-Bernie Sanders won
the Nevada caucus in a landslide on Saturday
and, now, some pundits in the Democratic establishment
are panicking about the possibility
that he might be the Democratic nominee.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Suspenseful theme plays ] [ Cheering and applause ]
Bernie has now won the popular vote
in the first three primary contests,
making him the clear front-runner,
and, now, Politico is reporting that Bernie sanders
has sent the Democratic establishment into panic mode.
And you can tell because the general tenor
of the coverage on cable news has gone something like this...
-NBC News projects
Bernie Sanders the winner in Nevada.
-What the [bleep] is going on?!
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
-Pundits across cable news
have been freaking out about Bernie's rise.
For example, you might remember that, after Bernie won
the popular vote in Iowa and again in New Hampshire,
the story wasn't that he was winning,
but that, if you used pundit math, he was actually losing.
-I don't understand how Bernie is considered a front-runner.
In New Hampshire, 52% of voters wanted
either Pete Buttigieg or Amy Klobuchar or Joe Biden.
Moderates are winning.
-Why wasn't Buttigieg's win in Iowa
a bigger banner headline?
He also has upset Bernie Sanders in both states.
-The story of the night:
Amy Klobuchar now in third place.
-The story of the Sanders campaign, so far, this year,
is how much ground he's lost from four years ago.
-That's right: By winning states,
Bernie is actually losing ground.
[ Laughter ] You see,
as all expert pundits know,
you don't wanna win the first two.
That's a rookie mistake,
wherein you come off as needy or, as the kids would say,
thirsty. [ Laughter ]
You wanna throw everyone off by losing a bunch of states,
playing it cool, off to the side,
until someone finally says,
"Who's that fellow with zero delegates?"
[ Laughter and applause ]
No, seriously.
[ Applause ]
No, seriously, who is that?
[ Laughter ] Oh! Alright.
See, according to the pundits,
you don't actually win the first two states, like Bernie did.
You wanna follow the Joe Biden path:
Come in fourth in Iowa, fifth in New Hampshire,
and a distant second in Nevada.
And, on top of all that,
just wander over during a crucial debate
[ Laughter ] and give the front-runner
a hug, you know.
That's the first time Biden ever hugged someone
from an angle where they could see him coming.
[ Laughter and ohs ] And, not only
[ Laughter and applause ] did some pundits insist
that Bernie wasn't actually the front-runner
after winning the first two states,
they also created an elaborate mythology in their heads
where Bernie was only winning because the so-called moderates
were supposedly splitting the vote.
And they kept insisting that, if the moderates
would just coalesce around one candidate,
that candidate could be Bernie.
-Bernie Sanders may have eked out the most votes
in Iowa and New Hampshire,
but if you look at the numbers more closely,
it shows a candidate hitting a ceiling.
If you look at the combined percentages
among the centrist candidates,
they do much better than the progressives.
-When you add up the totals, though,
for Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, and Joe Biden,
when you add them up last night,
that's more than half the electorate backing a moderate.
-Buttigieg and Klobuchar and Biden
split the moderate vote, with their combined percentage
overwhelming that of Sanders, who got 26%.
-That's right: If you just combine the votes of Buttigieg,
Biden, and Klobuchar, you can beat Bernie.
[ Laughter ] Now, all you have to do is
find a way to genetically combine them into one candidate,
called the Klobu-Biden-Butti-char.
[ Laughter and applause ]
It's that's easy. And then, all --
[ Cheering and applause ]
And then, every time you ask it a question,
it has the same answer.
What should we do about healthcare?
-We must step forward into the future.
-I'm from Minnesota.
-CornPop was a bad dude.
-Alright. [ Laughter ]
But the reality is that most actual voters
don't think like pundits.
They don't divide candidates
into a so-called liberal lane and a moderate lane.
In fact, polls have shown that the top second choice
among Biden voters is actually Bernie.
Polls have shown that Democratic voters
are overwhelmingly satisfied with choices.
They don't divide them up into lanes.
They like them each for their own reasons.
They like Bernie for his consistency
on issues like health care.
They like Warren for taking on big fights
against special interests, like Wall Street.
They like Biden for his eight years as Obama's VP.
They like Buttigieg for his youthful charm and charisma.
