Today, Explained - Booker blames the rules

Episode Date: January 15, 2020

Senator Cory Booker tells Sean Rameswaram why he never stood a chance and Vox's Ella Nilsen explains why Senators Warren and Sanders are fighting. (Transcript here.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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When they'd all get up on stage together for a debate, the Democratic Party almost looked like America. And then there was last night. Six candidates on stage debating, all of them white, most of them have got 60 or 70 birthdays under their belts. With just two weeks until the Iowa caucus, it is clear that things have changed. It happened over the course of the past month. Kamala Harris dropped out in December. Julian Castro dropped out in early January. And then just on Monday, Cory Booker gave up. Booker stopped by Vox's offices here in D.C. late last week. His campaign wasn't in great shape at the time. And I asked him what went so wrong. Well, I think that DNC did not realize that they were making rules that were new, we've never seen before, that ultimately has ended up advantaging people who have either a lot of money personally, who can hack the system, or people who through their sort of personalities

well known can get money quickly. Working against the candidates who have actually become president for our party in the past were people that were way behind for most of the campaign. Jimmy Carter, low single digits. Bill Clinton, low single digits. Barack Obama going to the Iowa caucuses, national polls, 15, 20 points behind. And they've actually designed rules that would have kept some of our nominees off. Remember, one month before the Iowa caucuses, John Kerry, John Edwards were at 4% and 2%. Sixth and seventh in the polling then would go on and finish Iowa one and two and be our vice president and presidential candidates.

When you make the whole election about national polls, we would not have had presidents like Clinton and Carter and Obama. National polls did not predict their winning. Heck, national polls didn't predict the last president. They were wrong. And so I say this for Iowans and they laugh. I joke with them. I say, you all are pretty good at defying what the national polls are telling you to vote for. Polling is not the indice. And so when you see people like Castro and Kamala Harris, I've worked with lots of people in politics. These are two of the more talented people that through their lived experiences were bringing things to the table that made so many Americans a

core part of our democratic voting base feel the sense of pride and gratitude when they left because they didn't have enough money to get to the voters, the actual people who vote. Even black women in my own family who were supporting me were like angry and felt some kind of way that a woman that could win twice in California statewide and be an extraordinary standout rising star in the Senate can't even get to Iowa to be voted upon. And that is very problematic. That's the party side of it. What about the people side of it? What about Joe Biden still being the front runner in national polling? Does the party still want Biden because of his connection to Obama instead of someone like you? Never before in our lifetime has a frontrunner in the Democratic Party throughout ever gone on to be president. You know, when Mondale, Gore, even Hillary Clinton in the

last election, they were all frontrunners. The only people who have ever gone to the White House are people like me, who come from behind people, people that the national media wasn't given that much of a chance, but then came into those early states that you have to win by your connection to people, by your ability to organize, by your ability to convince people in town halls.

Those are the people that have gone on to win in our party. So love Joe Biden. He swore me into the United States Senate. But to exclude from the stage people that are different, people that don't have the money or the popularity or the name recognition and not even give them a chance to make their case. When we clearly see the last person to make the debate stage is somebody who's been spending tens of millions of dollars on TV. Trust me, if I had that money, we would be on the debate stage. And so that's problematic that the party that's saying we want to get big money out of politics, the party that's saying that we think there's too much of an influence of concentrated wealth to create a system that can be so easily hacked by it. Senator Booker and I talked a bunch

more. We talked about his campaign and whether his message of love was really the right one for this moment. And a lot of the conversation feels kind of moot now that he's dropped out. But what he said about polling and the new rules imposed by the DNC struck a chord. So I asked Vox's Ellen Nilsson if there's truth to it. She's been covering this election season most recently from New Hampshire. And we started with a simple question. Is he right? I mean, in a sense, he is. I mean,

