Full Episode: Washington Week with the Atlantic full episode, 11/10/23

Jeffrey Goldberg: President Biden still lags in the polls, but the news is generally good for Democrats. Ballot measures protecting abortion win big this week in red and purple states.

Sean Hannity, Host, Fox News: Democrats are trying to scare women into thinking Republicans still want abortion legal under any circumstances.

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY): We were told that Republicans would get tired of all the winning. How's that working out?

Jeffrey Goldberg: But a surprising announcement from a key Democrat throws the future of the Senate into question.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV): I will not be running for re-election to the United States Senate.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Next.

It's been a busy week here and there's much to discuss starting with Joe Manchin's announcement and the possibility that he might run for president as an independent.

Joining me to discuss this week's developments are Eugene Daniels, a White House correspondent for Politico, and the co-author of Politico's playbook, Asma Khalid is a White House correspondent for NPR, Ed O'Keefe is the senior White House correspondent and a political correspondent for CBS News, and David Brooks is a columnist for The New York Times, a contributing writer at The Atlantic, and the author of How to Know a Person. So, thank you all for being here. David, welcome to the big time.

David Brooks, Columnist, The New York Times: Thank you.

Jeffrey Goldberg: This is your -- yes. I mean, after years of trying out on the news hour, you finally made it. I hope you're not too nervous.

David Brooks: I am a Washington Week virgin. So --

Jeffrey Goldberg: You are. By the way, this is the latest you've ever stayed up. So, congratulations.

David Brooks: Thank you for lowering your standards.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Thank you for being here. And we're going to talk about How to Know a Person tonight. And we're going to start by asking David, how to know Joe Manchin. How do we know Joe Manchin? David, why don't you start us off on this question?

David Brooks: Well, you stare deeply into his heart.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes, and his soul, right?

David Brooks: And what you see is a guy looking at the White House.

Jeffrey Goldberg: So, tell us, and I want to bring everybody into this conversation, obviously, but tell us what it means, Joe Manchin's announcement.

David Brooks: Yes, it means he's really interested in running for president. And to run for president, you've got to get on the ballot. And there's an organization, No Labels, that's getting on the ballot. And so No Labels hasn't decided. Larry Hogan has said that No Labels probably wants a Republican and not him, if they go ahead. But I think Joe Manchin sees a window and he's going for it.

And so, you know, what interests me is the potential end of the two-party duopoly in presidential races. You could have a Manchin or Hogan in No Labels. You have Cornell West. You have Jill Stein. You have Robert F. Kennedy. So we could have five candidates.

Jeffrey Goldberg: I mean, the three you just named are not exactly juggernauts. Manchin, theoretically, could do something. But, you know, we've seen this. I mean, Asma, we've seen this before.

Asma Khalid, White House Correspondent, NPR: Yes, You've seen this in many elections. I think the challenge for Joe Biden, though, is that in, I guess, recent cycles, right, if we think of 2016, where Donald Trump did defeat Hillary Clinton, many, you know, political analysts would say, many of us who covered the election, that part of that loss was due to third party candidacies.

And so I do think all of these potentials pose challenges to Joe Biden in major part, because if you look at polling, there are some challenges he faces from a group of key voters, you know, key parts of his coalition, whether that is young voters, black voters. You see different parts of his base that seem to have lackluster enthusiasm for his candidacy.

Jeffrey Goldberg: And talk a little bit about, if you want to push back on David -- I mean, it's his first time, so we would sort of mandatory to push back on him. But do you think that Joe Manchin could actually become president?

Ed O'Keefe, Senior White House Correspondent, CBS: Well, the answer to this question is show us how you get on the enough ballots to win 270 electoral votes. And unless or until No Labels or some other entity hires enough lawyers and signature gatherers in enough states to do this, it's just worthy of a conversation like this.

And I think part of what you have to remember with Joe Manchin is, yes, he, like most of the Senate, has designs on the White House, but he also is perfectly happy having all of us just talk about him on Friday night because what he craves is the attention that gives him the political capital to get things done in the Senate.

