The NPR Politics Podcast - NPR Politics Live From Thousand Oaks, CA: Recapping The Democratic Debate

Episode Date: February 20, 2020

This is a special episode, recorded in front of a live audience at Kavli Theatre in Thousand Oaks, California. The cast recaps the ninth Democratic primary debate, in which candidates turned up the heat ahead of this weekend's Nevada caucuses. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg — a newcomer to the 2020 debate stage — was a top target for attacks, from allegations of sexual harassment to his billionaire status.This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, campaign correspondent Scott Detrow, demographics and culture correspondent Juana Summers and senior editor and correspondent Ron Elving.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

Hey there, this is the NPR Politics Podcast, live. I'm Tamara Keith, I cover the White House. I'm Ron Elving, editor-correspondent. I'm Juana Summers, I cover demographics and culture. And I'm Scott Detrow, I cover the campaign. And we are here at the Kavli Theater in Thousand Oaks, California. It is 8.15 p.m. and we are not alone. We would not be here without Mary Olson and our partners at KCLU

who continue providing outstanding local news to this area as well as to the donors who make it all possible. And thank you to the students and staff from California Lutheran University who are in the audience tonight. So in Las Vegas, just moments ago, the NBC News, MSNBC debate wrapped up, and we are now going to break down key moments in that debate. And as is a time honored tradition, Scott, could you walk us through the names of those who were on the stage, as well as their approximate talking time? So yeah, and I think this is something we're going to talk a lot about. Elizabeth Warren actually spoke the most time. The Massachusetts senator

spoke for more than 16 minutes, followed pretty closely by Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders spoke for about 15 minutes. Former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg spoke for about 14 minutes, and then each spoke about 13 minutes and some change. You had former Vice President Joe Biden and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. All eyes were on the new guy, Michael Bloomberg, who skipped Nevada, isn't even on the ballot there, but he was on the stage in Las Vegas.

And it seems as though the other candidates on stage with him noticed. Oh, yes, he was noticed. I think the question we have to ask after this debate is why he wanted into the debates. Because he's been doing very well on the edited video front, where he spent something like $400 million putting video on television that people could see with a video sort of advertising reel for Mike Bloomberg. And tonight, the other candidates came after him hammer and tongue. Look, I'll support whoever the Democratic nominee is, but understand this. Democrats take a huge risk if we just substitute one arrogant billionaire for another. Mr. Bloomberg had policies in New York City of stop and frisk, which went after African American and Latino people in an outrageous way. That is not a way you're going to grow voter turnout. He got a real live on stage, real time vetting, it seems.

And one of the main issues that he has faced and has been a problem for him in this campaign is the policy in New York City, the stop and frisk policy. Now, he didn't invent it, but under his mayorship, it expanded. This is a policy that lowered the threshold for police to stop and search people for no cause, essentially. And overwhelmingly, it affected black and brown people. Overwhelmingly, it affected innocent people who had done nothing wrong. Vice President Joe Biden, in a very spicy way, went after Michael Bloomberg on this, and then Bloomberg responded. I've sat, I've apologized, I've asked for forgiveness, but the bottom line is that we stopped too many people, but the policy, we stop too many people, and we've got to make sure

that we do something about criminal justice in this country. There is no great answer to a lot of these problems. And if we took off everybody that was wrong off this panel, everybody that was wrong on criminal justice at some time in their careers, there'd be nobody else up here. And I think like one contextual point here that was pointed out and is worth pointing out, that as stop and frisk at a certain point did start to go down during the Bloomberg administration, it did because of a federal court order. And this is something that he continued to

defend for years up until around the point he realized he was going to run for president. And I think the other thing that we heard on stage too, and we didn't see it in this clip, is Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren came into the conversation, and she made the point that she didn't think Mike Bloomberg's explanation was sufficient. She said that he's talking about the effects of the policy in a way that she often talks about issues of racial injustice and

inequality. She said he needed to talk about and apologize for the intent, which she said, and others have said, was to disproportionately harm black and brown communities in New York. And just an observation about Elizabeth Warren in this debate, you know, in the previous debate, it seemed like she had sort of shrunk away. In this debate, she made a point very early on, sort of early and often, to inject herself into the conversation, and in particular, to go after Bloomberg. As a matter of fact, even when she was asked a question about Bernie Sanders or one of the other candidates, she turned on Mike Bloomberg, who is standing right next to her and conveniently available. But she took the moment and shook it hard.

