1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,180 ROBERT COSTA: Welcome to the Washington Week Extra. I'm Robert Costa. 2 00:00:03,180 --> 00:00:07,530 Let's pick up where we left off on our broadcast and open our notebooks on 2020. 3 00:00:07,530 --> 00:00:12,220 Joining us tonight, Josh Dawsey, White House reporter for The Washington Post; Josh 4 00:00:12,220 --> 00:00:17,140 Lederman, national political reporter for NBC News; Amna Nawaz, senior national 5 00:00:17,140 --> 00:00:22,420 correspondent for the PBS NewsHour; and Molly Ball, national political correspondent for 6 00:00:22,420 --> 00:00:27,820 TIME Magazine. As Molly wrote in this week's TIME Magazine, quote, "while the field has shrunk 7 00:00:27,820 --> 00:00:32,830 somewhat, it remains jumbled heading into the next contests, the...Nevada caucuses and 8 00:00:32,830 --> 00:00:37,150 the South Carolina primary...Buttigieg and Klobuchar remain little-known in those 9 00:00:37,150 --> 00:00:41,120 states...And billionaire former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg...is on the verge of 10 00:00:41,120 --> 00:00:47,660 qualifying for the next debate on February 19." Molly, your story, start with you. 11 00:00:47,660 --> 00:00:54,360 When you look at Mayor Bloomberg, where does his campaign sit inside the Democratic 12 00:00:54,360 --> 00:00:59,240 Party? Is there a lot of goodwill, is there anger about a billionaire trying 13 00:00:59,240 --> 00:01:01,960 to buy his way in? What's your reporting tell you? 14 00:01:01,960 --> 00:01:04,770 MOLLY BALL: It's actually - I think when he first got in there was an assumption he 15 00:01:04,770 --> 00:01:09,350 probably wouldn't get much traction because his ideological profile is so out of sync 16 00:01:09,350 --> 00:01:13,450 with particularly the sort of, you know, rank-and-file activists who vote in Democratic 17 00:01:13,450 --> 00:01:19,910 primaries. And it - and Elizabeth Warren in particular, her whole theme is about corruption and 18 00:01:19,910 --> 00:01:23,720 money in politics, and so she's really gone after Bloomberg, saying he's trying to buy it. 19 00:01:23,720 --> 00:01:29,740 But you know, you can't buy an election without getting people to vote for you, and what 20 00:01:29,740 --> 00:01:34,960 we've seen is that this ad blitz - this incredible, you know, hundreds of millions of 21 00:01:34,960 --> 00:01:38,880 dollars in ads in all of the Super Tuesday states and across the country, they're good 22 00:01:38,880 --> 00:01:42,340 ads, they're persuading people, and that's why he's getting traction. 23 00:01:42,340 --> 00:01:46,770 But also, I think there's a lot of - there's some goodwill for him in the Democratic 24 00:01:46,770 --> 00:01:52,680 Party because he has pledged that whether or not he is in the race, his money will be. 25 00:01:52,680 --> 00:01:57,110 So whoever the Democratic nominee is is going to have the advantage of potentially more 26 00:01:57,110 --> 00:02:02,000 than a billion dollars in independent spending by Mike Bloomberg aimed at bashing Trump. 27 00:02:02,000 --> 00:02:05,590 COSTA: Josh, I'm really curious about when you're on the trail with Mayor Bloomberg. 28 00:02:05,590 --> 00:02:09,640 What's it like? Are these events very professional? 29 00:02:09,640 --> 00:02:14,640 Is he shaking hands with voters, is he making the case, or is this a TV-heavy campaign 30 00:02:14,640 --> 00:02:18,480 with just a few events scattered around? What's the real take here? 31 00:02:18,480 --> 00:02:21,990 JOSH LEDERMAN: Yeah, I covered the wires for many years and it feels like being in the 32 00:02:21,990 --> 00:02:26,840 presidential bubble, being either with a general election nominee or covering a president 33 00:02:26,840 --> 00:02:31,130 himself. He swoops in, he's there for 20 minutes, he speaks, and he gets out. 34 00:02:31,130 --> 00:02:35,020 He's not spending a lot of time glad-handing with voters. I don't think he thinks he 35 00:02:35,020 --> 00:02:39,610 needs to do that. He's not spending a lot of time answering questions from voters. 