GWEN IFILL: Looking to break out, 15 candidates fighting for one gig: we look at the
GOP debates tonight on Washington Week.
FORMER FLORIDA GOVERNOR JEB BUSH (R): (From video.)
No, the simple fact is, Donald,
you cannot take -
DONALD TRUMP: (From video.)
I didn't want to - yeah, OK, more energy tonight.
I like that.
CARLY FIORINA: (From video.)
It's not that politicians are bad people, it's that
they've been in that system forever.
FORMER ARKANSAS GOVERNOR MIKE HUCKABEE (R): (From video.)
I think we are, in fact, the
A-Team.
GWEN IFILL: It was hot, it was sweaty, and it was on.
The Republican candidates for president competing for the Reagan legacy.
OHIO GOVERNOR JOHN KASICH (R): (From video.)
By the way, I think I actually flew on
this plane with Ronald Reagan when I was a congressman, and his goals and mine really much
- pretty much the same.
GWEN IFILL: They fought for the right to challenge a Democratic nominee.
JEB BUSH: (From video.)
This administration, with President Obama and Hillary Clinton,
has created insecurity the likes of which we never would have imagined.
NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR CHRIS CHRISTIE (R): (From video.)
Let's ask Hillary Clinton.
She believes in the systematic murder of children in womb to preserve their body parts.
GWEN IFILL: The target in question fought right back.
FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON: (From video.)
This is just the usual
back-and-forth political attacks, the kinds of things you say when you're on a debate
stage and you really don't have much else to say.
GWEN IFILL: And they elbowed each other aside for the chance to knock Donald Trump out
of first place.
WISCONSIN GOVERNOR SCOTT WALKER (R): (From video.)
Mr. Trump, we
don't need an apprentice in the White House.
We don't need an apprentice in the
White House.
We have one right now.
GWEN IFILL: Did anyone win?
Covering this eventful week, Molly Ball, national political correspondent for The
Atlantic magazine; Eamon Javers, national political correspondent for CNBC; Manu Raju,
senior political correspondent for CNN; and Karen Tumulty, national political
correspondent for The Washington Post.
ANNOUNCER: Award-winning reporting and analysis.
Covering history as it happens.
From our nation's capital, this is Washington Week with Gwen Ifill.
Once again, from Washington, moderator Gwen Ifill.
GWEN IFILL: Good evening.
I would be the last one to tell you that this week's Republican debate has redefined the
course of the 2016 election.
In fact, if we have learned anything about this campaign so far, it is to expect the
unexpected.
But if you were watching this debate to learn something about who
these candidates are - and 23 million people did - you learned a lot.
Carly Fiorina came prepared to seize her first big moment on the debate stage.
CARLY FIORINA: (From video.)
I'll tell you why people are supporting outsiders.
It's because, you know what happens if someone's been in a system their whole life?
They don't know how broken the system is.
A fish swims in water; it doesn't know it's water.
It's not that politicians are bad people, it's that they've been in that system forever.
GWEN IFILL: Donald Trump proved, once again, that he is incapable
of apologizing to anyone.
JEB BUSH: (From video.)
To subject my wife into the middle of a raucous political
conversation was completely inappropriate, and I hope you apologize for that, Donald.
DONALD TRUMP: (From video.)
Well, I have to tell you, I hear phenomenal things.
I hear your wife is a lovely woman.
JEB BUSH: (From video.)
She is.
She's fantastic.
DONALD TRUMP: (From video.)
I don't know her, and this is a total mischaracterization
of what I said.
JEB BUSH: (From video.)
She is absolutely the love of my life and she's right here.
And why don't you apologize for her right now?
(Applause.)
DONALD TRUMP: (From video.)
Good.
No, I won't do that because I said nothing wrong.
GWEN IFILL: And Jeb Bush finally came prepared to answer questions about his brother.
JEB BUSH: (From video.)
You know what?
As it relates to my brother, there's one thing I know for sure: he kept us safe.
I don't know if you remember, Donald.
(Cheers, applause.)
Do you remember the
rubble?
Do you remember the firefighter with his arms around it?
He sent a clear signal that the United States would be strong and fight Islamic
terrorism, and he did keep us safe.
DONALD TRUMP: (From video.)
I don't know, you feel safe right now?
I don't feel so safe.
GWEN IFILL: Everyone arrived with a game plan.
Let's see who did what they came to do and what this means now, beginning with the
frontrunner, Molly, Mr. Trump.
