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Last Night's Debate; "Endeavor" On Way to Final Home; Bill Clinton Stumps for Obama; Rave Reviews for Martha Raddatz Debate Moderating; Experience versus Youth in V.P. Debate
Aired October 12, 2012 - 11:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: -- CNN NEWSROOM continues right now with my friend, Ashleigh Banfield.
Take it away, Ash.
ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN HOST: Don Lemon, did you actually stay up late and watch the debate and then get up at like 2:00 in the morning and do that show you do?
LEMON: Three hours' sleep and it wasn't very restful because I kept saying I'm going to miss the alarm. So that's why I'm all crazy.
(CROSSTALK)
BANFIELD: You know something my friend? Three hours' sleep is a good night when you have two children under the age of 6.
(LAUGHTER)
LEMON: All right. You got me beat on that. Hey, have a great show and a great weekend. Good to talk to you.
BANFIELD: Will do. Come visit anytime.
Don Lemon, my friend, my colleague. Love you.
Hey, good to have you with us, everybody. Hi, I'm Ashleigh Banfield. It's 11 o'clock on the East Coast, 8:00 am on the west coast, good morning.
So here you go, no candidates -- no candidates in the vice presidential debate go in trying to look vice presidential, no. Joe Biden, who wants the title back and Paul Ryan who wants that title, period, both want to look very presidential instead.
Remember? It's a heartbeat away. The voters tend to think in those terms when it comes to V.P. nominees, but last night in the debate in Danville, Kentucky, Joe Biden had another challenge. He needed to get his base back on board after President Obama's demoralizing defeat in round one last week.
So from where Biden -- so Biden there, here we're (inaudible). You can see it, the smirks, the laughs, those one-liners. Those who like him say this was good. It was aggressive, it was commanding. Those who don't like him say this was rude and it was unhinged. And Paul Ryan, keeping his cool, punching back, he's out to prove that he is primed for the national stage.
CNN's Dana Bash looking now at all the highlights.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DANA BASH, CNN CONTRIBUTOR (voice-over): These were two men who both came ready to tangle.
JOE BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't know what world these guys are in.
REP. PAUL RYAN, GOP VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: (Inaudible) we have the --
BASH (voice-over): On taxes --
RYAN: You can cut tax rates by 20 percent and still preserve these important preferences for middle class taxpayers.
BIDEN: Not mathematically possible.
RYAN: It is mathematically possible.
BASH (voice-over): -- on Medicare --
BIDEN: If they allowed Medicare to bargain for the cost of drugs like Medicaid can, that would save $156 billion right off the bat.
RYAN: And it would deny seniors choices.
BIDEN: All --
BASH (voice-over): -- on the president's foreign policy.
RYAN: And when we look weak, our adversaries are much more willing to test us, they're more brazen in their attacks and our allies are less going to --
BIDEN: With all due respect that's a bunch of malarkey.
BASH (voice-over): The vice president appeared determined to make up for President Obama's mistakes last week, almost immediately launching the attack lines Obama never used in his debate.
BIDEN: But it shouldn't be surprising for a guy who says 47 percent of the American people are unwilling to take responsibility for their own lives.
My neighbors, they pay more effective tax than Governor Romney pays in his federal income tax.
BASH (voice-over): Before the debate, CNN was told Paul Ryan's team anticipated Biden being aggressive where the president was not, especially on Mitt Romney's infamous 47 percent remark.
RYAN: Romney is a good man.
BASH (voice-over): Ryan was ready with a well-practiced retort.
RYAN: With respect to that quote, I think the vice president very well knows that sometimes the words don't come out of your mouth the right way.
(LAUGHTER)
BIDEN: But I always say what I mean. And so does Romney.
BASH (voice-over): Biden's recovery plan for a demoralized Democratic base was not just in what he said, but what he did.
RYAN: In spite of their opposition.
BIDEN: Oh, God.
BASH (voice-over): The president was criticized for not interrupting. Biden jumped in constantly.
RYAN: As a result of this --
BIDEN: That's not what -- that didn't happen.
RYAN: -- what we're saying --
BIDEN: (Inaudible). Nobody is --
RYAN: Mr. Vice President?
BIDEN: (Inaudible).
BASH (voice-over): The president was slammed for nodding as Romney spoke.
Biden used the split screen to give a running commentary of disapproval with his facial expressions.
Ryan had a zinger ready for all that, too.
RYAN: I know you're under a lot of duress to make up for lost ground, but I think people would be better served if we don't keep interrupting each other.
BASH (voice-over): For 90 minutes voters saw two dramatically different visions, from the economy --
BIDEN: The last people who need help are 120,000 families for another -- another $500 billion tax cut over the next 10 years.