36 00:02:39,610 --> 00:02:42,260 He gives his spiel and that's it. 37 00:02:42,260 --> 00:02:48,080 And part of this, I think, is about the fact that he's focusing on Donald Trump and not 38 00:02:48,080 --> 00:02:53,120 on the other Democrats, who are all competing in South Carolina and Nevada, and instead 39 00:02:53,120 --> 00:02:57,650 he's trying to project as if he's already the nominee, as if he's already into this 40 00:02:57,650 --> 00:03:00,390 man-on-man fight with President Trump. 41 00:03:00,390 --> 00:03:03,620 And that has helped create this aura around him that seems to be growing. 42 00:03:03,620 --> 00:03:06,750 COSTA: What are the people like around him, Josh? You've covered city hall. 43 00:03:06,750 --> 00:03:08,910 Was Bloomberg mayor when you were there or was it only De Blasio? 44 00:03:08,910 --> 00:03:11,570 JOSH DAWSEY: Partially, partially. He was there part of the time I covered city hall. 45 00:03:11,570 --> 00:03:15,470 COSTA: So I mean, people in our world as reporters know people - Howard Wolfson, Kevin 46 00:03:15,470 --> 00:03:20,060 Sheekey, these top Bloomberg advisers. What kind of strategists does he have around him? 47 00:03:20,060 --> 00:03:22,340 How do they see this race? 48 00:03:22,340 --> 00:03:28,090 DAWSEY: Very disciplined folks around him, very kind of traditional establishment folks 49 00:03:28,090 --> 00:03:33,890 around him. They're not taking a lot of, I think, unnecessary risk. 50 00:03:33,890 --> 00:03:37,500 I think - here's the way they see the race, the folks I've talked to around him. 51 00:03:37,500 --> 00:03:42,050 It will take other folks collapsing - it will take Biden collapsing, it will take others 52 00:03:42,050 --> 00:03:45,750 collapsing - and there will need to be - the Democratic Party at some point will need to 53 00:03:45,750 --> 00:03:47,950 coalesce behind someone. 54 00:03:47,950 --> 00:03:51,490 And Bloomberg thinks going across the country to all of these different states he's 55 00:03:51,490 --> 00:03:54,810 talking to voters that the other candidates are not talking to, he's putting ads in 56 00:03:54,810 --> 00:03:58,750 places the other candidates are not going, he's doing all of these things in a national 57 00:03:58,750 --> 00:04:04,110 strategy hoping that when it actually comes that he's on the ballot there's still a 58 00:04:04,110 --> 00:04:08,020 desire for someone like him to be the unifying candidate. 59 00:04:08,020 --> 00:04:11,470 Whether that can happen or not I don't know, but that's their theory of the case. 60 00:04:11,470 --> 00:04:16,400 And frankly, it seemed more of a folly a few months ago than it does now. 61 00:04:16,400 --> 00:04:20,140 If you watch what's happening now and you see the dynamics that are playing out across 62 00:04:20,140 --> 00:04:23,930 the primary, you can kind of see him getting momentum and it working. 63 00:04:23,930 --> 00:04:25,680 COSTA: Amna? 64 00:04:25,680 --> 00:04:28,120 AMNA NAWAZ: Well, I mean, the other thing to realize at this point in the race is that - 65 00:04:28,120 --> 00:04:30,730 you know, I was thinking back to New Hampshire night. 66 00:04:30,730 --> 00:04:33,200 We had a Democratic strategist who's been doing this years and years, Peter Hart, and he 67 00:04:33,200 --> 00:04:36,790 was saying what happens now is this whole thing moves from retail politics to wholesale 68 00:04:36,790 --> 00:04:41,140 politics after Iowa and New Hampshire, and that sort of aligns perfectly with the way 69 00:04:41,140 --> 00:04:44,740 that Bloomberg has been positioning himself and the way that he is messaging. 70 00:04:44,740 --> 00:04:48,510 Also, if you are one of the many, many early Democratic voters out there who are 71 00:04:48,510 --> 00:04:52,550 prioritizing what you want from a candidate, what we hear again and again regardless of 72 00:04:52,550 --> 00:04:55,790 where you are is I want someone who beats Donald Trump. 73 00:04:55,790 --> 00:04:58,910 That doesn't matter if they're progressive, if they're a centrist, if they're a moderate. 