i'm to introduce at today's brunch. the author robert kuttner. he's a award winning and bestselling author who covers

the intersection of economics politics and social justice. you've seen his writings everywhere from the new york times, new york book review to the atlantic harper's new yorker, dissent, foreign affairs, columbia journalism review, political science quarterly, and, of course, the harvard business review. bob is co-founder and coeditor of the american prospect magazine, co-founder of the economic policy institute, which, believe me, a major, major player in the economics scene in washington. he currently serves on their board as a long time columnist for business week and the boston globe. he's academic post at boston university, harvard, among other institutions. he currently teaches at brandeis university. bob was also a staff writer and a columnist for the washington

post. chief investigator for the senate banking committee. executive director of president carter's national commission on neighborhoods. and economics editor of the new republic. he's won numerous prestigious awards, journalism awards as well. the paul hoffman award of the united nations development program for his lifetime on economic efficiency as well as social justice. he's educated at oberlin college, london school of economics and university of california at berkeley. he's also the author of 14 books, including the 28 new york times bestseller obama's challenge america's crisis and the power of transform primitive presidency. bob is here today because has written a incredibly interesting and timely book and the is going big. fdr his legacy biden's new deal

and the struggle to save democracy. in this book, bob draws a line through a line from fdr to joe biden and describes the possibilities and perils facing president biden as he attempted to go big during his first term. i'm i'm looking forward intently to this conversation here at bob thinks about the prospects of going big and bold if there is a second biden term and what the social agenda be and that with the political climate at this moment our history and also i'm interested in bob's comments and on the topic of day and that is what is the future our democracy. where are we going? how's movie going to end after the november? so please, please join me in a

warm community action welcome for robert kuttner. so bob, i want to start off by asking you really sort of a softball question to start this, but why did you write. going big? was it with frustrations with the democratic? was it fear of what donald trump or republicans might do if, particularly a party led by donald trump to the country? or was it out of a sense optimism that? the timing was right to do this? well, thank you david and thank you for having me. and thanks, everybody, for coming in. looking at my book. i think it was one part hope and one part fear. and the opening line of the book suggests that this will either be a pivot forward to something like the new deal or it will be

a heartbreaking interregnum. between two bouts of something very close american fascism. and we we are in it. we will know which it is come november. i think the other reason i wrote the book and i started writing this in. 2021 was out of a sense, joe biden of, all people was starting to lead the democratic back to something that. the democratic party had lost, which was a concern for the well-being of ordinary working people. and a lot of the book is how three democratic presidents begin with a carter and then clinton and then obama really set the stage for donald trump by being very liberal on social issues. but by forgetting, as james

carville famously posted a note it's the economy, stupid. and if you deprive ordinary of their dreams, then sooner or later you're going to get someone like donald trump, where the anger and frustration and, the exasperation and the that elites are looking down on you opens the door to a kind of racist that in some ways is irrational, but it can't be written off because it reflects the real feelings of ordinary people. and i, in 2021, i was astonished that joe biden of all people, given his history as a very mainstream democrat, was sounding more like fdr. and i argue that this was actually a good thing that the council that democrats needed to recoup by moving to the center

was bad advice economically it was bad advice politically was not going to help and yet here's biden, who is the most improbable messenger of that pivot. he's almost 80 years old. as i wrote you of had the soul of elizabeth warren in the persona of joe biden. and that didn't quite compute. and yet going big was right thing to do. and we can talk in more detail about why more people have not appreciated the fact that the economy is in good shape, that this is to biden's credit. i have some answers to that. i'll save that for the conversation. back and forth. but i think my point if if progressive vision is ever going to take the play away from the kind of resentful, angry, reactionary politics that breeds trumpism, it's going to have to

do something for ordinary people again. and the american dream has lost. my generation, if you didn't have rich parents, had a very good shot at. the american dream college was basically free. you could afford to buy a home you could get a job that was a gig that had a good career. you could a pension you could have affordable health and health system was not impenetrable. and you look at the world from the point view of somebody who's 25 years old, who doesn't have rich parents or the point of view of who's 40 years old, who is in a declining area of the country or a declining sector of the economy. the price of realizing that dream are getting further and further away. and unless we restore it, which i think biden is really trying do, you're going to have more and angry reaction.

