Meeting. Im Senior Editor at politics and government and i am pleased to be your moderator joining us today senator and democratic candidate Michael Bennett representing colorado since 2009 before serving as superintendent of Public Schools in denver where he worked to improve accessibility and quality of education and also the author of a new book called the land flickering lights we will talk about the book for the back story with a hyper partisan conflict calling washington out to restore integrity we are excited to have them here with us. [applause] we will talk about the book obviously we will talk about congress for covert you were born 1964 new delhi india. But is not a very good origin story but it works. Tell us the circumstances. I was there because my parents were there. [laughter] that makes sense. They were working for the embassy theres chester bowls with the ambassador to india and with the jfk view the United States had a role to play with countries like india i was there for 18 months. I have been back but now when i get introduced the only senator in the history of america born in the only hospital in new delhi we were chatting before we came out here that your mom was born in poland and the way they look at the world and with the holocaust they didnt leave poland because my grandfather didnt want to leave his family behind but everybody was killed except for them and an aunt. Then they went to stockholm sweden but then they went to mexico city and where the mom registered herself in school but in the second grade they asked her to line up in order of whose family had been in the country the longest or the shortest period of time and i was the answer to both questions my dads family can trace all the way back to the mayflower and my moms was by far the closest in time and that is made a huge impact on me. My grandparents were the most committed american citizens i have ever known. There is a Great Sadness they felt with a sheer joy of being americans that i cannot express that they were just so grateful to be part of this democracy and Pluralist Society that we live in but they gave back as much a way ams supposed to work. So what do you make of trumps comments . But if those who choose to vote democratic he knows what hes doing. Atenries old if jews are loyal to the country. He knows exactly what hes doing. Its amazing for a guy that appeared in thing has never read a book including the one that he wrote. He does have a natural sense of the reactionary autocrats playbook, and this is the kind of thing you would hear somebody in the rightwing government and polling say. Very unusual for an american president to acquire power by dividing the American People in the way donald trump did thats the way he did it and that is how he is trying to hold onto power now. He has taken such little effort to reach out to anybody that didnt vote for him. He goes to states he did and when. It seems like it would be relatively easy to make those. Now you know what its like to live in a place like turkey if your president believes that he owes nothing to anybody who didnt vote for him and all he owes his allegiance to our the people of who voted for him and he sees at the same way. By the way, my view is that if im fortunate enough, my expectation is to spend as much time in places i will never win more than 40 of the vote and in the places where i have won 70 of the vote because i think it is a critical way to begin to try to stitch the country back together again. Its sort of the opposite of the way trump has thought about it. It sounds like you did a bit of that after you got appointed senator you went to colorado but not deep blue parts to listen. What did you find out because you didnt run for Office Coming for the accidental senator appointed by the governor when ken salazar was appointed interior secretary. The accidental senators, what they called me to hurt my feelings id been a School Superintendent i had no feelings left. They had been beaten out of me a long time ago. It is my responsibility as a senator that represents the state that this third republican, third democrat and whether they voted for me or not or agree with me or not, i feel obligated to go to places where we have this bike on the Affordable Care act. I was in the red parts of colorado having town hall after town hall saying this is why im voting for it. Not saying you should agree with me or my hopes you will agree with me but its been fascinating. Its funny because some of those places what are you reading i would like to know what you are reading and sometimes the meetings are better. When i go to boulder if i disappointed Rachel Matthau that week that is a tough conversation to have and sometimes even tougher than in the red part where they think im a socialist. You said you were the superintendent of the school when you were somewhat surprisingly i think appointed. There were some figures were they appoint somebody to run for office. How surprised were you by what you found . I was shocked and it was a close reader of the newspaper. I actually grew up in washington, d. C. My father had worked on capitol hill for years and democratic administrations of one kind or another. So, i think that its safe to say i knew more about the way the government work then your average person does just because of that. And i was shocked at the level of dysfunction and the level of pathology sociopaths that occupied the national legislature. I really was and i continue to be shocked about it to this day. Particularly the fact that i came from the School District where we were fighting for the lives of those that we have in the rePublic Schools. The Public Education is reinforcing