Sanders vs. Warren?

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And live from Audubon University, just north of Columbus, Ohio, this is the CNN New York Times Democratic Presidential Debate.

Senator Warren,

you've proposed some sweeping plans, free public college, free universal child care, eliminating most Americans' college debt, and you've said how you're going to pay for those plans, but you have not specified how you're going to pay for the most expensive plan, Medicare for All.

Your signature, Senator, is to have a plan for everything, except this.

The difference between a plan and a pipe dream is something that you can actually get done.

You're 78 years old and you just had a heart attack.

How do you reassure Democratic voters that you're up to the stress of the presidency?

We are going to be mounting a vigorous campaign all over this country.

That is how I think I can reassure all of the people.

This is Radio Atlantic.

I'm Isaac Dover.

So the Democratic race has been going on for months now, but the only major shift has been the rise of Elizabeth Warren and the relative decline of Bernie Sanders.

As of this week, Warren is polling consistently as the frontrunner, and she was certainly treated that way on the debate stage on Tuesday.

Sanders' campaign has been struggling, and it's not just because of that heart attack, although that heart attack came a couple weeks before the debate, enough time that he had a chance to recover, but also enough time that people were wondering when he walked down onto stage what kind of shape he would be in.

Turns out, he was in good shape.

And over the course of the evening of the debate, news came out that he was going to be endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the congresswoman from New York, and of course the Democratic superstar.

So here we are about 100 days before the Iowa caucuses when the voting starts.

It's getting to a more serious phase of the race, more serious time of the Democratic Party, trying to figure out exactly what it's doing here.

So what does the race really look like now?

What are the dynamics driving it, especially as this Warren and Sanders movement happens?

That's why we've got Elaine Godfrey, who's an assistant editor here, also covers Democrats here at The Atlantic.

Talk with me.

Elaine, thanks for being here on on Radio Atlantic.

Hi, Isaac.

Thanks for having me.

So I was in Westerville, Ohio for the debate.

I got to see it as live as one gets to see these things.

They're in another room and then they come in to talk to the reporters and do the spin room afterwards.

But you

were in a very different place for the debate.

What were you up to?

So during the debate, I was in Arlington, Virginia at a bar, a sports bar, in a private room with about two dozen Bernie supporters.

And I had set that up as kind of a, you know, it was Bernie's first major public appearance since his heart attack.

And so it was me being like, are these supporters still behind him?

Are they worried at all?

Are they anxious?

And

it turned out that they were a little bit anxious.

Yeah.

When I asked them about it, they all said, totally reasonable question.

He's a 78-year-old guy.

He had a heart attack.

You know, we were all a little bit worried about it.

But sort of as the debate went on, they got way more confident.

And in the end, everyone was like, he did great.

He's fine.

It's all said.

Bernie's back, baby.

Yeah.

I think it was one of the striking things about the debate.

And there were people who were joking around beforehand, sort of a dark way, oh, what if he collapses?

But in fact, the news of it is that he didn't and that he was in really good form, right?

And I think you could argue in better form than people who are younger than he was, including Joe Biden, who stumbled at a bunch of points.

And Sanders did not and stood there for three hours.

It was a three-hour debate.

It's a long time for anybody to stand there.

It was so long.

It was so long.

It was a long time for me to sit there, and I didn't have to do anything.

I know.

Yeah, he looked great.

He really did.

As soon as he, I think he was trying to get the moderator's attention, he shot his hand into the air like he does.

And everyone in the bar cheered and shot their hands into the air.

They were clearly just extremely encouraged by his energy and his, you know, he cracked some jokes.

It really was a good debate for him, you know, like you just would not have known that, you know, two weeks ago he had a stenting procedure.

Yeah, he was sort of looser than he usually is, and certainly than he has been at the discussion.

He laughed like four times.

Like he was, yeah, super casual.

It was impressive.

So let's...

Take a step back here.

The Sanders campaign was not in great shape before the heart attack.

It's not just a question of the health.

He has been

lower in the polls than he had been certainly planning to be and wanting to be.

Well behind Elizabeth Warren, well behind Joe Biden, who are in the top spots.

But of course, the Warren one is the interesting question because people usually see them as drawing from the same place, even though they really don't.

But they are both on the lefter side of the party.

How much trouble was the Berning campaign in, do you think, before the heart attack?

So I think they were in a little bit of trouble.

It didn't seem to me

like we're nearing the end of the campaign, right?

I don't, to be fair though, I don't know when, if ever, he will drop out before, like, I think he's in it to win it, basically.

