John Delaney's Nuanced View Of Our Broken Congress [11-7-19]

This is Larry Lessig and this the third season of the podcast Another Way. The subtitle for this season, as you've heard a million times, is POTUS 1, which is our effort to frame a commitment to fundamental reform and to get the candidates to accept it. Today, I'll speak to a candidate who has described a package of fundamental reforms, some on his website, some outside. We'll wrap those things together. Let's see if I can get him to accept the idea that this fundamental reform has to come first. John Delaney was a lawyer turned successful entrepreneur turned congressman from Maryland. In 2018, he became the first candidate to enter the Democratic primary for president. Stay tuned for this conversation in this episode. Great. So welcome, Congressman John Delaney. I'm so grateful you would take time to talk about the questions of reform. Your website launches the discussion in your Fixing Our Government section, saying the following, quote, our politics and system of government have been broken by hyper partisanship, politicians who have the wrong incentives, limitless corporate money influencing our elections, and a discourse that focuses on anything but the facts about our pressing issues combined to make real solutions to our problems almost impossible to achieve. So in that list, starting with hyper partisanship, I'd like to ask you to start by telling us a little bit about the way the money produces the wrong incentives. I mean, you had some time in Congress after being a successful entrepreneur, and obviously you are not as optimistic about the functioning of our Congress as you are about the system of entrepreneurship. So help people understand what the incentives are through the fundraising that make it so this Congress can't function.

Well, obviously, in my opinion, there's too much money in politics, and it presents itself in a couple different ways. Firstly, many members spend all their time fundraising. Literally, they spend 40 hours a week dialing for dollars, which makes it very hard for them to do their job as effectively as possible. And it makes it hard for them to develop relationships because they just don't really have the time to engage in the kind of activities you need to do to develop relationships with colleagues and people you work with. So that's one of the problems. There's just an enormous incentive for people to spend a lot of time fundraising. The second problem is it does often create bad incentives because on certain issues, we see how money can really have an outsized role in how members vote. And probably the easiest example to look at is gun safety, where we have a situation where well over 90% of the American people want us to pass a law that says that there are universal background checks in this country. But because the NRA has such a powerful financial footprint in the Republican Party, both in terms of raising money directly for Republican candidates, but also in terms of running, you know, a super PAC to support Republicans. You know, it makes it very hard for Republicans to vote against or vote for something that the NRA is against. So money in politics doesn't affect every issue. There are certain issues where it has a much bigger effect. You know, gun safety. Like I just talked about addressing climate change, where I believe the fossil fuel companies have really bought off a huge percentage of the Congress and effectively, you know, paid them to lie about something, which to me is a. Is a. Is a obvious fact at this point. But other issues are more complicated, like our failure to address immigration and pass comprehensive immigration reform, for example. That's not because of money in politics. Because, in fact, most of the big money in politics is in favor of comprehensive immigration reform. You know, the attack that we've seen on women's reproductive freedom, to me, that's not because of money in politics, because, you know, most of the bigger money in politics, for example, is actually supportive of women's health care and women's reproductive freedom. So money in politics is a huge problem. It's a problem in that people spend too much time raising it. It's a problem because it bends the will of the. Of our government away from the American people. But it's not the only problem.

So let's think a little bit about two parts of that. So, I mean, I think you've hit the two clearest cases of outsized single issue affected by money, nra, with gun safety regulation and climate change, the fossil fuel industry. I think the Kochs were the most innovative in deploying resources in that context. But what's striking about those particular examples is that money is operating to really block traffic. And of course, in Congress, the easiest thing to do is to block. It's really hard to get something done, but blocking seems to be pretty effective. And that might be. Is that the difference between, like, immigration reform or reproductive rights legislation? That it might be that money's on the side of both of those issues, but it's still not even powerful enough to get something done when it's so easy to block or to veto change?

