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Amy Walter:

It's Politics with Amy Walter on The Takeaway. You know, during times of tumult and stress I crave perspective more than anything else. It helps to give structure to chaos, and it also helps me feel less alone to know others may have traveled a similar, if not exactly the same path.

Amy Walter:

I got a big dose of perspective last weekend in a front page story written by the Washington Post's premier political reporter Dan Balz titled America was Unprepared for a Major Crisis, Again. It was an insightful look, not just of the mistakes made by this administration in dealing with Covid-19, but he also noted that, "repeated crises have shown that government is rarely, if ever, fully prepared."

Amy Walter:

So I reached out this week to a couple of people who are highlighted in that story who have faced such circumstances.

Andy Card:

This is Andy Card. I had the privilege of being Chief of Staff to the President of the United States, George W. Bush; the Secretary of Transportation to George H.W. Bush; and served Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Bush.

Kathleen Sebelius:

My name is Kathleen Sebelius. I'm the former Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, and the former governor of the great state of Kansas.

Amy Walter:

Kathleen Sebelius served in the Obama administration as Health and Human Services Secretary during the H1N1 flu epidemic in 2009, and Andy Card as Secretary of Transportation and the point person for dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew in the first Bush administration. Card also as Chief of Staff in the second Bush administration during 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina.

Amy Walter:

Both acknowledged the challenge facing the country today is of unprecedented scope. I started off our conversation by asking them to respond to this quote from former Pennsylvania governor and the country's first Department of Homeland Security Secretary, Tom Ridge from the same Washington Post story. He said, "I've often wondered if democracy writ large is designed to be responsive rather than preemptive."

Kathleen Sebelius:

So I was in an administration where we had three government shut-downs. It was almost impossible to pass an HHS budget. We worked on continuing resolutions, which in state governments don't exist, and in the federal government is a way of just kicking the can down the road. You're literally conscripted to last year's budget so there is no new money.

Kathleen Sebelius:

To say to Congress, it's important to tuck this money aside for what may or may not ever happen. It's important for the government to step up and promise the pharmaceutical industry that they will buy medications. If you make the medications we will buy them, and we may not ever need or use them. That's a very difficult conversation. It's a lot easier in many way to get the government to promptly react when something happens, whether it's a disaster man-made or pathogen to step up and provide resources, as opposed to having those resources available in a stockpile, in a medication fund, in wherever that may or may not be used. That's tough to do in government. It's tough to do in state government. It's very tough to do at the federal level.

Andy Card:

The other practical reality is the states are sovereign, and governors have to request aid. The federal government can't preemptively give it. They can threaten to do it, and in some bizarre instances do it, but it's usually over the objections of the lawyers, especially at the Defense Department. The members who serve in the military under the president's command cannot exercise police powers.

Andy Card:

Governors had National Guard and when a governor requests assistance and say, I'd like the military to come but I want them to be under my command, which is what happened during Hurricane Katrina. The Defense Department lawyers appropriately say, "No, our soldiers took an oath to follow the command of the Commander-in-Chief. It's not the same as the National Guard, and we cannot exercise police powers unless there is a declared insurrection." And disasters are seldom insurrections.

Amy Walter:

In a moment in crisis the actions of our leaders are almost always under microscope, but there's going to also be tension within the team. When so much is unknown leaders can get conflicting advice even from people they trust.

Speaker 5:

H1N1 is widespread and could easily get much worse.

Pres. Obama:

Response plans have been put in place across all levels of government.

Speaker 7:

A chance to get the hard to find H1N1 vaccine produced a polite stampede of parents and not-so-happy children.

Speaker 8:

Six deaths in this country now linked to swine flu.

Speaker 9:

Swine flu seems to be spreading at a great rate.

Pres. Obama:

State and local governments on the front lines to make anti-viral medications and vaccines available, and be ready to take whatever steps are necessary to support the healthcare system.

Kathleen Sebelius:

President Obama was very, very clear that he would follow the science. There were lots of debates, and screaming matches, and various exercised folks who felt very strongly that he needed to take very tough action from the get-go, and do things like shut down all the schools in America, or make presidential edicts.

Kathleen Sebelius:

At one point we had one member of the White House describe in graphic detail that the last thing this president would want is bodies up and down Pennsylvania Avenue and children being carted out of their homestead and piled on carts, and that would be the end of this term in office. President Obama just said we've got to follow the science, and that ended the debates and the arguments. But there was no question that people were very frightened, and people were very frightened at every point along the way.

