The NPR Politics Podcast - Sanders Says He Is Winning 'Generational Debate,' Losing On 'Electability'

Episode Date: March 11, 2020

Despite an underwhelming performance in yesterday's primary contests, Bernie Sanders says he remains a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination. Sanders pointed to Sunday's one-on-one debate with Biden in Arizona as a chance to change the minds of voters who say they like his policy ideas but view Biden as the best option to defeat Trump in November. This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, and campaign correspondent Scott Detrow.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hello, my name is Jane Ray and I live in Sumter, South Carolina. I'm currently making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for my kids to eat for dinner. This podcast was recorded at 2.25 p.m. on Wednesday, the 11th of March. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but over at my house, it's peanut butter jelly time! hear this, but over at my house, it's peanut butter jello time. Dinner of champions. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover the presidential campaign. And I'm Scott Detrow. I also cover the presidential campaign. Last night, there were major wins for Joe Biden in Mississippi, Missouri, Michigan,

and Idaho. Today, Bernie Sanders, who won North Dakota, assessed the night at a press conference in Burlington, Vermont. Last night, obviously, was not a good night for our campaign from a delegate point of view. Scott, you were there. I was. Yeah, this was in Burlington, Vermont. This is the first time we've heard from Bernie Sanders since last night's results. He did not speak at all anywhere last night, which was pretty remarkable and also kind of made sense because he didn't have much to talk about. This was a really bad night for his campaign. We talked a lot in last night's podcast about the symbolic value of Michigan and how big

of a loss that was for him there. You can see the thinking of his campaign, though, and why they're going to keep going forward. This has been a race that has seen massive instantaneous shifts in momentum, and especially right before the very first one-on-one debate, which is going to take place on Sunday night, their thinking is that could change things again. It's a pretty long shot. It's very hard to see the path forward. Sanders did not take any questions. I had many about the way that he viably gets himself in the lead of delegates, but they're

going to push forward. And I think we're going to talk about this in a little bit. But the overall big picture tone of this statement was really interesting to me. It seemed like he was talking about trying to win the nomination, but also more broadly trying to talk about continuing to push the Democratic Party to the left. There's a bit of an echo here between what Bernie Sanders seems to be saying in terms of, you know, winning on the battle of ideas, if not the battle of actually getting the nomination, which again remains to be seen, to be totally clear. But there's an echo of what something

Elizabeth Warren said when she was still in the race, I believe it was to Time Magazine, where they asked her essentially, listen, let's say you don't win the nomination. If the nominee ends up taking your ideas, how would you feel? And her response was, I'd feel great. I would lead the parade. I'm paraphrasing here, but not by much. And so, listen, Bernie Sanders, and I know we've talked about this on the podcast before, has successfully moved the party leftwards. We saw this happening in 2016. We see Joe Biden adopting more progressive policies than, quote unquote, centrist, moderate, whatever you want to call them, candidates did in the past. And I think Bernie Sanders can take a fair amount of credit for that, whether or not he wins the nomination. In his remarks this afternoon, Sanders was pretty clear eyed about

what was happening. He said lost or we're losing a bunch of times. While our campaign has won the ideological debate, we are losing the debate over electability. Yeah, and we've interviewed tons of voters who feel that way. I think Bernie Sanders has been pretty blunt a few times in the last few weeks. I'm thinking also of a statement he made last week after Joe Biden had such a big night on Super Tuesday, where Sanders admitted that the entire premise of his electability argument, of his path to the nomination, is to see young voters turn out at record numbers, to get non-regular voters, people who don't really vote ever, out to the polls to support him. And he said that just isn't happening.

And this was another concession that Bernie Sanders is having a hard time making his pitch right now. His campaign had really, even though they benefited so much from a crowded field, they had been excited about the chance to go one-on-one with Joe Biden, to talk about the issues, to talk about trade, to talk about Biden's vote for the Iraq war, things like that. They got that chance. Bernie Sanders delivered that message all over Michigan, especially. And we saw the second week in a row where across the country, Democratic voters have coalesced around Joe Biden, not Bernie Sanders. One other thing that we saw in the exit polls, and it was stark, was just how there is this big, huge generational divide among the Democrats

with older voters overwhelmingly favoring Biden and with younger voters overwhelmingly favoring Sanders. And Sanders addressed this in his remarks. Today, I say to the Democratic establishment, in order to win in the future, you need to win the voters who represent the future of our country, and you must speak to the issues of concern to them. You cannot simply be satisfied by winning the votes of people who are old them. Yeah, I think that was the moment more than anything else that made me think, what is Sanders trying to do here? Is the next few weeks about getting back into the fight and being the nominee? Or is he not going to admit it out loud, but it's this more about continuing this years-long push? You know, I've been kind of going back through different times I've interviewed Sanders over

the last few years. And I did this interview with him at one point in 2018, when all of the candidates he was endorsing in primaries seemed to be losing. And he said, yeah, I'm not really too bothered by that. This is more about pushing the party long term. And if they get 5% more than they would have otherwise, and maybe win an election down the line in a few years, I'm fine with that, which is not something you hear from politicians that often. So I'm not trying to say he's not competing anymore. But it seemed to me in that moment, this was a big picture conversation for Bernie Sanders. One important point that I really want to make here, though, also about that generational divide is that, look, you look at any of these states, especially from last night, young voters by a

