The NPR Politics Podcast - The 5th Democratic Debate Takeaways

Episode Date: November 21, 2019

The big question of the night was whether or not Mayor Pete Buttigieg would take heat from other candidates after rising in the polls in Iowa. After discussion about policies that haven't received much attention at previous debates, the attacks came. In this episode: political correspondent Scott Detrow, political correspondent Asma Khalid, political reporter Juana Summers, and senior editor & correspondent Domenico Montanaro. Connect: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

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the campaign. I'm Asma Khalid. I also cover the campaign. I'm Juana Summers. I cover politics. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. It is 11.50 Eastern on Wednesday, November 20th, the fifth Democratic debate hosted by MSNBC and The Washington Post just wrapped. Asma, you're in Atlanta. How is it down there? That's right, I am. I am at the Tyler Perry Studios, and we are still sort of in the midst of this media center spin room.

It's all one big warehouse space, and it's been a noisy night, but I would say, you know, to me, the debate felt kind of like a status quo debate, but I'm sure we'll talk more about that. Definitely. Before we get to that, though, some the debate felt kind of like a status quo debate. I'm sure we'll talk more about that. Definitely. Before we get to that, though, some other very important stuff we got to work through. Wanda, welcome to the podcast. Thanks. You have just joined our 2020 team to cover demographics and culture for the campaign.

You are a longtime national political reporter. And I only recently learned that you're very into pinball. I am. I now have four machines in my basement and I play tournaments that have more, have hundreds of people. The biggest one was a thousand people in Pittsburgh. So that's what I do with my spare time. So do you win tournaments, Juana? I mean, you must win tournaments if you have like four in your basement, right? I've been known to win on occasion and I happen to help run a pinball league. So that's what I do when I'm not here. So, Juana, you since you are new, you have the honor of doing something that I don't know that you even know that we do in these podcasts.

But we start off the debate podcast by running down everybody that was in them and who talked the most to who talked the least. This is a lot of pressure, guys. I'm not going to mess it up. So with the most speaking time was Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. She spoke for 13 minutes and 24 seconds. After that, former Vice President Joe Biden for 12 minutes and 37 seconds. In third, Mayor Pete Buttigieg with 12 minutes and 35 seconds. After that, you've got Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, California Senator Kamala Harris, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, Hawaii Congresswoman Kelsey Gabbard. Then you have billionaire and environmental activist Tom Steyer. And last but not least

is the entrepreneur Andrew Yang with six minutes and 47 seconds. But Osmo said this was a status quo debate, and I feel like that was accurate, especially up until the last 20 minutes. We did record early enough that this was the second podcast of the day, the first one, obviously, all about that enormous impeachment hearing with Gordon Sondland. And it felt fitting to me that impeachment has overshadowed the race so much that that big hearing this morning overshadowed tonight's debate. And it just felt like kind of a low-key debate for most of the evening to me. I think that's definitely true. And I think part of that has to be the impeachment hearings in Congress, and just the dominance of what they've been doing over the past, you know, week and a half, and the consequential sort of monumental testimony of European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland today, you just kind of have to wonder

if it sucked some of the air out of the room. I know that they started the debate with that. But even with what these candidates were going to say, they're all in favor of getting rid of Donald Trump as president. They're all running against him. So, Domenico, I think you've probably been in this position, too. But I wrote the story that we had in our website, kind of previewing what the debate was going to be about. And as it kept going, I was getting a little nervous because I had written about all about how all the other candidates would probably attack Pete Buttigieg and he'd probably be on the defense because he's been surging in the polls.

And then that just did not happen for an hour and a half. And I was like, wow, I was 100 percent wrong. The last 20 minutes or so of the debate, though, the tone really did shift. I was mildly vindicated. And Buttigieg was in the middle of a couple real back and forth, starting with Amy Klobuchar, who critiqued his lack of experience. He's the mayor of a city of 100,000 people. But just like I have won statewide, and Mayor, I have all appreciation for your good work as a local official, and you did not when you tried, I also have actually done this work. I think experience should matter. Mayor Buttigieg, I'll let you respond to that. So first of all, Washington experience is not the only experience that matters. There's more than 100 years of

