The Press Box - Democratic Debate Reaction | The Press Box

Episode Date: September 13, 2019

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker talk about Julián Castro vs. Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren on the defensive, Kamala Harris's new strategy, and more from the ABC/Univision debate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here with your instant reaction to the third round of the Democratic debates. We got stuff to say about every candidate that was on the stage tonight. But David, I think we should start with that first very lively, very frisky section of the debate, which was about health care, but was really about everything that this primary election is about. Absolutely. May I take you through a little play by play? Please do. So we start off with Biden being asked about his health care plan. He has this line where he says, Elizabeth Warren is for Bernie.

I'm for Barack. A move we've seen throughout this. I'm going to give Barack Obama the biggest bear hug. And then he comes back and goes to Joe Biden, this is Joe Biden, goes back to Sanders and Warren and says, how are you going to pay for your much more ambitious health care plan? hands. Warren comes back, kind of ducks the tax question. Sanders comes around and says, you know, he's one of his great lines, which is it costs more to do nothing. And then Biden gets back to accusing them of raising taxes on the middle class. Now, that is, that is kind of some

back and forth we've seen and then you could have predicted that. What was interesting to me was then Klobuchar sort of comes off the top rope and a tax. This is Amy Klobuchar, excuse me, senator from Minnesota, comes off the top rope and attacks Sanders and Warren. And then Pete Buttigieg does exactly the same thing, telling them you don't trust the American people to choose Medicare or private insurance. You're making them go on to Medicare. So it was just a fascinating dynamic to start off because it was not, let's all gang up on Biden.

It was Biden brought his moderate wingman and wing woman. and to me it created this dynamic where it was almost Warren and Sanders who were on the defensive. Yeah, I think that's an accurate reading, although I'm not sure that, I mean, it didn't seem like there's much of an imbalance between the two sides. I mean, Warren and Sanders both seem to be very game for the fight and very, you know, very capable with their responses and with the data. and, you know, I mean, you said Warren ducked the tax issue a little bit, but she addressed it. I mean, she might not have gotten into the details that a debate like that will eventually require. But she didn't shrink from the fight. No.

And she would just, she was pressed by Stephanopoulos, if I'm remembering correctly, to say, you are going to raise taxes on the middle class to do this. She would prefer to say it in a way that I'm going to lower all your medical costs so that in the aggregate you will be paying less. even if that involves raising taxes on various groups of people. But please continue. No, I mean, I think that that was one of those conversations, and there were several of them tonight, where I felt like we got just on the cusp of self-realization. You know, we're like robots coming to grips with our humanity here or something.

I mean, they were like, we were so close to turning a corner to the sort of debate that we all say that we wish we could have. The sort of debate where the argument that Elizabeth Warren is making that you're, saving money in the aggregate is actually a coherent thing to say. Yes. But we didn't quite get there. And you're right. And maybe that was on Warren to turn that corner.

I do feel like there was a degree to which, and I thought Sanders had an incredible performance night. I'm not just saying that because I was stunned that he kept his voice throughout the entire night from where he started. But he had a really strong showing. But I do feel like in the healthcare debate, Warren was a little bit, maybe I'm wrong. it felt like she was a little bit burdened by by having, I mean,

she was certainly aided by having a, you know, an agreeing voice on that stage, especially when it's powerful as is, but she was a little bit burdened. I felt like by having his, by being associated with him, by having the,

by having to kind of, I don't know, I felt like she would have been better as a singles performer than as a tag team. Maybe I'm wrong. I think that's right because I think she's trying to carve out this path where she might agree with burning on certain points of policy, but is clearly trying to say, right, I'm the capitalist and I'm a capitalist. I'm, I'm over there, but I'm not quite all the way over there. And when you start out with healthcare, you're essentially saying, you guys over

there on the far left and the rest of us sensible moderates over on the other side. And that does do her to service because I think you then, you just, yeah, you're right. You just, you just put her in that in a different category. Even if they're saying, even if they're pretty much in lockstep when it comes to health care, it doesn't, it's a matter of, it's a matter of tone where it just doesn't line up when she's trying to make the point that we were just discussing, well, you know, I mean, it may, it might cost a little bit more on paper if you're just looking at taxes, but like, I'm, you know, just trying to kind of thread the needle. And then it goes to Sanders and he just says, like,

hell yes, it'll cost more, but it'll cost less, you know, than what, than doing nothing. I mean, that's just a different tact. And, and to be saying the same. to be on the same side and having two such different tactics, it almost seems like they're contradicting one another even though they're not. Yeah, and I just thought it was when I say

that section worked better for Biden and his allies than them, I thought it was just because it was teed up that way. The first question was almost teed up to Biden, please attack the two people on either side of you, which immediately put them on the

defensive rather than you guys tell us what's inadequate about Joe Biden's health care plan. And really, and you see how much of this is just kind of coin, flippy, and up to the moderator. Because a kind of funny thing happened, which is that Warren was a little bit, you know, kind of had to answer defensively a couple of times in that, in that healthcare section.

