rachel quester OK, so we are walking. michael barbaro We are walking into the Stan Spirou Field House in Manchester, a.k.a., the Bernie Sanders primary night rally spot. And there are a lot of people lined up outside, despite the fact that it is very cold and snowy on the ground. So we’re expecting a very large crowd. The crowd is counting down. crowd 10, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one! [CHEERING] michael barbaro This crowd is loving these numbers. Bernie Sanders absolutely in the lead. crowd (CHANTING) Bernie, Bernie, Bernie, Bernie, Bernie, Bernie! [cheering] michael barbaro Something’s happening! crowd (CHANTING) Bernie, Bernie, Bernie, Bernie, Bernie, Bernie, Bernie, Bernie, Bernie. michael barbaro Bernie is taking the stage right now. He seems very triumphant. archived recording (bernie sanders) Thank you, New Hampshire! Thank you, New Hampshire.

michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.” Today: Bernie Sanders wins the New Hampshire primary, with Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar following close behind him in second and third place, and Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden coming in a distant fourth and fifth place. Alex Burns on what that means for the rest of the race. It’s Wednesday, February 12. OK, Alex, I’m pleased to be sitting with you, albeit at 12:15 a.m., because we actually have election results to discuss this time.

alex burns

It’s sort of a novel experience, right, for the 2020 campaign? They just count the votes, and the person who got the most votes is the guy who won.

michael barbaro

And they count them on the same night —

alex burns

Right.

michael barbaro

— as the election.

alex burns

Right.

michael barbaro

So I want to start at the top of the results.

archived recording (bernie sanders) Let me take this opportunity —

michael barbaro

Bernie Sanders.

archived recording (bernie sanders) To thank the people of New Hampshire for a great victory tonight.

michael barbaro

On the one hand, that’s the expected result and it has been for months, right? And New Hampshire went for Sanders overwhelmingly in 2016 over Hillary Clinton. So how should we be thinking about the significance of this result tonight?

alex burns

Look, there’s no question that this is an important milestone for the Bernie Sanders campaign.

archived recording (bernie sanders) Let me say tonight that this victory here is the beginning of the end for Donald Trump.

alex burns

It re-establishes him clearly as the leader of the left wing of the Democratic Party, which was not sure to be the case at this point in the race. But you saw Elizabeth Warren really recede as a competitor and Bernie Sanders consolidate his support in a way that positions him pretty well for the next couple rounds of this thing. At the same time, you saw him come out on top with about 26 percent of the vote.

michael barbaro

Mm-hm.

alex burns

Four years ago, he won 60 percent of the vote here. Now, there are many, many more candidates running this time, so it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. But I do think that when you look at the results in both Iowa and New Hampshire, you see a majority of the Democratic electorate leaning towards those more moderate candidates and Bernie Sanders prevailing mainly because there are more moderates than there are progressives.

michael barbaro

Right, because one way of thinking about what happened tonight is that Bernie Sanders got around a quarter of the vote, 25 percent, and he won. But another way of thinking about it is that if you add up all the more moderate candidates’ vote tonight, they collectively got something like 70 percent of the vote.

alex burns

Right. Now, of course for Bernie Sanders’s purposes, winning is winning, right?

michael barbaro

Right.

alex burns

But, what that tells you is that as this race advances, if you end up with fewer and fewer moderate candidates, it could become harder and harder for Bernie Sanders to keep winning states.

michael barbaro

Right, because those votes would likely coalesce around one moderate.

alex burns

One or maybe two moderates, compared to the three, four, five moderate options we have had in the race up to this point. Sanders is going to need at some point to broaden his coalition within the Democratic Party. And delegate math is a boring and arcane subject.

michael barbaro

Says who?

alex burns

Well, I think that between friends, we can say that it’s an arcane subject. But the way the Democrats hand out delegates, which are ultimately the point system that determine who gets to be the nominee, is really proportional to the share of the vote you get. So it’s not like winning by 1 percentage point or 1.5 percentage point over Pete Buttigieg means you get all the delegates and he gets zero.

michael barbaro

Mm-hm. In other words, these kind of victories — 26 percent of the vote — means functionally you get something like 26 percent of the delegates. It doesn’t mean you’re collecting just a giant boatload in a state like New Hampshire or Iowa, for that matter.

alex burns

Right. There’s certainly a value in bragging rights and in momentum —

michael barbaro

Of winning.

