Unfiltered. Thats it cspan. Org coronavirus. Joining us on newsmakers is the chair of priorities usa. Let me begin. What a weekend it has been, really upending the lives of all americans. The stock market now in bear territory. How does this change the Political Landscape . Just the way the candidates for president and all around the country are campaigning. Changes to the fundraising apparatus. If you are a governor or an election official in illinois or ohio, it changes the dynamic of how you are administering those elections. Most importantly, it highlights the primary messaging and issues we have been raising about donald trump and this administrations ability to move away from impulsiveness and arrogance and chaos to actually solve the problems and not simply be about the politics of the election. I think we will be living with the consequences of this for a while, but there is no question in the shortterm, it is fundamentally changing the way that we are running campaigns in the country. On the issue of the testing kits, the president is blaming the obama administration. This is nothing new. Everything good that has happened in the country is because of donald trump and everything terrible in the country happened because of barack obama. The reality is donald trump has been president for three years. If there was an issue with the cdc, he should have solved the problem. He should not have been eliminating government officials dealing with pandemics. He shouldnt be sending mixed messages about test kits. Lets her member, a few days ago, there were plenty of test kits according to the administration. Now there are not enough and that is because of barack obama. This administration is engaging in a massive misinformation campaign, which is ultimately going to cost american lives. You know, when you compare that to the leadership being displayed by nancy pelosi in terms of the legislation she is putting on the floor today, you look at the speeches put forward by Bernie Sanders and joe biden, it is a pretty stark difference between handling the crisis. I know that we all think of this as a Public Health crisis and we are thinking about the people who are sick. It is also a political issue. Im sure you watched President Trump deliver his Oval Office Address this week and i wonder what you thought about that . I think the primary purpose of an Oval Office Address is twofold. At this time, it is to calm fear and it is to provide information. I think in both of those counts, the president failed. Within five minutes of the conclusion of that speech, the administration was forced to put out multiple corrections based on the information he was sharing. A lot of this is around coverage of the mba and the nhl and all of these events that are being canceled. My Church Service this sunday is going to be a livestream instead of in person. Lets remember that there are waitresses and janitors and Grocery Store clerks that dont have the option of social distancing. They are working in fields that require interaction with people, where is the advice and direction and the ease being provided to the people being forced to still work and interact with people . Their job requires it. That is what we should have been hearing from the president. Not misinformation about shutting down travel and a lack of information around testing. We who cover President Trump over and over again for the past four years have said this is a defining event and they turn out to not be defining events. Is this a defining event will this change his standing with americans and his prospects for reelection . I do because the immediacy of it. Most of the arguments have been about his impulsiveness, arrogance, the chaos being caused by the administration doing real harm. But a lot of the harm is not seen right away. We may not see the consequences of that for five or 10 years. The courts. We dont necessarily see the consequences of the courts the consequences are here and now. People are dying, people are sick, the economy is hurting. I think just the immediacy of the consequences of the misinformation is different than what we have seen out of this administration. You mentioned how this is affecting the politics. People are supposed to vote in four days in four states. What research is there that voters can go to the polls safely . I know that in at least a couple of the states, they have made pretty significant changes. When you think about the fact that there are Nursing Homes and Nursing Centers that are often times pulling locations, when you think about the fact that the average age of a poll worker or volunteer is probably older on average, so i know in places like illinois, Governor Pritzker has taken pretty aggressive stances and made a lot of decisions that will allow people to vote safely, but will also address some of the concerns of the people involved that are administering the election. My hope is obviously that people will turn out, that they will vote, and that each of these states will provide the sort of overall administrative structure to allow people to do it safely. Make sure people do it clean, make sure social distancing is intact. I think there are some things that we can do. How about the campaign by President Biden vice President Biden, who loves to give hugs and shake hands . Senator sanders loves to hold big rallies. Guy the near term is that if you are behind in the polls, this is a big challenge because you need momentum changes in order to deal with the fact that you are behind in the delegate count. I think it disproportionately hurts Bernie Sanders in that regard because you have to find ways to make up the new delegate math. Longterm, i think we are going to be dealing with the consequences for a while. Clearly, that in person contact that both of these candidates like and that frankly donald trump likes is going to be a challenge for all three of these guys. Thinking about the coronavirus in the Democratic Convention in july and we dont know exactly where we will be by july, but shouldnt the Democratic National committee and the democratic establishment in charge be making contingency plans to have a convention that is virtual . Guy yeah, so obviously we still are several months away. Most