Government and the 2020 race for president gets under way amid a Global Climate in crisis. How dare you. When all in starts right now. I want nothing. Good evening from new york. Im chris hayes. Its been quite a year in u. S. Politics, a one that began which saw three close allies of the president sent to prison and now ending with an historic impeachment. We also saw the rise of young activists focused on climate, gun safety, the arrival of a diverse and historic class of democrats, and by the way one of the most uncertain democratic president ial primaries in a generation at least. Weve got a lot to cover in the next hour. We begin tonight with the investigations into the president and his allies which could fill a whole show or week of shows by themselves. It was only this year saw the release of the Mueller Report, prison sentences for michael cohen, Paul Manafort and roger stone and most recently a criminal probe into trump lawyer rudy giuliani. Not to mention the impeachment of an american president. Joining me now to discuss maya wylie, an msnbc legal analyst. Offered the forthcoming book break them up and philip bump, National Correspondent for the washington post. I want to just start with the people in the president s orbit just who have pleaded to or gone to prison because of felonies. And i came up in chicago politics and this patterns very familiar if youre around corrupt machines. First a donor gets nicked and then maybe they turn or they dont and then the chief of staff and then before you know it, the people around the corrupt politician are all pleading or going to jail and then the politician goes down. And ive seen this play out numerous times with the corrupt. And its amazing how just the basic fact of how many people are in the president s inner orb bit in prison doesnt really scan. This is crew he assembled himself. This is not a bunch of people who were working together and some corruption filtered out through them as they worked there. He picked them all. And part of the reason he picked them all, people should remember, in 2016 the republican establishment was saying no thanks to donald trump. So he was sort of left picking up odds and ends where he could. This is what he got. Now i think some of that is coming home to roost. Because he was pushed out by the Republican Party, he ends up with people who lead down this path. I think he ends up with people who are going to walk the path with him. Thats right. I mean, this is him m. O. I mean, i agree with you certainly on how who he assembled and how and we know that Paul Manafort worked very hard to work for free for him. Right. In order to advance his own economic interests. But this is the way donald trump operates. And its the way hes always operated. And we also know one of the things thats different is he was dangling pardons to people. Yep. As they were being implicated and in danger of indictment, and that is not something we typically see out in the light of day when politicians, friends and relations are being implicated in crime. Thats a great point. And we also know from rick gates, one of his court filings, there was an offering of monetary compensation from a joint defense fund. We think a violation of the law. Sort of a very gray area. But these patterns are not unfamiliar patterns to people who have studied corruption and crime in politics. No, i was really glad that you brought up chicago or look at oligarchic systems throughout the world. Because sometimes i think we look at this and say, oh, hes so original. Right. Actually its actually really banal. Yes. This is, like, corruption 101. Selfdealing. Surrounding yourself with people who will carry water. Lying. Confusion. Confusion is definitely a friend of corrupt regimes. What is different is that, first of all, we dont have a federal government investigating statelevel corruption. Yep. We instead have a president and the tools that we have to deal with a president who is as corrupt as these other regimes are really different and were still finding our way with these tools. This is such an important point because, again, to go back to this context. Again, this was a very formative experience for me, it was sort of my first years reporting when george ryan went to prison in illinois, he was the governor, right . What ends up happening in those situations is the feds come in, right . What ends up happening is there is this sort of other authority there that has a kind of, like, professional incentive, right . If you nab a corrupt politician youre doing a good job as a federal prosecutor. They have they come in. Theyre the ones that clean it up. Its not like the local prosecutors are cleaning it up. Theyre too imbedded in the system. Thats precisely what the federal prosecutors are there for. We dont have that situation here. Not only do we not have that, but i think one of the formative figures of this year once history looks back at it is attorney general william barr. Great point. And all the things william barr has done to shield President Trump through the Mueller Report, to shield President Trump through the release of the Inspector Generals report which looked at what the fbi had done in 2016. All these ways barr sort of opted as the opposite of intent of a federal agent. Thats right. Which i think is going to be very, very significant. We have to accept were so used to the federal government coming in and saving that weve kept looking for versions of