alex burns

— and fundraising, for just winning. But in terms of winning delegates to claim the nomination, a larger share of the vote matters almost as much as just actually winning.

michael barbaro

Well, so when it comes to that question — to momentum — what does this mean for Sanders?

alex burns

There is now an 11-day sprint for the candidates until the next contest in Nevada. And what Bernie Sanders now has is an opportunity to try to broaden his support. And to try to go out and get some of those progressives who had been voting for Elizabeth Warren, or some more working-class voters who had been voting for Joe Biden and pull them into his camp, and make himself more formidable as not just a really strong candidate, but as a front-runner. To take control of this race and to do it before one of those moderate alternatives catches up with him.

michael barbaro

Right. Time here is of the essence for Sanders.

alex burns

Right.

crowd (CHANTING) All the way. Granite State, what do you say? Mayor Pete all the way. Granite State, what do you say? Mayor Pete all the way.

michael barbaro

So let’s talk about who is currently leading that moderate pack, Pete Buttigieg —

speaker And I don’t think you can beat what Pete’s talking about. He may not win tonight, but number two, that keeps him going. And that’s all we’re looking for.

michael barbaro

— who came in second tonight, just behind Sanders.

alex burns

Buttigieg came into this state with a whole lot of momentum coming out of Iowa. And just looking at his events, at his crowds over the last week in New Hampshire, you could see a lot of support moving away from Joe Biden and into the Mayor Pete camp. And, but for a couple moments in that debate last Friday, he might have won this state outright.

archived recording (pete buttigieg) In this election season, we have been told by some that you must either be for a revolution or you are for the status quo. But where does that leave the rest of us? Most Americans don’t see where they fit in that polarized vision. And we can’t defeat the most divisive president in modern American history by tearing down anybody who doesn’t agree with us 100 percent of the time.

alex burns

You really saw him take a beating on the debate stage for the first time from every direction.

archived recording (linsey davis) Senator Warren, is that a substantial answer from Mayor Buttigieg? archived recording (elizabeth warren) No.

alex burns

Literally every other candidate on stage went after Mayor Pete.

archived recording (joe biden) Mayor Buttigieg is a great guy and a real patriot. He’s a mayor of a small city who has done some good things, but has not demonstrated he has the ability to — and we’ll soon find out — to get a broad scope of support across the spectrum, including African-Americans and Latinos.

alex burns

And the one who probably went after him to the greatest effect was Amy Klobuchar.

archived recording (amy klobuchar) We have a newcomer in the White House, and look where it got us. I think having some experience is a good thing.

alex burns

Another moderate from the Midwest, who went out there and made a very, very blunt case that he’s just not qualified to be president.

archived recording (amy klobuchar) It is much harder to lead and much harder to take those difficult positions. Because I think this going after every single thing that people do, because it’s popular to say and makes you look like a cool newcomer — I just, I don’t think that’s what people want right now.

michael barbaro

And you think that was effective, or it just did enough to hurt him here?

alex burns

Well, when you look at how Amy Klobuchar finished in New Hampshire — I don’t want to jump the gun here — but she did pick up an enormous amount of momentum at the end. I think you do have to consider the strong possibility that a bunch of moderate voters who ended up with her after that debate would otherwise have been with Pete.

michael barbaro

So it may have been Klobuchar and her gain here that cost Buttigieg a victory here.

alex burns

I think that’s pretty likely.

michael barbaro

Mm-hm.

alex burns

I also think that she has really benefited from the decline of Elizabeth Warren. That there are a lot of voters out there who feel very strongly that they’d like to see a woman elected president, and particularly they’d like to see a woman go up against Donald Trump. And that was a big dynamic fueling Elizabeth Warren’s rise, and I don’t think that that demand has gone away. And part of what you saw here in New Hampshire was a lot of more moderate and older women — who may have been drawn to Warren but were concerned about whether or not she could win the general election — suddenly see this other alternative pop up, who is a woman, and a moderate, and from the Midwest, and has a much blunter electability argument in her arsenal.

michael barbaro

And what exactly is that argument?

alex burns

The argument is that she has won three statewide elections in Minnesota, which is on the verge of being a swing state.

michael barbaro

Hm.

archived recording (amy klobuchar) I’m the only one up on this stage, you can check it out, that has consistently won in red congressional districts. Not once, not twice but three times.