RYAN: Our entire premise of these tax reform plans is to grow the economy and create jobs.
BASH (voice-over): -- to national security threats, like a nuclear Iran.
RYAN: If they get nuclear weapons, other people in the neighborhood will pursue their nuclear weapons as well.
BIDEN: War should always be the absolute last resort.
BASH (voice-over): For the most part, it was a substantive debate between two longtime lawmakers who tried to disagree without being too disagreeable.
BIDEN: When my friend talks about --
BASH (voice-over): Biden avoided any trademark gaffes, but did provide a little levity.
BIDEN: This is a bunch of stuff, look, here's the deal --
MARTHA RADDATZ, ABC NEWS CHIEF FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, MODERATOR: What does that mean, a bunch of stuff?
BIDEN: Well, it means it's simply inaccurate.
RYAN: It's Irish.
BIDEN: It's Irish. It is. We Irish call it malarkey.
(CROSSTALK)
RADDATZ: (Inaudible). OK.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BANFIELD: All right. Dana joins us live now from Danville, a young woman who didn't sleep much last night, clearly.
So this was a spirited show, Dana Bash. It was definitely fun to watch, but did these two men achieve what they wanted to achieve and that is come out actually looking like they could be a heartbeat away from the presidency?
BASH: I think it's fair to say the answer to that is yes. The -- for the most part, both of them did what they told us that they wanted to do going in from the perspective of the Democrats, what Joe Biden's aides and especially those who were very close to the process have been preparing, say that he really needed to do was make up for the bad debate that the Obama campaign knows that the president had last week.
He did that and, most importantly, reenergizing the Democratic base. That was, you know, some would argue -- and Republicans are arguing forcefully that he did it too much, that he went overboard in his reaction in making sure not to nod like the president did.
On the Republican side, what they wanted to make sure was that Mitt -- excuse me, Paul Ryan could sit on the same stage in a legitimate way with the vice president. I think that there's no question he did that.
What the debate is -- the debate that is happening right now on the Twitterverse between the campaigns is what I just talked about, whether or not Joe Biden went too far. Republicans are saying he was rude, he was out of control; bet you're going to see something on "Saturday Night Live" this weekend. And Democrats are saying that was just Joe being Joe. He did what he had to do.
BANFIELD: I think you hit it right on the head. That is what's going to show up on SNL and remember last time around, SNL had a huge impact, particularly when it came to the vice presidential campaign.
All right. Dana Bash, thank you.
BASH: It did.
BANFIELD: My friend. I look forward to laughing with you on Saturday night.
So even before the debate was over, the party faithful, the pundits, the voters, all of them weighing in, just as Dana said. The Twitterverse was crazy.
But based on our CNN ORC poll that was taken right after the debate, this thing was pretty much a draw, folks -- 48 percent of registered voters who watched said that they thought Ryan won the showdown; 44 percent said that Biden came out the winner.
Yes, I know -- Ashleigh, the math says Biden won. But the key point here is this was a poll of only 381 registered voters; it was late at night -- are you going to call everybody in America at 11 o'clock at night Eastern? No.
But this is what happens. Slightly more Republicans than Democrats were actually in this sample. So they were taking part as well as more independents than either Democrats or Republicans, so you can mix that into the big baking dish.
And without debating who won or lost this thing, I want to get right to the issues that you have to weigh if you're going to go into that voting booth. You got to know how these guys feel about this, and whether they handled themselves right.
Let's start with Libya. Almost right out of the gate there was this heated exchange.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RYAN: This is becoming more troubling by the day. They first blamed the YouTube video. Now they're trying to blame the Romney-Ryan ticket for making this an issue.
RADDATZ: (Inaudible).
BIDEN: Well, we weren't told they wanted more security. We did not know they wanted more security again. (END VIDEO CLIP)
BANFIELD: So joining me now with their take on all of this, Ben Smith is the editor in chief of the content website "BuzzFeed."
And then to his right in San Francisco is CNN contributor and anchor of "Real News at the Blaze (sic)," Amy Holmes.
OK. Let me start with you, Ben, since you're sitting right beside me. That was a big issue. This has been a contentious debate. And the White House has been taking it on the chin over what happened in Libya.
And it seemed to some that either the vice president wasn't sure of his semantics when he said we didn't know they needed more security or it seemed to others he knew that the White House didn't have that information right away, but it's all about the optics.
How did they come off last night on this very critical foreign policy issue?
