The NPR Politics Podcast - NPR Politics Live From Drew University: The Road To 2020

Episode Date: January 23, 2020

This is a special episode, recorded in front of a live audience at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey on Wednesday, January 22nd. As part of Drew Forum's Speakers Series, the cast breaks down everything you need to know about who's running for president, and how impeachment affects the race. This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, senior political editor & correspondent Domenico Montanaro, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations. Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.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, I'm Rick, and I'm from Harding, New Jersey. Hi, my name is Hui. My name is Vranch. I'm from China. I'm from New Jersey. And I'm here to see the NPR Politics live show. I'm here at Drew University to see the NPR Politics podcast. This podcast is recorded at 7.42 p.m.

On Wednesday, January 22nd. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. Okay, here's the show. Hey there, this is the NPR Politics Podcast Live. I'm Tamara Keith, I cover the White House. I'm Mara Liason, I'm the national political correspondent for NPR. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I'm a political reporter.

So we are here at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. Thank you so much to the Drew Forum for inviting us to be part of their speaker series. And we are not alone. Hello, everybody. Say hi. So at this very moment, right now, as we speak, our team back in Washington is taping a podcast, breaking down the second day of the impeachment trial in the Senate for President Trump. It is the first day of opening arguments. Every night this week, our podcast is going to be there to break down the key moments of the trial. But tonight, we are here with you at Drew University, and we want to take a step back

and talk about the impact of impeachment on President Trump, as well as his potential 2020 opponents. So as this trial is unfolding, in some ways, it feels like we are watching a baseball game that we recorded, where we know the score at the end, but we don't know exactly all the plays, but you kind of know. So of these early innings, I'm torturing metaphors. What has stood out to you guys? Well, I think it is a foregone conclusion that the president will be acquitted because it would take 20 Republicans to decide to vote to convict and remove him. And that's just 20. Just like, let that sink. That's not going to happen. I think the only suspense was whether the Democrats,

the Democratic impeachment managers who came over, walked through the Capitol from the House side to the Senate, whether they were going to convince four Republicans to agree to vote with them to call for witnesses. That's something that Mitch McConnell doesn't want. And that's the suspense. They have, yesterday, they laid out arguments for why certain documents and certain people should be called as witnesses. All of those amendments were voted down on a purely partisan vote, 53-47, 53-47, went on until about 1 in the morning.

They're going to have another vote on witnesses after the opening arguments. My guess is they won't get to four, not unless Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump want witnesses. And the president, even though he's been on both sides of this issue, he's kind of been of many minds. He's pretty much said, I'll let McConnell decide. But look, the politics is at stake, too. I mean, we have an election coming up. We're in an election year. You know, 2020 is at stake.

And I think what's been interesting, just noticing the polls over the last couple of weeks, again, they have not really been the problem that Democrats thought they were going to be. And they were so nervously hand-wringing over for, you know, the better part of a year, year and a half, maybe, you know. So when you're at a point where it looks like you're winning on the substance, it's actually surprising to me that Democrats haven't tried to go on offense a little bit more. None of the advertisements that have been used in some of those states

to pressure those vulnerable Republicans, there have been zero ads that Democrats have run trying to put pressure on them. There's only been, I think, something like 11, according to advertising analytics, on impeachment. And all of them have been from Republicans pushing back against Democrats. You know, there was some thought heading into impeachment, you know, maybe a couple months ago that, you know, watch the senators who are up

for reelection. Watch the vulnerable purple state senators. No one seems to be watching those vulnerable purple state senators anymore. We are watching one in particular, Susan Collins. There are only two, by the way, there are only two Republican incumbent senators up for reelection from blue states, from states that Hillary Clinton won, Colorado and Maine. Susan Collins, who has said she might be open to witnesses. Cory Gardner in Colorado hasn't said much at all. But all of the political equities are against them voting for witnesses unless the president wants it, because they don't know whether President Trump would consider a vote for witnesses a betrayal.

