The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, March 21

Episode Date: March 21, 2019

Democratic presidential hopefuls are betting on bold ideas like abolishing the electoral college, but what would that actually mean? Plus, the candidates are boasting large numbers of donations, but what do donations tell us about enthusiasm? This episode: Congressional correspondent Susan Davis, political editor Domenico Montanaro, editor correspondent Ron Elving, and political reporter Miles Parks. 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 Melinda, and I'm spending my 23rd birthday doing dishes, making dinner, and listening to my three favorite reporters on the NPR Politics Podcast. This podcast was recorded at 12.43 p.m. on Thursday, March 21st. Unless you're as obsessed as I am with these people, something has probably changed by the time you hear this. Okay, here's the show. Now I want to know who the three are. We're drawing lots here. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And I'm Ron Elving, editor correspondent. All right, guys, there's two big things we're going to talk about this week. Democrats wanting to scrap the Electoral College and what their campaign contributions are telling

us about the race so far. So let's start with the Electoral College. Ron, what is the Electoral College? The Electoral College is a group of people who are elected state by state in November of a presidential year on Election Day, and they are elected to then go represent that state in the Electoral College. Several weeks later, when people have stopped paying attention, they know who has been elected president, the actual election of the president takes place in the Electoral College some weeks later, reflecting the vote state by state. Not the national popular vote, but just the vote state by state.

That's the Electoral College. And currently there's 535 electors. 538. 535 matches the number of people in Congress, plus three for the District of Columbia. That's what it is. How can I forget D.C.? I'm a resident here. Because you have no representation. That's why I forget. So we don't really count. So the reason we're talking about this now is Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic senator

from Massachusetts who's running for president, was doing a town hall on television this week and she was asked about the Electoral College. And this is what she said. We can have national voting and that means get rid of the Electoral College. And Elizabeth Warren isn't the only one making this case. Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is also running for president. He talked about it to our own Scott Detrow this week. We are not as democratic as we'd like to think. And as a country that stands for democracy around the world and preaches democracy here at home, we ought to actually be a place where the person who gets the most votes for president gets to win the election. I think that's something most Americans intuitively understand. But our system right now

doesn't reflect that. And twice in my young life, the American people have been overruled because of the Electoral College. I mean, I'm a little surprised that this is an issue that people are seemingly losing their minds over. I guess I'm not. I mean, just in seeing the interest in this, especially after Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by three million votes in the 2016 election. And then you see that she lost by really by some 70,000 votes between three states in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. And if you don't know that by now, you haven't been listening to the podcast. And don't live in those three states. But the fact is- Welcome to the podcast. I mean, Democrats have lost now two presidential elections in the past two decades that they won

the popular vote in and then lost the electoral college. So I think there's a degree of base voters feeling like there's an unfairness to the situation. And, you know, we can talk about all the reasons why it's wound up that way. But that's what it is. Right. And it fits into this kind of broader conversation Democrats want to have about voting right now, which is they just don't see it being done fairly. The Electoral College skews itself to where the votes of people living in rural America matter more than the people living on either coast and specifically in urban areas. And we know the people who are living in those urban areas are disproportionately non-white voters. So Democrats see those two things as intrinsically

connected. I mean, there's an obvious and very self-serving reason it seems that Democrats care about this issue now is that as you look towards the future of the country, it's not unforeseeable that the Democratic Party could continue to win a popular vote and lose the Electoral College. Although it's possible for it to go the other way. And for a while in 2016, Donald Trump was worried about that. He could see a map in which he might actually come out with more popular votes. But if those three states that narrowly went for him had all gone for Hillary, he could have lost the Electoral College even if he won the popular vote. And we saw this in 2004 when George W. Bush was reelected. He actually had several million votes in the popular vote, but he almost lost Ohio. And if he had lost Ohio, he would have lost the Electoral College

and been put out of office by the same mechanism that put him in in 2000. I mean, Hillary Clinton, one out of five of her votes were from New York and California. You could say that that's a problem with the fact that people aren't counted seemingly one for one, or you could see it as a problem of the Democratic Party not figuring out how to appeal to people in different parts of the country. Well, it's this question of is the Electoral College a safeguard or is it a deterrent? Right. Or is it not maybe not a safeguard or does it diminish democracy or protect it? Is the question. And there would be a change. I mean, this is this is the argument. And President Trump made this argument on Twitter this week and talking about why he used to be in favor of a