alex burns

And she likes to tick off — and she’s very, very happy to do it — the list of the numbers of counties that voted for Donald Trump in 2016 that she then carried when she ran for re-election in 2018. It’s a little bit of an oversimplified case, because she had a pretty weak opponent in 2018. It’s not like it was this battle of the titans thing that she somehow miraculously survived. But for voters, I think especially outside the Midwest, this notion that you’re from the part of the country that Democrats lost last time is really appealing. I think it’s also appealing to people when they hear Pete Buttigieg talking about his identity as a Midwesterner.

michael barbaro

You’re saying it should not be seen as a coincidence that two of the top three candidates here are Midwestern moderate Democrats.

alex burns

No, absolutely not.

michael barbaro

We’ll be right back.

archived recording (elizabeth warren) So the results are still coming in from across the state, but right now it is clear that Senator Sanders and Mayor Buttigieg had strong nights.

michael barbaro

OK. Fourth up, Elizabeth Warren.

archived recording (elizabeth warren) And I also want to congratulate my friend and colleague Amy Klobuchar for showing just how wrong the pundits can be when they count a woman out.

michael barbaro

You said that Klobuchar benefited from her decline, but help us understand Warren’s decline. She got 9 percent of the vote tonight, which was really pretty underwhelming.

alex burns

So I think part of why Elizabeth Warren became such a strong candidate for a long period of time in this race was that she managed to get out from under Bernie Sanders’s shadow. Because she got out there and defined herself so clearly in the eyes of Democrat voters as a daring leader, her own person, someone with big thoughts and big plans, she managed to appeal to a set of voters who weren’t accessible to Bernie Sanders in 2016, may not be accessible to him today, liberal women who voted for Hillary Clinton, and other people who are pretty progressive but not far left enough to feel comfortable going the full Bernie Sanders.

michael barbaro

Mm-hm.

alex burns

And she, for a while, was able to straddle these worlds and look like she was somebody who could bring together these disparate parts of the Democratic coalition. And then she was forced in the early fall to really choose a side over this question of “Medicare for all.”

archived recording (elizabeth warren) So yes, I’m with Bernie on Medicare for All. And let me tell you why. I spent a big chunk of my life studying why families go broke. And one of the number one reasons is the cost of health care, medical bills.

alex burns

And her decision was to align herself far more closely with Bernie Sanders.

archived recording (elizabeth warren) That leaves families with rising premiums, rising co-pays, and fighting with insurance companies to try to get the health care that their doctors say that they and their children need. Medicare for All solves that problem.

alex burns

That made it much tougher for her to continue being this unifying figure within the party. I do think Elizabeth Warren is still, for a lot of Democrat voters, a compelling enough personality and thinker and communicator that she may be tougher to push out of this race than someone like, say, Bernie Sanders would like her to be. But it’s really hard sitting here tonight to draw the path back to front-runner status for her.

michael barbaro

Mm-hm. Alex, what do you take away from what we’ve seen with Warren? What lesson is there when it comes to understanding the Democratic electorate in this race?

alex burns

I think you see a really low tolerance for anything that they perceive as risk. I think you see the Democratic voters are in a really unforgiving mood when it comes to candidates who they see as making a mistake of any kind, because they want a nominee who’s a sure thing for the general election. I think you have consistently seen and heard from voters anxiety about the implications of nominating a woman, even as there is still a lot of excitement about that idea. And I think you’ve seen the difficulty that candidates have had really up until the last week or so at carving out a durable space for themselves in a race where you have had, on the one hand, Bernie Sanders as this really tenacious leader on the left, and Joe Biden as, until recently, a pretty dominant figure on the political center.

michael barbaro

When you say low tolerance for risk, I guess I’m not understanding that. What makes them a risk?

alex burns

Well, in the eyes of voters, the notion that somebody could make a big misstep in a debate is anathema to Democrats at this point. The idea that somebody could fumble a big policy question when the hot lights are on, I think, is a hard thing for Democratic voters to process. And I think that you do see pretty conventional assessments of people’s electability kick in as we get closer to primaries. So coming from Massachusetts, not as appealing to somebody who’s thinking about electability as coming from Minnesota.

michael barbaro

Mm-hm.

alex burns

Somebody who maybe fits demographically a voter’s idea of what a president looks like may be an easier sell than somebody who would be a historic candidate.

michael barbaro

Well, I wonder if this low tolerance for risk, if that’s also a way of understanding what happened to Joe Biden.