They like Klobuchar for her record in the Senate.
And they like Bloomberg
because he pays people to like him.
[ Laughter ]
Still, before Nevada, many in the media were desperate
to avoid calling Sanders the front-runner
and, in fairness, only two states,
both of them mostly white, had voted.
In fact, even Bernie bristled at the question
of whether he was the front-runner
during a town hall on CNN.
-I think it was right before New Hampshire primary,
I asked you, after Iowa, if you considered yourself
the Democratic front-runner.
Now, after New Hampshire, do you?
-Who cares? [ Laughter ]
-If Bernie gets elected, his inauguration
is just gonna be a four-hour open house.
[as Sanders] Stop by, don't stop by.
There'll be cheese and crackers, but, you know,
maybe eat before you come.
[ Laughter and applause ]
[ Cheering ] Say what you will --
[ Applause ]
[ Whistling ] Say what you will about the guy,
but he does not care about status.
He has one suit that he irons by running it over
with his car, I guess. [ Laughter ]
He shoots lay-ups with two hands
and he's been photographed in the middle seat in coach
and that is the only time he's been centrist.
[ Laughter ] But even
the pundits and Bernie himself cannot deny his clear status
as the front-runner after an overwhelming victory
in Nevada on Saturday, the first diverse state
to vote in the primary,
in which Sanders seemed to win virtually every demographic.
-Sanders, indeed, won
a smashing, across-the-board victory,
according to our entrance poll.
He won among men and women,
college graduates and non-college graduates,
liberals and moderates/conservatives,
union and nonunion members,
people who decided early and people who decided late.
In short, Sanders crushed it.
[ Laughter ] -Take a look here among
self-described moderate or conservative Democrats.
That's a third of this electorate in Nevada.
This is what you're seeing.
Sanders is actually leading.
-NBC/Wall Street Journal poll asked,
"Who are you most enthusiastic or comfortable about,
when it comes to the Democratic nominee?"
Bernie Sanders leads with 65%.
-He was powered by young voters, Hispanic voters,
very liberal, and those who supported Medicare for All.
-Damn, he won union voters, nonunion voters,
young voters, Hispanic voters,
men, women, liberals, and conservatives.
And, based on this photo, he did well
with former vice presidents over 70.
[ Laughter ] And, yet, still,
cable news reacted with shock at Bernie's success in Nevada.
For example, as results were coming in
and it was clear that young voters and people of color
were going overwhelmingly for Sanders,
one anchor at a caucus site
audibly sighed as she reported the results.
-[dully] Largely, people of color.
Of those, the majority are Latino
and they are clearly, at least from eyeballing it,
[sigh] strongly in favor
[ Laughter ] of Bernie Sanders,
with Joe Biden coming in second.
-[laughing] Oh, my God, with the sigh!
[ Applause ] She's reporting on Bernie winning a caucus site
the way you tell your parents
why your dip[bleep] boyfriend got fired from his job.
[ Laughter ]
[dully] "He, uh, well, he was usin' the copier
and, well, from eyeballin' it,
it looks like he, uh,
[sigh] he photocopied his ass
and put it up in the break room."
[ Laughter and applause ] And then --
[ Cheering ]
And then, prominent
[ Whistling ] Democratic strategists and pundits
started spinning out on live TV.
James Carville, for example, has been showin' up nonstop
on MSNBC, warning that nominating Bernie
would destroy the party and even suggesting that
Russian President Vladimir Putin was rooting for him.
-It's gonna be the end of days, so I'm scared to death.
I really am.
There's a certain part of the Democratic Party
that wants us to be a cult.
I'm not interested in being in a cult.
I'm 75 years old.
I'm just not a very culty person.
I'm 75 years old.
Why am I here, doin' this?
Because I am scared to death. That's why.
The happiest person right now --
It's about 1:15 Moscow time.
This thing is goin' very well for Vladimir Putin.
I promise you.
He's probably stayin' up, watchin' us right now.
How you doin', Vlad?
[ Laughter ] -Alright.
He's not watching, but, if he was,
he'd probably think this was a public access puppet show.
[ Laughter ]
Seriously, James Carville always looks like
he was released naked into a Louisiana Goodwill
and given five minutes to pick an outfit.
