America is watching on cspan. Powered by cable continues. Host adam green is the cofounder of the Progressive Change Campaign committee, talking about the midterms and things that resulted from that. Thanks for coming in. Tell us what your Organization Funds itself in and how it is funded . Guest we are a newly million member organization. We do half elections, half issue advocacy. We have raised about 35 Million Dollars in grassroots donations through the course of our history. We have a lot in the halls of power, we do grassroots lobbying to try to connect to the inside and outside. This is mostly an economic populace. Sometimes, we show up for democracy fights. The last two and a half years, our northstar has been democracy, trying to keep the train on the tracks. We are happy right now democracy has given the Election Results this week. Host that was the theme in this midterms. Do you think that was an overriding theme, or other factors as a result of how democrats did . Guest not one issue, but a swirl of different issues. Abortion was a signal for many people democracy was going off the track. And increasingly illegitimate Supreme Court. The literal threats to Voting Rights and people running for secretary of state and governor were basically threatening not to certify the election in 2024 was a threat for people. I think there is a visceral sentiment of young people, a lot of young voters who may not normally show up in a midterm, i need to step up and vote to take my country in the right direction. This primal scream of the voters, lets put the breaks on this trumpism. Host you talked about the money race. As far as who you supported candidate wise, how they ultimately fared in these elections. Guest secretary race work raised over 15,000 grassroots donations. For people whose names you may not have even heard of. Folks in arizona did a clean sweep. All the election in swing states, lost. The only place there was a competitive swing state election was georgia where we lost to raffensperger. In the senate races, we raised about 800,000 for senate candidates. Mandela barnes came about a point shy of winning in wisconsin. We showed up in a big way for don Fetterman John Fenner and fetterman, rafael warnock. The theme is, keep democracy on track. We are happy the senate will be there to confirm judges, nominations. We will see what happens with the house. We feel like there will be good people fighting for democracy in d. C. Host how confident were you going into the elections before you saw the results . Guest last year, if you ask me how i was doing i would say, besides the existential dread, i am fine. I did not expect to be where we are today. A lot of people woke up to a new world world on wednesday. Because of the democratic agenda, a much better world will be expected. One of the biggest consequences of that, democrats have their mojo. There are not a lot of people secondguessing the decisions we made in the first two years. We will be wrong were we wrong to pass the biggest climate bill in history . The decisions made in the first two years of his presidency were validated. The signal to democrats is, go bolder, quicker, make sure the voters are feeling the effect of a democratic government. Host if you want in on this conversation, you can call in on the lines. 202 7488000 for democrats. 202 7488001 for republicans. 202 7488002 for independents. You can text us at 202 7488003. When you talk about the older approach, what does that mean for President Biden . Guest Elizabeth Warren basically said, there were people in the entire first years of the biden presidency telling him to slow down. Corporate aligned lobbyists were saying that to him. Do not do the universal childcare. There is a lot of the biden agenda undone. We come back from war now, i would put childcare and the Child Tax Credit as two of the top things. Republicans, if they take the house, would have an opportunity to show if they are serious about governing. Child governing should be a bipartisan issue. Helping parents in blue and red states deal with childcare should be a bipartisan issue. There is real opportunity to do things like antitrust legislation that everyone from ted cruz to Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders supposedly support, taking on Big Tech Companies getting too big, making sure consumers are being protected in the marketplace. Supposedly, there are 60 votes for a klobuchar antitrust bill that would help lower prices. Host do you think the legislation in the senate has a chance with republican support . Guest absolutely. Host what gives you that confidence . Guest we were involved talking to people in the senate before the election. In this sense, republican votes for particular reasons did not want to vote before the lection. As Chuck Schumer said, they are there to show up. We feel confident in that. There is more that can be done. Will rational republicans, if there are any, show up to codify roe . Will they codify contraception as the law of the land . There are so many places if republicans are serious and want to work in a bipartisan way, there is opportunities for them. One thing President Biden has made clear, the progressives are making clear, we are not going to compromise our values. We are not going to cut Social Security. We are not going to reverse high Prescription Drug prices. Host phone lines are on the screen. If you have questions with adam green, ask him about where progressives are, where the Democratic Party is when it comes to going forward. 202 7488000 for democrats. 