of the events that have been closed, most of the activities that have been closed. If we find that this is continued. They have been able through mitigation to reduce the number of folks testing positive. We are not at that point yet. I think we need to give it a couple of weeks. Once we have a large number of tests and get a sense of the magnitude of this. If we are in this current situation. Conventions are big moments for political parties. For your foot soldiers and others. This year we have this unusually wide gap between the Democratic Convention and the republican convention, which means republicans have a much better chance of holding their convention despite the pandemic. Is that a big deal . Would that be a significant disadvantage for democrats . Guy i think in this particular case probably not. It is not like the country does not know who donald trump is. I dont know that they will do a particularly interesting job of redefining donald trump, so i think in some respects it has less of an impact. Versus the democrats where we will be introducing adVice President ial candidate who will be new to most of the country. Im not sure that the conventions themselves have any longterm impact right now then maybe some organizing efforts. The democratic primary really changed. Why so quickly . Why coalescing almost overnight with joe biden . Guy you know, one of the issues is the difference between a candidate that has support and then loses it and their ability to get it back versus somebody trying to get the support to begin with. Joe biden when we started this election 20 years ago, he was already at 35, 45 of the democratic primary vote. We have had a long contested primary. Those voters wanted to move to somebody else. They were not sure if they would stick with their first or second choice. I think it is easier to get those voters back. The South Carolina message was simple. Joe biden is going to win. He had gone through a couple of states where the campaign struggled. Once they demonstrated they could win with a diverse slate, that change the dynamic when people honed into two or three candidates instead of 15 at the beginning of the cycle. Were there any concerns behind getting joe biden early in the nominating process, that it could alienate Bernie Sanders supporters . Bidens lead is large, but not insurmountable at this point . Guy one of the things that was important to us was that when it came to the primary, we were going to be neutral. We havent spend one dollar and the primary, we wont. But we also recognize that for the Trump Administration, the general election begin the day after he inaugurated. They were the earliest present in American History to announce reelection, they have been advertising online since last year. So, we can learn from recent history, from john kerry to bill clinton defining the race against bob dole to mitt romney and his election against president obama that we dont have time to lose. The math is pretty straightforward. That joe biden is the prohibitive favorite and likely nominee of the party. If the Trump Campaign decides to bring the fight to joe biden, we will make sure we are there to respond, but we are not going to be involved in litigating the primary in any way. In a tweet this week, you declared biden the nominee. Yes, i think it is the most likely scenario. We would have to see a change of 15, 20 points in the polls. When you look ahead to florida, i strongly suspect to the Vice President will have anywhere from a 2025 five point victory. We will see him pick up wins in ohio, could pick up a win in arizona. The math only gets harder, not easier for Bernie Sanders. From our perspective, he is going to be the nominee and we are going to do the things necessary to defend him against the Trump Administration or the Trump Campaigns attacks against him. In response to that attitude that biden is now the all but certain nominee, you have seen resistance from Bernie Sanders and his supporters. In the exit polls in michigan, one of the key primaries that was held, you saw four out of five sanders supporters saying they would be dissatisfied with biden as the nominee. How big is your concern of that to you . Guy two quick points. I thought that joe biden struck exactly the right tone in his speech inviting sanders folks into the fold, not calling on Bernie Sanders to call out of the race, not canceling the debates. Im confident that the campaign understands the challenge in that regard. I think we will see them not adopt all, but some of the policy positions and approaches the Sanders Campaign has made. I was around in 2008 when people were making the same type of argument about the hillary supporters that were never going to support barack obama because of the divisive primary. At the same time, i think we need to give this process a chance to play out and get through to the other side of the primary. Im optimistic we will have a unified party going into the general. We remember what happened in 2004. Hearing joe bidens too old, he may be suffering from early stages of alzheimers, dementia, how do you respond to that . Guy i think this is a tried tactic of donald trump. Tried and true tactic of donald trump. When Hillary Clinton called him a puppet of the russian regime, his response is you are the puppet. When people talked about his temperament, he responds, it is your temperament. This is what they do. I just think we have to be prepared. Donald trump has regularly proven, i think to be relatively , incoherent in his rallies and to be relatively incoherent in his rallies. An opportunity for him to try to push away the criticism. But how do you respond to that, because its out there . Guy by having joe biden on the stump. By having a Strong Campaign operation that responds to these critiques, picking a Vice President that will be a Strong Partner and highlighting that donald trump is a liar. The Washington Post said he lied over 16 times. He has lied about the coronavirus. Now he is lying about joe biden. Isaac will see us make a strong response. Do some people see risks ahead for democrats . One is the controversy of hunter biden in ukraine and elsewhere when his pop his father was Vice President. Has joe biden addressed effectively or