--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Noel King: And I'm Noel King.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Not all journalism is the same. Take The Guardian. Our coverage has something unique. Fierce independence. Nobody owns us or tells us what we can and can't say.
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--:-- Noel King: 2020 explain. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Let me say tonight that this victory here is the beginning of the end for Donald Trump.
--:-- Ella Nilsson: [over the phone] Tell the people where you are. Where are you reporting for Vox from right now?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I am in the field house of Southern New Hampshire University, where Bernie Sanders just addressed a very loud crowd.
--:-- Ella Nilsson: People are hugging each other. I don't know if you can hear that, but there's some chanting going on over here.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was kind of funny seeing Bernie, like a man who doesn't smile that often, I feel like. He was just beaming when he came out tonight and addressed people.
--:-- Ella Nilsson: Did any of his followers have anything interesting to say to you while you were there tonight?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: His supporters here, especially the ones that have been with him in 2016, feel like they have never been this close to him winning the nomination.
--:-- Ella Nilsson: Like, I think that there's this palpable feeling that he could really do it this time, especially if he does well with with black voters and with Latino voters, that that he has a real path to the Democratic nomination.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And people here were really excited about that.
--:-- Ella Nilsson: The other thing was I actually talked to somebody who was from Berlin, Germany, who came all the way out here.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, I think he works in the U.S. sometimes, but he was volunteering with the Sanders campaign for the past few weeks, along with, he said, some people from Norway and some people from Denmark.
--:-- Ella Nilsson: Sure. They love socialism out there. Yeah. They love democratic socialism out there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I mean, yeah, I mean, he was sort of saying like he has certainly never been this excited about an American candidate.
--:-- Ella Nilsson: I mean, he was just saying it's really exciting to see a candidate fighting so openly for a lot of the things that Europe already has, basically a lot of the programs that they already have.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How was turnout tonight? People were saying that the turnout in Iowa didn't look great if Democrats are planning to beat Donald Trump in the general election.
--:-- Ella Nilsson: How was it tonight in New Hampshire?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was actually better than 2016 levels, according to some of the initial reports that we saw.
--:-- Ella Nilsson: I'm not ready to make any big predictions yet on how this could impact general election turnout.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the other thing is, you know, it's also hard to judge because there was no competitive Republican primary here.
--:-- Ella Nilsson: So it's tough to tell how Republicans might also turn out in the general election.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How about second and third? How do other people do?
--:-- Ella Nilsson: Yeah. So, I mean, the big surprise tonight was was Amy Klobuchar.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, there had been some polling recently showing that she was doing all of a sudden a lot better than expected.
--:-- Ella Nilsson: But you have to remember, she came out of Iowa in fifth place.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think that the big turning point for her in New Hampshire came from a combination of a lot of people that were still undecided and didn't know who they wanted to support.
--:-- Ella Nilsson: Maybe some more voters that were looking at more moderate candidates.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And she had a really good debate performance here last week.
--:-- Ella Nilsson: And I think that, you know, a lot of times debates don't necessarily change things in a race.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But this in this case, it seemed like people started having these internal conversations and dialogues this week and even up until the final day or two.
--:-- Ella Nilsson: So what does this mean for like the campaigns of Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden? Are they kind of now on life support?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, I mean, Biden Biden didn't even stick around in New Hampshire for his election party tonight.
--:-- Ella Nilsson: He went straight to South Carolina and like addressed his New Hampshire supporters from there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So he is really hoping that he can kind of bolster his his support in his campaign among African-American voters in South Carolina and Latino voters in Nevada.
--:-- Ella Nilsson: But I mean, he has now lost and lost badly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, he came in fourth place in Iowa and he came in fifth place in New Hampshire.
--:-- Ella Nilsson: That's not just a loss, that's like a trouncing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so I just think that making a pitch, especially making a pitch on electability to voters in Nevada and South Carolina is going to be really tough when you have the record that Biden has so far
--:-- Ella Nilsson: And as far as Warren I mean this is a really tough state for her to lose I mean she is a Massachusetts senator so she from right over the border
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She was a well-known entity in New Hampshire.
--:-- Ella Nilsson: It's not like she was starting with low name recognition.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like, her campaign sent out a memo today about their path forward and talking about some of these more diverse states.
