JUDY WOODRUFF: And that brings us to Politics Monday.
To help us dive further into the Democratic primary, I'm joined by Amy Walter of The Cook
Political Report and public radio's "Politics With Amy Walter," and Tamara Keith of NPR,
co-host of the "NPR Politics Podcast."
Hello to both of you.
It's almost here, just hours on you way.
So, Amy, Joe Biden said it himself, we heard in our reporting earlier. A few days ago,
the pundits were writing him off, asking why was he still in the race. Was he going to
get out?
Today, he is -- they are announcing endorsements practically by the hour every few minutes.
AMY WALTER, The Cook Political Report: That's right.
JUDY WOODRUFF: What happened? We know South Carolina. What happened?
AMY WALTER: Right.
South Carolina happened. And for the very first time in this race, the one thing that
has happened which hadn't before, which is the race finally narrowing and coalescing
around a candidate who has been talking about electability and his ability to be the most
electable of all the candidates.
And it's funny. As we have gone through this process, we have seen momentum become so important,
because, again, electability has been on the forefront of voters' minds. And Joe Biden
electability sure didn't look that set when he was losing in Iowa and Nevada and New Hampshire.
But to come back so resoundingly in South Carolina, at a time when the rest of the voters
who don't want to support Bernie Sanders, Democratic voters who don't want to support
Bernie Sanders, are desperate to find someone to rally around, it was actually the perfect
timing.
JUDY WOODRUFF: One state did this for Joe Biden, Tam?
TAMARA KEITH, National Public Radio: And with one state, he surpassed the delegates that
Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren had.
He's right behind Bernie Sanders. Now, of course, Joe Biden hasn't had the money. He
has not had the infrastructure. And so you have Bernie Sanders preparing to compete in
all of these Super Tuesday states, spending a lot of money, all of this.
And what Joe Biden has is free media. And his campaign had kind of been betting on this.
And a lot of us were like, really, this is your plan?
But -- right. So they figured, if he wins big in South Carolina, that will give him
a boost. People will be talking about him. Now they're keeping it going with these endorsements
rolling in, trying to create this air of inevitability, like he's the one.
There's the Bernie Sanders' lane, and then there's Joe Biden. And that's particularly
important in trying to convince people who are maybe considering voting for Michael Bloomberg
to say, OK, let's just consolidate this. Let's go for Joe Biden.
Now, of course, as we also saw, a lot of people have voted already.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, but, Amy, again, Tom Steyer, dropped out, then Pete Buttigieg, and then
today Amy Klobuchar.
All their votes, do they absolutely go to Joe Biden? I mean, what happens?
AMY WALTER: Absolutely not. And that's -- right. We can't assume that.
(LAUGHTER)
AMY WALTER: But we do know that those folks, Tom Steyer aside, that, especially with Pete
Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, they're in this part of the party, or they represented a part
of the party that really was focused on this electability.
Who's a candidate that we can support who we think is going to beat Donald Trump who's
not named Bernie Sanders? We're not interested in supporting somebody like Bernie Sanders.
So that support could also go to Elizabeth Warren. So, there's not...
JUDY WOODRUFF: Who is still in the race.
AMY WALTER: Who is still in the race.
And Tam makes this point about Michael Bloomberg. And I think that's really important as we
go into Super Tuesday. The biggest hurdles still for Joe Biden, the early vote that we
have talked about and that Amna talked about in California, and then Michael Bloomberg.
He is still -- he's spent a ton of money. He's still on the ballot, obviously, in states
like California, Texas, North Carolina that have a lot of delegates.
And every delegate he pulls, he's pulling from Joe Biden. He does especially well or
has been in the polling among African-American voters. That is obviously what got Joe Biden
his success in South Carolina.
So -- but Michael Bloomberg needs to do less well than he was doing in the polls before
South Carolina in order for Biden to really get the sort of coalescing that he wants to
show with this endorsement by Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg.
TAMARA KEITH: And I think an important thing to say about polling right now is that polls
are a snapshot of a moment in time, and things are changing very quickly right now.
JUDY WOODRUFF: They are.
TAMARA KEITH: For so long, this race felt like it wasn't moving very quickly, that there
were so many candidates.
All of a sudden, there are not so many candidates, and a poll that was done a week ago or 48
hours ago is not going to reflect the reality on the ground now.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And so people -- voters -- you heard it in both of these reports, but with
Amna especially in California, where voters who are wrestling with this, now the moment
has come.
AMY WALTER: Right.
JUDY WOODRUFF: They have to make a decision.
AMY WALTER: They have been desperate for so long. They have been saying to us for so long,
just tell me which candidate can beat Donald Trump.
