The Press Box - Democratic Debate Reaction and the Race to Iowa | The Press Box

Episode Date: January 15, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker break down the latest round of the Democratic debates, including the back-and-forth between the Sanders and Warren campaigns (00:22), Tom Steyer getting in on the memes (21:17), and Biden's, Klobuchar's, and Buttigieg's performances (27:23). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello media consumers. It's the press box. Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the ringer here with a quick reaction to Tuesday night's Democratic debate, a.k.a. the last time America has to pay attention to Wolf Blitzer until the Iowa caucuses. David, we have to start with what happened in the postgame portion of the evening. And this is where every respectable journalist says, I don't want to be a body language expert, but, and then they played the body language expert.

narrate along with me here. After the debate, Elizabeth Warren is shaking everybody's hand like NFL coaches do after a playoff game. She walks up to Bernie Sanders, with whom she's had a tense 24 to 48 hours. Bernie extends his hand. Warren doesn't shake it. She kind of clasps her hands in front of her body. She says something to Bernie.

We can see Bernie on TV saying, what? And then there's a lot of defensive hand motion like a cornerback and a wide receiver trying to get positioned downfield. And then they part. What was going through your mind when you saw that? I mean, I don't think there was any, we'll get into the sort of the provenance of the story and the, you know, what we believe to be true and all that kind of stuff.

I don't think there was any question about whether or not the disagreement between them was real, but, you know, to take this in the pro wrestling direction that I am always want to do, it did seem to sort of dispel any question about the sort of k-fabe of the disagreement, right? This was not a, this was not a disagreement for show, or at least if it was, you know, the show didn't end when the mics went dead. It's hard to imagine exactly what we said, although I guess you could postulate that Warren was expecting Bernie to take ownership of the statement in the process of. deflecting it. I can't imagine she would expect him to not

deflect, right? If, you know, at a minimum, I guess she would, she might expect him to say, yeah, I said that, you know, but it's a, it wasn't about her or anyone else. It was about whether the electorate, whether, you know, against Trump, Trump would, would, the electorate would respond to a woman. I don't have no idea what the, you know,

what he should have said. I think, I thought he handled it really well. And I thought in the context of the debate, she handled it really, she handled the subject really well, too. But it's just so bizarre to the entire thing, to, to, to, to imagine that after all of this, you know, strum and drang over the past several days, that the first time that they actually got to address the, address this on a human level was

there on camera after the debate? I mean, maybe, maybe there's more K-fabe to it than I was giving a credit for five minutes ago. I don't know. Yeah, no one could pick up the phone. I completely agree, and that did prove that it went beyond K-Fabe. And I think it kind of has to, because if you're Warren and you believe Bernie said that, and clearly she does, how can you not be hurt by that?

And how can you not be taken aback by that? So it doesn't feel like one of those things where, oh, you got mad about Medicare for all or got mad about, you know, my trade policy and we pretended to argue about it for a day and then we forgot it. It does feel like it gets into the personal. Let's get a little bit of the backstory here

in case people haven't been following this. The Warren and Sanders campaigns have been outwardly, almost, you know, demonstrably positive toward each other throughout this campaign. But it's less than 20 days to the Iowa caucuses. So no more Mr. and Mrs. Nice Senator. M. and J. Lee of CNN broke the story that in December 2018, Sanders and Warren met at Warren's apartment in Washington, D.C. By the way, that right there, before you know anything else, this is going right into

whatever the game change of 2020 is, you know, on a, Chris December evening in Washington. Bernie Sanders knocked on the door of an apartment in Calorama. I don't know. Is it Ryan Liz and Olivia Nuzzi that are doing it? Whoever, I just, when people saw that, that just went right into the book. That's like the start of a chapter early in the book. At this meeting, Lee writes, Warren laid out two main reasons she believed she would be a strong candidate for president.

