Lettie for organizing this event. I want to thank my agent, gail for being here, you have probably already seen one of the 10,500,000 Mike Bloomberg ads, the tagline is mike gets it done, no, gail gets a ton. So, thank you for being here. What an admission also, another great book that you have to re, my friend, Melissa Rogers who is a visiting scholar here we Work Together for 20 years. Her book, religion in public life and faith with the American Public life which has a nice double meaning is a great book to read. And i cannot resist honoring my entire doctor Mark Sheppard who came here today. I honor him because he is an awesome dr. Because he is a great sports fan, kids play sports together but he was actually the dr. To about half of the people in my part of bookings and there is enormous morning in this building that you decided to retire but also so many other friends here come i want to thank you all for coming. But, this is one of the coolest events brookings has ever had. And that has nothing to do with me. Im so grateful to have alexander here to lead this conversation by the way, i want to say we may end a little early because i want some time to sign any books you want to buy is my friend norm says it makes a Great Holiday gift and there is always a holiday somewhere down the road. So, we may end a little early. Many of you im sure no alexandra. Let me do they can to a bio and then the real bio. The canned bio is alexander is an american humorist in a newspaper columnist said in 2010 she became the youngest person to have her calmness at the washington post. She also runs the compost blog on the website. She is the the author of a field guide to awkward silences. Her forthcoming book is, nothing is wrong and heres why essays. It will be published this june. She was recognized in the 30 under 30 listed in a forbes in 2018. Now, lets go to the other part of the bio. A piece of satire she rolled in 2017 about President Trump was mischaracterized as news and included in one of the White House Daily press briefings. There was more . Their morning emails. They just sent it out in the daily emails. Reporter you will not surprise you that this happened because the pieces said, Donald Trumps budget is perfect and it will solve everything that is wrong in america. She has also appeared on jeopardy and she won prizes in the o. Henry pen off, she performs an international whistling congress jane competition, you can ask her to do that if you would like. Her play, the campsite rule, a sex comedy whose title is derived from an idea taken from dan savage was premiered at the capital film festival. If everyone in this room promises to buy my book we will only talk about alexandros sex comedy here today. In her new play is about the bill buckley debates and it is called inherit the windbag. And with that i turned it over to alexander. Thank you so much for this. I dont have a secret second bio for you. I feel unprepared. I just have your official regular bio which im sure is well known but i will give it anyway. You can skip me. Unless somebody really wants a bio. I grew up in massachusetts and i am a friend of alexanders. And i have a great new book out. How progressive and moderates can unite and save our country. Out this month. My wife once that you are really good at writing books but what you are a great ad is shameless so there you have it. Its funny, so, i flew back in from nevada last night, i apologize in advance for being less coherent or coherency. Already is happening. I was excited that i had this is a prospect on the horizon. Coming back from the primary where people are saying the line has fallen and people not only should get along but can get along. Right. Just before this event i sent out a tweet that read, that went with a column that was in the post today and the tweets read, democrats cannot defeat trump without the forces represented by Bernie Sanders. And, they cannot beat trump with the forces represented by bernie alone, and they have to come together. What i am petrified by and the reason i wrote this book and what we are seeing out there in the wake of nevada is such an Enormous Division that donald trump is having a wonderful time tweeting about it. I was very struck that his tweets after the nevada caucuses congratulated Creasy Bernie and then said, dont let them take it away from you. The moral of that story is trump on the one hand would love to run against those who he has called crazy socialist but he would also relish attacking the democratic establishment if they tonight sanders the nomination. So this party at inc. Has a lot of work to do Going Forward and we can sort of talk about that. The core argument of the book the first sentence of the book is will progressives and moderates viewed while america burns. And my great fear is that they will. I argue that people recall progressives and moderates and i know all terminology in this area is vexed. I have a full page on the word moderate and explain why use it anyway. But they have more in common than they want to realize not only that, they actually need to learn from each other. Now that risks making me an unwelcome family counselor in a terrible feud but its not that the progressives have to move to the center and that is that, i argue that progressives have been right about a number of things. They were right that moderates spent too much time over the years negotiating with themselves it was almost like you start a negotiation offering the asking price on the house and expect good things to happen. Progressives are right that the country has lived under the reagan economic consensus for way too long, i think