Progressive caucus has always wee, for a number of years, have the annual progressive caucus budget that we put forth that is full of those big ideas trying to move the ball forward. Only giving us policy solutions that people are asking for but how we can help elect electorally. I will let each person kind of say whatever they want. We will have five minutes to make some initial comments. We will ask a couple questions by the panel. So first, i will go in order here that we have. I will start this way. We have the president of democracy and color. Next to her, from the 17th district in california. Joshua, a polling firm that works a lot with aggressive democrats. And next to me is the Vice President for research and policy. It helps a lot of us in the progressive caucus, Democratic Party, and candidates come up with great policy ideas. We will do this in the last panel. Start here. Down the row and then open up the conversations. Amy is the president of democracy and color. Amy good afternoon, everyone. Where oursation about party goes has to be grounded deeply in an understanding about arewe lost in 2016 and who the most loyal central democrats that are most reliable. It is a conversation, a hard conversation about how weve been focusing resources. The messages we have been giving campaigns and what leaders we are elevating area the fight is on for swing voters. Shouldsome dynamics that inform our move Going Forward. The partys 47 people of color. The conversation about refining and economic message must be an openith acknowledgment 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. Continue to use race as a magnet for white voters and a wedge. The democrats have to be able to. Ully address race not only in a platform but in conversations about policy. At the dynamic with 2016, the one thing democracy and color was able to was that it wasnt swing voters that were the key. Democrats or people who went to third or fourth party and in some cases, that number was greater than the win number for trump. If we want to bring back people from third parties who want to hear a more progressive and stronger message, who want to hear a party that directly addresses race and Racial Justice, both leaders and the message needs to reflect that. I am really glad to just start the conversation by challenging as members of the party to do things differently. Assume the to chasing of white swing voters when actually we have capped out and focus on the new american majority which is multiracial progressive and reliable. That is our challenge for 2018, 2020, and beyond. And invest resources on bringing those voters out, talking to them early and often. Much. Nk you very thank you, mark, for leading this in congress. Part of that fed caucus. With Racial Justice, as an issue of morality. Im sure mark could speak to it more in more detail. Secretary clinton lost by 30,000 votes. They were able to come to the polls. There were numerous reports of in largely africanamerican areas not being given the correct information on how they could get a voter id the story told not enough. It has had and while the demographics a very favorable longterm for the Progressive Movement, they will not be as. Avorable the investment and in my view, historically black communities and colleges have not had the ,ame opportunities for business minority businesses, educational opportunities. It will be a more just country. I dont think the democratic cany or our generation never compromise on those basic values. In addition, i think we should be afraid to articulate a bold, Economic Vision that will appeal to everyone in america. Messageuld say trumps some of it certainly racial overtones. But there was also a part of his going tohat said, im bring back the steelworkers and im going to bring back the coal mines, and i will bring back these communities to america that they knew. And we as democrats have to offer in Economic Vision for everyone. What is their future for their kids. How is it going to be better in the 21st century . How will they have the same opportunities they once did . False,ll have this economic security. And there we have a progressive peoples budget where we talked about investing in infrastructure and investing in new industries. Creating apprenticeship programs, making sure someone who is 55 or 60 has basic health care and retirement. Folks, youry to life is not the same. Were not going to lie to you. Were not going to tell a 55yearold steelworker things are great. Here is what we will do. We can make sure you have health retirement,y and and we can make sure your kids have the same shot. It does cut aground across racial and ethnic and gender lines. I am a partner of a democratic and progressive Public Opinion research firm. The research has been coming out lately. Candidates they are working for. Youll give you an economic reason to vote for us. Because they think we are liberal, they dislike us because they think we are weak. We dont fight hard enough for the groups we say we are going to fight for. We banned to easily too often. Nature in is our negotiate. They dont believe we are going to fight. Make isthird point i that people support our Progressive Agenda. Youve seen survey after survey that says we support medicare for all, tough environmental standards, hold corporations accountable, raise taxes on the 1 . E see all this survey work it why dont they vote for our people . Together we put this to win campaigns . One note and we will go to findings. I am reminded of the end of this , and what he said was, won, if clinton had because of the margins, she would not of had a Democratic Senate or congress to work with. We still would not have gotten done what we want to get done because were not bringing notgh people along, were bringing enough voters along to get real