She could make a robust argument about the economy and earn broad support from female voters. Sanders responded that he did not believe a. woman could win. When I saw this the first time, and this is not an original opinion, my immediate thought was, I think there's room where they both could be right and they both could be sort of expressing what they see as the truth of this encounter. On the one hand, every single Democrat has talked about this question. Elizabeth Warren herself has talked about that she wrote a medium piece in March,

March called, let's talk about the woman question after what happened to Hillary Clinton at the hands of the Trump campaign, the misogyny, all that stuff. They've talked about this question. So you can totally see Bernie Sanders having this kind of out loud question about what would happen if a woman gets nominated by the Democratic Party. On the other hand, if you are that woman, Elizabeth Warren, you can see how just somebody having that conversation, in this private meeting when you're about to run for president can feel like

you're not going to win. A woman can't win. I can win, but you can't win. And I can see being a little bit insulted by that. Sure. Absolutely true. I mean, I think the problem with that sort of formulation

is that it sort of takes, for granted all of everything terrible we can think about our selves as Americans in the Trump era, right? I mean, and maybe we should. But I think that once you start I mean, yes, you can imagine Bernie saying it out loud and you can imagine

anyone saying it out loud and it sort of being it, you know, food for thought, I guess. But like, once you start down that path, then can't you find reasons why a Trump-addled electorate would be incapable of voting Bernie Sanders in the office. Or every candidate has some aspect that you would think would be disqualified, or you could argue would be disqualified by Donald Trump's, you know, just kind of, I mean, like I said, the way that he sort of, like, affects the electorate,

the way that he skews anything that we thought we knew before in terms of how people go out and vote. But, yeah, I mean, to address what, you know, your question, yeah, I can see. I mean, obviously, one could imagine why that would be said, and one could certainly imagine why Elizabeth Warren would be offended by it. We have to kind of, I guess, at some point, get into the discussion of how the story came to light because the way it was presented, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that this was not a, this is not something that Elizabeth Warren just sort of came out

and said to a reporter. This was something that she had been saying in private conversations, or maybe, I mean, in pseudo-private conversations, in fundraising gatherings or, you know, those sorts of things. She had told people about it, yes. She had told people about it and that those stories sort of like trickled up into publication. Now, maybe her campaign planted this story and sort of found a way to get it in print without her having to go on the record. But one can certainly, I mean, I guess it's much more reasonable to understand or to envision her saying something like this in private conversations to say, hey, look, even Bernie didn't think a woman can get elected.

You know, I mean, like, and, you know, he said that directly to me and had that and had that separate. from her actual campaign platform, you know? I mean, that makes, I think it's easy for someone to wrap their mind around that. But then we get to the question, like I said, of whether or not they planted the story. When a story like this comes out, all the people who think they're smart about the media on Twitter go, opo dump. Right there. Oppo dump. It's a plant.

They're trying to get Bernie. And I'd say, you know, at least three quarters of the time, they're completely wrong. and they sort of think they understand the media and they really don't. I got to say in this case, there's a decent chance that it is that. I mean, the timing is such. Like right now, right before the last debate before Iowa, three weeks before the caucuses themselves, this is when we find that out. And I'm not saying it's an illegitimate story because, by the way, it's a certainly a legitimate story.

If Elizabeth Warren, if Bernie said that and or Elizabeth Warren believes he said that in a private meeting, that is absolutely a story. So I'm not, I'm not casting doubt on it, but the timing of it feels amazing. For the record, the New York Times was able to match it pretty quickly after CNN reported it. So, you know, I don't know. I mean, it, look, Elizabeth Warren, we know had been trying to kind of find her. path to victory in Iowa. Her polls had been down since her high point in the fall. She'd been running this kind of interesting unity campaign where I can take people that are kind of more on the Biden side of the Democratic Party and the Sanders side and I can be the one who brings

