WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:03.180 align:start ROBERT COSTA: Welcome to the Washington Week Extra. I'm Robert Costa. 00:03.180 --> 00:07.530 align:start Let's pick up where we left off on our broadcast and open our notebooks on 2020. 00:07.530 --> 00:12.220 align:start Joining us tonight, Josh Dawsey, White House reporter for The Washington Post; Josh 00:12.220 --> 00:17.140 align:start Lederman, national political reporter for NBC News; Amna Nawaz, senior national 00:17.140 --> 00:22.420 align:start correspondent for the PBS NewsHour; and Molly Ball, national political correspondent for 00:22.420 --> 00:27.820 align:start TIME Magazine. As Molly wrote in this week's TIME Magazine, quote, "while the field has shrunk 00:27.820 --> 00:32.830 align:start somewhat, it remains jumbled heading into the next contests, the...Nevada caucuses and 00:32.830 --> 00:37.150 align:start the South Carolina primary...Buttigieg and Klobuchar remain little-known in those 00:37.150 --> 00:41.120 align:start states...And billionaire former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg...is on the verge of 00:41.120 --> 00:47.660 align:start qualifying for the next debate on February 19." Molly, your story, start with you. 00:47.660 --> 00:54.360 align:start When you look at Mayor Bloomberg, where does his campaign sit inside the Democratic 00:54.360 --> 00:59.240 align:start Party? Is there a lot of goodwill, is there anger about a billionaire trying 00:59.240 --> 01:01.960 align:start to buy his way in? What's your reporting tell you? 01:01.960 --> 01:04.770 align:start MOLLY BALL: It's actually - I think when he first got in there was an assumption he 01:04.770 --> 01:09.350 align:start probably wouldn't get much traction because his ideological profile is so out of sync 01:09.350 --> 01:13.450 align:start with particularly the sort of, you know, rank-and-file activists who vote in Democratic 01:13.450 --> 01:19.910 align:start primaries. And it - and Elizabeth Warren in particular, her whole theme is about corruption and 01:19.910 --> 01:23.720 align:start money in politics, and so she's really gone after Bloomberg, saying he's trying to buy it. 01:23.720 --> 01:29.740 align:start But you know, you can't buy an election without getting people to vote for you, and what 01:29.740 --> 01:34.960 align:start we've seen is that this ad blitz - this incredible, you know, hundreds of millions of 01:34.960 --> 01:38.880 align:start dollars in ads in all of the Super Tuesday states and across the country, they're good 01:38.880 --> 01:42.340 align:start ads, they're persuading people, and that's why he's getting traction. 01:42.340 --> 01:46.770 align:start But also, I think there's a lot of - there's some goodwill for him in the Democratic 01:46.770 --> 01:52.680 align:start Party because he has pledged that whether or not he is in the race, his money will be. 01:52.680 --> 01:57.110 align:start So whoever the Democratic nominee is is going to have the advantage of potentially more 01:57.110 --> 02:02.000 align:start than a billion dollars in independent spending by Mike Bloomberg aimed at bashing Trump. 02:02.000 --> 02:05.590 align:start COSTA: Josh, I'm really curious about when you're on the trail with Mayor Bloomberg. 02:05.590 --> 02:09.640 align:start What's it like? Are these events very professional? 02:09.640 --> 02:14.640 align:start Is he shaking hands with voters, is he making the case, or is this a TV-heavy campaign 02:14.640 --> 02:18.480 align:start with just a few events scattered around? What's the real take here? 02:18.480 --> 02:21.990 align:start JOSH LEDERMAN: Yeah, I covered the wires for many years and it feels like being in the 02:21.990 --> 02:26.840 align:start presidential bubble, being either with a general election nominee or covering a president 02:26.840 --> 02:31.130 align:start himself. He swoops in, he's there for 20 minutes, he speaks, and he gets out. 02:31.130 --> 02:35.020 align:start He's not spending a lot of time glad-handing with voters. I don't think he thinks he 02:35.020 --> 02:39.610 align:start needs to do that. He's not spending a lot of time answering questions from voters. 