Latest / Pod Save America / 2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell

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2020: Michael Bennet on fixing Washington and defeating Mitch McConnell · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. I'm here
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, and I just spoke to Colorado Senator
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: and Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bennett. We talked about why
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: he's running for president, his plans to reform democracy, immigration,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: health care, and so much more. And here's my conversation
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: with Michael Bennett. Senator Bennett, welcome to Positive America.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: I want to start, as we often do in these interviews,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: with the question of why you're running for president. Most
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: people we've had at this table, it's their children or
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: the country or Trump's election, you have offered in previous
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: interviews a more unique reason for why you're running, a
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: certain senator from Kentucky.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: Well, that's right.
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  Speaker 3: I'm running because, and you saw it up close in
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  Speaker 3: the Obama administration, these guys, McConnell and the Freedom Caucus,
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: have successfully immobilized our exercise in self-government.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: We have to overcome that.
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  Speaker 3: And I think there are two things we're going to
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: have to figure out how to do at the same time.
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: One is, going directly at them to undo the structural
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: challenges that are facing our democracy, Citizens United being one
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: of those, but political gerrymandering being another, the attack on
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: voting rights that Shelby v. Holder represents, and whatever it
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: is we need to do inside the Congress to make
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: it work better. And at the same time, I think
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: we have to build a broad coalition of Americans to
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: overcome the intransigence in D.C., The Freedom Caucus and Mitch
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: McConnell are not going to fix Washington. They're not going
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: to fix themselves. They need to be overcome. And I
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: think the Democratic Party can lead the way in unifying
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: the American people to do it. It's not going to
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: be easy to do, and I don't think it's going
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: to be accomplished in just one election either.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: And as you looked at this field, including a significant
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: percentage of your fellow senators, and you said to yourself,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: I should be a person who I can uniquely— be
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: the person to do this. What is it about you
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: or your experience that made you think that you should
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: take this on?
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  Speaker 3: I would say in my experience, I've been in the
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: Senate for 10 years, and before that I was in business,
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: and after that I'd run a school district. It was
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: over a billion dollars of budget. It was a major
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: school district in this country. So I come with, first
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: of all, a different set of experiences. But my work
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: in the Senate has both allowed me to accomplish big
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: bipartisan things. We didn't finish the Gang of Eight immigration bill,
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: thanks to the Hastert rule, but we were well on
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: our way to getting it done. We got 68 votes
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: in the Senate. I was part of that. We rewrote
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: and reformed and ended, really, No Child Left Behind. I
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: was a big part of that. The approval process at
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: the Food and Drug Administration that now has, this was
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: signed by President Obama, and now more than 120 drugs
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: have been approved as a result. And there are other
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: things like that. But just as important as what I've
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: been able to do, I've been able to learn why
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: the place doesn't work, how it's broken, how it's corrupted,
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: why President Obama's theory of the case, which was when
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: he was re-elected president, that the fever would break and
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: that somehow we would be able to get back to
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: working together. I think I understand why that didn't happen.
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  Speaker 3: I think I understand what's going to be required to
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  Speaker 3: get us beyond it.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Why do you think it didn't happen?
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  Speaker 2: I think it didn't happen because I think that the....
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: McConnell and the Freedom Caucus had an ideological commitment to
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: destroying our exercise in self-government that we didn't understand. And
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure President Obama fully understood it. I didn't
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: fully understand it. It's equivalent, by the way, to our
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: lack of comprehension that Donald Trump could ever have been
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: elected president. A lot of us didn't believe that was
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: possible either because we didn't see the reactionary forces building
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: in our political system And we didn't see the ways
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: in which the Freedom Caucus had dismantled our ability to
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  Speaker 3: govern ourselves on the one hand, but on the other hand,
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: had successfully eluded blame for having caused all these problems
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  Speaker 3: to begin with. Now we have an opportunity to do
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  Speaker 3: something different. I believe, and this really is why I'm
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: running for president, I think that if we spend the
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  Speaker 3: next 10 years in Washington the way we've spent the
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: last 10 years, I will be part of the first
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: generation of Americans. to leave less opportunity, not more to
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: the people coming after us. And I think that's entirely unacceptable.
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  Speaker 1: Do you, you know, McConnell is not a particularly popular
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  Speaker 1: politician nationally, but gets reelected all the time. These Republicans
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  Speaker 1: keep getting elected. Do you believe they are reflecting the
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  Speaker 1: will of their voters or are they sort of pulling
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  Speaker 1: the wool over their eyes?
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  Speaker 3: I think they are pulling the wool over their voters.
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  Speaker 3: And this is a place where I differ, you know,
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  Speaker 3: from other people in the field and in the Democratic field.
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  Speaker 3: I represent a state that is a third Democratic, a
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  Speaker 3: third Republican, and a third Independent. The vast majority of
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  Speaker 3: Republicans I know don't subscribe to the views that the
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  Speaker 3: Freedom Caucus has. They're more conventional and more traditional Republicans.
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  Speaker 3: These guys, and the manifestation of all of it really
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  Speaker 3: is in Donald Trump. I mean, you've got a Republican
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: Party that's turned everything on its head.
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  Speaker 2: Let me give you a good example. Climate change.
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  Speaker 3: I don't think we can solve climate change two years
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  Speaker 3: at a time. Other people might disagree with me. I
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  Speaker 3: believe it's a very urgent problem and we need to
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: act urgently, but we also need an enduring solution. We
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  Speaker 3: can't do it even one administration at a time. It's
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  Speaker 3: going to have to last longer than that. And when
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  Speaker 3: you look at the issue of climate, the Republicans had
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  Speaker 3: a relatively honorable tradition, which is that Richard Nixon, um,
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  Speaker 3: put the EPA in place and signed the Clean Water Act,
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  Speaker 3: the Clean Air Act. Ronald Reagan closed the hole in
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  Speaker 3: the ozone layer. Both Bushes said we had to deal
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  Speaker 3: with climate and led efforts at the UN to do that.
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  Speaker 3: McCain ran on climate change. What changed? Citizens United changed.
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  Speaker 3: And that completely changed the way the National Republican Party
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  Speaker 3: looks at this because they're being corrupted into inaction by
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  Speaker 3: the Koch brothers. Republicans in Colorado are not being corrupted
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  Speaker 3: into inaction by the Koch brothers. They are seeing their
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  Speaker 3: farms and ranches threatened because of our inability to deal
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  Speaker 3: with climate change. So I think there is a big
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  Speaker 3: distinction here.
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  Speaker 2: Obviously, there are people.
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  Speaker 3: That are watching Fox News all day long who now
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  Speaker 3: have come to believe McConnell's the greatest guy in the world,
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: having hated him, by the way, for years and years,
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  Speaker 3: as you know. But I don't think that's true of
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: conventional Republicans in my state.
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  Speaker 1: If I sort of like dig deep into what you're
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: saying about climate change in particular, am I right to
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: interpret what you're saying is that your Republican colleagues in
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: the Senate go to work every day and lie about
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  Speaker 1: an existential threat to the planet because they want money
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: from the Koch brothers or they're afraid of anchoring the
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: Koch brothers?
