Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

Feb. 4, 2020 - The Muckrake Political Podcast

53:20

Exclusive Iowa Coverage: A Matter of Electability

It's caucus night and co-host Jared Yates Sexton is fighting the Des Moines Flu to give insight from his reporting on the ground in Iowa. Discussions include a dissection of the collapse of the Joe Biden campaign, Democratic worries over Bernie Sanders, a strong showing by Pete Buttigieg, and a rundown of what we know and don't know as we leave the Hawkeye State. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	So we have Jared Yead-Sixon reporting live in Iowa on the boots on the ground.
	I hope you heard his last podcast that we had, Solo, where he broke some serious news about Joe Biden.
	So, Jared, I want to talk to you about that, because how did you come about this news and what did it mean when you heard it?
	Well, first of all, I just want to say that I have picked up one of the worst cases of the flu that I've ever had in my entire life, which is very fun to do while you're out in frigid Iowa.
	And I just had this moment today where I was like, I need to get out of this state.
	It is so cold and I am so sick.
	And for people who listened to the last podcast, like I had a little cough and I was like, Let's hope I don't get any of that crud.
	And then I woke up the next day and I was like, oh, this is a serious situation.
	Yeah, so one of the things that happened was I went to Joe Biden's rally in North Liberty the day before last, or whenever it was.
	Does time have meaning?
	And the rally itself was... I don't know any other way to put it.
	It was really piss poor.
	It was really bad.
	Nothing worked.
	And it was quite obvious that the campaign wasn't...
	It wasn't up to snuff, like something was wrong somewhere and the people working for Biden were running around and everything was sort of slapdash and haphazard.
	And then I started reaching out to the people in the campaign that I know a little bit.
	And so what happened was, so this was Saturday.
	And the Saturday before the Iowa caucuses is like this, this like, come to Jesus moment.
	It's like this big, big day where all of a sudden, like, if you have momentum and you know it, you're so excited.
	You know what I mean?
	Like, you're just like, man, Monday can't get here fast enough.
	And we really have it.
	Then the other campaigns start falling apart, and people who pay attention to this stuff, you'll notice it'll show up on Politico, or it'll show up on The Hill, or whatever, and you'll start getting these little stories that are like, Biden staffers say blah blah blah blah blah.
	Well, they were ready to talk, and they were telling me that this entire campaign has been really bad.
	They thought the people who got on the campaign thought that they were going to be getting on basically Obama 2.0.
	You know, a very analytic, heavy, smooth transition campaign.
	And what they got instead was, and Joe Biden has run for president twice before, and both times were disasters.
	That's what they got.
	And one of the people on the campaign told me that the campaign was snakebit.
	And for anybody who doesn't know what snakebit means, basically, it means that things just go wrong from the very beginning.
	And I witnessed some of that at the rally.
	You know, it was like Biden came out and nearly tripped and did a faceplant.
	He came out and John Kerry, who I apparently told somebody they thought about, you know, running for president.
	I don't think he actually thought that.
	John Kerry had maybe the same thing I've got.
	I don't know.
	Maybe I got this from John Kerry.
	Who knows?
	Maybe I've got the John Kerry flu.
	And then there was just this kid who just kept wandering over to the podium because his family wasn't like, you know, pulling him in.
	And there were protesters, people interrupting him, and it just never got a momentum.
	And Biden's speech was really bad.
	He wasn't able to concentrate and really bring things together.
	His entire campaign has been, I can beat Trump.
	I mean, that's what you even see on the signs.
	And so everybody I talked to was just like, this has been really bad.
	And what happens is those people start pointing fingers because they don't want the stench of the loss on them.
	Right.
	They want to go out and get the job and they want to be like, well, I was telling people here's an article right here where I told somebody this was the problem.
	And so, you know, it's like a sinking ship.
	And the Biden campaign out here in Iowa became a sinking ship.
	And it's going to be a long night for them.
	We've been watching the coverage.
	And, you know, he hasn't been viable in a lot of these caucuses.
	Buttigieg is rising.
	Warren is having a great night.
	Bernie Sanders is having a great night so far.
	But Biden, Biden's in trouble.
	Biden's in real trouble right now.
	I mean, is it worth spending, you know, 45 seconds just to kind of describe quickly how these caucuses work?
	Because, you know, certainly our president has no idea what happens in these things.
	He doesn't know where Kansas City is.
	Oh my goodness, I know.
	And so it's possible that people listening might not, you know, really have a grasp on it or listen to other podcasts that describe it.
	So, you know, the viable word is coming up a lot now.
	It kind of seems to sort of rear its ugly head during these times.
	So, you know, give us a quick breakdown of how that works when you walk into one of these gyms.
	Yeah, you walk into these places and you go stand in like a designated spot for your candidate.
	And then they take the number of the people there and they determine what 15% of the total number there is.
	And if you hit 15%, you're viable.
	If you don't, you're unviable and you have to go somewhere else.
	Or you just don't go anywhere else, right?
	You just stand around.
	And this is a really, really good thing for a liberal like Bernie Sanders.
	I mean, he's done really, really well in caucuses because a lot of the times it's based on excitement.
	And the people who are for Bernie are really, really for Bernie.
	I was out there earlier talking to the caucusers as they were going in, and I mean, they were treating it like a pep rally.
	And they're very young.
	The turnout is huge.
	And they are very, very young, and they are very excited.
	So, it's looking good for him.
	Probably looking good for Buttigieg, as well.
	I think it's looking good for Warren.
	Warren's campaign has basically been a non-stop party for the past four days.
	I mean, you just have groups of Warren supporters who are just going from bar to bar and restaurant to restaurant, having a great time.
	And that sort of excitement carries over to caucuses.
	I mean, when energy is infectious, it's infectious.
	And I think that plays a big role.
	You know my impression though of the excitement you're talking about when it relates to Bernie is bullying.