the equality. We had rather liberating people from it and made changes in denver. Every single day, whether we were agreeing or disagreeing, people were trying to do what they could do including the kids themselves. I got to washington and people just waste each others time. Particularly in the buck on the Freedom Caucus that served into the congress in 2010 and 2014 basically and ever since then immobilized or exercise in the e selfgovernment and they have acted as tyrants who believe they have a monopoly on wisdom and it is then we have to rescue our Government Back from these people. No matter who you are whether you are republican or democrat if you believe in the exercising selfgovernment, we have to overcome these people. They are immune to compromise and will not compromise. They need to be beaten and closed over and its going to be hard to do that. They are not the cause of all these things in fact you describe five different episodes that you focus on which our negative and positive. You describe it as a place that is hyper partisan and cant work across the aisle anymore. But that message you are talking about on the campaign trail coms that what democrats want to hear, that we need to have more cooperation . Not all democrats want to hear that. I believe strongly that we cannot accept that you cant go into the Freedom Caucus is diminished view of our institutions. We could accept it and there are democrats in the race that you accept it. Where this will lead us as a oneway ratchet down into the complete dysfunction. I quote this in the book its not like we havent seen this movie before. When you go back to what was happening at the end of the roman empire, it is the same kind of stuff that they went through and its described as the parties losing such faith in their own capabilities that they have nothing left but to destroy each other and i think that is kind of where we are. But we put this in terms if you dont mind but i think on the campaign trail people say to me all the time we need to act urgently on Climate Change, and i agree we need to act urgently. We should ask ourselves how it is via th we have a climate denn the white house and ask what are we going to do to make sure that never happens again. Its important. We need a durable solution if we cant accept the way that it works in washington and create a durable solution on climate. You cant accept the politics where you put in a set of policies during four years of the Obama Administration and the others without and four years later were two years later you put it back in and they rip it out. I dont think that is anyway to regulate a Banking System or support education but you certainly cant feel of climate. As a definitional matter you cannot accept the current political in america outside of washington to overcome a broken washington that is what we are going to have to do and it sounds really hard, and it is really hard but there are no shortcuts in democracy. This is why the debates to get rid of the filibuster is of particular interest to me because the question is can you win states like colorado, arizona because if you cant come youre not going to be able to make the kind of changes that we need to be able to make. Democrats are putting forth a lot of ideaworld of ideas and te thats gotten the most attention is the Green New Deal not so much anymore. Shes buried the hatchet. The longer you wait the tougher the solutions are going to deal with this. We should never compromise with scion ever and thats why i actually support the findings of the Green New Deal but say weve got to get to this by 2050 and theres other things in the finding that i agree with, but i think that another approach to the policy is going to be more likely to be successful for the reasons i said earlier if you come to colorado and have a conversation with people and say my climate plan by the way we act urgently and my plan is we are going to retrofit every building in america the next ten years and give everybody a paid vacation and give everybody a paid job and Bernie SandersHealth Care Plan pretty soon people are going to say that doesnt sound like a climate plan they left off a highquality Public Schools for every kid in america. They are invisible to the progress of love in this country and so the tragedy of the last we should be disqualifying for the white house if you den denid that Climate Change should be disqualified on moral terms but on other things that should be disqualifying on political terms because the majority of americans believe Climate Change is real and the majority believe we need to do something to fix it. The argument that is a disgrace we should have never lost a close on economics and he won an argument where he said if we deal with Climate Change is going to lead to an economic catastrophe for america where the reverse is true it will be an economic catastrophe for america that is an argument we cannot lose against. Theres a description in the book about the Keystone Pipeline votes and this is a thing where i voted in a way that wasnt consistent with the environmental communitys view with whom i have a strong relationship we moved to colorado because my wife was the regional director of the earth justice and Rocky Mountain region. It galvanized the base but it didnt bring everybody to the table. Somebody said to me for who gets to pick the symbols, the movement or the politicians and then the question from this friend of mine in colorado that was very disappointed with what he said about the lunch counters in the Civil Rights Movement and this is all in the book. They brought the north and the civitothe Civil Rights Movementd expanded the movement in a