The Press Box - Night One Debate Reactions | The Press Box

Episode Date: June 27, 2019

Warren holds serve, Castro vs. Beto, and other observations from the first night of the Democratic presidential primary debates. Plus a farewell to Bob Ley. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David, the Democrats just completed their first debate of the 2020 primary. And tomorrow night we have another one. What I want to know is, do you have a better idea of how we could stage a debate with 20 different candidates? This might surprise you, but the answer is yes. Okay. You have a plan for that, as Elizabeth Warren might say. The WWE has a thing called the Royal Rumble. Here's what I would say.

We start the debate with two candidates, two randomly determined candidates that debate for five minutes. Every five minutes, a new candidate is added to the pool. Wow. If somebody's polling, live polling numbers, drop below whatever arbitrary mark you want to say. Below 5%, they get kicked out of the debate. Okay. And then we just keep going until there's only one person left. So we look up, John Delaney's walking down the aisle or Tim Ryan's walking down the aisle.

Every five minutes, it's just like, oh, my God. God, that's John Delaney's music. We could have some legends of Democratic debates past come back. It's just like, everybody's just like, oh, crap, is that going to be Jayans? Oh, my God, that's Al Gore! That's all that. Like, that's exciting. My God, that's John Edwards

music. Oh, that would be a really awkward one. That's the lookup Xbox heat, guys. That could be a funny one. We are the Jesse Ventura of Media Podcast. This is the Press Box, a part of the Ringer Podcast Network. Hello Media Consumers. Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the ringer here with a reaction to the first Democratic presidential

debate. David, can we start with the meta media question? Please. Before we get into the individual candidates. The simplest one. Did this work as a format to have 10 Democrats on stage and five moderators peppering them with questions? My first note of the night was, my first takeaway was, well, that was awkward. This is written on this piece of paper right in front of me. I said going in that the most

that the, you know, the last debate was, I mean, the last Democratic primary season was defined at least in its post-mortem period by kind of interesting squabbling, behind the scenes, backbiting and deal-making, that sort of thing. The most interesting,

and this year they decided just let everybody in. But the most interesting backroom negotiating seemed to happen on the MSNBC production table where they just had to somehow negotiate half the staff into the Q&A, I mean, into the questioner's seat. It was just so bizarre. And of course, everyone's going to talk about the microphones going out. We'll get to that later.

But, I mean, could there be any better just distillation of the night than just the technical malfunctioning? I think the biggest question we had going in, a lot of people did, was can you do a debate with 10 people that actually makes any progress on, in any form and especially just the simplest progress, which is distinguishing between them on issue position. Yes. Like, how is Tulsi Gabbard different than Elizabeth Warren? Mm-hmm. That is the simplest thing.

I saw James Ponziwazek, TV critic over at the New York Times. He said, here's a thought. There should have only been an undercard debate. Everyone under four or five percent in the polls goes into the scrum. Yeah. Everyone above gets a buy. And if any of the unders managed to get above 5 percent by the fall, they advanced around two.

I actually don't think that would have been bad just to have a big debate with all the kind of marginal candidates, get them some airtime, figure it out, and then move on from there. Because what I heard a lot of tonight was, here's a kind of person who's kind of offered an interesting or incomplete position. Oh, you know, we'd like to get response to that, but we got to get over to John Delaney to talk about climate change. Yeah. They only, it seemed like the only, I mean, the moderators only just established half of the, I mean, they only really figured out half of the formula, right? We're only going to give everybody 30 seconds to answer, but our questions are 45 seconds long, right? And so there's like no way to, there's no way to add to, to give any functional answer to anything they're asking. The best part is when Check Todd had that really long question about guns.

And then the mics went out and he had to ask it again. I made a laugh about guns. Yeah, but then, and then they went to commercial to fix the mic problem and he had to ask it a third time. Yeah. My God. And it was just, that was horrendous. The, you know, I just feel that this. was, this will be looked at as a very, very bizarre night of American television. We hear all the

time that politics TV is a lot like sports television. Sports television would never be that chaotic and strange. No. Even when there are two people yelling at each other on sports television, it's just two. It's not 10 within three other people asking them questions. Eric Riedholm would not have allowed that on television tonight. So again, again, I don't, this is not just theater criticism just to make this clear. I don't think that was a good way to distinguish between the candidates at all. No, and the roles are functionally reversed when you have, I mean, it would be like with Chuck Todd at the mic, it was, it was functionally like you had Stephen A or Skip

asking the questions instead of doing the hot take answers, right? I mean, there's like, I've not, I haven't seen more bad faith coming from like the director's chair in recent memory. I mean, all of his questions were just so bizarre and leading, like, misleading. It was mind-bott. There's also a very wide variance in the questions. You know, Elizabeth Warren, who was, and we'll talk about her in a second a little bit more, which is kind of the frontrunner of this group coming in tonight. For sure. And treat it as such, at least in the first half of the debate. She kind of felt she kind of disappeared in the second half of the debate. But at least for she often got to answer the first question in a category. So it would be like, Senator Warren, a lot of people say the economy is working. Is it? And then she would give a very powerful, very broad answer about Democratic value. Well, if you went second or third, then you got a really specific question, sometimes about your own record. Yeah. So that wasn't at all the same question.

No, not at all. I mean, I like to think that Elizabeth Warren was, you know, just like during the great microphone kerfuffle. I like to think she just like went to the green room and cracked a beer and decided to set it out because she's like, she could leave on a high note at that point. She had done pretty well up to that point. But then as many people online pointed out, I just have a tweet from Dave Weigel in front of me. she ended up getting less speaking time overall than Booker and Beto. Which is interesting. And just slightly more than Castro, even though it seemed like the first half, she totally dominated.

