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American Morning

Democrats Debate

Aired October 09, 2003 - 09:37   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's turn now to presidential politics. With the first primary just around the corner, the nine remaining Democratic candidates will face off on the stage tonight in Arizona.
Senior analyst Jeff Greenfield is live for us in Phoenix with a preview of the debate today.

Jeff, good morning. Nice to have you.

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST: Good morning, Soledad.

O'BRIEN: So give me a prediction -- is it going to be all Wesley Clark now that the gloves are off, not that he has been in the race for a while and can't sort of claim, well, I'm so new, that no one should really ask me any specifics about my platform yet, do you think?

GREENFIELD: Well, I do think that Wesley Clark is not going to get the pass he got a couple of weeks ago in New York. At that point, he was brand new to the race. The other candidates trained most of the fire on former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, who was surging in the polls and in fund-raising.

What I do expect today is that there will be either cryptic or frontal questions about Wesley Clark's bonafides as a Democrat, the fact that he gave that now well-known speech to a Republican dinner in May of 2001 in Little Rock, where he showered praise on President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, something tells me that will come up. But I also suspect that Howard Dean will still be in the crosshairs. Former -- rather Congressman Gephardt and Senator John Kerry, both are mortally threatened by Dean's rise.

Gephardt in Iowa, Kerry in New Hampshire, Dean raised $15 million the last quarter. So I think that you will see both Clark and Dean as the subjects of pointed remarks from their opponents.

O'BRIEN: If you were going to be a panelist tonight, what questions and what areas do you think all of the conditions need to be pushed, or more answers need to be forthcoming?

GREENFIELD: Well, of course, Soledad, as a former "National Lampoon" writer, my dream question would always be, get a pencil and answer this one: a train leaves New York going west at 80 miles an hour, another train going east Chicago at 60, when do they meet, how much should the Amtrak subsidy be? But since I'm a more responsible older citizen now, that's not the kind of question I will ask. I don't like got you questions, you know, name the agriculture minister of Great Britain, and I don't like questions that let candidates play the tapes that have been embedded in their brains by their advisers, you know, how would you pay for Medicare?

The questions that, to me, are most revealing are the ones in which a candidate kind of has to think about something in a fresh way. Because what you want to know is not just what they know, but what their demeanor is. Are they expansive, defensive? Are they comfortable with complex issues? Do they retreat to the soundbites of their advisers.

I think they're going to get, clearly, questions about some issues like Medicare and Social Security that's been on the table. Half of this debate is questions from citizens, and so I think there will be local questions, that is, questions of relevance to Arizona, whether it's water rights, illegal immigration or trade with Mexico. A lot of these candidates are very dicey about NAFTA. Here in Arizona, there are a hot of jobs that have depended on that. There are also jobs that have fled to Mexico. You're going to get a real mix. It's going to be a pretty free-wheeling 90 minutes.

O'BRIEN: Let's take a minute and talk about Senator John Edwards. After his announcement, his campaign has not really found the traction that I know he was looking for. What do you think is going to happen with him tonight? And do you think if it doesn't go well tonight, he is going to have to drop out of the race?

GREENFIELD: I think that's awfully early. I mean, you know, we in the media tend to increase the pace of everything. And it is kind of weird to say that anybody has to drop out of a race when nobody's even cast a single vote and won't be until January. I ink you've got two candidates in particular, Senator Edwards and Senator Lieberman, whose early expectations have been, let's say, disappointed, and I think in both of those cases, this debate is a chance for the stake out who they are and why the Democratic voters ought to pay more attention to them than they have. For both of them, I think, this debate becomes a pretty significant event.

O'BRIEN: Jeff Greenfield, we'll see you a little bit later tonight because, of course as we need to note, the only place to see the Democrats debate from phoenix is here on CNN. Our exclusive coverage begins tonight at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com






Aired October 9, 2003 - 09:37   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's turn now to presidential politics. With the first primary just around the corner, the nine remaining Democratic candidates will face off on the stage tonight in Arizona.
Senior analyst Jeff Greenfield is live for us in Phoenix with a preview of the debate today.

Jeff, good morning. Nice to have you.

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST: Good morning, Soledad.

O'BRIEN: So give me a prediction -- is it going to be all Wesley Clark now that the gloves are off, not that he has been in the race for a while and can't sort of claim, well, I'm so new, that no one should really ask me any specifics about my platform yet, do you think?

GREENFIELD: Well, I do think that Wesley Clark is not going to get the pass he got a couple of weeks ago in New York. At that point, he was brand new to the race. The other candidates trained most of the fire on former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, who was surging in the polls and in fund-raising.

What I do expect today is that there will be either cryptic or frontal questions about Wesley Clark's bonafides as a Democrat, the fact that he gave that now well-known speech to a Republican dinner in May of 2001 in Little Rock, where he showered praise on President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, something tells me that will come up. But I also suspect that Howard Dean will still be in the crosshairs. Former -- rather Congressman Gephardt and Senator John Kerry, both are mortally threatened by Dean's rise.

Gephardt in Iowa, Kerry in New Hampshire, Dean raised $15 million the last quarter. So I think that you will see both Clark and Dean as the subjects of pointed remarks from their opponents.

O'BRIEN: If you were going to be a panelist tonight, what questions and what areas do you think all of the conditions need to be pushed, or more answers need to be forthcoming?

GREENFIELD: Well, of course, Soledad, as a former "National Lampoon" writer, my dream question would always be, get a pencil and answer this one: a train leaves New York going west at 80 miles an hour, another train going east Chicago at 60, when do they meet, how much should the Amtrak subsidy be? But since I'm a more responsible older citizen now, that's not the kind of question I will ask. I don't like got you questions, you know, name the agriculture minister of Great Britain, and I don't like questions that let candidates play the tapes that have been embedded in their brains by their advisers, you know, how would you pay for Medicare?

The questions that, to me, are most revealing are the ones in which a candidate kind of has to think about something in a fresh way. Because what you want to know is not just what they know, but what their demeanor is. Are they expansive, defensive? Are they comfortable with complex issues? Do they retreat to the soundbites of their advisers.

I think they're going to get, clearly, questions about some issues like Medicare and Social Security that's been on the table. Half of this debate is questions from citizens, and so I think there will be local questions, that is, questions of relevance to Arizona, whether it's water rights, illegal immigration or trade with Mexico. A lot of these candidates are very dicey about NAFTA. Here in Arizona, there are a hot of jobs that have depended on that. There are also jobs that have fled to Mexico. You're going to get a real mix. It's going to be a pretty free-wheeling 90 minutes.

O'BRIEN: Let's take a minute and talk about Senator John Edwards. After his announcement, his campaign has not really found the traction that I know he was looking for. What do you think is going to happen with him tonight? And do you think if it doesn't go well tonight, he is going to have to drop out of the race?

GREENFIELD: I think that's awfully early. I mean, you know, we in the media tend to increase the pace of everything. And it is kind of weird to say that anybody has to drop out of a race when nobody's even cast a single vote and won't be until January. I ink you've got two candidates in particular, Senator Edwards and Senator Lieberman, whose early expectations have been, let's say, disappointed, and I think in both of those cases, this debate is a chance for the stake out who they are and why the Democratic voters ought to pay more attention to them than they have. For both of them, I think, this debate becomes a pretty significant event.

O'BRIEN: Jeff Greenfield, we'll see you a little bit later tonight because, of course as we need to note, the only place to see the Democrats debate from phoenix is here on CNN. Our exclusive coverage begins tonight at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com