the so what's been the response from party leaders to your book. well, i think initially when the book came. in 2022 and i wrote that the democrats are not going to get clobbered in the 22 midterm for a variety reasons that i can talk about. people were very skeptical ordinarily when you get elected in the first midterm, your party loses control of congress. well, biden hung on the senate. he almost hung on to the house, only lost a few seats in the house. and and i think a lot of commentators felt that the democrats really needed to repair to the center because you needed manchin in cinema and maybe you could peel a few republicans. and said no democrats really

needed to be more than more like fdr. and the fact that biden did this in his first two years with working majority i think of five or six votes in the house one or two votes on a good day in the senate. he passed all this great stuff was kind of a miracle. and i think i feel rather vindicated because somehow biden, as witnessed in the state of the union address and, witnessed in his that was just released on on monday is trying to go even. and my friend stan greenberg the pollster has advised biden don't don't brag about what you've done. there's a kind of cognitive dissonance if people feel that their lives have not fundamentally changed for the better and that yeah, inflation down, but prices are still higher than they were years ago. and technical.

as a matter of economic statistics wages are up, but there may be up 1%. and i don't have any shot at buying a house than i did four years ago. if you talk about how great things are you're, you're going to challenge people's lived experience. but you say to them, give me a democratic congress, reelect me. these the things i'm going to do in my second term. that's more plausible. and i that's what biden did in the state of the union. i think that's what he did in his budget. and and and more and more power to him. and, of course, he finally got energized. this whole picture of sleepy joe that trump has got to town with. biden was on fire and god we need to see more of that. the you joe joe biden in the senate. you know i knew biden in the senate. i certainly observed as vice president. did you expect the joe biden

that went big to go big? no. and part of this book tries to explain why he went big. and i think there are three reasons. and the analogy with roosevelt is very interesting in this regard. so the first reason was that that he inherited a crisis the same way that roosevelt inherited a crisis. you may recall that campaigned on a balanced budget. he attacked herbert hoover from the right. hoover was spending much money and it wasn't until roosevelt took office and realized desperate the national situation was that roosevelt started governing on the need for massive public outlay and some deficit spending. and i think biden, who'd been a, you know, a fairly conventional moderately liberal democrat all of his career obama's vice president, takes office at a

moment when the covid crisis and the covid recession are requiring very substantial outlay. and so he pivots. he uses the moment he rises to the occasion. but there are two other reasons. one is that if you recall, how got the nominee asian biden's campaign was dead in the water. he he was going nowhere. he was written off. i think if if sanders and warren had not both been the race, one of them might well have been the nominee. but then he wins the south carolina primary. he wins it big. he goes on to run the table on super tuesday. and warren, in particular, follows her campaign early, becomes all in for biden and exchanges loyalty for. and a lot of warren's ideas are

really i'm sorry a lot of biden's ideas are really warren's ideas. a lot of biden's key personnel are warren people. and so biden really almost inspired of himself becomes, the standard bearer of the warren wing of of the democratic party. i think the third reason is reality. you had three democratic presidents. really moving more towards the center, embracing what some people call neoliberalism. let's deregulate. let's privatize. let's balance the budget. and by 2016, it became clear that that working. and so think reality had to the left if you will the center of the democratic party had moved to the left. bernie sanders, who was simply taken seriously until 2016, all of a sudden a major player. i think a majority of young

people, the public opinion polls said they had a favorable view of socialism. so i think reality moves to the left, democratic party moves to the left. warren a lot of influence. and then he seizes the moment that he inherits. so biden, of all people, becomes fdr redux. who would have thunk it? well, yeah, who would have thunk it? is right. the you look at the three successive democratic before carter, fdr, truman, lbj. right. they all went big. yeah, in a way they all surprised by their movement to the left. louis roosevelt was first bureau. the budget director quit resigned because of the that roosevelt running. no one would have expected truman from missouri right to

move like he did. and of course, lbj went went big and and shocked a lot of people, the democratic party. so there a realization that going and bold is a strategy successful democratic have been big and they've been bold. so why specifically, why do you think carter started the trend of a abandoning what was a successful formula for the democrat? it's a great question and it's sort of the heart of the book the book. let me say a little bit more about, truman, because it's such interesting history. so, truman, to to the surprise of a lot of people gets gets named named roosevelt's running mate at time when roosevelt has only three months to live and roosevelt is in denial about what poor health he's in and.