02:39.610 --> 02:42.260 align:start He gives his spiel and that's it. 02:42.260 --> 02:48.080 align:start And part of this, I think, is about the fact that he's focusing on Donald Trump and not 02:48.080 --> 02:53.120 align:start on the other Democrats, who are all competing in South Carolina and Nevada, and instead 02:53.120 --> 02:57.650 align:start he's trying to project as if he's already the nominee, as if he's already into this 02:57.650 --> 03:00.390 align:start man-on-man fight with President Trump. 03:00.390 --> 03:03.620 align:start And that has helped create this aura around him that seems to be growing. 03:03.620 --> 03:06.750 align:start COSTA: What are the people like around him, Josh? You've covered city hall. 03:06.750 --> 03:08.910 align:start Was Bloomberg mayor when you were there or was it only De Blasio? 03:08.910 --> 03:11.570 align:start JOSH DAWSEY: Partially, partially. He was there part of the time I covered city hall. 03:11.570 --> 03:15.470 align:start COSTA: So I mean, people in our world as reporters know people - Howard Wolfson, Kevin 03:15.470 --> 03:20.060 align:start Sheekey, these top Bloomberg advisers. What kind of strategists does he have around him? 03:20.060 --> 03:22.340 align:start How do they see this race? 03:22.340 --> 03:28.090 align:start DAWSEY: Very disciplined folks around him, very kind of traditional establishment folks 03:28.090 --> 03:33.890 align:start around him. They're not taking a lot of, I think, unnecessary risk. 03:33.890 --> 03:37.500 align:start I think - here's the way they see the race, the folks I've talked to around him. 03:37.500 --> 03:42.050 align:start It will take other folks collapsing - it will take Biden collapsing, it will take others 03:42.050 --> 03:45.750 align:start collapsing - and there will need to be - the Democratic Party at some point will need to 03:45.750 --> 03:47.950 align:start coalesce behind someone. 03:47.950 --> 03:51.490 align:start And Bloomberg thinks going across the country to all of these different states he's 03:51.490 --> 03:54.810 align:start talking to voters that the other candidates are not talking to, he's putting ads in 03:54.810 --> 03:58.750 align:start places the other candidates are not going, he's doing all of these things in a national 03:58.750 --> 04:04.110 align:start strategy hoping that when it actually comes that he's on the ballot there's still a 04:04.110 --> 04:08.020 align:start desire for someone like him to be the unifying candidate. 04:08.020 --> 04:11.470 align:start Whether that can happen or not I don't know, but that's their theory of the case. 04:11.470 --> 04:16.400 align:start And frankly, it seemed more of a folly a few months ago than it does now. 04:16.400 --> 04:20.140 align:start If you watch what's happening now and you see the dynamics that are playing out across 04:20.140 --> 04:23.930 align:start the primary, you can kind of see him getting momentum and it working. 04:23.930 --> 04:25.680 align:start COSTA: Amna? 04:25.680 --> 04:28.120 align:start AMNA NAWAZ: Well, I mean, the other thing to realize at this point in the race is that - 04:28.120 --> 04:30.730 align:start you know, I was thinking back to New Hampshire night. 04:30.730 --> 04:33.200 align:start We had a Democratic strategist who's been doing this years and years, Peter Hart, and he 04:33.200 --> 04:36.790 align:start was saying what happens now is this whole thing moves from retail politics to wholesale 04:36.790 --> 04:41.140 align:start politics after Iowa and New Hampshire, and that sort of aligns perfectly with the way 04:41.140 --> 04:44.740 align:start that Bloomberg has been positioning himself and the way that he is messaging. 04:44.740 --> 04:48.510 align:start Also, if you are one of the many, many early Democratic voters out there who are 04:48.510 --> 04:52.550 align:start prioritizing what you want from a candidate, what we hear again and again regardless of 04:52.550 --> 04:55.790 align:start where you are is I want someone who beats Donald Trump. 