Lanhee Chen talks to Armstorng & Getty

Getty Show. One of our faves and years. Lon Chen Uh David and Diane Stephy, research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Director of Domestic Policy Studies UH at Stanford University, and recent guest on special Port with Brett Bear Awesome, in which he equitted himself quite beautifully. LONGHI, how do you like that experience? Oh? Yes, you know it's it's it's a good show. It's a good show, great show. Breath of very guys so enjoyed it. Yeah, and it's a

serious news show. And anyway, I had to be nervous as held to be on that panel. But you're you're an eminate man. You handle it well, so well done. So listen a lot of national polls in the news recently, including the one outlier that freaked people out briefly. But is there any point in national polls when that's not how we pick candidates in the primary system. Boy, that's a great question, um, because and it's not something that

a lot of media talk about. You know, they spend a lot of time hyperventilating over these national polls and what each one means. But the polls that matter are are the ones in the early states like Iowa and Hampshire and Nevada. Obviously, those polls don't tend to come out until we get a little closer to those to those elections, and there are a few polls in those states, like, for example, in Iowa, the Des Moines registered poll is considered the gold standard, and that's the one we really

have to pay attention to it. But it's a great point. The national polls at this point of the campaign are relatively meaningless. Their name i de polls, you know, their polls about who knows who. And that's why I you know, my argument for why Biden, I think is still doing relatively well is because let people know who he is. He's a known commodity, he's got a little bit of that Obama halo effect around him for Democratic primary voters,

and that's why he continues to do relatively well. I have one question that I'm personally interested in the answer, and I hope the listeners are too, because we've been discussing this. We'll pull them do Bernie and Elizabeth occupy the same territory enough that if one of them gets out, the other one gets most of their supporters, as in Biden usually has those two added together, and it seems like if one of them got out, you'd have a

tie between either Bernie and Biden or Elizabeth and Biden. Yeah, that's the argument I've been making. I've been saying that. Really for Biden, the worrisome fact is that you've got a relatively high percentage of Democrats who affiliate with either war And or Biden. Let's call it the far left to the party. So, you know, the poll where Biden was Uh was in trouble earlier this week that came out from Monmouth University had essentially Warren plus uh Sanders

at and had Biden somewhere around. And so while I think it's the case that the vast majority of Bernie's support would go to Elizabeth Warren and probably vice versa. Uh, it's probably not all of them, but it's enough that if I were the Biden campaign, or if I were any other candidate trying to run a more moderate strategy in the Democratic Party, I would be concerned about how big that number is because that block is clearly the

ascendant block within the Democratic Party. But and when you start to look at it, it's, yeah, it's it's a big number. But the way they do things, as we saw with Trump, all you gotta do is beat the rest of the people, doesn't Your number doesn't have to be that big as long as you beat everybody else, if everybody stays in the race. So is there going to be a lot of pressure on either Bernie or

Elizabeth to get out? Otherwise Biden bests them both because they split the They split their number, so that I think there will be. But the interesting question is who applies pressure to who and and who decides to bow out. So far, if you'll observe from the debate by Warren and Sanders have been very friendly with each other. They

haven't attacked each other. They've been very supportive on the campaign trail, they've barely, if at all, kind of hit each other, and and and so at some point in the campaign, as the field narrows, and let's presume that Biden and Warren and Sanders are in there for at least the you know, next several months, which I think is true. I think Bernie and Warren have some staying power,

and I think Biden does too. At some point there's going to have to be an ego matchup, and someone is going to have to say, look, okay, fine, it's it's pretty clear that my even this is not my time. And the question is do you see Bernie Sanders stepping aside? Do you see Elsbeth Warren's But right now I don't see either of No, So then what do they do?

Let me pipe in with the latest moin registered poll um of the Dems, Biden has um, Bernie is in second with six, and Warren really in a time at that adds up to of likely caucus goers UM two, Biden's twenty four. Now that doesn't mean there's no chance one of them drops out, so that won't happen. But I wonder if you know how a Lonnie the media is number one stupid and number two, you can win Iowa by a tenth of a point or even be Rick Santoruman actually win, but nobody talks about it because

they misfigured. But the media will scream, uh, you know, Biden wins Iowa. Biden wins Iowa. I Biden with moments blah blah, by want by a tenth of a Boyington. We're about to have the other votes. Will that be the case if you got Liz and the old guy Bernie with a combined thirty one percent to Biden's twenty four Yeah, I mean, you don't have to win by much. You just have to have to be able to claim

that you won. And remember that in past elections, the story in Iowa has been not necessarily who wins, but who finished the second or who demonstrates momentum or who finishes better than expected. So there could be a lot of different narratives coming out of Iowa. And you know the results you mentioned there, you know, Biden, you know, with maybe what was it a five or six point lead, you barely have thirty seconds by the way, Yeah, I mean that's not very much given the marginary error of

that pole. That poll probably have marginal error four or five points, so we'll have to see. But the Iowa contest, in my mind, is more important this cycle than in any previous democratic cycle because the fields so big and it's so crowded on that progressive left. So we'll have to see what happened. That's interesting, yea. Indeed, Lonnie Chen of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, always enlightening. Sorry for the short chat today but we're a little behind, but

thanks for Millian, good to talk. Thanks, thank you.