They clearly made some sort of decision to focus on other people in the second half. And again, as Wago points out here, they totally skipped her on substantive, as he says, substantive foreign policy questions, which is interesting because she's been openly for withdrawal from Afghanistan for seven years. That's interesting. Yeah, let's talk about her for a second because she came into this debate as the star of this group as, and it was often seen as it's Elizabeth Warren and a whole bunch of other people. And to be fair, I mean, she's had a top, a top level campaign and she's been given a lot of respect along the way. But her, her status as a undisputed frontrunner is fairly, that is fairly new. A top, a true top tier candidate. Yeah. Or a top three candidate maybe.

She's basically, she solidified her position. I mean, I don't know how long the numbers have been in her favor, but the media has not formally acknowledged her as a frontrunner until fairly recently. Here's what complicates her in a setting like this. One is it, she is the frontrunner among these people. For sure. She's not an insurgent running against Biden, running against a centrist, running against the guy who's been around and signed all those problematic laws a long time ago. So that's one thing. The second thing is, I think Warren gets a lot of her power, as Bernie once did.

because she is the fighting Democrat. No compromise. I am going to fight for your values. I'm not like those other squishy Democrats in the middle. Well, when you see her out here tonight with 10 other people, I would say like for most of the debate, nine other people sounded a lot like Elizabeth Warren. Now, maybe they didn't have the same kind of detailed policy plans.

Maybe they weren't quite as well spoken. But she was standing in a group of fighting Democrats tonight. And I think in a way that made her seem like, as opposed to this is a standout top-tier candidate who is, you know, holding Biden to account or calling somebody on their issue positions. It's more just like she's one of a bunch of energetic candidates. Did that come off to you tonight? Yeah, I mean, they covered a lot of ground. Obviously, not with a lot of depth.

But the one thing that was really missing, I felt from the debate tonight was President Trump. And I'm sure that was a deliberate decision on. A bunch of people, none of that on Twitter. What was the? I didn't actually see that. I mean, I'm sure people did comment on that. But there, I mean, it must have been an organized decision either on the part of the campaigns or the network or both. I mean, certainly it had to be, to some degree, both.

But why would it be for either one? With the exception of, was it Inslee that said he was the greatest existential threat to America? I think that, I mean, and that, we can talk more about that down later in the show. But I think that it was hard to differentiate when your speaking. I mean, without Trump as you're as the, who you're fighting against, who you're arguing against, who you're, you know, I mean, he is the symbol for everything that these people are running for. Or the, you know, the contrarian symbol. It did all kind of fall into a sort of ideological monotony, even though there is, I mean, let's be fair, there is a pretty wide margin of ideology on the stage tonight. It all sounded a lot the same because there was a lot.

People with the most divergent points of view were saying a lot of, I think we can all agree on and then just saying, some odd platitude. You saw that a lot. They were trying to sound like Elizabeth Warren, I think is a fair assessment. Absolutely. And you got to say,

in temperament, if not in policy. That's exactly right. And so, and you, I mean, first let's acknowledge that it is sort of wild

that we had 10 people up on stage all more or less agree, I mean, or not even agreeing, but debating the merits of Medicare for all, free college tuition. I mean,

these things were just like whack-a-do ideas five or 10 years. ago. Yeah. Right? So this is, so... I'll give you like 2016. Yeah. For the most part, if you weren't listening to Bernie Sanders. Yeah. So that, I mean, that's, that's important, that's important to stipulate. And the, and the candidates that were not so all in on those, so, we're definitely like, we're definitely sort of protesting some, that they would be designated as somehow less liberal than thou, right? And they were trying to rely the differences. They were trying

not to say I'm against that. They were trying to speak to greater values and sort of, yeah, muddy the ones. We've gotten to a point with Globuchar, I mean, with candidates like Clobuchar like Delaney, I'm sure I'm forgetting somebody where the sort of, listen, I know how things work. I want to work across the aisle. We say that with Biden recently too, although we'll talk more about him tomorrow. I don't want to raise my eyebrow.

I don't want to be snide about the reality, the practicality of those sorts of statements. But it does seem that they are sort of disqualifying in a debate, in a primary debate like this. I think it's certainly in for the Democratic primary electorate, yes. But can I turn that around and say that I thought Elizabeth Warren's worst answer tonight was, what are you going to do about the problem known as Mitch McConnell? Yeah. And do you have a plan for that? And she said to applause or laughs or both, yes, I have a plan.

But then her answer was, we're just going to stay energized. And the energy that's going to elect me to become president is going to still be the energy in the air in January of 2021. Sure. Well, I think we've seen that that's not a plan and that energy, energy isn't a plan and you can have public pressure and all that kind of stuff. But I thought that was her worst answer because in a way, it's sort of. cuts away at the I've got a plan for that. Well, you've got a plan for everything but passing your plans through the United States Senate. Right. That seems like a big problem. And again, it's just not, I don't know that I don't know, I don't know what the answer to that is other than for the Democrats,

other than when a lot of Senate seats. Well, I mean, she's got to have a better answer than that. If her whole thing is like, I've got all this technocratic detail. Listen, I think you're absolutely right. I think, especially from a, from a, you know, when you're considering her as a candidate, as someone who's making an argument to the country, yes, you're right. It's conceivable that she, you know, her campaign numbers prove out that, or bear out that the only way she gets elected is in a landslide that will include the Senate too. So she's not worried about that. You know, I mean, she might know something we don't know. But I think that you're right that that's, I mean, that's an insufficient argument. Or that's, even if you knew that, that's not the way, that's, that's an insufficient sales job.

So, I mean, I think you're right. I think that was definitely her weak spot. Although, and this is not a defense of anything that she said, that moment where she said, yes, I do, and then, you know, let there be a, gave the room space to erupt into applause. Yeah. Was the only high moment of the entire night?

