Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from My Heart Radio. My guest today is Howard Dean.
Speaker 1: Dean has an impressive list of former titles, former governor
Speaker 1: of Vermont, former chair of the Democratic National Committee, and
Speaker 1: former candidate for the Democratic presidential primary in two thousand four,
Speaker 1: and currently he is still opinionated about what the Democrats
Speaker 1: need to do at this pivotal time. Dean's faith in
Speaker 1: people's fundamental decency is shaped in part by his years
Speaker 1: in Vermont politics. Though originally a New Yorker, Dean has
Speaker 1: lived in Vermont most of his adult life, and he
Speaker 1: was a family physician before becoming governor. When you look
Speaker 1: at a map of the states where COVID rates have
Speaker 1: been soaring, Vermont seems to be faring better than other
Speaker 1: places like New York City and l A. I wanted
Speaker 1: to know if it's simply because Vermont is rural. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean from a density point of do it makes
Speaker 1: a difference. We also happen to have a Republican governor
Speaker 1: who has a brain and who that cares what the
Speaker 1: facts are, which is nice. He actually confessed to having
Speaker 1: voted for Biden after the election was over. I like him. Well,
Speaker 1: there's there's Larry Hogan and Charlie Baker. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are some reasonable Republicans still, but Vermont has been very successful. Now, look,
Speaker 1: we're having a surge too, and we're having problems and
Speaker 1: we gotta, you know, buckle down. But we're a community
Speaker 1: that cares about each other. We actually sit down and
Speaker 1: have discussions about debate issues. I never hated the Republicans
Speaker 1: when I was governor. We used to sit down and
Speaker 1: work stuff out as much friction with an our crass
Speaker 1: as I did with the Republicans. This is a reasonable
Speaker 1: place where people actually care about their neighbors and believe
Speaker 1: you're supposed to respect your neighbors. Now, we were just
Speaker 1: joking before you come and we're like, could Howard Dean
Speaker 1: be the president now in the interim just till the
Speaker 1: COVID's over, then Biden could take over. Could we have
Speaker 1: a medical doctor who's president for an interim period of time?
Speaker 1: But we know what from us as a physician, where
Speaker 1: did we primarily get it wrong here in terms of
Speaker 1: the way we handle the COVID. Well, Trump has been
Speaker 1: a disaster because Trump cares about Trump and his press,
Speaker 1: and not any functional thing. I mean, he's basically gutted
Speaker 1: all the health agencies by putting lackeys in there who
Speaker 1: are afraid of him. So he ruined the good name
Speaker 1: of the CDC and and and the f d A,
Speaker 1: and you know, calling up the f d A president,
Speaker 1: head of the f d A and threatening if you
Speaker 1: don't get this thing out in the next twenty four hours,
Speaker 1: you should resign. I mean, that's not medicine, that's just nonsense. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that's why the way it's always been, the big
Speaker 1: problem is and Trump is more or less created the
Speaker 1: I'm not wearing a mask because that's my political affiliation,
Speaker 1: which is just stupidity. So yeah, we'd be better off
Speaker 1: the Trump The problem is, I mean, if you look
Speaker 1: at other countries, they are better off, a lot better
Speaker 1: off then we are. Almost all of them, not all
Speaker 1: of them. Brazil is in bad shape, Russia is in
Speaker 1: bad shape. But but most of the countries in this
Speaker 1: world are much doing a much better job than we are.
Speaker 1: And that that's right at the feet of Trump and
Speaker 1: the Republican Party, which never dared to confront of them,
Speaker 1: and locking down was the answer. Locking down, unfortunately, is
Speaker 1: some of the answer, and I think it was handled
Speaker 1: actually fairly well. We got behind in New York, and
Speaker 1: that's understandable because we didn't know what was coming. We
Speaker 1: didn't understand what was happening. They pulled themselves together. The
Speaker 1: stuff that's going on in the Midwest is ridiculous. That
Speaker 1: was a whole bunch of Republican governors that basically said, oh,
Speaker 1: we don't need to wear a mask. Well, now people
Speaker 1: are dying, dropping down like flies, and there's I c
Speaker 1: u s are all full. The danger of the i
Speaker 1: c u s being fillers twofold one is a terrible
Speaker 1: indicator of how sick everybody is. But the other is
Speaker 1: that if you have a heart attack, guests who doesn't
Speaker 1: get an i CU bed or even medical attention. So
Speaker 1: the Midwestern states, because of their mostly their own stupidity
Speaker 1: of their governors, are in bad shape. And I think
Speaker 1: we're going to get our arms around this again. I
Speaker 1: think the vaccine is going to be enormously helpful. But
Speaker 1: we've got six months of really tough stuff in front
Speaker 1: of us where there. I mean, I'm seventy two years old.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to be really careful for the next
Speaker 1: six months when the vaccine comes. People get a vaccine,
Speaker 1: then they have to have a second one like a
Speaker 1: month later. Yeah, right, and you think that how soon
Speaker 1: if I get the vaccine. This is something I wanted
Speaker 1: to clarify for people listening to the show. Let's say
Speaker 1: I got a vaccine the first week of January, and
Speaker 1: then a month la I have to get another vaccine,
Speaker 1: but I still have to distance from people and wear masks. Yes,
Speaker 1: you really should. The truth is you'll probably have some
Speaker 1: minimal amount of partial immunity, which will vary greatly from
Speaker 1: individual to individual, which is why the numbers of the
Speaker 1: on the second vaccine really matter. This is a peculiar
Speaker 1: virus which we have very little experience with heretofore. I mean,
Speaker 1: there have been some you know, the Stars epidemic which
Speaker 1: was very small compared to this, which we did not
Speaker 1: have a lot of success with a vaccine, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't nearly as contagious as this, and I might add
Speaker 1: the fatality rate was much higher than this one is,
Speaker 1: so thank god I didn't know the contagion right. This
Speaker 1: is very very contagious, and it's an odd virus which
Speaker 1: human beings have very little experience with So that's most likely,
Speaker 1: and I'm not a researcher, but that's most likely the
Speaker 1: reason for the two vaccines. My guess is that there's
Speaker 1: some immunity after the first shot. You really got to
Speaker 1: get the second one. This is not something you want
Speaker 1: to fool with. And then after the second shot, you
Speaker 1: still have to distance in mask and keep or you
Speaker 1: free to just move about in your safe I would
Speaker 1: distance in mask. I wouldn't think I was free until
Speaker 1: we get to hurt immunity. And that's about se vaccinated
Speaker 1: or having had the disease. We know that most people
Speaker 1: are immune after they get the disease. The problem is
Speaker 1: we don't know how for how long. It could be
Speaker 1: only three months. We don't know how long this vaccine
Speaker 1: is gonna ask. You know, the flu vaccine you have
Speaker 1: to take every year, and you have to take it
Speaker 1: every year for two reasons. One, we don't know how
Speaker 1: immune you are. And to the flu virus, which is
Speaker 1: a different, holy different family of viruses, mutates like crazy
Speaker 1: very quickly, so you may get an entirely different flu
Speaker 1: riders coming the next year. That's why you get flu
Speaker 1: shots every year. Uh, this we don't know that much
Speaker 1: about we do know there's been one mutation. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: despite Trump's chatter about China and all this, the virus
Speaker 1: that most Americans have is actually a European mutation. And
Speaker 1: most of the virus in New York actually came from Europe,
Speaker 1: not from China, because it was we could trace it
Speaker 1: to a European set of European travelers that actually came
Speaker 1: back from Westchester County from a conference, and that was
Speaker 1: the first case in New York. So most of the
Speaker 1: virus in this country it's the European variant. Now, your
Speaker 1: father was a Wall Street guy. My father was a
Speaker 1: Wall Street guy. The thing about my parents is that
Speaker 1: it makes them different is yes, we have a house
Speaker 1: in East Hampton. We actually grew up here. I didn't
Speaker 1: go to junior activities that the Maidstone Club. I went
Speaker 1: to the East Hampton Boys Club and met everybody. My father, Yes,
Speaker 1: he played golf all summer with the summer people, and
Speaker 1: then he shot Coote and duck all winner with the
Speaker 1: local guys. We went to a church that had a
Speaker 1: lot of local people in the vestry. It wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: the hoity toity whatever. So we really although I went
Speaker 1: to school in New York City. Uh, this is the
Speaker 1: only places I've ever voted at East Hampton, New York
Speaker 1: and Vermont. And when the time came for you to
Speaker 1: go to school and your father was a business guy
Speaker 1: and you just had to go to medical school, what
Speaker 1: prompted you to do that? Why? How do I? How?
