The Press Box - CNN Democratic Debate Reactions, Night Two | Press Box

Episode Date: August 1, 2019

Everyone gangs up on Joe Biden, Kamala Harris goes on the offensive, and everyone else scrabbles to get out of last place. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly, and welcome to The Ringer Podcast Network. Up on our site, The Ringer is breaking down the 40 best singles and albums from 1999, covering Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys, Maria Carey, and tons more. And to accompany that piece, we filmed our staffers discussing what they agreed and disagreed with from the article and debated what should have won. You can read the piece on The Ringer.com and watch the video at YouTube.com slash The Ringer. media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer here with your instant reaction to round two, night two of the Democratic debates,

which David was almost as long as saving Private Ryan. Literally, Justin Miller pointed this out on Twitter, almost as long as an epic Spielberg war movie. I was going to say this is the best presidential debate since saving Private Ryan. We're going to talk about Cory Booker finally finding his footing in this presidential race. Kamala Harris trying to put together a second solid debate performance. But David, I think the story of the night was the continued pummeling of Joe Biden by every person on stage, including Jay Inslee. Yes. They hit him early on health care, on climate change, on his comments

about women working outside the home, on his history on criminal justice. Here is Corey Booker, taking it to Biden in one of the most vivid moments of the night. And seven, when I was trying to get rid of the crack cocaine. Mr. Vice President, there's a saying in my community, you're dipping into the Kool-Aid and you don't even know the flavor. You need to come to the city of North and see the reforms that we put in place. So you see there that Booker was talking about Biden's history of passing crime bills. Yeah.

Biden was sort of robotically trying to turn it around on Booker and then Booker got one of the best lines of the evening. What did you make of? the dog pile on Biden that sort of unfolded basically starting about 45 minutes into the debate. Yeah, I mean, the beginning of the debate, I was trying to keep track of all of the kind of matchups, all the various moments of combat. And I got like Biden Harris, Harris Bennett,

de Blasio Bennett, Biden de Blasio. I kind of got about, you know, 15 minutes into the debate and just sort of threw up my hands because I realized this is going to be, you know, a dog fight in every direction. But then it really did sort of settle in on, you know, ganging up on Joe Biden. And I think on the one hand, it was, it got a little bit old. And I don't mean that as an excuse, you know, like, I don't, I'm not saying that in defense of Joe Biden, it just seemed a little bit repetitive, especially from some of the lower level candidates trying to make a name for themselves.

But also, I mean, listen, this is, this is, this is, every election is about change. I mean, in this primary in particular, I think is really about reshaping the party. the Democratic Party. And I think that Joe Biden, for all his assets, and he has many of them, he is just a huge freaking target. And, you know,

they always say that it's hard to run for president as a senator or a congressman because you have a voting record that people can argue against. Joe Biden has like half a century of a voting record. And there's plenty of, there's every opportunity for everybody

to just line up and just knock down, you know, knock him down for some vote he made 30 years. years ago. Yeah, there's a little something for everyone. Yeah. And we eventually got around to even Iraq and his vote on the Iraq war later on. I mean, to me, there's two, there's two parts of this. One is the theater criticism of Joe Biden's performance. And I don't think that's silly. I know, I know we always talk about, you know, that's the bad thing we say after the debates. I think it, there are a lot of Democrats watching this who are like, who are thinking, can Joe Biden stand

up to attacks from Donald Trump? Can he stand on stage and parry Donald Trump? Can he stand on stage and parry Donald Trump's attacks. He did not do that very well at all in the first debate. He was better tonight, I think overall. He was, he was less shaky. But when he tried to attack Kamala Harris's record as California AG or Booker's record as mayor of Newark, New Jersey, there was this really shaky quality, this really kind of prepared but not particularly convincing quality to like talking points he had obviously been handed. Yeah. And that did not inspire much confidence in me that he can just stand up there and, you know, again, for over an hour, two hours, two hours plus, coherently roll out lines.

In a potential debate against Donald Trump. Handle the stagecraft of a debate. Yeah. It sure didn't seem like it to me. Yeah, I mean, we talked about this a little bit previously, and you and I talked off the air about it before the show. but I do think that there's he's he's handicapped by the fact that he's our memories of him performing so well in the vice presidential debates during his two terms of Obama's VP you had two very good ones two two is both races and and he's he was really impressive in those

positions and I think that whether or not you want to you think age should be a decided factor in this in your decision-making process it's a bad look for him to be seen as deteriorating, you know, age or side, you know, I mean, it's not, then that's, I think that's, it's more than a bad look. Yeah, I think that that's, deteriorating is on, on camera is not good. Yeah, I mean, it's funny because he started off the night in his opening statement, kind of letting the crowd know, letting the viewers know that there was going to be a little bit of, there's going to be a little, you know, of an adversarial tone to the debate. And, and to me, I believe that was sort of preemptive apology on his part, because he had those talking points in

hand. He knew that he was going to get a little bit more, he's going to get into it a little bit more with the other people on stage than maybe he did in the previous debate. I don't think what he was expecting was the degree to which that presaged everybody else's just like rough and tumble attacks on him in his own record. He had the line to Harris when they were shaking hands before the debate, go easy on me, kid, which seemed to foreshadow some knowledge, at least he was going to be attacked, probably by Harris again. I thought his best line of the night was in his opening statement when he sort of nodded at the Donald Trump go back to where he came from, racist stuff. And he said of this country, we are loving it. We are not leaving it. We are staying and we're

