What A Day - Debate Night Las Vegas

Episode Date: February 20, 2020

Six presidential candidates took the stage in Las Vegas last night for the last debate before the Nevada Caucuses on Saturday. And folks: it was a street fight. We discuss how Bloomberg fared on his first time out (spoiler alert: not well) and some extremely tense moments between our beloved midwesterners. And in headlines: hat birds are back, My Own Private Greater Idaho, and California to apologize for the internment of Japanese Americans.

It's Thursday, February 20th. I'm Akilah Hughes. And I'm Gideon Resnick. And this is What A Day, where the offer is still out to Andrew Yang to join us as a political correspondent. If he doesn't, I don't know how I'm ever going to learn how to do math. I've been using this abacus and frankly, I'm fucking tired of it. On today's show, what you missed at last night's Democratic debate. Last night, six Democratic presidential candidates took the stage in Las Vegas for the ninth debate of this election cycle in the last debate before the Nevada caucuses on Saturday. We heard from former Vice President Joe Biden, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg,

as well as Senators Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren. Before we get into some of the substance here, let's talk about overall impressions. It was pretty savage. Yeah, it was. I mean, it was a really solid debate, I thought, with a lot of contrast going through records. This is how people should choose candidates, ultimately. Yeah, I definitely thought it was the most entertaining debate. So thank you for that. We watch a lot of these and, you know, it gets a little repetitive. So this actually felt like we finally got to the meat of it. But also, it was like the first time

we saw, you know, where these candidates truly do differ. And also, you know, what it looks like when people's teeth come out. So let's start with Senator Warren, who had a major night, especially considering how much she has to prove right now. Yeah. Yeah, no, she she definitely was the standout in a lot of different ways. And that's right. I mean, in New Hampshire and Iowa, Warren was solidly pushed out of this top two contender status and with the Nevada caucus this weekend and then South Carolina and Super Tuesday in quick succession, this is really one of the last opportunities to kind of course correct in this race and get that momentum back. Yeah. And out the gates, he was like swinging at Bloomberg. Everybody was. We're definitely going to get to it.

But she really took him to task on his response to a question about whether his company was a hostile work environment for women, as you know, has been reported by news outlets who are looking into lawsuits filed against Bloomberg for, you know, alleged crude remarks and other inappropriate behavior. He said he takes reports of sexual harassment seriously and has promoted women into leadership roles at his various organizations. But here was Warren's response to that. I hope you heard what his defense was. I've been nice to some women. That just doesn't cut it. The mayor has to stand on his record. And what we need to know is exactly what's lurking out there. He has gotten some number of women, dozens, who knows, to sign non-disclosure agreements, both for sexual harassment and for gender discrimination in the workplace. So, Mr. Mayor,

are you willing to release all of those women from those non-disclosure agreements so we can hear their side of the story? We have a very few non-disclosure agreements. How many? Let me finish. How many is there? None of them accused me of doing anything other than maybe they didn't like the joke I told. And let me just and let me put there's agreements between two parties that wanted to keep it quiet. And that's up to them.

Oh, no. Yeah. Warren and Biden also in this longer exchange went on to push Bloomberg to release any woman who signed NDA so that they could speak out about his behavior. And Warren also pointed out that this isn't just about litigating Bloomberg's character, but about his perceived electability. The point being that if you have a person who could have negative stories come out during the course of an election and a very rich man with, you know, allegations of this sort at prior, you know, his workplace, it's similar to Trump. It's harder to draw that contrast. Yeah.

And this was the energy that Warren exhibited throughout the debate. And it wasn't all directed at Bloomberg. She repeatedly just went down the line comparing the candidates' plans, setting herself apart, which felt like, you know, that's the actual goal of an event like this. After all these redundant debates, it was good to see how they're actually all different from one like, you know, that's the actual goal of an event like this. After all these redundant debates, it's just it was good to see how they're actually all different from one another, you know? Yeah, no, definitely. And this seems a lot more in line with how Warren started this campaign, which was assailing billionaires, then where it's been in the past few months, which has been a little more muddled in terms of what the overall pitch was that she

was offering against everybody else. Yeah. And so if Liz was the roast master, it's obvious Bloomberg was the roasty, which makes sense. It was his debate debut. The entire field took him to task for his record as mayor of New York. They interrogated his stop and frisk policy. Vice President Biden took the opportunity to invoke Obama's intervention in that policy. Warren again dragged him for his apology regarding that legislated brutality. He was asked about redlining and claimed he always thought it was a bad practice, even if the tape we all heard and saw says otherwise. And Sanders pushed back on what he considered a, quote, cheap shot, conflating democratic socialism with outright communism. And Bloomberg didn't shy away from being a capitalist. He leveled with the audience,

claiming that most Americans want to live under capitalism. And he took that idea to the brink with his monologue on why he deserves to be a billionaire. So here's that exchange. Billionaires in this country saw an $850 billion increase in their wealth. Congratulations, Mr. Bloomberg. But the average American last year saw less than a 1% increase in his or her income. That's wrong. Mayor Bloomberg, should you exist? I can't speak for all billionaires. All I know is I've been very lucky, made a lot of money, and I'm giving it all away to make this country better. And a good chunk of it goes to the Democratic Party as well. Is it too much? Have you earned too much money? Has it been an obscene amount of money?

