The NPR Politics Podcast - Special Episode: On The Ground in Iowa

Episode Date: February 3, 2020

In this special episode of the NPR Politics Podcast, Scott Detrow travels to candidate events around the state of Iowa days and speaks with our campaign reporters about the themes of the race in the days before the first-in-the-nation caucus.This episode: campaign correspondents Scott Detrow and Asma Khalid, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, and political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben.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

Oh, we're in Cedar Rapids. Are we going to the right place? You look scared. I'm a little worried we might have put in the directions for one of the later stops. Are you serious? Oh no. Oh my god. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow.

Tomorrow, Iowa caucuses. This campaign has been going on for a year. Now, the actual contests are beginning. All weekend, producer Barton Girdwood, editor Eric McDaniel, and I drove hundreds of miles to see the top polling candidates as they made their final pitches in the final hours before the big day. All right, we are getting into our very large, white Chevy Silverado. My first car was a Ford Ranger, so I have some pickup truck experience,

but this is about twice the size. Our first stop was supposed to be North Liberty, Iowa to see former Vice President Joe Biden, where we were going to meet Asma Khalid. But real talk, we got lost and it was my fault. Hey, how's it going? It's good, how are y'all? That's Asma on the phone. We put in the wrong location into the GPS, so we are making up time.

We'll be there in two minutes. Okay. We were lucky because Biden is notoriously late to his events. If you're media, you can just go in right here. Okay. Okay, so we made it in time. We got to the right location. This looks like the typical setup for a Joe Biden event, although of course it's a lot more energized than those final days before the caucuses.

Yeah, I mean, this is the final weekend before the caucuses. So you also just have more folks who can attend a rally because it's not on a weekday. And you know, what's really interesting is this is so characteristic of Biden events in that he will often stand in the middle of the crowd and there are chairs, people all around him. He's not necessarily elevated on a stage. And I would argue it's one of the more intimate setups that you see at some campaign events. Yeah, kind of the theater in the round set up, if you want to put it that way. You've got the firefightersfighters Union wearing their yellow t-shirts with firefighters for Biden signs. You've got American flags, the Iowa flags, Biden, and big February 3rd with a checkmark graphics. And of course, one way you know that the Iowa caucuses are just around the corner is that this room is crawling with reporters,

TV crews from all over the country, from all over the world. Yeah. You know, Scott, I was at one of his rallies the other day, and I looked around the room and I thought, we have probably reached peak journalist-to-Iowan ratio at this point. You know, not necessarily at this event, but some of them, it feels like there are maybe just as many journalists as there are actual Iowans who can caucus out there. What is Biden's closing argument, Beth? So a lot of his closing argument sounds like a recap of his opening argument, which has been about the need to restore the soul of this nation

and about how important it is to vote for him to essentially bring the United States back to some sense of normalcy and how really this election is about character. This is an argument that you see even in some of his closing argument ads, this notion that four more years of Donald Trump would really be a threat to the country and that vote Biden means beating Trump and that he is more electable than anybody else. You know, every four years, democracy starts in Iowa. You are at the starting gate. You've set the nation on the path of picking the next president of the United States, and it's a big responsibility. But I respectfully suggest I don't think the responsibility, no matter how many caucuses you're participating in, has ever been bigger than this

one. Not because I am running, but because Donald Trump is president, and we owe it to well beyond the Democratic Party. We owe it to the American people that he is not, And we owe it to well beyond the Democratic Party. We owe it to the American people that he is not, that he's referred to in a year from now as a former president. All right, so Asma, it's a few minutes after noon. This event is actually still going on. John Kerry is speaking right now. But we've got to move on to the next event.

So we've stepped outside to talk for a few minutes. One thing that jumped out to me is that Joe Biden spoke for like a half hour about Donald Trump's character before he got to the issues. And then he kind of quickly ticked through climate change, health care, gun control and things like that. But just the heart and soul of Joe Biden's candidacy is all about Donald Trump. That's right. And this is what we have been seeing from him for a while now. I mean, he he really does speak, I would argue, more about morality than policy. And it's really about the character of the country, the idea that, you know, you need to vote for him. He's got the best shot of beating Donald Trump. And, you know, when I talk to voters, I think that a lot of them who are even kind of lukewarm about his candidacy point to the fact that they do kind of think he might have

the best shot of beating Donald Trump. You know, I was speaking with one guy before things kicked off and he told me that he feels like Biden's campaign is underwhelming. It reminds him a little bit of Hillary Clinton's in 2016. And that worries him. But he also feels like Biden really does have the best shot of beating Trump. As this race has gone on, Joe Biden has started to consolidate more and more of the political establishments backing, if you will. One thing that was interesting was this generational endorsement dynamic that you had. He came out with two surrogates. One, Abby Finkenauer, one of the youngest women ever elected to Congress.

