What A Day - Mr. Sanders Wins New Hampshire

Episode Date: February 12, 2020

Senator Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire primary Tuesday night with around 26 percent of the vote, followed by Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, and Joe Biden. We talk to Sanders voters at his victory event and give the view on the ground from 2020's first primary.And in headlines: Roger Stone’s lighter sentence, beautiful dogs gather in New York City, and T-Mobile and Sprint get approved to get married.

It's Wednesday, February 12th. I'm Akilah Hughes. And I'm Gideon Resnick, and this is What A Day, coming to you from New Hampshire, where I ate a disturbing amount of chicken nuggets yesterday. Dude, you didn't have to go all the way to New Hampshire to eat chicken nuggets. They've got them here. Oh, I did. I would not want to eat this many nuggets around anyone that I know. Yeah, you would. I've seen you around

nuggets before. I'm called out. On today's show, a recap of the New Hampshire primary and results that actually came in on time. All right. Well, Senator Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday night with about 26 percent of the vote. South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg took second place with about 24%. And Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar came in third at almost 20%. We're going to get into what happened. But first, Gideon, you were at the Sanders victory event. Tell me what it was like. Yeah. So the energy sort of ebbed and flowed throughout the night a little bit just, you know, as the margin got tight towards the end. But people were still there and really excited to see Sanders when he declared victory. He gave a pretty brief speech thanking the volunteers in the state and his supporters as well, and then congratulated by name all the

other candidates that were in the race. With victories behind us, popular vote in Iowa and the victory here tonight, we're going to Nevada. We're going to South Carolina. We're going to win those states as well. He did not do the Howard Dean scream after that, which was probably good. In his speeches also recently, Sanders, like the other candidates, has been sure to mention that whoever ends up being the nominee, they're all going to have to work together to defeat Trump. So getting that unity message out early. We also talked to voters throughout the day about why they were supporting Sanders and spoke with some after the results had been tallied too. Let's take a listen to some of that. I wrote it for Bernie and I'm just hoping that I get some

help. You know, I mean, I worked all my life and I don't think I should still have to work, which I'm working two part-time jobs right now. I'm retired. It shouldn't be that way. Medicare, free education, equal pay, essentially anything that makes the country better rather than worse than how it is right now. Four years ago when Trump won, I was emotional and I was like, wow, I need to kick it into high gear now. And I knew who I wanted to vote for four years ago and I got to do that now. And so rewarding. That was James Randolph of Nashua, Malcolm Goodman of Nashua and Juliana LaRue in Manchester. All right. Well, what about turnout? Did we

have a repeat of Iowa in any regard? We did not, thankfully. That's really good. Turnout was very good, actually. It surpassed 2016 turnout and is approaching the turnout of the 2008 Democratic primary. Like you mentioned, there had been concerns in Iowa that that turnout wasn't as high as it could have been or as high as people would have liked. So this is definitely a better sign for Democrats. As we get more information, though, I also kind of want to see in the coming days what the overall young voter turnout was, especially given the driver's license law that we discussed on a previous episode. Yeah, well, you know, the more people that vote, the better. That's really good news. And

when people vote, Democrats end up winning. So what can we say about how the other candidates finished? Well, in second place was Pete Buttigieg, who had surged in the state since Iowa and captured a share of the moderate vote that's there. We should definitely also be paying attention to the delegate splits between these candidates. If we continue to have close contests like these, Buttigieg and Sanders are basically neck and neck on that front right now. Third place was the surprise, Senator A.B. Klobuchar. New Hampshire was feeling global warming, if you will. I guess... Oh my God. Did you say global? I did. I hope that's six. I guess that some of the surge that we saw on the ground over the last

couple of days was real. And perhaps late deciders really did swing over to her after the most recent debate. And going forward then, I think we can kind of expect Klobuchar to keep making this strong case against Buttigieg's lack of experience. That will probably come up in other debates as she tries to eat into his support. But the problem that exists for these candidates is that they keep splitting this moderate vote against Sanders, and nobody has really been able to consolidate it. And that's why we're seeing these results like these in the first two states. Also would note, too, that we spoke to a first-time voter for Klobuchar and Buttigieg, respectively. So

that was good that those folks were coming out for the first time, too. Sure. All right. Well, so those are the top finishers. What about the rest of the field? There's still a lot of people left. There are still a lot of people. So moving to fourth and fifth place, Senator Warren came in fourth with less than 10% of the vote, meaning that she will not get delegates from the state. Biden was then in fifth in another bad finish for the former frontrunner in this race, how quickly some of these things can change. Both of them are saying that they're looking forward and moving on, but they're in really tough spots right now, to say the least.