04:55.790 --> 04:58.910 align:start That doesn't matter if they're progressive, if they're a centrist, if they're a moderate. 04:58.910 --> 05:02.780 align:start And that is what the entire message of the Bloomberg campaign has been built around, so 05:02.780 --> 05:05.120 align:start he's speaking to those people. 05:05.120 --> 05:07.520 align:start COSTA: So those voters are out there - they're everywhere - who want to have 05:07.520 --> 05:10.570 align:start electability at the top of their list of what they're looking for in a candidate. 05:10.570 --> 05:14.680 align:start But you also talk to these voters on the Sanders side of the aisle in the Democratic 05:14.680 --> 05:20.350 align:start Party who want wholesale change, the structural change. Democratic socialist revolution. 05:20.350 --> 05:25.500 align:start MOLLY BALL: What I find so interesting about that actually is that it is such a 05:25.500 --> 05:30.050 align:start universal phenomenon - the obsession with electability - that even Bernie Sanders is now 05:30.050 --> 05:35.130 align:start making an electability argument. He has changed the sort of rubric of his late rallies 05:35.130 --> 05:38.620 align:start in New Hampshire and the ones that he's starting to do now for Nevada. 05:38.620 --> 05:43.710 align:start They're all called "Bernie Beats Trump" rallies. And so he, too. You know, I think 05:43.710 --> 05:47.860 align:start his followers see him as this sort of pure incorruptible above politics sort of figure. 05:47.860 --> 05:51.590 align:start But he's got his finger in the wind, too, and he knows that what - if he really wants to 05:51.590 --> 05:56.410 align:start be the nominee and not just make a statement in this campaign he's got to convince people 05:56.410 --> 05:58.690 align:start that he can win, and it's a different theory of change. 05:58.690 --> 06:00.880 align:start COSTA: He's making an interesting argument. 06:00.880 --> 06:03.900 align:start MOLLY BALL: But, you know, we've been hearing this argument from both parties for a long 06:03.900 --> 06:08.580 align:start time. Do you do bold colors, a strong ideological vision, galvanize the base of your 06:08.580 --> 06:13.150 align:start party, win that way? Or do you tack to the center, try to win over swing voters? 06:13.150 --> 06:17.500 align:start That's - there's a lot more sort of political science evidence for that route. 06:17.500 --> 06:20.720 align:start But politics is topsy-turvy and Donald Trump is president. Who knows? 06:20.720 --> 06:23.470 align:start COSTA: To follow up on that, that's such an important point. 06:23.470 --> 06:28.670 align:start There's a group in the Democratic Party, Josh, that sees populist anti-establishment 06:28.670 --> 06:33.880 align:start figures like Senator Sanders as the key to get a groundswell of new voters and support, 06:33.880 --> 06:38.650 align:start and there's that Bloomberg model, which is win over the suburban voter with targeted ads 06:38.650 --> 06:42.780 align:start on gun control and the economy, and that seems to be the divide about how do you actually 06:42.780 --> 06:46.640 align:start beat Trump. They all want to beat Trump in the Democratic Party, but how do you do it? 06:46.640 --> 06:49.040 align:start LEDERMAN: Right. There's, basically, two ways you win elections. 06:49.040 --> 06:53.590 align:start You drive up turnout among your base or you focus on persuadable voters in center, and 06:53.590 --> 06:57.900 align:start Democrats have not yet figured out which of those two strategies is most likely to get 06:57.900 --> 07:02.220 align:start Donald Trump defeated. I think that's why we see such high levels of anxiety among 07:02.220 --> 07:06.690 align:start Democratic primary voters as of now and why the field coming out of the first few 07:06.690 --> 07:09.750 align:start contests is still so muddled. 07:09.750 --> 07:14.310 align:start COSTA: Pete Buttigieg, he's been attacked by Rush Limbaugh this week. He's facing a 07:14.310 --> 07:18.930 align:start lot of intense attacks not only from the left but from the right. How is he faring? 07:18.930 --> 07:22.340 align:start DAWSEY: Well, he had a very impressive finish in New Hampshire. 