And then she just kind of disappeared for the next like 15 or 20 minutes. I forgot. You saw a lot of tweets like Elizabeth Warren is in this debate, right? Yeah. But to me, got her just off on a very, very weird start. It did. Well, the one thing she did say very clearly, I think that one of the first things she said, she said, we all owe a huge debt to President Obama. Now the question

is how we can improve what we've done. And one of the questions coming into the debate, obviously, was to what degree they were, whether or not they were going to continue to, quote, unquote, attack Obama's legacy as they were, you know, was perceived that that's what happened in the last debate. You know, Warren obviously came in, prepared. I mean, that, that was a clearly a can statement and most of the things that these candidates are saying are. And she was, you know, she was prepared to acknowledge the, the general goodness of the Obama presidency. And then you're right, she did sort of disappear. But I did, but that, but, you know, in so much as this part of the conversation was the whole debate in a microcosm, or at least the good parts of the debate

in a microcosm, it's worth pointing out that, that the Obama revisionism was sort of on the back burner tonight. Yes. She was very careful. careful about that. And I think that's, it's going to be very hard to win the Democratic nomination by saying Obama did everything wrong. Right. You're going to have to say Obama did great stuff. Now let's keep going. It's just a difference of opinion on how we keep going. That's the winning line here. Not Obama sucked and let's undo it all. I just think that it's going to be hard to win the Democratic nomination taking the Biden approach, which is to say the Obama legacy was good. Now, let's find the most inoffensive way of. of, you know, framing that as the status quo and maintaining it. It just seemed, and we're talking about canned lines, there was a point when Bernie was talking about, you know, I don't even remember what he said, but it was some sort of, you know, healthcare for all ideal and, and, or no, he was talking about other countries that have, that have universal health, that provide universal health care and Biden snap back,

this is America, which it just seems like talking about microcosm, what was the idea coming into this, that he was going to like nitpick about raising middle class taxes and use lines like this is America. I mean, that was, some of that stuff was more from the, you know, we, we, we, we accused some of the peripheral candidates in the first debate of pulling out of the Republican playbook. I mean, I know that we're, that, that if Warren or Sanders gets the nomination, they're going to have to go up against Republicans, but man, that, some of that fell a little bit low from, from the Biden side. From an internationalist like Biden, one who later, brag that he had been to Afghanistan more times than anyone else on the stage. It was a little

weird. But I'll tell you what, I thought you're right. We've been talking on this podcast for for weeks and weeks now of Biden's, you know, Biden has all these built in advantages. He has Obama. He has a name recognition. He has all these kind of, you know, Democratic constituencies that know him and like him and think he's going to be Trump. And he's, the tricky part for him is, how do you say, like, I'm going to be an incrementalist and just do a little bit more. Well, a lot of your opponents are saying, no, no, no, let's do a lot more. I thought the way this debate unfolded tonight is a sort of vision of how Biden wins this nomination, which is you've got a whole bunch of candidates going reservoir dogs style at each other.

And it doesn't seem like, oh, these two candidates are the true keepers of the faith. And Joe Biden is this, you know, guy who doesn't have any vision. It seems like there's this big, giant controversy. about what should we do. And then you say, oh, well, Joe Biden seems like an okay guy. Let's go with him. Again, just based, we're going to, we're going to, Biden had a long night. And I do mean long.

But I think just that kind of thing where you have a whole bunch of people going at each other. And Biden is, as you say, hitting these kind of canned lines. I thought at least in that part of the debate, he was much more vigorous. He was much more sort of on point. He knew how to defend himself. He was ready, ready to be attacked. that was to me how he wins, which is sort of trying to, you know, throw up enough dust in the air to make it seem like he's not an incrementalist and turn it into a broader discussion in the Democratic Party about what's the right thing to do, not me versus Warren. That to me is deadly for him.

I don't disagree with that. I just thought the specifics of some of that argument that he was making tonight. If he wants to make a discussion, make a discussion about the direction of Democratic. party, I don't know why he's getting, he's constantly getting in the weeds about, you know, precise costs of different plans and stuff like that. I mean, I don't think that stuff is, I don't think it's, I don't think he should discard it. I don't think that stuff's insignificant. But it, for some reason, the more, the more detailed he gets, the less, I don't know, the more it seems like maybe he's protesting too much. Are you saying that he's just not capable of, of executing, how do we pay for it,

attack against these people? I think I'm making, I think I'm making an argument that's, that may be more, more meaningless than that, I don't admit, but it, but it seems a little bit,

at least certainly more meta. I think the more he gets into the weeds, the, the less he, the more he loses whatever vague sheen of like, presidentiality that he, that he apparently marched in with and is being given, you know,

as the, you know, de facto presumptive nominee, right? I think that the, I think that the, big conversations about the direction of the party suit someone coming from that position. But the more detail-oriented, the more nitpicky, the more the more quarrelsome he gets,

the more I feel like he sheds that sort of sheen. All of this is just, all of this, I want to make the, I got to say that, you know, your mileage may vary on whether or not Biden won this portion of the debate or or had a strong, you know, had a particularly strong showing in this portion of the debate. I think we have to say that this was up until the point that Julian Castro jumps in, that was definitely the best part of Joe Biden's night. Absolutely. Because when when Castro comes in with the steel chair, everything just sort of takes a turn for the vice president.

So Ryan Liza just wrote a piece in political magazine about how, and one of the things he mentioned when he was talking about how the Biden campaign sees this whole race and the sort of dynamic. is how no one had exactly brought up Biden's age. No one had come out and said, this guy isn't up to the job of running for president or being president. And then Julian Castro kind of did tonight. Let's listen to that clip. Your plan would not. They do not have to buy in.

They do not have to buy in. You just said that. You just said that two minutes ago. You just said two minutes ago that they would have to buy in. You said they would have to buy in. to buy in. Are you forgetting what you said to automatically be in for it? What you said just two minutes ago?

I mean, I can't believe that you said two minutes ago that they had to buy in. And now you're saying they're- So that was not subtle. You're forgetting that. You've forgotten what you said two minutes ago, sir. I mean, and they, whatever that crowd reaction, I think, kind of told the whole story.

