The NPR Politics Podcast - Stocks Fall Sharply Ahead Of "Big Tuesday" Primaries

Episode Date: March 9, 2020

As financial markets reckon with another acute shock, a question for the White House resurfaces: will it take measures to stabilize the U.S. economy? And Michigan, Missouri, and four other states head to the polls Tuesday, in what could be be a make-or-break day for Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign. This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, chief economics correspondent Scott Horsley, campaign correspondent Juana Summers, and national political correspondent Don Gonyea.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Diana from Whittier calling from the start line of the 2020 Los Angeles Marathon. This podcast was recorded at 2.37 p.m. on Monday, March 9th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Like, hopefully I'll have 26.2 under my belt. All right, here's the show. Well, congratulations. Let's just assume you finished and that it felt great. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.

I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And we are going to talk all things Big Tuesday. That would be the primaries tomorrow. But first, I want to phone a friend, though not literally on the phone. Scott Horsley is here. Hi, Scott. Good to be here, Tam.

I wish it were under happier circumstances. And Scott, you are the chief economics correspondent for NPR, but I think we should start calling you Dr. Doom. It's been that kind of winter. Yeah, so we have you here because when the financial markets opened this morning in the U.S., they dropped so quickly that trading had to be halted. The circuit breaker went off. I don't know if it's technically a circuit breaker. They call it a circuit breaker. Yeah. If the S&P 500 index drops 7% in a single day, they will halt trading for 15 minutes. And that's what happened this morning. And then

trading restarted. And for a while, things kind of held their own, although the S&P is down now more than 7%. And the Dow is down just a little over 8 percent as we record this at 2.30 in the afternoon. So, Scott, the markets have been really uneasy and volatile for the last couple of weeks because of coronavirus. But this today isn't just about coronavirus, right? That's right. Add to all the jitters that are still out there about coronavirus and which are probably growing as the virus spreads, we now have a new wrinkle, which is a surprise move by Saudi Arabia to open the taps on oil production and cut the price of oil. That really caught the market by surprise because the Saudis and all the other big oil producing countries, like the Russians and the OPEC members, had been trying to put a floor under oil prices, had been trying to maybe curtail production so

that oil prices wouldn't fall further. Oil prices have already been dropping because of the coronavirus outbreak and the slowdown in the world economy and demand for oil. So to see the Saudis reverse course and say, OK, if we can't get a deal with the Russians, we'll just flood the market and drive the price even lower until they scream and squeal. That really shook up traders and just made an already volatile situation even more volatile. So, Scott, how low is low here? So the American benchmark is just north of $31 a barrel. The European benchmark is a little over $34 a barrel.

Basically, oil prices have fallen by about a quarter on the Saudis' move. Yeah, a barrel of oil might cost less than a barrel of hand sanitizer right now, a bottle of hand sanitizer. If you can find one, that's right. Now, for American consumers, of course, this has some benefits. It will presumably drive the price of gasoline down, but it's doing that at a time when people don't really want to drive anywhere anyway. And because the United States is now a bigger oil producing country and we have a lot of energy companies in this country, that's not good news for them. Are there potential economic ripples beyond just the markets being upset? And what, if anything, can President Trump and Congress do to shore up the U.S. economy. Well, as we say, this just adds to a market that was already

really skittish because of the unknown surrounding the coronavirus epidemic and what that's going to do to, you know, factories in this country, what it's going to do to shopping centers, how it's going to affect all sorts of commerce here. We haven't really seen any specific proposal from the Trump administration to address this. The president has repeatedly called for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates even beyond the cut that they ordered last week. The president did float the idea on Twitter of a payroll tax cut, but even members of his own administration don't seem to be backing him up on that. Meantime, you have congressional Democrats saying, we think we ought to be doing stuff to help the workers who might be affected by the coronavirus epidemic. For example, expanding

paid sick leave for the millions of American workers who don't have it or enhancing unemployment insurance. We did hear today from the Republican chairman of the Senate Finance Committee that they're looking at the idea of some targeted tax cuts. So we do have policymakers who are at least trying to explore options for addressing the economic fallout from the epidemic. But there's been no consensus on what direction any kind of relief package ought to take. All right, Scott, we're going to let you get back to... Monitoring the freefall. Yes, that.

And we are going to take a quick break. And when we get back, it's time for Big Tuesday. This message comes from NPR sponsor Indeed. When it comes to hiring, you need help getting to your shortlist of qualified candidates fast. With Indeed.com, you can post a job in minutes, set up screener questions, then zero in on qualified candidates using an intuitive online dashboard. And when you need to hire fast, accelerate your results with sponsored jobs. New users can try for free at Indeed.com slash NPR. Terms, conditions, and quality standards apply.

Offer valid through March 31, 2020. 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 I have new friends, NPR's Don Gagne and Juana Summers. Hey, Don. Hi there. And Juana, you are on your way to Missouri. Is that right? That is correct. I am headed home. Yes, because you're from Missouri. I grew up in Kansas City. And the reason we are talking about that state and why we have Don here, who is from the great state of Michigan,

is that Big Tuesday is tomorrow. There are six states on the ballot, Michigan, Missouri, Washington, Mississippi, Idaho, and North Dakota. And really, all eyes are on your home states, Michigan and Missouri. They are indeed. And Michigan is particularly interesting. First, it's the biggest of the states that are voting here. But it is also, here's where it gets intriguing, a place that Bernie Sanders carried unexpectedly. It was an upset. It was really, really, really close in 2016 over Hillary Clinton. It's a state he has been looking to all year. Now it suddenly becomes a state where he absolutely has to do well to try to stop this surge that we've seen from Joe Biden over the past couple of weeks. A few weeks back,

Bernie was leading in the polls. Now in all of the polls, one after another that have been coming out, it shows all the movement toward Biden, some even giving Biden a comfortable lead. And Juana, what about Missouri? Yeah, so I'm so interested to see what happens there because this is a state that Hillary Clinton only beat Bernie Sanders by a little more than a thousand votes. It was a really tight race. They competed heavily for the state's voters. I think this year what's going to be so interesting is the fact that like many of these other states that we saw on Super Tuesday, Missouri also has a large share of Black voters. And I think the state will be a really good test case, along with Michigan and Mississippi as well, to show whether Midwestern Black voters are warmer to Bernie Sanders' message than Black voters have been in some other parts of the country.