the rise of democratic socialism which im happy to talk about can be explained in part about the backlash of the economic consent which is there is no problem in the country we cant solve every problem in the country can be solved if we just throw money at rich people on that is not a very good Economic Policy and it has not worked for a lot of people. I think moderates are right first and the disposition they suggest for the politics after trump we do need a period of what you would call moderation in the way we treat each other as americans. The moderates are right that we do need to find some way to come together as a country. I always love to do this with a big crowd because i like to hear the answer. What is the first word of our constitution . I love hearing the crowd say we. We dont say we as a country anymore. Above all, moderates are whites. Most cases in American History when Elizabeth Warren likes to call big structural change, we got a new refrigerator and i sent out a notes are very political kids that this new refrigerator represents big change in our house but what Elizabeth Warren calls big structural change often happens in steps. Two examples i use in the book, the original Social Security program was not the one we ended up with it was much narrower. It excluded a lot of people but we put a structure in place that we built on and eventually virtually all americans are most americans were covered by Social Security. The great Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights act of 65 followed weaker ones past and 65 that got us going. And so, what i argue drawing on a man who actually was a democratic socialist, Michael Harrington the author of the other america that great book that helps spark the program mike used to talk about visionary gradualism and maybe thats not a slogan on which you want to hang your hat i can imagine a really cutting alexander column how much more blurring can you get than visionary gradualism but i find it exciting because the visionary part says progressives are right that we need substantial change in this country. Moderates are right that those changes often come step, by step, by step ac, and then agree that if it has to happen over time. Not too long, not putting off forever, not what Martin Luther king call by taking the tranquilizing drug of gradualism but gradualism with a purpose. I think we might be able to win an election or two and actually pass things that would make lives better for americans particularly those who are left out. Sorry, that is a long answer but an open invitation to plug the argument. Thank you. I think you pretty much touched on a lot of the key points of where the intersection is between figs and taken a step back one of the things that precipitated this is what is happening to the Republican Party. You have a whole chapter in your book dedicated to that. The statistic to you have that i may not be entirely accurately quoting is that while democrats have become somewhat more liberal democrats have become a hundred more conservative by some measures which is why you will wind up with this alliance. Thank you. The 150 is right. Just to give one other piece of data, both parties has moved away from the center psalm partly because democrats have lost all of those that they used to have in the 50s but if you ask people who say there are republicans or say there democrats how they think of themselves only about half call themselves liberal. The eight other have call themselves liberal or conservative. Now, two thirds of republicans call themselves conservative and similarly if you look at how members of Congress Vote there well to the right of the center compared to democrats being left of center and that became even more extreme after the last election because the republicans who lost represent a more moderate districts and have more moderate candidates from other districts. This presents a particular problem around the broad centerleft in the Republican Party because the democrats and liberals in the past have lost the thoughtful almost all of the big arguments about how to change the country, how to create reform are now happening inside the Democratic Party. Richard nixon i will say a nice word about Richard Nixon. Richard nixons Health Care Plan that he put forward in the early 70s was to the left of barack obama as healthcare plan. Lots of republicans used to acknowledge that yes, its a problem that so Many Americans dont have Health Insurance and we need to do something about it, indeed obama care itself was based on ideas from the Heritage Foundation and from mitt romney supplanted massachusetts. Yet, this was labeled as socialism. In the book and we can talk about bernie some i think one of the useful things about bernies usefulness is i dont think we can move to singlepayer right away but i think having that in the debate has been enormously useful to declaring where that is. Suddenly people are realizing that obama care is quite moderate. The chapter on republicans is called missing in action because i think you see two forms of radicalization in the Republican Party. One is obviously trump and trump is more radical on immigration then even his immediate predecessors if his predecessors used a dog whistle Politics Around race issues, trump uses a bullhorn on these issues. There are ways he has moved in a more radical direction but there are other ways in which the radicalization of the Republican Party preceded trump and opened the way for trump. Im very fond of john f. Kennedy is line from his inaugural address, he who rides the power on the back of the tiger ends up inside. I think that is what happened