And if that's what he concludes, he could come after them the way he's come after other Republicans who have criticized him or broken with him in public. And generally, that ends in tears for the Republican because he has such a firm grip on the Republican base. And both of those senators could still get a primary challenge from the right because the filing deadline is many months away. So it turns out that the Republican senators are not the only ones there for this impeachment trial. In fact, there are 47 Democratic senators, or I guess it's 45 and two independents. And there are a number of presidential candidates, Democratic presidential candidates, who are now held in the Senate chamber. They are not allowed to use their phones. They are

not allowed to talk. And this trial is lasting at least eight hours a day, six days a week. And Danielle, that means they're not in Iowa or New Hampshire or any of these other states where the voters will be deciding who will win the primary. Right. So let's talk about these people. You have Bernie Sanders from Vermont, Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts, and Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota. And Michael Bennett. And Michael Bennett from Colorado. Thank you. He's still running.

Yeah, totally. So we are 12 days from the Iowa caucuses right now. The Iowa caucuses often the polling not just can, but often does shift in the last two weeks, even in the last week leading up to this. So this is an incredibly important time to be on the ground. And unfortunately for these four, they're not. And especially if you're you know, we were talking about this Amy Klobbuchar who just picked up that big half endorsement from the New York Times. She got a full endorsement from the Quad City Times. That's absolutely true. In Iowa.

Which probably matters a lot more to a bunch of Iowans. Then you can't go out and make hay of that. She has been really running a hard ground game. She has visited all 99 of Iowa's counties, and she keeps going back to a lot of them. Similarly, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, I have been out watching them. They have been running really heavy schedules there as well. So right now what they're all doing is just having their surrogates out there. Warren has the Castro brothers.

Bernie Sanders is having that big concert coming up. Vampire Weekend. Whatever that is. Domenico, you know that. I don't know what it is. Vampires? They play the rock music. On a weekend? Oh my god. Anyway, yes. Count me out. At NPR, we're not ashamed

to say things like that. No, what do I care? Hey, at NPR, music they would be. But no, the point being, they are doing everything they can to get their face out there, to get on like that. No, what do I care? Hey, at NPR Music, they would be. We should be. But no, the point being, they are doing everything they can to get their face out there, to get on the news, to get their people out there because they can't be there. And that must be

absolutely wrenching for them. So last night, I got home late at night. I turned on the TV just to see what was going on with impeachment. And Rachel Maddow's show was on. And there was some sort of a quorum call.

It was like a brief pause in the debate. And so senators could briefly leave the Senate floor. And popping up on the screen is Amy Klobuchar, who just like must have like, I'm just like imagining that there is like a race with all of the candidates sort of like running toward the Maddow camera. Who's going to get there first? Because it's an important audience. And they had like, she had basically five minutes to try to get some airtime. You know, they can't even do late night TV if this trial is going this way.

She has got to do that stuff because it's the only medium left for her to be able to get her message out. She can't do what she wants to do, which is retail campaign day in, day out. And to be honest, it feels really unfair. If I were a campaign manager and realized we put in all this time, all this effort, and global warming is real. Global warming. And finally, right? And then you can't actually benefit from it. You can't actually go and try to, you know, maybe win the thing and have a chance to be the president when you've spent all this time and effort there. Right. Because on top of that, if you ask voters,

I ask pretty much every voter I talk to, what issues do you care about? Impeachment never, ever comes up. Like, it's not the Democrats in Iowa, what issues do you care about? Impeachment never, ever comes up. It's not the Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire do not care. They, of course, care. Yeah, they're for it. Yeah, it turns out. But those same Democrats, they're not glued to the TV necessarily over this. They have other things they want to hear the candidates talk about.

So even seeing Amy Klobuchar on MSNBC talking about this might not be a thing that they're necessarily looking for. Well, boo-hoo. Excuse me if I am not too sympathetic. She's a senator of the United States and she's running for president. And as she herself says, I can walk and chew gum at the same time. Absolutely true. And none of them are complaining. She's doing her constitutional duty. To turn the focus away from Democrats, let's get to the Republicans.

