--:-- [Discussion begins with Emily Stewart and an unidentified guest]
--:-- Emily Stewart: The sixth Democratic debate, very awkwardly timed between the president getting impeached and Christmas.
--:-- [Unidentified Guest]: Yeah, but even more awkward, maybe, is that it was on the same night as Miss America pageant, which a lot of people probably don't even realize still exists.
--:-- Emily Stewart: I had no idea that was going on, but I'm guessing more people probably watched Miss America than the debate.
--:-- [Unidentified Guest]: Which did you end up watching?
--:-- Emily Stewart: So I kind of watched both, but if I can be honest, I did spend some time on Miss America.
--:-- [Unidentified Guest]: Talented, accomplished principles. As I was watching, I kind of thought, you know what, a lot of these answers sound kind of similar.
--:-- Emily Stewart: So since I watched both of them last night, I decided to make up a little game.
--:-- [Unidentified Guest]: I bet a lot of people wouldn't know what came from a pageant contestant, although now they call them candidates at Miss America, and what came from a presidential candidate.
--:-- Emily Stewart: They're both candidates? Yeah. They changed it now because Miss America is trying to be better.
--:-- [Unidentified Guest]: They got rid of the swimsuit competition. They now have to have a social impact initiative.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Obviously, all these women are still beautiful, and this is about beauty, but Miss America is trying to be a little more modern.
--:-- [Unidentified Guest]: So did you make this game? Did you actually execute?
--:-- Emily Stewart: Indeed, I did. It is on the Vox.com website.
--:-- [Unidentified Guest]: Can we play the game?
--:-- Emily Stewart: Yeah, so let's do it.
--:-- Emily Stewart: So basically, what I'm going to do is read a quote to you, and then you tell me, do you think it came from a presidential candidate or a beauty queen?
--:-- [Unidentified Guest]: Okay, cool.
--:-- Emily Stewart: All right, so the first one. America needs a champion right now, and I'm that champion.
--:-- [Unidentified Guest]: That's actually good. Wow, that could really be either.
--:-- Emily Stewart: I'm going to say that's from last night's debate.
--:-- [Unidentified Guest]: Nope, it was Miss Connecticut last night.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Hit me with another.
--:-- Emily Stewart: All right. I really wish I could have that one back. The world needs America, but it can't be just any America.
--:-- [Unidentified Guest]: It has to be one that is actually living up to the values that make us who we are, supporting peace, supporting democracy, supporting human rights, and supporting stability around the world.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Ugh. I feel like something like that was said at the debate last night.
--:-- [Unidentified Guest]: Can I go debate again?
--:-- Emily Stewart: And that is correct. That was Pete Buttigieg.
--:-- [Unidentified Guest]: Yes! All right, you ready for another one?
--:-- Emily Stewart: Yeah, I'm ready.
--:-- Emily Stewart: I'm still pissed about the first one.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Did you know that every eight minutes, a parent or caregiver makes a medication error that affects a child?
--:-- [Unidentified Guest]: I don't remember that.
--:-- Emily Stewart: I'm going to say pageant.
--:-- [Unidentified Guest]: That is correct. That was Miss Virginia.
--:-- Emily Stewart: You're doing pretty well.
--:-- Emily Stewart: So now we are going to do prior years. And I think these ones might be a little bit easier.
--:-- [Unidentified Guest]: They're like pretty well known, but maybe not.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Who knows?
--:-- Emily Stewart: Um, all right so I was told I didn't smile enough.
--:-- [Unidentified Guest]: Well if they're well known it's got to be debate right.
--:-- Emily Stewart: I kind of gave it away but yeah that was Carly Fiorina uh in 2015 but obviously a lot of women have heard that and I'm sure plenty of the Miss Americas have sorry Carly.
--:-- [Unidentified Guest]: And then our last one. Who am I and why am I here?
--:-- Emily Stewart: That is 100% debate.
--:-- [Unidentified Guest]: Who am I? Why am I here?
--:-- Emily Stewart: And I 100% forget who said it, but it was very funny at the time.
--:-- [Unidentified Guest]: Right. So that was Emerald James Stockdale.
--:-- Emily Stewart: He was a 1992 independent vice presidential candidate who was running with Ross Perot.
--:-- [Unidentified Guest]: Oh, that's right. That's right. Oh my gosh. Vintage.
