tv Washington Journal Hans Nichols CSPAN August 19, 2020 12:39pm-1:09pm EDT
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decliningdually numbers of cases, bringing in students from across the country , where at the end of the day, even with all of the measures we were putting into place that it would be too risky. >> we will live this discussion -- leave this discussion. if you missed anything of what dr. had to say, see it on our website, c-span.org. coming up, minnesota senator amy klobuchar and other democratic lawmakers discussed mail-in voting at a virtual event hosted by the center for american progress action fund shortly in about 20 minutes at 1:00 p.m. eastern. we will have live coverage on c-span. you can watch it online at c-span.org or listen live at the free c-span radio app. joining us to talk about the democratic national convention is the political reporter from axios. thank you for joining us today. >> thank you for having me.
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>> what are you hearing about the format and the impression it is leaving this time around versus previous political conventions? >> from democrats i'm hearing, and you can hear it, is a sigh of relief. there is a great deal of concern among party strategists about how they will focus on the tactics of making sure the delays weren't too long or there weren't any awkward moments. in the first two days, most democrats i talked to had a great deal of concern this wouldn't be able to be pulled off but pass the test. there was a little bit of i wouldn't say heartburn but about the question on the numbers coming in. how many people are watching this convention at home on their television, or however they are doing it. they are way down from four years ago. part of that is that people watch tv differently. they might stream it or watch it in different ways. they technically they feel have not mastered or passed the
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threats chilled -- the threshold test, there are concerns about viewership. the goal of the convention is to get the diehards, not people watching their favorite cable programs. it is to the voters that have not tuned in yet. -- find the voters that have not tuned in yet. on the first night msnbc -- which was sometimes watched bipartisan, those more progressive or believing in democratic party politics, it is 5 million viewers. nbc, a network that tries to reach everyone, only has 2 million. that is maybe a little troubling for democrats that want to reach a broader audience. >> maybe you can tell us about democrats and concerning enthusiasm out of this type of event than previous events. >> so you really saw the enthusiasm take place when they were trying to figure out who to choose. it is -- as vice president.
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air is a difference between enthusiasm and motivation. -- there is a difference between enthusiasm and motivation. they will be enthusiastic about their ticket and motivated to vote. they weren't necessarily enthusiastic about joe biden. he didn't tickle them in certain ways but they were motivated to vote. so the selection they ended up going with was senator kamala harris, which was a known mistake, a version of the hippocratic oath, do no harm. instead of going with someone that excited the debates, like an elizabeth warren. yes there is concern about enthusiasm, but it has not quite bubbled up because democratic strategists look at their base, motivated toso elect donald trump out of office and replace him with anyone. >> senator harris is expected to speak tonight about the nomination. do we have any sense of what she
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will address? >> there will be two to three parts. you will get testimonials of joe biden. we saw this sort of in the initial speech she gave up there in wilmington. i was up there on a sticky basketball court in a humid room in wilmington. this is a slightly different background. she will be prosecuting the case against donald trump, something vice presidential candidates always do, but she will also be outlining the policy proposals, and there will be a little energizing the debate on what they really want to hear. democrats are using -- and you saw this last night. they are using this convention to explain who joe biden is as a person. the basic take away from a friend of mine has a smart piece saying joe biden is a nice guy. americans have known about joe biden for close to 50 years. he has been on the national stage, but they really don't
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know him. that's the opportunity of conventions, to introduce your candidate on your terms before that candidate gets defined in 30 seconds to 62nd attack ads. that is why we get back to numbers on how many americans are watching it. that is why numbers are important. >> one of the ways of defining it is how much ended engage in the president, the interviews. what does the campaign say about will there be more interviews of both those candidates? >> they are not responding for my requests for interviews, but that is probably not the representative. biden has a different approach on doing interviews then donald trump. withd trump will sit down i don't want to say just about anyone. if you look at the number of press conferences trump has done up to this point, it is much higher than any -- either of his predecessors, and that does not include the chopper talk where the president talks to us.