And, in fact, I think we got to this place where we are today because Democrats, Democratic
voters, Democratic candidates who weren't named Bernie Sanders were so obsessed with
this question of electability, that voters themselves got wrapped around this, right?
How many voters did you talk to who said, I mean, I like this candidate, but can they
win in Wisconsin? And do you think they will do well in enough battleground states?
JUDY WOODRUFF: Exactly.
AMY WALTER: And I don't know against Trump. I saw them on the debate stage.
And so that issue became so -- it was -- it became paralyzing for so many voters.
JUDY WOODRUFF: For sure.
AMY WALTER: And so they were dispersing their votes among a whole bunch of people, instead
of just focusing on, here's the candidate we think is the most electable. I may not
love this person, but they can win.
JUDY WOODRUFF: I was still hearing it from Virginia voters in Virginia. I was out able
to talk to some of them over the weekend, Tam.
But just quickly, on Mike Bloomberg -- and I did see him Saturday morning in Virginia.
Some of the rationale, if not the main rationale, for his candidacy was, Joe Biden may not make
it.
AMY WALTER: Right.
TAMARA KEITH: Right.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And so now, with Biden having momentum, what happens?
TAMARA KEITH: It's a big, giant, open question.
You know, he -- Michael Bloomberg has spent more money than God. I mean, he has spent
-- he has spent more money certainly than Barack Obama spent in his entire 2012 reelection.
And it's not clear yet what it's going to buy. Is he going to be like a Tom Steyer,
who people seem interested in, and then the support actually melts away when it comes
time to voting, or is he going to get a certain amount of support?
Will he be viable in some states? But, like, the thing is, do you spend that much money,
do you run that hard, do you -- is your whole strategy, I'm going to go out on Super Tuesday
and show them? Does that become -- like, what if you only are just viable in a few states
and you aren't winning states?
How long can you maintain that?
JUDY WOODRUFF: And there is Bernie Sanders, Amy, who has a very loyal -- and, again, I
was able to see him over the weekend.
AMY WALTER: Yes.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Talk about an enthusiastic crowd. Thousands were out, Springfield, Virginia.
It doesn't get any...
(CROSSTALK)
AMY WALTER: That's what been fascinating.
As I said, with this focus on -- so much of the field, so many of the voters focused on
electability, what so many candidates were doing was running not to lose, not to lose
to Donald Trump.
Bernie Sanders I saw as the only candidate who was running to win, right? He didn't care
about all these other things that people were wrapping themselves around. He has been very
committed to his message, to his ideology, to his narrative throughout this campaign.
It hasn't budged. It hasn't changed.
So there is an attractiveness to that. That's what a lot of voters are attracted to. And
he was able to coalesce those voters. He hasn't lost them, in the way that the ones who were
focused on electability have been diverse -- dispersed.
(CROSSTALK)
JUDY WOODRUFF: Excuse me.
As we have been saying, Tam, he does seem -- appear to be ahead in the polls in California.
TAMARA KEITH: Way ahead.
JUDY WOODRUFF: He's supposed to do well in Texas.
That's one reason Joe Biden is having this mega-event tonight with endorsements.
AMY WALTER: Yes.
TAMARA KEITH: Mega-rally.
JUDY WOODRUFF: But he could end up doing -- I mean, he could either end up cleaning up tomorrow
or looking less than inevitable.
TAMARA KEITH: Absolutely. Those are the options. And there's some muddle in between that could
happen.
JUDY WOODRUFF: In between.
AMY WALTER: But one of the things that I will be looking to see is, will some of these states
be more like Nevada, where he won super handily, won -- he won African-American voters, he
won Latino voters especially -- or will some of these states be more like South Carolina,
where Joe Biden was able to really consolidate the African-American support?
The question is, Bernie Sanders has been able to expand his base well beyond what it was
in 2016. Does that hold up in every state or only some of the states?
AMY WALTER: Right. And Nevada, of course, was a caucus. The rest of these are primaries.
Joe Biden, yes, did very well among African-American voters and among white voters in South Carolina,
but South Carolina doesn't look even, as you well know, like North Carolina or Virginia.
TAMARA KEITH: Right.
AMY WALTER: The African-American population that votes in South Carolina is bigger than
any other state that's going to vote on Super Tuesday, maybe with the exception of Alabama.
But the -- California and Texas, the two states with the most delegates, they also have a
tremendously large Latino population. That's where Bernie Sanders has also done very well,
Joe Biden not so well.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Targeting those voters.
AMY WALTER: That's right.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, we can't wait. The voters get their say, a lot of them -- what is it,
a third of the delegates being chosen by tomorrow.
(CROSSTALK)
JUDY WOODRUFF: We can't wait.
Tamara Keith, Amy Walter, thank you both.
TAMARA KEITH: You're welcome.
AMY WALTER: You're welcome, Judy.