January 19, 2021 • 47 mins
Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean offers a long-view take on what’s needed in this pivotal moment as Joe Biden takes office. Dean talks about vaccines, prioritizing the important while attending to the urgent, and what unity might look like for our deeply divided country. Dean has studied democracies around the world, yet much of his adult life has been rooted in Vermont where he practiced family medicine before becoming the state's longest-serving Governor from 1991 - 2003. Dean ran for the Democratic nomination in the 2004 Presidential race, pioneering grassroots fundraising. Then, as chair of the Democratic National Committee from 2005 and 2009, his 50 state strategy played a key role in Barack Obama’s 2008 win. At 72, Dean teaches foreign policy at Yale’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and is as opinionated and clear thinking as ever.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from My Heart Radio. My guest today is Howard Dean.
Dean has an impressive list of former titles, former governor
of Vermont, former chair of the Democratic National Committee, and
former candidate for the Democratic presidential primary in two thousand four,
(00:25):
and currently he is still opinionated about what the Democrats
need to do at this pivotal time. Dean's faith in
people's fundamental decency is shaped in part by his years
in Vermont politics. Though originally a New Yorker, Dean has
lived in Vermont most of his adult life, and he
was a family physician before becoming governor. When you look
(00:47):
at a map of the states where COVID rates have
been soaring, Vermont seems to be faring better than other
places like New York City and l A. I wanted
to know if it's simply because Vermont is rural. Yeah,
I mean from a density point of do it makes
a difference. We also happen to have a Republican governor
who has a brain and who that cares what the
(01:07):
facts are, which is nice. He actually confessed to having
voted for Biden after the election was over. I like him. Well,
there's there's Larry Hogan and Charlie Baker. I mean, there
are some reasonable Republicans still, but Vermont has been very successful. Now, look,
we're having a surge too, and we're having problems and
we gotta, you know, buckle down. But we're a community
that cares about each other. We actually sit down and
(01:29):
have discussions about debate issues. I never hated the Republicans
when I was governor. We used to sit down and
work stuff out as much friction with an our crass
as I did with the Republicans. This is a reasonable
place where people actually care about their neighbors and believe
you're supposed to respect your neighbors. Now, we were just
joking before you come and we're like, could Howard Dean
be the president now in the interim just till the
(01:51):
COVID's over, then Biden could take over. Could we have
a medical doctor who's president for an interim period of time?
But we know what from us as a physician, where
did we primarily get it wrong here in terms of
the way we handle the COVID. Well, Trump has been
a disaster because Trump cares about Trump and his press,
and not any functional thing. I mean, he's basically gutted
(02:12):
all the health agencies by putting lackeys in there who
are afraid of him. So he ruined the good name
of the CDC and and and the f d A,
and you know, calling up the f d A president,
head of the f d A and threatening if you
don't get this thing out in the next twenty four hours,
you should resign. I mean, that's not medicine, that's just nonsense. Uh.
And that's why the way it's always been, the big
(02:33):
problem is and Trump is more or less created the
I'm not wearing a mask because that's my political affiliation,
which is just stupidity. So yeah, we'd be better off
the Trump The problem is, I mean, if you look
at other countries, they are better off, a lot better
off then we are. Almost all of them, not all
of them. Brazil is in bad shape, Russia is in
(02:53):
bad shape. But but most of the countries in this
world are much doing a much better job than we are.
And that that's right at the feet of Trump and
the Republican Party, which never dared to confront of them,
and locking down was the answer. Locking down, unfortunately, is
some of the answer, and I think it was handled
actually fairly well. We got behind in New York, and
that's understandable because we didn't know what was coming. We
didn't understand what was happening. They pulled themselves together. The
(03:17):
stuff that's going on in the Midwest is ridiculous. That
was a whole bunch of Republican governors that basically said, oh,
we don't need to wear a mask. Well, now people
are dying, dropping down like flies, and there's I c
u s are all full. The danger of the i
c u s being fillers twofold one is a terrible
indicator of how sick everybody is. But the other is
that if you have a heart attack, guests who doesn't
get an i CU bed or even medical attention. So
(03:38):
the Midwestern states, because of their mostly their own stupidity
of their governors, are in bad shape. And I think
we're going to get our arms around this again. I
think the vaccine is going to be enormously helpful. But
we've got six months of really tough stuff in front
of us where there. I mean, I'm seventy two years old.
I'm gonna have to be really careful for the next
six months when the vaccine comes. People get a vaccine,
then they have to have a second one like a
(04:00):
month later. Yeah, right, and you think that how soon
if I get the vaccine. This is something I wanted
to clarify for people listening to the show. Let's say
I got a vaccine the first week of January, and
then a month la I have to get another vaccine,
but I still have to distance from people and wear masks. Yes,
you really should. The truth is you'll probably have some
minimal amount of partial immunity, which will vary greatly from
(04:23):
individual to individual, which is why the numbers of the
on the second vaccine really matter. This is a peculiar
virus which we have very little experience with heretofore. I mean,
there have been some you know, the Stars epidemic which
was very small compared to this, which we did not
have a lot of success with a vaccine, but it
wasn't nearly as contagious as this, and I might add
(04:44):
the fatality rate was much higher than this one is,
so thank god I didn't know the contagion right. This
is very very contagious, and it's an odd virus which
human beings have very little experience with So that's most likely,
and I'm not a researcher, but that's most likely the
reason for the two vaccines. My guess is that there's
some immunity after the first shot. You really got to
(05:06):
get the second one. This is not something you want
to fool with. And then after the second shot, you
still have to distance in mask and keep or you
free to just move about in your safe I would
distance in mask. I wouldn't think I was free until
we get to hurt immunity. And that's about se vaccinated
or having had the disease. We know that most people
(05:27):
are immune after they get the disease. The problem is
we don't know how for how long. It could be
only three months. We don't know how long this vaccine
is gonna ask. You know, the flu vaccine you have
to take every year, and you have to take it
every year for two reasons. One, we don't know how
immune you are. And to the flu virus, which is
a different, holy different family of viruses, mutates like crazy
(05:48):
very quickly, so you may get an entirely different flu
riders coming the next year. That's why you get flu
shots every year. Uh, this we don't know that much
about we do know there's been one mutation. Interestingly enough,
despite Trump's chatter about China and all this, the virus
that most Americans have is actually a European mutation. And
most of the virus in New York actually came from Europe,
(06:10):
not from China, because it was we could trace it
to a European set of European travelers that actually came
back from Westchester County from a conference, and that was
the first case in New York. So most of the
virus in this country it's the European variant. Now, your
father was a Wall Street guy. My father was a
Wall Street guy. The thing about my parents is that
(06:33):
it makes them different is yes, we have a house
in East Hampton. We actually grew up here. I didn't
go to junior activities that the Maidstone Club. I went
to the East Hampton Boys Club and met everybody. My father, Yes,
he played golf all summer with the summer people, and
then he shot Coote and duck all winner with the
local guys. We went to a church that had a
lot of local people in the vestry. It wasn't you know,
(06:55):
the hoity toity whatever. So we really although I went
to school in New York City. Uh, this is the
only places I've ever voted at East Hampton, New York
and Vermont. And when the time came for you to
go to school and your father was a business guy
and you just had to go to medical school, what
prompted you to do that? Why? How do I? How?
I say this nicely? I worked on Wall Street for
(07:15):
a year and a half and I hated it. I
did it wasn't for you. Well, I was in college
during Vietnam, where presidents of both parties lives through their
teeth about the war, and fifty five thousand Americans were killed,
not to mention millions of Southeast Asians, and I had
given up and everything. I went to ski bummed and
Askeden and poured concrete and wash dishes for a year.
Decided that was not something I was going to be
(07:36):
happy with, and then I went to work on Wall Street.
Was the path of least resistance. I learned a great deal,
but I learned I didn't want to live in New
York and I didn't want to work on you know,
make my living pushing other people's money around. And so
I decided to go to medical school because a friend
of mine had gone and to do a post back.
I didn't you know. This was the sixties. There were
no requirements in college, so I hadn't taken a single
(07:57):
math or or science course while I was in college.
But I was good at it in high school, so
I went. I loved it, and I went to Albert
Einstein College of Medicine. I was at Token gem at
the at the Jewish medical school. It was great. I
learned a lot and met my wife. So what could
what work? Would go wrong? Right? And was Vermont something
that was a place you visited summer at ski to
(08:18):
something if you're going to do the East Coast skiing
at least? How did Vermont come into your life? Uh?
There was a family that uh sort of became my
second family when I was in college, and I used
to spend a lot of time in Bondville, Vermont, which
is a tiny little town near Stratton. I did ski
a lot, but I came to Vermont by chance. When
you leave medical school, you list your top ten choices
(08:38):
as internships. Vermont was my fourth, and I had three
high powered academic medical centers that I had applied to. Ironically,
tour in New York and one was in Washington, d C.
And I didn't get any of them, so I got
my fourth choice. The computer matches that it's called the match,
and it's a big deal when you get out of
medical school. So I the match as signed me to Vermont.
And if it hadn't done that, then you never would
(09:00):
have heard of me. When did you start to become
more hyper aware of what was going on? And you
knew you had a passion for public affairs when you
were how old? Well, I thought I had a public
passion for public affairs when I was in high school
and I was elected to the student council sort of
by accident. And then I got disgusted with all the
stuff in Vietnam and the civil rights movement, by the
reaction of my own government. It didn't matter which party was,
(09:23):
there were pots on both of them. Uh. Then Watergate happened,
and the Democrats took a turn left and for better
government and try to get the corruption out of the government,
which they did to a large extent. Now it's behole
returned thanks to the right wing Supreme Court. But I
got interested in re interested in politics because I always
thought that the way that Democrats could rehab themselves was
to get a Southern run. And when Jimmy Carter ran
(09:45):
for president, I signed on And that's what got me
into politics. To campaign. Yeah, I signed up just as
an envelope liquor and a phone call maker. And then
I was mentored by two women who were twenty five
years older than I, who are sisters, and one of
whom was They both actually played a very active role
in reconstituting the Democratic Party in Vermont. Vermont did not
(10:05):
have a Democratic governor for a hundred and nine consecutive
years between eighteen fifty three and nineteen sixty eight. So
these two women had put the thing together and they
mentored me. And because I worked my butt off for Carter,
and I went to the convention and that was this
and then I became the chair of the county and
that's worked my way out. What office did you hold
(10:27):
prior to being governor? I was lieutenant governor for five years,
and then before that I was in the State House
for two terms. When you have a political passion from
when you're you know, during the sixties and Watergate and
Vietnam and so Furth, and then you decide to run,
what is it that makes you decide to give up
practicing medicine to run for politics. Well, I didn't. Everything
(10:47):
is part time up there, lieutenant governor. So I was
practicing medicine until August fourteenth, and I was seeing a
patient and the nurse knocks on the door and says,
excuse me, I have to interrupt you for the governor's offices.
