The NPR Politics Podcast - Joe Biden Wins Big In South Carolina. Now What?

Episode Date: March 1, 2020

The Associated Press has called the South Carolina primary race for former Vice President Joe Biden. It gives his campaign a much needed boost ahead of the slew of Super Tuesday contests in three days.Bernie Sanders has an infrastructure advantage in the coming contests, but will Biden's momentum and Mike Bloomberg's cash imperil his shot at the Democratic nomination?This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, campaign correspondents Scott Detrow and Asma Khalid.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 Scott Detrow. I'm covering the presidential campaign. And I'm Asma Khalid. I'm also covering the presidential campaign. And the time now is 9.19 p.m. on Saturday, February 29th, Leap Day. And in his third run for the presidency, four states into the Democratic nominating process of 2020, South Carolina has delivered former Vice President Joe Biden his first win. I told you all that you could launch a candidacy. You launched Bill Clinton, Barack Obama to the presidency. Now you launched our campaign on the path to defeating

Donald Trump. The Associated Press has called the race for Biden. We don't know his exact margins, but they look to be very big. Scott and Asma, you are at election night parties, which is why there's a lot of conflicting music going on right now. Asma, you have been with Biden's campaign all week. How big a deal is this for him? He needed a win here. I mean, there were really serious questions about the viability of his candidacy if he did not win here. I will say, I think this was a long expected victory in South Carolina. He had been leading in the polls for months, but still it was a much needed win. You know, he compared there in that quote, we heard his candidacy to what happened here in South Carolina to Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. And I will say that's a bit of revisionist history.

Both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton did not struggle as much leading it to South Carolina as Joe Biden has. Well, and then Biden turned directly from there and said, voters in Super Tuesday states, I have a message for you. It was like he knows that this is his moment. And the question is, is this a springboard or is it a bump? I think that's the biggest challenge that Joe Biden faces. He said that tonight after he won South Carolina. And because he did so poorly in Iowa and New Hampshire in particular, he was not really able to spend the money or time in Super Tuesday

states. And that is a direct contrast with a lot of candidates in the race, but especially his main rival at this point, Bernie Sanders. I'm traveling with the Sanders campaign, and South Carolina had really been an afterthought the last few days. He is crisscrossing the country. He was in Massachusetts and Virginia today, flies out to California for a West Coast swing tomorrow. And more importantly than that, he's been spending a lot of money in Super Tuesday. So Biden's certainly going to get some momentum, certainly going to get some press coverage. But the things working against him are, one, he hasn't put in the time in Super Tuesday. And two, there's only two full days before voting begins.

So it's not like he can really ride this momentum and get a lot of media coverage and conversation. Like voting is just around the corner. And in fact, in a lot of places, already voting, early voting is a huge thing in California. Millions of people have already voted there. Asma, I want to talk about the message that Biden delivered in his victory speech tonight. It was a clear eyed speech. It was a strong speech. It was a direct, not meandering speech where he did talk about his case and sort of laid out his vision as an alternative to Bernie Sanders. And if the Democrats want a nominee who's a Democrat, a lifelong Democrat.

A proud Democrat. An Obama-Biden Democrat. Join us. We have the option of winning big or losing big. That's the choice. This was a really succinct pitch that he made that explicitly outlined for people, why me? You know, why Joe Biden? And I will say it was in stark contrast to what I've seen with him on the campaign trail.

Often when he's out giving a stump speech, it can be really meandering. I mean, I met voters in Iowa who came out to hear him, who told me they were turned away after listening to the speech because they just felt like maybe he was too old, just didn't see my message. Tonight, that is not at all what we saw. We saw a pretty crisp, short, I think it was about 10 minute speech that I think even more than the length was just so clear in delivering why Joe Biden. And he said that essentially, you know, he's a Democrat. And he said, you know, if you don't necessarily just want revolution, but you want results, pick me, pick Joe Biden. And he said that essentially, you know, he's a Democrat. And he said, you know, if you don't necessarily just want revolution, but you want results, pick me, pick Joe Biden. And I think that is a message that he needs to deliver and he needs to deliver pretty effectively.

