Today, Explained - ABCDebate

Episode Date: September 13, 2019

After Vox's Tara Golshan reviews the third Democratic debate, Matthew Yglesias explains how Joe Biden wins even when he loses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Before we get into the third Democratic debate, I would just like to say, as many if not all of the candidates did last night, that none of this would be possible without our patron saint, Barack Obama. I want to give credit first to Barack Obama for really bringing us this far. We would not be here if he hadn't the courage, the talent, or the will to see us this far. We owe a debt of gratitude to President Barack Obama. This is a president who came along with the DACA program. No one had ever done that before. This is the president who sent legislation to the desk, saying he wants to find a pathway for the 11 million undocumented in the United States of America.

This is the president who's done a great deal. And what I favor is something that what Barack Obama wanted to do from the very beginning, and that is a public option. And I would return the level of legal immigration to the point it was under the Obama-Biden administration. We all owe a huge debt to President Obama, who fundamentally transformed healthcare in America and committed this country to healthcare for every human being. Okay, now that that's out of the way,

last night's debate featured some moments that may have seemed sort of vintage if you watched the preceding debates. People went after the frontrunner Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. Every time something good about Barack Obama comes up, he says, oh, I was there, I was there, I was there. That's me too. And then every time somebody questions part of the administration that we were both part of,

he says, well, that was the president. I mean, he wants to take credit for Obama's work, but not have to answer to any questions. Bernie called out the advertisers. And tell you how absurd the system is tonight on ABC ABC, the healthcare industry will be advertising, telling you how bad Medicare for All is because they want to protect their profits. That is absurd. Kamala called out Trump. And now, President Trump, you can go back to watching Fox News. But apart from those few instances, we really did get something different.

There were no Bill de Blasio's or John Delaney's trying to dunk on the leading candidates. There were fewer absurdly short time limits imposed on the candidates. And that led to less arguing and more substantive explanations of what people want to do as president. It may not have been the most riveting three hours of TV, but it seemed like a healthier forum for people who are trying to make up their minds on how they feel about these top ten candidates. Tara Golshin was at Vox's internal watch party. Notably last night, the topics that were covered were different than the past couple of debates.

They touched on racism in a way that wasn't just surface level. They talked about gun policy. They talked about immigration. They talked about education policy. And they talked about foreign policy. And those are not necessarily topics that have come up a lot. Well, let's get into what they said, starting with racism, which, again, I think the ABC moderators deserve credit for saying we're going to have a real conversation about racism. Yeah, in the past, it's been kind of this litmus

test around do you support reparations or not. But last night it was framed of voters are really concerned about racism in the country and what are you going to do about it. And so candidates like Beto came up and said, look, it's not just we have to denounce Donald Trump. Racism is endemic in our education system, in our health care system. Castro actually complimented Beto for the way that he framed it. Booker brought up environmental justice. And then Harris was interestingly kind of asked to answer for her record as a prosecutor. You used to oppose the legalization of marijuana. Now you don't.

You used to oppose outside investigations of police shootings. Now you don't. You've said that you changed on these and other things because you were, quote, swimming against the current. And thankfully, the currents have changed. But when you had the power, why didn't you try to effect change then? And so she was trying to answer for why that keeps coming up and what she wants to do differently. Was I able to get enough done? Absolutely not. But my plan has been described by activists as being a bold and comprehensive plan that is about ending mass incarceration, about taking the profit out of the criminal justice system. I plan on shutting down for profit prisons on day one. It will be about what we need to do to hold law enforcement,

including prosecutors, accountable. And this conversation about race was in particular significant last night because the debate was actually at a historically black university in Houston, right? Yeah, that framed the whole conversation from the get-go. The audience had students from a historically black university. So obviously this was a poignant issue for this specific audience. Moving on to guns, I think a lot of the candidates wanted to single out Beto in particular to praise him for how he handled the shooting in El Paso. And then Beto finally got his moment to speak about it

and actually delivered. 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 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 against our fellow Americans anymore. And he said, I'm not just talking to Democrats in Texas about this.

