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Speaker 1: Getty Show. Look, I think the good news but Joe
Speaker 1: Biden is this was maybe the best he could do.
Speaker 1: And the bad news is this maybe the best he
Speaker 1: could do. That's David axel Rod and David axe Rod
Speaker 1: ran Obama's campaign. Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe had this
Speaker 1: to say, give me a prey. I don't have an
Speaker 1: You people, Donald trop and you're talking about defending Obamacare.
Speaker 1: It's Republican talking points. Who is advising you? Wow? A
Speaker 1: lot of beating up on the Obama Ara policies on
Speaker 1: the debate stage last night. Well, they're going after that
Speaker 1: three percent of Democrats that didn't like Barack Obama exactly.
Speaker 1: Finally they get the pummeling they deserve. Lan he Chen
Speaker 1: joins us. Lan He is a David and Diane Stephy
Speaker 1: research Fellow at the Whoever Institution, Director of Domestic Policy
Speaker 1: Studies and Lecture in Public Policy at Stanford University. Lan
Speaker 1: he how are you, sir, Oh, I'm doing fine. Nothing
Speaker 1: like two nights of debates to get you going in
Speaker 1: the morning. Tell you what. I feel, re energized and
Speaker 1: just more in love with life than ever. So what
Speaker 1: stood out most to you? What's what's on the tip
Speaker 1: of your tongue this morning? Debate? Wise? Well, I think
Speaker 1: it's interesting. You know, the candidates had two nights to present.
Speaker 1: You know, what I would say is a vision for
Speaker 1: how they plan to govern, how they plan to maybe
Speaker 1: even defeat Donald Trump, and instead, especially last night, they
Speaker 1: really spent their time attacking one another. I thought last
Speaker 1: night was really interesting because everyone's coming after Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: then Kamala Harris gets attacked, and then kind of inexplicably,
Speaker 1: Joe Biden attacks Corey Booker, and it was just a
Speaker 1: very bizarre confluence of events when when I thought it
Speaker 1: was going to be a much more substantive conversation. I
Speaker 1: really thought it was a lot more of a scrum,
Speaker 1: and I don't know that's going to serve the Democrats
Speaker 1: well in the long run. So I thought it was
Speaker 1: a little puzzling from that perspective. Well do you do
Speaker 1: you blame? The candidates? Are? A lot of people are
Speaker 1: blaming CNN. They're they're taking a beating from MSNBC in
Speaker 1: The Washington Post has a whole column about that. What's
Speaker 1: with this? Pitting each other? Them against each other? Every
Speaker 1: question is set up a she said something bad about you,
Speaker 1: You said something about her. Now you argue, I mean,
Speaker 1: what what is that? Well, here's my thing. The first
Speaker 1: rule in politics is you don't answer the question, so
Speaker 1: you don't have to take the bait. I mean why
Speaker 1: these guys take the bait and it's like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: Joe Biden to this about you a great, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: attack Joe Biden. The reality is that the person who
Speaker 1: I thought that the most to lose last night was
Speaker 1: Joe Biden. And I know the conventional wisdom as well. Okay, look,
Speaker 1: he didn't do that badly. Let's be honest, he didn't
Speaker 1: do all that great either. I mean, if if if
Speaker 1: you watch that debate and you see Joe Biden punching again,
Speaker 1: punching down at Corey book of the first rule that
Speaker 1: we always use with candidates and debate preparation. When I've
Speaker 1: been in dozens of these meetings, if you don't punch down,
Speaker 1: if you're the front runner, why do you punch down?
Speaker 1: And so in my mind, for Joe Biden last night,
Speaker 1: it may have been a better performance in the first
Speaker 1: time he went out there, but gosh, if that's the
Speaker 1: best he can do, I think his campaigns in trouble. Well, boy,
Speaker 1: you and I are some of the few people saying
Speaker 1: that I didn't think he was very impressive, but he
Speaker 1: did avoid disaster. You know, you mentioned substance and policy,
Speaker 1: and I've advocated for more of that in my whole life,
Speaker 1: and I finally got it the last couple of nights,
Speaker 1: and I found myself just mystified and bored by the
Speaker 1: endless recitation of the minor differences between various people's health
Speaker 1: care policies. I like substance, But how did this strike you? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I thought the health care discussion dived into the weeds
Speaker 1: quite quickly. I mean, look that the reality is that
Speaker 1: there are very stark differences between what someone like Joe
Speaker 1: Biden and what someone like Kamala Harris want to do
Speaker 1: with healthcare. And they could have made those things abundantly clear,
Speaker 1: while at the same time, by the way, pointing out
Speaker 1: the differences between what they want to do and what
Speaker 1: they allege Republicans want to do. But instead they were
Speaker 1: talking about this percentage of people and that percentage of
Speaker 1: people on this element of the plan, and that all
Speaker 1: on the plan. So I did think they get lost
Speaker 1: in the weeds really quickly, and and there I do
Speaker 1: blame the moderators a little bit, and the moderators could
Speaker 1: have jumped in and tried to pull them out of
Speaker 1: the weeds. But you're right, I think the conversation got
Speaker 1: way more specific than most Americans cared to hear about,
Speaker 1: even those who like policy. I know we talked about
Speaker 1: this before the first debate started. How much do these
Speaker 1: debates matter. There's not a lot of da to show
Speaker 1: that they move the needle much that the polls move much.
