The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, August 15

Episode Date: August 15, 2019

As Beto O'Rourke recasts his campaign to more squarely focus on President Trump and Governor John Hickenlooper drops out of the race, questions arise about who should be running for president or the senate. Plus, after the markets take a nosedive, economists fear a potential recession. This episode: political correspondent Scott Detrow, White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe, political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben. and editor correspondent Ron Elving. 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 everybody, before we start the show, I want to let you in on something really exciting. We are taking the podcast on the road. We'll be in Boulder, Colorado on September 20th and Washington, D.C. on November 8th. We'll be taping a podcast live on stage so you can see how all this magic happens. Get a ticket at nprpresents.org. Hey everyone, this is Ben Rothman in Southwick, England, where I just became the first American to ever win the World Championships of croquet. This podcast was recorded at...

It's, uh, 1.07 p.m. on Thursday, August 15th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Like the world of croquet, which has been shook. Way to go. Way to go, buddy. 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 Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. And I'm Ron Elving, editor correspondent. And we're going to start with some bad news for Ayesha, and we will explain why. Beto O'Rourke is committed to his presidential

campaign. He relaunched it today in a way after taking some time away from the trail to be in El Paso as his community tries to heal from a mass shooting that was seemingly targeted at Latinos. There have even been some who've suggested that I stay in Texas and run for Senate. But that would not be good enough for this community. That would not be good enough for El Paso. That would not be good enough for this country. We must take the fight directly to the source of this problem. That person who has caused this pain and placed this country in this moment of peril. And that is Donald Trump. And Aisha, we should explain that this is not a personal problem.

No, no, I do not have any problem with Beto. Beto, but the problem lies. Tell us more. O'Rourke. O'Rourke. I did good. You did. That's perfect.

O'Rourke. Yeah, you should have stopped at the first one. Okay, now say rural juror for us. I can't say O'Rourke. What's the possessive of Buttigieg? We'll get there. Some of us will get there. Aisha, I think the editors have decided you can just say Beto

if you feel better that way in this segment. I feel better, Beto. I feel Beto that way. I feel better. So O'Rourke did, he really stepped in and he was in his community in a very serious time in his community. But even though he did not campaign, I feel better. charge in saying that President Trump is stirring up hatred with his rhetoric and bears some sort of responsibility for the climate right now in this country of an upsurge in white nationalism. He was the most extreme in making that point. Other Democrats have made varied versions of that

point, but it became something that lots of candidates were talking about and asked about this week. He has definitely been sort of at the forefront of this. It's definitely something people have stopped and taken notice of. But also the shootings in El Paso and Dayton have really shaped this race in a very particular way. I don't like gun control hasn't taken over the race. But, for example, in Iowa, a gun control forum was very quickly organized. Many of the candidates showed up at it. And even at events that were not that forum, in many of their stump speeches, gun control made an appearance

that it otherwise would not. This is a thing that I don't think the candidates are going to let go of anytime soon. O'Rourke talked about that pressure to drop out and run for Senate. That's real pressure. I mean, why is that? The Democrats, if they're going to have any chance of taking back the Senate in 2020, need to get some of these presidential candidates out of the presidential race and into the Senate races in their home states. Texas would be one of them. We're going to talk about Hickenlooper in a moment in Colorado. That would also apply to Steve Bullock in Montana. These are guys who would have a shot, at least, of winning a Senate seat in their home state. If you look at the numbers with with 22 Republican seats on the ballot, but you got to have somebody to beat those people.