I'll also be looking at what is going on in some of the state's rural counties. Those are parts of the state that Bernie Sanders did really well at winning over in 2016, those non-college-educated white voters. So we'll be looking to see if he can do that again or if those voters go for Joe Biden instead. Yeah. So in some ways, 2016 will be a benchmark for both of these races, like how Sanders did in 2016, how he does this time and how the demographics shake out. And Michigan is one of those blue wall states. It's one of the states that Hillary Clinton lost in November of 2016 to Donald Trump and has been giving Democrats heartburn ever since. Who are the key voters in that state? Suburban voters, especially women in the suburbs. Now,

they will be key this week. And we should note it is an area that Joe Biden has, in their recent contests, been showing considerable strengths. Sanders' big strength, college students. He has had big rallies, a big one at the University of Michigan over the weekend. And he is counting on, hoping hoping for big turnout there, perhaps bigger than he's gotten in previous states so far. But a group that I find particularly interesting is union households. And a lot of them are those white working class families that didn't didn't officially go for Trump last time. Hillary Clinton still carried them in Michigan, but by a smaller margin than any Democrat had since that election way back with Ronald Reagan against Walter Mondale. So those voters, a lot of them did go for Trump.

And the question is, do they come back this time? Are they looking at the Democrats? Can I introduce you to one family that I met? Oh, please, please. OK, so these are Democrats and these are not people who flirted with Trump. I should tell you that right off the bat. But it is a husband and wife in a working class suburb of Detroit. It's Larry and Antonia McCool.

OK, so he's a Bernie supporter. She is a Joe Biden supporter. This is a couple that get along great. It's a lovely household. They swear they love each other. Let's hear the tape. Let's let's. So we hear first we hear Antonia talking about what she doesn't like about Bernie Sanders. I feel that he's

like Trump in that way, where he feels that his point of view is the only point of view to have. So there are a lot of things about Sanders and Trump that are, to me, are kind of similar in a different kind of way. And I guess she's not saying that Sanders is Trump, but she's pointing to the fact that she sees Sanders as being kind of rigid in his views. And in that regard, she sees some Trump in him, even if their views are certainly very different. Now, her husband, Larry McCool, kind of disagrees with all of that. And he likes Joe Biden. He thinks he's a good candidate, but he just has issues with him.

I hate to say it, but it's like status quo Joe. I mean, the fossils are coming out. Bernie's up there in years, too. Oh, Bernie's up there in years, but his train of thought is younger. So the McCools are going to vote with a lot of other people on Tuesday. That's tomorrow in Big Tuesday. Missouri obviously is voting, but there are other states, too. North Dakota and Mississippi and Idaho and Washington state. And it does feel like a day that could be very significant for the Bernie Sanders campaign. It does. Yeah. One of the biggest tenets of Bernie Sanders campaign,

as Don knows better than I do, is the fact that he is the candidate who can bring back disaffected voters in places like Michigan. So that state is really important symbolically. But there's also just the reality of math. Absent a strong performance on Tuesday, Bernie Sanders' ability to catch up with Joe Biden and the delegate count, that path becomes much more narrow. So he needs some wins and needs to pick up some delegates on Tuesday, he needs to regain the momentum. Michigan, Missouri would be perfect places to do that, but there are big challenges there for him. Yeah, and that is where he reset the race four years ago. Four years ago, his win in Michigan, narrow as it was, essentially powered him for the rest of the campaign. It gave him staying power right to the end and right into the convention. Obviously, he's hoping for more this time. He's hoping to actually be the nominee.

If he can kind of defy the numbers we're seeing in the polling over the past week, it would be a very important day for him, a good day. But it could also be just as good of a day for Joe Biden. And it could be where Joe Biden really nails this thing down. And you have had more consolidation among Democrats behind Joe Biden in the last couple of days. You had Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, both senators, both former candidates in this race, come out for Joe Biden. And then on the Sanders side, he got a big, important endorsement from the Reverend Jesse Jackson. And he also had some progressive groups throw their weight behind him. The Jackson endorsement is interesting.

Jesse Jackson ran for president, people will recall, in 1984 and 1988. He won the Michigan primary in 1988. So presumably that endorsement will mean some people, even though he hasn't really been kind of on the scene as much, especially as much as Senators Booker and Harris, who've just endorsed Joe Biden. But it's an important endorsement for Bernie Sanders to have on this final weekend. It's unquestionably an important endorsement, particularly coming from a leader in the Black community. And Bernie Sanders is working on improving his standing with Black voters. But despite all of that, it does feel like at least right now, the momentum is still with Joe Biden. Yeah, that that momentum that started with the South Carolina

primary hasn't hasn't let up yet and may not. That's right. All right. Well, I think we're going to leave it there for now, but we will have much more to talk about after we get results from big Tuesday, as we're calling it tomorrow night, late tomorrow night. Until then, we encourage you to keep up to date with all the latest coronavirus news by checking out NPR's daily morning news podcast, Up First. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Juana Summers. I cover the campaign. And I'm Don Gagne. I cover national politics. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.