huge margin prefer Bernie Sanders. We hear this over and over, but it's important to understand how big this is. Like seven in 10 voters under 30 in Michigan preferred Bernie Sanders, whereas seven in 10 voters over the age of 65, give or take, preferred Joe Biden. And we see this in many contests. And this generational divide has not always been apparent in the Democratic Party. Go back to 2004 when we had another super progressive candidate, Dennis Kucinich, and even Howard Dean. Look back at these candidates. They did not have these huge generational divides. I mean, and it is remarkable how quickly and how wide this has opened up. And there are any number of reasons for it. Recession, endless war, all those things. But it is it's amazing how big and how quickly this has happened. I wonder and I think we don't know the answer, but how much of that is Bernie Sanders? How much of that is Bernie Sanders is an icon, if you will?

And how much of that is ideological? I don't know if you can disentangle the two, right? I mean, because there's the political arena. There are the world circumstances that have set the stage. Once again, Great Recession, I'm sure, set the stage. People graduating with huge amounts of debt. But then you need someone to come in and operationalize that, take advantage of that. And Bernie Sanders seems to have been remarkably effective at taking advantage of that. And not every politician would be. All right. Well, let's take a quick break. And when we get back, we will talk about what is propelling Joe Biden's success. And now, Uber has introduced a brand new safety feature called RideCheck, which can detect if a trip goes unusually off course and check in to provide support.

To learn more about Uber's commitment to safety, visit uber.com slash safety. On a secret military recording, a sound so haunting, one scientist believed it could change the world. My mind was racing as I listened to this, and I thought, this, this is the way. Join NPR's Invisibilia for the first episode of our new season. And we're back. And now that we've gotten some more results out of last night, we're still waiting on Washington state. But we did learn that Biden won Idaho in addition to the three M's, Missouri, Mississippi and Michigan. Washington state is still too close to call. But Bernie Sanders did win North Dakota. I want to talk about what has tilted this race toward Biden, starting with his base.

It seems as though he started in South Carolina winning black voters overwhelmingly. But it seems as other things. One is that Joe Biden's support tends to skew more female than Sanders' support, which skews more male. And the other thing that we're looking closely at, and I'm sure we will be disentangling in the weeks and so on to come, is looking at how Joe Biden's support differed than, say, Hillary Clinton's support, another center left establishment, quote unquote, politician who ran against Bernie Sanders last time. And one thing that we saw in Michigan, very interestingly, black voters support of Biden didn't differ much, if barely at all, from their support of Clinton in 2016. Now, white voters, they swung hard for Joe Biden in a way that they didn't for Hillary Clinton in 2016. So that is one big thing that happened. voters. They swung hard for Joe Biden in a way that they didn't for Hillary Clinton in 2016. So that is one big thing that happened. I do wonder, and I guess we partially know the answer, but how much did Bernie Sanders benefit from being not Hillary Clinton in 2016? And how is that different in 2020 when you have Joe Biden, who is also not Hillary Clinton? It's hard to know exactly how big of a part that was. But Hillary Clinton, we know, we remember, we all talked to a bunch of voters back then. A lot of voters were very

turned off by her for a variety of reasons. And it is important to really pay attention to here is, yeah, how much did gender play into that? And that's, listen, it's going to be so hard for us to put borders around that and know exactly for sure. But it's hard to imagine it isn't to some degree a factor in this. And I think one of the things that, you know, as these results played out and kind of clarified that question that I was thinking a lot about was that answer that Elizabeth Warren gave last week, which is not news to many people about the fact that, you know, any sort of question about that is a trap question, right? You know, you don't want to seem like a whiner, but it's such an obvious factor. I think, broadly speaking, this has been something that really caught Bernie Sanders and his campaign flat footed. The realization over the last three weeks that maybe

this, I was gonna say maybe just maybe, which is something that he says 15 times, that maybe just maybe. I think you've heard enough stump speeches, Scott. Somebody's been spending a lot of time on the road with Bernie Sanders. That maybe this coalition, this revolution isn't as big as they thought it was. And it's so hard when you're in the middle of a bubble like this, like 10,000 person rally, 13,000 person rally over and over again, to realize that, yeah, you know, 35, 37 percent of the electorate is still a massive amount of people, but it might not be enough to win an election. Yeah. I mean, I just I think about right before Nevada talking to some of the standards advisors and they were they could see a path, an easy path to winning the nomination. They had the ground

game. They had it all laid out. They were seeing that they were expanding his base in Nevada. And then it just all slipped away. It's just amazing how to state the obvious. It's amazing how quickly this changed. Right. Because after Nevada, Bernie Sanders, understandably, could make the case lot of Latino voters in Nevada, for example. And then in California. Yes. Yeah. And then South Carolina came along and shot some holes in that theory of the case. And I think when you say it that way, it really underscores the thinking that they have of why would you get out of the race right now, especially with a one on one debate coming up. Well, that one on one debate is coming this weekend, and we will be covering it. That is a wrap for today. We will be back in your feeds tomorrow.

I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover the campaign. I'm Scott Detrow. I also cover the campaign. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. © BF-WATCH TV 2021