henry, who was then vice president, was very left wing and a little flaky and unpopular with the party. and so roosevelt agrees to replace. and then there's a big tug of war about who's going to replace. wallace as the vice president, the compromise candidate is truman. and then the truman. is track to just lose a blowout election in 1948. he loses congress in 1946. and keeps stumbling. there was a line in those years to air is truman and and then in the in summer of of 48 on the advice a couple of strategists truman goes big. he sends up to congress

republican congress a whole new package that he knows is to be defeated in order to the difference between him and the do nothing congress, which he called it. and then he goes on the road he goes on the road twice and he gets he says things like, don't vote for me, vote for yourself. these republicans are all just about wall. they don't give a -- about you. and his rhetoric gets bolder and bolder. bolder. and even though he's got the dixiecrat party on the right, walking out because he supports the civil rights plank at the convention and he's got the left, he's walking out to nominate wallace. he still wins. he wins 303 electoral votes. he wins by by 3 million popular votes. and because truman rediscovers his inner new dealer. and then you have johnson. who decides almost on day one

that his destiny is to redeem the unfree business of roosevelt. and of course, if it weren't for the tragedy of vietnam, which then divides the party and ushers in nixon, and ushers in a whole more conservative era, lbj would have been one of the great us presidents ever and he would have succeeded. so now why carter? and if you if you look back at that era, it's 1974. nixon has resigned in disgrace. jerry ford has become president and and there's a kind of a general revulsion against the corruption of washington and jimmy carter is the ultimate outsider. he's also a much better politician than a lot of people gave him credit. i was the junior man on the national staff of the washington

post. in 1974 when carter declared for the nomination in. 1976. and my editor calls and says, this guy, jimmy carter, i think he's governor of georgia, is having an event at the national press club. will you come in and cover it? now, at that point, carter's name recognition, not not his popularity rating, but people who have ever heard of him is 2%. and i, the only national reporter who even covered the event. that's obscure. carter. but he was a dynamo politician. and his time was unerring. people were in the mood to nominate. and then elect an outsider. so why does carter become the most conservative democratic president. since grover cleveland? and i think the answer is the nature of the times.

first of all, you have this horrible inflation that is the result of the opec oil price increases. and secondly you have carter his advisers telling him that if you want to do something about deregulation, inflation, let's deregulate. let's deregulate airlines and let's deregulate trucking. let's deregulate the health system and let's deregulate the several other sectors of the economy. and that will engender a competition. so the whole new deal schema of regulation gets tossed out the window on theory that competition is going to be good for restraining prices. well, of course what happens is you get recounts, creation of powerful industries without regulation. also, carter blames unions for inflation.

unions too much power. they put up wages. that in turn puts up prices. so carter's not terribly friendly to unions and. then finally, you have supply side economists saying that, well, the way to re-energize the is to cut taxes on capital and the first supply side tax is not reagan. it's in 1978. so carter believes that you got to move to the center and also carter very unfortunately appoints paul volcker to be head of the fed and volcker decides that the way we're going to break the back of inflation is to put interest rates up to 20%. and we all know how that worked out. so, yeah, it did break the back of but at the cost of a terrible recession. and then reagan roaring in and reagan does neo big time.

so unfortunately the carter repositioned democratic party as a kind of center, a center right party. privatization, tax cutting, anti-union and the. 1980 election. is it total blowout? really the new deal long shadow of the new deal continues right through the seventies. nixon did not try to repeal the new deal. eisenhower certainly did not try to repeal the new deal. eisenhower has a democratic senate for six out of eight years. final in 1980, democrats, the senate and a whole of senate progressives gets blown. republicans take the senate and this really is the beginning of, the conservative era. the both roosevelt, truman, johnson had large majorities of

their party in congress. the great 89th is very famous in terms of did so did carter. yeah and and yet. yeah. carter in 76 did have huge worry at 80. he was fair for ronald reagan to say are you better off today than you were four years ago? which no one in their right mind would say, oh, yeah i really am. -20% interest rates. so had big margins, which we have divided today. right. narrow margins likely to continue. i don't i don't see one party having a blowout election coming up. and so the first element going big is you're able to get it through congress. second element going on is that the public really wants the parties to work together. they want bipartisanship. bipartisanship is in evaporating

quantity here in d.c. how do you square them? the ability go big with the narrow margins, party unity. there's not many competitive house seats and senate seats anymore. and the public expecting the parties are going to work on together on whatever future agenda emerges emerges. tough questions. sorry about that. well, let's let's go back to biden's first two years. so biden is basically running on fumes. he's got no republicans who are going to cross over and support him. he's got, as i said before, six or seven in the house, one or two in the senate. yet he decides to go big. and so almost definition, he has to go big as a partizan democrat. now, what's interesting that in the in the transitional. the first phase of covid from

