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