	To me it almost sounds like they're all in their pack and they're gonna start to try and push everybody they can in a really abrupt you know and in your face manner to get into their grouping.
	Am I wrong in that or is that what it's like?
	I love that we are now entering the part of this podcast where we start having to talk about Bernie Sanders as a potential presidential candidate.
	Yeah, I think there are parts of the Bernie Sanders support base that can be Pretty intimidating, I think is one word.
	Aggressive.
	Aggressive, I think there's a lot happening there.
	To these people, and you know, I think part of it, we kind of mentioned this very, very briefly before we got on here, I think part of it is an age thing.
	I think that, you know, his base is very young, and they, Are really energized and they really believe that they're playing a role in a political revolution and so that's the thing right is if you're if you're carrying out a political revolution then you know why have niceties that's what's got us to this point and.
	I think that there's a generational thing there because they are aggressive and they can harass.
	I mean, the Bernie Bro thing is true.
	It doesn't mean that his entire base is that.
	I mean, there are a lot of rural people who are really up for some socialist ideas and a change to how our economy works.
	But yeah, there's a lot of them who are really aggressive.
	I think that's a good word for some of them.
	Okay, fair enough.
	And so, what I liked hearing is that maybe, you know, he's got a little bit of momentum, but it sounds like perhaps Warren and Buttigieg are maybe a little bit more on an upswing here in theory.
	And again, like we said before, this really doesn't matter if you win it outright.
	I kind of, right?
	It feels like you just got to nail that top three.
	Yeah, the old adage is three tickets are punched out of Iowa.
	There's going to be four here.
	You know, usually it's three.
	Here it'll be four, and it's going to be Biden, it's going to be Sanders, Warren, and Buttigieg.
	Klobuchar's had like a little bit of momentum building, but I think Klobuchar's candidacy for the most part was a vice presidential candidacy.
	I think Buttigieg is too, if we're going to be frank about it.
	I think he's putting himself out there for that.
	I think they're in the running for those things.
	You know what's funny?
	I remember another guy who put himself in the running for the Vice Presidency in 2008.
	And all of a sudden ended up taking over, right?
	That was what he was, I think, you know, initially going for when Obama started in 08.
	And then it just became a thing.
	So I don't know.
	All of a sudden, am I getting grip of a little Buttigieg energy here?
	You know, he's kind of following the Obama playbook, is it safe to say?
	Yeah, I think that's fair.
	Basically, he's running an insurgency campaign.
	I mean, we live in this weird time.
	You and I are active on Twitter, right?
	Buttigieg is not popular on Twitter.
	And basically, it's just people dunking on him left and right, or calling him a secret CIA agent.
	I think he appeals to Midwestern people.
	I mean, we're seeing that.
	That's what happened here.
	People in Iowa love Midwestern people.
	I mean, he's not going to run in New Hampshire.
	I mean, he's not going to have a moment in New Hampshire.
	He might be around for Super Tuesday, maybe.
	But yeah, I mean, he gained momentum here.
	His on-the-ground machine here was really strong.
	You couldn't go anywhere in Iowa this weekend without seeing Buttigieg's stuff.
	Huh.
	Keep your eye on that.
	All the numbers and everything and the role he's playing, all those indicate, yes, it's a vice presidential run and he's going to hang in until Super Tuesday.
	But crazier things.
	South Carolina, he probably won't play well there either, I'd imagine.
	But, you know, I don't know.
	Democrats are strange these days.
	Everything is strange.
	And that's why it's like, again, the whole backdrop isn't necessarily about who you like, right?
	It's who's going to beat Trump.
	That's the big question.
	Can you believe that?
	- He hasn't, we talked about this before, the impeachment trial was successful because it knocked Biden out of it pretty much, or certainly wounded him, which was as good as they would have gotten if they had announced investigations in Ukraine, almost the same result.
	That's the 4D chess, by the way.
	Can you believe that?
	I kind of feel like Trump played 4D chess in this one. - That's a possibility.
	I think there were a lot of things that happened here to Biden.
	They were definitely counting on Barack Obama giving his endorsement before Iowa.
	And I don't think Obama wants to do that.
	Well, obviously, he didn't.
	But I don't think that they thought they would get to this point without Obama stepping in.
	And I think that hurt them.
	And on top of that, you know, going back to what I'm saying, Joe Biden's really bad at running for president.
	He just is.
	And he's always been bad at running for president.
	What he's done in Iowa has been a senatorial campaign.
	And there's a big difference between a senatorial campaign and a presidential campaign.
	But now... So, the firewall, so to speak, has been South Carolina.
	Everyone's like, if Joe Biden gets to South Carolina, he'll probably win there.
	Well, he's not gonna win New Hampshire.
	Bernie Sanders is probably going to win New Hampshire.
	And Bernie Sanders very possibly could run off Iowa and New Hampshire and then possibly Nevada.
	You know, what happens to Biden in South Carolina if he has the stench of loss on him?
	I don't know where those people go.
	And I don't know what happens to, you know, sort of the traditional democratic base down there.
	I think everything right now is sort of up in the air.
	And, you know, I've been watching it all day because I've been deathly ill.
	To watch the democratic institution freak out over Bernie Sanders has been a lot.
	I mean, we were talking about it before I went on the air.
	I mean, all of a sudden, Bloomberg is a viable candidate in all these people's mouths.
	The idea that, and by the way, you're not going to have Bernie Sanders running against a billionaire who's throwing his money around and have that turn out well.
	You know what I mean?
	That's not a good fight for Bloomberg.
	But yeah, it's been weird.
	A lot of things have been shaken up.
	I don't think we're going to know who won tonight.
	I think we'll find that out tomorrow.
	Would you like to know what the returns are right now at 7-Eleven Pacific Time?
	Breaking news!
	Guess who's winning?
	Right now, my guess is it is Elizabeth Warren.
	Okay, this is on the NPR website and they have votes.