--:-- Emily Stewart: In my defense, I was seven years old and lived in another country.
--:-- [Unidentified Guest]: But yeah, so that's the game, right? It's fun and it's not as easy as you would think.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Yeah, I'm really glad you came up with this game because I mean, in addition to being fun, it shows that pageants aren't as dumb as you think.
--:-- [Unidentified Guest]: Debates aren't as smart as we'd hope.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And at the end of the day, they're both probably more about TV ratings than they should be.
--:-- Emily Stewart: But I should say that last night's debate was better than I think all of the ones that preceded it.
--:-- Emily Stewart: It was almost never obnoxious.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And there were really substantive questions and discussions.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And obviously, it also helps that there were only seven people on the stage and we're getting closer to the primary.
--:-- Emily Stewart: It's actually starting.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And you started to see that kind of come out last night.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And we should talk about who the seven people were.
--:-- Emily Stewart: So it was Klobuchar, Biden, Steyer, Warren, Sanders, Buttigieg, and Andrew Yang.
--:-- Emily Stewart: So what we saw start out as this very diverse field with multiple people of color, lots of women, a few billionaires, is now six white people and one Asian guy.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And credit to the PBS and Politico moderators last night, they actually asked Yang directly about this.
--:-- Emily Stewart: What message do you think this sends to voters of color?
--:-- [Unidentified Guest]: It's both an honor and disappointment to be the lone candidate of color on the stage tonight.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And he also used it as a moment to talk about race in America and the fact that people of color being excluded is emblematic of a broader issue and really pivot toward his message.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And the question is, why am I the lone candidate of color on this stage?
--:-- Emily Stewart: Fewer than five percent of Americans donate to political campaigns.
--:-- Emily Stewart: You know what you need to donate to political campaigns Disposable income
--:-- Emily Stewart: The way we fix it the way we fix this is we take Martin Luther King message of a guaranteed minimum income a freedom dividend of $1,000 a month for all Americans.
--:-- Emily Stewart: I guarantee if we had a freedom dividend of $1,000 a month, I would not be the only candidate of color on this stage tonight.
--:-- [Unidentified Guest]: Thank you, Mr. Yang.
--:-- Emily Stewart: As I mentioned at the top, the debate sort of was awkwardly timed.
--:-- Emily Stewart: It came one day after the president was impeached and just a few days before everyone heads off on vacation for the holidays.
--:-- Emily Stewart: They had to lead with impeachment.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Did anyone actually say anything interesting?
--:-- [Unidentified Guest]: They kind of led the last one with impeachment, too.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Yeah, I mean, not really.
--:-- Emily Stewart: It's awkward to talk about impeachment if you're running to replace the president.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Like, you want to make more of a positive argument for yourself versus, like, well, maybe the Senate should get rid of him and then I'd be running against Mike Pence.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Well, let's talk about some of the positive moments that people made for themselves.
--:-- Emily Stewart: One of the first questions that seemed to depart from the usual sort of boilerplate of trade and the economy and climate was about this thing that Barack Obama said this week.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Which is essentially like the world would be a better place if more women were in charge.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Is that fair paraphrasing?
--:-- Emily Stewart: Former President Obama said this week when asked who should be running countries that if women were in charge, you'd see a significant improvement on just about everything.
--:-- Emily Stewart: He also said, quote, if you look at the world and look at the problems, it's usually old people, usually old men, not getting out of the way.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And I think the question went to Joe Biden first.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Like, what do you think of that, Joe?
--:-- Emily Stewart: Right. Well, it went to Bernie and Joe Biden.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And it was like, OK, like maybe ask a woman on the stage.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And Amy Klobuchar made that point when they turned it to her.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And she was like. Thank you for asking a woman this question.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And Elizabeth Warren did, too, but they framed it to her.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Senator Warren, you would be the oldest president ever inaugurated.
--:-- Emily Stewart: I'd like you to weigh in as well.
--:-- Emily Stewart: I'd also be the youngest woman ever inaugurated.
--:-- Emily Stewart: To kind of make a point that both her and Klobuchar have made, which is like, hey, we still have not had any women presidents.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And this is nuts.
--:-- Emily Stewart: That was a nice moment because everyone got to kind of have a laugh.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And almost soon after that, we had a first really contentious moment of the evening.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And it was about wine caves, I could say with a straight face.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Absolutely.
