[applause] please welcome our county chair. Hello, iowa. Fellow democrats from across america. All 50 states of america, welcome to polk county. Celebration for our Democratic Party. Together, we will get to meet 17 candidates who are leading a conversation about the future of our party and our country. One of these 17 people will be our next president. They say bad weather brings good luck, and it rained like heck at last years steak fry, and then we won back the congress. I hope the weather we have today is going to win us back the white house next year. Before we get started, please join me in welcoming the elected officials and candidates who are here today. Usually, we read all their names at our events, but obviously this is a little bit eager, so we are not going to go through all hundred of them. Please join me in welcoming them here today. Welcoming join me in five of our newer steak fry leaders. Lindsay paulson and peter crane are our steak fry chairs. Our executive director is judy downs. Our incredible advisor. Has been inwho charge of our security, john halbrook. He ditched us, folks. The event basically took three years to plan, and it would not have been possible without them and are hundreds of volunteers. Thank you so much for putting this event together. Report this is not even bluff numbers. I am pleased to report that we here12,242 democrats today. 12,200 12242, that officially means this is the biggest steak fry in American History. In addition to all 50 states, we welcome folks from as far away as canada, germany, japan, and sweden. Welcome to all our international visitors. Today,y as important as when so much of our conversation will be about our future, it seems absurd to talk about the really dark days that we had in 2016 for america. But you cannot know where you are going if you dont know where your coming from. Shock whenwere in donald trump was declared the winner of the 2016 election. Ouround democrats and Democratic Party in pieces. We had a bruising family part family fight in this party. Our organizers and volunteers were disillusioned. 99iowa alone, half of our county chairs turned over that year. Any counties, including our own county party here in polk, were basically bankrupt. All we could do was band together. When trump proposed his muslim ban, we rallied at the airport. When trump had his bizarre inaugural, the women of america marched in response. Our meeting swelled. It is still 125 people at least. Taught us the hard lesson that elections and voting are just as important as we democrats always said they were. Without donald trump, it could have been years before we saw women, people of color, and young people standing up for the leadership positions and the party they deserve. In 2018, in polk county alone, half of our nominees for office were women for the first time ever. Without donald trump, we would not have 17 of the brightest democrats in the country running for the highest office in the land. Without donald trump, this steak fry would not exist. It would have never been revived. This event did not even exist in 2016. Look at us now. In many ways, the revived event microcosm of our Democratic Party that was reborn after 2016. We had a bunch of scrappy faces, both young and old, step up in our county party. I asked tom harkin for permission to bring this event back for more than a year. I think he finally got sick of me asking and he finally agreed. Starte did so, we had to this whole thing from scratch. We did not pay any fancy consultants or Event Management companies. Isrything you see here today by and for the work of our volunteers. So at 17 candidates, 12,242 people, 10 rallies, eight marches, 350 reporters from around the world, two bands, one band, three food trucks, three ice cream trucks, nine grills, 300 volunteers, two campouts that really happened, and one giant flag that is actually made in the United States of america [applause] craig and i am almost done, i and i am almost done, i promise. If you want to contrast the Democratic Party and our friends who are struggling on the republican side, if you really want to contrast who we are, i would urge you to take a look at the annual republican fundraiser that is happening tonight here in des moines, over at the fairground, with karen pence. For the 300 reporters today, i thank you. Please go over to karen pences event and contrast of the crowd sizes and the energy that you will have. Lot less energy over there. That is their problem. We haveh the weather today, energy is not a problem we have for the Democratic Party. The people in that room and they are in a room. Unlike us. Roof, they will look a lot more alike than we do. Even though they look more alike, this will show you that when we all Work Together, we are bigger and stronger than they are, every single time. And again, that audience is going to be much smaller. I dont think they even have a tops out above 100 when he people. We have become a machine. Have four more seats in polk county alone. All of those are women. We helped elect cindy axne need a college to congress, one of the first two women elected to the house of congress from iowa. Marchesbeat the largest in history, even beating barack obama in 2012. 2020 begins tomorrow. Usually, we stay away from city council and school board races. As you saw with our pledge today, those are our races Going Forward. We will not give up on any races, whether it is dog catcher or president , at the Democratic Party, Going Forward. We will also be planning the most inclusive, transparent caucuses and i was history. We know our first in the nation status depends on that. The legislature includes republican tom snyders seat. You saw four of his opponents here today. We are going to beat some joni ernst. That was the applause line of the day. And we are going to get cindy axne he reelected. , weif we work hard enough can return iowa to the Democratic Party for the white house. We were the first state we were the first state to vote for thensenator barack obama, who got his first big start at the steak fry itself. We elected him twice as president , and next year iowa will be voting for a democrat again. Be known that donald trump, trumpism, and his merry band of grifters were an aberration of american politics, and not who we are as iowans or as americans. And i dont know anybody who better exemplifies all of that in our next speaker today. Cindy axne he is a fifthgeneration iowan, a Small Business owner, a parent, and a community advocate. She was a candidate at the steak fry for the last two years. She will be the only person other than me that will be on stage all of the last three years. We are immensely proud that she is our congresswoman for the third district. Since being elected, she has stood up for family farmers impacted by the trade war. Last week, she made headlines by opposing a funding bill that excluded really for farmers. She fought to Lower Health Care and Prescription Drug costs, and maintain protections for individuals with preexisting conditions. She has visited all of the districts 16 counties every month since she has been elected. In short, she was just the type of congresswoman that she promised to be, and that we hoped for. Police joined me in welcoming our pride, our congresswoman cindy axne a. Cindy axne a. Axne. [applause] rep. Axne hello, polk county democrats. And democrats from across the great state of iowa and all of you traveling from across the country today. How is everybody doing . Honored to serve as the congresswoman from i was third district. District full of incredible people who last year pitched in to make sure that i flipped a seat that nobody thought we could win, to send me to the house, to turn the house blue. It is that Iowa Democratic pride that turned out folks to make sure that not just one, but two women, were elected to congress from the great state of iowa. And guess what . We are going to flip the white house next year, arent we . Out toive a big shout sean and the polk county democrats for putting the steak fry on the map again. Ran for this seat, i said i would be a voice for all iowans, and that is why i pledged to visit all of my 16 counties every month and my first year of office. I have held over 40 town halls and public events. That is why i was named the most accessible freshman member of congress by the townhall project. Held verbal health care tours, and i have visited urban health care providers. I get that information back to d. C. And get to work on policy to help Rural Health Care folks get the doctors that they need, to make sure we protect iowans from surprise billing that is bankrupting us, and lower the cost of Prescription Drugs, because i have heard from too from toons who many iowans who cannot afford it, including a des moines mom who has to work two jobs just to buy the pharmaceutical she needs for her daughter. I have spoken with hardworking families who cannot make ends meet. We need to create more good paying jobs, but we also need to make sure that people have the skills they need to compete in todays economy. In congress, i have cosponsored legislation that increases trade and apprenticeship programs. Shout out to our unions right now, everybody. Our brothersy for and sisters fighting with the united auto workers. I have introduced legislation to hold business accountable for creating jobs right here in america, instead of outsourcing those jobs overseas. They promise that our republican president cant seem to hold, but one we democrats absolutely stand behind. And speaking of broken promises, as the president had his finger on issuing more ethanol waivers to put more money in the pockets of big oil, at the expense of hardworking iowa farmers, i stood up against the administration, and opened investigation into the epa, to stop this horrible mess that is happening to our economy here. You know what . Unlike trump, i care about iowa farmers. He continues to put more money in the pockets of big oil, i will keep standing up for the hardworking people here in iowas third congressional district. And when iowans were affected by the flood, they left their homes without shoes on their feet, or an extra change of clothes. Worthht to get 3 billion of aid. That is 1. 4 billion they were able to get in the senate. That is what this freshman congresswoman does. With my democratic colleagues, we will continue to fight for people across the country. Through legislation that takes dark money out of politics, make sure we address voters and build trust for the people, back to congress. By giving lgbtq people their godgiven rights, bypassing the equality app. By finally passing equal pay for women. Climate change to the Climate Change now act. And passing common sense gun legislation. Ok to hear from a West Des Moines mom whose threeyearold daughter had to practice active shooting drills on her first day of preschool. Hundreds of bills to help people in this country, to make a stronger, and to unify us. But that is not who we are only. We are making sure that we put country over party, unlike our republican parties on the others of the aisle. We know that people come first. We have been and we will always be the party that looks out for regular folks, because just like my parents taught me and my sisters, who are here today they said, girls, make sure that you help your friends and family, but help strangers alike. When everybody does well, our community thrives. You, i am here to tell 20 20 is not going to be easy. We have to do what we did in 2018 a vengeance, and when it was pouring rain the saturday before the election, there were lines of volunteers out the door to pick up packets to knock on a few more doors. Thats right. Hardworking, tireless iowans we are. Those are the kind of hardworking, tireless iowans i know will reelect me to congress. Help flip the senate seat. And make sure that one of these exceptional candidates eats donald trump. Beats donald trump. [applause] rep. Axne we all know there is so much at stake, so lets get to work, for the third district, for the great state of iowa, for our country. Lets win this. God bless america. [applause] our last speaker before we turn it over to the main stage of folks who were waiting to hear is congresswoman grace meng, who represents new congressional district. Unamerican whose belief everyone deserves to be heard led her into Public Service, first in the new york assembly, and now in the United States congress. Grace has been rated one of the most effective representatives of the house, and is a leading voice on food safety, clean water, and consumer protection. Grace is an elected vice chair of the dnc, and she oversees the table that overseas at the table, which supports minority women candidates. Lets give congresswoman grace meng a warm iowa welcome. [applause] rep. Meng good afternoon, i would. I am thrilled to be here with all of you today. My family came here with me today, and it did not take much convincing. Take to do was say tickets wereour booked. Our barbecues in new york city are a little bit smaller than this. Thank you to my friend cindy, amazing rising star, your fighter in congress. Thank you so much for your work and your kind introduction. Clap for cindy. Get us back the majority. Sean,you to our chairman, the democrats, the staffers and volunteers who made this incredible event possible. Lets give them around of applause. This is not my first time in des moines. In fact, i came to visit about two years ago, and was so impressed with what i saw. No, i am not just talking about your famous butter cow at the state fair, although many kids in new york city have probably never seen a real cow, much less a butter one. But when i had visited, it was soon after the 2016 election. Our hearts were broken, and i had come to see what i could offer. The truth is you comforted me, because i got to witness the amazing work you have all been doing uplifting people of and communities up for years. I had met with the asian latino coalition, a group of about 500 plus members strong. They felt like their voices had not been heard. I toward the plumbers and steamfitters training center, where they are helping to expand and build our middle class. I visited urban dream center, where they are helping individuals get back on their feet. I visited a center devoted to youth become selfsufficient. And i met Democratic Women from , strong women who are fired up to organize and elect democrats in 2018. And guess what . Democrats didnt win in iowa. Democrats did win in iowa. We welcomed cindy and abby to congress. And you elected a democrat statewide. Yes, there are many reasons to celebrate, but i know that you are here, like me today, because you are fired up to elect our next democratic president. You showed the country that democrats can compete and win in iowa, and we are going to do it again in 2020. Chairman tom perez says we have 418 weekdays until the weekend, and he is right. The dnc is your partner in this fight. We know the road to the white house begins in iowa. And we know that there are no more off years. We are investing in Rural Communities, suburban communities, communities of color. Trust,ans restoring strengthening our infrastructure, and organizing in iowa. We are recruiting candidates in every zip code, and we had a democratic candidate in almost every state legislative District Across the state last year. Good job. You have shown me and the nation that when we lead from the heart, we win. Our heartland is going to help heal our broken hearts in 2020. And we can bicker over which candidate is the best. But the truth is every single one of these candidates they have spent every weekend moment speaking of ways to right wrongs, to help make communities home whole again. Any of them would be better than the person in the white house today. Every one of our candidates know that no one in america should have to choose between putting food on their table or buying lifesaving medicine. Every one of our candidates knows that weakening the aca mean 170,000 iowans losing coverage, hurting iowans with preexisting conditions. Every one of our candidates has met with and no farmers who are suffering from trumps chaotic trade policy. And every candidate stands in solidarity with our uaw workers who have lost their health care through cruel gm policies. Whoever wins, we are going to help them defeat from. [cheers and applause] as we speak, the dnc is already training organizers in seven battleground states, including communities of color, who will stand ready to push our nominee to victory, whoever they may be. We are going to work with you to beat joni ernst and take back your senate. [applause] not only are we going to protect your three house seats, we are going to go after that fourth one. [cheers and applause] it begins here, right here in iowa. Lets show the country what we already know democrats can win in the heartland. [applause] thank you to each and every one of our candidates for running and the amazing work their teams are putting in. They know that diversity is our strength and that we are strongest when we are united and that is how we are going to win. Thank you for welcoming me and my family back to iowa. [applause] thank you for the work you are doing and will continue to do to elect democrats, and lets go win back our white house. [cheers and applause] [crowd chanting] real quick, before we start the introductions, we do have unfortunately a lost child in the audience. He is an africanamerican child, light gray tshirt, blue stars on the tshirt and a blue bucket hat and cargo shorts. His name is deshawn. If you see him, you notice we have a white tower tent directly behind checkin. You can take him over there or, deshawn, if you are around, if you want to head over there, your parents are looking for you. We will keep an eye out. Please keep your eyes around the crowd. He is five years old. Jumping into our program im sure we will figure it out and we are watching the gates, so no one will be getting out with us without us taking a look at it. Jumping into our program, beto orourke is a fourthgeneration texan born and raised in el paso where he served his community on the El Paso City Council and in congress. In march 2017, beto launched a Historic Campaign to represent all texans in the u. S. Senate, running the largest Grassroots Campaign the state had ever seen. [cheers and applause] are you guys here with somebody or what . He ultimately received more votes than any other democrat in Texas History as he excited thousands of firsttime voters to go to the polls. Polk county, please join me in welcoming congressman beto orourke. [cheers and applause] mr. Aurora come on up, folks. Hows everybody doing . Beto come on up, folks. Hows everybody doing . Huge honor to be with you today. So grateful for everyone who has come out, regardless of what campaign you are with. We are all on the same team, focused on defeating donald trump in november 2020. For the beto supporters out there, to these extraordinary volunteers, to our team and staff, the folks who camped out last night, made these homemade signs, built a boat, and i was wondering why they built the boat, but then i thought maybe that is the boat on which we arrived in this campaign and now that we are here at the very end, in it to win it, we are going to burn it down because theres no going back. [cheers and applause] mr. Orourke one of the things ive learned over the course of this campaign all across iowa and all across the United States of america is we are all in this together. We are all connected for better or for worse. In el paso, texas, on august 3, we are one of the safest cities in the United States of america, safe not despite the fact that we are a city of immigrants and asylumseekers and refugees but because we are a city of immigrants and asylumseekers and refugees. [cheers and applause] there was nothing so safe, so special about us that could disconnect us from a country that is violent and founded in a racism that is still with us today in 2019, a violence and a racism welcomed out into the open by President Trump and directed at our community. 