The NPR Politics Podcast - Bernie Sanders Suspends Presidential Campaign

Episode Date: April 8, 2020

In a livestream announcing his exit from the presidential contest, Bernie Sanders told support that while there was no viable path forward for his campaign, the progressive movement was as strong as ever. Sanders' decision comes weeks after the coronavirus pandemic upended the Democratic race. This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and campaign correspondents Scott Detrow and Asma Khalid.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there. Before we start the show, I need to ask a favor. It's a tough time for a lot of people right now, and NPR is here every day with the news, whenever you're ready to hear it. In fact, some of our stations have even canceled their fundraising drives to make sure you can get the latest news you need to keep safe and informed. But those fundraising drives are the main source of money for many stations, and I was hoping that our listeners might be able to help them fill the gap. Helping local stations helps us make the NPR Politics podcast. So if you're able, please head to donate.npr.org slash politics to give what you can. Thanks. Hi, this is Rachel from Minneapolis, Minnesota. I've been working from home for the past three

weeks and decided that now is the perfect time to foster a dog. Well, I just finished signing the paperwork on my first foster failure and third dog, Moose. This podcast was recorded at 2.16 p.m. on Wednesday, the 8th of April. Things might have changed by the time you hear this, but I'll still be a total foster failure and that crazy dog lady. Okay, here's the show. So just to clarify, that is a very good thing. That means she is not fostering the dog. She is keeping the pooch, but she didn't say what kind of dog it is, which is always the most important question. But if she has three dogs, that's a lot of hair. Oh, yeah. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith.

I cover the White House. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover politics. And I'm Asma Khalid. I'm covering the presidential campaign. And for one last time on this podcast, we are saying bye-bye-bye to a Democratic candidate for president. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has ended his campaign. I wish I could give you

better news, but I think you know the truth. And that is that we are now some 300 delegates behind Vice President Biden and the path toward victory is virtually impossible. Scott, you spent much of the past year covering Senator Sanders, actually more than a year. So why is this the moment for him to leave the race? Well, I mean, I don't think there's one specific thing about this particular moment, but ever since he lost that string of races in March, it's been pretty clear that there was next to an impossible path for Bernie Sanders to become the Democratic presidential nominee. And that only became even more of the case when so many states moved their primaries back. And this primary was totally upended by coronavirus. And the current political

and economic and health world is a big reason why Sanders says he is ending things right now. He spoke at one point specifically to his supporters who wanted him to stay in the race. I know that there may be some in our movement who disagree with this decision, who would like us to fight on to the last ballot cast at the Democratic Convention. I understand that position. But as I see the crisis gripping the nation, exacerbated by a president unwilling or unable to provide any kind of credible leadership, and the work that needs to be done to protect people in this most desperate hour, I cannot in good conscience continue to mount a campaign that cannot win. I was so struck by his sort of honest assessment there of how much the pandemic has affected his own assessment, right, of staying in the race. Because I know you can always kind of dive into hypotheticals, but I have been wondering if we weren't in this situation where so many primaries have been now delayed till June, would Bernie Sanders' own estimation of what to do in this moment have been different?

Yeah, I mean, I think the same dynamic would have been there no matter what reality we were living in right in this moment. And that is that Bernie Sanders won basically three of the first four contests, that tie, that unclear tie in Iowa among them. But as soon as the race consolidated down, as soon as a lot of the other more moderate candidates dropped out of the race, it was very clear that Bernie Sanders just was not going to grow his support past that 30% or so of Democratic primary voters, and that if anything, he was getting less support than he did four years ago. And I don't think any situation would have changed that. It really is incredible. Like, for a long time, he was one of the frontrunners, then he was the frontrunner. And then in moments, it all slipped out from underneath him after Joe Biden won South Carolina. Yeah. And I think in particular, that one day that started on the West Coast and Bernie Sanders and the reporters following him slowly made their way east across the country. And it seemed like every time the plane landed, another candidate had dropped out of the race

and endorsed Joe Biden. And he just never recovered for that. And that was a conscientious choice that they made to consolidate the support behind one single alternative to Sanders, in what I would argue was a quest to stop Sanders from becoming the nominee. I mean, had this race become and continued on as splintered as it was, you could have made the case that it would have been a very different race. But the fact that we saw Buttigieg, Klobuchar, you know, one after the other candidate just come out and say, I'm going to stand behind Joe Biden was unlike anything I'd seen in a previous election cycle. But let's stop and pause and reflect on Sanders' impact here, because this in a lot of ways, I mean, was a race that was fought on Sanders' turf, talking about issues that Bernie Sanders cared about that were totally fringe ideas in 2016. And in 2020, they were on the debate stage every single time and not dismissed.