Speaker 1: Maybe for a day or twobe and they kind of
Speaker 1: settled back. There are a couple of examples of people
Speaker 1: when Rick Perry couldn't name, you know, the main departments.
Speaker 1: I think that really damaged him, But there are very
Speaker 1: few examples. And then I saw an article today Laundry
Speaker 1: listing all of the times Hillary Clinton has want a debate,
Speaker 1: Like practically every debate she's ever been in she won.
Speaker 1: She's had like one gaff in her entire career, yet
Speaker 1: she lost repeatedly running for president. So what do they matter? Well,
Speaker 1: I think you raise a very good point, which is
Speaker 1: what generally happens with these debates is they create temporary
Speaker 1: changes in temporary shifts in how voters view various candidates,
Speaker 1: but they don't have lasting changes necessarily in the scope
Speaker 1: and the nature of the race. Now, what they can
Speaker 1: do is, in this situation, they can create uh, sort
Speaker 1: of a buzz around a candidate who maybe nobody was
Speaker 1: paying attention to. So Julian Castro got his five minutes
Speaker 1: of fame out of the first debate. In the second debate,
Speaker 1: you know, you could argue that, um, there were others
Speaker 1: potentially like Corey Booker, who may have benefited. But in
Speaker 1: the long run, I'm not really convinced the debates matter
Speaker 1: a whole ton in terms of the atmospherics of the
Speaker 1: race and where things are headed. Biden is still going
Speaker 1: to be the front runner. You're still going to have
Speaker 1: a pack of three or four that are in that
Speaker 1: next group that are nipping at his heels. And I
Speaker 1: don't think that changes very much. When it could change potentially,
Speaker 1: as when we get down to two or three people
Speaker 1: in the debates, then if someone has a very good
Speaker 1: performance or a very bad performance, it could affect things.
Speaker 1: But for now, at least, I do think as steady
Speaker 1: as she goes lanh chen is with the Hoover Institution
Speaker 1: and Stanford University. Listen, I'm going to make a number
Speaker 1: of very wobbly assumptions and leap right to Biden versus
Speaker 1: Donald J. Trump on stage debating. Uh, Trump's gonna go
Speaker 1: mean Biden is going to try to be the ah
Speaker 1: shucks every And how do you see that plan out?
Speaker 1: Any idea? Well? You know here, here here's the thing.
Speaker 1: I mean. Trump is very very skilled in these debate contexts,
Speaker 1: and and I just don't think that people realize that
Speaker 1: he is able to use um elements of his rhetoric,
Speaker 1: elements of his now his record as president. I think
Speaker 1: he's gonna use that very effectively. I think Biden, if
Speaker 1: anything in the last couple of debates has shown that
Speaker 1: he's just a step slower then he was. You know,
Speaker 1: the last time I really remember him on debate stage, obviously,
Speaker 1: was in twelve when he was in that VP debate
Speaker 1: against Paul Ryan. I think that's the last time he
Speaker 1: debated before this, seven years ago. And yeah, it's seven
Speaker 1: years ago. And what you realize is if you go
Speaker 1: I would encourage people go back and watch some of
Speaker 1: that tape. The Joe Biden from seven years ago very
Speaker 1: different than the Joe Biden that we've seen in the
Speaker 1: last two debates. And I do think he's gotten a
Speaker 1: step flower And I wonder what it's gonna look like
Speaker 1: when he's debating Trump, because Trump is gonna be relatively nimble,
Speaker 1: relatively agile, and and Biden may be able to CounterPunch,
Speaker 1: but is he gonna be able to do it effectively?