And Mike Bloomberg, well, he took a lot of shots. I think it probably would have damaged those who tuned into the debate and got their first impression of Mike Bloomberg. I don't know for certain, though, that the benefit for that will go to Elizabeth Warren. The mayor has to stand on his record. And what we need to know is exactly what's lurking out there. He has gotten some number of women, dozens, who knows, to sign non-disclosure agreements, both for sexual harassment and for gender discrimination in the workplace. So, Mr. Mayor, are you willing to release all of those women from those non-disclosure agreements so we can hear their side of the story.

We have a very few non-disclosure agreements. How many is that? Let me finish. How many is that? None of them accuse me of doing anything other than maybe they didn't like the joke I told. And let me just put, and let me put, there's agreements between two parties that wanted to keep it quiet. And that's up to them. They signed those agreements and we'll live with it.

So wait, when you say it is up to, I just want to be clear. Some is how many? And when you say they signed them and they wanted them, if they wish now to speak out and tell their side of the story about what it is they allege, that's now okay with you? You're releasing them on television tonight? Senator, no. Is that right? And this became something of a multi-candidate pile on after that. But, Juana, can you please explain what the background is on this issue?

Yeah, so here's the back story. The Washington Post did a really phenomenal report that I would urge anyone to read about the issues at Mike Bloomberg's company. And it essentially talked about a number of examples of what women in particular who worked at the company described as a hostile environment saturated in the Post's words with degrading comments. I want to be clear that we're not talking about allegations of any sort of inappropriate sexual conduct that involved Mike Bloomberg, but we're talking about the words that he used and the culture that he fostered. And the Post and other news outlets have reported on a number of lawsuits throughout the years from women who have alleged discrimination that occurred at his technology and media company. And as Elizabeth Warren and others on stage tonight pointed out, a number of those women are bound by non-disclosure agreements and they're unable to talk about them. And he's received a lot of pressure from Warren and others to release those women so that there

is more transparency about how he conducts his business, as that is one of the main things that he's using other than his time as mayor of New York to talk about why he is qualified to be president. And I really don't think Elizabeth Warren has ever been more happy to see a multi-billionaire show up right next to her. She, for a variety of reasons, some doing to the way the strategic decisions that she's made over the last few weeks and some doing to the fact of how this race has been crunched down, had really kind of taken a backseat to the storyline of Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg finishing 1-2 in the first two states,

and also the really dramatic story of a total collapse in Iowa and New Hampshire of former Vice President Joe Biden. And her campaign and her supporters have been very frustrated, saying, hey, what about the person who finished above Joe Biden? But you also saw in the last debate in particular, Elizabeth Warren really not get that much speaking time, really not jump into the conversation. But here was an opportunity to do the thing that Elizabeth Warren does best, and that is sit in those banking hearings, sit in those Senate hearings, and just hold CEOs of financial institutions' feet to the fire. You've seen her

do it so many times. That's exactly what she's doing right here. Meanwhile, Vice President Biden, who is also down low on the list of speaking time, there were numerous moments in this campaign where Biden was like waving his hands, like, please call on me. And frequently there were these back and forths between Bernie Sanders, who was at the center of the stage, and Pete Buttigieg, who was on the other side of Joe Biden. And so they're like arguing back and forth. And Biden's just like, hey, hey, hey, it's me. I want to play one of those exchanges where Sanders and Buttigieg were going back and forth.

And that's what we are saying, Pete, is maybe it's a time for the working class of this country to have a little bit of power in Washington rather than your billionaire campaign contributors. All right, look, first of all, first of all, look, my campaign is fueled by hundreds of thousands of contributors, including 26 billionaires, among the hundreds of thousands of contributors. And look, we've got to unite this country to deal with these issues. You're not the only one who cares about the working class. This was a debate in which Buttigieg seemed to have been getting it from one side, from Sanders,

and from Amy Klobuchar, with whom he had several sharp clashes tonight, from the other side. And I think a lot of people, just judging by what I've seen so far on Twitter and heard elsewhere, a lot of people were imagining what it would be like to see Elizabeth Warren doing exactly what she did to Bloomberg tonight to another candidate in the fall who shares some of his characteristics, being President Trump. Billionaire? Billionaire, but also a person accused in many instances of creating a less than perfect work environment for women.

