The NPR Politics Podcast - How They'll Win: Candidates Outline Path To Nomination Ahead of Super Tuesday

Episode Date: March 2, 2020

Our reporters have been following the Democratic presidential candidates all across the country for months. Ahead of Super Tuesday, we check in with them to learn how each presidential hopeful thinks they will be able to secure the nomination. And, we say "bye, bye, bye" to two candidates who decided that they didn't see a path forward. This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, campaign correspondent Asma Khalid, campaign correspondent Scott Detrow, political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, congressional correspondent Susan Davis, and political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.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. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. It is Monday, March 2nd, Super Tuesday Eve. I want reverb. I really want reverb. Super Tuesday Eve. And it is a very big day. It is called Super for a reason, right, Domenico? Yeah, look, Super Tuesday is the biggest day of the primary for the Democratic nomination this year. We have 14 states that are going to go. 1,357 delegates up for grabs. That is more than a third of the total delegates at stake. And just to put that in perspective, so far, the leader in this race, Bernie Sanders, has something like 50 delegates. He needs 1,991 delegates to become the nominee. This is the first big day. And we're getting a lot of news leading up to that that may be clarifying, too.

Right. And what you're talking about here is that both Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, so the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor and the senator from Minnesota, both in the what you call it moderate lane of the race, both of them have announced that they are withdrawing from the race. Right. And Amy Klobuchar, the senator from Minnesota, is supposed to endorse Joe Biden, the former alternative to Bernie Sanders, who is clearly at this point the frontrunner, the Vermont senator, because of how well he's done in those three early states, how well he did with Hispanic voters in particular, and what that could mean for Super Tuesday. So having Buttigieg drop out and say he's firmly not in the Sanders lane,

and for Klobuchar to drop out and say she's going to endorse Biden. Now we're moving toward a lot of people getting behind Joe Biden, hoping that he can be the alternative to Sanders if you're not comfortable with Bernie Sanders as the Democratic nominee. Well, as we are saying bye bye bye to Klobuchar and Buttigieg, I just want to talk about what they meant to the race. Let's start with Klobuchar. She is someone who finished a surprising third in New Hampshire. She had a little bit of Klobmentum, but it didn't go very far. Yeah, I think the high point for her was that New Hampshire debate, the debate before the New Hampshire primary. She did finish that surprise third place. You could see her sort of momentum going in there. And she

really had a strong summative argument against Donald Trump in her closing message that really resonated with a lot of people. She was never able to capture the hearts and minds of voters of color in this race. And when the race moved toward Nevada and South Carolina, when you had Latinos and African-Americans as the focus, she wasn't able to win them over and continue to finish further behind some of the other candidates. And the other candidate who is out is Pete Buttigieg. And he is notable for a lot of reasons, but also because he is the first openly gay person to win a contest. He won in Iowa. Yeah. And it probably shouldn't be overlooked, you know, how groundbreaking that is for him. And in particular, if you think about

what he was able to accomplish in the fact that he came from essentially nowhere. I mean, people at the beginning of this race weren't even sure how to pronounce his name, so much so that when you went to his rallies, he had people on stage leading chants of boot edge edge to help people pronounce his name. He was the mayor of a small city in the Midwest, in Indiana, South Bend, Indiana, 100,000 people or so. For him to be able to accomplish what he did really speaks to his political talent. He's 38 years old, and it's very certain we're going to see a whole lot more of him in the years to come. All right, Domenico. So because this is a

very special day right before Super Tuesday, and we have colleagues who are out all over the country following these campaigns around, we're going to do something a little different with this pod. And we are calling out to our friends on the road. Okay, I hear the sounds of, what, a gymnasium in the background. Asma Khalid, are you there? I am. We're not in a gymnasium, but we are on a college campus here in Houston, Texas. And you are with the Biden campaign waiting for him to go on stage at a rally. Is that right?