I mean, Tam, you have talked to the Trump campaign recently. How are they approaching impeachment in terms of getting him reelected? So they see impeachment as a fundraising boon. They, in addition to just raising money off of impeachment almost every day, they have sold a lot of these pencil neck Adam Schiff t-shirts and other swag related to impeachment. And here's the thing, if you are a president of the United States facing impeachment, and admittedly, there aren't very many of them who have, but if you're going to be a president facing impeachment, what better time? I mean, it's terrible to have it come in your reelection year, but it's also wonderful because you have this huge political apparatus, incredibly well-funded. He has a very well-funded political apparatus with a TV studio in their campaign office,

and they are doing rapid response. You have a built-in, it's not like he, I mean, they sort of quasi-built a White House war room, but not really. Because they have a Trump war room in the campaign that is fully staffed up, that is on its way to, they're all headed to Iowa any minute now. Oh, yeah. No, I mean, the Trump campaign has been doing counter-programming. When I was in Iowa for the debate last week, there was a plane flying over downtown Des Moines. I understand they do this at other debates as well. But there's a plane with a banner behind it saying Trump, something to the effect of Trump fights for America's farmers. So they are fully aware of when and where Democrats are. And it's not just something they can monetize by selling T-shirts. It's a real organizing tool. The fact that impeachment is happening 10, 11 months before Election Day is the weakest part of the Democrats' effort. And it's the most politically appealing part of the Republicans' message, which is, why should we take away the voters' sacred right to decide whether somebody stays president or not? You know, why should the senators take that away from the voters who are going to get a chance

very, very shortly to decide that for themselves? You know, Bill Clinton was impeached after he was reelected. But the way this works is when Trump says something outrageous about shifty Schiff or whatever, it immediately generates interest, a lot of searches. The Trump campaign, through its very sophisticated algorithms on Facebook and Google, makes sure that it places ads connected to every one of those Google searches. So if you search for Shifty Schiff, you want to know what is Trump talking about? Up comes an ad for the Trump campaign. And it often asks you a simple question. Take our poll. The poll usually has one question. Do you think President Trump should be impeached or not? And you have to put in your email address. Or maybe they say you could buy a MAGA hat just by clicking and giving us some data about yourself, where you live, your email address, etc. That all gets scraped into the

voter contact file. This is how digital social media campaigns are waged in the modern era. And all of those people will be contacted in the future as potential Trump voters. So it's a kind of outrage machine that feeds itself and is really one of the most important parts of the Trump reelection effort. All right, we are going to stop right here for now and take a quick break. And when we come back, more on 2020 and the election. Hey, Gene. What's good? You know, we probably shouldn't be friends. Why are you trying to hurt my feelings? I mean, statistically speaking, most adults don't have a single friend of a different race. As it happens, on the next episode of NPR's Code Switch, we're talking about making and maintaining friendships across racial

lines. Listen and subscribe. And we're back. And let's talk about the 2020 Democratic primary. The field has whittled down a little bit. We've got a clean dozen. There are a dozen candidates in the race. I mean, kind of. Okay, fair enough. There's a smaller number that really matters. Yes, and we will get to them in a moment. But first, you know, as we are 12 days away from the Iowa caucuses with just 12 candidates left in the race,

there's this wild thing happening where it seems anything could happen. So I have a question for you all in the audience. Now, admittedly, New Jersey doesn't vote in a primary or anything Democratic or Republican primary until June. Which is very important, by the way, because June 2nd, that is the last, New Jersey is the last major day of delegates of the entire campaign. So if we have a really close race by the end of April, New Jersey might matter. You might matter. You guys could matter. So how many of you here, if you had to vote, let's say February 3rd, the day of the Iowa caucuses, how many of you would know who you want to vote for right now? And how many of you are still shopping? That's a lot of undecided voters. Sounds about right.

Yeah. Same with Iowa. Oh, God, yeah. The thing that's amazing is I wouldn't be surprised if any of the top four candidates won Iowa. Yes. I mean, that's how unsettled it is. People have gone up and down. You know, we've had the Warren rise and slip.

We've had Buttigieg go up, kind of come down. Bernie Sanders is now on the rise, even though he's 78 years old and has had a heart attack. He's doing great. 79, he had a birthday. Joe Biden has been remarkably resilient, even though every single Democrat thought his campaign would have collapsed by now.