On the line, I took a call in this quavering voice,
and the other end of the phone says, I regret
to inform you that the governor has died of a
heart attack, and you're the governor. That was the end
of my medical practice. Oh my god. So that's how
(11:09):
I decided. I actually decided not to leave medicine because
it was sort of my turn to run for governor.
There were two other people that wanted it, and I
thought to myself, you know, I'm gonna get into a primary,
I'm gonna have to close my practice for five months,
and I'm not gonna have a practice to come back
to if I don't win. So I decided to run
for a third term, which is again, lieutenant governor in
Vermont's a part time job. And then the the governorship.
(11:32):
It's a four year term two years, the governor's two
years in the months two years, and I love it
that way. People keep wanting to change it. That is
laziness on the part of the public who doesn't want
to hear all those stupid ads. I don't blame him,
And it's laziness in the part of the politicians who
don't want to face the public. Donald Trump is a
good reason not to have four year terms. You can
get rid of me anytime you want in two years,
(11:53):
and it's happened lots of time. So I'm a big
fan of two year terms. Now. It may be impractical
in a place like New York, which is so big,
but in the smaller states, I believe you actually get
more done faster with two year terms because you're accountable
every minute. How far into his term was the government
when he died, Well, he'd been a governor for four
terms before that, and then he'd gone and then come back,
(12:13):
and he was eight months into his term. He was
eight months And when you in that state, do they
have to have a special election to have another about
the term? Yeah, but that's another advantage of if you
don't get you know, people who weren't really elected to
serve for the majority. So I faced the voters, you know,
sixteen months later or whatever. And then I was elected
to five terms on my own. So you finished his term,
(12:36):
and then what happened By the time you finished his
first term, You decide you like it and you want
to stay. Yeah. Well, I was really interested in healthcare.
It was interesting, Alec after a week of you know,
drinking water out of a fire hose and being brief
because you know, I knew nothing about nothing, and now
I gotta worry about the banks. And it was during
the one of the recessions, and I've got a zillion things.
Everybody's got to come and tell me what they're doing
(12:56):
and how the government works. And so I'm going through
all this and I don't of a moment to myself
and the states and shocked because this giant political figure
has suddenly dropped dead at the age of sixty three
and about two weeks and I had a couple of
hours to myself in my office by myself, and I thought, Wow,
you never expected this. What do you really want to do?
So I wrote down five things that I thought were
(13:18):
really important. The top was universal health care and Jim Hunt,
who was governor of North Carolina for sixteen years. He
took me aside one time and he said, he looked
me in the eye and he said, uh, you know
what we do is urgent. Uh. And I looked at him, nodded,
and he said, and ten percent is important. And I
never forgot that. So every day be while I was
(13:40):
in the office, I never left when on the days
I was in the office without pulling out my drawer
and looking at the five things I put down in
that day, two weeks into my unexpected term, to make
sure I've done at least one thing that further one
of those causes, because every day in your life, no
matter what job you have, the urgent, oh ways overcomes
(14:00):
the important and you get to the end of your
life and you haven't done the things that are important
because you focused on the urgent things all the time.
I teach a lot now and I advocate to my
students write that list down, because even at your age,
there's stuff you think is important and stuff do you
think is urgent, and you've got to be able to
tell the difference, and and the important stuff is going
to change as you grow older. But if you don't
do that you're gonna spend all your time in the
(14:21):
urgin and none of the stuff that's important. I'm Alec
Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. If you
like conversations about politics, check out our archives for more
in depth conversations with interesting people, like Good Morning America's
George Stephanopoulos. When I left the White House in early
(14:43):
I was I guess I was what thirt thirty six?
Then I felt much older and I you know why?
Oh yeah, I mean White House hears are dog years multiplied.
Here more of my conversation with George Stephanopolis a Here's
the Thing dot org. After the break, I talked to
(15:03):
Howard Dean about what he thinks Biden needs to tackle. First.
I'm Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the Thing.
I wanted to hear what Howard Dean makes of Joe
Biden's plans so far. I'm very pleased with what Biden's doing.
(15:28):
He's not my style. I think I wanted somebody who
was about forty because I think I'm desperate to turn
all this over to a new generation. I think my
generations hung around too long. But I think Biden was
a great candidate for for what we needed. I actually
thought Bernie was gonna win. I think what happened was
first we had Trump, who was just chaos every day's
reality television, and then we had COVID, which is scared
(15:49):
of the living daylights out of people, and I think
people just thought, jeez, I really like Bernie, and I
think we really need change, but we're just gonna get
four more years of confrontation. Although Bernie is a bit
very different than Trump, because Bernie's honest and Trump isn't.
But I think that that's when they decided they wanted Biden,
and I think he was probably the best nominee we
could have had. I think Biden's no nonsense, which is great.
(16:10):
I like his cabinet appointments. He has got to focus
on both the urgent and the important. The urgent is,
let's try to heal the country. Let's put confidence back
in government because there is almost none now. But the
important is, we really do have to have a universal
healthcare program that works for every American. Is ludicrous for
the United States of America to be the only democracy
in the in the world that doesn't have a universal
(16:31):
healthcare program. This is absurd, and he talked a little
bit about some of the things. I personally believe that
the way to do it is allow everybody to sign
up for Medicare. What we did this in my state
in Vermont, because at the top of the list, even
in the state of Vermont, was universal health care for me.
So my second year we put in get rid of
all these pre existing conditions. You can't charge anybody more
(16:54):
than above what you charge your least expensive patient. And
we had a huge Medicaid expand thanks to Bill Clinton,
so that every child in my state for two generations
has grown up with health insurance. Everybody under eighteen is
eligible for Medicaid essentially, or unless they're over poverty. You
can do that as a state. What you can't do
is say, here, what's going to do a single payer?
(17:15):
Maybe single payer is the right thing to do, but
the change is too fast. If Jolly Verman hadn't changed
his vote under Obamacare and gotten rid of the ability
to sign up for Medicare, the so called public option,
I think three quoters of the people in this country
would be on Medicare right now, because Medicare is a
much better program than the health insurance companies are the
people that are opposed to universal health care. Is through
(17:37):
any argument that they make that make sense to you. No, none,
I'm not. Look, you can be opposed to government run healthcare,
that's a reasonable argument. I don't happen to think. I mean,
I think Medicare does a better job the insurance companies do.
But to say that you shouldn't have universal healthcare, that's
the argument of people who have what they need and
don't give a damn about anybody else. And I have
no patience for that. I'm always curious if the COVID
(17:58):
has proven anything. It's is how linked we are, you know, biologically.
Why don't they recognize that it's in their interests as
well for other people to be covered. You know something,
most people are not opposed to universal healthcare, including most
Trump voters. The problem is what the Republicans do is
basically when on the worst instincts of people, they catered racism, homophobia.
(18:20):
What they sell is hate and that overcomes a lot
of things. Uh, if you pull most Americans, they would
really like a universal healthcare program, and that includes most
of the Trump voters. You know, there's a guy from
Georgia who is married to one of my favorite students,
And we were talking one day and he says, you know,
do you like Trump voters? And I had to think
(18:40):
about it, and I said yes, because most of them
used to vote for me. These are working people. These
are not I mean, yes, you get the lunatics that
are in the paper all the time. These are not
horrible people. These are people who are working people and
they and Trump brings out the worst in them, but
they're most of them are hard working people that don't
have a lot of money. They understand that universal healthcare
program would be helpful. So what do the Republicans do.
(19:03):
They crank up homophobia, they crank up racism, They invent
all these these issues that are tangential, and they get
them so emotionally invested. Fear is what's driving them. Look,
if you're a white guy in rural America and you
lose your job when you're fifty years old, there's a
pretty good chance you're never going to get another one. Now,
black and brown people know that feeling very well. White
(19:24):
folks have never felt that before. So they're scared to death.
And that's what the Republicans sell, is fear and hate.
And I'm done with the Republicans. I think they're done
as a party too. I don't think you can survive.
Either they're not going to survive or the country is
not going to survive. You can't self fear and hate
and have that be a leadership trait in a great country.
(19:45):
When you ran for president, you had your fifty state strategy. Correct, Yes,
I did, but at the fifty it wasn't called that
until I became chairman of the Democratic Party. And what
do you think what worked for Obama? Because Obama basically
employed that, correct? Yeah, what worked for Obama is he
took a lot of stuff. Look, I don't take credit
for all the great stuff we did in my campaign.
The truth is we had no money. We had a
(20:06):
ton of we had a very powerful message, and we
had all the twenty three year olds in the country
were for us, and they invented all this stuff. I
had no idea what we were doing or what I
was doing. As it turned out, well, it was the
small donations, and it was it was the organization, it
was meet up, it was all these things on the net.
I mean, they were the kids that worked in my
campaign was their first campaign and They were incredible. They
(20:29):
revolutionized campaigning. When I took over the Democratic Party after
I didn't win the nomination, I hired them. They had
started as company called Blue State Digital, and because we
had to bring the whole party up to snuff in
terms of social media and all that stuff. And then
Obama hired them away from me in two thousand six.
So Obama had two things. Besides being an incredibly charismatic candidate,
(20:51):
which he was, he had two other things going. For one,
this had been tried for a campaign cycle and it
was successful, and the stuff that wasn't successful and went
fell by the wayside. And too, he had David Pluff.
Obama himself is incredibly personally disciplined, and so is Pluff.
So all of a sudden you have all these kids
who had no discipline at all, because I didn't was
(21:12):
not terribly discipline, and trip he certainly wasn't um. And
all of a sudden, these kids now have to report
to somebody who's maybe a little old school, but who
has sees the big picture, which is Pluff. I truly
believe that pluf knew where every single Obama voter in
the country wasn't fantasy figured out with these kids, how
to get them all out And this is of course
a happy ending to this after the Obama campaign that
(21:33):
these kids sold Blue State Digital for a hundred million dollars.
Convenient good for them. When you decide to run, I mean,
I'm always curious about people who run for these state
wide offices. You know, something big like governor or senator
or the presidency office? Is the is the big brass
ring when you run for that? Um, does someone tell
(21:54):
you you're ready or did you tell yourself you were ready?
Or both? I'll tell you exactly how I knew. I
had been in the governorship longer than anybody else in
the state, and I'd serve a long time. And We've
done some pretty extraordinary things. Universal healthcare, we did the
equivalent of pre K with something called success by six
or zero to three kids, and dropped child abused down dramatically.
(22:14):
And the most controversial thing I did was signed the
first marriage equality build in the country. We had to
call it civil unions. In no way I could have
gotten a marriage a bill that said marriage out of
the House, but we did it, and it essentially was marriage.