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  Speaker 3: I think your last, I agree with everything that you said.
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  Speaker 3: I think the last point is the most important one
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  Speaker 3: because it's not even about the Koch brothers' money. It's
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: about all those guys have to do is rattle the
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: change in their pockets and threaten a primary. And that's
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: enough for people to have said, well, we'll move on
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: to some other topic.
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  Speaker 1: So you put forward very recently an aggressive electoral reform,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: democracy reform plan. What's in that plan?
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  Speaker 2: So there are two parts.
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  Speaker 3: There's a way of thinking about it broadly, which is
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  Speaker 3: taking the money out of politics, and the other part
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  Speaker 3: of it is getting people back into politics.
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  Speaker 2: There are reforms in Washington.
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  Speaker 3: Ending political gerrymandering, dealing with Citizens United, banning members of
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: Congress from becoming lobbyists after they leave Washington, D.C. I
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: I've had that bill for 10 years. I noticed last
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: week AOC and Ted Cruz were both saying.
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  Speaker 2: Now it's cool, and everybody loves it, and it's all
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  Speaker 2: on Twitter.
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  Speaker 3: I don't know if that is a reflection of my
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  Speaker 3: failure as a politician, but I believe in it because
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  Speaker 3: over half the people that leave the Congress and don't
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  Speaker 3: retire become lobbyists in Washington. That sends a terrible signal,
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  Speaker 3: and the incentives are misaligned. I think this wasn't included
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: in that package, but I'm coming with it later. I
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: also think members of Congress shouldn't get their health care
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: subsidized until we've got universal health care for the American people.
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  Speaker 3: It would be amazing how fast that actually happened if
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: we were having to give it up.
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  Speaker 2: That's one side.
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  Speaker 3: The other side is very much focused on how do
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  Speaker 3: we improve the opportunity for Americans to be able to vote.
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  Speaker 3: So it's things like same-day registration, automatic registration when people
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  Speaker 3: are 18. It's trying to mop up after the Supreme
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  Speaker 3: Court's anti-voting opinions like the one I mentioned earlier. And
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  Speaker 3: I think that's another place where the National Republican Party
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  Speaker 3: and their allies, I guess, around the country have worked
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  Speaker 3: really hard over the last 15 or 20 years to
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  Speaker 3: deny people the right to vote. And we should be
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  Speaker 3: on the side of making it easier for people to vote.
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  Speaker 3: And I think that's where the American people are, too.
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  Speaker 3: I do think the basic tenet here is that I
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  Speaker 3: don't think Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell... are for our democracy.
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  Speaker 3: I don't think they're for a republic. I think they're
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: for themselves and the interest groups that they're serving. And
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  Speaker 3: I don't think that represents what Republicans in my state believe.
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  Speaker 1: I think that's right in the sense that we, like
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  Speaker 1: democracy as we know it, is under real threat here.
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  Speaker 2: No question.
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  Speaker 1: And that there's a whole series of things that have
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: been happening slowly over time, but much more rapidly since
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: Trump got here, that put us on a path where
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: we will have essentially a minority rule in this country.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: One of those challenges is the Electoral College. Do you
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  Speaker 1: support abolishing the Electoral College?
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  Speaker 2: I do.
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  Speaker 3: I do. I think we'll be dead by the time
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  Speaker 3: we do that, so it's not high on my list
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  Speaker 3: of stuff. I would rather be focused on an amendment
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  Speaker 3: to overturn Citizens United, and maybe you could do a
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: little of both, but For all the reasons that you say, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Do you have higher, granting that the constitutional amendment process
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: is very challenging, do you have reason, but you picked
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Citizens United above Electoral College, do you think that there's
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: a greater chance we could get that done sooner, like
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: before we die?
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  Speaker 3: I think there is a greater chance we can get
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: that done sooner because 96% or something of Americans say
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: there's too much money in our politics and something like
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: 94% say that wealthy people have an outsized influence. So
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: if we can't make the politics of that work, and
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: we can't use that to overcome McConnell and these guys,
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure what we can do. I mean, climate
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: is in the 70s, I think, compared to that. So
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: that would be one that not only do I think
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: we could get it done sooner, it would have the
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: really useful effect of giving people the opportunity, like my
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: daughter who's here today, who are in the next generation,
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  Speaker 3: the opportunity to organize around politics to get their voice
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  Speaker 3: in politics and to get money out of politics.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: That's why I've sort of prioritized that.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: Another tool to repress the voices of the majority of
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: this country is the filibuster. And as I understand, you've
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: opposed getting rid of the filibuster. Is that right?
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: I have.
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  Speaker 1: And why is that?
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  Speaker 3: So I think, first of all, the history with the
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: filibuster with the judges is instructive. It's not dispositive, but
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  Speaker 3: it is instructive. And that's a history of Mitch McConnell winning.
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: and America losing and Democrats losing.
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  Speaker 1: What do you mean by that?
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  Speaker 3: What I mean by that is that we entered into
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: the sort of the preemptive retribution that led to our
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: changing the rules first. So those guys wouldn't allow President
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: Obama to get any of his, not any, but a
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: lot of his nominees through. He wouldn't let in particular
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: the D.C. Circuit judges through. You'll remember that. Chuck Hagel,
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: who is the Secretary of Defense nominee for President Obama
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: and was a Republican senator. was filibustered by the Senate
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: and a Secretary of Defense had never been filibustered in
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: the history of America. So we changed the rules. I
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: didn't believe that was the right thing to do at
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: the time. And I think the history has shown that
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: it wasn't because Donald Trump has been able to get
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: more judges on the courts in the first two years
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: than any president in American history. I believed it was
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: wrong for us to filibuster Gorsuch. You know, I took
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: a lot of beatings for that. But the reason why
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: was that I thought we were playing right into Mitch
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: McConnell's hands because we gave McConnell the ability to blow
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: the nuclear option on Gorsuch instead of holding it for
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: the next one when obviously he would have tried to
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: do it again. But that was when it was 5-4.
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: Roe versus Wade was at stake. It seemed to me
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: that that's when we would have wanted to organize the
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: American people around that. And we didn't do that. McConnell
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: strategically waited and waited until the moment when we basically
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: played into his hands over and over again. And now
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: he's getting exactly what he wanted. This is to say
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: nothing of what he did to Merrick Garland, which is
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: a totally different thing. So the result of this is
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: we now have reduced what was for 200 years a
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: bipartisan approach to advise and consent in the Senate. that
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: every time we did it, reinforce the independence of the judiciary,
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: we've now infected the judiciary with the partisanship that's supposed
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: to be hopefully temporary of the legislative branch. So I
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: think the history on this is bad. But beyond that,
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: I've got another argument, which is Mitch McConnell is the
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: majority leader of the Senate. If we really are going
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: to take the view that we should get rid of
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: the filibuster while he's the majority leader, and again, set
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: the precedent for McConnell to change the rules, then we're
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: going to have to accept the Senate where he can
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: privatize Social Security if he wants, where he can go
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: after reproductive rights, go after voting rights, go after the
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: environmental stuff, all of which they would have done when
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: George Bush, the son, was president. That would all be done.