That's right. He has two stops here in Texas today, in part because it's one of the most important states that's going to be voting on Super Tuesday tomorrow. So, Asma, how different does it feel, I mean, on the ground with the sort of momentum out of South Carolina? Do they really feel like they can use this to push forward in Super Tuesday? Definitively so. And the endorsements are coming in right and left. Our colleague Juana Summers confirmed that Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar is dropping out of the race.

She'll be endorsing Biden at a rally later today in Dallas, Texas. Tamara, I know you also confirmed that Harry Reid, former Senate Majority Leader, is endorsing him. I mean, there's just so much sort of, I guess, coalescing at this point around Biden as the most viable alternative to Bernie Sanders.

And for a while, we did not have a clear sense of whether the moderate lane was actually going to coalesce behind anybody. And if that would certainly happen ahead of Super Tuesday, when you've got more than, what, a third of all the delegates at stake. So I guess the question with all of the developments today, with Klobuchar out and Buttigieg out, does that support flow to Biden or does it not flow to Biden? I think that's the big question. I met a couple of young voters in their 20s yesterday at a Biden rally in Norfolk, Virginia. Their names are Hannah and Josh. By the way, they're podcast listeners,

so shout out to them if they're listening to this episode. But, you know, what I thought was interesting is they told me that they were both huge Pete Buttigieg fans. They were really disappointed that, you know, he was no longer going to be a part of this presidential process. But they ultimately are kind of torn on what way to go now. Most people I hear are Bernie or Biden. Bernie or Biden. It's definitely a Bernie or Biden. But I think a lot of people who are voting for Biden, we kind of joke about this, they're like closing their eyes and just voting for Biden. Bernie or Biden. It's definitely a Bernie or Biden. But I think a lot of people who are voting for Biden, we kind of joke about this. They're like closing their eyes and just voting

for Biden because they think like this is the best opportunity we have to vote to beat Trump. Is that what you feel? Yes. That was a long pause. So when she says that she's closing her eyes and voting for Biden, I mean, what does that mean? It suggests that there's not a whole lot of, in her case, necessarily enthusiasm and feeling that you're voting with your heart for Joe Biden. In fact, both of them said something I thought that was incredibly fascinating. They said that if this election were not about electability and beating Donald Trump, they would go with Elizabeth Warren. That's actually the candidate that they like the best. For as much as the last 24 hours or 48 hours have been clarifying, there's also a lot that we just still really,

really, really don't know. And it's moving extremely fast. And I think that Super Tuesday will offer that clarity in part because a lot of the recent polls we had seen suggested that Joe Biden was right at the red kind of around that 15 percent threshold that he needs in order to get delegates. And so there are, you know, I think signs of confidence that the Biden world feels because with Klobuchar dropping out, with Buttigieg dropping out, this suggests that he may be more likely to meet that 15 percent threshold in some states that maybe otherwise he wouldn't have. Asma, I know you've got to get back in there because Biden is going to speak soon. So thanks for slipping out to talk to us. My pleasure. Talk to you all soon. Yeah, talk to you soon. And now we are going to turn to our colleague Scott Detrow, who is out with the Bernie Sanders campaign. Okay, and I think we have Scott here because I hear someone speaking in the background.

Scott, tell us where you are. You're at a Bernie rally? I'm at one of my favorite places in the world, Salt Lake City, Utah. It is an outdoor rally. We've had a few of those the last few days. Usually I'd be cranky because I'm really cold, but we're looking at the beautiful mountains that surround Salt Lake City. So that's a trade I'm okay to make right now. And Senator Sanders is speaking, right? He is. Yes. Yeah, he is speaking today. This is another day with three states on the agenda. He's going from Utah to Minnesota to Vermont. Yesterday was a day that included California, Virginia, and Utah. We're on the eve of Super Tuesday, Scott.