So any one of them could win, or they could all come in within a point of each other, and we won't have a clear winner. You have a big jumble. You know, the thing that's really interesting about these top four is that each of them at different points in the campaign have led in both Iowa and New Hampshire. That is really remarkable. And I mean, I can't remember when there was a Democratic field that not only was so big, but you had an actual like non front runner that's really led for, you know, a significant amount of time, or one or two people who emerge. This is, it's very unusual to have

four. Well, this gets at something that I said before, which is that there are 12 days until the Iowa caucuses, things tend to shake up around then. I was looking back at the numbers back in 2016 in the Iowa Democratic caucuses. 22% of people who caucused decided in the final week. So one in five of them could change their mind. More than one in five of them could change their mind at this point. 40% of them decided in the final month. And forgive me if you do not know how the Iowa Democratic caucuses work.

It is not just a straight voting thing. What happens is you show up and you say, want to caucus for Amy Klobuchar. You go sit at a table that is designated for Amy Klobuchar people. Well, if she does not have 15% of the people in your room after everybody picks a table, you no longer caucus for her. You have to go pick someone else. You have to pick your second choice.

That is part of what makes the Iowa caucuses so unpredictable, especially when things are as close as Domenico said. And it's part of why Iowans have such trouble deciding because they know they might not get to stick with their number one choice. They might have to go to number two. And that's why being the second choice of someone slightly lower, like a Pete Buttigieg or Amy Klobuchar, is a very good thing. And that's what

Joe Biden is hoping for, because he is the second choice for some of the candidates who are polling a little bit less. It might not come in over 15%. And what's more clarifying for people who don't have their mind made up than a bunch of people in a room telling you who you should go vote for and stand with. That's a disaster. One of the things that is top of mind for Democrats this year is electability. It's not who excites them the most, who agrees with them on every single issue the most. It's who can beat Donald Trump. And they are having a really hard time figuring out who that would be. Yeah, because they can't tell the future. And they are all looking at the past and trying to,

and thinking like, well, I was wrong about how last time would go, or we made the, you know. There's just a lot of like trying to figure out what some people in Wisconsin might think in November. But it's also because these candidates, each one of them has tremendous vulnerabilities. I mean, you can imagine how Donald Trump will destroy Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, or Joe Biden. You really can. You can picture it. You know, and the thing is, actually, all four of them combined kind of make

one pretty good candidate. I mean, they each have like a piece of the Democratic heart, right? That, you know, kind of works. And but all together, like you say, I mean, or separate, they have their own vulnerabilities. And I think it makes it really hard for them, for those voters to make up their minds. So four people cannot be the nominee. 12 people cannot be the nominee. And it seems like we've sort of gotten to the point here, Danielle, where people have stopped being polite and started getting real at least a little bit. Well, maybe one candidate. There's been some skirmishes. Skirmishes?

Skirmish. Skirmish. Skirmishes. There have been some, you know, unpleasantness that's broken out. Right. I mean, you've had a few of these. We don't need to run through all of them. But for example, relatively recently, you had the co-chair of Bernie Sanders' campaign in a South Carolina newspaper really trashing Joe Biden's record with Black voters.

Of course, there are lots of Black voters in South Carolina, about half of whom in one recent poll said they like Joe Biden, and significantly fewer said they like Bernie Sanders. So Bernie Sanders is gunning for those voters. Aside from that, I don't know if you saw this, but there was a story about how someone who Warren talked to back in 2018 said that Bernie Sanders told her at a private meeting that a woman could not be president. Well, this blew up, of course. And that has become another big thing with the one with Bernie Sanders saying that's not true and her saying, heck, yes, it is. So this the gloves are off. Well, and and they both both Sanders and Warren on that particular fight have in the last few days really tried to deescalate it and say,

you know, we're friends. We've moved on. let's stop talking about this. But the reality is that there has been and continues to be an undercurrent in this Democratic primary with voters asking themselves whether out loud into our microphones or quietly and privately, well, can a woman win? Voters were so shaken by this right after 2016. And I'm sure I don't have to tell all of you this if you went to or saw one of the women's marches, because what voters will tell you is, yes, Democratic voters, of course, this is because these are the folks I've been talking to in Iowa. Yes, I was disappointed to see the first woman nominee lose. I was also disappointed and very upset to see her lose to

that guy, to a guy who, though he denies it, has been accused by many women of some form of sexual misconduct, and a guy who, you know, insulted Hillary Clinton's and Carly Fiorina's looks, and I could go on. And so that has only been building since then for Democrats. It seems like every day there's a new gender thing to think about. Brett Kavanaugh, Mike Pence not dining with other women, Donald Trump talking about Emmanuel Macron's wife's looks. I mean, I could just pull any of these out of my head. And I think it's been building to a fever pitch. I just think the Bernie Sanders Warren thing that just popped up was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