And if all he has left now is a year, well, there's still things that are going to need to get done. And, yes, he will travel the country, talking to people who are eager to hear about how there is a middle out there that's thoughts and prayers are not being addressed here in Washington.

But he's not actively engaged in the process of getting signatures and getting ballot access. And unless or until No Labels can demonstrate that, I'm told by his people, he's not terribly interested in doing this. He's also said recently to his team, if they think Larry Hogan is going to be the presidential candidate and I'm going to be the vice presidential candidate, they got another thing coming, I'm not interested.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. I mean, maybe this is just about the fact that he probably can't win his seat again in very, very, very red West Virginia.

Eugene Daniels, White House Correspondent, Politico: That was very clear who's going to have an uphill battle. There's no other Democrat that could win in West Virginia. And it was already clear he was going to have --

Jeffrey Goldberg: That's literally true. There's literally not one Democrat in West Virginia who could win.

Eugene Daniels: And the White House tried to get him to stay in the Senate race. Now, that's partly because they wanted him to try to do as much as he can so they could try to keep that Senate seat, but also because they know that he -- they didn't want him out there mucking it up for them as some kind of third party candidate either with No Labels or without them.

And I will say one thing I found interesting about his video that he released is that he talked about creating a movement. And that's not really how movements are made. Movements have to come from the ground up, right? There's not actually the center of political universe that's coming around and saying, where's my Joe Manchin, where's my Larry Hogan? That's not what's happening, right? Like that is not what happened. The centrist is --

Jeffrey Goldberg: Trump created a movement. There was no MAGA before Donald Trump. But there's only one Donald Trump.

Eugene Daniels: Like Obama created a movement as well, but it comes from the people have to say, I like this person.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Let me ask you, what else did you notice about the --

Eugene Daniels: New haircut?

Jeffrey Goldberg: Presidential. There's our proof, very presidential haircut.

Eugene Daniels: All you need, that's a factorial choice, is all you need.

Ed O'Keefe: And apparently you've paint the Oval Office red.

Jeffrey Goldberg: David, talk about what this means for the Senate. And you've been writing for years about centrist senators, not just Democrats, but the vanishing breed of moderate Republican centrist Democrats. What does this mean for the Senate?

David Brooks: Well, they keep vanishing. So, there's one less.

And so, you know, one of the things -- I've been defending Joe Manchin, because the Biden administration wanted a $4 trillion spending bill, and Manchin said, no, it's a $1 trillion spending bill. And if they had spent $4 trillion, inflation would have been through the roof. And so I think he actually played a vital role for the Democrats, even though most Democrats really dislike the guy.

But you are seeing a loss of voice after voice after voice in Kyrsten Sinema and some of the other remaining moderates have been seem genuinely in mourning that they're losing a teammate.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.

Asma Khalid: You're seeing the same though on the Republican side. I mean, isn't that just indicative of the way that politics is in this moment in this country, that there's really very little appetite for allegedly a centrist moderate movement?

Jeffrey Goldberg: Well, let's talk about the two other senators, Brown and Tester, who are running for -- Democrats, who are running for re-election in red states, one very red state and one pretty red state. What are their chances?

Ed O'Keefe: So, you thought it was Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Jon Tester of Montana?

Jeffrey Goldberg: Tester of Montana.

Ed O'Keefe: Sherrod Brown after this week is probably thinking why couldn't we hold that abortion referendum next year, because that might have helped him. But John Tester wisely sent out a fundraising note just minutes after Manchin's announcement saying, well, now all the money and the attention is coming to me, you need to help me out. And, yes, both of them now become mission critical for Democrats.

But they're also now, you're going to hear conversation about, well, could we make a play for Texas? Colin Allred, who's the leading Democratic contender, has raised a lot of money, is pretty popular in that state. Ted Cruz is on the ballot, or do you go down to Florida and hope that Rick Scott somehow stumbles and maybe you get a pick up there.