Yeah, no, I think that's. I think that's a correct insight. I mean, it is easier to block things. But, you know, I think the immigration reform example is, though, because I think some people want to overly simplify things. There's a real desire in life to overly simplify things. And so they look at why Congress is broken. And they say, well, it's all money and politics. And one of the main reasons Congress is broken is because of that. But it is not the only reason is the point I make, because again, comprehensive immigration reform enjoys broad support among, you know, the American economy, businesses, et cetera. And they have been very active in supporting, I mean, I can't tell you the number of groups that came to Capitol Hill to argue for comprehensive immigration reform. But the deep divisions in our country and the fear that has been created around immigrants has put us in a situation where you can't get it done. So again, that's not about money. If this was about money, we would have passed comprehensive immigration reform a long time ago. You know, it's about gerrymandering. It's about the politics of fear. It's about the politics of disinformation. It's other factors that get empowered by money. Like, let's look at gerrymandering. One of the things gerrymandering does is, is create very safe congressional districts. And in a safe congressional district, the only thing that really matters is the primary, because you can't lose a general election. So. And primaries have low turnout, as we all know, and the people who tend to turn out tend to be more active or activists. So there's a situation when you have gerrymandering, gerrymandered safe Republican districts, that the NRA's money can have an outsized role because it participates in the primaries, and it will basically attack Republicans who don't agree with its agenda. And that money in a low turnout primary has a very big influence. But what's really happening there is the kind of the confluence of money in politics and gerrymandering that has created that dynamic. For example.

No, I completely agree. I think you got to think about how these complement each other. But before we move from the money, I want to think about one other part of what you said, which I think is so interesting. I mean, when you identified the problems of money, you said one of the problems is people spend all their time doing it and they can't do their job. They can't develop relationships. They can't learn about the facts. But the interesting other part about that is that they. They actually do spend time with people. They spend time with the people who are funding their campaigns on the telephone. Right. And I just wonder whether what you think about the systematic effect of spending all of your time sucking up to rich people who have money might have on your capacity to represent as a representative the people who you were elected to represent.

Yeah, no, it's a big problem, obviously. I mean, I think both of those things were a problem. One, the fact that you're not spending, I would argue that they're not spending productive time. So it's hard to do a job when 40 hours a week you're spending on unproductive activities. Right. If you think about it, you're starting in a pretty big hole. And then, as you said, you're talking to people who are not your constituents, and that's a big problem. And then the other thing that doesn't get discussed enough, it's not a money issue, but it plays into this. And I think this started in the 90s when Newt Gingrich made it very fashionable for people to be in their districts, not in Washington. In other words, they made it unfashionable for members of Congress to be in Washington. And what's happened over the last several decades is that many of the members who used to live here no longer live here. And they live full time in their districts with their families, and they live in their offices often, or they sleep in their offices, and about 100 of them do this. And if you think about it, if you sleep in your office and your family is back in your district, you don't have much of an incentive to be in Washington. And in fact, it puts a lot of pressure on Congress to be in Washington as infrequently as possible. And that's also a big problem as well, because it really squeezes the time that members should be spending learning about the facts, developing relationships, and trying to legislate. So you get this really weird dynamic where people aren't in Washington that much. When they're in Washington, they're in rooms raising money all the time. So it all kind of layers into a very bad system.

Yeah. I mean, your colleague John Sarbands, when I first met him, and he was talking about these issues of reform back in like 2011 or 12, I mean, he said at that stage he had had lunch with a colleague about as many years as he had been in Congress, which at that point, six. Yeah. And he said the reason for that is if you have time to have lunch, you have time to be raising money, and so obviously you should be raising money.

Yeah.

And so this. This really has to weaken the capacity

of the institution, and they're never there. And they. We've created this perception that members of Congress should be like mayors showing up at every ribbon cutting, when, in fact, I'm not saying that those aren't important things to do. But, but that is actually not the job. The job is to come to Washington, represent your constituents, understand your district and try to legislate for the good of the country and the good of your constituents.

Right. And so obviously, I think we agree that there are a lot of problems that, or a lot of flaws that might drive to this pathology. You've identified on your website some pretty important changes to address those flaws. So the gerrymandering, the Open Our Democracy act is I think, quite aggressive and really inspiring in the way that it would try to facilitate tampering down on gerrymandering, at least as it's going to affect federal elections. You have a national election holiday which I think would facilitate more people voting. You also identify the Voting Rights act and restoration of the Voting Rights act and overturning Citizens United. And then you have this really interesting idea, which I don't think think anybody else is talking about, of basically creating. I think it's like question time in Parliament of Britain, like when the President would show up and sort of stand there and answer questions from members of Congress. Is that the basic idea to that?