	Not the STE, but the votes.
	That gets really confusing and they don't have any of that data.
	They only have the votes.
	Right now, and there's like 3,000 votes in, who do you think is winning?
	That's not complete.
	1,001.
	Next in line is Bernie at 842.
	And then you have Elizabeth Warren at 605, Joe Biden at 592, and then Amy Klobuchar at 579.
	So Biden is below Klobuchar right now.
	And that would be a— I bet that's— You know what?
	If he finishes below Klobuchar, then he's really doing something.
	That might be it.
	That tells me that those are the small rural precincts coming in, right?
	Where you just have like 70 people that you've got to move around.
	And there's no doubt that Buttigieg would do well there.
	I think his whole act has played really well in Iowa.
	His act?
	Yeah, I, you know, sort of the upstanding American and, you know, the all-American boy.
	He's a young mayor.
	He's a good-looking kid.
	And then on top of that, like, I think Iowans like to believe they're more progressive than maybe they are.
	So, you know, they're gonna be okay with him being openly gay as long as he is, you know, openly Christian.
	Yeah, I think he's going to do really well in the rural areas.
	But when the college towns and the cities start rolling in, Bernie's going to come back.
	But, man, that Biden number is bad.
	That's really bad.
	So let me ask you this because, you know, the whole openly gay aspect has really kind of gone way back in the background.
	Right?
	Like, you know, almost to the point where I can't remember if I told you this before, but at some point, like two weeks ago, I actually asked my wife, I'm like, wait, is Buttigieg gay?
	Because I hadn't heard it for so long, I kind of like forgot that that was a thing.
	And so here's my question, because, you know, my mind has to race to every different possibility and every different version of the matrix.
	So if he ends up running the general election against Trump, like part of the advantage there is that Trump will no doubt say something horribly homophobic, right?
	Like he'll have to try and smear and do that.
	And in any other year up until 2016, like that would end the candidacy as well.
	So I'm kind of wondering how that's going to play out.
	Because you also thought that would have been for the same with women.
	And we saw how that worked out.
	So maybe he's immune either way.
	But I would imagine there would be outrage if he really said something stupid.
	If Trump did, you know, that was homophobic.
	Oh, if Bernie Sanders wins the nomination, do not be shocked when anti-Semitism starts flooding, you know, the online space.
	Or, I mean, they just had, oh man, I thought about going to see Trump Jr.
	and, oh, what's the dumb one's name?
	Eric?
	Eric, Eric.
	Trump Jr.
	and Eric had like a little thing last night and I was too busy huddled up in my hotel bed shivering and trying not to die.
	Jared!
	I would have loved to have heard about that.
	That's a rough night, but I thought about getting up in my flu-ridden state and going to see Donald Trump Jr.
	But they've already started calling him a communist.
	I mean that's where that's already happened.
	And oh yeah, he would say something about Buttigieg, Bloomberg, like anti-Semitism would happen.
	I mean Trump has been having a ball lately just talking about Bloomberg's hype.
	Um, you know, whoever it is, it's going to happen.
	But sure, I think Buttigieg, uh, I think he would bring something really bad out of Trump.
	But the other part about it, so this is so terrible, like game theorizing or strategizing this thing, but my first instinct was like, well, Buttigieg is a veteran and, you know, Trump got away from the military with all those deferments and that'll look good for Buttigieg.
	But then I just remembered that I saw John Kerry with Joe Biden talking about swift boating.
	And, you know, and remembering that George W. Bush, you know, and Karl Rove went there and stripped John Kerry of, like, a heroic career in the military.
	Yeah.
	Oh, by the way, at the same time they did that, at the very same time they destroyed Dan Rather's career on the precipice of being exposing W's version of getting out of the military as well.
	And that ended up, I think, was not false reporting and it never should have happened.
	So that, yeah, I don't think that Buttigieg has that story that they could swift vote him on, right?
	And I have to tell you, the one thing that gets me, you know, Buttigieg has the smartest answers.
	He's not quite like Clinton, Bill Clinton was, but he's able to answer these questions in a really intelligent way that is pretty clear.
	It doesn't get completely in the weeds.
	And it doesn't remind me of Bill, but there's certainly, there's something there that makes you impressed when you hear him speak and answer questions.
	Yeah, he's really smart.
	I will throw this out there, and I'm glad that George W. Bush just came up, because I want to talk about this very, very quickly.
	My first time I ever came to Iowa was in 2004 to help the Howard Dean campaign.
	And, you know, I'm very, very passionate about Howard Dean.
	I was, you know, 22, and like just out of my mind for Howard Dean.
	I still think he would have made a great president.
	But Howard Dean got screwed over because people were so obsessed with beating George W. Bush that they talked themselves out of the candidate who could have beat him.
	Right?
	I mean, the idea of electability.
	We really fall sometimes into pundits.
	We become pundits.
	And all of a sudden we like to treat this as a hobby and like it's something to do.
	This is one of those situations where I don't think anybody knows necessarily who can beat Trump.
	I think the board is set up for Trump in a lot of different ways this time.
	And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there's a real possibility that Donald Trump can get re-elected president.
	He has a rigged electoral college in his favor.
	I mean, you know, as soon as he's acquitted by the Senate, I mean, you know, who knows what country he's going to be reaching out to, to, you know, interfere in our elections, if he hasn't already.
	I mean, he probably already has a couple of them on the phone.
	You know, we don't know yet, and we have to be careful with it, and I don't know what the answer is, and I don't think any of us know what the answer is at this point.
	Well, I think where the Bernie bros don't understand is that Trump hasn't really turned his eye to Bernie yet.
	Right?
	He's focused on Biden.
	And when he really wants to start smearing and using the word socialist as a four-letter word, that's when we're really... Any poll you see now doesn't mean anything to me.
	You know, I know that he's up, that Bernie's up.
	They're all up against Trump one-on-one when they do the polling.
