The NPR Politics Podcast - The 1st Democratic Presidential Debates: What You Should Watch For

Episode Date: June 24, 2019

On Wednesday and Thursday night twenty candidates will debate for the first time in the 2020 election. While they are all vying for the Democratic nomination, some are looking for a breakout moment, and others will be fending off attacks from rivals. The NPR Politics Podcast gets you ready for the two night special. This episode: political correspondent Scott Detrow, Congressional correspondent Susan Davis, political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, this is Kelly, and I'm recording this from the town of Ås, just south of Oslo in Norway. I've spent the year here as a Fulbright teaching assistant, and tomorrow is my last class of the year. Tomorrow's lesson will include eating American snacks, featuring Flamin' Hot Cheetos and Pop-Tarts. When I'm not eating snacks in class, I'm usually teaching American politics and culture, like trying to explain how a U.S. government shutdown works. This podcast was recorded at... I like that guy. We need Pete Buttigieg to say, like, thanks in Norwegian. It's 1208 Eastern on Monday, June 24th.

Things may have changed by the time you hear this. All right, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover politics. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I also cover politics. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. This week, it is a party in the city where the heat is on all night on the debate stage until the break of dawn or from 9 to 11 p.m. Eastern. Mara and I are welcoming ourselves to Miami along with 20 candidates over the course of two nights,

Wednesday and Thursday, the first debates. Really big deal, really big stakes, even if, as NBC put it in their advertising, it might not quite be two nights that change the course of history. That was insane. In a butterfly flapping its wings sort of way. We don't know. We can't be predicted.

We can't be predicted. Yeah. Why not? But whether or not it changes the course of history, this is a big moment for candidates to really introduce themselves to a lot of people who might be tuning in for the first time, right? Totally. Especially the ones who nobody knows who they are. Right. How many Americans have been keeping track of 20 plus candidates?

So, yeah, you're trying to make your moment if you haven't got that much attention. But, of course, the candidates who have been getting a lot of attention, like Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, a few others are going to be, you know, pressured as well and maybe criticized for the first time one candidate to another. But, Danielle, actually, it is two fields of 10 because there's so many candidates. We have to do this over the course of two nights. When this was first announced, didn't all things considered make you read through the lists of candidates as quickly as possible? They sure did. And you know what? I can't do it from memory. Do you want me to read them off to you right now?

Yes. I don't know if you need to do it in a rushed tone like you did then. Your call. But anyway, night one. I'm going to do this quick. So Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, former Representative Beto O'Rourke of Texas, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, former Maryland Representative John Delaney, Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard, former Housing Secretary Julian Castro, Ohio Representative Tim Ryan, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and Washington Governor Jay Inslee. So the big names that could dominate that night are Elizabeth Warren and, you know, Cory Booker, Beto O'Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, some Americans may have also heard of in hearings and that sort of thing. It's interesting that, you know, the DNC and NBC News, who's putting on this

debate, made a point to say they were going to evenly divide the top eight candidates up over the course of two nights. But really, it's like there's five candidates polling at higher numbers, and then there's a really big gap until you get to the next ones. And of those top five, only Warren is in the first night by herself, which is an interesting split. You know, Warren is benefits from having the best maybe narrative going into these debates, and that she is the candidate who is at this very moment in time ascending in the polls. She's been slowly chipping away and she is now technically up in the same mix with Bernie and Biden. That's a good way. That's a good energy to be going into a big night like this. You know, you can also make the argument that there's so

many of these other candidates down the ballot that in some ways the pressure is greater on them, that they have very few opportunities this summer to break out. And as the debates progress, the qualifications to get on stage get higher and higher. And a debate is a great way to build momentum for a struggling campaign. And one thing that these two nights are going to tell us is, is this a very fluid field with opportunities for candidates to totally emerge from the back of the pack? Or is this a normal size Democratic field, five to seven candidates embedded in this big sea of people that we aren't going to see very much in a couple of months? Right. And you wonder if people like, for example, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar are rejoicing that they are on that first night where. I think it's a great opportunity for them.

Right. Where you don't have Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders center stage. Yes, Elizabeth Warren is a big deal right now, but I mean, she's not a former vice president and she's not at the top, top of the polls. You might have more of an opportunity to make an impression. Right, right. So we're going to talk about the dynamics, the Biden-centric dynamics of Thursday in a second.