Washington experience on this stage. And where are we right now as a country? You know, Scott, you said, I think your question was, can Pete take the heat? And, you know, he did largely. I mean, he was able to kind of parry back. He was in the middle of things, not just on his experience, but also on race. And obviously, anytime a conversation moves to race and politics, it becomes, you know, a real more lively conversation than a lot of what we heard in the first hour and a half of that debate. You know, did it really expand out? And I still think the big question for a lot of people in their minds is the question of experience with Buttigieg. And did they see a president on that stage in Pete Buttigieg? I actually thought this was a really strong performance from Amy Klobuchar as well. She talked about her experience and keeping in mind, yes, she's been a sitting senator

representing Minnesota since 2006. But before that, she was a prosecutor and before that, a lawyer. So she brings a different type of heartland experience than Mayor Pete Buttigieg does. But one that I think a lot of voters, particularly in places like Iowa, are very interested in. And just like Buttigieg, Klobuchar has really been focusing on Iowa, trying to build up support there. And she has seen her poll numbers go up in the last month or so. Of course, nowhere near as much as Buttigieg's has gone up, but she's been a little bit on the rise. So one other moment that Buttigieg was in the middle of was when Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard criticized his experience, his foreign policy view. And if your question is about experience, let's also talk about judgment. One of the foreign leaders you mentioned meeting was Bashar al-Assad. I have, in my experience, such as it is, whether you think it counts or not, since it wasn't accumulated in Washington, enough judgment that I would not have sat down with a murderous dictator like that. And here's how Gabbard responded.

I take the example of those leaders who have come before us. Leaders like JFK, who met with Khrushchev. Like Roosevelt, who met with Stalin. Like Donald Trump, who met with Kim. You know, I think how Pete Buttigieg responded there does sort of answer some of the criticisms of is he presidential? Does he have, you know, the quote unquote judgment to be president? But look, I think the bigger thing is Tulsi Gabbard. She irks a lot of traditional Democrats. She's kind of like this strange family member, right?

This strange cousin that is part of the family. And most of the time, everyone's kind of like this strange family member, right? This strange cousin that is part of the family. And most of the time, everyone just kind of ignores her. But every so often, she just says something that gets under their skin. You could tell that at this moment with Bashar al-Assad, Pete Buttigieg just wanted to go there. And, you know, I don't know how much the entanglement really matters in terms of substance. But what it does, I think, to some degree, it shows Pete Buttigieg's judgment on some of these foreign policy issues. This is the second time that they've tangled in a debate. And you're right, Asma. Only two veterans on the stage.

Yeah, the only two have worn the uniform. But nobody makes Pete Buttigieg look more presidential than Tulsi Gabbard when they get into it. It's just totally true. I think there are also some lessons learned, too, from one of the past debates when you saw Tulsi Gabbard really hammering in with attacks on Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris didn't really effectively parry them. And you saw both her and Pete Buttigieg in that exchange that we just heard really figure out how to just take it to her and not leave those attacks hanging. Let's shift gears to one more theme that we saw tonight.

The debate was in Atlanta. There were a lot of questions about reaching out to black voters, conversation about voting rights and other issues. But there was also this one contrasting moment between Cory Booker and Joe Biden. I have a lot of respect for the vice president. He has swore me into my office as a hero. This week, I hear him literally say that I don't think we should legalize marijuana. I thought you might have been high when you said it. And Juana, that's just like yet another moment where you take a step back and think, wow, the party has shifted so much to the left in such a short period of time. Yeah, that's absolutely right. And it's one of the things I've been thinking a lot about and

have been talking to voters about President Obama's legacy as he stepped into the fray. And obviously, that is inextricably linked with former Vice President Biden. And so there's this big question of what direction the next standard bearer, no matter who that Democrat is, needs to take the party in. You heard former President Obama argue last week that they need to not lurch too far left and tear the whole system down. Obviously, former Vice President Biden isn't a candidate who would lurch the party to the left. But you see a lot of other candidates on that stage, including Cory Booker and others that likely would at least farther left than the Obama Biden presidency would take it. Yeah, for sure. And then the polls for legalizing marijuana are so much different than

at the beginning of the Obama presidency. So Biden responds. He makes a broader point about support from black voters. And the response got Biden-esque. If you notice, I have more people supporting me in the black community that have announced for me because they know me. They know who I am. Three former chairs of the Black Caucus. The only African-American woman that ever been elected to the United States Senate. A whole range of people. No, that's not true. The other one is here. I said the first.

You know, that comment to me really strikes at two things. One is the sort of generational divide, right? You heard laughter, you hear how Booker and Harris go after him. But to some older voters, the way that people go after Biden seems sort of disrespectful. And, you know, after the debate tonight, you heard from surrogates here in the spin room, like the mayor of Atlanta, who were saying, you know, of course Biden knows that Kamala Harris is a senator. He swore her in. And they said that it's just hard to talk in really short snippets of one minute bites on stage. So I feel like it's kind of a Rorschach test. People feel when Biden makes these mistakes a certain way. Some people feel like people are picking on him. Other people say,

well, look, this is what speaks to the fact that this man stumbles and maybe just doesn't have what it takes to defeat Donald Trump. Well, it's hard for Biden to speak in short, crisp, short sentences. You know, I mean, this is part of debates, you know, you have to be able to make your case in a tightly packaged, you know, subject, verb, object kind of way. And he has struggled with this repeatedly. And I think it's so markedly different for those of us who've covered politics for a little bit, who've seen him in prior debates do well, to see him this time around just sort of speak with a lot of word salad and mix up a lot of his words. And it really does undercut his narrative. You know, even though he's got this experience, it also does play into the fact that he's older. I mean, he's turned 77 today.

