The Press Box - Bernie Wins New Hampshire. Pete's Second. Biden Goes Bust. | The Press Box

Episode Date: February 12, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss Bernie Sanders’s victory in the New Hampshire primary, the night's biggest winners and losers, the dropouts, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello media consumers. This is the press box. We are Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker with your instant reaction to the New Hampshire primary. David, I'm told saying, we actually have a winner this time is an overwork Twitter joke. So skip that. The winner of the New Hampshire primary is Bernie Sanders. At this moment, he is in first place with 26% of the vote. Pete Buttigieg in second with 24% and Amy Klobuchar, kind of surprised at them.

night with 20%. Let's start with Bernie because I feel as soon as the direction things we're going to go tonight became apparent, we then immediately, and by we, I mean everyone on cable news started this argument of how big a victory is this for Bernie. Should we be adding up Buttigieg and Klobuchar's votes to counteract it somehow to show that no, no, no, really people want to elect a centrist? how much stock do you put in to this victory tonight for Bernie Sanders? It's a huge win. I mean, I just don't, maybe if anything, I'm influenced to look at it in his favor because of all of the attempts that seem to have been made in the media to minimize it. I mean, I'm not quite sure how comparing this year against four years ago is even remotely meaningful. But I've over and over again on I think every cable news channel I've seen his numbers put side by side with his numbers from four years ago when he was running in a two-person race against Hillary Clinton functionally.

But this is this is really big. I mean, I think of anything, what really diminishes it, at least on a conceptual level, is that he was running neck and neck up until the end with Pete Buttigieg, who himself wasn't, you know, an entirely viable candidate two weeks ago, right? So if he had, if this had been Bernie and Joe Biden, you know, with Biden in the place of Buttigieg, I think it would have been seen as a little bit more meaningful. But Joe Biden, I mean, that's a story for another segment. But I mean, his campaign is just has hit rock bottom. And I think, I mean, I think, I mean, I don't know that there's a definitive answer to the Bernie Sanders question because there is some true. truth to the, I mean, a lot of truth to the notion that there's a lot, you know, there's a huge

portion of the Democratic voting electorate. I mean, you know, waiting to be, waiting to be even given the right to vote in this, you know, primary season. But this is a big night for Bernie Sanders. I totally agree with everything you said. From the kind of conceptual problem, Bernie's dealing with it, he beat two candidates tonight that people didn't take entirely serious. all the way up until they finished well tonight, that he was expected to win tonight. I think it was about 67% odds in the Nate Silver rankings before the night. So when you're expected to win,

just winning doesn't do you a ton of good, at least in the kind of weird cable news brain that rules America. But man, I'm with you. I think it's huge because I saw Chris Hayes make this point on MSNBC. see how many candidates that have actually won or co-won an election right now are set up to win more of them? How many have, and I believe these were Hayes' things, and I thought this was correct, a multiracial coalition, a lot of money, and a national campaign apparatus. It's basically Bernie Sanders right now. So, and the idea is like he co-won Iowa last week, right?

he wins New Hampshire tonight. He could win Nevada in 11 days. Even if he takes the L in South Carolina, he's set up to do very well in states like California on Super Tuesday. He raised $27 million in January, beating every candidate in the field. Man, if that is somehow secretly a losing hand going forward, I'll take it.

I'll take it. I'm not saying Bernie is going to win the nomination, but he is by far in the strongest position to win it after tonight. I agree. You know, Chris Matthews was on TV tonight, and you'll forgive me. I feel like I've watched more across the cable network spectrum. I've watched more MSNBC than normal over the past couple of weeks because it's been sort of incredible to watch the, you know,

the sort of more moderate liberals on the network kind of come to grips with Bernie, the phenomenon of Bernie Sanders or the sort of reality of Bernie Sanders. Chris Matthews, whose entire opinion of Bernie Sanders could be sort of summarized in just like a performative eye roll,

trotted out the old Nixonism tonight, which is whenever you hear about somebody, whenever you hear about the anybody but X movement vote on X. And, you know, that was obviously true of Trump four years ago. Yeah. It was true of Trump four years ago, obviously. And now it feels like it's becoming true of Bernie Sanders. I mean, and you really, to stay on the MSNBC tip for one more second,

you really need to look no further than sort of the morning Joe Cass kind of trying Pete Buttigieg on for size for the first time. And listen, there's no question about how much, about the significance of the amount of money that Michael Bloomberg has spent. I mean, it's a lot and it's meaningful in a lot of different ways. But the seriousness, which with his people are addressing his campaign on MSNBC and other networks, I think is a direct reflection of the kind of anxiety about Bernie Sanders. It is absolutely a reflection of that. and also is this tortured math where we're trying to add up other candidates totals and say, well, see, those are bigger

than Bernie Sanders's total. Yeah. That is not how these things work. If you want to divine the kind of general will of the Democratic primary electorate, you go right ahead. We saw this with Trump four years ago. That's not how these things work.

