>> brennan: welcome back to "face the nation," there is big news in our cbs news battleground tracker. that's our survey of the democratic candidates and how they're doing in the early contests. there are 18 states in our aggregate starting with the iowa caucus up through super tuesday. and there is a big reshuffling in the top tier. massachusetts senator elizabeth warren is now at 26% support, just ahead of former vice president joe biden at 25%. the third candidate in our top tier is vermont senator bernie sanders. he has 19% support. in the second tier, those are the candidates with higher

single digits. california senator kamala harris now has 8% support. south bend indiana mayor pete buttigieg has 6%. former texas congressman beto o'rourke has 4%, and former san antonio mayor julian castro and new jersey senator cory booker are at 2%. the rest of the field comes in with 1% of the vote or less. joining us now is cbs news elections and surveys director anthony salvanto. anthony, always good to have you here. tell me about this reshuffling. >> well, this is the story of elizabeth warren rising, not necessarily joe biden falling. he is about where he has been. but her support and that boost she's getting is as a result of other candidates, now former supporters, moving to elizabeth warren. and we have seen this because in this survey, we have gone back and reinterviewed thousands of voters since the summer. and what we see is in particular from kamala harris, her supporters have now moving to

elizabeth warren, and at twice the rate that they have proved proved -- moved to joe biden and other candidates. she is clearly picking up some of them. she's consolidating the liberal side of the democratic party and also her electability ratings are on the rise. she's 16 points higher in being perceived by democrats as being electable, as being able to beat president trump, and that's always been a key criteria. and lastly, margaret, i want to emphasize, this is in those early 18 states that you mentioned, where the campaigns are really focusing. they're first ones to hold contests, so that movement. really reflects i think where the campaigns are putting their energy. >> brennan: so warren's gain is harris' loss, but what does this mean for joe biden? >> there's still some good news here. he's still up in our delegate count. and here's what that means. i know it sounds like it's a far-off thing. it's the democratic convention next summer, but ultimately this campaign is a fight for delegates, and delegates are handed out to top finishers in all of these states.

really any candidate that gets above 15%. well, by the time you get through all of those states, joe biden is doing well enough. he's racking up a lot of delegates, a lot of votes in places like south carolina, that he still has the overall delegate lead in that estimate when we take these vote preferences and we translate them into how the delegates would be awarded in the states. >> brennan: that's important still to actually clinching the nomination. >> brennan: >> when you get to next summer and you're at the convention, the balloons drop, that's how the delegates are awarded to candidates. >> brennan: let's will be at some of those key states. we have them here. we'll bring them up on the screen, iowa, new hampshire, south carolina, nevada, what are they telling you? >> iowa is tight. it is still with biden ahead, just narrowly over bernie sanders. but then some news out of new hampshire, where we know that elizabeth warren has been really ramping up, staffing up, campaigning a lot, she is now very narrowly ahead of joe biden

and bernie sanders. that's effectively a three-way race. there south carolina, i mentioned joe biden still has a substantial lead there. african american support really critical, and then in nevada, often overlooked but an important early primary, we have got bernie sanders narrowly up on joe biden. >> brennan: so with this information, what do people do with it? what do they predict going forward? >> i think what you watch is who has room to move and room to grow, by which i mean, are candidates being considered by voters even if those voters are not making them their first choice yet. and what we see is that elizabeth warren does seem to have even more room to grow, because she's being considered now by more than half of democratic voters even the ones who are not making her their first choice. when they describe the candidates, she's seen as blly elec but thas joe biden's strong suit. >> brennan: and electable means -- >> being able to beat president trump in the minds of democrats.

that's been the top criteria for them. they want somebody that can go on next november, 2020, and beat president trump. >> brennan: thanks so much. anthony salvanto. as always, all of the results are available on our website at facethenation.com. we'll be rig

>> brennan: it's time now for our political panel. jamal simmons is a democratic strategist and host on hill tv. david frum is a staff writer at the atlantic.

michael crowley covers foreign policy for "the new york times," and lauren meizo is a national political reporter at politico. good to have you on "face hk y t battleground tracker that moves liz r elizabeth warren into the top spot. is that what you have been hearing on the campaign trail? >> yes, as i have been on the campaign trail, a number of my colleagues, we have seen a slow and steady rise from warren. she has systematically put a lot of boots on the ground in places like iowa and new hampshire and nevada. she has been very methodical about getting data on voters. and she has been trying to really utilize her niche, which is i have plans for almost everything, and she is really heavily leaned into that, and it appears to be working. she is slowly gaining on biden. >> brennan: it also suggests, according to our polling, that there is more attraction to this idea of thessive wing of the party. jamal. >> yeah, i think my math for this election has been pretty

