Today, Explained - The Dems Went Down to Georgia

Episode Date: November 21, 2019

We’re taking a break from impeachment to talk about the fifth Democratic debate and the Buttigieg Bump. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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on stage last night in Atlanta for their fifth debate. I didn't even really mind the totally ridiculous Avengers-style intro on MSNBC. Let's show them what we've got. Let's show them what humanity can do. And then after that intro, they went straight into impeachment. We're in the middle of the fourth presidential impeachment proceedings in our nation's history. So we didn't really learn anything new on impeachment. Ella Nielsen is covering the 2020 race for Vox.

Senator Warren and Senator Klobuchar were asked on the top about it. Warren has been very clear that she has supported impeachment from the beginning. Sanders was asked about it, and he sort of said, yes, Trump is a terrible president, but also and then pivoted to his message of we need to address these more systemic inequalities. So I think that it was kind of a good platform for everybody to just say what they've been saying for a long time. I don't know if I'm projecting because he's been getting a lot more attention lately, but it felt like Pete Buttigieg was very, very prepared for this question and came

out like swinging with his answer more so than any of the other candidates. We are absolutely going to confront this president for his wrongdoing, but we are also each running to be the president who will lead this country after the Trump presidency comes to an end one way or the other. Buttigieg kind of benefits from not being a creature of Washington here. I mean, he's the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, which is a relatively small city. This is kind of his pitch for his presidency is that he is not of Washington. He is from America's heartland. He understands the challenges of regular people.

Washington experience is not the only experience that matters. There's more than 100 years of Washington experience on this stage. And where are we right now as a country? And I think that, you know, while everybody else is embroiled in this impeachment debate, he was sort of able to touch on it and then kind of launch straight into his own pitch about his candidacy. I have the experience of knowing what is at stake as the decisions made in those big white buildings come into our lives, our homes, our families, our workplaces, and our marriages. And I would submit that this is the kind of experience we need,

not just to go to Washington, but to change it before it is too late. And I sort of think that the impeachment as a backdrop to all of this might be good for Buttigieg more than anyone else, especially given that the senators that are running for president may actually have to come off the campaign trail to deal with an impeachment trial. So Buttigieg benefits no matter what on that. Ella, I feel like we didn't actually have that many robust conversations on policy last night, but we did have some revelations about the candidates through sometimes superficial conversations about policy. So I wanted to focus on three of those, income inequality, the environment, and race. Let's start with income inequality. And this conversation was

sort of about income inequality in the country, but also about the candidates on stage. Yes, Tom Steyer and his plaid tie got attacked for being a billionaire last night. And actually, then Andrew Yang leapt to his defense and, you know, was like, oh, Tom Steyer is a good billionaire. He cares about the environment. It was kind of an interesting illustrative moment because we've had plenty of candidates railing against millionaires and billionaires. But last night, it was kind of an interesting dynamic because Amy Klobuchar, the senator from Minnesota, talked about kind of her humble beginnings and so brought some more of her personal experience to it. I am someone that doesn't come from money. I see my husband out there. My first Senate race, I literally called everyone I knew and I set what is still an all time Senate record. I raised seventeen thousand dollars from ex-boyfriends. And I'd like to point out it is not an expanding base. So I think because the field is so large

and like there is still no clear front runner, we've lately had Tom Steyer entering the race. He is a billionaire who has run organizations like NextGen and Need to Impeach. Former New York City mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg is talking about getting in. And of course, like these guys, as Klobuchar kind of was nodding to, sort of have a little bit of an unfair advantage and that they can just self-fund. They don't need to go out and fundraise and worry about, you know, hitting their quarterly fundraising numbers because they just have so much money. So Yang defended Steyer as a billionaire who's dedicated a lot of his wealth and means to, you know, fighting climate change. But then Biden went after him pretty hard on climate change. So, yeah. So on Wednesday night, climate finally sort of got its big moment. And one of the things

that I noticed was the questions on climate like went to Tulsi Gabbard and Tom Steyer. None of the like leading four candidates got a question on climate, which I don't know, seemed a little off to me. But anyways, so Tom Steyer gets a question on climate. He immediately said, I'm the only person on this stage who will say that climate is the number one priority for me. But he kind of immediately got a jab from Joe Biden, who pointed out that Steyer used to invest in coal mining. While I was passing the first climate change bill,