Well, or he's in it to be in it.

That's the other part of this, is that there was in 2016, and I covered that campaign a lot, there was a

part of the campaign that was about actually

competing for the nomination, but it was sandwiched between when he got into the race to try to push Hillary Clinton to the left, and then as it started to work, then he went, oh, well, maybe he could actually win.

And then they were pushing that.

And then it reached the point where they were still kind of pushing for

the

ideas that they wanted and

not really thinking that they were going to win the nomination.

They knew what the math was.

There came a point where they realized that their biggest influence, if they kept pushing in a way that was

still winning delegates but not going to compete

was to be able to shape the platform at the convention and that became the goal and then they in fact did that and of course everything that's flowed out of the 2016 campaign from his influence on the party sort of stems from that totally i mean they were debating medicare for all the top candidates have all adopted bernie's 2016 ideas right this is you know he has already had this amazing uh

power over, you know, the conversation and how it's taken a shift.

I do think, though, you know, he is still in it to win it.

I think he really thinks he can do it.

But at the very least, he has enough money that he will be in this as long as he wants to be.

Exactly.

And the support is strong with him,

people who are ready to be in this for as long as he is in it.

You know.

So part of the reason why I went to this debate watch was to say,

did it give you pause when he had a heart attack?

Did it make you think, okay, who's my plan B?

And they said, you know, yeah, it made us worried, but,

you know,

we're here for the revolution, right?

Like we're here, and the political revolution is bigger than he is.

It's his campaign slogan, not me, us, right?

It's,

they even said, several people actually said to me, if he gets elected

and he's in office and he dies in office after a a couple of years, dies in office.

The appointments that he's made and the changes that he's made already, you know, having been president for a couple of years, means the revolution will live on, basically.

And they said, you know, we expect him to appoint a young, likely female running mate to sort of address that in case he dies.

Someone young can carry on the revolution, which I thought was a really interesting and morbid way of looking at it.

It is this,

yeah, campaigns always say it's not about me, and that is his slogan, but it's a strange thing for a campaign to have supporters who say like, yeah, you might die, but that's okay.

Like, in that it's really not about the candidate, but it's this idea, it's a cult of personality in a way, but this sense that the personality is bigger than the body that is holding that personality.

Right.

And no Elizabeth Warren supporter that I've talked to would ever, I don't think, would ever say, you know, she dies, but her ambitions will carry on, you know, if she's elected president.

Like, I just don't see that.

That's just not.

Or the other person who is just around Sanders' age, Joe Biden, you do not hear anybody who is supporting the Biden campaign saying, well, that's okay, we'll just get him in.

And even if he doesn't last a term, like, that's fine.

Right, right.

It'll be okay.

Yeah, it's a crazy argument for someone.

But at the same time, it's interesting that they're, you know, unprompted, right?

I didn't ask them,

will the revolution go on?

They have given this thought, which is fascinating.

Yeah.

And as the debate was going on, the news broke and was quickly confirmed that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will be endorsing Sanders, appearing with him at this rally on Saturday.

He'll also, he was immediately endorsed by also Ilan Omar, congresswoman from Minnesota, and Rashida Tleib, the congresswoman from Michigan, three of the four members of the squad.

The fourth member, Ayana Presley, from Massachusetts, is at least so far sitting out.

But these three very prominent young female, progressive,

aggressive members of Congress, freshman members of Congress, will be with Sanders.

What do you think that that means for the campaign?

I think the campaign is extremely excited.

His supporters are extremely excited.

What is it about it that excites him?

Because to me, what's interesting about it is that it is a clear sign that he's not going anywhere.

Right.

And that seems seems to be, it's not like anybody's surprised, oh, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, how could she have possibly landed in supporting Sanders?

Most people thought she'd either not make an endorsement or would endorse Sanders or Warren.

It was not like she was really up for grabs in a big way.

But doing it now has risks for her, I think, but it also is the best news for the Sanders campaign.

Totally.

I mean, he's at his weakest point, or he was, right?

Like, he's physically weak.

He has had a heart attack.

He's struggling in the polls.

Like this is a real move for her to say, I still endorse him, for all of them to say, I still endorse him.

And

I think had she endorsed Warren, which I don't, I don't think she ever would have.

I think she would either, it's either Sanders or nothing is what I was expecting.

But had she endorsed Warren, I think it, I honestly think it would have been it for Sanders.

Like you can't, how do you move on from that?