all those people together. The other people will leave out part of the party. I'll bring, I can, I'm kind of in the middle enough that I can bring everybody. Yeah. But then, and by the way, you will not convince any Bernie Sanders fan on Twitter that this wasn't a plan. Oh, yeah. I don't know if you've looked at the comments on any of these things, but they certainly feel, you know, this was put out there by the Warren campaign as a way to damage Bernie. Yeah, I mean, and perhaps not surprisingly, like the loudest reaction to the debate was actually not directed at Warren, was directed at CNN for the way that they handled the issue for, you know,

going to Bernie and saying, you know, did you say this? Then when he said no, going to Elizabeth Warren and saying, how did you feel when he said that, regardless of what he said? During the debate. During the debate, right. I understand why this is meaningful to Elizabeth Warren, the person. And again, if you, you know, in so much as it's sort of a part of her private stump speech, you know, her like personal motivation, it makes all the sense in the world.

it's it's tempting to think that she didn't it wasn't interesting you know she wasn't interested in making this part of the public debate because one i mean this is part of the public debate is just sort of disheartening it's just sort of the embodiment of everything that we're caught up with uh watching these democratic debates that were like squabbling over again in the big picture these are deeply important issues but the actual thing that's in contention here is not is not it does not reflect the the deep the deep significance of it, right? I mean, this is a fairly minor disagreement that we're focusing in on because we're not in the general election yet, and we're trying to find these small ways to paint big differences between candidates. But you know what? That's that's the ballgame, folks. That's how this is played. Let's let us remember any primary election ever.

And I saw Benjie Sarlin talking about this on Twitter. He works for NBC. And he's saying, by the way, people who think this is ugly, have we forgotten the Republicans four years ago? Yeah. No, for sure. When one candidate was accusing the other candidate's dad of killing JFK, the crazy, the crazy stuff that came out in that primary election. So I don't know that we're really there all the way. Yeah, I'm, yeah, I think that, I mean, go ahead.

And look, I just, I, no, no, it's fine. I just. You're right. When Bernie Sanders stands up there on stage and says, I am obviously, like, whatever happened there, it is very hard to believe that Bernie Sanders is like a misogynist. It's very hard to believe that Bernie Sanders doesn't support, isn't going to support anybody who becomes a Democratic nominee, isn't going to support Elizabeth Warren. I guess, I guess to me what this story is really interesting is because the whole time,

it has been obvious that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are fighting. for the same turf, right? Famously, and this is one of Sanders' defenses when the story came out. Bernie said he was not going to run in 2016 if Elizabeth Warren did. He was going to take a pass. He was going to say he was going to essentially give her that lane in the Democratic primary. She didn't run, and he wound up getting in. This time, they're both in. And clearly, no matter what they say in public, they are standing in each other's way to some extent of winning the nomination. right they don't perfectly cross over but they are standing in each other's way and i mean i mean i guess this is maybe interesting and maybe the opposite of interesting but i mean the thing that sort of

has captivated my you know my thinking throughout this whole thing is actually i think i think i think i first started thinking about it from a piece that i think it was an alks perine piece in the new republic where he was talking about uh trying to make sense of the bloomberg and devalpatrick campaigns and how there's sort of all this like backroom you know deal making going on with a Democratic establishment, but basically he was saying that like, um, trying to try like basically saying with like team Obama like there's no, there's no, there's no personal grievance between Obama and Elizabeth Warren,

but their teams detest each other deeply. And then weirdly Hillary Clinton and the, the team Clinton has a, is sort of, you know, has no particular feeling towards Elizabeth Warren. So would be, you know, I mean, there's, but I guess that what I'm getting at is to see Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders sort of address this directly after the debate on stage, I think kind of underscores the fact that so much of what, so much of the disagreement that we're seeing is being driven by campaigns. And you can understand why even if Elizabeth Warren and Bernie

Sanders are ideologically sympathico and personally sympathetico, that the people actually like driving these discussions and driving, and again, driving this wedge are the people surrounding them, the people working for them. And it makes a certain amount of sense that like, you know, if you're, you're fighting for your job, if you know, if you're as campaign staffer, and you're so much more, you're so much more kind of in the weeds with this whole debate that you would actually end up finding, finding grievance and finding enemies in places where, in theory, you should be finding alliances. Well, that's your job, right, to some extent, right?