and that, for the fact said, was a game changer, while I managed the $90 billion recovery plan, investing more money in infrastructure that related to clean energy than any time we've ever done it. My friend was producing more coal mines and produced more coal around the world, according to the press, than all of Great Britain produces. And Steyer tried to defend it and, you know, said that 10 years ago he came to the conclusion that climate is a huge problem and has since spent a lot on environmental causes. It was like a rare moment of tension, which I didn't feel like we got as much of last night a huge problem and has since spent a lot on environmental causes. It was like a rare moment of tension, which I didn't feel like we got as much of last night with people like de Blasio and Delaney and Hickenlooper out of the mix. Another one came up, of course, on race.

What was that conversation like? There was a sort of a two-pronged discussion on race. One came when Mayor Pete Buttigieg was asked about kind of a significant hiccup in their outreach to Black voters and that their plan that addresses racial inequality in America used a stock photo of a woman from Kenya as the main image. And Kamala Harris, as the only Black woman running for president, was asked about that. For too long, I think candidates have taken for granted constituencies that have been the backbone of the Democratic Party and have overlooked those constituencies and have,

you know, they show up when it's, you know, close to election time and show up in a black church and want to get the vote, but just haven't been there before. I mean, you know, there are plenty of people who applauded black women for the success of the 2018 election, applauded black women for the election of a senator from Alabama. But, you know, at some point, folks get tired of just saying, oh, you know, thank me for showing up and say, well, show up for me. And it's kind of worth noting that even though she had a powerful argument last night, she's been struggling in the polls, including in South Carolina, where Joe Biden is clearly the candidate that is far and away like running away with the black vote right now. So he has a huge coalition of support. And that's, you know, partially because he was Obama's vice president. He has ties in South Carolina. He's just like a known entity in the state. And meanwhile, the two candidates that were on the debate stage last night,

there are actually now three black candidates running with Deval Patrick in the mix. But Cory Booker and Kamala Harris have not been doing as well with black voters. So last night, it was really notable that Booker like went after Biden, especially on racial issues and on drug policy around marijuana. I have a lot of respect for the vice president. He has swore me into my office as a hero. This week, I hear him literally say that I don't think we should legalize marijuana. I thought you might have been high when you said it. And let me tell you, because marijuana, marijuana, marijuana in our country is already legal for privileged people.

And it's one of the war on drugs has been a war on Black and brown people. Biden did take a moment to clear up his views and say that he does believe in decriminalizing marijuana. But then if this was a moment to sort of look good on race, he kind of shit the bed because he said, listen, I come out of the Black community in terms of my support. If you notice, I have more people supporting me in the black community than have announced for me because they know me.

They know who I am. Three former chairs of the black caucus. The only African-American woman that had ever been elected to the United States Senate. A whole range of people. My point is... No, that's not true. The other one is here. Forgetting about Kamala Harris's existence when she was on the stage right there with him did not look good. Buttigieg also had to answer a couple of tough questions on race, which I think is sort of his biggest challenge right now.

I mean, this is something that he knows is an issue, his campaign knows is an issue. And there have been issues in South Bend with race relations between the police and members of the city, with housing, with Buttigieg firing the city's first black police chief after he took over. And so he talked about the consequences of racial inequity in his own city, I think he sort of admitted that, like, as a white man, he can't really relate personally to that struggle of Black Americans. But he also sort of tried to pivot and talk about the fact that he is a gay man and that he understands how it feels to be a marginalized member of society. While I do not have the experience of ever having been discriminated against because of the color of my skin. I do have the experience of sometimes feeling like a stranger in my own country, turning on the news and seeing my own rights come up for debate and seeing my rights expanded by a coalition of people like me and people not at all like me working side by side, shoulder to shoulder, making it possible for me to be standing here wearing this wedding ring in a way that couldn't have happened two

elections ago, lets me know just how deep my obligation is to help those whose rights are on the line every day, even if they are nothing like me in their experience. I think it remains to be seen if that is going to be sort of an effective pitch to African-American voters. But last night we sort of saw him trying to attempt to make an effort to bridge that gap. Did it feel to you like he found a new gear last night? I mean, he got more attention from the moderators and even from other candidates, and thus he kind of had to defend himself a little more. He was almost a little surly at times, I would say. It was an interesting juxtaposition to what we saw in the October debate when Buttigieg was the one that was doing a lot of the attacking, right?