trump to biden, the first big piece relief legislation, that's passed under trump and that's passed with bipartisan. right. and then biden pivots off of that and gets congress to pass two more big pieces. it adds up to a total, almost $5 trillion. so even though there's not much bipartisan, there's a general recognition that there's a very serious recession and that if you don't pass relief measures, the recession is going to turn into a depression. so even though there's almost no bipartisanship and even less today, biden manages to cobble together majorities to pass this important legislation. and i think even if you as a pollster asked people, would you like the parties to work

together, people will say, yes, of course. it's of those civics book questions. anybody who reads the newspaper or watches television or looks at social media knows that the republicans are in one corner. they're totally to trump the are in a very different place. one of the things that drives me crazy about press coverage of this is the attribution of a false kind of symmetry. you have the extreme left and the extreme right, and why don't they just get along together? i think what you really have is trump as a kind of neo fascist because he's got so much support from the republican base, totally intimidating traditional republicans who are more like george bush republicans or mitch mcconnell republicans who are pro-business, pro deregulate

nation but don't want to destroy, are willing to ad hoc deals with. the democratic party. so you've got one real extremist party led trump on one end and then you've got kind of american versions of social democrats who are very pro-democracy on, the other side. and to sort of say this all two extremes, that's just wrong. and it's it's damaging. and i think the most recent example, this is the border bill where the senate goes a long way towards meeting the republican demands for much much tougher on the border and they're all set to pass the thing and then says don't biden a victory. and so the whole thing falls apart and it's a tragic of how

intimidated traditional republicans in office are by trump because if you go against trump he'll you you'll get beaten you'll be at odds with the trump electorate. there's a there's a story i quote in the book in 19 in 1953 the great german playwright and ironies of bertolt brecht who was a communist but was sort of a liberal communist, if there is such a thing as living in berlin, east berlin, which at that point, of course, is controlled by the communist and and yet brecht could not resist being satirical. and so some commissar in east berlin puts out a directive saying that the people are insufficiently enthusiastic about the latest party program.

and brecht writes a little poem called the solution to losing the solution. and he says, would it not be more efficient to fire the people and get new one. well you can't do that. and when 35% are the people are 35% of the people are die hard trump supporters. that's just reality. and so the question is what, do you do with that? and my argument is, over the long term, you have to address the pocketbook that have led people to become supporters. i think this true all over the west, all over west. you look at hungary. you look at france. you look turkey in country after country after country. a neo party, an ultra nationalist party is either the

largest party or the second largest party. and in country it actually govern for years. where did that come from? where did that come from in the fifties and sixties, when ordinary people got a fair shake and the income distribution was actually more compressed rather than more unequal? you didn't have any support for ultra right wing parties. so i think it's it's one big part. the that ordinary people feel that the whole system is rigged against them. and then just to add fuel to the fire, it's a resentment against. immigrants. if if you that you're getting a fair in the economy and then on top it you've got all these immigrants coming in you're going to turn the establishment. you're going to turn against who supports immigrants and you're going to feel look down on. there's a wonderful book by, arlie hochschild, sociologist

called strangers in their own land. and a lot of this is about dignity. a lot of this is feeling that people in washington people in new york, people in san francisco look down on on the flyover states as losers. and people don't like that. and so if you have somebody like trump who comes along and in a very authoritarian way reaffirms, the dignity of ordinary people, he's going to get a lot of support. and so i think democrats, progressives mainstream republicans, need to figure out how to do that again. and i think if we can just get through this period and if trump can just be beaten, then i think maga will begin to fragment. there's no obvious successor, trump and my mainstream republicans can come out of

their foxholes and we can get not the kind of bipartisanship we under eisenhower, but a little bit of bipartisanship of the kind that we under obama and move the country back to something a little bit more normal and also start doing something to allow ordinary people to have a shot at realizing american dream again. and it's hope and opportunity that now i would not have picked joe biden to be the amici ory of this vision. god knows i would have picked somebody who's 49 years old and who doesn't occasionally mix up the names of leaders, but i think in terms of senescence and incipient dementia, i you put head to bed with head to.