74 00:04:58,910 --> 00:05:02,780 And that is what the entire message of the Bloomberg campaign has been built around, so 75 00:05:02,780 --> 00:05:05,120 he's speaking to those people. 76 00:05:05,120 --> 00:05:07,520 COSTA: So those voters are out there - they're everywhere - who want to have 77 00:05:07,520 --> 00:05:10,570 electability at the top of their list of what they're looking for in a candidate. 78 00:05:10,570 --> 00:05:14,680 But you also talk to these voters on the Sanders side of the aisle in the Democratic 79 00:05:14,680 --> 00:05:20,350 Party who want wholesale change, the structural change. Democratic socialist revolution. 80 00:05:20,350 --> 00:05:25,500 MOLLY BALL: What I find so interesting about that actually is that it is such a 81 00:05:25,500 --> 00:05:30,050 universal phenomenon - the obsession with electability - that even Bernie Sanders is now 82 00:05:30,050 --> 00:05:35,130 making an electability argument. He has changed the sort of rubric of his late rallies 83 00:05:35,130 --> 00:05:38,620 in New Hampshire and the ones that he's starting to do now for Nevada. 84 00:05:38,620 --> 00:05:43,710 They're all called "Bernie Beats Trump" rallies. And so he, too. You know, I think 85 00:05:43,710 --> 00:05:47,860 his followers see him as this sort of pure incorruptible above politics sort of figure. 86 00:05:47,860 --> 00:05:51,590 But he's got his finger in the wind, too, and he knows that what - if he really wants to 87 00:05:51,590 --> 00:05:56,410 be the nominee and not just make a statement in this campaign he's got to convince people 88 00:05:56,410 --> 00:05:58,690 that he can win, and it's a different theory of change. 89 00:05:58,690 --> 00:06:00,880 COSTA: He's making an interesting argument. 90 00:06:00,880 --> 00:06:03,900 MOLLY BALL: But, you know, we've been hearing this argument from both parties for a long 91 00:06:03,900 --> 00:06:08,580 time. Do you do bold colors, a strong ideological vision, galvanize the base of your 92 00:06:08,580 --> 00:06:13,150 party, win that way? Or do you tack to the center, try to win over swing voters? 93 00:06:13,150 --> 00:06:17,500 That's - there's a lot more sort of political science evidence for that route. 94 00:06:17,500 --> 00:06:20,720 But politics is topsy-turvy and Donald Trump is president. Who knows? 95 00:06:20,720 --> 00:06:23,470 COSTA: To follow up on that, that's such an important point. 96 00:06:23,470 --> 00:06:28,670 There's a group in the Democratic Party, Josh, that sees populist anti-establishment 97 00:06:28,670 --> 00:06:33,880 figures like Senator Sanders as the key to get a groundswell of new voters and support, 98 00:06:33,880 --> 00:06:38,650 and there's that Bloomberg model, which is win over the suburban voter with targeted ads 99 00:06:38,650 --> 00:06:42,780 on gun control and the economy, and that seems to be the divide about how do you actually 100 00:06:42,780 --> 00:06:46,640 beat Trump. They all want to beat Trump in the Democratic Party, but how do you do it? 101 00:06:46,640 --> 00:06:49,040 LEDERMAN: Right. There's, basically, two ways you win elections. 102 00:06:49,040 --> 00:06:53,590 You drive up turnout among your base or you focus on persuadable voters in center, and 103 00:06:53,590 --> 00:06:57,900 Democrats have not yet figured out which of those two strategies is most likely to get 104 00:06:57,900 --> 00:07:02,220 Donald Trump defeated. I think that's why we see such high levels of anxiety among 105 00:07:02,220 --> 00:07:06,690 Democratic primary voters as of now and why the field coming out of the first few 106 00:07:06,690 --> 00:07:09,750 contests is still so muddled. 107 00:07:09,750 --> 00:07:14,310 COSTA: Pete Buttigieg, he's been attacked by Rush Limbaugh this week. He's facing a 108 00:07:14,310 --> 00:07:18,930 lot of intense attacks not only from the left but from the right. How is he faring? 109 00:07:18,930 --> 00:07:22,340 DAWSEY: Well, he had a very impressive finish in New Hampshire. 