certainly not leaving it to you or words to that effect. I thought that was a, I thought that was a great line. Yeah. That's a stump speech worthy line. And that's something again that he really didn't get a chance to come back to because he was really on the defensive all night. Sure. He was really, really on the defensive. To the point, if we push past theater. criticism just for a second and talk about the record and Joe Biden's very long record. The interesting slice of that was it wasn't just stuff in the Senate, crime bills, the kind of things we've been talking about. It was his record as part of the Obama administration. Yes. And that's a big. Yeah, that's big. And people trying to drive a wedge between him and Obama,

or I guess bigger picture between Obama and where the Democratic Party is right now in 2019. Yeah. And that's fascinating. Nick Confessori, the New York Times just said, instead of running against Trump, the Democrats tonight are running against Obama. I don't know that it's totally surprising. You know, how many Republicans were running on the Bush record four years ago, though there wasn't a lot of, you know,

mainstream Republican descent with George W. Bush. But, you know, they were clearly, Biden is trying to hug Obama. He picked me, he said. How bad could I be if he picked me for Veep and said it was the best decision he ever made? And candidates like de Blasio were challenging Obama's record.

Well, I think de Blasio, we can talk about him. He obviously came in tonight with one goal in mind and that was to try to score some points at Biden's expense. But when you were just talking, I was thinking of Kirsten Gillibrand because she is one of the she's one of the candidate

to it says she can get stuff done. You know, she got elected in a red, in a red district, you know, whatever. She can bring, she can bring the people of different parties together. She's not a pragmatist in the sense of some of the people we saw talking, a quote-unquote pragmatist in the sense of some of the people who were on the stage last night,

certainly not a moderate by, I think, her own definition. But she is a, I can get stuff done sort of politician. What we saw when she went after Biden, specifically because of a, I believe, a child care credit from 1981. I mean, but sort of... That he had opposed. That he had opposed, yeah. For families above a certain income, this was an op-ed, he wrote.

Yeah, but yes. I guess the point I'm trying to make is it's interesting because she's a pragmatite. She says she's a pragmatist. She says she can get something done. What we've seen that people are going after in Joe Biden is the reality of pragmatic governance, or just governance in general. Above getting stuff done. If you spend eight years in the White House and get anything done, there will be plenty of fodder for the far left or far right on the other end of the spectrum of your party to criticize.

And that's not a blanket defense of Joe Biden, but it is an interesting angle for everyone to be going after the Obama presidency in that way. They did push him into a corner when they said, okay, let's talk about Obama's deportation record when Obama was trying and failing to get comprehensive immigration reformed done as president. And they said, well, what did you make a vote? it, Joe Biden. Yeah. And Biden said, well, I had my opinion, but I'll keep that private. Yeah. While endorsing Obama's broader goals on comprehensive immigration reform.

And I think it was Cory Booker who came back and said, now, wait a second. You can't claim the successes of the Obama administration. And then when we point out the failures, they say, well, I had advice to Obama, but I'm keeping it private. I mean, that is kind of weird. And, you know, that doesn't, and I understand he doesn't want, he, you know, Biden doesn't want to get into a thing where he has to oppose certain things about the administration and attach himself to others. But that is a really weird, untenable place to be. Yeah. I mean, I don't

know if Obama said that picking Joe Biden was the best thing he ever did on the record. I kind of think he did, but that sounds like a private conversation that Joe Biden was perfectly happy to air. You know, it was in his defeat. It helped him out. You know, maybe it's a small point, but the, the subject that springs to mind is the Trans-Pacific Partnership, where Joe Biden actually said he would not rejoin the TPP, that he would renegotiate it. And that was him, I think that was as close as he came in the debate to actually threading the needle between embracing the legacy of the Obama administration, but sort of striking out in his own, sort of, you know, trying to establish a path forward that didn't, that wasn't just a, you know, a blanket regression to everything that had

happened during the Obama years. I'm not sure that there would be any significant difference between the TPP and whatever Joe Biden would renegotiate. But the fact is he did, he did say he would not be a part of, you know, a party to just a straight up renewal. And that's, I guess there's some significance there that shows him at least attempting to evolve. One thing Nate Silver said tonight, clapping back at people who were, you know, talking about the difference between where the Democrats are now and where Obama was when he left to office nearly four years ago is that it's, he says it's a sign of why Biden, who's very

much embracing Obama's leading in the polls. you know, sort of suggesting that maybe the kind of Democrats that are going to turn out in primaries and caucuses really aren't that dissatisfied with the legacy of Obama. And that, you know, this is us again living in not only Twitter world, but sort of, you know, just sort of like hypothetical democratic primary world. Yeah. Where the Democrats have moved left and have pushed that way on various issues, whether it's Medicare for all decriminalizing border crossings, that kind of thing. whereas there are a lot of mainstream Democrats who are going to turn. I was like, if you just say we're going to rerun Obama with a few changes here and there, we're okay with that. Yeah.

And that's what Biden's betting on, by the way. Biden's, yeah, I think that's right. But he needs to find a way to be more, to be more vocal about that, to be more defiant about that stance in debates, right? I mean, he can't see, I mean, clearly there's nothing he can do when there's nine people going after. after him on the stage all the time. I mean, he can't, he can't just say, no, I choose not to engage. But he, he didn't seem like, it didn't, it didn't feel like a proud defense of the Obama legacy when he was up there tonight, kind of trying to bat down attacks. Yeah, though it's worked so far, right, with the polls.

