Well be reading axios a. M. In a while. Go to signup. Axios. Com. That does it for us. Im geoff bennett. Good hanging out with you, alex witt. Our country is really powerful, really strong. Never been like this, oops. How did a fly get into the white house . I dont like that. I dont like flies. I dont like flies. The democrats oh, there was a mosquito. I dont want mosquitos around me. I dont like mosquitos. I dont like those mosquitos, i never did. Squashed like a bug. Good morning. Welcome to morning joe. It is friday, july 12th. Along with joe, willie and me, we have nbc news correspondent heidi przybyla. Host of saturday night politics on msnbc, donny deutsch. Hes too tan, but okay. Host of Msnbcs Politicsnation, president of the National Action network, reverend al sharpton and former director of Strategic Communications for Hillary Clintons president ial campaign, adrienne elrod. She is an msnbc contributor. National security expert columnist at usa today and author of the book the death of expertise tom nichols. You he does not need the tanning beds like donny deutsch. Its tanning spray. Im having a mental image all over again. Lets talk about the mosquito thing. Like mosquitos and flies and donald trump. Theyre drawn to him. Hes a real germophobe. But man, its the mosquito the mosquito clip of 2016 is the most entertaining to me because of the voice he drops into when he encounters a bug of any kind. I dont like mosquitos. What is that thing he does when theres a fly or mosquito in the room. Low on the list of problems but interesting nonetheless. Very low. Lets get right to the news of the morning. The first nbc news wall street journal poll shows the frontrunners shows the two people who were at Center Statement of the debates. Joe biden leads with 26 while senator Elizabeth Warren trails by seven points at 19 . Senators Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders tied for third place with 13 each. Mayor Pete Buttigieg is at 7 . And Andrew Yankee and beto orourke 2 . No other candidate cracks 1 leaving them currently below one of the threshold requirements to qualify for the third round of debates in september. So lets stop right there really quick. We can go to people sharing the views, who is best to defeat trump, but lets go back to the overall list of the candidates. And willie, boy, ill tell you what. As we get to the early states well show South Carolina in a minute. It becomes so clear that this race there may be 21 people who say theyre in the race. But its down to five if you believe any of these polls and for people that have been saying that the polls make no difference, well, theyre wrong because good money doesnt chase bad polls and the top five candidates also happen to be the top five candidates with the most money and biden is doing pretty well. Youll start to wither if youre not in the top five. If youre Amy Klobuchar or cory booker and youre sitting behind andrew yang you have to be discouraged and your donors have to be discouraged. If youre beto orourke and youre tied with with yang you have to be disscourged but if youre Elizabeth Warren at 19 and nipping at the heels of joe biden you have to be encouraged with where you are. And joe biden has to be happy about some of the cross tabs. If you look here among africanamerican voters he has almost africanamerican voters, a 30 point lead over Kamala Harris. Rev, if you look at what he has been through over the last couple of weeks with the comments about segregationist senators and Kamala Harris looking at him in the debate in miami, africanamerican voters for the most part have stayed with him for now. First of all, it will take more than one incident to flip voters but theres been an increase in Kamala Harris, but clearly joe biden according to the polls has a significant lead. Thats the read on the ground. I think though he ought to look at the fact that she is rising there and that can cause problems in South Carolina. And i think the fact that none of the other candidates are penetrating in any significant numbers to the africanamerican vote might be a large part of why theyre not doing better in terms of the general polls. So if i were part of the other three of the five that seem to be locked in at the top, my concern would be why im not getting through at all. While joe biden is still relatively comfortable there and we see Kamala Harris on the rise there. Well, lets followup on that, rev. Go back if you will the breakdown by race, guys. Alex, i want to show that again. Because there have been two candidates that have done well in the National Polls. Who continue to lag behind for support among black voters who obviously, rev, as you and i say once you get out of iowa and New Hampshire thats the ball game. Youre going to see if a candidate cant get support among black voters, then theyre going to lose South Carolina pretty badly and there are two candidates that stand out right now who still have a lot of work to do, mayor pete who actually put out a program yesterday and talked about how to improve the lives of africanamericans. And Elizabeth Warren sitting at 8 . Not surprisingly in the South Carolina poll well show you in a minute those two lag far behind the rest of the field. You know, its something you and i talk about all the time, joe. That is that is a lot of the so called progressive candidates dont penetrate on the ground because they have an ivory tower view and you have people who are conservative, you have been republican, i have been a democrat, but we understand the church and the church