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: And I don't think we should be sacrificing protections for
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: the most vulnerable people in our country because we think
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: we can't for some reason make a compelling case to
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: enough Americans to beat these Republicans. Our job should be
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: to win the presidency and win a majority in the
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: Senate and hold a majority in the House and reset
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: the table here politically. The American people are with us,
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: not with them.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: I agree with you to a point. I agree with
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: the risk. Right. There's no doubt that if you get
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: rid of the filibuster, that there's going to be a
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: moment in time that where Republicans have the House, the
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Senate and the presidency, and they're going to do terrible things.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: I see a couple of challenges here, which is there
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: is basically zero path with current demographic trends to 60
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: Democratic senators again in our lifetime. Just the way things
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: are going with the very odd time, very briefly, when
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Democrats had 60 involved having senators in the Dakotas. Arkansas, Louisiana, everywhere. Alaska,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: states that we're unlikely to have again soon. And so
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: if you're a progressive and you're sitting there saying we
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: have to do something about climate change, what is the,
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: how do we, like, let's say that we have a
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: President Michael Bennett and Senator Schumer gets rid of the filibuster,
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: you could pass climate change legislation then and we could
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: actually do something. But if we wait, I mean, do
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: we have time to wait?
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: We don't have time to wait on climate change. And
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: it's unlike any other issue that we're confronting in that
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: respect because, you know, as much as I wish that
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: kids all over America were going to decent schools when
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: they're not going to decent schools, I know that if
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: we can try to fix that now or 10 years
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: from now or 20 years from now, we'll still be
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: fixing it and able to fix it.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: With climate, it's different.
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: If we don't act now, it might not be able
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: to be fixed. It probably can't be fixed. But I
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: think climate makes the point. much less on the filibuster
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: than more broadly on the pitch that I'm trying to
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: make to Democrats and to the, to the American people
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: on what we have to do with our politics, which is, it's,
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: this is much more important than just what the, you know,
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: the filibuster in climate, as I said, you can't fix
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: it for two years.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: You got it.
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: We have to fix it for a generation and we
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: have to sustain it. It doesn't mean the policy doesn't
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: change or it doesn't mean that, but if, if politicians
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: in Washington that are influenced by special interests and, and
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: money can flip us back and forth on climate based
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: on 51 votes, you tell me how long it's going
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: to last, especially if I take your point that it's
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: hard for Democrats to get a majority. It's hard to
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: get a majority. It's hard to sustain a majority. It's
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: hard to get to 60.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: That's true.
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: By the way, I'm not quite as pessimistic as you are.
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: I think that we will in our lifetime be able
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: to get uh, to 60.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: Do you know of a large group of millennials moving
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: to Wyoming anytime soon?
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: No, but I do remember Barack Obama standing in Brooklyn
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: urging people to move to Wyoming.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Uh, they didn't follow him, unfortunately.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: Well, maybe they'll change their mind.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: We should have sent him to Wisconsin.
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: But I think that would have been helpful too. But
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: I think there are changes in the South. Look, we've
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: got in the West, Colorado has the chance to have
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: two Democrats. Uh, New Mexico, we've got two. Arizona, we,
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: we would never have thought we'd have two and we
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: might have two. Nevada, I think there's southern states that
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: are going to change. So, look, I think the much
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: more important point from my point of view is we
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: need a Democratic Party message that's compelling to enough people
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: that not only can we accomplish what we're trying to do,
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: but we can sustain what we're trying to do. And
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: that's a really tough challenge. I mean, that is the
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: fundamental challenge with where we are in this democracy. It
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: would be a lot easier if we were an autocracy,
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: but we're not.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go back to the question of the
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: filibuster for judicial nominees for a sec. I can understand
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: a strategic debate about whether you filibuster Gorsuch or the
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: next person who at that point may or may not
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: have come down the line. I think that's a strategic conversation.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: But you did say that it was a mistake to
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: give her to the filibuster for appointments, executive and judicial.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: And I'm just wondering two things about that. One is,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: What was the alternative in a world? Because it wasn't
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: just Chuck Hagel. At the time, Republicans were saying that
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: they were not going to give Barack Obama a defense secretary,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: a EPA administrator, and a labor secretary all at the
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: same time. And we had a bunch of empty seats
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: on the circuit court, D.C. Circuit Court, second most important
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: court in the land, that had been sitting open just waiting.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: McConnell had been holding them open forever. And so the
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: choice was have no cabinet, not fill any of those seats,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: and then theoretically, if we progress down the same path
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: where Trump wins and we lose the Senate, that Trump
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: is filling even more judicial seats.
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: Well, I don't think Trump could be filling any more
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: judicial seats. He's filling, he's got, I mean, they are now,
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: because they got rid of the two-hour rule, they got
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: rid of all, all we do is judges.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: Right, what happens is there'll be more vacancies if Obama
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: is not able to fill those spots at 13.
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: And still, I think one of the great disappointments of
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: the Obama administration was that There are more vacancies at
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: the end of the first term than there were at
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: the beginning. There are more at the end of the
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: second term than there were at the beginning, and that's
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: a huge problem. I think that the short-term gain of
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: getting three people on the D.C. Circuit is well– way
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: overwhelmed by what has happened as a result of the
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: Trump people. I wouldn't expect you to agree with my position.
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: By the way, most Democrats don't agree with my position,
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: or most Democrats in Washington don't agree with my position,
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: but I think that we set the precedent and we
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: set the predicate for McConnell to be able to do
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: his dirty work, which is what he did. You asked
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: what the alternative was. I think the alternative was another
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: gang of 14 to say, we're going to head this off.
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: We headed it off before. We headed it off even
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: in the same term as when we confronted this. And
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: I think there was a feeling at the time that
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: it was just too late. We had to give in
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: to this. And.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: And I wish we hadn't done it. I don't think
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: we needed to.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: But you believe that had Democrats not done this, and
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: we get to a world in 2017 where Trump is president,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: McConnell's majority leader, and Paul Ryan's speaker, and Democrats are
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: blocking all of Trump's judicial nominees with the filibuster, and
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: they're blocking his cabinet secretaries, and they're preventing him from
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: filling whatever other jobs. You think McConnell would not have
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: triggered the new government?
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: I absolutely believe he would have done it. I absolutely
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: believe he would have done it.
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: There's no question in my mind, but I think, I
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: believe we should expect more out of our elected officials
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: than we have been delivered on this issue, for.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Example, in the last 10 years.
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: When I was in law school, and so I don't
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: accept the degradation of our institutions in this way. And
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: I think it's worth fighting for them to make sure
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: they're not degraded because the people who win when it's
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: degraded are the Freedom Caucus. I used to walk around
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: I would land at Denver International Airport when we were
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: doing some idiotic thing in Washington, and I wish that
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: I had a paper bag to put over my head
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: because I was so embarrassed. And, you know, I would wonder,
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: why would anybody want to work in a place with
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: a 9% approval rating? And there's an answer to that.
