The NPR Politics Podcast - #DemsSoWhite? Kamala Harris' Exit Raises Hard Questions About Race And Power

Episode Date: December 5, 2019

The Democratic Party faces the prospect of a debate in two weeks with only white candidates onstage. Earlier, they had the most diverse presidential candidate field in history. This episode: political correspondent Scott Detrow, political correspondent Asma Khalid, and political reporter Juana Summers.Connect: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 Krista from Harvard Law School, class of 1994. I'm calling from Thailand, where I've been up all night watching the impeachment hearings, but I keep dozing off to sleep while listening to some of the congressmen drone on and on. This podcast was recorded at... It's 310 Eastern on Thursday, December 5th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'll never forget waking up to see my classmate Paul Taylor sitting in the Republican Council chair interviewing Professor Jonathan Turley. All right, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the campaign. I'm Asma Khalid. I also cover the campaign. And I'm

Juana Summers. I cover demographics and culture. Okay, so we're going to talk a lot about the campaign today. But first, noting it, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made it official today. The House of Representatives is going to move forward with articles of impeachment against President Trump. The president leaves us no choice but to act because he is trying to corrupt, once again, the election for his own benefit. So no big surprise there. A historic moment, nevertheless. We're looking at an impeachment of the president on the House floor for maybe just the third time in U.S. history in the coming weeks.

But, Juana, as all of this was happening, you were driving across Iowa, and as I hear, swerving out of the way of deer carcasses. I wouldn't maybe go that far, but it's been quite a busy morning. I am in Waterloo, Iowa, which is about two hours away from Des Moines. And there's a big candidate forum here on Friday and former Vice President Joe Biden is speaking here tonight. So not the biggest town in Iowa, but they're certainly getting their share of candidate attention over the next few days. But you started the day with New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, and he was talking about something that's gotten a lot of attention in the days since Kamala Harris dropped out of the race, and that is a field that started as the most diverse presidential primary field in campaign

history has gotten less and less diverse, and that there's a real chance that the debate in a couple weeks could be an all-white stage. Yeah, that's right. We heard Senator Cory Booker talk about that. I've been in Iowa with him, and he's spending the next four days here really barnstorming the state, reminding voters that it is the state that launched President Barack Obama on a path to win the nomination and then become the first Black president. But he is incredibly frustrated, and openly so, about the fact that his friend, fellow Senator Kamala Harris, is no longer in this race. It is a problem when an immensely qualified, widely supported, truly accomplished Black woman running to lead the party, a party that is significantly empowered by black women voters,

didn't have the resources that she needed to continue here to Iowa. What message is that sending that we heralded the most diverse field in our history? And now we're seeing people like her dropping out of this campaign, not because Iowa voters had the voice. Voters did not determine her destiny. So, Juana, what is Booker calling for here, other than obviously for more voters to support his campaign for president? So it's really interesting. There's clearly in his comments that he made during the speech in Des Moines

and then after when he spoke with a small group of reporters, he's frustrated about the fact that the next debate stage in all likelihood will be just white candidates. But what we didn't hear him do is call for the Democratic National Committee to make any changes to the rules. He just kept saying over and over again, if we are the party of inclusion, if we are a party that wants power to rest with the people instead of the millionaires and billionaires, then we shouldn't have a stage that's all white. He also seemed particularly frustrated that he believes folks like himself and Julian Castro, who he called out by name, have been putting in tons more work on the ground in these early primary states than some of the folks who are

running millions of dollars of campaign ads and who could possibly appear on the stage. He didn't say him by name necessarily, but it was clear that he's talking about Tom Steyer, the hedge fund investor, and Michael Bloomberg, who recently entered the race. Yeah. So Asma, I think there's two things to point out here. First of all, I mean, it is still, especially compared to history, a pretty diverse field of top tier candidates. You have Elizabeth Warren, a woman in the race, only one woman's been nominated by a major party, and that's obviously Hillary Clinton. And you've got Amy Klobuchar as well. Yeah. And you've got Pete Buttigieg, who's running to be the first openly gay president