Yes. You know, the basic idea is that we live in a world of tremendous disinformation and what I call kind of asymmetric communications. So people have press releases and they press conferences and they pick who they want to ask questions or they send out tweets or press releases. And you know, because so many the American people receive their news from social media, which isn't regulated. You know, there's a lot of stuff up there that's not factually correct. And so in that kind of an environment, I think it's incumbent upon elected officials to do as much kind of almost old fashioned town square type transparent debating with their constituents or their political rivals. And I think it would be terrific if the President could lead by example, by doing it once a quarter and going to the floor of the House of Representatives. And I envision it, you could do it a hundred different ways. But the way I envision it is it would go for three hours, it would be on national television. I think a lot of Americans would watch it. The first hour and a half would be one topic that was agreed upon in advance. You know, immigration or foreign policy or, you know, climate change, whatever the case may be. And the second hour and a half would be open question time where the President would receive questions from members. They'd obviously go back and forth between Democrats and Republicans in some way. There'd be some time limit and that would be the wild west of the, of the three hour presentation. And I just think it would be enormously enlightening to the American people because they would probably figure out who's telling the truth. It would be a forum where the truth probably is discovered because it's very hard to just openly lie when you're out in public on national television and you're debating back and forth with facts, checkers and all these kind of things. And I just think our elected officials ought to be able to do it. I just think it's a threshold requirement for being effective at your job. And I think it's a President ought to be willing to walk in front of the American people 12 hours a year and field questions from their elected representatives.

So would you be afraid of posturing or maybe another way to ask that is, would it be a better, would it be more likely to be productive if this were a conversation that was just with the president and the members of Congress as opposed to one where people can grandstand and you know, their 10 seconds on C Span then gets to be the core of their next campaign ad.

Yeah, no, listen, again, but I think a president ought to be skilled enough to deal with that. You'd have rules, right? As I said, the first hour and a half would be one topic and there would be rules with clocks and how long people could speak. So if people want to grandstand, you know, let's say a member gets a minute to ask the question or two minutes to ask the question. You know, if they want to grandstand the whole time, then the president should say, well, you know, unfortunately, you didn't use your two men's to ask a question. You just gave a speech there. But let me respond to what you had to say.

You don't. Do you see this kind of debate in the floor of Congress right now?

Do I see this? No. Because you know, when all those speeches you see on C Span, no one's ever in the room when those speeches occur. So it's all scripted and it's not productive. Look at the presidential debates. You know, when the Democrats and Republicans have their nominee and they're actually having a debate. While those things are flawed, they are overwhelmingly considered to be the most informative part of a presidential campaign.

Sure.

So again, nothing is perfect. Everything is subject to critique and criticism and imperfection. And I'm sure what I envision here would have that right. There'd be things about it that people don't like. There'd be parts of it that don't work There'd be parts that are awkward, there'd be parts that will drive people crazy. But in general, the notion of 12 hours a year of back and forth between the President and members of Congress, I just don't see how that's not a net positive to the democracy.

No, that would be really interesting. Let's go back to the opening paragraph. The thing that you say in that first sentence and that you've obviously spent a lot of time emphasizing is the problem of partisanship or hyper partisanship. And you've already identified the way gerrymandering contributes to that. Because if all you're doing in a safe seat is watching your flank, whether to the left in a Democratic seat or right in a Republican seat, then you're obviously going to be more sensitive to the extremists than you otherwise would be. So that's clear how that's adding to hyper partisanship. How do you see the voting rights issue adding to partisanship? Or is it not. Is it unrelated to that?