that. Yes. In mueller. In the impeachment investigation. Which i strongly support. But instead, we have to understand that actually the tables are turned and we should be looking to states, and actually, i think the press is a little complicit in this. Thats interesting. The press should be asking questions about state a. G. S and what they are doing about local d. A. S. We shouldnt wait until mueller comes out to say, hey, the d. A. In manhattan, cy vance, are you doing your investigation . Thats going to go for the Supreme Court next year. One of the things were seeing is many states have been starting investigations and they were starting them in the context of the mueller probe. We know that the attorney general for new york had been cooperating with mueller in his probe and they were certainly sharing information or at least its suggested that they were. But i dont think theres any question. I mean, weve seen already what the new York State Attorney general has done with regard to trumps corruption with his charity that he used as a personal political piggybank. Right. And he has now had to fork over a substantial fine. Hes had to close the charity. And he cant open another one. And by the way, his children served on the board. So this is another instance in which also the familys implicated. But this is the president who brought litigation saying that there could be no criminal investigation of a sitting president. Yes. That is an astounding, astounding assertion. And to your point, right, that is a those are both thats a state a. G. Who ha closed down the foundation. Its a manhattan d. A. Who is going to be for the Supreme Court. I think also part of what happens here, right, and this is a point not a novel point, the sum total of news and scandal adds up. Were doing this yearend show. People play this game all the time and it can be lame but im going to do it anyway. If a woman wrote a firstperson essay in a prominent magazine in the third year of obamas tenure saying that barack obama had raped her in a dressing room, that would be the only news story for that year. The only one. I think its fair to say. It certainly would be a yearend review show. That happened with donald trump this year. E. Jean carol writing first person on the record. Not that it matters for her credibility saying that donald trump raped her in the dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman and it just we covered it on the show for a bit and it gets thrown into this, like, maelstrom throw it on the pile of Donald Trumps scandals. Yeah, i mean, thats absolutely true. And i cant argue with that. I think one of the things that i heard someone point out, and i wish i could remember who, but there doesnt exist on the left the same sort of churning machinery to keep these things elevated and to probe and dig. Though nonsense on top of it. It just didnt exist. All these things do fade out on the right. Look what happened with the fbi probe. The right has been chewing on Text Messages for more than two years. Thats a great point. That simply doesnt exist on the left. And i think thats part of the reason why these things tend to pass quickly. Well, we also, unfortunately, have a country that voted where some people, not 3 million more voted for hillary clinton, we know. But a lot of people voted for donald trump despite the fact yes. That he had a public tape, audio showing him talking about sexually assaulting women. And, you know, thats remember, thats when all the republicans started backing thats right. The Lindsey Grahams were like not my candidate because everyone thought that was the line you couldnt cross, except he crossed it and that is atownin astounding. Yeah, the scope of what trump has done both personally and using his power of the presidency yes. And the extreme cruelty and inhumanity of it can be very overwhelming. Well, and it also starts to feel like, you know, its like the old saying about, you know, dog bites man is not news. Man bites dog is news. If the man keeps biting the dog that ceases to be news, too. The whole point of man bites dog it makes news because it is unexpected and novel. At certain point, woman accuses president of sexual assault, isnt almost an impoempirical s. 19 women. Lots more to discuss, including the man who puts his fealty to donald trump above his duty to the nation as attorney general, wibblliam barr, as phillip mentioned and the year in trump corruption right after this. Ion right after this complaining about the russia investigation last year donald trump reportedly lamented the fact that he did not have an attorney general who would protect him above all else. Asking top officials, quote, wheres my roy cohn. This year he got his wish. Bill barr was sworn in as attorney general and quickly became clear he was there to protect the president no matter the cost. Undercut his own departments Inspector General. When the i. G. Debunked a trump Conspiracy Theory and generally behaved far more like the president s personal lawyer than the nations top Law Enforcement officer. Phillip, you mentioned this in the last segment. It, to me, is one of the most cops constituental things that happened this year and one of the most worrying, deeply and profoundly, which is the person who is the head of the nations Law Enforcement apparatus is just not trustable as any kind of independent arbiter of good faith. Oh, yeah, he earned an impeachment inquiry. I mean straight up. Thats highly