The NPR Politics Podcast - Candidates Jockey For Position As Sanders Alternative Ahead of Tuesday Debate

Episode Date: February 24, 2020

Moderate presidential hopefuls face a collective action problem—each wants to see voters rally behind one alternative to Bernie Sanders, but (so far) none are willing to quit the race in order to make it happen.And while Joe Biden was once the uncontested front-runner in South Carolina, lavish spending by Tom Steyer and an uptick in attention from the Sanders campaign means that Biden's chances aren't what they once were. This episode: congressional correspondent Susan Davis, senior political editor-correspondents Domenico Montanaro and Ron Elving.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Jock, and I'm in Cebu City, Philippines with my daughter, Jillian, and my son, Frankie, and we're attending the Sonoloc Festival. This podcast was recorded at 2.36pm on Monday, February 24th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Okay, here's the show! That sounds like a lot more fun than being here. I don't know if I was at that festival, I'd be recording a timestamp for us. Do you think that was really two kids or just one kid changing his voice?

Or were they even there at all? Or was the guy just doing both of his kids' voices? I think it's proof that it's never too soon to start listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. Well, I'll sign up for that. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Domenico Mont. Hey there, it's the NPR politics podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And I'm Ron Elving,

editor correspondent. And we are not even one week removed from the last debate and it's time to prepare for another one. Democrats will meet on the stage tomorrow night in South Carolina. There will be seven candidates this time. One more from the last debate. Tom Steyer has requalified for that debate. Yep. It's deja vu all over again. Qualified by virtue of his showing in one poll in South Carolina. But that's all it takes. Gets you on the stage. Because there he is. Yeah. So going into this debate, I think it's fair to say coming out of Nevada that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is the front runner and has all the momentum going into South Carolina.

I know a lot of people keep saying to me, how can you say that? How can you say Bernie Sanders, the front runner or the man to beat? Only three states have gone. Here's the thing. Bernie Sanders expanded his coalition in Nevada in a way that I think a lot of us were surprised by. He'd been winning a quarter of the vote in the first two states in Iowa and New Hampshire. And then he wound up winning men, women, people with college degrees, people without college degrees. He finished second with African-American voters, a very close second to Joe Biden, and even finished second with moderates. And by the way, won Latinos overwhelmingly. And I think that's a real key here. To me, the big question going into this debate is do more Democrats on the stage take aim at Sanders

to try to dent that frontrunner status? That would be the time. That would be the time to do it. At this juncture, after Nevada, it's clear there's nobody in his league. So this is a moment when the other candidates have to realize either they stop Bernie in South Carolina or this race is largely over. He could come out of Super Tuesday with hundreds and hundreds of delegates margin over anyone else. And that will be impossible for any of them to catch. And that means the most is on the line for Joe Biden. I mean, the former vice president has been saying that he can do well with voters of color. Well, he had also been saying he could do well

with white working class voters. That didn't go so well, especially in New Hampshire. If you think about it, Manchester certainly looks a lot like Scranton, Pennsylvania. Didn't work out for Joe Biden. He didn't do well with Latinos, got walloped like the rest of the field in Nevada. African-Americans, he won. And that's going to be key going into South Carolina, because in 2016, 61 percent of the Democrats who went out to vote in that primary were black. And Joe Biden needs to keep them on board. He's

retained a degree of support with them. But we also have to talk about Tom Steyer because he has spent more than $21 million on ads and he is specifically targeting the black community. We'll talk more about Steyer, but I also want to talk about former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, not on the ballot in South Carolina, but will be on the debate stage. And after last week's debate, not exactly an A-plus performance up there. Of course, it was a terrible performance by Mike Bloomberg. It didn't seem as though he wanted to be there, didn't seem as though he had prepared. And all the other candidates came after him. And when you stop and think about it, they were really taking their eye off the ball by doing so, because Mike Bloomberg was not the big threat to them. Certainly, he wasn't in Nevada. They should have been more concerned about Bernie Sanders. But instead,

it seemed as though they were all angry at the fact that he had made it to this stage largely just by spending $400 million or more on ads. And they didn't feel he had a right to be there. And they all wanted to get points with their own basis back home by going after Mike Bloomberg. That was not the strategic move as we saw on Saturday night. Well, I mean, that depends on if you're somebody who's not okay with Bernie Sanders being the nominee, or if you're trying to, you know, need to take down Bloomberg because you're trying to push yourself into the nomination. I mean, Elizabeth Warren certainly went after Bloomberg and did well with progressives. They thought she had a good debate. She's trying