Did he do - what did he come to do?
MOLLY BALL: Well, he came to stay on top, certainly.
And he came to put on another installment in this long-running Donald Trump show, that a
lot of people thought would be cancelled a lot sooner but it still hasn't been.
You know, I was surprised that - I thought Donald Trump was off of his - off his game at
the debate this week.
I thought he was a little bit tentative.
He got into some things that he couldn't get out of.
He sort of couldn't bluster through some of these questions.
Now, of course, he was the center of focus, the center of the stage, the center of a lot
of the attacks.
But, you know, Carly Fiorina took some shots at him that really landed, and he was
thrown off-balance.
And she really got under his skin in a way we haven't see anyone be able to do.
And I think that for someone whose persona is so much dependent on being sort of the
alpha male, when he gets set off-balance like that, it really shakes the whole edifice of
his persona.
GWEN IFILL: What do you think about that, Karen?
KAREN TUMULTY: Well, I think the other thing that happened was that there was a lot of
policy discussed, a lot of these candidates really digging down into some pretty
nitty-gritty questions of policy.
And when that is where the conversation was, suddenly Donald Trump was silent for very,
very long stretches.
GWEN IFILL: Let me - let me show you an example.
There was a moment where he was asked about a question - he was asked by the radio host
who was actually one of the questioners at the debate, Hugh Hewitt, about people who are
enemies to America, and he named names and asked Donald Trump if he knew the difference.
And this was Trump's reaction when he was asked about why he didn't seem to.
DONALD TRUMP: (From video.)
OK, so I will say this, though.
Hugh was giving me name after name - Arab name, Arab name, Arab - and there are few
people anywhere - anywhere - that would have known those names.
I think he was reading them off a sheet.
GWEN IFILL: OK, this is what Marco Rubio had to say right after that.
SENATOR MARCO RUBIO (R-FL): (From video.)
Well, you should ask him questions in detail
about the foreign policy issues our president will confront because you better be able to
lead our country on the first day - not six months from now, not a year from now.
On the first day in office, our president could very well confront a national security
crisis.
GWEN IFILL: Well, Manu, what about that?
Did he - that's a perfect case where he didn't quite have the comeback.
MANU RAJU: Yeah, that's right, and it really was a big moment there for Marco Rubio.
Of course, he one's of the youngest - he's the youngest candidate in this race.
He's a first-term senator.
And one of the big questions about him is whether or not he has the experience to run,
whether or not he can be commander in chief on day one.
And the way that he kind of put Donald Trump in his place helped resolve some of those
questions, and it showed a real contrast.
And it's something that Trump is going to have to grapple with, whether or not he can
actually pass the commander-in-chief test.
GWEN IFILL: I want you to - I want you to weigh in on this, but the other big moment,
of course, involved Carly Fiorina.
We all now know - know by now that he gave an interview to Rolling Stone in which he
said that, you know, who would elect that face?
And she was asked about this last night.
CARLY FIORINA: (From video.)
I think women all over this country heard very clearly
what Mr. Trump said.
(Cheers, applause.)
DONALD TRUMP: (From video.)
I think she's got a beautiful face, and I think she's a
beautiful woman.
EAMON JAVERS: The thing about that moment is that Donald Trump had to know that
question was coming.
He had to know that she was going to hit him hard on it, which
she did.
And he had to have planned a response.
And that was the response he planned, was to compliment her looks.
GWEN IFILL: Don't you think that in Donald Trump's world that women generally say: "Oh
that's great, Donald, thank you"?
I mean, he doesn't - I think he thinks calling a woman beautiful, even in a professional
situation, is a compliment.
EAMON JAVERS: I think you could tell by the look on his face as he made that comment
that he thought he was giving her one of the best compliments he could give her.
And it was clearly just a tone-deaf moment, one of a number of tone-deaf moments.
When you talk about that exchange with Marco Rubio, there was this fascinating moment
where Donald Trump was actually at the point where he had to promise that he would learn
the issues by the time he was elected.
And I've never heard a presidential candidate really ever make that admission, or make
that promise.
And so Donald Trump continues to break all the rules.
Whether that's going to have an impact on his standing in the polls - because his appeal
seems to be not based at all on his command of the issues, it's based on a whole bunch of
other things - we're going to have to wait and see.
KAREN TUMULTY: You know, it's interesting, though, that answer of hers.
I know women in America heard this.
The morning after the debate, Carly Fiorina was asked on MSNBC, on Morning Joe, you
know, how - why she did so well.