BEN SMITH, EDITOR IN CHIEF, "BUZZFEED": That struck me right there as Biden's worst moment, his only really bad moment for the debate, or because -- I mean, I don't know if Joe Biden personally knew about -- Barack Obama personally knew about requests from the embassy in Libya. But there had been a hearing the previous day, which it was very clear that the State Department knew.
So it is not really clear what Joe Biden was talking about there. You saw Paul Ryan kind of (inaudible), you know, and that was the one moment where it seemed to me --
(CROSSTALK)
SMITH: -- unclear in his statement by Biden.
BANFIELD: Yes, I think a lot of people were shocked.
Amy, was that something that jumped out at you? Or is it fair to jump all over this when in fact anybody who brings a gun to a building and starts killing innocent people can be called terrorist. It's whether it was an organized terroristic event and the semantics were perhaps lost in this very quick debate.
How do you feel about it?
AMY HOLMES, CONSERVATIVE INDEPENDENT: Well, I thought that Joe Biden was trying to push back on what has been a very difficult month on this issue for the administration, And as Ben pointed out, this has been covered thoroughly by your network about what the administration knew.
We've learned that, in fact, the state department knew in real time that there were not protests going on in front of the consulate in Benghazi and that the administration kept pushing the line about the video. But I want to get back to the debate and what we watched last night. And I got to tell you I have to congratulate our viewers for sitting through those 90 uncomfortable minutes of Joe Biden's antics. I couldn't believe what I was watching.
(CROSSTALK)
BANFIELD: Oh, my lord, Amy Holmes, were you watching the same show as I was? This was great TV. Heavens to Betsy.
HOLMES: My mother, my mother --
BANFIELD: -- kept me awake.
HOLMES: Ashleigh, my mother, who voted -- my mother, who voted for President Obama in 2008, felt that the vice president's behavior was so obnoxious, so condescending --
BANFIELD: OK. But let me --
HOLMES: We know that democracy isn't free; Joe Biden made us pay last night. It was oh, God, it just made my skin crawl.
BANFIELD: Let me ask specifically about that. And I only have about 30 seconds left for both of you, so I'm going to go for Ben first. You guys have to keep this tight.
Amy raised the issue of the obnoxiousness, that some people saw his laughing and his smirking, his eye rolling. What about the power of the body language? When people come out of this, do they really think through the issues that they heard them debate? Or do they feel overall what kind of character they saw?
SMITH: I mean, I think as Amy demonstrated, conservatives hated what Joe Biden did -- like Amy. Liberals loved it. Independents, and it's not totally clear; we don't have good enough samples. One thing that was really clear is Biden totally dominated the debate. It was Biden (inaudible).
BANFIELD: Last thought on that, Amy, but keep it tight, though.
HOLMES: You know, Biden, I don't think he was at a debate so much as a performance and it was a performance that was so unpleasant and so off-putting I'm looking forward to forgetting it and moving on to the next presidential debate.
BANFIELD: And away we go, four days away. All right.
Ben, Amy, thank you to both of you. It's nice to see you and I love the differing perspectives on this, because we were all watching the same TV screen.
So for those of you who missed last night's debate, it was really good. And don't listen to Amy, it was really good. Uncomfortable or not, it was great TV and you can see it in its entirety next hour right here on CNN; we start it off uninterrupted at noon Eastern. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: Their ideas are old and their ideas are bad and they eliminate the guarantee of Medicare.
RYAN: Here's the problem. They got caught with their hands in the cookie jar turning Medicare into a piggy bank for ObamaCare.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BANFIELD: Well, those are great sound bites, but how do we get to the truth in between those two comments?
Reforming Medicare has been on the Ryan-Romney agenda from the very start. And Paul Ryan stuck by his proposals at the debate last night. Only, he said, partially privatizing Medicare will not turn into a voucher program as the Democrats have been suggesting.
Joe Biden said that President Obama's plan would save billions of dollars and then extend the life of Medicare until 2024, but who's right and who's wrong and who is stretching things just a little further perhaps than they should?
Our Tom Foreman is here with a very quick fact check.
TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Ashleigh. As I'm sure you know, Medicare is the government health insurance program mostly for people over the age of 65. About 50 million Americans rely on this program and its financial future over the long term doesn't look so good.
The scary part is, though, that both campaigns say the other side's plans for dealing with that are just awful.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RYAN: ObamaCare takes $716 billion from Medicare to spend on ObamaCare.
BIDEN: All you seniors out there, have you been denied choices? Have you lost Medicare Advantage?
RYAN: Because they haven't put a credible solution on the table.
BIDEN: Their ideas are old and their ideas are bad and they eliminate the guarantee of Medicare.