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: If you think you've been sent there to dismantle the
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: federal government, having it be at 9% suits you just fine.
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: If you're going there to expand opportunity for people, to
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: change the tax law so it actually gives the American
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: people a chance to get out of poverty if they're
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: in poverty, a chance to make a paycheck pay again,
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: then it makes it much harder for you to do
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: your job. And I think that's the challenge that we
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: confront now because the degradation of all of this makes
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: it harder for us to do our work. not easier
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: for us to do our work. And the fact that
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: I would absolutely believe Mitch McConnell, given the opportunity, would
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: do the same thing, leads me to conclude that we've
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: got a job to do to change our politics and
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: restore these institutions. Dan, there's a reason there's a guy
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: in the White House who is a reality TV star.
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: You wouldn't send a person there unless you had such
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: a degraded sense of what we were doing there that
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: it seemed like a suitable thing to do. And I
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: think we need to elevate our view of all of that.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: We'll shift to a slightly happier topic. We'll come back
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: to some unhappy ones. But one of the economy, economic
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: inequality have been a core part of the debate in
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: this election. You have a plan, a piece of legislation
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: that you helped author called the American Families Act, which
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: has been described as one of the most aggressive anti-poverty
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: initiatives in a long time. Can you tell us what's
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: in that plan?
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: I can, yeah.
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: It's called the American Family Act. It's a dramatic expansion
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: of the child tax credit. It takes it up to $ 3, 600
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: a year for a kid under the age of six, $ 3, 000
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: for a kid older than six. And one of the
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: really important parts of it is instead of having it
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: be an annual payment, it pays out every month. So
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: that's about $ 300 a kid for people that have a
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: kid or two. That makes a really material difference. My
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: state has one of the greatest economies on the planet,
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: and if I had to summarize the last 10 years
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: of my town halls, it would be that people come
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: and say, because our wages haven't gone up and because
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: expenses have gone up, we can't afford housing, healthcare, higher education,
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: and early childhood education, no matter how hard we work.
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: If I think about the people that don't come to
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: my town halls because they're so poor that they're working
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: and working and working, but I think about the kids
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: that were in my old school district and their families,
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: it's that no matter what they do, they can't get
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: out of poverty. And I think The Bennett-Brown bill, which
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: is the American Family Act, combined with the Brown-Bennett bill,
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: which is a big increase to the earned income tax credit,
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: combined with paid family leave, combined with an increase in
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: the minimum wage, could make an enormous difference in this country.
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: Just my bill alone, the American Family Act, the professors
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: that have looked at it say that it would reduce
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: childhood poverty in America by almost 40 percent. It would
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: end $ 2 a day poverty in America for America's poorest children,
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: and all for the less than 3% of the cost
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: of Medicare for all.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: This is probably a dumb and naive question, but is
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: there any world in which there's any interest from any
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: Republicans who'd work on some version of that plan?
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: I believe there is.
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: It's not a dumb and naive question. There are a
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: lot of libertarian think tank type folks who are for
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: this kind of thing because they see it as a
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: way of addressing poverty without adding a bunch of bureaucracy
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: to it.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: So I think in a Marco Rubio's worked on some
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: of this stuff.
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: There are other people that have looked at it, and
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: I think that it's the kind of proposal that, in
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: a rational world, we'd be able to work on.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: Now I'm going to go back to the unhappy topic
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: of Mitch McConnell in the context of this.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: I want to go back to that, too, because I've
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: got one more thing I.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: Want to say. So in the first night of the
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: Democratic debates, the one you weren't in, one of the
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: questions that the moderators asked the candidates on stage was, essentially,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: let's say you're elected president, republicans keep the senate what's
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: your plan to deal with mitch mcconnell so here you
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: have an aggressive language has some at least conservative thinker
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: prospects of support how does a president michael bennett deal
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: with a senate majority leader mitch.
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: Mcconnell first of all he's not going to do anything
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: without being forced to do it i mean he's not
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: interested in these issues and i i write in my
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: book which is called the land of flickering lights based
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: on some work we all did together um that Mitch
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: McConnell is impervious to give and take unless he's taking everything,
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: which he almost always.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: Is, which is true. And so you have to force him.
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: And I'm assuming for the purposes of this that he's
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: still there because that's what you said. I don't think
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: there's any other way to do it than to propose
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: solutions that are broadly popular among the American people A
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: public option, for example, versus Medicare for all. That's one example,
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: but there are many others. Something that's broadly popular and
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: then go out to the country and fight for it
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: and make sure that the country understands that McConnell is
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: misleading them about what he's saying.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: Which he is.
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: And at a certain point, you either achieve victory that way,
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: highly unlikely, or you change the election, the outcomes of
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: elections so that you can close over these guys.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: We live in a democracy.
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: I mean, the tyranny of the minority will continue to
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: persist in this country, whether you have the filibuster or not,
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: if we don't win elections based on a broad policy
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: agenda that that the American people can get behind. And
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: I think that's what we're going to have to do.
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: So when I say it's not just one election, it's,
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: you know, it's a lot.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: I think if you look at 2018, right, which is
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: one of the all-time best years for Democrats in the House,
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: in the Senate, we lost elections with some pretty good
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: candidates in all the sort of states you're talking about
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: where you would need to change electoral outcomes to pass policies.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: Is there something we would do differently? Is there something
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: that would change in politics that would mean that you know,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: a very moderate person like Joe Donnelly could be reelected
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: or elected in Indiana, you know, Claire McCaskill, et cetera.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: The challenge, I think, politically is in why.
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: I think those guys, this isn't the only reason they lost,
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: but I think they paid a very heavy price because
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: of Kavanaugh, the Kavanaugh hearings.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: Because of how they voted?
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: Not how they voted, just getting caught up in national
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: politics and looking like it's the National Democratic Party and
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: it's not about an opportunity agenda. It's not about trying
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: to drive economic growth for people. It's about McConnell and
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: these guys, the Freedom Caucus, have so successfully delegitimized the
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: federal government that that's a huge problem that we've got
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: to catch up to. But I take your point. I mean,
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: they were really good candidates in those places, but they
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: couldn't carry that burden.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: So you brought up Medicare. So you have your own
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: Medicare plan called Medicare X, I think, which is a
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: public option plan. Why substantively, and you hinted at this,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: politically go that route instead of either a Bernie Sanders-esque
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: plan or even the Medicare for America plan that some
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: of the other candidates support?
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: I think it's simpler than the Medicare for America plan.
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: And I think, substantively, it's better than Bernie's plan. I
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: just think Bernie's wrong on the policy here. I think
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: it's a lot better to give people an option to
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: get to– I mean, my desire here is to get
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: to universal health care as fast as we possibly can.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: That's what we need to do.
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: There are millions of people in America who are making
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: too much money to be on Medicaid but not enough
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: money to afford private insurance.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: They desperately need a solution.
