disenfranchise african-americans. that is what is going to be coming at us in this election. i am so energized because we may be having a primary debate right now, but we know that we are going to close ranks behind the candidate. now, i plan on being that candidate. cory booker also saying democrats must rally around the democratic candidate and also he plans on being that candidate. joining us now is new jersey senator and democratic nominee cory booker. senator, thank you for being here. it s really good to be on, joy. thank you for having me. not a problem at all. let s talk a little bit about last night. you and senator biden really went head-to-head at certain points during the debate. you did drop the dipping in the kool-aid and don t know the flavor line which as a generation xer i appreciated. but the question you re going to have with senator biden is that he is very strong among african-americans. looking at this polling, steve kornacki sent this to me last night, vote
all of that is ahead tonight. but we begin tonight with the 2020 candidates who were back out on the trail today after a fiesty combative debate in detroit where the night two democratic contenders whacked each other over the heads over their differences on policy and over each other s records. vice president joe biden and senator kamala harris were teed up to battle right from cue 1 over their health care proposals. julian castro took aim at the obama/biden administration s record on deportation. tulsi gabbard attacked harris on her job as prosecutor in california. senator booker and biden got into a heated exchange on their respective criminal justice records. for the second time this cycle, biden was tagged, this time by washington governor jay inslee over his vote for the iraq war. if you re detecting a theme
critiquing president obama. so i guess my question is with black voters, is joe biden in a stronger position with the most reliable black voters, older voters, because he s defending obama and you re critiquing obama? well, i don t know how that spin resulted. anybody that watched the debate, i was talking about vice president biden s record, not obama s. heck, i had many conversations with president obama during his time as president about reforming the criminal justice system. it was joe biden who bragged that every crime bill since the 1970s major and minor had his name on it. that s his words about his record. this is not about the obama administration at all. i don t know how that spin came out of this. this is about a guy that championed the bills that created three strikes you re out and incentivizing states to have longer sentences and more jalsz and prisons built from the time i was in law school to the time that i was the mayor of the city of newark. a new prison or jail be
do that. of course when you re the front-runner like joe biden, you re going to be the one as you indicated who has the kick me sign on your back. but there is a way to do this where you re not attacking every single policy monumental some of these policies were monumental like the passage of obamacare, that president obama, who still has a 97% approval rating, that you can go about attacking these policies, criticizing them without attacking the person who actually put them in office. i think some of the candidates on the stage last night, some folks, this is probably going to be their last debate. perhaps mayor bill de blasio was in a hail mary mode trying to figure out how can i still have a viral moment that might catapult me to the next debate. but i m not sure that going at it the way that they did made a lot of sense. and to your point, look, it does give donald trump a talking point tonight. i m sure he s going to go into his rally and talk about the fact that he was not re
most of which were very popular. so it didn t make a lot of sense to me. i hope i see some improvements going into pt third debate. karine, you worked in the obama white house as well. i might have flashbacks about them trying to pass the affordable care act. it was excruciating. does it surprise you that so many candidates are pinning their election chances on a redo. a whole other very specific health care plan? like i said, joy, i think it s okay to talk about how to make health care better. of course. how to expand obamacare and say we re going to build on it, because we know that health care is the number one issue for the base, for americans. this is something that really hits home for them. so that s fine. i think that when you act as if obamacare didn t exist, that s when it s perplexing and makes no sense. yeah. can we talk about will hurd just for a second. he tweeted i have made the decision to not seek re-election for the 23rd congressional district of texas in or