22 killed in a walmart on the saturday before School Started by a gentleman who had an ak47, a weapon designed for war to kill people as effectively, as efficiently in as great a number as possible. That is exactly what he did, fueled by that hatred and that racism directed by this president. Weeks later, we found ourselves in forest, mississippi, the side the site of the largest single state ice raid in the history of this country. Those communities of immigrants working in chicken processing plants, one of the toughest, shittiest Jobs Available in the United States of america rounded up like animals, separated from their kids. All this done in all of our names. And in Pacific Junction in this state, meeting with those in a community that had never meaningfully flooded before this year, to learn that every single one of their homes was underwater. To visit with farmers to the store soybeans in their visions unable to find markets that had been closed to them by this president. For better or worse, we are connected to Climate Change. We are connected to these disastrous policies. We are connected to the violence and racism in this country. But for better, we are all connected to one another and to the solution. The people of el paso, texas, are the ones who gave me voice to say hell, yes, we are going to buy back every ar15 and ak47 in this country, to get those off the streets and out of our homes so that no one ever has to fear that again. [cheers and applause] mr. Orourke and people will ask us they will say, hey, beto, are you afraid you have gone too far . That you have really pissed off the nra this time . Im not afraid of that. No, im not afraid of that. I would be afraid if i were a schoolteacher in a kindergarten classroom and those kids for whom i had already sacrificed so much were up against a gunman with an ar15 because we did not have the courage to stop them while we still had time. I would be afraid if i were the son of an immigrant who went to work early this morning and never came back, detained and deported back to a country he had not seen for 20 years. I would be afraid if i were one of those farmers here in iowa who had seen those markets closed to me, unable to get out of debt. I would be afraid if i was a trans woman of color who could be killed with complete impunity in this country right now with no one to follow up or investigate. I would be afraid if i had to drive 300 miles to make my own decisions about my own body to find a safe, legal abortion or Cancer Screening or Family Clinic health because we closed the Cancer Centers in my state. I would be afraid of my son were black and were stopped by the police in a country that has refused to ensure accountability for the abuse of power in the deaths of young, black men who are not armed and posed no threat to this country. Then i would be afraid. But for all of those who live in fear in this country, we as democrats must decide we will not be afraid. We as americans must decide we will not be afraid. We must decide that we will free america from fear. [cheers and applause] mr. Orourke and that means no fear as rewrite this countrys immigration laws to reflect what this country looks like, to legalize our fellow americans, starting with more than one million dreamers, and make them u. S. Citizens in this, their true home country. Orourke no fear as we pursue universal guaranteed highQuality Health care, and that means primary health care, and that means in iowa, 51st in Mental Health care, no copays to see a psychologist or psychiatrist or be treated so you are well enough to live to your full potential. Universal health care that means every woman makes her own decisions about her own body and has access to the care that makes it happen. No fear about confronting Climate Change before it is too late, putting farmers and Rural Communities here in iowa in the driver seat, getting behind regenerative agricultural practices that they are already pioneering, paying them for the Environmental Services that they want to provide. Every single one of us doing all we can, meeting this threat not with half measures or half steps but with the entire country to ensure this planet is one that we can pass on to our kids and every generation that follows. [cheers and applause] mr. Orourke no fear about ending a war on drugs that has become a war on people and some people specifically in a country that has 2. 3 million americans behind bars, the largest prison population on the face of the planet, disproportionately comprised of people of color. We will end the prohibition on marijuana. We will expunge the arrest record for everyone caught in possession of marijuana, and we will make sure that we close forprofit prisons, end cash bail in america, do the right thing while we still can, and because a young man named henry came up to me while i was approaching the stage and said, i sure hope you are going to talk about puerto rico. I want to make sure that we follow the people of puerto rico, whatever they want to do, whether it is independence or statehood, we are going to get behind them and make sure they are treated with respect and dignity and have the power they deserve as our fellow human beings and our fellow americans. [cheers and applause] mr. Orourke this is how we free ourselves from fear. We decide what we believe in and we fight like hell to achieve it and we dont let anyone, if its the nra, the corporations, or the Political Action committees, or even our fellow democrats tell us what is and is not possible. We, the people, decide what is possible in this country. [cheers and applause] mr. Orourke ladies and gentlemen, that is how we defeat donald trump in november 2020. [cheers and applause] mr. Orourke that is how we bring a deeply divided country back together again. Are you with me on this . [cheers and applause] mr. Orourke let me hear you say hell yes hell, yes mr. Orourke im with you, america. Im with you, iowa. Lets go out and do this. [speaking spanish] thank you, iowa. Thank you very much. [cheers and applause] [crowd chanting] hey, everybody, we are still looking for deshawn, and i misspoke. He is actually 12 years old. 50, not five. For everybody else, deshawn is still we are still looking for deshawn. If you have seen him, he is an africanamerican boy, light gray tshirt with blue stars, a blue bucket hat. He is 12 years old, five foot tall. Found him . All right, we found him, everybody. [cheers and applause] look at our democratic family helping each other. Thats wonderful. Our next speaker is senator kamala harris. [cheers and applause] she is a lifelong Public Safety and civil rights leader, elected in 2016. She is the second africanamerican woman in history to be elected to the u. S. Senate. And the first africanamerican and first woman to serve as attorney general of california. [cheers and applause] she has been a key voice in the fight to hold the Trump Administration accountable, asking tough questions on behalf of the American People. Throughout her career, she has been a fearless advocate for the voiceless and vulnerable and a vocal and determined fighter on behalf of all people. Im going to tell a story real quick. We actually did a rally with her last november, and it was a really big crowd and i went backstage and saw a bunch of guys in suits. I dont know if you have seen her husband, but he looks kind of like a secret service guy. I thought it was security, so i walked back and go, wow, thats a big effin crowd out there and everyone went completely silent because i had just cursed in front of the candidates spouse. Of course the atlantic was there so my words were in the magazine. My mother has seen it and my grandmother has seen it, and im always embarrassed about it, and they always rib me about it, but since they are here again, i will say, senator harris, this is a big, effing crowd. Join me in welcoming senator kamala harris. [cheers and applause] Kamala Kamala Kamala Kamala [cheers and applause] senator harris oh, i am at the steak fry. I dont know if you guys heard, im planning on moving to iowa. Its great to see you guys. Its great to be back. I know weve got to get right to business. Im on a clock, apparently. I dont know where it is, but it is somewhere around here. There it is. Its great to be back and i want to thank you all for all the leadership, all that you do. The thing i love about iowa is that you have the ability to see what other people sometimes can see but what many cannot. Your state has always had the ability to know what can be unburdened by what has been, and i want to thank you for that leadership. I want to thank you for the inspiration and support you have been giving me, and for those who are the new friends, i will tell you i was raised by a mother who was all of five feet tall, but if you ever met her, you would have thought she was 10 feet tall, and my mother had a lot of advice over the years. One of the things she would tell me is dont ever let anyone tell you who you are. You tell them who you are. [cheers and applause] senator harris so im here to share with you a little bit about who i am. In my career, i have been a fighter and ive taken on some tough fights. I have taken on the Oil Companies. Ive taken on pharmaceutical companies. Ive taken on the big interest, the special interests who have always been keeping working families down, have always been motivated by profit to the expense of the american family. I have taken them on and i have won, and it has not been about a pretty speech. It has been about the work i have actually done. When i stand before you as a candidate for president of the United States, i say to you, look at my track record to know what i mean. I will fight for you every day of the week and we will win. [cheers and applause] senator harris when i think about this fight, i know that this is why we are all here together, the fight we currently have is to get the current occupant out of the white house. [cheers and applause] senator harris to successfully do that, i would suggest we are going to have to successfully prosecute the case against four more years of donald trump and it will take a prosecutor to do it. And i think we are working with a pretty good, long rap sheet. Lets think about it dudes got to go. Dudes gotta go. Lets look at what we are talking about. Heres a fellow that came into office talking about make America Great again, which caused a lot of us to ask, again exactly for whom . And caused us to realize he was talking about going back to something, so back to what exactly . Back before the Voting Rights act . Back before the Civil Rights Act . Back before the Fair Housing Act . Back before the ada . Back before title ix . Back before roe v. Wade . Because we are not going back. We are not going back. And he came in making a lot of promises. To a lot of folks. He made promises to farmers. He made promises to working families, and he betrayed people. Lets just look at what happened. He betrayed our families when he said i see you. Ive got you. I will take care of you. I will honor your hard work, and then he passes a tax bill benefiting the top 1 and the biggest corporations in america. Betrayed families. Betrayed our farmers. Said, im going to hang out with you. Im going to respect you, and then what did he do . He engages in trade policy by tweet, born out of unilateral action essentially born out of a fragile ego, that has resulted in farmers here in iowa looking at bankruptcy because, of course, over decades, they did the hard work of building up a market to sell soybeans to china, and now they are looking at soybeans rotting in bins and looking at bankruptcy. Betrayed people. Betrayed us in terms of national security, and what should be the responsibility of the commanderinchief of the United States of america because what have we seen . In donald trump, a socalled commanderinchief who on the subject of the fact of russias interference in the election of the president of the United States prefers to take the word of the russian president over the word of the American Intelligence Community. On the subject of an american student who was tortured and later died, prefers to take the word of a north korean dictator over the word of the American Intelligence Community. On the subject of a journalist who was assassinated, a journalist who had american credentials, prefers to take the word of a saudi prince over the word of the American Intelligence Community and just in the last 48 hours, yet again, we find that he is in cahoots with a Foreign Government to manipulate the outcome of this election for president of the United States. [crowd boos] senator harris iowa, we need a new commanderinchief. And we need to absolutely, right away, begin impeachment proceedings. Hes got to go. We need to hold him accountable. I want to also say this thats an obvious point, dude got to go. But we also have to recognize that we have had to endure years with his campaign and now with his presidency of a powerful force that has been trying to sow hate and division among us as americans, who has been trying to get us to point fingers at each other, and i would suggest to you that what we need both in terms of a Winning Strategy, but also in terms of leadership that is about truly strengthening our country based on our values and our longstanding commitments is we need leadership that is prepared to unify our country around our common values, our common goals, our common aspirations and experiences. Because the vast majority of us have so much more in common than what separates us. In this election, we cannot afford to have a campaign and a strategy that is about dividing people around ideology because im going to tell you, i have not attended one town hall or rally where anyone has raised their hand and said, you know the thing that keeps me up at night is this debate between socialism and capitalism. We need to have strategy that is a Winning Strategy about saying that we have got to recognize the challenges before us as a nation and a world. Our big challenges about who we are, our definition, standing, and strength as a nation, and to meet those challenges, it will not be about going back to the good old days. It will be about looking forward and taking on the challenges that meet us today and in the future. [cheers and applause] senator harris and the Winning Strategy that is the right thing to do is to say that we will address as the big challenges of our nation the issues that wake people up in the middle of the night. Issues like health care, issues like so many of the Young Students i have met, elementary, middle, and High School Students who are in trauma about the drills they have to endure when they are being taught about how they should hide in a closet or crouch in a corner in case there is a gunman roaming the hallways of their school. We must address the common issue that we know affects farmers in terms of flooding, affects people in terms of hurricanes, wildfires in california, and the issue of our Climate Crisis, and what we must do to take that on with a sense of urgency and commonality in terms of outcome and experience. [cheers and applause] senator harris the commonalities we face in knowing one of the issues that keeps people up at night, whoever you are, whatever your race, wherever you live, whoever you pray to is can you get to the end of the month paying the bills, which is why i am proposing the most significant middleclass tax cut we have had in generations. [cheers and applause] senator harris these are the challenges before us, and i know we are up for these challenges, and i would say to everybody here that we as democrats have got to march toward 2020 knowing in our hearts and in our souls that the vast majority of us have so much more in common then what separates us, and to win this campaign, we must be prepared to unify our country around those common goals and experiences because that is the way we will get donald trump out of office, and im here to ask you to please stand in kamalas corner during the caucus. Thank you. Thank you. [cheers and applause] senator harris thank you guys. Im going to go down here. Thank you. Am i going down here . Whoo Kamala Kamala Kamala Kamala senator harris liked the event so much she stole our microphone for a minute there. Our next speaker is cory booker, senator [cheers and applause] senator cory bookers entire career has been defined by running toward challenges and achieving victories that conventional wisdom deemed impossible. After graduating from yale law school, he moved to a low income innercity neighborhood in newark, new jersey, where he still lives to this day. He was working as a tenant advocate Holding Slumlords Accountable when he was asked by his community to step up and run for the city council. In 2013, he became the fourth ever africanamerican elected in the u. S. Senate. Since then, he has worked to achieve some of the most significant progressive victories in recent memory. Polk county, join me in welcoming senator cory booker. [cheers and applause] hello, iowa [cheers and applause] i cannot tell you what it means to be here in polk county. I cannot tell you what it means to be back here in des moines. Some of you might not know this but this big, bald, black guy from new jersey, my roots are right here in des moines. My grandmother was born and raised in this state, right here in the in des moines. [cheers and applause] this is what i know it was my family in crisis, my grandmothers grandmother, that was a poor woman whose husband was murdered in alabama, and her and her nine children around the turnofthecentury moved up to this state and found a town called buxton, iowa. Like iowa had been on lgbtq rights, on womens right to vote, on civil rights, this town was ahead of its time. It was a place where you saw black migrants like my great great grandma and white european immigrants come together in an integrated town, and they went down together in the mines, working sidebyside to scrape out from the earth there American Dream. That is the story of america. When my grandmothers child, my mother, was joining with my dad moving to the state of new jersey, every time they tried to find a neighborhood often with the best Public Schools, 50 years ago they would be met by a Real Estate Agent that would see a black family and say lies, this house is no longer available. This house was pulled off the market. Its already sold. But what they found in that moment of bigotry and discrimination they found people from that community, white folks who said, this is not who we are. They set up a sting operation with some incredible lawyers. I call it a conspiracy of love where they would send my parents out to look at a house. They would be told no, and a volunteer white couple would come right after them and put a bid on the home and find out the house was still for sale. The house i grew up in, my parents were told it was sold. The white couple found out it was still for sale. They put down a bid for the house. The bid was accepted, papers were drawn up, and on the a of the closing, the white couple did not show up. My father did, and a volunteer lawyer, a white man named marty friedman, and they marched into that Real Estate Agents office and the Real Estate Agent did not give up. He literally was so angry he had been caught in the sting, this conspiracy of love, that he gets up and punches my dads lawyer in the face and sics a dog on my dad. Every time my dad would tell the story when i was growing up, the dog would get bigger. [laughter] eventually, he would be like, boy, i had to fight a pack of wolves to get you in this house. America, iowa, this is who we are. We are not a nation of hate and discrimination. When i was growing up around this kitchen table, my parents did not hesitate to talk about wretchedness and discrimination and bigotry, but they always told me that that has never defined america. [applause] what has defined this country is our ability to respond to hatred with love, for us to respond to people that try to divide us with our ability to come together and stand together and Work Together. [cheers and applause] i and proud to be in this election that is about many things and the policy issues are so urgent, but this election is really a referendum on spirit. Not on one guy in one office. This election is a referendum on who we are and who we must be to each other. This party we as democrats have always told the truth of who we are. When my iowa grandmother married my louisiana grandfather, and they moved to detroid. My grandfather got a job on the Assembly Line as a union worker for uaw. At that time, most blacks in america were republican, but he went out and was an activist who bragged about converting district after district to the Democratic Party because my grandfather said, democrats, we are the party of we, not the party of me. [cheers] democrats, we are the party of inclusion, not the party of exclusion. We are not the party of the wealthy few. We are the party of everyone, everybody, everywhere. [applause] we are the party of civil rights, of womens rights, of workers rights, of lgbtq