Kathleen Sebelius:

And we've got some situations coming up, Amy, that are going to be very tricky. I mean, people right now are now in a kind of food fight over protective equipment. I've really never seen anything like this. I very close to our current governor who continues to make requests to the federal government and none of the requests have come to Kansas that she's made of FEMA. But they're out there trying to bid for equipment against big states, against hospital systems. I mean that kind of exercise is pretty unknown to me. I've not seen it happen before.

Kathleen Sebelius:

Once we get a vaccine, which we hope will be within a year to 18 months, the vaccine will not be available all at the same time. We will not have a situation where everybody can get vaccinated on day one. So unless we have some kind of equitable, and reasonable, and transparent distribution system that people actually have faith in or believe in, we're going to be in a world of hurt as this thing goes on.

Andy Card:

Governor Sebelius, Secretary Sebelius described it exactly right. The allocation of resources becomes a greater challenge the greater the magnitude of the disaster. Where resources are allocated you never satisfy everyone, and those are the tough decisions.

Andy Card:

So I would say that presidents and cabinet members have to make decisions based on science and the best expertise you can get. They should try not to make them based on emotion. However the emotions will be very, very strong from almost everyone, including those who may not have the critical need at the critical time. So you don't get to manage expectations the way you do in most other instances.

Andy Card:

It's a big challenge. I would focus on dealing with what does the science say, what do the experts say. In the current challenge, how do you flatten the curve where it is most steep right now? So you focus on the hot spots. Then you try to have everybody in the whole country working to flatten everybody's curve. But you have to start with New York, or Washington State, or New Orleans, or wherever the challenges are.

Andy Card:

But the people who are in areas who have not had these steep climbs in death rates ... I used to say when I was working at the White House, "Every staffer should remember if we think that we're happy because the unemployment rate is only 3.2%, remember if you're the one unemployed, it's 100%." You can't make every decision based on the overall number without being cognizant that there are people that will say, "But I am hurting right now really badly, and I need help now personally."

Andy Card:

Leaders have to make the tough decision, "No. We have to start with New York and we'll get to you later on." But it should always be done with empathy and recognizing that, if you are the one unemployed the unemployment rate is 100%.

Speaker 10:

Andrew here, a hurricane which continues to strengthen.

Speaker 11:

Perhaps the most destructive natural disaster in our history.

Speaker 12:

One of the greatest concerns for hurricane forecasters and emergency management personnel is how to evacuate hundreds of thousands of people on short notice.

Speaker 13:

Those who aren't evacuating are stocking up on emergency supplies in anticipation of a long, bumpy ride.

Speaker 15:

Central Villas just outside Florida City is devastated. They need food. They painted this on their roof to attract some sort of attention because they haven't seen any relief trucks this far south.

Speaker 16:

All of us are in this for the long haul.

Andy Card:

Being on the ground made a huge difference. I tried to encourage the governor and others to come to see the disaster to understand it. I remember Governor Lawton Chiles, we were trying to get to ask for help. Literally he said, "All I need is six water buffaloes for the National Guard." Those are just water tanks. I said to the governor, I said, "Governor, you need a lot more than that. You want all the help you can get." And he was resistant. But when he came down to the area and surveyed it, he acknowledged that it was greater than he had thought, and he did make a blanket request.

Andy Card:

Those are some of the practical concerns. If leadership is cool, calm, and collected, and speaking the truth, it doesn't mean they can't be optimistic. It also doesn't mean they have to be pessimistic. But you should speak the truth and demonstrate how you think you'll be able to manage through this crisis, and what you're doing to manage through it, and be flexible and motivating to the people that have to carry out the orders.

Andy Card:

I did find that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was afraid to act many times because they thought they might be violating the regulations. Some of the regulations would say, if you want to apply for assistance you have to bring all of this paperwork with you. I remember saying, "They don't have the paperwork." "But our rules say they must provide this paperwork." And I said, "Everything in their home was blown away. They have no paperwork. Some of them may not even have their IDs with them."

Andy Card:

So I actually took the staff and I said, "We're going to go stand in line like everybody else and see what it means to apply for aid, and understand the questions that they're asking. You're going to go down there with the information you have and see if you qualify for aid, and see what they go through." There was tremendous resistance to do that, but then it changed dramatically how FEMA was functioning. I actually said to a few FEMA workers when they were saying, "If we do this Congress will be made and we'll be called before Congress and have to testify why we did this." I said, "You can blame me."

