to think you can go toe to toe with donald trump. you don t have to look forward and look down the row and say, joe, i don t think you are any good. you can talk to camera and say, look, donald, if you are listening, i m a governor. i m going to do this. i m going to do that. you better hope you don t face me. those kind of moments will be effective. they don t come at any other democrats expense. that will be the problem, is, you know, people are so it is a primary. it is a competition. it is a contest. people are supposed to try to beat each other. but there is such a zero tolerance for democrat on democrat criticism that it s hard to see what will happen. so it is a safe zone to go after trump. and it is a way of distinguishing yourself from biden. the last thing i will tell you is the other audience is your donor base. this is june 26th and 27th. june 30th is the end of the second quarter. right. and especially now because of the way the dnc, the way you were talking to chair
process that s going to enable us to take back our democracy. you mentioned the bench. i wonder how you feel leading the party at this moment. a lot of folks look at this and they re thinking on the democratic side who can beat trump. folks look at the ending. what about the beginning, the process? do you take any special pride in how diverse the field is with more women running than we ve seen in any other presidential cycle in history? is that stuff important? or do you just look at what the conversation is going to be? oh, i m absolutely proud of the fact that not only do we have the most women in the race, but the most racially diverse field of candidates in the history of our country. that s who we are as a democratic party. what people will see is they will see america and they will see the democratic party. and that is absolutely a point of pride and one of the things we did at the outset, because we were listening to people, ari,
looking for is who can do toe to toe with donald trump. that is going to be the underlying question with them. so they could speak pretty. but if they can t feel like they are presidential like they could actually knock the sky down, that is going to basically be a ding on them. for a lot of these folks, it will be a marathon. they don t want to tarnish whoever the democratic is. it is a different type of race where before you wanted to ding down your candidates as fast as possible. there is an understanding unz tone that whoever ends up being the democratic nominee, they can t be bruised and that s really tough. could i sound a slight dissent on that? sure. denies are going to come out early. that s one reason for this crowded field. and despite this talk about keeping our nominee intact, it s going to be a real brawl because everyone in there professes friendship, bernie sanders for senator warren. but they re all in it to win it.
rights leader. while that has been a big debate between democrats, when it comes to taking on trump, the president fuelling more debates with his delay to round up immigrant families that were supposed to occur this weekend. a walkback also on the potential strike against iran. most democratic candidates do welcome those outcomes. but they re still slamming the president for his process and allegations. let s get right to it, kicking off our special coverage with this spashl panel. thanks to all of you for joining us this sunday night. thank you, ari. great to see you. i give it to you first looking at where joe biden got to. is this diffused before he took the stage. i think we have two priorities going into 2020. we have to get trump out of
out there that could right now with a fresh and kind of different take on where to take the party. and that becomes the question, right? is this going to be a primary about bold ideas and a vision for the future and really about the progressive energy and base and ground swell of the party that bernie, that and elizabeth warren and championing. or will they retreat into some sensibility of we need to go back to yesterday because we need to retreat and regress into what used to be and play it safe. i personally think the democrats will lose if they play it safe. i think it matters we are in a presence right now where the progressive values are at the forefront of the conversation about politics. we can t go back. and, so, i just hope that on the debate stage that the candidates are able to kind of drive that message home so the public can see forward versus backwards. we talked a bit about the debates and trump tonight. we haven t talked about the obama legacy.