change. Think there are lots of individual pieces here. We need a fundamental overhaul. Lets put two of these over here in two of these over here to make them work. A fundamental overhaul of why people dont believe us is core to our challenge. I think part of our challenge is often, we have to the conversation down. We have very elite conversations about the economy and how it reaches people. Whether it is college theydability, something want to do. We have these elite kind of conversations with each other that dont reach voters. Voters often think we are the elites. We defend government. We want the government to work. We want to reform. And what i think is exactly right is we dont have conversations with where people are. We talk about a Strong Economy instead of strong families. We talk about the jobs instead of about what good jobs mean for families and people. We are talking about things at the level that they dont they have not been brought in to these conversations. Some say we are too abstract in terms of how we talk about the economy are people. Its just too abstract. More abouto talk their family and not just what is happening with them at work, but what that means is happening in your family. And what people are undergoing in their daily lives. We have 10 point agenda is to fix the economy. Those 10 points, we have four sub points. I would love to hear what those 40 points are. We cannot boil this down enough for them. That is my biggest issue. Principles we believe that they believe in them and were having too much of an elite conversation. Thank you, josh. Speaking of elite , im going to try to not be too elitist. Im very optimistic right now. What we have seen is 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. It is fraying. People dont believe it. Many of us have never believed it. The intervention of any sort kurtzer growth, her to jobs, hurts average americans. Protection is legal in order to compete with a market fairly. Absolutely laughable to most americans at this point. They may have been laughable to many people, particularly people of color and women. Thats how we got to where we are. So 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. It is not as though we all show up in the marketplace on equal footing. The outcomesthough are inevitably going to be just and fair. The day, the way weve been operating is really bad for growth. We have the economist on our , whichw, some economists may or may not be a benefit. But i think that this antitrust which was part of the better deal agenda promoted by the dems recently is a really useful entry point. To the idea that corporations have too much power and corporations have been able to rigged the rules on their own behalf. There is a long story to tell there. I think the average american gets it. Talking about antitrust is a way to sort of signal that you also get that. I do think that theres a lot more that needs to be in that agenda. There is a need for us. We think about this a lot, how do you connect these kinds of things around tax rates, monetary policy, antitrust, around peoples lived experience . Whether it is the job of the steelworker or the justice agenda. There are two aspects of it. I do believe things like antitrust rn intersectional issue. When you have monopoly power on top of the society that also has deep structural inequalities, those get worse. But i also think we need to be clear that while antitrust and Corporate Power is necessary to do what we want to do in the society we want, it is also not sufficient. Broadbandk that infrastructure is a really great example. If we had a more competitive telecoms world, we would all pay a lot less for a lot better service. There is no question there. We would perhaps feel that corporations had less power over our lives. But that would not be sufficient to close the digital divide. We would 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. Lot. S a i also just want to say that im at a loss. We have not done imperfectly perfectly, combining these agendas. The Corporate Power agenda, the Racial Justice agenda, the womens agenda. Continuing to have conversations like this, we can find ways to make these connections that speak to the lived experience of all americans. We will start a discussion. With ant to start off i think you said it. We can do both. Make sure that we are covering all the issues. About half of them are democrat constituencies. If they had an unexpected 500 expense, they would be in trouble. 60 say that job still dont pay enough to live on. We see this strong economic message out there across a multitude of our constituencies. I think you brought up the entry point. Antitrust, anyone that has watched what happened with United Airlines pulling the person off the plane. When you have consolidation of industries, you no longer have to consider your customers. You can do it you want to. How do we make this work that we have a message that accomplished both . The progressives in the Democratic Party have to start thinking intersectional he. Intersectionally. Which is to connect all the ways that our identity influences our politics. For me as a woman, a person of color, my class. Me those things that make me , our politics have to accommodate. Part of this is looking at the party. Those are the best articulate and intersectional politics. You brought up the peoples budget. I thought it was really interesting, our resolution. Herof the top articulate intersectional policy. Articulating a suite of congressional bills. Should we win in 2018 to address a whole host of issues. We have to start time together and its a lot of women of color playing this role. In the party and in the broader movement, both in the resistance and those addressing Immigration Reform and criminal Justice Reform and education. We