The Democrats have only got maybe six or seven shots and they're only going to have those six or seven shots at some of those 22 incumbents if they can get their best candidates. And the thing is, O'Rourke really has, the best way to frame it for me, is that he raised more money in his first day in the race than he did the entire second quarter of 2019, that three-month period where we measure campaign fundraising by. He went from being the buzzed-about candidate to being somebody who's hanging around around 2% or 3% in the polls, really has struggled to distinguish himself in the debate. And it seems like he did kind of find this calling, talking about the El Paso shooting, but his argument is not, and therefore I will stay in Texas,

it is, and therefore I will continue this presidential campaign. That's right. It's a little hard to fathom his thinking here with respect to that particular logic. But the big fundraising at the beginning of his campaign this year was obviously something of a surge from the 2018 race that he ran against Ted Cruz in Texas. And that's why he's a national star, not only because he has a lot of natural appeal, but because he ran a close race against the supposedly unbeatable Ted Cruz in Texas with a lot of money raised outside of Texas as well as in Texas, because he became a hero to liberals nationally. And here's the thing I'd say about

O'Rourke's presidential campaign. I mean, clearly, we have talked a lot about the way that this field has separated itself out into tiers. And there is this this tier of five candidates who have really established themselves more than any other ones. I still think it's a little less than six months to the Iowa caucuses. I still think there is room for a handful of other candidates to elevate themselves to that tier. And I do think that Beto O'Rourke has the widespread support, has shown the fundraising potential, has shown that he can be an exciting candidate. He could be one of those candidates to make that jump. He has just really struggled the last few months in this race after that really hot start. Right. I mean, listen, Democrats want to beat Trump so very badly. And we've seen O'Rourke have that bump at the very beginning, getting all that money. We've seen Pete Buttigieg have

a sort of bump. We've seen a slow and steady rise of Elizabeth Warren. But I think that there's room for voters to, yeah, like to test out every candidate sort of one at a time. Maybe a Cory Booker can have a bump. Maybe Amy Klobuchar can. I think that's the sort of thing that can still happen for a few of them as voters just cycle through and say, oh my God, in this electability frenzy, who on earth is the most electable? I don't know. Ron, you mentioned John Hickenlooper. I'm going to shift gears here and we are going to need to say bye bye bye to former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper. Just before we recorded today's podcast, John Hickenlooper ended his presidential campaign. He said in respect to the Senate, I have not been in the studio for this yet.

Nothing, nothing, nothing became his campaign like the leaving of it with that musical accompaniment. Did anybody else know this dance in high school? A little bit. I was, I was, I was aware of it for sure. In terms of the Senate, he says, I've heard from many Coloradans who want me to run for the Senate. They remind me how much is at stake in this country. I intend to give that some serious thought. John Hook and Looper would be considered to be the Democrats' strongest candidate against Cory Gardner, who is the incumbent Republican senator in Colorado. The state has been trending blue for several years now,

is looking strong for Democrats in general. And John Hickenlooper is still popular among Democrats there. There are some other Democrats already running for the Senate there, and so he's going to have to deal with that. That's probably why he'll take a little time before he makes up his mind. But yeah, he's won a statewide race there twice already as governor. So, I mean, it just shows that he can win. I have three things to say about John Hickenlooper. Do tell. First of all, I think he is a great example of the type of candidate when you look at his political background, when you look at what he's been able to accomplish,

that if it was like 1996 or 2000, he would be an incredibly strong candidate for the Democratic nomination, a moderate governor got liberal stuff done in a purpley swing state. Right. But that is just not what Democratic voters want this year. They want somebody who is more of a fighter, who's more out there, you know, and I just don't think the the friendly guy from Colorado really fit into what Democrats were looking for. And part of that is because back in 2016, that's not what Republicans went for, right? They went for something radically different. And it seems like the Democrats are trying to now not necessarily match that, but they're trying to respond to that. And the other

two things, unfortunately for Governor Hickenlooper, I think a lot of the problem he had this campaign came down to a moment that I witnessed before the first debate in Miami, where he was trying to get into the debate venue and the security guards stopped him and said, oh, are you a reporter? The credentials line is this way. Just like not necessarily his fault, but just such a wide field. It's just so hard to get attention. Well, not only a wide field, but a field in which you have a lot of senators. Now, governors, we have often talked about governors, you know, have executive experience. They in the past have done well in these races. But senators, especially with high profile judiciary committee hearings, for example, that sort of thing. Like we see senators get these national platforms.

