The NPR Politics Podcast - The 3rd Democratic Presidential Debate: What You Should Watch For

Episode Date: September 9, 2019

On Thursday night ten Democratic candidates will face off. It's the first time former Vice President Joe Biden will face Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Plus, Trump faces a new challenger in the Republican field. This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, political correspondent Scott Detrow, 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

Hi, this is Andy from New Brighton, Minnesota, and I'm at the Minnesota State Fair with the Irondale High School Band, where we're getting ready to march in the Daily Parade. Today's podcast was recorded at 106 p.m. on Monday, September 9th. Go Band Kids! Things will probably change by the time the parade's over, but we're going to give you a roll-off to get ready for your show. All right, here we go. This is not the band playing our theme song. It was a beautiful transition. You know,

I played drums in high school. I'm just feeling I feel all this love for this band. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the campaign. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And it is almost time for the third Democratic debate. And for the first time, it will only take one night instead of two. But it will be three hours long, which is a great reason to download an NPR Politics podcast the next morning to catch up on it. Indeed. And there will be one. This Thursday, 10 candidates are going to debate

in Houston, Texas. Scott, you are going to be there, right? I am. Asma Halil and I are headed to Houston later this week. We will be there to cover the debate. Three hours long. I was talking to a couple of campaigns who said that they expect only about two hours of that

to be actual back and forth debating and the rest will be opening statements, closing statements, and a lot of other commercials and hoopla. But still, very long amount of time, even with 10 candidates. OK, so what are you two looking for in this debate? And how is this debate different than the last debates? Well, as predicted many times on the podcast, the field has shrunk. And we are for the first time going to see the three top candidates together. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Joe Biden are all going to stand next to each other at the center of the stage. And what I'm looking for

is, first of all, will the non-aggression pact between Warren and Sanders, they're the two progressive left center candidates, will that hold? Who will go after Joe Biden? Somebody does in every debate. Will it be Warren this time? Most Democrats think Warren is moving pretty swiftly into the number two position and emerging as the main competitor to Biden. And then the overarching bottom line question for every single one of these debates is can Joe Biden perform? Scott? I have a nuanced thought, so bear with me as I spell it out. Notice that Mara said the top three candidates, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren. There has been a growing gap over the last few months between the three of them and Kamala Harris. Now, the first debate, you'll remember Kamala Harris rocketed up in the polls after that performance where she aggressively took on Joe Biden, talked about his past opposition to federal busing policy. And that was seen as, wow, this blockbuster moment. And then in the several months since then, Harris has fallen back to earth and then some is polling in the mid single digits right now and really is about where she was before

that ever happened. That has led to a lot of analysis of, well, maybe these big debates moments don't really matter. Maybe they don't set a candidate apart and help provide momentum. I think that's an argument that it does matter. I think what happened with Harris was more that in the weeks since that debate, she kind of backtracked on a lot of those accusations. She went back and forth on several policies again. She did a lot of things that kind of led to criticisms of her campaign. But I think that is still a sign that a singular dramatic moment, a confrontation spelling out something on policy really can put your campaign in a different gear. And that's what nine candidates

on the stage are hoping for as they as they look at Biden, Warren and Sanders creating more and more distance. All right. Before we really dig into policy, let us do what is a tradition on this podcast, which is to name the names of everyone who is going to be on that stage on Thursday night. Scott, take the honors. I think I can do it in one breath. Ooh, I'm watching. Can I only say their last names, though, or do I have to say their first names as well for this challenge to work? Mara, what do you think? Either way, just go for it. Okay. Biden, Sanders, Warren, Harris, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Booker, O'Rourke, Castro, Yang. And actually, I have a lot more breath. I can keep going.

Can you quickly, though, tell us who isn't on that stage? And are they now down for the count? You know, we have seen several candidates drop out of the race specifically because they did not meet this debate stage. But several are pressing forward. That includes Colorado Senator Michael Bennett, Montana Governor Steve Bullock, several others saying, we are going to stick in the campaign. We believe we can either make a future debate stage or, you know, take our case directly to the voters. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has been one of the more blunt candidates on this front. He conceded to reporters recently that, look, if I don't make the debate stage in October, which for de Blasio is very unlikely, I think I might call it a day at that point in time. So for now, several candidates still sticking around. If they're not in October as well,

they might reconsider. We should point out that Tom Steyer, the environmentalist, billionaire, political activist from California, now has qualified for the October debate. So he did not get that last poll he needed in time to split this stage up into two nights this week. But he will be on the stage in October and the DNC does not know what it's going to do yet. Oh, so we don't know whether we'll be back to two nights or two nights of coffee or. We do not. But we recently learned next month's debate will be in Ohio. Oh, excellent. So we talked about how there's some question of who or how they might interact with Joe Biden on this debate stage, who might go after the former vice president.