She pointed out she, just like Joe Biden, took the oath, was elected at age 29. But then you also have John Kerry, who won the Iowa caucuses way back in 2004, when politics looked a lot different. Who was just telling the crowd that age doesn't matter. 70 is the new 50. Just was basically, you know, trying to quiet the critics. Because there are some folks who feel like Joe Biden's age might be a detriment. And I've heard this at campaign events of his. You know, some folks will say, I like him, but the thing that gives me pause is his age. I worry about the energy. I worry just about, you know, does a 70-some-year-old have what it takes to be a president? And I should point out that these are often folks in their 70s who are concerned about this, making this point to me. Well, 70 is the new 50 is a point that I think three of the frontrunners in this race would

embrace. Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren. One candidate who would probably not embrace that is former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg. And that is who we are off to see next. All right. Don't get lost. Follow that GPS. Barton is now in charge of the GPS. Yep. We got lost. Okay. Right direction. I don't know if this is right. Nope, wrong direction. Wrong direction. Once more into the traffic circle. Next, we headed to Anamosa to catch up with former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg. In order to get to as many places as possible, the candidate was flying from rally to rally in a chartered jet.

That's not uncommon, but it wasn't how Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren was getting around. I'm taking a video. Oh, Warren, she's going to cut him off. Oh, my God. We weren't planning on seeing her until Sunday, but suddenly there she was in her bus right next to our car in Cedar Rapids. And here we are. We are right next to the Elizabeth Warren campaign bus. Hi, Elizabeth Warren! It looked like she might have turned left, but we kept going because we had to beat Buttigieg's plane to the next stop.

Waiting for us inside an elementary school cafeteria in the town of Anamosa, and looking really happy to be in Iowa, was NPR's Don Gagne. So we're in the elementary school cafeteria. They've got this... I don't know, I'm getting lost. You're just mesmerized by it. I know, I know. So up on the wall it says Strawberry Hill Diner. I mean, I got a thing

for diners, right? And then below it is the map of Iowa with all the little Iowa for Pete's all over it, and then American and Iowa flags. And's it's it's it's quaint beyond words but it's it's pretty classic it's pretty classic Iowa I think this wins the prize for best setup of the day after the tour he walked me through Buttigieg's closing argument to voters a lot of it is generational Democrats win when they look to the future but then he gets down into some nuts and bolts stuff. He talks about the impeachment trial. He notes the frustration Democrats feel as they watch it.

And the line that he uses is that the senators are the jurors today. You are the jurors tomorrow. And that's what being a voter in 2020 meets. And he has made, at times, more explicit than others, but a lot of comparisons to Barack Obama. He'll have that line about, you know, another guy with a funny name. You are in a unique position here as the person who covered that 2008 Obama race for NPR, and now you're spending a lot of time with Buttigieg. How similar does it feel? How not similar does it feel? Here's what feels similar.

When he does a big event that is packed with supporters, they're excited about him the way a lot of Obama voters were excited about him at this stage 12 years ago, 12 years ago. Now, we're in an elementary school cafeteria here. You didn't see a ton of events like this at this stage of the game for Barack Obama. Last question. Joe Biden, as he often does, basically ignored the fact that he's running in a Democratic caucus right now. And how much does Pete Buttigieg draw contrast with the Democrats he's running against? How much does he criticize them?