unusual in our system, although technically it applies to civil officers. You dont typically have a situation where a cabinet member seems like they should be investigated for purposes of impeachment. But between all the things you listed, and im just going back to that whistleblower complaint, right . So shocking to have an independent Inspector General appointed by trump, by the way, doing that persons job and saying credible evidence and this is urgent, and its under the banner of national security. And for barr to be somehow engaged and then the incredible finding that congress should not see the complaint yes. Even though theres no theres no confidential information it, by the way. Which is a finding the department of justice helped find. And that on top of his spinning of the Mueller Report itself, which was deeply troubling, then getting on an airplane and flying around the globe to uncover dirt for the president s reelection as attorney general. Yeah. Shocking. And then in the ukraine example, remember, that if donald trump had a legitimate concern about corruption going through the channels of Law Enforcement and letting the fbi do its independent apolitical job would have been the right yep. Tool. Thats not anything that william barr has done. And lets just add because i cant let this show go by without adding it. His statement to the Federalist Society about policing. Gentleman. Yeah. And that people may not get Police Protection if they complain about Police Misconduct is unacceptable. Law enforcement honor prize where he gave that speech. Barr has long been a very troubling more than troubling, an awful authoritarian, proincarceration figure, but what he has done now is so beyond the pale that i agree that we need impeachment investigation, and i Hope Congress investigates him. But also a real rethinking of the structure of power in the a. G. s office. I mean, remember 2006 when george bush yes. Fired six u. S. Attorneys . And i remember this moment because it was actually so cheering how everybody was outraged. Yep. Totally outraged. Like you cant do that. You absolutely cannot politicize this. So i actually think that, unfortunately, this is an area where the norm has so profoundly been broken that we have to look towards 2021 and look toward the future and say we cant allow this kind of abuse to happen again because it so undermines the rule of law in this country. You know, thats a great point about sort of the role that Public Opinion plays in sort of enforcing some of this. Thats gone because i think 40 of the country will go along with whatever the president did. There is one exception this year that was really important. The president attempted in broad daylight to award himself an enormous multimillion dollar government contract. You said before that corruption is banal. This is the most banal corruption in the universe. It happens all over the place all the time. Awarding yourself or your family or cronies a government contract is the lifeblood around the world and throughout the ages. I love Mick Mulvaney coming out to announce this with the pretense it had been an exhaustive search process and they looked everywhere, but the only place it would work is south florida in the middle of the summer. Take a listen. And it became apparent at the end of that process that dural was by far and away, far and away the best physical facility for this meeting. In fact, i was talking to one of the advance teams when they came back and said, what was it like . Mick, youre not going to believe this, but its almost like they built this facility to host this type of event. Yeah. I mean, look, the remarkable thing about that moment, of course, is that Mick Mulvaney came out to make that announcement about dural and ended up confirming that there was quid pro quo. That was the same day. Literally the same press conference. Yeah, i mean, im very curious. There was an immediate and sharp reaction to the announcement about dural. It very quickly got wound back down. I am curious if it had happened outside the context of ukraine, would the response have been the same . Im skeptical it would have. Part of the reporting is that members of congress on the house and senate were like, we dont need this right now. Youre about to get impeached. Are you out of your mind . There are these things called procurement laws. We can criminally violate them and we have a president who apparently doesnt think he has to Pay Attention to any laws, criminal or otherwise. He has always used his office in the three years hes been there to advance his business interests. Its call corruption and he does it all the time out in plain view. There have been over 2,000 instances of trump enriching himself, and there has been pushback at occasional moments. And i think what we should learn from that, one, is to never stop speaking to the public about how corrupt this president is. We cannot give up on that. And second, its not going to work every time. Right. Hes stuffing his pockets. This was so bald faced. And i just love the Mick Mulvaney, like, just the that they that it was so bald faced but they also had to, like, have this theatrical, we looked high and low and east and west, well, the president s property is where we should do it. Thank you all so much for being here. That was great. Once begun, this year has been one of the worst on record for the climate. Activist and actress jane fonda joins me to talk about the worldwide effort to change that. Next. Next this is something i find myself saying at the end of every year, but sadly it is true once again. 