it's kind of ironic because basically, DNC chair Tom Perez kind of had this job of trying to figure out how to try to give everybody a fair shake or, you know, appear to give everybody a fair shake on the debate stage. There were 20 candidates running at that point. It was ginormous. I mean, this was back when we were having two different debate nights because we literally couldn't get everybody on a single stage in one night. So they came up with these new requirements that Booker is talking about, that folks would have to make a polling requirement. And this could either be a certain percentage in national polls or a certain percentage in a number of qualifying early state polls, so polls in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. And then additionally, you would have to have a fundraising threshold

that you met. And rather than just it being a lump sum that you had to meet, you also had to have a certain number of donations, a threshold of donations that you met. Perez told me in an interview back in the spring, this was sort of supposed to be a way to respond to the party's grassroots, to make sure that the grassroots were included, and to try to be more inclusive of candidates and responsive to the grassroots wing of the party. And what Booker is saying is that this did the opposite, that sort of these thresholds that increased each time there is a new debate,

there's debates every month, each time these thresholds increased, it kind of kept winnowing down the field, which is sort of what the DNC designed it to do. But at the same time, it shut out these candidates that were polling low, who really needed to make the debate stage for people to get exposed to them in addition to their early state campaigning.

So it was sort of almost like the debates became these mini primaries themselves. And we kept sort of seeing people drop out after they failed to qualify to make the debate thresholds. And we should note that the field's now 12, but only six made the stage last night. Yes, exactly. Senator Booker and Andrew Yang both met the donor threshold for last night's debate, but their poll numbers are what kept them off stage. But these are certainly two candidates voters like.

Is there something that these polls are missing or even getting wrong by chance? I don't think that the polls are necessarily wrong. I just think that it's part of a really tough situation of still being in a pretty massive field, having so much focus be on the forefront runners at this point who are all white. You know, we're talking about Biden, Warren, Sanders, and Pete Buttigieg. But I think that it is a combination of the size of the field and sort of struggling to break through these debate requirements. And then also the fact that people in the early states that Booker is talking about, you know, the ones that he was sort of trying to rest his campaign with, you know, to do well he was sort of trying to rest his campaign with,

you know, to do well in Iowa, like Barack Obama did well in Iowa. A lot of people are sort of worried about this electability question. And so a lot of people are, I feel like, becoming a little bit more risk averse than they might have been in past elections, because there is sort of this specter of, you know, a general election with Donald Trump looming over all of this. And everybody is well aware that whoever they pick, you know, could be the Democratic nominee. That person is going to have to go up against Trump. And so when you're sort of caught in this loop, this kind of feedback loop of like low polling and not getting on the debate stage, so you're not getting the exposure, voters that I have talked to in New Hampshire definitely start to take notice. And I have heard with folks like Booker, sometimes with Amy

Klobuchar, who was on the debate stage last night, you know, I really like that candidate. They really speak to me. I, you know, I think they're really smart. I think they're really great. But they're not polling well, which makes me think that other people don't like them. And that makes me nervous because we need to have somebody that everybody likes to defeat Donald Trump. What is it about a Booker or a Kamala Harris or a Julian Castro that didn't strike a chord the way, say, a Mayor Pete did? Well, you have to remember that. So the, with the order of the early states, I mean, there are four in total, but Iowa goes first, New Hampshire goes second. And these are the two most white states. Like they are, New Hampshire is like 90% totally white people.

Iowa's something around like, you know, 85. And I think that is tough. I mean, Barack Obama kind of had this electricity in 2008 where he was, you know, able to do really well in Iowa. But I think this time around, not to say that, you know, Booker and Harris were polling super well in South Carolina, because I think that the polls there showed that folks like Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, two white candidates, were doing better among African-American voters in South Carolina as well. But the fact is, is that in order to do well in Nevada and South Carolina, you first have to do well in Iowa and New Hampshire, which are two overwhelmingly white states. So you're meeting a lot of older white voters. And I think a lot of these folks that I've talked to in New

Hampshire, when they look back at like what went wrong in 2016, they're really focused on sort of this idea of a Rust Belt working class white voter that didn't turn out for Hillary Clinton and voted with Donald Trump. And I think that they are sort of more anxious about what that person has to think in the 2020 general election than, say, you know, a black voter in Michigan who didn't turn out or a black voter in the South who didn't turn out. They're kind of worried about other white people. OK, so the field is looking a lot less diverse, but there's at least still two women who are on the stage during last night's debate, right? And it's not like anyone's sitting around asking whether a woman can beat President Trump, right?