What avenues do you think that these candidates have? And in particular, where on policy are there differences? As has been the case for months and months, I think you will hear a lot of conversation about health care, which remains one of the top, if not the top concern for a lot of voters of both parties, but particularly Democrats. Joe Biden has laid out his argument that that what you need to do is build on Obamacare, not tear it down. That was the key message of one of his first television ads that he started airing a few weeks ago. You know, I think it's a tricky line that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris and other candidates who want a single payer system can make because they have defended Obamacare so much over the last few years, in particular, when Republicans tried to repeal it. But I wonder if there's an argument made at a certain point of Obamacare

happened. Everyone agrees it took things in the right direction on this stage, but it happened. And so many people are still deeply angry at the system. Why not start over? Yeah. Or why not build on it with a public option? Yeah. What I call mandatory Medicare for all, scrapping Obamacare, throwing out the private employer provided health, who is not going to be on the debate stage Thursday night. Now you actually have Warren and Biden next to each other. What policy areas are most likely, do you think, to show fissures between them? Well, I actually think that what you're going to hear in terms of the contrast, for instance, between Warren and Biden, she's going to make an electability

argument. Electability has been the thing that has kept Biden at the top of the field. Electability is the number one, two, and three top priority for Democrats this year. They really want to beat Donald Trump. And what she's going to say and what she's been saying on the stump is, you don't have to give up the candidate you love just to have someone who's electable. In other words, she's going to say, I can beat Donald Trump just as well, if not better than Joe Biden. I have a big, bold vision. I'm a populist who can go toe to toe with him. So I think you're going to hear the candidates make their policy arguments in terms of electability? I think Bernie Sanders will make a very similar argument. You know, Joe Biden, we've talked a lot about how his campaign really rests on electability, and he's been more and more explicit about that lately. So has Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders and his campaign regularly point out that he is also beating Donald Trump by wide amounts in these hypothetical general election matchups, either national polls or key battleground state polls. Bernie Sanders will, as he often does, make many of the exact same points he's been making for

decades, but argue that in his view, he is the candidate who is most electable and can also bring about the most change that a big chunk of Democratic voters want. And, you know, one thing we haven't seen yet, and maybe we're going to see it in Houston, is a clear ideological contrast between Warren and Biden. Is she going to take him on on ideology? You're just too moderate. And is he going to take her on saying, you want to throw Obamacare in the garbage can, and you are just too far to the left to win? I have a question for you guys. If you were moderating this debate, what would you ask about? Well,

one of the big mysteries isn't the right word. But one of the things I've been thinking a lot about over the course of this campaign is how remarkable it is that foreign policy really has not been a key theme of this campaign. You look at all the things happening in the world, this rise of populism and authoritarianism all over the globe, trade wars with China, so many other things. And over and over again, the candidates don't really focus on foreign policy. And a lot of voters just don't seem to be particularly interested in foreign policy. I think right now this debate will be happening in the wake of a momentous story coming out of the White House that President Trump had invited the

Taliban to Camp David days before 9-11 to sit down and try to finalize a peace deal that could allegedly get to the point of ending our presence in Afghanistan. Of course, as you know, Tam, because it ruined your weekend. As tweets often do. President Trump canceled that, announced it was happening to begin with, all sorts of criticism from both parties. I think that is a prime opportunity to probe candidates on how exactly they would end the war in Afghanistan, what their plan for Afghanistan is, how they would consider dealing with the Taliban. Because so far, when Afghanistan has come up, most Democrats have said, yeah, we should get out of there, but more so focused on,

you know, we need to rewrite the congressional use of force authorization and less the weeds of how you actually achieve that goal. Right. And when foreign policy has come up in debates and conversations with these candidates, you get kind of a lot of platitudes about, well, we'll restore America's respect in the world, but you don't get a lot of specifics. The closest that we've come to the specifics of how you get out of there is from the big foreign policy speech that Warren gave shortly before she officially announced her candidacy, where she talked about achieving, as she put it, a realistic peace settlement that halts the violence and protects our security. What exactly does that mean? Does realistic mean engaging with the Taliban? I have asked her campaign

for clarification on that. I've not heard back from them yet at this point. Mara, if you were the debate moderator, what would you be asking? Well, I'd probe them on why they want to throw Obamacare in the garbage can. I mean, at least the candidates who are for mandatory Medicare for all. I would ask them why, when people are concerned about rising drug prices, they're talking so much about getting rid of Obamacare instead of solving that problem. I talk about why they think that taxpayer-funded health insurance for undocumented immigrants is a good position to run on in a general election. And I'd also ask them about a carbon tax and why so few Democratic candidates seem to be embracing that. There are a lot of things.

