Todays panel is pivoting left, how we win by standing up for working families. We want to take a look at what happened in the last election and some lessons we learned and where we need to have a bigger and bolder message as opposed to maybe a message of incrementalism. One of the things the progressive caucus has done for a number of years is the progressive caucus budget that we put forth that is full of those kinds of big ideas trying to move the ball forward in a very big bold way to try to give us the policy solutions that people really are asking us for, but also how to help electorally about talking about the bigger and bolder issues. We have a great panel here today. They are going to be with us talking about issues. Im going to let each person kind of say whatever they want to about themselves, other than a brief introduction, everyone has five minutes to make initial comments. And then we will ask a couple questions from the panel based on that discussion and then well like to open it up. So if you have questions, we would like to address those as well. So first im going in the order here that we have, im going to start down this way and then come back to nell. We have amy allison, the president of democracy and color. Next to her is representative roe cana. Next to roe is joshua who works for a polling firm that works with progressives and democrats. And next to me to my right is Nell Abernathy, the Vice President at the roosevelt institute, that helps a lot of us in the progressive caucus and candidates come up with great policy ideas. So this is our panel. And i think well do this because we start in the last panel, start here, so amy will, well start with you and go to roe, josh and then to nell and then well open up the conversation. So amy allison, the president of democracy and color. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. The conversation about where our party goes has to be grounded deeply. And the understanding about why we lost lost in 2016 and who th democrat voters, the most loyal central democrats that are most reliable mic. Really are. Some of it is about a conversation, hard conversation, about how weve been focusing our resources. How weve been what messages that weve been giving are campaigns and what leaders that were elevating. Theres been an assumption amongst the democrats that the fight is for swing voters. But we saw in 2016 some dynamics that should inform our move Going Forward. First of all, the party is 47 people of color. So a conversation about refining an economic message must be paired with an open acknowledgement about the role of Racial Injustice in limiting Economic Opportunities for nearly half of the base of the party. This is critical because there has not been a full conversation about the role of race and as trump continues and the republicans continue to use race as a magnet for white voters and a wedge the democrats have to be able to fully address race. Not only in a platform, but in conversations about policy. And so when we look at the dynamic with 2016, one thing democracy in color was able to demonstrate in some of the states where clinton lost from ten points or fewer was that it wasnt swing voters who were the key. It was democrats or people who went to third or fourth Party Candidates and in so many cases that number was greater than the win number for trump. And so if we want to bring back people from third parties, people who want to hear a more progressive stronger message, who want to hear a party that directly addresses race and Racial Justice that are inspired. Both the leaders and the message needs to reflebt that. Today in this conversation, im really glad to just start the conversation by just challenging us as members of the party. To do things differently. That is, not to do and assume the same, the chasing of white swing voters who actually weve kind of capped out and that really focus on the new american majority which is multiracial progressive and reliable and that our challenge for 2018, 2020 and beyond is to evolve the way we look at and prioritize whos in the base and invest our resources on bringing those voters out, talking to them early and often in the language and the way that will bring them in. Great. Well, thank you very much, aimee. Next we have ro khanna from california. Thank you, mark, thank you for leading this panel and leading us in congress. Its an honor to be on a panel with mark who really pushes the envo envelo envelope. I appreciate being part of that caucus. Aimee, thank you for your leadership. I agree with a lot of what you said about Racial Justice. Partly just as a issue of morality. I mean, putting aside the politics and there are two places i would point to. I mean, one in wisconsin, which im sure mark could speak to in more detail. As i understand it, secretary clinton lost by 30,000 votes. And there were about 300,000 people identified as not having the quote unquote right voter i. D. Who werent able to come to the polls and there were enum russ reports of people calling for the polling stations from largely africanamerican areas like milwaukee and others not being given the correct information on how they could get a voter i. D. Card. And so i think when we look at one of the Untold Stories of 2016, the story told not enough, is the suppression of minority voters. And the role that the rollback of basic Voting Rights protection and legislation has had on this country. And while the demographics i think are very favorable long term for the Progressive Movement, theyre not going to be as favorable if we dont deal and have a strategy with making sure that people are enfranchised. The second thing is of course we need Restorative Justice in this country. I mean, theres no doubt that weve had historical wrongs. And i think that most many people, at least democrats and others believe, that we need to have investment in my view hbcus, historically black communities and districts that have