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there are obviously different approaches. biden is a more traditional one. they have many gatekeepers before you can get an interview. what are the first two interviews with joe biden and the family? people magazine. maybe president trump gave an interview from people magazine but it almost seems like a play from the 1990's, reach suburban females and talk to people. then they will sit down with david mirror from nbc. it reminds me a little bit of what we saw to a lesser extent of the careful rollout we saw in sarah palin, a campaign i covered back in 2008 where palin did not do much interaction with reporters. she did not come to the back of her plane and weigh in on whatever what was happening in georgia or what have you. they cap are sequestered until these big moments. nbc, cbs, they all did these big
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network interviews and blew up. palin did not pass that test. i think after she had the interviews, i could see russia from my house type yolks, it became almost a trope on saturday night live was hard to recoup. d many interviews -- many more interviews but the pressure to get it right is more traditional to a mccain/palin ticket. mccain, during the primary process, talked to his press corps all of the time. stage ofwe got to this the campaign, it was difficult to get time from mccain. they were very tight on the candidate's time because they knew it was a precious resource and they knew there was a risk reward. reward to talk to new voters, but the risk is that the candidate gives off a bad message and makes a mistake. >> hans nickel is joining us to
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nichols is joining us to take your question. --ublicans, what is reporting like now versus that? >> i'm in my living room. it is difficult to develop sources. i would say that is the main change. idon't want to pretend that am -- you can't meet people for drinks. you can't have the sidebar conversations. that said, it can be more efficient because you can be texting, emailing with 20 people. everyone this kind of doing it. last night, you have a rolling conversation with your sources about what you are seeing on the
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convention. as opposed to if we were there, all of the reporters would be in their newsrooms, we would be working in our -- on our stories and then digest it. it is a little bit faster and a little bit more efficient. less drinking and you are in bed a lot earlier. last night, i was in bed by 11:30 or 12. things isof the spinning out from a conversation you are having is a conversation about joe biden's appearance but how it relates to the conversation about classrooms reopening. common refrain among republican and democratic strategists is that the virus is going to determine the winner of the election. we are having these conversations in august. a lot of families are on vacation, trying to figure out how they are going to do schools. this is my own theory. it is bolstered by a fair amount of reporting, but the issue of schools is going to be
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potentially dispositive in the election and campaign. donald trump is squarely on the side of open up the schools. you see much less hesitancy, more hesitancy, just a different approach on the democratic side. that is partly because the teachers unions, what you saw from joe biden was maybe an attempt to neutralize that. acknowledged that the yearning to go back to school, the yearning for learning is so real, but you have to do it safely. moves maybe a preemptive by the biden campaign. live in suburban maryland where pre-much 90% of the conversations with my neighbors are, what are you going to do about schools? if you look at the different
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electorates, the way the campaigns are slicing it. senior citizens are very important. donald trump needs to improve his numbers there, but suburban families and suburban female voters is one place joe biden needs to keep his numbers high. you can slice and dice it different ways, but he needs to win in the high teens and 20's among that demographic. if that erodes, that gives trump a bit of an opening. saw, she isove i also a teacher. i think sometimes we can overthink the choreography of this when in reality, joe biden just said i want to give my speech to schools. i want to be in a library and if there are longer-term political benefits, so be it. host: the story is how jill the schooles conversation. our first color is from harold
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on our line for republicans from florida. go ahead. caller: good morning. i try to listen to some of the convention last night. it just got a little old because they kept trying to say what a great guy joe biden was. quite frankly, i understand people like him. he is not exactly honest. done, he has said he has he has not exactly done. honors he said he had, he didn't exactly get. it is very hard to listen to the politics of it all. we are supposed to just believe what they say. if he didn't make so many claims that were proven to be untrue, it would just be better. it was hard to watch, and then all of this stuff about dr. jill. nobody in america who has got a doctorate in education is called doctor. it is not done. for her to keep calling herself dr. just points out she is not a real doctor.
