I was in graduate school at the school of journalism at northwestern and we launched what now is the Washington Program in 1966. I was supposed to go back and work at the Chicago Daily news but i ran into a friend, a friend of mine who became a key confidant to Sergeant Shriver in the war on poverty and got recruited to work on the war on poverty so i have been here ever sense. The first job actually was the most incredible job and a Young Journalist could have because Sergeant Shriver didnt trust the bureaucrats to tell them what was going on in the poverty programs so he hired a bunch of Young Lawyers and journalists like me to go around the country and write indepth reports on what was going on. I got assigned to do the deep south and much of my political philosophy was really shaped in those years. Host so, where was your trajectory . Who else worked for you over the years . Guest well, i spent two and a half years on the war on poverty and then i went to work on capitol hill and worked for senator joe tidings of maryland who was in those days chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee before home rule. In fact while i was on the District Committee we pass the home rule and be built the subway and redid the courts and started the first Narcotics Treatment Center citywide in the country. Then, after the people of maryland decided that senator tidings spent too much time in the district and not enough time in maryland or for whatever reason they did not reelect him i went to work for senator ed muskie of maine where he ran the intergovernmental relations for eight years and then spent two years in the white house the carter white house. I was the deputy pfizer to secretary president carter and for those who said the Carter Administration didnt get anything done we got the polls higher. I then went up and i became director of the House Democratic caucus and that is where really we started the new democrat movement. And in 1984, really at the beginning of 85 after the mondale landslide loss, a bunch of governors and senators and congressman including the clinton and al gore and sam nunn and chuck rap formed the Democratic Leadership Council and i formed it with them. That became the vehicle for changing the Democratic Party and ending what was a pretty long losing streak for president ial elections. Host what you mean when you say the new demo rats . Guest well the new democrat, sort of the tagline for the Political Movement that we started. If you recall in the 1980s the democrats suffered the three worst defeats in Electoral College votes in the history of american politics. No party had ever lost a High Percentage of electoral votes in three consecutive elections than the democrats had since the beginning of parties in 1828. And essentially the great new Deal Coalition that sort of split asunder and we were losing overwhelmingly. So our Reform Movement was called the new democrats. But we tried to do was reconnect the Democratic Party with its first principles, and opportunity for all. Equal opportunity for all special privilege for none. Americorps and on the opportunity side during the clinton years we created 22. 5 million new jobs and got the economy roaring. The sort of toughminded internationalism of roosevelt and truman. Base sense of social justice of johnson and very importantly, very importantly as we look ahead roosevelts first renovation, the constant effort to reform government because democrats believe government is an important agent for our collective wills and to help people help themselves and each other. We have always believed reforming government and we collect reinventing government was absolutely essential to our agenda. Host as we go along we want your participation in this conversation as well with al from. The new democrats and the return to power is the name of the book and the segment democrats only calling 20 only calling 202 5853800 for democrats and Eastern Central timezones 5853881 if youre a a democrat and you live in the mountain and pursue big and further west timezones. We want to hear from you and discussion about the Democratic Party. Al from the dlc is no longer, is that correct . Guest is actually dormant. Its now part of the clinton foundation. Host it was cast in you tell me if this was fair and you write about this in your book but it was cast as kind of a conservative democrat. Is that a fair description . Guest i dont really think its a fair description. What i really think we did was turn the party to the first principles. In a sense progressive government was in deep jeopardy not only in the United States but all over the world. All over the world conservative parties were dominant and what we tried to do is modernize liberalism in a way that people would support it again. Because we supported ideas like welfare reform people said oh you are conservative but to me the idea of moving people out of poverty from welfare welfare tos a liberal idea. We changed the incentives of the welfare to work system. We took on the crime problem with an idea called community policing, putting police back in the neighborhood. I actually picked that up from an africanamerican Jewish Police in Charleston South Carolina named rubin greenberg. That change the whole policing system all over the country and had a remarkable impact both on preventing crime and on reducing crime. The idea like Charter School like John Kennedys ethic of asking people to give Something Back to their country. The