No, I think, I think you're, I think what you're saying is correct. I'm not sure that. He's ahead. No, no, what you're saying when Nate Silver, the point Nate Silver was making, I think is absolutely right. I think that there is a different, that we're talking about different parts of the potential voter base. But I do, but I also think that like, if you're going to be proud of the Obama legacy, if that's your platform, you have to have a stronger way

of conveying that to a national audience. Should we talk about the night Cory Booker had? Yeah, I think he had a fantastic night. And it's a guy, right, who's been, who you and I have said a couple of times has lots and lots of assets as a candidate, but just didn't seem to have his, you know, to find his way into this race

really weak after week. week and especially during the first set of debates. Guess how he found his way into the race? Just like Kamala Harris did. He attacked Biden. Biden then came back again with some pretty clunky talking points about Booker's record as Newark Bear and Booker pushed back. And Booker was just a lot funnier. Yeah.

And do you think he finds his way? Is there a path for him now? Let's not say to win, but let's just say to get in, get back into the conversation, be a serious can in this race after tonight. think so I think I think you know I'm not a I'm not a pollster and I'm certainly not Nate Silver I'm not quite sure how much mutability there's going to be in the polls over the next couple of months I would assume that we're not locked in but you're but as we discussed for you know was it yesterday or last week that I mean that the the top four have been really consistent very consistent and and you know I think that I think that by

that that Booker is going to be the real test because Because he, of all of the second-tier candidates over the past two nights, he certainly had the best night. And I think whether or not there's room for someone like him to jump up in the polling, I mean, if anybody can do it, one would think it would be Cory Booker after tonight. He had kind of a strange start of the night where protesters, who we heard from the various points of the night, were shouting during his opening statement. He did the bit which I'm officially tired of, which is every time Democrats argue to come out and say, You know who's watching this and is totally happy we're arguing?

Donald Trump. Now, that may be true, but it is a democratic debate, right? Yeah. The Democrats are arguing about who has the better policies or who has the policies that will defeat Trump. Yeah. So that is kind of the point. Yeah. You can't have a non-argumentative debate.

And that's okay. No, no, I think that's fine. I think to the point that he was sort of targeting the moderators for setting up some, some slightly false confrontations between the various candidates. I think there was some validity there. But you're right. It's not a, you know,

it does seem a little bit worn out. Nathan Heller of the New Yorker said Booker has been visibly in a better mood since Biden accidentally called him the president. That's a pretty funny moment. Yeah. Let's also talk about Kamala Harris. She got back into this race last time around by attacking Biden on his policy on busing

and the lovey-dovey or semi-lovy-dovey noises he made about working with segregationists. You and I talked before that we wanted to see if she could come out and have a second solid debate to fortify her standing near the top of the polls or as a first-tier candidate. I sort of think she did tonight. She was weirdly in the middle of the crossfire in the first section of the debate, which is about health care. Biden, among other people, was talking about how she seemed to have a policy. She's been all over the place on health care. Yeah.

That was both trying to be Medicare for All and the old system at the same time. Sure. Biden said, you're promising a new system in 10 years. Don't believe anything anybody says about something that's going to happen in 10 years. He accused her of raising taxes on the middle class. I thought she weathered that part of it pretty well. And the rest of the debate, she was on the attack. She really, she, whatever memo she got about your book.

better when you're attacking Biden? She read it. Yeah. My favorite, I think my favorite part's when Gillibrand said something about Harris's plan, she goes, oh, that's interesting. By the way, back to attacking Joe Biden. Yeah. And she did the same thing with Tulsi Gabbard.

Yeah. You're incorrect about my plane. Now, if I could go back to Senator Biden, our vice president Biden's plan. What? Yeah, I think that, I think that, I mean, she certainly got that memo, and I think that memo was, you know, obviously, it was obviously passed around all the other candidates, too. But it's not just attacking Joe Biden.

I think that Harris managed to comport herself as a frontrunner, which she is, according to polling. But also, I mean, she felt like she was on the attack in general, all the way down to the closing statement where she embraced her time as Attorney General of the state of California, which, as we've discussed before, it seemed like she was a little bit reluctant to do in the past. She talks about a record in the Senate,

but wasn't always eager to be like, yeah, I'm a cop, you know? And she was, she embraced it wholeheartedly in her closing statement tonight. And, you know, obviously talked about, I mean, referred, I mean, specifically to prosecuting the next four years in the presidential, in the presidential race. That's her catchphrase. Yeah. Now, we do, we did see Biden and then more effectively Tulsi Gabbard start to ask questions about that record. And that feels to me like the September debate, which is if Harris is a top tier candidate. And if we're down to mostly only top-tier candidates in September,

it's going to start being about her record and not just Biden's record. Right. To me, that was actually one of the disappointing parts about the Biden performance, and I know this is working backwards a little bit, but he went after Kamala Harris. He went after Cory Booker. He came into the debate tonight, clearly prepared to try to at least ding them a little bit. And he failed utterly at it, right?

And both of them, no matter what, what you think about them, are wide open to criticism of their own. You know, I mean, if you're prepared to debate against either of those candidates, you should have a lot more ammunition or at least a lot more felicity with the facts than Joe Biden seemed to have tonight. And I think that's a real, that's a real, I mean, legitimate critique of, you know, his campaign. She had a really, her night was interesting just in the sense of the ebbs and flows, because she, again, was going straight at Biden and other candidates were even attacking her in the first section about health care. And then she kind of disappeared for a while.