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there are certain professions that yes, if you have a doctorate, you are called a doctorate. host: ok, that is harold. on the dr. point, she has a phd. she is not a medical doctor, she doesn't present herself as such. differentprobably views on that on whether professors should be called doctors. that is how she likes to be called. meetpose it should he ever joe biden, he can say professor biden or misses biden or jill, it is nice to meet you. before i was in the states, i was in germany where you have had doctors or professors where you're both a doctor and professor. some people really make you use that title and others don't. in latin america and argentina, some of the attorneys i know are doctors because they have a juris doctor it. we would never call an attorney
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in this country a doctorate. i think harold would agree with that view. by naxalis malpractice doctor, you don't go to a doctor of law to sue the doctor. it is just a different approach, but it is probably not for me to adjudicate here on who gets to use that title on who doesn't. host: the collection of speakers you have seen so far, do you think they make the case of why i am against trump rather than why i should support joe biden? guest: that is always the right fuel oxygen mix. i guess we will see in the polling at the end of this. it doesn't seem like trump has really crashed this convention just yet. he tried to. this has been more about joe biden and against donald trump. there have been anti-trump lines. somewhat unusual for upper --
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for a former president to attack a current president. donald trump does have an ability of crashing a lot of parties and making the conversation himself. you can see they are trying to do this by laying out the contrast. donald trump is out there doing these hanger events and joe biden is very unlikely to even get a campaign plane, which is sort of a tradition in presidential cycles were sometime over the summer, you 757, you put 10 selling -- stenciling on the side and you hit four or five and you're just kind of discombobulated. that won't happen with joe biden. if they do end up traveling, it
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will be more discreet trips. that is a long way of saying that trump is trying to do some counter programming, but he hasn't really seemed to have gotten in the head of convention planners just yet. host: here is bobby in minneapolis-st. paul. caller: hi. thanks for taking my call. i am retired and i watch a lot of tv. when i look at cable, i look at cnn, a look of fox and i look at msnbc which is double anti-trump. this, it seems to are ignoringables what isgoing on with happening in seattle and portland and what has happened in chicago and new york. i can go on and on. is, don't you think
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during this convention, and i know they want to keep away from i out in the twin cities and this is where it all started. i think you raise a very interesting point. it is the question of our times. if everyone is just listening to the media is going to conform or form their worldview, you don't have a great sense of what is happening outside of your bible. is what concerns democrats, their biggest viewers for their convention on msnbc and on joe biden.com or whatever, those are the people that are going to vote for joe biden regardless. their challenge is to reach people like you who, you say you
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are an independent. and there are issues in your life that you care about. there may be something specific that you care about. if voters are much more interested in other subjects and you are hungry for news on a different subject that the networks aren't giving you, the campaigns and traditional ways to reach people like you are broken. you will go to facebook, you will go to twitter, you will go to different places looking for this information. how cable isof covering the violence in many american cities. i circulate the channels. i see more of the coverage on fox. the question is, if, for an undecided neighbor of yours who wants this information and isn't getting it from traditional channels, frequencies or
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broadcasts, where they going to get it and which party is going to put forth a more compelling case on why there presidential candidate should be elected? there is so much we don't know that is happening during coronavirus. there is so much that national reporters sitting here in our dcu suburban homes don't know. guys like you are closer to it. i am from seattle and i talked to my friends out there. i am genuinely curious on what is it like a few blocks away? what are families saying. i've been hungry for information on that as well, but maybe i need to re-up my subscription to the seattle times which my brother used to deliver. host: nelson in oregon. ander: i'm not a democrat i'm not a republican, but i am voting democrat straight down the ticket because of the fact that lincoln is spinning around
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in his grave. here's my point. i don't think you are focusing on the convention. guest: i was in gresham, oregon about three weeks ago. there is a doughnut place. i don't or if i can give doughnut recommendations, but joe's doughnuts makes a pretty good apple fritter. go ahead. caller: ok. because of our wonderful, forever impeached president. i came out here to spend christmas and new year's with my ex-wife and never made it back to georgia because the pandemic hit. georgia, thatnnah is my actual home. anyonever campaign for and no one in my entire life.