	But I'm convinced that once Trump starts to bring everybody down into his mud-packed cauldron of feces, everybody will start smelling like it.
	You walk in shit long enough, you'll smell like it.
	And they're all going to get, whoever it is, will get knocked down.
	And it'll be, again, 50-50, 49-48, whatever it is.
	And it's going to probably come down to three states, like we said.
	So that's the problem I think I have with the Bernie bros.
	They're convinced, based on these polls, that, oh, he's the only guy who's not corrupt who's going to be able to win.
	And then, boy, to hear them smear all the other Democrats and how corrupt they are, that's when you start wondering what side they're on, really.
	I just want to get this right, a mud-packed cauldron of feces.
	This is the Muckrake Political Podcast, a joy for the ears every day.
	It usually deals with something scatological, I apologize.
	What I think people forget is that Donald Trump has spent the past four years kind of advocating for Bernie, you know, as a way to like, you know, flip off Hillary.
	It's always been like the DNC's screwing Bernie over, Hillary's screwing Bernie over.
	He even did that, I think, a couple of days ago.
	He might have done it in his interview with Sean Hannity.
	Yeah, real possibility that's what happened.
	But yeah, I don't know.
	The thing with Bernie is my conventional wisdom, and we talked about this a little bit, I think, a couple of days ago.
	You and I grew up in the Cold War, right?
	We grew up when we had to consider the idea of, you know, nuclear missiles being lobbed at us and hiding underneath our desks.
	I don't think the next generation is as afraid of the idea of socialism.
	I know here in Iowa people haven't cared about it.
	That being said, it could be a non-starter.
	It totally could be a non-starter, and it could really undo him.
	Or there's a possibility that tomorrow doesn't look like today, and I don't know what the answer is there.
	Many.
	You know, the thing with socialism though, it's not communism and there are so many institutions in America right now that are basically socialist anyway.
	Many.
	People don't even know it, right?
	That's the dumb part about this is that the uneducated people just simply go to this false equivalency and assume, well, communism, well, look what happened to Russia, look at Venezuela and that we can't possibly live under that kind of rule.
	And, you know, there's no other place to look more than in the healthcare system.
	And that's where Bernie's been the champion.
	It's probably what's vaulted him across, you know, so many different polls up as much as he has.
	And so I just feel like that's going to be a strange argument, but it's going to work.
	I mean, if you go around telling people, I don't think that the economic system is fair, and I think it is rigged for the wealthy, and neoliberalism has been a dangerous, unfair, cruel system, people hear that.
	I mean, they know it.
	There's no way now, I mean, Trump even, if you listen to Trump, And this is the really, really wild thing about Trump that nobody talks about.
	Trump blends every political idea possible.
	Like, he doesn't have an ideology.
	He'll just say whatever comes to him at the moment, right?
	I mean, he has been engaged in socialistic behavior, the way that he's done with factories and farmers and, you know, it's happened one time after another.
	But I, and the reason he does is because everyone knows that the economy is rigged and it's unfair and it's cruel.
	So, yeah, I think we've gotten to the point in this capitalistic system that I think people could listen.
	And does that mean that Bernie is going to win the nomination?
	No.
	Does it mean that he'll win the presidency?
	No.
	Does it mean that he could become president and do something very, very large and change everything?
	No, it doesn't mean that.
	I think we're stepping into unprecedented territory.
	And I do think.
	So we have eight days from today is when the New Hampshire vote is.
	If Bernie wins convincingly tonight, this country is going to start having a conversation about socialism.
	And it's not going to be great on cable news.
	I'll just throw that out there for everyone.
	But we're going to have a conversation about it.
	And I think that we'll get a better idea in the next eight days how America feels about it.
	I know.
	And by the way, if you want to go that route and you respond to what Bernie is saying about inequality economically, well then choose Elizabeth Warren, because her platform is a lot more coherent and a lot more focused, as far as I can tell, and understands more of the reality of how you can actually manage this in terms of how you pay for a lot of the things he's talking about.
	And, I mean, listen, Bernie would be 79 if he took office.
	He has just had a heart attack during the normal part of the campaign.
	It's not even the most stressful part of the campaign.
	So it's almost like that in and of itself makes me worried, as it is.
	So, but can I, to get around to the notion of like the whole socialism confusion that exists, and I guess here's the question is, you know, you want to talk about like the Trump voter who is completely ill-informed, and we can use a lot of examples, and I wanted to share with you with one.
	And it's not like if we suddenly explain to them what socialism is and how you would really benefit from it or how you benefit even better from Bernie's platform.
	Let's just pretend you could do that as if they wouldn't switch their vote.
	But Joe Walsh, if you're not familiar with Joe Walsh, not the guitarist for the Eagles, I wish it was the guitarist or the Eagles.
	Yes, it would be pretty impressive if he could pull off both.
	But he's running, he's a Republican candidate for president, and he was, you know, never a Trump or kind of a guy.
	He went to one of these Trump rallies just the other day, and he asked 40 of them in line, because there was a whole bunch of them, and he asked them all, you know, has Donald Trump ever lied to the American people?
	It seemed like a simple question.
	Every single one said, no, he's never lied.
	And then they also said, this is weird, he goes, a few people told me that Trump, unlike Obama, has never golfed.
	What?
	Yeah.
	That's what they were saying.
	And they certainly don't understand that the deficit's been blown up to greater than a trillion dollars under Trump.
	They don't know this stuff.
	Nobody thought Trump did anything wrong with Ukraine.
	You know, even, even you have, you know, certain guys, Republican senators are saying he did something inappropriate, like who got that far?
	So that's what you're dealing with.
	And that, that kind of creep, you know, it will infect others a little bit on the margins.
	And I feel like that's when you start to get into that 60,000 vote, you know, difference in those three states that end up, you know, giving him the electoral college.