do you think he needs to do more . Think he has addressed effectively. I would just remind folks that we have a Trump Organization that is currently making millions of dollars off of Donald Trumps presidency. Push for akushner tax rebate in the current tax bill that was passed by republicans that directly benefited his companies. Some of it i believe is just a distraction from the real issue. Really corruption has been by the trump kids, by trumps soninlaw and people serving in the current administration. Everybody that has looked at the hunter biden situation said there was nothing wrong. I think we will continue to prosecute the case is best we can, focusing on the fact that this administration has been engaged in quid pro quos that benefited the Trump Administration. You said that when Hillary Clinton said donald trump was a russian puppet and said you are the puppet, isnt that what you are doing . Guy the first thing i said was that i think they answered the questions correctly. That there has been a review of this issue and that no one has done anything wrong. Can deal with the facts. In this particular case the facts are clear that what the Trump Administration and Trump Organization has been doing is using this to distract from the fact that they are making millions of dollars off of the taxpayers. Making money off of the federal government and engaging in activity that, under normal situations, we would be getting more situate attention than it currently is. I dont equate the attacks and lies on hunter biden with what i think are very legitimate critiques of the Trump Organization in the Trump Administration. Which have actually been covered in the press in a way that i think could be amplified more. By the way, we will. This is not going to be something we let sit on the sideline. We pointake sure that out the hypocrisy of the attacks coming from the Trump Organization. Is this more of an antiTrump Campaign that donald trump is corrupt, not fit for office or is it more defending joe biden . Short term, our number one responsibility is to make sure trump is being held accountable. We have been up Online Advertising since july of last year. Wisconsin, michigan, pennsylvania and florida. Online in arizona since december and outspending the Trump Campaign managers five states online. Most of the stuff we have been talking about is about the issues that affect peoples real lives. Preexisting conditions, medicare, wages, social security. Health care at large. Most of the work provides a a joe bidenween campaign and a Joe Biden Administration that will work to cover every american, versus a Trump Administration that has literally kicked millions of people off of their health care. That would be the predominant focus of our effort, but we will let these other attacks go unanswered and we will respond when we feel like it is important for us to do so. Where you see the bow ground, the Trump Campaign says they can expand it to minnesota . Guy those are the first five we started with. Carolina ended up being a battleground state. President obama when the state, it has been competitive. We have a democratic governor. I would not be surprised if you see that added. I think its important that democrats continue that they need to mind other states. We learned some of those lessons in the last election. Just because we are focused does not mean we cannot move to other states. Worked in support of Hillary Clintons election four years ago. She was the democratic nominee and carries the popular vote in the country. What role would you like to see her play this time around, and do are Many Democrats why they seem so reluctant to invite her in as a surrogate and advocate . Guy the reality is that we have been in a pretty congested candidate. I think there has been some reluctance in terms of getting involved in the primary. I actually think she will be a great surrogate. I hope she has a speaking slot at the convention. I think we will see that change once we get to the other side of the primary process. Do you want bill clinton to have a speaking spot . Guy i think all of our former president s should have a speaking spot. Be happy for jimmy carter to have a speaking spot at the convention. What are the lessons from the Clinton Campaign . What didnt they do with Bernie Sanders that you think joe biden should do in 2020 . , if bernie this time sanders drops out and joe biden is the nominee. Guy one of the things that joe biden and Bernie Sanders have is a good working relationship. I think that will be helpful in the process. Bidenll see the joe campaign do a lot of proactive outreach, not just a Bernie Sanders in his campaign, but his supporters. I also think going back to the convention, there is more time. He was really it was really smart of the dnc to move the convention up. It frees up general election money. He gives us more time to heal wounds and address concerns and consolidate and mobilize a party moving forward. I think youll see organizations like joe biden continue to do that type of outreach. President barack obama, when is the proper moment for him to get in and what is his role in the selection . Guy not yet. We still have elections on tuesday, we had debates coming up. The primary calendar will move quickly. I think quicker than a lot of us anticipated. We will have a definitive nominee that passes the 1900 vote mark. There is plenty of time for barack obama to get involved. Fore is no better surrogate joe biden then the president chosen to be the Vice President. Popular,ll enormously not just with democrats but with independence. In many of these battleground states he won. I expect he will be on the trail a lot going into the late summer and early fall. We are heading into a new chapter in this president ial race, what has been the Biggest Surprise for you so far in the democratic contest . Guy going back to the speed at which the selection moves from South Carolina to where we find ourselves today. I have been in politics a little while. I have never seen polls move that quickly and that definitively and then stick. Is probably the Biggest Surprise in all of this. Really largea field, hundreds of millions of dollars spent to make debate stages and be competitive in early states. And despite all of that we saw an election move really, really quickly in the course of a last couple of weeks. The other thing that is , the remarkable thing about the Sanders Campaign manager and that i have in a normas amount of respect for his how committed his supporters are. How engage they are in the process. Knocking on doors, showing up at rallies, being engaged online. It is important that we recognize not just the mechanics of the campaign, but a lot of policy issues that have been moving young people to be more engaged in politics. Not just in electoral politics, but organizing movements. The sustainability has not been a surprise to me, but something we should recognize going forward. You mentioned sanders supporters. 