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: And I think finishing the job on Obamacare with the
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: public option that we should have passed back then is
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: the best way of doing it because it gives folks
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: a choice and it also allows the public option to
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: compete down.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: The price of private insurance in the country, which I
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: think will help as well. That's why I think it's better.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: So then in the universal health, at the point at
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: which the Michael Bennett Medicare X plan reaches universal coverage,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: That'll be a mix of private insurance and government insurance.
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: Like many countries. I mean, Australia, in many ways, is
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: the best example. They've got great health outcomes for the
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: people there, and they've got a mix of public and
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: a mix of private.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: I listened to you and Ezra Klein debate this topic
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: on Ezra's podcast a few weeks ago. And one of
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: the arguments that you made on the political side about
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: Bernie's plan is that Republicans want to call Democrats socialists,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: and when we give them an opportunity to do so,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: it makes it harder to win elections. Is that right?
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: Well, let me make a better argument. I don't think.
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: I think that it would be very hard for a
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: Democrat to lose Colorado next fall in the Senate race,
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: unless they're for Medicare for All.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: Medicare for All and the Bernie, the single-payer version.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: But that is the version. And why is that? Why is.
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: Because it's so deeply unpopular. Once you understand just the
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: fact that it takes health insurance away from 180 million people,
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: its support falls into the low 30s. When you add
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: the taxes on that, its support falls into the low 30s,
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: and that's the way people in Colorado see it, and
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: I'm sure in Arizona, and I'm sure in North Carolina.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: The....
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: And Bernie, at least, is honest about what's in his plan.
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: You know, Bernie has been very clear that what his
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: plan does is make private insurance illegal, except for what
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: he calls cosmetic insurance, which is, I guess, insurance for
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: cosmetic surgery, plastic surgery.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: That is the plan. And so people that have signed
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: up for that.
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: Plan that are in this primary have signed up to
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: a plan that Bernie is being honest about. I'm not
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: sure everybody's being as honest as Bernie is being about it.
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: And it really matters because it's the difference between running
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: on a plan that the majority of Americans support and
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: running on a plan that only 33% of Americans support.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: A bunch of your colleagues in the Senate, also on
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: the debate stage, other than Bernie, signed up for that,
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: co-sponsored that plan. I'm not going to ask you to
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: name names and attack people, but do you think you're
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: one of the only candidates who spoke up against Bernie
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: Sanders' plan directly on that debate stage? Do you think
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: some of these candidates are trying to have their cake
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: and eat it too when it comes to Medicare for All?
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: I'm sure they are, and that's up to them. They
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: have to run their race. My thing is we just
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: got to beat Donald Trump at the end of the
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: day here. And so we have to have an agenda
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: that is going to appeal to the American people And
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: it's not just about disqualifying us as socialists. It's about
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: disqualifying us as people that want to.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: Take away 180 million people's insurance. I mean, think about it.
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: You remember what the pushback was when Barack Obama said,
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: if you like your insurance, you can keep it. And
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: a couple million people maybe lost their insurance because they
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: had those plans that didn't meet the bear.
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: Right? You remember that? You remember the politics of that? Yep.
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: Imagine a world where our offer is, and if you
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: like your insurance, we're going to take it away from you.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: I might be.
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: For Bernie's plan if we didn't have an existing system,
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: because there are a lot of merits to it. But
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: we do have an existing system, and I think this
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: is an issue we can win on.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: Think about this. Those guys spent years and years.
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: Threatening to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and We were
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: on defense.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: All those years.
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: Barack Obama always said, he said, there's going to come
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: a time when you're not going to be on defense anymore.
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: And he was right. It was when we defeated the
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: repeal attempt in the Senate. The next week, Bernie introduced
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: his Medicare for All, and these folks signed up to it.
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: And then we're on defense on that bill instead of
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: being on offense on universal health care, which is where
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: we should be, I think, as a party. Not just
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: as a party, but for the good of the country.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: So there's the question of taking health care away from people.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: But then also another moment in the debate that was
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: quite notable, I think, for people who've been involved in
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: the politics of health care for a long time was
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: the moderators asked, would undocumented immigrants be included under your plan?
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: And everyone, including you, raised your hand. So I'm curious
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: both substantively why that's the right thing to do and
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: whether you have political concerns about it along the lines
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: of some of the concerns you have with some of
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: these other healthcare plans.
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: I think that substantively, the reason that people put their
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: hands up is that people are here and they're going
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: to need healthcare. And the way they get their health
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: care today is through the emergency room, which we pay for,
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: which is ridiculously expensive. And as somebody who used to
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: be a school superintendent, I know firsthand that it does
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: no good for kids that are American citizens who have
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: had inoculations to sit in classrooms with kids who haven't
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: been inoculated. That's a bad thing. And we should figure
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: out how to deal with that. It is true that
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: that represents change politically. I mean, when we negotiated the
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: Gang of Eight immigration bill. The Republicans insisted that the
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: undocumented people be banned from having health care because their
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: argument was we're never going to be able to convince
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: our colleagues who hate the Affordable Care Act already that
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: that should be available. So we're going to have to
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: figure out how that goes. And I do think the
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: politics of this are very complicated. I think it would
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: be dishonest to say otherwise.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: Because, you know, as you remember, that's the reason for
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: the famous you lie moment in Barack Obama's joint address
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: on health care when Republican Congressman Joe Wilson yelled you lie.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: It was right after Obama said that undocumented immigrants would
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: not have health care.
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: But now it's 10 years later, 10 years of paying
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: for emergency room visits, 10 years of classrooms that aren't safe,
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: 10 years of these guys unwilling to do anything.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: I think obviously the.
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: Best thing to do would be to pass quarantine. comprehensive
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: immigration reform and to deal with the refugee crisis that
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: we have at the border.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: Let's get to immigration. Have you put out an immigration
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: plan for this, for your campaign, or do you stand
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: by the original Gang of Eight?
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: I stand by the original Gang of Eight. I think
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: that we have two distinct issues that we need to
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: contend with right now. One is the immigration issues, which
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: are represent the Gang of Eight. The other is the
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: refugee crisis at the border. I don't think we should
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: be making immigration law based on the refugee crisis at
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: the border. Trump is acting like we're this pathetic, weak country.
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: I mean, he's not acting like we're strong, we're powerful,
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: we're wealthy, and by the way, humane. And if we
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: were behaving that way, we'd be spending money that's necessary
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: to create a set of conditions for people at the border,
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: sending lawyers down there, making sure people got this stuff adjudicated.
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: We'd be leading a conversation in the hemisphere with everybody,
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: Canada and Latin America, to say what is it we're
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: going to do to all carry a share of the refugees.
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: That are coming from the Northern Triangle countries.
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: We certainly would need to take our share, but I
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: think there are other countries that would want to take theirs.