Well, no, I mean, I think it's. I think the biggest issue with the voting rights issue is probably unrelated to partisanship, although it's related. But that's not the biggest issue. The biggest issue is efforts to deny people one of their most sacred rights in this country, which is the right to vote, the franchise. And I think efforts to deny people that right or make it difficult for them are insidious. So that's the main reason I advocate for voting rights, the Voting Rights act amendment, which is what it would technically be. So it's more than. If I were to conclude that it had nothing to do with partisanship, then I would still be a huge advocate for it. In other words. Right. Cause I think it gets at people's basic right of citizenship, but I do think it probably contributes to partisanship. I just have this general view that whenever more people vote, you get a more representative democracy. And what I mean by that is the aggregate vote in the primaries is not as representative as the. As the vote in the general election, because in the primaries you tend to have people who are more activists in the parties. And I have nothing against those people. Everyone has a right. But you tend to get people who are less interested in bipartisan countries compromise and more interested in partisan wins. You tend to get more of that in primaries. That doesn't mean everyone who's in a primary is like that, but you tend to get more of those. And when you get to the general election, you tend to get more centrist and independents and people who don't look at the world through a political lens. And so I just think in general, anything we do to get more Americans to vote in general, leads to a more productive representation of the country. So. And that's the point of the Voting Rights act, which is to make sure as many people vote as possible.

So are you convinced or is it necessary for us to conceive of the problem in voting rights as race related or is it partisan related? I mean, look at Georgia. So, you know, in Georgia, obviously there was a lot of shenanigans in the election that Stacey Abrams, I think, should have won. And you can look at the games that went on with the Secretary of State and the way that they disqualified all sorts of voters or made it harder for some people to vote than others or didn't have machines in certain places or different polling times. You can look at that and you can say that was about race, it was about making it so black people would not be able to vote. Or you could look at it and say that was about Republicans trying to make it hard for Democrats to win. And the difference between those two is pretty important because obviously the Supreme Court has made it so hard to sustain an argument grounded in race. I mean, the level of proof now you've got to make to say that in fact this is racial gerrymandering or this is racism that is constituting this is difficult. But Congress, under Article 1, Section 4, would have the power to intervene for the purpose of equalizing on the basis of partisanship in the sense that you can say, look, if you run your system to screw your other, to screw your opponents, then that's a violation of another kind of equality that is just as central in our tradition as we should be insisting on racial equality. So yours is focusing on the Voting Rights Act. That makes it seem like it's about race. But is that the only thing that you think is going on here?

No, I don't think it's the only thing that's going on here, but I'm not sure we have to. Actually, I think it's a little bit of a false choice. Right. Because I think it's wrong as a matter of racial discrimination. And I think it's also wrong as a matter of a functioning democracy and ensuring that people have the right to vote, regardless of whether it's it's both.

You're absolutely right, it's both. It's not either or. But my point is that it's typically spoken of as if it's only a problem of race. In my view, it is that it certainly is a problem of race. But if we could expand the discourse and say that it's not just that, it's also this, we might actually make it easier to bring people into the effort to try to reform it, to fix it. Because I think the people get the rigging of the system for partisan reasons. Maybe in a more productive way, maybe it's an easier way to talk about it.

Yeah. The problem that you always have with this issue is you have to overcome a natural bias among the American people and the natural bias among the American people and it's not backed by facts. So it's an example of where a lot of people come out on this issue when they're not informed is actually not really the right place. And it's said differently. The truth in this issue is not always what people would intuitively think. And what I mean by that, if you go to a lot of people in this country, country like in Maryland, we don't have to show our driver's license to vote, but you go to a lot of people in this country and say, how do you feel about showing your driver's license to vote? And they're like, well, that seems reasonable to me. Like that is their normal answer because they have to show their ID in many situations. So when they don't really think about it, they just say, well, that sounds normal. And. But then when you spend time with them and you say, well, you know, there's actually no evidence to suggest that places that require driver's licenses versus don't, that there's any difference in voter fraud. Which, by the way, the second point is voter fraud is like almost non existent.

Yeah, of course.

And then the third point is you explain to them that what actually requiring a driver's license does or of means of identification does to certain people. And then when they hear the arguments, a lot of them say, okay, now I get it. Yeah, that makes sense. You probably shouldn't require it. But the initial reaction among a lot of the American people is that this stuff doesn't sound overly crazy to them. You see what I mean? And that's what has been the big challenge, I think, with these arguments, which is it's an area where we really need to make sure people are informed of the facts.

