12.20.19 / DEBATE 6: ENTER THE WINE CAVE
[THEME]
SEAN RAMESWARAM (Host): Emily Stewart, Vox. Last night, the sixth Democratic debate, very awkwardly timed between the President getting impeached and Christmas?
EMILY STEWART <VOX POLITICS REPORTER>: Yeah, but even more awkward maybe is that it was on the same night as the Miss America pageant, which a lot of people probably don't even realize still exists.
SEAN: <laughs> I had no idea that was going on, but I'm guessing more people probably watched Miss America than the debate. Which did you end up watching?
EMILY: So I kind of watched both. But if I can be honest, I did spend some time on Miss America.
CLIP <We are Miss America 2019> Talented, accomplished, principled
EMILY: As I was watching I kind of thought, you know what, a lot of these answers sound kind of similar. So since I watched both of them last night, I decided to make up a little game. I bet a lot of people wouldn't know what came from a pageant contestant, although now they call them “candidates” at Miss America, and what came from a presidential candidate?
SEAN: They're both candidates?
EMILY: Yeah, they changed it now because Miss America is trying to be better. They got rid of the swimsuit competition. They now have to have a social impact initiative. Obviously, all of these women are still beautiful and this is about beauty. But Miss America is trying to be a little more modern.
SEAN: Hmm. So did you make this game? Did you actually execute?
EMILY: Indeed, I did. It is on the Vox dot com website.
SEAN: Can we play the game?
EMILY: Yeah. So let's do it.
GAME SHOW SCORING
EMILY: So basically, what I'm going to do is read a quote to you and then you tell me, do you think it came from a presidential candidate or a beauty queen?
SEAN: Okay. Cool.
EMILY: All right. So the first one, America needs a champion right now. And I'm that champion.
SEAN: That's actually good. Well, that could really be either. I'm going to say that's from last night's debate.
EMILY: <wrong buzzer> Nope. It was Miss Connecticut last night.
SEAN: <laughs> Hit me with another.
EMILY: Alright.
SEAN: I really wish I could have that one back.
EMILY: The world needs America, but it can't be just any America. It has to be one that is actually living up to the values that make us who we are: supporting peace, supporting democracy, supporting human rights and supporting stability around the world.
SEAN: Ugh. I feel like something like that was said at the debate last night. Can I go debate again?
EMILY: And that is correct. That was Pete Buttigieg.
SEAN: Yes.
EMILY: Yes. All right. You're ready for another one?
SEAN: Yeah, I'm ready. I'm still pissed about the first one. <laughs>
EMILY: Did you know that every eight minutes a parent or caregiver makes a medication error that affects the child?
SEAN: I don’t remember that. I'm going to say pageant.
EMILY: That is correct. That was Miss Virginia. You're doing pretty well.
SEAN: Thank you
EMILY: So now we are going to do prior years.
SCORING SWITCH
EMILY: And I think these ones might be a little bit easier, they’re like pretty well known but maybe not who knows? Um. Alright, so, “I was told I didn't smile enough.”
SEAN: Well if they're well known it's got to be debate, right?.
EMILY: I kind of gave it away. Yeah. That was Carly Fiorina in 2015. Obviously a lot of women have heard that and I'm sure plenty of the Miss Americas have.
SEAN: Sorry, Carly.
EMILY: And then our last one. “Who am I and why am I here?”
SEAN: That is 100 percent debate.
<CLIP> ADM. JAMES STOCKDALE: Who am I? Why am I here?
SEAN: And I 100% forget who said it, but it was very funny at the time.
EMILY: Right. So that was Admiral James Stockdale. He was a 1992 independent vice presidential candidate who was running with Ross Perot.
SEAN: Oh, that's right. That's right. Oh, my gosh. Vintage. In my defense, I was 7 years old.
EMILY: Same.
SEAN: And lived in another country.
EMILY: But yay! So that's the game, right? It's fun and it's not as easy as you would think.
SCORING OUT
SEAN: Well, I’m really glad you came up with this game because it shows that pageants aren’t as dumb as you think, debates aren’t as smart as we’d hope, and at the end of the day they’re both about TV ratings more than they should be. But I should say last night’s debate was better than almost all of the ones that preceded it! It was almost never obnoxious. There were substantive discussions!
EMILY: And obviously, it also helps that there were only seven people on this stage and we're getting closer to the primaries actually starting. And you started to see that kind of come out last night.
SEAN: And we should talk about who the seven people were. So it was Klobuchar, Biden, Steyer, Warren, Sanders, Buttigieg, and Andrew Yang. So what we saw start out of this very as this very diverse field with multiple people of color, lots of women, a few billionaires, is now six white people and one Asian guy. And credit to the PBS and Politico moderators last night, they actually asked Yang directly about this.
<CLIP> DEBATE MODERATOR AMNA NAWAZ: What message do you think this sends to voters of color?