The only moment where it seemed like the audience was engaged with the candidate. Am I wrong? No, I guess Castro had some moments. Sue. I think Castro. I think there was just some, I don't think there was any engagement in like the Canada, the candidates had just said something really surprising that didn't feel totally scripted.

Tulsi Gabbard had a, towards the end of the debate, actually had a good answer. I'm a little bit. How much did it involve her military service? Well, entirely. I mean, no, but when she was when she took down Ryan, apparently her, again, and the reaction numbers, according to the various tweets I saw online spiked for her right at that moment. I'm a little bit, I mean, I don't know how much you want to get into the, this sort of bottom tier or second tier, whatever you want to call of candidates here.

It's, I think we should develop some sort of like, like, you know, quixotic scale for like how inane some of these candidacies are because tonight, I talked about the number of, the amount of speaking time, the top candidates got, but we're talking about 10 minutes a person is like that, is the high water mark, right? Mm-hmm. We're giving time to people who don't, I mean, this goes back to what you were saying about there having, being a battle royal for the, for, you know, amongst the bottom candidates. But like, we're giving a lot of time to people who we literally won't remember by name, by face, by voice in three months. I'm, I'm totally open to the argument that those people shouldn't be on the stage. I was open on a couple of press boxes go to the argument that those people, are we sure absolutely sure they need like a 30 minute or one hour CNN town hall? because you've decided you want to run for president. Yeah.

It's just almost like, and again, I always think to me, cable news regards this completely as content. You know, this is content disguised as, you know, as, you know, very responsible issues-oriented programming because they just like, it feels like a special event, even if it's really not a special event. But yeah, I don't, I find that really good. Why don't we work our way down?

Because how about, how about the semi-quixotic tier next? Which I think coming into the night probably included, Beto O'Rourke and Corey Booker. And maybe we can go ahead and add Julian Castro to that, to that tier now, who had a pretty good night. O'Rourke, let me glancing at my notes. He spoke Spanish. One of three candidates by my account.

Yeah. Matthew Cottenetti over at Free Beacon noted that he was attacked more than any other Canada on stage, I think, by Castro probably most memorably for the night. Had a lot of personal stories. I met a man who didn't have health care. I met a man who went to the doctor once. Was a little bit slippery with his answers. That first answer,

I believe he gave was about the top tax rate. Do you think it should be 71%? I think it should be fair. I think it was something to that. And then eventually it trickled down to, or it didn't trickle. It shouldn't be using other economic terms by accident in this conversation.

But I think eventually he said something about a 26% corporate tax rate, which is not the answer to the question. And that was a question. question in search of a real answer. It wasn't in question in search of a different solution. Watching him tonight, he's better at questions that are in the manner of what are your values, then what is your plan? Like, he's good at values. He's good at standing up there and saying, these are the things we believe in. This is the kind of country we should be. But then you're like,

okay, how much, what kind of tax rate should we put on rich people? And he's like, this is the kind of country we can be. He goes, he's constantly goes back to. general values. I thought that he, I mean, he's come, he is a different man than he was when he announced his candid. He's certainly a different man than he was when he's running in Texas. He looked. Do you really think so? I know that he's always, we talked about this during the debate, so we're circling back around to a conversation. I know that he is a, a serious public speaker. I don't, I know that he's not a, he's not grinning and glad handing his whole way around. But maybe there was a reason he was standing on tables. He, he, he, he, when he has time, when he has time.

That wasn't allowed tonight. Huh? That was not allowed to. According to the NBC, the MSNBC rules. You're absolutely right. You know, he got killed in his back and forth with Castro. But even before that, he looked, he was too quiet.

He was too, I mean, his physical presentation, and again, maybe this goes back to the tables, left, you know, left a lot to be desired. I mean, he felt like he looked like he was a hostage for half the thing, for half the night. but when he finally woke up was when he was talking about the environment because he actually got into a rhythm

a comfortable rhythm of a subject that he felt comfortable talking about, whatever it was. And listen, I don't want to get too much in the horse race he met his stuff, although that's what this podcast is about. But this is the time

when we start making judgments, and we start making silly judgments about these candidates. And Beto, to me, felt like a guy who hadn't, who hadn't done his homework. I'm not saying he wasn't necessarily prepared for the debate.

Didn't seem too prepared. But you've got to be able to answer with specifics. You got to be able to expect questions and to give an answer and to stand behind your convictions if you dispute the premise of the question. I think, let me counter that slightly. I think he did his homework, but I think he stubbornly refuses to play by the typical rules of political theater. That's great in a one-on debate. And he lost his debate to Ted Cruz basically during the Texas Senate race. And I think if you watch that HBO documentary, he often talks like this, you know, that we, we have a crisis. In Texas, I did this. That's how he talks. He's like a podcast. You know, it's not, it's not like a one, it's not a tweet. He's a podcast. It just goes on and on and on. And it kind of, after a while, you kind of get in the rhythm of it. He gets kind of getting this trance. That's his thing. And when he has a minute, he can't do it. Now, you're right. But I, but I think he just has refused to try to be the guy who's going to be.

to win the minute. I mean, he didn't look like the guy was trying to win the debate tonight at all. To me, he looked like the frontrunner. He acted like a front runner kind of playing defense. I think that's right. I think, I mean, but he looked like he looked like the whole, like the whole, it looked like he wasn't expecting to be there. I really think that's just his face, but I think you're right.

It did look weird. Yeah. It did look weird. I'm like to belabor the Beto point. For anybody that had only heard about Beto, for anybody that had maybe read a magazine, seen a couple tweets, we read a magazine profile. Which one did you have in my have in mind. Go ahead.

Whatever. Just someone who's dimly aware that there's an HBO documentary but not necessarily going to watch the whole thing. For someone who only knows Beto from his legend, tonight was a huge disappointment.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know that you would have come away with tonight. I was like, I'm going to vote for that guy or I've got a great feeling about that guy. Because it was,

and he was also just bland. Yeah, that's it. That's it. You were expecting, you're expecting RFK or something and that's not what you got. Booker had an interesting night. Yeah.