tom kaplan This is Tom Kaplan, and I’m at Joe Biden’s election night party in Nashua. This is a pretty strange party in that Joe Biden isn’t going to be here. He already left the state to go to South Carolina. He’s supposed to address the party via livestream. It’s fair to say the room here, it’s not exactly buzzing with excitement. There’s probably not going to be much to celebrate tonight if you’re a Biden supporter. archived recording (joe biden) We are in a battle for the soul of the nation. Now Jill and I are moving on to Nevada, and South Carolina and beyond, beyond. And we want you all to know how much we appreciate everything you’ve done. Look, we’re going to be back. We’re going to be back in New Hampshire. We’re going to be back there to defeat Donald Trump in November. Elect Jeanne the next senator again. And up and down the ticket. So don’t go away. You’re not getting rid of us. We’re coming back, and we love you. We’re going on and we’re going to win in Nevada and in South Carolina. Thank you.

michael barbaro

And I almost can’t believe we’re talking about the electability candidate, the guy whose ads declared him to be the one person who could beat Donald Trump, coming in fifth place here.

alex burns

It’s really staggering and such an abrupt decline for Biden in this race. I think for months you heard this from voters over and over again. They were willing to give Joe Biden a pass on a lot of stuff that they would not have tolerated from other candidates, because they did perceive him as the electability candidate. That if all they cared about was beating Donald Trump, then the fact that he wasn’t so impressive in debates and his message wasn’t so clear didn’t really matter all that much to them. Except to the voters who saw him the most up close, the people in Iowa and New Hampshire. And when you saw him come in fourth in Iowa, it set off just a devastating chain reaction in New Hampshire. That this was a guy who voters had already been suppressing a lot of anxieties about — because they thought he could win — suddenly losing and losing pretty badly in the first state. And what has happened here, just over the last eight days, is just a rushing of the air out of the balloon. His support has just scattered to other candidates, probably mostly Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar.

michael barbaro

It felt like Biden knew this was coming, right? He left New Hampshire today for South Carolina, didn’t even stay for the results. I think he did some streaming video to a crowd here in Manchester. Is there a version of this, where the story that Joe Biden has been putting forward —

archived recording (joe biden) This is the long race. I took a hit in Iowa, and I’ll probably take a hit here. Traditionally, Bernie won by 20 points last time, and usually it’s the neighboring senators that do well.

michael barbaro

— that these first two states do not represent his greatest strength and his possibility — that that’s accurate?

alex burns

Absolutely. I don’t think we can sit here right now and say Joe Biden is totally finished. I think we can say that he’s entering by far the most difficult stretch of his campaign.

michael barbaro

Mm-hm.

alex burns

There are already signs that Biden’s support among black voters may be more vulnerable than he hopes that it will be. But we’re going to find out soon enough that he staked his claim pretty clearly on the idea that now the rest of the country — states that look like the country as a whole, Nevada and South Carolina — are going to have their say. And because he has put so much moral weight on those states, it would be very, very difficult, probably impossible, for him to shrug off another loss.

michael barbaro

OK, so you have brought us at long last to Mike Bloomberg. Help us understand how he fits into all this, particularly in light of what happened to Joe Biden today.

alex burns

Well, when Bloomberg got into the race in November, what his advisers said was that he wasn’t convinced that Joe Biden could make it out of the early states. And that he wanted to essentially be waiting in March if Biden took a dive before then, and you ended up either with Bernie Sanders emerging from February as a front-runner, or just a jumbled split decision among the other candidates running.

michael barbaro

How do you like that prediction?

alex burns

Well, I think Mike Bloomberg likes that prediction quite a bit right now. That if the idea for Bloomberg was Biden had to fall for him to rise, at least half of that has happened now.

michael barbaro

And so, help me understand what their vision of this race is. He’s not been on the ballot these first two states. Joe Biden is, as their prediction required, stumbling. So what needs to happen for the Bloomberg candidacy to take off?

alex burns

The Bloomberg theory of the case is that as moderates at the national level shift away from Joe Biden, and as people who don’t live in these small rural states tune in to his television ads —

archived recording Mike Bloomberg started as a middle-class kid who had to work his way through college, then built a business from a single room to a global entity, creating tens of thousands of good paying jobs along the way.

alex burns

— check out his campaign appearances, that they will start to see him as the safe option in the race.

michael barbaro

The electable guy.

alex burns

The electable guy.