Amy Walter:

That was in 1992. Kathleen Sebelius, you, now in 2009, life is a little bit different. Obviously we have social media at that time, and the cable news infrastructure. And now 10 years later it's even more intensive, so you get bombarded even more quickly with critics, almost instantaneously, who have their own platforms. So how do you respond in real time to what is going on in this ecosystem of media and social media.

Kathleen Sebelius:

You will always have second guessers, and now the second guessers are there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, challenging everything that you're doing. The only thing that I know to do, and whether it was a disaster that we dealt with in Kansas when entire cities were wiped out with tornadoes, or at HHS dealing with either a natural disaster or, again H1N1, is tell people what you know, tell them what you don't know, on a regular basis. But that you are learning every day.

Kathleen Sebelius:

Repeat it. Show compassion on a regular basis. Understanding what they're going through, how frightened they are, what's happening. That you hear that. That you're working on that. And what you can do to help solve it. It's very difficult when people hear very mixed messages.

Kathleen Sebelius:

So I think it's very important that people understand where the science is going, what the science says. Particularly in a heath crisis like this, that it really isn't a debate. That people will learn more as we go through Covid-19. They'll learn more about coronavirus. They will give us updated information as they learn it, but there is a science and that's really what we have to follow.

Amy Walter:

Kathleen Sebelius and Andy Card, I want to thank you both so much for taking the time to speak with me today. I really appreciate it.

Andy Card:

Thank you, Amy. Good to be with you, Kathleen.

Kathleen Sebelius:

Nice to be with you, Andy. Amy, thank you very much, and stay safe everybody.

Amy Walter:

Yes, you too.

Amy Walter:

Leon Panetta has served at all levels of leadership. He was the US Representative from California from the late '70s to the early '90s; the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and White House Chief of Staff to President Clinton; during the Obama administration, he served as the Director of the CIA and Secretary of Defense.

Amy Walter:

So Secretary Panetta can appreciate better than most the political challenges to preparedness, realities of running for re-election, budgets, and bandwidth. I asked him to reflect on those challenges over the course of his career.

Leon Panetta:

There has been an attitude that has developed over the last almost 20 years or more where there has been a hesitancy to confront bad news, or to in any way tell the American people that they are going to have to sacrifice. So there's been a sense, for example, that we could go to war and have some in our society fight that war. Others would not have to fight it. That we could have wars and not have to pay for it. That we could borrow money instead of having to exercise any kind of fiscal discipline.

Leon Panetta:

You know, there's just been a general sense that rather than confronting the American people with the real facts, and with the threats ... Not to put fear into the American people, but to make them understand the truth of the situation that we're confronting. Because there's been a lack of leadership to do that, I think so often we are unprepared for the crises we have to confront.

Amy Walter:

I want to follow up with that by asking you whether you think, looking at where the public has gone on asking them to make some amazing sacrifices. Sheltering in place. We have just an unprecedented number of people who have lost their jobs, who may never get those jobs back, who are losing income. It seems though that the public has, until this point, been willing to make those sacrifices. So what does that tell you?

Leon Panetta:

Well, it tells all of us a great deal about the fundamental spirit of the American people. Look, I was a small boy during World War II. Even as a small boy, I saw the sense of sacrifice by all citizens. Not just those that went to war and fought and died for this county, but citizens at home who were air raid wardens, who were operating on rationing, who were doing all of the things that needed to be done to make sure that we supported the war effort.

Leon Panetta:

Now almost 75 years later as we confront probably the most serious crisis that we've confronted since World War II, I think the reality is the American people understand that in many ways the responsibility lies with them to take the actions necessary in order to make sure that we do what's right to try to prevent this coronavirus from continuing to impact on the people of this country and, for that matter, the people of the world.

Amy Walter:

The other issue I wanted to raise with you is this question about governing in a time of incredible polarization. This isn't new. You've been around through it. But here we are in this once-in-a-lifetime crisis, and if you log onto Twitter or you watch cable, you see that this polarization, this negative partisanship is strong as ever. Alive and well. So I wanted to get you to weigh in on the challenge of governing in a time like.