110 00:07:22,340 --> 00:07:26,830 The question will be - when I was down in South Carolina, there's a lot of skepticism 111 00:07:26,830 --> 00:07:30,390 towards him there among African American voters. They don't feel like they know him. 112 00:07:30,390 --> 00:07:34,030 He hasn't been on the air a lot there. He hasn't really been entrenched in places 113 00:07:34,030 --> 00:07:37,380 like South Carolina before. I mean, at the end of the day, he is a compelling figure 114 00:07:37,380 --> 00:07:41,420 that many people love but he is not the national politician. The name ID is not as 115 00:07:41,420 --> 00:07:46,590 high as Biden's. He doesn't have that kind of institutional entrenched bond with some 116 00:07:46,590 --> 00:07:51,000 of these folks as the other candidates do. And it's not saying that it's - he couldn't 117 00:07:51,000 --> 00:07:54,150 change it, that he could not surpass it, that he could not fix it. 118 00:07:54,150 --> 00:07:58,150 But I do think he has some uphill challenges past these first two states in places where 119 00:07:58,150 --> 00:08:00,790 he may not be the most natural sell. 120 00:08:00,790 --> 00:08:03,410 MOLLY BALL: He's got a - he's got a stature problem, right. 121 00:08:03,410 --> 00:08:06,100 People look at him and they aren't quite sure they're seeing a president because of his 122 00:08:06,100 --> 00:08:10,480 age, because of his experience. He just hasn't convinced a lot of people that he can 123 00:08:10,480 --> 00:08:14,160 fill those shoes and I think that's what we're going to see him really scrambling to do. 124 00:08:14,160 --> 00:08:18,620 COSTA: Final thoughts. Andrew Yang, running on universal basic income, drops out of 125 00:08:18,620 --> 00:08:22,040 the race this week. So does Senator Michael Bennet. 126 00:08:22,040 --> 00:08:26,860 Andrew Yang. Change the debate in the Democratic Party? 127 00:08:26,860 --> 00:08:31,140 NAWAZ: You know, I think he introduced a lot of ideas that weren't previously in the 128 00:08:31,140 --> 00:08:34,930 discussion. For a guy who went from being, like, the single-issue candidate to 129 00:08:34,930 --> 00:08:39,260 actually making it into several debate stages and ended up being the only candidate 130 00:08:39,260 --> 00:08:42,850 of color left on those stages at some point, that was, certainly, important for the 131 00:08:42,850 --> 00:08:46,510 party in terms of messaging but also in terms of broadening the message. I don't think 132 00:08:46,510 --> 00:08:50,380 it's the last we've seen of Andrew Yang either, by the way. But also, I just wanted to 133 00:08:50,380 --> 00:08:53,980 point out earlier on the Buttigieg issue, which was - and I do think a lot of his 134 00:08:53,980 --> 00:08:57,840 voters - Yang's voters - could end up going to people like Buttigieg as well. 135 00:08:57,840 --> 00:09:03,350 While we wrestle with sort of where we are as a country and where we're going to be and 136 00:09:03,350 --> 00:09:07,720 who we're going to be, for whatever path Buttigieg has forward or not, it is worth noting 137 00:09:07,720 --> 00:09:13,000 that the first openly gay candidate for president polled a significant amount of voters in Iowa 138 00:09:13,000 --> 00:09:17,780 and New Hampshire, and that is not something we could have said five years ago or 10 years ago. 139 00:09:17,780 --> 00:09:22,100 COSTA: So true. Any other thoughts? We'll leave it there. It's Valentine's Day so 140 00:09:22,100 --> 00:09:25,660 everyone can go home and relax or go out. I'm sure you're going to go out, Dawsey. 141 00:09:25,660 --> 00:09:28,310 DAWSEY: Whatever you think. (Laughter.) 142 00:09:28,310 --> 00:09:31,260 COSTA: All right. That's it for this edition of the Washington Week Extra. 143 00:09:31,260 --> 00:09:34,010 You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on our Washington Week website. 144 00:09:34,010 --> 00:09:36,920 While you're there, check out our Washington Week-ly News Quiz. 145 00:09:36,920 --> 00:09:50,780 I'm Robert Costa. Thanks for joining us. See you next time.