Like he was going after Warren on Medicare for All. He and Klobuchar kind of tag teamed that one a little bit. But, you know, the Buttigieg campaign is kind of entering sort of this new phase, a new profile. But that comes along with distinct challenges, both on the debate stage and off the debate stage. In a minute, the rise of Mayor Pete, how it happened, whether it means anything. This is Today Explained. A lot of people out there have great ideas, right? But what if you don't know how to get that idea to people?

Like, there was this whole incident recently where this dude was, like, walking down the street in Jamaica, Queens, and he found an In-N-Out burger on the sidewalk in Jamaica, Queens. The thing that's interesting about that is that the closest In-N-Out burger to Jamaica, Queens like in Texas. There are no In-N-Out Burgers in New York City. And yet this guy was walking by on the sidewalk, looked down and saw this perfectly pristine In-N-Out Burger just sitting there on the sidewalk in a wrapper. And he was like, how did this happen? Anyway, he commemorated this moment of finding an In-N-Out burger on the sidewalk in Jamaica, Queens, with these great t-shirts that said Jamaica, Queens, with the In-N-Out logo on them. All the proceeds went to charity. But like, this guy had a great idea.

I wonder who built his website. It must have been a lot of work to market these t-shirts, to build a website, to sell these t-shirts, to distribute all these t-shirts out, I bet the guy who did it all could have used an all-in-one marketing platform for help. And MailChimp offers one of those. So if you're making a funny t-shirt based on an incredible story that happened one time, and you're ready to be your own boss while you're doing it,

and you're kind of asking yourself, how do I do this? Start with MailChimp. They got an all-in-one marketing platform, and you can find it at MailChimp.com. Pete Buttigieg is now the leader in Iowa, which gets the 2020 voting underway in just 11 weeks. A lot of the other main candidates in this race, they were sort of very well known before the primary started. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, those were sort of big, heavyweight celebrities. Pete has really sort of had to bootstrap a campaign.

Like, literally nobody knew who he was when he started. It seemed like a joke candidacy. How do you pronounce this? to the media. He went on all kinds of podcasts everywhere. He went on The Weeds. He is the mayor of South Bend, Indiana. He is a candidate for president in 2020. And in lieu of further introductions, let's just please bring out Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Then he became quite popular with donors. He raised a ton of money. And now he is running TV ads strategically in the early states, and the ads seem to be working. As a veteran and as a mayor, I've seen what we can achieve when we have each other's backs. You know, he's still, like, behind, obviously, but it's been a real kind of success story out of a very big field. So what's Mayor Pete's appeal?

I think something that Pete appeals to is people who like the idea of a more moderate Democrat, somebody who will not frighten the voters with radical positions, but who is still something of an outsider, something of a fresh face, right? That, you know, there's a sense that you need somebody who is not part of the system and not part of the establishment, but also isn't a frightening radical. At the same time, you hear incredible hostility to him from like members of Congress, right? Democratic Party elected officials really see him as a guy who's like jumping in line. It offends their sensibilities as professional politicians to see somebody that young with that thin a resume suddenly on top of the polls for Iowa caucuses. Is his resume that thin?

I mean, he's a veteran. He is an elected official. He speaks like more languages than your average American. Is he unqualified? It's an impressive resume, right? I mean, if you were talking about a candidate for statewide run, right, if you were talking about governor or senator, you'd say this is great. This is a young guy with a great resume for somebody in his mid 30s. Right. I've got more experience in government than the president of the United States. I've got more years of executive experience than the vice president. And I have more military experience than anybody who's arrived behind that desk since George H.W. Bush. I get that it's not a conventional background, but I don't think this is a time for conventional backgrounds in Washington right now.