head with biden in a debate, trump comes across as more demented. huh? clinically so. so i think we can just get through this. we have a shot at restoring something that's both more normal and, more hopeful. and let me just one other issue. i don't know whether you were going to ask this, but i but i have to raise it. biden has got to deal with netanyahu because if anything is going to sink him, that. thank you. you know, it's like the parent who says to a kid, if you do that again, something bad is going to happen. and then the kid does it 11 times again and the parent never delivers and i think the fact we are supporting the annihilation of civilian in gaza with one hand and building a peer with the other hand to get more relief supplies in to compensate for fact that we are underwriting the annihilation of

civilians that that's out of jonathan's swift. that's just completely utterly crazy. and i think netanyahu is so reliant on biden that biden has to go beyond, oh, i'm going to draw a red line to demonstrate some toughness and some firmness and because netanyahu playing biden for a full does damage on several counts it it shows weakness. biden needs show strength. it makes the united states complicit in something that is just inhumane and it deprives israel of legitimacy and credibility in the world. and it hurts biden with with young people, with people of color, with people who muslims. you know, when i was a kid, israel, post-holocaust, it's homeland for the -- and it's run by kibbutz next in progressives.

and it's a great place. and if you were under 40 years old, the israel that you know is in israel that illegally occupying the west and stealing land from arabs that they own in west bank and playing a very game with gaza and, you simply don't have the same residual favorable view of now biden is whatever he is, he's one. biden grew up at time when israel was this great place, and he grew up at a time when, of course, the united states was going to back. but it's reached a point where he can't back israel. right or wrong or it's going to kill his reelection as well as not the right thing to do. well that wasn't the question i was going to ask, but the but foreign policy ought to be a biden. there are 50 countries worldwide

that have some kind of armed going on now and you'd think that that would play into biden's hand. i want to i want to go back on one point though and is on the border bill bill senator lankford did the right thing. yeah and he's getting crucified and and put together the best bill possible and yet it was shot down by by candidate former president donald. and he is paying a heavy price for it now. i think what i've noticed in congress since bill collapsed is that who i had hoped that they're going to stand up, get a little more courage and they're not part of the trump wing have gone deeper into the foxhole. yeah i think this may take as up to six years to get the trump

effect through the political system. what do you think. i think it depends entirely on whether trump is beaten and how badly beaten he's beaten. i think if trump beaten fairly soundly, then i think that influence dissipates. and i think more republicans come out of the foxhole. if if if biden somehow takes back both houses of congress, then it's it's even more. if trump wins and we want to talk about that. we all know what that would mean. but i do think it's such a festering problem that i don't think it'll take six years. and i think we've got now to compromises that have had the support of both parties. first, we had the compromise about ten years ago where have a path to citizenship for people who have been here who've stayed

out of trouble and and the dreamers people who came here when they were very young because were brought here illegally by their parents, they got to be citizens. that was the compromise. and then when the republicans turn. hard right, the republicans say, we're going to we're not going to go for that. secondly, you have the compromise to deal with the short term emergency, which is the fact that people on the border are coming in in numbers that are overwhelming system's capacity to deal with them. and so instead of following the protocol where you go before a magistrate and the magistrate decides whether you have reasonable fear of persecution in which you are allowed into the country. but under carefully supervised circumstances now you just the numbers are so overwhelming that people are paroled into the country the system loses track of them. they go to the big cities.

they make the democratic mayors crazy, they give the republican governors an opportunity to do all kinds of mischief, like putting people on busses, telling them, go to new york, we'll pay for it. so i think there's an urgent need for a solution. the fact that the republicans give the democrats talking points, hey we had a bipartisan deal. you were so beholden to donald trump that you walked away from it. that's a good talking point, but it's not a solution. right. and i think once we get beyond november. i think there will be such a need for a solution. there will be a solution. and biden now is using executive power, ironically, to do some of what trump did to close the border in some circumstances is when there is surges to order that the numbers of people who were just paroled into the country be reduced and

makeshift. it would be so much better if congress legislated a but something has got to be done. yeah. you know going big going bold cost money certainly roosevelt spent money during the great depression. truman spent money postwar war two. lbj spent a lot of money, some in vietnam, but some managed interest. and yet with a $34 trillion national debt, with trillion dollars being added, our national debt every. 100 days. i won't say what biden. biden would describe it, but it is a big deal and it's going to be a continuing concern among both parties. how do you go big? well, i think biden gave us a very good blueprint for that in the budget that he released on

