he hasn't been in other debates. One thing we heard, though, is a clear recognition from former Vice President Biden that other candidates are making inroads here. I heard that in particular when he actually stepped out and took on Tom Steyer, saying that he'd invested in private prisons that hogtied young men. Those are the former vice president's words. Tom Steyer, as someone who has been rising here in the polls, has spent a lot of time and a lot of money here.

And it's hard to overstate just how important of a state this is for Joe Biden and the electability case that he has been making for why he should lead this party. Well, and Tom Steyer, as you say, is a candidate who also has bet a lot on winning over black voters in South Carolina, has spent a lot of money and invested a lot of time in that. And that's supposed to be Joe Biden's lane. It absolutely is. But it's not just Tom Steyer that's eating into his margins with black voters here, to be clear. This is a state, keep in mind, that in 2016, Bernie Sanders got trounced by Hillary Clinton. And he's shown an ability to improve his standing with black voters here as he's picked up victories in other states. And he's in second now behind Joe

Biden. And some polls show it's a tight race between those two. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won something like 70 percent of the vote. Former Vice President Biden is not going to win with that kind of margin. Obviously, it's a more crowded field, but like, it's not even going to be close to that. Yeah, but Wanda makes a really important point. Steyer has nowhere to go. He can't really help himself. He can only damage Joe Biden. And for people who are puzzled, why would Joe Biden turn his attention to Tom Steyer in this debate? That is why. Steyer isn't really a competitor, but he is a real problem for Biden. So we're kind of dancing around something

that was an undercurrent of this whole debate. South Carolina is a state where a large share of the Democratic electorate is African-American. This is the first state that will vote in this primary season that is demographically like South Carolina. And because they were playing to the home state crowd, the candidates in a lot of ways talked about race even when they weren't talking about race explicitly. Yeah, that's right.

We heard a really nuanced discussion between a number of the candidates about the issue of redlining a discriminatory housing process that disproportionately affected black and brown folks across the country, but especially in places like South Carolina and other southern states. We heard talks about economic justice and reparations, issues that you don't often hear about in debates. A lot of these debates held in states where, frankly, there aren't a lot of black and brown folks. So there is a key competition here for the black vote, for voters of color, because it's not just South Carolina. When we look ahead to Super Tuesday, we are heading into a more diverse phase of the race where all of these candidates need to show an ability to pick up support of nonwhite voters. Well, there are going to be several southern states voting in Super Tuesday that look more like South Carolina than Iowa. Yes, there's no doubt.

Once we get into Super Tuesday, we're into states with much higher proportions of African-American voters, much more diverse electorates than the first couple of states. So is there a chance that tonight was the last night that we see some of these candidates on the debate stage? The next Democratic debate isn't until March 15th. That's well after Super Tuesday. I think so. I don't know what the criteria is for the next debate, but after Super Tuesday, they're just going to be candidates that don't have the funds to go forward. There's a question of funding, and there's also a question of momentum.

Depending on what happens here in South Carolina and what happens in Super Tuesday, given the victories that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has already had, there is a chance that the sheer numbers just become difficult for other candidates if they don't start to win in some of these states and amass the delegates they need to keep going. And the more candidates that stay in and get under 15% means the more that Bernie Sanders is going to get a disproportionate number of delegates from that state. That's the weird Democratic delegate math. It can be some very confusing math, but you do need 15% in most of these. Right.

And the thing that will help Bernie Sanders the most is if a lot of candidates stay in and don't cross the 15% threshold. Because then, even though he might, for instance, get 30% of the vote in a state, he could end up with three fifths of the delegates. So guys, I would like to end tonight's podcast the way they ended the debate. So can you please tell me the greatest misconception about you and your personal motto? Juana? Wait, really? That's the best answer. Yeah, are you serious?

Okay, yeah, we don't actually have to do that. But the candidates really did have to do that on stage tonight. Yeah, they really did. I mean, this was a real moment, an invitation for humble bragging, you know, tell us your greatest fault. I care too much. Well, that is a wrap for today. We will be back in your feeds at the regular time tomorrow. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Juana Summers. I cover the campaign. I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the

NPR Politics Podcast.