They have their moments of grilling a Supreme Court nominee, whereas John Hickenlooper hasn't had an opportunity for the whole nation to know him. So I think I might have actually seen the very last moments of the Hickenlooper campaign when he was in the beer tent at the Iowa State Fair, pouring beers for people. Danielle, you and I were both there for several days. We saw the candidates doing all the things you do at the fair, flipping pork chops, riding rides, meeting voters, giving speeches. You're the Iowan. Why does the state fair matter? You know, I came away asking the exact same question, honestly. Because, you know, to be honest here, confession, I am a native Iowan. I had never been to the Iowa State Fair until this year. So it was new for me.

That is shocking. I grew up hours away from Des Moines, you guys, you know. Hours? Hours. Two? Yeah. Anyway. As far away from Des Moines as you can get and still living in Iowa. Anyway, the point is this that so the significance is that it is a big,

high profile event that a lot of Iowans go to. It is wholesome. It is happy. It makes for a lot of great photo ops, right? If you can get a photo of you with a corn dog at the Iowa State Fair, I imagine a presidential candidate thinks it makes you look like a normal person. But I came away honestly wondering how useful this is for normal Iowans, quote unquote, because, you know, Scott, you were there. Any, especially the big candidates are surrounded by this just crush of people. And getting a candidate to actually talk to a real person is a production in and of itself. And sometimes they just plow through the fair, get their corndog and go. Sometimes they do talk to people, but it's not a given. And aside from that, I talked to a few Iowans who told me, you

know, it's cool. We don't have to talk to candidates so-and-so because they come through our town. All the candidates come through our town all the time. We can see them other times. We don't have to see them in this giant crowd of people in the heat at the state fair. Yeah. But for candidates, I mean, it's certainly one of those moments where there is a ton of press to talk to. Sure. Everyone would give a speech and then give a little press conference, and there were

like 20 or 30 cameras, regardless of who you were. Danielle and I did a lot of stories from the Iowa State Fair. If you want to hear more of them, you can go to The Real Radio, where we also do our reporting. Also true. Little known fact about the podcast. If you go to NPR.org, you can hear the stories that Danielle and I did from the State Fair. We're going to take a quick break and we are going to talk about that quote, crazy inverted yield curve. That's, of course, how President Trump phrased it on Twitter. We'll talk about why it's one of several signs the economy could be slowing down. And ButcherBox has over 20 different cuts of meat to choose from. With grass-fed beef to free-range organic chicken to wild-caught sockeye salmon,

ButcherBox ships free right to your door. Get six free burgers in every box until October 15th, and a special discount when you sign up on butcherbox.com slash politics. Support also comes from BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers licensed professional counselors who specialize in issues such as depression, stress, anxiety, and more. Connect with your professional counselor in a safe and private online environment at your convenience. Get help at your own time and your own pace. Schedule secure video or phone sessions, plus chat and text with your therapist. Visit BetterHelp.com slash politics to learn more and get 10% off your first month.

The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with 2.3 million people behind bars. This week on ThruLine, how we got here. The history of mass incarceration in American culture. ThruLine from NPR, the podcast where we go back in time to understand the present. And we are back and it has been a very eventful week for people like Danielle and for people like me a week where I bug Danielle with a lot of questions. We have several signs that happened in the past week that a recession could maybe possibly be on the horizon. We're going to walk through them and we're going to talk about how they could affect politics. So,

Danielle, let's start with one that got a lot of attention. The way the president framed it was tweeting about the crazy inverted yield curve. All caps. All caps. Yes. But your response seeing this data come in was kind of like the Daniel Kurtzleben newsroom equivalent of all caps. If guys, guys. What is this and why does it matter? OK, the yield curve. The reason this matters is that the yield curve is one of those rare and pretty good predictors of a recession. Like when the yield curve inverts, and I'm going to get to what that is in a second, there tends to be about somewhere in the realm of 18 months until a recession happens. A recession is two quarters or more of negative economic growth. That's the technical definition.