with the Republican Party and donald trump. Speaking of socialism which you did sort of drop in there, when we talk about socialism. I think especially as a millennial one of the things that people who are slightly older here when they hear socialism. They think people are coming with torches to and i think millennial as you were saying copenhagen, thats what socialism in more of a broad opportunity for people to be bolstered by their society as opposed to right and left although im sure on the internet theres always summer. I think youre exactly right. I think i want to shout out my brookings colleague who recently had a very good column on young people and where they are coming from and he and i did it piece for brookings together and socialism, some of which i have used in the book. Young people have a very different view of socialism for two reasons. You have listed them both. One is that young people got hammered more by the fallout from the Great Recession than anybody else. If you are a college student, young person you went to college at a time when state governments were slashing their support for Public Education which means that your tuition went up, your debts went up and it was a real problem. If you are noncollege found and you are young you entered an economy where the Unemployment Rate shot up where opportunities did not exist as they existed before and where the bluecollar jobs that your dad or granddad may have had that paid a decent wage were not there anymore. So, young people have a much different view of capitalism than older people do for good reason. That is one reason why i think bernie has taken off. If you look at bernies program its a very specific sets of what i called today and my column deliverables. Young people look at it as a college looks good to me. Single payer looks good to me when i cant buy Health Insurance and so on. But the second is, young people didnt live through the cold war. I always like to tell the story i went to a Catholic School there used to be a catholic comic book called Treasure Chest with catholic ideas propagated. It was in the 50s and a friend and i were reminiscing about this some years ago and we will never forget an issue of that magazine that was devoted to what would happen if the soviets took over the United States. Our flag the Stars Stripes we have the stripes but the stars were replaced by ash and hammer. As kids towered before the teacher she was pointing to a blackboard where it was written there is no god. People in the older generation extremely subtle message. People with the older generation remember the soviet union and the soviet union was a more repressive regime. You didnt need that comic book to know it. For young people Socialism Means denmark, sweden, norway. These are not scary places. Indeed the people in denmark are the happiest people in the world. And of Socialism Means a lot of people are happy what is wrong with it. So, i think that is the difference. You could say they are more sophisticated because theyre more european icing view socialism to that optic and not the old object. Electrically its a challenge because theres a lot of older people in the electrics who associate electorates with absolute state control over the economy. I had one college saying come on, bernie youre really a social democrat but he continues to call himself a democratic socialist. They they say why dont you just call yourself a social democrat and everything would be easier. I think you are including in the book that basically youre saying this is the new deal, you are embracing capitalism within the new deal and heres an excerpt representing. And i quote bernies two speeches with socialism and actually both speeches are praising the new deal in a way that just about everybody who voted for all of the other candidates over the last few primaries would agree with. The only backup in the primaries the only was exciting from the book youre talking about a time when there was a successmaking needed a 2018 elections and he spoke to a range of people from across the country in the spectrum about how they were sold are doing that. And i thought one of the more fascinating people you talk to was Ayanna Presley from massachusetts. Can you share little bit of that . I had a lot of fun in 2018, is amber still here she arranged all of these journeys where i met a lot of and spoke with a lot of candidates on the ballot that year including brown, has a great book out represented by gail brown and abramson congressional candidates an Interesting Group from new jersey for example but two of my favorites and i write about at some length were Ayanna Presley and Abigail Samberg are out in richmond. On the face of it ayanna and annabelle are quite different from each other. Was on the city council in boston africanamerican woman 40 years old at the time. She took on a quite progressive member of congress from her district but her argument was that it was not a moment weve been traditional liberalism. Her slogan which i like so much i made up the title in my last chapter is, change cannot wait which i thought was a fascinating combination of barack obama was a change we can believe in a Martin Luther king is the fierce urgency of now and its only three words. In her constituency was made up of younger people very much like the bernie constituency or the aoc constituency. Africanamericans and other minorities in her district plus a new class of younger somewhat techie people in the district even though most people in the district actually like mike, b, is abigail spam burger, she be to keep party person in a very republican district that is some of you m