After the shooting, I went to Arkansas to a gun show, and I heard that there is common ground on this. And he was complimented on the stage by people like Vice President Joe Biden for the way that he talked about it. And of course, this shooting that Beto stepped away from his campaign to handle in El Paso had to do with immigrants, had to do with Latino immigrants in particular. What did the candidates have to say on immigration? Immigration came up last night in a way that was really reflective for the Democratic Party. It was a debate between Julian Castro, who has kind of become the lead in the Democratic field on this subject. And he kind of made it personal, too, by saying, A few weeks ago, a shooter drove 10 hours, inspired by this president,

to kill people who look like me. And what was interesting last night was that Julian Castro really kind of pushed Joe Biden on the record that the Obama administration had on immigration. Let me just say that I would, I was the first candidate in early April to put forward an immigration plan. You know why? Because I'm not afraid of Donald Trump on this issue. I'm not going to backpedal. I'm not going to pretend like I don't have my own vision for immigration. So we're not going to give up DACA. We're not going to give up protections for anybody. I believe that the Obama administration has come under a lot of criticism for a high number of deportations, for not handling the migrant crisis very well, for kind of always being conflicted between the humanitarian crisis and how to enforce the border.

Those kinds of things came up last night in a way that really took Biden to task, and he didn't have a good answer for it. Immigration is something we've heard a bit about in prior debates, but last night we did get more substantive discussion on education and foreign affairs than we've seen in any of the prior debates. Did we learn anything about what these candidates want to do on education? Several candidates voiced support for universal pre-K, for raising teachers' wages. These are the kinds of positions that you would expect from the presidential candidates, but just often don't get talked about. Yeah. And somehow foreign affairs also seem to get left off the stage in prior debates. What did we learn last night about how these people want to handle the world?

Yeah, the world, as expansive as it is, is not the subject of the most robust debate. And last night, it did come up. Even in conversations around immigration, for example, Warren cited the need to support countries in Central America. And then Bernie Sanders also was asked directly about Venezuela, which is currently in huge economic and political crisis, has a socialist dictator in Maduro as the leader. And weirdly, the question that was posed to Sanders was, why don't you call out Maduro as a socialist dictator? And Sanders came out and said very clearly, I consider him to be a terrible tyrant, and then took the opportunity to say... To equate what goes on in Venezuela with what I believe is extremely unfair.

I'll tell you what I believe in terms of democratic socialism. I agree with what goes on in Canada and in Scandinavia, guaranteeing health care to all people as a human right. I believe that the United States should not be the only major country on earth not to provide paid family and medical leave. I believe that every worker in this country deserves a living wage and that we expand the trade union movement. And the last big chunk of this conversation on foreign affairs that we should mention is, of course, Afghanistan, which has been a thorn in the president's side, especially this week, last week.

Did the Democrats have any solution for ongoing conflict in that country? I wouldn't say we got very detailed solutions last night, but there was a very clear vision that Democrats want to get out of Afghanistan. Notably, Warren said that she would get out of Afghanistan even if there wasn't a deal with the Taliban. So you saw people like Pete Buttigieg, who's actually a veteran and was stationed in Afghanistan, and people like Senator Bernie Sanders who have pledged to kind of end these endless wars, as they call it. So it came up and it was consistent with what we've heard from Democrats about foreign policy in the Middle East. Instead of closing statements, the debate ended with some classic job interview fare. Tell us about a setback you've

encountered and how you've grown from it. Who gave the most memorable answer? I think a really historic moment last night was when Pete Buttigieg on the national stage kind of recounted his coming out story as a moment of resilience. You know, as a military officer serving under Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and as an elected official in the state of Indiana when Mike Pence was governor. At a certain point, when it came to professional setbacks, I had to wonder whether just acknowledging who I was was going to be the ultimate career-ending professional setback. I came back from the deployment and realized that you only get to live one life, and I was not interested in not knowing what it was like to be in love any longer. So I just came out. I had no idea what kind of professional setback it would be, especially because,

inconveniently, it was an election year in my socially conservative community. That's not something that you would have imagined could happen in the United States five, 10 years ago. You saw just a more personal feel from the candidates. You heard something that Warren says on The Stump a lot, but her story about getting through school and dealing with sexist policies in the workplace when she was pregnant and trying to get a job. And then you saw the same thing from Andrew Yang, who had failed at his first business and is now running for president, from Bernie Sanders, who's someone who in the 2016 race didn't like to talk about his personal story, but has now started talking about the fact that

he is a son of an immigrant and lived in a rent-controlled apartment and had financial struggles as a kid growing up, but has kind of made it his mission to advocate for working-class people. So you really saw all of these stories and an opportunity for them to share them. Something I found sort of refreshing about this debate last night was that it didn't seem like anyone really moved the needle on where they stood in the field. And it also didn't really feel like anyone was like outwardly trying to do that. It almost felt like a more honest exchange in which we, the viewers, learned more about all of these people. Did the field narrow at all in your eyes? We went in last night knowing this was the first debate where you had the

top three polling candidates on stage together. We expected something to change here in that this was the first opportunity where we saw Warren and Sanders on stage with Biden, that there was a real opportunity. And then you had those kind of mid-tier candidates who have had moments in the past, like Pete Buttigieg and Harris, that they've stood out, but it hasn't really stuck for them in the polls. But we didn't see any breakout moments from last night that I expect to change the outcome going forward. And the next debate in October, it looks like the field is going to be bigger again. Already 11 candidates have qualified for that debate. So there's a strong chance it's going to be over two nights again.