to use that as a way to sort of propel herself into the conversation. It didn't work out great in Nevada because so many people voted early. We saw three quarters of the vote actually happened early in Nevada. And if you look at the entrance polling, she did pretty well with people who said they decided in the last few days, but that was too little too late. So I expect tomorrow night she is going to be quite forceful in probably going after Bloomberg and probably going after most of the rest of the field, except for maybe Sanders, because I think Warren and Sanders have had this non-aggression pact and they're OK with one or the other being the nominee. I was on a phone call today with the Bloomberg campaign and they talked a bit about their debate strategy. And they seem to echo a point that former Mayor Pete Buttigieg made following the Nevada caucus results, saying that it's a mistake if Democrats don't start taking fire at Bernie Sanders because they believe not only will he lose to Donald Trump. They're saying that explicitly, but that he could hurt Democrats all the way down the ballot.

And he said, you know, this idea that the moderates keep attacking each other at these debates is wasted oxygen. This is the problem with the whole way that these primary and caucus systems are designed. And we saw it four years ago in the Republican Party. Everybody wanted Donald Trump's voters. And so they didn't want to go after Trump too hard because they wanted his voters after he supposedly dropped out inevitably. Well, he never did. And they never went after him and they never coordinated their attacks on him. And instead, they attacked each other, tore each other down. And Donald Trump emerged. He was not the consensus nominee at the beginning of that process. Neither was Bernie Sanders. But in this case, we're seeing a mirror image really on the part

of the Democrats in making the same moves with respect to Bernie Sanders. Each of these people wants to be the nominee. They want to be president and they can't coordinate between themselves. You know, the House may very well be the biggest risk when it comes to Bernie Sanders, each of these people wants to be the nominee. They want to be president, and they can't coordinate between themselves. You know, the House may very well be the biggest risk when it comes to Bernie Sanders, because you can see a world in which, you know, a left-wing populist with a strong base winds up beating a right-wing nativist, populist, nationalist in a general election. We've seen it happen in Europe. If basically you run anything that has a D or an R next to it, they're going to get 45 to 47 percent of the vote. You could see that world in which he winds up doing well in a national election. The problem in the House is that

they've been so gerrymandered to be center right districts that even though the Alexandria Ocasio Cortez's of the world got all the attention after 2018, it were those 40 plus moderates who are the ones who gave Democrats the House majority. But here's my question. So we know that some elements of the Democratic Party are starting to freak out a little bit more and more about Bernie being the nominee. Let's say tomorrow night, everybody trains their sights on Bernie Sanders. Is it too little too late? You know, look, again, only 4% of the delegates have been allocated. And remember, every single time a candidate in this competition has gotten a degree of hot scrutiny, they've wound up coming down.

You know, you saw that with Elizabeth Warren. You saw that with Pete Buttigieg. Every candidate so far it's happened to. Now, is Bernie Sanders more like Donald Trump and all of those slings and arrows come at him and he's like Teflon and it all rolls off? We're about to find out because everything that these candidates have, you're going to start to see. And I've seen more and more on social media, more of a Bernie backlash than I have seen previously. Okay. Well, we need to take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll talk more about

the South Carolina Democratic primary. 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. What's good, y'all? As you know, February is Black History Month. And all throughout that month, NPR's Code Switch is going to be running a special series about the history of Black resistance. Because as long as Black folks have

been oppressed in this country, which is, you know, forever, we've also been fighting back. Listen and subscribe. stake in South Carolina than Joe Biden? Absolutely fair to say. He needs, first of all, to get endorsements lined up here from the last few people that he hasn't nailed down in the black community. That would be James Clyburn, first and foremost. He's a third-ranking Democrat in the House. He is the highest-ranking African-American in either the House or the Senate. And he is someone who has legendary status in South Carolina and could help Joe Biden a lot, solidify his situation. He may wait until after the debate. He may do something sooner. But if he endorses Joe Biden,

Joe Biden has life. If he wins in South Carolina, Joe Biden has life. But he needs to get a W. If he doesn't, he's going to go into Super Tuesday looking like the guy who got clobbered in every event in February. I had one person who's close to Jim Clyburn say to me earlier today that Clyburn thinks, quote, firmly that Bernie Sanders can't win and would hurt our chances to hold the House and win the Senate. Now, if that's the case, and he sees Joe Biden as the second to last best hope behind maybe Mike Bloomberg to beat Bernie Sanders in this nominating process, he needs to give him a boost here because otherwise someone like Tom Steyer really could gut Biden and wind up seeing his numbers collapse. And there is a way in which you could see Bernie Sanders pulling off a victory with not that high of a vote margin in South