	Yeah, and if we want to talk about those three states, whoever ends up going in them, and that's my backyard.
	It's your backyard, too.
	I mean, you're from Wisconsin.
	I'm from, well, Illinois.
	You're from Illinois, okay, but you went to school in Wisconsin.
	I did go to Wisconsin, yes.
	Right, okay, so that's your backyard as well.
	I'm from Indiana.
	Those are areas that Barack Obama won handedly.
	And I would not have believed that Barack Obama would win Indiana until he did.
	And the reason he did is because he went into those places and he made an economic argument.
	They're ripe for the taking.
	That doesn't mean it has to be Bernie Sanders.
	Elizabeth Warren can do it.
	Or Buttigieg could do it.
	I mean, hell, let's go there.
	Michael Bloomberg's not going to do it.
	I'm sorry, but Michael Bloomberg is not going to go into Wisconsin in labor territory and talk to people about money.
	That's just not going to work.
	All I can tell you is that if any of those, whoever represents the Democrats in the general, if any of them go into any of those Rust Belt towns and promise that the factories are coming back, I won't vote.
	I will stay home if I hear them try that, you know, because that's the biggest one.
	That's what Trump said, right?
	Trump probably won over a lot of people saying we're going to bring all these factories back.
	And it's the biggest hoax I've ever heard of anything and you know at least with Obama there was some forward thinking about how we can take those those people that lost those jobs and either retrain them and help them direct into other parts where they can become you know viable there's that word you know people in the economy again but that's my I tell you that's my big one that's like the biggest outright lie that people will just buy up like it's candy and it's it's it's it's the worst manipulation I can hear.
	It's disgusting.
	As a person who grew up in a factory family, I mean, I have a lot of contempt for anybody who tells my family that those jobs are coming back.
	And it's just blatant lies and blatant manipulation.
	And that's what Trump's going to do.
	And let's be frank, that's what he did.
	But I think we have a system where We're not going to see, because I'm hearing the name McGovern thrown around a lot today.
	Really?
	In reference.
	Yeah.
	I threw that out there in the last one and I just thought I was the only guy.
	Really?
	The other people were talking about him?
	Yeah.
	I'm hearing a lot of people who are critical of Bernie Sanders who are throwing around the name McGovern.
	And I don't know if a McGovern election can happen anymore.
	You know what I mean?
	I think Trump is so unpopular that unless maybe there's a crisis or unless a candidate has a heart attack or is discovered in a major scandal or something like that, I don't know if that's possible.
	I will say, you know, it's January 3rd.
	I need to take some NyQuil here in a minute.
	February 3rd, 2020.
	And we don't know.
	We don't know who has won Iowa.
	We don't know who's going to win the nomination.
	We don't know who can beat Trump.
	We're in for a lot.
	I mean, tomorrow is the State of the Union.
	The last debate in New Hampshire is Friday.
	New Hampshire votes a week from tomorrow.
	We don't know.
	We just don't know.
	And to, you know, get All over this and pretend that we do know, I think.
	I just don't think we can do it.
	Well, let's just throw out really quickly the McGovern, you know, campaign from 72 against Nixon because it was a landslide.
	Nixon won.
	I don't think McGovern got... He didn't.
	None?
	Zero?
	I believe he might have won one of the Dakotas, which is where he was from.
	And maybe DC.
	I think maybe he won DC as well.
	Right.
	And if you remember, he had to pick a vice presidential running mate who wasn't sort of a last second Thomas Eagleton, who was discovered in, you know, in the Nixon dirty trick way.
	They revealed that he had electric shock treatment, which back then was like basically you were you should be tied up in a straitjacket and never let out of a rubber room.
	Like that's what was the feeling back then.
	He won Massachusetts.
	Won Massachusetts.
	OK.
	He won Massachusetts and D.C.
	He didn't even win his home state.
	Right.
	It was just like in 84 with Yeah.
	Oh, my goodness.
	Oh, with Mondale?
	From Mondale, yes.
	Anyway, so that really sank him.
	And then if I'm not mistaken, McGovern also, they kind of smeared him as if he cried at a campaign rally.
	Yeah, he was touched.
	No, that was Edward Muskie.
	Oh, that was Muskie, forgive me.
	Yeah, everybody thought that Muskie was going to be the candidate to take on Nixon.
	But yeah, he was outside of a factory and he started crying.
	And everybody was like, I don't think this man's mentally stable.
	And meanwhile, Richard Nixon... I don't know if people know this.
	I found this in the research for my book.
	This is fun.
	Richard Nixon, one night, while drunk off his ass, ordered a a strike on North Korea with nuclear weapons and they just ignored him.
	Oh yeah, well there was a standing order if anything came in after I think midnight, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said you have to talk to me first, I believe.
	Doctor Strangelove was not fiction if you ever watched that movie.
	Have you seen that movie?
	Oh, it's one of my favorites.
	Okay, great.
	But, by the way, the modern Republican Party has been crazy for a very long time, since at least Goldwater, if we want to get into it.
	But, I mean, it's a strain that has run through.
	I mean, that's the other thing.
	Everybody's like, what has this country become?
	And it's like, no, this is what the country has been for a while.
	It just has mutated and got worse.
	Right.
	And it connects to all sorts of things like the military industrial complex with Eisenhower.
	Which is funny because then the implication would be before then it wasn't run like that.
	And that might have been true.
	I guess we were a bit isolationist, didn't want to get into World War II.
	You can imagine how all the war-mongering people back in the late 30s would have had a hard-on to get into a war and then spend all that money making bullets.
	And it took freaking Pearl Harbor to get us into it, so maybe that was right.
	And Eisenhower would know because he had a front-row seat to that one, too.
	So at any rate, yeah, it's a really interesting thing that we actually haven't really gotten into a war with the control that Trump has had over the government at this point.
	And it almost makes me wonder, scratch my head, I wonder how has that not happened, unless you want to consider being the brink with Iran for a couple of days.