popular vote. He had a tweet in 2012 that Domenico unearthed where he said, I said, or at least retweeted or at least retweeted where he said that the Electoral College is a total disaster for democracy. if we went to a national vote system, it would eliminate the entire Midwest and all rural places from mattering in politics. And people I've talked to talk about how different political campaigns would look if we were in a popular vote system. You would have candidates only going to urban centers, which to be fair, they aren't going there right now. So that would engage a part of the political system that isn't being engaged in the campaign system. It would just be different. But urban centers wherever they were. So Atlanta is an urban center. Dallas and Houston are urban centers. Certainly Chicago is an urban center. There are many urban centers in Florida. So it does not mean that you're writing off all those states in the Midwest. It just means that

you're probably writing off anybody going out and campaigning in strictly rural areas. It does currently disproportionately give rural America, the middle, middle America, an advantage in the system. But if you went to a national vote system, defenders of the electoral college say you're forgetting about states like Wyoming and Montana, whose voices would basically become silent. I also think that there's a macro philosophical argument that when you're talking about amending the Constitution on an original intent, we should be pretty careful in how we proceed. A lot of people support the Electoral College in the sense that it was just sort of a baseline

foundation of our democracy. And a huge part of how we vote in this country, a very important part is the fact that states and localities run how elections work. This would change that. This would make a national election system a reality, which is not how the founders initially viewed voting. You know, and there's also an argument to be made that the result of a presidential election should look decisive so that a president can go forward and lead the country. And the Electoral College is almost always, not absolutely always, but almost always much more lopsided than the popular vote. So it does look as though, and when you look at the map, sometimes it gives this impression, it's just a visual impression that the country was united behind its new president. Yeah. I mean, I think though, the thing that most people in a clear-eyed

way just come back to is they sit there and say, so someone wins more votes and they might not be president. That doesn't make sense to me. And that's why 65 percent in polls, by and large, will say, why not the popular vote? Although for a bit of real talk here, I mean, let's say a Democratic president or any president wins and wants to change the Electoral College. It's not like it's easy to do. No, not exactly. Well, not at least not in the way that when you start talking about changing the Constitution and changing the actual way legally how elections are run in this country.

Plus, to amend the Constitution, you would need two thirds of the House and Senate to agree and three quarters of the state legislatures. Which means 13 states can stop it. 13. And that's really hard to imagine. There wouldn't be 13 states who wanted to preserve the Ele legislatures. Which means 13 states can stop it. 13. And that's really hard to imagine there wouldn't be 13 states who wanted to preserve the electoral college. And when you look at how divided this country is on essentially every issue, I'm not sure you could get those majorities to agree that today's Thursday. No, you wouldn't get it in the House and Senate, and you would

certainly not get three-fourths of the state. Especially, yeah, you talk about all the things that would be needed. I think in the abstract, it sounds like something that, oh, we would just vote the same way we did in 2016 and count it differently. But it's not nearly that simple, specifically because you can imagine a time if you ever needed a recount of that election. Logistically speaking, when you look at the voting infrastructure, how would you recount that many votes? It's hard to grasp what a real system would look like there. So not to be cynical, but this makes this a great issue to be for if you're a Democratic candidate for president or any kind of presidential candidate. Just say, I'm for a national popular vote for president. And 65% of the people in the country agree with me. And you never have to deal

with the consequences because it's never going to happen. Here's the question, though. So this seems like it's the latest in what has become a trend of Democratic proposals that are probably unlikely, but popular. You have Democrats in the House voting on a big package that would have reduced trying to reduce the voting age to 16. You have presidential candidates like Pete Buttigieg and others saying, let's put more judges on the Supreme Court. You have other candidates talking about scrapping the filibuster in the Senate. I mean, there is a macro point here that is maybe that voters are, there is a deep frustration about how government is run and Democrats are trying to capitalize on that. I mean, there is, there's a bigger point here, right? And why not talk about it? Why not put forward all of these ideas? Why