So it's not really clear at this point, kind of staring down to January and February when voting starts, if anything has notably changed. Which means Biden is still in the lead. Yeah, Biden's still in the lead. In a minute, why Biden is still in the lead. Yeah, Biden's still in the lead. In a minute, why is Biden still in the lead? Are you a fan of Emma Stone's? I was just rewatching Superbad last weekend and realized that she's like the entire moral core of that movie and she's also really, really good in it. Emma Stone turns out narrating the entire new season

of Vox's incredible Netflix series, Explained. It just debuted on Netflix yesterday. You're going to get five episodes, each just 15 minutes long, about the human mind. Memory, dreams, anxiety, mindfulness, psychedelics. It's going to answer questions that you have, like why are human memories so bad? Why do we have so many really weird dreams? And why is anxiety the most common mental disorder? You can find The Mind Explained on Netflix right now by just searching for The Mind Explained, or you can go to netflix.com slash mind explained. Again, netflix.com slash mind explained and use

the coupon code. No, I'm just kidding. Just go watch the show. Matthew Iglesias, Weeds Podcast. Why is Joe Biden winning this race? You know, Joe Biden is winning the race, I think, because he was the popular vice president from a popular Obama administration. And that's what people want. And you haven't seen

a lot of effort to probe what I think are some of Biden's more serious weaknesses. Which are? I think first and foremost, his age. Polls have shown that voters have serious concern in the abstract about a candidate who's over the age of 70. Warren and Sanders are both over 70 themselves, so they're not well positioned to make this argument. As is President Trump, it turns out. As is President Trump. But you see clearly on the debate stage that Biden appears less sharp, I think, than Sanders

and Warren do. And you really saw this last night when he gave this answer to a question about slavery and reparations, which, you know, it put him in a tough position. Biden was not going to endorse reparations. He's a moderate. He's a pragmatist. He's the electability candidate. But he also has a large African-American base in this primary. So, you know, he wants to answer the question in a way that's sensitive to everybody's feelings. But what he starts doing is he says something very confused about his education plan, which I can gloss for you, as he was saying the real solution is to invest in preschool and invest in nurse home visits. But if you listen to what he actually said.

Play the radio. Make sure the television, excuse me, make sure you have the record player on at night, the phone. Make sure the kids hear words. A kid coming from a very poor school, a very poor background, will hear four million words fewer spoken by the time they get there. There's so much. No, I'm going to go like the rest of them do twice over. OK, incomprehensible. It was like this gibberish about radios and record players. And I happen to know what Biden's policy on this is. So I I could like translate it for you. But if you just watched it, you would have no idea. And then he very oddly just veered off. By the way, in Venezuela, we should be allowing people to come here from Venezuela. I know Maduro.

I've confronted Maduro. I think what he said about Venezuela was sensible, but it had nothing to do with the question. And then the topic went over to Julian Castro after that, who sort of made a joke. Secretary Castro. Thank you very much. Well, that's quite a lot. If that had been the beginning of that conversation, it would have been interesting. But Castro had actually earlier in the debate gone after Biden on age in a kind of mean-spirited and on the specifics unfair way. Are you forgetting what you said two minutes ago? Are you forgetting already 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 don't have to buy.

You're forgetting that. It's a little tedious, but like Biden hadn't. Right. So I think it was a bad look for Castro to raise a valid issue in an invalid way. And then he came back around to it, but he'd kind of already, you know, blown it. Which is to say that Castro was trying to say, look at this candidate who can't remember what he said a minute ago because he's too old to remember it. Yeah. And, you know, Castro took a lot of criticism from other quarters for that. So I'm

not going to pile on because it wasn't well done. But the fact of the matter is there's a lot of reporting which says that one of the reasons Obama, there's a lot of reporting which says that one of the reasons Obama picked Biden back in 2008, why he chose him over, say, Evan Bayh, who was a politically similar figure, is that because Biden was old, Obama thought that Biden would not be running to be his successor in 2016. And that would help his administration run more smoothly. He did not admire the Bush-Cheney policymaking, but he thought that dynamic between a president and a vice president was like good and correct. And indeed, Biden didn't run in 2016, right? Obama sort of patched the

to Hillary Clinton. But then Biden, four years later, he jumps in the race. He's quite a bit older than anyone who had ever been president before. And it's not like, wow, he's quite a bit older than anyone who's been president before, but he doesn't show it at all. He does show it. We have never, never, never been unable to overcome whatever the problem was. If you agree with me, go to Joe 30330 and help me in this fight. Thank you very much. He seems like the oldest major presidential candidate ever.