He has only in the past couple of days started calling out opponents by name. He has been above it all throughout, pointing out policy differences on the debate stage and this and that. But in this final push, he has, you know, very politely spoken of Joe Biden, but said, is this old Washington hand the guy to take us into the future? And he also speaks of Bernie Sanders and again, says nice things about Sanders and his passion, but he says, Senator Sanders seems to be offering Americans a choice. It's either the status quo or it's revolution. And Pete Buttigieg certainly doesn't think that's the choice that Americans are facing. So this is where what I'm offering is different from my competitors. And let me be clear, this is an honest and respectful,

but meaningful, difference of opinion and difference in approach. With Vice President Biden, the message is that this is no time to take a risk on someone new. But I'm here to make the case that history has taught us that the greatest risk we could take going into a high stakes election would be to fall back on the familiar when we're dealing with something that is completely new in our politics like this president. And then you've got Senator Sanders. I think speaking for values and ideas that everybody broadly can share in terms of the goals,

but in a political framework that makes it feel like you're either for a revolution or you got to be for the status quo, and there's nothing in between. Where actually the striking thing about the moment that we're in is that there's a healthy, strong American majority ready to come together and deliver on these big ideas, even more than we had just a few years ago, to get health care to every single American. Just not wild about the idea of kicking people off their plan if they don't want to be. All right. So, Don, we're outside the school right now. You made it clear beforehand and it was clear watching him speak after listening to you. This is a guy who sticks to the stump speech. These are very buttoned down events. This is the first one where he's taken his suit jacket off that I've seen in the past

couple of days. It seems like it feels like a real earnestness, hopefulness, and optimism. Is the theme, turn the page, let's hit reset? These are really positive events. He always talks about hopeful being a noun, as in a presidential hopeful. His supporters really smile when he says that, and that's kind of what they bring as well. You have had more time to talk to voters at Buttigieg's events than we have. What are the constant themes that you're hearing? There aren't a ton of late deciders. People who like him, like him. Yes, he's a nice, plain-spoken guy, but they think that he can stand up to Donald Trump. And the buzzsaw that's going up against the Trump campaign will no doubt be in a general election.

All right, Don, good luck with all the driving. I'm sorry NPR does not have a plane for you, but, you know, I think you can make it work with some triangulating. We're good. We're used to this. And, hey, Iowa in January. It's a beautiful place. Bernie Sanders was at an arena in downtown Cedar Rapids. Don't hit this car with my car door. Didn't dent the car. Time for some Vampire Weekend. And it wasn't just him speaking. It was a big concert with Vampire Weekend.

We spotted Domenico Montanaro in the big crowd by the press area. And it wasn't just him speaking. It was a big concert with Vampire Weekend. We spotted Domenico Montanaro in the big crowd by the press area. So this is a little different than any other event we've been to today. We went through security and then we had to wade through this big crowd in an arena, a smoky, dark arena to find you. Yeah. Here we are. A few thousand people already filing in. You know, Sanders people clearly, you know, they have the energy here in Iowa. You know, you've got a lot of young people here.

And he's the frontrunner in Iowa. He's the favorite. And the pressure, frankly, is on him with that. And this isn't just a speech. It's a rally. It's a concert. It's an event. Yeah, this is a pep rally.

I mean, look, there's only a couple days left. They've got to get the juice flowing with some of these supporters, not only for them to caucus, but for them to do the work. I don't know. What do you think is his final message? You've been going with him, traveling with him for some time. What's the closing sale here in Iowa? Bernie Sanders starts off almost every speech with Donald Trump as a homophobic, xenophobic, et cetera, racist, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,

but then quickly pivots to all the things he wants to do as president. And that is, of course, Medicare for All, the issue he talks about more than any other candidate, and partially because of him dominated so much of the last year of this campaign. He talks about really scaling back the United States military presence abroad, all these big changes that Bernie Sanders wants to do, part of the political revolution as he's branded it for two campaigns in a row now, but really that he's been talking about for decades.

You know, the boldness of Bernie Sanders is obviously what stands out. And, you know, what's, I don't know if this is indicative of anything or not, but the other night, you know, we had our live podcast event and I talked to someone there who said that he had committed to Elizabeth Warren so much so that they had sent him his card in the mail. Yeah. And I said, you signed the card. They mail it back to you as a passive reminder of like, hey, buddy, by the way, I said, so you're going to caucus for Warren? He's like, no, I'm caucusing for Bernie.

And I said, wow, you're caucusing for Sanders. What happened? How did Warren let you down? And he said, she didn't really let me down. It's just that I saw this surge with Bernie, and it's like he decided to go with the OG. Then I got a call from the Bernie Sanders campaign. All right, so I'm backstage right now.

There's going to be an off-the-record meeting with Bernie Sanders and a bunch of reporters. This is something campaigns often do with the reporters who cover them a lot. You can't use the quotes, but it's often a good opportunity to get more blunt thoughts from the politicians that you're covering than you would get in a formal interview. Of course, we've interviewed Bernie Sanders before and we will again. But it's a really cool scene right here. I'm standing backstage. There's a big velvet curtain from the floor to the ceiling of this arena and the stage is in front with the music set up. Michael Moore is speaking right now.