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: And over the long haul, we've got to figure out
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: what we can do so that we don't have failed
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: states 1,500 miles from our border that are perpetually sending
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: refugees to the southern border. On immigration, I think it
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: would change. There are things that have changed since 2013,
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: but in the main, the deal that was struck there,
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: which is a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: people that are undocumented, the most progressive Dream Act ever conceived,
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: much less passed in the Senate, the agricultural jobs provision,
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: and $ 46 billion of border security, is probably the deal
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: that could get struck again. I mean, Trump's wall and
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: all this stuff, I mean, we had real 21st century
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: security that we were going to put in place that
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: basically would allow us to see every single inch of
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: the border and understand who had come in and overstayed
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: their visa and who needed to go back. And we
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: have none of that because of the tyranny of the
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: Freedom Caucus.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: In the House.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: Would you be willing to, in a world in which
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: we were actually negotiating on immigration now, would you be
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: willing to fund Trump's wall or some portion of his
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: wall in exchange for some of the elements of the
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: 2015 bill?
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: I don't think funding his wall makes any sense. I think, look,
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: we had in the bill that I was just talking about,
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: 350 miles of fence, which he now calls steel slats.
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: He doesn't care whether it's concrete now or steel slats.
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: And he goes down there and stands next to this
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: like two or three steel slats that are left over
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: from what the Obama folks were doing. We could have
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: had 350 miles of steel slats today if we had
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: done the Gang of Eight bill. We doubled the number
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: of border security agents on the border. Lindsey Graham used
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: to say that those guys would be able to hold
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: hands at the border. They'd be standing so close to
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: each other.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: So when Trump says that Democrats are for open borders
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: that's a lie. I mean, it's demonstrably false because every
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: single Democrat who was in the Senate when that bill
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: was on the floor voted for it, which is more
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: than I can say for the Republicans.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: Well, I think... Yes, it is a lie, as most
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: things Trump says is. He has found a new context
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: for that lie after the debate on Thursday night when
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: they asked, once again, the 10 candidates on stage, yourself included,
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: which of you would support eliminating the part of the
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: law that makes crossing the border illegally a misdemeanor crime?
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: So the proposal is, would you turn it into a
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: civil offense? Nearly every person on that stage, including all
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: the people at the top of the polls, raised their hands.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: You did not.
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: I did not because I know that Barack Obama was
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: able to enforce that law without separating children from their
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: parents at the border and without giving the American people
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: the sense that we believed in having open borders. And
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: I think we can do that again. Look, Trump has
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: every reason to want to conflate the refugee crisis on
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: the border with our immigration issues. And we shouldn't fall
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: into that trap, in my view.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: Were you surprised to see so many people raise their hand?
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was, actually. I was.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: Where do you rank it on your list of political concerns?
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: High. Very high.
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: Look, every day they try to disqualify us. And as
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: you were saying earlier, you know, that the conversation I
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: had with Ezra, he's always going to do it, and
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: they're always going to do it.
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: That's true.
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: I accept that point. That's not the point I'm trying
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: to make. The point I'm trying to make is that
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: Franklin Roosevelt never called himself a socialist. He was called
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: a socialist over and over again. But what he was
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: for was American democracy. What he was was a Democrat.
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: What he wanted was the survival of this republic. And
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: what he expressed was the need for us to have
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: what he called four new freedoms or the four freedoms.
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: That's what he was doing. The conditions haven't changed. The
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: political terrain is the same. I think we just need
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: to be as smart as he is, and we need
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: to be not less strategic than McConnell is. And Trump's
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: no genius in any of this, but he does have
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: a preternatural sense of how to disqualify people based on
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: a grain of truth or a shred of truth, and
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: we shouldn't give.
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: It to him.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: Trump is going to want to make immigration the subject
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: of this election.
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: It always is. That's how he thinks he won in 2016.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: It's what he credits for keeping the Senate in 2018.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: The challenge is comprehensive immigration reform is a good issue
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: for Democrats. There is a majority of support, including a
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: lot of, even a good chunk of Trump's voters who
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: support a version of comprehensive immigration reform that you support
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: and most Democrats support. The problem often is that we
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: either end up on the defensive about it, or we're
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: talking about immigration reform and not talking about health care,
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: the economy, the things that matter to a lot of
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: other voters. If you were the nominee, how do you
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: navigate that terrain?
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: I don't think I have. I don't.
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: There's not a defensive bone in my body on immigration.
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: My landing place is the work I did in the
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: 2013 Gang of Eight. And I can defend that work
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: in any county in this country, I think, Republican or Democratic.
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: People may disagree with it. They may not think it
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: was a good idea. But I'm in no sense worried
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: about being disqualified by it. And actually, I think, as
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: you said, most people support it. If you if you
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: look at the polling, the elements of the Gang of
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: Eight bill poll much higher than anything else, including Trump's wall.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: And do you what do you what do you think?
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: So that bill passed 68 votes, including Trump's golfing buddy,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: Lindsey Graham, presidential candidate Marco Rubio, who has no memory
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: of having worked on that bill. Um, but it's just
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: like the context of the political context is totally different,
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: but yeah, I was, but the political context of that bill,
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: I think for people who are younger or may not
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: have been following politics closely, then is the Republicans believe
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: the only way they would ever win the white house
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: again after Barack Obama won in 2012 was to deal
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: with the immigration issue.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: And then you flat flash forward to four years later
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: and Donald Trump or Donald Trump's president, I think it's
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: having run. with the most right-wing inflammatory immigration agenda in history.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: Did the politics change? Did we misread the politics?
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: We misread the politics.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: In what way?
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: Here's what we did.
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: Reince Priebus, who was the Republican chair, you'll remember, did
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: the autopsy in which he said, maybe if we weren't
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: so negative about gay people, maybe if we didn't hate
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: Latino people, we would do better in the polls and
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: we wouldn't lose to the.
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: Likes of Barack Obama. Remember that?
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: And then what happened was Ted Cruz shut the government
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: down in 20 whatever that was. When was that?
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: 2013. 2013.
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: Ted Cruz shut the government down and his numbers went
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: up and the Republican Party's numbers went down. And the
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: Freedom Caucus went to Boehner and they said, it turns
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: out we don't need a big tent party. It turns
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: out we don't need to do rational things. We don't
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: need to legislate. All we have to do is break
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: the government and we're going to win. And that is
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: their operating theory. And that has been the theory since then.
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: I also think, and I could, you know, I don't
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: have a monopoly on wisdom. I certainly don't. I don't
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: believe there's this massive, that there was this massive latent
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: anti-immigrant sentiment in America when Donald Trump rode his escalator
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: down from Trump Tower and called Mexicans rapists. I think
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: it's been created by Trump, Fox News, and by, to
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: their everlasting shame, the Republican national committees who have been
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: running ads about MS-13 all over America.
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: John Tester, who barely won.
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: In Montana, tells a story this time about being in
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: a tractor on his farm in Big Sandy, Montana, and
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: he's listening to the radio and the Trumps rolled into
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: town to support his opponent.
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: And to attack John.
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: And And John's just sitting there completely mystified because he's
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: talking about MS, is it 13?
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: MS-13. Mystified by that.