Good night, I think. Yeah. I mean, we kind of figured before the debate he would do well tonight. One is because he hasn't really been talked about all that much, but has lots of, you know, stage talent. He's a good talker. He's engaging. He got some sort of interesting questions tonight. The first one was about breaking up Facebook and whether he differs with a warrant on that, sort of ducked that.

He also had his own moments speaking Spanish. Kind of had a powerful moment off a Tulsi Gabbard LGBTQ answer. where he turned it to the murder of trans Americans, as he called it. What did you make a Booker tonight? I thought he looked really good. Why isn't Booker a top-tier candidate again? I mean, why isn't Booker doing better?

I think he's been on the national stage for a really long time. He was christen the next big thing before he was worthy of being that. Before he was a senator, sure. I think that there's a little bit of exhaustion on that front. I think that that exhaustion couple with the gym, general exhaustion of how many candidates we have running right now for this nomination, it's probably, it probably amplifies it.

He's just gotten lost. He's gotten lost. And I don't think he has a message that is that is amplified his position at all. Yeah, he's sort of a better, he's a better kind of glib engaging talker than he is a big message guy at this point. Yeah, and I think that he's made for a stage. He's made for a national stage in a way that maybe Beto's not. He is made for this kind of present because the people that are, the people that are that decide who gets on TV, the people who decide what magazine articles get written.

When they hear Cory Booker, they have some preconceived notions about him. He's in the pocket of Wall Street. He made up his made up a childhood friend for the purpose of politics. You know, there's all these weird backstories about him. Even the ones that turned out to be BS, there's a little bit of an arched eyebrow when it comes to Cory Booker amongst the eggheads, you know, amongst the decision makers.

And I think that, but you put him on a stage like this tonight, and he looks like a president of everybody that was there, even when he gave answers that were like utterly empty when he was talking about gun control, when he gave, I thought, his weakest answer on the merits tonight, it was maybe his best answer in terms of presentation. He looked like somebody. who, I mean, he, he, he, he's, he spoke like somebody who could, who would be an effective and engaging president.

Yeah, I thought it was interesting. He constantly located, uh, his positions and his background and being from what he called a black and brown community. Mm-hmm. Mentioned that a lot. Mention the kind of, a little showdown with, uh, Bill de Blasio. Yeah. Was, it was an interesting one. Right. But just kind of locating himself as somebody who was on the ground and sort of understands the effects of big legislation and big national problems. as being beyond, you know, it's like I have practically dealt with these problems.

Of course, lots of candidates say that and we're here that 100 times the next two days. But one more thing about Booker, when I mentioned his weak answer on gun control, that was the first of two statements he made on gun control. And I don't know if he was aware of the fact that he botched the first one and came back and gave a stronger one to follow it up. But if that's the case, I think that's just another one of these, that's probably a good sign for him as a candidate, that he was one of the only people up on stage who was self-aware and commandeering enough to make that sort of correction.

Julian Castro had an interesting night. First of all, lots of good one-liners talked about, you know, reproductive justice when he was talking about abortion rights. Yeah. On immigration, he had the phrase, I don't want to criminalize desperation. He did it. Got into it with O'Rourke. That was an interesting Texan on Texan kind of vibe there. Yeah.

When he talked about Section 1325, told O'Rourke that, you know, if only you did your homework, our pal Chris Sellen Trump tweeted biggest news of the first half of the debate is that people realize Castro is running for president and that sounds like a joke but I actually think Chris means that and totally sincerely which is there are a lot of people

who had either not heard of him or had barely registered that that campaign was going on a lot of pieces like by the way remember that Castro was actually running for this thing and was somebody who came in with a lot of at least a lot of curiosity about him tonight his speech was like super measured, right?

He was not trying. He was his whole, his whole presentation was very measured, very slow, very methodical. And I thought really effective in that whole group. Presentation wise, I agree with you. Subject matter wise, I mean, his first, I believe the first time he spoke tonight, it was about passing the ERA, right? Which was not the Equal Rights Amendment, which is not. Big cheer from the crowd.

Big cheer from the crowd and not a particularly divisive issue, but a very interesting way to introduce yourself to the country, right? If you're Julian Castro. Yep. He later spoke about, you said, the reproductive justice. I mean, he made a lot of, there were a couple times during the night

where he made, subject-wise, made some interesting, and some interesting choices based on the limited amount of screen time that he got. But I think by the time the debate wrapped up, it, I, the individual issues were sort of subsumed

into this idea that he was actually like the thought leader on stage tonight, second only maybe to Elizabeth Warren. He was the person who was actually driving the terms of the debate. And I think that, that one, that's impressive and important. And two, if other people are saying this tomorrow, that's an enormous thing for him as a candidate. Yeah, because I mean, to me, he comes into debate like this. And your first job is just remind people that you're running for president. Sure. You have been so absent. And so, and you've just sort of disappeared from mainstream media coverage, blame him, blame the media, whoever you want. Your first job tonight is just, hi, I'm running for president.

Please think about me. But to then take a further step, as you say, and be kind of the guy that was, you know, driving the train a little bit tonight. That's pretty amazing. Our pal Jay Kang tweeted this also thought this was good. Really can't figure out why Castro, mayor of a huge city with experience in the federal government, struggled so much to get attention. And the mayor of South Bend had 15 premium tier outlets asking him every three days

about his favorite interpoles. Yeah. Well, I think there's a little bit of, there's a little bit of, I don't think Castro has any exhaustion attached to him. But we've been talking about Julian Castro and his brother for, what, 10 years? Yeah. And this is that, this is, it's not like he should have run for president four years ago. But, you know, I mean, the mayor of South Bend really came out of nowhere. You know, there was a lot of people who were, I mean, there are a lot of news outlets or a lot of editorial boards who were just like, who is this Buttigieg guy? send somebody out there. You know, I mean, it was a very sort of relatable, innocent editorial system that led to that sort of coverage. But I agree. Castro doesn't even get the amount of, you know, the screen time that he should get on like MSNBC's nighttime shows. You know, like he's not. And he is, he's interesting because he is no, he is nominally part of the Obama machine, right?