Speaker 1: I say this nicely? I worked on Wall Street for
Speaker 1: a year and a half and I hated it. I
Speaker 1: did it wasn't for you. Well, I was in college
Speaker 1: during Vietnam, where presidents of both parties lives through their
Speaker 1: teeth about the war, and fifty five thousand Americans were killed,
Speaker 1: not to mention millions of Southeast Asians, and I had
Speaker 1: given up and everything. I went to ski bummed and
Speaker 1: Askeden and poured concrete and wash dishes for a year.
Speaker 1: Decided that was not something I was going to be
Speaker 1: happy with, and then I went to work on Wall Street.
Speaker 1: Was the path of least resistance. I learned a great deal,
Speaker 1: but I learned I didn't want to live in New
Speaker 1: York and I didn't want to work on you know,
Speaker 1: make my living pushing other people's money around. And so
Speaker 1: I decided to go to medical school because a friend
Speaker 1: of mine had gone and to do a post back.
Speaker 1: I didn't you know. This was the sixties. There were
Speaker 1: no requirements in college, so I hadn't taken a single
Speaker 1: math or or science course while I was in college.
Speaker 1: But I was good at it in high school, so
Speaker 1: I went. I loved it, and I went to Albert
Speaker 1: Einstein College of Medicine. I was at Token gem at
Speaker 1: the at the Jewish medical school. It was great. I
Speaker 1: learned a lot and met my wife. So what could
Speaker 1: what work? Would go wrong? Right? And was Vermont something
Speaker 1: that was a place you visited summer at ski to
Speaker 1: something if you're going to do the East Coast skiing
Speaker 1: at least? How did Vermont come into your life? Uh?
Speaker 1: There was a family that uh sort of became my
Speaker 1: second family when I was in college, and I used
Speaker 1: to spend a lot of time in Bondville, Vermont, which
Speaker 1: is a tiny little town near Stratton. I did ski
Speaker 1: a lot, but I came to Vermont by chance. When
Speaker 1: you leave medical school, you list your top ten choices
Speaker 1: as internships. Vermont was my fourth, and I had three
Speaker 1: high powered academic medical centers that I had applied to. Ironically,
Speaker 1: tour in New York and one was in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: And I didn't get any of them, so I got
Speaker 1: my fourth choice. The computer matches that it's called the match,
Speaker 1: and it's a big deal when you get out of
Speaker 1: medical school. So I the match as signed me to Vermont.
Speaker 1: And if it hadn't done that, then you never would
Speaker 1: have heard of me. When did you start to become
Speaker 1: more hyper aware of what was going on? And you
Speaker 1: knew you had a passion for public affairs when you
Speaker 1: were how old? Well, I thought I had a public
Speaker 1: passion for public affairs when I was in high school
Speaker 1: and I was elected to the student council sort of
Speaker 1: by accident. And then I got disgusted with all the
Speaker 1: stuff in Vietnam and the civil rights movement, by the
Speaker 1: reaction of my own government. It didn't matter which party was,
Speaker 1: there were pots on both of them. Uh. Then Watergate happened,
Speaker 1: and the Democrats took a turn left and for better
Speaker 1: government and try to get the corruption out of the government,
Speaker 1: which they did to a large extent. Now it's behole
Speaker 1: returned thanks to the right wing Supreme Court. But I
Speaker 1: got interested in re interested in politics because I always
Speaker 1: thought that the way that Democrats could rehab themselves was
Speaker 1: to get a Southern run. And when Jimmy Carter ran
Speaker 1: for president, I signed on And that's what got me
Speaker 1: into politics. To campaign. Yeah, I signed up just as
Speaker 1: an envelope liquor and a phone call maker. And then
Speaker 1: I was mentored by two women who were twenty five
Speaker 1: years older than I, who are sisters, and one of
Speaker 1: whom was They both actually played a very active role
Speaker 1: in reconstituting the Democratic Party in Vermont. Vermont did not
Speaker 1: have a Democratic governor for a hundred and nine consecutive
Speaker 1: years between eighteen fifty three and nineteen sixty eight. So
Speaker 1: these two women had put the thing together and they
Speaker 1: mentored me. And because I worked my butt off for Carter,
Speaker 1: and I went to the convention and that was this
Speaker 1: and then I became the chair of the county and
Speaker 1: that's worked my way out. What office did you hold
Speaker 1: prior to being governor? I was lieutenant governor for five years,
Speaker 1: and then before that I was in the State House
Speaker 1: for two terms. When you have a political passion from
Speaker 1: when you're you know, during the sixties and Watergate and
Speaker 1: Vietnam and so Furth, and then you decide to run,
Speaker 1: what is it that makes you decide to give up
Speaker 1: practicing medicine to run for politics. Well, I didn't. Everything
Speaker 1: is part time up there, lieutenant governor. So I was
Speaker 1: practicing medicine until August fourteenth, and I was seeing a
Speaker 1: patient and the nurse knocks on the door and says,
Speaker 1: excuse me, I have to interrupt you for the governor's offices.
Speaker 1: On the line, I took a call in this quavering voice,
Speaker 1: and the other end of the phone says, I regret
Speaker 1: to inform you that the governor has died of a
Speaker 1: heart attack, and you're the governor. That was the end
Speaker 1: of my medical practice. Oh my god. So that's how
Speaker 1: I decided. I actually decided not to leave medicine because
Speaker 1: it was sort of my turn to run for governor.
Speaker 1: There were two other people that wanted it, and I
Speaker 1: thought to myself, you know, I'm gonna get into a primary,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to close my practice for five months,
Speaker 1: and I'm not gonna have a practice to come back
Speaker 1: to if I don't win. So I decided to run
Speaker 1: for a third term, which is again, lieutenant governor in
Speaker 1: Vermont's a part time job. And then the the governorship.