And she said: Because I stood there and I really listened and I paid attention.
And I think that listening is a real underrated and underused skill on the part of
politicians.
MOLLY BALL: And I think that's why her performance was so strong.
She wasn't just spouting talking points.
These weren't canned answers.
If you heard that answer, that burn she delivered to Trump, this was something where
Trump had just said to Jeb Bush, I don't care if you try to take it back, I heard what
you said.
And Carly Fiorina took that and turned it around on him.
She said: I don't care if you try to take it back, I heard what you said and the women
heard what you said.
So that was her sort of deftness in being able to incorporate
the things she was hearing.
MANU RAJU: And the real question for Carly now is whether or not she can turn this into
money - she's, of course, not been able to raise nearly the amount of money that a lot of
her rivals have been able to pull in - and whether or not she can start building that
organization in some of those key states early.
How much momentum will she get out
of this?
We'll just have to wait and see.
GWEN IFILL: Here's the other thing she did, which I don't think people notice as much,
which is she made a pretty bold foray for the conservative vote.
In talking about the Planned Parenthood controversy, she laid it right out there and she
had this to say.
CARLY FIORINA: (From video.)
I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, to watch these
tapes.
Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking,
while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.
This is about the character of our nation.
And if we will not stand up and force
President Obama to veto this bill, shame on us.
(Cheers, applause.)
GWEN IFILL: Now, here's what interesting about that.
Obviously it speaks right to the heart of people who think Planned Parenthood should be
shut down, that people in Washington are wusses for not doing it, and she is speaking to
not what's conventionally considered to be her crowd, and she's doing it very directly.
EAMON JAVERS: Well, the fascinating thing about that moment was -
GWEN IFILL: It should be said, by the way, the tape she's talking about was not
actually a Planned Parenthood tape.
It was some stock footage that was put on top of the footage.
EAMON JAVERS: Yeah, but you heard the quiver in her voice as she was delivering that,
and the anger and the steeliness behind that comment.
That's going to resonate well with a lot of Republican primary voters.
And that was one of a couple of emotional moments that she had, in addition to the
Donald Trump response.
And then she also had this moment where she brought up the death of a child due to drug
addiction, and it was a very powerful moment.
She kind of veered off of it a little bit after she put that out there and kind of
missed really landing the full emotional impact.
But she was very deft in bringing these emotional moments to the stage, where the other
candidates didn't seem to have that kind of range on display.
GWEN IFILL: Chris Christie tried to, talking about people who were trying to seize the
moment and came with a plan.
He tried to keep coming back to this question of it's not about us, it's about them.
And part of it was pushing back at Carly Fiorina and Donald Trump.
Let's listen to that.
CHRIS CHRISTIE: (From video.)
The fact is that we don't want
to hear about your careers, back and forth and volleying about back and forth about who
did well and who did poorly.
You're both successful people, congratulations.
You know who's not successful?
The middle class in this country who's getting
plowed over by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Let's start talking about those issues tonight and stop this childish back and forth
between the two of you.
(Applause.)
GWEN IFILL: Was this kind of a do-or-die might for Chris Christie, Molly?
MOLLY BALL: Absolutely.
I think his campaign is struggling.
You know, he's 10th or 11th in the field, depending on what polls you look at.
And, you know, his donors are getting antsy.
He's really got to prove he still belongs on that stage.
I thought Christie had a really interesting and successful strategy to, number one, sort
of emote in that way and show sympathy, empathy with the middle class -
GWEN IFILL: Remember me, the straight-talker over here?
MOLLY BALL: But to not do it in the angry way, not be the ranty Chris Christie, because
we all know the Chris Christie who chews people out on YouTube and, you know, that sort
of had created a bad image for him since Bridgegate.
So he wants to show the side of him that is compassionate, that is funny, that is lively
and emotional.
He sort of wears his heart on his sleeve, but that's not always in anger.
And so he had a few good moments, I thought, last night.
GWEN IFILL: Who else had a do-or-die night last night, Karen?
KAREN TUMULTY: Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin.
And he had a few sort of good lines in there that he managed to get in, but for most of
the evening he was pretty invisible.
And he, I think, of all the candidates on stage, could least afford that because his
decline from frontrunner in Iowa to practically an asterisk has been so precipitous.
MANU RAJU: Yeah, that - I mean, and Iowa's been his strategy.
He needs to do well
in Iowa.
That's been the goal of him all along, and he's seen that decline.