Mm-hmm. But a lot of the Obama kind of apparatchezation. have gone on gone to other campaigns to bedos and and of course many other ones right people still working for biden um he sort of has been just lost in the shuffle Castro and i think tonight is a really really big night for him because all of any reason any question like that like jay king asked any any any questions you have about why hasn't been giving the attention given the attention tonight those are the questions we're going to be asking tomorrow and those questions help him as a candidate he doesn't seem like a given anymore he doesn't seem like someone who's been

handed this position because and tonight he earned it back. There was a big boomlet you'll remember for Hillary Clinton to pick him. Yeah. As our vice president. I think and I'm not dismissing him at all as a presidential candidate, but I think pretty quickly if it hasn't already

started on Twitter, we're going to hear Castro as a possible VP starting like five minutes. Yeah. It's probably already, we can look it up here. I'm good. I just, yeah. Just look for, look at Warren Castro right now and see what she's fine. I'm going to run through the outer tier candidates here a little bit, David.

Please hit me with anything that goes to mine. Bill de Blasio standing at the edge of the stage, didn't you think he was much more effective as a kind of Democratic Party troll than he was as mayor of New York City? Quick interjection to say that the first thing that came up was an Emily Nussbaum tweet about the Warren Castro, the potential of a Warren Castro. It's like, you call that 100 miles away. Yeah. It's just like absolutely, 100 miles away. Let's let him run for president first. I think that would probably be a good idea.

And then we can get to him as a vice president. At least we're not doing the thing where we're just like putting a woman as a vice president every time. Like that was that was that was. But there is this thing you do when there's like anybody has like any kind of flash. You know, it's like, you know what? They would make a great vice president. Yeah. We're already casting them as the running mate.

You know, but I find it it's almost they're almost never picked as the running. Yeah. If you're one of the people that four years ago was complaining that Bernie Sanders was not was never given a fair shake by the media. If you think that the predetermination by the media is a big deal, don't be a predeterminist yourself. Don't knock anybody out because of their, because of their age and don't assume someone to be a good vice president before you've actually given them a chance to be president. We got to let this thing play out. That's what the primary is supposed to be about. De Blasio was mixing it up tonight, kind of casting himself as I'm the guy who's

going to defend the soul of the Democratic Party. Yes. Of course we should be for a 70% tax rate. Of course, private insurance isn't working. Why are you defending private insurance? He asked at one point. Would you make a de Blasio? Blasio is in a tough position because everybody... He feels like he's always been in a tough position. We all know that...

Often of his own making. We all know that, and it'll be said over and over again, that the people, the loudest liberal voices on Twitter do not in any way represent the voting the voting body of the United States of America even the most liberal side of the American electorate but they do have an outsized voice on social media and thus in media overall, right?

Sure. Those people have a lot of bad things to say about Bill de Blasio and I think that is what... Those people live in New York. Exactly. Those people know the those people those people, if he hadn't been running for president, would probably be out for beers, shit-talking Bill de Blasio tonight regardless, right? In Brooklyn specifically.

Yes, he's the mayor of the city. The city sucks a lot, even though it's the greatest city on earth. David is a resident of New York to anyone not aware of that. Yeah, people will have bad things to say about Bill de Blasio. We've joked around to that Bill de Blasio. If we're going to have a quixotic level,

his quixotic scale, his quixotic numbers are way, are actually like very, very high for someone who has relatively reasonable electability numbers. I don't think there's any way he's going to be president, but he's in like the single digits, right? He's not in a zero. He registered. Yeah, but his quixotic numbers are just off the charts, right? The idea that he's doing this is just bonkers. He's one of these guys. This is what's interesting is he can remind people in a form like this what they like about Diplosio. Yeah. What they liked when, when he improbably won the Democratic New York.

mayor or primary, which is a fighter for progressive values. You know, if you're not worrying about him managing a major city, then, and of course, nobody, you know, got into it with his management of said city tonight. He comes off looking much better. Yeah. He was one of the two candidates, the other being Elizabeth Warren, who raised their hand when asked if they would abolish private insurance, which is, I don't think it's ever, I mean, especially on a night like tonight, never a bad look to be standing alone with Elizabeth

Warren amongst on a stage full of 10 people. Can I ask you about the hand raising questions? Yeah. Because that got kind of a run on Twitter tonight too. And I thought that was interesting. I like them because I do think it has the effect of pinning people down in a way that as we talked about a second ago, you can't pin people down sometimes when you just even ask them directly. Sure. I thought they were interesting.

They tried several of them tonight. There was one. There was that one you speak of. One was about signing back on to the Iran deal. But I thought that's interesting. and I don't actually think that's a bad idea. I think maybe there should be more. Well, the other thing that you always hear about these debates,

and it was on the Republican side, the same thing was happening four years ago, is that there should be more interact, that they should find a way to emphasize interaction between the candidates, to actually have its candidates challenge each other on their differences and on ideas. Tough to do with 10 people on the stage at the same time. But you get to, I mean, this is a joke, but I don't mean it totally is a joke.