And it's interesting when you go to their history that last year when she's running, she's in that primary against an incumbent Democrat who'd been there for a long time.

Sanders did not endorse her in that race.

Yeah.

And

she was connecting with his politics, with his supporters in a lot of ways, invoking him, but he was not behind her.

And then when she won, then they very quickly got together and they took this tour of a number of congressional districts campaigning.

And

everyone that they campaigned for lost the primaries in the end.

So they have a little bit of a history of this not working.

But

there is this now infusion that she can give the campaign.

One thing that I'm curious for your thoughts on is

how

her endorsement of Sanders over Warren could further divide the left, right?

I mean, there's already this sort of hostility between Warren and Sanders supporters.

You know, Sanders supporters are purists.

They're very

Warren used to be a a Republican.

She was a Republican for 30 years.

Sanders has believed this stuff his whole life,

you know, et cetera.

And I'm wondering if people will think, you know, well, AOC endorsed Sanders.

That means he's the bona fide pick for the left.

I'm curious if you, what you think.

I mean, it's, I don't know that the divide.

is as simple as just a divide, right?

That when you talk to Sanders supporters about Warren, there is that level of antagonism.

The Warren supporters don't have that same kind of antagonism towards Sanders, in part because a number of the people who are supporting Warren were with Sanders in 2016.

And I've heard from them when I've been out on the trail, yeah, you know, I liked Bertie, but his time has passed, or he's a little old, or

and not in a very negative way, but just thanks for your service, essentially.

But we're moving on to the next thing.

The Sanders supporters do not feel that way about Warren or about people who support her.

They feel a sense of betrayal,

a

sense of

this is a fight to the finish, essentially.

There is still

bad memories for them about the fact that Warren didn't endorse Sanders in the 2016 primary.

That's a real thing that still comes up

and that she wasn't on the team then, so how could she be trusted?

Remember, she endorsed Hillary Clinton the

evening that Bernie Sanders went to the White House to meet with Barack Obama when it was all done.

That was like the end of the primary officially.

So she waited until the end.

She didn't endorse Clinton, but she also didn't endorse Sanders.

And that is

the division seems to me like it may be of more significance to people who support Sanders than

it will be for the Warren campaign.

Aaron Powell, yeah,

it's interesting.

There is just more hostility from the Bernie wing towards the Warren wing that that I think this AOC endorsement could definitely exacerbate.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: Where does that leave the rest of the race, do you think, when we see this going on with Bernie Sanders staying in the race, maybe getting stronger again?

Certainly, it seems like physically,

at least for all appearances, getting stronger.

Warren continuing to be strong.

It is just unquestionable at this point that she has taken over the top spot from Biden in the attention she's getting, in the polls, and the fundraising.

So that's going on.

Biden is holding on to his position, but then there are all these other people.

I don't think it's right to call them moderates exactly, but they're the others who are there who are trying to find their way through it.

Yeah, I mean, Buddha Judge isn't really a moderate necessarily.

I don't really think any of them are moderates.

Sure.

You know, of the candidates running.

And

some of the ones who get called moderates, I think, fairly push back on that.

Amy Klobuchar saying, I'm not a moderate if I don't believe in Medicare for all.

That's just, I am being practical about it.

Of course, one of the people who doesn't believe in Medicare for All is Sherrod Brown, senator from Ohio, who has

probably the most

clear progressive credentials other than

maybe Bernie Sanders.

But he's been in the Senate for the same amount of time, been in Congress, fighting on a lot of things that have made progressives really happy.

But what his argument is about Medicare for All is it can't really pass.

And so Democrats should focus on doing things that will actually get done.

That's not so different from the argument that Michael Bennett or Amy Klobuchar make about Medicare for all or Pete Buttigieg or Joe Biden.

And that's the kind of thing that gets them called moderate.

It's really kind of weird to me that at some point in the run-up to this race, in people's minds, being a progressive meant that you had to support the Green New Deal, which is a resolution that does not have any

depth of legislation behind it or legislative language in it.

Nobody knows exactly what the Green New Deal would be.

And Medicare for all, which we all know

would be hard to pass and which at least at this point from Sanders and Warren, from anybody else who's behind it, has no clear structure of how it would be paid for.

So to chase these

two

ideas is what makes one a progressive or not in a lot of people's minds.

But so let's not use the term progressive or moderate.

The other candidates who are not Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren.

Well, in the debate, they finally and rightly got in their defenses, right?

It felt like the first time, and maybe it's just because I haven't been able to keep that close of track of the past debates because they're so damn long.