Cool. Just assume that one is sitting here in a green shirt and the microphone across from you and still is confused by what the yield curve is. Okay. Basically, it's this. It is a chart that shows you how much return you get or yield on various forms of government debt. So you can loan money to the government. You can buy bonds, treasury bonds, for certain amounts of time, anywhere from three months to 30 years, short term to long term. This is a chart that shows how much return you get on it. Now, in a normal economy, if I am giving money to the government for 10 years, short-term to long-term. This is a chart that shows how much return you get on it. Now, in a normal economy, if I am giving money to the government for 10 years, I expect a high return. Why? Because there's a lot of risk in me handing money over to the government for that long. I'm going to demand a lot more back, right? Well, what happened this week is that the return on the

long-term bonds, the return on that long-term investment dipped below the return on the long-term bonds, the return on that long-term investment, dipped below the return on a short-term investment. That is really weird. Normally, it should be riskier to loan your money for a longer term. And oversimplified, does that just mean a lot of people are worried about what happens around the corner and are deciding to be safe and park their money in long-term bonds? What it means is that people believe that in the future, inflation is going to be low and the Fed is going to lower interest rates. Well, what creates low inflation and causes the Fed to lower interest rates?

Recessions do. It means investors expect a recession and it means they see risk in the short term. Daniel, is it fair to say that this indicates that businesses are less than confident about what's going to be going on in the economy in the next couple of years. I think it's fair to say that it just means all sorts of uncertainty. I mean, the basic thing is that when Trump says this is a crazy inverted yield curve, crazy isn't far off. This does not happen often, but it reliably happens just before a recession. And Aisha, what was interesting to me is there were a couple other signs of a possible slowdown of the economy, both here and around the world. And what was interesting is that there were a lot of analysts, and by and large, I feel like the business world has not had a problem at all

with the Trump administration. They're all about regulations being cut. They're all about the tax cuts that gave them a ton of extra revenue. But there were a lot of people saying, yeah, this continued trade war, the continued unpredictability of it is really cutting into the economy. And yeah, that's the thing is that they've had this cloud hanging over the global economy where you've had the U.S. and China kind of battling it out. And what you saw this week is the U.S. and the White House kind of pulled back a bit. And so there were supposed to be these tariffs that were going to go into effect on September 1st. And what the U.S. trade representative said is that they all will not go into effect. Some of them will, but the ones that really could have affected consumers like laptops

and, you know, back-to-school supplies, things like that, they are not going into effect. It's important to note, I think, that that indicates what the White House really thinks about who pays for tariffs. Right. Because if consumers are going to be affected by the tariffs and that's going to keep them from buying as many things, that means they know perfectly well the prices are going to be affected. But the official line from the White House has been China's going to pay for it all. But what happened recently to change minds? Because the president has been posturing and going back and forth with China and several other countries on tariffs for a long time now. These

policies have been in place for a long time. What changed in the last few weeks to suddenly make all these smart, you know, all knowing people more pessimistic about the economy? I mean, part of it is that at the start of August, Trump did announce another round of tariffs. Aside from that, this week, we got some worrying news from a couple of other countries. Germany, for example, tipped into very minorly negative growth, but negative growth. All of this is interconnected, right? Because Chinese consumers buy German autos, for example. And we have some tariffs on Europe. They get much less press than the Chinese ones. But yes, those play into this. And the world is globalized,

right? So investors look at these major economies overseas, see the trouble there, and they worry about the U.S. economy. And let us remember, this is a 10-year-old expansion. It began all the way back in 2009, and we have been climbing almost without break since then. That is unusual. It's a record setting. So there is a business cycle still. Gravity has not been repealed. At some point or another, something is coming. And Ron, I think most listeners would obviously understand that if the economy goes south, that is harmful to President Trump's reelection chances. But can you just explain how important recession versus economic growth is, regardless of who the

candidates are, regardless of what year the election's in? The strongest argument for the reelection of President Trump is the strength of his economy, which is his economy now after two and a half years in office, wherever it was when he came in, it's strong now and it's his. The strength of his reelection argument is the strength of the economy. So if the economy weakens, even some, the argument weakens, at least some. And one thing I want to add to this, and I've been beating this drum forever, but it's true, is that, you know, if we do have a recession and if it is coming in, you know, the next year or two, we have so little room as of right now to deal with it. What do you mean by that? Because the Fed, so interest rates are how