--:-- Ella Nilsson: She's going to be campaigning in Virginia pretty soon.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But this is not good for her.
--:-- Ella Nilsson: And her campaign was counting on some momentum.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they just did not get that tonight at all.
--:-- Ella Nilsson: But it was an even tougher night for two of the candidates who dropped out, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yes. So Andrew Yang and Colorado Senator Michael Bennett both dropped out tonight.
--:-- Ella Nilsson: And I think that both of them were kind of pinning a lot of their hopes on New Hampshire.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, Andrew Yang had spent a lot of time campaigning here.
--:-- Ella Nilsson: And I mean, I had heard from a lot of voters that said that they really liked him and they really liked his message.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I was kind of going into election night looking to see if he would get some sort of bump.
--:-- Ella Nilsson: But I just think that people were so concerned with electability this year that I think a lot of folks didn't really want to throw their vote to somebody who was unknown and who they didn't really think could beat Trump.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the same thing with Michael Bennett.
--:-- Ella Nilsson: I mean, he had staked his entire campaign on New Hampshire, but he just hadn't really been getting any traction for months.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He had been stuck at, you know, somewhere between zero and one percent in the polls.
--:-- Ella Nilsson: And I mean, he was sort of like campaigning like the old New Hampshire way.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He was doing all these house parties that Lauren Chulgin talked about in Tuesday's episode, and he just wasn't getting anywhere.
--:-- Ella Nilsson: He was gaining no traction.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So he had to call it tonight.
--:-- [Break music plays]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, you know what, Ella? I think before we go to the break, we're going to take a minute to remember our friends, Senator Michael Bennett and Andrew Yang.
--:-- Ella Nilsson: Okay, sounds good.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I know what you're thinking, America. How am I still on this stage with them?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If you go to the factory in Michigan, it's not wall-to-wall immigrants, it's wall-to-wall robot arms and machines.
--:-- [Audio clip continues]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We have to send the opposite message of this administration.
--:-- [Audio clip continues]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And as you're president, I think I could send a very clear message where if you were considering immigrating to this country and I'm the president, you would realize my son or daughter can become president of the United States.
--:-- [Audio clip continues]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, I am the math guy.
--:-- [Audio clip continues]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it is clear tonight from the numbers that we are not going to win this race.
--:-- [Audio clip continues]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so tonight I am announcing I am suspending my campaign for president.
--:-- [Audio clip continues]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thank you, I love you too.
--:-- [Audio clip continues]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thank you, New Hampshire.
--:-- [Audio clip continues]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When there's a group of kids in this country that don't get preschool through no fault of their own, and another group does, equal is not equal.
--:-- [Audio clip continues]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And we've got a group of K-12 schools that are good because families can spend a million bucks, and you've got the Detroit public schools that are as segregated as they were, equal is not equal.
--:-- [Audio clip continues]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Tonight is not going to be our night, but let me say this to New Hampshire, you may see me once again.
--:-- [Break music continues]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: After the break, on Today Explained, Matthew Iglesias makes the case for President Bernie Sanders.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Matthew Iglesias, the politics team here at Vox, wrote up arguments for each of the leading Democratic presidential candidates in this race.
--:-- [Audio clip continues]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And you wrote about Bernie. What's the argument in favor of Vermont Senator Bernard Sanders?
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: Key to the argument is his electoral performance is a lot better than people realize.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He's been a more pragmatic legislator than a lot of people realize.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: And I think in a way he could be a unifying candidate that brings Trump's opponents together and wins the election in November which fundamentally is what mainstream Democrats want
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay, well let get into it. I mean let talk about his legislative history and his legislative agenda.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: I think one of the arguments against Bernie is that he actually accomplished that much in the Senate.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is that a fair argument?
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: His legislative agenda is very expansive.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What I think is important to understand about Sanders, though, is that he's not somebody who has blown up needed compromises, right?