It was a, it was a, broadside in no uncertain terms. And there was a point, and I, you know, I didn't even, I wasn't sure how deliberate the dig was on first listen, but not to jump ahead too far, but Castro came back around to it later in the debate, where he was just sort of, I think he said something after Biden had gone on for a while on some subject,

he said, well, that was a lot and just sort of like chuckled. You know, I mean, I think that, I think that that sort of smirky dismissiveness, I mean, that's going to be a moment we, that's going to be a moment that we remember in the Biden campaign assuming, I mean, if Biden does not get the nomination. It is. I mean, it, it reminded me a little bit of Chris Christie and Marco Rubio, though under very different terms, where Chris Christie's only job seemed to be to eject Marco Rubio from the debate. Yes. And, you know, Castro was coming in. You're like, this doesn't seem like it's going to go off well. This doesn't seem like it's going to end well for you. It might end poorly for Biden,

but it also seems like in some way it's going to end poorly for you. I think we should do the fact check of this first. I saw this pronounced that it was maybe in the Washington Post that this was, the Castro's attack was actually false. I think it's one of those cases where it can be traced to Biden sort of not really talking very clearly. Timothy Burke put up some side by sides, which are interesting, where Biden said when his plan, you can automatically buy in, as opposed to saying being automatically enrolled, which was what Castro was saying.

I think Biden meant to say automatically enrolled, but he said the words buy in. There's no way folks to automatically buy into something unless it's one of those recurring credit card charges like on Netflix that you forget you have. You know, it's not really work. But that, so that's the thing. So there's a little bit of a question of, it's almost more. of a semantic thing than anything. But I was, I was, I guess we shouldn't be shocked because Castro went, went against, you know, Beto in this way. But it was, it was wild to see that thrown out there in that kind of way.

And as you said, it's the repetition of it, isn't it? The way he keeps saying the words, you're forgetting this. You're forgetting this. I mean, listen, I don't want you to, hey, folks out there, I don't want you to miss that I'm calling this personal. old. Forgetting, forgetting, forgetting.

It was. I mean, the repetition was significant. And you said it was a semantic issue and that's, I believe that to be true.

But, but, I mean, everything in a debate, like the one we saw tonight, and everything in any debate, works on a number of levels. And everything is loaded.

Everything is packed with, you know, metaphorical implication. And it almost doesn't matter a single bit, whether or not, which one of them was, was semantically correct. in this argument.

Castro took a swing at Biden and hit squarely. There was even a moment where Sanders seemed to approach Biden during this back and forth and whisper something in his ear. I don't know if he was explaining to him that he did catch him in something or I don't know what was said.

But regardless, you know, Biden was caught his heels and it seems like the more he, the more loudly he protested, the more he sort of fell backwards into the stereotype that Castro, was trying to perpetuate. Yeah. I mean, I sort of think looking at it, looking at the tape for just a second there during a commercial, it seems like Biden in a way gets himself into this mess because he's not

talking clearly about his plan. You've got to talk clearly about your plan. Semantics are important, even if it's a debate tactic, whatever semantics are important. I just, it was just again, it was just sort of amazing to see someone put their hand on the third rail. And I think I've said on the pod and I agree. And I would say, again, I don't think that's, I don't think that's a bad question to ask. And I don't think it's a bad question to ask out loud. It's the presidency of the fucking United States. It's important. It's important to know. But to do it in, I don't know if that is doing it in any way other than just being sort of sarcastic. You know, like you literal, oh, like, hey, dude, you just forgot what you said two

minutes ago. Um, you know, again, it reminded me of Chris Christie essentially saying that Marco Rubio was a robot over and over again. Castro would come back and attack Biden again, the one you mentioned David, but also the one where he said, why do you only take credit for the good stuff the Obama administration did? Whenever there's something that is now getting a second look, why do you run away from that? So that was an interesting dynamic.

Let's go Canada by Canada real quick. Joe Biden had some juice at the beginning a little bit. When he nodded to JFK in his opening statement, And I thought, oh my gosh, that is, you know, speaking of dating yourself. But then he had this refrain. We refused to postpone this. We refused to postpone that, which I thought actually was, was pretty good. As the night grew longer, he started fish tailing a little bit.

He had a very long winding answer on Afghanistan and Iraq that ABC's David Muir finally sort of cut him off on it. Nobody really made him pay for that. I think that was just because the order of the question. Then his other answer for the night, which will, I think, live beyond this night is his answer on education. At least it started out that way. We somehow got on to record players halfway through it. And then in a big surprise, we wound up closing out on Nicholas Maduro, the Venezuelan dictator, who had come up earlier in the in the night. Yeah.

I mean, that was that was, that was. And that was sort, wouldn't that Biden essentially making Castro's point for him? Like, you know, where it's like, you watch that answer. Like, what are we, what are we talking about here? Yeah. What are we doing? I know I'm reading too much into it. But every time Biden gets cut off, and this has happened in every debate.

And when he's, when one of the moderators cuts him off and he just acquiesces, there just seems to be it, it almost like the subtext is that Biden, you know, knows that he's, he, it's not going to get any better if he keeps going. and there was some of that tonight. But then when he did go on, and this is the exchange that you were just referring to, he is rambling about education, about leaving record players on, about trying to pull facts out that don't seem to go together. I don't think I'm reading too much into the setup by saying,

this is one of the few times in debate where the camera kind of pulled back and showed some shots of the whole stage. And there seemed to be numerous people, Corey Booker in particular, who looked visibly uncomfortable as Biden was talking. and and then Biden when they cut him off Biden says

no I'm going to keep going and then starts talking about something else entirely and whether or not this was an earlier point that he didn't get a chance to address and whether it made sense in his head it looked you're right it made the it made the point for Castro for anybody else that was thinking this

and then that's when Castro jumped in and just said I mean when it went to him he was just like who well I mean and literally I was like typing that like why like if anyone's going to say I have no idea how to respond to that. This is the time. And, you know, Castro basically took the opportunity.