And you don't get to add it up after the fact and say, well, Bernie really didn't win. He did win. He really was. the media freakout is going to be wild oh i love this tweet from will menaker uh it was actually before tonight it said the two paths laid out for the liberal media if sanders wins on tuesday are already being prepped the matthew iglesias knee bend he's just like me or any other regular democrat and won't be so bad and the chris matthew's full red bait meltdown this is very very good i'm not

sure we got to either of those tonight and the narrownness of the narrowness of of his victory, right, means that he is not the presumptive nominee. And you will not see people, I don't think you'll see a ton of Bernie skeptics jumping on board after tonight. But he won. He won. He was expected to win, and he won. He co-won the first primary at the very least, or the first caucus, because I'm still not

sure we know what happened. And he outright won the second one. He's got a really good chance to win the third one. And show me, show me the list of candidates who've done that and then not won the Democratic nomination or any nomination. It's not many, man. It's not many. Also, by the way, I don't know how much of that debate you watched on Friday, but aren't you convinced Democrats were still attacking the wrong guy? Like, I turned on that debate and Amy Klobuchar was going right at Buttigieg.

Now, I know they're sharing the same kind of Midwest centrist, nice person lane, but it was almost so much fire. was on Buttigieg. Elizabeth Warren wasn't attacking anybody. And then Joe Biden dropped that ad, that that web ad this week that was just all about Pete Buttigieg putting up Christmas lights in South Bend, Indiana or something. And you're like, you know the other guy is in first place, right? Yeah. You need to tear him down before you do all this. And that reminded me the Republicans four years ago, too.

Exactly what I was just thinking of. It's that whole, it's the Ted Cruz philosophy of like, I'm just going to wait till it's me and Trump and then I'm going to squash Trump, right? Or I'm just going to put my, what do you say? I'm going to put my arms around them until the end or whatever. And then at that point, just the freight trains running out of control. Yeah, or Chris Christie taking out Marco Rubio. And it turned out Marco Rubio was at the issue.

You know, Marco Rubio, we're going to win anything anyway. Yeah. I mean, it is kind of stunning that we started off, you know, I mean, not started off. but it was only less than a month ago, a couple weeks ago when you posed the question as to whether or not the Democrats, the more moderate Democrats had, had, you know,

mis-aimed their fire at Elizabeth Warren for so long, thinking that Bernie kind of didn't stand a chance and then opened up the door for Bernie just a steamroll. I mean, it's really hard to look, to look at what's gone on tonight and see the race is anything, anything other than that so far. Let's talk about Pete Buttigieg,

because he also had a big night tonight. By the way, in the annals of political chutzpah, he comes out on stage tonight when it's pretty clear Bernie is going to win, but before the race had actually been called. So he didn't actually have to concede. He merely congratulated Bernie on his quote, strong showing. Yeah. And then chutzpah upon hutspah, he grouped Amy Klobuchar in with all the big losers of the night. you know oh there were some other great candidates tonight including Amy Globuchar and Joe Biden

it's like whoa whoa whoa those things don't have anything to do with each other do not do not accuse Pete Buttigieg of not knowing how to play the game the delegates he's going to get David look pretty much the same according to prediction Sanders is going to pull nine Pete Buttigieg is going to pull nine so how do we interpret

this showing by Mayor Pete I mean you gotta say it's impressive right i mean coming from from where he's been in the polls in new hampshire at least you know and and skate i mean and and building off of his big iowa win um which you know had was certainly constructed i mean with with all the nonsense that went on in the in the vote count there could have been dampened more than it more than it was um yeah i mean listen he he's done a really good job. And I am interested to see where we go from here. I mean, he does have, you mentioned who besides Bernie Sanders was set up to win. And that obviously is that that that argument was made,

not coincidentally, by the Warren campaign before the vote counting even started today in a, in a semi-deliberately posted medium post, where they kind of made. the argument that, you know, by Super Tuesday, there was only going to be a couple, what, three candidates that mattered, her, of course, being one of them, Bernie Sanders being another one. Pete Buttigieg has a ground game in Nevada. What that's going to actually, you know, how that's actually going to translate into votes, who knows. And obviously, the bigger question for Buttigieg is, you know, as people have said, a million times over is how well he's going to turn out or how well he's going to do in the African-American vote, the Hispanic vote.