There are still ways for Democrats to hold, or at least get to 50-50, and then if they win the White House, have that vote, which will challenge the vice president's future ambitions, if that's where we're headed.

But all is not necessarily lost and you still have the potential to pick up or hold, essentially, you would hold a seat in Arizona. Races in Nevada are always competitive, but Democrats usually eek it out. So, it will be close. But, certainly, those two moderates are now the ones to watch.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. I want to come to the abortion issue for the Democrats, a huge issue, but stay on the subject of these third-party candidates. I mean, Joe Manchin is a serious player in American politics. RFK Jr. gets a lot of attention. Jill Stein gets less attention. Cornell West gets attention in a very limited segment of the Democratic left. But are Democrats right to be worried, mainstream party Democrats, Joe Biden re-elect Democrats?

Eugene Daniels: Absolutely they should be worried, because it only takes a sliver, that sliver of the left that Cornell West can pull from in a couple of these states. And that's a rap for Joe Biden, right? You can -- as you were talking about 2016, a lot of Hillary Clinton supporters and folks that worked on her campaign, when Jill Stein announced, they were on Twitter, or X, excuse me, talking about how she would --

Jeffrey Goldberg: We can call it Twitter here.

Eugene Daniels: It's a safe space -- talking about how she is the reason that Hillary Clinton lost Michigan, or Wisconsin picked one of those blue wall states, right? And I think that is something this White House and this campaign, they're not saying it out loud, but they are worried about it. They're concerned about it.

David Brooks: I think the political world is just radically more unstable than it was even four years ago. People are just really annoyed. They're furious at the state of the country, their fears of the direction, and it's right for some sort of disruption that we can't even see. And they want a younger guy like Joe Manchin who's 76.

Asma Khalid: I agree with the sense that I do think you just need a sliver, and I think it depends on certain votes, right? I mean, I've heard a lot from voters and folks just within the party system about Michigan, right, because of what's going on with Israel and Gaza, you've heard that some of the Arab-American community is upset there. Michigan is a state that Hillary Clinton lost by 10,000 votes. You know, these are slivers or tiny percentages, but Democrats really can't afford to lose a state like Michigan.

And you get the sense that they are aware of that. They're trying to reach out to some of the younger, more progressive voters. But, again, some of those younger, more progressive voters aren't really aligned with Biden on a host of other issues. They're frustrated about student loan debt, some other issues.

Jeffrey Goldberg: But what are the chances -- let's stay on that for one second. What are the chances that significant number of Arab-American voters in Michigan go to Trump?

Asma Khalid: I don't think a significant number would go to Trump. What I hear is that they would sit it out. And I had met folks who sat it out in 2016. I, in fact, went to go to a reporting trip ahead of the 2020 election, specifically met young black voters and young Arab-American voters who sat it out in 2016. They just didn't like Hillary Clinton. They gave Biden a chance. That's the danger, is losing some of those folks to sit it out or potentially go third party.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. Speaking of reporting trips, you recently went to Arizona, among other places. You were in South Carolina today actually with the vice president. Thank you for taking a nap or Red Bull or whatever got you here. But you were there talking a lot about abortion. I want to sort of focus in on that issue. How regretful are some Republican strategists that the Supreme Court ruled in their favor?

Asma Khalid: I mean, so what I hear from Republicans, as well as Democrats in the state of Arizona, is they see that if abortion is on the ballot, which it very well could be in the state of Arizona in 2024, that poses a real challenge for Republicans. Because much like what you saw in Ohio, Arizona is currently there gathering signatures to put this ballot referendum on, to put a constitutional right for abortion in 2024.

I was out just tag-teaming, watching people do these ballot signatures, voter after voter, afterwards I'd interview them. And they would say, you know, I'm not really aligned with the Democratic Party. Some of them, Republicans, some of them, like, I don't like anybody, but they were out there to sign this ballot referendum.