Yeah. And just let everybody gang up on Biden before sort of reasserting herself in the kind of the second half of the debate. I thought that was interesting. And then she came back around at the end or towards the end and went after President Trump, which, you know, I think it was actually a weird, interestingly kind of a book end to Biden's intro. But she, you know, she had that whole thing about, you know, Trump has broken his promises to the American people. He made a lot of promises to the American people that he didn't keep. And I thought that was really effective. That was right before, I think, the last commercial break before the end, which is the only way I can really mark time in the debate.

But I think having the commercial break probably helped underscore the poignancy of her statement. But that I thought was like an incredibly effective moment for her. And one of the moments, you know, catchphrases aside that's going to stand out tonight for me. The one thing I don't get from her is the whole 3 a.m. presidency. I'm, I am, you know, the kind of things that keep you up at 3 a.m. in the morning. Those are the things I'm concerned about, which is just a rerun of the Hillary Clinton 3 a.m. phone call, which didn't work in 2008 against Obama. Why are we replaying failed bits that weren't even that great? I don't get that. No, it doesn't make any sense. Let's do a little bit of a rundown, David, like we did last night, because, as you know, a lot of these candidates are now leaving us. They are not going to be around for the September debate. Are we going to play happy trails lately in the background?

We're going to, Kai, can we, can we queue up Happy Trails? Happy Trails to you? Nice little country Western too. Yeah, can we get John Hickenlooper playing Happy Trails and a band? Bill de Blasio, David. Yeah, he had a big night. He had an active night. Attacked Biden and Harrison, his opening statement.

Talked about how he was trying to restructure society. Went after Biden, as we mentioned for Obama's deportation policies twice. my favorite part is when he said our party, the Democrats, can't be afraid to tax the hell out of the rich. And then there was really reluctant, tepid applause. Here's the thing. So maybe the people in the audience were afraid

to tax the hell out of the rich or at least afraid for de Blasio to do it. He said it twice. It means at the beginning and the end. I think Bill de Blasio, I think if you would play to him a tape, if you had told him exactly how tonight was going to go before the debate, he would have said that, like, I could not, I could not be any happier.

Just in terms of his performance. Now, I'm sure he would have hoped that the crowd would have actually responded at all to any of his big lines that just fell totally flat. I mean, he executed the plan that he wanted, that he set out to execute, you know? He kind of made a public nuisance of himself to the point that, that Joe Biden kind of awkwardly acknowledged the attention that he was getting from de Blasio. Do you want to play that clip? Sure. Let's do it.

And give working people power again, not just multinational corporations. Yes. Your response? Your response, sir? Yes. That's it? No, he said, would I insist that labor be engaged? The answer is yes.

I consider that victory. Well, I love your affection for me. You spent a lot of time with me. You know what? I will give de Blasio a good bit of credit for one thing, and that's when he had to blurt out, what about Iran at the end of the foreign policy discussion, such as it was. That seems like that might have been a slightly more interesting subject than the, you know, troop levels in Afghanistan, even though that's, you know, obviously a very important subject as well.

But he was the one person who was just like, can we please talk about this thing that's actually happening in the world and not these like oddball wedge issues. And the moderators were like, sorry, too busy. Yeah, we'll move on. Just to back up to that clip, did you understand any of the words that sounded, it sounded chippy? Yeah. And it sounded like they were exchanging busts. Yeah.

But did you actually understand a sentence that either one of them was saying there? No, it was like when you're super early in the morning and you like pass a coworker that you don't know that well in the kitchen. And they're like, how was your weekend? And you're just like, well, you know, the things are going with the way. Yeah. You know, as you kind of like fade. Like your brain fades off as you walk away. Yeah, that was what was happening.

You're like, great weekend, morning, today. I don't understand that at all. How about Michael Bennett, Senator from Colorado? Oh, my gosh. How about this tweet from Liam Donovan? Bennett has one of those voices that just doesn't match up with a visual. It's like John C. Riley doing a voiceover. I just said the first thing I thought of tonight was Huckleberry Hound,

and then he just kept turning into Huckleberry Hound in front of my eyes tonight. So every time he spoke. He had the word damn in his opening statement. Yeah. And it was like his advisor say, okay, you're really boring. Your affect is just incredibly boring. So why don't you cuss in the opening statement? That'll get everybody's a day.

Use kind of a lower tier curse word. Yeah. That'll wake everybody the hell up. I mean, the lines that were kind of powerful in his opening statement, delivery was like this. This is one of the actual lines. Mr. President, kids belong in classrooms, not cages. I mean, that's a big line.

Some incisive commentary. But it didn't land. Quick sidebar to say, there was a lot of, like, low-level cursing that would have really shocked our parents like 20 years ago in the debate tonight. There was tax the hell out of the rich. There was the dam. Cory Booker got a shit hole over the airwaves, which is okay. I mean, I understand why that was acceptable. But, yeah, this was a, the Democrats are kind of working blue these days.

How about Don Lemon of CNN, one of the moderators? asking Bennett, why are you the person to heal the racial divide in this country? Fantastic stuff. Was that set up for Bennett, who was seemingly the least likely person on stage to heal the racial divide in our country? Or did we just get to the point where he was the next one up? Yeah, it seemed like they had all of their index cards set up for only the top-tier candidates to be involved in the debate.

