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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Sanders Beat Clinton in Michigan; Donald Trump Wins Big in Three States; Still Voting in Hawaii Republican Caucuses. Aired 1:30- 2a ET

Aired March 09, 2016 - 01:30   ET

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

[01:30:39] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Welcome to a special morning after Super Tuesday sequel edition of EARLY START. I'm John Berman.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Christine Romans. Nice to see you all bright and early this morning or late last night. It's Wednesday, March 9th, we want to welcome all of you viewers here in the U.S. and around the world.

BERMAN: All right. The breaking news this morning, a flat-out shocker in the Democratic race. Bernie Sanders pretty much out of nowhere beat Hillary Clinton in the Michigan primary. Hillary Clinton did win Mississippi by a really big margin, and yes, she did win the most delegates tonight. But the Bernie Sanders' win in Michigan was, in a word, huge. This is what Bernie Sanders had to say about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Is that the Bernie Sanders campaign, the people's -- the revolution. People's revolution that we are talking about. The political revolution that we are talking about is strong in every part of the country and frankly we believe that our strongest areas are yet to happen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right. Now the Democratic delegate count as it stands right now this morning, let's throw it up there. Hillary Clinton at 1,234, Bernie Sanders at 567. That does include super delegates. But even if you take out the super delegates, Hillary Clinton has a more than 200-delegate lead and she built on that tonight. She actually did win more delegates.

ROMANS: Speaking of building, let's go to the Republicans and Donald Trump. It was his night. Trump sweeping to victory in the Michigan and Mississippi primaries. Dominating the Republican field in those two major races.

There was also a primary in Idaho won by Ted Cruz. Caucuses in Hawaii. We're waiting for details any moment. From Hawaii. Trump, though, at his victory news conference taking aim at his opponents' attack ads, what he called $38 million worth of horrible lies.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think what this shows really more than anything else, is that advertising is not as important. It really isn't as important as competence because there has never been more money spent on hitting somebody than was spent on me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: All right. The Republican delegate count now, you can see Trump clearly in the lead, 447 delegates, Cruz coming in second with 346. Rubio 154. John Kasich on the board with 53.

Now a very disappointing night for Rubio, finishing dead last in Michigan with less than 10 percent of the vote. Could this be the death nail for his campaign? Can he hang on to compete next week in his home state of Florida? Incredibly important now.

MJ Lee, CNN Politics and Money reporter joins us with more on the winners and losers and what it all means going forward. A stunner in Michigan. Donald Trump basically gets his mojo back. An incredible night.

MJ LEE, CNN POLITICS REPORTER: Yes. That's right. A huge upset on the Democratic side. We were not expecting Sanders to win in Michigan. I think the Clinton folks were not expecting this. The Sanders' folks were not expecting this, either. And you see the results here with 97 percent of the votes counted. Sanders at 50 percent and Clinton at 48.1 percent. So still a close race, but the fact that Sanders even won is a very big victory for him. One, again, that they were not expecting. And it goes to show that Hillary Clinton, who has been hoping to just really focus on the general election, she's not able to quite put away the nomination quite yet.

BERMAN: Not at all. No. I mean, it shows Bernie Sanders can compete in areas that aren't connected to Vermont, you know, non-border states. It shows that Bernie Sanders can compete in states that have an African-American population. It changes a little bit of the game, even though Hillary Clinton absolutely did win more delegates tonight because she had that colossal win in Mississippi.

LEE: That's right.

BERMAN: MJ, talk about the Republicans tonight because, you know, Michigan and Mississippi, two states not close to each other.

LEE: Right.

BERMAN: Donald Trump won both of them by a lot.

LEE: And showing that he really can win across, you know, regional lines and, you know, win different kinds of people, right? Folks in Mississippi, traditional sort of southern state. And then in Michigan, where he really, you know, sought to win over blue-collar working class Republicans. And Cruz, of course, pulling off his seventh win in Idaho. And we are waiting for results still to come in, in the Hawaii Republican caucuses. And for Kasich and Rubio so far, they have had zero victories tonight.

[01:35:05] And this is a particularly disappointing night for Marco Rubio, and it cements, you know, basically what we have known for a while, the results of tonight, that Donald Trump is clearly the Republican frontrunner.

And for Ted Cruz, I think going forward and starting tomorrow, he continues to make the case that he's clearly the only Republican in the field who had a shot at taking on Donald Trump.

ROMANS: MJ, stick with us.

We're going to bring in Josh Rogin, CNN political analyst and columnist for the Bloomberg View.

Welcome this morning. What a night. What a shocker in Michigan. Just looking at how much money they spent in Michigan. Bernie Sanders outspent Hillary Clinton in Michigan. She really focused on this new attack about the auto bailout. Did it not work?