not say, let's amend the constitution if that's what it takes, or let's come up with a national popular vote through some other means. I do think there is an interesting parallel. We're talking a lot of kind of logistics, but when you boil it all down, isn't it interesting how all of these conversations are? The system is rigged. This is something that we have been talking about for a while now. It's just a different way of talking about the same thing. I think in some ways it's good that these conversations provoke more Americans to think about structurally how elections are done and what's in the Constitution and how do we elect presidents. I don't know if that's I don't know if the outcome changes, but I think in some ways,

like forcing people to be reminded of these civics lessons might be kind of healthy on its own. Amen. All right. Well, let's take a quick break. And when we get back, let's talk about money and what it tells us about the candidates in the field right now. There's a subculture of people fascinated by prime numbers, you know, like 7, 11, 13, 17, 19. Primes go on forever. There is no final biggest prime number. And the hunt for the latest monster prime number can take years. You end up with a 24 million digit long number. Ideas on the power and beauty of math on the TED Radio Hour from NPR. And we're back. So let's talk about money.

There's been a lot of talk about what these campaign donations are telling us as candidates jump into the race. So first, Bernie Sanders, independent from Vermont, he raised in his first 24 hours after making it official $5.9 million. Then Beto O'Rourke comes along and makes his campaign official and raises $6.1 million. So far, they, I believe, have sort of set the standard. They're far and away above everybody else in what they've raised in the first 24 hours. And also, it came from a very large base of donors. In Bernie Sanders' case, he said the average was $27 per person or per contribution, I should say. And in Beto O'Rourke's case, it was also fairly low at $47, which means broad-based support, future voters,

people who can give again and again. And this is really important because, you know, these numbers are just meant to indicate momentum. These are numbers that we're only getting from the campaigns. These aren't even numbers that have been reported yet to the FEC and released. There is a little trust but verify here. I mean, we will verify, but we won't be able to verify the first 24 hours of like when that money came in. We'll just have to see what the number is for the entire quarter

on the Federal Election Commission website, which eventually will be posted. And we're coming right to the end of the first quarter here with March 31st. So we'll get a much better picture of that in the next couple of weeks. I do think it's interesting, though, because I'm always skeptical about drawing too much conclusion by fundraising, because if money was the thing that mattered most, we'd be talking about President Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush or President Jeb Bush, who raised the most in the 2016 field. So you don't want to inflate the importance of it. But in this context, I do think it speaks in some ways to the grassroots appeal of Bernie Sanders and Beto O'Rourke, because it's not an insignificant amount of money. It's not going to get them the

nomination, but it does speak to sort of early enthusiasm, right? And eventual financial viability as a long-running candidate in a very long primary season and then up against an incumbent president. So you're going to have to be an absolute monster in the world of fundraising in order to compete in the primaries. We've got California moved way up so that with their wide window for people casting votes, they're going to be practically one of the very first primaries.

And as a result, that means you've got to advertise in California or get blown away. You're going to have to have real bucks. So it's not just support. It's also money, money. And a general election candidate is going to have to raise like $2 billion probably in this campaign. So it's no joke. Like you've got to be able to, you know, spend money in those states, you know, to be able to, you know, get on television, get out the vote, create those email lists. These things cost money. And I think one of the potential risks that Democrats right now are

running into is their complete sort of a skewing of any kind of big dollar donations, right? Do you think Democrats are doing themselves a disservice in taking off the table money they're willing to accept going up against a Republican president who has his own money that he can invest and has said he's going to take all the money that people will give him? I personally don't think so. I mean, it would be so this is such a nice like you're saying it doesn't have a huge practical negative,

but it has this messaging positive when if it's going to align with all these other anti big money, you know, tax the bill, super billionaires, all these messages, it kind of aligns with that in a way that's nice, but doesn't actively make it really much harder for them to raise money. Well, and so far, President Trump has actually raised a ton of money. I mean, compared to 2016 and 2015, he's got $106 million that he's raised so far, about $35 million cash on hand through the end of September of 2018, through that reporting period. So that's a lot of dough. That's Jeb Bush money.