consistent. the democrats need a progressive that they can sell to the center , not a centrist they have to sell to the progressive wing. that's what the john kerry election was in 2004. that's what the hillary clinton election was in 2014. it didn't work out very well. i would say this, if you look at at the history of the new hampshire primary, it's been five times a massachusetts official has run in the new hampshire primary. democrat and republicans since 1988. each one of those people either won the massachusetts -- new hampshire primary or they came in second like romney, but all of them got over 30%. mitt romney got the lowest at 31%, 32% when he ran in 2008. the probability is that elizabeth warren will win the new hampshire primary oes that do to joe biden whose entire election is predicateed on him being the winner when he may not be winning? >> brennan: david, yreican race, the former congressman from south carolina wants to challenge president trump.

trump campaign says, eh, it's irrelevant. it is? >> they have made it so that mark sandford will not be able to vote for himself because they have shut down the state primary. donald trump is so popular in the republican party he does not want republicans to vote on his renomination, that's how popular he is. the story of the republican party -- >> brennan: it's not unprecedented that the caucus has been canceled. >> it is not unprecedented, but it's something when a president wants to demonstrate the strength of his support in the party, these kinds of acclimations can be useful. the key to donald trump's position in the republican party is a problem of fractions, which is that he is getting a bigger and bigger share of a smaller and smaller party. >> brennan: bigger and bigger share of a smaller and smaller party, but yet not willing to count him out. >> that he's going to be the nominee, we counted him in. >> brennan: but potential reelection? >> but i think his reelection

looks worse this fall than it did this summer. the story that -- things are beginning to go wrong. the price of his policies is arriving. the bread and butter issues, we just see everywhere around us, the signs not of economic trouble actually but of economic warning. we're seeing consumer confidence leaking. we are seeing some financial markets reacting badly, and we're seeing that the things that the president might try to do to save the economy are temperamentally unavailable to him. that to find some way of reaching an agreement with the chinese on taking off the table the stupid things that we're arguing about like washing machines and focusing on the important things, intellectual property and the security of 5g notework, he can't do that, and the consequences of his inability are affecting real people's wage, which are now flat, and soon will be affecting real people's jobs. >> brennan: and michael crowley, president trump has sold himself as the dealmakerrable we saw another potential deal literally fall apart in the last 24 hours with

afghanistan. >> yeah, well, first of all, what an amazing turn of events. i think that much of washington was prepared for a big announcement that they had reached a conclusion. now everything is kind of in pieces on the floor, and it's an example i think of how, you know, the president practices this kind of wild, seat-of-the-pants diplomacy that reminds me of his approach to north korea, the north korean dictator kim jong-un. i'll go meet with this guy who had basically never met another foreign leader before, and everyone was astonished, you can't do that. yes, i can. this camp david thing would be the same thing. this is crazy. the taliban is going to come to america? they're going to come to camp david a few days before 9/11? this is how the president operates. i think he loves to gob smack us and also thinks by breaking through these walls things become possible, but margaret, we're not seeing the results. his diplomacy with north korea has essentially go norwhere. kim jong-un is still producing nuclear material at a pretty steady pace, launching short-range missiles. yes, he has stopped some tests.

and afghanistan now, this peace process is in tatters some this president's improvisational, wild style i think earlier in his administration, some people thought, wow, he might be able to get things done that other presidents couldn't with their conventional ways, i think there is a lot more scepticism about that right now. >> brennan: this is a popular thing to run on for democrats, the idea of ending the war, bringing the boys home is something every single candidate say're gng to do. very few have actually detailed how they're going to do it. does this force democrats to answer those questions now? or do we just move oned to next crisis? >> i think a bit of both. i think you might see some democrats trying to answer that, to strike another contrast with trump. but again, a lot of what's going on in the primary race right now is very insulated. they are not always reacting to trump or what he is doing in the immediate sense. they are staying focused on the

plans and visions they want to bring to voters. >> this may be an opportunity for all normal politicians to reintroduce the american people to basic concepts of operationalty. you know, there are reasons why these kinds of discussions are handled by a special envoy or a assistant secretary level and not brought to camp david until there is a success to announce. you do not commit the president's time, and make democratic candidates could begin, because one of the great challenges for the country in 2021 if there is a democratic presidents, there's all this progressive energy you describe, it's going to find itself running into a full series of objective walls, of a probable republican majority in the senate, terrible fiscal problems even if there isn't a recession, much worse fiscal problems the there is, the intractability of the health care pr so this moment which is not central the people's concern is a good moment to say, these problems are hard. they are difficult. we are not making promises. we are goingo best through channels and reveal a special