I don't know if they were fringe, but they were certainly not ideas that Democratic establishment leaders fully embraced or made a big part of their campaigns. And that changed over the last four or five years. That's something Sanders talked about today. And I think even healthcare, right, even people like Joe Biden, who were not running on Medicare for all who were arguing against Medicare for all, we're still framing the basic of their healthcare conversation around things that Bernie Sanders pushed for, right? Like Pete Buttigieg talking about Medicare for all who want it. And Joe Biden's platform, whether it's on health care or climate change or a whole bunch of other issues, is still far to the left of any other past Democratic nominee. And I think that has a

big part to do with the movement that Bernie Sanders has led over the last few years. Before we go to the break, Scott, I want to go back to the interview that you did with Sanders over the summer. It was part of our series where we were interviewing the presidential candidates. You sat down with him, and it was this unique thing where it was just you and Bernie Sanders. His aides left the room. I can't imagine another interview with a candidate where they weren't just surrounded by aides. And I think that says something about how central Sanders was to the Sanders campaign. Yeah, I think that I mean, certainly this was a professional campaign. It was a large campaign staff. They did a lot of innovative things, including really rewriting the entire rules of how you

raise money and organize online more than anybody else since the internet became a central part of presidential politics. But it was a campaign that revolved around the candidate and that trusted the candidate and was confident in what the candidate was running for. Like nobody was trying to get the best political spin or framing on Bernie Sanders saying, yeah, of course, you're going to pay more taxes under my health care plan, right? They're just like, that's what we're running on. That's our message. That's our movement. Certainly, that might be part of a reason why he was never able to expand to a majority of the Democratic Party. But they just trusted in their candidate. And I'll just never forget the aide saying, OK, have a good interview and

closing the door. And then it was just our producer and editor and Bernie Sanders and me sitting there, and we were like, oh, okay, I guess nobody's going to end this interview or handle you. It's just us talking. That said a lot. Bernie Sanders is pretty good at ending interviews on his own. That is true, and he also had thoughts on how we were recording him that day. Oh, NPL is going to drive me completely crazy. But you're getting what you want.

The mic's further away. All right. Highlight. A total highlight. All right. Well, we are going to take a quick break. And when we get back, we're going to talk about what Sanders' exit means for the race going forward. In Cherokee Nation, a feud has been simmering for more than 180 years. I always joke

that the Ridges and the Rosses were like the Montagues and the Capulets. We've been fighting for so long that people don't really know why. But in Cherokee, we know why. That's next week on Code Switch from NPR. And we're back. And let's start with the primary. Former Vice President Joe Biden is now the presumptive nominee. Oh, it's my favorite awkward phrase. We're going to call him the presumptive nominee until the Democratic Convention makes it official, which we don't even know when that'll be. And if it's going to happen, when, where? Exactly. Oh, we know where it's going to happen. Oh, it'll be like a super huge, awkward Zoom call. But Sanders himself also had his eye on on this convention. And there was part of his speech where he was talking about

leaving the race, where he he explained that he wanted to continue to rack up as many delegates as possible. I will stay on the ballot in all remaining states and continue to gather delegates. While Vice President Biden will be the nominee, we must continue working to assemble as many delegates as possible at the Democratic Convention, where we will be able to exert significant influence over the party platform and other functions. I was just so struck by the fact that Sanders explicitly told his supporters today that he's going to remain on the ballot and that, you know, they want to accrue delegates to have this pressure exerted later on on the Democratic Party because, you know, we've seen so many other candidates drop out of this race. And those are