Is there anything new in his messaging now, especially as we're seeing all these people come out in support of Joe Biden? Yeah, this is an interesting moment. On one hand, Sanders feels like a movement that's growing, that's getting more energy. He has gotten a lot of enormous crowds this weekend, 13,000 people on Boston Common in Elizabeth Warren's home state. March 3rd, Super Tuesday, is a state his campaign has

organized around for months now. They feel like they can win California, they could win Texas, they could get a big delegate lead. So that's the surging feeling. At the same time, there is a walls-are-closing-in feeling. You had Pete Buttigieg drop out last night. And of course, just now, Amy Klobuchar dropped out. So Bernie Sanders actually held a press conference today. It was just before that Klobuchar news. But he was asked about the fact that Buttigieg is clearly getting out of the race to try and block Sanders from the nomination. And here's what he said. It is no secret.

I mean, The Washington Post has 16 articles a day on this, that there is a massive effort trying to stop Bernie Sanders. That's not a secret to anybody in this room. The corporate establishment is coming together. The political establishment is coming together and they will do everything. They are really getting nervous that working people are standing up. Yeah, I mean, the establishment, the Democratic establishment, is definitely sending a signal today. For sure. And we've talked for so long about that traffic jam, that muddle, the phrase of what do you want of the moderate candidates. That is suddenly gone now. And it's gone on the eve of the biggest voting day of this primary. I am seeing the Internet afloat with very certain views of how this will play out. And I think we should just take another moment and say we have absolutely no idea how it will play out. On one hand, there's such a consistent track record in the last few years of endorsements not mattering as much as they used to.

But on the other hand, we have seen in four early states now a lot of Democratic voters looking for cues and making up their mind at the very last minute. That's absolutely true. So let's narrow in on where Sanders is focusing. You know, I mean, you're in Utah. I always talk about how there are two things that you need to pay attention to as far as where campaigns think they need to do well, where they're spending their money and where they're going. Sanders has spent 15 and a half million dollars across these 14 states for Super Tuesday, almost half of that money in California. So Scott,

you used to be a reporter there. You know California pretty well. You've been with the Sanders campaign. How important is California to Sanders' hopes tomorrow? California is the most important state by far. That is why Sanders spent so much time campaigning there. Even ahead of Nevada, he was spending more time in California than Nevada. He held two big rallies. And this shows you how important he thinks California is. He made the strategic decision to skip an incredibly symbolic moment of being with the other Democratic candidates in Selma, Alabama, walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. This is a campaign that talks about Martin Luther King Jr. all the time, and he risked maybe alienating black voters by skipping that event

because rallying in California in San Jose and L.A. was so important. They feel like they can have a big win in California, maybe keep most of the other candidates. I guess there's fewer candidates than there were a few hours ago. A few minutes ago, yeah. Sorry, that take was an hour old. Under a 15% threshold and get a big win there. Texas, I would say, is number two on the importance list.

Number three is Massachusetts because they're spending a lot of time campaigning there suddenly in the last few days. We saw in 2012. We saw in 2016. If you beat someone in their home state, it's pretty hard for them to stay in the race. And then Utah does actually matter a lot to Sanders because both Utah and Vermont, the campaign feels pretty strong that they could possibly do so well here that they get all of the delegates. Even though these are smaller states on the scale of Super Tuesday, that's going to matter in the current environment of fighting for delegates. Because if you look at the other states

outside of California and you think about, you try to game out a Biden surge potentially, you know, you're looking at half of the states being significant African-American populations in the Democratic electorate. You're looking at some other places that have a degree of moderate voters that could help Joe Biden. There's the chance that Biden and Sanders roughly split the delegates in a lot of the other places. But then there's California with its 415 delegates. If Bernie Sanders is able to run up the score with Latinos the way he was in Nevada, which is what I'm sure that they're probably banking on in many ways, that he could net 100, 200 delegates over Biden and be really, really difficult to catch, right? All right. Well, Scott, I know that

as soon as that speech finishes, you have a plane to get on. So we are going to let you run and finish covering that speech. I already missed one motorcade so far this trip. I luckily found my way back to the plane in time. But yes, it sounds like he's actually wrapping up. So I've got to pack my stuff and sprint to make the plane to go to Minnesota. Don't miss the plane. So I'll talk to you guys tomorrow night from Vermont. Yeah, or maybe very early Wednesday morning. Probably both. All right, bye.

