>> brennan: welcome back to "face the nation." joining us for some more 2020 analysis are jamal simmons, democratic strategist and host on hill tv. amy walter of the "the cook political report," and, of course, our own ed o'keefe. ed, you just laid out the crowded field. i was speaking to a democratic strategist this week or fund-raiser i should say who says this is like waiting for gaddeau. still not sure. is biden going to show up? >> if you believe the verbal slip-up last night, yes, he certainly made it seem like he is. i asked him earlier this week when he was at this firefighter's union, what's the hold-up. he says, there's no hold-up. he just looks at history, which suggests that people who have waited a little longer than this current crop that got in at the stroke of midnight as the year

began and thinks he has some time to spend because he's got the name and clearly has some s up somady and ready to ce we size his operation will be. but all signs still point to early april some time befdail5t. >> ed mentions history. with the vice president, history is a pretty tough marker for him. >> brennan: what do you mean? >> democrats, you know, he's very popular. people all over the country are hungering for him to get into the race, but democrats have never elected a sitting or former vice president to the white house before. democrats also, if you go back and look at some of the 530a polling, the person ahead a year out from electioday did not ultimately win the white house. there is only three times that person won the nomination, walter mondale in 1984, al gore in 2000, and hillary clinton in 2016. hillary is a tough marker some the vice president really has to i think take on the fact that

he's going up against these trends, and that means he has to hi ho bes differently.se p about progressive issues that's more compelling, and i hope that's what they're planning. >> brennan: amy, do we need new blood, as former president obama suggested? he's not necessarily going to -- >> he's not the newest person in the mix for his years there on the senate side. it's really interesting watching democrats grappling with their choices. they have all kinds of opportunities here, generationally, on race, and on gender. and it seems that the issue really comes down to this. how safe of a choice do democrats want to make. by safe we all are going to determine that, the democrats are going to determine that, too, in very different ways. and the safe being really who is the one who we k ms who

is the most disruptive in this field. waiting for geauddeau is a good description. primaries are a lot like trying to figure o whoou going to marry. do you go with the person who really races your heart or do you go with the person you want to bring home to your parents. >> brennan: you don't think the two can be the same thing? >> sometimes they can be both. i think barack obama was both. i think in 2004, remember there was that infamous bumper stick their said, dated dean, married kerry. >> how did that work out? >> and a lot of democrats will say, exactly, when we made the safe choice, john kerry, hillary clinton, we lost. we have to go with somebody who is going to be engaging in a very different way. one more quick thing about engaging and broadening, going away from states, it's also about broadening the electoral map outside of the presidential race, which is the senate, there are a bunch of democrats

matter. we got to go into places like texas, iowa, north carolina, georgia, and those are the races that are going to determine control of the senate. >> brennan: it was such a rollout for beto o'rourke. people are asking, is he anointed? is this going to backfire on him? >> i think to the charge that the media may have overdone it, we have to remember something, i made this point repeatedly in our reporting. you talk to every other campaign that's involved in this right now, the one name that kept coming up in private conversations was always him. is he going to do it? do you think he can raise $80 million again? this was them essentially goading us into saying, you know, they're scared of him. very scared of him. and this coffee shop counter-top campaign that he launched this week by jumping up on countertops repeatedly, was it you that said, i hope you brought the windex. >> clorox wipes. people are eating there. >> it seems to have gone well for him. he started very strategically in southeastern iowa, part of the state where democrats used to dominate and have struggled in

recent years, and repeatedly people said, you know, they don't come to this parted of the state until later in the primary, so we give him a lot of credit for doing it. we'll see. >> brennan: there has been some attention to perhaps a double standard here, that beto delayed making an announcement, he had this sort of soul-searching played out in the press, that a female candidate of the five or so we have so far, would have been punished for looking indecisive. do you buy that? >> there is still going -- there will always be a double standard. when we look at whether the candidates of color and women will be judged to different standards than white men. at the same time, i do think every one of these candidates gets their time to make their case, and this is why the debates are going to be so important. because all this right now is sort of fluff, when they're all on the stage together, making the case they have the best opportunity, time best person here, to go up against donald trump, that's when voters really get to see what a they're made of.