Indeed. One more thing about this moment that jumped out to me is I have been spending a lot of time covering Bernie Sanders for us. I'm the reporter who's now at this point following him around the most as we've all kind of picked the candidates that we spend a lot of time following. And it was interesting to watch after Iowa the way that Bernie Sanders changed the way that he talked about Pete Buttigieg. For a while, Bernie Sanders, the way that he talked about Pete Buttigieg. For a while, Bernie Sanders, as you did a story in 2016, has word for word been giving a lot of the same speech

for decades, and that's something his supporters love about him. But it was interesting to see him start to target Pete Buttigieg, specifically on this point of his funders and the amount of billionaires who fund him. And sometimes he would do it in very, I don't know if it's gracious when you're kind of attacking somebody at the same time, but saying, Pete Buttigieg, great guy, I really like him. That being said, he's being funded by a billionaire. And I think the attack line that really jumped out the most and the supporters stick to the most is the argument that why would so many wealthy people give money to somebody that they thought was going to change the status quo, making the argument that you don't expect that many massive changes out of a Buttigieg presidency.

I think this also comes at a point where there's this really big debate among both the candidates on stage and among voters who are looking for their perfect Democratic candidate over what the role of money in this primary should be. You have one billionaire on stage, you have another billionaire, Tom Steyer, who is not on stage, but who is spending a heck of a lot of money in some of these early primary states in order to contest them. And there's a question of whether or not, what the place is for big donors in the Democratic Party.

And I think that this clip with Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg is kind of the perfect embodiment of that debate. All right, we are going to take a quick break. And when we get back, more fireworks on the debate stage. Support for NPR and the following message come from Rothy's. Rothy's are stylish, sustainable shoes made for life on the go. Carefully crafted from repurposed plastic water bottles, Rothy's are fully machine washable. Best of all, they're comfortable and have zero break-in period thanks to their seamlessly knit design. Plus, Rothy's always come with free shipping, free returns, and free exchanges. You'll quickly discover why BuzzFeed called them their forever shoes.

Rothy's are available in a wide array of colors and patterns. Find your perfect pair at rothys.com slash weekly. Planet Money is the man who popularized recycling by making a deal with the mafia. It's the bedroom beats maker making hits for Drake and Nicki Minaj and the woman trying to get her money back from Venmo. Planet Money from NPR. And we're back. And let's talk about another moment in this debate that stood out.

Senator Amy Klobuchar coming into this debate, you know, in some ways she had Klob-mentum, right? She had this surprising third place. I preferred global warming. There you go. We've now talked about global warming. So Klobuchar had this momentum or whatever you want to call it coming out of New Hampshire. She finished a surprising third in New Hampshire. And then she did this interview with Telmundo, where she did not know the name of the president of Mexico. And that was problematic, and she was asked about it in the debate. I am the one person on this stage that came out first to say I was for the U.S.-Mexican-Canadian trade agreement.

That is going to be one of the number one duties of a president is to implement that. Senator Klobuchar, my colleague specifically asked you if you could name the president of Mexico, and your response was no. Yes, that's right. And I said that I made an error. I think having a president that maybe is humble and is able to admit that here and there maybe wouldn't be a bad thing. But if you could let me. I wouldn't liken this to trivia.

I actually didn't know how many members were in the Knesset. So there you go. But you're staking your candidacy on your Washington experience. You're on the committee that oversees border security. You're on the committee that does trade. You're literally part of the committee that's overseeing these things. And we're not able to speak to literally the first thing about the politics of the country to ourselves. Are you trying to say that I'm dumb or are you mocking me here, Pete?

I'm saying that you shouldn't trivialize that knowledge. I made an error. People sometimes forget names. Yeah, Tam. But it went downhill from there, actually. I made an error. People sometimes forget names. You know, Tam... But it went downhill from there, actually. I don't think any of us would place any bets on any sort of combination of an Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg ticket. No, no, the feelings between them are not what one would call warm.