the Fed speeds up the economy. They push interest rates down, that is supposed to speed up the economy. Interest rates are already quite low. They're half as high as they were before the last recession. So they have less room to push that accelerator down. Aside from that, we just spent a bunch of money on a bunch of tax cuts. We're spending a bunch of money on all sorts of other stuff. My point is we don't have a lot of fiscal room. So if a recession hits, think of that big stimulus that was passed at the start of the Great Recession. Do we have room to do a large stimulus like that if there is even political will for that? And I'm not even saying there is. If we wanted to do a large stimulus like that if there is even political will for that and i'm not even saying there is if we wanted to do that i don't know if we could though asia danielle said that the general guideline if you look at the past is that it takes about 18 months for this to kick

in uh that would be i believe just after november 2020 and so with these recessions, they're very hard to predict. Right. Eventually it will happen, but we don't know when. I'm sure what the White House is hoping is that if there is going to be a dip in the economy, that it will happen after the election and not before. And so that's the that's the wild card right now. All right. We're going to take a quick break. come back, and end the show with Can't Let It Go. 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. Think of NPR's Life Kit as that friend who always has great advice on everything from how to invest to how to get a great workout.

We bring you tools to help you get it together. So listen and subscribe to NPR's Life Kit, all guides to get all of our episodes all in one place. Everybody ready? You know it. Three, two, one. everybody ready you know three two one and we are back and it is time to end the show like we do every week with can't let it go part of the show where we talk about the things we cannot stop thinking about politics or otherwise aisha you are up first yes so what i cannot let go of this week uh i talked a bit about this in one of the live shows in Philly. I think

I don't like birds, right? And yet you bravely came to the Sesame Street concert with a very big bird. It was a very big bird but I allowed it. You're afraid of birds? I'm afraid of birds, especially big birds. And so in this

case, I also, this is also like a summertime, you know, thing, too. So apparently in Ocean City, New Jersey, everyone knows where the big boardwalk and all that stuff. They've had a problem with these seagulls who are like evil. That was my that's my reference. They're evil. OK, yes. And so they were saying it was so bad.

And this this is a New York Times story. They said that they quoted someone saying, I've seen them take an entire pizza. This guy had a box. He took one slice out. The bird came down, hit the slice, then hit the box. And then hundreds of birds just swarmed. That's impressive. They're aggressive. And so what does the city decide to do to deal with this? They bring more birds. So they have hired these raptors. These are like mercenary birds for hire.

Yes. So the headline is like, flying assassins are called into combat against aggressive goals. So they use falcons and they had an owl and like it's it's really. Are they like fighting in the air above the boardwalk? It's bird on bird. These birds, they could eat the goals, but they don't. They're just trained to scare them. This costs like twenty one,100 a day.

My question is, what happens when these raptors decide, you know what, you're using us? I think we have bigger prey we want to attack. Maybe there's some little... Now you have food chain problems. Because then, what did you do to deal with the raptors taking over? Well, we brought in mountain lions. What did you do to take care of the mountain lions? T-Rexes.

So it's like the raptors are going to realize what they're doing and then they're going to start attacking the people. And then what can you do then? What can you do then? Well, I like the marketing possibility. Hide in the kitchen. Mark what you can do then based on other raptors. Ron.

This is something I literally cannot let go. It's actually been going on for about a month now. Jessica Taylor, our colleague, tweeted from a Trump rally in North Carolina that the president had just used an expression twice that evangelicals find highly objectionable. This involves the word God, the name God, and it also involves the word damn. And if you put those together in a particular way, it is highly offensive to serious evangelicals, theological evangelicals, not just people who fit in that category, maybe demographically, but people who really take their Bible seriously. We're talking about all the way back to the Ten Commandments and certainly... Taking the Lord's name in vain. Yes. And it's blasphemous to urge God to do this.