I feel like what we're, what we're eventually, I mean, the end of all this conversation is like a stage, a candidacy. a primary wide game of never would I ever where you just have the mask of question and it's just like would you

it can even be it can even be one of these bad faith Chuck Dodd questions like would you take away the guns of every American and then someone and then they have to raise their hands or just the candaceate themselves never would I ever take away the guns of all the Americans and then everyone else who disagrees has to do a shot or whatever you play the game. Amy Klemishar had the

strangest scripted lines tonight the ones I wrote down are all foam and no beer. Us Texans know that as all had and no cattle, I believe. My Uncle Dick's deer stand. And I think our favorite night got a big laugh from us when she referred to a magic genie. Now, as opposed to a genie who doesn't have magical powers. Just those regular genies that just appear and don't give you any wishes. So that was funny. I don't know what she did tonight other than, I don't think, I don't think she did a bad job tonight, but I am struggling to remember anything that she said other than those lines. How about John Delaney at the other end of the, what of my favorite MSBC Mobitz is when he was first called on, the camera kind of lingered on the other side of the stage, like the cameraman or the director in the truck didn't know where to go with the camera, which is kind of his thing, sold himself as a job creator tonight.

the line, I think we should be the party that keeps what's working and fixes what's broken, which is pretty in arguable as a position in either the Democratic or Republican Party. Yes, his first response was really good. The way his first, his, his, hello America are running for president moment was, I thought, quite competent. And then everything after that was just a nose dive. I mean, there was it going back to the way that, you know, the field has changed in just four years, you know, or eight years, 10 years, whatever.

I felt like that the that the that the MSNBC crew was was almost antagonistic towards him because of his moderate status, right? Uh-huh. Like they, like the implicit question

and every question asked him was how are you going to get elected by this Democratic primary electorate? Which is not a bad question. No, I wish they just ask that question. It may seem unfair, but that seems like a,

That seems like the question he's got to answer at the moment. We talked a little bit about Tulsi Gabbard. Her sister commandeered her Twitter account tonight and said the debate was rigged for Elizabeth Warren. And that she was, I thought Gabbert actually spoke a lot because I heard like six versions of her I served in the military answer tonight. Yeah, there's a lot of that. Jay Inslee was kind of a big performer for those of us. We always say, you know, fake savvy reporter person says, you know, pretends to have actually heard all these people speak. honest reporter person like David Shoemaker over there and Brian Curtis over here,

admits that we haven't heard a lot of these people talk ever. We couldn't identify a couple of these people before tonight. That's okay to admit that. That's a very normal human thing to admit. And I had never seen Jay Inslee talk before tonight. I promised you that when you brought up Jay Inslee would open another beer. So I'm doing that. Okay, thank you.

Yeah, I was not aware that Funkhouser, was running for president and was very excited to find out that he was. This is the, this is he, Jay, Jay Inslee should never not be running for president. He should be on every debate stage, regardless of, of what percentage of approval he has at all times. He said something like tonight. Trump says wind turbines cause cancer. We know they cause jobs. So we need to cause more jobs in this country, David. Tim Ryan was kind of everybody's favorite, you know, long shot tonight. Dan O'Sullivan tweeted this and I enjoyed it. Tim Ryan looks like if the debates had to have a cop undercover in it like a sky marshal.

So that was... He also had the word elital. He was trying to say, he was talking about the quality of being elite. And he said, elital, which was amazing. A couple more thoughts. It is overstated. People make the joke too many times about someone who looks like they've accidentally wandered on stage for this sort of thing.

this really like his entire presence was like that weird I was explaining nightmares to my 10 year old this week where I was just like a lot of adults have the nightmare that they show up for a class and realize they haven't attended all semester or they show up for a big presentation and they haven't prepared this felt like you could almost see him blinking his eyes waking up to this moment where he is just like oh shit I'm running for president and there's something touching about that because of the biggest

moment this guy's life he had a couple of good moments at the end I'm going to give him credit. I mean, he was, this was not, this. He got more comfortable. He's very quixotic. On the quicksotic scale, he's very quixotic in terms of the plausibility of him being elected. This whole thing seems very misbegotten. He does seem to have some things.

Once he got comfortable, he had some real things to talk about. But man, for a lot of this, we are grading on a massive curve, not just with him, with a lot of these candidates. The idea that any of these people look particularly presidential tonight, at least beyond the top, what, three or four is, it would be ridiculous to say. Yeah, I am inclined to agree. A couple notes on MSNBC. It was kind of interesting how they split up the moderators. The second hour was Rachel Maddow and Chuck Todd.

And they came on with this kind of weird, goofy energy, like the fourth hour of the Today Show. Were they trying to apologize for some perception that they were at each other's throats, or were they just doing a little bit? I didn't. I think it was a bit. Okay.

I had no idea what that was going. I mean, everybody on MSNBC is relentlessly. Chummy all of the tosses to the next show or just like and in a way that you don't believe they're actually show no but like really or like really specific just like that's my dear friend Chris Hey is that or my dear friend Lawrence O'Donnell I heard like how does that dog spaying go this weekend you know I mean it's all Lord's O'Donnell has a particular technique with that that we should we should dissect in the press box at some point there was the crazy mic problems were just an unforgivable production area I have no idea what happened with that a couple of a couple of interesting questions two one is that Maddow asked Jay Inslee about his climate change plan does your plan save Miami another favorite moment was when they went to Lester Holt who was doing

questions from regular people and we could see a man yawning very loudly in the audience behind him. Why do we go to Lester Holt to read a question from a long question along and very elaborate, very intelligent but unnecessarily elaborate question from a quote unquote regular person from

the aisle of the audience and then toss it and then did he choose to give it to better or Rourke? Or was that the writer? It was very unclear. Yeah, I think if you have 10 candidates on stage, the most important thing you do is have lots and lots of moderators. And then also send one of those moderators into the audience to ask a question from a sixth person.