But I'm with Scott here. I am very leery of the idea that this bump from South Carolina can quickly be translated into 14 other states where he has not had the grassroots organizing and the infrastructure as Bernie Sanders has had in many of those states. And before we turn further to Super Tuesday, I want to turn to another one of our colleagues. Juana Summers is over at the Tom Steyer headquarters tonight. Juana, this is not such a party, eh? It is not anymore. The mood has changed demonstrably here in the last few minutes. Tom Steyer actually just took the stage a few minutes ago. And as we and others have reported, he is ending his campaign tonight here in South Carolina.

He has spent millions of dollars and many events here in the state. He staked it all on the line here and on the states. Black voters did not get the result he had hoped for. And so he's telling supporters now that he's ending his campaign. He just came out and people were cheering saying we love you Tom clapping for him they they're sad to see him go but I said if I didn't see a path to winning that I'd suspend my campaign and honestly I can't see a path where I can win the presidency so am I going to

continue to work on every single one of these issues? Yes, of course I am. Because I've never stopped. That's what I'm here for. This is the point of the podcast where we play Bye Bye Bye. I would like to make an argument to play another song, Tam. And I think Juana knows what I'm talking about. I don't know if we can say the name of that song on this podcast.

If you remember, the biggest viral moment of this campaign came just last night when Tom Steyer helped to get out the vote concert here at Allen University in South Carolina

with the rapper Juvenile and he took the stage, he danced a little bit and I think he backed something up at the end. He backed that booty up. Backed that booty. Backed that behind right up.

Okay, but so because this is the end of his campaign, Juana, what was he trying to do? He staked his campaign on this state's black voters. He felt a strong argument that the black community has been the moral core of this country for so long, and so that's where he focuses attention, his money, his time. He spent more days on the road in this state than any other candidate, which is pretty incredible. He went to small towns, big cities, spent a lot of investment here talking about racial justice, environmental justice, reparations,

the need to fund the country's historically black colleges and universities, yet was not able to chip away at the state that, as Asma and others have reported, has been such a firewall for former Vice President Joe Biden. All right. We're going to let you get back to reporting and listening to that speech where he's dropping out. But, Juana, thanks for dropping into the pod. Thanks, y'all. And the rest of us are going to take a quick break. And when we get back, what this all means for the 15 contests coming up in just three days. Hi, this is Felix Contreras from NPR Music's Alt Latino podcast.

As part of our Black History Month coverage, we take a look at the Afro-Latin roots of reggaeton and its rise over the last decade to become one of the most listened to musical genres on the planet. To check it out, download Alt Latino from wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. And billionaire Tom Steyer dropped out of the race. There are a lot of other candidates who, like Steyer, did not perform particularly well in South Carolina, but the rest of them are still in and all still sort of laying claim to the title of alternative to Bernie Sanders. Is that right? Well, I think it'll be pretty hard for former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar in particular to make that argument given the strength of Biden's

win tonight and given the fact that after their strong performances in Iowa and New Hampshire, they've really faded a lot. And that kind of tracked what we saw all along, that both of them had a hard time connecting with voters of color. Klobuchar and Buttigieg have been doing a lot of campaigning across all the states that are voting on Tuesday, but I think it's a tough argument for them. I think it also raises a lot of questions about what the path is for former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. But Asma and Tam, I feel like you would agree that the window for Bloomberg and the reason he was picking up steam in recent months was a fading Joe Biden. And if Joe Biden won so big

in South Carolina tonight, even with all those challenges on Super Tuesday that we've been talking about, it feels like there's less of an argument for Mike Bloomberg, right? That is the argument that two senior Obama advisors were making on TV tonight, David Fluff and David Axelrod, who essentially argued that if that was the vision that Bloomberg had was a potential Biden collapse, that that has not happened. I would imagine that there's going to be added pressure on Michael Bloomberg over the next couple of days to figure things out. But I think to some degree, he's invested in a lot of these Super Tuesday states. And, you know, I will say I don't