ANDREW YANG: It's both an honor and disappointment to be the lone candidate of color on the stage tonight.
EMILY: And he also used it as a moment to talk about race in America and the fact that, you know, people of color being excluded is emblematic of a broader issue and really pivot toward his message...
<CLIP> ANDREW YANG: And the question is why am I the lone person of color on this stage? Fewer than 5% of Americans donate to political campaigns. You know what you need to donate to political campaigns? Disposable income. You know what you need to donate to political campaigns? The way we fix this is that we take Martin Luther King's message of a guaranteed minimum income, a freedom dividend of a thousand dollars a month for all Americans. I guarantee if we had a freedom dividend of a thousand dollars a month, I would not be the only candidate of color on this stage tonight.
SEAN: As I mentioned at the top, the debate sort of was awkwardly timed. It came one day after the president was impeached and just a few days before everyone heads off on vacation for the holidays, they had to lead with impeachment. Did anyone actually say anything interesting? They kind of led the last one with impeachment, too.
EMILY: Yeah, I mean, not really. It's awkward to talk about impeachment if you're running to replace the president, like you want to make more of a positive argument for yourself vs. like, well, maybe the Senate should get rid of him and then I'd be running against Mike Pence.
SEAN: Well, let's talk about some of the positive moments that people made for themselves. One of the first questions that seemed to depart from the usual sort of boilerplate of trade and the economy and climate was about this thing that Barack Obama said this week, which is essentially like the world would be a better place if more women were in charge. Is that fair paraphrasing?
<CLIP> DEBATE MODERATOR TIM ALBERTA: Former President Obama said this week when asked who should be running countries, that if women were in charge, you’d see a significant improvement on just about everything <cheers>. He also said, quote “If you look at the world it’s usually old people, usually old men, not getting out of the way.”
SEAN: And I think the question, went to Joe Biden first like, what do you think of that, Joe?
EMILY: Right. Well, it went to Bernie in and Joe Biden. And it was like, oh, hey, look, maybe ask a woman on the stage. And Amy Klobuchar made that point when they turned it to her. And she was like,
<CLIP> SENATOR KLOBUCHAR: Thank you for asking a woman this question.
EMILY: Then Elizabeth Warren did, too. But they framed it to her…
<CLIP> DEBATE MODERATOR TIM ALBERTA: Senator Warren you would be the oldest President ever inaugurated. I’d like you to weigh in as well.
SENATOR WARREN: I'd also be the youngest woman ever inaugurated.
EMILY: To kind of make a point that both her and Klobuchar have made, which is like, ‘Hey, we still have not had any women presidents and this is nuts.’
SEAN: That was a nice moment because everyone got to kind of have a laugh. And almost soon after that, we had a first really contentious moment of the evening and it was about wine caves. I couldn’t say it with a straight face.
<CLIP> WINE CAVE PROMO
SEAN: It was about wine caves, Emily. What is a wine cave?
EMILY: I guess it's where rich people keep their wine.
SCORING <HAYDEN’S EMPEROR QUARTET>
EMILY: So basically, this wine cave thing kind of kicked off when our colleague at Recode, Teddy Schleifer, found on Instagram some of these pictures of a mayor Pete fundraiser in California where there is this wine cave and a chandelier with Swarovski crystals all over. And so obviously, there's this broader question within the Democratic Party about how to deal with wealthy donors. You know, Elizabeth Warren is not taking any money from big donors. Same with Bernie Sanders and Mayor Pete really has embraced some of the bigger fundraisers.
SEAN: And Pete made the argument that he needs the money, whereas a lot of the candidates on stage don't because they're independently wealthy?
SCORING OUT
<CLIP> PETE BUTTEGIEG:You know, according to Forbes magazine I’m literally the only person on this stage who’s not a millionaire or a billionaire. This is important. This is the problem with issuing purity tests you cannot yourself pass. If I pledged, if I pledged never to be in the company of a progressive Democratic donor, I couldn’t be up here. Senator your net worth is 100 times mine.
EMILY: And he also pointed out that Warren, for her Senate campaign, has done fundraisers in the past, and this is sort of a new stance for her. But these two have been kind of going back and forth for weeks, so it's not surprising that this would come up.
SEAN: Senator Klobuchar kind of shut it down by saying, like, guys, we're not here to fight. Let's move on. Let's make progress. But then moments later, she was taking shots at Pete herself!
EMILY: Yeah. Amy Klobuchar yesterday really came out fighting. And she was really going after Mayor Pete. You know, I don't think Amy likes Pete very much.
SEAN: I don't think so either, Emily.