rights. Heck, were the party that believes in science. [cheers and applause] [laughter] i want you to know im running because my parents taught me the ideals of rugged individualism and selfreliance, but the truth of america is that we are not here because of rugged individualism and selfreliance. We are here because of each other. We did not get to the moon because of rugged individualism. We did not build the underground railroad because of rugged individualism. We did not beat the nazis because of individuals. Every great gain in this nation was by patriots who brought people together because patriotism is love of country, and you cannot love your country unless you love your fellow countrymen and women. [cheers and applause] and love is not a sentiment. I am not talking sentimentality. Love is struggle, love is sacrifice. Love is service. Love says that if your family doesnt have health care, if your family doesnt have great Public Schools, it is an affront to my family. It weakens our justice. [cheers and applause] so this election, we democrats have to understand we cannot define ourselves by what or who we are against. We must define ourselves by who we are and what we are for. [cheers and applause] there are those who want to demean, degrade, and divide, but we in this moment must be the party of a revival of civic grace. We must be the party of a more courageous empathy. We must be the party of courage and sacrifice and love of your neighbor and your countrymen and women. [cheers and applause] i am here all my life because of the sacrifice and service of our ancestors. Every election was not an election about me. We are about a team sport. This election is not just about one office. We have to beat Mitch Mcconnell. [cheers and applause] this election is not just about one office. It is about Supreme Court seats. [applause] this election is not just about one office. Its about state legislators. Its about governors. [cheers and applause] so im going to call to you right now i need everyones help with my campaign because we are not running an individual campaign. We will win this election not by dividing democrats, but have people that unite us and bring us together. We will win this election not by showing the worst of who we are but the best of who we are because we have seen tough times before. Donald trump has demeaned and degraded and divided. I remember the poetry of maya angelou. He may try to lie about us, but she said, you may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lies. You may trod me down like dirt, but still, like dust, we rise. [cheers and applause] im telling you right now, they came after us. They came after they came after us. They came after us at valley forge. They came after this country at pearl harbor. They came after us 9 11, and we carried the grief and the hurt, but we were always a nation that at the worst times pulled together and said to each other we will rise. They tried to beat us back at the Edmund Pettus bridge. They tried to beat us down at stonewall, but we responded every generation with the words we will rise. Now, we must rise. We will rise for health care for all. [applause] we will rise for Public Schools. We will rise to end the scourge of gun violence. We will rise for union labor. We will rise for one another. Like kennedy who pointed to the moon, we will rise. Like king, who pointed to the mountain tops, we will rise. Iowa, america, it is our time to come together, to stand together, to Work Together. He does not define us. We define our truth, and im telling you right now we will rise. We will rise. We will rise. We will rise we will rise we will rise thank you very much. We will rise thank you, iowa. Thank you, america. [cheers and applause] cory cory cory cory cory cory cory cory cory cory [indiscernible] we love you need to move the microphone down a little bit. Cory cory Elizabeth Warren is running for president to level the Playing Field and give every american a chance to build a life they can be proud of. She is fighting for big, Structural Solutions to tackle the corruption squeezing working people and undermining our democracy. On the campaign trail, she spends her time Holding Town Halls and taking hundreds of questions across our country to talk about a washington and an economy that are not working for far too many people. Elizabeth warren has spent her whole career taking on giant corporations, big banks, [cheers and applause] standing up for the American People, and now she is running to fight for all of us. Polk county, join me in welcoming senator Elizabeth Warren. [cheers and applause] music [cheers and applause] music sen. Warren hello, iowa. [cheers and applause] sen. Warren im here today to stand up for the constitution of the United States of america. No one is above the law, not even the president of the United States. [cheers and applause] sen. Warren when the Mueller Report came out, it showed three things first, that a hostile Foreign Government attacked our 2016 election system in order to help donald trump. Second, that donald trump, candidate, welcomed that help, and third, that as president , when our federal government tried to investigate those activities, donald trump did everything he could to obstruct justice. I read all 448 pages, and when i got to the end, i called for the impeachment of donald trump. [cheers and applause] congress failed to act, and now, donald trump has shown that he believes he is above the law. He has solicited another Foreign Government to attack our election system. It is time for us to call out this illegal behavior and start impeachment proceedings right now. [cheers and applause] sen. Warren not in a million years did i think i would be standing on a stage like this with all of you. I was born and raised in oklahoma. I have three older brothers. They all went off to join the military. Me, i have had the same dream since i was a little kid, and that is to be a Public School teacher. Can we hear it for americas Public Schools . [cheers and applause] my family did not have the money to send me to college, but my big chance was a Commuter School that cost 50 a semester, and for a price i could pay for on a parttime waitressing job, i had a chance to finish my four year diploma. I became a special needs teacher. I lived my dream job. [cheers and applause] i loved it. But i got here today because i see an america that is not an america of expanding opportunities. I see an america that just keeps working better and better and better for a thinner and thinner slice at the top. When you see a government that works great for the rich and for the powerful and is not working for anyone else, that is corruption pure and simple, and we need to call it out for what it is. [cheers and applause] an america that works great for giant Drug Companies but not for people trying to get a prescription filled that is corruption. [cheers and applause] an america that works great for giant Oil Companies that want to drill everywhere but doesnt Pay Attention to the Climate Crisis that is bearing down upon us thats corruption. [cheers and applause] so i got good news i got a plan for that. [cheers and applause] sen. Warren you bet. And it starts by taking the corruption headon. End lobbying as we know it. Make everyone who wants to run for federal Office Everyone have to put their tax returns online. [cheers and applause] when we attack the corruption, when we start to beat back the influence of money, we can make some big, structural change in this economy. [cheers and applause] and here is where it starts put more power in the hands of workers. Make it easier to join a union and give unions more power when they negotiate. Unions built americas middle class, and unions will rebuild americas middle class. [cheers and applause] theres another way we can restructure this economy it time for a wealth tax in this country. [cheers and applause] [crowd chanting] sen. Warren here is how it works your first 50 million, free and clear. [laughter] you feeling relaxed about that . Good. But your 50 million in first dollar, you got to pitch in two cents. [applause] two cents. And two cents for every dollar after that, and heres the question two cents on the top. 1 of 1 in this country . What can we do with that . We can provide universal childcare for every baby in this country. All of them. Universal prek for every three and fouryearold in america. [applause] raise the wages for every Child Care Worker and preschool teacher in this country. Make College Tuition free for everyone who wants to go. [applause] truly level the Playing Field. Put 50 billion into historically black colleges and universities. [applause] we can do all of that with a twocent wealth tax. Plus, we can cancel Student Loan Debt for 95 of the folks that have it. We can do that for two cents. Two cents two cents two cents sen. Warren we can do all that and one more. We need to protect our democracy. We need to have a constitutional amendment to protect the right of every american citizen to vote and to get that vote counted. [applause] get rid of all political gerrymandering in this country. [applause] roll back every racist Voter Suppression law that has been passed. And one more we will overturn citizens united. Democracy is not for sale. [cheers and applause] this is what we can do together. We can attack the corruption. We can restructure our economy. We can protect our democracy, and whatever issue brought you here today, if its gun violence or climate or health care, whatever brought you here, you are here because you believe down deep somewhere in your heart that we can make our democracy work, not just for a thin slice at the top. We can make it work for everyone. Im Elizabeth Warren. I know whats broken. I know how to fix it, and we are building a Grassroots Movement to make it happen. [cheers and applause] [crowd chanting] Warren Warren warren [crowd chanting] Bernie Sanders. Bernie sanders is the junior senator from vermont. He is running for president because he believes that the principles of government should be economic, racial, social, and environmental justice, not corporate greed. His lifelong record of Public Service demonstrates his dedication to restoring democracy to the American People. Polk county, please join me in welcoming the great senator Bernie Sanders. [cheers and applause] music [cheers and applause] sen. Sanders hello, iowa are you ready for a Political Revolution . [cheering] sen. Sanders let me thank all of you for what you are doing to defeat the most dangerous president in the history of this country. Crowd member yes sen. Sanders we will not continue to have a president who is a pathological liar. Who is undermining the constitution, who is a racist, a homophobe, a xenophobe, and a religious bigot, among other things. Donald trump must be defeated in this important moment in American History. We need to run an unprecedented campaign. The same ole, same ole type of politics is not going to work. Continuing to be dependent upon the wealthy and the powerful for Campaign Contributions is not the way forward [cheering] sen. Sanders we need to run a campaign that is focused on the needs of the working class of this country and is supported by the working class of america, black and white and latino, native american and asianamerican. [cheers and applause] that is how we create the largest voter turnout in history. That is how we defeat donald trump. [cheering] sen. Sanders but here is the rub. The only way we create that excitement, create that voter turnout, is to do something not often done in american politics, and that is to tell the truth. And here is the truth, as i see it. Because of the sweat and toil of the working families of this country, including undocumented families, the United States has become the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. But that wealth is not filtering down to ordinary americans. In fact, as a result of a massive transfer of wealth over the last four decades, from the middle class to the top 1 , we now have more income and wealth inequality than at any time since the 1920s. While three people, three people own more wealth than the bottom half of american society, 50 of our people are working paycheck to paycheck. 87 million are uninsured or underinsured. And 500,000 go bankrupt because of medical bills. In America Today, working class families cannot find affordable child care. Young people cannot afford Higher Education or leave School Deeply in debt. 500,000 people tonight are sleeping out on the street. Family farmers in iowa, vermont, and all over Rural America are being driven off the land because of the greed of large agribusiness conglomerates. Rural america is in severe decline and Water Systems are collapsing. So in the midst of all of these crises, among others, let me tell you my vision for the future and what america looks like under a Bernie Sanders administration. [cheering] dividing the American People trumps strategy is to win reelection by dividing the American People up. We will do exactly the opposite. Were gonna bring all of our people together, around a Progressive Agenda that works for all of us, not just the 1 . Under my administration, we will combat ferociously the systemic racism that pervades all aspects of our society. We will combat White Nationalism in all of its ugly forms. [cheers and applause] and whether the 1 likes it or not, we will end the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality in this country. Yes, the rich and the powerful will start paying their fair share of taxes. [cheering] yes, we will create millions of jobs, rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, and these jobs will pay workers a living wage, at least 15 an hour [cheering] and we are gonna give workers an unprecedented opportunity to join unions yes were going to provide quality, affordable child care for all, and yes, were going to make public colleges and universities tuition free. And yes, we are going to make sure e sure that every teacher in america earns at least 60,000 a year. [cheering] and yes, in my view, health care is a human right, not a privilege. And we will pass the medicare for all legislation that i introduced in the senate. Under that legislation, there will be no premiums, no copayments, no deductibles, no out of pocket expenses. You go to the doctor that you want. You go to the hospital that you want. And you will end up paying substantially less for health care than under a system which gives the Health Care Industry 100 billion a year in profits. [cheering] and yes, we are going to take on the greed, the corruption, and the price fixing of the pharmaceutical industry. And under medicare for all, nobody in america will pay more than 200 a year for the Prescription Drugs they need. And yes, i am proud to have introduced the most comprehensive Climate Change legislation ever introduced by any candidate running for president or anything else i know its a radical idea, because my administration believes in science, not politics [cheering] and we will hold the fossil fuel executives accountable for lying about the carbon production that they are now producing. We will stop all subsidies and tax breaks that go to the fossil fuel industry. And we will lead the world, lead the entire world, moving forward to an Energy Efficiency and sustainable energy. Now, here is here is a dream, a vision that i want you to work with me on. Right now, in this world, were spending a trillion and a half dollars on weapons of destruction designed to kill each other. My vision is that we bring the countries of the world together, that we use those resources to combat our common enemy, which is Climate Change. [cheering] and yes, we will bring fundamental reforms to a broken and racist criminal justice system. We will end the war on drugs and legalize marijuana [cheering] crowd member woo we will end cash bail. And yes, when we talk about some of the horrific crises that we face, this president , unlike trump and the republican leadership, will not be intimidated by the n. R. A. [cheering] we will do what the American People want us to do and that is pass commonsense gun safety legislation. Including a ban on the sale and distribution of assault weapons in this country. Brothers and sisters, Nelson Mandela said something extraordinarily profound, which i thing encapsulizes what this campaign is about. He said, and i quote, it always seems impossible until it is done. You understand what that means . It always seems impossible until it is done. Our job is to think big, not small. Our job is to have a vision of the kind of america we want that works for working people, not just wealthy campaign contributors. And this afternoon, i ask for your help, to take on the greed and corruption of wall street, the insurance companies, the Drug Companies, the fossil fuel industry, the Prison Industrial Complex and the military industrial complex. Let us create a government and an economy that works for every man, woman and child in this country, and not just the wealthy and the powerful. Thank you all very much [cheering] crowd member Bernie Bernie bernie [chanting] [chanting] andrew yang is an author and entrepreneur who in 2011 found venture for america, a nonprofit that created almost 3,000 jobs in detroit, cleveland, pittsburgh, baltimore and other cities throughout the country. In his book, he makes the case for the freedom dividend, a universal basic income of 1,000 a month for every american along with hundreds of other policies. He was named a president ial ambassador of entrepreneurship by the Obama Administration and a champion of change for his work with venture for america. Now hes running for president in 2020 to bring his bold vision for the country to the white house. Please join me in welcoming andrew yang [applause] [cheers and applause] iowa [cheering] how beautiful are you . Its so great to be back how many of us are here today . Whats the official count . Im going to give a trumpian number there. Five Million People here today as you know, i am not a career politician. Im an entrepreneur and problem solver. And im here with a message. It is up to you, the people of iowa, to solve the biggest problem of our time. Its a problem our country has been struggling with. And the problem is this. Why is donald trump our president . Oh, really . If you think about it, how the heck did he win iowa by nine points . How did he win wisconsin . How did he win michigan, ohio, pennsylvania . And if you turn on cable news, you get this whole series of answers. The answers go something like, russia. Racism. Facebook. The f. B. I. Hillary clinton. In some cocktail and some mixture. The numbers tell a different story, a very clear story. The reason why donald trump is our president is this. We automated away four Million Manufacturing jobs in ohio, pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin and 40,000 right here in iowa. How many of you have seen Stores Closing where you live right now . And why are those Stores Closing . Oneword answer. Amazon. Amazon is a 1 trillion tech company sucking 20 billion a year out of your communities. How much did amazon play in taxes last year . They paid less taxes than everyone here together today. 30 of americas stores and malls are closing as we speak, including thousands here in iowa. The most common job in most of the country ask working is working in retail. The average retail clerk is a 39yearold woman making between 9 and 11 an hour. When her store closes, what is her next move going to be . How many of you have seen selfserve kiosks when you go to mcdonalds or in fastfood restaurants . Mcdonalds says they will be in every location in the country in the next two years. When you call the Customer Service line of a big company and you get the bot, you probably do the exact thing i do. Zero zero zero, human human human, until you get a person on the line. Am i right, iowa . In two or three short years, the software is going to sound like this, hey, andrew, hows it going . What can i do for you . Its going to be delightful, a little bit seductive apparently. You might not even realize its software. What is that going to mean for the two and a half million americans who work at a call center right now making 14 an hour . I was just at iowa 80. I know why you went for the buffet. Great value. And they say, very proudly, that 5,000 people stop there every single day. My friends in Silicon Valley are working on cars and trucks that can drive themselves. They tell me they are 98 of the way there. There are selfdriving trucks on our highways right now. What is that going to mean for the 3. 