Talking to some of his donors and his supporters after the debate, a lot of people are
very nervous and think that it's time for a shakeup in his campaign in order to get
things straight because last night did not calm any of those nerves.
GWEN IFILL: Well, and the interesting thing about it is he - his people let it be known
in advance that he was going to come out - kind of like Jeb Bush's people did - he was
going to come out slugging.
He was going to come out and take on Donald Trump.
And he tried.
EAMON JAVERS: Yeah, but he didn't, really.
I mean, there was the one - GWEN IFILL: He didn't really land a punch.
EAMON JAVERS: There was the one line about the apprentice, you know, and that sort of
was one that kind of seemed like it had been pre-rehearsed and, you know, you use that
when you - when you get the opportunity.
MOLLY BALL: And it was wrong.
If you're going to come in with a canned joke, at least have it be accurate.
(Laughter.)
Donald Trump's not the apprentice, he's the master.
(Laughter.)
MANU RAJU: Yeah.
(Laughs.)
EAMON JAVERS: You know - you know what was fascinating to me was the range of views on
so many different subjects among these Republicans.
I mean, you had a lot of different candidates from a lot of different parts of the
Republican Party up there - from, you know, Rand Paul to Donald Trump, whichever part of
the Republican Party he represents.
And so on everything from Putin to marijuana to the Iran deal, you had a whole bunch of
different options for Republican voters to choose from there.
Should we be talking to Putin?
Should we be refusing to talk to Putin?
Should we be befriending Putin, or gritting our teeth and treating him like Mikhail
Gorbachev?
You know, there were a lot of options there for Republican voters to choose.
And where that all sorts out is going to be hard to tell because there were so many you
kind of get lost in the confusion.
GWEN IFILL: Well, and one of the options is the option the Democrats, to a certain
degree, are struggling with, too, which is do you want another Bush or another Clinton?
And that's the one that Rand Paul actually seized.
Let's listen to what he said.
SENATOR RAND PAUL (R-KY): (From video.)
There will always be a Bush or Clinton for you
if you want to go back to war in Iraq.
But the thing is, the first war was a mistake, and I'm not sending our sons and our
daughters back to Iraq.
GWEN IFILL: Well, you heard Donald Trump, I think, say that he wouldn't have supported
the war in Iraq.
KAREN TUMULTY: Ben Carson.
GWEN IFILL: Ben Carson say it, and you also had Rand Paul say it.
But you have other hawks in the party.
MANU RAJU: Yeah, you do.
And Rand Paul has sort of been struggling with being the libertarian that his dad was,
and also being acceptable to the establishment wing of the party.
And he's trying to figure out his way to navigate those two wings.
And I think last night you saw him try to go back to his more traditional roots and the
libertarian wing of the party and try to appeal to those same Ron Paul supporters,
because just like Scott Walker, Rand Paul has seen his decline - his standing erode
pretty dramatically in the polls and needed something to shake things up.
I'm just not sure if he did that.
KAREN TUMULTY: And especially when you have that moment - several moments where you saw
Jeb Bush coming to terms with his own last name during the debate.
As the clip you showed earlier about keeping the country safe, at one point he
acknowledges that he smoked marijuana in high school and says, oh, and my mother's really
unhappy with me for saying it.
MANU RAJU: Sorry, mom.
MOLLY BALL: Right, sorry mom.
(Laughter.)
GWEN IFILL: And he tweeted out: sorry mom.
Always good to remind people that Barbara Bush is your mother, I guess.
(Laughter.)
MOLLY BALL: By the way, that was another thing for those of us who were following
social media during the debate.
He's standing there, and yet tweeting at the same time, and was.
(Laughter.)
EAMON JAVERS: Multitasking.
MANU RAJU: He might not have been the guy tweeting.
MOLLY BALL: Right.
KAREN TUMULTY: In the meantime, I got some notification of
him joining some other social - Vine.
He joined Vine during the debate.
(Laughter.)
GWEN IFILL: He did.
You know who the biggest winner was on social media during the
debate?
Bernie Sanders, whose Facebook posting completely trashing the Republicans
completely outstripped anything the Republicans posted, or their doppelgangers.
MANU RAJU: The other one was the hashtag of the hot guy sitting behind the moderator.
(Laughter.)
The anonymous guy in the background got a lot of attention on Twitter.
That guy's a celebrity.
EAMON JAVERS: He may join the Republican field, yeah.
MANU RAJU: I think he got an agent the next day.
He's off to the races.