FOREMAN: This is their essential claim, that my opponent will destroy Medicare, but is that really true? Let's take a look at some of the facts and consider it. I'll bring in some tools here and look at the White House plan to begin with. This is the landscape they're dealing with.
The cost of Medicare is going to generally increase over the next 10 years until it reaches about $1 trillion annually. They want to reduce that by about 10 percent. That's the orange part here. That's the part they're cutting out.
Now, their opponents look at that and say, that's real care for real people that you're getting rid of and you just can't do that, but the White House says hold on.
No, it's not; that's a reduction in the amount of money that we're paying to the administrative costs of hospitals and to insurance programs. In a word, they say that is waste. We can get rid of it and we should get rid of it. That's the White House take on things.
Now if you bring in the Ryan-Romney plan, you'll see the landscape is just the same, they have the same increase. They also want to reduce it by about 10 percent but they want to rely on the private sector, not government to get that done. In a word, they're going for vouchers. Now they don't like calling it vouchers, but that's really what it is.
Right now if you're on Medicare, what happens is the government pays Medicare, Medicare pays the hospital, the hospital takes care of you.
Under this plan, the government would pay you and you would decide if you wanted to buy into Medicare or into private insurance that will create competition between the two, in their theory, and that is how you get at that very same waste that the White House wants to get out.
These are two very complicated, huge programs. There are critics on both sides who say this plan won't work or that plan won't work or this plan will leave people stranded or that plan will leave people stranded, but the truth is it is complicated. It's hard to deal with all of that.
So if we go to this basic claim that both sides have raised here, that somehow this is all about destroying Medicare, that is simply false. That is a scare tactic, no matter which side is saying it.
So why are they saying it so much? All you have to do is look at the map and you know. Across the country, the Baby Boomers are getting older. They're becoming a bigger percentage of the voting population fast, all those dark states is where the percentage is highest.
And look at Florida down here, battleground state, more than 17 percent of the population there is over the age of 65. These are engaged voters. They are voters who show up when it's time to vote and they're very concerned about Medicare, even though both sides say neither plan is going to affect people over the age of 65 right now.
They're engaged on this issue and whichever side wins the Medicare debate will probably win a lot of senior votes.
BANFIELD: You know, when Tom Foreman speaks I just listen because he makes it all make such sense. And for those of you who missed what Tom was talking about -- the debate -- and you'd like to see it again, we aim to please.
We're going to replay the entire vice presidential debate at noon today, noon Eastern -- that's 9:00 am Pacific, so you won't miss a thing.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RYAN: You can cut tax rates by 20 percent and still preserve these important preferences for middle class taxpayers.
BIDEN: Not mathematically possible.
RYAN: It is mathematically possible; it has been done before. It's precisely what we're proposing.
BIDEN: It has never been done before.
RYAN: It's been done a couple of times.
BIDEN: It has never been done --
RYAN: (Inaudible) lower tax rates, increase growth. Ronald Reagan --
BIDEN: Oh, now you're Jack Kennedy?
RYAN: Ronald Reagan --
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BANFIELD: Now you're jack Kennedy? (Inaudible) 2012.
Hey, tax cuts and the auto bailout, those are two really big issues that got really heated between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan at last night's vice presidential debate, so I immediately thought the person I would have to call on this to fact check it would be Christine Romans. And she was available.
Thank you. So here's the deal. It just stands to reason that they both seem to say something with such -- like such confirmation in their voices, it's hard to say how this can be different.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: It's politics, my friend.
BANFIELD: Talk taxes, because I keep hearing this 20 percent across the board tax cut and then I hear the counterclaim, you can't pay for that. The math doesn't work.
ROMANS: You can't make the math work.
So look, we have looked --
(CROSSTALK)
BANFIELD: (Inaudible)?
ROMANS: -- into this and the tax policy center says you can't make the math work. So let me walk through the math for you.
Paul Ryan's claimed you can cut income tax rates by 20 percent across the board, keep middle class deductions intact, all the while keeping the deficit neutral.
The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center says, given the information available that we have about their plans it's just not possible to cut that tax as much as they'd like and not add to the deficit without eliminating deductions, by the way, that could hurt the middle class.
They say you can't do it without changing rules on capital gains and other investments income, things that the Romney campaign says it will not do.
BANFIELD: Well, they -- the Romney campaign absolutely will not go to capital gains and carried interest. That's like a cornucopia of money right there.
ROMANS: Yes, well, the middle class is also a cornucopia of money and they are very adamant that they're going to cut taxes for the middle class. The point here is that the campaign has said again and again that they are going to work with Congress to try to figure out the best way to do that and that's going to mean horse trading, right?