And yet they keep ending up very near each other on the debate stage. Well, you need to be arguing with the leader. You don't need to be arguing with the person who's third or fourth or second. So these people are unfortunately being caught up in these more petty squabbles between themselves. And that's probably hurting both of their campaigns. It isn't necessarily the best thing to be the person who takes somebody else down. What you want to be is the beneficiary of the leader being taken down. And, you know, Mike Bloomberg is obviously hoping that people will gang up on Sanders. Sanders was doing a pretty good job of benefiting from people

ganging up on Mike Bloomberg. I mean, let's just say Bernie Sanders is in our latest PBS NewsHour Marist poll. He is leading and not by a little bit. He is leading in polls in a number of states like he is widely expected to win in Nevada. So here he is. He is at this moment the leader of the pack. He didn't face too much pushback, but there was a moment when the moderators asked him about another, like sort of a lower level question in one of the recent polls. Senator Sanders, our latest NBC News Wall Street Journal poll released yesterday, two-thirds of all voters said they were uncomfortable with a socialist candidate for president. What do you say to those voters, sir? What was the result of that poll?

Who was winning? Questions to you. Well, the question was that I was winning, and I think by a fairly comfortable margin. I might mention that. But here is the point. Let's talk about democratic socialism, not communism, Mr. Bloomberg.

That's a cheap shot. Let's talk about democracy. Let's talk about what goes on in countries like Denmark, where Pete correctly pointed out they have a much higher quality of life in many respects than we do. What are we talking about? We are living in many ways in a socialist society right now. Problem is, as Dr. Martin Luther King reminded us,

we have socialism for the very rich, rugged individualism for the poor. I was talking to one of Bernie Sanders' top advisors yesterday who said, basically, like, this is the fight that Bernie Sanders was made for. You know, like, going up against a billionaire, much like, as you said, Elizabeth Warren was made for this, so was Bernie Sanders. I mean, he's been railing against billionaires for his entire career, and now there's one standing right over there on the stage. Well, there's a very good chance the next two or three weeks we'll decide who the Democratic nominee is going to be. I think I will say some things our friends in the corner like, and I will say some things our friends in the corner will not like about Bernie Sanders. I mean, there is no question that Bernie Sanders is at this exact

moment, probably the front runner to be the Democratic nominee for president. And I think that has to do to his performance, the first few states, but also the way that the Sanders campaign has lapped any other campaign except for Mike Bloomberg in organizing on the March 3rd states where a third of the delegates are at stake. Bernie Sanders is committed to win California. He is actually spending more time campaigning in California than Nevada over the next few days, which is really interesting. That's called confidence. It's called confidence. And he's got a lot going for him on that front, and he will continue to do his thing. But I think the question is, you look at that poll, and it's interesting. Sanders is on top, but yes, and we had a similar poll. What are the things that Democratic voters least want to see in a

nominee? Somebody over 75, a socialist, somebody who recently had a heart attack, which I think was kind of a direct question about a certain candidate. They also weren't super excited about a billionaire either. That too, or a CEO. So really not loving the few. But this is the way the system works. If, let us say, the NBC Wall Street Journal poll is correct, that Bernie is ahead with roughly 30%, give or take a few points, among the Democratic field, but two-thirds of the voters don't want a socialist president, both of those facts can be true.

Two-thirds of the people in the country may not want a socialist president, but the Democrats may be in the process of choosing a socialist or a democratic socialist to be their nominee. Those two things can both happen. And that is both a victory for Bernie Sanders, and it's an enormous mountain for him to climb in the fall campaign. He's going to have to choose how he handles the convention very carefully. Perhaps he will dispatch Mike Bloomberg, but that's not certain on the basis of this debate because most of Mike Bloomberg's voters probably weren't watching this debate. And then he has to choose a running mate

who can help him get over that natural fear or trepidation or whatever it is that people have about someone who calls himself a socialist. One more clip I want to get to before we wrap the show. This is a moment where Bernie Sanders and Michael Bloomberg are continuing their conversation about billionaires. Billionaires in this country saw an $850 billion increase in their wealth. Congratulations, Mr. Bloomberg. But the average American last year saw less than a 1% increase in his or her income. That's wrong. Mayor Bloomberg, should you exist?