5 million americans who drive a truck for a living or the 7 million americans who work at truck stops, motels and diners across the country . Donald trump is not the cause of all of our problems. He is a symptom. A manifestation. Were in the midst of the greatest Economic Transformation in the history of our country. When is the last time you heard a politician say sports Industrial Revolution . Just now and i am barely a politician [cheering] this is a set of problems that got donald trump elected. You saw it on your farm, in your manufacturing plants. Youre now seeing it in your main street shops. Its going to continue to eat through our economy. Its going to devastate rural areas in particular. We know that rural areas are getting sucked dry first. What are the solutions . What is the vision . We need you, the people of iowa, to take to the rest of the country as fast as possible . If youve heard anything about me and my campaign, youve heard this. Theres an asian man running for president who wants to give everyone 1,000 a month. You remember hearing that . Thank you, yangyang. And the first time you heard it, i know it sounded like a gimmick, like it was too good to be true. But when you dig into our countrys history, this is a deeply american idea. Thomas payne was for it at our founding. Martin luther king championed it in the 60s. Called it a guaranteed minimum income for all americans. It is what he was fighting for the day he was killed in 1968. 1,000 economists endorsed it. It passed the u. S. House of representatives twice in 1971. And 11 years later, one state passed a dividend where now everyone in that state gets between 1,000 and 2,000 a year, no questions asked. What state is that, iowa . Alaska how does alaska pay for it . Crowd member oil what is the oil of the 21st century . Thats right. Technology, selfdriving cars and trucks. Big data. There is a study that says our data is worth more than oil. How many of you got your data check in the mail . That is the reality of the 21st century economy. Your community is getting sucked dry. Companies profiting in the billions. And you see zero. This is the math that we have to change. We have to build a trickleup economy that works for you all as fast as possible. [cheering] now, this 1,000 a month, after im president thank you, iowa after im president and we pass the freedom dividend and you get this 1,000 a month, what would you spend it on . I heard beer. Ha ha we are the steak fry. The money would go right back into your communities. It would go to day care. Car repairs youve been putting off. Little league signups. Local organizations. This is how we rejuvenate the economy and make it, instead of the winner take all economy were all saddled with, an economy thats built around our needs, our values. Our value as people, as owners and shareholders of this great country. Ive been giving the freedom dividend personally to families around the country for the last number of months. One of the recipients is a guy named kyle who lives in iowa falls, iowa. Hes at home taking care of his mom, recovering from cancer. I saw him last month. He seemed like a new man. And he told me he spent some of the money on a guitar and was playing shows for the first time in years. For kyle, it was a guitar. For jodie, it was car repairs. For mallory, it was going back to school. But these are the choices. This is what the money means to us in real life. Now, i talk a little bit about how our measurements are messed up. How many of you woke up excited about g. D. P. This morning . [laughter] g. D. P. Is at record highs. Do you know what else are at record highs in America Today . Stress, financial insecurity, suicides, drug overdoses. Its gotten so bad that our Life Expectancy has declined for the last three years in a row. And i talked with my wife and boys, one of whom is autistic. What is her work calculated at . Zero. We know thats the opposite of the truth. We know the work shes doing is among the most challenging, important and vital work there is. I was off the trail for a couple days, looking after our kids. You know what i said after a couple days . Get me back to something easy, like running for president you know what i mean, if youre a parent, its so hard. But its the best work there is. This is a vision we have to take to the rest of the country as quickly as possible. Of an economy that works for us. If you look back, donald trump won in 2016 by pointing out the problems. What did Hillary Clinton say in response . He said make America Great again. What did hillary say . America is already great. And we lost. We need a new message. He defined the problems but his solutions were the opposite of what we need. Donald trumps solutions, were were going to build a wall, turn the clock back. Were gonna bring the old jobs back. We have to do the opposite of all that, iowa. We have to turn the clock forward. We have to accelerate our economy and society as quickly as possible. We have to evolve in the way we think about work and value, and i am the ideal candidate for that job because the opposite of donald trump is an asian man who likes math. [cheering] now, math is an acronym. It stands for make america think harder. Were going to let our fellow citizens know that it is not immigrants that are causing these problems. It is automation and technology. It is the fourth Industrial Revolution. There is one criteria you all have for your nominee. It is this. Who is the best situated to beat donald trump in 2020 . Raise your hand if thats your main criteria for the nominee. Oh. Im a numbers guy. I am one of only two candidates in the field that 10 or more of donald trump voters say they will support. So if i am your nominee, we will win [cheering] we can bring in thousands of disaffected trump voters, independents, libertarians to join with us as democrats and progressives, because it is not left, thest not right, it is forward and that is where were going to take the country in 2020 thank you, iowa i love you i will see you soon thank you, iowa [cheering] crowd member Andrew Yang Andrew yang [chanting] Vice President joe biden has made championing dignity and opportunity for every worker, every family and every Rural Community his lifes work. During his time in public office, he successfully championed the violence against women act, banned assault weapons and helped make obamacare the law of the land. Hes doggedly determined to fight our Climate Crisis by bringing farmers in on the deal, to rebuild our middle class and our rural main streets, to invest in an invigorated Education System and in our rural energy and water infrastructure. And hes fighting to build on obamacare by establishing a public option to make sure every american has access to affordable, Quality Health care. Hes running for president , to unite our country, restore the soul of this nation and to rebuild the full force of the middle class. Polk county, join me in welcoming Vice President joe biden [cheering] hello, iowa [chanting] folks ha ha the rain is holding off a little while longer. You guys in the front pew, no way out for you. Ladies and gentlemen, i know this is now the polk county steak fry, but i started off here when it was the tom harkins steak fry. But it wasnt ever this big. Compliments of kind of what a great crowd. You know, tom and i served together a long time. He helped me pass battles, helped me pass the assault weapons ban, the violence against women act. I played a small part in his crowning achievement, his americans with disability act that he passed. [cheering] tom, tom was tough, principled and honest. I think he warrants being recognized here today. Folks, we meet here today as a threat posed by donald trump just seems to get worse every single solitary minute. We saw it in el paso. We see it now in iran, and god knows where hes going to go with that. The stakes are only getting higher. Above all else, we must defeat donald trump, period. [cheering] and stop his abuse of power. We have a president who traffics in the ugliest forces. The ugliest forces in our nations history. In both clear language and code. President trump has fanned the flames of White Supremacy in this nation. When charlottesville occurred and there were decent people standing there saying, we will not go along with this hate, and he was asked when a young woman was killed, he was asked to characterize what happened, he said, quote, there are fine people on both sides. No president no president has ever said anything like that, save the possibility of before the civil war. Ladies and gentlemen, in doing so, he has signed a moral equivalence between those neonazis, the ku klux klan, the white supremacists, preaching hate in White Supremacy, and those who are opposing it. At that time, i said were in a battle for the soul of america. And we are in the battle for the soul of america. Thats whats at stake. [applause] this country can overcome four years of donald trump with great difficulty, but eight years, eight years of trump, i believe, will forever change the character and nature of the country we are. America is unique in all of history. Its an idea. An idea. American creed. All men and women are created equal. Weve never fully lived up to that. But weve never, ever, ever walked away from it. Its genius. Every generation of americans, every generation, has opened wider and wider access for more and more people. Thats why its never gathered dust in our history books. We need a president who once again values honesty, decency, treating everyone with dignity and respect, leaving no one behind. Giving everyone a fair shot. And understanding that theres something bigger than our individual selves. Folks [cheering] we also have to rebuild the backbone of this country, the middle class. And this time, bring everybody along. Because wall street did not build america you built america you built america [cheering] and unions built the middle class. [cheering] right now, there are 50,000 auto workers and their families, men and women, who sacrificed so much to keep General Motors alive. Gave up more than anyone to keep it going. And now theyre being left behind again. Learning their Health Care Coverage is going to be suspended. These families deserve better. When we moved from scranton, pennsylvania, when i was a kid, there was no work after coal died. My dad was not a coal miner, but my dad was a salesperson. There were no jobs. If you listen to barack, youd think i came out of scranton with a lunch bucket out of a coal mine, but i didnt. My dad was a whitecollar salesman. But my dad, when we moved down to a little steel town, he used to say, joey, a job is about a lot more than a paycheck. Its about your dignity. Its about respect. Its about your place in the community. It is about being able to look your child in the eye and say it is going to be ok. , the middle class cannot look at their children in the eye. The do not believe they can say it is going to be ok. They do not believe their child can do as well as they did. We have never, ever had that happen in america. We are no longer the wealthiest middleclass in the world and the poor have no way. There are two things in order to have dignity. You have to have two things. You have to be able to look your child, someone you love come and know you can provide health care havehem, know that if they a preexisting condition you can still get them insured, to know with a terminal illness that an Insurance Company cannot come along and say your time is up. Suffer in peace. Obamacare did great things, but we have to go much further and we have to build on it. I am opposed to anybody who wants to take down obamacare. [applause] now we have to finish the job. We can do it because the American Public now understands what they had and were given by obamacare as trump tries to take it away. Ladies and gentlemen, that means a public option that is similar to what we have now but is optional for anyone wants to buy into it. If you haven, insurance you like, if you have negotiated with your company, you can keep it. If you do not come at you can join the plan. To bringse subsidies down the cost to the middle class. Anyone who is eligible today for medicaid will automatically be eligible for the health care proposal, fully covered. We bring down premiums, drug costs. Is the most immediate way to get universal coverage in america, by protecting and building on obamacare. If im president , i am going to do everything in my power to make sure that it is done. Everything in my power to make sure this nation also finds cures to cancer, alzheimers, and other diseases. If the Defense Department can invest in darpa to find major ways to protect this country from Stealth Technology to the internet, why shouldnt we be investing 100 billion in four years into health care that invests 100 billion focused on cancer, alzheimers, and diabetes . Ladies and gentlemen, we also have to provide education. 12 years of education is not in the middle it class in the 21st century and you know it. It is in our power to change that and we can do it easily. What we should be doing is making sure that every single child in america from age 3, 4, and five has access to preschool immediately. We know, those of you who are teachers, and professors, that that increases the possibility of those children succeeding no matter what their background is, no matter where they have come from. Community college should be free for anyone who can get into commune in college. Flat out free. That, we triple title i funding, making sure teachers get paid a minimum of 60,000 a year across the country. We will have a significant shortage of teachers within the next five or six years. Ladies and gentlemen, we need more school psychologists. We need social workers. We need more people in our schools. We can do that by tripling title i funding. Ladies and gentlemen, in addition to that, the fact is that the needs we have to focus on, what trump has done wrong. Ite to start to rework means reversing tax cuts. It means cutting tax cuts for the super wealthy. ,hy should any teacher firefighter, policeman, any middleclass person be paying any higher tax rate than someone making 50 million . It is wrong. I would eliminate that Capital Gains and make them pay the normal rate they are supposed to pay. In addition to that, we have to move immediately on what is the accidental threat to our nation existential threat to our nation. I wrote about it in 1986. That is Climate Change. It is the single most serious issue we face. Folks, as president , first thing i will do is rejoin the Paris Climate Accord. , withinithin 100 days 100 days, call a meeting of all the major nations in the world to come to washington to up the ante. They are responsible for 85 of all the pollution. How we canout a plan reduce our consumption of fossil fuels and get to net zero 2050. Ladies and gentlemen, we can right now, if we have a president with any imagination, in our Green New Deal, provide for a new green infrastructure. We can provide 500,000 charging stations along our highways, increasing the access for vehicles, electric vehicles, creating 10 million new jobs. We should own the electric vehicle market. We should be the place that shows the rest of the world what we have to do. I also call for investing 400 billion dollars immediately into research and technology to deal with Climate Change. Farmers will be part of getting us to zero. They will be the first group among us to get to net zero under my plan. It will provide good paying jobs , not wages that are 15 an hour, but 45 an hour. We have to unify this nation. I know my time is getting close, but look. I am tired. I am tired of Walking Around all with the americans with their heads down. People say what are we going to do . Ladies and gentlemen, this is the United States of america. There is not a single thing i mean this. To senate as a 29yearold. I am more optimistic about americas chances today to lead the world than i have ever been. Our workers are three times as productive as workers in asia. We have more Great Research universities in america than all the rest of the world combined. We are the wealthiest nation in the world. It is time we pick our heads up, remember who we are this is the United States of america. Lets get up and take it back. Lets get up and take it back. Our for the next halfhour or so. If it starts to rain we will let everybody know. Thank you for sticking with us. Our next speaker has several titles, mayor, lieutenant, veteran, rhodes scholar. And hope to add president to that list. Mayor Pete Buttigieg of south , understands the urgency of the problems our country faces. A veteran who served in one of the endless post9 11 wars, pete understands we need to meet this moment with fresh and bold solutions. Thank you. Lets go back and cross out the part where i said my name is. Ete buttigieg we are not going to let a little. Prinkle get us down im running for president because i think our country is running out of time. Countrythat when our needs to rise to some of the greatest challenges late at our feet, the leaders have us divided and discouraged and doubtful from what is at stake is whether we can redirect the american prospect. It cannotght now and wait. The northstar of my politics is comesea that every day first. The Big Decisions they make in washington flow into our everyday lives. I know that because i lived it. People have been saved by obamacare and killed by the opioid crisis. Rescued byas medicare but altered by crushing debt. My marriage hangs on the balance of a single vote in the United States Supreme Court. Thank you iowa for what you helped do for marriage equality. Politics for me is about our everyday lives. Extend them to washington hoping that they will fight for us to seem moreand they interested in the part about fighting then about us. Hat has got to change we are being divided around the values that are supposed to hold us together. I say the greatest patriotism is the one that calls us to be one not the one that tells people to go back to where they came from. Especially when where they came from his michigan. They speak of faith but what faith condones taking money out of a budget for feeding hungry. Hildren i was hungry to and you fed me . I was a stranger and you welcomed me . They talk about freedom but there is supposed to be more to then amazon not paying federal income tax. How about the freedom to organize for a good days pay for a Good Days Work . How about the freedom of women to make decisions about their own body . We are getting more and more divided it is beyond politics and it amounts to a crisis of belonging come one so profound that people are selfmedicating. Days, you get to be the first in the country to lead us away from the horror show. This is not a show to pick up the remote and change the channel to something better. You get to caucus to defeat this president and to get rid of the conditions that made it possible for him to run. If everything is going well i guy like donald trump is never able to take over a party let alone get within cheating. Istance of the oval office going to be able to replace this president if we think he is an aberration. Cant water down our values or get so caught up in purity tests that we shut out half the country before we get to that is how we win. You may have noticed this president is not sure what to do with it. He will do his usual thing about socialism but i come from six hours that way in the heartland of america we wallowed do our best to bring our communities to washington instead of the other. Ay around that samego to political playbook. Nominee thisr president will have to compete with in america an american war veteran on the subject of who would make a better. Ommanderinchief that is how were going to win the residency. Picture a presidency where you turn on the news in your Blood Pressure goes down instead of up. Picture a white house that can deliver medicare for all who wanted to give you a chance to decide if the public option is better than the private ones out there. Picture a president who sees to it that it is as easy to get Mental Health treatment as it is for a checkup. Assuring presidency that everybody has the opportunity 6 opportunity to succeed. I president who actually believes in Climate Change and is determined to do something about it. And a secretary of education who actually believes in public. Ducation sure but weaking know each other as americans. We will issue a call to national a million paidte volunteer Service Opportunities across this land, to remind us what it is like to Work