Speaker 1: It's a four year term two years, the governor's two
Speaker 1: years in the months two years, and I love it
Speaker 1: that way. People keep wanting to change it. That is
Speaker 1: laziness on the part of the public who doesn't want
Speaker 1: to hear all those stupid ads. I don't blame him,
Speaker 1: And it's laziness in the part of the politicians who
Speaker 1: don't want to face the public. Donald Trump is a
Speaker 1: good reason not to have four year terms. You can
Speaker 1: get rid of me anytime you want in two years,
Speaker 1: and it's happened lots of time. So I'm a big
Speaker 1: fan of two year terms. Now. It may be impractical
Speaker 1: in a place like New York, which is so big,
Speaker 1: but in the smaller states, I believe you actually get
Speaker 1: more done faster with two year terms because you're accountable
Speaker 1: every minute. How far into his term was the government
Speaker 1: when he died, Well, he'd been a governor for four
Speaker 1: terms before that, and then he'd gone and then come back,
Speaker 1: and he was eight months into his term. He was
Speaker 1: eight months And when you in that state, do they
Speaker 1: have to have a special election to have another about
Speaker 1: the term? Yeah, but that's another advantage of if you
Speaker 1: don't get you know, people who weren't really elected to
Speaker 1: serve for the majority. So I faced the voters, you know,
Speaker 1: sixteen months later or whatever. And then I was elected
Speaker 1: to five terms on my own. So you finished his term,
Speaker 1: and then what happened By the time you finished his
Speaker 1: first term, You decide you like it and you want
Speaker 1: to stay. Yeah. Well, I was really interested in healthcare.
Speaker 1: It was interesting, Alec after a week of you know,
Speaker 1: drinking water out of a fire hose and being brief
Speaker 1: because you know, I knew nothing about nothing, and now
Speaker 1: I gotta worry about the banks. And it was during
Speaker 1: the one of the recessions, and I've got a zillion things.
Speaker 1: Everybody's got to come and tell me what they're doing
Speaker 1: and how the government works. And so I'm going through
Speaker 1: all this and I don't of a moment to myself
Speaker 1: and the states and shocked because this giant political figure
Speaker 1: has suddenly dropped dead at the age of sixty three
Speaker 1: and about two weeks and I had a couple of
Speaker 1: hours to myself in my office by myself, and I thought, Wow,
Speaker 1: you never expected this. What do you really want to do?
Speaker 1: So I wrote down five things that I thought were
Speaker 1: really important. The top was universal health care and Jim Hunt,
Speaker 1: who was governor of North Carolina for sixteen years. He
Speaker 1: took me aside one time and he said, he looked
Speaker 1: me in the eye and he said, uh, you know
Speaker 1: what we do is urgent. Uh. And I looked at him, nodded,
Speaker 1: and he said, and ten percent is important. And I
Speaker 1: never forgot that. So every day be while I was
Speaker 1: in the office, I never left when on the days
Speaker 1: I was in the office without pulling out my drawer
Speaker 1: and looking at the five things I put down in
Speaker 1: that day, two weeks into my unexpected term, to make
Speaker 1: sure I've done at least one thing that further one
Speaker 1: of those causes, because every day in your life, no
Speaker 1: matter what job you have, the urgent, oh ways overcomes
Speaker 1: the important and you get to the end of your
Speaker 1: life and you haven't done the things that are important
Speaker 1: because you focused on the urgent things all the time.
Speaker 1: I teach a lot now and I advocate to my
Speaker 1: students write that list down, because even at your age,
Speaker 1: there's stuff you think is important and stuff do you
Speaker 1: think is urgent, and you've got to be able to
Speaker 1: tell the difference, and and the important stuff is going
Speaker 1: to change as you grow older. But if you don't
Speaker 1: do that you're gonna spend all your time in the
Speaker 1: urgin and none of the stuff that's important. I'm Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. If you
Speaker 1: like conversations about politics, check out our archives for more
Speaker 1: in depth conversations with interesting people, like Good Morning America's
Speaker 1: George Stephanopoulos. When I left the White House in early
Speaker 1: I was I guess I was what thirt thirty six?
Speaker 1: Then I felt much older and I you know why?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean White House hears are dog years multiplied.
Speaker 1: Here more of my conversation with George Stephanopolis a Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing dot org. After the break, I talked to
Speaker 1: Howard Dean about what he thinks Biden needs to tackle. First.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: I wanted to hear what Howard Dean makes of Joe
Speaker 1: Biden's plans so far. I'm very pleased with what Biden's doing.
Speaker 1: He's not my style. I think I wanted somebody who
Speaker 1: was about forty because I think I'm desperate to turn
Speaker 1: all this over to a new generation. I think my
Speaker 1: generations hung around too long. But I think Biden was
Speaker 1: a great candidate for for what we needed. I actually
Speaker 1: thought Bernie was gonna win. I think what happened was
Speaker 1: first we had Trump, who was just chaos every day's
Speaker 1: reality television, and then we had COVID, which is scared
Speaker 1: of the living daylights out of people, and I think
Speaker 1: people just thought, jeez, I really like Bernie, and I
Speaker 1: think we really need change, but we're just gonna get
Speaker 1: four more years of confrontation. Although Bernie is a bit
Speaker 1: very different than Trump, because Bernie's honest and Trump isn't.
Speaker 1: But I think that that's when they decided they wanted Biden,
Speaker 1: and I think he was probably the best nominee we
Speaker 1: could have had. I think Biden's no nonsense, which is great.
Speaker 1: I like his cabinet appointments. He has got to focus
Speaker 1: on both the urgent and the important. The urgent is,
Speaker 1: let's try to heal the country. Let's put confidence back
Speaker 1: in government because there is almost none now. But the
Speaker 1: important is, we really do have to have a universal
Speaker 1: healthcare program that works for every American. Is ludicrous for
Speaker 1: the United States of America to be the only democracy
Speaker 1: in the in the world that doesn't have a universal
Speaker 1: healthcare program. This is absurd, and he talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about some of the things. I personally believe that
Speaker 1: the way to do it is allow everybody to sign
Speaker 1: up for Medicare. What we did this in my state
Speaker 1: in Vermont, because at the top of the list, even
Speaker 1: in the state of Vermont, was universal health care for me.
Speaker 1: So my second year we put in get rid of
Speaker 1: all these pre existing conditions. You can't charge anybody more
Speaker 1: than above what you charge your least expensive patient. And
Speaker 1: we had a huge Medicaid expand thanks to Bill Clinton,
Speaker 1: so that every child in my state for two generations
Speaker 1: has grown up with health insurance. Everybody under eighteen is
Speaker 1: eligible for Medicaid essentially, or unless they're over poverty. You
Speaker 1: can do that as a state. What you can't do
Speaker 1: is say, here, what's going to do a single payer?