If you're trying to, if you're trying to manage Bernie to the Democratic nomination, we saw Fas Shakir come out, who's his campaign manager yesterday, and say, this is a lie. I mean, just completely like all in. And by the way, that's when the press's ears perk up because when somebody says this is a lie, somebody is, somebody is lying. And then, of course, there was that Warren statement later in the day that said, nope, nope, it happened. I'm not, we're not, we're not standing down on this one. But that's your job.

And your job is kind of defined, to find those differences and blow them up. And probably as you point out, to do it on behalf of your boss. So at the end of this campaign, whether one of them is president or they're both back in the Senate, they can be friendly with one another. And, you know, it's kind of just, oh, that was part of the campaign and, you know, that happened. All of this, David, beautifully teed up Warren in the debate last night. Because no matter who you believe, Bernie is on stage essentially offering a defensive position.

Of course, of course, of course, of course, of course, where Warren now is just getting this underhand meatball right across the plate that she can. stroke out of the park. Let's listen to that. What did you think when Senator Sanders told you a woman could not win the election? I disagreed. Bernie is my friend, and I am not here to try to fight with Bernie. But look, this question about whether or not a woman can be president has been raised, and it's time for us to attack it head on.

And I think the best way to talk about who can win is by looking at people's winning record. So can a woman beat Donald Trump? Look at the men on this stage. Collectively, they have lost 10 elections. The only people on this stage who have won every single election that they've been in

are the women. Amy and me. That was a good line. Yeah, I mean, kudos for her for finding, I mean, just kind of threading that needle or finding, like you said, hitting it out of the ballpark. It's true. And I think that it's, you know, there weren't a ton of

of examples tonight of strong I mean of like direct attacks between the different candidates at least not new ones you know and not not particularly interesting ones and I thought it was interesting that she sort of aligned herself of the Klobuchar to make that make this bigger point which is that obviously that that you know women are the ones you know winning these contested elections whatever you think like you said of the of the actual content of this dispute who's right and who's wrong the thing Bernie's defense of it was indisputably correct right I mean, he supported female candidates. He wanted Warren to run, as you mentioned earlier, four years ago.

And so his defense on the merits is really strong. I mean, whether or not he said this thing out loud, I think substantively, it doesn't matter a whole lot if you look at his record. But you're right. Elizabeth Warren used the opportunity to sort of deflect a little bit from the dispute and to make, I think, a much more salient point for the path forward. This also, this was not the only thing that happened between the Warren and Sanders campaigns this week. Politico reported via Alex Thompson and Holly Otterbine that there was a Bernie Sanders campaign script that instructed his volunteers to tell voters, I'm quoting from their story, leaning Warren, that people who support Warren are highly educated, more affluent people who are going to show up

and vote Democratic no matter what, and that, quote, she's bringing no new bases into the Democratic Party. I'll just return to the point I said a second ago. I know someone always stands on the debate stage and says, why, you know, this is what Donald Trump wants us for us to be arguing up here. And people who are sympathetic to Democrats say, why, we're just getting tangled up in these small grievances and stuff like that. I totally understand that. That is totally true. This is how campaigns are run. This is what it is. And for almost every single politician on the planet, with the perhaps lone exception of Cory Booker, they would rather go to this place than lose. the election. You do not want to coast to a to a fourth place finish in Iowa and then say, well, you know, but hey, I was really nice to my fellow Democrats. Nobody wants to say that. You are,

you are going to proverbially leave it on the field. And you know what? When you don't do that, look what happened to Cory Booker. Like he didn't break through. Nothing happened. Nobody had knew what he stood for. So I, I just think when he left the race, if the, if this whole idea of campaigning via love was ever a thing. And I guess you throw Marianne Williamson into that into that pile too. That that's done. It, it never was in this election and it never will be. This is just going to be regular, old fashioned sharp elbowed campaigning. And this is going to be the beginning, I very safely predict, of three weeks of this. We're going to see a lot more. Yeah, I agree with that. The, the, the,