And I had to wear a bulletproof vest for my
last campaign, and I had to run in that campaign
because if I hadn't uh and quit after we passed it,
then that was essentially became a referendum on civil unions,
(22:37):
which you know, I didn't want to lose that and
I didn't I wanted by D twenty three votes. So
I was done. There was no way I was getting
reelected to anything. And I just thought what next? And
we had two senators that have been there for a
long time and I wasn't. I didn't really want to
be in the Senate anyway, So what else is there? Politics?
And that's what I did. And when you decided to
run and you didn't win the nomination, whose idea was it?
(23:00):
You to run the d n C. That was my
idea and everybody else hated it. I didn't get a
single vote from inside the Beltway. My vote, my listener
was a classic grassrooms. I was elected by the states,
And why do you think that is? Why did they
vote for you? And the insiders wouldn't because they were
fed up with the inside the Beltway people. Because the
inside the Beltway people don't know anything about campaigns. Look
at them. They all end up running campaigns after that
(23:22):
they were successful fifteen years before, and they're selling all
this crap that was good fifteen years ago and elected
somebody and it's no good anymore. And they're always getting
making a ton of money. When I got to the
d n C, there was no data platform, not because
Terry McCulloch was an idiot, because he actually left me
with the surplus, which is unheard of after a presidential campaign,
just because the Washington consultants sold him something was totally inadequate.
(23:43):
So I basically ran against the establishment, which I had
been doing in my presidential campaign, and it was very successful.
I didn't get any votes from inside the Beltway, and
three quarters of the members are from the States, and
that's where I got my votes. And then the last campaign,
I ran a for profit corporation called the Democratic Data Exchange.
And the reason I was asked I don't know anything
about data. The reason I was asked to run it
(24:06):
is because I could get along with both the insiders
and the outsiders. After after the fifties, States Strategy gave
us back the presidency, the Senate in the House, which
none of which we possessed. When I took over as chairman,
and we had nothing, and by two thousand six we'd
had the House in the Senate, and by two thousand
eight we had Obama's president and had to trifecta. Was
this something you thought was going to happen when Obama
(24:26):
want did you expect you we get invited to commit
to that administration? I was hoping I would. What job
would you want? Probably h h s. I'd had a
few words with a person who turned out to be
the chief and staff, and I had a few words
with Obama too, you know, like, I don't not famous
for hiding my opinions, and I'm not to go along
to get along guy. I'm a guy who says what
they think, and I think, you know, we ought to
(24:47):
do what we can. It's not that I'm not a
team player. I am, but I'm not a team player
to the extent that you have to lie to be
a team player. And I don't play Washington games. And
this is the same true with Biden. Do you think
if you were invited to come and enjoined Biden's administration anyway,
would you consider that? Well? I don't. I won't be invited,
and I don't feel bad about it. Um, I really
truly think that it's time for a lot of other
(25:08):
new people to come in, and Biden hasn't done all
of that, but he's done some of it. Uh. He
has a very diverse cabinet, which I think is absolutely critical.
I mean, I am so pleased to see Janet Yellen
as the head of the Treasury Department. I'm thrilled to
see Gena McCarthy, who's been overlooked for a long time,
going to be his chief climate change person. She really
knows what she's doing. Tina Flanois is going to be
(25:30):
Kamala Harris's chief of staff. She is a real find. So,
I mean, he's got some really good people who are
about to take over for him, and I think that's great.
Look again, sure it would be fun job to have.
I really think somebody's who's forty two should have that job,
not somebody who's seventy two. So when two thousand sixteen comes,
Trump wins, here you are. You ran for president, you
(25:53):
ran the d n C. You've had a successful political career.
What happened to Hillary Clinton in two thousand sixteen, Hillary
actually was incredibly helpful, So you have to know a
little bit. What about what I've been doing relatively quietly.
So there was a woman named Judith McHale who used
to run the Discovery Channel for fourteen years, and another
woman who's a big organizer in Silicon Valley named Amy
(26:16):
Raw and Judith is very close to Hillary. She worked
for her at the State Department. And we came up
with this notion that instead of funding the traditional d
n C, we ought to look at what this young
generation is doing. And what the young generation is doing
will not come as a surprise to you. They all
have groups that does certain things. Some of them train people,
some of them recruit members of minority communities to run
(26:39):
for office, some of them only recruit local officials. All
these things need to be done by the d n C.
But this is a generation that doesn't trust institutions, so
they start their own. Now there's some problems with this generation.
One of them is I call it cooperation without commitment.
So if they if they have a startup and they disagree,
instead of working it out, they go each start their
own start up and say nice to work with you, etcetera, etcetera.
(27:02):
But what we did was to vet them. Judith would
vet them from a business point of view, I'd vote
to vet them from a political point of view, because
there's zillions of these institutions and try to pick best
in class, who could do tech best, who could do
local officials best, who did Congress best? So we picked
eleven institutions. One collective pack taught African Americans how to
(27:23):
raise money essentially from white people, which were was very
hard for them to do. Another one was Run for Something,
recruited young people to run, especially for local offices, often
members of minority and communities and women, not exclusively. Uh.
There was a training organization based in Chicago, Vote Latino.
So there were eleven organizations that we picked that circumscribed
(27:46):
the functions of the Democratic Committee, and Hillary helped us
raise the money and of course raised most of it
from her funders, who had no understanding what we were doing,
but they loved Hillary, and we raised a hell of
a lot of money. She raised a hell of a
lot of money, and it went to Indivisible and Swing
Left and all these really good organizations. And that's what
(28:06):
Hillary did for two years, and then the second two
years I spent doing Democratic Data Exchange, and she spent
raising money for both these organizations and some other ones.
So it's this is not meant to supplant the d
n C. This is meant to do things for the
d n C that they can no longer do because
the a new generation has come forth and does everything
(28:28):
differently in politics. Basically, it took the stuff that started
my campaign, started in Hillary's campaign in two thousand sixteen,
some of it, and is bringing it into the twenty
one century and then trying to get the d n
C used to working with all these groups, which they
have to a pretty good extent as allowed by what's
left of campaign finance reform. Do you think she ran
(28:48):
a good campaign in two thousand and sixteen. No, I
don't think she ran a particularly good campaign, but she
did a hell of a lot for people since that
time to help Biden win and and to reconstitute the
Democratic Party. Do you think that the electoral college should
be eliminated? Yes, playing and simple yes. And I also
think we ought to have ranked choice voting do Yeah.
(29:10):
We had in Burlington for a while until one of
the Republican candidates claimed that his rival got in because
of that, and the rival turned out to be crooked.
It was a progressive at the time, and so we
got took it off the ballot, We're probably gonna put
it on now. But I'll tell you why. It does
two things. First of all, you don't have to have
a runoff. You get people again. You give people choices.
(29:31):
I felt good about the mayor's race that I voted
in in Burlington because my fourth choice one, but I
had voted for that person. The other thing, if it's
ranked choice voting, let's just say you and I are running.
I need your second place choices. So I'm not gonna
spend a lot of money running around telling everybody what
a jerk you are, because if I do all, your
(29:51):
second place people are gonna put me last, or your
joy people are gonna last. It's not perfect, but you
run much more civilized campaign and decent campaigns. If you
have ranked choice voting, then you do in this winner
take all minority, you know you can win with thirty
six per cent or of the vote. So those are
the two big reforms I think we need is ranked
(30:13):
choice voting and getting rid of the electoral college. What
do you think, Well, depends how you do it. There's
a bill called National Popular Vote, which has passed in
states controlling about nine votes. If they get to to seventy,
the electoral college is essentially gone unless the Court Supreme Court,
which of course is a function essentially offshoot of the
Republican Party these days. What it does Vermont's passed it,
(30:34):
New York's past It is say, if somebody wins the
popular vote in the country, that's where your electoral votes go.
And it takes place when enough states to add to
to seventy have passed this ballot. Former chair of the
Democratic National Committee, Howard Deem. If you're enjoying this conversation,
(30:56):
be sure to subscribe to Here's the Thing on the
I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts. When we come back, I talked to Howard
Dean about one of the most urgent issues for the
future of our democracy, campaign finance reform. After the break,
(31:26):
I'm Alec Baldwin and this is here is the Thing.
My guest today is Howard Dean. Given the deep political
divisions in this country, I wanted to know what Dean
thinks about the struggle Republicans will face regarding the future
of their party after Donald Trump. There's a lot of
parently decent people who have been voting Republican for a
(31:47):
long time who couldn't bring themselves to vote for Trump.
I mean, there are still a lot of decent Republicans.
The problem is none of them are in the Senate,
with the possible exception of Mitt Romney. There are people
I like in the Republican Party the Senate um, but
I don't respect them because I don't think they have
a spine between them. I'd like Bob Corker a lot
and Trump deep six Tim and that's why they're so
(32:07):
terrified the Republican Party. This happens to all politicians, and
the Democrats are not exempt from this. They care more
about their job than they do about the country, and
that's a big problem. You shouldn't be in. You know.
I'm actually for going back to the way the original
Congress was, which is the way the legislature is in Vermontest.
This is not a full time job. You better have
another employment. And I'm for term limits in Congress. Not
(32:31):
because I like term limits, but because when you have
the degree of corruption that is going on in the
Republican Party, although I'm sure it's going on in the
in the Democratic Party in the past, you know, we're
not immune from this kind of stuff, then it's time
to try to fix that corruption. The corruption is unbelievable,
partly because of Citizens United, which is the most dangerous
decision that was made since dread Scott. The Supreme Court
(32:53):
has totally corrupted billions of dollars of dark money going
to the Federalist Society, who then serves up the highest
scentage of people rated unqualified by the American Bar Association
ever to be seated in the courts. This country is
in a lot more trouble than just Donald Trump. And
we've created this mess ourselves. Yes, I believe the Republicans
are more responsible for the than the Democrats are. But
(33:15):
the Democrats need to get their act together. And we
need desperately needed generational change. Uh. And we need less politics.
And the way I think you get less politics is
don't make this a full time job. You know, pay
people decently, but you know you've gotta have another job.
I mean, campaign finance reform has been my number one issue.
(33:36):
And it's what's if you're a proponent of campaign finance reform,
if you're sworn to that cause, it's a it's a
lonely task because it's the least sexy issue you could
possibly be working on, right, but it's the most critical
one for the country. It's the lynch pin of all
the problems of this country. Yep. It sure is. When
you reference term limits and someone said to me, well,
I mean always that conversation, people would say, well, elections
(34:00):
themselves are termaments. I said, no, no, no no, no, fair
elections are like term limits. I said, right now, incumbency
is such a daunting power. We need term limits because
campaigns are not fair, because we don't have And I
was working with people on the nine Sunday's program and
Marvin Calb or his brother Bernard Calb at the Shorenstein
School at Harvard and then talking about having not ceilings
(34:21):
of spending, but floors. So if you're in a statewide
race and media saturation for that state for senate governor,
we exempt lieutenant governor because that's more ceremonial. In a
lot of states, we exempt controller and a g. But
you see the two senate races. In the gubernatorial race,
what is media saturation in that state? If it's thirty
million dollars for you to penetrate the entire media platform,
(34:42):
and you you gotta make sure, each candidate, there's thirty
million dollars. Now you could oppose me and you could
spend eighty. You could spend what Bloomberg, you could spend
a hundred. But as long as I have thirty, I
have a base of what equal saturation were good to go.