Speaker 1: Maybe single payer is the right thing to do, but
Speaker 1: the change is too fast. If Jolly Verman hadn't changed
Speaker 1: his vote under Obamacare and gotten rid of the ability
Speaker 1: to sign up for Medicare, the so called public option,
Speaker 1: I think three quoters of the people in this country
Speaker 1: would be on Medicare right now, because Medicare is a
Speaker 1: much better program than the health insurance companies are the
Speaker 1: people that are opposed to universal health care. Is through
Speaker 1: any argument that they make that make sense to you. No, none,
Speaker 1: I'm not. Look, you can be opposed to government run healthcare,
Speaker 1: that's a reasonable argument. I don't happen to think. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think Medicare does a better job the insurance companies do.
Speaker 1: But to say that you shouldn't have universal healthcare, that's
Speaker 1: the argument of people who have what they need and
Speaker 1: don't give a damn about anybody else. And I have
Speaker 1: no patience for that. I'm always curious if the COVID
Speaker 1: has proven anything. It's is how linked we are, you know, biologically.
Speaker 1: Why don't they recognize that it's in their interests as
Speaker 1: well for other people to be covered. You know something,
Speaker 1: most people are not opposed to universal healthcare, including most
Speaker 1: Trump voters. The problem is what the Republicans do is
Speaker 1: basically when on the worst instincts of people, they catered racism, homophobia.
Speaker 1: What they sell is hate and that overcomes a lot
Speaker 1: of things. Uh, if you pull most Americans, they would
Speaker 1: really like a universal healthcare program, and that includes most
Speaker 1: of the Trump voters. You know, there's a guy from
Speaker 1: Georgia who is married to one of my favorite students,
Speaker 1: And we were talking one day and he says, you know,
Speaker 1: do you like Trump voters? And I had to think
Speaker 1: about it, and I said yes, because most of them
Speaker 1: used to vote for me. These are working people. These
Speaker 1: are not I mean, yes, you get the lunatics that
Speaker 1: are in the paper all the time. These are not
Speaker 1: horrible people. These are people who are working people and
Speaker 1: they and Trump brings out the worst in them, but
Speaker 1: they're most of them are hard working people that don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of money. They understand that universal healthcare
Speaker 1: program would be helpful. So what do the Republicans do.
Speaker 1: They crank up homophobia, they crank up racism, They invent
Speaker 1: all these these issues that are tangential, and they get
Speaker 1: them so emotionally invested. Fear is what's driving them. Look,
Speaker 1: if you're a white guy in rural America and you
Speaker 1: lose your job when you're fifty years old, there's a
Speaker 1: pretty good chance you're never going to get another one. Now,
Speaker 1: black and brown people know that feeling very well. White
Speaker 1: folks have never felt that before. So they're scared to death.
Speaker 1: And that's what the Republicans sell, is fear and hate.
Speaker 1: And I'm done with the Republicans. I think they're done
Speaker 1: as a party too. I don't think you can survive.
Speaker 1: Either they're not going to survive or the country is
Speaker 1: not going to survive. You can't self fear and hate
Speaker 1: and have that be a leadership trait in a great country.
Speaker 1: When you ran for president, you had your fifty state strategy. Correct, Yes,
Speaker 1: I did, but at the fifty it wasn't called that
Speaker 1: until I became chairman of the Democratic Party. And what
Speaker 1: do you think what worked for Obama? Because Obama basically
Speaker 1: employed that, correct? Yeah, what worked for Obama is he
Speaker 1: took a lot of stuff. Look, I don't take credit
Speaker 1: for all the great stuff we did in my campaign.
Speaker 1: The truth is we had no money. We had a
Speaker 1: ton of we had a very powerful message, and we
Speaker 1: had all the twenty three year olds in the country
Speaker 1: were for us, and they invented all this stuff. I
Speaker 1: had no idea what we were doing or what I
Speaker 1: was doing. As it turned out, well, it was the
Speaker 1: small donations, and it was it was the organization, it
Speaker 1: was meet up, it was all these things on the net.
Speaker 1: I mean, they were the kids that worked in my
Speaker 1: campaign was their first campaign and They were incredible. They
Speaker 1: revolutionized campaigning. When I took over the Democratic Party after
Speaker 1: I didn't win the nomination, I hired them. They had
Speaker 1: started as company called Blue State Digital, and because we
Speaker 1: had to bring the whole party up to snuff in
Speaker 1: terms of social media and all that stuff. And then
Speaker 1: Obama hired them away from me in two thousand six.
Speaker 1: So Obama had two things. Besides being an incredibly charismatic candidate,
Speaker 1: which he was, he had two other things going. For one,
Speaker 1: this had been tried for a campaign cycle and it
Speaker 1: was successful, and the stuff that wasn't successful and went
Speaker 1: fell by the wayside. And too, he had David Pluff.
Speaker 1: Obama himself is incredibly personally disciplined, and so is Pluff.
Speaker 1: So all of a sudden you have all these kids
Speaker 1: who had no discipline at all, because I didn't was
Speaker 1: not terribly discipline, and trip he certainly wasn't um. And
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, these kids now have to report
Speaker 1: to somebody who's maybe a little old school, but who
Speaker 1: has sees the big picture, which is Pluff. I truly
Speaker 1: believe that pluf knew where every single Obama voter in
Speaker 1: the country wasn't fantasy figured out with these kids, how
Speaker 1: to get them all out And this is of course
Speaker 1: a happy ending to this after the Obama campaign that
Speaker 1: these kids sold Blue State Digital for a hundred million dollars.
Speaker 1: Convenient good for them. When you decide to run, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm always curious about people who run for these state
Speaker 1: wide offices. You know, something big like governor or senator
Speaker 1: or the presidency office? Is the is the big brass
Speaker 1: ring when you run for that? Um, does someone tell
Speaker 1: you you're ready or did you tell yourself you were ready?
Speaker 1: Or both? I'll tell you exactly how I knew. I
Speaker 1: had been in the governorship longer than anybody else in
Speaker 1: the state, and I'd serve a long time. And We've
Speaker 1: done some pretty extraordinary things. Universal healthcare, we did the
Speaker 1: equivalent of pre K with something called success by six
Speaker 1: or zero to three kids, and dropped child abused down dramatically.
Speaker 1: And the most controversial thing I did was signed the
Speaker 1: first marriage equality build in the country. We had to
Speaker 1: call it civil unions. In no way I could have
Speaker 1: gotten a marriage a bill that said marriage out of
Speaker 1: the House, but we did it, and it essentially was marriage.
Speaker 1: And I had to wear a bulletproof vest for my
Speaker 1: last campaign, and I had to run in that campaign
Speaker 1: because if I hadn't uh and quit after we passed it,
Speaker 1: then that was essentially became a referendum on civil unions,
Speaker 1: which you know, I didn't want to lose that and
Speaker 1: I didn't I wanted by D twenty three votes. So
Speaker 1: I was done. There was no way I was getting
Speaker 1: reelected to anything. And I just thought what next? And
Speaker 1: we had two senators that have been there for a
Speaker 1: long time and I wasn't. I didn't really want to
Speaker 1: be in the Senate anyway, So what else is there? Politics?
Speaker 1: And that's what I did. And when you decided to
Speaker 1: run and you didn't win the nomination, whose idea was it?