But this one, I mean, you had Klobuchar and you had Budijej, even more,

defending themselves against Warren by saying,

we have bold ideas too.

Just because we don't support Medicare for all doesn't mean we don't care about working people or uninsured Americans.

Right.

Klobuchar had that line that I thought was her best line of the night, where she said to Warren, your idea is not the only idea.

Exactly.

Yeah, and I thought it was really good criticism of Warren that hasn't happened yet.

She hasn't really faced that on the stage yet, clearly because now she has emerged as a frontrunner and people are getting anxious.

But also, I think because people can sort of smell the blood in the water when it comes to Biden and Biden's floundering, I think they're kind of vying to replace him, right?

Like Butijej

is clearly trying to fit in that.

And

he and Klobuchar were way more aggressive on Tuesday in, I think, hopes of picking up some Biden supporters, picking up some supporters who don't want Medicare for all and don't don't want to do a Green New Deal that they don't fully understand yet.

Yeah, I'm curious actually what you think.

Do you think Budajedge is that character?

I think the shift that's happened in the primary race and it was cemented in the debate is that this was for a long time a race to be the alternative to Biden.

People that, you know, it's going to get down to two people eventually.

Who's the one who can be there with Biden?

Yeah.

And then as Warren got stronger and now has reached this level, it actually actually has become who can be in the race with her.

Yeah.

And of course, Biden is the person most likely to be in that position based on where the polls are.

But the sense that he may not make it continues to power people.

Now it should be said that from the day that he got into the race, people have been expecting him to fall apart.

And every day that's gone by, he has not.

But he also hasn't really moved up.

And he continues to have a lot of issues.

We'll see what the political impact from the impeachment inquiry here is and whatever

positives and negatives for him come out of the

questioning and attention to his son and what his son was doing.

But

the play here for everybody politically, it seems, is, okay, Elizabeth Warren will be there.

I'm the one who can go up against her.

Yep.

And that's, again, where Biden wants to be.

That's where Buddha Judge was trying to move in to be.

That's where Klobuchar was.

That's where where everybody else on stage was where Harris was.

It's where Booker was.

And that is really it.

The only person who did not take a real swing at Warren, I thought in an interesting way,

because he was teed up to take a swing, was Julian Castro, who has

not been doing as well.

He had a moment or two of good times earlier in the summer,

but his campaign is not in great shape.

There is a lot of a sense that he might be a potential running mate for Elizabeth Warren.

And so the moderators turned to him at one point and said, okay, what do you think about this?

And he did not attack her.

Yeah.

And

that seems to be the calculation that he's making at this point.

I think you're totally right.

They're all vying for this spot to run against Warren.

Let's take a quick break.

We'll be back with more in a moment with Lane Godfrey.

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I just want to say,

as a great New Jersey and Yogi Berra said, I am having deja vu all over again.

I'm having deja vu all over again, first of all, because I saw this play in 2016's election.

We are literally using Donald Trump's lies, and the second issue we cover on this stage is elevating a lie and attacking a statesman.

That was so offensive.

He should not have to defend ourselves.

And the only person sitting at home that was enjoying that was Donald Trump seeing that we're distracting from his mouth easiness and selling out of his office.

And I'm happy, Dave.

Back to Joe Biden.

I thought it was really weird that

he was asked about Hunter and he sort of said, you know, we did nothing wrong.

But then Corey Booker chastised the moderators for even, you know, asking the question because he said, this is what Trump loves to see.

And I just, I think that's so weird because because this is the moment when you, when you address that stuff, right?

This is when you're supposed to be, if, if Biden has the best shot right now of being the nominee, maybe,

you, you got to get that out now, right?

Like, this can't become, for Democrats, this can't become another emails thing or a, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollar speeches thing.

Yeah.

I think that for Booker, it was particularly interesting because he has been pushing this message of bringing people together and that he's bigger than any of the fights.

I tried to get him after the debate in the spin room to take a shot at Warren.

I said, she doesn't seem like she's being as straightforward as her usual brand is on Medicare for all.

What do you think of that?

And he said, look, I'm not going to get into that.

And the most that he did was say, I'm just running on my own utter candor.

That's the word, the phrase they use, utter candor.

Okay.

But he wouldn't go right at her.

Of course, after the last debate

when Julian Castro took the shot at Biden over his age, Booker afterwards in the spin room made a comment about how a lot of people are wondering if Biden can go the distance.

And that was at that point in the race before the whistleblower complaint had come out.