monday. so the budget that he released on monday raises taxes on the top two or 3% of the population and and raises taxes on. it it has about $5 trillion of tax increases only on wealthy people and corporations over the next ten years, $500 billion a year on a on a $20 trillion economy. and that stabilizes the debt. it reduces the deficit and still leaves room for a couple of trillion dollars of spending. this also takes us back to the roosevelt truman johnson era when democrats were not of progressive taxation. right. the conservative democrats who come after that, they with the republicans and supply side tax cuts. and it's not unlike the taxes that biden are proposing are at

can two three levels. they're still well below the levels of taxes under eisenhower. but you just had a more progressive tax system under eisenhower because that was a of the new deal system and think again it's it's another indicator of the democratic party under biden recovering its soul. it's okay to have progressive taxation because if you don't have progressive, then the choice is you either cut domestic spending or you have big deficits. and the deficits. i'm sorry the debt stabilizes around 100% of one year's gdp which is a lot less than it was after world war two. it's still little too high. if you have decent economic growth, it'll come down. and if we can just get the fed to take its foot off the brake and lower interest costs that

helps the federal government. the federal government is a big debtor. and if the federal government is having to pay five or 6% to fund the debt, that's an if. it's only having to pay two or 3% to fund the debt. the federal government, as well as people who want to buy homes, as well as people with credit cards as well as small businesses, they all save money. i think one of biden's great mistakes was to reappoint jay powell chair the fed. i mean, powell, who had been appointed by trump, wall street auditions, be reappointed as a kind of a, hey, i'm a republican. i'm a wall street guy, but i believe in low interest rates and. indeed, during the whole trump period, interest rates were kept very low. well, as soon as covid and as soon as biden stimulated the economy, powell turns around and raises interest rates. a and so, okay inflation's down

somehow you didn't manage to kill growth. we got lucky. take your jam off the brake. so that's something that biden doesn't control directly. but it's another that influences how well the economy is going to do. you know they're not to raise taxes in an election year in congress. we're not going to do anything in an election year. there's a divided congress, correct. but once the calendar turns to january of 2025, they're going to be focusing on 2026. right. number one and two, unless a party wins a blowout, that's probably powell. now is. sorry about that. the i don't know how to turn it off either. the unless one of the parties wins a blowout, it's going to be more of the same. how do you how do you. how do you break this logjam to,

do some of the things that you're talking about that, you know, parties have blurred my mind over. the years i used to always think that democrats as a populist party, party of the little guy. i just there's a lot of closeness with wall street by some republicans are, more populist than i remember them be in terms a little guy in their anger. how do you as all this fit together but? it's so important to unpack what. you just said so yes. democrats used to be economically populist as the party of the little guy. they became more a party of wall street. now, under biden they are more economically populist. again, more power to them. biden does not need a blowout win. he just needs a margin of one or two in the senate and three or four in the house because. with cinema gone and manchin gone, you're going to have even more party. and so unfortunately, if you're

going to have the kind of program that biden has proposed, it's going to have to be democrats, even though in an ideal we'd like it to be bipartisan. and i think the other point i cannot underscore this enough the kind populism it's very unfortunate word because it has opposite meanings almost the kind of populism that trump stands for is not economic populism. it's support for the little guy, quote unquote, in a psychological, in a nationalistic sense. but if you look at what trump actually sponsored that was the part of the trump that was almost indistinguishable from george bush and ronald reagan. it was deregulation, tax cuts, privatized and to what's good for wall street it was you know steve an ocean it was.

jay powell it was a kind of weird pact of wall republicanism and populist rhetoric but the rhetoric was national list. it was racist. it was authoritarian it wasn't populist in the economic sense of how do i help people buy a house or how do i help people get a decent job? trump didn't do that. it fell to biden to do that. the if joe didn't run. for a second term, how history regard him. oh, so i've gone back and forth on this. i think after the state of the union address, i'm pretty convinced that biden is going be the guy and i think all this talk about biden step down in favor of somebody else, that's

that's going to dissipate. biden is going to be the candidate. now, if biden had gone the other way, say, six months ago, as he hinted that he might do in 2020 when he called himself a transitional figure. and were just a one term president. presidents don't do this, by the way. they don't the only guy in history who did this was calvin coolidge, who stepped down after one term when he when he could been reelected. so a president who has a reasonably successful term, even if he's an old guy, doesn't do this, and if he wants to run for reelection, nobody in the party the nerve to tell him, sorry, mr. you've got to step down. but let's let's assume that he did step down. i think history would remember him as a as a truly great transitional one term president