	We were on the brink with North Korea as well before they got all buddy-buddy and started exchanging love letters.
	I mean, we've been on the brink of major wars twice with this dude.
	You know what it might also be?
	Is that they can award contracts to whoever they want and build stuff anyway without the war, right?
	So it's almost like they can enrich those people as it is.
	And then there's front-running trading and all that stuff too.
	There's evidence for that too.
	So I have no doubt that they're getting their buddies Yes, I have a muckrake political podcast update, and that is that there is no update because Iowa is dragging its feet.
	We have an update for the numbers if you want them.
	Do you have them?
	Yes, I have a muckrake political podcast update, and that is that there is no update because Iowa is dragging its feet.
	It's going to be a late night for whatever reason.
	Well the numbers I see are Buttigieg got to 1385, and Bernie is basically at a tie with And Elizabeth Warren is over a thousand.
	And then these are these are votes, which is still not quite clear how they're measuring this.
	But then Biden and Klobuchar, you know, Biden's a little bit ahead of her, but not by much.
	So, you know, they could they could save face, I suppose, with that fourth spot or maybe even third.
	But yeah, if Joe Biden if Joe Biden comes in fourth in the Iowa caucus.
	That is Armageddon for his campaign.
	It's embarrassing.
	So is it safe to say that he has all the Obama framework that helped him run his campaign, or no?
	No.
	It's a whole new group of people for the most part.
	He has a couple people here and there who have come over, but it's mostly a different campaign.
	But I will say, if he comes in fourth, my guess is he would move on to New Hampshire, but there would be firings.
	I mean, and there have to be firings.
	I mean, the people who were talking to me were, you know, more or less printing out their resumes in the back room.
	I mean, they're ready to go.
	They're ready to jump over to other campaigns.
	But yeah, if he finishes fourth, I mean, that is as bad as it can get for him.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	Right.
	For the front-runner to do that, and then, you know, again, if he can win South Carolina and then go on from there into Super Tuesday, it's an uphill battle.
	And once that narrative takes hold, you know, I see it the other way, too, in a way with Obama.
	He won Iowa, lost New Hampshire, but then won South Carolina.
	That was enough for him to sweep into a legitimate campaign that ultimately took down the Clinton machine, which has got to be one of the biggest upsets we've ever had.
	Oh, period.
	And the problem there is that that's a two-person race.
	Yes.
	Right?
	I mean, what we have here in this race is we more or less have two leftward progressives and we have two left-of-center candidates.
	And they're splitting support.
	You know, this is what happened in 2016, more or less, with the Republican campaign, too.
	There's just a lot of people clogging a lot of different lanes.
	I don't know that Biden has room here.
	I really don't.
	And I can tell you this.
	I mean, the infrastructure of his team is bad and nobody's happy.
	No one feels good.
	He could go... I mean, the problem here is it's a bunch of people, and also we live in the cable news era, right?
	And social media.
	And now, like, the story for the next few days is going to be that he was destroyed.
	I mean, on Friday night, you know, when you watch the debates, one of the first questions to Biden is going to be, your argument has been that you were the most electable, and you finished, like, third or fourth in Iowa.
	That'll be the first question asked of him, and there's really not a lot of coming back from that.
	Right.
	By the way, just in case you were wondering, Hillary finished third in Iowa in 08.
	Do you remember who she finished behind?
	Is that Edwards?
	Yes, by like a couple votes.
	But still.
	Okay, yeah.
	John Edwards.
	Yeah, John Edwards.
	He's kind of the punchline, right?
	For any joke you want to tell, John Edwards.
	That repulsive man.
	Yeah.
	Well, listen, in this day and age, with the Trump paradigm, I wonder, you know, having a family on the side or whatever he was doing.
	He didn't have a family on the side, but I guess... I don't know.
	I don't know.
	Because with Trump, You know, what he gets away with.
	But then again, I guess none of the Democrats are gonna get away with that stuff.
	So, that's not the point.
	But John Edwards was that guy, right?
	He was the good-looking white guy.
	Young, good-looking white guy.
	That was gonna, you know, lead the party.
	Yeah, he was a disaster.
	And the thing is, even back then, everybody knew what was going on with John Edwards.
	And now it would have been exposed like that.
	But, you know, back then it just festered.
	Does that mean that Pete Buttigieg is that guy now?
	uh there's a real possibility that Pete Buttigieg is that guy yeah I mean I don't think he's if I had to guess right now so let's say Buttigieg let's say he finishes third in Iowa that's my guess second or third he finishes in Iowa in New Hampshire a third or a fourth I think is okay and You don't think he's resonating in New Hampshire?
	I think he's doing okay.
	I think you have Bernie and I think you have Warren who have that New England home field advantage up there.
	And, you know, maybe he beats out Biden.
	I don't know.
	I don't know how he's going to play in South Carolina.
	I don't know how he'll play in Nevada.
	I mean, he might be able to make some headway in Midwestern states in, like, the Super Tuesdays.
	But, I mean, for Pete Buttigieg to win the nomination of the Democratic Party, we would have to go into the convention I don't know that he can go to the convention with enough delegates to have it outright.
	Right.
	I just have this feeling that like right now he's polling the average in New Hampshire is Sanders at 26.5%, and then you got Biden at 17.5%, Warren at 14.3%, and Buttigieg at 13.7%.
	So they're kind of bunched up.
	But I just have this premonition that if Buttigieg ends up having a really strong performance in Iowa, like second, That he could jump up.
	That – I don't know why.
	And I feel like – I mean, I got to look back at what – that same thing with Obama happened.
	But certainly there's something more legitimizing about that, I think, to people who are like, oh, let's look at him again.
	And so maybe he's not – maybe he's third in New Hampshire instead of fifth.
	That's something.
	Which is a big win for him.
	I'm not trying to talk anybody into like, oh my god, Buttigieg is going to be the guy.