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: He sometimes defects. Sometimes a bill is going to go through the Senate with 80 votes, and he casts a no.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He says, you know, we should hold out for more.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: But when they needed every Democrat to vote for the Affordable Care Act, when they needed every Democrat to vote for the Dodd-Frank bill, for the Obama stimulus, for anything like that, he is there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This stimulus package is not perfect, but it'll go a long way in Vermont and throughout this country to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, move us to energy independence and sustainable energy, protect working families hurt by this recession, and most importantly, create millions of good-paying jobs.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: He understands how the political system works and when you have to take half a loaf.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He was known in the House of Representatives for getting a lot of bipartisan amendments passed.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: Senator John McCain of Arizona and I have tried our best to come forward with an agreement.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's an agreement which I'm sure he is not 100% happy about.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: And I can fully assure you, I am not 100% happy about it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I would have written a very, very different bill.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: It's true he's not the greatest legislative titan in the history of the Senate, but he's also not this ignoramus that some of his supporters on Twitter sometimes seem like.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He's been a member of Congress for a long time.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: He knows how hard it is to get coalitions together for bills, and he knows the importance of making compromises to get things done.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I don't think there's any reason to worry that as president he would be unable to deal with the realities of legislating.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: Hmm. And what do you think as president he would make his, you know, first act, his first hundred days, his first year?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What's Bernie going to dive into?
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: I think health care. He's very passionate about health care.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He's passionate about his Medicare for All crusade.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: The idea that the United States of America should join every other major country on earth in guaranteeing health care to every man, woman and child.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is not a radical idea.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: In fact, poll after poll shows that a majority of the American people support that idea.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: People want to know.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: I think it's obvious that, like, we're not going to pass a bill that's as expansive as that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: As expansive as Bernie's Medicare for All.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: Yeah, as expansive as his proposal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think the real view from his team is that you need someone who is committed to fighting against the special interests that block this kind of action.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: That anything you do, right, whether it's the modest prescription drug pricing reform that House Democrats are trying to do, whether it's the bipartisan reform on surprise billing that is kicking around the Senate, all of these things get blocked by the exact same nexus of interest groups who lead the opposition to Medicare for all.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So you may as well just see what you can get out of an actual legislative process.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: But I think they think you will get the most by naming the bad guys and taking them on.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So Bernie, of course, wrote the damn bill.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: We've heard it a million times at this point.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But he isn't the only person supporting the damn bill anymore.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: So why Bernie over someone, say, like Elizabeth Warren, who at least at some point has said that she's on board with a similar kind of plan?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I agree.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: I mean, I actually think in terms of legislative outputs, you are not going to see a huge difference between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren or even Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg or Amy Klobuchar or Joe Biden.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because the way legislation works is it depends on Congress.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: If you really – your primary consideration is what bills are going to pass, like you should focus on the Senate race in Maine, Senate race in Arizona, Senate race in Colorado.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's what's going to determine it, not the choice of president.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: But the most far out there Bernie Sanders proposals are not going to become law no matter what happens.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You're going to get the same kind of incremental change however you want.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: But if you want a sort of unified Democratic Party taking the fight to Trump, taking the fight to Republicans and selling the base on the need for compromise, there's nobody better than Sanders to do it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Bernie never sells it that way.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: Do you think he believes that?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Do you think he believes that once he gets into office, he will be the people's champion and thus temper his ambitions?
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: I think that Bernie understands that it is hard to pass bills and that, you know, there's not going to be like a parting of the clouds and all obstacles vanish.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I think he also rightly thinks that some of the people who preach pragmatism are in fact being influenced by money and campaign contributions and lobbying and their desires.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: And that people look and they say, why have Democrats been talking about lowering prescription drug costs for 20 years, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How is it that that never gets done?
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: And it's not because nobody knows that you may have to trim your sales a little or make deals.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's that these very popular ideas wind up not happening because of the influence of money in politics, right?
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: And it's not that a Sanders presidency eliminates all of those obstacles, but it means that you will have a president who is making bargains literally because of vote counts, not because of the impact of money.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So if there is a President Sanders and if he does need to compromise his agenda, what do those compromises actually look like, you think?
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: You know, I think some form of a public option of opening up of Medicare.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He actually co-sponsored a public option bill back in the 2016 cycle before sort of raising his aspirations.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: And then things on prescription drug costs.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That an issue that he has been a champion of forever and that mainstream Democrats are increasingly comfortable with
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: But they never quite sealed the deal on cutting prescription drug costs
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think if Sanders is in the White House right this is a guy who been fighting pharma for decades and he is going to tell everyone like we are going to get this done at last, and they really will.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: It's kind of funny, though, because what you're talking about, like a public option, for example, is essentially like the compromise position that Biden and Klobuchar are arguing for against Bernie's Medicare for All.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But this is the perversity of American politics, right, is Barack Obama runs and wins on a public option platform.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: So you get the ACA with no public option, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think if you run and win on a Medicare for all platform, you might get a public option if you're lucky, right?
