Latest / Politics Between Us / Beyond the Blue Wave — Part 1

Transcript

Beyond the Blue Wave — Part 1 · Politics Between Us

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's easy to feel like political conversations have completely broken down.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_02: Everything feels urgent, binary, and loud.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_02: But I don't think it has to be that way.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_02: Politics gets a lot more interesting and a lot less toxic when we actually listen
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: to each other, hold space for different points of view,
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_02: and try to stay in relationship even through the hard stuff.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Alison Bea, and for the last 25 years, I've worked in law and politics in Maine.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm Luca DeAngelis. I'm in my twenties.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: I live in New York City, but I grew up in Maine.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: And to be honest, a lot of the time I'm disillusioned with politics,
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: but Alison is the person I keep talking to anyways.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: We've been having these messy,
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: honest conversations since I interned for her at the ACLU of Maine when I was 18.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: So this is Politics Between Us,
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: where we see what happens when we approach politics with curiosity instead
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: of certainty. Welcome everyone.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, Alison.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: Hello, Luca, on this day after the midterm elections.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly. Hi.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: So yes, we are coming to you the day after the midterm elections.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: We wanted to sit down with a few of our favorite previous guests to debrief
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: the election results.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: So we're going to bring you those conversations.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: Right now, we are going to talk to Betsy Sweet.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: Betsy is one of those people who has been everywhere in Maine politics for almost four decades.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: She's been an advocate.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: An organizer, a lobbyist, and she also ran a primary race statewide twice
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: for governor in 2018 and for US Senate in 2020.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: So she's got a lot of thoughts on what just happened.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: Alison, are you ready to talk to Betsy and debrief these results?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm so excited to get her take.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: So yes, let's get to it.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: Let's bring her in.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome, Betsy Sweet.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, how are you?
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_03: Hi. Well, I'm very good this morning.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_03: I'm tired, but very, very good.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thank you for joining us for our post-election debrief.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: We're thinking about a couple people who we'd love to talk to,
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: and you were kind of one of the first people who came to mind.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: So it's great to have you here with us.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what emotion best describes how you're feeling this morning?
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, gosh, what a great question.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, elation, right, I would say. And hopeful.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I...
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_03: I feel like for my many four decades in politics,
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_03: we have been planting the seeds for this.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_03: I'm thrilled.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_03: I'm so grateful to all the candidates who put themselves out there,
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_03: the ones who won, the ones who lost, the ones who started this,
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_03: and for all the ancestors in the last 30 years in politics.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_03: Who put us on this train, who put us on this path, who, you know, we couldn't have done this.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_03: This isn't just about the last hundred days or the last two years or even the last
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_03: since Trump's first term.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_03: You know, this has been something that has been building
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_03: and it's all those tireless hours of working and organizing and having
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_03: the hard conversations and doing the thing.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, it just like all, it feels like this huge, um,
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_03: And as someone said, it's not a tsunami, it's a blue nami.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_03: So to see this blue nami, and my hopeful part is that it's not just,
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_03: this was not just a repudiation of Trump,
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_03: and this was not just about gas prices and the cost of living, but that this,
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_03: so here's my hopeful nugget that I'm holding onto, is that this isn't just a win,
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_03: but it's actually finally At least the beginning of an alignment
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_03: in which our politics and our politicians align
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_03: with the heart and the soul
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_03: and the desires and the wants of the American electorate.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_03: Because nobody, I don't want to spend the whole time answering one question.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we love that answer.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it's interesting.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_02: So you talk about seeds and, you know, what's come before, not just the last hundred days.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's funny you said
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: that because this morning I was watching Tallarico's acceptance speech from his win
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_02: in Texas, the Senate seat.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: And it made me think of our conversation with you back in the few months ago.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I'd love to just like play for you one,
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: just one little clip because it was so resonant of our conversation.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: People across the political spectrum are hungry for a different kind of politics.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Not a politics of hate, not a politics of fear, not a politics of division,
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: but a politics of love.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_03: I spoke to Marianne Williamson, and she said, you know, a year and a half ago,
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_03: she heard about this guy, Tallarico, and she sent him her book,
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_03: The Politics of Love.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, it Right,
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_03: And that is what he spoke of.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what I hope the realignment is.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_03: I hope that the powers that be,
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_03: listening to all the pundits this morning,
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_03: I kept thinking, you're going to take the wrong message from this.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_03: No, this isn't about left and right and liberal and this is around It can be
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_03: the moment we speak to the heart and soul of who we are.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that's what Donald Trump was crushing.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what he, you know, that's what people felt viscerally,
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_03: whether they were conscious of it or not.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_03: But to miss that moment will be devastating.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm hoping that there's enough people like Tallarico and others and, you know,
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_03: that got elected that, you know,
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_03: and all these incredible women and the range of diversity, like, you know,
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_03: somebody said in my living last night, oh, I thought DEI was dead.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_03: Look at this, you know?