2019 was one of the worst years for the climate on record. Carbon emissions are up globally. The paris targets are being mixed and the world is sliding toward catastrophic warming. The one source of good news is the vibrancy of the Global Climate movement which is also setting its own records and which shifted the political conversation around the world. Here in the u. S. Climate protesters have taken to direct action on the capitol every friday this fall and winter. The woman who started this ritual called fire drill fridays is the legendary actress and activist jane fonda and she joins me now no pla. Nice to have you here. Good to be here. Can you tell me the origins of this action . It was over Labor Day Weekend and i read naomi kleins new book that included descriptions of gretta thua thunberg and new information about what she was saying. Greta being on the spectrum and saying nobody behaving like they should in a crisis. Our house is on fire, come on, folks. Get out of your comfort zones. So i called up the head of green peace usa, andy leonard, im going to move to d. C. For a year. I thought ted at netflix would give me a years hiatus. Turns out i only had four months. I thought i was going to camp out in front of the white house. Discovered that was not legal. So with the advice of annie and bill mcgibbon of 350. Org and naomi klein, we decided every friday i wanted it to be like a teachin focussing on different aspects of the Climate Crisis each friday with experts and scientists and frontline activists and celebrity friends. I had no idea in the beginning it could catch on and get traction. Im kind of overwhelmed with the results of whats happening. One thing i think is profoundly relatable about this. I think weve emailed about the Climate Crisis before. Its deeply concerning to you and many people. Breaking out of the sense of pra paralysis or doom. The house is on fire feeling. It can paralyze you. Okay, im going to do something. And the doing something itself, what has that meant to you about how you think about the issue . It turns out that my desire is like a whole lot of other people. I want to in fact, yale scientist that studies these things says theres, like, 13 million americans who want to engage in civil disobedience but no ones asked them. Were asking. Theres something very profound when you align your body with your deepest values. You feel very empowered and you feel integrated. And thats what happens when you engage in civil disobedience and risk getting arrested. More and more people are coming that have never done that before and thats having a big effect on them and i think it has to become the new norm. Because the scientists are saying, and you know scientists are usually pretty neutral, pretty conservative even in pronouncements. Thats right. And theyre saying, folks, this is this is serious. The only way we can handle it is with us precedented numbers unprecedented numbers in the streets protesting the government. I asked the senators, is what im doing right . Is there Something Else i should be doing . The wonderful senator ed markey said, youre building an army. Make it big. They need that pressure from the outside. The way thats always whats changed history. Its what its what got the new deal, pressuring Franklin Delano roosevelt back in the 30s during the great depression. Do you feel like one question for me as i watch 2020 unfold, particularly the primary and i think about the political lay of the land, where we are, where we have to get to, particularly as the numbers come out from the paris target. Lo low hanging fruit. We need hundreds of billions of dollars of investment to transform the american economy. Do you feel like there is enough of a priority around climate being made among your folks that basically share your politics . Yeah, i think you do . I think thats why, you know, this is working. I think in the last year with all the bad news, the good news is that Peoples Awareness that, a, theres 100 agreement among the climate scientists. Theres not two sides to this story. Two, its really, really bad. Three, it is human caused. And four, we can do something about it. And so the scale of people who understand whats happening is way up. Its just what are they going to do . And i think people are ready to step up and do more. Do you feel like you can imagine a universe in which we pass Something Like the Green New Deal . Like some massive sort of generational defining piece of legislation that really did spend trillions of dollars to kind of reconfigure the American Industrial base . Yeah, it can definitely happen. The Scientists Say we have the technology. It can happen. If we start right away, we can we can do whats needed in the next ten years, which are the critical years, and the only thing thats in the way is the political will, and thats because the fossil fuel industry has spent so much money lobbying and paying for the campaigns of a lot of the of the people in washington. But it can happen. Recently over 500 environmental groups and labor groups issued a call to the next president asking them to in the first ten days of his or her administration take ten major climate actions that could move us away from fossil fuel and jump start a green economy. How many weeks have you done this down at the capitol . Since