I completely believe in public financing of campaigns completely. Well,
you know what, solar are A lot of voters this
is are seing in Arizona. They actually passed this by
(35:02):
Arizona was a pretty conservative state. This is the first
time it went to going to Democratic for quite a while.
I think since Bill Clinton and two so Arizona they
had they passed public finance and campaigns by referendum. They
had two governors, both of whom I think served two terms.
I'm not sure, Janet Apolitano and the Republican governor I
forgot which one it was who won under that system.
(35:23):
And the Chamber of Commerce and the labor unions got
together and tried to overthrow it because these are two
big influence groups, one from each side, and they spent
a lot of money on a referendum to get rid
of it, and they lost. Because the public likes public financing,
because it gets the corruption out of politics. And there
was a complicated system because of the free speech component
as you described, So you can actually spend more, but
(35:45):
everybody has a minimum amount that they can get. And
it worked fine until John Roberts came along and then
Citizens United passed and then that was thrown out. Well,
like they said, the problem is if if someone can
spend an unlimited amount of money to run for office
of actions speech, the line was then the person with
the most cash speaks the loudest. And that's the problem
(36:05):
of this country is that the things that Citizen United
are protecting are you know, rich mail oriented, Christian oriented,
Wall Street oriented. Everything that happens in this country. Now,
to me, that significant is about stimulating the Tao. It
doesn't get past and washing unless it stimulates the Tao.
And that's that's the problem. Well, yeah, I mean that's true.
The idea that corporations are people and have the same
(36:28):
free speech rights, this is graceful, and this is put
on by supposedly serious jurists. And there who do you
think gives money to the federalist society? Rich people who
who are really conservative and big corporations and they don't
have to declare where the money is coming from. That
is the classic Jane Mayer definition of dark money. So,
you know capitalism, which I happen to believe in because
(36:51):
I think it fits our sort of species well, that
it helps to be greedy, which we are as a species,
and it helps us to be altruistic. But capitalism is
in trouble, not because it's a terrible system, is because
it's at the extreme end of where it should be.
We need better regulations so that everybody can benefit. It
doesn't matter what system you have, whether socialism or communism
(37:11):
or capitalism. Every system fails if you don't have a moderate,
reasonable place in the middle where it can work. And
capitalism is not there now. John Roberts bears much of
the responsibility for that. Well, we need capitalism with regulations.
We need capitalism with some teeth from regulatory teeth. You're right,
people need to pay more tax as, corporations need to
pay more taxes. But we want people to be competitive.
(37:34):
It's the political aspect of the fact that money is
speech that kills this. Because as long as my vote
was just as important as the chairman of General Motors,
that was great. But the truth is the chairman of
General Motors can write a million dollar check to some
dark money organization and my vote doesn't make any difference
if you do that. And that's where we are today,
and we can't be there if we want to survive
as a country. We may not. There's no guarantee that
(37:56):
America survives or any other country survives. It's to us,
and we're gonna have to be much more serious about
how seriously we take government. That that, to me is
the most important lesson of the Trump administration was how
close we came to this country actually perishing, which now
we're not done yet. Look, Trump is the you know,
the worst of the worst and all this stuff, but
the hard work has not been done, and it wasn't
(38:17):
done by the Democrats either, and we had a chance
to do it and we didn't do it. So, yes,
Trump is a despicable person. I think he's the symptom,
not the cause. It's assumed that you know, Biden is
up there, he's older, and he's about to begin a
four year term in one of the most grueling jobs
known to man, and whether he is willing, whether he's
(38:38):
able to seek a second term after that, is to
be revealed. But at the same time, he has a
young woman who is the vice president elect, and I'm wondering,
when you're in that position and there's as much of
a chance with him as anyone, that he won't seek
a second term. He might not be willing to do
that when he's eighty two years old four years from now.
Do you think that everybody is assiduously grooming her to
(39:00):
run for that job. I'm here. I'm sure she's insiduously
grooming herself. But that doesn't look I mean, that's not
a guarantee of anything. I guarantee you that if Joe
doesn't run for a second term, there'll be a primary,
and Kamala Harris will have the advantage in that primary.
Everybody will know who she is, but people are gonna
come after her. But look, the second term of a
(39:22):
president is a referendum on the president. That's why Biden
was such a great candidate this time, because it was
pretty non controversial and this was all about Trump, and
if it was gonna be all about Trump, we were
gonna win. So the second term for Joe Biden will
be all about Joe. If he chooses not to win,
then win, then Kamala will bear the burden and the
credit for whatever they do. Well. I'm sure there'll be
(39:44):
a primary if Biden chooses not to run, and I
think if Biden is healthy, he'll run. Your intelligence and
the breadth of your career and all the many different
areas you know about. I'm sorry that you're not an
American political life right now, but you're probably having a
great time right Um, and myself. If you have to quarantine,
Vermont is a good place to do it. The people
are great, and we're great to each other, and it's
(40:06):
a real community. Howard Dean and I talked in mid December,
but given the unrest before the inauguration, I wanted to
call him to get an update. So, of course, what
happened recently in the Capitol. What was your first reaction
when you saw all that going on? It was pretty
much discussed and horror. Um, And actually my reaction is
(40:27):
stronger today than it was when I saw it because
of the loss of life. I mean, these people committed murder.
These are enemies of the United States. I think the
talk of unity from the Republicans is just an attempt
to avoid responsibility. I'm all for unifying the country. But
condition is the first act of unity, and so I'd
like to see a little less posturing and bs and
(40:50):
a little more seriousness about what's good for the country. Otherwise, Um,
you know, I am convinced that we can put down
this insurrection if we need to, and I'm hoping it
will come to that. But if it does, that's what
we have to do. Do you think that this is
just a preluded more of this to come in state
houses and so forth. Here's the only way to get
rid of this. People have said, well, you have to
(41:11):
improve the conditions in rural America. That's true, but you
can improve what with the New York Times ridiculously called
racial conservatism. I mean, in other words, racism, which for
some reason the New York Times didn't want to put
in the paper. This is gonna go away with cognitive dissonance.
That is, the people who do these things are gonna
lose their jobs if they continue to behave like this.
(41:33):
Some of them are gonna lose their lives because we're
not having this again, and this next time it will
be The National Guard is a much better trained than
the Capitol Police, and eventually this is gonna go away. This,
this embracement of conspiracy theorist is not because people are
stupid or un educated. It's because they have to rearrange
the facts of life because they feel like they're not
doing well. Okay, we can help them do better, but
(41:56):
first they have to rearrange the facts of life, because
you can't do well if you have an alternative universe
that doesn't match the facts of life. We have more
and more people who were saying I need the government
to help me, and now we are trillions of dollars
more in debt from writing checks to people to help
them survive the COVID. Do you think we get to
(42:17):
a point where we can't afford it anymore, We're really
going to be in serious economic and financial trouble. Well,
we would be in serious or economic financial trouble if
we weren't putting out all that money. I mean, you know,
the unemployment rate among women is going up seventy that's shocking,
just shocking. Um. So this is a true economic danger.
(42:38):
The problem is we had the most incompetent, corrupt president
in the history of the United States at the helm
when all has happened. Um, So, we can dig our
way out of this. From an economic point of view,
it's going to take some time. I think we can
do that. Our economic system is still stronger than anybody
else's in the world. Uh. The concern that I have
is how do you tamp down this very small minority
(42:59):
of crackpots who are willing to do whatever it takes.
What's the situation in that regard in Vermont? Um, it
was so far. You know, Vermont is not this kind
of a place. This is a real community where we
actually care about each other and respect each other. The
Republican governor here called for Trump to leave office after
this happened. So, I mean, we were Vermonter's first and
(43:21):
Republicans and Democrats second. But the situation is and but
there've always been people like this. I remember when I
did civil unions for the first time in the history
of the country, gay people could essentially get married. And
I had some some of that. I mean, I had
fifty year old ladies using the F bomb on me
when I was campaigning and stuff. Um, but uh, that's
(43:41):
a minority of people, and they're kept in check because
the state doesn't put up with it. We're polite, we
don't shame them. We're not confrontational, but they are confining
themselves to the edges of society. By the entire class,
including the Republican Party in Vermont, there are very few
people in the Publican Party in Vermont that are actually
(44:02):
elected that behave like the majority of elected representatives to
do at the federal level. Well, in my mind, the
COVID and the political upheaval in the country mirror one another.
Their problems we've never faced before in this country. We've
never I shouldn't say we've never faced this kind of
political upheaval before, but but I think specifically to where
we are now, We've never seen a bunch of hoodlums
(44:24):
crash the gates of the and the doors of the
of the Capitol building and vandalized the Capitol Building. That's
something I never thought i'd see in my lifetime. But
if you're Biden and you're the president, now, what's the
line you have to walk between demanding law enforcement, demanding
people don't do those kinds of things again, but not
be perceived of someone who you're ganging up and you're
(44:46):
piling up on the extreme right. Okay, so what Biden
has to do is speak to the whole country minus
the extreme right. You can't reason with these people. Their
treason is they're really not Americans. So that's not our problem.
Our problem is that is the seventy million people that
voted for Trump that aren't crazy. There's plenty of them.
I don't think most Trump supporters think this is okay,
(45:09):
and so I mean the ones in Congress appear to,
and that's mostly because they completely lack any intestinal fortitude whatsoever.
But I think what Biden needs to do is speak
to all of us at the same time, not carry
on about law and order, but be really clear that
when this kind of stuff happens, the consequences are going
to be enormous. Enormous. These people are gonna get this
(45:29):
is already happening. These people are gonna lose their jobs,
and if they are willing to put other people's lives
at risk, they're likely to lose their own lives. As
long as we're speaking to the majority of Americans who
are I think fundamentally decent people, we can suppress the
crazy people who are armed and mean other people harm.
And the last thing I want to say is we
cannot what we must not do under any circumstances is
(45:51):
concede other people's rights in order to bring order. We
are not going backwards on civil rights. We have made
huge gains over the summer. Uh's who the demonstrations, the
Black Lives Matter, and I think the consciousness in the
white community about what the problems are. That's where a
lot of this is is a lot of the white
community doesn't want to face what we really need to
(46:11):
face in order to try to get rid of some
of this injustice. But most people will want to do that.
I think most people in their hearts are good people.