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_03: And so just seeing this incredible breadth of people who have
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_03: a different perspective and have that,
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_03: what I would consider that heart and soul alignment coming into politics is
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_03: the thing that makes me helpful.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's really interesting that you bring that up, Betsy,
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: because throughout this election cycle,
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: as we've been talking about economic populism,
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: which has been very exciting that we're talking about class issues and trying
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: to bring people in. But I have always had this lingering concern that, well,
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: what happened to our important conversations about equity?
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_02: What's happening to our conversations about how power works across other identities?
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I woke up this morning sort of in that moment of like, oh, this is amazing.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: And yet, why was it just economic populism?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: And then I'm scrolling and I'm looking and I'm like, wait a minute.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: We just elected, you know, indigenous, queer,
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: disabled, black, Latino, Latina.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we're just like the breadth of Canada, Muslim in Michigan, right?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so this idea that it's a binary, right, is wrong, I think. It's so wrong.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, well, right, so that it really is, it can be whatever labels we put on things.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's not actually what I hear you saying is the labels get us distracted
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: from the The good witchy feeling, right?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: The witchy sense of, no, no, no,
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_02: there's a bigger spiritual human connection that people are looking
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_02: for in their politics. Exactly.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_03: And I think, you know, it's going to be so tempting to miss that.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's going to be so tempting to miss that, right?
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_03: Because, and I think that that's
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_03: the continuing role that we need to play is
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_03: because it If we miss it, we'll just go through the cycle again.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that the issues that we face,
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_03: whether it's climate change or nuclear war or whatever,
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_03: we don't have the 40-year cycle to bring us back again to yet another spiral,
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_03: you know, that maybe gets us a little more elevated, right? That's the hope, right?
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_03: We just keep, hopefully, get a little more elevated. Then we have to go down.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_03: And then we come up.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_03: Anytime we go up a little higher, a little closer to that connection,
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_03: we don't have those 40 years now.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_03: Like this, I mean, I feel, at least I don't feel like we do.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_03: I feel like we are at the, we are at a huge, And I was going to say juncture,
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_03: but I think it's a precipice.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_03: I think we're at a very huge precipice.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_03: And so anyway, yeah.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I just hope that we don't miss it.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Alice and I talk a lot about how to not just have the pendulum go back and forth.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that was definitely a question on our mind this morning.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I...
• 8:38
  You know?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_03: Talk to you about it. Yeah, And I... No, sorry. Go ahead. Let me... That is...
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was getting a lot from you of just kind of having a politics
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: that is more heart-centered.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I think that binary thing of right and left, and even up and down,
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_03: which I think is more powerful than right and left, left out, not left out,
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_03: voices heard, voices not heard.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_03: You know, those are all, you know, those last ones are more useful than right and left, I think.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_03: But I think, as you said, Luca,
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_03: I think there is a deeper thing that is happening here
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_03: because of the epidemic
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_03: of isolation and loneliness and individualism, right,
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_03: that I think has hurt us immeasurably.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm not sure people are conscious of it, but I know people feel it.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_03: And so when you come together for a Troy
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_03: or for an Abdul or for a Tallarico, right,
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_03: you know, like, you know, there's, you know,
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_03: there's all the things and then there's the other thing.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_03: And so much of, and like when Graham was running, you know,
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_03: like the thing that we heard so often was people felt like they belonged
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_03: to something.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_03: They belonged to part of a, And you could easily describe that as I belong
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_03: to a political movement that was for health care for all, which is true.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_03: I don't take that away.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_03: But I think it was deeper than that.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I think yearning for something that alignment I was talking about earlier
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_03: on is deeper than that.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_03: And that's the thing that I think is
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_03: so incredibly poignant and possible
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_03: at this moment if we don't lose it.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_03: Not we. We will keep it.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's interesting you talk about belonging because one
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: of my concerns always is that I would say people want to be seen.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_02: They want to be seen by their politicians.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that that is one of the things that many people missed about Trump is
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: that he made people who felt unseen, seen.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so that it is important that it is not...