[ Laughter and applause ]
[ Giggles ]
[as Carville] How this hat look on me?
How's this hat look on me, bad? I'll take it.
It's all squashed up like a bug on my head? Yeah.
Like it's completely lost its shape?
Alright. I'll take it.
[ Laughter ] And, just as a reminder
of Carville's track record:
In 2008, he said then-Senator Barack Obama
was unelectable and attacked him to the point
where even Obama hit back and said James Carville
is well-known for spouting off his mouth
without always knowing what he's talking about.
In fact, Obama was specifically responding to this comment
Carville made about Hillary and Obama --
and this is a real quote --
"If she gave him one of her cojones,
they'd both have two."
[ Laughter and ohs ] Alright.
I'm havin' trouble following the logic here.
So that means
[laughing] she was starting with three cojones?
[ Laughter ]
Yet, somehow, that wasn't even
the most unhinged response to Bernie's win.
Chris Matthews actually compared Bernie's victory in Nevada
to the Nazi invasion of France during World War II.
-I'm reading last night about the fall of France
in the summer of 1940 and the general, Reynaud,
calls up Churchill and says, "It's over."
And Churchill says, "How can it be?
You got the greatest army in Europe.
How can it be over?"
He said, "It's over."
So I had that suppressed feeling.
I can't be as wild as Carville, but he is damn smart
and I think he's damn right on this one.
-As a general rule, anytime a man of Matthews' age
starts a sentence with, "I was reading last night
about the fall of France in 1940,"
that's your queue to exit the conversation.
[ Laughter ]
He's like your senile grandpa,
screaming into the phone on FaceTime:
"They banned me from the golf course
for not fixin' my divots!
This is just like 1940, when the Nazis...!"
[ Laughter and applause ] Alright, alright.
Talk to ya later, Grandpa.
[ Cheering and applause ] And, somehow --
[laughing] Somehow,
[ Whistle ] this isn't the most insane thing
Matthews has said about Bernie.
After Bernie's win in New Hampshire,
you might recall, Matthews went on another deranged tear,
that had somethin' to do with Communists
executing him in Central Park or something.
It was so incoherent, his fellow anchor Chris Hayes
had to chime in to offer some sense.
-I have my own views of the word socialist
and I'll be glad to tell them, share them with you in private.
[ Laughter ] And they go back to the early 1950s.
I have an attitude about them.
I remember the Cold War.
I have an attitude towards Castro.
I believe, if Castro and the reds had won the Cold War,
there would have been executions in Central Park
and I might've been one of the ones getting executed.
And certain other people would be there, cheering, okay?
So I have a problem with people who took the other side.
I don't know who Bernie supports over these years.
I don't know what he means by socialism.
One week, it's Denmark.
We're gonna be like Denmark.
Okay. That's harmless.
It's basically a capitalist country
with a lotta good social welfare programs.
Denmark is harmless. -He's pretty clearly
in the Denmark category. -Is he?
-Yeah. -Are you sure? How do you know?
Did he tell you that?
-Well, I mean, that's what he says
and that's what his agenda calls for.
-Just as a reminder, that whole thing started with this...
-I have my own views of the word socialist
and I'll be glad to tell them, share them with you in private.
[ Laughter ]
-Chris Matthews is definitely a guy
who says he'll share his thoughts with you in private
and then talks to you in public for a full minute.
[ Laughter and applause ] [as Matthews] I'll tell you
what I think about this movie later, in private.
It sucks!
[ Laughter and applause ]
By the way, Bernie is not the first
strong progressive candidate to come under fire
from centrist pundits in the Democratic establishment.
When Elizabeth Warren was soaring in the polls
and seen as the front-runner,
we got story after story about how Wall Street
and Democratic donors were panicking.
Cable news shows rolled one clip after another
of billionaires freaking out about her plans.
And that's because they perceive both Bernie and Warren
as threats to their livelihoods and their way of thinking.
Regardless of how you feel about any particular candidates,
if you're a pundit, you might wanna ask
why so many voters are flocking to Bernie Sanders and, yet,
when you ask them if they're at least curious
to find out why Bernie is doing so well, they say...
-Who cares?
[ Laughter ] -This has been "A Closer Look."
♪♪ [ Cheering and applause ]
♪♪ [ Whistling ]