JOSH ROGIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, apparently not. I mean, what we saw here is that Bernie Sanders and John Kasich spent a lot of time and energy in Michigan. They spent a lot of time on the ground. It seems to have paid off. It's hard to tell exactly how the different policy arguments affected the votes.

ROMANS: Right.

ROGIN: But the bottom line is that exit polls showed that Hillary Clinton did very poorly again with young voters. She did very poorly again with voters who made their decision early. She did very poorly with independents. So what we see is that the trends that are haunting the Clinton campaign continue to haunt them. And as they look towards the election, they have to also note that she's struggling in all the purple states. Michigan, a very purple state. Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada.

So even if Bernie Sanders' late stand can't really change the basic trajectory of the race, which is that Hillary Clinton is still on path to secure the nomination, this spells all sorts of trouble in the general election no matter who she's going to go up against.

BERMAN: Obviously Bernie Sanders is very happy about what happened tonight. And MJ, as you said, not just a little bit surprised. I think they were very surprised. Listen to what Bernie Sanders had to say about what this means.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SANDERS: What the American people are saying is they are tired of a corrupt campaign finance system and super PACs funded by Wall Street and the billionaire class. They are tired of a rigged economy in which people in Michigan, people in Illinois, people in Ohio are working longer hours for low wages, worried to death about the future of their kids. Yet almost all new income and wealth has gone to the top 1 percent, and the people of America are tired of a broken criminal justice system, in which we have more people in jail, largely African-American, Latino, Native American, more people in jail than any other major country on earth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: He's been singing that theme song and he has been hitting it over and over and over again.

BERMAN: Yes. You know, and he made the point of saying, looking ahead to Ohio, I mean, the Michigan victory tonight is big for him. Next week you have Ohio and Illinois, guys, where I think they feel now more confident that they can compete there.

Look, Hillary Clinton did win more delegates tonight but had she won both states I think people would be saying about Bernie Sanders, you know, it may be over. Now it's not over. Now he's going forward.

ROGIN: Right. I think what you're seeing here is that Bernie Sanders has always done better with white voters than Hillary Clinton. That showed today, as he heads into the rest of the rustbelt states, the Midwest states. That favors him. That means she still has to focus on him. It doesn't mean that she can go negative on him. So that's Hillary Clinton's balancing act, is that she's got to continue to appeal to Bernie's voters to woo them -- when the general election comes, but at the same time she can't seem to assume that she's going to run away with this thing. She still has to talk to their issues. She hasn't quite hit that tone yet.

ROMANS: You heard that sound from him. He has been singing that theme song again and again and again, going to the heart of what some of these voters are talking about. Hillary Clinton is talking about most recent debates to talk about the export-import ban. She talks about in more nuanced -- policy nuanced tones about how to fix things. He goes straight for the heart. Has that been what's helping him?

LEE: Yes. I mean, if you look at the exit polling from tonight in Michigan, it's very interesting. For the folks who thought that international trade takes away from American jobs, Sanders won 56 percent of those voters, whereas Clinton won 43 percent. And then among voters who are very worried about the U.S. economy, Sanders again outperforms against Clinton 56 percent to 40 percent.

So you can clearly tell from these numbers that Sanders' populist message is clearly resonating in a state like Michigan and John, as you said, when the Sanders camp is looking ahead now to the contests in Ohio, they're clearly going to think, well, this is a message that clearly worked for us in a state like Michigan. Let's keep moving ahead in a state like Ohio.

BERMAN: I want to shift to the Republicans right now because they are counting votes in one state. The Hawaii Republican caucuses have wrapped up. They are literally now counting. This is our very first look at the raw, and I mean, very raw numbers. You can see Donald Trump with an 81-vote lead. But that could change in a heartbeat.

We do have on the phone with us right now the chairman of the Hawaii Republican Party, Fritz Rohlfing.

[01:40:06] Fritz, thank you so much for being with us. Hopefully you can hear us OK. Talk to me about turnout. How many people turned out to these caucuses tonight?

ROHLFING: Yes. We had a great turnout. Four years ago, we had about 10,000. We think we're going to be well above that tonight. It seemed like all of the polling locations were packed and full. So we're excited to hear what the total will be. But we think it's going to be great.

BERMAN: Do you have any early vote totals? You're seeing earlier than us. We just put a number up on the screen. 13 percent of precincts reporting and Donald Trump at an 81-vote lead. It sounds like we have a long way to go in counting. But are you seeing numbers earlier than we are?

ROHLFING: No. You're seeing what I'm seeing, and that is correct.

ROMANS: You talked, Fritz, about the turnout. What's energizing voters this time around?

ROHLFING: Well, it's the most exciting Republican presidential nominating process of perhaps our lifetime. People in Hawaii are excited to be able to be participating in that. And it showed in those locations that I visited tonight. There were folks from all over, from all walks, coming in and having their voice. So it's a wonderful thing.