So we can't really tell you that you can -- deficit neutral and cut that much money. So our verdict is false; you can't cut taxes and keep middle class deductions. You can't cut taxes and keep lower rates on capital gains.
And I asked Mark Zandi from Moody's Analytics this morning. I said Mark, how can the Romney campaign make this promise come true? And this is what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARK ZANDI, ECONOMIST, MOODY'S ANALYTICS: The Romney campaign could adjust their plan. They could say OK, I'm not going lower the tax rates as much as I'm saying right now and they could make the arithmetic work, but under the current plan with the current numbers, no, it doesn't.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: So the Tax Policy Center and Mark Zandi, many, many others say it just doesn't work. The campaign continues to say no, no, we'll have ways of scaling back some deductions for wealthier Americans. We can make it work. There you go.
BANFIELD: Another day you and I are going to do a whole segment on carried interest and capital gains and how much money is actually saved by the very wealthy because of those very --
ROMANS: Because they're taxed at a lower rate than everyone else.
BANFIELD: And how big that pot -- a potential pot could actually be. Another day. Right now, though, one of the claims last night -- and we hear it quite often on the campaign trail -- is that Mitt Romney had said let Detroit go bankrupt. This is what Joe Biden said last night -- and you know what? Headlines, if you don't know this, on television, I'm going to tell you. Headlines are not written by the person who writes the article.
ROMANS: Right.
BANFIELD: Take it away, Christine.
ROMANS: OK. So let's listen first to the claim that Joe Biden made, that the president has also made many, many times, that Mitt Romney said let Detroit go bankrupt.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: We knew we had to act for the middle class. We immediately went out and rescued General Motors. We went ahead and made sure that we cut taxes for the middle class. And in addition to that, when that occurred, what did Romney do? Romney said no, let Detroit go bankrupt.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: So what did mitt Romney say? What did Mitt Romney write? On November 18th, 2008, Mitt Romney wrote an op-ed in "The New York Times" that was titled, "Let Detroit go Bankrupt."
BANFIELD: Headline. Headline.
ROMANS: The headline he had put on his op-ed was "The Way Forward for the Auto Industry." So the headline said "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt." He didn't use those words within the body of the piece.
This is what he wrote, among other things in this piece, "A managed bankruptcy may be the only path to the fundamental restructuring the industry needs. In a managed bankruptcy, the federal government would propel newly competitive and viable automakers rather than seal their fate with a bailout check."
The Obama administration ultimately implemented a managed bankruptcy of the automakers.
BANFIELD: They both had the same concept. Mitt Romney and president Obama had the same concept of a managed bankruptcy.
ROMANS: Different concepts. I mean, Mitt Romney did not want a bunch of government money going and taxpayer money going in and guaranteeing these automakers. He did -- but when you hear the words "let it go bankrupt," you think he wanted them out of business or gone. He has said repeatedly he did not want them. But he did not want the taxpayer involved the way they were.
So we have decided that this is misleading, this statement. The op-ed was titled "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" by "The New York Times." He had called it "The Way Forward for the Auto Industry." Romney wanted a managed bankruptcy overall and, ultimately, there was a managed bankruptcy.
Well, look, there are different views on how to fix the auto industry, but Mitt Romney did want to fix the auto industry, just not the way the Obama administration did it.
BANFIELD: Both of these sides had views about a managed bankruptcy; they had different perspectives, but don't believe the headline that was attributed to Mitt Romney.
ROMANS: Well, and the Obama administration's plan ultimately worked, by the way.
BANFIELD: I think you can make a fair argument, without question.
Christine Romans, thank you very much. Get some sleep tonight.
For those of you who missed it and you did get your sleep last night, you get to watch the debate because we're going to replay it. The entire vice presidential debate starts at noon Eastern time. That's 9:00 am on the pacific coast today. Don't miss it.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LEO MCCARTHY, CNN HERO: October 27, 2007, was a beautiful autumn day. Mariah was with her two friends. I didn't know the last time I kissed her would be my last time. Later that night, they were walking down this path when an under-aged drunk driver swerved off the road and hit them. Mariah landed here, and she died that night only a block away from my house. Mariah was only 14, and I'm thinking how did this happen? It is so preventable.
My name is Leo McCarthy. I give kids tools to stay away from drinking.
Our state has been notoriously the top five in drinking and driving fatalities in the country. The drinking culture is a cyclical disease that we allow to continue.
Mariah's challenge is be the first generation of you kids to not drink.