07:22.340 --> 07:26.830 align:start The question will be - when I was down in South Carolina, there's a lot of skepticism 07:26.830 --> 07:30.390 align:start towards him there among African American voters. They don't feel like they know him. 07:30.390 --> 07:34.030 align:start He hasn't been on the air a lot there. He hasn't really been entrenched in places 07:34.030 --> 07:37.380 align:start like South Carolina before. I mean, at the end of the day, he is a compelling figure 07:37.380 --> 07:41.420 align:start that many people love but he is not the national politician. The name ID is not as 07:41.420 --> 07:46.590 align:start high as Biden's. He doesn't have that kind of institutional entrenched bond with some 07:46.590 --> 07:51.000 align:start of these folks as the other candidates do. And it's not saying that it's - he couldn't 07:51.000 --> 07:54.150 align:start change it, that he could not surpass it, that he could not fix it. 07:54.150 --> 07:58.150 align:start But I do think he has some uphill challenges past these first two states in places where 07:58.150 --> 08:00.790 align:start he may not be the most natural sell. 08:00.790 --> 08:03.410 align:start MOLLY BALL: He's got a - he's got a stature problem, right. 08:03.410 --> 08:06.100 align:start People look at him and they aren't quite sure they're seeing a president because of his 08:06.100 --> 08:10.480 align:start age, because of his experience. He just hasn't convinced a lot of people that he can 08:10.480 --> 08:14.160 align:start fill those shoes and I think that's what we're going to see him really scrambling to do. 08:14.160 --> 08:18.620 align:start COSTA: Final thoughts. Andrew Yang, running on universal basic income, drops out of 08:18.620 --> 08:22.040 align:start the race this week. So does Senator Michael Bennet. 08:22.040 --> 08:26.860 align:start Andrew Yang. Change the debate in the Democratic Party? 08:26.860 --> 08:31.140 align:start NAWAZ: You know, I think he introduced a lot of ideas that weren't previously in the 08:31.140 --> 08:34.930 align:start discussion. For a guy who went from being, like, the single-issue candidate to 08:34.930 --> 08:39.260 align:start actually making it into several debate stages and ended up being the only candidate 08:39.260 --> 08:42.850 align:start of color left on those stages at some point, that was, certainly, important for the 08:42.850 --> 08:46.510 align:start party in terms of messaging but also in terms of broadening the message. I don't think 08:46.510 --> 08:50.380 align:start it's the last we've seen of Andrew Yang either, by the way. But also, I just wanted to 08:50.380 --> 08:53.980 align:start point out earlier on the Buttigieg issue, which was - and I do think a lot of his 08:53.980 --> 08:57.840 align:start voters - Yang's voters - could end up going to people like Buttigieg as well. 08:57.840 --> 09:03.350 align:start While we wrestle with sort of where we are as a country and where we're going to be and 09:03.350 --> 09:07.720 align:start who we're going to be, for whatever path Buttigieg has forward or not, it is worth noting 09:07.720 --> 09:13.000 align:start that the first openly gay candidate for president polled a significant amount of voters in Iowa 09:13.000 --> 09:17.780 align:start and New Hampshire, and that is not something we could have said five years ago or 10 years ago. 09:17.780 --> 09:22.100 align:start COSTA: So true. Any other thoughts? We'll leave it there. It's Valentine's Day so 09:22.100 --> 09:25.660 align:start everyone can go home and relax or go out. I'm sure you're going to go out, Dawsey. 09:25.660 --> 09:28.310 align:start DAWSEY: Whatever you think. (Laughter.) 09:28.310 --> 09:31.260 align:start COSTA: All right. That's it for this edition of the Washington Week Extra. 09:31.260 --> 09:34.010 align:start You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on our Washington Week website. 09:34.010 --> 09:36.920 align:start While you're there, check out our Washington Week-ly News Quiz. 09:36.920 --> 09:50.780 align:start I'm Robert Costa. Thanks for joining us. See you next time.