hear that much willingness to pull out of the race from any of the candidates at this point. The Buttigieg campaign feels like they need to stay in to apparently stop Bernie Sanders from claiming the nomination. And they feel like that's the best path is to remain in this. They feel that they have a strategy to accruing delegates in a number of congressional districts across various Super Tuesday states. And, you know, I will say it'll be interesting to see, though, what happens, I think, after Super Tuesday. Maybe that's when we'll have a slightly clearer vision of where this race is. The big question is, by that point, will Bernie Sanders have really accrued just an insurmountable lead with delegates? I mean, the other thing that was really interesting to me is we actually heard from a Biden campaign spokesperson who said that, quote,

if you are a candidate and you have not shown that you can get traction with the core of the Democratic Party, with African-American voters, then you have to take a hard look at your path and what your goals are. To me, that was a rather stunning, even if it was not direct, indication of who should get out of this race. I think it's pretty clear that that side I was aimed at several of the candidates still in the race. You know, Scott, one thing that just really gets me with this campaign this year is every night has been, every time people have voted has been a really big night and has been a major twist in the story. It's like it keeps changing. And tonight was no different. And then we're going to head into Super Tuesday. We could emerge from Super Tuesday with yet another story.

And this answer for me is going to be really impassioned and patriotic because my favorite song on the Sanders playlist is now playing behind me, and that is Simon and Garfunkel's America. So just, this is going to be wistful, okay? Go for it. Look, and I think that's one of the things that we've been really dwelling on for more than a year as we've looked at this primary schedule is that South Carolina slingshot, right? So it's Saturday, South Carolina's voted. You've got Sunday and Monday to digest this result. And then Tuesday, it's a national race. We have seen so

many moments so far where voters reacted to something that happened just before voting. Amy Klobuchar's strong performance before the New Hampshire primary in that debate. She gets a big surge. Joe Biden getting that endorsement from Jim Clyburn. He gets a big surge in stabilization. There's not much time for that here. And that's one of the things I'm really curious about. And with Bernie Sanders, who I've been focused on lately, his campaign all along has been focused on these March 3rd states. He's spent a lot of time in Texas, a lot of time in California. The campaign feels like they these March 3rd states. He's spent a lot of time in Texas, a lot of time in California. The campaign feels like they could win both those states and that not many other

candidates would be above that 15% threshold, which means they could get a ton of delegates from those two states. And if that does in fact happen, it's really tough for anybody to catch Sanders over the next few weeks. And we'll have an answer to that soon because you've got March 10th and March 17th, big clumps of states voting. And then after that, it really starts to drop off. You have more contests where it's just, you know, a handful of states voting at a time. Though I will say that with vote by mail in California, I mean, unless Bernie Sanders wins really, really big, we could be still waiting to see what the delegates are coming out of various congressional districts. Oh, yeah. We'll be waiting for a while. We'll get a general sense of the statewide totals, but we'll be waiting a while.

And the other thing that's worth pointing out is that people in California have been voting since the Iowa caucuses by mail. And you've probably already had way more people in California send their ballots in than have voted in all the first four early states combined. All right. Well, I think we're going to leave it here for tonight. I know, Asma, Joe Biden is getting back out on the road and you're traveling with his campaign. So he's headed to Alabama tonight. So I will be on a flight to catch him campaign. A lot of other candidates are going to be in Selma, Alabama as well tomorrow. And I think it's actually worth pointing out that Bernie Sanders will be, I think, the only candidate not in Selma, Alabama. We asked the campaign why that was.

They said they had scheduled their events in California. Sanders has participated in Selma commemorations and similar events a lot, but I think it's notable, especially given how often his supporters, his surrogates who speak on stage before him, draw comparisons to Martin Luther King Jr.'s movement to what Sanders is trying to do. It's pretty notable to me that he will not be in Selma. Where he will be is California, Utah, Minnesota, and Vermont over the next few days. And I will have the pleasure of going to all those states as well with him. Quite an itinerary. We are going to leave the podcast here for tonight, but we will

be back in your feeds on Monday talking about the final day of campaigning before Super Tuesday. Scott and Asma and everyone else out all over the country will be part of that pod. In the meantime, we've got way more of our election coverage up on our live blog at NPR.org, so make sure to check that out. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the campaign. And I'm Asma Khalid. I'm also covering the campaign. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.