I mean, to me, you want just as many balls in the air as is as perhumanly possible. I love Lesterholt, but every time I see him on the Today Show, anytime he's not sitting behind the desk, I feel like he should be reading. mean tweets or something. Like he's just like, he's, he's just an ironic, he's just like a,

like a marginally self-aware, like, like, a pre-ironic figure. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. It was also,

by the way, kind of a bit tonight to tweet during the debate. We talked about Tulsi Gabbard's sister. Marianne Williamson said she was going to have to learn to speak Spanish before tomorrow night's debate. She's, she's going to be in front of us tomorrow night.

Trump just tweeted all caps boring at one point. and then also got into it with NBC, MSNBC about the production snafo. And he had said he wasn't going to be watching Zee'd be on an airplane. Yeah, but Donald Trump is now... He was going to have to watch, but he wasn't going to be tweeting. You don't understand. He is now a pedantic media critic. You know, before when he was doing fake news, enemy of the people, he was like a demagogue media critic.

Oh, right. Now he's like a pedantic one. He's like Howie Kurtz or something, right in a column after the debate. Yeah, they've gotten that right. Oh, what's going on with these microphones, you know? this is really bad stuff. Well, that's a compare. File this one away, because we're going to, we'll compare this to, heaven forbid, the microphones go out in any presidential debate, and it'll become a national

crisis about how NBC or whoever the broadcaster is is trying to silence the Republican Party. Is it fair to say? Andrew Yang, by the way, had some great Spanish-speaking quotes, too. I think he was out there really early. If nothing else, he is a slightly funny, responsive Twitter. Do you think this changes anything tonight? I think it'll be interesting. I don't know how much. is changed. I think it'll be interesting

to see how much tomorrow's debate refers to tonight's debate because we've talked a lot about how they're gonna, I mean, tonight they certainly

went fairly easy on one another with the exception of a few squabbles like the Castro-Oroch one. Mm-hmm. But, you know, overall, we discussed this when I was on the show last,

the show at the end of last week, that we were, that they, you know, it was going to be hard for them to attack each other. It seemed like everybody was going in politely. I think it's actually going to be fairly easy for the people debating tomorrow on Thursday night to reference answers made on Wednesday

night and go and come out against those, right? Right. It's not easy. I mean, it's an awkward position to say, you Bernie Sanders are wrong about this, although Bernie will get his fair share about that on Thursday night. It's much less awkward to say some candidates like Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday night believe this and then to say something opposite, right? So it'll be interesting to see how much that's, how much that's, tonight's debate is referenced tomorrow. How much has it changed? I don't know. Quick overwork, Twitter joke via McKay Coppins. One billion people, David, this is an exact number, approximately one billion people tweeted the winner of tonight's debate was the friends we made along the way. So I just wanted you to know that otherwise professional

political reporters took a moment at the end to just tweet that. That's via Nathan Brooks. Thank you, Nathan, for your, for your service. Also, David, just from the realm of, oh my gosh, this person is tweeting about the debate and was a big star of sitcoms in our childhood. Did you catch any of the tweets from 227 legend Jack Kay Harry tonight? I was surprised. I was disappointed with Marla Gibbs' silence throughout the night, but Jack Hay, thankfully, came through strong. Jack Hay was huge tonight. I've got another Overworked Twitter joke This is my first contribution

If you tweeted That having too many Random microphones on is a perfect metaphor for the 2020 Democratic primary Ah, there you go Congrats you made the overworked

Twitter joke of the week Before we sign off until tomorrow night, can we say a quick word about Bob Lee The longtime ESPN host Yeah Who retired today

Tack on five minutes Bob Lee is a guy who has been been with ESPN since the third day of its launch in 1979. So to call him an ESPN lifer is correct, both in his life and the life of the network. He was the host most recently of Outside the Lines. He was a sports center, a frequent sports center host back in the day, especially the kind of 6 p.m. Sports Center, where you could find him and Charlie Steiner and Robin Roberts doing a kind of, you know, more low-key, serious sports center than the version that came on at 11 o'clock.

I mean, he's such an interesting guy. I wrote about him last year. Interviewed him a couple of times, as I think almost everybody on this beat has. And the most amazing thing to be about Bob Lee was on the air, he could be Mr. News Anchor guy. All that sort of, you know, that grandiosity, that sort of tone, that seriousness. But I found as when I report on these guys that the guys that are that way on the air are also almost always like that off the air too. they really believe that stuff. Yeah.

And Bob Lee was funny because off the air, he was, you know, self-effacing, if anything. He was a guy sort of always bursting his own bubble. And, you know, to me, he's like such an interesting character in that universe because, you know, when Muhammad Ali dies, Bob Lee gets a phone call and Bob Lee goes into a studio. But he was also, you know, when he talked and when he was off camera, he was just a very conspiratorial guy. guy I like to talk about music, that kind of stuff. Just a very interesting, very interesting figure in sports TV history. I think that's definitely right. Everything that you've said is right.

I want to go back in time since this is the eulogistic part of the podcast, too. Well, Bobby is still alive. The first, you're right, but I mean, his career at ESPN seems to have, it seems to deserve a eulogy at this point. You and I, years ago, a couple of young Wepper Snappers went to the book release party for those guys have all the fun. That's right. We did. One of the only actual ESPN personalities who was there was Bob Lee.

I forgot about that. And you forced me to go up and talk to him. With you. You know, I don't remember this at all. That's amazing. He was incredibly gracious. Yes. Incredibly engaged with us. And we were, you were a nominal somebody.