<CLIP> SENATOR AMY KLOBUCHAR: When we were in the last debate, Mayor, you basically mocked the 100 years of experience on this stage. And what do I see on this stage? I see Elizabeth’s work starting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and helping 29 million people. I see the Vice President’s work in getting $2 billion for his cancer moonshot. I see Senator Sanders’ work, working to get the veterans bill passed, across the aisle. And I see what I’ve done, which is to negotiate 3 Farm bills, and be someone who actually had major provisions put in those bills. So while you can dismiss committee hearings, I think this experience works. And I have not denigrated your experience as a local official, I have been one. I just think you should respect our experience when you look at how you evaluate someone who can get things done.
EMILY: So she kind of made the point with him that like, hey, young man, like, sit down and listen to some of these people. I respect them.
SEAN: Yeah, it was kind of a big night for Klobuchar, a big night for Yang. I liked a lot of things about the debate. I didn't love the moving background that was kind of hard to stare at. I didn't love that a lot of the more diverse candidates had disappeared. But I did like fewer people and better questions and more substantive conversation. And whereas all the other debates opened with health care, it's become so monotonous and cliché, this one ended with health care and like ended with a fight on health care?!
EMILY: Yes. So, yesterday, you did see Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders really kind of clash over health care. And this was really like a really unique moment. You have two guys who are ostensibly the front runners.
<CLIP> JOE BIDEN: And making sure we’re able to cover everyone who is in fact able to be covered. put your hand down for a second, Bernie. Okay?
BERNIE SANDERS: Just waving at you, Joe. Saying hello.
BIDEN: I know.
EMILY: And they really did have a pretty substantive argument over their different visions for health care. Know, Joe Biden has basically said he wants to build on Obamacare. You build out a public option. And Bernie Sanders obviously is a huge proponent of Medicare for all. He always says, I wrote the damn bill, but last night he did not. That was not like his big line last night, they really got into it and tried to draw some clear separation between themselves. And you really got to see, like how they both think about the issue of health care very differently.
<CLIP> JOE BIDEN: It covers everybody, it’s realistic, and most importantly it lets you choose what you want. Here you have 160 million people who have negotiated their health care plans with their employer, like many of you have. You may or may not like it. If you don’t like it you can move into the pubic option that I’ve proposed in my plan. But if you do like it, you shouldn’t have, you shouldn’t have Washington dictating to you ‘You can not keep the plan you have.’
MODERATOR TIM ALBERTA: Thank you Vice President Biden. Senator Sanders, 45 seconds for a response?
BERNIE SANDERS: Under Joe’s plan, essentially, we retain the status quo.
BIDEN: That’s not true!
SANDERS: That is exactly true. Thank you. And by the way Joe under your plan, you asked me how we’re going to pay for it, under your plan I’ll tell you how we’re paying for it right now. The average worker in America, their family makes $60,000 a year. That family is now paying $12,000 a year for health care, twenty percent of their income. Under Medicare for all, that family will be paying $1200 a year, because we’re eliminating the profiteering of the drug companies and the insurance companies, and ending this byzantine and complex administration of thousands of separate health care plans.
SEAN: And it was a reminder that, you know, despite everything we've been through this year, the front runners in this campaign are still Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.
EMILY: Exactly.
[MIDROLL]
SEAN: Matthew Yglesias, Vox, I was just talking to Emily Stewart, Vox, about last night’s debate and how after everything that’s happened this year, after Mayor Pete and Beto and Kamala and Castro and Bloomberg and Marianne Williamson, after all that, when it comes down to the polls, it’s still the Bernie Biden show, which is to say the continuation of Obama versus a new lefty, socialisty politics for the Democrats, which is to say that after all of this, this is basically the 2016 race all over again: Obama’s legacy versus Bernie.
MATTHEW: Right. I mean, that's not to dismiss Warren, who's in third place in the polls, or Buttigieg who is doing well in the early states, but they are both behind Sanders at this point and Sanders is behind Biden. And, you know, the the Biden Sanders primary, it's quite similar in a lot of ways to the Hillary/Sanders primary. The basic question is like, should Democrats change in some fundamental way or should they stay the same? And a lot of people, you know, Harris, Booker, people who seem very promising at one time or another and part of what felt promising about them to people who are sick of these tensions is they thought, ‘Okay, well, maybe we can turn a page on this,’ right? Have a new generation of leaders. But most of the electorate, it turns out, gravitates toward Biden or to Sanders. And that kind of basic tension inside the party remains quite robust.
SEAN: And if you had one issue that sort of captured the essence of that tension, I imagine it's the issue that most of the debates started with: it's Medicare for All versus what might be called like Obamacare Plus, huh?