That is, it's a lot of money. It's way more than Barack Obama had in the 2010 cycle. He only raised about $4 million or so. I mean, remember, President Trump, almost as soon as he took office, started doing campaign rallies that were for 2020 outside of Washington. He's extended what's usually become a way too long year to year and a half campaign to a four year reelection campaign. OK, so Trump's raised one hundred and six million. He's got thirty five million in the bank. What has he been spending it on? One area where President Trump is really spending a lot of money and putting a lot of time and effort in is on social media and in particular Facebook and then Google ads as well. Spending about three and a half million dollars on Facebook and about a million dollars on Google. So about four and a half million dollars between those two platforms. That's far and above what the Democratic candidates have been spending.

Elizabeth Warren has spent about five hundred ninety five thousand on Facebook and Google ads. Kamala Harris, a similar amount, half a million. Bernie Sanders, four hundred and thirty eight thousand. So you see where they are as compared to President Trump. President Trump knew that this was a platform that had helped him and worked for him in 2016. And they're just ramping it up again in 2020. I do want to step in here, though, and be skeptical one more time of how much these numbers matter, specifically when we're talking about Democratic primary candidates. We know that, I mean, a lot of there's been a lot of studies about who donates to political campaigns, and it's disproportionately a lot of white people. Guess what? Guess who is

making up less and less of the Democratic primary base? White people. So when you look at Beto O'Rourke and Bernie Sanders, I'm not in any way saying these are the only people they're appealing to. But when you look at money specifically as an indicator of this broad support, I don't think I think that might be slightly overstating how much broad support they have in more diverse places. one, you're going to need a lot of money to probably last for a pretty long time in this campaign. And one kind of interesting kind of break the mold thing that's been happening, Bernie Sanders went and he's doing recurring payments. So you know how you can set up your auto pay for your cable bill. He's essentially doing that to Bernie. He's saying, hey, you like me so much. You like what you get. You like what you hear. Pay me $27 every month. Also, public radio likes to do that as well. We do. We will. You like what you hear. Pay me $27 every month. Also, public radio likes to do that as well. We do. We will even throw in a tote bag. And we might even give you

a little something if you do it. Maybe an NPR politics t-shirt. I don't know if they do that now, but that's in the shop. They are. Yeah, I wore it last week. I'm surprised that more candidates haven't done that sort of reoccurring small donor thing already. You know, it's one way to kind of get a large grassroots base, maintain that base and have them continue to pay and fund. And that means that Sanders is going to be able to stick around for quite some time if he's able to at least show some momentum in those early states. One thing I think is so interesting about both this fundraising conversation and how campaigns are targeting voters is that 2020, I mean, every election is this, but it just feels like the rules of campaigning are just being rewritten in real time. And it's hard to balance

like our conventional wisdom and all of our experience in how campaigns are run and elections are won with a really volatile electorate, a completely different ad culture. I think that's really what I mean. Honestly, I'm too young to care about campaign money. That's really what it comes down to is like my whole time I've been caring about politics. People keep telling me to care about it. And I am seeing over and over again that there are candidates who can have success without it. As you scroll Facebook. But there's something to that. Right. Like if you're looking at the future voter, it's just it's just happening at such a pace that it's hard to stay in front of it. Yeah, I think it just speaks to the difference in the platform where the message is getting out. It doesn't necessarily mean money doesn't matter. But what it is, is that, you know,

spending a ton of money on television ads, and only television ads is not going to be the way to get everyone to the polls. I mean, I remember in 2008, we started talking about digital advertising, and it was a minuscule fraction of what campaigns were spending. And now it's really skyrocketed, frankly, in how much people are spending. Every presidential cycle repeals some of the rules from previous cycles, but reiterates some of the others. And every time the candidate who is most creative about figuring out which rules are which is the candidate who emerges. All right, let's leave it there.

We'll take a quick break. And when we get back, it's time for Can't Let It Go. Welcome to the 21st century. Do you see Jesus in the burnt toast? Do you realize that literally there's a bucket of condoms by the exit? Why is this happening? Why is this happening to me? We cannot just say stop. I want to get off.