You know, at some point, listen, I mean, I hate to give too much credence to the sort of hand-waving that Joe Biden and everyone else is doing right now. But it's true. You know, when your number one, when the number one question about your legitimacy as a candidate, is whether or not you can actually turn out Democratic voters. That's going to continue to be a question about your campaign until you do it, right? I mean, and so there's as good as tonight was, as good as Iowa was for the Buttigieg campaign. I mean, it just sounds so, it's just sounds so, you know, control V at this point, but he's, we, we, we don't know yet. Yeah.

I mean, he's on the one hand, right, just like Bernie, you can say he's done everything he needed to do. Co-won Iowa, narrowly lost tonight. But it feels like if we look back at other primary results throughout the years, there would be lots of candidates like Buttigieg and Klobuchar who had a nice, you know, man, win place or show finish up front. And then they just kind of vanished. They just didn't. It's almost like the punditocracy wished them to be better candidates than they actually were. Sure. I'm not saying this is going to happen to him, but he and Klobajar have enormous potential to be those candidates in this race.

where this is tonight is the high point, right? Or if you want to argue for Pete, that weird Iowa finish was a high point. I'm not saying it's definitely going to happen, but this could be the high point of his campaign tonight. Yeah, there's so many candidates in the field, and obviously there are candidates who dropped out of the race who were still on the ballot today.

It's a little bit hard to, it's a little bit hard to do the game theory about whose candidacy is affecting who. I mean, it's incredibly difficult to do that, obviously. And it's particularly, hard to figure out if there's any meaning behind. I mean, if there's anything you can actually draw from, I mean, obviously, Buttigieg and Sanders are the big winners over the past couple of weeks. You know, is Klobuchar, is, is Klobuchar great performance today or tonight meaningful? Or is it,

you know, I mean, New Hampshire, you know, what do they always say? No one, that no one tells New Hampshire how to vote or no one tells New Hampshire what to do or no one puts New Hampshire in a corner or whatever. But New Hampshire does have, you know, kind of a history of voting for Klobuchar type candidates, you know, of liking that sort of candidate. Mayor Pete was, you know, Warren's kind of disappearance notwithstanding. Mayor Pete was a sort of conventional Iowa pick, right? I mean, or Iowa, he was the, he was a type that they like in Iowa. Like I said, Klobuchar is, someone pointed out, um, oh, it was Nathan. Raykich on 538 pointed out that there's there might be some parallel between Clobuchar's

performance tonight and like the performances of John Kasich and John Huntsman in previous cycles, you know, that's sort of just like, you know, grit, moderate candidate. And I think that there's really something there, you know, I mean, but you don't want to, you don't want to overgeneralize too much. I don't even remember the original question was, but, but yeah, I mean, I mean, I mean, we have to look at all of these things together with the, you know, with the honesty to say that nothing's really going to be meaningful until we're a little bit further down the road and we can look back with hindsight. Yeah, so Klobuchar was a big surprise tonight. She comes out there and her non-victory victory speech and says, hello America. I'm Amy Klobuchar and I can beat Donald Trump, which was a nice moment.

Her candidacy, excuse me, to this point had been largely a manifestation of pundits, who said after every debate, gee, why isn't she doing better? Well, tonight in New Hampshire, she actually did better, right? All week there were signs that we were going to get what was alternately called clomintem or the cloboo charge, both of which should be outlawed immediately if they haven't been already. Do you think, I know this is the overly simplistic way I get, and you don't get to do this kind of post hoc math, but that clobuch charge.

and Buttigieg just looks at these, looked at these results tonight and like, man, if I had just, if you had just done a little bit worse, if I had just snuck a few more of your voters away, especially Buttigieg, I could have just won this thing outright. And all the stories tomorrow and the fake narratives tomorrow would be a lot different if Pete Buttigieg were the one who won two in a row instead of Bernie Sanders. I just think it's hard to disentangle everything. I mean, every vote that either, I mean, not every, every vote that, half of the votes that Amy Klobuchar got tonight, more than half. And a significant number of Mayor Pete's votes came from the fact that Joe Biden got like 15, you know? I mean, it's like it. David is not saying the percentage.

That's the total number of votes Joe Biden got in New Hampshire tonight. I mean, I've seen, I've seen so many people, but the percentages side by side of like, Here's where the, you know, here's where these votes went. Elizabeth Warren's votes clearly didn't go straight into Bernie Sanders' back pocket. There's a lot of different ways you can count it. Sure. I mean, I'm sure that's what those. I'm sure that the Buttigieg campaign is, you know, side-eyeing the Klobuchar campaign right now.