Together on something hard. Of what the presidency can do is to build up that sense of belonging. A girl came up to me. Me what my campaign meant to her. She said i dont have to be ashamed just because i have autism. Ht, now this campaign is getting somewhere. Ofwering the crisis thatnging means making sure Everybody Knows where they fit in americas future. That is with the presidency can do if it is in the right hands we can look into the eyes of the same kids showing up with tears in their eyes. We have a lot of work to do before we change the trajectory of this company. Are you ready to spread the hope that is required to make this country a better place . And are you ready to leave behind the reality show in washington and change the channel to something we can be proud of . Then i am asking you to join me canaking history because we change the trajectory of this nation and be proud of how we did it. Iowa and i will see. Ou on the campaign trail we are still serving meals. But the grillers are done it. Lock and they have been here since 6 00 getting the food ready, getting the vegan options ready. Can everyone join me and thanking them for what they did today. Their caterers were excellent to work with. Our next speaker is mayor bill de blasio just kidding. He dropped out yesterday. Senator Amy Klobuchar has a strong petition for working hard and getting things done. Instead of calling people names are spreading the blame she is committed to fighting for the breadandbutter issues we care about, issues like infrastructure, Mental Health, and addiction. Please join me in welcoming the one best suited for a little bit thehether during her speech klobuchar. Or amy sen. Klobuchar thank you, iowa. I can handle the snow, i can handle the rain, and i can handle donald trump. They said what candidate would like to talk in the rain i said to me. I am so happy to be here with you and i always think of one thing when i think of this steak fry, the biggest compliment of all. That tom harkin was paul wellstones best friend in the United States senate. Iowa thank you for giving us abby and thank you for dave. Are excited to call rita a congresswoman next year. We dont just need to win, we need win big. Be focusedwe need to on one thing. Have one more thing and that is the general election. I can tell you what we need to do in iowa, we need to win that senate, we need to flip the fliplature, we need to those senate seats and we need to send Mitch Mcconnell packing to do that, iowa, you cannot just do it by winning the presidency. You have to bring in a fired up base. That is what im going to do. Now thehave right stakes are so high because we have a president running this country like a game show. We have a guy who would rather lie than lead. We have a president who doesnt see the difference between in america as good as its promise and and america he can sell for a promise. As i said whats the difference between greenland and President Trump . Sale. And is not for think about what he has done. He has shared Israeli Intelligence with russia. Russia over his own intelligence officers. Speech. Ade a political he said that he fell in love with kim jongun. Who does that . That is someone who cannot differentiate between partisanship and our country. I believe in the goodness of america. I want to be president for all of america. This is about those states we did not win in 2016. Pennsylvania. I went to philadelphia and pittsburgh. I went to the people who voted for donald trump. To michigan and i spoke to those port workers, i went to iowa. All that way from pennsylvania , we are going to build a makewall, we are going to donald trump pay for it. This. S how we do win thatlly want to general election this is what we do. Voters, we saye are you tired of the nonsense which is what i say every day. This is with an optimistic economic agenda for this country. Have words for former Governor Scott walker. We stand by the workers at the union auto strike at the picket line. Thats what we are about. This economic agenda is the simple idea that our work doesnt end on Inauguration Day. Its telling the people that after charlottesville there were not two sides when the other one side is what it is. It is about standing by the farmers and telling them i will not treat you like a poker chip in a bankrupt casino. As someone who is on the Agricultural Committee who has worked hard for Rural America, i understand it is not just one size fits all. If we want to bridge the rural and urban divide we better be able to send our emails to our grandma because we dont even have highspeed broadband in every county in iowa. I will deliver that to every county in the country by 2026. Comes to Climate Change the big crisis of our time, this resident has moved us backward. Just this week he stopped californias efforts to do something about it. On day two i will bring back the clean power standards. Four five, and six i will do something about Climate Change. On day seven i will rest. I wont really rest. [laughter] spoke to a survivor from pulse nightclub and he asked what we would do about gun safety and i told him what i would say to the president on the debate stage. I would say i sat across from you after parkland and i listen to you and i looked at you and i on a down with hash marks piece of paper nine times when he said he wanted universal he said he wanted universal background checks, nine times, just like he said after midland, odessa, and after dayton. What happened there . 30 seconds and dayton ohio, nine people gunned down. The cops got there and a minute and it wasnt enough. The day after he met with me in the white house and we tried to push for sensible gun safety legislation. He met with the nra and he folded. As your president i will not fold. We will get busy on. This ift achieve any of we do not have Voting Rights. Reauthorizee must the Voting Rights act, register every kid in this country when and pass a8 constitutional amendment to overturn citizens united. That is how we get this done. We must not just get all of these great policies passed. We must change the tone in our politics, reach out to our friends and say imagine if every morning you didnt have to wake up to a mean tweet. I dont know what the media would do. What would our lives be like . Say to your friends and neighbors and people you know who may have voted for donald know that there are plenty of them and say look what he has done, he hasnt kept his promises. He gloats about a economy that he didnt create. Our workers were resilient out of the downturn and they got us where we are and he gloats. From his trade wars and his ethanol waivers and the farm economy, he winds. Friends who work hard every day that may have made an error, you tell them we dont want a whiner in the white house. We need someone who is a strong backbone of this country. And remember the march we are on. We are not alone in this march. The day after Inauguration Day when millions of people peacefully marched all over this country. Next day 6000 women signed up to run for office. On day nine you were not alone. When that meanspirited refugee order came out they went to they stood up and they protested. Today 100, the march for science. My favorite sign, what do we want . Science. When do we want it . After peerreviewed. Tried to do that meanspirited thing and overturn the Affordable Care act and overturn peoples civil rights to stay on their insurance when they had preexisting conditions, we won because of all of you. The fall in those glimmers of legislative races where people were winning in those places we never thought they could win, my favorite was a guy in new jersey who said i hope they will be home to make dinner. Ant guy was beaten by africanamerican woman. Then doug jones wins in the state of alabama. Won in alabama. That is the march we are on. 2020. Win iowa in Michael Bennet represented the state of colorado in the senate in 2009. But he hasnt spent a lifetime in politics. He turned around failing businesses in the private sector and improved outcomes for kids as the superintendent of the denver Public Schools. He is the only candidate who has won two statewide campaigns in a swing state. He has led the charge to reach universal coverage with a public option, comprehensive immigration reform, and and child poverty. Please join me in welcoming senator Michael Bennet. [applause] music sen. Bennet thanks. Thank you, mr. Chairman. My family is here today. Iowa democrats, if we do our job, 400 days from today we can send donald trump back to maralago. And end the Long National nightmare that we are facing and save our democracy. I am Michael Bennet, it is great to be here. Sen. Rs and applause] bennet thank you. I am not a career politician. Then was the superintendent of the denver republics schools, the large urban school district, where most of the kids live in poverty but have exactly the same dreams as my kids. I have been in the senate for 10 years, having won two very tough elections in a purple state. 10 years ago, when i got back to washington i thought that what i would find would be the bedrock of our democracy. Government of the people, by the people and for the people. Instead what i found was steve king. And Mitch Mcconnell. And a whole cast of characters who are trying to make Barack Obamas life an absolute misery, destroying our government and this exercise in selfgovernment. In the 10 years i have been there, nothing has changed about the republicans except now we have donald trump. Someone who says Climate Change is a hoax, but that iowas windmills are causing cancer. Someone who says he loves kim jongun but hates our allies like angela merkel. Someone who told you mexico would pay for the wall, but guess what, you are. Someone who has sold the white house to polluters and crony capitalist. Capitalists. He did say he would run the government just like one of his businesses, and thats the only promise he has kept bankrupt. [applause] none of that has anything to do with improving the lives of real americans. That is something i know a lot about. If i had to sum up the last 10 years that ive had, the town halls ive had in iowa, people, and they say, michael, we are working so hard, but we cant afford some combination of housing, health care, Early Childhood education, or Higher Education. For the families that dont come to my town halls because they are working two or three jobs, if they were at my town hall they would say, michael, we are killing ourselves, but we cannot get our kids out of poverty. And we have to fix this. Iowa you are hearing a lot of plans from a lot of people. What i hear is how are you going to get it done with those guys back in washington . We need an agenda that is going to unite democrats and the 9 Million People that voted twice for barack obama and once for trump. We need to take that agenda to the country, to states like yours and mine and to when win tough election so we win the white house, send mcconnell packing and hold onto the house majority. By winning we can finally fix a broken washington. I didnt have to come up with it to run for president. Its an agenda that unites the American People. Its an agenda that has a real tax cut for the middle class and we cut childhood poverty in america by 40 . [applause] universal health care through a public option we can enact in three years, not in 30 years, giving Everyone Health care in this country and cut costs. [applause] putting the 70 of kids who never go to college in the position of earning a living wage, not the minimum wage when they graduate from high school, [applause] a Climate Change plan that is not just urgent but creates policy that can last a generation and close over and the broken politics. Its good policy and good politics. I want to tell you, we risk losing if we run on the wrong ideas. Take health care. For families in this country, the stakes couldnt be higher. Think about the hypocrisy of the republicans who kill obamacare. Donald Trumps Health care is paid for by all of us. Mitch mcconnells health care is paid for by all of us. Yet donald trump is the first president to run for president and be president who is literally taking Health Care Away from millions of americans. Republicans taking it away, and democrats fighting for universal health care. Theres a big difference in this race. If you like your health care you can keep it. We cant become the party of taking away from 180t away million americans. We won the house back in 2018 with democrats running on a public option, not medicare for all. We should follow their lead, thats how they will build a majority. To do that we need to nominate somebody who has run tough races and who says the same thing in the primary that they say in the general election. When i decided to run for president my daughter is standing behind me. If you run, you tell the truth and you lose, no one can fault you for it. I said to her caroline, thats good, there is no other reason for me to run. I was so pleased when i saw in the des moines register, the headline on the editorial that said Michael Bennet pounds truth into this campaign. [applause] that is what we need, iowa. You are all here today to save our democracy, just like the people who came before us. The founder of this country did to incredible things in their lifetimes. They won an interaction against the colonial power. Insurrection against the colonial power. Thats called the revolution. They submitted a constitution for ratification by people who would live under it. They did something terrible, which is they perpetuated human slavery. It took other americans to do their duty. One in particular named Frederick Douglass. He was born a slave in this country. He ran away, he fled, he got to massachusetts, where he met the abolitionists. The abolitionists were are at that time that the constitution was a proslavery document. Frederick douglass said you have it exactly backwards, the constitution is an antislavery document, but we are not living up to the word of that constitution. [applause] it is the same thing Martin Luther king says in memphis when he was there for the garbage workers who were striking when he said i am here to make sure america keeps a promise you wrote down on the page. I think our job is exactly the same as that. I think Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther king are are just like the founders, the people that wrote the constitution of the United States. I believe men and women, especially women who fought for the right to vote, who fought for my daughters. Who have the right to vote. I think that children who marched in the streets in america yesterday to pull our to call our attention to the Climate Crisis that we face, i think they are founders too. When you think about what your responsibility is in this election, you need to think of yourself as a founder. That is the job of a citizen in a democratic republic. We cannot elect donald trump. We will not elect donald trump again. Iowa. [cheers and applause] iowa democrats, you set the course for the country by voting first. Dont just send the message. Caucus for a candidate who knows how to build a new American Dream. Thats how we are going to beat donald trump he had thank you, iowa for your kindness, for your generosity, for being here today. [applause] [chanting] Julian Castro served as secretary of housing and urban development under president barack obama. Before that he was the mayor of san antonio, texas. The youngest mayor of the top 50 American City at the time. As secretary he worked to expand the promise of opportunity all over the nation. And expanded housing to decrease homelessness among veterans and expanded Internet Access to low income families and public housing. Please join me in welcoming secretary Julian Castro. [applause] hello, iowa let me begin with a message for our House Democratic friends. It is time for you to do your job and impeach donald trump. How manyand applause] crimes does this president have to commit before congress will act and impeach him . Whether we impeach him now or defeat him on november third 2020, there is going to be life after donald trump. The question is, what is that going to look like for a our beautiful country . I grew up on the west side of san antonio with a grandmother and a mother and my twin mother juaquin. My grandmother had come over from mexico when she was seven years old, along with her sister. She never finished elementary school. She raised my mom as a single parent and my mom raise my brother and me as a single parent. Like a lot of your families we knew what it was like to struggle, to worry about being able to pay the rent at the first of the month just a think, the two generations after my grandmother got here were almost nothing. One of her grandsons is a member of the u. S. Congress. The other one is standing here asking for your support to be president of the United States of america. [cheers and applause] that is america. That is a country road country we want to create for every single american. I know in the years to come we need to move forward as one nation, with one destiny, and my vision for the future of our country, is that america will be the smartest, the healthiest, the fairest and most prosperous nation on earth. If we are going to be the smartest nation on earth and means starting early. With universal prek for three euros and fouryearold. It means paying teachers what they deserve and improving your k12 Education System. We know jobs require more knowledge and more skilled than ever before. That means everybody should have access to Higher Education with college and job training certification programs. If we are going to be the healthiest nation on earth we need a different Health Care System. My grandmother had type two diabetes. I watched as her condition got worse and worse. That whole time she had medicare. I want to make sure everyone has medicare in our country. I also believe we need to make sure we have a distinction between physical and Mental Health care and invest in Mental Health care. [cheers and applause] and that we improve our Health Care System so that rural hospitals can stay open. And provide Quality Health care to everybody. [cheers and applause] if we are going to be a fairest nation on earth, it means reforming our justice system. Legalizing investing in public defenders legalizing marijuana and , investing in diversion programs. I am proud i was the first candidate to propose a Police Reform program. So no matter the color of your skin or how much money you have or what neighborhood you are growing up, you are treated the same by law enforcement. I also believe that if we are going to be the fairest nation on earth, we need to be sure that women get equal pay for equal work. And that we defend a womans right to have an abortion in this country, the womans right to choose, as it is under assault. Act,we passed the equality so the matter what your gender identity or Sexual Orientation is, you will not be discriminated against in housing or unemployment. We will not have secondclass citizens in the United States. If we are going to be the most prosperous nation on earth, it means prosperity for everybody. It also means were going to have to tackle the biggest threat to our country. My First Executive order on my first day in office will be to reenter the Paris Climate Accord so that we lean again on sustainability [cheers and applause] and to follow that up with a Green New Deal so we can protect our planet and get to net zero and also create rate jobs in the clean energy economy. Being the most prosperous nation on earth means we need to raise the min min wage to at least 15 an hour and support unions. We sure folks have good benefits. We already need to go above 15 to the minimum wage. We need to index that every year so we dont have to wait 10 years for the next race of the minimum wage we need to invest. In affordable housing. We need to make sure we have a tax code that rewards people that work for a living. Not only the amazons of the world and people who are very wealthy. I propose investments for working families and universal childcare, making sure we have Good Health Care and universal prek. Those things families need to truly prosper. We also need to make sure that in the years to come that we invest in jobs, not only big cities and suburbs but in Rural Communities that are hurting in iowa and texas and throughout the United States in 2016 most of us did not think donald trump was going to win. A lot of us were surprised. His campaign is up to its old tricks. One of his old tricks is to scapegoat immigrants. We need to inform