the Warren campaign, I think, you know, for all the talk about it's, about it, you know, it's fumbling, it's dropping the polls up until this past week. And for all the, for the very good job they've done overall at sort of fighting back in any number of different ways. I think they needed this, you know? I think they needed, and maybe if they did leak the story, maybe they needed the, maybe they needed the public rationale for going a little bit more on the offensive. but you're right. I mean, if that script and the Bernie Sanders campaign script is true, which I assume that it is, who cares?

I mean, it's like the content, I mean, this is exactly what campaigns are supposed to do. This is what we expect campaigns to do. And moreover, there's a lot of truth to it. You know, at least you can like understand the truth, how they derive that truth from, you know, how they derive that argument from actual truth. That's the argument he makes out loud all the time

just without Elizabeth Warren's name in it. But I'm going to bring more people into the general election than these other candidates will. That's what he always says, that I'm going to fire everybody up and activate more voters than your regular run-of-the-mill Democrat will. Now you just get to say it out loud. Can we talk about the very odd beneficiary of the Warren Sanders Agita? I speak, of course, of Tom Steyer. because during this freighted non-handshake last night, Steyer somehow appears between Warren and Sanders.

He's like, if my campaign ain't getting any traction, I'm just going to get in on the memes here. I'm just going to appear here and then people could just tweet about me. Suddenly, he becomes this weirdly important figure because he's the only person who heard what Warren and Sanders were saying to each other on the stage. Here's what he said to the New York Times. is Reid Epstein about being handshake zealig.

Mr. Sire, you really didn't hear the conversation between Senator Warren and Senator Sanders? He was just saying goodnight to the two of them. You guys could see what I didn't hear anything. Do you think a president should be more observant to hear a conversation happening right in front of them? Shouldn't the president be able to hear those types of things? Happening three feet away from their face? Great job by Reid Epstein there. I love the comedy questions after the debate.

The funny thing about Steyer is he was on the verge of not being on the stage at all. Then he got two last second Fox polls that put him there and showed some pretty surprising results. In Nevada, he was tied for third place with 12% in double digits. South Carolina, he was in second place with 15%. I think there's an explanation that I'm stealing from someone whom I can't remember at this precise second, but that those states don't have a ton of democracy. Democrats dumping commercials onto the airwaves. So Steyer and his money has been kind of unopposed there other than maybe Biden and South Carolina.

Yeah. But again, I don't, I don't want to take his candidacy too, too seriously. I think if you're Steyer and, by the way, Mike Bloomberg, you are really hoping for the split decision, right? You want Buttigieg to win Iowa. You want somebody else to win New Hampshire. you want Biden to win South Carolina and you want somebody else else to win Nevada and then you essentially want the campaign

to start on Super Tuesday where it's sort of wide open and Democrats are all kind of doing the emoji shrug at each other. Yeah. I mean to go back in reference that Alex Perrin piece that I said earlier I mean that his argument for basically

for Bloomberg and Deval Patrick was like you know I will I will never say brokered convention out loud as part of my as part of my personal ethos. Take the vow. And I will, and I, and I, and I, and I have made fun of people for saying it before. But, but honestly, the only way those campaigns make sense is a broker convention, right?

I mean, it's like there's not, I mean, Bloomberg has spent $200 million and has nothing of, of significance to show for it yet. Although, you're right. I mean, if the Tom Sire got on stage because of sort of media prevalence and, or omnipresence, then, you know, maybe there's some validity to the, you know, to spending all that money. I just keep going back to the question that, you know, we asked, somebody else asked for the first time, but asked so long ago, which is just like, man,

if you just took the $500 million or whatever that Sire and Bloomberg have spent and did anything else with it, wouldn't that have made so much more of an impact? You know, if you had just spent that money doing a showtime documentary about Bernie Sanders. Like, you know, I mean, I feel like that would have, like, that would have done more to get to have Trump lose the next election than anything their campaigns are going to functionally do. But who knows?