Leon Panetta:

I've often said in my 50 years of public life I've seen Washington at its best and I've seen Washington at its worst. I mean the good news is I've seen Washington work. I've seen the leadership of, whether Democratic or Republican presidents, working with bi-partisan leadership in the Congress. I had leadership in the House. Tip O'Neill, who was a Democrat's Democrat. Got along very well with Bob Michael, who was the minority leader. We worked together on a bi-partisan basis under presidents of both parties. That's how democracy is supposed to function. That's how it's supposed to work. That's how we govern, is through the ability to work together and find consensus.

Leon Panetta:

Unfortunately, I've seen Washington at its worst. I've seen it bitterly divided, as it is now. Very partisan. Very dysfunctional because neither party leaders want to really sit down and work through the crisis that this country confronts. So we've had basically gridlock on so many issues, from immigration, to infrastructure, to healthcare. And now even on this coronavirus, although there's been some consensus on the initial package, there's still divisions that you sense between the parties on trying to decide the right course of action.

Leon Panetta:

This is a time, very frankly, when both parties have to put aside the partisanship, the attacks, the counterattacks, and just understand that the fundamental interest of the country is at stake, and that both have to work together to find the answers to this situation. This is a time when we need governing. We do not need gridlock, and we do not need partisanship.

Amy Walter:

So how optimistic are you that this could actually happen? I mean we're just at the start of this unfortunately very deep crisis?

Leon Panetta:

Amy, I teach the students at our Panetta Institute that in a democracy we govern either by leadership or by crisis. If leadership is there, willing to take the risks that are associated with leadership, we can confront crises. We can deal with crises. But if leadership is not there, then we are going to govern by crisis. And very frankly for the last number of years, we have largely been governing by crisis.

Leon Panetta:

So the real fundamental question is going to be whether leadership is willing to step forward, put aside these partisan threats that have been used for so long, and recognize that as leaders they have an obligation to the American people to find solution. Those solutions may not always please their particular party base. But if those solutions are the right ones and they can arrive at consensus, then I think the American people will respect the leadership of this country for doing what's right. But it takes risks. It takes a willingness to take a risk, but that's what leadership is all about.

Amy Walter:

Secretary Panetta, thank you again so much for doing this. Really appreciate your perspective.

Leon Panetta:

Good. Nice to be with you, Amy.

Amy Walter:

We've been talking all about leadership and governing during the crisis. But what about solutions? Are there ways that the United States could better prepare for something like a pandemic?

Asha George:

Our commission looks at bio-defense as being composed of a whole spectrum of activities that go from prevention and deterrence through preparedness and surveillance, and then on to response, recovery, and mitigation.

Amy Walter:

That's Dr. Ashe George, executive director of the bi-partisan Commission on Bio-Defense.

Asha George:

You know, depending on the source, be it naturally occurring, or intentionally introduced, or accidentally released, different elements of that spectrum actually come into play. I would say amongst them all there is a core set of activities that should be common amongst all of them.

Asha George:

But when it comes to a naturally occurring disease, and a pandemic in particular actually whether it's naturally occurring or not, there is whole requirement for domestic capacity and the ability to respond in such a way as to control the spread of the disease, and to make sure that we can treat the people who do become ill with it. That we can develop the vaccines we need and so forth.

Asha George:

Those systems are composed of both the scientific enterprise and the healthcare/public health enterprise here in the nation. And you've seen what's happened with both of those. They don't necessarily get the funding that they need from the federal government. The business side of this for industry isn't particularly great because the federal government winds up being the only customer for many of the things that they might need to put out.

Asha George:

Then on the public health side, you know the public health community has seen fewer and fewer dollars coming to them from the federal government. Then, of course, healthcare. The healthcare system seems to be doing pretty well because so much of it is privatized. But when you look what they have to deal with, they have to optimize their business practices. So they're only looking at the regular disease and regular injuries and illness that come in through the door on a frequent basis and optimizing to deal with that.

Asha George:

They are not anywhere close to having systems in place that would allow for these huge surges in cases that occur with a pandemic. They, in turn then, are looking to the federal government to help them when a pandemic does occur. But there are no, or few, systems in place to assist.

Amy Walter:

It also seems like a response to something that it is threat from another country. In other words, okay, we need to protect our country from somebody who has unleashed a weapon would maybe go farther in sort of bringing all of the resources together more quickly than the way that this pandemic played out?

Asha George:

You're absolutely right. If somebody released smallpox somewhere else in the world, or some other biological agent that we knew had to be part of a biological weapon, we would immediately spring into action assuming that the United States would be under attack as well at some point. And if not under attack, then certainly having to deal with smallpox because it would just spread like wildfire throughout the world. But that's not what happened here.