Yeah. And I think the facts help, of course.

Yeah, the facts are pretty clear. There's very little voter fraud. And requiring, you know, in the one example I've given, these kind of identifications does in fact not do anything to reduce voter fraud. It just suppresses Turnout.

Right.

So it's, it's, it's, it is not. It is. It's not even that. It's not accomplishing anything. It is accomplishing something bad. But I'm not sure most people immediately conclude that if they. Unless they've actually thought about the issue or have had anyone explain it to them. And I think that's what puts us at a disadvantage in some of these things, which is, you know, the intuitive response that people have is actually not always the correct one on this issue, for example.

Right, right. Okay. So that's pretty clear. And, you know, obviously you say we should overturn Citizens United. What's striking about at least what's on your website compared to what I've read about what you've been talking about. And in particular, you had a town hall, a great town hall in New Hampshire with the open democracy people. And in that town hall you talked about changing the way we fund elections. Yes, And I just wonder why. I mean, you know, obviously it's hard to run a campaign. There's a lot going on. It's a question of priority. But I wonder whether that's really at the core of your commitment, too, as much as gerrymandering reform or the Voting Rights Act.

Yeah, but I also, you know, a big part of my campaign is to be very honest with the American people and to always tell them the truth, because I just think that's not only what I should do, but I also think it's how our democracy works better. So what I explained to the American people, I am in favor massively of things like my former colleague John Sarbanes proposed, which is empowering small dollar donations and providing public financing of elections. I'm in favor of all those things, but I also understand that constitutionally, we're probably never going to get rid of the ability of people to give money to candidates. And I don't think we'll live in a world where that ever goes away completely because of the free speech implications and how the court has historically ruled on this. So, you know, I don't say things to people like some candidates do, which is I'm going to get rid of anything but small dollar donations, because I don't actually think I could ever represent that to the American people. What I can represent to the American people is that I will appoint judges who I think will interpret Citizens United differently. I will completely back a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United States. But again, I point out to them, I'm saying we should not hold our breath for that because we should have passed the Equal Rights Amendment decades ago. There's no argument against the Equal Rights Amendment. Yet we haven't been able to get that done as a constitutional amendment. And then what I say to people is that what I also will do as president is, you know, empty the gas tank in every way I can to pass a law that significantly curtails Super PACs. Meaning, while I don't think corporations are people, and I don't think those folks died on the beaches of D day for a bunch of corporations, I do believe that even before we overturn Citizens United, we can pass a law that will be upheld constitutionally by the Supreme Court that limits the amount of donations to a super PAC just to be consistent with the limits on donations to political campaigns and further requires complete transparency and disclosure about who's giving money to a super pac.

Well, I mean, we could geek out on the law question here, and I. You know, we can argue about whether this court would accept limits on contributions to independent political action committees, and I

would probably lose that debate to you, by the way, so.

Because, well, whether or not I'm not a legal scholar, we can also agree that it would be wonderful to get at a constitutional amendment or the Supreme Court to overturn Citizens United. But the question I'm asking about is really the question John Sarbanes would ask you about, which is long before we do that, we could radically change the dependency that members of Congress have on funders or the 40 hours a week that you say they spend calling these people. And whether it's John Sarbanes idea, which I think is amazing, the matching fund idea, or an idea which he has a pilot for in that bill, and, you know, Andrew Yang and Kristen Gillibrand have really embraced, and now Bernie has embraced the idea of democracy vouchers or democracy dollars to radically increase the number of people who are participating. The question I have for you is I don't. I don't see that presented. And I wonder whether that's part of the change, too, even before we amend the Constitution or overturn Citizens United.

Yeah, I mean, I have. I'm not at all opposed to this notion of democracy dollars. You know, to be honest with you. I mean, it was an idea that I had spent a lot of time on in Congress, and I know it's been discussed in this presidential campaign. I'm not opposed to it as a concept, but it. It doesn't seem like an easier fix than other things. Meaning I'm not sure that. That it's any easier to make that happen than it is to have public financing of elections, for example. So, you know, I tend to view all of those things in almost the same category, which is I'm probably supportive of all these things, but I tend to think about which ones I'm more likely to be able to get done.