But somebody's got to fill that gap. Somebody's got to fill that void. I find it really hard as much, as much excitement as Mayor Pete clearly had going for him in New Hampshire. I find it hard to imagine that, you know, even if it were a two-person race, he would have performed that much better. But maybe, I mean, it's, it's, I don't know, I mean, there was a point during one of the, during somebody was speaking, one of the pro-Mayor Pete voices was speaking at the rally tonight and compared him outwardly to President Obama. And, I mean, I mean, I guess your mileage may vary on that. But it just,

feels like it just feels like the campaign is sort of insisting upon itself and maybe and that's worked to a certain extent it's worked incredibly well but

but I just don't I just I find it hard to imagine like I said if Klobuchar didn't exist that Mayor Pete would have suddenly jumped up 10 points yeah and I don't want to I don't want to diminish

Klobuchar's achievement because she was again a candidate who existed mostly as kind of a notion of everything of pundits and everyone else and then she has that really good debate on Friday night where she had her best performance. You and I have said multiple times in this podcast

that she's gotten better at running for president as this campaign has gone along. That was by far her best debate on Friday. And she showed off all the reasons people would want to vote for. Her speech tonight was fantastic, I thought. Hitting not only that very stagy but effective opening line, but getting into her family, getting into being a mom,

getting into her daughter and her dad and her grandparents. And, you know, she has a very, just like Elizabeth Warren, who sort of, I think, was better at running for president earlier in the campaign. She has a very, very compelling pitch. And tonight was the first time it really translated. I mean,

I think that Clobetcher probably benefited from Elizabeth Warren's tumble. And not just in vote count. I think specifically it's, you know, there's kind of two places that you want to be in a presidential race, especially at this stage. It's that you want to be, you know, the frontrunner or one of a very small group of front runners or you want to be a dark horse. And Elizabeth Warren, whether or not it was, you know, I'm sure there's some sports metaphor. Maybe she, you know, when she excelled too early. she peaked Yeah she peaked too early

That's what I'm trying to say She peaked too soon But Or whether it's just a You know A product of a million other little Little things But like it

But certainly Amy Klobich Are benefited From being relatively unknown At the beginning of the last debate Right? I mean she had the ability To sort of come from behind And be an exciting new

Idea of a candidate As you said Yeah I think I think she benefited from that the whole election. You know, just again, you know, Democratic voters wanting to turn the page. We don't want Barack Obama's vice president, right? We don't want all these familiar people. We want somebody new.

And as somebody said on cable news tonight, she was new, but she was also really experienced. And that was, again, that's the case she's tried to make for a long time. And it wasn't until tonight at work. Let's talk about the candidates, David, who finished in the equivalent of the NBA lottery tonight. First Elizabeth Warren sitting at 9% of the vote as we speak in a state that neighbors her home state of Massachusetts. There were a bunch of pieces this week. I read the ones by Alex Thompson and Politico and Matt Flegenheimer in the New York Times about how Elizabeth Warren has refused to change tactics at all. She is on the exact same script or had been since before people started voting.

I love the way Fleggenheimer put it. He says, she's self-branded as a fighter in a policy context, but less often in a political one, meaning she's going to fight for you, Joe and Jane six-pack, but she is not going to fight with Pete Buttigieg. You know, I'm a tough, I'm a fighter, but I'm not going to draw distinctions with the other candidates. until today, as you point out, because this memo got out with her campaign taking shots at all the other candidates. Sure. While why they weren't going to hold up over the long haul. She said tonight, I believe in her victory speech. Harsh tactics might work if you're willing to burn down the party, which is a sub-tweet of Bernie Sanders and probably somebody else. So tonight

So on election day She decided to change taxes But again on Friday night When she had a big Chance to show everybody What her closing message was She didn't Try to draw any contrast

What do you make of that? Everything that you said sort of goes Is sort of a piece in my mind I think well I'll take the end first I mean her talk about not burning down the party In her concession speech was such that I mean, I texted you to ask if she was conceding if she was dropping out of the race.

I mean, it just, like, it was just so over the top. But looking at it now, maybe that's just, she's like, the campaign made the decision to turn the page really dramatically. So we're talking about this new Elizabeth Warren tomorrow and not her performance in the race. Prior to that, I mean, the, the medium post that you mentioned that I previously discussed, that to me is not, I mean, that to me is actually the kind of of the kind of attack that Elizabeth Warren in her campaign can do well. It's like it's a white

paper attack, right? I mean, she's not good at going after people. And I mean, it's not that she's bad at going after people in debates, but it clearly does not reflect well upon her campaign. I mean, that wasn't, when she went after the Pouda judge for the wine, the wine caves, when she went after Bernie Sanders called him a liar or asked if he called her a liar in the debate about whether or not he thought there could be a woman president. I mean, whether or not that dropped her poll numbers, that certainly coincided with the plummeting of her polling numbers and subsequently her performances in Iowa and New Hampshire. I don't think that, I'm not sure that that reflects positively on her as a candidate,

