ROBERT COSTA: Welcome to the Washington Week Extra. I'm Robert Costa.
The Democratic presidential race is entering a new and more vigorous phase, and the
candidates were out in force in the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire this week.
SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): (From video.) We've had a billionaire-friendly economy
for long enough. I think it's time we put our families right at the top.
SENATOR CORY BOOKER (D-NJ): (From video.) Beating Donald Trump gets us out of a valley,
but it doesn't get us to the mountaintop. I'm running to go to the mountaintop.
SOUTH BEND, INDIANA MAYOR PETE BUTTIGIEG (D): (From video.) They're telling us that
everything's going along just fine because the Dow Jones is looking good.
And I'm thinking, OK, but what about communities like ours?
SENATOR AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN): (From video.) This president's moving backwards on climate
change and not really focusing on how we're going to help students and their families in
New Hampshire afford an education.
FORMER VICE PRESIDENT JOSEPH BIDEN: (From video.) But, God willing, we can turn the four
years of Donald Trump into a historical aberration.
But eight years - eight years of Donald Trump would change the nature of who we are.
SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT): (From video.) It is absolutely imperative that we defeat
Donald Trump, the most dangerous president in the modern history of this country.
ROBERT COSTA: That was Bernie Sanders, a senator from Vermont, and I spent the week
covering him in Iowa as he courted voters. He told me he now sees this moving toward
being a two-man race, Sanders versus former Vice President Joe Biden.
Joining me at the table tonight, Lisa Desjardins, congressional correspondent for the
PBS NewsHour; Michael Crowley, White House correspondent for The New York Times; Toluse
Olorunnipa, White House reporter for The Washington Post; and Susan Page, Washington
bureau chief for USA Today. Susan, seasoned campaign correspondent.
(Laughter.) You look at this Democratic race; it's been sleepy, under the radar,
President Trump hogging the headlines. Now we're a month before Iowa, Iran in the
news; what does it mean for Senator Sanders, Vice President Biden, and everyone else?
SUSAN PAGE: You know, I went back and looked at where we stood in the polls on January
1st of last year, and where we stood in the polls then is precisely where we stand in the polls now.
So we've spent a year of two dozen candidates fighting it out and we are right where we
started, which is Joe Biden in a lead but not such a formidable one that he couldn't
possibly be knocked off, and Bernie Sanders a clear number two with a strong position
with a devoted core of voters and with a ton of money.
ROBERT COSTA: Lisa, you've been tracking some of the senators for sure, and others.
LISA DESJARDINS: Yeah, and I think the surprise to me is when you talked to Elizabeth
Warren supporters especially in Iowa around the time of the Iowa State Fair, so late
August or so, they had that same fervor, that Bernie fervor.
But when she rolled out her healthcare plan and then couldn't explain, A, exactly how
she's going to pay for it; or, B, exactly how far she was going toward universal
healthcare; for the policy queen that really gave huge pause to that very passionate
crowd. Now, she has a big ground game in Iowa.
That's the test: Did she put in enough names into the computer, can she get them out?
Maybe the polls don't matter as much as caucus night for her, but I think right now it's
astounding. We've got Biden, Sanders right duking it out - and Buttigieg, don't forget, yeah.
TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA: Yeah, and as Susan said, things in terms of the polls have remained
relatively stagnant, and the broader battle between the liberal left-wing segment of the
Democratic Party and the moderate segment of the party, that fight has continued to last
for the past year. And we see Biden representing the more moderate wing; we see Bernie
Sanders really as the standard bearer for the progressive wing.
And the voters are going to have a say at the end of the day, but right now based on the
polls it seems like there are equal numbers in almost - in both camps, and they're going
to continue to fight things out as we go through the early states, and this could drag on
for quite a while because the Democratic Party has to decide what it's going to represent
going forward, especially against President Trump - whether or not they want to try to
win back some of those Trump voters and appeal to the more moderates and the suburban
voters that are out there, or try to activate the base the way Bernie Sanders has with
his 5 million donations and show that that is enough to power them to victory.
It's not clear yet what the formula would be.
ROBERT COSTA: Let's get into that. What kind of party does the Democratic Party want to be?
You think about this moment; it could go toward Vice President Biden and say we're going
to be a little bit more hawkish, a little bit more critical of President Trump, or it
could go more in the Senator Sanders direction - noninterventionist, antiwar.
We've seen these tensions in Democratic politics before. We talked about it on the show,
Dean versus Kerry in terms of how they thought about Iraq back then, more than a decade ago.
Based on your reporting and talking to sources, where is the Democratic Party likely to
move, toward that Biden wing or toward that Sanders wing, amid all the Iranian news?
MICHAEL CROWLEY: I don't think I - I don't want to give you a confident prediction,
because I don't think it's clear.
ROBERT COSTA: What are you paying attention to, then?