And the bus is pulled behind backstage with this really dramatic lighting on it. Blue bus, it says Bernie. Iowa, this is what I believe. If there is a low voter turnout, if people, working people, young people, people who believe in justice say, well, you know, it's a good TV show on, or I got something else to do, I'm going to stay home. If there's a low voter turnout, let me be very frank, we're going to lose. But if there is a high voter turnout,

we're going to win. So tonight, I am here to ask you to make certain that on Monday night, we have the highest voter turnout for an Iowa caucus in the history of this state. Let us go forward together. Let us defeat Donald Trump. Let us transform this country. Thank you all very much. So you and I are sitting in the very narrow backseat of the cab while Barton drives. We just left the Sanders event. What jumped out to you? You know, what jumped out to me is I'm really glad that I drove two hours from Des Moines to see this event because, you know, I'm pretty convinced that this is Bernie's race to lose. And I mean,

that seems, if you were at this event, that's a pretty, I think, conventional take. Because no other candidate is getting 3,000 people to his events. This was in an arena. It was a show of force. On the one hand, that's pretty impressive. On the other hand, it means that Bernie Sanders has now raised the bar where anything short of a victory is going to be seen as problematic. We talked about the crowd size difference. Crowd size isn't everything, but all of the candidates were in and around Cedar Rapids today, and no one had anywhere near the size of a crowd. No, they didn't, but I don't think we can discount some of the other candidates either, because I do think that there's a lot of strong support for them, too. You know, these people around town have had their Elizabeth Warren buttons on and happily displaying those.

And Joe Biden, for all the talk of the fact that, you know, some of his events have been a little lackluster here in Iowa. Actually, the event that I'd seen that I saw today with him, he had a packed house, a few hundred people at, albeit a middle school, but the people who were there supporting him, older crowd, but strong sense of urgency, intense urgency about beating Donald Trump. And here comes a really big and slow-moving freight train. All right, so, Domenico, we are giving you a ride to your car, and then we're all going to drive back from Cedar Rapids to Des Moines. Yep. Biggest question for last, what did you think of Vampire Weekend?

I liked them. I actually didn't know that I knew one of their songs. It sounded a little bit like Paul Simon, to be totally honest, if I'm going back a ways. But they're good. They're fine. We're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, Sunday.

Support for this podcast and the following message come from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, developing solutions to support strong families and communities to help ensure a brighter future for America's children. More information is available at aecf.org. Hey, it's Guy Raz here, host of How I Built This from NPR. And on our latest episode, how Jimmy Whale started an online encyclopedia as a side project and watched it grow into one of the biggest sites on the Internet, Wikipedia.

Listen now. We're back and we were back on the campaign trail Sunday morning. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren had scheduled a last minute rally in Indianola and it was packed. More than a thousand people showed up. Uh oh. There might not, the room might be at capacity. Danielle Kurtzleben was inside, so we snuck into a stairwell to call her. Hello!

Hey, Danielle. Hi. So, I think I'm about ten feet away from you, but I'm sitting in the stairwell around the corner by myself, and you're in a very crowded room. Oh, no. Yes. The room is at capacity. So I've seen them turning away reporters and caucus knowers alike.

So it looks like Warren is going to talk to the capacity crowd first. But you've been following her around the last few days. What has she been focusing on? So what she's been talking about is, yes, her speech about, here's my biography, I'm a girl from Oklahoma, my parents struggled economically, and also talking about her corruption agenda. Now that said, you and I both know that if you followed a candidate long enough, you can recite their stump speech word for word by the end of the campaign season. So she did have a couple of new things in her speech yesterday.

She led it off with a very sort of unity message. She led off by saying, first of all, you know, thank you, Iowans. You have asked me the tough questions. You've made me a better candidate. But also a thing where she said thank you explicitly to all of the other candidates, the ones in the race and the ones not in the race, because we have to beat Donald Trump. And it also seems to be a strategic move that her campaign is making. She is, of course, very progressive, as progressive as Bernie Sanders on almost everything, but also really works within the political system more than Bernie Sanders. And her campaign has been making this pitch. I am the candidate who can take both wings of this party and get everybody on board.