BERMAN: Now we don't get a lot of information often on the mainland here about Hawaii politics. Even less so about Republican politics in Hawaii. It's largely seen as a Democratic state. But which campaigns have had a presence over the last few weeks? I saw Rick Santorum actually was there for Marco Rubio campaigning over the last few days. That's a rough assignment.

ROHLFING: Yes. That's correct. The Rubio campaign had one that -- a circuit. He did come to Hawaii and he was here on Sunday and Monday and also today. But there were also call-in interviews to the radio stations by John Kasich and Donald Trump. And I know the Cruz campaign has been a very active campaign and they have a lot of volunteers. So it's been very high participation from all of the campaigns.

BERMAN: Donald Trump likes to say, you know, he's got hotels and buildings everywhere. One of the things he has said is he's got people who work for him in Hawaii. Does Donald Trump really have a presence in Hawaii independent of his politics?

ROHLFING: Well, he does. There's a hotel here, Trump Hotel. So he's a national celebrity, so it's not a big shock that a lot of people are interested in finding out about him and supporting him.

BERMAN: All right, Fritz Rohlfing, the chair of the Hawaii Republican Party, thanks for being with us. We'll check back in with you as these votes continue to come in. Again, this is your first look right now with 13 percent of precincts reporting, Donald Trump with an 81- vote lead. The chairman of the party just told us that he expects turnout to be north of 10,000. So there is a long, long way to go here.

ROMANS: Yes. He said that's a good turnout. He said that the view from Republicans in Hawaii is this is the most exciting Republican side of the race in their lifetime.

BERMAN: All right. Dylan Byers joins us now. You know, CNN politics and media reporter. Also with us Alex Burns, national reporter for the "New York Times." Got about a couple of minutes left before we go to break.

Guys, let's get your headlines on the race tonight. Dylan, start with the Democratic side. That's what we've been talking about.

DYLAN BYERS, CNN SENIOR MEDIA AND POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, look, I mean, you know, Hillary Clinton is going to come out of this with some delegates and there's no question that she remains the frontrunner with the best shot at the nomination. But this was a win for Bernie Sanders tonight, no question. And I think more importantly what it does is it continues to raise concerns about Hillary Clinton in the general election, which is the last conversation that she wants to be having right now.

Her hope was that she could wrap this thing up after big wins in South Carolina and on Super Tuesday. And of course, that's not the case. We keep -- you know, this Democratic primary race keeps sort of being extended out and now looks poised to maybe go the distance, maybe as far as June. And he certainly -- Bernie Sanders is certainly going to continue to give her a run for her money in many of those northern states.

He's going to make the case that he should be able to broaden his support. And so look, you know, I think the Hillary Clinton campaign is not happy with how this night turned out, despite whatever they may tell you.

ROMANS: You know, Alex, just a couple of days ago, they were, you know, putting, you know, a little bit -- I guess downplaying expectations from Hillary surrogates that it wouldn't be a runaway. Wouldn't be a -- they really got this wrong. There must be real hand wringing in the campaign tonight.

ALEX BURNS, NATIONAL POLITICS REPORTER, NEW YORK TIMES: Well, I think there is a decent amount of hand wringing just across the broad from folks who polled Michigan and analyzed Michigan, saw it as a state that was a natural fit for Hillary Clinton and a place where her just institutional power from unions and decades in Democratic politics really ought to carry -- ought to have carried her across the finish line.

[01:45:04] But look, when you look at those exit polls, the biggest number that pops out to me is the difference in her support with core Democratic voters and Sanders' support among independent voters who he won by just a gigantic margin. So a lot of those surveys that we were looking at last week, the week before, that showed Clinton with these towering leads.

ROMANS: Right.

BURNS: They were focusing on those partisan Democrats.

ROMANS: Right.

BURNS: Who only made up about two-thirds of the electorate.

BERMAN: All right. Everyone, stand by. Much more to talk about, including the votes that continue to trickle in from the Hawaii Republican caucuses, our final contest of the night. We could get a call in that race sometime in the next hour. There's a lot going on here at CNN. We're calling it March Madness.

Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, after this shocking result in Michigan, they have a debate that we are airing tonight. The Univision Democratic debate simulcast right here in English on CNN. 9:00 Eastern Time. That will be followed by a special post-debate edition of "AC 360" at 11:00 p.m. Eastern. And then on Thursday night, wow, CNN has the Republican presidential debate from the University of Miami. Marco Rubio's last chance really to change the trajectory of this race, which for him is not going up.

All right. Coming up, as we said, the results in Michigan, we have a whole lot of people in the Clinton campaign, the Sanders' campaign, the national polling media scratching their heads. So what happened? How did everyone get this so wrong? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(HEADLINES)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SANDERS: Take this opportunity to thank the people of Michigan who kind of repudiated the polls that had us 20, 25 points down a few days ago. Who repudiated the pundits who say that Bernie Sanders was not going anywhere.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Pretty much everything pointed to a Hillary Clinton victory in the Michigan Democratic primary. But Bernie Sanders scored a shocking upset. How did he do it? What does it mean for the race going forward?