I mean, we're all just speaking in hypotheticals here. These are just like, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of hypotheticals right now. I don't know about Showtime documentary. You're right. I think that's probably the wrong spot for it. But you get the- Netflix documentary I would have accepted. That's like kind of putting on the Paramount Network, you know, where you're scrolling

through and you go, do I get this? Do I? Did I pay for Showtime? By the way, to the Pundit Wet Dream thing, the broker, the, a Democrat, no Democrat getting more than half a pledge delegates right now is one in seven chance 15% in the Nate Silver odds, which is the third most likely scenario. Biden winning number one, Sanders number two, no one number three. Yeah. Slightly ahead of Elizabeth Warren winning.

So, you know, again, I agree. Let's never say that out loud on this podcast. Let's never be one of those people. Yeah. But it could happen. I will say this. awfully exciting in Milwaukee. I will say this about the billionaires

and about their dumping all the money into it. I mean, Bloomberg's commercials have been fantastic. And if they were about literally anybody except Michael Bloomberg, I would probably be, you know, asking to, like, do segment one on this podcast about it. I mean, they're just really white meat, but, like, very effective commercials.

Tom Steyer, for all, you know, for all, I mean, I agree with him on, or at least his positions on a lot of the politics. I mean, you mentioned Zealik, is it, is he, earlier, I mean, I think some people have mentioned Forrest Gump, you know, to the same, to the same end, the way that he gave that closing statement last night talking about how he's like a, he was an athlete and the American people or his teammates. I mean, it was, that was just

bad Hollywood script stuff, you know, and it, and it, I don't think it just underscored how weird, deeply weird his campaign has been, despite everything, you know, it could have going for it. Yeah, I felt like this weekend I was watching Mike Bleachie. Bloomberg commercials that had segments of football games between them. Yes. Yeah. There's so many. Like, my kids can now identify. My kids are very young and they can identify a Mike Bloomberg commercial.

That's a thing they can do. That's like, just like there's a Star Wars trailer. Yeah, they don't know many things, but they know what a Mike Bloomberg commercial is. They know what Mike Bloomberg's desk looks like. They know what like the lamp on Mike Bloomberg's desk looks like. They know Mike Bloomberg's not taking any donation. I mean, they know everything at this point. I want to talk to you about the other three candidates who were in the debate last night, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar.

But I kind of grouped them together because none of them particularly stood out to me last night. Joe Biden, God, I hate to give into Trumpism, but it did feel like a low energy debate for Joe Biden. I saw David Ackerd. Right after the debate, David Axerod was on CNN and he said the same thing and just sort of like the and the, and the The phrase low energy caught itself in his throat. And it was just like a hilarious moment. But yeah. Trump has won.

Yeah. I mean, in a race where polls are showing and conventional wisdom tells you that the number one thing Democratic voters should and are looking for is someone who will take the fight to Donald Trump. It is deeply weird and confusing that Joe Biden. opts to end every single thing he says in every debate with, oh, well, I guess I'm out of time. Like, how, like, at least show, like, it's, it's, it's, it's not only the easiest way to show a little fire and a little bit of passion and a debate,

but it's what every, literally everybody else in every debate has ever done. You just, you talk over your time. You keep going until you've made your point. Every single point that Joe Biden makes is just like, oh, well, all right, next. You know, I mean, it's, it's so strange. And he did, he does look, I mean, low energy for sure. I kept thinking, because we have a much smaller debate, you know, there are many fewer people on stage tonight.

There have been in previous debates. And one of the questions, the sort of meta questions that we keep coming, that we keep thinking about, I don't know if we've even talked about it, it's like, who's, who is most diminished from this, from this enormous stage? You know, I mean, it's really easy to, to, or not easy, but it's, you know, people have, many people have dealt with a hypothetical for, about the Republic. primary four years ago, right? That if it had been Jeb versus Trump from the start one-on-one, then Trump would have been demolished. Or, you know, that's a theory that some people have.