the beginning of october. End of september. And what is that experience like . Like, the Actual Experience of having the bracelets put on your back and the other people with you . Its very moving. As i said, you know, you just you just fall into your body and you feel as that youre a whole person. Its very hard for us to put our bodies where our values are, you know, in this day and age, so its a very important experience. You know, im white and im famous, and its theres good laws that you are, ms. Fonda. So they dont beat you up there. Sure. I understand this is a very different experience of arrest than millions of americans experience. But its calling attention to it and people are traveling from all over to come and be part of it and theyre asking to do it in their hometowns. They want to start fire drill fridays. Someone came from poland. Someone came from london last friday to want to start. So, i mean, its its giving people something that they want. And our job as citizens of this country, not elected officials, is to build pressure, build pressure so that by the election time and by the inauguration time, whoevers elected, we will be in the streets by the millions pressuring and demanding. You know, its funny you talked about sort of laser focus and clearly this is something youre, like, extremely focused on. To the extent that your doing this. Taking four months off. You moved to washington, d. C. Its almost the case that, like, the scale of the crisis requires almost a kind of pathology from us. It requires a kind of compulsion. It requires us to act in ways yeah. That are different than normal because the scale of the thing is abnormal. You know, people are always asking because ive been an activist for a long time. How is it different than it was in the 70s . Totally. Because this is global and this is immediate. Theres a ticking clock. Yeah. And the locomotive is racing at us and the scale of what needs to be done is so huge that its different than anything that i have ever experienced. I mean, it is existential. Who are the people that you meet when youre doing this . Oh, i dont know, ill be arrested and therell be a woman next to me who is a manicurist from delaware. On the other side there will be an east indian woman who works with immigrants in virginia. Therell be a buddhist woman from ashland, South Carolina north carolina. North carolina. Just very, very different people. One time there were four rabbis and five nurses and a few nuns. Its just, you know, very different each time. I meet people that i never would have met otherwise and i hear their stories and we bond and plan and organize. Planning is very important. Mmmhmm. Jane fonda, it was just a great honor to have you here. Thank you so much. Thank you, chris, for having me. Appreciate it. Well be right back. Ciate it well be right back. 2019 had the most Diverse Congress in history when it comes to race, gender ethnicity thanks to almost entirely one party, the democrats. Muslim and native american women are serving for the first time in the countrys history. There are more women in congress than ever before in history. Meanwhile, weve seen a rash of republican retirement announcements as the party abandoned many of its supposed ideological principles. Here to discuss the class of 2019 and much more, im joined by msnbc political analyst zerlina maxwell. Msnbc contributor sam cedar. And democratic strategist waleed shahid. I was on the hill the first day of the swearing in of the new class. It was so striking then. It really epitomizes something profound and deep or politics, like, there is one party that is genuinely a multiracial coalition. When you look at the Republican House members, it is just white man after white man. I mean e, theres not even like near gender parity. Theyve stepped back. In fact, this ends up being in a representational sense the fundamental truth right now of the way our politics are working. I think, you know, the Republican Party, their numbers of women actually went down in the last election cycle. Striking. Which is very shocking. So i think were in a moment just writ large in the country the demographics are shifting to the point where were going to have a majority of not white people in this country, and thats going to be a very major deal in terms of the way our politics are going. Who were going to elect. What candidates we support and what policies we actually support. So its not surprising that were seeing the diversity in the elected officials that we actually have in the electorate. Although one of the trends thats happened is for a lock time even that diversity was not reflect in the actual elected officials in the Democratic Party, right . Theres been a gap in representatives, staffing. A huge gap between the actual match makeup of the party. One of the things that happened this year is that it closing. Aocs primary challenge against crowley is the biggest example of that in a majority minority district, lots of districts still represented by white incumbents in the Democratic Party. There is a realignment hatchippg where the base of the party has been more diverse than the top of the party in a lot of ways. One of the things it hasnt penetrated is the staffing level. Which is a huge obstacle. The staffs still continue to be overrepresented and look more like the republican caucus. This is one of my major beeves in 2016, there really isnt a pipeline of young staffers of color and