Okay, but, but call it public financing of congressional elections, you know. Yeah, I'm all for that, to call it that. Yeah. But, but then the question is why isn't this what you're telling on your website that you're going to do? Right. This is the question, like, is this actually something you're going to do as much as you'll pass the Open Our Democracy act or restore the vra?

Yeah, you know, I'm committed to, I would be committed to any number of initiatives to provide public financing of elections. Absolutely.

Absolutely. That's a great word. You know, and I know that you are straight talker, congressperson or former congressperson. So, you know, when you say absolutely, that means that. So that's good news because it's not clear at least right now on the site, but it is what you've been saying, and it's wonderful to have that confirmed. The last part of this, though, then, is, you know, it's really striking this election, the number of people who have said, you know, from, from Steve Bullock to Elizabeth Warren, that it's not just that they believe fundamental reform is important, but they're going to move fundamental reform first, like this is what they're going to do because they agree with you that our system of government has been broken, as you say in the very beginning of your website. So is this the way you think it has to be addressed, too, that we have to take this up front first if we're going to make it possible to get any of the other things that we're talking about done, and the package includes the range of things that you've described.

I don't necessarily agree with that sequencing, which is it would obviously be great to get this done first because it would obviously be great to get this done immediately. So I'm not opposed to it being done first, and I think it would be the best thing to do first. But do I think the full range of reforms that I would want to see happen will get done immediately, and therefore it could have this cherished position of first again, being a pragmatist, I'm not sure that's realistic. I mean, if you take a range of things I'd like to do on election reform and trying to fix our democracy and then you put that in one column and you put in the other column the things I actually want to do to improve the lives of the American people as a matter of direct policy, recognizing that the broken democracy gets in the middle of it. But I do think there are things that can be done in terms of helping people that I can probably get done easier than some of the reform initiatives. So I wouldn't wait. Well, infrastructure, for example, I mean, if we had a $2 trillion national infrastructure program, I think it would have a very big impact on Americans right away. I think if we could do things to lower pharmaceutical prices, I think that would have a very big impact on the American people right away. If we could expand the Earned Income Tax Credit, we could have a very big impact on the American people right away. And I think I wouldn't want to wait to try to make progress on those things until I was able to get my full portfolio of election reforms done, because I would view that as not doing my job well.

Of course, when Obama tried to get drug price competition inside of what became Obamacare, he was told by the drug companies that basically they were going to spend $40 million to defeat Democrats and destroy his majority in the House if he did that. And of course, if he had taken up the fight to get reform, that would have been an empty threat. But because he hadn't, he was vulnerable to that. And you might think the same thing with infrastructure. Of course, everybody talks about infrastructure, but the premise is that there's going to need to be some commitment of resources. And it seems the one thing in the world driven by funders that we can get done is tax cuts. So you've got to tell your funders that they're going to face higher taxes to support infrastructure or whatever else we're going to spend our money on. And that's obviously harder in a world of corrupted democracy than it is in a world of better democracy. So we don't want to wait for any of these things, but one of the ways to look at the last 10 years is we've been waiting for everything because we live inside of, as you describe it, a system of government that has been broken.

Yeah, but. And I agree with you, don't get me wrong, right? I mean, as we've discussed during the show, which. Which is clearly these things prevent us from doing things that are in the common good of the American people. But I just think that what we're talking about here becomes a bit of an intellectual argument and not really an argument that resonates with the American people, because I think if you sit down with most Americans, 40% of our citizens can't afford their basic necessities. They don't want us to wait on trying to do something to improve. Improve their lives, to fix these issues that have caused corruption in our government. I think they want us to fix corruption, and they want us to do things to improve their lives, and they don't want us to think about sequencing. They want us to do our job. And to try to do them both at the same time is what I would think most Americans would want their representatives to do.