culture. Right. Which a lot of blacks like me were raised in. And they dont understand that because theyre removed from that. So people dont really relate to them. They may agree on one or two issues but they dont connect with them. Yeah. You know, its so important. We have said this time and again because of course rev al has talked about it time and again that you talk about ideology among democrats and republicans what it seems sometimes both parties elites dont understand is that hispanic voters and black voters a lot of voters are conservative with a small c. Thats right. And do not relate as reverend al, mika, to latte liberals. No. And by age groups biden trails both sanders and warren by double digits. Sanders at 25 , warren at 23 . And biden at 11 . But biden is the run away favorite among voters who are 50 and older. Warrens 15 . Sanders gets 3 with these older voters. Biden is also far behind warren with the liberal voters. 29 prefer warren. 27 choose biden. But among moderate and conservative democrats, biden at 35 and harris at 15 . Every time i look at the numbers, this is i mean, i think we have picked out alex and the team have picked out the two most important cross tabs for the democratic primary. The vote down racial lines but also the vote down age lines. Every time i look at the young voters swarming up, im excited like everybody else. Getting involved but whenever i have said this, i said it on the night of the 2004 election that if your Campaign Strategy depends on young historic number of young voters sweeping you over the top, you will be left standing at the altar. It does not you want those old voters, the old voters get out and vote. If you can excite young voters as well, thats fantastic. But just young voters will likely disappoint you like they disappointed howard dean in 2004. Right now, biden has got the older voters. Head a like to lure the young hed like to lure the Younger Voters but what do you think about Bernie Sanders not doing so well with voters over age 50 . Its fascinating. First of all, youre exactly right. The two most reliable constituencies when it comes to voters turning out are Older Americans over the age of 50 and africanamerican voters. So the fact that joe biden is polling very well among those two groups is a very good news for him. And to the point that you just mentioned, i mean his debate performance was not fantastic a couple weeks ago. Hes got a debate coming up but he didnt really lose a lot of support among his key core constituency as a result of that debate. So thats good news. Also like you said, joe, when it comes to the Younger Voters every election cycle lots of money, millions of dollars is spent on mobilizing numbers and we have seen a greater turnout over the last two election cycles but at the same time, you still cannot rely on that constituency as much as you can among africanamericans and older voters. You also cannot become the democratic nominee if you dont have support among africanamericans. So, you know, again the field is 25 people but i think what were seeing from a result of this poll and other polls that have come out since the first debate is the field is set. The field is really starting to gel. And its going to be so much harder for somebody like cory booker, Amy Klobuchar to really break into that 4 to 5 where you need to be. And we have to keep in mind that the way the democratic process is sent is set up in the democratic primary, you have to get 15 of the vote in the Congressional District even to qualify for delegates. So were still six months away from iowa but you have to think i guess seven months away, but you have to start thinking if youre a voter, you know, starting to make up your mind if youre a campaign, mapping out your strategy over the next seven months or so you have to make sure youre doing what you can to make sure you hit 15 in the Congressional Districts. So ill sprinkle in one more from the poll which is that only 12 of the people responded said they made up their mind about the candidates. As adrienne said its seven months away from a vote. Only 12 of democratic primary voters say they know who theyre going to vote for. Along those lines just kind of the cautionary tale or a cheerleading message to the democrats next debate, leave race out of it. The big discussion coming out of the debate obviously was kamala and biden and busing and the irony is we have a president who unfortunately a lot of candidates wont even address him, who got in office on race. By dividing us on race. We all know his history as a racist starting with birther, all the way to charlottesville. That do the democrats do . To very good decent progressive candidates, biden, harris, who you know in their core are all about decency and bringing people together. What do they do . They shoot each other that way and i hope and if i was advising either one of them, because at the end of the day, youll turn off certain africanamerican voters and white voters and you need them both so step away from race. You know, its interesting, obviously if you go on twitter a lot of life long democrats dont want to hear from the likes of you and me. Talking about the party darting too far left and, i mean, why should they hear from us, they did so well in 2016 against trump. But you look at the first debate and it doesnt look like biden was damaged too much. It looks like as the polls keep rolling out the clear winner seems to be Elizabeth Warren as far as making a break. What to the front of the pack. What does that mean . What do you see in the poll results . Not only whos at the top, but also the 15 or so who are buried below 2 . One of the things i think is really interesting is to think about how these polls would have shaken out if there had been only seven or eight candidates instead of this, you know, complete hot mess of 22 candidates including a lot of vanity candidates. You know, you kind of wonder if there had been only seven or eight choices where would the other 10 or 12 thats down there in the ones and twos, where would that vote have gone. Would it given a shot to cory booker or Amy Klobuchar so of course youll get two or three at the top. And then everybody else in what onesies and twos at the point. Nobody wanted to hear from us, former republicans, well, this is the thing were warning about early on. We had 17 candidates and look what happened to us. Even though trump won, i mean, it was the worst candidate coming out of it. I think the other thing that comes out of this is how much biden wasnt dented. I was surprised by that. Yeah. Thats big news, isnt it . Yeah. I think donny is right. For the democrats to push this primary on to the turf of race, its insane. Its exactly what the republicans had hoped they would do because that plays right into Donald Trumps natural home turf. So fox news poll of South Carolina democrats shows the former Vice President with a big lead in the first in the south primary. 35 say they would vote for biden, a 21 point lead over senator Bernie Sanders who gets 14 . Senator Kamala Harris is in third with 12 . With senator Elizabeth Warren back at 5 . Senator cory booker with 3 and mayor Pete Buttigieg at 2 . Like the nbc National Poll, bidens advantage here is build on a strong show of support from the states africanamerican voters. Among whom he attracts 41 of the vote compared to receiving just 25 among white democrats. So lets stop there and we can show you another chart. The other chart shows the same thing, biden does well with older voters so rev, lets look at two charts. Ill keep this one up first. Here we have Elizabeth Warren sitting at 2 among black voters in South Carolina. Mayor pete only sitting at 1 in South Carolina. Now, if you will, switch over, alex, to the overall South Carolina number. When you switch over to the overall South Carolina number, you see actually that theres a good reason that mayor pete is only sitting at 2 . And its in large part because of the vote. Elizabeth warren drops from 19 in the National Polls to 5 in South Carolina. And rev, this is what we have been saying for some time. Everybody focus on iowa and New Hampshire and theyre such important early contests, but really the look of the democratic primary, the character of the democratic primary, rev, lets go to rev, doesnt start until we get those results in from South Carolina and we see whats going to do well on super tuesday. Whos going to do well in the northeast and whats going to do well where the states are more diverse and represent the overall population. No doubt about it. If youre discounted in South Carolina, do very poorly, you will not probably survive to see the rest because you wont have the money and you wont have the kind of momentum. I think whats interesting about this is again, many people that talk about the progressive wing of the party do not understand theyre not talking about the most of the Africanamerican Community who have different views that could be conservative maul c like you say in reallife things and who relate to people. The other thing that i think that people forget when they talk about joe biden agree with donny, one, donald trump played the race card and he played that he was going to undo everything that president obama did. Well, undoing obama is undoing obama biden. So a lot of africanamericans are saying this is my vote to say i am with obama biden and the things that donald trump is trying to undo. And biden gets a lot of support because of that. He was the copilot of the years that mr. Trump is now trying to displace. So its going to take more than one or two bad nights at a debate for people to look at joe biden as separate from the last ten years. They werent around 50 years ago for busing. Its a big issue and an important issue, but they remember in real life their own experiences over the last ten years thats trying to be displaced by this president and joe biden was part of that. And really fought hard in that. I was in the rooms. I disagreed with joe biden in the 90s but joe biden was an ardent fighter in the rooms for what barack obama did with the Affordable Care act and criminal justice reform. Theres no question about it. Heidi, theres obviously a ton of road ahead of us still, but joe biden has take an few hits now right when his campaign rolled out with the question of women who said they made him feel uncomfortable. The hits on busing. The hit during the debate where it wasnt just Kamala Harris going after him, it was his general performance that was perceived as not good and hes still sitting at pretty solid numbers if you go state by state and then in the National Poll as well. I guess the question is joe biden is such a known commodity, what changes the dynamic of the race . Of course it will change a million times between now and iowa, but what changes the way that people feel about joe biden . He does look pretty tough right now, but this is so early. Thats another paradigm here which was Hillary Clinton in 2007 when she had the majority of the black vote behind her and later in the race when it looked like obama could actually get other voters to vote for h