archived recording Because there’s an America waiting to be rebuilt, where everyone without health insurance is guaranteed to get it, and everyone who likes theirs can go ahead and keep it.

alex burns

And there is some sign that that’s already happening. There’s at least some polling to suggest that a good number of moderate voters and a good number of black voters are shifting, at least somewhat, in Bloomberg’s direction.

michael barbaro

Hm.

matt stevens This is Matt Stevens. I’m here at Andrew Yang’s campaign party on primary night here in New Hampshire.

michael barbaro

So finally we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the two candidates who dropped out tonight.

matt stevens Mr. Yang is going to announce that he’s dropping out of the race for president when he comes and gives his speech here sometime shortly after 8:00. archived recording (andrew yang) Hello, New Hampshire, how are you?

alex burns

Well, we lost Andrew Yang and we lost Michael Bennet, the senator from Colorado.

archived recording (andrew yang) Though thousands of voters came out for our campaign tonight, tonight is not the outcome we fought so hard to achieve. And while there is great work left to be done, you know I am the math guy, and it is clear tonight from the numbers that we are not going to win this race. I am not someone who wants to accept donations and support in a race that we will not win. And so tonight, I am announcing I am suspending my campaign for president. archived recording We still love you, Andrew! [APPLAUSE AND CHEERING] archived recording (andrew yang) Thank you. Thank you so much. archived recording (CHANTING) Andrew Yang, Andrew Yang, Andrew Yang! gene bishop Hi, my name is Gene Bishop. I live in Ashland, New Hampshire. I’m 81 years old. And I’ve been a political junkie my whole life. And I never, ever, before Andrew came along, I never contributed to a candidate. I never worked for a candidate. But I saw him in March of 2018, 2019. And the first time I saw him, I knew he was something special. Very, very different. And I had to do what I could to help him be successful. So I just can’t believe that it’s over. matt stevens Are you upset? Are you — gene bishop Yeah, very upset. Probably just as — I’m being very selfish, because he’s probably very upset, too. It’s something that probably he never want wanted to do, but it just hurts. matt stevens You think you’d ever get this connected to a candidate, where you’d feel this strongly when he drops out? gene bishop Never, no never. He was a big part of my life.

alex burns

I do think that when you look at the Andrew Yang experience, he is somebody who comes out of this race as a political player in a way that he was not at all two years ago. That he has a following. And when you talk to Democratic voters, even voters who like most people supported other candidates, there is an interest in him. And almost a certain affection for him, that he was often the most lighthearted character in a debate. And people liked the way he talked about the economy. And the question is, if he does want to stay in politics, what does he do with that?

michael barbaro

Right, he seems to have “cabinet member” written all over him. If he wants it.

alex burns

If he wants it.

michael barbaro

What do we think happens to the Yang Gang? Where do they go?

alex burns

We don’t really know. Because he’s one of these candidates, and it’s a genre of candidate that crops up from time to time, who seems to draw on a constituency that isn’t really partisan, It isn’t ideological, in the sense that we think of it. They’re drawn to a candidate’s personality and world view and just the way they talk about things.

michael barbaro

I think of Ross Perot.

alex burns

Yeah, I think that’s a pretty good comparison in a lot of ways. And do they go to another candidate? If it’s anybody, it might be Bernie Sanders, because he does have this following of younger, disaffected liberal men that overlaps, at least somewhat, with the people supporting a Yang. But a lot of them also may just sit out the rest of the primaries, because they may have been drawn uniquely to Andrew Yang.

michael barbaro

Mm-hm. So it’s now a little after 1:00 a.m. on Wednesday morning. We had this absolute mess of a situation in Iowa. We have a quite real result in New Hampshire. What is Alex Burns thinking, beyond all the many thoughts that you have already shared with us?

alex burns

We are still in a really, really muddled race. I think last week we talked about how five candidates in Iowa cracked double digits, and nobody got more than about a quarter of the vote. Well, this time three candidates cracked double digits, and their vote shares were a little bit higher. But you still don’t have anybody here running away with the New Hampshire primary the way we saw both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump do in 2016. So there are still a bunch of people in this race who have a great chance to make their case, a couple of people who have a less great chance to make their case, and then Michael Bloomberg sitting out on the horizon. And I think the next three weeks are going to be some of the most unpredictable and fluid that certainly I’ve seen in presidential politics.

michael barbaro

Thank you, Alex.

alex burns

Thank you.

michael barbaro