Speaker 1: You to run the d n C. That was my
Speaker 1: idea and everybody else hated it. I didn't get a
Speaker 1: single vote from inside the Beltway. My vote, my listener
Speaker 1: was a classic grassrooms. I was elected by the states,
Speaker 1: And why do you think that is? Why did they
Speaker 1: vote for you? And the insiders wouldn't because they were
Speaker 1: fed up with the inside the Beltway people. Because the
Speaker 1: inside the Beltway people don't know anything about campaigns. Look
Speaker 1: at them. They all end up running campaigns after that
Speaker 1: they were successful fifteen years before, and they're selling all
Speaker 1: this crap that was good fifteen years ago and elected
Speaker 1: somebody and it's no good anymore. And they're always getting
Speaker 1: making a ton of money. When I got to the
Speaker 1: d n C, there was no data platform, not because
Speaker 1: Terry McCulloch was an idiot, because he actually left me
Speaker 1: with the surplus, which is unheard of after a presidential campaign,
Speaker 1: just because the Washington consultants sold him something was totally inadequate.
Speaker 1: So I basically ran against the establishment, which I had
Speaker 1: been doing in my presidential campaign, and it was very successful.
Speaker 1: I didn't get any votes from inside the Beltway, and
Speaker 1: three quarters of the members are from the States, and
Speaker 1: that's where I got my votes. And then the last campaign,
Speaker 1: I ran a for profit corporation called the Democratic Data Exchange.
Speaker 1: And the reason I was asked I don't know anything
Speaker 1: about data. The reason I was asked to run it
Speaker 1: is because I could get along with both the insiders
Speaker 1: and the outsiders. After after the fifties, States Strategy gave
Speaker 1: us back the presidency, the Senate in the House, which
Speaker 1: none of which we possessed. When I took over as chairman,
Speaker 1: and we had nothing, and by two thousand six we'd
Speaker 1: had the House in the Senate, and by two thousand
Speaker 1: eight we had Obama's president and had to trifecta. Was
Speaker 1: this something you thought was going to happen when Obama
Speaker 1: want did you expect you we get invited to commit
Speaker 1: to that administration? I was hoping I would. What job
Speaker 1: would you want? Probably h h s. I'd had a
Speaker 1: few words with a person who turned out to be
Speaker 1: the chief and staff, and I had a few words
Speaker 1: with Obama too, you know, like, I don't not famous
Speaker 1: for hiding my opinions, and I'm not to go along
Speaker 1: to get along guy. I'm a guy who says what
Speaker 1: they think, and I think, you know, we ought to
Speaker 1: do what we can. It's not that I'm not a
Speaker 1: team player. I am, but I'm not a team player
Speaker 1: to the extent that you have to lie to be
Speaker 1: a team player. And I don't play Washington games. And
Speaker 1: this is the same true with Biden. Do you think
Speaker 1: if you were invited to come and enjoined Biden's administration anyway,
Speaker 1: would you consider that? Well? I don't. I won't be invited,
Speaker 1: and I don't feel bad about it. Um, I really
Speaker 1: truly think that it's time for a lot of other
Speaker 1: new people to come in, and Biden hasn't done all
Speaker 1: of that, but he's done some of it. Uh. He
Speaker 1: has a very diverse cabinet, which I think is absolutely critical.
Speaker 1: I mean, I am so pleased to see Janet Yellen
Speaker 1: as the head of the Treasury Department. I'm thrilled to
Speaker 1: see Gena McCarthy, who's been overlooked for a long time,
Speaker 1: going to be his chief climate change person. She really
Speaker 1: knows what she's doing. Tina Flanois is going to be
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris's chief of staff. She is a real find. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, he's got some really good people who are
Speaker 1: about to take over for him, and I think that's great.
Speaker 1: Look again, sure it would be fun job to have.
Speaker 1: I really think somebody's who's forty two should have that job,
Speaker 1: not somebody who's seventy two. So when two thousand sixteen comes,
Speaker 1: Trump wins, here you are. You ran for president, you
Speaker 1: ran the d n C. You've had a successful political career.
Speaker 1: What happened to Hillary Clinton in two thousand sixteen, Hillary
Speaker 1: actually was incredibly helpful, So you have to know a
Speaker 1: little bit. What about what I've been doing relatively quietly.
Speaker 1: So there was a woman named Judith McHale who used
Speaker 1: to run the Discovery Channel for fourteen years, and another
Speaker 1: woman who's a big organizer in Silicon Valley named Amy
Speaker 1: Raw and Judith is very close to Hillary. She worked
Speaker 1: for her at the State Department. And we came up
Speaker 1: with this notion that instead of funding the traditional d
Speaker 1: n C, we ought to look at what this young
Speaker 1: generation is doing. And what the young generation is doing
Speaker 1: will not come as a surprise to you. They all
Speaker 1: have groups that does certain things. Some of them train people,
Speaker 1: some of them recruit members of minority communities to run
Speaker 1: for office, some of them only recruit local officials. All
Speaker 1: these things need to be done by the d n C.
Speaker 1: But this is a generation that doesn't trust institutions, so
Speaker 1: they start their own. Now there's some problems with this generation.
Speaker 1: One of them is I call it cooperation without commitment.
Speaker 1: So if they if they have a startup and they disagree,
Speaker 1: instead of working it out, they go each start their
Speaker 1: own start up and say nice to work with you, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But what we did was to vet them. Judith would
Speaker 1: vet them from a business point of view, I'd vote
Speaker 1: to vet them from a political point of view, because
Speaker 1: there's zillions of these institutions and try to pick best
Speaker 1: in class, who could do tech best, who could do
Speaker 1: local officials best, who did Congress best? So we picked
Speaker 1: eleven institutions. One collective pack taught African Americans how to
Speaker 1: raise money essentially from white people, which were was very
Speaker 1: hard for them to do. Another one was Run for Something,
Speaker 1: recruited young people to run, especially for local offices, often
Speaker 1: members of minority and communities and women, not exclusively. Uh.
Speaker 1: There was a training organization based in Chicago, Vote Latino.
Speaker 1: So there were eleven organizations that we picked that circumscribed
Speaker 1: the functions of the Democratic Committee, and Hillary helped us
Speaker 1: raise the money and of course raised most of it
Speaker 1: from her funders, who had no understanding what we were doing,
Speaker 1: but they loved Hillary, and we raised a hell of
Speaker 1: a lot of money. She raised a hell of a
Speaker 1: lot of money, and it went to Indivisible and Swing
Speaker 1: Left and all these really good organizations. And that's what
Speaker 1: Hillary did for two years, and then the second two
Speaker 1: years I spent doing Democratic Data Exchange, and she spent
Speaker 1: raising money for both these organizations and some other ones.