We have to have a president that's willing to talk
to those people and be really tough on the people
that want don't want to play ball. Many many thanks
to you, sir, and thanks for taking my call. My
great pleasure. Talk soon. Former Vermont governor and former d
(46:35):
n C chair Howard Dean. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the
thing is brought to you by my Heart Radio. We're
produced by Kathleen Russo and Carrie Donohue. Our editor is
Zach McNeese and our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our theme
song is by Miles Davis. Didn't pay Me in US
(47:03):
to
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from My Heart Radio. My guest today is Howard Dean.
Dean has an impressive list of former titles, former governor
of Vermont, former chair of the Democratic National Committee, and
former candidate for the Democratic presidential primary in two thousand four,
(00:25):
and currently he is still opinionated about what the Democrats
need to do at this pivotal time. Dean's faith in
people's fundamental decency is shaped in part by his years
in Vermont politics. Though originally a New Yorker, Dean has
lived in Vermont most of his adult life, and he
was a family physician before becoming governor. When you look
(00:47):
at a map of the states where COVID rates have
been soaring, Vermont seems to be faring better than other
places like New York City and l A. I wanted
to know if it's simply because Vermont is rural. Yeah,
I mean from a density point of do it makes
a difference. We also happen to have a Republican governor
who has a brain and who that cares what the
(01:07):
facts are, which is nice. He actually confessed to having
voted for Biden after the election was over. I like him. Well,
there's there's Larry Hogan and Charlie Baker. I mean, there
are some reasonable Republicans still, but Vermont has been very successful. Now, look,
we're having a surge too, and we're having problems and
we gotta, you know, buckle down. But we're a community
that cares about each other. We actually sit down and
(01:29):
have discussions about debate issues. I never hated the Republicans
when I was governor. We used to sit down and
work stuff out as much friction with an our crass
as I did with the Republicans. This is a reasonable
place where people actually care about their neighbors and believe
you're supposed to respect your neighbors. Now, we were just
joking before you come and we're like, could Howard Dean
be the president now in the interim just till the
(01:51):
COVID's over, then Biden could take over. Could we have
a medical doctor who's president for an interim period of time?
But we know what from us as a physician, where
did we primarily get it wrong here in terms of
the way we handle the COVID. Well, Trump has been
a disaster because Trump cares about Trump and his press,
and not any functional thing. I mean, he's basically gutted
(02:12):
all the health agencies by putting lackeys in there who
are afraid of him. So he ruined the good name
of the CDC and and and the f d A,
and you know, calling up the f d A president,
head of the f d A and threatening if you
don't get this thing out in the next twenty four hours,
you should resign. I mean, that's not medicine, that's just nonsense. Uh.
And that's why the way it's always been, the big
(02:33):
problem is and Trump is more or less created the
I'm not wearing a mask because that's my political affiliation,
which is just stupidity. So yeah, we'd be better off
the Trump The problem is, I mean, if you look
at other countries, they are better off, a lot better
off then we are. Almost all of them, not all
of them. Brazil is in bad shape, Russia is in
(02:53):
bad shape. But but most of the countries in this
world are much doing a much better job than we are.
And that that's right at the feet of Trump and
the Republican Party, which never dared to confront of them,
and locking down was the answer. Locking down, unfortunately, is
some of the answer, and I think it was handled
actually fairly well. We got behind in New York, and
that's understandable because we didn't know what was coming. We
didn't understand what was happening. They pulled themselves together. The
(03:17):
stuff that's going on in the Midwest is ridiculous. That
was a whole bunch of Republican governors that basically said, oh,
we don't need to wear a mask. Well, now people
are dying, dropping down like flies, and there's I c
u s are all full. The danger of the i
c u s being fillers twofold one is a terrible
indicator of how sick everybody is. But the other is
that if you have a heart attack, guests who doesn't
get an i CU bed or even medical attention. So
(03:38):
the Midwestern states, because of their mostly their own stupidity
of their governors, are in bad shape. And I think
we're going to get our arms around this again. I
think the vaccine is going to be enormously helpful. But
we've got six months of really tough stuff in front
of us where there. I mean, I'm seventy two years old.
I'm gonna have to be really careful for the next
six months when the vaccine comes. People get a vaccine,
then they have to have a second one like a
(04:00):
month later. Yeah, right, and you think that how soon
if I get the vaccine. This is something I wanted
to clarify for people listening to the show. Let's say
I got a vaccine the first week of January, and
then a month la I have to get another vaccine,
but I still have to distance from people and wear masks. Yes,
you really should. The truth is you'll probably have some
minimal amount of partial immunity, which will vary greatly from
(04:23):
individual to individual, which is why the numbers of the
on the second vaccine really matter. This is a peculiar
virus which we have very little experience with heretofore. I mean,
there have been some you know, the Stars epidemic which
was very small compared to this, which we did not
have a lot of success with a vaccine, but it
wasn't nearly as contagious as this, and I might add
(04:44):
the fatality rate was much higher than this one is,
so thank god I didn't know the contagion right. This
is very very contagious, and it's an odd virus which
human beings have very little experience with So that's most likely,
and I'm not a researcher, but that's most likely the
reason for the two vaccines. My guess is that there's
some immunity after the first shot. You really got to
(05:06):
get the second one. This is not something you want
to fool with. And then after the second shot, you
still have to distance in mask and keep or you
free to just move about in your safe I would
distance in mask. I wouldn't think I was free until
we get to hurt immunity. And that's about se vaccinated
or having had the disease. We know that most people
(05:27):
are immune after they get the disease. The problem is
we don't know how for how long. It could be
only three months. We don't know how long this vaccine
is gonna ask. You know, the flu vaccine you have
to take every year, and you have to take it
every year for two reasons. One, we don't know how
immune you are. And to the flu virus, which is
a different, holy different family of viruses, mutates like crazy
(05:48):
very quickly, so you may get an entirely different flu
riders coming the next year. That's why you get flu
shots every year. Uh, this we don't know that much
about we do know there's been one mutation. Interestingly enough,
despite Trump's chatter about China and all this, the virus
that most Americans have is actually a European mutation. And
most of the virus in New York actually came from Europe,
(06:10):
not from China, because it was we could trace it
to a European set of European travelers that actually came
back from Westchester County from a conference, and that was
the first case in New York. So most of the
virus in this country it's the European variant. Now, your
father was a Wall Street guy. My father was a
Wall Street guy. The thing about my parents is that
(06:33):
it makes them different is yes, we have a house
in East Hampton. We actually grew up here. I didn't
go to junior activities that the Maidstone Club. I went
to the East Hampton Boys Club and met everybody. My father, Yes,
he played golf all summer with the summer people, and
then he shot Coote and duck all winner with the
local guys. We went to a church that had a
lot of local people in the vestry. It wasn't you know,
(06:55):
the hoity toity whatever. So we really although I went
to school in New York City. Uh, this is the
only places I've ever voted at East Hampton, New York
and Vermont. And when the time came for you to
go to school and your father was a business guy
and you just had to go to medical school, what
prompted you to do that? Why? How do I? How?
I say this nicely? I worked on Wall Street for
(07:15):
a year and a half and I hated it. I
did it wasn't for you. Well, I was in college
during Vietnam, where presidents of both parties lives through their
teeth about the war, and fifty five thousand Americans were killed,
not to mention millions of Southeast Asians, and I had
given up and everything. I went to ski bummed and
Askeden and poured concrete and wash dishes for a year.
Decided that was not something I was going to be
(07:36):
happy with, and then I went to work on Wall Street.
Was the path of least resistance. I learned a great deal,
but I learned I didn't want to live in New
York and I didn't want to work on you know,
make my living pushing other people's money around. And so
I decided to go to medical school because a friend
of mine had gone and to do a post back.
I didn't you know. This was the sixties. There were
no requirements in college, so I hadn't taken a single
(07:57):
math or or science course while I was in college.
But I was good at it in high school, so
I went. I loved it, and I went to Albert
Einstein College of Medicine. I was at Token gem at
the at the Jewish medical school. It was great. I
learned a lot and met my wife. So what could
what work? Would go wrong? Right? And was Vermont something
that was a place you visited summer at ski to
(08:18):
something if you're going to do the East Coast skiing
at least? How did Vermont come into your life? Uh?
There was a family that uh sort of became my
second family when I was in college, and I used
to spend a lot of time in Bondville, Vermont, which
is a tiny little town near Stratton. I did ski
a lot, but I came to Vermont by chance. When
you leave medical school, you list your top ten choices
(08:38):
as internships. Vermont was my fourth, and I had three
high powered academic medical centers that I had applied to. Ironically,
tour in New York and one was in Washington, d C.
And I didn't get any of them, so I got
my fourth choice. The computer matches that it's called the match,
and it's a big deal when you get out of
medical school. So I the match as signed me to Vermont.
And if it hadn't done that, then you never would
(09:00):
have heard of me. When did you start to become
more hyper aware of what was going on? And you
knew you had a passion for public affairs when you
were how old? Well, I thought I had a public
passion for public affairs when I was in high school
and I was elected to the student council sort of
by accident. And then I got disgusted with all the
stuff in Vietnam and the civil rights movement, by the
reaction of my own government. It didn't matter which party was,
(09:23):
there were pots on both of them. Uh. Then Watergate happened,
and the Democrats took a turn left and for better
government and try to get the corruption out of the government,
which they did to a large extent. Now it's behole
returned thanks to the right wing Supreme Court. But I
got interested in re interested in politics because I always
thought that the way that Democrats could rehab themselves was
to get a Southern run. And when Jimmy Carter ran
(09:45):
for president, I signed on And that's what got me
into politics. To campaign. Yeah, I signed up just as
an envelope liquor and a phone call maker. And then
I was mentored by two women who were twenty five
years older than I, who are sisters, and one of
whom was They both actually played a very active role
in reconstituting the Democratic Party in Vermont. Vermont did not
(10:05):
have a Democratic governor for a hundred and nine consecutive
years between eighteen fifty three and nineteen sixty eight. So
these two women had put the thing together and they
mentored me. And because I worked my butt off for Carter,
and I went to the convention and that was this
and then I became the chair of the county and
that's worked my way out. What office did you hold
(10:27):
prior to being governor? I was lieutenant governor for five years,
and then before that I was in the State House
for two terms. When you have a political passion from
when you're you know, during the sixties and Watergate and
Vietnam and so Furth, and then you decide to run,
what is it that makes you decide to give up
practicing medicine to run for politics. Well, I didn't. Everything
(10:47):
is part time up there, lieutenant governor. So I was
practicing medicine until August fourteenth, and I was seeing a
patient and the nurse knocks on the door and says,
excuse me, I have to interrupt you for the governor's offices.
On the line, I took a call in this quavering voice,
and the other end of the phone says, I regret
to inform you that the governor has died of a
heart attack, and you're the governor. That was the end
of my medical practice. Oh my god. So that's how
(11:09):
I decided. I actually decided not to leave medicine because
it was sort of my turn to run for governor.