--:-- Emily Stewart: So, yes, 75 feet down. Caves are wonderful, first of all, for wine.
--:-- Emily Stewart: So there's many things, the temperature, the humidity.
--:-- Emily Stewart: It was about wine caves, Emily.
--:-- Emily Stewart: What is a wine cave?
--:-- Emily Stewart: I guess it's where rich people keep their wine.
--:-- Emily Stewart: So basically this wine cave thing kind of kicked off when our colleague at Recode, Teddy Schleifer, found on Instagram some of these pictures of a Mayor Pete fundraiser in California where there is this wine cave and a chandelier with Swarovski crystals all over.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And so obviously there's this broader question within the Democratic Party about how to deal with wealthy donors.
--:-- Emily Stewart: You know, Elizabeth Warren is not taking any money from big donors.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Same with Bernie Sanders.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And Mayor Pete really has embraced some of the bigger fundraisers.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And Pete made the argument that he needs the money, whereas a lot of the candidates on stage don't because they're independently wealthy.
--:-- Emily Stewart: You know, according to Forrest Magazine, I am literally the only person on this stage who's not a millionaire or a billionaire.
--:-- Emily Stewart: So if this is important, this is the problem with issuing purity tests you cannot yourself pass.
--:-- Emily Stewart: If I pledge, if I pledge never to be in the company of a progressive Democratic donor, I couldn't be up here.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Senator, your net worth is 100 times mine.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And he also pointed out that Warren, for her Senate campaign, has done fundraisers in the past.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And this is sort of a new stance for her.
--:-- Emily Stewart: But these two have been kind of going back and forth for weeks.
--:-- Emily Stewart: So it's not surprising that this would come up.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Senator Klobuchar kind of shut it down by saying, like, guys, we're not here to fight.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Let's move on. Let's make progress.
--:-- Emily Stewart: But then moments later, she was taking shots at Pete herself.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Yeah, Amy Klobuchar yesterday really came out fighting.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And she was really going after Mayor Pete.
--:-- Emily Stewart: You know, I don't think Amy likes Pete very much.
--:-- Emily Stewart: I don't think so either.
--:-- Emily Stewart: When we were in the last debate, Mayor, you basically mocked the hundred years of experience on the stage.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And what do I see on this stage? I see Elizabeth's work starting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and helping 29 million people.
--:-- Emily Stewart: I see the vice president's work in getting $2 billion for his cancer moonshot.
--:-- Emily Stewart: I see Senator Sanders' work working to get the Veterans Bill passed across the aisle.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And I see what I've done, which is to negotiate three farm bills and be someone that actually had major provisions put in those bills.
--:-- Emily Stewart: So while you can dismiss committee hearings, I think this experience works.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And I have not denigrated your experience as a local official.
--:-- Emily Stewart: I have been one.
--:-- Emily Stewart: You know, I just think you should respect our experience when you look at how you evaluate someone who can get things done.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Thank you, Senator.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Mr. Mayor, I'll give you a chance.
--:-- Emily Stewart: She kind of made the point with him that like, hey, young man, like sit down and listen to some of these people and respect them.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Yeah, it was kind of a big night for Klobuchar, a big night for Yang.
--:-- Emily Stewart: I liked a lot of things about the debate.
--:-- Emily Stewart: I didn't love the moving background.
--:-- Emily Stewart: That was kind of hard to stare at
--:-- Emily Stewart: I didn't love that a lot of the more diverse candidates had disappeared.
--:-- Emily Stewart: But I did like fewer people and better questions and more substantive conversation
--:-- Emily Stewart: And whereas all the other debates opened with health care it become so monotonous and cliche.
--:-- Emily Stewart: This one ended with health care and like ended with a fight on health care.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Yeah.
--:-- Emily Stewart: So yesterday you did see Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders really kind of clash over health
--:-- Emily Stewart: And, you know, this was really like a really unique moment.
--:-- Emily Stewart: You have two guys who are ostensibly the frontrunners.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And making sure that we're able to cover everyone who is, in fact, able to be covered.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Put your hand down for second partner, OK?
--:-- Emily Stewart: Just waving to you, Joe.
--:-- Emily Stewart: I know, I know.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Say it all out.