>> i would argue that beto o'rourke is the best natural candidate for this era. he understands social media. he is willing to engage in that fear in a way that donald trump has engaged in, and nobody else can really do that. what we don't know, can he do all the other things that have to be done in a campaign. can he build an organization, can he raise the money can, he withstand the hits that will come his way. those are really big things. this week, there was kind of a little bit of an upset. a lot of women i talked to were really upset about the way he talked about his wife and raising their kids. that came up a lot. i started to call around to friends and family. >> brennan: because he said ildrenfe mainly >> so i started talking to women who don't live in washington and asking them what they thought. the most interesting response was a 70-year-old woman in detroit who said to me, oh, yeah, i saw that. i really liked that. >> brennan: she thought he was giving his wife credit.

>> she thought he was giving his wife credit. so i think sometimes that things sound differently to people who live in different places. we have to wait and see how this all plays out. >> which is why the process is so important. you haven't heard democrats yet. it's going to happen. say this process is too unwieldy. we're going to damage the ultimate nominee by having all these debates and this lasting far too long. right now i think it's the only way to determine which one of these candidates meets all of those different criteria that jamal pointed out, of who is going to be able to raise the money, look like they can stand up to the president, be able to be inspiring, also have a pathway to the white house that looks to voters like a realistic path to the white house. >> brennan: well, we'll have the leave it there with with the three of you. more to come when we come back more to come when we come back from this break with some r life. wrinkles just won't. neutrogena® rapid wrinkle repair's derm-proven retinol

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( ♪ ) only tylenol® rapid release gels have laser drilled holes. they release medicine fast, for fast pain relief. tylenol®. >> brennan: we turn now to our panel for some analysis on the other big news of the week. jamal simmons and amy walter are joined by ramesh ponnuru, a senior editor at "national review" and a columnist for "bloomberg opinion" and mark mark landler covers the white house and foreign policy for "the new york times." good to have you join us. ramesh, lesk you. amy brought up in the last segment this point about it not0 presidential race. it's also about these congressional seats. senators, some of them we saw with this vote on the rebuke to

the president, the accusation that maybe they were a little worried about their seats in 2020 and that may have swayed some republicans to stick with the president. how big of a concern and a factor was that? >> i think it's striking that of the 12 republicans who defendant not vote with the president, who voted to disapprove, only one of them is running in 2020. there was a risk on both sides, there's a general election risk because the emergency is unpopular and the wall is unpopular, but among republicans, these things are very popular, and obviously i think a lot of republicans showed they were more concerned about winning their primaries than they were about the general election. >> brennan: who do you have in mind, thom tillis who took a lot of heat for that eleventh hour switch? jonirnstl o ted with the president and not with the 12 republicans, like mitt romney and pat toomey, mike lee

and others who had these constitutional concerns about what the president is doing. >> brennan: mick mulvaney was on this program and said the thinks the white house has nothing to worry about with this attempt to override the veto, but how was this received inside the white house? it was the president's first time to use the pen this this way? >> it was also first time the president was rebuffed this way by republicans. ramesh points out that several of them didn't go the whole way. the fact of the matter is that after two years in witch the republicans have been just an absolute reliable sort of bastion for the president in congress, i thought this was still symbolically important. i'm sure that president trump's argument is, well, i didn't pitch as hard as i could have. if i really asked for the votes, i would have gotten them, but nevertheless, they must be looking at this and thinking, do we have mitch mcconnell as reliably as we thawing we did? and facing the prospects of more unpopular potential policy decisions and debates down the road, is this the first in what will be a more independenticorie

reanomeht that's wishful thinking? >> indeed, indeed. and i stimulate that we haven't seen it and we've had the same sort of discussion in times in the past, well, this will be the moment they show their independence, and they continue not to do that. but having said that, you know, this was a somewhat different set of circumstances. it didn't play out quite as well as i think the white house hoped it would, and so that's got to be at least somewhat concerning for them. >> brennan: do you think this resonates with people at home or do you think it's lost on them? >> i don't think it resonates unless the president wants them to resonate, in which case he does very gress. tolyoinhing didn't underp america safe. they're trapped in the old ways of thinking. i'm here to break it out of us. so it actually works for him. i think this is very ben --