There were two other people that wanted it, and I
thought to myself, you know, I'm gonna get into a primary,
I'm gonna have to close my practice for five months,
and I'm not gonna have a practice to come back
to if I don't win. So I decided to run
for a third term, which is again, lieutenant governor in
Vermont's a part time job. And then the the governorship.
(11:32):
It's a four year term two years, the governor's two
years in the months two years, and I love it
that way. People keep wanting to change it. That is
laziness on the part of the public who doesn't want
to hear all those stupid ads. I don't blame him,
And it's laziness in the part of the politicians who
don't want to face the public. Donald Trump is a
good reason not to have four year terms. You can
get rid of me anytime you want in two years,
(11:53):
and it's happened lots of time. So I'm a big
fan of two year terms. Now. It may be impractical
in a place like New York, which is so big,
but in the smaller states, I believe you actually get
more done faster with two year terms because you're accountable
every minute. How far into his term was the government
when he died, Well, he'd been a governor for four
terms before that, and then he'd gone and then come back,
(12:13):
and he was eight months into his term. He was
eight months And when you in that state, do they
have to have a special election to have another about
the term? Yeah, but that's another advantage of if you
don't get you know, people who weren't really elected to
serve for the majority. So I faced the voters, you know,
sixteen months later or whatever. And then I was elected
to five terms on my own. So you finished his term,
(12:36):
and then what happened By the time you finished his
first term, You decide you like it and you want
to stay. Yeah. Well, I was really interested in healthcare.
It was interesting, Alec after a week of you know,
drinking water out of a fire hose and being brief
because you know, I knew nothing about nothing, and now
I gotta worry about the banks. And it was during
the one of the recessions, and I've got a zillion things.
Everybody's got to come and tell me what they're doing
(12:56):
and how the government works. And so I'm going through
all this and I don't of a moment to myself
and the states and shocked because this giant political figure
has suddenly dropped dead at the age of sixty three
and about two weeks and I had a couple of
hours to myself in my office by myself, and I thought, Wow,
you never expected this. What do you really want to do?
So I wrote down five things that I thought were
(13:18):
really important. The top was universal health care and Jim Hunt,
who was governor of North Carolina for sixteen years. He
took me aside one time and he said, he looked
me in the eye and he said, uh, you know
what we do is urgent. Uh. And I looked at him, nodded,
and he said, and ten percent is important. And I
never forgot that. So every day be while I was
(13:40):
in the office, I never left when on the days
I was in the office without pulling out my drawer
and looking at the five things I put down in
that day, two weeks into my unexpected term, to make
sure I've done at least one thing that further one
of those causes, because every day in your life, no
matter what job you have, the urgent, oh ways overcomes
(14:00):
the important and you get to the end of your
life and you haven't done the things that are important
because you focused on the urgent things all the time.
I teach a lot now and I advocate to my
students write that list down, because even at your age,
there's stuff you think is important and stuff do you
think is urgent, and you've got to be able to
tell the difference, and and the important stuff is going
to change as you grow older. But if you don't
do that you're gonna spend all your time in the
(14:21):
urgin and none of the stuff that's important. I'm Alec
Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. If you
like conversations about politics, check out our archives for more
in depth conversations with interesting people, like Good Morning America's
George Stephanopoulos. When I left the White House in early
(14:43):
I was I guess I was what thirt thirty six?
Then I felt much older and I you know why?
Oh yeah, I mean White House hears are dog years multiplied.
Here more of my conversation with George Stephanopolis a Here's
the Thing dot org. After the break, I talked to
(15:03):
Howard Dean about what he thinks Biden needs to tackle. First.
I'm Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the Thing.
I wanted to hear what Howard Dean makes of Joe
Biden's plans so far. I'm very pleased with what Biden's doing.
(15:28):
He's not my style. I think I wanted somebody who
was about forty because I think I'm desperate to turn
all this over to a new generation. I think my
generations hung around too long. But I think Biden was
a great candidate for for what we needed. I actually
thought Bernie was gonna win. I think what happened was
first we had Trump, who was just chaos every day's
reality television, and then we had COVID, which is scared
(15:49):
of the living daylights out of people, and I think
people just thought, jeez, I really like Bernie, and I
think we really need change, but we're just gonna get
four more years of confrontation. Although Bernie is a bit
very different than Trump, because Bernie's honest and Trump isn't.
But I think that that's when they decided they wanted Biden,
and I think he was probably the best nominee we
could have had. I think Biden's no nonsense, which is great.
(16:10):
I like his cabinet appointments. He has got to focus
on both the urgent and the important. The urgent is,
let's try to heal the country. Let's put confidence back
in government because there is almost none now. But the
important is, we really do have to have a universal
healthcare program that works for every American. Is ludicrous for
the United States of America to be the only democracy
in the in the world that doesn't have a universal
(16:31):
healthcare program. This is absurd, and he talked a little
bit about some of the things. I personally believe that
the way to do it is allow everybody to sign
up for Medicare. What we did this in my state
in Vermont, because at the top of the list, even
in the state of Vermont, was universal health care for me.
So my second year we put in get rid of
all these pre existing conditions. You can't charge anybody more
(16:54):
than above what you charge your least expensive patient. And
we had a huge Medicaid expand thanks to Bill Clinton,
so that every child in my state for two generations
has grown up with health insurance. Everybody under eighteen is
eligible for Medicaid essentially, or unless they're over poverty. You
can do that as a state. What you can't do
is say, here, what's going to do a single payer?
(17:15):
Maybe single payer is the right thing to do, but
the change is too fast. If Jolly Verman hadn't changed
his vote under Obamacare and gotten rid of the ability
to sign up for Medicare, the so called public option,
I think three quoters of the people in this country
would be on Medicare right now, because Medicare is a
much better program than the health insurance companies are the
people that are opposed to universal health care. Is through
(17:37):
any argument that they make that make sense to you. No, none,
I'm not. Look, you can be opposed to government run healthcare,
that's a reasonable argument. I don't happen to think. I mean,
I think Medicare does a better job the insurance companies do.
But to say that you shouldn't have universal healthcare, that's
the argument of people who have what they need and
don't give a damn about anybody else. And I have
no patience for that. I'm always curious if the COVID
(17:58):
has proven anything. It's is how linked we are, you know, biologically.
Why don't they recognize that it's in their interests as
well for other people to be covered. You know something,
most people are not opposed to universal healthcare, including most
Trump voters. The problem is what the Republicans do is
basically when on the worst instincts of people, they catered racism, homophobia.
(18:20):
What they sell is hate and that overcomes a lot
of things. Uh, if you pull most Americans, they would
really like a universal healthcare program, and that includes most
of the Trump voters. You know, there's a guy from
Georgia who is married to one of my favorite students,
And we were talking one day and he says, you know,
do you like Trump voters? And I had to think
(18:40):
about it, and I said yes, because most of them
used to vote for me. These are working people. These
are not I mean, yes, you get the lunatics that
are in the paper all the time. These are not
horrible people. These are people who are working people and
they and Trump brings out the worst in them, but
they're most of them are hard working people that don't
have a lot of money. They understand that universal healthcare
program would be helpful. So what do the Republicans do.
(19:03):
They crank up homophobia, they crank up racism, They invent
all these these issues that are tangential, and they get
them so emotionally invested. Fear is what's driving them. Look,
if you're a white guy in rural America and you
lose your job when you're fifty years old, there's a
pretty good chance you're never going to get another one. Now,
black and brown people know that feeling very well. White
(19:24):
folks have never felt that before. So they're scared to death.
And that's what the Republicans sell, is fear and hate.
And I'm done with the Republicans. I think they're done
as a party too. I don't think you can survive.
Either they're not going to survive or the country is
not going to survive. You can't self fear and hate
and have that be a leadership trait in a great country.
(19:45):
When you ran for president, you had your fifty state strategy. Correct, Yes,
I did, but at the fifty it wasn't called that
until I became chairman of the Democratic Party. And what
do you think what worked for Obama? Because Obama basically
employed that, correct? Yeah, what worked for Obama is he
took a lot of stuff. Look, I don't take credit
for all the great stuff we did in my campaign.
The truth is we had no money. We had a
(20:06):
ton of we had a very powerful message, and we
had all the twenty three year olds in the country
were for us, and they invented all this stuff. I
had no idea what we were doing or what I
was doing. As it turned out, well, it was the
small donations, and it was it was the organization, it
was meet up, it was all these things on the net.
I mean, they were the kids that worked in my
campaign was their first campaign and They were incredible. They
(20:29):
revolutionized campaigning. When I took over the Democratic Party after
I didn't win the nomination, I hired them. They had
started as company called Blue State Digital, and because we
had to bring the whole party up to snuff in
terms of social media and all that stuff. And then
Obama hired them away from me in two thousand six.
So Obama had two things. Besides being an incredibly charismatic candidate,
(20:51):
which he was, he had two other things going. For one,
this had been tried for a campaign cycle and it
was successful, and the stuff that wasn't successful and went
fell by the wayside. And too, he had David Pluff.
Obama himself is incredibly personally disciplined, and so is Pluff.
So all of a sudden you have all these kids
who had no discipline at all, because I didn't was
(21:12):
not terribly discipline, and trip he certainly wasn't um. And
all of a sudden, these kids now have to report
to somebody who's maybe a little old school, but who
has sees the big picture, which is Pluff. I truly
believe that pluf knew where every single Obama voter in
the country wasn't fantasy figured out with these kids, how
to get them all out And this is of course
a happy ending to this after the Obama campaign that
(21:33):
these kids sold Blue State Digital for a hundred million dollars.
Convenient good for them. When you decide to run, I mean,
I'm always curious about people who run for these state
wide offices. You know, something big like governor or senator
or the presidency office? Is the is the big brass
ring when you run for that? Um, does someone tell
(21:54):
you you're ready or did you tell yourself you were ready?
Or both? I'll tell you exactly how I knew. I
had been in the governorship longer than anybody else in
the state, and I'd serve a long time. And We've
done some pretty extraordinary things. Universal healthcare, we did the
equivalent of pre K with something called success by six
or zero to three kids, and dropped child abused down dramatically.
(22:14):
And the most controversial thing I did was signed the
first marriage equality build in the country. We had to
call it civil unions. In no way I could have
gotten a marriage a bill that said marriage out of
the House, but we did it, and it essentially was marriage.
And I had to wear a bulletproof vest for my
last campaign, and I had to run in that campaign
because if I hadn't uh and quit after we passed it,
then that was essentially became a referendum on civil unions,
(22:37):
which you know, I didn't want to lose that and
I didn't I wanted by D twenty three votes. So
I was done. There was no way I was getting
reelected to anything. And I just thought what next? And
we had two senators that have been there for a
long time and I wasn't. I didn't really want to
be in the Senate anyway, So what else is there? Politics?