Speaker 1: I'm just not sure. I'm convinced, based on what I've
Speaker 1: seen the last two nights or the last two debates,
Speaker 1: that he's gonna be a great counterpuncher. And I think
Speaker 1: that you've got to be a great counterpuncher, and you've
Speaker 1: got to be able to think about ways to put
Speaker 1: Trump on the defensive if you're gonna go up against it,
Speaker 1: I'm just not sure Biden can do that. If you
Speaker 1: were advising Kamala Harris prepping her, what would you say
Speaker 1: about last night's debate performance or her performances in general. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think she's been fine. Um. I think
Speaker 1: that that her problem is that at some point her
Speaker 1: rejoinder was always, well, those are Republican talking points, and
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, there Republican talking points, but there's some
Speaker 1: truth to the matter in other words, And Republicans say
Speaker 1: your plan is going to kick hundreds of millions of
Speaker 1: people off their health insurance. You know you gotta have
Speaker 1: an answer for that, right. You gotta tell us why
Speaker 1: it is that your plan is not going to decimate
Speaker 1: private health insurance. It will, by the way. Uh, you've
Speaker 1: got to be able to tell us why your criminal
Speaker 1: justice record as as d A doesn't square now with
Speaker 1: what you're saying you want to do as president. You've
Speaker 1: got to be able to answer these kinds of tough
Speaker 1: questions without sort of going, well, they're just Republican talking points.
Speaker 1: And I think for now it's an interesting line. People
Speaker 1: in the crowd like it. But it's gonna get old,
Speaker 1: So she's gonna have to really have a substantive set
Speaker 1: of responses to some of these challenges. And I think
Speaker 1: she's got to better articulate what her theory of the
Speaker 1: case is. Why is it that she thinks she can
Speaker 1: beat Donald Trump? Why is it that she thinks she's
Speaker 1: got a better vision for America? And that hasn't really
Speaker 1: come through in the last two debates. She I saw
Speaker 1: her pretty low and a likability pull the other day.
Speaker 1: She needs to come up with a second tone. She
Speaker 1: has one tone and if she retrieved, angry is self righteous.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I see stuff where she's like at a coffee
Speaker 1: shop or something talking to people and she's got kind
Speaker 1: of this giggly schoolgirl thing going that's very appealing, But
Speaker 1: on the stage it's just always the same tone. Well,
Speaker 1: listen to Jack the section, um you want her in?
Speaker 1: What a school girl out for it? Or what? I
Speaker 1: just I'm shocked for this. Sorry you go ahead. I
Speaker 1: was gonna say. I think I think it is a
Speaker 1: little bit of a problem for her in that in
Speaker 1: that she she doesn't seem to have multiple gears, as
Speaker 1: it were, and be effective in a campaign, you will
Speaker 1: need to have that nuance and be able to shift
Speaker 1: into different gears at different times. So we'll have to
Speaker 1: see if she develops that as a campaign goes on one.
Speaker 1: He who among the like the third tier people, the
Speaker 1: one to two percenters, has impressed you lately? Okay, So
Speaker 1: I'll say this. I thought the first night Steve Bullock,
Speaker 1: the governor of Montana, was was actually quite effective because
Speaker 1: of his case is, Look, I'm the only Democrat up
Speaker 1: here who's one in a state that Trump won. That's
Speaker 1: pretty darn compellent. I mean, if I'm a Democrat who
Speaker 1: wants electability, why not go for a guy who's been
Speaker 1: a governor who's got, you know, some some good plans
Speaker 1: that seem relatively reasonable, who has got some progressive streaks.
Speaker 1: Why not go for a guy like that? So I
Speaker 1: Bullock has been good and by the same token, Um Bennett,
Speaker 1: the Senator from Colorado last night, I thought did a
Speaker 1: great job of going up against the more liberal policies.
Speaker 1: Particularly that meant I thought he was pretty effect right.
Speaker 1: But he's got a voice like a cartoon barrel on here,
Speaker 1: so that's gonna hurt him. Heyst that's going to be
Speaker 1: a problem. We'd love to talk to you all day.
Speaker 1: We're out of time, but lanhy Chen of the Hoover Institution,
Speaker 1: Stanford University, Uh, it's always great to talk to you,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk again soon. Thanking our plus Sean do
Speaker 1: your do your Governor Bennett voice? Oh hi, I think
Speaker 1: we should just all get together and have a nice picnic.
Speaker 1: Sounds like a cartoon. Isn't this great? Everybody? The real
Speaker 1: lesson is the friends we made along the way. Now
Speaker 1: let's have a delicious picnic. Yeah, he can't help, but
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