 | | The New York Times | |
| Twenty-one candidates. Eighteen questions. Four months of reporting, traveling, editing and programming by a team of more than two dozen people. |
| The result: Meet the Candidates, a collection of video interviews with nearly everyone in the Democratic presidential primary race, covering topics both political and personal. |
| Today we’re turning over the top of the newsletter to my colleagues Alex Burns and Sydney Ember, the reporters who put together this amazing (and huge!) project, to reflect on their favorite moments and tell some behind-the-scenes stories. |
| [See the whole project here — you can browse it by question or by candidate.] |
| Alex: Well, that was a lot of interviews! And videos. So many videos. You and I split the interviewing almost evenly (I think you did 11 and I did 10.) Was there anything that stood out the most to you — that moment that just keeps popping into your head — in terms of how the candidates answered questions or what they said? |
| Sydney: My honest answer is the sheer volume of sighs that Bill de Blasio elicited when I asked him about his most recent embarrassing moment. They just kept coming! |
| [See Mr. de Blasio’s answer here.] |
| Alex: O.K., but wearing cargo shorts to the gym is about as embarrassing as it gets, so — understandable. |
| Sydney: I kept expecting something on a groundhog. |
| |
| I was also struck by how similar some of the candidates were on questions like whether they supported or opposed the death penalty (nearly all said they opposed it). But were there any big differences that stood out to you? |
| [See their answers on the death penalty here.] |
| Alex: The death penalty question was really striking to me, too. Even Steve Bullock, the only candidate who said he favored it in some circumstances, essentially said he was against it for most of what we think of as capital crimes, like murder. The only hypothetical exception he named was terrorism. |
| Also, somewhat to my surprise, I think the interviews really showed some of the ways that the leftward lurch of the Democratic Party has been overstated. On the single-payer question, for instance, there was very little “Medicare for All or bust” rhetoric. Even clearly liberal candidates — like Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Cory Booker — indicated they’d likely focus on improving the private health insurance system. |
| [See their answers on health care here.] |
| Sydney: Totally. That was surprising, especially since so many candidates talk on the trail about their support for “Medicare for All.” One thing I really enjoyed was getting to learn more about the candidates as people. They so rarely talk candidly about themselves, but I thought some of their most revealing answers were to the personal questions we asked — about their comfort food on the campaign trail, for instance, and about what they do to relax. We also got to spend a little bit of time with them before the interviews, an informal setting that was actually (at least for me) pretty unique. |
| [See their answers on comfort food and how they relax.] |
| Alex: Yes! Most of the interviews I did were at our office in New York, so it was fun to see how some of them handled being in the newsroom. Ms. Warren and Ms. Harris attracted pretty sizable crowds and handled it in pretty different ways — Ms. Warren with a kind of impromptu mini-town hall about tech regulation, Ms. Harris by focusing on a very animated conversation with Sam Sifton, the food editor. (Other candidates were, ah, less recognized.) |
| Sydney: At least one waved and … no one waved back. I also got to travel a bit for some of the interviews I did (mostly to D.C., to be fair). But we met Beto O’Rourke at a sound stage in Austin. And we traveled to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to interview Bernie Sanders. |
| Alex: I have to ask, what was it like to do that interview with Mr. Sanders after your rather contentious exchange with him back in May? |
| Sydney: You know, he was very pleasant! He answered all of our questions, including the personal ones that he is known to vehemently dislike. One of my favorite moments was when he started talking about his grandchildren. It was the most tender I’ve ever seen him. |
| [See all of Mr. Sanders’s answers here.] |
| Alex: That’s sweet. It was interesting to see which candidates were looser on the personal questions versus who seemed happier talking about policy. I kind of judge a number of the candidates who refused to name an actual most embarrassing recent moment, especially in contrast to someone like Amy Klobuchar, who delivered one involving an airplane and her underwear. That’s candor! |
| [See Ms. Klobuchar’s answer here.] |
| If you could go back and add one more question to the list, what do you think it would be? I saw someone on Twitter saying she wished we had asked about pets. |