And there's certainly a degree to which, I think Bernie Sanders, I don't know if he's being, if he's been diminished by this process, but he certainly seems less significant than he did four years ago when he was going toe to toe with Hillary Clinton, right? Yeah. Well, there were two candidates in the race, sure. And it's, and it's tempting to make the argument that Joe Biden is being diminished because of his great stature in, in modern political history, by standing on the stage with, well, maybe not the people who he was on the stage with yesterday,

but certainly some of the people that have been on stage before. But I can't shake the fact that the most powerful thing diminishing Biden in this debate is Biden's debate performance. Like he just seems, there's just nothing there

besides his name that would like drive me to vote for him. And yet. And yet. Can't we say that to some, in some weird way that the way he's decided to run this campaign, the style, the lane he has sort of lumbered down has been pretty successful. Again, just using that Nate Silver Machine, he has a 26% chance of winning in Iowa, which is not a state that was particularly seen as being advantageous to Joe Biden.

Yeah. I just feel like, I mean, mean, I completely agree. There was nothing about that performance. His closing statement was okay, but there was nothing about that performance where you were like, okay, Joe's back baby, he's got, he's found his group. Nothing at all for two hours. I think that you saw that. I think that was to me the overarching sort of theme of the debate last night, is that we

had the polls come out right before the debate that basically showed Biden, booted judge, Sanders, and Warren all sort of in a four-way tie, right? I mean, like, basically, whoever wins, it's almost the margin of error, you know, it won't be a big surprise. And I feel like almost everybody was just like, be it from those polls or internal polling or whatever, was comfortable where they stood. You know, for Amy Klobuchar, obviously there's going to be, there's a potential for significant variance based on her current poll numbers. And the more she, the more votes she gets the better. But, you know, I think she can paint a moral victory no matter what comes out of Iowa. And, you know, whatever Tom Steyer is doing.

But, you know, Biden didn't seem, I mean, Biden had the opportunity to, I think, shine more than he has in previous debates just by virtue of being, of the debate stage being reduced. And he didn't do it. It's, it's funny about him because I feel he's almost lulled everybody to sleep. Yeah. Literally and figuratively. Literally because it is not, you watch the debate, like, I'm not getting anything here. But figuratively, because the candidates aren't attacking him enough. You know, I know, I know we see.

like, you know, the Biden, here's something Biden said about Iraq or here's something Biden said about, you know, whatever, you know, drug offenses back 20 years ago. We see that on and off on Twitter, but like to me, Joe Biden is still the frontrunner. And like if you, if you try to find a hot take about this election from anybody, it's that Joe Biden's just going to win the nomination. Yeah. He's going to finish in the top two in Iowa. He's set up to win on Super Tuesday. And he's just going to win this thing. Yeah.

All of this is going to be for not. And a whole bunch of campaigns are going to go back and like, why weren't we just focusing all our fire on that guy as the, again, you know, whether it's a national poll or now even, you know, a couple of Iowa polls as the frontrunner. Why? Like, that's what you do, right? You take out the frontrunner and then that allows you to try to win. He's being really insulated, I think, by the debate format, too. I mean, you have CNN last night who was they were trying to pick fights, right? I mean, they were trying to highlight distinctions.

But the distinctions are not significant. I mean, outside of health care, which I guess is significant, although I'm not sure in practice how significant those distinctions are going to be. But, you know, what matters, as I mentioned before, is electability, is going head to head with Trump. And also, but it's not just this meta question. It's also the really practical question of the arguments that Trump's going to make on the campaign and how the Democratic platform, you know, addresses those same questions. It's not a compare and contrast. It's like, how can we go after that same block of voters that Trump surprisingly won? in the last election. And I think that, I think that Biden, by reputation, sort of has a leg up in that category. Also, I mean, Bernie Sanders as well. But, you know, Biden's, Biden particularly. And I think without, I don't know what the, I don't know what the move is to try to take him down

on that front. But that's the real way, that's, that's the way to go after him. And as long as the debates are just like, you know, doodling in the margins about, you know, about issues on which the the candidates largely agree. Biden, you're right. I mean, I don't know if he's lulled us to sleep, but he certainly insulated from a lot of the damage he could conceivably take.