envoy in afghanistan, not the president to see the diplomacy, as michael calls it. >> brennan: jamal, i want to ask you as well, gaffes i guess is a word we can use on the campaign trail. kamala harris, who we showed in our poll, was losing some ground to the benefitted of elizabeth warren. had to apologize for something she said at a rally this week. will -- let's listen to what she says. >> what are you going to do in the next year to stop the mentally retarded action of this guy. >> well said. well said. >> brennan: i played that so people could judge for themselves. what was she laughing at? >> it was a bad moment. i think her campaign would have come off better if she said after this, you know what, i reacted poorly to that. i wish i hadn't, instead of saying she hadn't heard it. but that's what happens in campaigns. elizabeth warren is still trying

to get past the pocahontas and the d.n.a. and all this other stuff. campaigns have bad moments. the next question is what are you offering the people? donald trump is going to say all the things about the democratic nominee. the question is: what are you offering people that they want to be out there and be for and they're going to go and rally behind you because of that despite whatever mistakes it is that you've made. i think people are still waiting to hear from kamala harris a concise message about what those things are. >> brennan: michael crowley, sharpie gate? >> thank you for asking. >> brennan: what do we make of it? >> we know the details by now. the president taking a sharpie to his hurricane map and on some level it's a total theater of the absurd. on another, i think it's, you know, encapsulates american politics right now. the president essentially tried to disport facts. he got the facts wrong, then he tried to retd ro actively distorted them. it looks like he enlisted government officials to back him up. wouldn't back down, showed,

number one, a complete obsession with media coverage, and number two an incredibly thin skin. i think there are 40, maybe 40 and change% of the country thises this is the white house's line. this is the media going after trump relentlessly, making too much out of something that wasn't that big of a deal. and this is like this rinse, wash, and repeat cycle we havana in the country. now half the country thinks the president basically isn't playing with a full deck and some large number thinks that he can't get a fair shake. and it's going to come right down to november. and i think it's a close call as no which one of these sides tilts higher. >> isn't the national weather service event the bigger part of this story, the fact that the president said something that wasn't right, and the scientists and the government are being compelled to, one, not contradict the president, and, two, put out a statement that seems to contradict other scientists and the government. >> also the president's own defense raises an interesting point. his defense is, i heard at one point that alabama was a risk.

by the time i made my statement, alabama was no wronger at risk. what were you doing in that interval? i was taking no briefings because i was golfing. and i think these stories even the small ones reveal something about a unique process of government 24n which the president does not take his responsibility seriously. it's not just matter of lying, it's a matter of not doing the work, and that's what necessitates the lie. >> brennan: laura, there were a number of stories involving trump property, from the vice president staying at one in ireland to what we are now looking at with an investigation in congress, his properties in scotland. tell us what we need to know. >> the house judiciary and house democrats as a whole are expanding their scope. they want to define very clearly what their impeachment inquiry would look like. and so on top of potential obstruction of justice issues that came out from the mueller report, they are adding to that by wanting to look into whether or not the president has

violated the amollmentings clause, whether or not he's profiting off the presidency with stays like pence's in ireland as well as the president's suggestion that the g7 stay in doral at the doral resort in florida next year. and so democrats want to add those to their impeachment inquiry. we could see a vote as early as next week on adding this extended scope. >> brennan: we will watch for that this week. >> we need to know, at the trump hotel, is there a presidential tip jar? >> brennan: we'll leave it there. thank you. we'll be back in a moment.

boss: it's a big responsibility. employee: oh, it's huge. i know, it's huge. boss: and the salary... employee: oh my god, yes. i was literally about to move in with my parents

and right before... yeah, so this saved me. boss: i really believe in you. you know? employee: thank you. it's nice to hear that from someone. boss: these are cool. did you...um? where did... >> brennan: we're back now with journalist garret graff. he has a new book out called "the only plane in the sky." it's a detailed account of the morning of september 11, 2001, told by those who lived through it. it's good to have you here. reading this, it was very powerful. these are first-person accounts. it's an oral history. why did you write it this way? it's not a narrative? it's an oral history? >> and the goal was very much to capture the way that americans

experience that day. you know, we're coming up now. this week will be the 18th anniversary of the attack, and we're watching this traumatic moment in american history slip from memory to history. and when we say "never forget," i think we fail to remember just how traw -- traumatic, chaotic, and fearful that day was to experience some the goal was to tell the story, not the facts of the day, which we all know and remember, but the experience of the day, how americans lived it, coast to coast, morning to night. >> brennan: and we will living it is painful for a lot of people. why do you think it's important to go through that? >> well, i think you saw it actually even just this morning. we are still living with the consequences of that day. we are living still with the world that that day shaped. and it was shaped by the fear, the trauma, and the chaos that the policy-makers experienced that day and their decision and