18 to 29 haveges overwhelmingly backed senator sanders. How does someone might joe biden make sure those voters show up in the election . Its important to recognize why that is happening. Is not just because of policies, a lot of young voters grew up in the shadow of the great recession. They are the ones i have dealt with the consequences of flat wage growth. They are one dealing with the consequences of Rising College costs. They are the ones dealing with current policy issues they will be around a lot longer. I think that is a recognition that we need to see some real systemic change. Not just nibbling around the edges. A lot of policy proposals that joe biden has put forward will do some of those strategic structural changes. We need to just make sure we are doing everything we can not to make some bogus political argument, not just to present some entire wornout campaign slogan, but to get at the heart of policy issues that they want to see addressed in the administration going forward. Chancesntagewise, the that the democratic normally nominee will select a woman. 80 , 70 5 . We need to make sure we have a ticket that reflects the diversity of not just our party but the country going forward. From my perspective there is no better time than to have a woman on the ticket. We thank you for joining us. Conversation. E let me begin with you. We lived through 9 11. It certainly affected the psyche of all americans. It changed our lives. But this coronavirus fields and seems very different because of the impact across the board with all americans. We think about the big event say you and i have covered over the years. 9 11 when the 2008 financial meltdown. Another one that shifts the ground for americans. The coronavirus will turn out to be that kind of event. Because it is going to affect so many lives. It has already affected summoning peoples daily lives in terms of whether they go to work and kids go to school. How often you wash your hands and how concerned you are about the older people in your families. This has a big effect on americans life and coulter generally. Because of that it has a big effect in a president ial year on our politics. I think it has changed in some big ways the ground on which the 2020 president ial election is going to be thought. An election, how concerned are republicans . Those that you are talking to. Thats a primary message President Trump has had, what how strong the economy is. The economy is not strong anymore and that is one of the old blocks that is moved. We joke that, the president was acquitted of being impeached. It could all be in the Rearview Mirror and three to four months but it probably one it be. Look at the battle for the senate. Democrats are hoping to take it back. A severe recession could hurt republicans chances of flipping the house. That will be tough already. Affecting thely president ial race, its changing fundamentals in the house and state house. So many voters say, i dont really like President Trumps tweets and i dont like his rhetoric and i dont like this and that, but i like what i see happening with my 401 k . I like what i see happening with the unemployment rate. That has convinced a lot of people who might not otherwise support President Trump to support him. If you take that away it creates a problems for him. He has become the Republican Party. The Republican Party is the trump party. There are suchon consequences for every other republican who will be on the ballot in november. If you take from the president s speech and the events that unfolded on thursday were every major sporting event has been canceled, the country is essentially shutting down. I have never seen Something Like this before. Its like wartime. Maybe this is what it was like during world war ii. It is a test for the country. As we said during the interview with guy, we dont lose sight of the fact that it is primarily a Public Health crisis that will affect people in big ways, but also affects our politics. Republicans are quite worried. Ofwas the underpinning President Trumps reelection strategy. We have never defeated an incumbent president for reelection when the economy was as good as it was two weeks ago. We have never reelected a president within an economy that is in the tank in a recession. It is an existential crisis for trumps presidency. Where were the mistakes . Look at who has taken leadership. Have a companies, state governments and the president s speech earlier this week, he had several public errors he needed to correct. What is the way House Administration correct course. It is not by the businesses and private leadership. It is the federal government. Thats what hinges on the response is how does the federal government response respond . Mind weould keep in have months to go before the election. We have a long way to go in terms of the pandemic. A long way to go in terms of election day. The First Campaign i covered was in 1980. The incumbent president jimmy problems of where he was doing ok until the iranian hostage crisis. It devastated his reelection crisis, not because people because of the hostages in iran, they blamed him because they did not think he was dealing with it in a competent way. President trump faces the risk of the coronavirus. To both of you, we thank you for joining us on cspan. John trawls freemont brought the Pacific Coast into the united states. At the beginning of the story he did not have a Pacific Coast
vimarsana.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.