Speaker 1: So it's this is not meant to supplant the d
Speaker 1: n C. This is meant to do things for the
Speaker 1: d n C that they can no longer do because
Speaker 1: the a new generation has come forth and does everything
Speaker 1: differently in politics. Basically, it took the stuff that started
Speaker 1: my campaign, started in Hillary's campaign in two thousand sixteen,
Speaker 1: some of it, and is bringing it into the twenty
Speaker 1: one century and then trying to get the d n
Speaker 1: C used to working with all these groups, which they
Speaker 1: have to a pretty good extent as allowed by what's
Speaker 1: left of campaign finance reform. Do you think she ran
Speaker 1: a good campaign in two thousand and sixteen. No, I
Speaker 1: don't think she ran a particularly good campaign, but she
Speaker 1: did a hell of a lot for people since that
Speaker 1: time to help Biden win and and to reconstitute the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party. Do you think that the electoral college should
Speaker 1: be eliminated? Yes, playing and simple yes. And I also
Speaker 1: think we ought to have ranked choice voting do Yeah.
Speaker 1: We had in Burlington for a while until one of
Speaker 1: the Republican candidates claimed that his rival got in because
Speaker 1: of that, and the rival turned out to be crooked.
Speaker 1: It was a progressive at the time, and so we
Speaker 1: got took it off the ballot, We're probably gonna put
Speaker 1: it on now. But I'll tell you why. It does
Speaker 1: two things. First of all, you don't have to have
Speaker 1: a runoff. You get people again. You give people choices.
Speaker 1: I felt good about the mayor's race that I voted
Speaker 1: in in Burlington because my fourth choice one, but I
Speaker 1: had voted for that person. The other thing, if it's
Speaker 1: ranked choice voting, let's just say you and I are running.
Speaker 1: I need your second place choices. So I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: spend a lot of money running around telling everybody what
Speaker 1: a jerk you are, because if I do all, your
Speaker 1: second place people are gonna put me last, or your
Speaker 1: joy people are gonna last. It's not perfect, but you
Speaker 1: run much more civilized campaign and decent campaigns. If you
Speaker 1: have ranked choice voting, then you do in this winner
Speaker 1: take all minority, you know you can win with thirty
Speaker 1: six per cent or of the vote. So those are
Speaker 1: the two big reforms I think we need is ranked
Speaker 1: choice voting and getting rid of the electoral college. What
Speaker 1: do you think, Well, depends how you do it. There's
Speaker 1: a bill called National Popular Vote, which has passed in
Speaker 1: states controlling about nine votes. If they get to to seventy,
Speaker 1: the electoral college is essentially gone unless the Court Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: which of course is a function essentially offshoot of the
Speaker 1: Republican Party these days. What it does Vermont's passed it,
Speaker 1: New York's past It is say, if somebody wins the
Speaker 1: popular vote in the country, that's where your electoral votes go.
Speaker 1: And it takes place when enough states to add to
Speaker 1: to seventy have passed this ballot. Former chair of the
Speaker 1: Democratic National Committee, Howard Deem. If you're enjoying this conversation,
Speaker 1: be sure to subscribe to Here's the Thing on the
Speaker 1: I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. When we come back, I talked to Howard
Speaker 1: Dean about one of the most urgent issues for the
Speaker 1: future of our democracy, campaign finance reform. After the break,
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and this is here is the Thing.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Howard Dean. Given the deep political
Speaker 1: divisions in this country, I wanted to know what Dean
Speaker 1: thinks about the struggle Republicans will face regarding the future
Speaker 1: of their party after Donald Trump. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: parently decent people who have been voting Republican for a
Speaker 1: long time who couldn't bring themselves to vote for Trump.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are still a lot of decent Republicans.
Speaker 1: The problem is none of them are in the Senate,
Speaker 1: with the possible exception of Mitt Romney. There are people
Speaker 1: I like in the Republican Party the Senate um, but
Speaker 1: I don't respect them because I don't think they have
Speaker 1: a spine between them. I'd like Bob Corker a lot
Speaker 1: and Trump deep six Tim and that's why they're so
Speaker 1: terrified the Republican Party. This happens to all politicians, and
Speaker 1: the Democrats are not exempt from this. They care more
Speaker 1: about their job than they do about the country, and
Speaker 1: that's a big problem. You shouldn't be in. You know.
Speaker 1: I'm actually for going back to the way the original
Speaker 1: Congress was, which is the way the legislature is in Vermontest.
Speaker 1: This is not a full time job. You better have
Speaker 1: another employment. And I'm for term limits in Congress. Not
Speaker 1: because I like term limits, but because when you have
Speaker 1: the degree of corruption that is going on in the
Speaker 1: Republican Party, although I'm sure it's going on in the
Speaker 1: in the Democratic Party in the past, you know, we're
Speaker 1: not immune from this kind of stuff, then it's time
Speaker 1: to try to fix that corruption. The corruption is unbelievable,
Speaker 1: partly because of Citizens United, which is the most dangerous
Speaker 1: decision that was made since dread Scott. The Supreme Court
Speaker 1: has totally corrupted billions of dollars of dark money going
Speaker 1: to the Federalist Society, who then serves up the highest
Speaker 1: scentage of people rated unqualified by the American Bar Association
Speaker 1: ever to be seated in the courts. This country is
Speaker 1: in a lot more trouble than just Donald Trump. And
Speaker 1: we've created this mess ourselves. Yes, I believe the Republicans
Speaker 1: are more responsible for the than the Democrats are. But
Speaker 1: the Democrats need to get their act together. And we
Speaker 1: need desperately needed generational change. Uh. And we need less politics.
Speaker 1: And the way I think you get less politics is
Speaker 1: don't make this a full time job. You know, pay
Speaker 1: people decently, but you know you've gotta have another job.
Speaker 1: I mean, campaign finance reform has been my number one issue.
Speaker 1: And it's what's if you're a proponent of campaign finance reform,
Speaker 1: if you're sworn to that cause, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: lonely task because it's the least sexy issue you could
Speaker 1: possibly be working on, right, but it's the most critical
Speaker 1: one for the country. It's the lynch pin of all
Speaker 1: the problems of this country. Yep. It sure is. When
Speaker 1: you reference term limits and someone said to me, well,
Speaker 1: I mean always that conversation, people would say, well, elections
Speaker 1: themselves are termaments. I said, no, no, no no, no, fair
Speaker 1: elections are like term limits. I said, right now, incumbency
Speaker 1: is such a daunting power. We need term limits because
Speaker 1: campaigns are not fair, because we don't have And I
Speaker 1: was working with people on the nine Sunday's program and
Speaker 1: Marvin Calb or his brother Bernard Calb at the Shorenstein
Speaker 1: School at Harvard and then talking about having not ceilings
Speaker 1: of spending, but floors. So if you're in a statewide
Speaker 1: race and media saturation for that state for senate governor,
Speaker 1: we exempt lieutenant governor because that's more ceremonial. In a
Speaker 1: lot of states, we exempt controller and a g. But
Speaker 1: you see the two senate races. In the gubernatorial race,
Speaker 1: what is media saturation in that state? If it's thirty
Speaker 1: million dollars for you to penetrate the entire media platform,
Speaker 1: and you you gotta make sure, each candidate, there's thirty
Speaker 1: million dollars. Now you could oppose me and you could
Speaker 1: spend eighty. You could spend what Bloomberg, you could spend
Speaker 1: a hundred. But as long as I have thirty, I
Speaker 1: have a base of what equal saturation were good to go.