I don't think that's necessarily a decisive factor. It's not like Donald Trump is like Mr. Mental Acuity. Policy matters a lot. Biden, you know, has a lot of good answers. He has a lot of reasonable ideas. But this is like a totally normal, reasonable thing for people to argue about, especially for the candidates at the back half of the ticket. You had up there on the stage, Amy Klobuchar. You had Cory Booker. You had Pete Buttigieg. These are people whose policy ideas are not that different from Biden's, but who

are 10, 15, 20, 30, in Buttigieg's case, 40 years younger. And you would think that they could talk about this, but nobody really has been so far. He's also been in politics forever. He joined the Senate in 1972, right? Yeah. That's a long- When he was very young. Time ago.

Yes, when he was very young. But he has been in office a long time. He's been in office a long time. He's been in Washington a long time. And you don't traditionally win presidential elections by championing Washington insiders. No. Right? I mean, it's not just like— Not lately.

Trump was like an outsider in a weird way. But, you know, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton were sort of outsiders in the normal way, right? Obama had only been in the Senate a couple years. Clinton had been the governor of a small state. Parties normally succeed by nominating a candidate who promises they're going to clean up the mess in Washington. Biden has been part of the mess in Washington since longer than like a very large share of Democrats were not alive. You know, that again I think is like a valid thing to talk about. Do Democrats want to go against Trump with their champion being a sort of emblem of the swamp?

Or do they want an outsider who can claim to be fixing things? And is that the safe way to have the discussion instead of maybe as Castro did last night, veering more towards something that could be considered ageist? Yeah, I mean, I think it might be smarter to say, look, like, do we really want to spend this campaign litigating votes that were taken in the 1980s? Do we really want somebody who's so associated with the United States Congress over a million years? Like, don't we want a voice of change, of somebody from the future, you know, something

like that. And I felt like it was simmering below the surface at last night's debate, but hasn't yet broken through in the way it deserves to. Eric Swalwell said it directly to his face in the first debate. I was six years old when a presidential candidate came to the California Democratic Convention and said, it's time to pass the torch to a new generation of Americans. That candidate was then Senator Joe Biden. Joe Biden was right when he said it was time to pass the torch

to a new generation of Americans 32 years ago. He's still right today. Now that he's dropped out, might it ironically be on his closest competition in Iowa, Sanders or Warren, to make the same argument? You know, it may. I mean, it's again, Sanders and Warren are not ideally positioned to make this point. And the other moderates in the race seem to be being very cautious. You know, I think one line of thinking is the Amy Klobuchar's of the world are sort of hanging out there waiting to see if Warren overtakes Biden. And then there's like a panic in the establishment. And they're like, oh, we need you, Amy.

If Biden wins Iowa, does he win the race? Yeah. I mean, Biden is in a very strong position. I mean, I don't think his performances as performances have been commanding. But Donald Trump was not a great performer in the Republican debates. And he still won the nomination fairly easily because he had the views that like most Republicans agreed with. Most Republicans wanted a harsh anti-immigration policy and they wanted a softer take on Social Security and Medicare. And Trump stood for that. And so he won. I think most Democrats want some kind of policy continuity with Obama. They want some level of political

caution about embracing sort of out there progressive ideas. And Biden stands for that. If he can win there, the rest of the calendar only gets easier for him. So that's still months away. But unless something like actually changes, he's still on track to win. And do you think that change would come out of one of these future debates

between now and January? I mean, I do think the debates are the best opportunity to sort of shake up the narrative of the race, particularly for the candidates out of the top three? Because the debates level the playing field a little bit. You're Cory Booker. You're Beto O'Rourke. You're Pete Buttigieg. You're Kamala Harris.

Like you get to be up there on stage. You have the opportunity to get attention for yourself. And if you use it well, you can make things happen. Matthew Iglesias is the host of the Weeds Podcast right here at Vox. I'm Sean Ramos-Firm. This is Today Explained. The executive producer of the show is Irene Noguchi. The show is produced by Bridget McCarthy, Noam Hassenveld, Halima Shah, and Amina Alsadi. Our engineer is Afim Shapiro.

We had extra help this week from Britt Hansen and Jelani Carter out in New York City. Thank you. Spaceship, and Today Explained is produced in association with Stitcher, and we are proudly part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Amen.