And that's what I did. And when you decided to
run and you didn't win the nomination, whose idea was it?
(23:00):
You to run the d n C. That was my
idea and everybody else hated it. I didn't get a
single vote from inside the Beltway. My vote, my listener
was a classic grassrooms. I was elected by the states,
And why do you think that is? Why did they
vote for you? And the insiders wouldn't because they were
fed up with the inside the Beltway people. Because the
inside the Beltway people don't know anything about campaigns. Look
at them. They all end up running campaigns after that
(23:22):
they were successful fifteen years before, and they're selling all
this crap that was good fifteen years ago and elected
somebody and it's no good anymore. And they're always getting
making a ton of money. When I got to the
d n C, there was no data platform, not because
Terry McCulloch was an idiot, because he actually left me
with the surplus, which is unheard of after a presidential campaign,
just because the Washington consultants sold him something was totally inadequate.
(23:43):
So I basically ran against the establishment, which I had
been doing in my presidential campaign, and it was very successful.
I didn't get any votes from inside the Beltway, and
three quarters of the members are from the States, and
that's where I got my votes. And then the last campaign,
I ran a for profit corporation called the Democratic Data Exchange.
And the reason I was asked I don't know anything
about data. The reason I was asked to run it
(24:06):
is because I could get along with both the insiders
and the outsiders. After after the fifties, States Strategy gave
us back the presidency, the Senate in the House, which
none of which we possessed. When I took over as chairman,
and we had nothing, and by two thousand six we'd
had the House in the Senate, and by two thousand
eight we had Obama's president and had to trifecta. Was
this something you thought was going to happen when Obama
(24:26):
want did you expect you we get invited to commit
to that administration? I was hoping I would. What job
would you want? Probably h h s. I'd had a
few words with a person who turned out to be
the chief and staff, and I had a few words
with Obama too, you know, like, I don't not famous
for hiding my opinions, and I'm not to go along
to get along guy. I'm a guy who says what
they think, and I think, you know, we ought to
(24:47):
do what we can. It's not that I'm not a
team player. I am, but I'm not a team player
to the extent that you have to lie to be
a team player. And I don't play Washington games. And
this is the same true with Biden. Do you think
if you were invited to come and enjoined Biden's administration anyway,
would you consider that? Well? I don't. I won't be invited,
and I don't feel bad about it. Um, I really
truly think that it's time for a lot of other
(25:08):
new people to come in, and Biden hasn't done all
of that, but he's done some of it. Uh. He
has a very diverse cabinet, which I think is absolutely critical.
I mean, I am so pleased to see Janet Yellen
as the head of the Treasury Department. I'm thrilled to
see Gena McCarthy, who's been overlooked for a long time,
going to be his chief climate change person. She really
knows what she's doing. Tina Flanois is going to be
(25:30):
Kamala Harris's chief of staff. She is a real find. So,
I mean, he's got some really good people who are
about to take over for him, and I think that's great.
Look again, sure it would be fun job to have.
I really think somebody's who's forty two should have that job,
not somebody who's seventy two. So when two thousand sixteen comes,
Trump wins, here you are. You ran for president, you
(25:53):
ran the d n C. You've had a successful political career.
What happened to Hillary Clinton in two thousand sixteen, Hillary
actually was incredibly helpful, So you have to know a
little bit. What about what I've been doing relatively quietly.
So there was a woman named Judith McHale who used
to run the Discovery Channel for fourteen years, and another
woman who's a big organizer in Silicon Valley named Amy
(26:16):
Raw and Judith is very close to Hillary. She worked
for her at the State Department. And we came up
with this notion that instead of funding the traditional d
n C, we ought to look at what this young
generation is doing. And what the young generation is doing
will not come as a surprise to you. They all
have groups that does certain things. Some of them train people,
some of them recruit members of minority communities to run
(26:39):
for office, some of them only recruit local officials. All
these things need to be done by the d n C.
But this is a generation that doesn't trust institutions, so
they start their own. Now there's some problems with this generation.
One of them is I call it cooperation without commitment.
So if they if they have a startup and they disagree,
instead of working it out, they go each start their
own start up and say nice to work with you, etcetera, etcetera.
(27:02):
But what we did was to vet them. Judith would
vet them from a business point of view, I'd vote
to vet them from a political point of view, because
there's zillions of these institutions and try to pick best
in class, who could do tech best, who could do
local officials best, who did Congress best? So we picked
eleven institutions. One collective pack taught African Americans how to
(27:23):
raise money essentially from white people, which were was very
hard for them to do. Another one was Run for Something,
recruited young people to run, especially for local offices, often
members of minority and communities and women, not exclusively. Uh.
There was a training organization based in Chicago, Vote Latino.
So there were eleven organizations that we picked that circumscribed
(27:46):
the functions of the Democratic Committee, and Hillary helped us
raise the money and of course raised most of it
from her funders, who had no understanding what we were doing,
but they loved Hillary, and we raised a hell of
a lot of money. She raised a hell of a
lot of money, and it went to Indivisible and Swing
Left and all these really good organizations. And that's what
(28:06):
Hillary did for two years, and then the second two
years I spent doing Democratic Data Exchange, and she spent
raising money for both these organizations and some other ones.
So it's this is not meant to supplant the d
n C. This is meant to do things for the
d n C that they can no longer do because
the a new generation has come forth and does everything
(28:28):
differently in politics. Basically, it took the stuff that started
my campaign, started in Hillary's campaign in two thousand sixteen,
some of it, and is bringing it into the twenty
one century and then trying to get the d n
C used to working with all these groups, which they
have to a pretty good extent as allowed by what's
left of campaign finance reform. Do you think she ran
(28:48):
a good campaign in two thousand and sixteen. No, I
don't think she ran a particularly good campaign, but she
did a hell of a lot for people since that
time to help Biden win and and to reconstitute the
Democratic Party. Do you think that the electoral college should
be eliminated? Yes, playing and simple yes. And I also
think we ought to have ranked choice voting do Yeah.
(29:10):
We had in Burlington for a while until one of
the Republican candidates claimed that his rival got in because
of that, and the rival turned out to be crooked.
It was a progressive at the time, and so we
got took it off the ballot, We're probably gonna put
it on now. But I'll tell you why. It does
two things. First of all, you don't have to have
a runoff. You get people again. You give people choices.
(29:31):
I felt good about the mayor's race that I voted
in in Burlington because my fourth choice one, but I
had voted for that person. The other thing, if it's
ranked choice voting, let's just say you and I are running.
I need your second place choices. So I'm not gonna
spend a lot of money running around telling everybody what
a jerk you are, because if I do all, your
(29:51):
second place people are gonna put me last, or your
joy people are gonna last. It's not perfect, but you
run much more civilized campaign and decent campaigns. If you
have ranked choice voting, then you do in this winner
take all minority, you know you can win with thirty
six per cent or of the vote. So those are
the two big reforms I think we need is ranked
(30:13):
choice voting and getting rid of the electoral college. What
do you think, Well, depends how you do it. There's
a bill called National Popular Vote, which has passed in
states controlling about nine votes. If they get to to seventy,
the electoral college is essentially gone unless the Court Supreme Court,
which of course is a function essentially offshoot of the
Republican Party these days. What it does Vermont's passed it,
(30:34):
New York's past It is say, if somebody wins the
popular vote in the country, that's where your electoral votes go.
And it takes place when enough states to add to
to seventy have passed this ballot. Former chair of the
Democratic National Committee, Howard Deem. If you're enjoying this conversation,
(30:56):
be sure to subscribe to Here's the Thing on the
I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts. When we come back, I talked to Howard
Dean about one of the most urgent issues for the
future of our democracy, campaign finance reform. After the break,
(31:26):
I'm Alec Baldwin and this is here is the Thing.
My guest today is Howard Dean. Given the deep political
divisions in this country, I wanted to know what Dean
thinks about the struggle Republicans will face regarding the future
of their party after Donald Trump. There's a lot of
parently decent people who have been voting Republican for a
(31:47):
long time who couldn't bring themselves to vote for Trump.
I mean, there are still a lot of decent Republicans.
The problem is none of them are in the Senate,
with the possible exception of Mitt Romney. There are people
I like in the Republican Party the Senate um, but
I don't respect them because I don't think they have
a spine between them. I'd like Bob Corker a lot
and Trump deep six Tim and that's why they're so
(32:07):
terrified the Republican Party. This happens to all politicians, and
the Democrats are not exempt from this. They care more
about their job than they do about the country, and
that's a big problem. You shouldn't be in. You know.
I'm actually for going back to the way the original
Congress was, which is the way the legislature is in Vermontest.
This is not a full time job. You better have
another employment. And I'm for term limits in Congress. Not
(32:31):
because I like term limits, but because when you have
the degree of corruption that is going on in the
Republican Party, although I'm sure it's going on in the
in the Democratic Party in the past, you know, we're
not immune from this kind of stuff, then it's time
to try to fix that corruption. The corruption is unbelievable,
partly because of Citizens United, which is the most dangerous
decision that was made since dread Scott. The Supreme Court
(32:53):
has totally corrupted billions of dollars of dark money going
to the Federalist Society, who then serves up the highest
scentage of people rated unqualified by the American Bar Association
ever to be seated in the courts. This country is
in a lot more trouble than just Donald Trump. And
we've created this mess ourselves. Yes, I believe the Republicans
are more responsible for the than the Democrats are. But
(33:15):
the Democrats need to get their act together. And we
need desperately needed generational change. Uh. And we need less politics.
And the way I think you get less politics is
don't make this a full time job. You know, pay
people decently, but you know you've gotta have another job.
I mean, campaign finance reform has been my number one issue.
(33:36):
And it's what's if you're a proponent of campaign finance reform,
if you're sworn to that cause, it's a it's a
lonely task because it's the least sexy issue you could
possibly be working on, right, but it's the most critical
one for the country. It's the lynch pin of all
the problems of this country. Yep. It sure is. When
you reference term limits and someone said to me, well,
I mean always that conversation, people would say, well, elections
(34:00):
themselves are termaments. I said, no, no, no no, no, fair
elections are like term limits. I said, right now, incumbency
is such a daunting power. We need term limits because
campaigns are not fair, because we don't have And I
was working with people on the nine Sunday's program and
Marvin Calb or his brother Bernard Calb at the Shorenstein
School at Harvard and then talking about having not ceilings
(34:21):
of spending, but floors. So if you're in a statewide
race and media saturation for that state for senate governor,
we exempt lieutenant governor because that's more ceremonial. In a
lot of states, we exempt controller and a g. But
you see the two senate races. In the gubernatorial race,
what is media saturation in that state? If it's thirty
million dollars for you to penetrate the entire media platform,
(34:42):
and you you gotta make sure, each candidate, there's thirty
million dollars. Now you could oppose me and you could
spend eighty. You could spend what Bloomberg, you could spend
a hundred. But as long as I have thirty, I
have a base of what equal saturation were good to go.