We already saw earlier in the day that Biden canceled plans to be at a victory party in New Hampshire, which is just about the clearest sign that you're not feeling confident, you don't go to your own party. And he opted to go to South Carolina. And that's the state where he is going to try to make his last stand to keep this campaign alive. And another indication of where things are moving is that Sanders is now in front in the national polling average too. And Biden seems to be shedding his lead with black voters in those polls. And those were the two things, the lead amongst black voters and the national polling average lead that was really kind of propping Biden up even when people had their doubts when the fundraising

was lagging and when these results were not good in these early states. Yeah. I mean, you know, the states coming up are totally different demographically than Iowa, New Hampshire. You know, there's more voters of color. So that's going to be interesting. Plus, I think, you know, we're all underestimating how much money Michael Bloomberg is spending and, you know, how much he's going to get in the race for March. So we do have a long way to go. But what can we start to expect next? I think first, yeah, those are great points. I think it's maybe, you know, more of the stratification of the vote with all these candidates still in. I mean, only Andrew Yang and Michael Bennett dropped out on Tuesday, which is making the likelihood that there are a lot of candidates still in the race by Super Tuesday kind of high. And with Yang,

it's really interesting because anytime a candidate drops out, there's a question of where their voters are going to go, how to keep them engaged, how to keep them involved in the process. And Yang said that he wants to see another candidate support his universal basic income plan. And maybe that would be a doorway into getting those voters on board with another candidate. But to the point that you were making about the next states that are coming up, Nevada is next, followed by South Carolina, then Super Tuesday in quick succession. And this could not be more different terrain, to say the least, than the states that we've seen so far. We're no longer dealing with states that have something like 90 plus percent white populations. So the challenge they're in, if Klobuchar and Buttigieg

are going to remain the successful candidates that it seems like they are right now, is that they're going to have to register with voters of color, and they just have not been able to do that yet. But back in New Hampshire, now that the primary is over, Democrats are looking towards November. Here's one party official that we spoke to, Josh Marcus Blank of New Hampshire's Democratic Party. Ultimately, we're all working on this together. And so our work will really start Wednesday to make sure we're engaging folks and in a position to have every primary campaign, all of which have been very, very strong, especially as we get to the end, they're pretty enormous campaigns and, you know, have really engaged the activists and even some first time voters. And we'll want to

use that entire group and form the coalition to make sure we can win. And it's, I think, a big benefit to us to have this competitive primary because of all those folks who will then be part of our group in November. Yeah. And he also said the Democrats in New Hampshire are going to emphasize economic issues and health care in their run against Trump. Yeah. And that should be pretty easy considering what we were reporting on earlier this week with all those budget proposal cuts. All right. Well, we get a sweet reprieve of the New York Times needle for over a week before the Nevada caucus. And whether your candidate is still in or not, and whether you voted yet or not, you can always check your registration status and get more information on this whole process by going to votesaveamerica.com. I'm there right now. It's very chill.

Chill indeed. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. Headlines. A true roller coaster in the trial of very buff Monopoly man Roger Stone yesterday. Late on Monday, federal prosecutors recommended seven to nine years in prison for the longtime Trump ally and former campaign advisor for impeding investigators in the Mueller investigation. Stone's sentence was unusually harsh for his charges, but that's because he also threatened his judge on social media and violated a gag order. Folks, that's just Roger being Roger. On Monday night, Trump tweeted that Stone's

sentence was unfair. And on Tuesday, officials with the Justice Department submitted a new filing recommending a much lighter sentence for Stone. They said their move wasn't influenced by Trump, but apparently it felt gross enough to prompt three prosecutors on the case to withdraw and one prosecutor to resign from the department entirely. So, yeah, it was a bad day for the rule of law. We'll be following the story and we'll let you know just how much Trump can control the courts from his sticky little iPhone. I would also like us to refrain from using the phrase

sticky little iPhone in the future if we can help. T-Mobile got the okay to go through with a plan to take over its competitor Sprint. Let these companies kiss each other. A federal judge approved the merger yesterday, which combines the country's third and fourth largest wireless carriers. Now with a combined total of about 100 million customers, T-Mobile is better positioned to face off with its other competitors, AT&T and Verizon. The approval signals yet another example of the Trump administration's affinity for corporate

monopolizing. The White House won't stop until there's one big mega corporation left in the country. I just hope that corporation is your very own Crooked Media. I mean, I don't know how I feel about that. Indigenous groups in Canada inspired an enormous protest movement to stop a proposed pipeline from ravaging their land. Nearly 28% of the 416-mile coastal gas link pipe passes through Wetuitin lands, and if any other pipeline on Earth is an example, the risk to land and wildlife there is very real. Indigenous protesters have erected blockade camps along the proposed pipeline route to prevent access to construction sites disrupting rail schedules and passengers. An injunction against the blockades has been in place since December 31st,

and Canadian Mounties have arrested more than 60 protesters as they've moved to clear the camps. And yesterday, Americans watched with bated breath as people in the Northeast cast votes that could decide the future of our nation. Yes, it was the Westminster Dog Show, where well-behaved dogs go snout to snout to see who is the hottest in terms of a dog. This year was a historic one, with the Golden Retriever making it into the final seven for the first time ever. Wow. Apparently, the show dog world thought that they didn't like golden retrievers, but that all changed when they met Daniel, a dog who is more beautiful than any celebrity.

The judges awarded best in show to a standard poodle named Seba, robbed, which is fine if that's what you're into, but the real winner of the night was Google Images, which just received a big data dump of very glamorous dog shots. Oh my gosh, I'm making all of them my background on my phone.

Those sweet, beautiful pups. And those are the headlines. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, do a tweet that gets us out of jail, and tell your friends to listen. By the way, if you're into reading and not just the latest research on global warming and the closed zone layer like me, What A Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Cricut.com slash subscribe.

I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And that's how you say adios, New Hampshire. We'll see you in 2024. This will work better when you're back. It works fine fine I like it 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.

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