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campaign for stacey abrams kentorgia and i watched still the election. regarding the convention, i think the convention is extremely inclusive. this has been an unconventional convention. i think they have done a really great job considering the way they have had to do it. and the representation from across the board. we are talking hard-core lifelong republicans that have come out because of their reasons that they gave, but also
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big, high-ranking military. host: thank you. guest: nelson is kind of about something that i think rob is talking about and that is that media is not covering issues he thinks are important. that the's case, it is georgia whencover stacey abrams was b. is just another example of why no one knows how 2020 is going to head out. ofon't have any of the ideas nelson and his relationship with his former wife, but he spent six weeks with his former wife on the west coast. that is going to scramble traditional notions on why people vote one way or the other and a presidential election. would you have got your kids sitting in your house trying to distance on zoom and both you and your wife are working.
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in the house, or if you and your wife or partner or however have to go out, those transcend your typical calculus on whether you want your taxes to go up or down and how you feel about judges. coronavirus has affected us all so deeply and manifestly, that it is going to be fascinating to see how it scrambles traditional, political patterns. a full why i think only or riverboat gambler would make any real predictions on which direction this is going to go. nelson, go to joe's doughnuts. it is one of the first towns when you come over from the warm springs reservation. get to donates. -- two doughnuts. seal you saw or tossed
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cortez not only make a presentation, but ultimately say her support for bernie sanders. how did that play out? guest: i missed it because i blinked. this was obviously very choreographed. the nomination of bernie sanders was sort of pro forma. money sanders got some votes that you had to nominate them. she did not mention joe biden. even though we just heard 60 seconds from her, we will hear atm her for quite some time quite a lot of different venues. she is an important voice in the democratic party that demonstrates an important movement and we are not done hearing from her. we will continue to hear from her and what she represents. be distasteful and disquieting to some americans who don't like her political opinions, but she is here to stay.
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a point of clarification, according to the bio, dr. biden has a doctorate in education as well as two masters degrees. some of the folks on twitter's pointing that out. richard in louisville, kentucky. go ahead. listeninghave been and watching for the last couple of months, what is happening to our country and to the democrat-controlled cities. two very learned men, you and mr. nichols. guest: as a bourbon drinker, you can make me scottish. caller: i think you are a straight shooter and that is what we need more from our reporters in this country. i look at the democrat-controlled cities, i see people being killed, i see first amendments being stopped
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and they will let people say hey, can we talk about this, can we get together? you have antifa and black lives matter. we all know these people are going to vote for joe biden, but my question to you is, have you got a copy of the democrat platform and what they are going to do to this country? thank you very much. have a physical copy, i read it online. it was four weeks ago that they sort of went over everything in the platform and made sure that everyone was on the same page. is platform at a convention usually an opportunity for lobbyists to make money because everyone is fighting to have their provision in there. rarely is alatform matter of policy statements and really drives the agenda into presidency.
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what drives the agenda is the two were three issues that the candidate campaigned on. i will come clean on this. i don't know what the republican platform in 2006 set about building a border wall. i am pretty clear that was -- but i am pretty clear that was one of trump's clear agenda items. now he says he has completed that wall. i take your point that everyone should read -- everyone should read the platforms. the better indicator of which way a president is going to go is what they spend their time on, their big speeches, and what they are willing to lose political capital on. obama had a version of this that did not -- there was some concern inside the obama white house because he was elected on hope and change and all these good feelings, but there was nothing concrete.
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leave aside what the platform said when everyone gathered in denver. when he is elected, he has a choice. does he do health care first or financial services reform first? president obama did health care first and a lot of democrats in his party think that was a mistake and they should have done financial services reform first, but then maybe not gotten the affordable care act. you have a finite mind of capital, just like i have a finite amount of time here. on that note, i will sort of wind down. host: we will give you 30 more seconds. we are going to hear from president obama and someone here from hillary clinton tonight, perspectives they bring as far as the activities of this week. has taken the gloves off in a private call that was quickly leaked in may. you will have current -- will have former presidents.
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obama will give testimonials and probably tell some nice stories, nice anecdotes. i would think hillary's speech is going to matter less because she did not win in the electoral college. twitter will light me up for saying she did not win. she did not get more electoral college folks. .t is the obama speech you want host:of politics. "washington journal" continues. host: the president of emily's list joining us to talk about the role women will play in campaign 2020. good morning to you. guest: thank you for having me. host: remind us of emily's list, the organization. list ismily's celebrating its 35th anniversary this year, committed to electing pro-choice democratic women u
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