GWEN IFILL: It's possible, because it was a long night.
Three hours, you got to look at something.
(Laughter.)
OK, so let's talk about John Kasich, and other people who were hoping that this would be
a big moment.
John Kasich is the, if you don't like Bush I'm the not exactly - I'm the
middle-of-the-road guy.
I'm the guy who will just say that maybe a government
shutdown's a bad idea.
Let's listen.
JOHN KASICH: (From video.)
All we're going to do is shut the government down, and then
we're going to open up - open it up and the American people are going to shake their
heads and say, what's the story with these Republicans?
I would not be for shutting for the government down because I don't think it's going to
work out.
GWEN IFILL: So that's what - but if you're a Ted Cruz, however - who of course was
standing on that stage - that's exactly what we should be doing, pushing back, shutting
the government down.
EAMON JAVERS: Yeah, I mean, I thought with Kaisch, it was
interesting.
Sort of a little bit of a man out of time.
I mean, I remember covering him when he was on Capitol Hill in the '90s.
He was referring, you know, flying the Reagan plane in the '80s, things he did in the
'90s.
I'm not sure how many Republican primary voters even remember that he was a
factor in the '80s and '90s.
He might have been a little bit out of step in that way.
KAREN TUMULTY: You know, I think the median age of the Republican primary voter is such
that they probably do.
(Laughter.)
EAMON JAVERS: Maybe they do.
MANU RAJU: Maybe they do, yeah.
KAREN TUMULTY: They may remember, ironically, that he did shut the government down in
the '90s.
He was Newt Gingrich's chief lieutenants.
Now he thinks that's a bad idea, a little bit of an evolution there.
You know, I think Kasich is making that bid to be the establishment alternative to Jeb.
He does have a lot of buzz in, like, the sort of donor circles -
GWEN IFILL: And in New Hampshire.
KAREN TUMULTY: - and in New Hampshire.
But you know, people thought he had a good debate last time too.
He barely budged in the national polls, so.
MANU RAJU: And, you know, getting back to that moment, that was a very big moment for
Ted Cruz because he - nothing more that he wants than a battle over Planned Parenthood.
And, you know, he will say that if there's a government shutdown it'll be the Democrats'
fault, but he'll also blame the Republicans in Washington for not fighting hard enough on
Planned Parenthood, people like John Kasich for not fighting hard enough.
It's a clear way to distinguish himself from his rivals, but also showcase that he's the
one actually fighting for the conservative cause.
EAMON JAVERS: It's a classic moment in politics when you see a sitting United States
senator who is a member of the Republican Party blaming the Washington Republicans for
all kinds of failures.
And I'm thinking, aren't you a Washington Republican?
GWEN IFILL: Oh, that.
Well, that was Marco's Rubio's defense about not
showing up to vote: Washington doesn't get anything done anyway, so
I'm a sitting United States senator, why vote?
KAREN TUMULTY: And speaking of outsiders, the person whose numbers I'm going to be
really interested in watch over the next few weeks is Ben Carson, who really had a very
good first debate.
He comes off as a different kind of presence - sort of a gentle presence on that stage.
GWEN IFILL: But he leaned away from the opportunity of questioning Donald Trump on his
anti-vaccination stand.
As a physician, you would have expected him to be able to say directly: I don't know
that that's a good idea.
But he kind of danced all the way around it.
KAREN TUMULTY: He started out going after it, but then by the end he was saying, oh,
yeah, you're right - because Donald Trump said with my kids I space out the vaccines and
I don't follow the regular schedule.
GWEN IFILL: Or someone did it for him, I think, is the way he phrased it.
(Laughs.)
KAREN TUMULTY: Right.
But I think, you know, if in fact Carly Fiorina does rise in
the polls, I think, as a lot of people expect her to, I'll be interested in seeing
whose numbers she's taking.
And there's a good chance it's going to be Ben Carson.
GWEN IFILL: Really?
Because even though - in part because of that passionate
answer on Planned Parenthood and issues things like that?
KAREN TUMULTY: And it's also the outsider space.
GWEN IFILL: She also mentioned that she's a cancer survivor and she mentioned that she
lost a child to drug abuse.
She also managed to humanize herself at the same time when she was talking them on,
things I didn't know about her, which is interesting.
So if you're a Democrat and you're watching this debate last night, if you're Hillary
Clinton or Bernie Sanders or Martin O'Malley - who's desperate for more debates - what do
you take away from this?
Who do you see as your biggest threat?
