Own eyes. Backhildren one generation face decisions about serious issues that did not exist when we started out. I dont think it is an exaggeration to say that in addition to Climate Change, we face more threats to our way of life than any other time in u. S. History. Because of this, i feel this is the most important election of my life. We need leadership that has guide is guided by steadfast character and intellect. I also believe we need leadership that is not at the extreme left or right, but centered, practical and reasonable, responsible. Senator bennett has all of these qualities. He also has the educational background, work, and legislative experience and character to lead this country. As debbie said after the first time we met michael three weeks separates him from other Democratic Candidates and it is why we support him. He sen. Bennet thank you, mike. Thank you so much. [applause] sen. Bennet lets give these guys a round of applause for opening up their home. Thank you, michael. Thank you, debbie. Thank you all of you for being here. I was actually on time but we had a bus of students who were from all around the world who stopped at the bottom of the driveway to hear what is on the mind. Of New Hampshire. It is good. They will be part of our conversation which is great. I also want to introduce you to my wife, susan, who is here today. She has been with me in New Hampshire for most of the whole race. She and i met 25 years ago. Shes the reason we are lucky enough to live in colorado and are raising our three daughters there. She is a public and environmental lawyer who wanted to go to work for something called the Sierra Club Legal defense club which is now called earth justice. She ran the region for that organization for years and years. I mostly wanted to get out of the practice of law and found a way to do that in colorado. I was in business for a while when i got out there, restructuring companies that were failing. That had the chance to be superintendent of the report of schools. I tell people, it is a School District 95,000 kids in denver, colorado. Most kids are kids of color, most kids are living in poverty. It has a 1 billion budget which is about three times the size of south bend, indianas budget, for perspective on that. [laughter] sen. Bennet i went into the senate about 10 years ago. I was appointed the first time i when i arrived. Ive been there ever since. If i had to summarize for you the last 10 years of town halls, in my state, which is exactly one third democratic, one third republican and one third independent, it is very easy to do it. It is people coming and saying we are working hard, but we cant afford some combination of housing, health care, Higher Education or Early Childhood education. We cant afford to live a middleclass life and we cant save and we think our kids will live a more diminished life than the life we lived. I think abut the families in my old School District, as i said, most of whom are living in poverty. What they would say if they came to the town halls, which they dont typically do because they are working two and three jobs, but they would say is no matter what we do, we cant get our kids out of poverty. These are the challenges we face as a democracy. A democracy will not do well if we have massive economic inequality and we have no economic mobility. That has been the story of our years. For the last 50 an economy that has worked well for the people at the top and not so well for everybody else. I think that is one of the reasons why donald trump was elected president. People were looking at this and saying, nothing seems to make much of a difference. Maybe we ought to try sending a reality tv star to blow the place up. When i meet people who voted for donald trump, they say because we wanted to blow the place up. I sometimes say to them, congratulations. You achieve your objective. But now what are we going to do for our kids and grandkids . What are we going to do for americas place in the world . Which is really what is at stake in the selection. I think the election of donald trump is not the source of all of our problems. I think he is a symptom of our challenges more than he is the cause of our problems. He certainly has made matters much worse and he is not solving the issues that i have heard about in my town halls. He is certainly making matters much worse across the world because i believe he is the weakest Foreign Policy president we have had in my lifetime. And every single day, another day passes where he shows he is weaker and weaker and weaker. Which is the reason we really ought to move him out. If i think about my own familys history, when i was in the second grade, everybody in my class was asked to stand, to line up based on who had been here the shortest time and whose family had been here the longest time. I turned out to be the answer to both those questions. My family, on my dad side, all the way back to the mayflower. My dad had been a Public Servant mostly in washington, d. C. , of all places. Taught me Public Service is noble. He worked on capitol hill at a time when our congress functioned. He worked in the state department at a time when we were setting an example for the rest of the world that i think was really important. My moms Family History could not have been more different. They were polishjews who survived the holocaust, everyone in the family was killed except for an aunt and my mom and my grandparents. They lived in poland for two years after the war was over. Then they went to helsinki for a year, to stockholm for a year. Then of all places, they went to mexico city for a year. Then they came here. The only place in the world where they could where they thought they could