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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Before we get going today with our first guest and my pick for the most important moment of last night's debate, I just want to briefly mention for one final morning that this is the last day of our shortened full membership drive. A big thank you to all of you who have become WNYC members or renewed your memberships. I also want to acknowledge those of you who have made extra contributions on top of your existing memberships.

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Here we are last call, which has come up so fast, as we've been telling you all week because of the amount of news and the seriousness of the news this fall, we are doing a shorter drive than we usually do in October. Usually, on this Friday in October, we'd be preparing to go through the weekend and then through next Tuesday, but we just don't feel it would be right this year to impede the election coverage that much or all the local coronavirus information we're trying to keep you abreast of. We'll have our Friday Ask the Mayor segment this morning with some news on that. The mayor has a vaccination rollout plan for the city now. You can see where you fit in.

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Now, rather than do some kind of general recap, like the morning newscasts have been doing I want to play a few bites from just one section of last night's debate that I will call the most important and offer the clearest choice from a long-term policy perspective. Certainly, there are stark differences on the pandemic, rise to that level two for the coming year, but this is even longer-term for environmental protection, environmental justice, and economic growth. This answer from Trump is not getting a lot of press compared to other things he said. He basically says here, "Don't worry about Black and brown people getting sick from living near polluting energy plants because they're probably being paid well." This starts with the question from the moderator, Kristen Welker.

Kristen Welker: President Trump, people of color are much more likely to live near oil refineries and chemical plants. In Texas, there are families who worry the plants near them are making them sick. Your administration has rolled back regulations on these kinds of facilities, why should these families give you another four years in office?

President Trump: The families that we're talking about are employed heavily and they are making a lot of money, more money than they've ever made. If you look at the kind of numbers that we produce for Hispanic or Black, for Asian, it's nine times greater the percentage gain than it was under in three years, than it was under eight years of the two of them, to put it nicely, nine times more. Now, somebody lives-- I have not heard the numbers or the statistics that you're saying, but they're making a tremendous amount of money. Economically, we saved it. I saved it again a number of months ago when oil was crashing because of the pandemic. We saved it.

Brian: I couldn't believe that when I heard it. He actually shrugged off rolling back environmental protections for people and, mostly, people of color living near oil refineries because they're paid well if they work there. Joe Biden responded like this.

Joe Biden: My response is that those people live on what they call fence lines. He doesn’t understand this. They live near chemical plants that in fact, pollute, chemical plants and oil plants and refineries that pollute. I used to live near that when I was growing up in Claymont, Delaware and there are more oil refineries in Marcus Hook and the Delaware River than there is any place, including in Houston at the time.

When my mom get in the car, and when there are first frost, to drive me to school, turning the windshield wiper, there’d been oil slick in the window. That’s why so many people in my state were dying and getting cancer. The fact is those frontline communities, it’s not a matter of what you’re paying them. It matters how you keep them safe. What do you do? You impose restrictions on the pollutions that if the pollutants coming out of those fence line communities.

Brian: Now that exchange by itself would have been so dramatic in human terms, in compassion terms, and environmental regulation terms, but then, it went even bigger, much bigger. Trump seized on the part we just played, not to reassure those residents that he would protect them as well as pay them, but to accuse Biden of something and this turned into, to my ear, the most important policy debate of the night.

President Trump: Would he close down the oil industry?

Kristen Welker: It falls-

President Trump: Would you close down the oil industry?

Joe Biden: By the way, I would transition from the oil industry, yes. I will transition.

President Trump: Oh, that’s a big statement.

Joe Biden: That is a big statement because I would stop-

Kristen Welker: Why would you do that?

Joe Biden: Because the oil industry pollutes, significantly.

President Trump: Oh, I see.

Joe Biden: Here's the deal-

President Trump: That's a big statement.

Joe Biden: Well, if you let me finish the statement-- Because it has to be replaced by renewable energy over time, over time. I’d stopped giving to the oil industry. I’d stop giving them federal subsidies. You won’t give federal subsidies to gas-- Excuse me, to solar and wind.

President Trump: Yes.

Joe Biden: Why are we giving it to oil industry?

President Trump: We actually do give it to solar and wind.