Speaker 1: I completely believe in public financing of campaigns completely. Well,
Speaker 1: you know what, solar are A lot of voters this
Speaker 1: is are seing in Arizona. They actually passed this by
Speaker 1: Arizona was a pretty conservative state. This is the first
Speaker 1: time it went to going to Democratic for quite a while.
Speaker 1: I think since Bill Clinton and two so Arizona they
Speaker 1: had they passed public finance and campaigns by referendum. They
Speaker 1: had two governors, both of whom I think served two terms.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, Janet Apolitano and the Republican governor I
Speaker 1: forgot which one it was who won under that system.
Speaker 1: And the Chamber of Commerce and the labor unions got
Speaker 1: together and tried to overthrow it because these are two
Speaker 1: big influence groups, one from each side, and they spent
Speaker 1: a lot of money on a referendum to get rid
Speaker 1: of it, and they lost. Because the public likes public financing,
Speaker 1: because it gets the corruption out of politics. And there
Speaker 1: was a complicated system because of the free speech component
Speaker 1: as you described, So you can actually spend more, but
Speaker 1: everybody has a minimum amount that they can get. And
Speaker 1: it worked fine until John Roberts came along and then
Speaker 1: Citizens United passed and then that was thrown out. Well,
Speaker 1: like they said, the problem is if if someone can
Speaker 1: spend an unlimited amount of money to run for office
Speaker 1: of actions speech, the line was then the person with
Speaker 1: the most cash speaks the loudest. And that's the problem
Speaker 1: of this country is that the things that Citizen United
Speaker 1: are protecting are you know, rich mail oriented, Christian oriented,
Speaker 1: Wall Street oriented. Everything that happens in this country. Now,
Speaker 1: to me, that significant is about stimulating the Tao. It
Speaker 1: doesn't get past and washing unless it stimulates the Tao.
Speaker 1: And that's that's the problem. Well, yeah, I mean that's true.
Speaker 1: The idea that corporations are people and have the same
Speaker 1: free speech rights, this is graceful, and this is put
Speaker 1: on by supposedly serious jurists. And there who do you
Speaker 1: think gives money to the federalist society? Rich people who
Speaker 1: who are really conservative and big corporations and they don't
Speaker 1: have to declare where the money is coming from. That
Speaker 1: is the classic Jane Mayer definition of dark money. So,
Speaker 1: you know capitalism, which I happen to believe in because
Speaker 1: I think it fits our sort of species well, that
Speaker 1: it helps to be greedy, which we are as a species,
Speaker 1: and it helps us to be altruistic. But capitalism is
Speaker 1: in trouble, not because it's a terrible system, is because
Speaker 1: it's at the extreme end of where it should be.
Speaker 1: We need better regulations so that everybody can benefit. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter what system you have, whether socialism or communism
Speaker 1: or capitalism. Every system fails if you don't have a moderate,
Speaker 1: reasonable place in the middle where it can work. And
Speaker 1: capitalism is not there now. John Roberts bears much of
Speaker 1: the responsibility for that. Well, we need capitalism with regulations.
Speaker 1: We need capitalism with some teeth from regulatory teeth. You're right,
Speaker 1: people need to pay more tax as, corporations need to
Speaker 1: pay more taxes. But we want people to be competitive.
Speaker 1: It's the political aspect of the fact that money is
Speaker 1: speech that kills this. Because as long as my vote
Speaker 1: was just as important as the chairman of General Motors,
Speaker 1: that was great. But the truth is the chairman of
Speaker 1: General Motors can write a million dollar check to some
Speaker 1: dark money organization and my vote doesn't make any difference
Speaker 1: if you do that. And that's where we are today,
Speaker 1: and we can't be there if we want to survive
Speaker 1: as a country. We may not. There's no guarantee that
Speaker 1: America survives or any other country survives. It's to us,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna have to be much more serious about
Speaker 1: how seriously we take government. That that, to me is
Speaker 1: the most important lesson of the Trump administration was how
Speaker 1: close we came to this country actually perishing, which now
Speaker 1: we're not done yet. Look, Trump is the you know,
Speaker 1: the worst of the worst and all this stuff, but
Speaker 1: the hard work has not been done, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: done by the Democrats either, and we had a chance
Speaker 1: to do it and we didn't do it. So, yes,
Speaker 1: Trump is a despicable person. I think he's the symptom,
Speaker 1: not the cause. It's assumed that you know, Biden is
Speaker 1: up there, he's older, and he's about to begin a
Speaker 1: four year term in one of the most grueling jobs
Speaker 1: known to man, and whether he is willing, whether he's
Speaker 1: able to seek a second term after that, is to
Speaker 1: be revealed. But at the same time, he has a
Speaker 1: young woman who is the vice president elect, and I'm wondering,
Speaker 1: when you're in that position and there's as much of
Speaker 1: a chance with him as anyone, that he won't seek
Speaker 1: a second term. He might not be willing to do
Speaker 1: that when he's eighty two years old four years from now.
Speaker 1: Do you think that everybody is assiduously grooming her to
Speaker 1: run for that job. I'm here. I'm sure she's insiduously
Speaker 1: grooming herself. But that doesn't look I mean, that's not
Speaker 1: a guarantee of anything. I guarantee you that if Joe
Speaker 1: doesn't run for a second term, there'll be a primary,
Speaker 1: and Kamala Harris will have the advantage in that primary.
Speaker 1: Everybody will know who she is, but people are gonna
Speaker 1: come after her. But look, the second term of a
Speaker 1: president is a referendum on the president. That's why Biden
Speaker 1: was such a great candidate this time, because it was
Speaker 1: pretty non controversial and this was all about Trump, and
Speaker 1: if it was gonna be all about Trump, we were
Speaker 1: gonna win. So the second term for Joe Biden will
Speaker 1: be all about Joe. If he chooses not to win,
Speaker 1: then win, then Kamala will bear the burden and the
Speaker 1: credit for whatever they do. Well. I'm sure there'll be
Speaker 1: a primary if Biden chooses not to run, and I
Speaker 1: think if Biden is healthy, he'll run. Your intelligence and
Speaker 1: the breadth of your career and all the many different
Speaker 1: areas you know about. I'm sorry that you're not an
Speaker 1: American political life right now, but you're probably having a
Speaker 1: great time right Um, and myself. If you have to quarantine,
Speaker 1: Vermont is a good place to do it. The people
Speaker 1: are great, and we're great to each other, and it's
Speaker 1: a real community. Howard Dean and I talked in mid December,
Speaker 1: but given the unrest before the inauguration, I wanted to
Speaker 1: call him to get an update. So, of course, what
Speaker 1: happened recently in the Capitol. What was your first reaction
Speaker 1: when you saw all that going on? It was pretty
Speaker 1: much discussed and horror. Um, And actually my reaction is
Speaker 1: stronger today than it was when I saw it because
Speaker 1: of the loss of life. I mean, these people committed murder.