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: But the president always gets less than what he ran on because of the dynamics in Congress.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I wonder, you know, you talk about Bernie potentially rallying this coalition of supporters from the left, but also the center.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: You've got people like James Carville talking to our colleague Sean Illing last week about how he's scared to death about Sanders' ability to beat Trump, to unify the left as well as centrists.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Tell me about the argument that Bernie could actually do that.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: So, look, we can look at people's electoral track records, right? Some politicians do better than average in their home state and some do worse.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it is 100 percent true. The politicians who do better than average are typically moderates.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: Joe Manchin is one of the great overperformers in the U.S. Senate.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But Bernie Sanders is also an overperformer.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: You look at any year that he was on the ballot and there was also a presidential election, 1992, 1996, 2000.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's happened over and over again.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: And he runs ahead of the Democratic ticket, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's not that like every leftist does that. That's not true at all.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: But Bernie Sanders does.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He is a very effective politician.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: He is an effective campaigner.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he does it a few different ways.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: One is his personal reputation for integrity.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The other is this whole weird thing where he's not really a Democrat.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: It seems to help him get the votes of people who go for third parties, that there was a lot of pro-Sanders crossover votes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There was a lot of Stein Sanders crossover votes, but even Johnson Sanders crossover votes, right?
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: To people who are suspicious of party politics and business as usual, Sanders seems like a free-thinking person, a person of integrity, somebody who they can trust.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's hard to scale that up from Vermont to nationwide, but it should give people like Harville, people who worry about electability, some sense of reassurance.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: That like this is a guy who has run and won and done very, very well in those elections.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, Vermont is obviously not a swing state, but he's doing better than Barack Obama, better than Hillary Clinton, better than Bill Clinton in his home state.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: And as we move in our heads to the hypothetical of Bernie actually running against President Trump, I wonder how does Bernie fare against someone who wants to paint him and his friends AOC as just socialists and scare people into winning votes?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If it was me, if you could go back in time and have Bernie Sanders not call himself a socialist, I would definitely take that.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: People who think that's a handicap, they are correct.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Socialism is a label.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: It polls very poorly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But he's been calling himself a socialist for a long time.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: He's been making it work.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the other advantage is Republicans have been calling every Democrat they've run against a socialist for a long time.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: And to an extent, you know, they're sort of the political party that cried wolf on this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Over there, it seems as though far left socialist ideology is increasingly becoming mainstream Democratic Party doctrine.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: The socialism has never worked.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If they're so interested in it, why don't they go to Caracas or why don't they go someplace where they've tried it?
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: A vote for any Democrat in 2020 and a vote for any Democrat tomorrow in North Carolina is a vote for the rise of radical socialism and the destruction of the American dream.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Trump got 46 percent of the vote back in 2016.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: And it's not just that he lost the popular vote, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He was below 50 percent in Florida, Arizona, North Carolina.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: He's below 50.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the question is not so much how do you appeal to like swing voters or do I like Trump? Do I not like Trump?
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: But it's how do you get all of the anti-Trump voters together?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think Sanders is uniquely well positioned to bring those third party voters and to get them to vote Democratic.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: I think that's the strongest electability argument for him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: As I went walking that ribbon of highway, I saw above me that endless skyway.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: Never forget that Bernie Sanders recorded a folk album in the 80s.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That golden valley.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: I don't know if Matthew Iglesias has recorded any folk albums yet, but he hosts the Weeds podcast at Vox.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our colleagues here have written arguments for several of the other leading candidates in this race, including Vice President Biden, Senator Warren, and Mayor Pete.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: You can find them at Vox.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Ramos from this is the 499th episode of Today Explained.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: This show was made for you and me.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I roamed and rambled.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: I followed my footsteps from the sparkling sands of your diamond desert, and all around me a voice was sounding, this land was made for you and me.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This land is your land
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: This land is my land
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: From California To the New York Islands
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: From the river forest To the Gulf Stream water
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This land was made for you and me