| Sydney: I think I’d add a question on education (another topic I saw someone on Twitter suggest). Policies around student debt, but also universal pre-K and charter schools, have become something of a focus among candidates in recent months, and it would have been interesting to hear their answers side-by-side to a question like, “How would you improve the country’s education system?” |
| Alex: That would have been good. We started the project before Ms. Warren’s student loan proposal really intensified that debate, and it’s now a pretty significant part of the race. |
| I would love to have asked something about bipartisanship or their instincts about working with Republicans — whether they think it’s possible, whether it would be a goal or something they’d do only grudgingly, whether they have to find partners on the other side to get stuff done or whether getting stuff done requires Democrats to be politically dominant. It’s such a dividing line in the field, and all the more so now that Joe Biden has decided to stake much of his campaign on the idea that he could make Republicans his partners in governing. |
| Of course, we wouldn’t have been able to ask Mr. Biden, since he did not show up! |
| ____________________ |
| A timeline of the Biden controversy |
 |
| Tom Brenner for The New York Times |
| Joe Biden’s remarks this week on working with segregationists kicked off the biggest fight of the Democratic primary so far. For those who have not kept up, here’s a timeline of everything that has happened in the past 48 hours. |
| • On Tuesday night, at a fund-raiser at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City, Mr. Biden invoked two former Democratic senators who were staunchly opposed to desegregation — James O. Eastland and Herman E. Talmadge — as he looked back fondly at the “civility” of the Senate of the 1970s. |
| • On Wednesday afternoon, Senator Cory Booker, one of two black candidates running for president, said Mr. Biden was “wrong” to use segregationists as examples for bringing the country together and suggested he should issue an apology. |
| • Other Democrats spoke up on Wednesday afternoon, too. Senator Kamala Harris, who is also black, said, “If those men had their way, I wouldn’t be in the United States Senate.” Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, Mayor Bill de Blasio and others also criticized the former vice president. |
| • Before a fund-raiser on Wednesday evening, Mr. Biden was asked by reporters about his comments. “Apologize for what?” he said. When a reporter mentioned that Mr. Booker had called for the apology, Mr. Biden shot back: “Cory should apologize. He knows better. There’s not a racist bone in my body.” |
| • Mr. Booker, in an interview on CNN Wednesday night, said that Mr. Biden “shouldn’t need this lesson.” |
| • At a fund-raiser later on Wednesday, Mr. Biden invoked the former senators again, but changed his tone. “We had to put up with the likes of like Jim Eastland and Hermy Talmadge and all those segregationists and all of that,” he said. “We were able to beat them on everything they stood for.” |
| • Finally, as my colleague Reid Epstein and I reported today, Mr. Biden called Mr. Booker late Wednesday night to try to smooth over tensions. We were told the tone between the men was conciliatory. |
| What do you think? We want to hear from On Politics readers. What do you think of Mr. Biden’s comments? Do they make him look out of touch, or were his opponents too quick to criticize? And how do you think it will affect the race? Send us an email: onpolitics@nytimes.com. |
| ____________________ |
| What to read tonight |
| • Iran shot down an American spy drone early Thursday. But did it venture into Iranian airspace, as Tehran asserts, or stay in international airspace, as the United States asserts? Here’s what we know so far. |
| • “I think people just want to listen to somebody who’s just going to say it straight and be honest.” After 23 years, Judge Judy is still going strong. |
| • A writer for Buzzfeed went on a cruise hosted by Olivia, a lesbian travel company, for a story. She ended up blowing up her whole life. |
| ____________________ |
| … Seriously |
| The Cut ranked the comfort food choices in our Meet the Candidates project, “from least-to-most likely to cause me to wake up in the middle of the night, covered in a cold sweat, and screaming.” (Sorry, Amy Klobuchar!) |
| _____________________ |
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| Thanks for reading. Politics is more than what goes on inside the White House. On Politics brings you the people, issues and ideas reshaping our world. |
| Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. |
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