EAMON JAVERS: I think if you're Joe Biden and you're watching this you think, I can get
in there and I can beat those guys.
GWEN IFILL: I can take these guys?
EAMON JAVERS: Yeah.
I think - I think, you know, if you're Joe Biden and you look
at that.
He's got a lot of experience in debates, you know, over the years.
GWEN IFILL: But isn't that the same thing as Republicans saying I will beat Hillary
before they can get actually past their own field?
EAMON JAVERS: Well, sure.
And all of this is ego, right?
All these candidates are enormous egomaniacs.
You have to be in order to put yourself forward for the presidency of the United States,
just to have that confidence in yourself.
So I think the question is, how much is it going to disrupt the Democratic field as
Democratic voters watch the Republicans winnowing out a very large field and they look at
their field and they say, well, we only have a couple of choices here?
How does that impact it?
We already saw Hillary Clinton come out the next day and say she'd be at least open to
some more debates.
You know, the question is whether that field is still -
GWEN IFILL: She said it.
That's not what the DNC is saying.
(Laughter.)
EAMON JAVERS: Right, right, right.
And she put it on the DNC and said the
Democratic National Committee is making that decision.
GWEN IFILL: I'm sure they didn't talk about that at all.
EAMON JAVERS: Right, she has no influence, I'm sure.
MANU RAJU: But I was here - you know, getting back to your question - when I was here
talking with Democrats the next morning after the debate, the feeling was that Rubio
could potentially present the greatest threat because he's very polished on the debate
stage.
He, if he were to face Hillary Clinton, accentuates all of the differences,
all her vulnerabilities.
And his performances in the last two debates
give some of them - make them somewhat worried.
GWEN IFILL: He managed to elude the immigration issue by dividing it into people who
come here legally, people who come here illegally, and people who need to be - whether
people will be returned.
He kind of made it into - he kind of made it into bite-sized chunks.
What do you think about what the Democrats are looking at and worrying about?
KAREN TUMULTY: Well, don't forget the context, too, of this is signs that Hillary
Clinton is still - she's still got a big lead in this primary, but she is slipping
dramatically and, in our poll this week, slipping dramatically among women.
GWEN IFILL: That really struck me.
That was interesting.
KAREN TUMULTY: So - Democratic women.
GWEN IFILL: Who are going where?
KAREN TUMULTY: Actually, both Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, who's not even in the race,
have moved - and we're talking over an eight-week period - each of them have moved into
the low 20s against her.
GWEN IFILL: Which argues Eamon's point, I think, about Joe Biden.
EAMON JAVERS: At some point - if you're not even running and you're polling in the 20s,
at some point it becomes a campaign.
MANU RAJU: Especially when you wanted to be president your whole life, you know?
(Laughs.)
EAMON JAVERS: Right.
He's been - he's been campaigning since 1984, right?
So he -
MOLLY BALL: Well, all this chaos on the Republican side is a life raft for the
Democrats, who are pretty worried.
And they're not sure quite how worried they should be, but they look at what's happening
to Hillary.
She has not been this unfavorably rated since - she was not this disliked through the
entirety of the 2008 campaign.
Her ratings now are worse than they've been since she's had her own sort of standalone
political career.
She's really in bad shape.
She hasn't been able to turn things around.
She's still having trouble answering questions, when she's answering questions.
GWEN IFILL: And so they take some glee into looking at these Republicans and saying,
hey, maybe there's a little avenue for -
MOLLY BALL: The number one argument you hear from them is, well, it's not that bad.
(Laughter.)
Maybe they'll beat themselves.
GWEN IFILL: That's what the Republicans are saying about the Democrats, too.
(Laughs.)
Thank you, everybody.
We have to go for now.
But, as always, the conversation will continue online on the Washington Week Webcast
Extra where, among other things, we'll talk a little more about the undercard debate and
about one Democrat's push to add more debates to their schedule.
You can find it all week long at PBS.org/WashingtonWeek.
And while you're online, check out our new voter initiative, 16 for 2016, where we
invite you to comment on the 2016 presidential race.
Send us your photos or upload a video to join the conversation about the election.
And Monday night, join me in South Carolina where I'll host a PBS town hall meeting,
America After Charleston, where we'll tackle the lingering national wounds about race,
policing, and how we see each other.
That's at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time on your PBS station.
Keep up with developments with Judy Woodruff and me on the PBS NewsHour, and we'll see
you here next week on Washington Week.
Good night.