National Service became americorps so i dont believe those ideas are conservative ideas. I believe they are sort of an extension of the great liberal principles that were so important to this country in the middle of the 20th century. Host when you hear the word progressive what does that mean . If someone says im a progressive . Guest i think its someone who looks ahead. I mean look, progressive has a lot of meanings to a lot of different people. To meet somebody who wants to have robbers in our society who wants to make our society constantly better into me that can be done with government playing a role but it also has to involve individual responsibility and a big private role. The key for progressive government to me actually is privatesector Economic Growth. When i was a young man a long time ago paul tsongas, the late senator paul tsongas told me the problem with the Democratic Party as we spend so much time passing out the golden eggs we forget about the health of the goods. To me you have to worry about the health of the goose and grow the economy. If you create more wealth for everybody then you have the ability to deal with income inequality by redistributing some of it. Host during the 90s when bill clinton was president we had the third way. And you are part of that, werent you . Part of the forming of the third way . What was that and is it an effective way to govern . Guest i think its the only way to govern and the most effective. The third way actually is in the United States it was called the new democrats. In great written tony blair called it new labor and in Germany Schroeder called the new middle. Essentially, tony blair actually gave the best definition. He said its not a compromise between liberalism and conservatism. Its the modernization of liberalism but its constantly modernizing your government. It goes to the points i talked about and what bill Clinton Norris talked about were three words, opportunity, responsibility and community. Those were sort of the underlying themes of the ideas included americorps welfare reform fiscal discipline. , increasing. And reinventing government Charter Schools community placing. Basically ideas that dealt with concerns people had in their everyday lives. Host al from is a guess and heres the cover of the book the new democrats and the return to power and the return to the the new democrats and the return to power. What are some of the dangers that democrats face today . Guest the democrats right now have a demographic advantage. The republicans in the 1980s Michael Barone used to call the democrats the stupid party. And i think the republicans in recent elections havent acted very smartly. In the 2000 election for example they basically told hispanic voters and activists women we dont want your vote. As long as they continue on that path, the democrats will have a demographic advantage but in the 1980s the republicans have had that some of demographic advantage. For the democrats i think the challenge is to have a solid Economic Growth agenda so we can create the wealth we need to do other things we want to do. And to constantly reform government. The most important thing president obama can do in the next year is continue economic recovery. We have the best growth quarter in years at 4. 1 . If we continue that at that rata lot better for a lot of people in this country but the second thing is we have got to fix obamacare is. Obamacare is a good rob graham. Its the right structure. Its a private insurance program. I dont understand all the conservatives who are so angry about obamacare. Either you have a system which if you want to cover everybody and help sick people and people with conditions either you have a system that allows him to get private insurance and that would have to be for some people government subsidies to do that or you have socialized medicine. We chose the private system. Now, its tricky and you have to organize the market in the best way get a lot of people in the pool because the Way Insurance works is Healthy People basically pay to treat sick people so that later in their lives when they get sick other Healthy People will pay for them. That is what insurances and that is how Auto Insurance works. But if youre going to have a private system and that is what we chose, that is why you need this individual mandate. If everybody doesnt participate than the Healthy People dont participate and premiums will be out of sight and who is going to pay for the cost . It wont be insurance and it will have to be a subsidy system. Host al from before we go to calls this is the article in buzzfeed. Al from says obama hasnt given direction to his party. You stay here, you are quoted as saying he has provided less direction than i expected, less aggressive leadership one way or another. Well i think, the president has a very Important Role to set the tone of the debate and i think in too many cases this president has not done that. And i hope he does more. I think most of the things, i agree with most of the things he has tried to do but one of the things a president has to do, hes the only person in this country who speaks for the whole country. I just wish he would speak out more. Host a lot of talk, there has been some conversatconversat ion going on about Elizabeth Warren and a populist approach and a progressive approach to politics and policy. What do you think about Elizabeth Warren . Well, i dont follow everything Elizabeth Warren says or does. Im sure she has been a good senator for massachusetts but look, one of the things i have learned with politics over my, and i hate to say this but almost 50 years in politics is that its a lot easier to have rhetoric and promise things than it is to actually deliver. In the end of the Democratic Party in power its how you deliver. President obama delivers a 4. 