way that could overcome people in a way that they would never give up in this country. We need the same sort of relentlessness and approach on Climate Change. We have to be building a cool notion of people to change the politics in washington, d. C. So that we have an urgent and durable solution and i think that i believe he can easily do that. The coalition is waiting for us in america to do it but you cant just expect that its going to be there and you cant make proposals that divide people when you try to unite people and i want to end by being very clear about it. You cannot compromise on the science and we cannot compromise on the science. That isnt the same thing as saying we shouldnt be giving out how to build a coalition of people that can sustain a political outcome in this country. That is an honorable thing to do, not a dishonorable thing to do. I think that you b you be lid to this you are talking about segregation, civil rights, some of the big civil rights bill passed in the mid60s could never have happened. What has happened to the party not just on civil rights which is a little more understandable, but on scion. A perfect example a chapter in the book is called corruption of an action its about Citizens United and the way that i just described the effect on our country is by using Climate Change. I dont want to overstate it for the republicans havbutthe repuby honorable environmental tradition. Everybody knows Teddy Roosevelt but imagine this, Richard Nixon signed into law instead of the epa. Ronald reagan closed the hole in the ozone layer. He was a skin cancer survivor. Using a cap and trade system basically. George bush went to the United Nations and said weve got to do something on climate. In fact the dad went to detroit michigan and said people think we are going to get anything done on climate and forget about the white house effect and we are going to get something done on climate. My friend ran on Climate Change. What happened was in 2010 the Supreme Court decided Citizens United and the blood to fossil fuel people having a completely outside role in their politics where they first set out just in that year trequire every member to sign a climate pledge that said they were going to say that Climate Change was really if humans were not going to contribute to it so they went out and signed the pledge and ever since then we have been living in a world where if the republicans irepublicans in wask like they are going to do something on climate, they just have to rattle the coins in their pocket because in the supreme courSupreme Court we cat 30 million in your next primary and you are going to be dead before the season starts. And that has created this profound corruption of inaction the Supreme Court in their opinion i use to describe those reading a seventh graders paper and that is insulting to americas seventh graders, so i dont say that anymore, but the ignorance of that opinion where they were so focused on this idea of corruption of action, you give me 5,000 i will go write a bill for you or you 55,000 i will write a bill that has the appearance of being written for you. The court said both of those things we have a right to worry about and we can limit contributions, so thats why you can only get the 5,000 but then they said with independent expenditures by definition they are independent so we dont have to worry about it and thats why they could give a billion dollars into bodies and put their name on it and in effect they said it wouldnt cause the American People to lose faith in their democracy. 95 of the American People say theres too much money in our democracand ourdemocracy and ths control too much of it. This is one of the reasons we are in the mess that we are in. Its not the only reason. It was a confluence of the rise of the tea party reaction. It was being unleashed by the white house with the corrosive effect in that era of partisan gerrymandering that happened in the house of representatives. Those things cost together into a structural toxic stew that we are still living with so when my friend joe biden says this goes to the question of being a symptom, not a cause if we get rid of trump and go back to normal it ignores the structural issues that exist in the democracy that we lay out in the book, and many of the last ten years ignore that its now populated by a bunch of Tea Party People and bona fide kindd of republicans that were available to pass in the civil rights bill. We should all care about this. This isnt a good thing for democrats because as you pointed out, to get real legislation on big issues that will endure over time you need more than one functioning political party. You need at least two and i would argue it wouldnt be bad if we had more than that to be able to call us support so that it can last longer. You were pretty tough on joe biden. I think that it was in the first debate you were critical of him and the role that he played in the deal that he accepted and negotiated amount of the budget and the bush tax cuts. In the book you reiterate that. I wrote the book long before i saw him on the debate stage so this is something i thought of not as a tactic in the campaign. It is called the land of flickering lights and the reason its called that this every time we have one of these shutdowns in the middle of the night, i say this place has become the land of flickering lights where the standard of success is keeping the government from the hour or two or month or two and in the time ive been in the senate since the last decade, 40 of the days ive been there we were on continuing resolutions which are temporary budgets that just extend the dead hand of the past into the future.