But first, Sue, of all of us, you have some unique perspective here. I have now seen a couple of these cattle calls, if you will, of where all the candidates talk back to back to back to back. But I saw them all give like five and seven minute speeches. You were in South Carolina Friday night where they all gave like one minute speeches, which feels like a very perfect window into the short amount of time you actually have on the debate stage. How do you break through in a crowd in a short period of time? Yeah, it was really fascinating.

This was also a crowd of probably about 4,000 South Carolina voters. Almost everyone I talked to hadn't made up their mind yet, which is a great reminder at this point in the campaign going into debate night how fluid everything is. The field is fluid. Voters are fluid. And there is in terms of the ideas that have to differentiate themselves on a lot of the big stuff, a lot of the candidates are great. So if you're trying to differentiate yourself, the debate is a chance to do that. You know, in these short stump speeches, everybody kind of gives the, you know, I'm for better wages. I'm for

a better government. The debate will give them a chance to get down into the details. I would also say, too, that it's important to remember this is a primary debate. They are still just trying to win Democratic voters. This isn't a general election dynamic. So it's going to be more driven towards, you know, strict Democratic ideas, values and motivation. Danielle, of all of us, you have probably spent the most time in the Medium posts and web pages and Twitter threads and white papers of policy rollouts. What are the policies that you are most looking forward to hearing candidates argue about and talk about when they're all on the same stage together? I mean, pretty much for me, it's about the policies that actually do divide Democrats in big, meaningful ways that voters care about.

Like, for example, you can think of the topic of climate change, which is not one of these policies, I would say, because most Democrats, all of these Democrats would tell you, yes, climate change is a problem. We need to do big things to solve it. Now, whether they're into the Green New Deal or whether they're into something else. It's like a matter of degrees. Right. There's still broad agreement. Something needs to be done, probably something really big. Abortion seems like that, too. Yeah. Yeah. There are a lot of candidates in this race that are pro-abortion rights. OK. So I am hoping that the good moderators at NBC, MSNBC, Telemundo get into topics like trade. Trade really divides Democrats. And it was a really big deal in 2016. I mean, candidates like Warren and Sanders, when the TPP was being negotiated, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that big giant trade deal that Obama negotiated, Warren and Sanders really disliked this deal.

They thought it was bad for workers. Obama and Biden, for example, really liked it and were pushing for it. So this is something that really divides Democrats. And aside from that, I mean, really broadly speaking, just I'm looking to see how much candidates disagree with each other as opposed to getting on that stage and saying, I don't like what Trump is doing, because any candidate could say that about a lot of topics. So that seems like an easy answer, a pat answer. I'm hoping they say more. So we've been talking for a while about the fact that Joe Biden being on stage night two is going to be the big storyline and how much other candidates attack Joe Biden or not. But that'll be coming after a two hour debate.

We will, of course, be in the podcast studio late at night breaking down that debate for you. But, Danielle, like how much do you think night one could affect the tenor and tone of night two? I mean, that's a great question. We can't predict the future. But what we do know is, of course, we have Elizabeth Policy Warren in that first night. I think it's actually Big Structural Change is her middle name. Unrig the economy. You're correct.

I apologize. No, but I mean, since she is the candidate that has been sort of casting herself as the candidate of policies, well, you wonder how much that is going to set the tone for the second night, especially since her policies have been a thing that other candidates have been having to react to. For example, candidate so-and-so Elizabeth Warren proposes a wealth tax. What do you think, candidate so-and-so Elizabeth Warren proposes breaking up big tech? What do you think? So I wonder how much Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, anybody that second night gets asked about these big things

that Elizabeth Warren might put out there the first night. So obviously, Warren and her policies has been like kind of a big storyline of the race. But who else are you interested in hearing from on night one? And who else do you think has the potential to have that pop out moment? I think it's a real advantage for the second tier candidates to be more on the front end of night one. I think I'm talking about people like John Delaney, the former congressman from Maryland, Julian Castro, Congressman Tim Ryan, the names that are polling at like the one percent range in the polls. If they were on stage with a ton of the more, quote unquote, front runners, I think it's hard

to get oxygen on a stage like that with less, you know, less leading candidates on the stage. It's really Warren and everybody else. And if you're everybody else, it's an opportunity. You know, candidates look for opportunities and to have a moment, to have a breakthrough, to make a point, to do something. They are the ones that if they're going to have a good night, you want to be John Delaney coming out of the debate, everyone saying that was the moment of the debate. I have talked to two advisors from some of these candidates who are in the one or two percent and they say, thank God we are night one. And thank God that Joe Biden is a night two because they expect a whole second night conversation to be about Joe Biden. I feel like that is the moment to really stand up and make an impression.