rebuild their shattered lives and they did rebuild their shattered lives. My mom was the only person who could speak any english. She enrolled herself in her College High School in new york city actually, the Elementary School but graduated from high school. She went on to graduate. I have traveled our country very broadly, both before this president was elected and after he was elected. I can tell you that i have met lots and lots of immigrants in my state and other places. I have yet to make to meet any that have a stronger accent than my grandparents have. I have not met anybody who are stronger patriots than my grandparents were. They knew what this country meant to the rest of the world. It wasnt because we were perfect, it was not because they saw us as privileged, it is because they knew that when we were at our best, we are actually trying to work out the imperfections we have. We are working hard as americans to make the country more democratic, more fair, and more free. That has been our imperfect story from the very beginning of the country, really until now. I think donald trump is a threat to all of that, which is why he should why we need him to be a one term president. Making him a one term president isnt enough. We have to govern the country again. Iap i presented a unique agenda, the real deal, that would address directly the issues that i have heard in my town halls both in colorado and New Hampshire, about the lack of economic mobility. The lack of educational equity. The importance of dealing with Climate Change. The importance of investing in our infrastructure again. Creating universal health care in the country and cutting our health care cost. And reforming the way our democracy works in the way the Government Works so we can deliver for the American People because we dont have a lot of time left. I will speak to myself for myself, i dont feel like i have a lot of time left on this planet and i want to make sure that when susan and i are turning it over to our own kids and turning the democracy over to the kids working so diligently in schools every day, to try to get an education and participate in our economy and democracy meaningfully, that we have turned over them a democracy that we can be proud of and one to do that, we have to win not just the presidency but also a majority in the senate. To do that, we have to win purple states. I am the only candidate in this race that has won a National Election in a swing state. I have done that twice. No one else has done it. The longer i go in this election, the more certain i am that it is different to run in the commonwealth of massachusetts, or in vermont, then it is to run in colorado and iowa and arizona and maine in North Carolina and places we will have to win if we are going to send Mitch Mcconnell home and began to start making this country work again. Im deeply honored you are all here today. Im particularly honored because i know you know im not pulling as high as other people in this race. Im not as wellknown. I havent raised as much money. Myself to committed New Hampshire. Ive spent more time in this state than anybody else in this race. I had done 33 town Hall Meetings just like this one, or house parties, when i announced i would do another 50 before this was all over. That is not withstanding the fact that in the next two weeks, im going to have the impeachment stuff that i will have to go back and work on as well. I think, in many ways, because i think your state and my state are very much the same politically. My belief is if we nominate somebody who can win your state, nominate somebody who can win my state, we can win the presidency and we can many when a majority in the senate and govern the country again. If we nominate someone who cant, we wont. Then it will be shame on us for having put this guy back in office again. I just cant accept that. That is why even though my numbers have not been as high as others, ive stayed in because in part, New Hampshire is less decided today then you were six weeks ago. You are less decided today than you were six months ago. The reason you are, i think without being presumptuous, is you have not decided which one of us can take on donald trump and win. Somebodye looking for who is like him, obviously, im not your candidate. If you think as i do, may be what the American People will look for is the opposite of donald trump, that is what im offering up in this election. I dont think you can get more to the opposite of donald trump than i am. I think the pendulum is going to swing and give us the chance to beat him. I want to thank you all for being here. I would love to take whatever questions, criticisms, observations, anything you would not ask another politician because you might be worried that you would hurt their feelings. As i mentioned, i was a superintendent for years. You cant hurt my feelings. [laughter] sen. Bennet it was beaten out of me a long time ago. Yes . Thank you for getting us started. My brother who worked for the state New Hampshire was a wildlife biologist for over 25 years. He has educated me on the changes that has happened in the state of New Hampshire. Just one of the examples is what has happened to the goose population. In the last 15 years, it has declined by 30 . Due to Climate Change, primarily. Warm winters, lack of snow, mothers completely hundreds of thousands of chicks, she no longer feeds her calves. Result,\ New Hampshire depends a great deal on tourism, wildlife, it is a big industry. I would like to know i would like to present you with a New Hampshire moose. Sen. Bennet thank you very much. [laughter] [applause] sen. Bennet im grateful to have it. Thank you. Thank you so much. You are welcome. I would