who got the country out of the covid recession with relatively scant damage other than the tragedy of covid itself. and if the story that the democrat democratic party doesn't have a much of a bench, i think that's exaggerate it. i mean, my candidate for for 2028 would be gretchen whitmer. i mean, i think she's phenomenal. and and you remember from from the 19 from the 2016 campaign, there's there's trump like a hulk looming over hillary and intimidating her. you don't do that with big gretch and she'd be a great candidate this time. i don't think that's going to happen. but and there are there are other really good people, raphael warnock, who is just phenomenal. and governor shapiro of pennsylvania.

so democrats do have a decent bench. people in their in their fifties. and i think what's tricky playing the crystal ball game. let's say biden reelected let's even say that a very narrowly takes the house and the senate with him. then you have the six year jinx the sixth year of a presidency is always bad for the president. s party. so let's say the republicans back congress in. in 2026. then biden becomes a true lame duck and that may influence what happens in 2028. but i want to prognosticate too far into the future. i'm more about 2024 when we're worried about 2024, the and i assume in 2028, bernie will probably run and and i would assume trump will retire to the sidelines. he doesn't win in 2024.

your book you also about the special interest in terms a big pharma and wall street and the role that lobbyists play in terms of preventing going big. can you comment on. as a lobbyist, be careful. well, i think, you know, 50 years ago the labor movement was a much stronger counterweight to. the influence of industry. i think there's been such a tremendous tilt. i think it was very smart of biden as well as the right thing to do to make big pharma a kind of nemesis. people know that they're being taken to the cleaners, that they pay too much for their drugs, that you go to other countries drugs are much cheaper and biden initially took to make sure that

insulin would be affordable. this is a product that's been in the public domain for 100 years. so how can it be that insulin is expensive and? the drug companies keep coming with slight variations. change a molecule here. change delivery mechanism there. and so they jacked up the price of and. so biden been bold, smart and ethical in taking on the big pharmaceutical companies. i think he's very smart as well as doing the right thing in reviving antitrust. you've had all these so-called roll where the dominant players in an industry just become monopolies. and finally, after reagan and robert, kind of euthanizing antitrust for 40 years you have amazing young woman, lina kahn at the ftc, jonathan kanter at

at the antitrust division. she has department reviving antitrust. so the market can work way the market is supposed to work based competition and you don't have platform monopolies. any time somebody comes up with a new innovation that might compete them you don't have them just buying out their competitor. you don't have airlines consolidating. i live in boston i flew down last on jetblue, the was dirt cheap. why was the dirt cheap? because there are actually competing airlines from, boston to washington. but if you go on a number of other routes where just one airline you're going be absolutely soaked. so i think embracing competition, embracing what's good, the consumer, taking on pharma. this is all good. i think a lot of democrats are compromised. and if if you if you look at the

career pattern of former members of the house, members of the senate, even seniors staff, unless you're either an idealist or a --, you go to k or you go to wall street and, you you add an extra zero to your salary. that's the career progression. and good friends of mine who to be progressive senators are now working for law firms that are effectively lobbyists. so by working for a law firm you've got one degree of separation from yourself. and the dreaded lobbyist for trinity. you're not quite a lobbyist. you're just a lawyer. but for all intents and purposes, you're being hired for your ability to exert influence over legislation and that just tells playing field. it just makes it harder. so no offense, lobbyists. yeah. the none taken the i don't admit

i'm a lobbyist, but yeah. the other thing is i don't agree with everything elizabeth warren says. me neither. but she say that washington is not broken. it's rigged. yep. and that is exactly what it is in terms of big and bold. well, before have time to take one or two questions from the audience, i want to ask this question. final question. my sense is getting to know you in the last few months and all our conversations, my sense deep inside, you're an optimist by nature to make good fight. they have for so many years takes a degree of optimism and and incredible fortitude in this election year and this difficult moment that we're in, unlike any since the 1860s, perhaps even any in our in our history, leave

us with a sense of and hope that if ask you this question, your answer will give us that that hope and that sense of confidence. and the question is this how is this movie going to end? how how are we coming out of this? well, i think you smoked me out. my optimism is temperamental or it's characterological, and sometimes you have to be an optimist in the face of contradictory evidence, because the alternative is to be a defeatist and despair is just just not a good place to. i think the odds are better than even that the movie comes out with with trump being defeated. that's the single most important. i think there's possibility i wouldn't want to place odds on it that the democrats might even