of the United States. I think there's also kind of a premise here in this conversation that there's been a bit of pushback to. And you've reported on it that that black voters would would would support a black candidate and so on and so forth. Yeah. I mean, there's this assumption that's pretty faulty, which is that voters of color are choosing a candidate based on sharing the same race or ethnicity and that it doesn't actually pan out. You know, I've spoken to political scientists who say, you know, there's this assumption of racial solidarity. And part of the reason that's there is because we did see elements of racial solidarity with Barack Obama's historic candidacy in 2008. But this is a different time period. I mean, Barack Obama ran at times, you could say it's sort of like a deracialized race. This is a very different time because of Donald Trump in part, but also because young African-Americans want candidates to talk about race in a way that Obama just didn't have to as much in 2008.

And obviously, Iowa and New Hampshire are predominantly white states. And we're going to talk more about that in a little bit. But you can't get the nomination for the Democratic Party without having a massive support from voters of color. Asma, what trends have we seen among voters of color this year? So at this point, you know, there is an assumption what Cory Booker is saying when he says the voters haven't made a choice. The assumption that, you know, voters of color would choose a candidate of color. The tricky part of that equation is that it does not mesh with what we're seeing in current 2020 polling. We've seen that Black voters consistently seem to prefer former Vice President Joe Biden and Latino voters.

There's a mix. We see them favoring Joe Biden, but also seeming to favor Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. And I spoke with Neera Tanden, who's the president of the Center for American Progress, this liberal think tank about this. She pointed out, yeah, you know, voters of color are actually supporting the white, male, straight, older candidates. I think a lot of voters of color feel particularly targeted by Trump and feel that, you know, white candidates might be safer to take him on. And, you know, what she went on to say is that, you know, voters of color are anxious about the idea of enough white voters supporting a candidate of color against Donald Trump in a general election. I'm wondering what both of you make of the fact that Cory Booker had his best fundraising day, according to his campaign, of the race immediately after Harris drops out,

and that Julian Castro had his best day in months, also according to his campaign, because we haven't actually seen the fundraising numbers yet. What do you make of that? I mean, they both were certainly soliciting campaigns off of Kamala Harris's departure, warning voters, ringing alarm bells that this could be a race that ends up being a top tier of just all white candidates. And look, you know, Scott, we've reported on this before, but this is a Democratic primary electorate that is attuned to messages like that. You could say it's voter concern. Maybe it's voter guilt, whatever you want to call it. But these types of messages do play well to a Democratic primary elector. I mean, the question is, is it enough to say, hey, I'm going to choose to actually cast my ballot for Cory Booker over, say, a Pete Buttigieg or Joe Biden?

I don't know. But they're saying we want you to remain a part of this race. So I think that's right. I think that's why you heard Cory Booker in particular today focusing his message, the public message he gave on the fact that he believes that this party faces, the Democratic Party faces a really dire threat if the demographics of the candidates that are on stage and that are out there don't reflect its voters. He talked repeatedly about needing to bring back together the Obama coalition. And I guess the big question is whether he is the candidate that's able to do that. And that's something we've all been reporting on. Yeah. All right. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, more on the ground from Iowa.

An American, a Russian and a Ukrainian walk into a bar. No, this is not the impeachment hearings. It's a comedy competition in Ukraine. I'm Gregory Warner. The high stakes of comedy in a country led by a comedian. It's a social mission to unite the country. On Rough Translation from NPR. All right, we are back.

Juana, you have been talking to a lot of voters in Iowa. There's this boiled down perception that it's an entirely white set of caucus goers. That is obviously not entirely the case. And you're focusing your reporting on voters of color. What are they telling you? So I'm in Waterloo, Iowa, which is actually one of the most diverse parts of the state. Its mayor, Quentin Hart, told me yesterday that it's actually 17% black. And not only that, there are large immigrant communities and a large Latino community here as well. So much more diverse than a lot of the state. And the number one word that comes up with me when I'm talking to voters is the word viability. They are looking for a candidate that they believe is viable. I've talked to a lot of folks here, and they say that there are a lot of candidates who interest them.