It really, like, this is, it was a, it was not a good moment for the Biden campaign. I think that in a lot of ways, the poll numbers are too, are locked in. You know, I mean, I don't know how much a debate like tonight is going to swing the primary poll numbers. but I mean that just felt like a real, real significant moment. I mean, it just, I don't know any other way to say it. It did, but do you think there's any chance that Castro was mean to Biden winds up papering over that a lot? Dude, I mean. That that was a bigger thing on liberal Twitter.

And again, it'll be that mean old Hulian Castro will become the, it will come the storyline and not that in cable news world. we'll see I mean I guess anything's possible I'm not sure that being mean if Joe Biden can't stand up to Julian Castro I'm not quite sure what that says about his campaign or what it would about his candidacy overall

yeah regardless it'll they just play weird you know what I mean it doesn't you know you and I can watch that and be like oh boy that was that was just a as just the word you use is perfect it was just so uncomfortable to watch that answer you just felt bad. And yeah and this just this is this isn't this isn't good in any way. But again, I just

I don't know. You know, I don't know that that's going to again, it's like are we are we, you know, overestimating everybody A, by thinking there is worried about that as liberal Twitter is or B that, you know, two plus hours into the debate, they're even still watching. And that focused in on an answer like that as opposed to again, the fireworks and the kind of showier stuff at the front front end of the debate. I don't know. If it does reflect poorly on Castro tomorrow, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll be a very, it'll be a very positive memory when it comes time to pick a

vice presidential nominee. People will be saying, remember how strong he was in the debates and he'll be able to go after, he'll be able to be able to go after Pence like nobody of. Elizabeth Warren, I think, had just about as much interest in her performances as Biden did. Yeah. She had a really interesting week where she seemed to have been gifted with all the right opponents. She had Jim Kramer ranting about bankers on CNBC.

She had Phil Graham, whoa, hadn't thought about that name in a while, writing about her in the Wall Street Journal. And she had Ed Rendell about as old a Democratic Party warhorse as you can imagine, writing about her in the Washington Post. And it was almost like, how lucky do you have to be to have those guys going up against you? I mean, that's just, you know, I think she took that Jim Kramer tweet and said, I approve this message, you know, on Twitter because it was so easy.

Again, I thought, I thought she was, again, I've said this part, I think she's the best debater at this field. I think she is the most skilled debater. She is the best at explaining what she believes in. She actually believes in it. She knows what she believes in. She's good at getting that out. I thought she just because purely because the order of the question, she got a little bit lost tonight at times. It didn't set her up as it did.

some of the other debates. To me, her best moment was about getting out of Afghanistan and talking about, you know, I've asked the generals, nobody has an idea what victory looks like, even if we don't have a peace deal with the Taliban, we're out. That I thought was a really good, long, interesting answer that she had. Anything about her night tonight, strike you? I thought she had a really good night. I thought she had a really good night. I thought that she, obviously, the last time we discussed this stuff, we were talking about how she is the only one of the frontrunners that kind of has a trajectory in her polling and in her campaign narrative overall. And I think because of that, she stood to lose the most of just about, I mean, of the three major candidates. And I thought, I mean, she held her own.

I mean, more than held her own. She looked supremely presidential out there. And I think that, you know, people were, a couple people I thought mentioned this online. But she's, she's, it's time that we start to not saying that she's the best debater of the bunch, that she's just like a damn fine debater, right? That we don't need to, that if, if, I mean, she can go toe to toe with Trump. And if, and if, you know, I mean, if there's anything that's going to torpedo or candidacy in that head to head, it probably won't. be what it probably won't be her cowering on the debate stage next to the sitting

president. I don't mean to slide her by saying she's merely the best Democratic debater because I think there's a lot of good debaters on that stage. I just think she's the best at she just has a better command than anybody else of all the stuff. She really does. And you know, maybe

the best thing that can happen to Elizabeth Warren is that, you know, Castro Biden will be the cable news catnip for the next three weeks. For the least the, actually that assumes way too much for the next three days while she just keeps right on the line that she's been on, which is when Iowa and then see what happens. Yeah.

She set up. She really is. And she, like you said, she didn't have a bad night tonight. Again, I did. And again, I didn't think, like I said, just in terms of the pitches that were thrown to her, I didn't think she had a fantastic, you know, a huge chance to do all that much tonight. But I thought she held her own very well.

Yeah. I think that what's interesting to me is that she's because of her platform, because of her political backstory, because of, I mean, for a lot of different reasons, she kind of has the vibe and the impression of an insurgent candidate. And tonight, she played the role of the frontrunner or one of the frontrunners. And she was even more impressive in that role than she was as an insurgent. And I think to me that that spoke, that spoke volumes. Bernie Sanders didn't have a voice.