Should you have earned that much money? Yes. I worked very hard for it. And I'm giving it away. Thank you. You get the question, should you exist? I don't think things are going swimmingly. Yeah, that's a real temp check.

All right. Well, for context here, Bloomberg has taken the giving pledge, which means he's promising to give away at least half of his wealth in his lifetime, which is what he wants people to focus on. They are not. His rivals want people to think hard about whether anyone should make this much money, even if they plan to give it away. Another big theme of the night was Buttigieg going after Klobuchar. These two moderate candidates in the field are, you know, second and third a lot of places. So want to take us through some of the moments where they faced off? Yeah, absolutely. So that's right. These were the guys who these were the candidates who came

in second, third in New Hampshire, obviously still important in that they're moderate candidates who are having difficulty getting voters of color into their coalitions. In one of the moments, a recent interview with Klobuchar in which she forgot the name of the Mexican president was brought up. And Buttigieg really leaned into that pretty hard, prompting Klobuchar to ask him, quote, Are you saying I'm dumb? Are you mocking me here, Pete? Throughout this, a lot of tension, both of them were essentially doing the Arthur fist meme in real life. Yeah. So if you're not familiar, it's Arthur. He's wearing a yellow sweater. He's got his little aardvark fist. John Legend looks like him when he wears a yellow sweater. I don't know how to tell you. Google it. Right. Yeah. We can only do so much on a pod. But anyway,

so here's the second exchange that got even testier on Klobuchar's record with immigration and judges. If you're going to run based on your record of voting in Washington, then you have to own those votes, especially when it comes to immigration. You voted to confirm the head of customs and border protection under Trump, who is one of the architects of the family separation policy. You voted to make English the national language. Do you know the message that sends in as multilingual a state as Nevada to immigrants? You have been unusual among Democrats. I think the Democrat among all of the senators running for president most likely to vote for Donald

Trump's judges who we know are especially hostile to dreamers and to the rights of immigrants. I wish everyone was as perfect as you Pete, but let me tell you what it's like to be in the arena. Number one, do the math. If my friend Andrew Yang was up here, that's what he'd say. In fact, I have opposed, I have not supported two-thirds of the Trump judges, so get your numbers right. And I am in the top 10 to 15 of opposing them. Number two, when it comes to immigration reform, the things that you are referring to, that official that you are referring to was supported by about half the Democrats, including someone in this room. I mean, name

names, Amy. It was wild. At one point, I thought she was asking him to go get a switch. They just, you know, they're clearly going after each other only. It happened all night. Yeah, it definitely seems like there's something personal between them at this point. Buttigieg was mostly right on a number of these claims. Klobuchar was staunchly against the appointments of Supreme Court Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, but voted for more than 56% of Trump judicial nominees who went on to be confirmed, which is higher than many of her colleagues. And on the English language section, it was an amendment in 2007 that had to do with federal agencies providing materials in languages other than English. And Klobuchar has disavowed the vote in the years since. And she did vote for the head of CBP while the two other senators on stage did not. A lot of other Democrats

did as well, though. But again, this underscores a broader fight that the two of them have had about what qualifies as good experience and also that, you know, with so many moderates in the race, by nature of that, they might be fighting over some of the same pool of voters. And Buttigieg wanted to litigate the immigration record in the first state where Latino voters make up a large percentage of the voting bloc. We hadn't heard him talk about this before, so that seems very targeted. But there is one person that we haven't talked about that much yet. That's right. Tom Steyer, who had every ad besides Bloomberg during the commercial breaks. Yes, him. We saw a lot of him, even if we weren't necessarily asking for it. But also Bernie Sanders.