Speaker 1: These are enemies of the United States. I think the
Speaker 1: talk of unity from the Republicans is just an attempt
Speaker 1: to avoid responsibility. I'm all for unifying the country. But
Speaker 1: condition is the first act of unity, and so I'd
Speaker 1: like to see a little less posturing and bs and
Speaker 1: a little more seriousness about what's good for the country. Otherwise, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I am convinced that we can put down
Speaker 1: this insurrection if we need to, and I'm hoping it
Speaker 1: will come to that. But if it does, that's what
Speaker 1: we have to do. Do you think that this is
Speaker 1: just a preluded more of this to come in state
Speaker 1: houses and so forth. Here's the only way to get
Speaker 1: rid of this. People have said, well, you have to
Speaker 1: improve the conditions in rural America. That's true, but you
Speaker 1: can improve what with the New York Times ridiculously called
Speaker 1: racial conservatism. I mean, in other words, racism, which for
Speaker 1: some reason the New York Times didn't want to put
Speaker 1: in the paper. This is gonna go away with cognitive dissonance.
Speaker 1: That is, the people who do these things are gonna
Speaker 1: lose their jobs if they continue to behave like this.
Speaker 1: Some of them are gonna lose their lives because we're
Speaker 1: not having this again, and this next time it will
Speaker 1: be The National Guard is a much better trained than
Speaker 1: the Capitol Police, and eventually this is gonna go away. This,
Speaker 1: this embracement of conspiracy theorist is not because people are
Speaker 1: stupid or un educated. It's because they have to rearrange
Speaker 1: the facts of life because they feel like they're not
Speaker 1: doing well. Okay, we can help them do better, but
Speaker 1: first they have to rearrange the facts of life, because
Speaker 1: you can't do well if you have an alternative universe
Speaker 1: that doesn't match the facts of life. We have more
Speaker 1: and more people who were saying I need the government
Speaker 1: to help me, and now we are trillions of dollars
Speaker 1: more in debt from writing checks to people to help
Speaker 1: them survive the COVID. Do you think we get to
Speaker 1: a point where we can't afford it anymore, We're really
Speaker 1: going to be in serious economic and financial trouble. Well,
Speaker 1: we would be in serious or economic financial trouble if
Speaker 1: we weren't putting out all that money. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: the unemployment rate among women is going up seventy that's shocking,
Speaker 1: just shocking. Um. So this is a true economic danger.
Speaker 1: The problem is we had the most incompetent, corrupt president
Speaker 1: in the history of the United States at the helm
Speaker 1: when all has happened. Um, So, we can dig our
Speaker 1: way out of this. From an economic point of view,
Speaker 1: it's going to take some time. I think we can
Speaker 1: do that. Our economic system is still stronger than anybody
Speaker 1: else's in the world. Uh. The concern that I have
Speaker 1: is how do you tamp down this very small minority
Speaker 1: of crackpots who are willing to do whatever it takes.
Speaker 1: What's the situation in that regard in Vermont? Um, it
Speaker 1: was so far. You know, Vermont is not this kind
Speaker 1: of a place. This is a real community where we
Speaker 1: actually care about each other and respect each other. The
Speaker 1: Republican governor here called for Trump to leave office after
Speaker 1: this happened. So, I mean, we were Vermonter's first and
Speaker 1: Republicans and Democrats second. But the situation is and but
Speaker 1: there've always been people like this. I remember when I
Speaker 1: did civil unions for the first time in the history
Speaker 1: of the country, gay people could essentially get married. And
Speaker 1: I had some some of that. I mean, I had
Speaker 1: fifty year old ladies using the F bomb on me
Speaker 1: when I was campaigning and stuff. Um, but uh, that's
Speaker 1: a minority of people, and they're kept in check because
Speaker 1: the state doesn't put up with it. We're polite, we
Speaker 1: don't shame them. We're not confrontational, but they are confining
Speaker 1: themselves to the edges of society. By the entire class,
Speaker 1: including the Republican Party in Vermont, there are very few
Speaker 1: people in the Publican Party in Vermont that are actually
Speaker 1: elected that behave like the majority of elected representatives to
Speaker 1: do at the federal level. Well, in my mind, the
Speaker 1: COVID and the political upheaval in the country mirror one another.
Speaker 1: Their problems we've never faced before in this country. We've
Speaker 1: never I shouldn't say we've never faced this kind of
Speaker 1: political upheaval before, but but I think specifically to where
Speaker 1: we are now, We've never seen a bunch of hoodlums
Speaker 1: crash the gates of the and the doors of the
Speaker 1: of the Capitol building and vandalized the Capitol Building. That's
Speaker 1: something I never thought i'd see in my lifetime. But
Speaker 1: if you're Biden and you're the president, now, what's the
Speaker 1: line you have to walk between demanding law enforcement, demanding
Speaker 1: people don't do those kinds of things again, but not
Speaker 1: be perceived of someone who you're ganging up and you're
Speaker 1: piling up on the extreme right. Okay, so what Biden
Speaker 1: has to do is speak to the whole country minus
Speaker 1: the extreme right. You can't reason with these people. Their
Speaker 1: treason is they're really not Americans. So that's not our problem.
Speaker 1: Our problem is that is the seventy million people that
Speaker 1: voted for Trump that aren't crazy. There's plenty of them.
Speaker 1: I don't think most Trump supporters think this is okay,
Speaker 1: and so I mean the ones in Congress appear to,
Speaker 1: and that's mostly because they completely lack any intestinal fortitude whatsoever.
Speaker 1: But I think what Biden needs to do is speak
Speaker 1: to all of us at the same time, not carry
Speaker 1: on about law and order, but be really clear that
Speaker 1: when this kind of stuff happens, the consequences are going
Speaker 1: to be enormous. Enormous. These people are gonna get this
Speaker 1: is already happening. These people are gonna lose their jobs,
Speaker 1: and if they are willing to put other people's lives
Speaker 1: at risk, they're likely to lose their own lives. As
Speaker 1: long as we're speaking to the majority of Americans who
Speaker 1: are I think fundamentally decent people, we can suppress the
Speaker 1: crazy people who are armed and mean other people harm.
Speaker 1: And the last thing I want to say is we
Speaker 1: cannot what we must not do under any circumstances is
Speaker 1: concede other people's rights in order to bring order. We
Speaker 1: are not going backwards on civil rights. We have made
Speaker 1: huge gains over the summer. Uh's who the demonstrations, the
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter, and I think the consciousness in the
Speaker 1: white community about what the problems are. That's where a
Speaker 1: lot of this is is a lot of the white
Speaker 1: community doesn't want to face what we really need to
Speaker 1: face in order to try to get rid of some
Speaker 1: of this injustice. But most people will want to do that.
Speaker 1: I think most people in their hearts are good people.
Speaker 1: We have to have a president that's willing to talk
Speaker 1: to those people and be really tough on the people
Speaker 1: that want don't want to play ball. Many many thanks
Speaker 1: to you, sir, and thanks for taking my call. My
Speaker 1: great pleasure. Talk soon. Former Vermont governor and former d
Speaker 1: n C chair Howard Dean. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the
Speaker 1: thing is brought to you by my Heart Radio. We're
Speaker 1: produced by Kathleen Russo and Carrie Donohue. Our editor is
Speaker 1: Zach McNeese and our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our theme
Speaker 1: song is by Miles Davis. Didn't pay Me in US
Speaker 1: to