--:-- Emily Stewart: I know.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And they really did, you know, have a pretty substantive argument over their different visions for health care.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Joe Biden has basically said he wants to build on Obamacare, build out a public option.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And Bernie Sanders obviously is a huge proponent of Medicare for all.
--:-- Emily Stewart: He always says, I wrote the damn bill.
--:-- Emily Stewart: But last night he did not.
--:-- Emily Stewart: That was not like his big line last night.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Like they really got into it and tried to draw some clear separation between themselves.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And you really got to see like how they both think about the issue of health care very differently.
--:-- Emily Stewart: It covers everybody.
--:-- Emily Stewart: It's realistic.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And most importantly, it lets you choose what you want.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Here, you have 160 million people negotiated their health care plans with their employer, like many of you have.
--:-- Emily Stewart: You may or may not like it.
--:-- Emily Stewart: If you don't like it, you can move into the public option that I propose in my plan.
--:-- Emily Stewart: But if you like it, you shouldn't have Washington dictating you.
--:-- Emily Stewart: You cannot keep the plan you have.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Thank you, Vice President Biden.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Senator Sanders, 45 seconds to respond.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Under Joe's plan, essentially, we retain the status quo.
--:-- Emily Stewart: That's not true.
--:-- Emily Stewart: No, that's not right.
--:-- Emily Stewart: That is exactly true.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Thank you.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And, by the way, Joe, under your plan, you know, you asked me how we're going to pay for it.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Under your plan, I'll tell you how we're paying for it right now.
--:-- Emily Stewart: The average worker in America, their family makes $60,000 a year.
--:-- Emily Stewart: That family is now paying $12,000 a year for health care, 20% of the income under Medicare for All, that family will be paying $1,200 a year because we're eliminating the profiteering of the drug companies and the insurance companies and ending this Byzantine and complex administration of thousands of separate health care plans.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And it was a reminder that, you know, despite everything we've been through this year, the frontrunners in this campaign are still Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Rating and reviewing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What are you doing?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Rating and reviewing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What are you doing?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Rating and reviewing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What are you doing?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Five stars
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What are you doing?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Love this show
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Today Explained
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's Today Explained Matthew Iglesias, Vox.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: I was just talking to Emily Stewart, Vox, about last night's debate and how after everything that's happened this year, after Mayor Pete and Beto and Kamala and Castro and Bloomberg and Marianne Williamson, after all that, when it comes down to the polls, It's still the Bernie Biden show, which is to say the continuation of Obama versus a new lefty socialist politics for the Democrats, which is to say that after all of this, this is basically the 2016 race all over again.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: Obama's legacy versus Bernie.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: Right. I mean, and that's not to dismiss Warren, who's in third place in the polls or Buttigieg, who is doing well in the early states.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: But they are both behind Sanders at this point and Sanders is behind Biden.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: And, you know, the Biden-Sanders primary, it's quite similar in a lot of ways to the Hillary Sanders primary.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: The basic question is, like, should Democrats change in some fundamental way or should they stay the same?
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: And a lot of people, you know, Harris, Booker, people who seemed very promising at one time or another.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: And part of what felt promising about them to people who are sick of these tensions is they thought, OK, well, maybe we can turn a page on this, right, have a new generation of leaders.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: But most of the electorate, it turns out, gravitates toward Biden or to Sanders.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: And that kind of basic tension inside the party remains quite robust.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: And if you had one issue that sort of captured the essence of that tension, I imagine it's the issue that most of the debates started with.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: It's Medicare for all versus what might be called like Obamacare plus, huh?
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: Exactly.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: And you see Sanders and Biden argue about this.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: You also saw a whole bunch of candidates initially come out for Medicare for All, I think assuming that by co-opting one of Bernie's signature issues, they could co-opt his supporters.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: When it turned out that that wasn't going to happen, that the Sanders constituency is very loyal to him, that started to lead Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, maybe even to an extent Elizabeth Warren definitely Pete Buttigieg to back away from that idea
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: Right And so it in part a debate about policy but really the policy debate is also about the people involved It about the Sanders movement and its viability the challenge it poses to the establishment.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: And you've seen the different candidates' struggles to navigate those waters, how profound the divide really is, and how little interest there sort of was in bridging it.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: What does that actually tell us about what voters feel about, say, Medicare for All or Obamacare Plus?