at least especially as a candidate who's going to have to go toe to toe to with Donald Trump. But I think that maybe what we saw in the last debate was her realization that that's not the candidate she was going to be. It's not the candidate she's going. That's not the way she's going to win. And who knows if this medium post today is going to be effective, but certainly it's more of a piece with that version of Elizabeth Warren than, you know, making wine cave snark. Well, if you're going to do the white paper thing, maybe do it a few days before the primary instead of the day of where it's a signal that we know we're going to get blown out. Numbers guru Dave Wasserman tweets Raise your hand if you thought a few months ago that Warren and Biden would finish closer

to Yang Gabbard Steyer who had 3% each than the top New Hampshire tier of Sanders, Buttigieg Klobuchar. I am not raising my hand right now. The aforementioned Alex Thompson writes that Warren has more than a thousand staffers in 31 states likely only, second only to Mike Bloomberg.

So structurally, she is set up to keep going. This campaign may be weird enough that there is a path forward to just keep going and hope it changes. I'm still skeptical of candidates that say, I'm losing all the primaries right now, but at some unspecified date in the future, I'm going to start winning all the primaries. I don't remember that ever happening. And I don't, again, given all the kind of. narrative media stuff. I just don't know how. And plus not to mention money, right? You need money. Right. I don't know how that works. I really don't. Money's important, obviously. Maybe there's

nothing more important, but it's also an endurance race. And that's a cliche, obviously. But I feel like what we saw over and over again in the Republican field four years ago was that everybody eventually got their shot. Everybody got their moment in the spotlight. And maybe Warren's already had that, but I think it's really easy to make the case that she hasn't, that on the national stage with everybody looking, with people actually casting votes, she hasn't had her biggest, the biggest moment she might, that she's going to have yet. I tend to agree. No, no, I tend to agree with you. New Hampshire is right next to Massachusetts. It was a good time to have a big moment.

And Iowa was demographically set up, you know, for her to do really. well. I agree with that. I mean, I don't think that she's, I don't think that she's, I don't think that she can continue on in this, in this way from any significant amount of time. And again, the financial considerations are going to be huge. But, um, I just think it's, I mean, we have, I mean, the entire political apparatus, the entire Democratic political apparatus at this point is basically calling a mulligan. So it really, I mean, if, if for no other reason than the fact that nobody wants Bernie Sanders and not a lot of people want Pete Buttigieg from, you know, whatever, from the swamp, if you will. It really, it really is too early to call

for anybody. No, I'm with you there. And I am willing to at least entertain the idea that this election could be different because of that. That it's so shattered into a million pieces that there is some weird surprise yet to come. I don't know if it's Elizabeth Warren. I kind of think Elizabeth Warren needs to win Nevada or at least finish a very strong second Nevada.

All candidates say, hey, I'm preparing for five primaries down the line, you know, and then it turns out they do badly and they drop out. So she, to me, has to do well Nevada. Or I don't really see the case. She's got, I mean, she's got a good, apparently a good, you know,

operation there. And she's also got the undying affection of Harry Reid, which could be really meaningful. I mean, if she performs really well in Nevada, I don't think it should be a huge surprise. And if she doesn't, I think that, you know, that might be the end. To talk about tonight's biggest loser in the electoral sense of the word anyway, we come to Joe Biden. He acted like a loser all week. He basically conceded defeat after the New Hampshire debate on Friday. He didn't hang around to New Hampshire tonight but went straight to South Carolina.

Carolina, his much-heralded firewall state where he was throwing, David, what he called a launch party, like launching an app, not launching my candidacy into the sun, which might have been the actual result of tonight. He came out in his non-concession concession speed and said, wait a second, 99% more than 99% of African-American voters haven't voted yet. so what you know why are we pretending that this this thing is done or even half done here's the one problem there was a quinipiac poll on monday which showed biden's african-american support cratering yeah it went from 49% at the end of january to 27% Bloomberg's went from seven to 22 and there is this big weird issue down where it's like I think the question now is does Joe Biden make it to South Carolina

you know is the do you even get the benefit of making it to your firewall state and trying to win it or is he so bad once again in Nevada that that's it you know you're a former vice president you come in with all the advantages you also come in with the advantages. You were fourth in Iowa and now you're fifth tonight in New Hampshire. Fifth, dude, eight percent of the vote. If you don't do well in Nevada, what possibly, and you're not showing