Right? That's in a minute on Today Explained. Support for today explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained. Ramp.com slash explained. R-A-M-P dot com slash explained.

Cards issued by Sutton Bank. Member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply. Today, today explained. Ella, I don't love the idea of covering these like internecine scuffles between the candidates, but this one sort of blew up last night in a way that maybe felt worth talking about. So what is going on between Elizabeth Warren and Bernard Sanders? Well, as one activist put it yesterday to The New York Times, mom and dad are fighting. To sort of set the stage on where this is all coming from.

So over the weekend, Politico first reported that Sanders' campaign was going negative on Warren in a script that volunteers had when they were calling people to ask them who they were voting for. Volunteers for the Sanders campaign were given scripted talking points criticizing Warren and suggesting her supporters are elitist. I was disappointed to hear that Bernie is sending his volunteers out to tranche me. And then a couple days later, CNN had this bombshell report that back in 2018, when Sanders and Warren had this meeting before they announced their candidacies, basically to sort of like acknowledge that both as two very prominent progressives were going to run for the Democratic nomination, sort of kind of lay out what a so-called non-aggression pact to basically be like,

I'm not going to go after you. You don't go after me. Let's promote progressive issues and everybody's good. And then this week we sort of saw that fall apart. Sanders told Warren he did not believe a woman could win, according to four sources, two people Warren spoke with directly and two others familiar with the meeting. And Warren came out and confirmed that account of the meeting. Sanders himself forcefully denying the characterization as ludicrous, saying in a statement to CNN, it's sad that three weeks before the Iowa caucus and a year after that private conversation, staff who weren't in

the room are lying about what happened. And so, of course, this came up last night at the debate. Sanders asked about it, again denied that he had said that a woman couldn't win in 2020. And I don't want to waste a whole lot of time on this because this is what Donald Trump and maybe some of the media want. Anybody knows me, knows that it's incomprehensible that I would think that a woman

could not be president of the United States. Go to YouTube today. There's a video of me 30 years ago talking about how a woman could become president of the United States. And it didn't so much go into the continuation of what it had become, which was sort of a he said, she said situation. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by three million votes. How could anybody in a

million years not believe that a woman could become president of the United States? And let me be very clear, if any of the women on this stage or any of the men on this stage win the nomination, I hope that's not the case. I hope it's me. But if they do, I will do everything in my power to make sure that they are elected in order to defeat the most dangerous president

in the history of our country. And then the ball was in Warren's court. And rather than sort of saying, no, Bernie, you're lying, you did say this, dangerous president in the history of our country. And then the ball was in Warren's court. And rather than sort of saying, no, Bernie, you're lying. You did say this. She kind of went off on this tangent about gender and, you know, who can win elections, this kind of obsession over whether a woman can't win 2020 because Clinton ultimately lost the electoral college to Trump? This question about whether or not a woman can be president has been raised and it's time for us to attack it head on. And I think the best way to talk about who can win is by looking at people's winning record. So,

can a woman beat Donald Trump? Look at the men on this stage. Collectively, they have lost 10 elections. The only people on this stage who have won every single election that they've been in are the women. Amy and me. Is that still a question that the Democratic Party is asking itself, that the country's asking itself? Yeah, I think 2018 was the year of the woman. And now two years later, you know, rather than just being like, okay, 2018 showed us that women in fact can win. There is all of this hand-wringing going on again because ultimately this is a person

who is not going to be sort of a symbolic rebuke to Donald Trump. It is the election to see whether or not Donald Trump is going to get elected again. And so everybody is like, guys, we really can't screw this up. But also everybody has their different version of what electability means. So I've talked to voters who are like, you know what? Yes, a woman can like really hand it to Donald Trump on the debate stage.