our immigration system no more putting kids in cages. No more kids sleeping on the floor. Nor families being separated. We are going to keep families together. We are going to put undocumented immigrants on a pathway to citizenship. We are going to make sure we treat people with compassion and common sense instead of cruelty. And that we partner with the Central Americans so that people can find safety and opportunity at home instead of having to make a dangerous journey to the United States if we arend applause] going to beat donald trump, we are going to have to ensure we go everywhere. I have been doing that in this campaign. We need to create a young, Diverse Coalition of working people. Thats what im doing. Im going to get those votes but also get the electoral votes of florida and arizona and texas. Folks have asked me what is the first thing you would do if you are elected president . I said the first thing i would do on the first day is to sign that executive order recommitting to the Paris Climate Accord so where leaning on sustainability and we send a signal to the rest of the world that that is what we are going to do. But i said in all honesty my fear moment would come a little bit earlier in the day when it is customary for the incoming president to say goodbye to the outgoing president [cheers and applause] you all know at that moment is going to look like. Right there on the white house lawn. With all of Donald Trumps staff lined up around the white house the helicopter waiting in the distance. To take them off. I can imagine being there with my wife and my daughter. Getting ready to say goodbye to melania and donald trump. They will be getting ready to go off to new york or maralago, or somewhere. And right before he leaves, right before he walks away, im going to tell him, adios. Adios, adios, adios. You can help make it happen, iowa. Were counting on you to register voters and spread the word p to get folks off the sidelines, to beat donald trump on november 3 and say adios in january 2021. Thank you very much. Thank you iowa. Thank you. Thank you. [cheers and applause] [applause] [chanting] our next speaker is the first female combat veteran to run for president and one of the first elected to congress. Representative to representative to Tulsi Gabbard has served for 16 years and has served twice in the middle east. She has served on the Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees in addition to , serving as vice chair of the dnc. She is running to bring a soldiers heart to the white house. Please join me in welcoming congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. music [aint no Mountain High enough playing] rep. Gabbard aloha. In hawaii when we get gentle showers we consider them blessings. I feel belessed, grateful to be here to join all of you today at such an important time. I start our conversation with aloha. Because it is important. We are facing increasing divided times. Selfserving politicians in washington who are pitting one group of us against each other. Pitting one tribe against the other. Tearing us apart. Now i start with aloha not as a way to say hello, but because there is a very powerful meaning that inspires us in how we can come together. When we greet each other with aloha, what were saying is i come to you with an open heart, i come to you with respect, i come to you with love recognizing we are all connected, we are all family, were all children of god. This aloha inspires us to come together, to bridge those divides regardless of where we come from. Regardless of who we love or how we worship or if we worship. Aloha is what unites us. We live in a great country. I love our country and i love the American People. There is so much that brings us together, the values of the principles and the freedoms enshrined within our constitution. These are the things that bring us together. These are the things we are fighting for. I read recently, reread recently abraham lincolns gettysburg address where he spoke very briefly and very clearly about the great sacrifice that was made on those battlefields about the new nation that was born, dedicated to the proposition that we are all created equal. He laid out the best way that we as people can honor the great sacrifice that was made. He laid out how we must, Going Forward ensure we have a government of , the people, by the people, and for the people. Is that the government we have today . No. Its not. We have not carried out that vision that lincoln had for us. Instead we have a government of, by and for the rich and powerful. We, the people, are left behind as a result. We, the people, and of struggling and suffering as a result. You deserve a president who will fight for you, who will put your wellbeing ahead of the interests of profit, put people ahead of politics, put the wellbeing of the American People in our country at the forefront. This is why im running for president to bring these values at the heart of every soldier, the heart of every service member. To restore the principal and integrity and honor and respect to the presidency. As your president i will crack down on big pharma and Big Insurance Companies and make sure that every single american gets the health care they need. Im going to make sure that education of our kids is a priority, as your president that we pay , our teachers what they deserve and we make sure that our kids have every opportunity for their lives. Should [cheers and applause] i will end the failed war on drugs, end the federal marijuana prohibition and bring about real criminal justice reform. In a broken system that is torn far too many families apart and has cost the American People so much. Ill tackle Climate Change. I first got involved with politics, i first ran for office in hawaii when i was 21 years old running for the state house because of a desire to protect our planet. To make sure that we have clean water to drink and clean air to breathe. Together we can usher in a new green century, harnessing all the innovation and technology has to offer us, to make sure we are protecting our planet, creating good just, transitioning off of fossil fuels and truly investing in our future. Now, there is an issue that essential to all these other issues and the issue is the cost of war. The cost of war. It is something that, as a soldier, i know all too well in a deeply personal way. I served on two deployments in the middle east and my first deployment was to iraq in during i served on two deployments in the middle east and my first appointment was to iraq during the height of the war. I served in a field medical unit where every single day we were confronted with that high human cost of war. Ive served in congress for seven years on the Foreign Affairs committee, the Homeland Security committee. I understand the importance of our national security. I also know how deeply painful the terrible loss is for the of thousands of families who never got to welcome their loved ones home. From these wasteful regime change wars that have undermined national security, that have cost of such pain and suffering in the countries where we wage these wars, and that have caused every single one of us as taxpayers trillions of dollars since 9 11 alone. What does that mean . Trillions of dollars. Every single dollar that has been spent on these wasteful wars is a dollar that has come out of our classrooms, out of our healthcare system, it has, come out of our communities. Where has it gone . It has gone towards waging these wasteful wars and the nation building that has followed. Today as we gather here we are still spending 4 billion every month in afghanistan. We need to bring our troops home and bring our taxpayer dollars home to rebuild our own nation right here at home. Now, unfortunately these are not just things that are happening in the. In the past. For those of you watching in the news, you will see how yesterday President Trump secretary of defense announced the deployment of more troops to where . To saudi arabia. To defend saudi arabias oil, to defend saudi arabias infrastructure. Handing off our sovereignty and our military to be used buy another country. Be used by another country. That is not why we take this oath to serve. We take this oath to protect and to defend our country. Im running for president to end this insanity. The most important responsibility the president has is to serve as commanderinchief. As your commanderinchief, i will end these wasteful regime change wars, make sure we do not start any new ones, work to end this new cold war we are in and an arms race that would further cost us trillions and more lives and instead redirect those dollars toward serving the needs of our people right here at home. There is so much at stake here. We are facing very dangerous times. This is why we are here, and this is why i am hopeful because i know that when we stand together, motivated by this love we have for our country, for each other, and for our future, there is no obstacle we cannot overcome. Thank you for all that you do. I ask you to join me in our campaign. I ask you for your support to bring about the kind of change we need to put people and our country above all else. Thank you all so much. It is great to see you. Aloha. Thank you. Tom steyer is progressive activist and former businessman. In 2010, he signed the giving pledge to give most of his wealth to good causes during his lifetime. He has spent the last 10 year successfully fighting corporate control of our political system and organizing and mobilizing at the Grassroots Level for the good of the American Public. Please join me in welcoming our friend, tom steyer. Mr. Steyer hello, good afternoon, and isnt it great to be here on such a Beautiful Day . Let me say this. I have been coming to iowa since i was a little boy. My aunt and uncle are from iowa city, my uncle was a professor of constitutional law at the university of iowa. This isnt my first iowa rainstorm. [inaudible] mr. Steyer i know it isnt. I know you guys have heard a lot of people talking today and every single one of them is more decent, more qualified and more patriotic than the criminal we have in the white house. You are never going to see someone from this stage separate a young child from his or her mother. You are never going to see someone from this stage mock a gold star family. And youre never going to see someone from this stage conspire with the president of ukraine to use american tax dollars for his political purposes. I can promise you that. Thats i started need to impeach two years ago because i knew he was a criminal. But im not running because of mr. Trump. Im running because we have a failed government in washington, d. C. Corporations have bought our government. It is failed because of a hostile corporate takeover, and unless we take back this government, unless we get back to government of, by, and for the people, we are not getting any of the things we want. Unless we take back this were not going to get the health care we want, not going to get the education our children deserve, not going to get a living wage for working people across the United States. We are not going to get clean air and clean water. But let me talk for one second in iowa about who i am. Because when i read about myself in the paper, i sometimes think my first name is billionaire. And actually, my mom is from minnesota. She ended up working in the new york Public Schools and in the brooklyn house of detention. My dad was the first generation in his family to go to college. He became a lawyer. He quit his law practice to go into the navy in world war ii. Then he prosecuted the nazis at nuremberg. [applause] mr. Steyer they were from that depression era, world war ii generation, were people thought you give as much to america as you get from america. And when i started need to impeach, i was thinking about my father and a nazis, because when you see something wrong in america, you fight it. You dont ask what is tactical, what is good for you, you fight it every day before it gets too strong and that is what i was doing. My mom had an expression. Actions speak louder than words. Let me give you a little sense of what ive been doing for the last 10 years. I started the business a long time ago in one room with no employees and no windows, i built it up into a pretty big business. But i stopped it. I took the giving pledge and for the last 10 years, i have been working to form coalitions of ordinary american citizens to take on unchecked corporate power, and we have been winning. Look, we took on the Oil Companies and we beat them. We took on the Tobacco Companies and we beat them and we gave the money to medical, health care for the lowest income californians. I closed the billiondollar corporate loophole and gave the money to fix up the Public Schools. Ive taken on the monopoly utilities and insisted they get 50 clean energy by 2030 and won. And, for the people in iowa who dont know, i started something called next gen america in 2013. Next gen is on 41 campuses in the state of iowa. In 2018, we did the largest youth Voter Mobilization in American History and went into 38 congressional districts, we doubled the turnout of young people. We flipped 33 districts, including sydney and abbey. So, let me say this. I have done the grassroots. And in terms of business, i know this is going to come down for an awful lot americans to who can you trust to keep the economy safe and make sure it keeps going and is distributed fairly amongst americans . I am the person with a history of being able to do that in the private sector. I know what drives prosperity because i had to be able to understand it to make it happen. And i will use that, not just to protect americans, but also to expose mr. Trump for the fraud and the failure that he is. He was a fraud and a failure as a businessman. Hes a fraud and a failure as a president. He has two big economic policies. One was his tax plan. Biggest giveaway to Corporate America and the richest americans in American History. It is the worst thing ive ever seen for working americans. That was a disaster for us. His trade policy . His trade war is a total failure. Its specifically hitting iowans. His trade war cost iowans 635 apiece. On average. Oft is 2500 for a family four. Do you really think iowa can afford 2500 for the ego trip of a failure and a fraud . I dont think so. I would stop this trade war on day one. But let me say this, lets talk about Something Else that is going on in iowa that we all know. We know that there were record floods this year. We know that a levy burst north of Council Bluffs this week. Climate is real. I have spent 10 years fighting on climate. Successful ly successfully, we have taken on all this companies. I have said this is my number one priority. There is no one else in this race will say that. My number one priority i establish a state of emergency the first day of my presidency. [applause] steyer look, i understand what it means to do this, that we have to do it. But, as a business person, i can tell you, we can do it and have cheaper fuel. Iowa is wind energy 42 wind energy. Better jobs. We can do it and be healthier. I know what this means in terms of runoff from nitrates. I know it is a local pollution problem, too. It is not jobs or the environment. It is jobs and the environment. And this climate is the perfect example, the poster child for the corporate takeover. Oil companies would rather risk our health and safety. The health and safety of every single american, than lose the tens of billions of dollars in profits they make every year. I dont care about their profits. If you look at gun violence, 90 of americans have wanted background checks on guns for decades. We dont have it. Why . The gun manufacturers do not want us to have it. Im telling you we have to undo this corporate takeover of our government, and i have said term limits on congress. Nobody else is going to say that. 12 years senator. Power corrupts. Ill give you six words to explain term limits. Mitch mcconnell, lindsey graham, chuck grassley. Theyd be gone. National referendum. Look, if we had a National Referendum where we got to put it on the ballot and citizens get to vote it in, we would have mandatory background checks on guns next week. And we have to get rid of the fiction that corporations are people. I know the Supreme Court has said it, but they have said a lot of really stupid, wicked things over the last 240 years. This is where the corporations hang so much of their control, is corporations are people. Let me say one thing last and thats this. We act and people sound as if this is a failed society. This is the most Successful Society in the history of the planet. We have real challenges. If we do just these two things break the corporate stranglehold on our government, stabilize the climate we are in a position that is better than any people in the history of the world. What we want, we can have. We can have health care as a right for every american. Every other advanced society does. We can have the Education System our children deserve. We can afford it. Other places have it. We can have a living wage for every worker. One job should be enough. And we can guarantee clean air and clean water for every american, because no one has the right to poison you or your family to get richer. Thats just wrong. So, i am here. Actions speak louder than words. Im asking for your vote. But i promise you, i have delivered on everything i have promised in my life. If you go back and look, i started a business when people thought it made no sense and i delivered on it. When i took on the Oil Companies, no one wanted the job, because no one thought they could be beat and we beat them. When i took on the Tobacco Companies, no one wanted the job, but i beat them. When i started nextgen, no one thought it made sense to organize young people in the United States because they thought it was too expensive. I thought it was too expensive not to have a democracy and not to organize them. And two years ago, when i started the need to Impeach Movement against mr. Trump, everybody explained to me we cannot afford to do the right thing. And i said, we cant afford not to do the right thing. And lastly, when i started working on climate, people told me it is not a political issue. Nobody cares. This is not something you should spend your time on. I said, it is too important not to spend your time on it. Let me promise you, when i said i would do something, ive delivered. And i promise that if you give me your vote, i will deliver every single day. I will never forget and i do not care one bit about those corporations. They have to do their business but they cannot run our government, and i will never let them do it. Thank you very much. [applause] joe sestak served in the navy for 31 years. Serving throughout the world and rising to the rank of threestar admiral. Following his daughters battle with brain cancer, joe ran for congress, fighting to provide families with the same quality of health care he received in his familys time of need. He was called the most productive legislator of his class and was reelected by 20 points in his 21 republican district. Admiral joe sestak is running for president because he believes this nation must have a president and a commanderinchief that can beat the current occupant and also unite this nation by be ing accountable to all americans. Please join me in welcoming admiral joe sestak. [tom pettys wont back down playing] mr. Sestak thank you very much for having me here today. Id like to do something just a little different if its all right. Ive been living in an econo lodge for 77 of 90 days. I flew in in june into des moines after my daughters brain cancer finally went into remission. She was in a safe harbor. I came here to announce my candidacy for presidency of the United States of america. It was about the time the corn had begun to sprout. And it was kneehigh by the fourth of july. Last week we had a harvest moon. So, i decided it was time, maybe i could tell you what i learned from iowans in those 77 days i ran around the state and came back at night to an econo lodge. He actually did about 235 events, including press engagements. Included in those work in those were 13 parades where i shook over 30,000 hands. Because i learned in iowa parades are pretty special. As a woman taught me when i called her and said, how many do you expect on the route . She said we have not had a parade in four weeks so we expect extra to be there. But we also passed out about 110,000 brochures into willing hands and underneath unwilling car windshield wipers. You might have even got one as you walked out of hyvee. But over 17,000 miles i traveled throughout the state since late june. Thats like going across america about six times. I learned the history about iowa. Man, i saw where john lewis was born, that great labor leader who put unions on the map in the 1930s, the 1940s, and the 1950s. I saw where wade oreilly came from, the wonderful man from mash. He taught us the folly of war. I met and learned that great characteristic of people of iowa. Some call it iowa nice. Naw, it is a lot more than that. There is a respect for others wherever i went around the state. It didnt matter whether it was a woman in a laundromat or whether it was a republican in a parade. It was respect for others. You may just call it iowa nice, but it is a lot more than that. It is a lesson to the capital of this nation. But i saw it most particularly in the respect they had for veterans. And you go to waterloo and you see that Wonderful Museum to the five brothers, the five salomon sullivan brothers. Even in the navy today we have a ship named after those iowans. Those five men who lost their lives in world war ii on the same navy ship, fighting nearby with my father in that second world war. Then the econo lodge, that road named for merle hay, the First American killed in world war i, an iowan. I saw it every day when i ran back and forth and shook hands, and they had a brochure with my picture on it. As i ran up to them and inevitably one out of four iowans would shake my hand. Or even stand out and say thank you for your service. Then, i met individual iowans. One on the farmer i stood next one. To that pointed at his soybean crops and said, one out of four of those rows, i will not be of wont be able to plant next year. I might be out of business because our customer china is no longer buying from us. St,et a precision agronomi. Nd i asked her what that was she has done her job of making sure that those fields were precisely measured. I met a marine corps veteran who worked in a factory. He started at a certain wage. When he left last year, anybody who entered that factory, started just like he did in 1990, at the same wage. I spoke with people who had talked about medicaid in iowa. It has been privatized and services plummeted. Last year this year. They were given a 8. 