A lot of folks putting in the work here. And they say that there are a lot of candidates who interest them. A lot of folks putting in the work here. This community has had more than 60 visits to date, according to the Des Moines Register by candidates. But they want someone that they think can win. Just want somebody who can beat Donald Trump. I mean, Asma, this has been the story from the first voter conversation to the latest voter conversation. It doesn't really seem to change at any point in this primary. No, it doesn't. And I mean, this does kind of factor into arguably maybe why we are seeing a top tier of candidates that's mostly white. I mean, this is a sort of controversial idea, but you do have some voters of color feeling that the more viable candidate, the safer, less risky option in this election cycle, because they see President Trump as somebody who maybe exploits race is potentially

a Joe Biden, who's just an older white male politician who's been around for a while. Which to me, like there are so many moments in politics where you think, wow, the past is so present here. I'm thinking there was a moment today where Joe Biden confronted a voter and it was almost word for word, very similar to a confrontation that he had 30 years ago when he was running for president. Right. So that's one thing. But there's also like such a short memory. And I'm just thinking about the fact that only one Democrat since FDR has won two national elections with more than 50 percent of the vote. And that was someone named Barack Hussein Obama, who seemed very electable. He won with huge margins.

But the climate was different, right? I mean, that's what I feel like a lot of the folks I'm talking to will say is that the climate is different in part because of President Trump, but in part just because there are young voters who don't care for the candidacy or the way of style of campaigning that Barack Obama had. So, I mean, I do think it's a really interesting hypothetical question of whether any candidate of color really could be the nominee in this cycle, regardless of who they were, just because the climate feels so different. Juana, you've been covering this all cycle, first for the AP and now for us. I mean, what sort of sense of how the ground has shifted do you get from voters? Well, I think it's shifted a lot. One of the things I explored fairly recently for NPR is this question of what Obama's legacy means now and whether or not a politician who campaigned

in the way that he did and with the type of rhetoric that he had could win in these politics. And I talked to Joel Payne, who's a Democratic strategist who worked for Hillary Clinton. The answer he gave me was probably not. The party has moved demonstrably left. There's certainly a Trump effect, but the politics have changed the things that voters and particularly young voters have changed. And he might not have been able to win in a 2020 climate in the same way that he did in 2008 and 2012. So viability, electability is this prevailing issue. But Asma, one of the ongoing conversations we've been having at our desk for months is that that is paired, especially among white liberal Democratic voters, that is paired with this tremendous sense of guilt.

Yeah. And the sense that they want candidates who are going to talk about race, structural racism, implicit bias. And when you look at all these metrics around discrimination and, you know, public opinion polling on is discrimination a factor that hurts African-Americans and whatnot, there's been a whole bunch of survey questions. You often see white liberals feeling that these factors are more severe, I should say, than African American or Hispanic voters. And to me, what is fascinating about this is you've got a situation where you have a top tier candidate field that is mostly white, but you have a white liberal base of this party who really wants these candidates to be talking about race and talking about implicit bias. I mean, maybe the question is they feel like a white candidate can be the best person to do that.

And then there's the other ongoing conversation within the Democratic Party. Is that activist conversation reflective of the rest of the country? And it seems like after months of veering in the direction of yes, it is, the party seems to be veering in the other direction and saying it's not representative. I don't know. I guess we'll find out when people start actually voting and caucusing for candidates. All right. That's a wrap for today. We'll be back tomorrow.

Until then, you can head to n.pr slash politics group to join our Facebook group. It is a place for you to connect with others who listen to the show, talk to us, ask questions about politics, post a lot of pictures of pets. It's a great group. Check it out. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the campaign. I'm Asma Khalid.

I also cover the campaign. And I'm Juana Summers. I cover demographics and culture. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.