In the eulogy I said, if you stick with me for four years, don't use alcohol, don't use illicit drugs, I'll be there with a bunch of other people to give you money to go to a post-secondary school.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: I promise not to drink until I am 21.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: I promise not to get into a car with someone who has been drinking.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: I promise to give back to my community. MCCARTHY: I think Mariah's challenge is something that makes people think a little bit more to say we can be better. Mariah's forever gone, I can't get her back, but I can help other parents keep their kids safe. If we save one child, we save a generation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BANFIELD: I will never get tired of watching this, people. That is the shuttle "Endeavour" in the streets of L.A., and even though you can't tell, it really is inching along at a rapid rate of 2 miles an hour and it's on its way to the California Science Center. By the way, when it flew it used to fly at 17,000 miles an hour, so this is pretty awesome. But to me, this is awesome. We've seen it riding with a rocket booster on the back of a 747. Look at this picture. It will be pulled by a teeny-weenie Toyota Tundra. The idea of the difference between them. Adorable. The whole thing weighs over 292,000 pounds. The "Endeavour" alone weighs 150,000 pounds and that's a lot of carrying devices, et cetera. We looked this up. A standard Toyota Tundra has a maximum towing capacity of 10,000 pound, but when it pulls this spacecraft. It's 282,000 pounds over its capacity.
Our John Zarrella who gets everything science joins us from L.A.
Because you've had this fabulous assignment the whole journey. Tell me where we are in the journey and how we're doing today.
JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: OK, where we are, Ashleigh is we're parked and it's a tremendous opportunity for the people of Los Angeles and they're coming out with their kids and their families and getting to take pictures with the orbiter and what happened was they had to move from the airport before they got into L.A. rush hour traffic. They didn't want to be dealing with that so they moved it early this morning and it's only gone a mile and a half, two miles from this location here, and it's going sit here for nine hours before they actually move it again.
They're doing a little bit of reconfiguring of the transporter system, which is incredibly unique in and of itself and it's remote controlled and a guy literally walks in front of it moving these hundreds and hundreds of wheels under it so they can move it and turn it around different streets. They'll reconfigure it today. And they'll be taking down power lines before they head out and move again.
But the whole journey is going to be 12 miles over a course of 46 hours. So not until tomorrow night will they get to the California Science Center. The shuttle's wingspan is 75 feet wide and they've had to literally cut down 400 trees in order to make room for the vehicle along these streets.
Now, the California Science Center says it's going to replant two trees for every one they've had to cut down. And they've had to move power lines and streetlights and overhead signs, and you can see how incredibly tall. It's over 65, 70 feet high. And that's about there, sitting on top of the transporter.
But what an opportunity for the folks here in Los Angeles to just come up and get this close-up view of the vehicle that it's an incredibly rare opportunity -- Ashleigh?
BANFIELD: It's like a moving museum. I am glad you told me it stopped. I was watching it at 5:00 a.m. That it was slowly inching behind you. 9-hour stop and then it's moving again.
Zarrella, great assignment and great work. Thank you, John. Have a great weekend.
ZARRELLA: You got it. Bye.
BANFIELD: Folks, if you want to track what John sees, we've got it on our web site and you can track the progress of "Endeavour" all of the way down the streets of L.A. Just go to nasa.gov.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BANFIELD: I want to take you live to Indiana and Hoosierville. This is a rally Bill Clinton is taking part in today. It's actually for the Indiana Democrats and this is a get out the vote that President Clinton is taking part in. He's got a busy schedule he's ahead of because he's taking part in a lot of events for President Obama and Joe Biden. He's headed to Arizona on Wednesday and Iowa later in the week, as well. So today this is an effort at a high school. It's north central high school on Indianapolis' north side.
Let's listen in really quick.
BILL CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They started, as people enrolled, they started whittling down the profit margin because they realized that as soon as people could get the preventive services and people stayed healthier and the costs stayed down. You couldn't justify wasting the taxpayers' money on that kind of profit margin. So they got some new recommendations, which, as I said, the AARP endorsed. And we can cut this profit margin back down to $1.14 for every dollar you spend on regular Medicare. In fairness, the people that started it said it ought to be exactly the same because you should have your people healthier and less costly, so we're getting toward that, right? That's all they did and when you cut the profit margin down that much you've still got a lot of business in Indiana killed for a guaranteed, 14 percent profit every single day, every single month, every single year at a time.
(APPLAUSE)
CLINTON: Now that's all this deal is. But in everybody's budget before they assume the higher cost. Once you say you're not going to spend the $716 billion, it keeps Medicare alive until 2024. Now if you do that, then all these radical changes these guys are proposing and privatizing it become unnecessary because it gives us more than a decade to see whether we can bring health care costs overall down to the rate of inflation. If we do, we won't have to do those radical things because health care costs in the private sector have gone up way more than Medicare costs have.
