Can the Democrats get it together in time?
To the Point
KCRW
4.4 • 583 Ratings
🗓️ 29 August 2019
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The race for the presidential nomination poses another stress test for the Democratic Party. With unity the essential requirement for defeating President Trump, too many candidates may stay in the contest too long. We’ll look at the potential consequences of a divided nominating convention.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Donald Trump may be the least popular president in American history, but he could still be re-elected next year, especially if the Democrats can't get their political act together. |
| 0:15.0 | Their nominating process is already underway. State caucuses and primaries are about to begin, but the process is driving more toward |
| 0:22.2 | division than unity. Multiple candidates are sniping among each other, driven by political |
| 0:28.2 | consultants who profit from drawn-out battles. Advocates are focused on issues that may have |
| 0:34.1 | limited appeal to masses of voters. It's possible that the party won't get behind a |
| 0:39.6 | single candidate before the nominating convention just three months before the final election |
| 0:44.4 | next November. We'll talk later about what that could mean, but first, let's consider the Democratic |
| 0:49.7 | National Committee meeting this past weekend in San Francisco. Didn't make much big news, but that doesn't mean it wasn't important. |
| 0:56.8 | Carla Maranucci was there. |
| 0:58.4 | She is the senior writer for Politico's California Playbook, and Carla Maranucci. |
| 1:02.8 | As always, welcome. |
| 1:04.0 | Good to be with you, Warren. |
| 1:05.4 | So what happened or what didn't happen, perhaps more importantly, in San Francisco? |
| 1:10.5 | Yeah, Warren, I think what didn't happen is probably some of the most interesting stuff. |
| 1:15.2 | What we saw was 13 presidential candidates addressing more than 350 delegates. |
| 1:22.6 | But the interesting part was, you know, there was no, it's the economy stupid. We didn't hear a whole lot |
| 1:29.2 | of economic messages, and that was on a weekend in which the stock market had tanked 600 points |
| 1:36.1 | in which there were a lot of concerns about tariffs and Donald Trump. Many of the candidates |
| 1:41.8 | just went over that, basically didn't mention it at all. |
| 1:47.3 | And we didn't hear any words really about another big issue facing the Democrats' impeachment. |
| 1:53.0 | The eye word wasn't really mentioned by these candidates. |
| 1:56.9 | Instead, what we saw was some very divisive stuff with regard to some of the progressive wing of the party clamoring for a debate on climate change. |
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