Bye-bye. And we have more from our colleagues following around the candidates, but first we're going to take a quick break. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Uber. Uber is committed to safety and to continuously raising the bar to help make safer journeys for everyone. For starters, all drivers are background checked before their first ride and screened on an ongoing basis. And now, Uber has introduced a brand new safety feature called RideCheck,

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And our colleague Sue Davis has been out following around Michael Bloomberg. Hey, Sue, you're here. I'm here. Here I am. Here I am in Washington, D.C., trying to figure out where the heartbeat of America is feeling today. So you are currently in the bubble on the road with Mike Bloomberg, but you are sitting in the studio with us right now. What happened? It's Super Tuesday and he's in Washington, D.C. What is happening?

I have been in the bubble. We have been traveling all across the South over the weekend. But today, Michael Bloomberg is in Washington, D.C. And in the greater D.C. area, he spoke this morning at AIPAC, which is the Israel lobby here in D.C. He's obviously a very prominent Jewish former politician. And then he's a current politician. I guess, yes, he's a current not an office holder. He's not an office holder right now, but a former he was former New York City mayor. And also tonight he's doing a Fox News town hall, another event that other Democratic candidates shunned

in the in the course of this race. Huh. OK, so we have already talked to Asma and Scott. They are following around Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, who are both sort of treating this like a two-man race at this point, in part because a lot of other people have dropped out in the last 48 hours. But Michael Bloomberg, who you've been following, does not think that this is a two-man race. No. He said in an appearance today in Manassas, Virginia, I'm in it to win it. You know, remember, Bloomberg got in the race exactly 100 days before the Super Tuesday contest. And he got in the race at a moment. Remember when we were talking? I'm sure we did many podcasts about it, about the anxiety about the field that nobody can win. The Democratic hand-wringing. Yes. And he didn't want to run

for president, but he got in the race because he saw an opening because there was no strong candidates. Well, we're living in a very different reality now coming out of South Carolina. Joe Biden looks really strong. Bernie Sanders has really strong performances in the other early states. And so there is this question going into Super Tuesday is like, what exactly is Mike Bloomberg doing in this race? And what voters is he competing for right now? Bloomberg has spent hundreds of millions of dollars of his own

money and a lot of that on just the Super Tuesday states. What I'm wondering about is what does success look like on Super Tuesday for Mike Bloomberg? Has his campaign said anything about that? Because they haven't booked any ads yet post Super Tuesday. Clearly, they see an opening in some of the states that are up on Tuesday that Democrats don't normally go to, places like Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, states that tend to still be a little bit more centrist, more moderate, might have some of those disaffected Republicans that might be willing to cross party lines. And I did find a lot of those voters. I talked to Trump voters from 2016 who said they already cast their ballots for Bloomberg in Tennessee. A lot of enthusiasm with him around North Carolina. North Carolina has a lot of retirees from the New York and New Jersey area,

sort of more college educated, wealthier Democrats. And I am running a campaign for change, for sanity, for honesty, for inclusion, for compassion and a campaign for human decency. So he does have sort of, I would say, a small core of people who are really excited about him. And then there's a lot of voters at his events who I just call like political tourists, right? Some of it is the uniqueness of having a big campaign rally in a place where candidates never come. And he's been on TV so much you feel like you know him.

Exactly. He's been blanketing the airwaves. It's like, I'm going to come out and see what this guy's all about. You've all heard the slogan, Mike will do it. Mike will get it done. And if you haven't, I've wasted an awful lot of money. I mean, people's kids are reciting his ads. Yeah, I mean, it's spending like we've never seen before. It's absolute saturation in some of these markets. And so the question is, is he a novelty to these voters? Is it like, let me see the act that's come to town? Or is he actually winning people over when they actually see him in person? So one question that I've been thinking about a lot as we've been taping this podcast is polls are a snapshot in time. And most of the polls that we have right now have a snapshot before Saturday, you know.