What you have to do is bring health care costs down to the rate of inflation we're getting. And by the way, in the last two years health care costs have been under 4 percent two years in a row for the first time. And listen to this, 50 years. So --
(APPLAUSE)
CLINTON: --that's the deal. So the idea that Joe Donnelly was out there ripping off Medicare is not so. You ought to be glad that he said, we're not going to spend that money where it would be a waste of your money, and instead we're going to use it to close the doughnut hole in the drug program that will save $16 million for seniors, and to help provide affordable health insurance for more than $30 million Americans with pre-existing conditions who do not have it now.
(APPLAUSE)
BANFIELD: That's what you call -- oh, yea, campaign gold. You also call it TV ratings gold because when that dude was at the DNC, most people watched their TV sets for the news and for the DNC coverage than at any other time this year, it seemed. When he goes out on the trail, I'm sure those two nice gentlemen that I don't recognize from Indiana are really happy.
Let me talk more about what happened last night, though. Bill Clinton wasn't anywhere to be seen last night. This was the vice presidential debate. We want to know what you think about it because we actually tried to tap your thoughts very late last night. CNN did some late- night polling, calling you, hopefully, not waking you up, to ask you what you thought of the debate.
And CNN's political director, Mark Preston, is here to break down some of the answers we got.
We talked about how people felt about the debate overall and it was a win, lose or draw and that was a draw, but there were some statistical issues that we need to put out there in terms of our sampling. Can you give me the headline on that and go into deeper numbers?
MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Sure. This was a poll last night of 381 people who actually watched the debate and we got their sentiment whether they thought Paul Ryan had won or whether Joe Biden had won. In addition to that, this poll last night tended to be more Republican than what the polls are. America, as a whole tends, to be more identified Democrats. And last night's poll had an eight-point advantage over what the normal polls are when it comes to Republicans being sampled within the polling method. So I know that's all confusing, so let's just get right to the numbers because that's what people want to see and hear anyway, Ashleigh.
Who won the debate last night from these debate watchers? And it shows according to these numbers that Paul Ryan comes out on top, but it's still within the margin of error. And I have to tell you, I was with the advisers from the Romney-Ryan campaign and the Biden-Obama campaign down in Danville, Kentucky. Right after the debate, they both were declaring victory.
Moving on a little bit from that, what was the opinion of Joe Biden after this, Ashleigh? And the opinion is that Joe Biden has a plus- two net. Basically, he went up a little bit when it came to his favorability. And he also went up one point in his unfavorability. And if you put those numbers together, he came up plus two.
Look at Paul Ryan, someone that the American public don't know a whole lot about. His net was a plus five for Paul Ryan. Not only did his unfavorability go down, but his favorability went up. Look, the next debate is on Tuesday and that's what most people will be focusing on.
BANFIELD: We have four days to digest that, and two of those days are weekend days.
So, Paul -- or rather, Mark Preston, nice to see you. And we'll be talking to you on Tuesday when we have the next big one. Thank you, sir.
PRESTON: Thanks.
BANFIELD: By the way, folks, just a reminder, if you missed the showdown between Ryan and Biden, you're in luck. We'll let you watch uninterrupted. We're airing the whole debate at the top of the hour, 13 minutes away and make sure you stay tuned right here on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BANFIELD: If you didn't catch last night's grudge match between the Scranton Scrapper and the Wisconsin Whiz Kid, I guess we should have put up a spoiler alert at the top of the hour. About 15 minutes from now -- nine minutes give or take four minutes, we're going to re-air the whole one-on-one, the debate of the running mates. It starts in just a couple of minutes, Debate 2012. Hold on because you're going to see a lot more of this. Joe Biden, Democratic incumbent, versus the GOP challenger, Paul Ryan, start to finish as it happened, no interruptions.
But until then, I want to bring in the mainstay of the CNN debate coverage and our big-time political go-to guy in general, Wolf Blitzer.
Wolf, I'm going to start off "Brady Bunch"-style with three words -- Martha, Martha, Martha, Martha! I know it's Marcia, Marcia, Marcia, but Martha Raddatz was really quite something to watch.
I want to show a quick clip of her work and ask you something on the other side.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: This is a bunch of stuff. Look, here's the deal --
(CROSSTALK)
RADDATZ: What does that mean, a bunch of stuff? BIDEN: Well, it means it's simply inaccurate.
It's Irish. It is.
(LAUGHTER)
We Irish call it malarkey.
RADDATZ: Thanks for the translation.