And that's the thinking Democrats have, and that is the fear Republicans have, is that voters will turn out for this abortion issue. And while they're there, hey, just vote for the --

Jeffrey Goldberg: They might just vote for it.

Ed O'Keefe: And it may happen in Florida as well. So, you could see, if not the Senate race, House candidates benefit from this in Florida. New York is going to have one of these ballot issues next year. And you think to yourself, well, blue New York. But the more Democrats show up in suburban New York City, in the five or six House districts that could flip from red to blue, and then you'd have Speaker Hakeem Jeffries, this is why Democrats want it.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Quick reporting question for you. You were just in Florida this week at a Trump rally. Did he talk about abortion?

Ed O'Keefe: No, didn't come up nearly as much as it did at the debate ten miles away, and the way it comes up now with Democrats. I mean, he takes credit for putting judges on the bench who have ruled in favor of more restrictive abortion rights or of ending Roe versus Wade, because he understands in a Republican primary, you have to do that. But, ultimately, if he makes it to the general, and said one reason why there are a lot of Republicans who believe he won't win, because Democrats will remind everyone he put the judges on the court that made this happen.

Jeffrey Goldberg: There's something interesting about -- Trump seems to not be hurt as much by this abortion backlash, or maybe I'm maybe I'm over-reading events right now. But could this actually hurt him or is it a down ballot kind of problem for Republicans next year?

Eugene Daniels: I think it could hurt every single Republican, right? I mean, if he's the nominee, that is something that's going to be on the minds of voters when they head into the ballot box, right, when they head to go vote.

I think all of us have been surprised by the saliency of abortion, right? Like, I think, you know, people thought the midterms sure, some of these special elections that happened in 2022 sure, but we're in November of 2023 and voters are still voting on the side of abortion access because, like those voters that you talk to in Arizona, when you talk to people, they don't -- Americans do not like things taken away from them, right?

They do not like, that is something that we feel very strongly about. Once we have something, we don't want to take it away from us, you know? And so that is what the Republican Party is learning the hard way at this point.

And it's not an issue of messaging because there's a lot of Republicans in Virginia, for example, Glenn Youngkin, the governor there, was saying, well, if we just talk about it a little differently and say 15 weeks instead of 6 weeks, that's going to be the thing. It's not an issue of messaging, exactly. It's not messaging. It is a policy issue that they have with a lot of the voters in this country.

David Brooks: Yes. And the broader lesson of the election is it's not only on abortion, but all sorts of cultural wars had lost saliency. And so if there's anything we learned that Glenn Youngkin's not personal defeat, but the Republican Party's defeat in Virginia, it's no longer when Glenn Youngkin got elected. And Andy Beshear's victory in Kentucky, the governor got re-elected. And he was running like bread and butter practicalities.

And so I think the lesson for Joe Biden is, A, run -- as David Axelrod has been saying, run a comparison campaign. And I would add run a prosaic campaign. Don't make it about who do you like less. Make it about I'm giving your student debt, I'm giving you prescription drugs, just concrete products. And I think if Joe Biden makes the campaign against about himself, that's probably bad idea. But if he can make it about the products he can deliver, infrastructure spending, all that kind of stuff, and it's off him and it's here is concrete benefits.

Asma Khalid: And they've struggled to get that message out. I mean, I go on trips with them where the $35 insulin fee right now, that gets a rip roaring applause. But it is something that hasn't managed to translate. And I came back and I told my editor I'm so shocked insulin is like a huge applause line, but it is.

Ed O'Keefe: And the vice president talked about it today in South Carolina in a crowd full of black voters. I mean, they know. That's the base. You've got to remind them of that. And when you remind the one person there, they go remind their kids, their neighbors, and that's why you got to go vote. They're very formulaic about it.

Jeffrey Goldberg: I want to go to this. You use the word comparison, a comparison election. We've been talking a lot on this show everywhere in Washington about age, specifically Biden's age and cognitive abilities. There are a lot of people on the right who say that he's lost much of his cognitive ability.