But then every so often, just like somebody's name would light up in front of them, they had to direct an existing question towards that person. Like they'd be talking about a very, an issue that's like very specific to Joe Biden. And then it would just be like, and what's your response, Congresswoman Gabbard? You know, and it's just like, wait, was she involved in this conversation at all? It was interesting because I thought Democrats, the field as a whole, had a better night tonight than they did last night. Last night, I felt it was sort of filled with gag candidates. And tonight, even the sort of outer tier candidates had moments, even Bennett, even de Blasio, also Jay Inslee.

Jamesley seemed a lot more serious, a lot more likable, a lot more I mean he had the Rick Perry glasses on he definitely had like toned down his presentation a little bit I don't know if he's I don't he's not particularly more of a serious candidate but he certainly I didn't leave tonight saying like how was this man ever elected governor no which I think I thought during the during the first round it was interesting like when they were talking about immigration he had this line where he said

we've just got to get the white nationalist out of the White House. We can argue about immigration policy. But let's also do this. Trump is a white nationalist. Here's the problem for immigration policy. The president is a racist. I thought that was really powerful. Alex Perrine on Twitter says Inslee, blesses Archewitt, ignore every question

on which he cannot distinguish himself and just talk climate. Quote, I am probably not going to heal America's racial divide. Arctic sea ice extent is at record lows. That's not a bad, not a bad strategy at all. No. How about Kirsten Gillibrand? Hoof. She had an interesting night in the sense that she seems to be doing what Beto O'Rourke was doing last night.

Yeah. Which is she's running the frontrunner campaign even though she's not a frontrunner. Mm-hmm. Which is sort of an interesting move. What did you make of her evening? I mean, she got a good amount of screen time or time to speak. Um, she thought, I mean, I don't even know what to say. I feel like she comporter herself pretty well, but she just didn't add up to that much to me. You know, I, I spoke before about

her, about her purported pragmatism. I don't know. I just, I continue to not know exactly what the argument for Kirsten Gillibrand does. I guess that's reflected in a lot of the polling. I mean, I don't know the back and forth, uh, with, with Biden and then with the moderators who, who, you know, I guess didn't follow up on that to, to her liking. That was memorable. There was the throwaway line about the first thing she'd do is Clorox, the Oval Office. And the second thing she would do is what addressed climate change? Yeah, after breaking out the Clorox. The whole bit about this Biden op-ed, which, if you read Justin Canoe, who was a Democratic House candidate in Tennessee, says,

Jell Brant's question is was, what did you mean when you said when a woman works outside the home, it results in deterioration of the family? Cano says this is not what Biden said. He opposed a child care tax break for families above a certain income. And beyond that, David, if you're looking at Twitter during the debate, Jillibrand broke out this attack in Iowa earlier. Yeah. So Biden was not waylaid in the way he was by the busing hit from Harris last time around. Right.

He was clearly prepared. Sure. And though she kept insisting on, no, what did you mean? What did you mean by this? he, I thought, had a pretty effective answer and sort of put that to bed pretty quickly. I do think that he

it took him a while to get to when she was like, you know, do you still believe that? And he said, I never did. It took him a while to get to that point. You know, I mean, and I think that, and again, I don't know how he's going to do it,

but he needs to have a more compelling way to say, I mean, I think it's even fine to say times have changed and I've changed too. I'm not sure that he's going to succeed by by insisting that he didn't write the op-ed that he wrote. I mean, I don't think that you can run for president with the, you know, editors decide. The editors pick the headlines argument for, you know, for authorship.

He, uh, Jill Brand, by the way, had the fourth most talking time tonight and about 11 minutes and 25 seconds. Uh-huh. I just don't remember much of it at all. I really, it just is fuzzy to me. Yeah. And I thought at the moment she was talking, she was speaking well, she was interesting. But again, I don't, I don't know how you run. that sort of campaign if you're not already at the top of the pole.

No, it's just not, yeah, exactly. It's not, it doesn't do much to say, you know, I'm doing this for, you know, to help people. I mean, it's just, it's a very kind of milk toast frontrunnery stuff. And there's, it's, I'm not sure. I mean, maybe she's just sort of in, you know, already sort of, she, maybe she's already sort of relinquished the fight on her and she just wants to go out, you know, looking like, go out with some positivity and, and looking. like a winner, you know.

Another guy I didn't get a great beat on was Julian Castro. Yeah. I wrote down good on Eric Garner, and that's all I have. Yeah, I don't know why I never noticed this, but he has the, he has Obama's affect down pat. I mean, just the way he tilted his head, the way that he paused on in the middle of the sentence on the that before he, before you make the turn into the idea. Yeah, I was really disappointed with him.

I mean, I thought that he, you know, the last debate we had said that he had one of the best nights of anybody, at least as far as this kind of second, third tier candidates. And it didn't really help him that much. He didn't really break out after that in polling or even a national profile. And tonight, you know, you would think he would have come out swinging a little bit more. You'd think he'd have a little bit more planned. And it felt like, I mean, part of it's the, you know, the way that, you know, the way that. debate was moderated, but it seemed like when he got a chance to speak,

he was almost too he was almost too practiced in a certain way. Like he knew the subjects that he was speaking on. He kind of got in the weeds a little bit too much and he seemed incredibly impressive. I mean,

again, this is splitting hairs, incredibly impressive not particularly presidential is not the right word. He didn't seem like like some agent of change. He didn't seem like aspirational. He didn't. He just seemed, he just seemed very good.