202 7488001 for republicans. Independents, 202 7488002. You know the name norman salomon. He was quoted in the New York Times sunday saying, when it comes to President Biden, it might be counterintuitive of the absence of a red w the biden is an albatross around the neck of his party. In effect, he is promising to be a drag on the party and its prospects heading into 2024. What do you think of those sentiments . Guest i think they are premature. Right now, we had a fork in the road the wednesday after the election. What direction do we go, backwards or forward . I am happy the president said we will not cut Social Security and edit care benefits. We will continue going down the road we have been policy wise. With the lameduck congress and as we enter a new congress, there is no one more powerful than the president in making clear what democrats and progressive values are and what republicans are trying to do. If they try to cut Social Security, there will be no more work sounding the alarm to the public than the presidency. We can get the 2024 residential politics down the road. For now, we need to make clear to the voters right here what republicans are trying to do and what we are trying to do, progressive priorities. Host do you think reaching out to republicans and the new congress, even if they gain power, do you think that will be on the table, those kinds of concepts . Guest it is important to underscore something that the Biden White House did right in the first few months of the presidency, which was redefined bipartisanship of the people, not the d. C. Politicians p joe biden was saying his American Rescue plan, which brought help to millions of people, was bipartisan. Publican, democratic and independent voters voted for it. We need to have that be our northstar when it comes to bipartisanship. Give the d. C. Politicians to work with us. They will have to show whether they are serious. There are some things they have been on the record for, including antitrust legislation, the child tax care credit, and we will see if they show up in good faith. Host robert joins us in our line for democrats in pennsylvania. Good morning. You are on with adam green. Caller believe it or not, i am a moderate democrat. I do not believe this gentleman can legitimize anything joe biden has done in his first two years. Everything he has done has been the opposite of what trump did. The tuition rebate we gave our youngsters in this country, that was just to get them back to the polls. That has been taken back by, i believe a texas federal judge. It is going to be deemed unconstitutional. We are letting the people from the south across our borders with impunity for two years. That has been bringing fentanyl across the borders. We have been killing our young people left and right with this fentanyl. All the young voters that we have activated, they are going to realize they do not have the friends they used to have anymore because the hundreds of thousands of fentanyl deaths. That is going to blow up in their faces. I do not think you would call that progressive. In order for this country to succeed, we will have to move back towards the center, towards moderate democratic views. We are going to have to move away from a little bit of the trump views, back to moderation in the Republican Party. Host gotcha, robert. Thanks. Guest i think the keywords you said work move back, advocating moving back to trump. I would agree. President wyden has not been moving in the direction of trump. How canceling student debt as a way to get to the polls, the way we govern people should inspire people to the polls. Parents should come to the polls after we help them with health care. Seniors should come to the polls after they do not get ripped off by health care companies. Yes, when my parents went to college back in the day, it was 50 a credit at a Public University or private university. Right now, it seems like we are fighting over the crumbs as big corporations are taking advantage of consumers, student and everyone. We in the Democratic Party are saying we are going to let people who graduate college by their first car, take their dream job, get married and not be shackled with hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt. Seems like a good policy. I think the president canceling up to 20,000 of student debt for some people will make a positive difference in peoples lives. I hope those people continue voting. Do you think the president has options if the legal challenges do not shake out in his favor there are many options. One, will be fine and court. If for some reason got that gets struck down, the power has been given to the president to cancel student debt. He didnt use that power. He has multiple options. The most important thing is, saying we are going to fight this in court. I stand by this policy. People like senator warren who put this on the map. Host are you saying executive order, given the president s power . Guest executive action through the education department. What he did was executive action. Often times, there is numerous ways you can do something. I think it will be maintained. There are other routes, too. We have a trump appointed judge ruling this down. We have some guy in texas who is one person. We have seen recent evidence of trump appointed judges being overwritten by courts. I think we will be fine. It was vindicated in the selection. Young people realized this would impact a lot. I talked to somebody the week this past in the private sector and said, the young people in our young in our lunchroom never talk politics. All they were talking about after the president made this announcement was there student debt. Wow, government can impact my life and make it more positive. I hope we can do that for everybody on different issues. Host new work, brought, independent line. Caller hey, guys. So glad to talk to you guys. Shout out to our troops protecting us in our rock ira q. I want to talk about the shared prosperity, which i think americas one of the things it is counting on. One of the things that has happened with this bipartisanship there is bickering back and forth. There are unintended consequences. I think there are a lot of unintended consequences for a lot of the decisions that our congresspeople make, when they are trying