You're explicitly making a case that has sort of been implicit for a lot of the time with Warren's candidacy that, you know, she is a policy wonk, she's a technocrat, but she's also a policy wonk slash technocrat you can get behind, that you can, that can excite people in a way that maybe past candidates did not excite Democrats. All right. I'm going to let you run. And I guess I'll talk, I'll talk to you on the other side of the speech. I don't know if it'll be on the phone or in person.

Either way, I'll talk to you soon. Okay. Sounds good. Thanks a lot. Bye. After that, we stood in the balcony looking down at the atrium where everyone who couldn't make it into the actual rally had crowded around, and the campaign was bringing out a real live soapbox for Warren to stand on to say hi.

The soapbox kept getting bigger. We have a small wooden box, a step stool on that small wooden box to get onto the big wooden box where there is a microphone where Warren is going to speak. Hello, Indianola! So I come here with bad news and good news. The bad news is there's no more room inside. The good news is there's no more room inside. Warren went upstairs to the main rally, where she ended her stump speech like she often does

with a story about a toaster so you could put four slices of bread on a toaster oven slide the thing in flick it on hear the baby cry run down to the other end of the house stay longer than you thought you had and by the time you got back the flames would be leaping off the toast about six to eight inches catch the kitchen curtains on fire the kitchen cabinets you get the idea ask me how I know and the part I will confess to is my daddy was so upset about this that finally one year for Christmas he bought me a fire extinguisher man knows how to party so long came a federal agency consumer product safety Commission and they said enough you can't sell toasters in

America that burned down people's houses now is it they put safety switches on the toasters you couldn't buy any more toasters like that in the toaster fire stop in the early 2000s in America mort mortgages were being sold, home mortgages, that were so complex and so dangerous, the mortgages sold had a one in five chance of costing a family their home through foreclosure. Think about that. Only this time, the government wasn't on the side of the people. Welcome to the overflow room, Danielle. Yes.

Can we talk about the toasters? Oh, sure, yeah. Something I have heard her talk about every single time I've ever heard Elizabeth Warren. It's a really interesting closing message. The toaster story is emblematic, I think, of one of the things that Elizabeth Warren does most effectively on the campaign trail,

which is, yes, we all know she's into policy. That's almost cliched to say that at this point, but she makes it personal. It works because everybody owns a toaster. And back in the day, toasters did start fires. And she has this whole self-deprecating line about, ask me how I know they start fires. Ha ha ha ha. And it always gets some sort of a knowing laugh from the folks in the crowd. So it's her way of, she's very good at, despite being a senator and a Harvard law professor, her stories about the toaster or the dress or being a mother and looking for child care,

she is very good at putting herself on voters' level. You know, this is the fourth event that I've been to this weekend. And every event's different. And sometimes you catch candidates in small towns, and sometimes you catch it in bigger towns. But to me, one of my takeaways is that on the progressive side of this equation, Warren and Sanders, there's just a lot more energy right now to me that I can see that I can feel that the people coming to their events. Sure, yes. And I don't know how much to make of that because, you know, a vote is a vote.

A caucus goer is a caucus goer. One equals one. Right. It's not that enthusiasm amplifies that. So it could very well mean that I'm super pumped about Warren or Sanders and I'm able to get my friends in town to go to the caucus. Or it just means I'm really excited while I'm sitting at Warren or Sanders' table. I have to be honest, I never know what to make of it. I'm still a little lost on it. We'll find out in a little more than 24 hours.

That was two days and four candidates. Andrew Yang was also in Iowa making his final pitch. Look at this! This is incredible! You know, there are hundreds of people outside who are on their tiptoes trying to peer in. Thank you for that. Those of you who got here early, nice work. And so was Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar. We have momentum because of people like you, because of people that are willing to come out on this beautiful winter day and come in here to hear me talk. I need your help. I need you to commit to caucus.

This campaign has been going on for more than a year. The field had peaked at two dozen candidates, and it's a lot smaller now. For everything that's happened, though, voters haven't had their say yet. That changes Monday. All across Iowa, people will gather, and they'll stand up and declare which candidate they want to be the next president of the United States. We'll be there to cover who they pick. And then we're off to New Hampshire and Nevada and South Carolina and on and on until one of

these Democrats is the party's nominee. This podcast was produced by Barton Girdwood and edited by Eric McDaniel and Mathani Maturi. I'm Scott Detrow. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.