I hate to sound like generic cable pundit, but this really is a wide open race. It really is, again, playing with that made silver machine. You know, Biden, I said,

whoa, it was a 26% chance to win Iowa. Bernie Sanders, 25% chance. Buttigieg, 21, Warren 17. And there's also,

by the way, there's this race to win Iowa. And I would, I would submit there's this race not to finish last in Iowa. Among those four. Among those four. If Elizabeth Warren finishes last, she's done. I think you can pretty safely say.

Pete Buttigieg probably needs to win Iowa. You know, even close second might be the only other scenario that gets him through the day. Bernie Sanders finishing last, I think would be pretty deadly to that campaign as well. Maybe Biden, you know, if it were a really close result, just again because his sort of support is a little bit, backload it. But there's a game here too where you just don't want to be last because then you're really done. Yeah.

And I can imagine all and I can imagine any of the four of them finishing last at this point. I agree. I don't think that any, any, you know, order is out of the question. I think it's all up in the air. You know, we've talked very little about

Mayor Pete on this podcast and I think that it's sort of amazing how institutional he's become, how I mean, how, how, like, I mean, he had a totally competent, totally compelling debate, and we're all just sort of like, okay, that was, he did it again. I mean, he's, he is, for all that we've talked about him, it should be surprising that he's up there in the polls to the degree that he is, you know, and, and, and he just sort of, but he's in a position of being able to, you know, hold serve. I feel like we say, use that phrase too much, but, you know,

he did fine. Amy Klobuchar, I thought, did really well. Um, the, um, the, So, you know, as the debate stage gets smaller and smaller and people keep dropping out, you know, her rationale for staying in, I guess, you know, get smaller and smaller. It'd be wild if, like, Elizabeth Warren or anybody else dropped out before her. But you're right. I mean, those top candidates, this is real stuff. And even though Biden, like you said, his support is elsewhere, and he's not going to drop out, his success, I mean, his good polling number so far in Iowa. I think have put him in a position where he does have to do really well there. I mean, that's the sort of the stakes for all of them.

They've all looked really good in Iowa at some point. Yeah, the expectations have been raised. Before it was like, oh, Biden's not going to win Iowa anyway. And now the expectations, oh, maybe he will win Iowa. So then if he does it, then he somehow failed more than he would have failed like three weeks ago. I think I completely agree with that. I think they all have high expectations. You know, I think Bernie's come back.

I think, if anything, it's Warren's chances. just because, you know, she's been in a little bit of a slump over the last couple months. She's the one now who has the, oh, wow, what a surprise that Elizabeth Warren finished blank. You know, she's got the Bill Clinton and New Hampshire kind of lane here that any kind of decent showing winds up being pretty good for her. I'm really excited about the next three weeks. I'm really excited. I'm also excited to be done with debates because I feel, I feel we've mined this format. We're all good with talking about Medicare for all and how to pay.

I think we've adjudicated that issue in front of the American public. Now it's time for more to reveal more secret meetings where candidates said something offensive about the other candidate. I cannot wait for the days in the not too distant future where instead of discussing debates, we're having long discussions about why Trump is unwilling to have a debate. It's going to be fantastic. John Delaney knocked on the door of Deval Patrick's apartment as they. set out the claim there. Oh my God. Respective lanes in 2020.

No. He is David Schubaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Almata. Production Magic by Steve Allman. We're back Friday with normal press box. More lukewarm takes about the media. Talk to you then, David.

Talk to you later, Brian.