Amy Walter:

In looking at the recommendations that you all made back in 2015, is there anything that you look at now and think, boy, if that had been in place today, it could have made a fundamental difference in mitigating the spread of this disease?

Asha George:

Yes. Absolutely. I think there are a few. Certainly our recommendation about establishing a stratified hospital system here in the United States. We really called for all hospitals to be capable of treating any sort of disease that might come by like this to some extent. Then being able to refer those patients up the chain as we would with our trauma system here in the United States.

Asha George:

If we had done that. If the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid systems had agreed that preparedness was important and had decided well in advance, years ago, that they would reimburse for the treatment that's associated with a pandemic or a biological attack. If the federal government had agreed to move parts of the stockpile, and actually put more into the stockpile, that would have helped a lot.

Asha George:

We called for the CDC and OSHA, both agencies, to work together in advance to determine at least what questions you need to ask at the beginning of a pandemic like this to answer and then enable both agencies to issues guidance that would help our healthcare workers, our public health workers, our first responders, and so forth, to be able to deal with a disease that's coming into our communities and understand what exactly to do.

Asha George:

With all of those examples that I just gave you, all of those things could have been addressed years ago and they were not. So now we're in the unfortunate position here in the country, and elsewhere throughout the world, where we're trying to plan. We're trying to prepare. And we're trying to respond all at the same time.

Amy Walter:

How optimistic are you, again, that maybe at the end of this, and hopefully that will be soon, that the lessons that we have learned from this awful experience will indeed help us for something, hopefully nothing as terrible as this, but another crisis that involves our public health?

Asha George:

I'm cautiously optimistic, and realistically optimistic. You know, after we have a large scale event like this of any sort, especially one that affects our national security, we don't have incredibly short memories. People don't just shut off and move on to the next thing right away.

Asha George:

I think we have a window after this is over, probably six months, maybe to a year, during which this will be fresh in our memories and Congress will take some action. The next administration will take a lot of action. And it will be incumbent on us as citizens to really push for the changes we need in order to better prepare ourselves for the next event.

Asha George:

I actually think it would be a huge mistake for everybody to say, well, these events only seem to occur every once in a hundred years or so. We got through this one and we'll just punt. We've seen more and more of these biological events, whether they're naturally occurring or not, occur much more frequently than we have seen in centuries ago, or even decades ago. Part of it has to do with globalization. Part of it has to do with the way we're managing the environment. And part of it, frankly, is just that this is the nature of viruses and other microorganisms. They mutate, so they're getting around all of our defenses.

Asha George:

We have to be prepared. I think it would be nice if our government and the private sector decided to plan for the next event such that it was going to occur in another six months, or six months after Covid-19 sort of winds itself up. I don't know if we'll get that far, but I'm hoping that in that six months at least, six months to a year, that we'll be able to evoke some change.

Amy Walter:

Well, Dr. Asha George, I really appreciate you coming on and talking with me about this.

Asha George:

Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Amy Walter:

On the front lines in this fight against the pandemic are state and local leaders, but they aren't getting on TV. None of them are going to get glowing profiles written about them in national newspapers. And that's why every week we want to check in with local mayors to hear the challenges that they're facing. This week I called up Marco McClendon.

Marco McClendon:

I'm the mayor of West Memphis, Arkansas.

Amy Walter:

A city of less than 30,000 people that sits directly across the Mississippi River from Memphis, Tennessee.

Marco McClendon:

Well, Covid-19 is definitely having a major impact. One it the things it has done, it has closed down vital jobs that people in this community depend on. They're having to go to the unemployment claims benefits, and they are getting just a partial amount of what they were making. It just brings a lot of difficulties on people with their income as well as West Memphis is in a very unique situation. We are in Arkansas but we sit right here in the Memphis MSA of 1.4 million people, and what goes on in our neighboring county definitely affects us right across the bridge.

Amy Walter:

Talk to us a little bit about what you do as mayor in a moment like this. We know, for example, that Arkansas is one of the few states that doesn't have a statewide stay-at-home order. Governor Hutchinson has not ordered one, but you are doing some of your own things in the city, for example, putting a curfew in place. So how are decisions that are being made by the governor of Arkansas impacting what you do, or not do, on your own city?

Marco McClendon:

Well, one of the things I have done, I have put in place an emergency curfew from 9PM to 5AM. One of the things I'm so happy about that situation is that most of our retailers, all of our businesses, they have closed at that time. So the only thing that's pretty much open in West Memphis after nine may be some industries that have second and third shifts, as well as our hospitals for anyone needing emergency care.