infrastructure to allow people to actually work on campaigns. Its not like a moneymaking venture. Right. Where if you dont come from money you can go and work for less money on a campaign or volunteer as an intern on a campaign. So most of the people that end up working as staffers come from families that can support them while theyre, you know, doing a Public Service and working on a campaign. What did you think one of the things that flows from this, to me, again, fundamental fact about our politics as embodied in the house is that, like, the democrats just have a bigger tent. They have a more Diverse Coalition. Its a fact. A more diversion coalition is more unwielding. Its a harder thing to get people across all the lines of ethnicity and race and even class than it is on the more and more homogenius side. The fact of the matter is there is a lot more identities as it were exactly. A lot of Life Experiences of people on the left broadly speaking than on the right. And, you know, to the extent that we have one one party that is really focussed on a very narrow identity its the Republican Party, just from a completely sort of, like, its just math. I mean, its interesting, though, because, you know, im struck by chris coons at yeah. Was at some type of event, senator chris coons. From delaware. From delaware who was talking about the polarization. And he in part said i think historys going to look back on the diversity that we have and see that as part of the problem in terms of getting together. Now, im not exactly i dont know exactly how he was characterizing that. I think its an odd thing to say but i think there is, you know, part of what we see is that there is when you have people from different backgrounds and Life Experiences, people arent going to agree on whats happening today. I think, though, that weve had identity politics this whole time. Of course. Yes. Its just been white identity politics and thats what weve been playing. Weve been centering whiteness and maleness essentially as the only thing we cared about in politics. And this moment is the moment were saying, okay, were going to open up the doors a bit. Were going to talk about what your lived experience is like as a woman. What policies are people putting forward that impact your lived experience, whether or not youre rich or youre poor or youre black or youre white, right . So now i think that were actually opening the door and allowing people to consider that your lived experience is very different depending upon the different aspects of your identity and that policy impacts you and that elected officials have to be accountable for the things that they are deciding to do. Right. That impact your everyday life. The question then becomes how you i think this is a challenge the Democratic Party faces in this moment, right . Yeah. What is increasingly there is this very clear identity that is formed by trumpism. You see it in the base intensely with the maga hats. I am this thing. I wear the red hat. It says a thing about me. It used to be white, chris. Its not a different hat. Its not a new thing. Im not saying its new. Evolution of its very specific. Obviously this identity of the Confederate Flag there are all sorts of identities over time, but the question of whats the identity on their side is a more complex one, right . Because if you want to build a Majority Coalition, what does that Majority Coalition say it is to get to bind together the 55 of the country that is not on that side . The the things that different because of peak polarization, because the parties are so much more polarized than theyve ever been is there is an overriding impetus to highlight the Racial Division and National Division between the two parties. Thats fundamentally very dangerous for multiracial democracy anywhere. Thats right. You have people like chris coons or even Heidi Heitkamp or Claire Mccaskill in their senate races in redder states saying they were willing to work with trump on immigration. A contradiction there is an impulse for modern democrats to not highlight the fact that there is a multiracial coalition. Of course. Theyre trying to get elected in places they dont have enough votes to poll. The issue is the Republican Party thats all they run on. Theres a fundamental conflict. Thats the asymmetry im talking about. I would say in a statewide race Claire Mccaskill has votes to pull on. It the that youre not speaking out to the black people who turned out to support you. Louisiana is a great example. In baton rouge, in new orleans, an uptick in black voters that tipped the governors race. More black people voted. Thats one for one. More votes. One of the things there one of the answers there that i think is always important and ill get to you in a second is just that Better Campaigns do better among different groups of people. Like, we always sort of phrase it in terms of tradeoffs. If you do two points better across a bunch of people. Thats better. That adds up into the margin. A Better Campaign the tricky thing about politics is that a Better Campaign has to do better among a lot of different groups. I think one of the arguments that were seeing on the left now that you need to have a candidate thats going to offer material benefits, right . Yeah. Actually starting to address issues of class in this country. I think is a way in which to address those issues of having a multiracial, multiethnic sort of Diverse Coalition of people because