I want to play a couple of clips from this week to show you -- to complicate that narrative a little bit. I'm going to roll those.

Joe Biden, U.S. President: You okay? I want the press to know that wasn't me.

Donald Trump, Former U.S. President: The press hates when I say they're smart. He said they were smart. Well, what am I supposed to say? They're stupid people? Kim Jong-un leads 1.4 billion people and there's no doubt about who the boss is.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Now, you know what's interesting about that latter clip? I mean, the first one is interesting because Biden seems pretty sharp, funny, right, maybe not the fastest moving guy in the world, but sharper.

The second part, if Joe Biden came out and said that North Korea has 1.4 billion people, we'd all be all over that. Oh my god, the president of the United States doesn't know that he's talking about China, not North Korea, right?

With Trump, maybe it's all baked in to people's assumptions about what he knows and what he doesn't know.

Ed O'Keefe: But this is different. He didn't used to do this. And this is the one change we've seen in him in the last few years, and even in the last just few months, that he's confusing names and places. He did with Turkey and Hungary a few weeks ago.

And, yes, they'll look at us and say, you guys are nitpicking in the details. But when you take it all collectively, it signals something has changed in their behavior.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Well, we're all supposed to be -- as voters, we're all supposed to be judging the abilities in preparation of a --

Ed O'Keefe: And that was a good event for the president. It was a labor union event. It was a victory for him and for labor unions. He, of course, calls himself the most pro-labor president in modern times. They haven't all been like that though recently. And the thing is he's going to need a lot more days, like that event in Illinois, to start turning that around.

Asma Khalid: I think some of this is somebody who covers the White House is part of it's about access, right? I mean, I do think that Trump, we've all seen him, he's readily been available, even during his days in the White House. And one of the things that you -- I think we both could agree and come in the White House, is President Biden has not been readily available to the press.

And the more, say, missteps you make, the less they become a news story, because people just get more comfortable seeing --

Ed O'Keefe: Remember the crazy Uncle Joe? We knew that when he was in the Senate. We knew that when he was in the vice presidency.

Jeffrey Goldberg: He would just say anything.

Ed O'Keefe: Because he'd say anything and people said, oh, whatever.

David Brooks: I've been interviewing the guy for 30 years, not to play the old guy card here, but sorry. And I interviewed him several times in the White House, and he is basically with it. He's like a pitcher who used to throw 80, 85.

Asma Khalid: He can answer questions under the plane, under the wing, no problem.

David Brooks: And so, in some ways, he's a little better than what it used to interview him, because he used to try to pack every fact in the known universe into every answer. And now he's got some message to discipline. But people think he's a doddering old grandpa. It's not true.

Asma Khalid: But why not make him more available?

Ed O'Keefe: That's what it is. And here's what happens. This is happening again this week. Bad polls come out. He comes and starts talking to us again for a few days. And we go, oh look, he's accessible. Bad news happens and he stops talking to us. And that's exactly what happened.

He spent two times talking to you guys, or to the reporters going to Illinois. Then Joe Manchin drops out and suddenly we don't see him again, because the bad news happened. Last time it was something with his son.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Well, President Biden, you're invited to this show. Anytime we'll get this group together. It's going to -- we could talk for as long as you like. No, no, no, I mean you're probably -- you're probably on to something. I mean, it always is a bit self-serving when we say, oh, just talk more to us. But there's something to be said for like lowering the mystery or removing that shroud of mystery around his health or his cognitive.

I mean, we're also comparing apples and oranges, because Donald Trump has a whole set of other issues related to his behavior, his relationship to reality, relationship to the truth. I'm trying to like say this as diplomatically as possible and hoping that David brooks comes in and rescues him from his cul-de-sac.

David Brooks: The cavalry is here.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Thank you.

David Brooks: You know, I think --

Jeffrey Goldberg: He's not a traditional politician the way Joe Biden is.