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: And that's, I appreciated in Tallarico's speech, particularly talking about,
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: you know, it doesn't matter who we vote for, right?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_02: We have a shared humanity because it's not going to work.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: We're going to keep getting, you know,
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: we won't pull back from the edge of the precipice if we continue to not find,
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: make sure that people don't get completely pushed out of our political system
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_02: and feel like they have no place and that they're not seen.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: And the left has, I think, you know, appropriate work to do in that area.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_02: And that, yeah.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Susan Collins finally lost her election.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think happened there, Betsy Sweet?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Bippity boppity boo.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_03: There's a little bit of magic there for sure.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_03: But I think, you know, I just think she was so believing in two things.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_03: One was how out of touch she was with how angry people were and feeling unseen
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_03: and unheard by Trump.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_03: And her, and no matter what she said, her people, the cloak got revealed, right?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_03: This moderate, you know, like finally they said, oh yeah, well you're moderate.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_03: And during the debate when they asked her the name of time she was moderate
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_03: where it made a difference.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_03: And she herself couldn't think of one vote in which it made a difference.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that I think was like, you know, oh, the emperor has no clothes.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_03: Like that, I think that was the other thing.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I think another thing that came across, and again,
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think this was conscious,
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_03: but her sense of entitlement The fact that her sign said, thank you, Susan,
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_03: like we're supposed to kiss her feet because she brought, you know,
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_03: and she thinks we're so stupid that, you know, yeah,
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_03: she brought a lot of fire stations to me, you know, good for her, you know, like,
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_03: right? She's, as I said, she's good at cutting ribbons,
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_03: but she was also really good at cutting our healthcare and cutting our rights
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_03: and cutting, you know, things that are much more fundamental and people felt
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_03: in their daily lives.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I think she blew that off.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_03: And then I think there was an elitism that she thought,
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_03: and it came out in that last commercial that Bill Green did, that said, oh,
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_03: he's just a stupid logger.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_03: This idea that 70% of the main population is stupid because they work
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_03: with their hands and they're working on resources.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_03: And even though you might have been the president of the Senate and been
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_03: in this legislature for 20 years,
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_03: We're just going to go back to that you're a stupid logger from my county,
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_03: from her county.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_03: So I think that sense of elitism,
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_03: which I think people finally got about Trump and it pissed them off about Trump.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_03: I think this was a nod to that in a way that she didn't understand.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_03: So I think that helped fuel that.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're seeing that Democrats have won big in Maine and nationally.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: But now it's kind of time to move from campaigning into governing.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: What advice would you give Democratic Party leaders?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: I guess, let's start in Maine.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: What would be your one piece of advice for them?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_03: Think outside the box.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_03: Like, don't just go back to where we've been.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_03: Don't do it the way we've always done.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_03: Think about making people not just seen, but included.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_03: Like people need to feel like you don't know.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_03: It's a thing that happens when you get to be in politics.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_03: Apparently, like you just kind of ride the wave and you just kind of forget.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_03: And there's a few people who have avoided that, but not very many.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's like, please think about who those people are.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_03: Think and to stay there.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it'll be really interesting to watch who Hannah Pingree, who Troy Jackson,
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_03: who hopefully Matt Dunlap, you know, are going to pull into their,
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_03: who's going to be around them.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_03: Troy especially, but Hannah.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_03: Janet's going to want Hannah to keep her legacy.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_03: There are people going.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_03: I think Hannah has to do a clean slate.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_03: There might be some that keep, but I think she has to make it her own.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_03: I think when Troy gets to Washington, the Washington system is going to say, oh,
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_03: you've got to have someone who's been here for 20 years. You've got to have this.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_03: You've got to have that. You've got to have like, you know what?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_03: And so I think...
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_03: You know, certainly being mentored is a good idea,
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_03: but helping to keep a different perspective and keeping that alive
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_03: and keeping people around you who call you on that and who make sure
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_03: that you're willing to say, uh-uh-uh, you know, we're straying.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_03: We're straying into the river here.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_03: We're straying into the way it always has been.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_03: Like, no.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_03: And so I would say, you know, and then the other thing is I would say curiosity,
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_03: imagination, And belief that it can be different.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_03: If they can keep those three things alive, I think they'll do well.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, when you're a candidate, you become the product.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: You're literally what you're selling.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so everyone is sort of around you to try to make you the best ever.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: And it gets very sensitive with you.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: So it is, you know, I've always believed that, you know,
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: running for office is a very noble thing to do.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: And yet so many good people end up getting twisted together.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't think it's because they're bad people necessarily.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, Luca, you might disagree with me,
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: but I feel like it is the system makes it very hard for you not to get used
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: to people doing everything for you out of a sense of wanting
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_02: to support your policies, but then end up creating a, not a monster,
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: but creating someone who's so out of touch,
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: it doesn't know the price of milk or eggs.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah. Yeah. And telling what to do and believing that they are smarter
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_03: because they've been there, you know, like that, you know, like,
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_03: cause you've got the learning curve, the learning curve is steep for sure.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_03: But I hope this new cohort
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_03: of progressives in national politics can resist that.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_03: I watched it happen in the Maine State Legislature.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_03: There's a whole new group of people that come in,
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_03: and the first message they get from their leadership is, shh, don't say anything.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_03: Your first two years are about listening.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_03: Don't say – and I think that if anything, these candidates,
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_03: these progressive candidates in particular, do have a mandate,
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_03: do have a thing to say, oh, no, no, we are not going to be quiet.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_03: We are not going to say it's all okay,
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_03: and we're not going to do it the way it's always been done.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_03: And, yeah, will we stumble and make some mistakes? Absolutely.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I guess that's the other piece of advice I would have,
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_03: is do not be afraid of making a mistake.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_03: Do not be afraid of trying something and saying, oh, it didn't work. All right.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_03: Back up. Let's try again.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_03: Because if we don't try and make mistakes and are willing to make mistakes,
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_03: the needle will not move one inch.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_02: Any other hot takes you want to share with us, Betsy, that you're thinking about?