And if there's 10 candidates on stage for two hours with commercial breaks and time for questions, you think even if everybody gets equal time, they're getting what, five, six, seven minutes over the course of the entire night to break through. And they all have to strategize how to make it count. One thing I do want to just throw in here is that also, besides the people that Sue mentioned, you have Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O'Rourke, people who are, you could say tier one and a half if we're saying tier one and tier two here. Like people who in, you know, the five, six, seven, eight, nine percentages. I mean, the folks who like Booker and Klobuchar, Americans might have seen in high profile hearings, plenty of voters might kind of know of them, be vaguely familiar with them, have some sort of comfort level with them. And now maybe they get to hear more and maybe see them really maybe shine. I mean, Klobuchar used to be a prosecutor, so she is comfortable in front of a microphone thinking on her feet.

Booker, likewise, we've seen him in high profile TV hearings, that sort of thing. I'm very curious to see how Beto O'Rourke does, given the big, like, and most of it being media driven, really. He has all this momentum. He could be a rising star. And then kind of that narrative turning on him in a way of like, what are your policies, but what is your justification for being in this race? I think particularly standing right next to Warren. I'm very curious

to see what he says, how he says it. He's the first media hype victim of the 2020 primaries. He turned out a lot of people are saying to be faux Obama. And the one thing I'll say about this, because I actually just spent the last week like going through and rewatching a lot of people are saying to be faux Obama. And the one thing I'll say about this, because I actually just spent the last week like going through and rewatching a lot of the 2008 Democratic debates with equally large stages. If you're not one of those top polling candidates, you might get a question like every half hour at most. And Joe Biden actually was in that exact position last time around at the edge of the stage next to like Chris Dodd going 20, 30, 40 minutes at a time without anybody calling on him and bringing him into the conversation.

All right. So that's night one. We're going to take a quick break and talk about all the different storylines that are going into night two. want to learn something. But what if you need a little break? Well, then you want to check out Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR News Quiz. It's the show that lets your lizard brain enjoy itself for once. You can be serious again later. Listen to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me on NPR One or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we are back. So night two. And again, another reminder, we will be potting after both these debates. So after you've listened to our podcast recap of the first night's debate, you're settling in Thursday night, 855, ready to watch that second two hour chunk.

This is the night with most of those top tier candidates in terms of the polling. Danielle, who we got Thursday night? OK, so we have Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. You may have heard of him. California Senator Kamala Harris, former Vice President Joe Biden, South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Colorado Senator Michael Bennett, author Marianne Williamson, California Representative Eric Swalwell, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, entrepreneur Andrew Yang, and former Governor John Hickenlooper of Colorado. And the interesting thing is a lot of them, the B candidates in specific, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, all have some interesting storylines going into this debate. First of all, last podcast, Sue, we talked all about the flap of Joe Biden's comments, looking back about how he worked with segregationists, Cory Booker taking issue. You were in South Carolina. You talked to a lot of voters, African-American voters in particular, about this.

How much of a factor was it? Really a non-factor. You know, I didn't find a single African-American voter or any voter really there, for that matter, that saw or heard what Joe Biden said. And they had all heard it. Everyone was aware of his comments. And it did not in any way change the perception of Joe Biden. I think that Joe Biden is well known in the black community, is well known, especially among black voters in South Carolina, where he has developed a very strong relationship on his own, not just as Barack Obama's vice president. He was friends with Jim Clyburn for 30 years. Biden's comments were the first sort of circular firing squad of the primary fight. It has been a fairly friendly primary campaign so far among these candidates. And Biden's comments were the first that prompted, you know, Harris and Booker and all the other candidates saw this as an opportunity to attack Biden.

And voters said it made them really nervous to see the campaign starting to go negative because there was a real concern that if they spend the next year just kicking the crap out of each other, that you're going to end up with a really weak nominee. And that's going to put them in a bad position going into the general election. Danielle, Pete Buttigieg has had a pretty rough stretch in South Bend, Indiana, where he is mayor and still mayor. We talked on Thursday about the fact that there was an officer-involved shooting. Police officer shot and killed a man who the officer said had a knife. The officer's body camera was not on at the time. This rough stretch has continued for Pete Buttigieg. It seems like he struggled to deal with the anger that's coming on at the time. This rough stretch has continued for Pete Buttigieg. It