A lot of things have happened since the last debate.

And since then, he's moved into this

bring people together in defense of Joe Biden move, which I don't think is a play to be picked as vice president.

I think it's them trying to figure out how to calibrate him into the race and

say things that are aggressive, but not things that are

off of his message of bringing people together.

Right, not attack, not be an attacker.

I see that.

You brought up Warren and her taxes on the middle class.

I'm curious.

So Warren has continued to dodge this question.

She will not say,

she won't say exactly what Bernie said at the debate, which is, yes, we're going to raise taxes on the middle class, but other costs will be down.

No more premiums.

Like, costs will be lower.

But I'm curious why it's even necessary that she has to say that.

I think I wrote about this after the debate.

I think that she has put herself forward as a truth teller, as a straight talker, as the person who can break down economic ideas and sell people who aren't progressives on why this progressive idea makes a lot of sense.

She does it on every other thing.

And on this, she refuses to, not because she is clueless.

She's a smart person.

She gets the politics.

She does not want to provide the soundbite to people saying, yes, I'm going to raise taxes.

And she doesn't want to play the game.

But this is the game.

Now, every single time that she gets in front of a reporter, it seems to me someone is going to ask her, what about raising taxes?

Until she says what she's going to do.

And the Warren campaign seems okay with that

in the conversations that I've had.

I think it's confusing, and I think it's potentially more damaging than

just about Medicare for all because it really goes at her brand.

It goes at who she is.

Why, when we know, it's not like this is a mystery.

The answer is clear.

Taxes will go up.

Overall costs, if it all works out as it's supposed to, would go down.

The other part of it is that I think people aren't really being fully honest about is how likely Medicare for All is, right?

And this is something that Bernie Bernie Sanders would say, that Elizabeth Warren would say, that all the other candidates who've endorsed Medicare for All, including Corey Booker, who signed on to Bernie Sanders' bill, including Kamala Harris, who signed on to Bernie Sanders' bill before she distanced herself and put out her own plan on it.

The idea that there is anything close to a majority of votes in the Senate for Medicare for All is not

based in reality.

Right.

And I think that that is something that progressives need to grapple with.

That

there are these ideas that can be the ideal, the objective.

But what happens if they get into office, if Bernie Sanders is elected president, if Elizabeth Warren is elected president?

Even then, the chances of this happening are not high.

So what do progressives do in that situation?

That's the question, right?

I mean, ostensibly they're shooting for the moon because they know they're not going to get there, but they'll get close, maybe.

I mean, yeah, even Medicare for all who want it or whatever is a stretch.

Like, it's going to be tough.

Democrats aren't likely to win the Senate.

This is not...

But even if they won the Senate, then

would the Senate vote for it?

Yeah.

Because, and winning the Senate is not about just the majority.

There are probably a majority of Democratic senators currently who are not ever going to vote for Medicare for all.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's the same with free college, right?

If Bernie is president and he's promised free college and Ilhan Omar is tweeting all this stuff, like, you know, it's going to be gone.

Your debt's going to be gone.

I mean, people are going to be disappointed.

But I don't know where progressives go from there.

How do progressives, young progressives who are really getting jazzed up about Sanders and about Warren, what's their reaction?

I don't know.

It's something supporters of Bernie and Warren really haven't talked much about.

It's something I've asked about.

And they've said mostly it's about shifting the conversation to the left, which Bernie has done really well since 2016, right?

They think that that's potentially more important than actually the plausibility of it.

Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.: So the other thing that's gone on is that this is all happening against the backdrop of everything else that is happening.

Yeah, it's crazy.

It's wild.

And I'll tell you that sitting in Westerville, Ohio in the debate and watching this go on, it felt sort of being in a parallel universe where, okay, we all show up and we get our credentials and sit down at our seats and watch these Democrats debate.

And there were 10 or 15 minutes at the top of the debate about impeachment.

But then it moves on and it's just a debate where

this is all happening and the world has a lot of other things going on, including the fact that the president is

at the cusp of impeachment.

The showdown between the White House and Congress is becoming a constitutional crisis.

It's not even to mention things like, I don't know, climate change,

what's going on in Turkey and Syria, which again

was touched on in the debate, but then quickly moved past.

Does the Democratic primary race have anything to do with the reality that America is living through?

That kind of a sigh is not a yes.

I just don't know how to answer that.

I mean, it is this big looming thing.

And I think it's weird for the 2020 candidates to even talk about it because

they want to beat Trump at the ballot box, right?