He hung in there. I thought actually the answer to me that that stood out was kind of a surprising was when he explained what kind of socialist he was. And as always with these things, he named a whole bunch of popular programs that other countries have that the United States should have. And it's sort of like, oh, yeah, it is. I'll tell you the one thing about Bernie that now having watched a bunch of these debates

is I feel like we get the same burning performance every time. I don't want to be like a theater critic where he should have new material like a comic every time. But I feel like I feel Bernie in a way is not reacting so much to what other people are saying as just delivering Bernie lines when they go to him. And I don't know if that does him the best service in a forum like this. Right. Because it does it just doesn't feel like to me, I mean,

other than saying, I wrote the damn bill once a debate, he doesn't really feel like he's responding to anybody all that much, as opposed to going to very, very, you know, well-known and well-honed lines in his stump speech. What do you think? I mean, if you're painting him is basically like the Simon Cowell of the debate, who just, you're just going to him to see how hilarious the dig's going to be without actually reflecting upon the person who just performed,

I think that there is some truth to that. I mean, it's, it's, you know, it, I mean, Bernie's, Bernie is very persuasive. Or he's a very impressive public speaker. He's a very, very, he's a brilliant guy. But I think you're right. I think that I don't know that, I don't know how much he needs to modulate. I think that that, you know, four years ago, he proved that, that being Bernie Sanders can take you a long way. But it was in a one-on-one face off with Hillary, right, where his ideas were really different, you know. And now in that crowded 10 person stage, and now we're going to go to two debates again next time, apparently.

It's just, I don't know, it feels, it feels like I'm putting in a quarter and a Bernie Sanders line is coming out, rather than him sort of engaging with people and being like, know your idea is wrong. Let me, let me show you why or something like that. I just don't feel he does a ton of that during a debate. And I don't know, for whatever reason to me, and maybe it's just me,

but I feel it makes his performance a little distant and feel a little canned. I think that's true. I think that the one thing Bernie has, if you want to give him the benefit of the doubt on his performance, on his debate style, is that he's probably the only person up there who can make a statement and have it feel like he just closed. He just settled an issue. Yes. He's the only, he's the only person with that sort of confidence with that sort of delivery. And on a debate stage that even though it was only one debate tonight, it had some of the same feeling of the last. We, you know, the first section of the debate was really powerful, was really important, as you discussed, you know, at the top.

The rest of the night just sort of meandered. And in large part, it was because these were issues that by and large the candidates all agree on. Or it's, or I can say with 100% certainty, the president, the presidencies would not different, would not be very different at all between all the candidates who were up their own stage. What was actually deliverable in most of the, in almost all of those. subjects would not be significantly different, if at all. And to have that much sort of, I don't know, I mean, just to spend that much time splitting hairs over not insignificant issues, but things that don't necessarily need that amount of attention in the debate, I mean, that's what contributes to these debates

feeling unformed and insignificant in a certain way. Bernie Sanders does have a way to kind of cut through that. And like I said, make statements that seem final and definitive. Yeah, it's funny because sometimes they weren't even splitting hairs. They were just all kind of giving very similar statements and not even really reacting to each other. Yeah. Race, mass shootings, ending the filibuster was one. There was a section on foreign policy on bringing the troops home on Latin America, which kind of morphed into a segment on climate change and again on education at the end.

Kamala Harris, David, would you describe the mood she came in with? I'm not grasping for gendered adjectives here. So it just felt giggly and giddy at times like she was trying to laugh a lot. It was a very, it was interesting for her because on the one hand, and I encourage you to go read Aestead Wesley's piece in The Times for a few days ago, where they're kind of talking about what Kamala Harris's next move is going to be in this campaign. She really tore into Trump. Like in her opening statement, everybody was giving their kind of generic opening statement.

she said, no, no, no, mine's about Trump and then just went after him. She turned, everybody was talking about health care. She turned that answer into Trump. She went on guns. She said Trump didn't pull the trigger on the El Paso shooting, but he's been tweeting out the ammunition. Constantly went at him. Then mixed in with that was this seeming determined effort to kind of like be

funny and lively. She had that very strange Wizard of Oz line. Yeah. She said, have you ever seen the Wizard of Oz? you know, they pull back the curtain and it's that little guy, that's Trump. I was like, yeah, I didn't know that, I don't know if we need to set up the man behind the curtain, you know, with like a, you know, 30 seconds. We all kind of understand what that reference is at this point. What did you make of heard of it?

I mean, I couldn't agree with you more, although my reaction might have been a little bit more extreme. I mean, we came in tonight wondering, you know, obviously one of the prevailing questions was how much the candidates were going to go at each other as opposed or whether they were going to, you know, pivot to just going after. Trump, and it seems like she kind of took that challenge very literally at her opening statement. And throughout the night, she had a couple of other can lines. Again, don't mean that dismissively, that I thought were really effective. And, you know, to some candidates would be seen as, you know, as presidential material. I'll say that. There were a number of times a night where she said things that I would, and I was just saying,

why isn't Biden saying that thing instead of whatever it is that he's saying? She, you know, she seemed, she, her, the script, the things that she said that were, that, a lot of the things that she said were, you know, seemed above the fray, seemed visionary, not visionary, but idealist. I mean, there were moments where she seemed like, if she were a frontrunner, it would have been a smart move, but so much of, but she's not. And I think that what had the rest of the debate, the other 75% where she seemed like she, she, like, she, was trying to put to to be lighthearted uh like or like she wasn't when she wasn't on script she was very very off script um i thought that i mean again don't want to don't want to be too dramatic about this but i i mean i i felt like whatever momentum she had whatever whatever whatever mojo she had jacking for you know that number that kind of number four seed um was just out the window after tonight yeah i don't think she had to be that you had any momentum is the thing, right? She'd kind of fallen so far back. And, and the idea was to

establish momentum attacking Trump. Yeah. Seems sounds like the right idea. But again, it was just, it was a very strange night for her. And I think she's, I don't know how that's going to play. And I don't even know if anybody's going to remember that for the most part, by the way. I just don't know how much that's going to stand out. One more thing about Harris, before we move on, every debate, even more so than almost with, I mean, Joe Biden, would be the only person who's on the same level, her record gets called into question, and she's still not quite figured out how to parry it, right?