ultimately there are some shared experiences that cut across, you know, the pane of class in terms of material benefit. Right. That i think is shared by everybody, you know, based upon how much money they make. There is one place weve seen that play out in precisely the races you talked about, so important on medicaid expansion. Really interesting to me in this year two wins in gubernatorial races in red states, louisiana and kentucky, the one very clear, concrete distinguishing factor, and, again, that does cut across i think lines of race and ethnicity is, like, do you have medicaid expanse or not . I think that was a really useful wedge tool when you talk about the concreteness of policy for both the democrats in that race. Look, talking about medicaid, youre talking about ageing parents. Youre talking about longterm care and making sure that your parents have a humane place to live. Which is not the case in most places. Ive dealt with that in my own life. I dont know if others have, but i think thats a universal experience. To your point about the experiences being linked, that is true. I do think, though, that we need to do a better job on the left of specifying that your racial identity can make your experience very different. It doesnt matter what class you are. You can be a rich black person and still killed by the police and nobody gets in trouble. So i think that we can do a better job of talking about that nuance, but were doing a much better job of at least embracing identity politics as a way to frame, you know, our discussions on the left. The place this all culminates, we had the 2018 win, very diverse class in 2019. Two gubernatorial victories. Now its the 2020 president ial election. The question of someones got to stitch this together. Thats the question i want to talk about, the historically diverse and vast field of democrats who decided to run for president this year right after this. This looking around here i see tablets, laptops, printers, smartphones. Theyre all connected to the internet. Theyre all connected. Can your network handle all those devices . Sometimes. Comcast business runs on the nations largest gigspeed network. So you can get the bandwidth you need to power all of your devices at peak performance. If all of my devices could have that kind of speed, i would be dancing get started with secure 35megabit internet and one voice line for just 64. 90 per month. Call today. Comcast business. Beyond fast. We have not even gotten to the first votes yet, but it kind of feels like the democratic president ial primary has lasted a lifetime. Just consider what happened to senator kamala harris. Entered the race back in january, considered a frontrunner. She dropped out amid disappointing poll numbers. She was part of the largest and most diverse president ial fields in democratic history. As the field has winnowed, so has that diversity. Where do you think we are right now in this race as we come up on the first the sort of most important transitional phase, sort of a month runup to the first votes being cast . I think right now were seeing the progressive versus moderate debate really hit its, like, the top yeah. Where it is because of Pete Buttigieg tearing into Elizabeth Warrens prominence in the past two months. And i think what youre going to start to see is this kind of progressive and moderate thing die down over concerns who voters feel can govern the country. Thats interesting. And i think that right now weve been in this debate for a long time about policy around medicare for all. I dont think thats going to last going into the Iowa Caucuses and more its going to be do you trust joe biden or Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders yeah, thats a good point. We were sort of at the peak right. It hadnt been a particularly ideological fight for a long time app at i time. What do you think . I agree. Ive long thought that the conversation weve been having which the media was having a separate one. Among the voters we were like who do we want to send in the room to negotiate medicare for all . We dont know whats going to be in it. A lot of steps between now and actually a signed piece of legislation. Who do we trust . Elizabeth warren versus the biden model . So its really about a set of values that we are sending a person in to negotiate, you know, the ins and outs of the bill. So i do think there is not as much bickering over, you know, youre for this and youre for that, youre selling out the left because youre not for the full medicare for all package. I think were stepping away from that because i think the base of the party. We havent stepped away yet. The activists and thats what animates them every single day, i think theyre focused on that. I think people going out every day knocking on doors and making calls are really focussing on the ultimate goal, which is defeating trump, whether it be, you know, one of the individual candidates for president on the democratic side. I suspect that with the number of debates that we have coming up into iowa and the diminished number of candidates that were going to have. Yeah. I dont think thats quite over yet. Yeah. I think were going to see more Broad Strokes of maybe not necessarily the policy specifics, but i think were going to start to see more Broad Strokes on the arguments against what, you know, someone like biden or buttigieg is offering versus what sanders or warren is offering. And i think those