beneficial to him. i do agree with the question of whether this signals more decent shun or whether it's just this was a really easy vote. they're never going to have to vote on this again. it's going to die in the house most likely. they won't have to vote on this again, and then it's in the courts where ultimately, you know, none of the discussion we're having right now may ever have to turn into reality. >> brennan: ramesh, one of the few areas where we did see criticism from republicans was on the foreign policy front. again, going into 2020, i questions there are some questions about what does the president say he delivered on when he comes to north korea. what does he say he delivered on with a promiseme upcg dec on both of those things. how much of a political lens should we be putting on them? >> i tend to think that those sorts of foreign policy decisions are not all that politically significant in a presidential election unless

something has gone very, very wrong, and in that case, people start holding politicians accountable and asking why things that they themselves as voters weren't paying attention to, weren't done. so i think the stakes politically are low, even if the stakes for our long-term national security are kind of high. right now i think the president can say to his core voters, look, i have been trying to pull out of our commitments overseas, or at least downsize them in an intelligent way. i think that's going to be accepted as fine. i don't think there are a on tof republican voters who are saying to themselves, you know, we need to be more involved in syria. we need to be more involved in iraq and afghanistan, and so i think he's going to be fine on this front. >> mark, we had the president go to the pentagon on friday for classified briefings. do we know what threats he was actually getting briefed on? >> well, we don't precisely know what threats he was getting briefed on. the assumption is clear that he was probably being briefed on north korea.

he was probably being briefed on syria, where after all heade this decision to leave some american troops behind after saying he was going to withdraw them, and probably also on afghanistan. we're in the midst of this peace reconciliation process with the taliban, and part of that process is setting a definite time line for withdrawing the remaining troops there. so i am sure some combination of those issues plus iran were probably all on the table at that point. >> brennan: there are about 12,000 troops still in afghanistan. >> that's right. and that conversation has become very complicated in the last couple of weeks because the afghan government feels that we the united states have cut them out of the process. we're dealing directly with the taliban, the afghans don't have a seat at the table, and that's become very contentious just in the last week in washington with a couple visiting afghan officials rais >> brennan: did you hear anything from this week with what's been described as a blow symbolically to the president or

the frustrations to try to deliver on some of these foreign policy projects. is there any rich territory for democrats to mine? >> i think democratic left, people are thinking more rabbit russia and russian influence than they are about some of the more fine points of foreign policy. they generally get the president is not doing very well, and the democratic candidates don't seem to be that far apart on this. i think what people on the democratic side are trying to do is offer an alternate vision about what is important. so the reason the president and immigration focuses importantly is for his faith is because it says parlarly to white disaffected voters, i'm the guy who is standing up against the brown people coming into the united states and trying to preserve the country for you. i think what the democrats are trying to say is that there's actually a bigger problem that happens. so if you look at what happened with the cheating scandal with the schools, like there is a sort of mob of people who were at the top. they have all the goodies. this goodies mob, but there is a goodies mob out there that is

dividing up all the opportunity among each other and those are the people that we all have to be worried about. how do we tilt the scales back in favor of working people, and somebody like elizabeth warren who talked about this idea of breaking up big tech companies is somebody who is driving this agenda on the left that says, maybe we have to change the rules about how we deal with our economy and that's an alternate vision that i think democrats are trying to establish. >> brennan: and yet that's also going back to who is the safe choice. and for democrats, trying to balance these two very important segments of their electorate, the ones who do see that the system is rigged, they're attracted to the bernie sanders message, also who is going to turn out that obama coalition that hillary did not, younger voters, voters of color, but the newest coalition are those white suburban voters who came out, and guess who they voted for? they voted for beto. that's how beto came so close in texas. it wasn't the rise or younger or latino voters. i was white suburban voters who

came out and voted for democrats and for beto. how do you keep those voters from either staying home or defecting back to donald trump? if you put a candidate, goes the theory, someone like elizabeth warren, someone like bernie sanders, that's going to turn off those voters who were willing to vote for democrats in 2018. >> brennan: but jamal, bernie sanders is trying to woo block voters right now in south carolina. he's trying to make up a difference i guess. >> he's trying, but there's a funny picture going around the internet yesterday of him at an african american church in south carolina, but everybody in the room was white. so what happened was they built the crowd, but it wasn't actually the crowd of the membership of that particular church some he's got a little bit of a tougher road. into more. but here's my real guess, somebody, whoever the democratic nominee is will adopt a lot of the policy choices that bernie and elizabeth warren put forward because that seems to be where the passion of the left is. >> brennan: we will see,

thanks to all of you. we will be back in a moment with a look at a unique new class of congressional interns.