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: Because there hasn't been an MS-13 person within 1,000.
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: Miles of Big Sandy, Montana.
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: Now, this is a fact of our political system that
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: we did not have to deal with when we wrote
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: the Gang of Eight bill. And we are going to
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: have to deal with going forward. And I don't think
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: there's any way to deal with it other than by
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: going straight at these guys. We've got to go straight
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: at the Fox guys. We've got to go straight at
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: these Republicans and stand for what the American people want,
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: which is a rational immigration system that supports the rule
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: of law and reflects our history as a nation of immigrants.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: Do you think the party has moved too far left
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: to win states in the middle of the country?
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: I don't think the party has. When I say the party,
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: I mean.
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: Our Democratic base, when I'm in Iowa and New Hampshire
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: and South Carolina, they're the same as the folks in Colorado.
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: You know, they want universal health care. They don't want
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: to take it away from 180 million people to get there.
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: They want us to act urgently on climate change, you know,
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: in a way that really.
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: Is durable. They want economic opportunity for everybody. That's what
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: they want.
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: I think there is a social media component here to
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: the Democratic Party that's Some people have called the Twitter
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: base of the Democratic Party. That has moved way to
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: the left, and you couldn't elect the Twitter base in Colorado.
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: You couldn't elect them in Arizona. And my argument is
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: I'm fine with all that. I mean, people can do
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: what they want to do. But to go back to
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: the sort of central thesis of this whole discussion, it
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: really would be better if we had a Democratic majority
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: in the Senate. And to get a Democratic majority in
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: the Senate, we need to run on an agenda that
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: is appealing to– people in the states that you were
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: talking about that can allow us to win elections at
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: a moment when you've got somebody as corrupt, as demonstrably
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: incapable of being president of the United States, who doesn't
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: believe in the rule of law, doesn't believe in freedom
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: of the press, doesn't believe in the impending judiciary, doesn't
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: believe in the most profound traditions of this country, that's
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: a guy who's a climate denier on top of all
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: of it? That's somebody who we should be able to beat.
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: And I think we can beat them if we've got
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: an agenda that is that's unifying for the American people.
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: And to me, to go back to your earlier point,
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: that actually is not about who's progressive and who's a moderate.
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: It's about who's got an agenda that's going to appeal.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: The running for president is, as you're discovering, I'm sure
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: every day, a somewhat absurd process that where the quote
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: unquote Twitter base has a lot of influence, where It's
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: really about finding ways to get known and noticed in
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: a strange media environment where being viral is helpful and
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: all of that. It rewards a lot of things that
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: are different from the things that make one a successful
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: legislator or a successful governor or whatever else. Now, your
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: time in the Senate, you've been there 10 years now.
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: You got there. You have never been someone who, in
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: my perspective, has... tried to make a huge name for yourself. Really,
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: I was surprised to even find out you were thinking
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: of running for president Cause it, you kind of, you
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: can kind of smell the people who want hopeless. Well, no,
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: it's not hopeless. It's that you like there. I often
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: notice that there are two kinds of senators that those
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: who arrive is thinking of the Senate as a way
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: station to a white house run. And it's pretty clear
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: who those people are. You see them on cable news
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: all the time. They're on the Sunday show circuit. They
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: do aggressive things. And there are people who are like,
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: I'm going to be a Senator. I'm going to, do
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: the work of being a senator for as long as
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: people in my state will have me. I always put
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: you in the latter category. And I think the things
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: that made you a very successful senator, I'm just curious
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: how those things have translated to the presidential race for yourself.
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: Well, it's a great question.
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: So first of all, I didn't spend my whole life
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: thinking I was going to run for president.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: Or even Senate, right?
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, or even Senate. I mean, yeah, it hurt my feelings.
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: But the Republican chairman, when I was appointed to begin with,
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: the Republican chairman in Colorado called me an accidental senator.
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: But it was true. It was true.
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: I'd been in business and I'd been a school superintendent.
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: By the way, a job that I really loved. And
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: I thought my job when I got to the Senate
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: was to represent a state that was a third, a third,
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: a third, Republican, Democrat, and independent. And I thought my
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: job was to support what you guys were trying to do.
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: And my job was to do my part to show
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: the American people that our system wasn't broken. that it
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: could still work. And I think I held that end
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: of the bargain the whole time that I've been in
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: the Senate. It is broken, and it doesn't work. And
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: we can't spend another 10 years like we did the
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: last 10 years and expect to do our job as Americans.
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: I believe that, and that's why I'm running for president.
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: And if I lose, I'll go back and run for
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: the Senate again, and I hope that I'll get reelected
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: and go on to play a constructive role for the country.
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: But this is a moment in our country's history when
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: we need all of.
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: Us to step up here.
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: The carelessness with which we treated our democracy allowed us
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: to elect Donald Trump president of the United States is
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: something we can never repeat again. And the fact that
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: he got elected once means he can get elected again
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: if we're not careful. And we need to be– the
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: worst thing we could possibly do is let this guy
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: get elected again. But on the back end of beating him,
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: we also have to figure out a way to govern
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: the country again. I know the people here are going
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: to shoot me that came with me on the judges,
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: but I have to say one more thing about it,
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: which is it's not okay with me that I grew
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: up in a country where the advice and consent was
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: done by senators in a bipartisan way, establishing the independent judiciary,
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: and now my kid has to endure a judiciary system
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: that's just partisan like the rest of our government because
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: a bunch of politicians in Washington couldn't figure.
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: Out how to do something else. It's not, it's not
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: our democracy. It's their democracy. We, we've got to find
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: a way to preserve it.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought the judges back up because we
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: can talk about that all day. What do you, what,
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: like what changed the, like what, what, what, no, what
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: changed the, what changed the nature of the process? What
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: changed this from a, you know, putatively independent judiciary to
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: a very partisan judiciary.
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: Everybody can pick their beginning of this one. I mean,
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: you can say that it was, you know, some people
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: say it was Robert Bork. Some people say it was
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: when Democrats started filibustering circuit court judges. Some people say
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: it was when Republicans were appointing people that were so
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: odious that they had to be filibustered by Democrats. My
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: point is, so anybody can point the blame in whatever
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: direction they want. My point is that in the end,
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: the people that got sacrificed are the American people who
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: deserve an independent judiciary, who are the same people who
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: are being sacrificed every single day because this country uniquely
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: can't seem to address our health care challenges, can't seem
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: to address our economic challenges, can't seem to address climate change.
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: And that's why I think we need to do better.
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: And I don't accept the idea that we're on this
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: one-way ratchet down, that we have to accept the Freedom
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: Caucus's destruction of our governing, now I'm talking much beyond
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: the judges, of our governing institutions or our governing agenda,
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: because to go back to your point on climate, to
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: the discussion on climate, I don't see how a democracy
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: deals with climate under those circumstances. If we have to
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: accept a world where every two years or four years,
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: the work that's done on climate is torn out by
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: the other party, we will never be able to address
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: climate in a meaningful way.