like to know what you would do in the first 100 days of your presidency to help . Sen. Bennet take you for that wonderful question. Thank you for this wonderful to free moose. I appreciate it. [laughter] sen. Bennet on new years day, susan and i took a walk in one a your beautiful towns, with forrester who was telling the group that was there about the changes that were going on in the forest. The fact that the ash trees were dying because of Climate Change, we talked about the moose population. And i heard about that before. We are having all of that happen in colorado as well. Many of our forests are dying because of the bark beetle infestation that is a result of Climate Change. Just like New Hampshire, exactly the same thing, the winters are no longer getting cold enough to kill off the beatles between one winter in the next. Which means they are around for the next year to do the damage that they have done. Plan i putt i out in this election was my plan. E im a former superintendent, i could have put out an Education Plan but i put out a climate plan for all the reasons mike said at the outset of this. From the point of view of the next generation, this is the existential crisis we face. I think this is the existential crisis are democracy faces. In the plan that i put out, i laid out how to spend the first day working on climate, not just the first 100 days working on climate. That would be summoning all the people needed to write a plan along the lines of the american climate plan which i proposed in this campaign. To do the work over nine months, to try to get something through to congress. If we cannot get it passed in the congress, at the end of nine months, to use every executive Authority Available to me under the Clean Air Act to do what we can on climate. The young people that are from here that have so much to be sore about it, our record with respect to what we are delivering for them is pretty pitiful when it comes to the National Debt we put on. The fact that we have reduced what we spend on our investment on them by 35 the fact that we are not investing in our infrastructure so that they have to figure out how to preserve the assets that are parents and grandparents gratefully thoughtfully built for us but we did not maintain. The fact that they have to borrow 25 years worth of debt for the privilege of going to college. All of that should enrage them about what we have done. Nothing will enrage them more than our failure to address Climate Change if we dont do it. We have got a big task in front of us. It is not enough to act urgently. It is not enough for somebody to say this is what im going to do on the first day. We need a solution that will endure for a generation. We need a solution that will actually last. You cant solve Climate Change two years at a time. Which is why want to argue to you today, you cant accept the fundamental politics of washington today because that is the politics of ipo my ideas in for two years, the other side rips it out. That is what we have been dealing with on health care the last 10 years. You cant solve climate two years at a time. Sometimes people say ok, we should do just what mcconnell does, we should do just what trump does, we should out mcconnell mcconnell. I think that is totally the wrong way of looking at it. They are not trying to do what we are trying to do. Mcconnell is not trying to do Climate Change. He doesnt care. What hes trying to do is put right wing judges on the courts and cut taxes for rich people. And he can do that with our institutions in rubble. We cant, for us to achieve something that will last for the next generation, someday we are going to have something that we think of as american climate policy. Like we used to have something policy. Merican foreign when we elected a president , the president knew what their job was with respect to the soviet union, with respect to the cold war, with respect to the transatlantic alliance. Im not naive. Some people say you are so naive, how can you do that with republicans there now . What is naive is believing we can continue doing what we have been doing the last 10 years, and actually deliver a real solution for the next generation. Which is why on climate, i propose paying farmers and ranchers and foresters to sequester carbon in their soil and in their trees as a way of trying to build a broader coalition of people to sustain a durable approach to Climate Change over time. I know it seems unimaginable today when our politics is captured by the coke brothers the way it is when it is captured by partisan gerrymandering. We cant lose sight of the importance of having to make longterm commitments and decisions like other americans have done during this democracy, the life of this democracy. It of which is just to say, is a reminder of how broken our current politics is. The only way we are going to fix that politics is with an agenda that is broadly appealing to the American People, that can allow us to overcome the special interests in washington. I think if we do put that agenda together, there is every reason we should be able to do it. I just want to make one last point. You made the point in your statement. You said this is important to New Hampshires academy. Thats what you said economy. Thats what you said. We lost the campaign in large part to donald trump last time because we lost an economic argument on Climate Change. He argued if we deal with Climate Change, we will destroy the economy. If we ignore Climate Change, the economy will be fine. That is preposterous. It is a ridiculous argument to hampshire. It is a ridiculous argument to make in colorado where i was recently down in south carolina, they have got cities that are going to be underw