not had the same opportunities for business, minority businesses, for educational opportunity. Again, putting aside the politics these are just the right things to do for us to be a more just country. And i dont think the Democratic Party or our generation can ever compromise on those basic values. In addition to that, though, i dont think we should be afraid to articulate a bold Economic Vision that will appeal to everyone in america. And there i would say that trumps message, i agree, some of it had certainly racial overtones. But there was also a part of his message which said, you know, were going to im going to bring back the steelworkers and im going to bring back the coal mines and im going to bring back these communities to the america that they knew. And we as democrats have to offer an Economic Vision for everyone. What is their future for their kids going to be . How is it going to be better in the 21st century. How are they going to have the same opportunities that they once did. Because thats really trumps promising them that theyre going to have this false Economic Security. And there i think of course we have a progressive peoples budget where weve talked about investing in infrastructure and investing in new industries and creating apprenticeship programs and making sure someone whos 55 or 60 has basic health care and retirement. So that we can say to folks who are going through this economic transition, were going to make sure. We get its hard. We get your life is not the same. Were not going to lie to you. I mean, youre not going to tell a 55yearold steelworker things are great. Theyre not going to believe that. But heres what we can do. We can at least make sure you have health care. We can least make sure you have dignity in retirement. And you know what, we can make sure your kids have the same shot as kids in palo alto or new york or anywhere in this country. And that message is one that i think does cut across racial gender ethic lines. So my view would be we need a strong message on issues of realtr Restorative Justice and Voting Rights. We need a strong platform too. I think we can do both. Thank you very much, ro. Josh. Thank you, good afternoon. So i am a partner at Lake Research partners. A Public Research firm. So im going to talk i think for my five minutes and hopefully foment a discussion about a little bit about what were learning about public opinion, where were falling short. New research has been coming out lately. The first thing ill say is i have these arent just my rules. But three rules i repeat quite often to candidates that im working for for public office. You know, three reasons why people do or dont vote for democrats. No particular order. The one i usually repeat as being the very first reason is that if theres not an economic reason to vote for a democrat theres no reason to vote for a democrat. We have not been giving folks an economic reason to vote for us and a reason that its different enough from the other party or the other group to vote for us. Thats my number one rule. No economic reason to vote for us. There is no reason to vote for us. The second rule i have is i tell folks that people dont dislike democrats and people dont dislike progressives or people dont because they think were liberal. They dislike us because they think were weak. We dont stand hard enough on our principles. We dont fight hard enough for the groups we say were going to fight for. We bend too easily too often. Part of it is just our nature to negotiate. But part of it is, you know, we give up too early. They dont believe were going to fight. They dont believe we believe often enough in our liberal principles. The third point is people progress opr support our Progressive Agenda. Youve seen survey after survey. Tough environmental standards. Raise taxes on the 1 . Weve seen all this survey work that says plank by plank people support our policies. Why the hell dont they vet for our people, right. Why cant we put this together to win campaigns . Ill give you one other piece of note here and well go into some findings. Im reminded at the end of this campaign when mike pott at afl bringing people together about what happens. What he said is even if clinton had won, right, even if hillary had won, that because of the margins we had, she shouldnt have had a Democratic Senate to work with. She wouldnt have had a Democratic Congress to pass legislation. We still wouldnt have gotten done what weve gotten done. Were not bringing enough voters to get our folks into office. So theres something happening that we do not have a core unified message. A broad enough umbrella thats sort of connecting with people. What i think is our theres lots of individual pieces here. We need a fundamental sort of overhaul. Not a piece by piece sort of lets put two of these over here and two of these over here to make this work. Its a fundamental overhaul of why people dont believe us or why people havent voted for us. Its core to our challenge. I think part of our challenge is often weve got to bring the conversation down. We often have very elite conversations about the economy and how it reaches people. Whether its from college affordability. Whether they even want to go to college. Whether college is something that really, what they want to do. We have these elite conversations with each other that dont reach voters. The problem is voters often think we are the elites. Were the ones who defend the government. We want government to work. We want to reform. Thats part of our challenge is we have these elite conversations. How do we bring these elite conversations down with people, down to people . What the representative said i think is exactly right. Is we dont have conversations with where people are. We talk about a strong economy. Instead of talking about strong families. We talk about good jobs instead of about what good jobs mean for families and for people. And so were having conversations. Dont