Marco McClendon:

But also what I've done from 5AM to 9PM I have put in place a stay-put voluntary, necessary order. If you have to go by groceries, if you have to take a walk and exercise, if you need to do something please do it and come back home.

Amy Walter:

How have people in your community responded to that?

Marco McClendon:

I've been very encouraged because a lot of them have told me, have called and talked to the staff, "This is what we should have been doing. The state should have done it a long time ago." And they want to make sure that we're doing everything to keep them safe. I have had a lot of mayors from my state asking for an emergency ordinance that I have put in place for the city. And everyone's been very encouraging about this because this is a real crisis that we have never seen for our city or our nation.

Amy Walter:

As you pointed out, though, you also sit right there on the Mississippi River. You get on a bridge and you're in Memphis which is a very big city. What does that mean for your town? I mean, you have people coming and going constantly. How can you feel comfortable or confident that you know what's coming in and out of your city at any moment?

Marco McClendon:

Let me bring this home for you Ms. Walter. Actually West Memphis is closer to downtown Memphis than Memphis is close to downtown Memphis. We have this big river crossing where actually we can walk to Memphis and Memphis can walk to West Memphis. Then we have two major interstates, I40 and I55, which in West Memphis only meets nowhere else in the United States where you have over 70,000 vehicles that's coming through our city from north, east, south, to west at any given time during the day here in West Memphis.

Marco McClendon:

So it has been definitely hard because we have a lot of people that go to Memphis as well as downtown Memphis has become more residential. So it's easier and quicker for Memphis to come to West Memphis and shop than going farther out in Memphis to have to shop.

Amy Walter:

Can you walk us through what your day-to-day life is like in this era of Covid?

Marco McClendon:

It has gotten harder because, first off, West Memphis was a city that was on the rise. In my first year, which was '19, we created over 1900 new jobs. We had Carvana that came to West Memphis, and Southland was building a 21-story hotel. Coca Cola. So many different industries was coming. So it was a lot going on. Restaurants, Chick-fil-A. Everything was coming, then this Covid-19 hit. And through the grace of God we are still having things to happen, but we had over 600 million dollars of travel and investment within our city and it seemed like overnight everything just stopped. And I'm out encouraging people maybe should we enforce the CDC guidelines of social distancing to make sure that we can be a city that gets past this pandemic. On a daily basis I'm meeting with the health professionals to make sure that we move forward.

Amy Walter:

I was looking at the coverage of your city over this last month. What I noticed was that where this issue really started in West Memphis, or at least where you all think it started, was with a funeral.

Marco McClendon:

It was a funeral here in West Memphis that had over 300 individuals at that funeral. But when I did my research on the funeral, my police went by there. It was a funeral home from Memphis. They brought the individual over to West Memphis because they cannot have that type of funeral in the city of Memphis. So they came over here and had the funeral, and actually took the body back to Memphis. The reason why they was able to do it over here was because our governor hadn't put anything in place that prohibits that. Stay-at-home orders or make sure that we enforce the 10 people or more through the CDC guidelines. They came over here. Actually we had five people that was diagnosed with it from that point.

Amy Walter:

Wow. And those were people who were staying and living in your community. So even though this was for a person who lived in Memphis, or at least was buried in Memphis, the folks in your community got the disease even if they weren't at the funeral?

Marco McClendon:

Yeah, we suffered the effects because those people stopped in West Memphis. They ate in West Memphis, and we did have some of the people from West Memphis that did go to the funeral as well. I just can't say all 300 was from Memphis, but the large part of them was from there. But we did have citizens that went there because they knew who the pastor of the church was. It was a pretty big, large church that done it.

Amy Walter:

Right. So what you're saying is they came over to West Memphis because Tennessee had a rule that you couldn't have more than 10 people, but Arkansas didn't have that same rule about public gatherings?

Marco McClendon:

Yes, ma'am. Exactly. That's what happened.

Amy Walter:

Mayor Marco McClendon, I really thank you so much for taking the time and speaking with me today.

Marco McClendon:

I thank you for having me, too, and God bless this country and West Memphis as well.

Bernie Sanders:

The message of our campaign is us, not me.