David Brooks: The big question for this presidential election for me is, I have a feeling and it's only an instinct, but based on a lot of reality, that it's going to be a foreign policy election. The world is getting a lot more dangerous. The Middle East has blown up, Ukraine has blown up, we're ripe for something in Asia. And how will the country react? Who do they think is the safer pair of hands when the world's on fire? And it's not really clear to me what the answer to that question is.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Wait, it's not clear to you the answer to the question or the answer to --

David Brooks: About whether they think -- I mean, I think Biden is well positioned for a foreign policy election because that's what he's been doing his whole life. And he actually has a cohesive theory about the world fighting authoritarianism and Donald Trump has no theory. And in Ukraine, he's clearly, in my view, on the wrong side, but he doesn't want to get involved.

In the Middle East, you guys are no better than I, but what I've heard Trump say about the Middle East is some random word salad. I see no policy there at all.

Eugene Daniels: I mean, I think you're right. I think President Biden is attempting to make it a foreign policy election. I don't know if that's actually going to work. Voters tend to only care about foreign policy when it's American boots or American lives.

Jeffrey Goldberg: I was just going to say, like, we're not talking about Afghanistan anymore. That was the crisis that was going to tear down this presidency. And I don't know, I mean, if the war --

Asma Khalid: Yes. I think also the Democratic Party itself. His coalition of voters are not unified if we're talking about the Middle East. So, I think it would behoove him or the Democratic Party to not make it a foreign policy.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Can I -- in the few minutes that we have remaining, a couple minutes we have remaining, can I talk about the fact that Trump is almost certainly going to be the nominee and that the debates that we're watching seemingly every week are a little bit of a tryout, beauty contest for V.P. I just wanted you to watch one fascinating moment from the from the debate just a couple days ago.

Vivek Ramaswamy, Republican Presidential Candidate: In the last debate, she made fun of me for actually joining TikTok while her own daughter was actually using the app for a long time So, you might want to take care of your family first --

Nikki Haley, Republican Presidential Candidate: Leave my daughter out of your voice.

Vivek Ramaswamy: The next generation of Americans are using.

Nikki Haley: You're just scum.

Jeffrey Goldberg: So, you're just scum. That was a pretty exciting moment.

We only have a couple of minutes left, but I did want to get your quick views on who he might be thinking about for vice president and why that person.

Asma Khalid: I mean if character and temperament is what he's looking for in someone who is akin to him, Vivek Ramaswamy seems to be his candidate on stage.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Very elegantly put.

Ed O'Keefe: His team would tell you they're looking at -- they're keeping an eye on Nikki Haley and Tim Scott They bring two different sets of skills and backgrounds. But, obviously, her with the foreign policy experience, being a woman, being a governor, there's a certain set of experiences. Tim Scott, African-American, a senator, affable, well liked and probably won't go the distance.

Eugene Daniels: I think those two choices are interesting. Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota, there's a relationship. They've had a rift a little bit at times.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Everybody has a rift.

Eugene Daniels: Also this one, I think, is scary for a lot of people, Kari Lake out of Arizona is also one that --

David Brooks: I don't agree with that. I mean, Kanye West is the obvious choice, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, maybe Elise Stefanik. I don't know. But I would go to Kari Lake. I thought she'd be my favorite.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes, again, How to Know a Person, take it from David Brooks, everybody should read this book. I'm going to gift this book to some lucky panelist.

David Brooks: You will laugh. You will cry.

Jeffrey Goldberg: You will laugh. You will cry. I want everybody to read wonderful book. David it's great to have you. Everybody, it's great to have you.

Unfortunately, we have to leave it there for now but I want to thank our panelists for joining us and for sharing your reporting.

Tune in tomorrow to PBS News Weekend for a look at a unique new program that helps military veterans with PTSD and depression.

And before we go, we want to take a moment to remember my friend, Gwen Ifill, ground breaking journalist and longtime moderator of this program, who passed away seven years ago this week. We miss her voice and we miss her moral clarity.

I'm Jeffrey Goldberg. Good night from Washington.