their dedication that that should never happen again. and, you know, we now see american servicemen and women who were born after that attack deploying for the first time to the wars in afghanistan and iraq that that day spawned. >> brennan: you talk not just to policy-makers, people in the room, you talk to everyday folks who touched this in some way, including, and this stopped me when i hit it, the airline attendant who checked in mohammed atta. tell me about that. >> yeah, there are so many people that those attacks touched and affected, including, you know, the ticket attendants in dulles and newark and boston and in portland who checked in the hijackers. they have these distinct memories of interacting with the hijackers and actually even in portland and dulles helping get them on board because they were showing up late to their flights that morning.

>> brennan: warning them, hurry up, you're going to miss your flight. >> "you're going to miss your plane, mr. atta," just a chilling, chilling comment in retrospect. >> brennan: is there a character in here whose story really stood out to you? >> there are a lot of them, because of sort of just what a human experience that day really was. i mean, a day like 9/11 strips away so much of the posturing and the artifice, you know, from policy-makers to first responders to the ordinary office workers who showed up in new york or the pentagon sort of expecting a normal tuesday and found themselves amid that tragedy. >> brennan: you spoke to a number of people including someone who hadn't spoken at all previously to the press, commander anthony barnes. he was the liaison between the pentagon and vice president dick cheney who was commanding things that day. what did you learn from him? >> so commander barnes was sort

of the director of the white house bunker on 9/11, the bunker under the north lawn that is operational 24 hours a day, has never been used before or since except for the morning of 9/11 when vice president cheney was his intoold that. because remember, they thought flight 93 was coming to hit the white house or the capitol. and so i talked to people and tell the stories in the book of the people who thought they were going to die at the white house that morning. commander barnes was the navy officer who was the one who actually asked vice president cheney for the authority to shoot down the hijacked airliners. he's never spoken before, and i spoke to him, and he said that he asked the vice president three times, because he knew just how momentous that order actually was, and he wanted to make sure that there was no confusion, and he recalls sort of just how annoyed vice president cheney was by that third time, because cheney had made the decision and knew that

it was the right thing to do. >> brennan: a surreal order to be given. >> a surreal day from start to finish. we tell this very neat story about 9/11 now that we know the whole attack took place in 102 minutes from the first crash to the collapse of the second tower. we didn't know that on 9/11. that's one of the things that i really tried to capture in the book. it was well into the afternoon. we were still dealing with planes that we thought were hijacked, and we didn't know whether al qaeda had a whole other wave of attacks planned for the next day or the next month. >> brennan: i thought it was interesting toward the end of the book when you talk to schoolchildren and how they remember it. it just is small children and their memories. it's a great read. thank you for sharing it with us. >> thanks for having me.

when you humble yourself under the mighty hand of god, in due time he will exalt you. hi, i'm joel osteen. i'm excited about being with you every week. i hope you'll tune in. you'll be inspired, you'll be encouraged. i'm looking forward to seeing you right here. you are fully loaded and completely equipped for the race that's been designed for you. when the engines failed on the plane i was flying, i knew what to do to save my passengers.

but when my father sank into depression, i didn't know how to help him. when he ultimately shot himself, he left our family devastated. don't let this happen to you. if you or a loved one is suicidal, call the national suicide prevention lifeline. no matter how hopeless or helpless you feel, with the right help, you can get well. cbs cares. the amazon rain forest is considered to be the lungs of the earth and absorbs 25% of the world's carbon dioxide. the current wildfires are destroying a football field of rainforest every minute. learn how you can help at amazonwatch.org. cbs cares. far too many young women around the globe lack crucial medical care, access to education, and a safe place to call home. they need to be empowered and supported. learn how you can help at girlup.org.

>> brennan: that's it for us today. we honor those who died on 9/11 and after that protecting u.s. interests as well as all the families they left behind. until next week, for "face the nation," i'm margaret brennan. captioning sponsored by cbs captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org possibilitt t t t t t news."

i'm elaine quijano. t news." trump's controversial now cancelled decision to unviolent taliban leaders to camp david. >> the president made the decision this was the right place. >> these are terrorists i. >> charlie d'agata has reactions. >> peace talks continue. >> we don't think so at this stage. >> the road to 2020. new poll shows a stakeup among top democrats. dorian's done but still doing damg. this time in canada. while the battered bahamas deals with a mountinger and reallily cry in hong ko kong. protesters flood streets calling r u.s. support. all that, plus taking aim. the coach who returned to his roots to lift