any life on the stump, unlike Elizabeth Warren say, what possibly is the case for you to go forward after that? Well, apparently the Biden campaign was out tonight trying to make the case that this tonight was worse for the war in the campaign than theirs so if you know if uh you know we're like you said we're close to her home state or you know her state whatever uh i don't i i i have no idea i have no idea what with joe biden's thinking and what what his his path forward is um i do want to credit uh chris siliza with a with an excellent observation uh he tweeted tonight. Do we have like a crystal as a slide whistle or something that we play? We mentioned his name. I was I was just struck dumb, but go ahead. Please continue. No, he, no, but he pointed

out that Joe Biden's run for president three times and is yet to win a single primary or caucus. I don't really know that those previous ones reflect entirely on the Joe Biden that we know and love now, but at some point, you've got to start drawing a line, right? He's got to start connecting dots. Joe It's just To go I mean just trace the outlines of this campaign For one thing that he

He took so long to get in We forgot I mean I'm sure We I've almost forgotten I wish we should probably go back to the archives Just to play a Supercut of my size Every time that we talked about Joe Biden Potentially getting in before he did

He took forever to get in and then when he gets in he's he rides down like sort of very ephemeral white horse um his entire constituency is you know i really i feel like i'm becoming like chopto trap house here his entire constituency is the media and and this sort of you know just just disappearing act of national polls which are just totally meaningless um in a primary system by the way not to interrupt you but are we sure Joe Biden has the media? Did you hear a media member act high on Joe Biden at all during this? Well, I think it was that. Well, the media, you're right, the institutional Democrats, sort of. I mean, he was the, he was the John Kerry and the buffet line before John Kerry was the John Kerry in the buffet line, right? He was like, he's doing the nation of favor by running. But even again, not to interrupt you again, I'm sorry, I'm just interrupting you all the time, but even then, he had a pretty low number of endorsements, right, for.

for the quote unquote institutional Democrat. Yeah, John Kerry, who was then reduced to muttering that he should run for president, but he really didn't have a lot of those guys compared to similar candidates in the past. You're right. And I guess for the media, I mean, if you want to get specific, the media was, I think, constantly just sort of aghast at his lack of availability, right? I mean, he wasn't, he wasn't on, he didn't do interviews. He wasn't on TV.

And he wasn't particularly good on the trail. So I don't really know what he has, except for this sort of like aura of inevitability. And then when you start losing and not just losing, he didn't come in second or third. I mean, like this was this, like you said before, like this is like Andrew Yang territory. He got crushed. And now, and now not only is he just like, it's not, he's not pointing the direct, pointing towards some bright future, right? This isn't like, this isn't like the audacity of hope. This is like he's, I mean, he's.

he's almost working the refs at this point, right? It's not just like, like, I am the one who can beat Donald Trump. He's like, no, no, no, no. But if we like recount the ballots or if we go look over there in that box that nobody's counted, I mean, it just, it's, the case that he's making is correct. Like we need more, we need to hear from many, many more voters and a much broader swath of them. But it just is such a diminished argument from the one he started with. I mean, totally.

And he keeps changing, he keeps changing the rationale. We mentioned the one with African-American voters. Another one he kept saying is, look, I'm winning nationally. You reporters don't know this, but I'm leading in national polls. Well, back to Monday's Quinnipiac poll. He's not leading anymore. Bernie Sanders led that one, 25 Biden in second place was 17. So that rationale is out the window too.

David Diane, by the way, just to top your Chris Salizza Nugget, says, Joe Biden has never finished higher than fourth in any primary or caucus in 32 years of running for president. Not just not one. Yeah. He's never finished in the money. Yeah. I'm not sure why we took this seriously to begin with. And again, it just made so much so well, it's Joe Biden. It's Uncle Joe. He's going to have a lot of money.

Well, he didn't have a lot of money. He's going to have a lot of support. He didn't have that. You know, he's going to have this core of people that think he's going to be electable. Well, he didn't have that either. You got nothing. Fourth place, fifth place. Yeah. Yeah, it just, it just. A well-liked former vice president. Mm-hmm.

I mean, a well-liked former vice president. I mean, it sounds like you're, that sounds like the, that sounds like sort of like the loose, the loose praise, the faint praise that you would give like a, you know, declining grandfather or something, which is maybe not too far from the truth. And to, to reiterate, just to make one more point about his lack of a media, media availability, Andrea Mitchell, who's someone who knows much more than she says on TV a lot of the time. She is media availability.