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: But isn't the fear that the alternative is we never
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: start the work?
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: But that's the alternative we're living right now. And we're
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: living that alternative because we frickin' elected a climate denier
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: president of the United States.
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: That should never have happened.
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: But that's the problem, though, with that is, any person,
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: the 16 Republicans ran for president in 2016, yes, we
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: got probably the worst one, but if any 16 had won,
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: they would have run the exact same play. They were
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: all climate deniers. They would have done the exact same
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: thing that Trump is doing. Like, the people embedded in
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: the administration who are denying climate science, I mean, like,
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: you gave Bush some credit, but Bush refused to put us,
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: George W. Bush, put us back in the Kyoto Treaty. He,
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: climate science was a huge problem in his administration. Like,
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: This is like climate change is a problem that whether
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: we get rid of Trump or not is going to
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: continue to be a problem. And so for a lot
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: of Democrats, the view is like, yes, it would be
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: terrible if we passed a climate bill and then they
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: undid it two years later. But we also know from
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: the Affordable Care Act that it's harder to undo something
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: than to just keep us at the status quo of nothing.
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that I think climate is so much
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: more urgent and so much more grave than that, that
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: accepting that half a loaf. is the same thing as
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: not getting anything done. That's my view.
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: I just can't see what the path is to something different.
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: In the short term. How can.
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: Look, the majority of people in this country believe that
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: climate change is real and we should be doing something
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: about it and that.
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: It's an urgent problem. They may have some disagreements about
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: how to deal with it. I think.
• 55:37
  Speaker 3: We lost the climate argument because we lost the jobs argument.
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: That's what I believe. I think we lost the.
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: Economic argument to Donald Trump preposterously, ridiculously. We didn't make
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: an affirmative argument on the economy in 2016, and we
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: didn't make an argument on the economy in the context
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: of climate change. If you're down in Miami, Florida, as
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: we were last week for the debates down there, it's
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: impossible to argue that not contending with climate is better
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: for the economy. That contending with climate is not better
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: for the economy than not contending with climate. It's impossible
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: to make that argument in Colorado. It's impossible to make
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: that argument in California. We did not make that argument
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: in 2016. Donald Trump won a cartoon argument on the economy.
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: And if we are going to continue to lose to
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: that argument, then I accept that we're doomed. But I
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: think we can do better than that.
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: I really do. I mean, I think we have to.
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: Let's go back to the judges one more time, and
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: then I'll let you go. Because you brought it back up.
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: You were free.
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: I guess one of the... I've really struggled to see
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: what the... Is there a reform that you would propose
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: to the process?
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: I think the judges were done.
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: I think the next generation is going to inherit our
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: stupidity and our inability to lead and do what needed
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: to be done.
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: The answer to the well, what would we have done
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: with all these vacancies?
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: The flip side of that is Betsy DeVos wouldn't be
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: secretary of education and Pruitt wouldn't have been secretary of
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: whatever it is he was secretary of before they ran
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: him out of town. And we wouldn't be accepting this
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: degraded view of what it all should look like. I
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: don't think it can be fixed. I mean, if you
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: were in a perfect world, what you would say is, look,
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: we were insane for a moment. We had this moment
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: of madness. We were overcome by the Koch brothers. We
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: were overcome by by cable TV hosts, and we were
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: overcome by social media, and we abandoned our best traditions
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: as a result. So here's what we're going to do.
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: We're going to let everybody loot the same number of
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: district court judges and circuit court judges and Supreme Court justices.
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: And when we got parity on each of those, we'll
• 57:50
  Speaker 3: go back to the old rules where we actually had
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: a reason.
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: To be bipartisan.
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: Today, these judges that are going on these courts, I mean,
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: my God, they are people who who have written, you know,
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: racist briefs. And in the old days, Republican senators, not
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: the old days, 10 years ago, five years ago, Republican
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: senators would have said, I'm not voting for that person.
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: You're not going to be able to get the Democrats on. Today,
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: it's become this badge of honor. Do you support Donald
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: Trump or not? You have no excuse for not voting
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: for these people. And that means it's a whole different
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: quality of person that's populating these seats. And I don't,
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: I don't, I'm sorry we got stuck on the judges
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: because I My instructions are never to talk about the judges.
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: But it goes for the institutions generally. If your view
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: is that it doesn't matter whether we– I'm not saying
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: your view, Dan Pfeiffer. I'm just saying if one's view
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: is that it doesn't matter whether we perpetuate these instruments
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: of self-government, which is I think the Freedom Caucus' view
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: and Trump's view. then none of this matters. The quicker
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: you get to an autocracy, the better off you are.
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: From our point of view, inheriting a legacy about making
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: this country more democratic, more fair and more free and
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: wanting to do that again for the next generation I
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: think that's too much sacrifice that we're asking for the
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: country and it's not expecting enough leadership from our elected
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: officials and frankly from all of us there's a lot
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: we can do here to win and I guess that's
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: my argument is let's.
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: Go out and win.
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: I will let you go right after this.
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: That's all right. I have nowhere to go. I've got to,
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: at some point, an airplane.
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: I have to get home because I have a one-year-old
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: daughter who will be in her thirties when Brett Kavanaugh
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: is Ruth Bader Ginsburg's age, which is why I find
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: this so concerning.
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: That's my point. That's the point.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: Do you, you know, within the context of the Republicans,
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: the Republicans in the Senate, right? Do you, are there
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: a group of people who, who you think would be
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: willing to work? You know, like, let's say Mitch McConnell
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: loses in 2020, or a Democrat president, yourself, wins. Are
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: there some Republicans who are sort of chafing under this
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: within the Senate who might be part of some sort
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: of either bipartisan Senate reform or something that would, like,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: is there a path other than just beating all of
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: these people and winning red states?
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: I think there are some still, but there are many
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: fewer than when I got there in 2010, because... That
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 3: was the beginning of the Tea Party assault that basically started.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: With Mike Lee beating.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: Bob Bennett on a Saturday morning in Utah, you know,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: that then led to Rand Paul, that then led to
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: everything else, the cascading thing that has ended up with
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: Bob Corker going away and what's-her-name coming back in. I mean,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: you know, the trade has always been to– more toward
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: the Tea Party side than not in the last 10 years. Still,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: there are some people, though, that I think would be
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: willing to try to work, particularly if they felt that
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: they were imperiled politically if they didn't. And I am
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: not going into this deal believing that we can trust
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: that that will happen any more than I signed on
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: to the Iran deal because I thought we could trust
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: what Iran was going to do.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: We don't know. We don't have any ideas.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: The thing we can do is control what we can control,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: and what we control is what our agenda looks like,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: what our message looks like. We can make an effort
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: to really talk to America broadly, and I think we
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: would find that if we did that, we're running against
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 3: a candidate who's actually really, really weak because he's so
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: far outside of the ideological mainstream of America that I
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: think he can be beaten.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: We will end it on that hopeful note.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: Let's do that. All right.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: Senator Michael Bennett, thanks for joining us here on Pod
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: Save America.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: Thank you.