Amy Walter:

This week Senator Bernie Sanders ended his bid for the Democratic nomination. In many ways it feels like a lifetime ago, but it was only about six weeks ago that Sanders looked like he was going to win it all. He carried New Hampshire. He came within a whisker of winning in Iowa. And, of course, put up a huge victory in Nevada.

Amy Walter:

The moderate wing of the party was divided. One-time front runner Joe Biden was lagging in delegates and cash, but Sanders' Nevada victory on February 22nd would be his last significant win. On February 29th, just a week later, Joe Biden scored a decisive win in South Carolina, and from that point on the once divided Democratic electorate rallied behind the former vice president.

Amy Walter:

With Biden piling up wins and delegates, there was simply no path forward for the Vermont senator.

Bernie Sanders:

But while we are winning the ideological battles, and while we are winning the support of so many young people, and working people throughout the country, I have concluded that this battle for the Democratic nomination will not be successful. And so today I am announcing the suspension of my campaign.

Amy Walter:

He leaves behind an important legacy and many disappointed supporters.

Samantha:

This is Samantha out of Portland, Oregon. This is devastating. I poured so much into his candidacy. I believed in him. He supported us. He wanted to make sure that our incomes matched inflation. He cared about things like that.

Speaker 23:

Hi, this is Sevy Seth From Greenville, South Carolina. I am very disheartened that he has dropped out because he was my only hope. More importantly, he was the only hope for my kids who are first time voters.

Speaker 24:

The simple fact is Bernie Sanders represented the old school, Great Society, lefty Democratic party politics. All the mainstream media did for the last six months is attack those politics and demonize them.

John:

John, San Diego, California. It became very clear as Bernie Sanders has announced the ending of his presidential bid, that there was no possibility that we will regain our republic in this election term. America has fallen.

Amy Walter:

To help us sort though that complicated legacy is Ruby Cramer, a politics reporter at BuzzFeed, who's been following the Sanders campaign.

Ruby Cramer:

It looks like holy crap Bernie Sanders could actually win this thing. It was sort of, for lack of a better phrase, a perfect storm of elements. You had a very crowded field. You had Joe Biden and Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg splitting up their own voters. You still had Elizabeth Warren in there. Bernie Sanders was the only person who could get more than a small fraction of the field with that many people in. And then you had the entry of Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, who's coming in with all this money and is basically making a huge play for the Super Tuesday states.

Ruby Cramer:

So all of these elements mean that Bernie Sanders is the only one with the base and the loyal support to edge him out above all these other people to get first place finishes in the Iowa popular vote, New Hampshire. And he then comes into Nevada with this massive victory and all this Latinx support. And you're like, wow, he's expanding his coalition. He has all these Latinos. He didn't have them four years ago. Wow. No one else can do this. Unless the field changes overnight he's the only one who could come out of Super Tuesday with a delegate lead. You could see Joe Biden and Michael Bloomberg kind of splitting their own vote, 15% each, in Super Tuesday.

Ruby Cramer:

Fast forward a week. Two weeks. Michael Bloomberg collapses on the debate stage. Elizabeth Warren just tears him apart. Everybody starts coalescing behind Joe Biden after Joe Biden wins with black voters in South Carolina. And very, very rapidly in the span, I think it was 36 hours, you had all of these candidates dropping out to get behind him. To literally redirect their planes to fly to a kind of Go Joe Biden rally in Dallas. And then everything changed.

Ruby Cramer:

I think what happened in that moment, which is really important to understand about Bernie, and helps us understand why he stayed in the race through the last month amid this pandemic, is that there was that week, or that two weeks, where he saw that path forward. He saw a moment when he could actually win. So just as everybody else was reckoning with that strange moment where it was like, wow, wait, can he really do this?, Bernie Sanders himself was feeling like he had this. Like he could do this. And I think that was a really hard thing to let go of, especially when it came to the March contests where basically at the end of the day more people came out to vote for Joe Biden, and Bernie Sanders could not expand beyond that base that we talked about.

Amy Walter:

Was it Sanders himself? Was it his message? Was it that, you know, maybe the Democratic base isn't as liberal as people think it is? Maybe there's just not an appetite for the kind of democratic socialism that he was putting forward. Is there an easy answer to that question?

Ruby Cramer:

No. There really isn't. I think it's a combination of a few things. I think that his ideas are popular. I mean we see widespread support for expanded access to healthcare, for a higher minimum wage. These are ideas that Bernie Sanders pushed Hillary Clinton on four years ago. You see in the exit polls that there is widespread support for those ideas. But you're not seeing a progressive candidate, and I would include Elizabeth Warren in this too, you're not seeing that broad support for that kind of progressive champion.