6 raise, those private companies. I saw throughout all of those counties throughout beautiful iowa how 2 3 of them are losing population as rural hospitals are disappearing. And who will set up a business where there is not a nearby Health Provider . D and watched because it reminded me of how i had walked 422 miles across pennsylvania one time when i was running for the United States senate. From the border of new jersey all the way across to ohio. I met coal miners who were losing their jobs and many more will, but they do not have the money to learn a new skill. I met manufacturer workers who lost their job but also didnt have the money to learn a new skill when those Small Businesses went away. When i walked across the keystone state where i grew up, i got two calls. One was from a republican because i was in my flight jacket. And he recognized me as i was walking past his car dealership. He yelled at me, hey, admiral, im republican but i love what you are doing. Then i got another call from the head democratic senator who raises the money for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign committee, who said, stop walking. Go back to your office and fundraise. I kept walking. And followed that republicans advice. It cost me. As my the Party Leadership put in from that committee more millions against me than they put in against Mitch Mcconnell. Too many have lost sight that it is always about people. Above party, above self, above any special interest no matter the cost. Come aboard to an Aircraft Carrier recommended in my battle carrier i commanded in my battle group. As i launched off afghanistan, seven had been in the first gulf war. One of them had never been off the carrier deck, not in combat before. She was 26 years old. She was the one that disobeyed orders that night, not to dive below. 20,000 feet until we had time to check who might be endangered below. But special forces had been ambushed. Four died immediately. Some asked permission. That young woman, that brandnew pilot, felt she could not wait. She dove three times and those four special forces who still lived picked up their dead comrades and came home tonight. That woman demonstrated exactly what this country is looking for and yearning for today. She was willing to be accountable to them, the troops, the people, above self, at the risk of her own career, never mind her life. No matter the cost to her. I honestly believe that we must beat donald trump above anything else. I cant wait to stand there and say, you know, donald, we have something in common. We both went during the vietnam era for our physical and i flunked it also. I came back the second time because i memorized the eye chart on the way out. I represented a nearly two to one republican district, the second democrat since the civil war. I had an f from the nra. I had 100 from National Organization of women and an f from the human rights campaign. I got reelected by 20 points and i did not spend a penny of the 3 million i raised on one Single Campaign ad. We somehow had learned to to agree on certain things and, where we disagree, it was not exactly iowa niceness, but we respected one another because they knew they could trust me. I was always accountable of us party, self or any special interests. That is our hobsons choice. To heal this countrys soul with someone who actually can again be able to get policies through and no longer have to have a president that can only do executive orders, or how else to meet the defining challenges of our time . Take Climate Change, the most catastrophic threat to mankind. Sure, we must at home pass the ability to have a carbon fee dividend, and we must stop all fossil fuel subsidies for Oil Companies and others and move them to green energy. And we must stop all drilling offshore as well as in the arctic and in sacred native american lands, but we also have to fix Health Credit Fix Health Care and get it through that senate. Yes, we must move toward singlepayer, i get that, particularly with my own Health Insurance from the military, they gave us a 300,000 bill to try to save my daughters life. Only 8 of kids has ever survived it and she has done it twice. How do we get there . I voted for the public option. How could you not . In the military, you learn piss poor planning gives piss poor execution. You want a public option that moves us inexorably toward singlepayer but it proves itself while we get there. You know what, in those rural counties, why dont you have a model like the v. A. . It has been shown that a governmentowned hospital is equal to or better than any other Health Provider, private or public. And then, yes, we can reduce student loans. There is a program that says and government if everybody we make it mandatory and make it grandfathered and universal, you do not have to pay back any more than 10 of your student loan. We should lower it to 5 . If you are lower income, forgiven after 20 years. Who do i want to focus on . The clinton and the trump supporter. The 5 of americans do not have a college degree. We are democrats. Why dont we focus on that coal miner who lost his job or the man who used to drive that tractor, or the farmer when she loses her farm . Why dont we have a program i wrote about in 2015 in my book it sold six copies where it is called training for a lifetime, like they do in the military. The air force community college, you learn the f22. Technology is going to transfer so quickly, we have to have those 11 million americans who no longer are in the Labor Participation rate back into the workforce by retraining them over a lifetime. Finally, restore u. S. Leadership to this world. No longer do we have democrats, republicans alike who do not understand when they voted for that tragic misadventure in iraq, the military can stop a problem. They can never fix the problem. And our president today had better understand with iran, you had better know how it is going to end before you begin. Thank you very much. [applause] looking forward to meeting Marianne Williamson for weeks now. Marianne williamson is a bestselling author, lecturer, and activist. She has worse with thousands of worked with thousands of individuals and large and small groups in transforming crisis into opportunity. For 35 years she has been helping people heal from problems that in many ways have been created by the irresponsible political establishment. Please join me in welcoming Marianne Williamson. [cat stephens peace train playing] ms. Williamson thank you. I dont know where this clock is people say i can see somewhere . Im sorry . Ok. Hi, everyone. Ive been listening to a lot of great candidates here today. I dont think of myself as running against anyone. I think of myself as running with a lot of really great people. And ive heard a lot of plans articulated and i agree with the majority of them. Im in the left wing of the Democratic Party. There is no question but that we have the democrats the best plans. But not of those plans are going to be brought to fruition until and unless we have another plan. That is what i want to talk to about today. My plan for defeating donald trump. Because we dont have a plan for how we are going to defeat donald trump it is all just thought. Were already having too much talk in a vacuum. Once im elected i will do this. I will do that. So, i want to talk to you about how we are going to do the first thing that most important thing that we must do. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is not just to defeat donald trump. We have to do more. We have to do more than not jump over the cliff. We need to get out of the vicinity of the cliff. We need to defeat an ideology. We need to so inspire a new chapter for the Democratic Party and for the United States of america that they cannot come back in 2022 or 2024. So, we have to think big. Think big with me. I dont know who were talking to when we go on and on about how bad donald trump is, because if youre talking about people who cannot stand the agenda of donald trump, i think it is fair to assume theyre voting for the democrat. And people who are so excited about donald trump are going to vote for donald trump. They are going to vote for donald trump. The point is, ladies and gentlemen, if we have one group that is so angry theyl vote for any democrat andl we put that up against one group that is so excited that no matter who else is running they will vote for donald trump, that is way too close for comfort. What we have to do is talk to all those millions of people who did not vote. What we have to do is talk to all of those way too many people who voted thi party, and we need to talk, please hear me, to what i believe are millions of people who, yes, they voted for donald trump but they are disturbed. But ill tell you something, if all we do is talk about how bad donald trump is, we are shaming them, we are making them wrong, and we will not make them inspired to vote for us. We have to have a new chapter in the Democratic Party that is way wider, which is speaking to something much deeper than i am a democrat and you are a republican. We need to speak to the heart of the matter. We need to speak to those values about which all of us care, not because we are democrat or republican, but because we are american. We have to transform this country not just change policies. If all you do is change president s they will come back in 2022 and 2024. If all we do is change policies, then the next president will simply take away the good ones we got in place. This country needs to transform. And this country needs a president , and this president should emerge from a party that is ready to go deeper, go soulful, get real, do some truth telling, talk not just the truth. Every democrat running is talking the truth. But ladies and gentlemen, we need to do more than talk the truth. We need to say the whole truth and nothing but the truth. If we tell, if we talk the whole truth and nothing but the truth, america has some painful truths to look at. America has to look at how many ways we are not behaving like the country that we purport to be. Or the ways in which we are not aligned with the principles on which we claim to stand. In a country where the government at this point does more to advocate for those who are already rich so that they can get richer and to advocate less for those who can hardly make it at all, were not the even behaving like a democracy. We are behaving like an aristocracy we repudiated in 1776 and we need to repudiate it again. And we need to face how much unnecessary human suffering has resulted. We have to face there are millions of American Children living with chronic trauma and, yes, they are in iowa, too, who go to schools where they do not have the School Supplies with which to teach their child to read. If a child cannot learn to read by the age of eight, then the chances of High School Graduation are drastically decreased, and the chances of incarceration are increased. The Democratic Party should not be a party who simply normalizes the despair of his children. And if all the Democratic Party is talking about is increased funding for schools and preschools and free college, all of which i agree with, ladies and gentlemen, we need to get bigger. We have children in this country who are traumatized before preschool. We have hungry children in america who go to school. We have 13 million hungry children in america. We have children who go to classrooms in this country and ask the teacher if they have something to eat. We have millions of American Children who are experiencing a level of chronic trauma that psychologist say is no less severe than the trauma of afghanistan and iraq veterans from war. Ladies and gentlemen, we need to get real about what is happening in this country, get real about race in this country. We need to do more about the paternalistic racebased policies. We need to do more than just having another commission to study it. Would need to realize that with 250 years of slavery, plus another 100 years of institutionalized violence against black people, it is time to pay a debt that is owed. It is time to pay reparation, and it is time to take reparative measures regarding native american justice in this country, including here in iowa, because whether you are a country or an individual, you will not have the future you want unless you are willing to clean up the past. The Democratic Party needs to be talking about a world war ii level globalization to do with the urgency of the Climate Crisis. So intends that if we do not take radical action within the next 10 or 15 years, we could be talking about a civilization collapse. We could be talking about food shortages, mass starvation, hunter is possibly of millions of refugees hundreds of millions of refugees and social collapse that we have not talked about in the modern era. And need to talk more about ben and liz preparation for war endless preparation for war. Bring the boys home. We should be talking about waiting peace, waging peace. We cannot just deal with the guns and just deal with the military budget, we also need to have a u. S. Department of peace, a department of children and youth, we need to pay reparations, we need to get real in this country about the things that we need to get real about. Donald trump has ushered in an era of political theater. And we will not be going back. Ladies and gentlemen, it is not just a politician. He is a phenomenon. And the only way we will defeat them is if we create a phenomenon of our own. And a phenomenon of our own is not an individual but it is an arousal, an inspiration, it is a motivation among the American People that will not occur with the same old same old. This is our plan and this is how we fix it. When he to have something that is so real and that people all over this country know thats telling it like it is and that is the moral values about which we can all say, im proud to be an american. I might be a conservative, i might be liberal, i mightve been a republican or a democrat but you know what . That woman is right. Ladies and gentlemen, i know what you have been told. Marianne williamson she is not one of them. Dont you get it . I challenge the idea that only those whose careers have been entrenched for a decade in the system we dug into could drive us out of it. Womens suffrage did not come from the government. People rose up and people stepped in. Civil rights did not come from the government. It started because the people rose up in the people stepped in. Ladies and gentlemen, it is time once again for the people to step in. So, next time i hope youll look at my website marianne2020. Com and at least consider deep in your heart next time somebody says, you could never win. You might want to think of saying, actually she might be the only one who can. Thank you very, very, very much. Not the only one, but we will make sure the democrat wins. I appreciate it. God bless you. [applause] lets try this. Hey. Who are you voting for, teddy . He said the meeting is called to order. If you cannot tell, he is a county chair kid. Attorney general tom miller is serving in his tenth four year term as the attorney general of iowa. No, you cant do it. The longestserving attorney general in American History. He has done so much to help hundreds of thousands of iowans, reducing telemarketing crimes. This is a terrible idea. And helping people all over the nation. He was a leader in the multistate Settlement Agreement that resulted in the Tobacco Industry paying billions of dollars to states and changing the way it conducts its business. He is not running for president. Although as iowans we wish he was. He is here to introduce governor Steve Bullock. Join me in welcoming attorney general tom miller. Hello. [applause] hey. Hey, welcome. Hearty iowa democrats. Ive known Steve Bullock for 12 years since he first became attorney general of montana. Here is what i know about him and is also the reason why i am supporting him for president. He is a man of immense integrity and character. He is a person of extraordinary qualities and abilities when it comes to Public Policy and serving in government. He has an enormously good judgment on how to make decisions. Hes roughly the same place i am on the issues, which i would describe as mainstream liberal, mainstream progressive, not a moderate nor on the left. But what stands out in my mind is his ability to connect with people and voters. Of all the people ive seen come to these caucuses over decades, he and Barack Obama Connect with People Better than anybody else. And the reason i say this is they both respect everybody equally. Everybody is important. He goes everywhere rural, urban areas. He listens to people. He empathizes with people. He connects with people. That package has allowed him to win in montana, a very difficult state. Win in rural and urban areas, run 24 points ahead of Hillary Clinton. Those kinds of qualities will allow him to be, i think the best of the candidates in iowa. When we have such difficult fights an important fight for the senate, for congress, for the iowa house. He could help our candidates. The same reason why he would run so strong in iowa is why he would want so strong in wisconsin, pennsylvania, michigan, and other places. This is the man that can lead us to victory. And the same qualities i have talked about are the kind of qualities that we need in a president as well. So, iowa democrats, take a good look at this man. And think about him. My friend, Steve Bullock. Gov. Bullock thank you, tom. Thank you, iowa look, about this time of year you got all kinds of visitors trying to make some distant connection to your state, so im not going to tell you my great great i grandparents settled henry county in 1850. Because that is not why we gather. We gather for the sake of our nation, for the sake of our nation in the world and for the sake of the america we will pass on the next generation. We gather to make sure donald trump is a one term president. You know, it is more than just that. Its soundly rejecting this behavior he has normalized, the lies, the abuse of power, the dividedness of race and gender and geography. For goodness sakes, we expect more out of our preschoolers than we do the president of the United States. As democrats we win when we offer something better, when we show up, we listen, when we vote we solve the challenges of everyday americans. I was raised in a singleparent household, paychecktopaycheck. Only knew there was a governors house because i delivered newspapers as a kid. Ive made it literally four blocks in life. But i worked my way through college. I borrowed my way through law school. Never forget that day when my wife and i paid off 175,000 in todays terms of student debt. You know what, though . When i growing up 90 of 30 year olds were doing better than her parents were. Today it is only half. 60 of americans have not had a pay increase in 40 years. 