We're going to take a quick break, come back, and we'll talk about some of the fact that he's older. I mean, he's turned 77 today. We're going to take a quick break, come back, and we'll talk about some of the policies that made it onto the stage tonight that really had not been the focus of conversation in previous debates. This week on the StoryCorps podcast from NPR, we take you back to 2015 when Asma Jama, a Somali-American woman,

was assaulted for speaking Swahili at a restaurant. Tune in to hear how Asma found support from an unlikely source, the sister of the woman who attacked her. We are back. And even though the first chunk of this debate was not super spicy, it did have a lot of conversation about a lot of issues that haven't gotten as much attention in previous debates. And I thought that was pretty notable. Yeah, that's right. As a policy nerd, I was really

excited about a couple of things that came up that you hear about sometimes, but not in a lot of detail during the debates. One of them is housing policy, which is something I'm really interested in. You heard a pretty lengthy exchange between Tom Steyer and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren on it. Elizabeth Warren really getting in the details there, talking about things like redlining. Yeah, discriminatory housing policy. Yeah, absolutely. So not to get too wonky, but essentially those are furthering segregation efforts by refusing to insure mortgages in and around African-American neighborhoods, policy with a lot of history in the United States. So you heard her talk about that. The other big thing that came up, and I want to point out that the moderators asked this not just to the women on

stage, but to the men, was paid family leave. You heard a great discussion between a number of candidates, Andrew Yang, who's the father of two young kids, as well as folks like Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar talking about what they would do on this issue that obviously affects so many American households. And climate change, too, which obviously has come up. Well, it's gotten attention for not coming up in some debates, but it's been talked about a lot. But they really stayed with it for a few minutes talking about it in detail. But Asma, one thing that didn't come up, Medicare for All.

It's been like the first half hour of every debate so far. Hardly anything tonight. I mean, we got some questions on Medicare for All. But to your point, since the previous debate, Elizabeth Warren, who had been criticized pretty roundly for her lack of details earlier on Medicare for all, has released two health care plans, one how she's going to pay for it, the second how she's going to transition to it. And I would say leading up to this debate, we got a lot of previewing, a lot of like telegraphing of the major critique some of these other campaigns feel about her ideas here. What was surprising to me is we have seen a lot more

criticism on the campaign trail off the debate stage in recent weeks on her own health care. We didn't actually see that much criticism of these plans on the debate stage tonight. And I was I was very surprised, actually, by that. So we started the podcast by noting the talking time and that Andrew Yang had the least amount of talking time, about half or so of how much Elizabeth Warren got. But I thought he was pretty memorable in the moments that he did have. I thought he had a pretty good night. One moment jumped out to me. He was asked another direct question. What would he talk about on his phone call with Russia's President Vladimir Putin if he did become president? Well, first, I'd say I'm sorry I beat your guy.

Or not sorry. And second, I would say the days of meddling in American elections are over and we will take any undermining of our democratic processes as an act of hostility and aggression. And I thought that was a really good answer because first of all, it was funny. But earlier in the debate, he had been asked, are you qualified to be commander in chief. And then he talks about a big foreign policy issue, talks about, you know, how he would position himself with this enormous threat to the United States that still, I think, both parties agree hasn't been fully addressed. And that's what to do about election meddling. So I thought that and a few other times he really made his presence felt. Yeah. I mean, he's a well thought out guy. You know, he's not an unserious person, right? I mean, he's a well thought out guy. You know, he's not an unserious person. Right. I mean, I think a lot of times some of these, quote unquote, fringe candidates can come across as, frankly, a little nutty. And he doesn't. You know, in fact, he made a joke about that because he said that he took the he took a lot of the issues that he cares about to Washington to try to lobby lawmakers on and felt like they didn't really do anything about it. And he said his first choice wasn't to run for president because he's not, quote, insane. All right, that is a wrap. This was our second podcast of the day. We will be back in your feeds tomorrow, continuing to cover the impeachment inquiry, which you can also follow on NPR.org and on your local public radio station.

I think that is all we have to say for today, though. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the campaign. I'm Asma Khalid. I also cover the campaign. I'm Juana Summers. I cover politics. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.