reach them because were talking about things just at the level they have not been brought into these kinds of conversations. The other piece ill say is just too abstract in terms of how we talk about the economy to people. Weve got to talk more about how they live, their family, and not just about whats happening for them at work, but what that means for whats happening in their family. We work for a reason. We work to pay our bills so we can do other things. What are those other things. That kind of working familys Progressive Agenda we want has to be a little broader. What theyre undergoing in their daily lives. The last point ill make, ill turn it back to the team, is we have ten point agendas to fix the economy. Under those ten point, we have four sub points for every one of those ten points. So really we have a 40 point agenda to fix this economy, right. We would love i would love to hear what those 40 points are. Im an idiot. Voters dont want a conversation about 40 points. We cant boil this down in a way thats relatable to them. Thats my biggest report now. Is we are not clear enough on what our progressive principles are to voters. They dont believe we believe in them. And were having too much of an elite conversation with them when they dont talk about the economy the way we tend to talk about it. Great, thank you, josh. And nell. Im Nell Abernathy and im at the roosevelt institute. And a little on the spot speaking of elite conversations because i work at a think tank and i study economics. So im going to try to not be too elitist. But im actually very optimistic right now about the prospects of a progressive Economic Vision. I think what weve seen is that the conservative story about how the economy works that has really guided policymaking for the last 30 to 35 years. Not just on the right but within the Democratic Party. Is fraying. People dont believe it. And many of us have never believed it. The idea that wealth was going to trickle down. That intervention of any sort hurts growth and therefore hurts jobs and hurts average americans. The idea that markets are fair and efficient and all we need is legal protection. In order to compete in a market fairly. These are absolutely laughable to most americans at this point. They may have been laughable to many people. Particularly people of color and women for last 35 years. A lot of people thought they were true. Thats how we got to where we are. I think progressives have a huge opportunity to tell a coherent story about how the economy actually works. That markets are structured by power. That institutions and ideas shape outcomes. That its not as though we all show up in the marketplace on equal footing. And its not as though the outcomes are inevitably going to be just and fair. At the end of the day, that the way weve been operating is also really bad for growth. We have, you know, the economists on our side now. Some economists. Which may or may not be a benefit. But i think that this antitrust, which was a part of the better deal agenda promoted by the dems recently is a really useful entry point to this conversation. To the idea that corporations have too much power and the rich and corporations have been able to rig the rules on their own behalf. Theres a long story to tell there. I think that average americans get it. And that talking about antitrust is a way to sort of signal that you also get that. I do think that theres a lot more than antitrust that needs to be in that agenda. And there is a need for us. Were thinking about this a lot. The roosevelt institute. On how do you connect these kinds of taming the top issues around tax rate, monetary policy, antitrust, to peoples lived experience. Whether thats the jobs of the steelworker or to a Racial Justice agenda or womens agenda. Because there are two aspects of it. One, i do believe that things like antitrust are an intersectional issue. When you graft monopoly power on top of a society thats also has deep structural inequality, those get worse. But then i also think we need to be clear that while antitrust and taming Corporate Power is necessary to do what we want to do and construct the society we want, its also not sufficient. And i think that broadband infrastructure is a really great example. If we had a more competitive telecomes world, we would all pay a lot less for a lot better service. Theres no question there. And we would perhaps feel that the corporations had less power over our lives. But that would not be sufficient to close the digital divide. We would still need Massive Public investment to target the communities that have for historical and continued structural reasons not been able to get access to the goods and services that are critical to participate in the economy. So anyway, thats a lot. I also want to just say, you know, i am at a loss. We have not done it perfectly. Combining these agendas. The Corporate Power agenda. The Racial Justice agenda. The womens agenda. Im very optimistic that by continuing to have conversations like this, we can find ways to make these connections that actually do speak to lived experience of all americans. Okay. Thank you, nell. So were going to start the discussion up here. Think of some questions that youd like to ask. Well open it up in just a little bit. I think, ro, you said we can do both. I think, nell, you just said it as well. We can do both. How do we get to making sure were covering all the issues . An interesting thing is after the election there was a poll down. About half of our democratic constituencies and a wide variety of our constituencies said if they had an unexpected 500 expense, they would be in trouble. 60 said that jobs still dont pay enough to live on. And its a struggle to save anything. So we see this strong economic message out there across a multitude of our constituencies. Id like how you brought up, nell, the entry point on some of these issues. Anyone who watched what happened when United Airlines