Kristen Welker: All right. We have one final question.

President Trump: That's maybe the biggest statement in terms of business. That's the biggest statement because-

Kristen Welker: We have one final question, Mr. President.

President Trump: -basically, he saying is he is going to destroy the oil industry. Will you remember that Texas? Will you remember that Pennsylvania, Oklahoma-

Kristen Welker: Vice President Biden, let me give you 10 seconds to respond-

President Trump: -Ohio?

Kristen Welker: -and then, I have to get to the final question. Vice President Biden.

Joe Biden: He takes everything out of context. The point is, look, we have to move toward a net-zero emissions. The first place to do that by the year 2035 is in energy production, by 2050, totally.

Brian: There it is, Joe Biden on a transition away from the oil industry totally in terms of emissions by 2050, Trump always wanting to double down on the oil industry. With us now, Clare Malone, senior politics writer for FiveThirtyEight. Remember, FiveThirtyEight calls itself that after the 538 votes in the Electoral College, so they are in their high season. Clare's latest article published yesterday is called A Contested 2020 Election Would Be Way Worse Than Bush v. Gore. Always great to have you, Clare, welcome back to WNYC.

Clare Malone: Thanks for having me, Brian.

Brian: We'll get to your article. Let's talk first about the debate. Could you believe the president expressed no empathy whatsoever for the people Kristen Welker explicitly asked about in that question, that mostly people of color who live near the oil refineries and chemical plants in Texas that are making them sick? All he did was say they're paid well, they have jobs at the plant.

Clare: Yes, President Trump is not a politician who's particularly known for his empathy. Here's how I interpret that from Trump's point of view. I think he's a person who thinks very being contrary when it comes to both politics and just his worldview, in general. I don't think he sees Black and brown people as people who will vote for him, and I think that influences a lot of the way he probably talks about those communities.

Also, Trump is not an environmentalist. He withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord. He knows that his base is in states. He brought up Pennsylvania and Texas in that answer, states that do have an oil industry. I think that he is very attuned to speaking to people that he sees as his supporters, and he is not very attuned to speaking to people or speaking to the human condition of people who he does not see as political assets to him.

Brian: Biden actually had to say out loud, "It's not a matter of what you're paying them, it matters how you keep them safe," and then, it got amped up into this existential discussion of the future of the oil industry. I see that Biden's campaign has now walked back his position from the broadest thing he actually said in that exchange, "I will transition from the oil industry. It is a big statement," to the narrower part of what he said he would stop giving the oil industry subsidies. Why do you think they're walking this back rather than wearing it with pride?

Clare: I think he did say in that answer that he was talking about subsidies. I'm not sure I would call it a rollback completely. He actually gave a pretty long time frame for transitioning out of oil. I believe he said 2035. I think this is something-- If you look at what people are saying about the energy industry, there are a lot of people, even in that industry, who are looking to transition to green energy. I think they see that that's where the money is down the road.

I do think that Biden's team, in these last two weeks coming to the election, wants to maintain their comfortable lead in Pennsylvania. I think the polling average has Biden up in Pennsylvania by about six. I think Trump and the Republicans this morning are hoping that people in Texas will be freaked out by Biden's comments. Trump has a very small lead in Texas by about half a percentage point. I think very much, right now, these campaigns are trying to, in Biden's case, not rock the boat, and in Trump's case, to play up any comment and hope to chip away at Biden's lead in these places where they're unexpectedly purple states, these traditionally Republican states like Texas.

Brian: Biden did state to goal from his plan that has a fairly long time frame, as you say, even longer if you take the last date that he gave in that answer, zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Presumably, they would have to transition away from oil to do that.

Clare: Presumably, yes. I should also say here that Biden-- I think Biden himself is in an interesting position within the Democratic Party. Let's assume, for the sake of this hypothesis, that the Democrats win the White House, they win the Senate, they hold complete control of government in DC for two years, Biden's getting it an awful lot of pressure from progressives saying, "Okay, let's try to do a green new deal. Let's try to stick some environmental credits in a COVID stimulus bill."