words I've not heard any other candidates say, that they're going to specifically try to push the party in this way. I mean, we've seen most of them, in fact, come out and endorse Joe Biden. And that's something we didn't see from Bernie Sanders. He did not explicitly say, I am endorsing Joe Biden. Though by all accounts, he is, you know, going to support him. But it was the bigger issue to me of like, I don't understand explicitly what he is trying to achieve, because this race feels really different than 2016. It's not like he and Hillary Clinton are battling this out to the convention. This is months before the Democratic convention that he's officially conceding. I mean, I think that he thinks that supporting Joe Biden, working to help elect Joe Biden and saying the party needs to move to the left more

and make changes really go hand in hand. I don't think he sees a contradiction in any of them. And I think he probably thinks that you get a little bit more clout being the runner up as opposed to somebody who dropped out in January or February. But yeah, still, it's a presumptuous move, I guess you could put it that way. But it's also, again, going back to the idea that Bernie Sanders sees what he's doing as more of a movement than a political campaign for president in any given cycle. Well, so this gets to my other question, all this talk about 2016. I mean, 2016, that race was very toxic all the way up to and through the convention.

And, you know, you had Sanders supporters turning their backs on Hillary Clinton, even though Sanders had endorsed her and ultimately campaigned for her extensively. What makes this time any different? Will this be any different? Or will there be Sanders supporters who are like ride or die, and there's no way they could support an establishment person like Joe Biden? Well, I think there's two major attributes of this race that make it fundamentally different than 2016. One is that Donald Trump has actually been in office. And so a number of Democrats, whether or not they like Joe Biden, have seen his policies in action. And there is a desire, I've already begun to see this from some folks on the more left side of the party, to unite and defeat Donald Trump. And then the other big factor to me that's different is Joe

Biden and Bernie Sanders' relationship. It is not the same relationship that we saw between Clinton and Sanders. The two are, by all accounts, friendly. Joe Biden had said that he alerted Bernie Sanders a little while back to the fact that he was beginning his vice presidential search. He didn't want that to look overly presumptuous, and he wanted to inform Sanders that he was making that decision. You know, even today, he had these really kind words to say about Bernie Sanders and how he has moved the Democratic Party and his movement. He said, you know, that he wants Sanders to know that he hears him, that he will be reaching out to him. Now, of course, the question is whether that will actually filter down to diehard supporters of Bernie Sanders.

I mean, I'll say one of the key questions that Asma and I asked almost every voter we encountered for more than a year going to all these rallies is, you know, will you support the nominee no matter what? And with Sanders people, I would often ask, what would you do if Joe Biden was the nominee? I asked that with a lot of different campaigns, and there was always significantly more Sanders supporters than any other candidate supporters who would pause and say, I just don't know what I would do at that point. Often, that's not the most representative sample size, because the people at a rally an hour early are the most diehard of diehard. But I think it's a big question. And

it's going to be on Bernie Sanders to make the case for why people like that should support Joe Biden. I think it's also going to be something that Joe Biden has to do to make the case to the younger, more excited progressive base of his party that he represents them, and you've seen him trying to do that. Osmond was talking about the statement today. You've seen it in recent speeches. I think the vice presidential nominee will be a big part of that, but of course you have so many other considerations now as well. Do you need to make an explicit push to the left as much as you did before America was in this total crisis setting of dealing with coronavirus and nothing else? I don't know. You know, we know, I know, and speaking to the Biden campaign, that they are aware that they need to make improvements with those young voters. I think the complicating

thing is that they've got a list of demands that they want. And these are policy issues. And they're not really all in sync with where Joe Biden is on some of these policy issues, whether it's immigration reform, or, you know, health care. And so where they can find agreement is what we're going to see play out in the coming months, and if they can find any agreement. All right, well, we will keep our eye on that. But we're going to leave it there for now. There's a lot more news surrounding the coronavirus today, as with every day. So if you're looking for an update,

we hope you will check out NPR's Coronavirus Daily. It's a podcast that posts in the afternoon breaking down all the latest about the pandemic. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the campaign. And I'm Asma Khalid. I also about the pandemic. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the campaign. And I'm Asma Khalid. I also cover the campaign. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.