>> brennan: politics and football meet head-on this spring with an unusual class of interns on capitol hill. cbs news special correspondent james brown reports. >> reporter: michael thomas, austin carr and ryan hunter are used to running, blocking, or catching for a living, but for the last couple of weeks, they have been running around the halls of congress, tackling the big issues facing the country. >> i have been fortunate to sit in on meeting with foreign policy administrators from the middle east, whether it be constituents from the state of missouri and the city of kansas city, st. louis. >> reporter: ryan hunter is an offensive lineman for the kansas city chiefs. he's interning nor freshman senator josh pauly oissouri. >> it's fun because we're both new together. so ryan is new. i'm new. we're kind of learning the ropes together. i think it's phenomenal that n.f.l. players like ryan who are very busy guys and have a career they're pursuing want to be involved in their communities, want to be involved in service.

>> reporter: michael thomas plays safety for the new york giants. this is his second time working for congresswoman sheila jackson lee, who represents his district in houston extension tex. >> what a place to be, not only in my office, but in many offices where they can be change agents and translate that will leadership on the field into making a difference. >> last year i thought, i got to come back because i sawwhat's ad how much she's really on the ground, you know, like putting in the work. a lot of things that we were fighting for for criminal justice reform,etentind stuff like, that she's already written. they're on the floor. she's proposing these things. i'm like, okay, this is how we can take that next step. >> reporter: and you are firmly convinced that capitol hill, this arena, this venue, if you will, can affect the kind of meaningful changes that you and others who have the same feelings can bring about? >> absolutely. i mean, it's going to take time. nothing happens overnight. i can see how other people can

say, man, they're slow, we need something now. we need to do something now. i get that passion. i feel it. >> reporter: austin carr is a wide receiver for the new orleans safe. he's pro-life and interested in some libertarian ideas, which is why he's interning for kentucky senator randtpaul. >> i'm seeing how hard they work and in particular senator rand paul, how often he's running to and fr-to-different meet rlings different committee, meeting with constituents. >> reporter: what have you seen in this young man, senator? >> we're glad to have him here, and i think it's good to see another side of our athletes. >> reporter: according to the nflpa, the average n.f.l. career last just under four years, and in 2014, the union started an externship program to prepare players for life after the nfl. since then 183 players have had on-the-job training in a variety of fields. michael thomas is a member of the union's executive board, and he sees this as an opportunity to speak for his community.

thomas was one of the players who protested police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem. >> me being here, being an intern, i see the stuff that needs to be taken. i'm willing to put in the work. i'm willing to advocate for it. i'm willing to help out congresswoman jackson-lee any way i can using my voice and my platform, the same way i did it on the football field in taking a knee. >> reporter: austin car met with the attorney general of louisiana to talk about the opioid crisis. >> nationwide, the u.s. consumes 80% of opioids in the world, right? >> reporter: ryan hunter learned more about brain injuries after meeting with the society for neuroscience. >> i would rather be here than be in the bahamas, because i'm learning so much for the future that this experience on its own beats, you know, having an umbrella drink on the beach. >> reporter: these pro athletes came to washington to learn from political leaders, but their mentors seem to learn from them, as well. >> i'm glad to see that austin,

you know, believes strongly in his faith and that it sounds like he wants to be part of trying to make things better in the country, but also be an example for, you know, kids throughout that look up to our stars. >> having players say, i want to be involved, i want to serve, i want to see it from the inside, i want to do something about that, that's awesome, we need more of that. i think ryan is a great example. >> i hope he will be able to with here when we are seeing these bills pass out of the house and senate where we have changed the criminal jus and i hope h be pf it. >> absolutely. re and we'll be right

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you are fully loaded and completely equipped for the race that's been designed for you. >> brennan: that's it for us today. thank you for watching. until next week for "face the nation," i'm margaret brennan.

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morning. morning news a a new gun control debate.

the new zealand prime minister is advocating for stricter gun laws after 50 people died in a a terror attack. the gunman purchased all his weapons legally. evacuation efforts continue in parts of nebraska and iowa. two people have died in the treacherous weather. a a slip of the tongue by former vice president joe biden, hints at a possible presidential run. >> i have the most