I was in a complete nobody. combined we were not we were beneath his dignity um he was incredibly engaged engaging and engaged incredibly smart incredibly nice and uh it's hard for those sorts of moments to not affect the way that you think about somebody on tv and it's one of the blessings that we have to be in this line of work um you could see on twitter today that he affected many lives in much more significant ways than he affected mine. But, you know, it's a little cloying to say that it's more, the friends we made along the way, we just made fun of that. But the lives that you affected positively are, is often a more meaningful measure of your career, you know, of your life than, you know, your

ratings or anything else. He seemed to be a very widely loved guy. Well, and I think you're right, Because I think he had something like 100% approval rating on the ESPN campus. Behind the scenes, in front of the camera, whatever you want to say. That's really, really hard at an organization that is known for, you know, ambitious people. And he really did. I mean, it's funny. I mean, a lot of this is, you know, he was a guy who had all kinds of people on his show. Just about every ESPN personality was on that show at one time or another.

People like Dave Zyron, were not a comfortable fit in the ESPN universe. We're on that show a lot. Mitch Goldidge tweeted this to me today, which I thought was funny. He said, congrats to Bob Lee on a great career, but congrats also to the many journalists tweeting today about how many times they were on O'TL. Enough about you. Enough about you.

Fantastic stuff. And I mean, on a network that is, I mean, listen, the ESPN logo, we've said this a million times, ESPN, the brand is the star, right? Mm-hmm. Bob Lee was never a star. He never, he never, he never, he never risked out shining the logo. That's definitely, I would, yes, that's a good way to put it.

But he was, he provided. Huh? On purpose too. Yeah, but he, but he did provide the network a level, a sort of gravitas that they no longer have. Now, you know, you can say what you want. I mean, I, by the way, just can I, can I complicate that a little bit? I don't think they had at various points along the way, or they always, they had much of

various points along the way. But what they would do is when people would say, look, ESPN's putting all this idiotic programming on there. Oh, Bob Lee. Yeah. Bob Lee doing outside the lines. Bob Lee talking about stadium funding. Yeah. Bob Lee talking about race and sports.

And, you know, they held up, I think I'm ripping myself off here, but they held up Bob Lee like this talisman and said, whatever you say that's bad about ESPN, you're probably right. But Bobby. Bob Lee. And he was such the real deal of that guy. that he warded off a lot of criticism by himself. Yeah. Often when, you know, there wasn't a ton of stuff on ESPN that really was really all that serious. Sure.

And a lot of stuff. But he was just so, he was so, you know, he's such a like a so legitimately interested in all these things and such a serious dude. And so had such a kind of like newsman's manner that, uh, that it worked. Yeah. It's funny. I mean, ESPN has been holding Bobbly up as, as a sign that it is, did it does have a serious side. for so long. And it is to his credit that he single-handedly, you know, made those people right, I think. Yeah. In a lot of ways. He covered sports. I mean, he was, he was in on soccer and

women's soccer in particular before it was cool. And, and, and he was in on a lot of very important, um, uh, like you said, financial and social issues before any of that stuff was in the modern conversation. Before we had, we had platforms like Twitter to discuss such things. He was making those, you know, going issues on ESPN. And, go, go ahead. Yeah, and I was just going to say the fall of 2017, I think, was his, you know, one of his last great high periods there because he was able to essentially, we'd have some, you know, we'd have protests or Donald Trump at the NFL on Sunday. And he would be able to come back after a weekend. And O'Tiel was right on the news. Like the biggest news story in America was a story that O'Tiel would cover better than anything else. Now, he's been away for several months on a kind of sabbatical, walked away last fall. Yeah. We don't quite know officially. I was going to ask. you this. Why, you know, why he left and what he did. It's funny. But I think, I don't know this for certain from Bobley, but I think one thing that's interesting is O'Tiel has changed a lot. And, you know, there's a kind of a high period of OTO where it's like, all right, you know,

what kind of stadium funding issue can we get into today? Let's roll up our sleeves. Let's get, Patrick Ruby over here. Let's get Dave Ziron in here. Let's get, let's get Bimani Jones in here. Here we go. Let's get to it. I don't think that show exists in the same way anymore. I think that show is still often serious, still often provocative. But there's a lot of times where it's, okay, it's NBA free agency time. Let's talk about Kauai Linder for seven days in a row.

And I think there's a lot of that show has become a lot more like the rest of ESPN is maybe one way to put it. And, you know, when Bob Lee is thinking about, do I come back, do I want to come back and do this day after day, which is a big grind after 40 years, I think it's got to be in his head, and I'm guessing, but I bet I'm right on this. It's got to be in his head. Is that the same show that I walked away from? Is that exactly the same show? Maybe it's not a worse show, but it's a different show. And to me, that's got to be mixed up in there somewhere.

Last night, I noticed that Linda Cohn and Keith Oberman recently reinstated host or the Sports Center host, and I was just like, oh, this is a real throw. Like, ESPN's really embracing its roots. And then the next day, you find out that... that Bob Lee is gone. You know, a lot of people listening to this will, I don't think they're heartbroken that he's disappeared. I mean, from their lives, but he was really important guy.

And it sucks for ESPN to see him walk away. And most importantly, an original guy. By the way, I love the cliche. I hear this couple of times. You know, Bob Lee's worked there for 40 years. He deserves the right to do what he wants. I agree with that statement, but everybody deserves the right to do what they want.

Like, you, David, deserve the right to do what you want. If you don't want to work at ESPN anymore, you can walk away and come over to a website like The Ringer. We're glad to have you. He is David Chewaker. I'm Brian Curtis, producer of this podcast at Jim Cunningham, research by Chris Almeida. We are back tomorrow night, Thursday night after the second loaded Democratic debate. I thought you said I reserved the right. I mean, that can do what I want here.

Okay. I'm going to be here. I have to be here. I got to work. I don't have the right to do my life. I'll see you tomorrow night, Brian. See you, man. David?

Yeah. Hi, I'm running for president. Please think about me. Yeah. What are your values? Utterly empty? Well, I think we've seen that that's not a plan. You know, a lot of people listening this.

He covered sports. I mean, he was in on soccer, women's soccer in particular before it was cool. And he was in a lot of... Control, we've got... We've got...