He did it twice in this speech, and there were people objecting to it. And now, a month later, people are still talking about not only the fact that he said this, but also the fact that Jessica Taylor tweeted it. And a lot of people didn't understand at the time why something like that might be offensive when so many other things the president has said and perhaps done were not offensive. Right, because admittedly, he has broken other Ten Commandments, and he has incredibly strong strength from white evangelical conservatives. It is a little hard, I think, for people who don't share this particular background in terms of their own personal families and religion to understand why that particular phrase is

so meaningful. I remember having it being very carefully explained to me by my minister in my confirmation training. That minister also happened to be my father, so I was taking it rather seriously. You know, I grew up in a very religious household, still very religious myself. I think that the issue is this idea of you should reverence the name of the Lord. Like we didn't really go around saying even, you know, how some people go, Jesus Christ. Like we didn't do that. Right. You just don't you just don't do it.

Like that's just, you know, and what we didn't curse at all. Like my mother never curses. So, you know, like it was just like a thing. Like we didn't we felt like that. They felt like that's sinful. You don't curse at all. Yeah. What about you, Danielle?

So what I can't let go of are a couple of little moments from Pete Buttigieg's visit to the Iowa State Fair. It's a hard word. Yeah. Not as hard as O'Rourke. Let's not go there right now. The possessive of Buttigieg is difficult. All right. So Pete Buttigieg, after his speech at the fair, then people get to ask questions.

And someone raised their hand, a teenager, and said, hey, I'm about to go off to college. Do you have any advice for teenagers about to go to college? And here was like his answer. Just I didn't even know what to think. Here's what he said. One thing you ought to know is that dish soap and hand soap are pretty much the same thing so in your dorm room this is very useful it took me a while to figure that out i don't think that's true i don't either first of all okay like first of all i i appreciate it because it's reminiscent of all the low-key gross stuff that goes along with college like people showing up to class in their pjs and like my roommate sniffing her clothes before she put them on in the morning.

I suppose I probably did that at some point too. But aside from that, like, don't you have questions? Like, does that mean he was using dish soap as hand soap? Was he bathing with dish soap? Or does that mean he was using hand soap to wash his dishes? And like, I want more follow-ups, people. Yeah. This is important.

Well, he's certainly not using bar soap. He's talking about interchanging the bottle soap. I wash my hands with the dish soap all the time. I do that but not your body. I think that's objectionable. I think that's objectionable. Because it's cheaper? Well, it's right there.

If you're in the kitchen, you just use the dish soap. You can wash your hands with the dish soap. Yeah, wash your hands. Most definitely. But not your body. There you're in the kitchen, you just use the dishwasher. You can wash your hands in the dishwasher. Yeah, wash your hands. Most definitely. But not your body. There are components in dishwasher detergent that are designed to clean grease off of porcelain. What I'm saying is he didn't explain well. And all seagulls.

Let's talk about that. All same stained seagulls, too. And from I Can't Let It Go, I will just briefly add to this. We've talked about the fair a little bit today. I will just quickly. I compiled a list of all the things I ate at the fair and I thought I was being reasonable, but when I

list them all together, granted I was there for several days. Yes. Granted I ate some salads at other points, but I'm just going to tick off everything I ate at the fair. Ready? Do it. Pork chop on a stick. cheese curds, fried mac and cheese. Didn't love those. Burnt tips, ice cream, bacon-wrapped corn dogs,

and it really escalates at the end. Maple-glazed pork belly on a stick, excellent. Deep-fried Oreos, excellent. And a corn dog-themed beer that was specifically brewed for the state fair. As the Iowan in this podcast, I'm so proud. You know, I feel like I left it out all on the tip. I left it at the fair. Thank you, Tatanka.

All right. That is clearly a wrap for today. We will be back as soon as there is political news you need to know about. Until then, a reminder, we are hitting the road. A couple live shows coming up, one in Boulder, Colorado, on September 20th, another in Washington, D.C., on November 8th. You can grab a ticket by heading to NPR Presents dot org. I'm Scott Tetreault. I cover politics.

I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I also cover politics. I'm Aisha Roscoe. I cover the White House. And I'm Ron Elving, editor correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.