to weigh the common good and the common goals. I also believe the law is the law. We should always follow what the law is. What i do not like is when people use the law to hinder progress. At the end of the day, i understand what he is saying. He used executive action, which i feel like is just used too much. We have to fight for common goals and common good. The fact he was President Biden for so long, he figured how to to get the thing. With the money being poured in from these lobbyists, that is another issue. Going back to something i really feel like is important, there has to be accountability. If the American People do not feel like we have accountability , we need to be educated consumers. Civics should be a show on tv, i was a podcast about it. People should know what the laws are in effect, when they taken effect. How they are going to affect you. Host got your point, brought brock. Guest accountability, yes. Taking on lobbyists, yes. To be clear, when the president uses exec of power, it is power he or she rightfully has. Congress gave the power over student debt. In other cases, it is to regulate rings around the climate or environment. Basic tax enforcement. We have to congress to have the irs to do stuff, they already have power. I do not think that is a contested space. A core point is right, we should not use the law to bog down process. Progress. Unfortunately, that is what is happening across societies right up. We have the Supreme Court, which is using a captured court including at least one stolen Supreme Court seat, two seat people accused of Sexual Assault making decisions on womens bodies, overwriting decades of president precedent. That is wrong. We have a miss apportioned senate. It takes away power from a lot of people. We have a senate filibuster. When i was moved by the shooting in texas, when little kids were shot down in school. I thought to myself, what is the best case scenario, what is the sequence of events from which we finally do something about assault weapons in this country . It is hard to imagine because all of the systemic things against the will of the people, the Supreme Court, the electorate college, gerrymandering, money and politics. I agree, we need to stop using the procedures to block the will of the people. What i think that means is moving in the direction of progress, more of a progressive election. Host we are going to show viewers a list of the current divisions of leadership in the house, starting with nancy pelosi, speaker of the house. The majority whip, the caucus chair. If the house changes, if the house doesnt change, should those people still hold their power, or is it time for change at those top levels . Guest i think objectively speaking, even taking the personalities out, having top leadership in their 80s or 70s is not the right look or m. O. For democrats. I think there is generally an appetite, i think among those leaders, for a generational change. There has been a signal they are willing to go there. Things get tricky if we have a one seat majority. The question is, what do you shake up at that point . My guess is, we will see some version of generational change. We will see how much. Host as far as the top choice in that generational change, is there an emerging figure you would like to see their . Guest not right now. There is a lot of rising stars in this congress. We are pulling hard for katie porter, pulling for a tight race in california. Jeffries is likely to take the top spot, he is someone who i think is underrated as having progressive values when he chooses to lean into them. He is someone who will at least get out there and able to be a plug others can plug into in terms of being a partner on the inside. Katherine clark, someone who was a big Elizabeth Warren supporter, would potentially be in the number two position. People like her are interesting to think about. Host a lot of news has been made about the election of the first gen zer, maxwell brock. What do you think he brings, or might bring to the current working . Guest maxwell frost one a competitive primary. He is a rising star. When people see him speak, they realize, wow. This guy has got it. He knows his values, he is authentic, he had an interesting upbringing. He is symbolic of that generational change. He is inspiring millions of people and will continue to do that. Other rising stars and taxes in taxes. Maxwell greg, ramirez in illinois, there is a bunch of great rising stars. Becca ballin, a state Senate President in vermont. We have people with real gravitas who are entering congress. I am excited to see what this class of candidates will bring to Congress Rate i think maxwell frost is a great example of progressive leadership. Host read is in washington state, republican line. Caller i would like to make a couple of comets. I watch washington journal every day half for about 30 years. I think guest you have on today is a prime example of a guest who pretends like they are a journalist or an activist. That guy is an activist, that is all he is. With respect to washington journal, you have a web format. I do software for living. You have a web format that shows video and sound. I when i click it, i can hear the sound when it is live. When it is in retrospect, if you are looking at a segment from the archives, it works fine. I do not know if you people are aware of this. If you are watching this program live on your browser, you do not get video. You only get sound. I have complained to cspan, it goes nowhere. The point i wanted to make that i think is important for maybe everybody to consider, we need a political revise all with respect to what i would term a bottleneck in our system. I would love to see the word and concept of veto completely go away. We elect representatives, hundreds of them in the senate and house, and as far as whatever they come up with after debate, after passing bills, that should be what we get. Re