I mean, it's every, she, it's not, whatever the plan is, it's not working. She comes in with one, you know, prepared response that doesn't quite line up with the line of attack. And that, she's got, I mean, that part, more than anything else is disappointing, not from a tactical point of view, but from a philosophical point of view,

that if she can't make heads or tails of how her, positions have changed on various issues enough to explain that to the American public, then I mean, I don't know why we'd be giving her the benefit of the doubt. I sort of want to pair her with better O'Rourke because I think he also came in with the strategy tonight of just letting loose on Trump and that was the way he was going to jumpstart his campaign. He said the El Paso shooter was inspired to kill by our president. There's a pretty tough thing to say about Trump.

He said, we have a white supremacist in the White House. I saw Jamel Hill tweet, by the way, saying, interesting how casually everyone is now using the term white supremacist. Chabelle, I'm sure appreciating that on some level. One, a lot of of plaudits from people from Biden to Castro for his work in El Paso after the

shooting. This was, and this was, I think, the line of the night for him. This will be on Fox News, wall to wall until the end of time. This is better work talking about gun control. And in Odessa, I met the mother of a 15-year-old girl who was shot

by an AR-15. And that mother watched her bleed to death over the course of an hour because so many other people were shot by that AR-15 in Odessa and Midland. There weren't enough ambulances to get to them in time. Hell yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47. We're not going to allow it to be used. I think, you know, we've joked about Beto trying to go viral, that that is kind of his mode in a lot of this campaign.

That is, to me, Beto, at his best. when he is I am metaphorically rolling up my sleeves and I am just talking passionately off the cuff I'm sure some of it's practice and all that stuff but I'm at least sound like I'm talking off the cuff about the issues like that.

That's when he's at his best. And the more moments he finds to be that guy and maybe if he'd been that guy from the beginning instead of worrying about people getting mad that he was up on the counter or whatever it was or mad at the Vanity Fair thing, that that's that's the good bedo that's the effective bedo

it's weird that we haven't seen more of it or that he hasn't been that guy for the entire election i agree with that um and and i'm not and i don't i'm not going to say i disagree with his position on on gun control but i will say it's a pretty you know i mean it's i can't help but think i mean that will you're right that's going to be the line that people take away from tonight i mean the other line which we managed somehow not mentioned before was biden's saying nobody should be in jail for a nonviolent crime, which his campaign already came out and said he didn't really mean. He meant for nonviolent drug offense. But anyway, so if that, if that has

legs, Wall Street criminals, you're in luck. Yeah. If that has legs, you know, that'll be, that'll be one we remember. But you're right. I mean, the Beto thing is, is going to, is going to carry on. And I know later in the night, Castro said that when he was talking about immigration, He basically said, like, I don't have anything to, I don't have any, I don't have any, anything to lose. So I have my, so I can, I can tell you what I really think about this subject. I hope for the sake of the Democratic Party that we don't get dragged down in the situation where every candidate who has nothing left to lose stakes out a, you know, relatively radical point in position on some subject and derails the debate, you know, each in their own way. Yeah. I mean, in Beto's case, right, it ties directly to a shooting that just happened in his hometown.

So, you know, there's it, it just, it feels like that's something, you know, that if you had just been a party to all that awful carnage. You're right. That's what you believe. And he may have believed that before, you know, but just, it just felt that just felt like, you know, his, to me is Beto is at his best when he sees an injustice. It was when it was people were talking about kneeling football players before, whether it's this. There's been a couple more. There was one about Native American rights in Oklahoma recently. And I can just take the kind of rage, the kind of powerlessness you're feeling and put it into words.

That's when he's at his best. And he had one of those moments tonight that was interesting. Amy Klobuchar, David, for some reason, Amy Klobuchar or the people who write for her think that she should come out with like big laugh lines. So we got the first one. This was at Texas Southern University, the debate tonight. And it was Houston, we have a problem, which is the first one. At just about the same time, they were putting little facts about the candidates up on the Chiron. And it said intern for Walter Mondale, which is, you know, about like the most boring fact you could ever think of someone.

I'll tell you the moment for her tonight. She had a couple. Actually, one was in the opening when she said, if you feel like you're stuck in the middle of these political extremes on left and right, I'm your person. You can come to me. That was about as much of an appeal as she made for a specific slice of Democratic voters. But the other one was really at the end, you know, when they were talking about moments of resilience, these candidates.

She had a great answer about, you know, having a child and then going and trying to change the laws about hospitals, about how long moms can stay in the hospitals. And that was, it was funny because that was kind of every candidate's closing statement. Some of them were better than others. But it actually reminds you what's like. likable about these people, why they get elected in the first place, you're like, oh, that person is really, you know, that there is something inspiring about that person. And we make fun and, you know, they're a bad candidate. Oh, they're never going to win the presidency. They're not going to win anything.

But you hear that and you're like, oh, that's how that, that's why that person's in the Senate. Not only because they can talk about something in an inspiring way, because they did something that's pretty inspiring. Yeah. And they had that sort of, you know, just, just urge about them and sense about them. Anyway, I thought that was her best moment, too. Yeah, I think that was her best moment, too. And it sort of makes me, I mean, I think this goes for more candidates than just her. It applies to what I was saying

about Biden earlier and many others up there as well, where it would, it just kind of boggles my mind that some of these candidates are more interested in, in belaboring the impracticality of someone else's argument instead of

staking out their own vision. And she did spend, I mean, she did pivot some tonight because she spent less time sort of negging the more liberal wing of the party and more time saying, I think these are the things that we all agree on, which I think is sort of is the right move. It's a tactic that Kamala Harris, I thought, and one of her more impressive moments was able to use in the health care debate