Then, he'll have people from the center of the party or states, senators and senate seats that are threatened by Republicans, and they'll say, "Yikes, hold back." I think Biden is a true-- His constitution is to be a centrist, a moderate, to broker deals. I think you saw that on stage and in the equivocation following the debate, which is, as the leader of the Democratic Party, he's in an interesting spot when it comes to environmental reform and regulations.

Brian: Put on your FiveThirtyEight political analyst hat. I know you have an interest in Pennsylvania as one of your topics, in general. Does this matter in Pennsylvania as Trump argued in the clip that it would?

Clare: Yes. It's interesting that the democratic lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, who's a pretty out there progressive, doesn't want to do away with the fracking industry. Obviously, the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania has been a huge source of income for that region for the past couple of decades. It obviously has big environmental effects. If you're thinking about the short term of an election, people don't want to see presidential candidates say, "We want to tamp down this big industry in your state," at a time when a lot of people are worried about money.

I think Pennsylvania Democrats, a lot of, let's say, industrial Midwestern Democrats, have interesting positions when it comes to environmentalism and industry. They have to speak a bit to the mindset of their constituents, who, in places that have been, particularly post-2008 crash, really hollowed out economically, they do have to think about people's fiscal mindsets in those states. I think it's an interesting dilemma for Democrats in Pennsylvania.

Brian: Biden tried to make it clear that he's not for banning fracking, he's for capturing the emissions from fracking and developing that technology. I did one fact-checking piece on my own this morning. Listeners, I just thought you would find this interesting since they were debating oil industry subsidies, and I figured a lot of you are thinking, "We actually give tax dollars to the oil industry, the hyper profitable oil industry?"

Sure enough, according to the bipartisan founded Environment and Energy Study Institute, "The United States provides a number of tax subsidies to the fossil fuel industry as a means of encouraging domestic energy production. These include both direct subsidies to corporations as well as other tax benefits to the fossil fuel industry in the tax code. Conservative estimates put US direct subsidies to the fossil fuel industry at roughly $20 billion per year," your tax dollars at work, "with 20% currently allocated to coal and 80% to natural gas and crude oil." I thought listeners you would be interested in that little fact-check that I haven't seen other people doing.

All right, Clare Malone, from FiveThirtyEight, to your article, A Contested 2020 Election Would Be Way Worse Than Bush v. Gore. That, of course, was the Florida recount and the Supreme Court stopping the Florida recount, giving Bush the election. You write that you went looking for lessons from that period of disruption, but all you found were the first cancer cells that have metastasized into our political system over the last 20 years. Can you elaborate?

Clare: Sure. Obviously, I'm not trying to say here that Bush v. Gore wasn't a traumatic and pivotal event for a lot of Americans. We are much more partisan than we were in 2000. What was really interesting when I dug into the historical polling, during the recount of 2000, was that a lot of Americans, even though they thought that there wasn't an accurate vote count happening in Florida, they said that they were fine with either candidate. They were fine with Bush. They were fine with Gore. They just wanted things to be over with. They were accepting the fact that either these guys would be okay. I do not think that that is the reality in 2020.

I think that we've seen some flashing red warning signs out of President Trump. If we don't have a clear winner to the election on the morning of November 4th, which I should say here to listeners, don't count on it. We are trying to prep people for-- There could be a couple of weeks of counting votes. Think of it as election month, not election day. If there isn't a clear winner, I think that President Trump has given us every indication over the past four years and the way he reacts to big news and the way he is a hyperbolic person is that he could launch a PR campaign to say, "I won the election and I'm not going to go out." That's one stretch of things.

Also, we're seeing lawyers and litigation raring up all across the country. There's going to be lots of fights over these mail-in ballots if this election is "close". I think it's like you would have a Florida 2000 in lots and lots of different states. I do have a worry about what that worst-case scenario could be following November 3rd.

Brian: All right, listeners, segue alert. We're going to move from Clare Malone to our next guest, Donna Brazile. Why Donna Brazile? Because she was Al Gore's campaign manager in 2000. She was there for those weeks of post-election day battles. We're going to get a perspective on what to expect and how they're preparing for it, at least, in Democrat world from Donna Brazile, coming up next. For now, we thank Clare Malone, senior political writer for the website FiveThirtyEight. Clare, always great. Thank you so much.

Clare: Thank you so much.

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