(CROSSTALK)
RADDATZ: And you're going to increase --
(CROSSTALK)
RADDATZ: And you're going to increase the defense --
RYAN: We're not going to cut the defense budget. They're proposing --
(CROSSTALK)
BIDEN: By $2 billion.
(CROSSTALK)
BIDEN: More than that.
RADDATZ: So no massive --
RYAN: No, we're saying --
RADDATZ: -- defense increase.
RYAN: You want to get into defense now?
We want to work with the Congress on how best to achieve this. That means successful.
RADDATZ: But no specifics?
RYAN: What we're saying is lower tax rates 20 percent. Start with the wealthy. Work with Congress to do it --
(CROSSTALK)
RADDATZ: And you guarantee this math will add up?
RYAN: Absolutely.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BANFIELD: Wolf, at times, this looked like it was a three-way debate. And it was definitely different from last week's moderating from Jim. WOLF BLITZER, HOST, THE SITUATION ROOM: That's right. Jim Lehrer took a much more hands-off style. He let the two presidential candidates go at it in that particular debate. We knew Romney went at it. The president didn't go at it so much. I suspect that's going to be different.
In this debate, Martha Raddatz, of ABC News, she got involved, and she haves much more controlling, if you will, in terms of the questioning, making sure that both had relatively the same amount of time and allowing some significant back and forth, and then cutting it off when she wanted to move on. She was clearly in control much more involved than Jim Lehrer was. Jim Lehrer, on his credit, he didn't want to be part of the debate. It wanted the candidates to go at it. Martha had a different style.
BANFIELD: All right, Wolf. I'm going ask you a question. Get you to think about it over the next break. Some people have criticized Joe Biden as looking like a condescending dad reaming out his son, whereas others said, no, no, this looked like a pretty clever son, advising his aging dad as to how things have changed. When we come back after the break, I want to get your take on that and what it might mean for voters.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BANFIELD: OK. So I went to break asking you about the father-son dynamic?
BLITZER: I think -- obviously, Joe Biden is 69 years old. Paul Ryan is 42 years old. 27-year difference. But on all of these issues the two went at it, and I thought Paul Ryan -- he went toe to toe on national security foreign policy issues with the vice president, who has way more experience in all of these areas than Ryan did. But Ryan obviously has studied a lot, certainly over the last few weeks getting ready for this debate. He didn't fumble, and the vice president, there were no gaffs by Joe Biden during this debate. People can preen about some stylistic maneuvers and the hands and the smiles and the smirks and all that kind of stuff, but there were no major verbal gaffs or anything by either of these candidates. I think it was a pretty good substantive debate.
BANFIELD: OK. So now I want to jump to something that's sort of unusual. You don't often hear pundits discuss this part of the debate. It was the very end, the stuff you're not usually supposed to be watching. It was when the families came up on the stage. I don't know about you, but I felt like I saw a very different dynamic playing out. I saw, not in the picture you're looking at now, but Joe Biden was hugging Paul Ryan's wife. There you got, the mom. I just thought, well, there's a mom who is looking at him saying, you know, you just went after my son, and then all of the families mingled, wives with other candidates, hugs, kisses. And it just seemed I have to say rather lovely.
BLITZER: Yes, it was very, very nice. And I liked it a lot. I especially liked it when Ryan's little kids, little boy and little girl, they went and sat in their seats where their dad used to seat during the debate. It was a nice touchy-feely kind of moment. Yes, they had a good serious debate. They got testy at time. But afterwards, it was nice. I think that's important. Yes, we want serious debates in Washington but we want them to be civilized, politic, respectful, clearly, this one was.
(CROSSTALK)
BANFIELD: Wolf, it did not look fake at all. There's the vice president with Paul Ryan's wife chatting. They're smiling. It just looked very honest. And I just wish that we could say more -- like we could say more things like the way Washington D.C. works in general.
On to the next one, Wolf. You got a lot of work ahead of you for Tuesday. Thank you, sir. Nice to see you.
BLITZER: Thank you.
BANFIELD: Wolf Blitzer joining us. Always such a treat to be able to talk to Wolf Blitzer about these things.
OK. So I promised you this. If you didn't have a chance to stay up late -- look, we all have kids. We get tired. We have the unadulterated version, uninterrupted version of the great debate 2012. Yes, it's the vice presidential debate, but 70 million people watched it four years ago. Sarah Palin. It was great. There were issues. You saw character. You saw issues, and you saw a real debate take place. And Martha Raddatz, as my colleague, Soledad O'Brien, said, was masterful in how she moderated this thing.
So without further ado, have a look.
