number of policy areas particularly related to healthcare. you started to see that come into focus. i do think if she continues to rise in the polls, more and more people are going to start to really ask tough questions of her that are going to force her to be more specific than she s been. and the second thing that claire said that i think is important was the way in which the moderate candidates, the candidate, the mainstream candidates, not just joe biden pressing sanders and warren, but also getting that help. amy klobuchar has had as good a debate last night as anybody had on stage. she was great. and a much better debate she had the first two times around. pete buttigieg too. all of those candidates in the middle were now for the first time last night trying to stake out positions that were like, wait, the progressives have the run of the table in the first two debates, we now are going to try to stake out some space as the alternative. and whether joe biden ends up being the
process that got biden on the ticket as vice president. he s always been prone to gaffes. that was true in his 40s, 50s and 60s. the difference is people are looking for signs of potential deterioration. gaffes that could be written off as joe being joe can become much more damaging to him. is that an age issue there or is it more to me, to jeff s point and josh s point about voters don t process the individual gaffes. is this the guy i want on a debate stage with trump? i think that s the thing that voters are focused on. we all hear this when we talk to voters. they care much more about who can beat trump, who will be best on the debate stage than any one policy or any one real moment. the challenge that biden faces, right now if you look at polling, he is shown to be the person that most democrats think can beat trump. do these moments chip away at that over time? is there going to be a tipping point for him on this? and i do think that the age question, again, when you talk to vo
harris and she said ask joe biden about that. the other candidates are hoping that gravity takes hold. you saw harris out there on a five-day bus tour. senator warren going like. this you re watching warren do this and thinking, whoa, she s well organized in iowa. if she can somehow win or be in the top one or two in iowa and move on to home territory, new hampshire next to massachusetts, that s the most interesting dynamic in the democratic race right now. yeah. it s very interesting that we started off this race saying, oh, warren might be too polarizing for the general election and biden is definitely the best person. that was based on assumptions and conjecture, what we know about them from the past and where their basic bases lie. in the interim, we ve seen the shift happen in those polls since they have been speaking on those debate stages and actually been challenging each other and warren has had better debate appearances than joe biden has. she s gotten a rise whereas biden
busy weekend are new questions for joe biden. he made several verbal gaffes during his iowa visit and the debate is whether it s just joe being joe or whether it could undermine his standing atop the field. jeff zeleny is joining us now from des moines. jeff, what is the take out there in iowa? is it just biden being biden or are there serious questions about his viability? reporter: john, there s no question that every democratic voter we talked to, and we ve talked to a lot of them out here for the last several days, they all admire joe biden. they talk in very positive and glowing terms about joe biden. but there is a divide about whether he is the strongest nominee for the party to take on the president. i mean he is supported by about 30% of voters here, according to the latest monmouth university poll here in iowa. that of course is the front of the pack. that also means that 7 in 10 voters choose some where else. so i think the assessment here, when you talk to voters, they do
victims, the survivors of parkland, but it was after he was out of office. what do we make of this or do we not know? i don t think we know. like jeff was saying, we talk to voters all the time and they do want to get past they don t bring up the gaffes. when he bring it up to them, they have responses like jeff said. but there were people clapping in that room when he mentioned poor kids are just as good as white kids line. it reminded me in chicago right after the first debate when he said something about kids in hoodies could be nobel laureates. the people that really like him are willing to look past some of these statements. we mentioned the chattering class is often wrong. good reporters at the table. 2016 trump can t win the nomination, trump won t run, trump can t be president because that s what s before you. david axelrod who knows joe biden very well, part of the