hold the senate and take back the house. that's a longer shot, but not impossible. if you if you if you do the numbers and then the way the movie comes out is we slowly work our way back to normal in sense of a greater degree of bipartisan cooperation. and we slowly work our way back towards. what i experienced as normal when i was a kid, which is a society regular people have a possibility of realizing the american dream. so that's that's the hopeful view they share and hope. opportunity. yeah. and you also pointed out something that is incredibly important as we return to normalcy. it's important that republicans are long on that journey that those who one has confidence in have more courage to stand up

and, do the right thing. and i think that that is there's a there's a number of very good members of both parties that want to do right. oh, and let me just underscore that. i think the proof of the pudding is the the original effort on the border. bill. that is, republicans following like langford following, their own impulses of what was necessary, what was the right thing to do. we're ready to cut a deal with democrats, by the way, mostly on republican terms for a border bill and it was only when trump brought down the hammer that they caved in. so you take trump out of the equation. many, many republicans going to revert to a kind of a normal george bush republican party. now, those happen to be my beliefs, but that's so much better than what we have now. and i remember talking with somebody about nikki haley and

saying that, you know, if by some miracle haley got the nomination, she could actually beat biden, she'd actually be better candidate against biden than trump would. and that would not be so bad because even though i with nikki haley's policies, she's not a neofascist, she's not an authoritarian, she's not out destroy american democracy and. i think most republicans are not fascist. they're not out to destroy american democracy. and you need, the kind of bipartite listenership that we had as recently as ten years ago and i think the race to replace mcconnell with thune and cornyn both are very good individuals. and i think at the end of the day they committed to doing what's for the country. yeah. and you just trump out of the equation. there's a better chance of the country reverting to some kind of normal. well, let's hope that joe biden

to think big and big. certainly the economic policy institute, jared bernstein has some influence that he's on there and they're bored. he's president biden's council of economic. so we've got time for one or two questions before bring this to a close can. you that there. is a better yes. darren priest's santorum community action. we are working on housing projects and been awarded arpa funds. so they're going to start hitting the ground this spring and, summer. and i'm just wondering if you think that there's going to be an impact if people realize that that's coming from biden administration? that's a good question. i think in part that's up to the biden administration part, that's up to you.

i mean, they you know, they have to make it known that these programs are actually benefiting regular people this year. and maybe they could be doing a better job at home. one final question. yeah. hi. well, that's a brilliant thank you very much. there is a new player emerging on the field that i won't call an elephant. call a rhinoceros for other reasons walked in and that's climate and the huge impact that's going to have on energy and thus the economy which will drag this thing down matter who's in power. and i'm wondering if you have any thoughts about part of the future. you chair. well, obviously biden and company are a lot more committed to doing something about climate. trump and company are, and a lot

of the infrastructure measures and new economy that biden has proposed and enacted are climate measures. so i think it's one more area where in order to take seriously all the threats to the economy and in this case, the planet. we just have get beyond the trump detour because trump is part of the climate. so no is not doing everything that ideally i like him to do. but give. guy four or more years, give the guy a democratic congress most democrats are deeply committed to doing something about climate and a lot of the infrastructure investment has a rendezvous with necessary climate investment. so we didn't talk about that and i thank you for bringing it up. but it's got to be part of the agenda.

it was also smart politics on his stay the union because that message now was to the audience nationwide but also is a direct message. progressive of the particularly on the house democrat it's an appeal to them and they reaffirmed that that. yeah i'm with you on that. well he's he's got it turned out has the enormous variable. yeah. and he's got to get his people to turn out the, the democratic success in 18 and 20 and 22 was all about turnout. it's all about people to turn out and trump happily keeps giving biden all of these high hanging curve balls like saying, you know, putin can just do work as well to do whatever he wants. and then biden whacks it out of the park. and i think you're going see more of that. well regardless of, you know, our conversation, we live in interesting times.

these are his stories. you look back and wonder what the hell was going on in america at this point. let's hope they don't say what the hell was going on throughout the world. interesting times we have a role to play and our goal. our goal is we want to be the good guys we want to be the voice of reason and we want and good public servants that and we appreciate their their willingness to serve and it an elective capacity and also that share our for a better america. so let's thank robert kuttner for giving us a. great