Let's get our panel to weigh in this morning. Nice to see you all you guys again. Really, that is the headline of the night on the Democratic side.

MJ Lee, what happened here? He surprised everyone in Michigan.

LEE: Well, I can tell you that with the Clinton campaign, there is a -- an autopsy that is now being performed, even as the results were starting to come in and the state had not been called, there were a lot of Clinton allies and aides starting to think about what went wrong, why did we win -- lose a state rather that we should have won? And I think one of the things that keeps coming up in our reporting is that this idea that perhaps Clinton just simply did not campaign aggressively enough in the state.

Now you all remember in Nevada and South Carolina, one thing that was very striking about what Clinton did in those states was that she campaigned very aggressively, kept a very packed schedule in both of those states. In Michigan, it sounds like -- it appears that she did not have the same kind of packed schedule.

The other thing is that, you know, aides are starting to wonder whether Clinton sort of lost sight of the goal, and the short-term goal, which is that she has to win the nomination first. And maybe she started to look ahead at the general election a little bit too soon.

BERMAN: She literally started talking about the general election.

LEE: Right.

BERMAN: In all of her speeches over the last few days. And her travel in Michigan was not extensive and it was focused on African- American communities almost exclusively. She's done very well with those communities in the south and around the country. In Michigan, and I think we do have those numbers, she did win the black vote in Michigan. Right now you can see that, Clinton, 65-31, that's an impressive victory, Josh, but it's not anywhere near what we saw in the south where she was up above 80 percent in some places in the African-American vote, 90 percent in the African-American vote. Bernie Sanders making, you know, significant inroads.

ROGIN: Right. I think Bernie Sanders is reaping what he sowed. He brought out a lot of liberal black leaders in Michigan. They were very active. They weren't just active on the trail, they were active on social media, on Facebook, doing a lot of interviews that had an effect -- did not have enough of affect.

What we also saw from the exit polls is that Hillary Clinton lost independent -- self-identified independent voters in Michigan 71-28. She actually won Democrats, but she lost independents by such a large margin that it contributed to her loss in the state overall. So it's retail politics. It works in Michigan. It worked for Bernie Sanders. But it also shows that the basic trajectory of who is getting what vote has not changed, and overall, Hillary Clinton has still got a lot of work to do.

ROMANS: Some of these exit polls, we look at trade in particular. You know, there was a kind of a different message between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton on trade. You really saw that, even in their debate this week. You know, Hillary Clinton talking about nuanced policy, Bernie Sanders talking about trade hurting American jobs.

This is what we asked people as they were leaving the polls, you know, in Michigan. Does trade with other countries take away U.S. jobs? 58 percent said yes, it does.

Alex, was that an important tipping point for Bernie Sanders last night?

BURNS: Sure. I think just the resonance of populist economic message across this sort of depressed, rustbelt, sort of white, lower-income electorate is really critical to Sanders' appeal in Michigan and in a number of other states that are coming up. And that's sort of the bigger picture of why tonight is important.

As Josh said, I don't think it changes the really broad trajectory of this race where Clinton is comfortably ahead in terms of delegates but we're heading into a number of states like Illinois, like Ohio, a little bit later in the calendar, Wisconsin, where if Bernie Sanders has proven in Michigan that this were a hard-edged, hard left anti- trade, sort of bottom-up economic message can work, just enough for him to scrape out a bare majority, maybe it can work in some of these other states coming up, where I think we all probably would have expected Clinton to have a reasonably strong edge.

[04:55:08] BERMAN: Dylan, Dylan. One last quick question here, Dylan. You know, the kids love you and the kids love Bernie Sanders. You know, in Michigan, we saw again where younger voters just flocked to him in huge, huge numbers.

BYERS: Yes. No, that's absolutely right. And again, it goes back to this question about Hillary Clinton's enthusiasm gap. And I know that's a favorite talking point for all of us, but it's a serious question for the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Two things stand out to me, one, I do think Hillary Clinton, it sort of started to take this for granted. I think her campaign shifted towards focusing on the general election. We were reading reports about how they were starting to think seriously about what it might mean to take on Donald Trump. You know, et cetera. And then secondly, I just think that they're not really giving young voters, especially a certain message that they can latch onto, particularly when it comes to the number one issue for both Republicans and Democrats and independents, and that of course is the economy.

ROMANS: All right.

BERMAN: All right. Yes, stand by, guys. A lot more to discuss.

ROMANS: Yes. We're going to talk about Donald Trump and his winning streak. And a Super Tuesday super upset. More on that in Michigan, next.

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