Yeah. He didn't have a ton of presence on stage either. No. Again, I'm resorting to theater criticism. How about Tulsi Gabbard? Another person in this whole thing. And by the way, just one more note on Castro.

I think he was completely handicapped by not having better O'Rourke to beat up. I mean, that, that was, remember, his way into this race was, I'm a better Texan than you. Yeah. Last time. Yeah. He didn't have that punching bag. Tulsi Gabbard, I wrote down, we don't have a health care system.

We have a sick care system. Yeah. Played the role of attacking Harris. I don't really have much else to say. Again, and again, I'm not sure where she goes from here. How about Andrew Yang? He had a better debate. He, according to the New York Times compilation, spoke the least tonight.

Eight hours. Excuse me, eight minutes. and it seemed like that for everyone. Eight minutes and 35 seconds, 53 seconds, excuse me, which is the lowest total of any of the Democratic candidates. I wrote down

Ezra Klein, thought he had a really good debate. It's like, he kind of has talking points like beam directly to Ezra Klein. Exactly, yeah. He has a very specific audience and he was addressing them,

he addressed them very well. But he also broadened his appeal a little bit tonight. He did. I think in the first debate, he was a little bit. bit a little bit cute, a little bit, a little bit, uh, a little bit, yeah, and a little bit too, directed towards his existing and growing fan base. I think tonight he sort of took the

opportunity to reintroduce himself and to focus on, you know, the one platform position that's going to really set him apart from everybody else. A really good riff, too, on his, counting his wife's work at home and raising the kids and raising their kids as actual work in the system, rather than something that's not counted as work. You know, she's working, she's working as hard as anybody. Yeah. Why does that not count? Yeah.

Why isn't that not, you know, in the way we tally things up? Also, when we was talking about climate change, uh, James Pony Wazick, TV critic at the New York Times tweeted, uh, Yang's, it's too late, follow me to hire ground is one hell of a campaign slogan. Yeah. He did have that whole bit about, look, we, we're way too late on climate change. The biggest thing we can do is get everybody to hire ground. Yeah.

Which added like the disaster movie answer to climate. And maybe that's where we are. That's one of the metaphor hits a little bit too close to home in that case. Yeah. I really do like that, though. By the way, a lot of plugging of websites tonight, my favorite of which was de Blasio's tax the hell.com, which seems you were actually taxing hell.

I was just waiting for someone to have their closing statement be, I have a lot of faith in the American people to make the right decision in this election. And also have a lot of faith in the American people that they can find Kamala, Harris.com without me saying it out loud. You know, I mean, like, how complicated is this? You Google somebody's name. One thing that you can't Google and find is whatever the hell Joe Biden said at the end of the night. Because I've tried, I just tried to Google that.

Just you type, dial, text Joe Biden 30303. Like, I don't know what that is, but it doesn't seem to be reflected on his website anywhere. Joe Biden does not use the internet. Resolved. Joe Biden does not, Joe Biden does not use a web browser. I mean, there's no way, dude. Maybe he texts. I'm sitting here in silence very deliberately.

I mean, this is of all... Remember McCain didn't use email? And that was going to be like the last presidential candidates who didn't use email. And we demonized him for it. Demonized might be the right word, but we certainly... Demonized. But that was certainly like a, I mean, like a persistent knock on him. A persistent knock on Donald Trump.

Yeah. Brett Baer says the internet seems confused with Joe Biden asking people to go to Joe 3033. We have cracked the case. as has the Joe Biden official Twitter account, which Joe Biden is clearly not using, which is you're supposed to text Joe to 3033O. Text Joe, everyone who wants to be on Joe Biden's bailing list forever and never be able to get off. But you're totally right. We are past the point in history where if I'm interested in a candidate,

I am not able to find the website that is named for the candidate. Our moms can do that. I do want to stipulate, by the way, that Joe Biden Twitter account signed. off for the night three minutes before they had to send the explanatory tweet about Joe texting Joe to 30330. They always talk about cleaning up stuff your candidate said in debates. Anything you'd clean up the text number? CNN, David, last night, you and I talked about how the debate felt like it had a really, really weird flow, almost more like a game show than a debate.

I thought it was much better tonight. I thought especially the first hour when they were covering basically the same thing. topics as yesterday, which was health care and immigration. It just felt more like a conversation. Tonight. Yeah. It felt more like a real debate. I mean, there was something about the flow, and certainly they were not as militant in

making the candidates adhere to the time, you know, the time limits for their statements, but especially for their responses. It did seem like if someone addressed you directly, you got a little bit more than 15 seconds to go after them. Also, there was the issue where, and I don't mean an issue in a negative way. Also, a lot of candidates, most notably Senator Harris and Booker were just talking over the moderators. I mean, just cannot, and not in a disrespectful way, just continuing to speak as one does, normally does in a debate. And yesterday we saw a lot of people, I don't know if the microphones were turned down tonight or something, but it did seem like yesterday people

were sort of snapping to attention a little bit more. Maybe, but I'm sure that was part of the notes going in and tonight. Just like, don't stop talking. What are they going to do? Is Jake Tapper going to say stop going to come after you? No. I mean, just keep going. They can ask you nicely to stop. And you'll get at least two more sentences in. Yeah. You'll get like one thought. They'll ask you to stop again. And then you'll get one more thought. And they'll say, no, no, really this time. Thank you, Senator Harris. Thank you, Senator Harris. Yes. And you'll finish your thought. Yeah, exactly. And, and, and Harris, you know, I agree. I'll say that she had a good night. we can all have our issues with her previous career and her politics in general,