Invisibilia, season five. No easy answers, just the right questions. And we're back, and we're going to end the show like we always do with Can't Let It Go, the part of the show where we all talk about the one thing, politics or otherwise, that we can't let go of. Miles, as the youngest member of the team today, you get to go first. Yes, and I am going to show my age here because my thing I cannot let go of is the fact that MySpace lost all of its music that was uploaded between 2003 and 2015, they announced this week. That was 53 million songs, and Ron Elving, among those songs,

were six of my high school bands, my high school screamo band songs that are no longer in the universe anymore. What's a screamo band? You don't know what a screamo band is? It's like emo, only a little more emotional. Well, we had a singer. Was Beto O'Rourke the lead singer?

I don't know if he got into the screaming aspect of it, but basically we had a singer. Was Beto O'Rourke the lead singer? I don't know if he got into the screaming aspect of it. So basically we had a lot of melodies, but then I couldn't really sing. So I did some more like different kind of emotional vocal situations. Did you play an instrument? I did. I played bass.

And it was me on bass and doing some other vocal activity. My friend Gordon, who is an amazing vocalist, who now is like a professional vocalist, sings like operas and things. And then my little brother who played drums. What was the name of the Screaming Emo band? We were called the 2020 Poetics. It's cringy.

I'm not kidding. This is so bad. But also timely now. So I wasn't sure if these songs existed anymore. I don't have them on my computer, but I did do a YouTube search, and there was one song still on the Internet. Yes. Now you're singing?

I'm not singing. I'm playing bass. I co-wrote lyrics. Hand me a million hour glasses. Give me my future in my hands. And right now Miles is air drumming while we're in here. This is such like a quintessential high school boy band sound. Yeah, it's not good. Exactly. I mean like no one's arguing. Though we haven't gotten there yet, like about like three minutes in there's like a 20 second moment where it's like oh hey there's like potential here i don't want to lose my mind

i want to go back to the idea that you had to use your voice as an instrument you know when you do that it's like you can was this like No, no, this wasn't scat. I just want to get right with you guys. It was a lot of yelling. I mean, there was yelling. Let's go take a step back from the mic. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it right here. But yeah, it was a lot of yelling. And people seemed to enjoy it, you know? The people came out to our shows.

Miles, I like it. You've got layers. Thanks, Sue. There are many layers. Ron, what was the name of your screaming emo band? The Shellback Rose, but that is another story. What? Ron, is this a real band you were in? Yes, this was a real band. What the?

What did you play? I played bass, just like Miles. What? There's a trend here for you both. We've got to have a bass off. Absolutely. Ron, what can't you do? You know what these two are?

They're all about that. Bass, yes. And it is true, and that is, of course. I've never felt a deeper connection with another human than right now. That remains one of my favorite tracks of the last several years. Ron, what can't you let go this week? Well, speaking of Gordon's lawsuit against Miles, and going back to politics, Devin Nunes has filed a $250 million lawsuit against Twitter and some individuals who were making fun of him on Twitter, one of whom called herself Devin's mom. And Twitter did take that off because she was not, in fact, Devin's mom.

But it's the cow. It's really the cow that people were into. The reason this is relevant is because Devin Nunes' family has operated a dairy farm in Iowa and has also had agricultural interests there in California where his actual district is. And he started actually animal husbandry around cows when he was a teenager. In his early teens, he bought seven head of cows. Well, maybe this is why he's particularly sensitive to this. It had several thousands of cows. Well, maybe this is why he's particularly sensitive to this. It had several thousands of followers after the lawsuit just checked up to 586,000 followers

for Devon Cow. And can I just say, I'm probably not the best barometer for what's popular, but I had no idea this thing even existed until he started doing this. I think you could say that for roughly 550,000 of those 586,000 now following it. It's also like it shows that he's pretty thin skinned. I mean, politicians get made fun of on Twitter, and that's pretty par for the course these days. But all he has seemed to have done with this is elevate the voices he was trying to get to shut up. And he says this is just the first of some lawsuits that are coming