Broad Strokes i think are going to, you know, dove tail into that question, who is going to offer the country something that is going to motivate people . I mean, part of to me why the race has ended up so strange here. Youve got two people with very strong ideological visions, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. I think theyre associated with that ideological vision. Biden is a bit of an ideological cipher. Hes mostly joe biden. Hes familiar. Been in politics for over 40 years. He has a record which you can like or dislike or like parts of or dislike parts of. Its not a grand vision of bidenism. What does that even mean . This newcomer in buttigieg that is the unwrapped Christmas Eve gift. Hes benefitted from holding this place, oh, look at that guy. People like a new thing. A new man. Hes also made a sharp hes had a couple of different ideologies. Well, thats the point. Actually, i think he is the one who has triggered this moment because his faint toward the center has been so sudden and so clearly tactical in nature, its just like the thing thats coming up that puts this point together, the ideological critiques are not heard as ideological critiques, but about the leadership. Elizabeth warren caught on the medicare for all question, it wasnt necessarily the policy position. Yes, agreed. But the way she answered the question. Kamala harris after the bussing stuff. It wasnt necessarily bussing and immigration that was the issue, it was the way she seemed to flipflop from what she stood at the debate. Those are the issues that ideology becomes a vessel for. None of that seems to betain to the frontrunner. Joe biden . I dont know about that. Hes been exactly the same thing the entire race. Meaning he hasnt grown. That old saying about strong and wrong type of thing. Right. I dont know that the substance of what people are saying broadly speaking in the way that meta narrative reaches a broad audience is as important as them sticking to a specific message. And i think to a certain extent, like you were saying, when it came to warren on medicare for all, i dont think it was the even the substance of the answer, the question i think it was really more that she ultimately felt like she had to answer. Right. And i think to a certain extent look, they did this whole thing in an era where you need to show that you are convicted. And even if, even people people disagree with maybe the specifics of it, that conviction i totally agree with that. Weve all forgotten about it but the biden people have the hyde amendment. They literally did an 180 degrees. Exactly the same thing. They took a position. Got hammered for it. He came out and clumsily retracted it. Thats fine. Thats what campaigns do. Very early in campaign. Very early. Biden has this thing where that doesnt count against him in the same way. I was going to make the point i do think we judge the women and men differently to this point. I do think there is a little bit of a double standard. A woman its seen about something of her character. Indecisive. And whether we can trust her and whether or not she is lying and not telling us the full story and shes hiding something about herself. That is a narrative going way back beyond when i was born and not related to politics. Its not unique to biden. I think that piece of it is unique to biden, but i think men get a little bit more space to flip or to change their position and it is not a complete attack on their character and integrity. The gender cross tabs on this are really revealing. Yeah. Headtohead among women, warren is even with biden against trump. They beat him by 14 points. Headtohead, biden is, you know, plus plus 14 among men, i think, or plus 7 among men and shes underwater, you know what i mean . Theres something going on there. Just weighting the mistakes a little bit differently and i think we shudak knowledge thoul that. The bigger question is what to do. I dont know the answer. General electability which is a thing that looms over all of us. If i knew how we could elect a woman, i would have a lot more money. Thats the question that loops over all of us. Thank you all. Well be right back. Ight ba. If you find you have some travel time ahead of you like a long drive or a crosscountry flight or nowhere at all to be but youre looking for something new to try out, weve put out a bunch of great episodes of our podcast why is this happening . That are just waiting to be binged. You can find conversations that explore what a wealth tax would really look like, what it means to make Climate Change a real policy priority, what it takes to build a progressive majority. We dove into the legal fight for transgender rights, heard from a person who fled violence in his country to seek asylum in the united states, and discussed the evolution of the black lives matter movement. If youre new to with pod, scroll through our feed. Brandnew episodes every tuesday. Find them wherever you get your podcasts. That is all in for this evening. Well be back after the holidays and i hope you have a great one. Good night. You. On this special Holiday Edition of the 11th hour, well bring you right into the center of some of the best discussions weve had here about power, about culture, and where weve been as we head into a president ial election season. The stories we have for you range from the roots of a deeply plus how a look back to how americans looked to the heavens and touched down on the moon