Live from Music Row on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast live on Wednesday morning on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – special guest host Ben Cunningham and all-star panelist Crom Carmichael welcomed One America News Networks own investigative reporter Neil McCabe to the show to talk about the Democrats’ New Hampshire results.
Mid third hour, McCabe gave his take on how he saw the Democratic presidential nominees playing out. He thinks Joe Biden had done himself in. Plus, McCabe thought people who were not happy with Elizabeth Warren, but wary of Sanders and Buttigieg, would support Klobuchar. Towards the end of the segment, he was convinced that there was no moderate Democrat candidates, just different tones.
Cunningham: Neil McCabe is on this morning. Neil are you there.
McCabe: Good morning guys.
Cunningham: Good morning. I’m sitting in for Michael Patrick Leahy. Looking forward to your analysis of last night. Where does this leave us now with these Democrats? You never know what’s going to happen one day to the next. Did this clarify anything for us?
McCabe: Well you know, coming out of Iowa. I may live to be 100 and never live to see who the real winner of the Iowa caucus is. (Cunnigham laughs) That was just a disaster. But I think what New Hampshire did was sort of validate that we kind of get the idea that either Bernie Sanders or Pete Buttigieg won in Iowa.
So coming into New Hampshire and now out of New Hampshire, that’s sort of been confirmed. Traditionally there are two tickets out of New Hampshire. But I don’t think that Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar’s strong third-place showing can be ignored. She did get a huge boost from the only statewide newspaper.
The Manchester Union Leader. That endorsement over the weekend really gave her a huge bit of momentum going into the primaries. And, so I think Klobuchar definitely is in the running so what you’re going to see as the race moves forward is that Bernie Sanders is in complete control of that progressive left-wing lane. And then Mayor Pete and Klobuchar will be battling it out in a sort of moderate lane.
Cunningham: Where does this leave Joe? Is Joe still viable or is his ship about to sink?
McCabe: You know I was at a polling place in Salem, New Hampshire and there were a group of union electricians who had driven up from Massachusetts and I told their team leader that Joe had taken that last chopper out of Saigon. (Cunningham chuckles)
Cunningham: Great analogy.
McCabe: He was basically going to make his last stand in South Carolina. And these guys were like stunned. I mean Biden abandoned his troops in the field. And I got to believe part of his poor showing is because people are just demoralized.
The big crime for voting in New Hampshire, especially in the Democratic primary, is that so many of these Democrats live in Southern New Hampshire which is all part of the Boston media market. They start coming home from work between three and five o’clock. So between three and say seven when the polls close, that is the peak time for the Democrats. And Biden basically took the air out of his own balloon.
Cunningham: What is the appeal of Klobuchar? I still haven’t figured that out. She has this unity message but other than that I can’t understand how or why she is appealing to voters. What is the message that she is delivering?
McCabe: It’s not really who she is, it’s who she is not. And she is not Elizabeth Warren. Elizabeth Warren from 2019 raised more than 70 million for this presidential campaign all to finish with less than 10% in New Hampshire. Like I said, most of the Democrats live in Southern New Hampshire, which is part of that media market.
So there is no one that knows Elizabeth Warren better than those Democrats in Southern New Hampshire. And the people who know Elizabeth Warren the best, are the ones that gave her that hard no. So people are sort of stuck with their Elizabeth Warren choice. Not really comfortable with Mayor Pete or Bernie Sanders, so they all sort of collapse on Klobuchar because she is not Elizabeth Warren.
Carmichael: Now, what will happen when Bloomberg gets into the mix for Super Tuesday? What happens with Klobuchar at that point?
McCabe: There is not a chance on God’s green earth that Michael Bloomberg becomes President of the United States or the nominee of the Democratic Party. He could spend a 200, 300, he could spend a billion. That Bloomberg tape talking about crime in New York City and how he deliberately sent his police into minority neighborhoods because young minority men are the crime problem in New York City. That is absolutely devastating. And that alone is enough to end his presidential aspirations. They’ll keep spending, but it’s not going anywhere.
Carmichael: I’m not trying to say that Bloomberg will be the nominee, but assuming that Bloomberg continues to spend billions of dollars through Super Tuesday, for purposes of discussion, let’s assume Biden drops out after South Carolina due to a poor showing. And we go into Super Tuesday and you have Sanders, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and now you have Bloomberg. What percentage of the vote does Bloomberg get on Super Tuesday?
McCabe: I don’t know, three percent.
Carmichael: That’s it?
McCabe: Five percent.
Carmichael: Do you think it will be that low?
McCabe: Bloomberg has zero traction. And it’s like it’s not a case of Bloomberg’s vote going anywhere. Bloomberg’s vote leaves with him. It’s him, his family and his friends and all the staffers that he fires.
Carmichael: OK. So then you’re down to Sanders, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar.
McCabe: Correct.
Carmichael: What happens with that group?
McCabe: Well, you know it all depends on how this is going to play out. Mayor Pete is raising a ton of money out of California. I don’t know if Klobuchar can raise that kind of money. I think what you’re going to see eventually is Mayor Pete versus Sanders. It would be interesting if Klobuchar can make a hard run for it.
But you know, remember, the so-called moderate wing of the Democratic Party still believes in not only a no regulations on abortion. They’re comfortable killing a child after it’s been born. I mean, these people want to seize guns. The only moderation is how they coax their left-wing ideology in moderate terms. So they may talk like other people, but they’re as hard left as anybody in Harvard Square or Madison, Wisconsin.
Carmichael: So what you’re saying is there is no moderate running for president as a Democrat now. They all want to act as authoritarians or let’s just call them tyrants. They would like to govern through edict.
McCabe: The real competition is in tone. Bernie Sanders has more of a revolutionary ethos to his campaign. And so people who want that sort of hard-left Bolshevik left-wing vibe, they’re going to go with Sanders. But there are some people who want to coax everything in moderate sweet terms but it’s exactly the same thing.
And what it’s going to boil down to is the agenda and the issues. There’s a lot of people who are personally uncomfortable with Donald Trump’s tone. Or the way he carries himself or his tweets. But they support him because they support him on the issues which is why Bloomberg could spend $100 million criticizing Trump and not move the needle at all.
Cunningham: The dynamics are amazing. Thanks so much for joining us this morning. It’s so great to have somebody on the ground with that perspective. I’m sure Michael will look forward to having you on again next week for an update. We sure appreciate it.
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“Moderate” Democrats are really Republican/conservative-lite.