And there were a lot of polls, including our NPR PBS NewsHour Marist poll from a couple of weeks ago that showed him in second place. I guess there's not a great way of knowing. But does it still feel like he's in second place? This is the thing. I mean, one thing to remember about polls, right? Like, look at South Carolina, where Biden had a blowout win that was not reflected in any of the polling going in. So I do think like people's votes change on a dime. There's a lot of late decide.

Yeah. So like I think it's good to be skeptical, especially in a lot of these states where there's been maybe one poll, maybe two poll. We don't have a lot Super Tuesday state and to be able to continue this campaign with a straight face as the candidate whose whole gamble is that you don't need to do the early states. I'm going to run a national campaign. Super Tuesday is the day that matters for me. And if you don't win any states, not one, then it kind of it weakens your own argument that you're the guy that can win in places that no one else can win. All right. Well, you need to get yourself headed in the direction of Florida. I'm off to Miami. Oh, such a rough life.

And and we have one more colleague to call out to. So thank you, Sue. See ya. All right. Domenico, there is one more stop on our Super Tuesday tour here. And it's with Danielle Kurtzleben. Hey, Danielle. Hello. So you sound like you might be at an airport. You have been following Elizabeth Warren's presidential campaign. Is that what you're doing right now, too? Okay, first off, those are some good ears you have.

If you can hear an airport in five seconds of background sound. Yeah, it just sounds like clinking. Yeah, but by God, you're right. It was a safe guess. Yes, that's true. That's true. We have been in, we just counted six states in 48 hours, including Texas, twice. It's a lot.

Wow. So anyway, yes, we are headed to California. We're at a layover right now. We are headed there with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. And this past weekend, she did not do well in South Carolina. And her campaign put out a memo. Can you explain what their theory of the case is right now? Yes, they put out this memo.

It's from Roger Lau, Warren's campaign manager. And it basically says this. Listen, we know we haven't done as well as we expected or had hoped. And, yeah, we might not be able to get the majority number of delegates and needed to outright win the nomination by the time the convention rolls around. But you know what? We don't think anyone else is going to do that either. So we are essentially prepping and hoping for a contested convention. That is what they are thinking right now. And the thing is this, it's not entirely wrong that there is a reasonably high chance, if you look at, you know, 538 has some predictors

about this, that yeah, it's possible no one is going to get a majority. Yeah, I mean, though, the point is getting at least a lead. And it doesn't look like she even has a path to getting a pledged delegate lead at this point. And it feels like she's kind of after being, pardon the expression, a queen maker? I don't know. At the convention, you know, say king maker. But you never know who winds up getting picked out of this thing. hand to be able to either, you know, stick around in case there's a Bernie Sanders implosion or to be able to give him enough delegates to get over the line. So you're out going to campaign events with her. How does the energy compare to other times in the campaign that you've been with her?

Is there a feeling of people are still excited to see her or does it feel deflated in some way? People are still very excited to see her. I mean, polling performance and primary performance doesn't really have, and I'm sure you know this from having been on campaigns before, doesn't have much to do with how your core supporters feel about you. And people are still absolutely over the moon to get selfies with her or photos, I suppose, to be more exact. Well, she certainly has high favorability still in the race. She, in our polling, was the top second choice across the board. The problem was that Bernie Sanders is one of the people who she's competing with. It's not clean that all of those supporters would go to Elizabeth Warren or that

all of Pete Buttigieg's would go to her or Joe Biden. It's not exactly the way these things happen for second choice. She's still very well liked, but her path right now is, you know, fairly small. And all of those questions and more will be answered tomorrow night and as the results continue to come in. Domenico, thanks for being on this wild ride. Yeah, a lot of leg room here in the studio. No worries about people reclining. All right, we will be back late tomorrow night, very late tomorrow night, with results.

In the meantime, keep up with all the latest at npr.org. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover the campaign. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.