But as a resume for a president, it's very unusual. I mean, South Bend, Indiana, is a small city, right? It's the fourth largest city in Indiana. And the idea of making the leap from there to the presidency with nothing in between is very unusual. Trump has obviously changed the rules of the game. But to people who've made careers in politics, right? Amy Klobuchar was district attorney, and now she's been a senator for a long time, and now she's running for president and there's this guy who has you know been mayor of a city of a hundred thousand people and now he's like yeah i'm gonna be president and it rubs a lot of people the wrong way what is he actually running on you know he early on made a big deal out of political reform he talked a lot about the

importance of changing the filibuster of looking at changing how the judicial system works and really emphasizing the need to democratize the political process. Well, first of all, we've got to repair our democracy. The electoral college needs to go because it's made our society less and less democratic. Then on policy substance, you know, he's offering what would have been considered a very progressive agenda 10 years ago, but looks moderate today. And that's a big sort of public option plan. He calls it Medicare for all who want it. Some increased funding for college and other educational subsidies. He's got a sort of what he calls a Douglas plan for black America. It addresses

redlining, a lot of issues like that. It's not shocking stuff, right? He's very much from the center of the Democratic Party today. What was distinctive about him in his early presentation was really that emphasis on political reform, which he has emphasized a little bit less more recently and instead has drawn the contrast on health care with Sanders and Warren. Just for the fun of it, how do you think someone like Mayor Pete might match up against someone like President Trump in the general election? I think in some ways he cuts an appealing contrast with Trump, right? He's young. He actually served in the military.

He's like a physically vigorous guy against this oldster. He's very good, very quick on his feet, you know, good at answering extemporaneous questions. He seems knowledgeable in a way that Trump isn't. At the same time, you know, if you're thinking about Trump's key electoral wins with white working class voters in the northern Midwest, Buttigieg, you know, he will emphasize his Midwestern ties and the fact that South Bend is a post-industrial city. But really, he's the mayor of a college town, right? And his whole biography is in sort of elite professional circles, right? Harvard, McKinsey. He goes back to his hometown.

But, you know, he didn't grow up there because his dad was a retired auto worker. His dad was a college professor. And, you know, you've got to wonder, right, does Pete have the connection with the right kind of voters to come and win? He's very weak in the primary with African-Americans, and he doesn't seem to have the persona to sort of get those white working class Obama to Trump switchers. At least that would be my concern about him more than, you know, can he go toe to toe verbally with Donald Trump? I think absolutely. That being said, he is doing well in Iowa with a lot of middle class voters.

In the early states where he's advertised, he's doing very, very well. In national polls, you know, he does well with sort of white college graduates, right? That's sort of his core base of support. So, you know, that works in an Iowa caucus. It works potentially in a New Hampshire primary. And the question for him is going to be, can he broaden that base of support, right? If he wins in Iowa, he will get a surge of positive coverage. That should give him a boost elsewhere. But how big of a boost? And in particular, can he make any kind of headway with African-American voters? Because you see polls like of South Carolina where he's getting 0 percent of the black vote.

And that's not a winning strategy in a Democratic primary. That being said, he's come a long way. He's doing well in Iowa, which is like, what, two and a half months away at this point. Is there a chance that, you know, a surge in Iowa could mean that Mayor Pete's going to be a lot more prominent player in this race? You never want to discount the guy who's leading in the early states. That's a big deal. It means something. It means other candidates will go after him. You know, at the same time, to keep it in perspective, right, what you really have here is a fascinating story. This guy nobody had heard of, this small city mayor, getting into the conversation is much more interesting than

the former vice president kind of hanging out at 30% for months. But still, 8% is not 30%. Joe Biden is the guy who's in first place. He's been in first place. Warren and Sanders are nipping at his heels. Pete is way behind, right? The odds of him winning still seem pretty low to me. But it is the most interesting political story right now is how has this guy gone from nowhere to somewhere? But then the question is, can he go from somewhere to actually winning? That's still a very uphill battle. Matthew Iglesias writes about politics here at Vox. I'm Sean Ramos for him. This is Today Explained.

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