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I want us to take time to celebrate and to honor the people.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_03: There was a beautiful thing on my social feed today that said,
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_03: you can't reap the harvest without thanking the people who planted the seeds.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that there's a lot of people in this movement And in what happened
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_03: in Maine, but also around the country,
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_03: who planted seeds a long time ago when that field, not to kill the metaphor,
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_03: but was hard, dirt, full of rocks with not, and everyone said nothing can grow here.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_03: And they did it anyway.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I would say we did it anyway.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_03: You know, like, and I just think, you know, we, so I want to take a minute and do that.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, do that and not just move on to the next thing.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I also really want Us to keep the pressure
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_03: on for inclusivity and seeing the whole picture.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I was on the phone this morning with my friends,
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_03: my young friends in the Somalian community in Lewiston, you know, and talking about,
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_03: you know, we see it all the time, you know.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_03: Politicians come and court them and court older, you know, as an old woman,
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_03: they court us, senior citizens vote a lot, you know, they court us during November,
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_03: and then by December 1st, we're nowhere, you know, and so I just,
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_03: I think we need to keep that as part of our organizing, and as you said, Luca,
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_03: new ways of building power, we need to figure out how we keep that voice alive,
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_03: respected, and valued, and so, um, So I know that we will all help them do that.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_03: And I know you guys will do that in your own work, but also in this podcast world.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_03: And then we just have to dream big.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_02: My favorite part of doing this podcast, I think,
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_02: has been talking to folks who have run for office and describe what it is like to be
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_02: on the campaign trail and to walk down someone's driveway or sit on their porch
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_02: and sit in their living room and talk to them about their lives and It's not even
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: a political conversation.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's just about relating to what's happening and where they want to see the future go.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: And to me, if we can hold on to that between the campaign
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: into actually governing,
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like we really can potentially see a new day.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe it's all of us have to be engaged and stay honest about that,
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: our own engagement as well, not to just disappear after the campaign,
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: but to stay involved in politics and make our way to Augusta or make our way to D.C.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: and stay the course.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_02: Well, enormous gratitude to you, Betsy.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: You've stayed the course for 40 years, maybe even longer.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_02: We know that from talking to you as a young'un.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: And we're so grateful that you came and spent some time with us here on Election Day just to...
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: To be in this moment, which is a pretty profound moment and historic moment.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you for being here.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_03: Very historic moment and so grateful.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm so thankful to the generational representation here, Luca.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_03: And as I say to my young friends, yeah, we'll stay in, but it's on you now.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_03: No pressure!
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: No
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_03: pressure!
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_03: I'm so grateful to both of you and it's been awesome to have this conversation.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Really wonderful to talk to you.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: Okay. That was amazing, Luca.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like I love talking to her. Always learn so much.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: I love thinking about planting seeds and how this is, you know, this takes work of generations.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: So that was super exciting.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I'm really excited for our next conversation,
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_02: our next debrief as well with Luca St. Clair. So that's coming up.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_02: So, um, Yeah, this has been a wild day. How are you doing?
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: You doing good?
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm doing great.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: Also super excited to talk to Lucas.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: He's, yeah, I think he'll have some funny takes as well.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, let's see.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's quite a day. All right, great.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thanks you all for joining us and definitely check out our other debrief
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_02: with Luca St. Clair.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: And a reminder to you all, I work at Colby College, as does Luca,
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: but the views expressed in this podcast are entirely our own and not attributed
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: to the college in any way.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: With that, stay tuned for our next debrief.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: Have a great day, everyone.