but she has an incredibly compelling, no, this is important. Like that, no, this is, her, Kamala Harris says, no, this is important. It might be the most effective weapon on the stage tonight. Yeah, and everybody shut up and let her finish, even though that was not the rules, which were the most important thing. For sure. I also think this debate was better because there was no John Delaney. And especially there, or put slightly differently,

there was no John Delaney character that was called on as an easy prop to, you know, go after the frontrunners. Yeah. It just, you know, de Blasio played that role from the left a little bit. But it, but again, it felt much more natural. And it didn't feel like, you know,

we are creating this weird political argument show. Yeah. Out of a debate. I mean, I think in general we're more attuned or more accustomed to the sort of leftist, the lefty gadfly. in these Democratic primaries, right?

And so de Blasio's role was a little, you know, felt more comfortable in that sense. But also, you're right. I mean, Delaney last night was a stalking horse. I mean, he got way more time than anything about his campaign would lead you to believe he deserved. But just for the sake of playing this role, I do wonder about the amount of time that everybody got to speak tonight in particular because there were really big drop-offs, right? There was, like, Joe Biden was way out in front.

21 minutes, 21, 27. She was five solid minutes behind. Corey Booker, five solid minutes behind her, Jilla Brand, five minutes down from that. I mean, a lot of that had to do, certainly, with the amount of time that, you know, Joe Biden was on top because he was responding to people's attacks nonstop.

Kamala Harris, especially during the healthcare debate, as you mentioned, and also probably because of her, no this is importance, got a lot of her own time in, too. And I bet that had a lot to do with it, but do you feel like the time, that the screen time was, over-skewed towards the front-runners? I mean, is that a conversation even worth having?

Do you wish we had just more, you know, are you ready to be at the next debate where we can just dispense with the second half? I've been ready to be there since last month. Yeah. And I think this is interesting the way they're giving everybody a chance. But I'm not sure this is, you know, now that we're past two rounds of this, I don't see any more reason for it. And the fact, I thought the most compelling part of the debate was when Biden and Harris were going, we're going back and forth at the beginning. Yeah, I think that's right. And we didn't have to say, oh, let's Tulsi Gabbard get in here. Well, why? Right.

But that, I mean, but that's, I agree with you. But it's, you know, that means it's incumbent on Kamala Harris and, I guess, if not her, I mean, who else was that Cory Booker to go after Joe Biden? But then, you know, Harris and Booker seemed to have, if not the same truce that, that, you know, Warren and Sanders had last night. They had, they had, you know, this wasn't necessarily a working arrangement, but they certainly weren't like exchanging fire between one and one of them. another too much. I guess the point I'm trying to make is, if not for them, I think it was a helpful thing that de Blasio was out there throwing bombs from one in. You know, I think it was helpful that, you know, Tulsi Gabbard, who I'm not a huge

fan of, was there to call Kamala Harris out on her shit about smoking pot and putting pot smokers in jail. You know, I mean, I think that, I think it's helpful that these people are around at least up until now because they're not restricted by the perception. They're not, they don't have to worry about how whatever they're saying, what would whatever they say is going to look two months from now. They're not going to be here two months from now. They're not going to be on the stage.

I think that's a good point. But now we've done four plus hours of all these people. Yeah. And I think that's fine. Plus these CNN town halls that many of them got, you know, I don't think they can go and say, well, the American people haven't had a chance to see me. Totally true. I just think that, and I think that it's going to be totally, it'll be just when they get winnowed down.

It'll be interesting to see if we ever get to a point where we're saying, you know, Sanders and Bernie or, I mean, Sanders and Warren are, you know, like, will you please go after each other? This is just getting monotonous. You know, I mean, is there going to be a time where the public calls for the truce is to end before the truce is in themselves?

A couple of things I want to clean up here before we get out of here. By the way, it's going back to that point. Sure. I did miss Marianne Williamson tonight. We didn't need a Delaney. We could have used a Williamson. Our friend, Chris Almeda, sends this one from Delaney,

who was still reeling David from getting clobbered by Elizabeth Warren last night. A day later, he released his response in his George Cassanza jerk store moment. Fantastic. She had that whole bit about, why do you run for president if you don't have ambitious ideas? He slept on it, and then he finally came up with something. 24 hours later. Go. This is so good.

I'm not going to read it. Do we even need to read it? No, it's so long nobody's going to read it. That's the whole point. It's like, not only did it take you 24 hours. is to come up with it, but it's like, it's like, it's a whole verse. And it's written in the style of what Warren said.

It starts out, I don't understand why anyone goes through the trouble of running for president. If they either came, blah, blah, blah, blah. So it took him a day. Good job, John Delaney and goodbye forever. Matthew Paris on Twitter says when David said last night that John Hickenlooper needs to go on Bravo, technically he's already been on an episode of Top Chef. So he's already hit that mark and he has a photo. of John Hick and Louborough on Top Chefs.

They did the whole season in Colorado. You were more right than you know. Oh, that's great. Abby Huntsman of the Huntsman family and The View said on Twitter night, pretty sickening to listen to Bill de Blasio's opening statement about crime when two nights ago, someone I know was mugged and robbed in Midtown

right in front of a bunch of people, one of many sad examples recently, the city he represents. So Abby Huntsman knows someone who was mugged. Did you see the response to that? Yeah, it was just incredible. Somebody just responded basically with the plot of the warriors and she responded back and she was just like, yes, it's very sad.