2 3 of the countys loss businesses over the last decade and you should not have to leave your church, your school or your Community Just to make a decent living. When you go from delivering newspapers to the governors house as a kid, to now actually raising our family and it, youve lived the American Dream. You have got to recognize for so many folks in this country that fair shot at a better life no longer exists. For far too many, that shot never did. Yeah, this is about winning the election. But it is also about making sure the economy in washington, d. C. , is finally working for working people. First things first. We need make this a single issue election and that single issue is kicking donald trump out of the white house. 2016, i was the only democrat in the country to win a statewide reelection in a state trump won. In won by four, 25 to 35 of my voters voted for donald trump. This election is about math. We need to take back 270 electoral votes. That path does not just go through the coasts or through the urban areas, it goes through the places like iowa. A third of your counties voted obama, obama, trump. This election is about the state house and the white house. And the deep, dark secret is we spend a lot of time loving you all to death. And then byebye. Come february, we all leave and you are left with a legislature that is gutting health care, stripping away rights from women, from workers. We need to make sure we have somebody at the top of the ticket that is actually going to help out all throughout the ticket. I believe i am the best candidate to carry that message to all of america. I refuse to see the votes of Rural America as the folks that work the land, feed the world and pass the plate on sundays somehow are forever wedded to a lying with orange hair and a golden toilet. I have won three election and a red states not by compromising our values but by getting stuff done. Even with the legislation that is a more republican than yours, we actually passed health care for 100,000 folks. We made it so we had Mental Health parity, we kicked dark money out of our elections and we froze college to and more and we have done that with ever once without ever once compromising womans right to make her own health care decisions. As a former union side labor lawyer we have done that without ever once taking away a workers right to organize and collectively bargain. Look, im the only democrat left in this race, the only governor left in this race and somehow i have not made it through those dnc debate role so far because i only got in four months ago. And is set up chasing donors, i was actually working with our Republican Legislature to get and Save Health Care for 100,000 montanans. Signed by last bill on monday, announced on tuesday and by thursday i was in iowa. I get what they are trying to do, but if we really are the party of the people, we ought to actually prioritize not chasing donors but actually saving peoples lives along the way. This is the most important election certainly in all of our. Lifetimes yeah, it is about beating donald trump, preserving a 243 year experiment called Representative Democracy. We need to be able to win back some of those places that we lost along the way. 135 days from now is when you all, you voters start making the decision, taking a big field into a small field. Ive learned a lot about iowa nice. You are somewhere on my list. I ask you take a good look over the next 135 days. Put me at the top of my list because i can bring those places and because there is Something Else. It is not just donald trump that is on the ballot. It is not just a 243 experiment called Representative Democracy that is on the ballot. Indeed, the American Dream is on the ballot right now. We have big problems in this country. Remember how united we were as a nation after 9 11 . We came came together with purpose, compassion, unity. We need that now. We need to be able to bridge some of these divides. We need to be able to heal some divisions and challenge the greatest thing that is happening right now and that really is that so many folks in this country do not feel they can live the American Dream, have a fair shot at a better future. We can do that. My most solemn vow when i take the oath of office, to preserve, protect and defend the constitution, yes, but also that American Dream, to make it real for the next generation. I ask you to take a closer look, go to Steve Bullock. Com. This will not be the last time you see me in iowa. Thanks so much for being here today. Thanks for what you will do over the next 135 days. Take care. Believe in steve believe in steve it is not easy to give a speech in the rain. Lets have another round of applause for governor Steve Bullock, who we all love so much. Our last speaker is here just before the rainstorm is really going to pick up. Congressman tim ryan is the u. S. Representative for ohios 13 district. He has served in Congress Since 2003 and represents traditionally bluecollar towns from youngstown to akron. He is a vocal supporter of unions and has led the charge on lost a crackdown on currency manipulation by foreign countries. A fiery and impassioned speaker, he is also an advocate for a more balanced life. He has authored books on meditation and healthy eating. He actually closed down our first steak fry revival in 2017, and by the look of the draw, he gets to close it down and bring us home again. Please join me in welcoming my friend. Congressman tim ryan is our last beaker tonight. Our last speaker tonight. [cheers and applause] representative ryan thank you. Thank you so much. This is great. We dont stop playing football if it rains, do we . So we dont stop politicking when it rains. My name is tim ryan. I have been in the United States congress for 13 years. I represent the state of ohio, northeast ohio, and we have a tragedy in our community, one of our communities several weeks back in dayton, where we saw a terrible act of violence where a bunch of young people who went out to go have a few drinks one night ended up watching mass murder with a gun that somebody should not have had. These young people literally watch people bleeding out on the streets of dayton, ohio, like it happens in so many other communities across the United States every single day, so i want to be very, very clear here with you in iowa today. Mitch mcconnell needs to get off his ass and passed the comprehensive background check till that is sitting in the United States senate that will save lives all over the United States. I dont think we can take this issue lightly or any other, but i am running for president because i believe we have to get away from the current left right divide. Weve got to get away from the left right divide. I want to tell you, im prepared for this. I got my Progress Iowa hat on here. Let me just say let me just say a couple things. One is weve got to get away from the left and right as a Democratic Party. We have got to be the party of new and better. New and better ways of addressing the issues around the economy. New and better ways of addressing the issues around health care, new and better ways of addressing the issues around Climate Change, and i want to share a couple of them with you thank you, my brother. Give this gentleman a hand. [cheers and applause] representative ryan this is where my wife would say, you run for president , you get spoiled. This would be an example of that. I want to talk to you about a few issues. We only have a few minutes left. We got to come up with new ideas that are going to solve our problems. One of the first things i want to do is appoint a chief manufacturing officer. We need to make sure we start making things again in the United States, and if we are going to fix the issue of climate and Climate Change, we need to build our way out of this, and that means we need to build electric vehicles. We need to build solar. We need to build wind, batteries, charging stations. This is a multitrillion dollar opportunity for us here in the United States of america, and right now, china dominates electric vehicles. China dominates batteries. China dominates solar. When i am president , those products will be built by American Workers here in the communities that have lost so much over the last 30 or 40 years. I believe we have got to have a new conversation around health care. Of course we all believe that health care is a right. Of course we all believe everybody should have access to it, and there should be a public option, but the conversation we are having today around health care is a conversation around a broken system. It is around a disease care system, a sick care system, and 3. 5 trillion a year is spent on chronic diseases that are largely preventable. I want to be the president that shifts the Health Care System to a system where we reverse chronic disease in the United States of america, where we adopt things like food as medicine, where we are literally today reversing things like type 2 diabetes using food and medicine and other intervention. I want us to play offense in Rural America. Too often, the Democratic Party has forgotten Rural Communities. I have an agenda for us to move into Rural America and win, and there is not a better opportunity because President Trump has screwed the American Farmers in ways they have never had to deal with before. I want us to convert our farming system away from an industrial agriculture system to a system of regenerative and sustainable agriculture. [cheers and applause] rep. Ryan i want us to build a system where we get rid of algae blooms in our lakes, where we heal our planet, heal things like the dead zones at the mouth of the Mississippi River and we literally can start sequestering carbon so we can deal with the issue around climate. Here is the best part of the regenerative agriculture movement. That farmers can finally make money because they are reducing all of the pesticides, they are reducing all of the fertilizer that they have to buy in a broken system that they are now trapped in. We can go to Rural America and say we are going to rebuild downtowns, renovate that theater, build a river walk, build an amphitheater, make sure we have housing in the downtowns. We are going to build community again. I represent a lot of small and midsize cities. I will tell you as your president , you will not be forgotten. We are going to rebuild small towns in the united of america again. [cheers and applause] i lastly want to talk about education. In order to build those vehicles, we are going to need to rebuild the Vocational Training in all of our schools. One of the worst decisions we made in this country was getting rid of vocational education, so we need to make sure we do that, but if we do not shift the conversation away from how we get higher test scores to a conversation that says how we take care of our kids, how we have traumainformed care, how we have social and emotional learning, how do we have art therapy and Music Therapy and play therapy if we dont heal the trauma, our kids will never be able to learn, and we have learned more about the brain in the last 20 years then in the previous 200, and we know when the brain is traumatized. We know when theres violence in a community or in a household that the childs brain literally is not working. I want to not reform education, i want to transform it. I will be the education president in the United States of america. We are going to get this country going again. Let me say weve got to compete. Weve got to be healthy. Weve got to be educated. Weve got to heal our earth and heal the trauma that our children and people in this country have experienced. Weve got to stop the ravages of things like the opiate epidemic that have taken so many friends and family members from us so that we can compete in a Global Economy again. Thats the kind of president i want to be. We are a strong country. We are a smart country. You may not be able to tell when you turn on the television set, but you can tell in the communities across the United States, we are ready to explode in this country. We have so many good ideas, so many goodhearted people, and what you will hear over the next few months from me is how we engage everybody in this country to help rebuild. Who is going to be the next generation that is going to go in and do the regenerative agriculture . Who is going to be the next generation of teachers that will go in these schools and heal our kids like my wife does every single day in her first grade classroom . Who is going to go in and invent new ways to capture carbon or the next wave of Energy Efficiency. Who is going to develop that . We cannot do it with an attitude that is hostile to business. Im for raising taxes on the rich. Im against increased inequality. Im against the concentration of wealth, but if we are going to get out of this mess, we have to all come together and that means working with the Business Community in the United States of america. Im going to tell you one last quick story about muhammad ali. The champ was walking down the road in kentucky, and someone came up to him and said, when i was a kid, i saw you fight. And ali said, great. The kid said it was a great fight, but you got knocked down in the third round, and ali said, wasnt my fight. The kid said my dad took me to the fight, it was an amazing event, but you were great, but you got knocked down in the third round. And ali said wasnt my fight, i aint never been knocked down. He said im either up or im getting up. Im telling you that the Democratic Party has never been knocked down. We are either up or we are getting up. Progressives in the United States are never knocked down. We are either up or getting up. Big 10 country is never knocked down. We are either up or we are getting up. Lets rebuild the United States of america. Lets get rid of the left and right divide. Lets move to new or better. Our citizens deserve it. I want to be a president. Go to timryanforamerica. Com. Send me a small contribution. Lets win michigan, ohio, pennsylvania, and send this cancer back to maralago. Thank you so much. Eers and applause] finally, please welcome representative samad to close our program. Everybody, how you doing out there . One thing i can say, whenever you hold an umbrella, make sure it is not so muddy taller than you. How are you doing . Has it been a great day for democrats . First of all, give sean and his crew a round of applause for the work that they did. The polk county democrats come on, you can do better than that. Just give them a hand. Lets give them a hand. Sean and the crew. [applause] listen, the second thing is the second thing is we cannot allow anybody to divide us. We cannot let individuals stop us from doing the work that we need to be doing. If you were out here all day, you saw all the babies running through. Thats why you are here today. Its for the babies. Its for you. Its for our future, and as long as we stand for our future and we make it work for those babies and we build a greater nation that they will be able to love one another and not hate each other, then we will be able to stand together hand in hand and they will understand the differences because once you understand your differences, your similarities have substance. We will come together and make it work. We will stand together and those that lasted all the way to this last minute, you are the soldiers. You are the ones that stand up, but now, you have to pull your friends out because if we lose this enthusiasm, then we lose in november. If we lose this enthusiasm, then we let down the babies that are depending on us to lead the way. Let us stand together. Let us understand that i am your brother. You are my brothers and my sisters, and the only difference between you and i right now is that i am on stage and you are not because together we stand. Divided we fall, but say it with me together we stand. Divided we fall. Yall, thats weak. Make numbers count. Together we stand. Divided we fall. One more time. Do it three times. Together we stand. Together we stand. Divided we fall. Together we stand. Divided we fall. Together we stand, divided we fall. Love you. Take somebodys hand before we leave. Take somebodys hand before you leave here. Meet somebody you didnt know. [the polk county iowa democrat steak fry wrapping up] announcer are a cspan campaign 2020 bus team is traveling across the country, visiting key battleground states in the 2020 president ial race, asking voters what issues they want president ial candidates to address during the campaign. Andnd i wish Washington Congress would work on infrastructure. Every other generation of american leaders have funded airports or subways or roads and bridges. And we are failing to do our part. This would be the first generation of elected leaders where we left our infrastructure in worse condition and what we got it at. We should work and demand that our leaders in d. C. Invest in infrastructure and make sure we protect another generation of americans. And put to peopleput people to work at the same time. That is the great thing about investing in infrastructure in this country. Biggest issues dealing with all americans across all spans of economic and education, is the use of Credit Scores. We use the main determinant on their automotive insurance rates, their life insurance, their housing and plummets. Most people do not realize this but your automotive insurance has more to do with your credit score than your driving record. If you want to apply for a job your Credit Scores pull. Notoure askingyoure asking for a loan youre asking for placed we are headed night. If you graduated College Student with zero credit and a lot of bills, your Credit Scores good to be quite low. And youre access to apartment because of your credit score, not because good payment history, not because of your job prospect not because of how much money opinion and proof you can pay the rent, your credit score determines everything. That is putting everyone out. The issue i would like to see discussed more in washington, d. C. Is the importance of bipartisanship. I think we as americans have more in common than we probably have disagree and says on. I would like to see us talking about the importance of reaching across the aisle. Those points where we do not does agree, finding Common Ground and working for that. Because the only way we can really move the nation forward is to Work Together. Announcer voices from a campaign trail. Part of c stands out of ground states to her. Cspan battleground states to her. This evening Georgetown University hosted discussion on the First Amendment including whether the amendment bars congress from regulating digital platforms. That we live at 7 00 eastern on cspan. Later this week the acting director of national intelligence, joseph mcguire, testifies about the process and handling of a whistle blower complaint, involving President Trump. You can watch live coverage from the House Select Intelligence Committee on thursday morning starting at 9 00 eastern on cspan three. A quick reminder that you can follow all of our programs online at cspan. Org, and listen with the free cspan radio app. Announcer tonight on the communicators. One of the nations top tele, market analysts, craig moffett, on the future of television, video, media and internet industries. Youll will see the live tv model only survive for sports and news. And that all most Everything Else will move toward ondemand models. The purveyors of content Live Entertainment content or streamed realtime entertainment , is to young people, a kind of oxymoron to begin with a the idea that there is a time of day for a particular show. It sort of an odd concept for anything other than a sporting event. Announcer tonight at 8 00 p. M. On cspan2. Congressman joe kennedy announced he will run for senate in massachusetts. , Smith Kennedy made the announcement in boston over the weekend. Congressman kennedy made the announcement in bo o
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