Carolina. I'm glad you brought up Tom Steyer because he's another candidate who has sort of bet it all on South Carolina. Yes. And he's bet it all on getting votes out of the black community. He's gone into that group and said, I'm really your guy. Forget about your longtime relationship with Joe Biden. There's no natural candidate for you in this field. And if you stop and think about it, I'm really the guy. And if you put out all these ads, much like Mike Bloomberg has done, you can get a certain amount of attention. You can get people talking about your name. And Tom Steyer has some assets and he can be a strong performer in debates. We'll see him on the stage in Charleston on Tuesday night, and he'll have a chance to close that sale. If he

gets enough of the black vote away from Joe Biden, that's probably the death knell for Joe Biden. So this entire field seems at this point, at least among the survivors to have been constructed to dismantle the advantages that Joe Biden once had. And cracks in his firewall in South Carolina have led to the point where now you're wondering if the wall crumbles entirely. And we're going to get another data point on black voters, a really important big data point on African-American voters here, because if Joe Biden is able to win them overwhelmingly, that can tell you he might have a lot of strength on Super Tuesday because half the states have significant black populations on Super

Tuesday. And it's only a few days later. If, though, he and Bernie Sanders split the black vote, well, that certainly tells you that Sanders is probably going to do at least as well as Joe Biden on Super Tuesday with black voters in some of those states. And given what Bernie Sanders was able to do to run up the margin with Latinos, if he can replicate that on Super Tuesday in places like California and Texas, no candidate may be able to catch him. We're talking now about the power of black voters, which is something we have said from the beginning, because women and minorities make up a huge factor of the Democratic primary voter. Right. But then what about the candidates seized like Buttigieg, like Warren, like Klobuchar, who haven't yet proven that they have that appeal? If they don't do well in South

Carolina, where do they go? Those candidates go going into Super Tuesday. The question is, why are you still running? The question has been, why are you still running for other candidates? And they have said there really isn't a reason. And they've dropped out one after another. Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, lots of people we thought would be around for a while. For the candidates who are still in it, after South Carolina, if you're not running just to, in some sense or another, torpedo Joe Biden, then why are you running? Because you are not going to be accomplishing your own nomination for president. And perhaps they're trying to show enough strength to get the vice presidential nomination. We've seen people stick for a long time in order to eventually leverage their way

to that nomination. But generally speaking, that's not why people run for president. These people still somehow think that it's going to happen for them, if not now, then down the road somewhere. They still want to stick and be president someday. One thing it seems important to note, too, coming out of South Carolina, I wonder how much momentum you get considering the calendar. Just three days later is the Super Tuesday contest. So even if Biden wins big, how much does that help him considering the short turnaround? It's the last piece of information. The last piece of information as people go to vote is an important piece of information. It might not matter more than anything else, but it is going to matter. And people take that in with them. If the news is bad

for a candidate who's had a lot of bad news, then it's devastating. If, on the other hand, you've had a lot of bad news and you get maybe one good showing, like in South Carolina, there's still hope for that person. And maybe he can come out of the 14-state voterama on March the 3rd and be viable again, at least get on to the next and on to the next and be the new story. It would help Joe Biden enormously or would help any of the candidates enormously to suddenly look like a survivor who took the punch from Sanders and came back. Look, we had been saying Joe Biden has to win big in South Carolina. Now it's gotten to the point where he just has to win. His campaign told me earlier today that a win is a win,

and that if they win in South Carolina, what is the rationale for Pete Buttigieg? What is the rationale for Amy Klobuchar? They're essentially urging them, get out of the race because we have the right to the alternative to Bernie Sanders. And that's how everyone's looking at it now. It's Bernie Sanders versus someone else who comes out of that side of the bracket. All right, that's a wrap for today, but we'll be back in your feeds late tomorrow night after the debate. Until then, head to npr.org slash politics newsletter to subscribe to a weekly roundup of our best political online analysis. It'll show up in your inbox every Saturday to let you know what happened that week and what it all means. I'm Susan Davis. I cover

Congress. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent, and I usually write that newsletter. And I'm Ron Helving, editor correspondent, and I surely read it. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. do we play in other people's movies? It was a really sort of palpable fear that they were going to reject me or worse. The unseen pressures we place on other people this week on Hidden Brain from NPR.