Every voter has been many voters have been wondering this to me and to our colleagues. There was this new poll, I think it was a CNN poll, that asked voters, do you think that a woman can win? And there was a gender gap. Yeah, I mean, mildly, but overall the consensus was 80 plus percent of people think a woman can win. And, you know, when we look at, and Danielle and I have talked about this before, but when we asked traits that you most like or find to be favorable in a candidate, being a woman was at the top of that list, being a billionaire, being a business executive, being someone over 70, being a socialist. All of those things were really far down the list of things that voters in the Democratic primary wanted.

But being a woman was at the top. But it is true that there was so much sort of PTSD after 2016 that there were a lot of voters, especially women, who were saying to pollsters that while they liked Elizabeth Warren, they weren't sure if she could win and they didn't want to see what happened in 2016 happen again. Now, by the fall, it appeared that she had convinced enough of those voters that it looked like she was going to win. And then that shifted because of her stance on health care in particular. Right. And I mean, to expound upon what Domenico was saying there. Yes. When we polled, voters said I would be I believe the question was, would you be enthusiastic about voting for one?

Yes. And it was something like 71 percent of people said yes, including 83 percent of Democrats. Cool. Great. Everybody wants to vote for a woman or at least thinks it would be awesome. Except we were asking about a hypothetical woman. What we are slowly learning through elections is that, I mean, we haven't had that many women run for president, and we have had many fewer women be taken seriously when they run for president. So thus far, what voters have told us and may tell us again in 2020 is, yeah, we'd like to vote for a hypothetical woman, but maybe not that woman or that one or that one or that one or that one. And the question is what the right woman would look like. And we may not know that for some time. Well, and particularly, and you've seen this in your reporting, but when you talk to older women who, when they were young, thought that they would see a female president in their lifetime are less hopeful now than they were when they were young.

I had a voter tell this to me just the other night. I wasn't even asking her about gender, but offhandedly, she said, I've been talking to my fellow Democrats in my precinct about who they're caucusing for. And she said, I see it. And she said, oh, of course, we're talking about gender. And I was like, do go on. And she said that, you know, all the older people, older women, she talks to say, I don't know if a woman could be elected president. And the younger ones say, of course she can. And which mirrors something that voters told me in 2016 fairly often. There was a similar age split. And one thing, though, to consider is that women were the backbone of the 2018 elections

that helped Democrats win back the House. And certainly women are not represented in Congress anywhere close to what their actual representation is in the country or how they vote. Women have been the strong majority of voters, 53 percent or so, for a decade or two, and yet still have not gained the kind of power in elective office, as those numbers would reflect. But there is a Speaker of the House. Yes. But we could go through the numbers. But you know, when I just think it's important to realize that what was really important in 2018, that gets very little attention because of some of the louder voices that we've heard about, moderates were the ones who won out and gave Democrats that majority. And a lot of those moderates were women. And, you know, that kind of voter, that kind of

candidate does seem to cut across and be able to win in places that you might not expect them to. And that is our show. Thank you to Drew University and all of their staff and volunteers who made tonight possible. And we could not have done it also without the NPR events team, Ali Prescott and Jessica Goldstein from that team. This show and the podcast are produced also by Barton Girdwood, Barbara Sprunt, and Chloe Weiner, who you just met. Our social engagement editor is Brandon Carter, and our audio engineer is Isaac Rodriguez. Our editors are Shirley Henry, Mathoni Maturi, and our audio engineer is Isaac Rodriguez. Our editors are Shirley Henry,

Mathoni Maturi, and Eric McDaniel. Special thanks to Lexi Schipittel and Dana Farrington. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you, Drew University, for being with us for the NPR Politics Podcast.