They support impeachment, you know, procedurally, but I think it's probably weird for them to think about, right?

Like, we don't actually want him to be unseated because we want to run against this guy.

That's what our campaigns are about for a lot of them.

But I will say the weirdness also, you know, stretches into

when I've been with supporters of Warren and Sanders, who I've primarily written about, they don't talk about Trump at all, ever.

Very occasionally during a debate

or a question or something, they'll bring up Trump and how much they hate him, but they see the election as not really having anything to do with replacing Trump

or less to do with replacing Trump and more to do with a movement.

So I'm wondering how much Trump and impeachment actually comes up in,

you know, a Harris rally or among Budijic supporters.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: It doesn't.

I was one of those people who, in the spring, when the Mueller report came out and the cable news chatter was, oh, what are they going to talk about on the trail now?

Who was saying, well, they haven't really been talking about it so far, so it's not like they lost their whole talking points.

It comes up.

An impeachment comes up.

I was in South Carolina about a week and a half ago with Kamala Harris and Tom Steyer.

Tom Steyer, who, of course, made his name in politics of late on impeachment.

And even then, impeachment is not the main thing that people are talking about.

They want to hear about more than that.

And I think that that's part of why you saw Steyer in the debate say, yeah, I was for impeachment before anyone else on stage, but here are other things that I'm going to talk about.

Right, here's my other

issues.

Yeah.

And

it is not

something

that people

really want to focus on.

I think that that is in part because if you think about the kind of people who show up to a Democratic event,

they at this point, just given where things are, obviously support impeachment.

Right.

That's where the politics of this have gotten.

The people who are self-selecting to go on a weekend or an afternoon or an evening to an event with a candidate and wait for a long time to get in to see some.

Those are people who are really far into the Democratic base for the most part, and

so they want Trump out of office or at least want their candidates talking about Trump being out of office.

But

I think depending on the candidate, it would come up more.

Harris, of course, is trying to rediscover her prosecutor for president sensibility.

It's more advantageous for her to bring it up at this point.

And she does, but she has been doing it in a way that I I think is interesting, and you heard a little bit of it on the debate stage, where she talks about how

the Ukrainian foreign aid that Trump was withholding was American taxpayer money, and that Trump was doing that to sell out the American people for his own ends, and that that and that that is the same thing essentially as him selling out the American people to benefit his businesses, him selling out the American people to

give a tax cut that went more to the wealthy than to the middle class and working class.

And she has this whole sold-out thing that she does.

That's how she links it in.

But even she's not like, this is the questions that I would ask in a judiciary committee meeting.

She does some of that on Twitter and elsewhere.

But

it's not the dominant force.

Right.

And I do think for someone like Harris, the more she can talk about Trump and talk about how she would handle Trump is g it's good for her.

I think people can picture her beating Trump or in a debate with Trump.

I think the same with Budajej also,

you know, like outwitting Trump.

But I think people struggle when it comes to someone like Warren being in a debate with Trump.

And I think that's why she rarely talks about him on her.

Why do you think that?

Why do you think people struggle with the idea of Warren debating Trump?

I think part of it's a sexism thing.

But I also think the perception of her among some voters is that she has a school marmee persona, a bossy kind of condescending vibe that voters don't like or aren't going to like.

And that next to Trump, who's essentially like the school bully, like,

isn't going to go well for her.

I think a lot of voters, at least voters I've talked to, are worried about that.

Not Warren supporters.

Warren supporters think she'll be just fine.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: Well, it sort of barrels ahead now to the more serious phase of the race almost every day, 100 or so days until the Iowa caucuses, and then a month from the Iowa caucuses until Super Tuesday.

It's going to be crazier and crazier times of that.

But it starts off with the next sort of gating event of the next debate in November.

So far, we have eight candidates who have qualified.

Eight of the 12 people who are on the stage, nobody who is not on the stage is qualified for the November debate, and there are four who have not.

We'll see if they do.

The four who are there in Ohio who may not make it to the debate that's in Georgia are O'Rourke, Klobuchar, Castro, and Gabbard.

So

as the field starts to shrink, maybe these questions start looking different and we'll have to check in another time.

That's right.

That's right.

We'll have more to talk about.

Exactly.

I'm sure.

So Elaine Godfrey, thanks for being here on Radio Atlantic.

Thanks for having me.

Appreciate it.

That'll do it for this week of Radio Atlantic.

Thanks to Kevin Townsend for producing and editing this episode, and to Catherine Wells, the executive producer for Atlantic Podcasts.

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