seems like he struggled to deal with the anger that's coming out of the shooting. So he went back to South Bend to deal with this. And there were, of course, some citizens of South Bend who were very upset about this shooting, of course. And he had a public meeting where people responded to him and respond they did. There were lots of very angry constituents who want more done because reporting has come out around the South Bend Police Department. Under Pete Buttigieg's tenure, it has become wider. And so people are saying, you know, well, maybe you should have maybe have a diversity problem in your police. You fired the black police chief very early on. That's very

true. Yeah, that created a smaller sort of media buzz earlier in the cycle. And seems almost obvious that this is a question that he's going to be asked and have to have a response to on the second night. You know, if you're going to beat Joe Biden, you have to have somewhere to go after New Hampshire and Iowa, when all of a sudden the Democratic primary electorate gets to have huge numbers of African-Americans and Hispanics. Now, you can see Kamala Harris having a strategy for that. But that is the big question for Warren, Buttigieg, and Bernie Sanders, because they in the past have not had support in the African-American community. So, Mara, what are you interested to hear Bernie Sanders be asked right now is the footsteps of Elizabeth Warren. She, as Sue said, is the only one who has actually climbed in the polls and it's been at Sanders expense. So what does he do? He's not on the debate stage with her. Does he see her as his main competitor right now or does he go after Joe Biden in an ideological way? All right. So one other big name on Thursday night will be Kamala Harris. What's at stake for her?

Harris has the most upside here. I mean, she's in South Carolina. She has tremendous support among African-American women. She needs to do something with it. The thing that I'm interested to hear her answer is that, you know, and this came up a bit when we interviewed her recently on the podcast, is that I feel like she is in a race where a lot of the other candidates have positioned themselves as this is the big overall goal of my presidency and my campaign. Here's what you get with me. You won't get from anybody else.

And Harris doesn't really have that. And one thing she's been talking about lately is like this collection of not quite pocketbook issues, but things like raising teacher pay, you know, like shifting around tax instead of trying to get more money from people's pockets, which is less of like a big blow up the system revolutionary goal. But she seems she argues is something that people care about in their everyday lives. I think that one, speaking of Kamala Harris and also Sanders and Biden, let's just smush all these together here, is that on that second night, what you have is Bernie Sanders, who is a self-proclaimed socialist, and then you have Joe Biden, who is very much an establishment candidate, who is considered by many, yeah, is a pretty moderate, at least in this field candidate. All those people who are on that stage with them, you have to wonder how much do they differentiate themselves from one poll or the other? Do you get up there if you're Kamala Harris and argue with Joe Biden?

Do you argue with Bernie Sanders? Do you end up looking more lefty or more moderate compared to them? And in terms of the issues that come up, who do you end up agreeing with? And how much do you tout how liberal or how non-liberal you are? All right. So, Sue, we have talked a lot for weeks now about the dynamic of Joe Biden being center stage. But aside from that, what are you looking for or interested to see in this field of candidates? I think we talked about the second tier candidates in the first night having an opportunity. I think it's so much harder for them in the second night because there's so much oxygen being taken up on stage between Biden and Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris.

It's going to be tough. And you look down, you look at the other candidates on the stage, people like Michael Bennett, the senator from Colorado, or even people like Marianne Williamson, who's kind of a self-help guru who has been one of these candidates in the campaign who has a bit of a cultural following. This is going to be tough. Can people like Marianne Williamson look like a president on stage with a lot of people that people already voted for to be president at some point? People like Bernie Sanders, people like Joe Biden. So it's a tough dynamic when you're on stage with people that are seen as the front runners. And I think it's going to be that much harder, one, to get questions that allow you to break through and differentiate and to really have a moment. So if they do, if you do and are able

to do that, it's an even better night if you can look like a president on stage next to Joe Biden. Okay. Lots to talk about, lots to listen for. We're going to do some plugging here right now. We are going to be, during the debates, live annotating the debates, adding context, fact-checking, background on the policies they're talking about. So when you are watching these debates, go to npr.org on your phone or computer or whatever else you have in front of you, and we will be keeping up in real time with the conversation.

After the debates, Mara, Danielle and I are going to be up late talking to you in a podcast about what happened each night. Then Mara, you and I will be on Up First and Morning Edition. It's just going to be nonstop conversation about these debates for a few days in Miami. A lot of stuff for you to listen to. So I'm excited. Are you? I'm really excited. All right. So we'll talk to you from Miami. I'm Scott stuff for you to listen to. So I'm excited. Are you? I'm really excited.

All right. So we'll talk to you from Miami. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover politics. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I also cover politics. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.