Very sad these things are happening. We can do better. We can do better than have to deal with these mime gangs. Next round of debates, David, are on September 12th and 13th. A couple of things I think we've set up. One is, which everybody on Twitter was wishing for tonight and is very ready for is Bernie and Warren against Biden. This has been happening all in absentia.

They've been doing this not on the same stage. We saw John Delaney got all the moderate centrist attacks. He was up to him to deliver him. Now it's up to Biden. And it's up to them to attack Biden. So that will happen in the next set of debates. The other one was something you and I were talking about last night, which is the Bernie and Warren conundrum.

There's a good piece in Politico about how they've been so friendly with one another, almost declared a kind of detente, if not a truce. And yet both of them need the other's votes to go anywhere in this election. So what happens with that? You know, it's kind of hard to imagine Bernie attacking Warren or vice versa in any sort of substantial way. Yeah. But it does feel like there's a ceiling if you don't peel off. some of the other candidate support, does it not?

Yeah. Yeah. I think right now, though, I mean, the thought process has to be that there's strength in numbers. Pulling aside. Like, if they're each holding, if they're each in the double digits, then it sort of doesn't matter. And if they are, I have no idea if this is true, obviously, but if the idea is that they need to outlast or muscle out the Joe Biden campaign, then I don't know that one of the

the needs to drop out before that happens, at least not for a few months, and that idea is proven to be worthless. But I don't think as long, I mean, at least with this many candidates in right now, before they cut the numbers down, I don't think that anybody in the top five, top six, needs to worry about jockeying for position

against another candidate. You know, you're just worrying about raising your own profile. No, I think that's right. And does Bernie strike you as somebody's going to drop out of this race under any circumstance? Well, that's what's really interesting about the truce, right? because there's been, I think there was a political piece the other day about the sort of, you know, the kind of shocking lack of fire behind the Sanders campaign this year.

There's a lot of instances where Warren seems to be sort of usurping that throne. And it's not just, not just, I mean, I guess that would be, you know, on a platform-wise. There's a bunch of other candidates. I mean, even like Yang and Gabbard, who seem to be sort of co-opting some of his, online support, I guess, to put it that way. But I think it's interesting, it is an interesting conundrum because you look at Warren, you look at Sanders, and you would think that the answer would be, whichever one of us is ahead on so-and-so date, the other one's going to drop out and support them, right?

But you're right, Bernie Sanders doesn't seem like the kind of guy who's going to drop out of the race. Oh, or does Elizabeth Warren? Well, Elizabeth Warren, I mean, and frankly, the way things are trending, I would expect Elizabeth Warren would be the one in the lead, right? So is Bernie just going to say, all right, she's your candidate? Everybody get behind her. And is there any Bernie Sanders supporters, even if they're ideologically similar, aren't Bernie Sanders supporters going to have, going to have PTSD from when he did the same thing for Hillary Clinton four years ago?

I mean, it's going to be, I mean... I'm not sure his support is that transferable. Well, I mean, I think you're, I think you're, I think you may be right. I mean, I think that she's as close as it might get for a viable candidate, but I'm not, I'm not sure I'm not sure people work like that. Well, but then you're assuming that there's, that the Bernie. Or that it's one to one. I don't think it's one to one.

I think you're right about that. I don't think, but the Bernie base is sort of like the Democratic base. I mean, the Democratic voter that doesn't exist except online that we were talking about before. Certainly there's, I mean, I personally know a lot of Bernie fans who are fans of Bernie because of his platform. And I think that there is, there will be some transferability on that front. But I think there will be some anxiety if he has to drop out. All this is purely hypothetical. Before we get out of here, though, can we just give a big round of applause to NBC News

who commissioned some illustrations of all the different candidates, and one of which the Joe Biden one in particular became the greatest meme of all time? What was that? You're an art director. Would you have let that picture appear on Theringer.com? I want to give a shout out to it. Creepy smiling Joe Biden. As some people at the ringer know, as Juliet Littman,

ringer goddess knows I'm not as demanding on faces celebrity likenesses as some people are as Juliet is in particular

these a couple of these faces are beyond the pale for the most part they're really good but the Joe Biden one really does look like Pepe the frog

I'm not sure what the gag is I'm not sure that's one that you absolutely would have sent back and said you have to do this again oh no Pepe

but it's but yeah I mean it's listen it's the sort of grin that's made for me and I mean it stinks because some of these you know like Andrew Yangs is good you know Bill de Blasio would probably put that on his Twitter profile I'm looking at these really tiny thumbnails now so I could be wrong but anyway great work anytime you commission a bunch of headshots it's gonna end in it very well may end in in disarray that's our

director corner which is our signal that it's time to go our producer is Kai McMullen he is David Shoemaker I am Brian Curtis we're back next next to week at our usual times, Tuesday and Friday, with more lukewarm takes about the media here on the press box. See you then, David. See you later, Brian. If you're doing headshots of everybody, do you feel the need thing is necessary to accent,

to accentuate Cory Booker's, like, weird eye? Oh, yeah. Or do you just gloss over that? Also, which one, just which candidate do you want to make creepy? Like, you had to just pick one candidate to be creepy. That I could get a few of your discussion.