have to be able to bring articulate the economy in the context of these movements. Those are best articulated by elevating voices that do it best already right now. Scramblehave the around and wonder what the magic phrase will be. About,want us to think really challenge ourselves about who we are trying to convince to vote for us. I love the example of the state were sitting in georgia. Hillary clinton by 213,000 votes. Lost by 213,000 votes. And every statewide democrat from jason carter to michelle nine, they lose. They get about 23 of the white vote. In a state like georgia, having an economic message is aimed at white voters without looking at other movements, articulating intersectional. We kind of hit the ceiling there in a state like georgia and in a. Lace like wisconsin and in a place like michigan. Look at the 200 million that when Progressive Movements were deciding how to spend that money. In september and october, zero dollars were spent on black voter engagement. It assumption about who we need to win over lead into the way that Building Communities were invested in. We do not lift up the right leaders. I want to challenge is to think about who it is that should be articulating. The spokespeople, reaching out and bringing in all of these messages. Economic and injustice messages so we can motivate our voters to come back to the polls, he even the 7 drop. It proved to be the critical swing vote for Hillary Clintons loss. Lets have an open conversation about that. We will keep talking about race. If youre not willing to talk in a conversation about democrats knowing people of color are the swing vote, then we wont have a conversation about how to move us forward and to strengthen our Progressive Movement. Raising the issue of making sure we talk about who the messengers are. There is no magic phrase. We just run David Copperfield for president . Its not that simple. The economic points, right, josh . Comments . I think its fantastic. Is that thereus is this tension. Real tension, it is often the we want to talk about its a progressive base. There is this tension around the kinds of conversations we have when, at base, they want good jobs that pay them enough to afford the things they need to afford. Things we think about, Holding Corporations accountable, making them pay more, etc. Counterpunch ourselves within this conversation. In the issue is, its very important to name the backups whether it is big pharma or corporations. The key for us is really we lose when we dont do the right kinds of things. It will be taken away. This is why the health care side was more successful. We are going to lose coverage, something taken away that we have. A conversation about what is taken away and what we lose is pretty important to hone in on the risk when it is progressive versus some other kind of agenda. I appreciated amys point ality. Intersection its great to see that its made it into i think we should start by what is our vision for america. I actually think whatever you think of politics that barack obama, one of the things that was so powerful about his candidacy, put it inside his ideology, is he started in 2004 by saying this is the america i believe in. First reptonage patriotism. His vision of america was very different than Donald Trumps vision of america. His vision of america said, look, what most of us believe, that every person should have a shot, that the greatness of the country is not with the elite people and wall street or elite industries. Its with ordinary individuals of varying backgrounds. Frameworkrt with that that our vision is about having everyone in this country a shot, they come from economic disadvantage or they have had Racial Injustice or religious discrimination, the point is, we believe in their potential. Then i think you start to have a frame for all of our policies. I think its important to frame is our vision of the country. One thing that drives me crazy is when donald trump says his policies will lead to 3 economic growth. Then we say no, they are not, they will lead to 1. 8 percent. Then he says you dont believe in america. Is 4 uld say our policy gross a let us tell you how we can do it. We will make sure every person has a real education or vocational education. We will make sure we get rid of the health care costs. We will make sure we give people who have never had new industries and jobs and opportunity and we will invest in real people, real communities, not in the elite and get 4 growth and will make america truly great. Aspirational,e an patriotic message that appeals andeoples got and i gut i think obama did that. Thats how he was president in some sense and whatever the policies, that aspiration is very important. Struggle he power it was terrific in terms of president obamas vision for the country. Wasink president obama great for the country in terms of what we were facing. It was not great for progressive or democrats. The fact that he said we will do and then whats happened, are we better off . We did not have eight years of much realn but how progressive change have we seen in many ways . We progress by omission, the fights we dont choose to have an part of it is by commission. We do it, we pass the laws and we had control of congress or two years. That went away two years a later. We are often too big to fail. We prosecuted these corrupt sons of guns in new york. They are prepared to do it again. Its how we delivered at what kind of mistakes we made by omission or commission and how do we stick to those things. Its great to have a vision but the American People are wondering eight years later whats the just . Whats the just. Gist. I want to address something you said about the growth argument and attacking corporations and potentially undermining, people feel like we may be attacking their jo