She is media availability. When discussing the fact that he wasn't going on Sunday shows and doing interviews and whatever else, she's in reference to his campaign said perhaps they sheltered him too much, which sounds a whole lot like the way you talk about somebody who's not making all the decisions for himself. You know, I mean, it just, it's sort of there seems to be a lot, a lot underwriting or, you know, know, beneath that statement. So we'll see. I mean, I have no idea where he goes from here, but it's just one thing after another that just seems, I feel like I've said the word misbegotten in relationship to this campaign way too many times, but that's like the, that's the word,

that's the word that's meaningful to me. I think there are two questions. Does Joe Biden win South Carolina and prolong his candidacy, or does Joe Biden make it to South Carolina? And to me, those are both equally valid questions. David, there were actually some even bigger losers tonight. Andrew Yang, who we've been impressed by, various points during the campaign, finished around 3% tonight, had put a lot of stock in New Hampshire,

dropped out of the race. He tells BuzzFeed's Ruby Kramer, there's part of me that feels disappointed, like I didn't fulfill people's goals. There's also a competitive part of me, too. like I can't believe I lost to these people. And I love that quote because that's how any of these candidates really feels.

Even if you're Andrew Yang and there was nobody on planet Earth who thought you were going to win the Democratic nomination, you look around and you're like, I can't believe I can't believe I lost to Joe Biden tonight. I can't believe I lost to Pete Buttigieg. That's what makes you run for president. is that sort of a rational conflict.

That's what made Andrew Yang run for president, right? That he could do it. That campaign came to an end tonight. I didn't read it, but I heard a quote from his campaign manager who basically just said, you know, the results speak for themselves and we can't really justify taking more money from, you know, donors and from the Democratic Party. and that's maybe the most, like,

impressive thing any campaign has said in this entire run. I mean, like, Andrew Yang, by dropping out, Andrew Yang might have gotten my vote tonight. Like, this was, it was the most, like, smart, like, just, like, actual human decision that I could possibly imagine him making. Listen, he's, he came so far. Even just in the brief time since he dropped out to now,

I've read a lot of like just really smart really really insightful things about his campaign it seems like he had a lot he had a lot of support and a lot of kind of surprising quarters at least in the sort of political literati and he I mean just the just the distance that he that he traversed from the first time that we heard his name when he was you know in the the the punchline block right I mean he we no one was taking him seriously at the beginning and, you know, there's no, I mean, I don't think anybody would bat an eye if he decided to run for office again.

I mean, he's a serious candidate now. And you're right, that irrational confidence. And like I said, his exit, I think, really behoove him for whatever he does next. Totally. An incredibly impressive performance versus where he came into this campaign. Absolutely. And much more impressive than a lot of big name policy. politicians. Speaking of big names, well, I guess medium name, Michael Bennett joins the other

boring Coloradoan John Hickenlooper in exiting the race tonight. His goodbye quote, I love you, New Hampshire, whether you knew it or not, we were having a great time together. To that Molly Ball of Time tweets, Michael Bennett is the imaginary Canadian boyfriend of the Democratic primaries. The thing I saw most tonight was people didn't know Michael Bennett was still in the race. I saw him in a barber's chair in New Hampshire on just some like, you know, reporters walked through the other day and was kind of shocked myself. Was a reporter not expecting to find him in there?

No, Michael Bennett was basically photo bombing a camera crew. I'm not quite sure. But apparently he was still in it. you know James Carville who's I guess campaign attach has obviously made more of an impact

in the past week than his candidate has hopefully this doesn't mean that James Carvel is a free agent and will be you know hooking up with another campaign although it's been sort of a guilty pleasure to see him reemerge on television but

I don't really know what there is to say about the Bennett campaign except you know farewell best wishes generic goodbye I have no memories of that campaign like some of these people

even had like a funny debate moment I have no memories of Michael Bennett no memories at all I just don't I wish I could even give you like a fake spiel here

but I have no memories I just don't and we're allegedly paid to do this Deval Patrick according to CBS News will also drop out tomorrow again wow that one of the weirder

candidacies ever Matt Stout from the Boston Globe tweeted he might have been first on this that DeVau Patrick was going to go home tonight and make some decisions tomorrow morning he needed to see where the winds of New Hampshire they said that he had needed the winds of New Hampshire

to carry us on and then went on to say sorry that he had been trapped by the narrative of jumping in late I just don't It doesn't make any sense Why he would have launched his candidate When in the manner that he did

And then drop out now You know the assumption At least You know with the sort of arch assumption Was that he was being backed by some You know Democratic establishment Seedy underbelly or whatever

I'm not sure where that crew has has decamped to who they're voting for now, but apparently there's no more, whatever drove him to get in no longer existent. I'm just sort of nonplussed by his entire candidacy. I'm not sure, I'm not sure why, like I said, why do you get in only to drop out now?

