| [Note: a previous version of this article wrongly transcribed Luis's comment about 6 to 7,000 aid workers as 67,000 aid workers. This has been corrected below.]
So on Friday evening at YearlyKos, Joel from the Biden campaign called me and asked if I'd like to talk to Biden's campaign manager, Luis Navarro.
So we sat down the next day and had a chat. I'm not sure if we covered new ground, but we did get a good defense of Biden's positions and a window into his campaign strategy. Some notes:
1) Momentum candidacy premise. The key idea here. Despite a weak Republican field, Luis believes that this is similar to 1984 and 2004, where candidates came to the fore based on issues and electability. He sees Biden well positioned there.
2) The campaign continues to give small knocks to Richardson, which may be a smart move. The media likes only one third wheel, and Biden's main goal has to be to get in Richardson's position by the primary. He doesn't have to be the winner -- he just has to place #3. Biden is also well positioned to take away Richardson's "resume" voters -- if he can get his record out there.
3) Drug war stance is seen as evolving, and bankruptcy stance is distinguished from predatory lending stance.
But really, read on...
On his New Hampshire Primary experience and the earned media strategy of the Biden campaign:
My first experience in New Hampshire was knocking on doors for Gary Hart...In 2000 I went up to New Hampshire for Al Gore and coordinated the Labor activities in Manchester for Gore for the New Hampshire Primary...
For me the difference in regard to the role I play in the process is versus a statewide contest for Senator or Governor -- this is the only process in which you start in one geographical location, and then have a succession of elections. Obviously in a race for statewide office...it's all over in the same day. And I think that's a difficult thing for some folks to get a handle on. There are people in later states who will say "Well, you're not running the campaign necessary to win because you're not running the same kind of campaign we ran for US Senate, we ran for Governor", but the truth of the matter is I think we've seen in '84, '88 and certainly in 2004 that earned media has a much more decisive impact on a front-loaded nominating process than paid media does.
On Iraq (and whether Richardson has a coherent view of policy there):
[When voters look what threshold a candidate has to meet to be president] we believe that threshold is visualizing that person as Commander in Chief. And if you think that they are tough enough, savvy enough to be commander in chief, do they have a coherent world view that validates that persona. And then the third element of it is, what is it that they are specifically saying and how much sense does that make.
The issues we have, for example, with Governor Richardson -- this argument that we withdraw all forces in toto -- leaving aside whether you believe that genocide could potentially come out of that, what about the 6 to 7,000 diplomatic aid workers, missionaries; you have no way to protect them, so what you're really saying then is that your going to withdraw all Americans and have no contact with Iraq, and I'm not sure that makes any more sense than not having diplomatic realtions with folks that we don't agree with.
Again, it's all part of this element of "How coherent is your world view?" and how does that relate to the policies.
On the evolution of Biden's views on the Drug War:
He readily owns up to the fact he introduced legislation that set higher penalities for crack than for cocaine. He has now introduced legislation that would make that a 1 to 1 ratio...He [also] wants tot change the perspective to how we approach drugs, less from a criminal justice standpoint, and more from a medical treatment standpoint.
ME: Is there a possibly a bit of an evolution on his viewpoint on this issue?
LUIS: Absolutely. And I think the evolution has come about as facts have come to the fore.
On the Bankruptcy Bill, and how it's predatory lending that's the real issue:
LUIS: There are protections within the bankruptcy bill that was passed so that specifically homes were immune from being taken out due to the changes in bankruptcy legislation.
Where you have seen a coming together of the loss of homes in the context of bankruptcy has been more a funtion of predatory lending than it has been a function of the state of bankruptcy. In other words, we haven't seen people losing their homes as a function of being bankrupt; they are losing their homes as a function of predatory lending, and it just happens that more people that end up in bankruptcy lose their homes as a function of predatory lending.
ME: So does Biden have a firm stand against predatory lending?
LUIS: Absolutely. He has a long record of trying to crack down on predatory lending. So I think that's where the distinction is here.
ME: Are there any provisions in the bankruptcy bill that Biden would have rather seen modified?
LUIS: He would have liked to have seen medical bills included in the elements of protection...
On Polls:
If you use 4 years ago as an example, the thee leaders at this stage of the game were Howard Dean, Dick Gephardt, and Joe Lieberman. None of whom went on to be the nominee. SO right now we're in a period where we may see bumps on our part because we did well in the debate, you may see bumps with RIchardson as a result of the fact he had some humorous commercials, but I think none of this is decisive at this juncture.
On the Biden campaign's "momentum candidacy premise":
So long as the sequential order [of the primaries] is the same, we feel confident that our premise, which is a momentum candidacy premise, will remain intact. If we finish in the top three in Iowa, we will become competitive with whoever is ahead of us because we will have come the furthest in terms of beating expectations. And that earned media will play a much more decisve role at that time than whatever money has been spent up until that point.
What campaign is this campaign reminiscent of? What's the prototype?
I'd say it's a hybrid of Gary Hart in 1984 and John Kerry in 1993...Candidates that people underestimate because of these initial measures around money and name recognition who come to the fore largely because their positioning on issues resonates with voters. In the case of Gary Hart, it was the sense that he had ideas that had validity relative to the rest of the field. In the case of Kerry it was folks thought he was more viable arguably in a general election than the others.
There's actually a lot more in the interview about the crime bill, violence against women, retail politics, Iraq policy. Luis also says the coherent core of Biden's belief is "responibility". Now that's a frame the Republicans have used to do some very awful things, so I cringed. But it's a powerful frame, and whether Biden gets the nomination or not, I wonder if we as Democrats should be looking at coopting that frame, which has given us 18 years of Republican presidents since 1980.
Apologies for the sound quality of the MP3, we couldn't find anywhere in the McCormick place atrium away from the noise of the infernal fountains. I used a noise filter plugin to remove the roaring sound, and it did a wonderful job taking the roar away and making the conversation audible, but the audio came out slightly wobbly.
Download MP3 |