Sanders got questions on a host of topics that he has previously addressed, has experience addressing Medicare for all his personal health, whether he's releasing enough medical information, some of his online supporters behavior and democratic socialism. And for stretches, there was little attention paid to him by some of the other candidates, despite the fact that he is a current favorite in Nevada and the national poll leader. Buttigieg notably was one of the few who kept trying to draw those contrasts when others weren't necessarily doing it. Instead, Sanders was given the chance to gang up on Bloomberg, one of his primary opponents by Super Tuesday, with everyone else who was trying to do the same on stage. Yeah, I mean, you know, the getting was

good. Everybody had to just get in on it. Yeah. But there was a telling final question about what should happen with delegates after the primary. The question went like this, quote, should the person with the most delegates at the end of this primary season be the nominee, even if they are short of a majority? Sanders, who is currently most likely to have the most delegates total if things hold as they are right now, said that he thinks that whoever has the most should win. Everyone else said that they wanted to follow the rules of the convention, which could leave the door open for a candidate who maybe came in second or third or fourth to end up as a nominee. But very, very long road ahead. Yeah, I mean, hopefully we just figure out who we want, because we're all already stressed enough. But where does this leave us? Well, we have Nevada on Saturday, and there's a decent likelihood that most of the vote there has already been cast with early voting, a lot of people

coming out, which is an encouraging sign. So it remains to be seen what if any kind of immediate effect this debate would have. But at the same time, very important to note, plenty of people in other places like California, one of the largest and most important states for this primary, are currently early voting still. And lastly, up until now, Bloomberg's polling, the numbers that we have seen kind of propelling him into second place in some of these national polls, has been based on just this blanketing of money, including ads that have kind of made it seem like Obama had endorsed him when no such thing happened. What happens now that he was seen like this on a national stage and performed this way? Yeah, we'll have to find out.

We're going to have more for you tomorrow on the caucuses in Nevada and then the results that should hopefully come in at some point this weekend, barring another Iowa. And we're going to let you guys look that one down. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. signed an executive order fueled by xenophobia to incarcerate 120,000 Japanese Americans. President Reagan apologized on behalf of the nation and offered reparations to survivors back in the 80s. Many of the camps were in California, so it's warranted that they'd give their own separate apology. Yeah, cool idea. Reparations. Just putting it out there. No reason at all. Black history month. The California bill also seems to allude to the Trump administration's treatment of Muslim Americans, Iranian Americans, and asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border.

It warns that it's important to learn from the mistakes of the past to, quote, ensure that such an assault on freedom will never again happen to any community in the United States. That's right. Any community. Reparations. So anyway, things have changed since the early 2010s, when crowdfunding usually meant giving your friend $10 so she could make a web series about funny roommates. Now, 50 million Americans, that's 20% of our country, say they've given to crowdfunding campaigns like GoFundMe and Kickstarter to raise money for medical costs.

Eight million started a campaign for themselves, and that's according to a new study from the University of Chicago, which attributed the popularity of these campaigns to rising out-of-pocket health care costs. A different study in The Lancet examined single-payer health care systems like Medicare for All as alternatives to asking strangers for help online. It found that those programs would save Americans $450 billion and prevent 68,000 deaths per year, according to what its authors say are conservative calculations. That's right. People can go back to fun Kickstarters about their roommates' terrible projects. You might remember last year, pigeons started showing up with cowboy hats in Las Vegas,

and everybody loved it. Well, the hat pigeons are back, folks, only this time things got a little political. The birds are wearing Trump wigs and MAGA hats now in an apparent show of support for Trump or a devastating slam on Trump. Literally, no one knows. It's very confusing satire. A group called Pigeons United to Interfere Now,

or Putin, you get it? Glued hats on the birds. Please, do not let them near your pets. Don't do it. A group of Oregon conservatives want to leave the liberal cesspool called Portland behind and redraw their state's border to put them inside a new conservative megastate known as Greater Idaho. Under the plan called Move Oregon's Border for Greater Idaho, 18 rural counties of Oregon's 36 total would officially become part of Idaho,

where they could yell about bathrooms and watch Tim Allen's TV show to their heart's content. The plan has been received warmly by Idaho's Governor Brad Little and Oregon State Rep Gary Leaf, but it would require many, many approvals to be enacted. Last fall, some of the same Oregonians tried to force a recall election against Oregon's Democratic Governor Kate Brown. Bro, with all due respect, you live in the woods. Just, like, go outside, enjoy nature, go swimming or something. Or just use, you know, internet for Tim Allen's show. What's the... you still get internet there.

And those are the headlines. That's all for today. If you like the show show make sure you subscribe leave a review remove any mean notes that are taped to our backs i am watching you and tell your friends to listen and if you're into reading and not just jokes printed on popsicle sticks like me what a day is also a nightly newsletter check it out subscribe at crooked.com subscribe i'm akilah hughes i'm gideon resnick And that's why What A Day should exist. We should. For the record.

Yeah, please exist. What A Day is a product of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Sonia Tun is our assistant producer. Our head writer is John Milstein, and our senior producer is Katie Long. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.