And other people that just say, you know what? I really just still don't think that America is ready for it. And like, I hate to say it, but I think that the country is still too misogynist for a women candidate to go up against Trump and win. It just feels funny to have this conversation about like whether a woman can be president when like someone who admitted to sexually assaulting women is the president. Like the bar seems so low at this point. How do Warren and Klobuchar talk about their electability on the campaign trail? Is the point moot to them, or are they actually making the case?

Oh, no. I mean, Klobuchar is, like, literally, that is the core of her message on the campaign trail. I mean, she always likes to say, like, I have never lost an election since fourth grade when my slogan was all the way with Amy Kay. That is the most believable thing I've ever heard in my life. You have to be competent to win and you have to know what you're doing. And when you look at what I have done, I have won every race, every place, every time. I have won in the reddest of districts. I have won in the suburban

areas, in the rural areas. I have brought people with me. And I mean, Klobuchar actually has like a good claim to electability and electability in the Midwest, which is like where everybody is worried about somebody being electable in 2020. You know, she's from Minnesota, which is a state that has a very blue urban center in Minneapolis, St. Paul and the Twin Cities. But, you know, she's from Minnesota, which is a state that has a very blue urban center in Minneapolis, St. Paul and the Twin Cities. But, you know, a big chunk of the state is also pretty red. And she has not only won there, but she has won by massive margins, like every time she has run for statewide office. That is like the core of her pitch to voters is, you know, I know what these Trump voters want. I know that they are ready to come back to the Democratic Party.

And, you know, rather than a progressive like Sanders or Warren, who's over promising all of these pie in the sky ideas, like I can really deliver concrete examples of things getting done and the change that that they want. Has the party changed at all? It was refreshing to get back to this original idea that we started with to see so many women, a gay veteran, so many people of color, a Latino candidate, a few biracial candidates. One of them was half Indian, you know. Did something change in the party or is this sort of the same party that just has some more diverse candidates on the fringes. Will the eventual nominee be sure to include a person of color as their running mate or a woman as his running mate? I think that that's definitely going to be a consideration. I mean, the reason that Stacey Abrams keeps getting talked about as a vice presidential, you know, potential vice presidential pick is, you know, Democrats need Black women in particular to turn out en masse for them in 2020. It's not just sort of this, you know, obsession over the

upper Midwest. It's kind of like a Democratic Party that's almost like afraid of its own success and kind of what came after that. People are really fearful of, like, the direction that the country went in 2016, and we haven't gotten out of it yet. We don't know the way to get out of it yet. So I think people are really not sure if the way is to just stick with white candidates. But it sort of seems like

that's kind of the direction it's going now. Ella Nilsen covers politics at Vox. She's in New Hampshire until the primary next month. You can follow her work at Vox.com or on Twitter at Ella underscore Nilsen. That's N-I-L-S-E-N. I'm Sean. I'm at Ramis Furum. The show is at Today underscore Explained. I don't know if you remember, but in a WNYC interview in 2016, right after Kanye West said that he wanted to run for president in 2020,

I asked you if you would support his candidacy. And at the time... I'm scared. Now in this season where Donald Trump is doing so well, again, if Donald Trump can do it, so can Kanye West. And Kanye West might do it with a lot more style and a better haircut. Do you still think Kanye should run? No. Card pass.

No, definitely not. Definitely not. You missed the old Kanye. Yes. not. You missed the old Kanye. Yes. God, I missed the old Kanye. All right, Senator Berger, thank you so much for your time. All right, thank you. Cheers.

I miss the old Kanye. Straight from the gold Kanye. Chop up the soul Kanye. Set on his goals Kanye. I hate the new Kanye. The bad mood Kanye. The always rude Kanye. Spazzing the news Kanye.

I miss the sweet Kanye, chop up the beats Kanye, I gotta say, at that time I'd like to meet Kanye.