Yeah. And I guess I would maybe ask about criminal justice, especially since this week, Kamala Harris came out with a plan of her own. And it is one of these recurring themes. And certainly there are tension points between what Joe Biden supported in the past and what he supports now. And if there's also tension points between what the consensus is in the world of a Democratic primary versus the world of a general electorate. And I'd also ask Elizabeth Warren, who, of course, that image of that card where she checked the box, what's your ethnicity? American Indian.

I would ask her why she thinks that that won't be a fruitful line of attack from the Trump campaign. She's that Harvard professor who impersonated a minority to get a job. Well, you know what, Mara? That topic actually came up when Asma Khalid interviewed Elizabeth Warren a few weeks ago for our podcast series. And you know what? If you want to hear all of the candidates on stage's answers to a wide range of questions, we have actually done an interview with every single candidate that is going to be on the debate stage this week that you can listen to in our podcast feed. You guys could totally cram. You could totally cram ahead of the debate.

We are going to take a quick break. And when we get back, we are going to talk about a trio of Republican challengers to President Trump. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Google. From Connecticut to California, from Mississippi to Minnesota, millions of American businesses are using Google tools to grow online. The Grow with Google initiative supports small businesses by providing free digital skills workshops and one-on-one coaching in all 50 states, helping businesses get online, connect with new customers, and work more productively. Learn more at google.com slash grow. When you think of country music, you probably have a particular image in mind. But as you can imagine, the history is way more complicated.

This week on ThruLine, we sit down with filmmaker Ken Burns to talk about his new documentary about the origins of country music. ThruLine from NPR, the podcast where we go back in time to understand the present. And we're back. Obviously, we have focused a lot on the Democratic side of the 2020 primary. But, Tam, there's been some news on the Republican side as well. Most recently, this past weekend, when former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford,

who was also in Congress, announced that he's running against President Trump. I think we need to have a conversation on humility and one's approach to politics. At the end of the day, a tweet is interesting, maybe newsworthy, but it's not leadership. And we're not going to solve some of the profound problems that we have as Americans by tweet. And he's not the only one. He's actually the third Republican, major, significant Republican to announce that they are planning to run against President Trump. You also have Bill Weld, the former Massachusetts governor, also ran as vice president on the Libertarian ticket last time. And former congressman and talk show host Joe Walsh, who promoted birtherism before being in Congress. What are his chances, Tam? as one. They are sharing office space. They are one unit. So there's not a lot of room. There's

not a lot of oxygen for a challenger. But also, as you say, South Carolina, so like, you know, the home state of Mark Sanford, on Saturday, the Republican Party voted to scrap their primary entirely for 2020. So in the state where he's best known, there will be no primary for him to challenge President Trump. And a couple of other states eliminated their caucuses. They say, and it's true that there is precedent for this on the Democratic side and the Republican side. But certainly, this makes it harder for these challengers. Although you think that in this era of social media, where everybody has a platform that can reach everybody, that some of these candidates would be able to get their message out, even if the RNC is stifling their chances. And we know from

history that challengers to an incumbent president don't beat him in a primary. What they do is they wound him and they make him more vulnerable in a general election, a la Jimmy Carter. But to me, what is most important about all of these challengers are the ones that are going to attack Donald Trump from the right. That's the most dangerous thing for him. And it doesn't really matter what happens in the primary. What matters is, can any of these candidates, any of these Republican challengers, get on a general election ballot in their states as an independent candidate or a third party candidate. That might hurt him in battleground states. All right. I think that is a wrap for today.

If you can't get enough politics or want to talk with other podcast listeners during the debate, join our Facebook group. It's a place to talk about politics, ask questions, and meet other fans of the pod. So just head over to n.pr slash politics group, answer the questions, and share your thoughts. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the campaign. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.