by saying, like, listen, guys, I mean, Donald Trump wants to take all this health care away. That's what we should be talking about. But anyway, but to Klobuchar, that, opening statement I thought was, was, it's hard for me to wrap my head around why that was the idea. I mean, she didn't just say, if you're stuck in the middle, you've got a home with me. She said, if you're stuck in the middle of the two extremes and you're tired of the noise, you've got a home with me. And that is just like so implicitly dismissive of everybody else up there on stage, of anything that they might say. I know, I know I'm reading too much into it, but tired of the noise. I mean, I don't think

that anybody who's seriously thinking about voting for Elizabeth Warren would categorize any of her platform positions as noise, you know, or even her defense of them. And so I just think that that, I mean, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, and why, and why I think that despite you're right, a strong

answer at the end, uh, it's going to be hard for her to, you know, keep going. Andrew Yang has given away money. It's got a little bit of a game show kind of vibe into the debate today giving away a thousand dollar a month to ten families which i'm just looking at the early headlines here time magazine said that may be a violation of election law experts say which you texted me i texted that immediately i was just like this can't be legal right i mean it just seemed i guess if you're not demanding a vote in return but i listen i first the the first thing i

need to figure out is whether or not uh as a podcaster and employee of the ringer i'm allowed to receive $1,000 a month from the Yang campaign because it might affect my opinion. The press box get a freedom dividend. Yeah, let's do it. It might affect my opinion on the subject. Yeah, I mean, it's just, it's just like,

I know you got to do something to sort of break through, but, you know, if you're starting, if you're coming, if you're trying to break out of the perception that you're sort of a, maybe an unserious campaign, campaign, this wasn't the tactic to take, I don't think. I keep wanting to take that candidacy more seriously. And then this week, we're posting tons of basketball highlights to win Twitter because it's so funny.

And then we're giving away money at the debate. And then when it comes around to him early in the debate, I believe this was during the health care section, he says, you know why these debates are so unwatchable? Because you guys are all trying to score points and differentiate yourselves on policy, to which Castro or somebody said, yeah, that's what a debate is, dude. You know, the whole point is, is to, you know, can that become silly? And at some point, sure, but like, that's, that's what this is about. So, you know, you're welcome to, you're welcome to make your own points on that.

But I just thought that was such a strange, you know, place to go. You know, why are you guys arguing about policy? Well, you know, this is, this is why we're here. This is, this is the, this is the, this is a campaign. Once you start giving away money, I'm not sure that it can get much weirder than that. But, you know, congrats to all the people that win. I don't know. You may have already won, as I used to say in those old drawings, $1,000 a month from Andrew Gang.

I want to put Pete Buttigieg and Corey Booker together because I think they both tend to during a debate suffer from the same thing, is that they almost speak in such a kind of big poetic way that it's not quite honored because debates are more. about pithiness, right, and in containing yourself to quick sound bites. I thought they both said some really interesting things tonight. Mm-hmm. That were not, that just again, we're almost kind of freestanding speeches rather than actually, you know, pivoting off things that were said or kind of responding. It was a little bit about the Bernie Sanders vibe, but they're both very different than Sanders. In Buttigieg's case, first of all, he had this whole idea about the unity that the country experienced on September 12th. and he wanted to extend that after September 11th.

That is a Glenn Beck idea. Yeah. FYI. That was already taken and you don't want it on the on the 9-12 deal. Just move away from that idea. He had a great line where he said, you know, we can't pit an auto worker against a single black mother of three

because where I come from, an auto worker is a single black mother of three. But again, it was sort of like it all just, we talked about him as the kind of Sorkin candidate in this where it's all feels like it's being written written sort of like a TV

show rather than something that is kind of a little cruder and necessary to kind of stand out. I didn't think he had a bad night at all, but again, I think the big question for his candidate is, where does it go from here? And I think I'm asking the same thing after tonight.

Yeah, I think so. I mean, if you want to take if you want to take Booker and Buttigieg together, I will say that I thought, I barely noticed Pete Buttigieg throughout the night. And I thought Cory Booker had just a fantastic performance. But I will align myself with Nate Silver, who said at some point tonight, he said, let me read this.

Booker's been having a very, or Booker's been very solid throughout this debate, throughout all three of these debates, really. But I'm not sure what is comparative advantage is supposed to be as compared with the other candidates. And I think that's about right. I thought that I thought that I kept saying tonight, like, more so than the other debates, you can see why people have been talking about Cory Booker as a potential, as a potential presidential candidate for a long time. I thought he was that. He was that guy tonight more so than he's been in the other debates, more so than I've seen him on the campaign trail.

He was supremely impressive. but I think that the point is well made that unless he's unless he wakes up tomorrow with magically with 15% more points in the polls then I just don't know what the I just it's hard to imagine him any of that meaning anything you know I mean I just I just can't wrap my head around it and I thought Buttigieg I thought buddha judge had a couple of moments tonight but like I said I think that he was he was he was

mostly forgetable. And I think that, you know, he was, he was, he's spotlight, he put himself in the spotlight for some, as we discussed earlier, rather moderate positions, which I don't think, behooves his campaign. I think that, you know, there's certainly going to be some, some, you know, a wide variety of people who make up that constituency. But I, but I still think that, that someone would. with his youth, with his with his with his sort of technocrat pragmatism,

I still think that there's a big appeal towards, you know, the the young, relatively leftist part of the Democratic Party. And, and I thought that he, you know, was going to some areas that is going to kind of betray a lot of that appeal tonight. Can you imagine you're Cory Booker. And as you said, you've at least got all the raw tools of being a great presidential candidate and you get to this stage and someone says, Senator, do you think more people should be vegan like you are?