Ruby Cramer:

I think that's a big mystery for him personally. He believes, and he said this on Wednesday when he dropped out of the race, that he is winning the ideological debate, but he is not winning when it comes to people coming out to vote. I think you could talk to a bunch of people who have worked for him, and worked for him four years ago, and they might say there are things that he could have done that he didn't do in terms of reaching out and forming relationships.

Ruby Cramer:

I had one former advisor point to he had three years in between his campaigns, and he didn't do as much politicking, sort of like forming relationships, whether it's Congressional Black Caucus or lock up labor endorsements early. There are things that they feel like he could have done that he didn't.

Ruby Cramer:

Part of that is that stuff has just never come naturally to Bernie Sanders. For someone who's been in Washington for 30 years he has never been like an inside game, back slapper type politician. He doesn't do that stuff. He's like a gruff guy who borders on rude sometimes. That's not the kind of relationships that he likes to spend time investing in. At the end of the day, everybody knew who Bernie Sanders was, right? This guy has 100% name ID, and people just didn't vote for him enough.

Amy Walter:

And then finally to think about the Bernie Sanders legacy. I think it is fair to say that, yes, issues like the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, free college, $15 minimum wage, certainly now are on the agenda in a way they weren't before Bernie Sanders was on the scene. Can you talk to us a little bit about what you think of his legacy, maybe two years, or four years, or six years from now?

Ruby Cramer:

You know I talked to one of his senior advisors earlier this week after the announcement, and he was saying he had already gotten a call from Bernie saying, okay, when's our next meeting, what's next? I don't doubt that as long as Bernie Sanders is in politics he will be fighting. He will be pushing. I mean this guy wakes up every day in a fight, right? I think that that will continue as long as Bernie Sanders is in politics.

Ruby Cramer:

So I think that raises two questions. How much of that time is he going to spend fighting someone like Joe Biden, or fighting the Democratic party? And how much is he going to spend trying to work with it? I think that that could shape the legacy and make it look very different depending on how he sort of acts, not just in the next four or five months until November, but beyond.

Ruby Cramer:

I think that one of the big questions for him, too, is like when are we going to see somebody like Bernie Sanders actually win, win a race in a non-blue district? Like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley. These are all great examples of people who followed in Bernie Sanders mold. But I think that you would be harder pressed to find someone who is going to deliver on the promise of what Bernie Sanders hoped his 2020 campaign would be, which was turning non-voters into new voters, bringing people who are usually not a part of the political process into the political process, energizing the working class including in red states where you would never think of a progressive winning. So I kind of feel like part of his legacy will be trying to answer those unanswerable questions about why exactly he was able to build a movement but not a winning movement.

Amy Walter:

Ruby Cramer, thank you so much for talking with me today. I really appreciate it.

Ruby Cramer:

Thank you. I appreciate it too.

Amy Walter:

One more thought from me today about the end of the Bernie Sanders campaign. It's always hard to know just what sort of legacy any political figure will leave behind once he or she exits a presidential race. Some leave only to come back and win the nomination and presidency later on. Think Ronald Reagan or Richard Nixon. Others who held such incredible promise, like Democrat Gary Hart, fall into political obscurity.

Amy Walter:

But it is clear that Sanders' time on national stage has had some immediate impact. His agenda, specifically on healthcare, minimum wage, college debt, continue to drive the political conversation. And his call for a more robust challenge to the status quo won't be going away either, especially as this pandemic only widens this country's gaping inequalities.

Amy Walter:

For me, the biggest political lesson to take from Sanders' loss is that building coalitions still matters. A successful politician meets voters where they are, not where the candidate wants them to be. What Sanders' supporters liked so much about him was his consistency and his unwillingness to compromise the things he saw as his core principles. But politics in the end is about compromise. It doesn't mean you have to sell your soul or your values. It does mean that you can't get everything you want in order to get the voters that you do.

Amy Walter:

That's all for us today. I want to give a big shout out to the people who made this show possible. Patricia Yacob, Amber Hall, Jay Cowit, Debby Daughtry, Polly Irungu, David Gable, and Lee Hill. And, of course, call us anytime at 877-8MYTAKE or send us a tweet on @AmyEWalter. The show is @TheTakeaway. Thanks so much for listening. This is Politics with Amy Walter on the Takeaway.

 

 

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