MICHAEL CROWLEY: The party's in a real state of flux. But I think you put your finger
on that question facing the party. And there are other issues associated with that,
including what is the Democratic Party position toward Israel and its territorial
claims? That is a big, divisive issue right now on foreign policy. And by the way,
Republicans are doing their best to exploit it. Senator Mitch McConnell has been bringing
measure after measure to the Senate floor to force Democrats to take tough votes on
things like the BDS movement toward Israel. And President Trump is aware of it also.
But you know, this is a choice the party is going to have to make.
I think ultimately it will come down more to the - it will involve the person more than
the ideological question. But you have definitely seen a larger Democratic drift from,
you know, Bill Clinton in the 1990s sort of gave interventionism a good name for the
Democrats, with his interventions in the Balkans, in Kosovo. And after George W.
Bush and the Iraq War, Barack Obama started a process of saying: You know what?
We got to get out of the Middle East. I don't want to get - you know, don't do stupid
stuff was his famous saying. And there's still a lot of that residue.
And so you hear the way Joe Biden talks, he was one of these 1990s Clinton-style
interventionists, almost neoconservative, using American military power to spread
democracy and our values through the world in an aggressive way.
Biden doesn't really sound that note anymore. It's much more cautionary.
He's much more about the risks of making mistakes rather than the potential and
possibility of American power.
SUSAN PAGE: I can tell you exactly the direction the Democratic Party is going to go.
It's going to go in the direction that they think will defeat President Trump.
MICHAEL CROWLEY: (Laughs.) Well said, yeah.
SUSAN PAGE: Because that is what - if you talk to Democrats - liberals, moderates,
Sanders supporters, Warren supporters, Biden supporters - the number-one thing they want
to do is make sure they get the White House back.
LISA DESJARDINS: But they're unsure, do they do that by picking the stable choice that
will draw Republicans, or do they do that by bringing someone who brings out passion in
the party? Something I'm thinking about, though, and we all know this: Usually the Iowa
caucuses are right now, January 3rd. This year they're a month later. So think about that.
If it was right now, that probably would benefit someone like Pete Buttigieg, Sanders.
This next month is an opportunity that these candidates don't usually get. But for the
Democrats it's a risk because they've actually shortened their usual primary season.
Their convention's a little bit earlier, the caucuses start later, in the year where it
might actually take a little bit longer to sort this out.
ROBERT COSTA: Does the White House stay up at night worrying about that Ron Paul voter,
the Rand Paul voter, the noninterventionist Republican libertarian who may not like the
president's decision in Iran and in Iraq?
TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA: I think they do stay up at night thinking about those voters.
And I think that's part of the reason you see President Trump every once in a while make
a rash decision to say: I'm going to pull the troops out of Syria, or I'm going to take
a decision that shows that I do not want to be involved in a quagmire in the Middle East.
I think the president himself sees himself as a representative of those voters, even
though he has surrounded himself with a number of hawks and tends to make hawkish
decisions from time to time. I think he does try to give some olive branches to the
libertarians and people who do not want to be involved in these foreign entanglements.
The president realizes that he campaigned towards those people, telling him that he would
not do the same thing that previous politicians did. And I think he wants to stay true
to them in terms of not getting involved in wars that look like they're going to last
for years and years. But he's fighting those demons within himself, trying to decide
what kind of president he wants to be, a hawk or a libertarian noninterventionist.
ROBERT COSTA: Any final thoughts?
SUSAN PAGE: Just somebody to keep your eye on, we haven't talked about, Amy Klobuchar.
You know, we've seen some surprises go away. Kamala Harris, I think that was a surprise
that she wasn't more successful as a candidate. Amy Klobuchar had a pretty good
fundraising quarter, her best yet. She's done a little better in the polls.
She's been pretty effective in debates in making the argument that resonates most with
Democrats, which is: I've won in red places as well as blue places in her state of
Minnesota. I can lead you to victory. She is - you know, we know we've got this top
tier of four candidates. It's, like, four and a half. And that half is Amy Klobuchar.
LISA DESJARDINS: And, you know, in Iowa there's usually a surprise. And it's usually the
person who does a lot of work on the ground. Mike Huckabee was that same kind of person.
We've seen people that are shaking a lot of hands in Iowa, like Klobuchar's been doing.
ROBERT COSTA: She's been to all 99 counties.
LISA DESJARDINS: That's right. Just last week, checked the mark.
ROBERT COSTA: It's interesting, when I was talking to voters in Iowa over the past week,
even at a Sanders event I would say, well, who's your second choice? And some of these
Iowans, more the older voter not the hard-core Bernie younger voter, would say: I like Amy.
I said, even at a Sanders event. And they just thought she has kind of a Midwestern sensibility.
And I met some other voters who were really torn between Buttigieg and Klobuchar, because
they want someone new. That voter seems to be the kind of person who's not into VP
Biden, but wants someone new, but also someone's who moderate. A lot to discuss in the
coming weeks. Thanks for joining us. That's it for this edition of the Washington Week
Extra. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on our website.
While you're there, check out our Washington Week-ly News Quiz.
I'm Robert Costa. Thanks for joining us. See you next time.