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: Is the support for Biden over Sanders a statement of support for Obamacare Plus over Medicare for All?
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: Or is it more personality-based?
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: I mean, I don't think it's personality-based.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: It's in part about the issues and the specifics of, you know, free college, Medicare for All.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: But I think a lot of it, and you saw this going back to Clinton Sanders, is feelings about the Democratic Party as an institution.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: Sanders voters, they tend to have a negative assessment of the Democratic Party and of the political system as a whole.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: They're younger on average, and they are angry.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: They like that Sanders is so oppositional to the system.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: Then on the other hand, you have a bunch of people who are loyal partisan Democrats, older, blacker than the Sanders constituency.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: They think the Democratic Party is good.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: They support Democratic Party leaders.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: Joe Biden, like Hillary Clinton, is a top figure in the Democratic Party firmament.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: They trust those people to do the right thing and to try to navigate difficult politics correctly.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: And they want to keep them in charge.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: The Sanders people don't see it that way.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: They are afraid of their interests being sold out and they want a new group on top of the pile.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: And there's still about an eight point gap between Bernie and Joe Biden in national polls.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: Does Bernie have any tricks up his sleeve to close that gap?
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: You know, one advantage Bernie has is that he is stronger in Iowa and New Hampshire than he is nationally, right?
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: So if he can pull off an early win, he may get a boost nationally, sort of cruise to victory.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: I also do think an edge he has is a couple topics on which Biden and Obama are not on the same page.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: That's the Iraq War and also a bankruptcy bill that Biden did in 2005.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: Those are opportunities for Bernie to expand his constituency, you know, beyond the sort of hardcore anti-establishmentarians.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: Another thing that Bernie taps into that is Obama-like is that he has very much a message of hope and empowerment, right?
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: Sanders, you know, if you ask me about him, a lot of cranky D.C. people say, you know, he's telling people he's going to do things that he can't really do.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: On the other hand, I think a lot of people, you know, to get involved in the process, to come out and vote, to come out and volunteer, they want to feel inspired.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: They want to believe that their activism can make a huge difference.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: And Sanders does paint that picture, which to me is reminiscent of Obama back in 2007, 2008.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: It makes you feel good about yourself to believe in the Sanders cause relative to Democrats who are telling you, like, that's never going to happen.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: That's not going to pass. We've got to be realistic.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: That's a kind of bummer message.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: The fact that President Trump, you know, called up Ukraine and asked President Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden seems to suggest that President Trump would prefer to run against Bernie Sanders.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: Do we have any idea who between the two candidates would fare better against Donald Trump?
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: You know, in head to head polls, it looks like Biden does better than Sanders.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: The gap between the two of them is not huge, though.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: And these kind of early polls, They have some predictive value, but it's not enormous.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: So I think it's hard to say.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: I mean, you can speculate.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: But I think realistically the biggest issue out here is that Trump is not very popular, which makes him vulnerable.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: But his strength is concentrated in the key electoral college states, which makes him hard to beat.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: And there's not that much more you can say beyond it other than that Trump's actions and people's assessment of them will probably matter more than what Democrats do.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: It feels like the Democratic Party right now can't really afford to be fractured.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: There's a lot of talk about, you know, this is the most important election of our lifetimes, etc., etc.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: And yet the choice that seems to be in front of this party is between a moderate Obama type and a Democratic socialist who has, you know, what would be considered radical ideas to a lot of Americans.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: Does that bode very badly for 2020?
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: I think it's not ideal.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: I mean, like a lot of D.C. inside type people, I was excited, intrigued early on by a lot of these younger sort of voices in the primary.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: I thought it would be helpful and constructive for Democrats to nominate someone who is not a self-proclaimed socialist, but who also isn't a pillar of the D.C. establishment for decades.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: Somebody who maybe wasn't around for the Iraq war vote or didn't support it.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: But it's just it's turned out that people have fallen, not everyone, but a lot of Democrats into these kind of old grooves, these old lanes that were laid down in the 2016 primary.
--:-- Matthew Iglesias: And even though it would be sort of convenient to like move beyond that or avoid it, to a large extent, that same fight is just still ongoing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Matthew Iglesias hosts the Weeds podcast, along with a couple other Vox Voices.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They will be covering last night's debate on their show today, if you just can't get enough.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Ramos from this is Today Explained.
