Washington Wednesday - Democrats in disarray after Iowa delay

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 5th of February, 2020. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: And I’m Megan Basham. First up, it’s Washington Wednesday.

Well, political drama is pretty ubiquitous in the nation’s capital. But even with the impeachment trial and the State of the Union address, Washington still got upstaged this week. At a time when politics is often predictable, something very unpredictable happened Monday night in Iowa. And it’s thrown the entire Democratic presidential primary into chaos.

EICHER: Candidates spent months campaigning in the Hawkeye State. They also spent more that $45 million on advertising ahead of Monday’s caucuses. But the long delay in announcing the actual winner took virtually all the return out of both those investments. No one got to deliver one of those coveted election-night victory speeches. So now Iowa is in the rear-view mirror and the campaigns have turned their attention to New Hampshire.

Joining us now to talk about all of this and what it means for the Democratic primary is Jamie Dean. She’s WORLD Magazine’s national editor and primary political correspondent. Good morning, Jamie!

JAMIE DEAN, GUEST: Good morning, Nick. 

EICHER: I saw plenty of funny takes on Twitter, but how would you describe what happened on Monday? 

DEAN: I think it’s safe to say it was the most anti-climactic moment of the 2020 campaign so far. The Democratic candidates had been waiting in their starting blocks for a year, and when the gun finally went off, it was more of a false start than an actual contest. 

EICHER: What effect has this had on the race?

DEAN: It strips any single candidate of having a break-out moment. There’s just something lost in not having that classic, election night victory in Iowa. 

We also should consider the effect on voters. This is really a terrible way to start the 2020 voting season. Iowa officials have said they do not believe the problems on Monday came from any outside interference or hacking. But given how much American voters have been hearing about potential hacking and outside interference for the last four years, this kind of debacle still isn’t good for voter confidence.

Democratic officials in Nevada have scrapped plans to use the same app that created havoc in Iowa. I think it’s safe to say that’s a wise move. I imagine party officials in New Hampshire are busy double checking all their systems ahead of their Democratic primary next week.

EICHER: Let’s talk about New Hampshire. That’s the next stop for the Democrats, as you say. I covered one of these back in 1992, when Bill Clinton proclaimed himself the comeback kid, even in losing both Iowa and New Hampshire. Now, when we think about the value of Iowa, we think about winning so-called “tickets” out of Iowa. Meaning who heads to New Hampshire as a more viable candidate. So, on your list, Jamie, who gets a “ticket” out of Iowa? 

DEAN: It’s neck and neck from what we can tell from the most recent polls: Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, and Pete Buttigieg are at the top of most New Hampshire polls. Sometimes they’re separated by single digits. Sometimes Sanders has a bigger lead.

And remember, lurking in the second tier is Michael Bloomberg. He reportedly plans to double his ad spending in hopes of taking advantage of the chaos in Iowa to focus on winning primaries after New Hampshire. He’s already spent more than $300 million on TV, radio, and digital ads.

One of the really interesting things about New Hampshire is that about half of the states’ voters identify as undeclared, instead of Democrat or Republican. All voters registered as Democrats or undeclared are allowed to vote in next week’s primary.

We’ve seen Pete Buttigieg focusing his campaign in areas of the state where voters lean more moderate or independent. But remember, Bernie Sanders won New Hampshire in 2016. He prevailed over Hillary Clinton by more than 20 percent. So he’s got a history in New Hampshire. It gives him an advantage, but it also gives him a lot to prove. 

The Democratic candidates are slated to debate in New Hampshire on Friday night, so we’ll see how they respond to the whirlwind of events this week.

EICHER: Speaking of Pete Buttigieg, you recently wrote a story for WORLD Magazine called “the gospel according to Pete.” Out of all the candidates before the Iowa results, why the interest in him?

JAMIE: Well, Pete Buttigieg has been a dark horse candidate. But he has gone farther and been more successful than a lot of pundits expected. For weeks, he polled near the top in the Iowa caucuses, and it looks like he’s in pretty good shape in New Hampshire.

EICHER: Hey, do a quick hit on the resume. 

DEAN: He’s a 38-year-old Harvard graduate, who just finished an eight year stint as the mayor of South Bend, Indiana. For most of his campaign, people have introduced him as Mayor Pete. 

EICHER: Kinda like Mr. Smith goes to Washington. 

DEAN: Yeah, I think he’s trying to take that lane. But as you can imagine, this is not the typical profile for a likely presidential nominee.

EICHER: No, no, not at all. So why do you think he was able to take off in the race? 

DEAN: I think a couple of things are going on: For months, Joe Biden really wasn’t lighting much of a fire on the campaign trail—even though he was leading in the polls. He just wasn’t generating the kind of enthusiasm that a presumed frontrunner usually would generate.

Meanwhile, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders have been generating a lot of buzz, but there seemed to be a chunk of the Democratic base that wondered if they are way too far left to challenge President Trump in the fall.

So, here comes Pete Buttigieg, and he is articulate and young, and very upbeat on the campaign trail, and he sort of started positioning himself as the moderate alternative to Warren or Sanders. And I think that’s part of why he took off.

EICHER: And, I mean, he’s touted as a moderate, but is he really?

DEAN: I think the answer is no. He has criticized Warren and Sanders on their proposal of Medicare for All, but his proposal is Medicare for All who Want It. That’s a slightly more moderate position than dooming the private insurance industry outright, but it’s still a massive government spending proposal.

When it comes to social issues, he’s not moderate at all. He came out as gay a few years ago, and he’s in a same-sex marriage with a man who has appeared with him quite a bit on the campaign trail.

On abortion, he doesn’t call for any restrictions on abortion, even up until birth. And he doesn’t really seem to see a place for pro-life Democrats in the party, which would be a very sensible move if you’re positioning yourself as moderate.

EICHER: It’s interesting headline language, Jamie. You called your story “The Gospel According to Pete,” so he does try to frame up his appeal as a religious candidate. 

DEAN: He does. He’s a regular church-goer at an Episcopal church in downtown South Bend. That’s where he held his wedding ceremony. Obviously, that’s a complete departure from Biblical teaching about marriage and sexuality.

Many Episcopal churches made that departure a long time ago, and Buttigieg is part of one of those congregations. 

His interest in religion seems very genuine, but he has a very subjective understanding of Scripture. He does not talk about the Bible being the inerrant Word of God. And he applies that subjective view to a range of issues. On a radio program, he said the morality of abortion is really up for interpretation because the Bible sometimes talks about life beginning at breath.

Most Christians recognize that there are famous passages of Scripture that talk about life beginning at conception.

The really sad part is that he’s taking in false teaching that is probably giving him a false sense of security. And I think the danger of all this is that a likable, articulate, young candidate can make that kind of teaching appealing—and seemingly normal—to maybe a younger audience that might be confused about all sorts of things.

So whatever his prospects going forward in the race, I think Christians need to keep an eye on this.

EICHER: Alright. Yeah, they do. Jamie Dean is national editor for WORLD Magazine. She is heading up coverage of the 2020 election for WORLD. Thanks so much for joining us today.

DEAN: You are welcome.

(AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar) Democratic presidential candidate former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg speaks to supporters at a caucus night rally in Des Moines, Iowa, Monday, Feb. 3, 2020. 

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