MATTHEW: Exactly, and you see, you know, Sanders and Biden argue about this. You also saw a whole bunch of candidates initially come out for Medicare for All, I think assuming that by co-opting one of Bernie's signature issues, they could co-opt his supporters... when it turned out that, you know, that wasn't going to happen, right? That the Sanders constituency is very loyal to him. That started to lead Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, maybe even to an extent, Elizabeth Warren definitely Pete Buttigieg, to back away from that idea. Right. And so it's in part a debate about policy. But really, the policy debate is also about the people involved. It's about the Sanders movement and its viability. The challenge it poses to the establishment. And you've seen in the different candidates’ struggles to navigate those waters, how profound the divide really is and how little interest there sort of was in bridging it.
SEAN: What does that actually tell us about what voters feel about, say, Medicare for All or Obamacare plus, is the support for Biden over Sanders a statement of support for Obamacare, plus over Medicare for All or is it more personality based?
MATTHEW: I mean, I don't think it's personality based. It's in part about the issues and the specifics of, you know, free college, Medicare for All. But I think a lot of it and you saw this going back to Clinton-Sanders is feelings about the Democratic Party as an institution.
SCORING <TODAY WE’RE CLOSING IN>
MATTHEW: Sanders voters, they tend to have a negative assessment of the Democratic Party and of the political system as a whole. They're younger on average, and they are angry. They like that Sanders is so oppositional to the system. Then on the other hand, you have a bunch of people who are loyal, partisan Democrats, older, blacker than the Sanders constituency. They think the Democratic Party is good. They support Democratic Party leaders. Joe Biden, like Hillary Clinton, is a top figure in the Democratic Party firmament. They trust those people to do the right thing and to try to navigate difficult politics correctly. And they want to keep them in charge. The Sanders people don't see it that way. They are afraid of their interests being sold out and they want a new group on top of the pile.
SEAN: And there's still about an eight point gap between Bernie and Joe Biden in national polls. Does Bernie have any tricks up his sleeve to close that gap?
MATTHEW: You know, one advantage Bernie has is that he is stronger in Iowa, New Hampshire, than he is nationally, right? So if he can pull off an early win, he may get a boost nationally, sort of cruised to victory. I also do think an edge he has is a couple topics on which Biden and Obama are not on the same page. That's the Iraq war and also a bankruptcy bill that Biden did in 2005. Those are opportunities for Bernie to expand his constituency beyond the sort of hard core anti-establishmentarians. Another thing that Bernie taps into that is Obama-like is that he has very much a message of hope and empowerment, right? Sanders, you know, if you ask me about him, or a lot of cranky D.C. people say, you know, he's telling people he's going to do things that he can't really do. On the other hand, I think a lot of people, you know, to get involved in the process, to come out and vote, to come out and volunteer. They want to feel inspired. They want to believe that their activism can make a huge difference. And Sanders does paint that picture, which to me is reminiscent of Obama back in 2007, 2008. It makes you feel good about yourself to believe in the Sanders cause relative to Democrats who are telling you, like, that's never going to happen. That's not going to pass. We've got to be realistic. That's a kind of bummer message.
SCORING OUT
SEAN: The fact that President Trump, you know, called up Ukraine and asked President Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden seems to suggest that President Trump would prefer to run against Bernie Sanders. Do we have any idea who between the two candidates would fare better against Donald Trump?
MATTHEW: You know, in head-to-head polls, it looks like Biden does better than Sanders. The gap between the two of them is not huge, though, and these kind of early polls, they have some predictive value, but it's not enormous. So I think it's it's hard to say. I mean, you can you can speculate. But but I think realistically, the biggest issue out here is that Trump is not very popular, which makes him vulnerable. But his strength is concentrated in the key Electoral College states, which makes him hard to beat. And there's not that much more you can say beyond it. Other than that, Trump's actions that people's assessment of them will probably matter more than what Democrats do.
SEAN: It feels like the Democratic Party right now can't really afford to be fractured. There's a lot of talk about, you know, this is the most important election of our lifetimes, et cetera, et cetera. And yet the choice that seems to be in front of this party is between a moderate Obama type and a democratic socialist who has, you know, what would be considered radical ideas to a lot of Americans. Does that bode very badly for 2020?
MATTHEW: I think it's not ideal. I mean, like a lot of D.C. inside-type people, I was excited, intrigued early on by a lot of these younger sort of voices in the primary. I thought it would be helpful and constructive for Democrats to nominate someone who is not a self-proclaimed socialist, but who also isn't a pillar of the D.C. establishment for decades. Somebody who maybe wasn't around for the Iraq war vote or didn't support it. But it's just it's turned out that people have fallen -- not everyone, but a lot of Democrats -- into these kind of old grooves, these old lanes that were laid down in the 2016 primary. And even though it would be sort of convenient to like move beyond that or avoid it to a large extent, that same fight is just still ongoing.
SCORING <Hit the Ground Running>
SEAN: Matthew Yglesias hosts the Weeds podcast along with a couple other Vox voices. They’ll be covering last night’s debate on their show today if you just can’t get enough.
I’m Sean Rameswaram. This is Today, Explained.