That was maybe, that was a terrible question, but that was, his response was one of the moments of the night. I mean, it just like, um, it was like no. Yeah,

he said no and then he said, I'm going to say it in Spanish and he said it no again. I mean, that was, it was, uh, you know, a silly question.

He deflected it with, with, signating with appropriate silliness. It was amazing because it was, wasn't it in the, it's like we don't talk enough about Latin America. And then somehow we got to, but should more people be a vegan like you?

Julian Castro, David, do you think is it all going to, it's all going to be about Biden, isn't it? He actually had some interesting lines tonight. We talked about the El Paso shooter, killed people who looked like me and my family,

said a lot of interesting things, but I can't imagine anything about that performance is going to survive. That's not he attacked Biden and attacked Biden because he said essentially Biden's dual. No, I think he was. Yeah. I think he, you know, we talked about him having a strong performance in the first debates. He faded a little bit in the second debate.

It's not in terms of his, you know, content so much as just the amount of screen time he was given. I think he came in tonight with a very deliberate game plan to make sure he got all of the time and attention that he felt he deserved. and he achieved that. I think that he came out tonight. I think people are definitely going to say he was mean. I mean, right before we started recording, I heard Rahm Emanuel say that those comments to Biden were disqualifying for Castro.

I think that without them, his candidacy was, you know, non-existent. And honestly, I think that he's going to end up being perceived is a more serious candidate going forward, whether or not that that amounts to anything meaningful. I think that's an open question. But I thought that he had a positive night, or not positive is probably the wrong word. I think that he had a plus night on the on average. But I just don't know.

I do think that people are going to be calling him mean-spirited. And I think that, you know, that was a calculated decision on his part. He pulled off what he wanted to pull off. The moderators tonight, if we can close with a few meta-media notes for George Stephanophilus, Jorge Ramos, David Muir and Lindsay Davis. I thought they did a pretty good job. I thought they, I thought the kind of just tone of this debate showed how just really awful that MSNBC debate was a couple of debates ago and how silly and giddy it was. Tonight they, they were not, you know, Ramos had a few moments where he was sort of talking about immigration. were interesting. I thought, but I thought the questions were mostly like, let's put this out there. Let's let the candidates talk.

They were very, they certainly tried to rein them in when they went over their time, but they were not interrupting them in the way that scene. Remember how, remember that CNN debate? Like right at the moment, you'd have a host on a loud mic going, thank you, thank you, thank you. Tonight they let the candidates talk a little bit. I think I prefer that. It seemed like the cool thing to do during the debate to just tweet how long this was. Yeah, it was really long. I, I think I'm in favor of boring debates. I think that I think that's okay. I just at some point I don't know what we're, I don't know what we're mad at, right? So we're going to be mad if the political discussion in this country is people yelling at each other on cable news or it's people having sort of a sleepy debate. I think you just sort of,

I mean, I'm sure there's a better way. I would have loved that, again, that second two hours to be a little more lively and brought out. the contrast a little bit more, but if the choice is sleepy debate, I think I'm okay with sleepy debate. Yeah, I mean, this was, this wasn't like the Oscars where we're like, we're really excited to see who wins best picture and it's being dragged down by these like terrible video packages

about the history of dance and film or something like that. I mean, there was, we knew what we were getting into, you know, I mean, the debate was what we thought it was, uh, to borrow a phrase. I, I agree. I mean, listen, it was, it was, it was long, but I thought to, I thought to, I thought that ABC and Univision Univision did a good job overall, like you said. I thought they moved the debate such as it was along with, um, with some felicity, but also let people,

I mean, people got to, got to debate organically a little bit, unlike some of the previous, certainly the first debate and, and to a large extent the last one, um, you know,

there was, in the opening segment, there was a part where, where Warren, and Sanders and Biden talked almost exclusively for about 15 minutes because they were just actively addressing each other. And by rules of the debate, you know, that they were allowed to keep responding. And I'm sure there are a lot of everybody else up on stage wish that they could get a word in, but it felt like we were actually getting somewhere, you know? And I'm not sure

that at the end of the day, we got anywhere of any, you know, we didn't, we didn't, you know, gets any new territory tonight. We're not, you know, no one's planning flags. But I do feel like it felt like we were getting close to some, like I said earlier, some moment of realization. We were getting close to some, to some, you know, actually like, just quantitative and qualitative distinctions between candidates. And I thought on the whole, you know, it was a good debate.

the ABC wins my eternal love for not having a separate introduction of the candidates and then opening statement. We just went right to the opening statements. Remember how terrible that was to see it in? Yeah. Where everyone had to walk on stage dramatically and then they had to start again. And also, if we just canceled the opening statement, I'd be just totally fine with that too, because who cares? I don't know, by the way, that I spent a lot of time with David Muir before tonight. I definitely kind of accidentally

watched World News tonight once or twice but his hair was kind of achieving liftoff in a way that I had not noticed before maybe in my previous time with him on the screen that was kind of amazing He was great note I wrote down Yeah he was he was really good

David Muir definitely has the I mean the appeal of David Muir is that he's sort of just like he's an actor playing an old fashioned Anchorman you know I mean he's got the He's got the look he's got the demeanor He certainly got the voice and tonight with the debate notes sort of curled up in his hand so then he could check them,

you know, check the statistics, check the exact wording of things. It made it even more old fashioned. You know, I mean, it was only, he was like a fedora and a press pass in the band away from just being something straight out of 1945. And I loved him. I thought it was great. We need to end all debates with good night. Good luck.

But how about we end this podcast the same way? He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Almead, a production magic by Jim Cunningham. We are back Tuesday. day at our usual time bright and early with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David.

See you later, man. It's the presidency of the fucking United States.