because conservatives have been shadow banned on social media and because conservatives get a bad deal. And he in particular has been singled out. And well, I think we'll hear more from Congressman Nunes with respect to all of these issues. But Sue, what is your what is your can't let it go? So the thing I can't let go this week is a rumor circulating in political chatter that was first reported by Axios this week that Joe Biden, who's still mulling whether he's going to get into the presidential race, has been considering when he announces announcing his running mate and announcing that Stacey Abrams should be his running mate. And I can't let it go partly because of the very different reactions it got. There's one school of thought

that was like, oh, brilliant, cannot play it better than this. And then there was the reaction among Stacey Abrams fans, which I think people on our podcast know who she is, but she ran for governor in 2018. She lost in Georgia, but she's sort of seen as this rising influential kind of rock star in the Democratic Party. She gave the response to the State of the Union. She gave the response to the State of the Union. She's an African-American woman. She's sort of seen as this rising influential kind of rock star in the Democratic Party. Gave the response to the state of the union. She gave the response to the state of the union. She's an African-American woman. She's sort of seen as the new cool in Democratic politics. And a lot of the Stacey Abrams stan out there got kind of offended by this idea that she should suddenly automatically agree to be number two. We should note, she has not ruled out running for president herself and reiterated this

week that she's still looking at her options. But one of my favorite tweets about it was Kashana Kali, who's a opinion writer for The New York Times, tweeted out and she just said, it's kind of amazing how awesome a Biden-Abrams ticket would be without Biden on it. And I thought it spoke to like this sort of, you know, this other wing of the Democratic Party that's looking for like new, now fresh voices and isn't so quick to be like, oh, yeah, Stacey Abrams, you should be number two. What's wild about it is it's so self-aware in where the Democratic Party is right now. It's like I can't even announce myself as an old white guy without having myself connected from the very beginning to something, somebody who represents the diversity and the youth of the Democratic Party. Right. So I would note this. People have tried this before. Ted

Cruz tried this in 2016. Remember when he announced Carly Fiorina as his running mate is some way to like juice his ticket. So I'm not even sure I see this as like a move of strength by Biden. I see it more as like a move of like, oh, we've got to shake this up. And when you're trying to shake it up, you're usually the one that's like not in the best place. Yeah. I mean, and there's nothing to say of whether or not the ticket would be any good. I mean, you know, would a ticket win with, you know, Biden at the top and and Stacey Abrams and Abrams didn't remember when her Georgia governor's race. I mean, it's fascinating to me that people who haven't won races and think about Abrams, Beto O'Rourke, you know, even Andrew Gillum, people were talking about maybe he'll run. It's like, you used to have to win things.

Domenico, what can't you let go this week? Well, I can't let go of President Obama releasing his NCAA men's and women's basketball brackets. He's still doing that? That's what I'm saying. This is what I can't let go of. And not only did he release his bracket, but the bracket is branded with his Sunrise Fields 2008 logo. Oh yeah, his campaign logo. Who does he have winning though? Oh, well, okay. I will get there. It's a pretty generic bracket if if I will throw some shade, because he's got Duke winning, beating North Carolina.

That's a pretty popular pick right now to go that way. His final four is Duke, Tennessee, Michigan, and North Carolina. You know, I don't know how much basketball he's been watching this year. I'm going to guess a lot. Yeah, more than in the last few. He was at a game, remember? That's true, but I don't know. I'm going to guess a lot. He does not have a job, Domenico. He is probably watching more college basketball than the average American right now. Maybe he's overthinking it.

But not more than Domenico. I would go to the other side of the bracket because I think the 5-12 Murray State versus Marquette. Watch out, Marquette. You might be in for some trouble. Did you do a bracket? He wants to. I haven't actually this year. See, what I want now is a Domenico bracket next to a Barack Obama bracket and see in the end who comes out on top.

And I just want to see you try to not pick Duke. That is a hard thing to do. I will pick Carolina. All right. We're going to leave it there for now. But before we let you go, reminder that we're going to Philadelphia. We're going to be doing a live podcast show there all about the 2020 race. If you want to buy tickets, please go to NPR presents dot org. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And I'm Ron Elving, editor correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.