It just doesn't make any sense. He didn't do anything to justify his candidacy. And the only way it made sense was that he was just to kind of lurk in the background for some, you know, convention shenanigans or something. I don't even know. I don't even get to nonplussed. I didn't even make it that far.

By the way, David Wright of CNN says a super PAC spent $1.8 million on advertising in New Hampshire for Devald Patrick. At this moment, he has won a little over 1,100 votes. 1.7 million for 1,100 votes. David let's wrap up by talking about where we go from here we're 11 days from the Nevada caucuses which occur on the same night and in the same state as the Dante Wilder Tyson Fury heavyweight championship I'm not sure how many people are aware of that

oh no no once the lead start rolling in everyone will be aware there is a lot of kind of panam tonight of people going forward not just to Nevada but beyond that Elizabeth Warren is heading to Virginia for her next stop. Bernie Sanders is going to North Carolina. Colorado and California, which are both Super Tuesday states, are close to Nevada.

So there's talk of campaign sort of doubling up. I'm sort of with you that I understand with the media that we're supposed to hate uncertainty. We're supposed to want this to wrap up as quickly as possible. I'm also sort of of the mind that I kind of want, not just for journalistic reasons, but for actual reasons of letting this play out and seeing what these candidates have, of letting this thing go on for a while. And not letting not just Iowa make our decision, but neither Iowa nor New Hampshire, nor Nevada,

nor South Carolina, but a lot of states make our decision for us. And another way to ask that question is, does anybody but Bernie Sanders not want a long primary at this point. If you're Bernie, you just want to win a couple, win big on Super Tuesday, and shut this thing down, right? Right. Everybody else wants a long primary. Mm-hmm. And I kind of think we're probably going to get it now. Well, minus a giant Bernie showing, which is certainly in the realm of possibility. I think it has to be a really giant showing. You know, I was thinking about the word Lane has been used a whole lot in this primary season, and particularly of late, whether or not clearing lanes would help

certain candidates if there was only one moderate candidate and only one liberal candidate, if the outcome would look different. I think that there might be some truth to that on the, on the moderate side. You know, certainly Biden's path, I mean, Biden would have had a much better showing if it was only him and Bernie Sanders. You know, I mean, you could make that case probably about who to judge, about maybe, maybe Klobuchar too. I'm a little bit, I'm a little bit less certain about that on, on Bernie Sanders' side. Because I think that he's actually, the fact that he and Elizabeth Warren stood side by side

in the center of every debate stage making similar arguments, I think really did a lot to legitimize both of them, Bernie Sanders in particular, who had been tared as this sort of ultra-lefty outside, you know, outside of common sense sort of thinker, right? The fact that, you know, he might be ahead of where he is in the polls and national polls, you know, right now, if it weren't for Elizabeth Warren's existence. But if she weren't there on the stage next to him, he might, I mean, he would look like an outsider. He looked like a loon, you know? And I think that to a certain extent, as much as he would like to clear the field,

He probably benefits from her staying in the race for as long as possible until, you know, he actually has enough, he has enough delegates to, you know, call it a night. She's the bridge from moderate Democrat and moderate voter to Bernie Sanders. Well, I think that that's certainly true, but I think more significantly, it's just, it, it, it just makes his arguments have more weight when there's two people making them and two people dissenting or three people dissenting. and it's not just five people tisking the idiocy of universal health care while he's standing there just trying to argue against all of them. Yes. I think that it will be, I mean, listen, the field is already narrowed quite a bit. I hesitate to say anything definitive, but I do feel like the next, I mean, whichever one of these major candidates,

drops out next, I think, is really going to tit the scales one way or the other. But, you know, that's a pretty vague statement in and of itself. And we have, we have, that will definitely be true. I mean, listen, we, I mean, we have, we're staring down Nevada, who is using the same app that Iowa used, as far as we know. I don't think there's been any definitive statement that they're changing their system. So that has the potential to be crazy. and we don't have any, if I'm correct,

we don't have any polls from Nevada since like the beginning of the year. Yeah, it's a long time. Like, we don't know what's going to. I mean, like, it's impossible to predict what's going to happen. I'm certainly there's going to be a lot of momentum coming out of tonight, though. I mean, I think that that's the big takeaway that it's really, you know, every state makes their own decision. Every state like, like just like New Hampshire likes to, you know,

make the case that they're independent thinkers and everything else. But it's impossible for what happens from here forward not to be influenced by the significant successes of Pete Buttigieg and, you know, Bernie Sanders. We will leave it at that until Thursday. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis Research by Chris Almeda and Erica Servantes. Production Magic by Jim Cunningham. We're back then. I guess it's Friday.

We record Thursday for Friday. Sorry about that. We were going to do this in one. Now let's just leave it in. We're back Friday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.