	But we gotta pick somebody.
	And I think, we didn't really talk about Bloomberg, per se.
	You are not happy about the notion of him buying his way into this race and potentially winning it.
	I wish Bloomberg would go away.
	I am really offended by his candidacy and I think it is indicative of a danger in our politics.
	And I think he represents a really dangerous trend.
	Okay.
	You don't feel like he might be the strongest guy to go up against Trump?
	No.
	I said this to you before I went on the air.
	I do not want to have to watch two billionaires slap fight each other for the presidency when neither one of them deserves it.
	I think watching a Bloomberg-Trump presidential election would, you know, it would seal the sarcophagus.
	I think that'd be awful.
	And to have Bloomberg, one of the architects of this neoliberal era, even the idea of him being president and sort of pushing America more towards that, this idea of analytics and Taylorism, I think is a really nightmarish scenario.
	Right.
	And it also will probably get into some sort of pissing contest between, you know, who's got more money.
	I mean, Bloomberg wins that hands down.
	But, you know, Trump isn't going to take that lightly.
	And I mean, even the thing that he's just it's it's to hear Trump talk about Bloomberg needing a box to stand on when he's not even officially even in the No.
	Donald J. Trump?
	Right.
	I don't.
	Blumer does not have a seat in the debate.
	Right.
	No.
	So.
	So he's clearly not talking about how he's going to look and how the podium is going to be.
	So Trump is lying.
	He's just making some crap.
	No.
	Absolute shit.
	Like Donald J.
	Trump lying.
	Yeah.
	Can you believe it?
	And so it's like stars and it's just it's It's just disgusting.
	He's not up for this.
	Trump is not, this is not his thing.
	I can't even believe I have to say this out loud.
	Nonetheless, I don't know.
	It's a four alarm fire here and nobody looks like they have the ability to put it out.
	And that's what's really going to get me nervous.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	I am very terrified about the prospects of Donald Trump winning re-election because I think he is an existential roiling crisis.
	I don't know who can beat him.
	I think that there are people who can beat him.
	I think that he has a lot of things in his favor, including the Electoral College, including the way the media covers politics.
	You know, I think that there's a lot of stuff in his favor that make him a presumptive favorite.
	But I think people can beat him.
	I think we have people right now in the race who can beat him.
	Okay.
	I mean, listen, if you look at the numbers, Trump, historically, Trump can't possibly, as an incumbent president, beat any of those people with the numbers that are like they are now.
	Right?
	By the way, I feel like you're holding back on our podcast audience, because for weeks now, you have been touting Adam Schiff getting into the race, and that is your guy.
	Like, you haven't talked about that on the podcast.
	That's what you want.
	I want, yes.
	You know what I want?
	Here's what I really want.
	I need Jed Bartlett to run.
	I want Martin Sheen.
	Because, by the way, it'd be really fascinating.
	It'd be the equivalent of Zelensky winning in Ukraine.
	Almost.
	And I think that, OK, it's the first episode of the second season of West Wing when Sam Seaborn is working as a lawyer and you have Josh Lyman finding this guy and he's like, you're going to know it when you see it in my face.
	And he runs and he interrupts the meeting that Sam's in.
	And he points to his face and they're like, yes, I've seen it.
	I know the guy.
	This is going to be it.
	And at that moment, he had been at like in a New Hampshire rally, which is not even rally.
	It was like in some basement somewhere with like 20 people.
	And he didn't have anybody who wanted to vote for him.
	So but I that's what I responded to is a guy like that who is just incredibly smart, has ideals.
	You know, he's going to fail miserably a lot of the time trying to achieve that, but there's always that hope and that knowledge, the comfort that the smartest guys are in the room, smarter than I am, working on these problems and doing their best.
	That's what it felt like with Bill Clinton, honestly, for me.
	And that's what I'm looking for now.
	And that's the problem, is that we don't, you know, and that's what I'm trying to talk myself into, maybe can Buttigieg be that guy?
	He doesn't have that, he doesn't speak well enough, but that's where I am.
	I want Jed Bartlett.
	He's a labor to listen to, and I don't know that he has much in the way of changes to offer.
	Yeah.
	This is a, and I think one of the things that we have to realize is that Donald Trump has exposed that there are major, major faults in our system.
	I think that we need somebody who can come in and change some things and fix some things.
	And maybe we have somebody in the race who will do that.
	I'm not sure.
	We might.
	And maybe someone will distinguish themselves.
	I mean, tonight is the Iowa caucus.
	I said this, I believe, the last time we talked.
	Tonight is going to be the night where the big speeches start.
	Right?
	The narrative starts building.
	And we'll see what these people are able to put together.
	Absolutely.
	Finally, we're here.
	We're starting to get it, but it's still going to be... This conversation, if we revisit this in six months from now, we'll probably just laugh at what we're saying, right?
	Because I feel like it's going to be completely the opposite of whatever we were thinking or trying to wrap our head around.
	Who knows what's going to happen?
	I think we can at least say this with some certainty.
	No one else is getting in the race.
	I don't know.
	I just messaged you, actually, a new logo that Adam Schiff has been sending around lately, and his new avatar online, which sure as hell looks to me like a campaign sign.
	I don't know if that's what's happening here, but I saw that earlier today, and I was like, that feels interesting.
	Can I throw this out there?
	I was at the Combine, the NBA Combine in Chicago in 2014.
	It was right before Steve Kerr was going to go to either the Knicks or go to the Warriors.
	What a choice, by the way.
	Yeah, I know, wow.
	And the Knicks wanted to hire a triangle coach, and obviously Kerr played in the triangle.
	And I think the news had broken the day before it started that Kerr was going to go to the Warriors, so they were looking for a coach.
	And I'm wandering around, I'm hanging out and talking to NBA players and GMs and coaches, whatever.
	At 2014, I was still not as rooted as I am now in the NBA circles.