1 growth rate for the rest of 2014. His Approval Rating is going to go straight up. He doesnt have to promise that hes going to get this done or that done. You get judged on your performance. Bill de blazio who is the new, will be the mayor of new york as of january 1 ran against stopandfrisk and a lot of things like that. The first appointment you made was bill bratton as Police Commissioner who created that system. And so you know i dont get excited about rhetoric. Everybody i think in the Democratic Party has progressive goals. Everybody wants to see you know, wants to see people do better and to deal with income inequality and the question it turns out in the end how you do it and let me give you a good example. Theres a big debate on minimum wage right now. The minimum wage needs to be raised as it hasnt been raised in a long time but to me thats not enough because for the liberal position what i call the liberal or progressive position nobody nobody works fulltime yearround in america at to support a family out to be poor. Now what liberals ought to be doing is looking for the most effective way to do that. To me, thats raising the minimum wage somewhat probably the level president obamas talking about which is the tend to 15 range but then expanding the honor and income tax credit which is the best targeted this way to help working poor people. In 1993 when we had the expansion of the unearned income tax credit was the largest effective antipoverty in they country. The question isnt goals. The question often maybe he means and they are debates the country ought to have. Host al froms books the new democrats and the return to power and the forward was written by bill clinton. Democrats only during the segment and dan is a democrat calling from tulsa oklahoma. Go ahead with your question or comment. Caller yeah i was a local work and worked in michigan and wisconsiwisconsi n and illinois and those states up there. The taxes were extremely high. I have also done some research and looked at history that the city of detroit was controlled by democrats. Well they are going bankrupt. Im a democrat democrat. I support the unions. This is really sad that you pass a bill and you dont read it. Now we are finding out that the insurance for my friends and family and people im associated with, its just not there. Its just not right and ive noticed that the younger people nowadays are less responsible than in my generation when i was younger. I was warning 53. Therefore im saying that they are not going to do what you wanted to do. They are not going to sign up and its going to cause chaos. Host danny i think we got the point. Lets get a response from al from. Guest danny, thats exactly why we need the individual mandate. Its just like Auto Insurance. If you drive the cars in most states you have to have Auto Insurance. The reason we have the mandate that says everybody has to have insurance, Health Insurance and if you dont you face a fine and im not sure the details of when but fairly shortly. I think if you dont have Health Insurance by march 31, you have to pay a fine is doing courage the young people to, Healthy People to buy Health Insurance. You know i think what we have to do is see how it works. Everybody wants to cover people who have preexisting conditions and people who are sick, but we have to have a system that requires Healthy People to buy Health Insurance. Now if they dont do it then we will have to figure out how we are going to pay for it but lets give obamacare is the opportunity to actually go into force and see how the mandate works with medicare initially, with the Prescription Drug program initially. We had a few months of a shaky start but then it turned out to work very well and be very popular. So i think its important that we dont rush to judgment. Its terribly unfortunate that hhs and the white house screwed up the web site to start because that focused on the failings of a part of the program that i think publicly should have been done right. But lets wait and see how this Program Works because when the mandate kicks and then people have to buy, if they dont then they will be fined. Host bill from washington. Go ahead, bill. Caller good morning and its pronounced sequim washington. Host thank you. Caller anyways, i started movement in my community and a lot of people are interested in this. If you ask anybody in the country, would you donate 10, 20, 50, 100 bucks to clean up politics in this country my idea for that is to getting our representatives to commit and sign up pledge that they will give more than 100 in contributions to any one person or any one thing. It would be amazing how much money they would race by doing this. If you could get the money out of politics than we could have a clean government again. I sent a letter to the editor and im only going to read a couple of mine lines here. Can you imagine politicians not taking orders from mr. Big . Can you imagine a representative spending twothirds on and set a fundraising . Everybody is interested in this and they should be and i guarantee you if i was out debating with somebody that was opposite i wo