I completely believe in public financing of campaigns completely. Well,
you know what, solar are A lot of voters this
is are seing in Arizona. They actually passed this by
(35:02):
Arizona was a pretty conservative state. This is the first
time it went to going to Democratic for quite a while.
I think since Bill Clinton and two so Arizona they
had they passed public finance and campaigns by referendum. They
had two governors, both of whom I think served two terms.
I'm not sure, Janet Apolitano and the Republican governor I
forgot which one it was who won under that system.
(35:23):
And the Chamber of Commerce and the labor unions got
together and tried to overthrow it because these are two
big influence groups, one from each side, and they spent
a lot of money on a referendum to get rid
of it, and they lost. Because the public likes public financing,
because it gets the corruption out of politics. And there
was a complicated system because of the free speech component
as you described, So you can actually spend more, but
(35:45):
everybody has a minimum amount that they can get. And
it worked fine until John Roberts came along and then
Citizens United passed and then that was thrown out. Well,
like they said, the problem is if if someone can
spend an unlimited amount of money to run for office
of actions speech, the line was then the person with
the most cash speaks the loudest. And that's the problem
(36:05):
of this country is that the things that Citizen United
are protecting are you know, rich mail oriented, Christian oriented,
Wall Street oriented. Everything that happens in this country. Now,
to me, that significant is about stimulating the Tao. It
doesn't get past and washing unless it stimulates the Tao.
And that's that's the problem. Well, yeah, I mean that's true.
The idea that corporations are people and have the same
(36:28):
free speech rights, this is graceful, and this is put
on by supposedly serious jurists. And there who do you
think gives money to the federalist society? Rich people who
who are really conservative and big corporations and they don't
have to declare where the money is coming from. That
is the classic Jane Mayer definition of dark money. So,
you know capitalism, which I happen to believe in because
(36:51):
I think it fits our sort of species well, that
it helps to be greedy, which we are as a species,
and it helps us to be altruistic. But capitalism is
in trouble, not because it's a terrible system, is because
it's at the extreme end of where it should be.
We need better regulations so that everybody can benefit. It
doesn't matter what system you have, whether socialism or communism
(37:11):
or capitalism. Every system fails if you don't have a moderate,
reasonable place in the middle where it can work. And
capitalism is not there now. John Roberts bears much of
the responsibility for that. Well, we need capitalism with regulations.
We need capitalism with some teeth from regulatory teeth. You're right,
people need to pay more tax as, corporations need to
pay more taxes. But we want people to be competitive.
(37:34):
It's the political aspect of the fact that money is
speech that kills this. Because as long as my vote
was just as important as the chairman of General Motors,
that was great. But the truth is the chairman of
General Motors can write a million dollar check to some
dark money organization and my vote doesn't make any difference
if you do that. And that's where we are today,
and we can't be there if we want to survive
as a country. We may not. There's no guarantee that
(37:56):
America survives or any other country survives. It's to us,
and we're gonna have to be much more serious about
how seriously we take government. That that, to me is
the most important lesson of the Trump administration was how
close we came to this country actually perishing, which now
we're not done yet. Look, Trump is the you know,
the worst of the worst and all this stuff, but
the hard work has not been done, and it wasn't
(38:17):
done by the Democrats either, and we had a chance
to do it and we didn't do it. So, yes,
Trump is a despicable person. I think he's the symptom,
not the cause. It's assumed that you know, Biden is
up there, he's older, and he's about to begin a
four year term in one of the most grueling jobs
known to man, and whether he is willing, whether he's
(38:38):
able to seek a second term after that, is to
be revealed. But at the same time, he has a
young woman who is the vice president elect, and I'm wondering,
when you're in that position and there's as much of
a chance with him as anyone, that he won't seek
a second term. He might not be willing to do
that when he's eighty two years old four years from now.
Do you think that everybody is assiduously grooming her to
(39:00):
run for that job. I'm here. I'm sure she's insiduously
grooming herself. But that doesn't look I mean, that's not
a guarantee of anything. I guarantee you that if Joe
doesn't run for a second term, there'll be a primary,
and Kamala Harris will have the advantage in that primary.
Everybody will know who she is, but people are gonna
come after her. But look, the second term of a
(39:22):
president is a referendum on the president. That's why Biden
was such a great candidate this time, because it was
pretty non controversial and this was all about Trump, and
if it was gonna be all about Trump, we were
gonna win. So the second term for Joe Biden will
be all about Joe. If he chooses not to win,
then win, then Kamala will bear the burden and the
credit for whatever they do. Well. I'm sure there'll be
(39:44):
a primary if Biden chooses not to run, and I
think if Biden is healthy, he'll run. Your intelligence and
the breadth of your career and all the many different
areas you know about. I'm sorry that you're not an
American political life right now, but you're probably having a
great time right Um, and myself. If you have to quarantine,
Vermont is a good place to do it. The people
are great, and we're great to each other, and it's
(40:06):
a real community. Howard Dean and I talked in mid December,
but given the unrest before the inauguration, I wanted to
call him to get an update. So, of course, what
happened recently in the Capitol. What was your first reaction
when you saw all that going on? It was pretty
much discussed and horror. Um, And actually my reaction is
(40:27):
stronger today than it was when I saw it because
of the loss of life. I mean, these people committed murder.
These are enemies of the United States. I think the
talk of unity from the Republicans is just an attempt
to avoid responsibility. I'm all for unifying the country. But
condition is the first act of unity, and so I'd
like to see a little less posturing and bs and
(40:50):
a little more seriousness about what's good for the country. Otherwise, Um,
you know, I am convinced that we can put down
this insurrection if we need to, and I'm hoping it
will come to that. But if it does, that's what
we have to do. Do you think that this is
just a preluded more of this to come in state
houses and so forth. Here's the only way to get
rid of this. People have said, well, you have to
(41:11):
improve the conditions in rural America. That's true, but you
can improve what with the New York Times ridiculously called
racial conservatism. I mean, in other words, racism, which for
some reason the New York Times didn't want to put
in the paper. This is gonna go away with cognitive dissonance.
That is, the people who do these things are gonna
lose their jobs if they continue to behave like this.
(41:33):
Some of them are gonna lose their lives because we're
not having this again, and this next time it will
be The National Guard is a much better trained than
the Capitol Police, and eventually this is gonna go away. This,
this embracement of conspiracy theorist is not because people are
stupid or un educated. It's because they have to rearrange
the facts of life because they feel like they're not
doing well. Okay, we can help them do better, but
(41:56):
first they have to rearrange the facts of life, because
you can't do well if you have an alternative universe
that doesn't match the facts of life. We have more
and more people who were saying I need the government
to help me, and now we are trillions of dollars
more in debt from writing checks to people to help
them survive the COVID. Do you think we get to
(42:17):
a point where we can't afford it anymore, We're really
going to be in serious economic and financial trouble. Well,
we would be in serious or economic financial trouble if
we weren't putting out all that money. I mean, you know,
the unemployment rate among women is going up seventy that's shocking,
just shocking. Um. So this is a true economic danger.
(42:38):
The problem is we had the most incompetent, corrupt president
in the history of the United States at the helm
when all has happened. Um, So, we can dig our
way out of this. From an economic point of view,
it's going to take some time. I think we can
do that. Our economic system is still stronger than anybody
else's in the world. Uh. The concern that I have
is how do you tamp down this very small minority
(42:59):
of crackpots who are willing to do whatever it takes.
What's the situation in that regard in Vermont? Um, it
was so far. You know, Vermont is not this kind
of a place. This is a real community where we
actually care about each other and respect each other. The
Republican governor here called for Trump to leave office after
this happened. So, I mean, we were Vermonter's first and
(43:21):
Republicans and Democrats second. But the situation is and but
there've always been people like this. I remember when I
did civil unions for the first time in the history
of the country, gay people could essentially get married. And
I had some some of that. I mean, I had
fifty year old ladies using the F bomb on me
when I was campaigning and stuff. Um, but uh, that's
(43:41):
a minority of people, and they're kept in check because
the state doesn't put up with it. We're polite, we
don't shame them. We're not confrontational, but they are confining
themselves to the edges of society. By the entire class,
including the Republican Party in Vermont, there are very few
people in the Publican Party in Vermont that are actually
(44:02):
elected that behave like the majority of elected representatives to
do at the federal level. Well, in my mind, the
COVID and the political upheaval in the country mirror one another.
Their problems we've never faced before in this country. We've
never I shouldn't say we've never faced this kind of
political upheaval before, but but I think specifically to where
we are now, We've never seen a bunch of hoodlums
(44:24):
crash the gates of the and the doors of the
of the Capitol building and vandalized the Capitol Building. That's
something I never thought i'd see in my lifetime. But
if you're Biden and you're the president, now, what's the
line you have to walk between demanding law enforcement, demanding
people don't do those kinds of things again, but not
be perceived of someone who you're ganging up and you're
(44:46):
piling up on the extreme right. Okay, so what Biden
has to do is speak to the whole country minus
the extreme right. You can't reason with these people. Their
treason is they're really not Americans. So that's not our problem.
Our problem is that is the seventy million people that
voted for Trump that aren't crazy. There's plenty of them.
I don't think most Trump supporters think this is okay,
(45:09):
and so I mean the ones in Congress appear to,
and that's mostly because they completely lack any intestinal fortitude whatsoever.
But I think what Biden needs to do is speak
to all of us at the same time, not carry
on about law and order, but be really clear that
when this kind of stuff happens, the consequences are going
to be enormous. Enormous. These people are gonna get this
(45:29):
is already happening. These people are gonna lose their jobs,
and if they are willing to put other people's lives
at risk, they're likely to lose their own lives. As
long as we're speaking to the majority of Americans who
are I think fundamentally decent people, we can suppress the
crazy people who are armed and mean other people harm.
And the last thing I want to say is we
cannot what we must not do under any circumstances is
(45:51):
concede other people's rights in order to bring order. We
are not going backwards on civil rights. We have made
huge gains over the summer. Uh's who the demonstrations, the
Black Lives Matter, and I think the consciousness in the
white community about what the problems are. That's where a
lot of this is is a lot of the white
community doesn't want to face what we really need to
(46:11):
face in order to try to get rid of some
of this injustice. But most people will want to do that.
I think most people in their hearts are good people.
We have to have a president that's willing to talk
to those people and be really tough on the people
that want don't want to play ball. Many many thanks
to you, sir, and thanks for taking my call. My
great pleasure. Talk soon. Former Vermont governor and former d
(46:35):
n C chair Howard Dean. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the
thing is brought to you by my Heart Radio. We're
produced by Kathleen Russo and Carrie Donohue. Our editor is
Zach McNeese and our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our theme
song is by Miles Davis. Didn't pay Me in US
(47:03):
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