	But I went up to Scottie Pippen and I'm like, listen, you should be the guy coaching the Knicks.
	No one knows the triangle offense better than you.
	You know what happened the next day, right?
	It was like breaking news.
	Nick's looking at Scottie Pippen.
	And I started that whole thing.
	I swear to God.
	It was me.
	I mentioned it to one guy here and one guy there.
	And I swear to God, it was reported on like it was breaking news and Scottie, whatever.
	And I told, who knows, maybe Scottie actually asked around.
	I don't know.
	Well, the John Kerry thing, with him on the phone saying that he was thinking about jumping in the race, it happened because of North Liberty.
	And he got out there and he outperformed Joe Biden.
	It was obvious.
	And actually, like, I want people to think about going to a concert, right?
	Joe Biden spoke before John Kerry.
	Which is just unheard of.
	Yeah, that's weird.
	It's really, really weird.
	Is that the kind of failings you're talking about as far as that doesn't happen?
	It shouldn't happen if whoever's running that campaign?
	No, that should never happen.
	Ever.
	There's no reason for it.
	I would even go so far as to say that Kerry probably spoke as long as Biden or longer.
	So one of the things that happens is he goes out as a surrogate for Joe Biden and he gets the energy going.
	Right?
	And all of a sudden, he's feeling it.
	And I watched it happen.
	Like, he was sitting there, and like I said, he was obviously sick, right?
	And probably with the same thing that I have.
	And he wasn't in it.
	Matter of fact, he was like texting, he was like looking on his phone.
	He was out of it.
	And then he got up at the podium, and you just watched something happen.
	Right?
	And these people are addicted to that.
	You know, a lot of these people are narcissistic and they love having everybody looking at them and giving them energy and adoration.
	And that's what happened.
	I mean, we never know what's going to happen.
	We never know if somebody's going to jump in or somebody's not going to jump in.
	After Iowa, the only thing that we know is there is a real possibility for Bernie to gain momentum.
	That's the only thing that we probably know coming out.
	Oh, and that Biden's in trouble.
	Those are the two definite things.
	Now, whether or not somebody else will get in... I mean, John Kerry right now could be fielding a phone call as he's watching Biden plummet, and it's like a bunch of Democratic donors.
	Yeah, and I want to put this out there because the people listening need to know this, and this isn't going to make everybody happy, but they need to know this.
	The Democratic Party is not just an assemblage of, like, our listeners or just liberal people.
	Like, the Democratic Party since the 90s has been a lot of corporate donors, it's been a lot of wealthy donors, a lot of power brokers.
	They are not going to be thrilled about what happened in Iowa today.
	They're not going to be thrilled about Sanders going up and Biden going down.
	They really thought that Biden was just going to sail through this thing.
	And so they are going to be freaking out.
	And what happens now, I'm not sure.
	Where their money goes, I'm not sure.
	What calls they're making, I'm not sure.
	But they're going to panic.
	And we're going to see that.
	And especially if he wins New Hampshire.
	If he wins Iowa and New Hampshire, you're going to see people freaking out like nobody's business.
	Well, I tell you, if Adam Schiff gets in the race, then I will take some amount of credit for that.
	Because I was on that tip two weeks ago, tweeting and sending it around, and who knows who saw it.
	But when you hear Adam Schiff, the way he orates and what he said in the impeachment trial all the last week and a half, that is the stuff of West Wing, right there.
	Hey, Schiff Haussmann, I'm in.
	Just ride that thing to November.
	I'm getting in the race.
	I don't have to do this one these days.
	Show them how it's done.
	And how to leverage social media properly.
	That's the other problem they don't understand.
	It's really bad.
	It's really, really bad right now.
	Here's one thing I can almost guarantee.
	If Schiff ever got in the race, I would be helping him with his social media.
	Oh man.
	I would not stop without, there would be no one could stop me from helping.
	They would just do it because I'd be bothering them so much.
	They would say, fine, just help us with whatever.
	But yeah.
	We are breaking a lot of news right here.
	You know who the other guy is who really probably should run too then would be Gore.
	Oh wow.
	Take back what was taken away from him in 2000.
	That is its own podcast, I feel like.
	Yeah.
	You know, I don't think he wants to do it, but I think he could sweep in there and like, you know, it's like a pull a Han Solo in, you know, chapter, episode four, like you forgot about it.
	And all of a sudden he saves the day with the Millennium Falcon.
	So I think he's he's kind of the guy.
	But but, you know, because Schiff doesn't whatever.
	But I don't know.
	The fact that we're talking about this like this at this point in the race is really damning.
	Yeah, I don't know where this leads.
	I don't know what happens now.
	I know that we saw the deficiencies in a lot of campaigns.
	Oh, and that's another thing.
	We definitely watched the impeachment play a role here.
	I mean, you know, the Warren campaign, a lot of them told me that they felt like they just weren't able to catch up because they couldn't have Warren here.
	They were, you know, relying on surrogates left and right.
	And they felt like they could have caught up to Bernie.
	They really did, but they weren't able to gain momentum because of that.
	But, well, this has been enjoyable.
	But I am going to take some NyQuil and I am going to go to sleep and hopefully avoid night long chills.
	That would be great.
	Which, by the way, I didn't even say this, but I watched my team last night lose the Super Bowl while feeling sick and shivering in a bed in a motel in Iowa.
	So that was fun.
	So, maybe tonight will be better.
	Thank you, everybody, for the support from all of our special reports from Iowa.
	I've really appreciated the feedback and the people reaching out.
	Please like us, subscribe to us, tell people about us.
	We appreciate all of it.
	It helps us so, so much.
	You can find me at J.Y.
	Sexton.
	You can find Nick at CanYouHearMeSMH.
	We're going to be back here in the next few days.
	Plenty to talk about.
	A busy, busy couple of weeks.
	Yeah, thanks everybody.

▲