I can't speak for all billionaires. All I know is I've been very lucky, made a lot of money, and I'm giving it all away to make this country better. And a good chunk of it goes to the Democratic Party as well. Is it too much? Have you earned too much money? Has it been an obscene amount of money? Should you have earned that much money? Has it been an obscene amount of money? Should you have earned that much money? Yes, I worked very hard for it, and I'm giving it away. Thank you. Mayor Bloomberg,

should you exist, might be a metaphor alert. I think that there are a number of candidates on that stage who have been running for president for more than a year, who watched this guy show up at, you know, 10 weeks ago and start eating their lunch, who are not happy about the situation, and yet they're almost powerless to do anything about it because of resources. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And so there's this kind of interesting muddle around Mike Bloomberg that I hear from voters that I talk to, and especially folks who have been involved in a democratic politics for a long time. And this clip kind of got at that. It's the fact that he's kind of flouted the process and the way it's traditionally worked. And he's spending a lot of

money to contest these Super Tuesday states and those further down in the process. But he's also spent a ton of money infusing democratic causes and democratic institutions. So there's kind of this double bind there that I think a lot of people don't know what to do with. Now, it's clear Bernie Sanders knows exactly what he thinks about this, and so does Elizabeth Warren. But I think for some of these other folks and candidates who are running these down-ballot races, it's a little more complicated to figure out

where they stand and fit with him. And in terms of how Mr. Bloomberg has spent his money, I do think it is worth pointing out that there are a lot of Congress people, there are a lot of state legislatures who feel like they won their races, that control of the Virginia House of Delegates, among other places, flipped because of the way he spent his money in a targeted way. And he does have a track record of getting people into office and getting laws passed on things he cares about, including

gun control measures and climate change measures. He measured at one point the night, and I covered environmental stuff for a couple years, and it is really interesting. If you look at the way that he personally spent money to get dozens of coal-fired power plants closed, you can make an argument that he has actually played a role in reducing carbon emissions in the U.S. more than almost anyone, except for, I don't know, maybe like Jerry Brown and Arnold Schwarzenegger and the stuff that they passed here in California. Is that a reason to be president of the United States? I don't know, but I think that is the response that the Bloomberg camp gives when it's about money.

Cool, let's talk about all the things I've spent for Democratic causes. Of course, in 2004, he was spending that money for George W. Bush and the Republican Party, though. One last impossible question. Does this debate matter? Does it make a difference? Does someone get a bounce? Nevada has already largely voted. We don't know exactly how many people in Nevada have voted, but some people are estimating that it's around half the total number that is going to vote.

In addition, the Culinary Union of Nevada, which we usually talk about in these kinds of discussions, has chosen not to endorse a candidate. That kind of leaves the door open for the Sanders organization to really drive through. There's every reason to think that even if this debate had not happened, Bernie Sanders was going to win in Nevada, and Bernie Sanders was going to be in the driver's seat for Super Tuesday with the looming sort of, you know, fog of what does Mike Bloomberg actually do when he gets in the fight. This debate might have produced enough journalism and media coverage and discussion that would put a damper, really, on this surge for Mike Bloomberg. And in that case, that would be the biggest effect the debate could have. I think the debate matters in a different way. I think it matters because

people are probably going to raise a lot of money off of it, to be completely blunt. Look at what happened in the last debate. It not only changed Amy Klobuchar's fortunes, I think, in New Hampshire, a state that gave her a star performance, she raised something to the effect of, I think, $12 million in the week or so following that debate. And that is no small sum if you are a candidate that does not bring in Bernie Sanders level money or have Mike Bloomberg level purse strings. Like that is a big deal. And with the glut of states that are going to vote on Super Tuesday, being able to have an influx of cash right now is really imperative. They've got a field staffs and so many states simultaneously. A lot of these states like here in California and Texas are really big. So they're going to need to be able to get on the ground.

They're going to need to be able to hire field staff and organizers. So I think it could potentially be a big deal for some of these candidates. All right, that's a wrap for today. Thousand Oaks, thank you so much for being here with us. And a special thanks once again to KCLU for helping to put on this very special episode. We will be back tomorrow with all the latest from the world of politics. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Ron Elving, editor correspondent. I'm Juana Summers. I cover demographics and culture. And I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the presidential campaign. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.