But what's striking about your campaign, you know, obviously you're in a field that's filled with lots of very strong progressives, and you're distinguishing yourself from the very strong progressives. But what's striking is the one thing that actually unites people on the right and the left is the recognition of this deeply corrupted system that leads most people, except the partisans, to actually believe there's not much government can do for them at all, because government is just broken and corrupted. And so what's the reason to get. Get all excited? It would seem that, you know, you're trying to leverage a recognition beyond the kind of passionate left of passion for real action here and more than, you know, placing yourself in the moderate middle or whether, you know, I know you have a complicated mix of positions, and I don't think it's fair to call you moderate, but I do think you are insisting you're not, you know, to the left of Bernie Sanders.

That is a fair statement.

Yeah. But it seems like the one way you could distinguish is actually like leveraging what everybody recognizes is the thing that blocks hope. And the more you did that, the more you could bring people in who say, well, you know, I dream with Bernie, but my reality is Talk to Me by John Delaney.

Right. No, I think that's an interesting observation. I mean, as you can tell, I talk a lot about things to try to get our government working again, both in terms of reforms that get the corruption, because there's no question on certain issues, the government is bought and sold by donors. No question. But I also have a view that it's even more deeply broken than that, because fear has been inserted into the equation by, in my opinion, really almost unpatriotic elected officials. Yeah. I mean, I hate to be so directive. I hate to be so direct about it, but anyone who tells the American people that their enemy is their fellow American, I view, is unpatriotic.

Yeah, but let's not Forget fear pays. I mean, there's a business model of fear, and you know, that's, that's related to the money, too. You scare people and tell them to send you $15, and you know they'll send you $15 more likely than they will if you tell them, here's the sensible plan for dealing with infrastructure. So these things go together.

Yep.

Congress. Congressman, I'm grateful for your time. We're at your 45 minute mark and this has been incredibly interesting, and I wish you luck in the fight to get attention to these issues as well as the other issues you've been pushing in this campaign.

Yeah. Thank you for the very intelligent conversation. I'm not sure my responses were as intelligent as your question questions, but I lumbered along.

Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you.

So that was former Congressman John Delaney, candidate for President, the first candidate who announced in the Democratic primary. As you can see, the commitment to reform that at least he's articulated here is fundamental and I think important, including at least if he adds the commitment to making public funding or democracy dollars, which is a form of public funding, a central part of what he wants to do. The open question at the end, I feel, is the question of priority. And you'll hear in my insistence, my own belief, which you've heard me utter many, many times, that whether or not this problem is something that affects everything, it affects everything important. And unless we get a democracy that is not, as Delany describes it, broken, we're not going to get these important things addressed. And so the open question from John Delaney's interaction with me is whether he agrees this needs to be moved first or primarily. And you might help him in that deliberation. You might help him about whether he believes, as the fixed democracy first people do or the POTUS one people do, that it's not just about signaling your support for fundamental reform. It's also about committing to making fundamental reform first that we need to insist on. So you can help him by following the links at the website. Under Our equal citizens US POTUS 1, we have each candidate graded and evaluated and links to the campaign that help people give feedback to the campaign about just how supportive of fundamental reform they should be. I'm feeling like Delaney is there, not quite there expressly, but I feel like he's working his way, which is encouraging to me, because obviously someone who's had as much experience as he has had inside of the political system and see exactly how it works and how it doesn't work has a clearer sense of what's necessary. And I hope that in his reflection on the questions we talked about, he can begin to see how essential it is that we get these things fixed first. That's the end of this episode of Another Way. These podcasts are produced by Equal Citizens US. You can find us on the web at EqualCitizens US and this podcast at EqualCitizens US. There's a place there to share this podcast and to give us your feedback and your ideas. Which is the best set of emails that I get to read every week. Please do both. And please share this podcast broadly. Many of the ideas discussed in this season of Another Way are also discussed in a new book I'm publishing just in two weeks. They don't represent us. I just got the first copies in the mail yesterday and it's a really pretty cover. I'm not going to say what the content is, but the COVID at least would be a great Christmas present or something like that. But you can find the book@hc.com that's for the publisher, HarperCollenge hc.com representus and we hope you're enjoying this season of the podcast. Another way we're gonna do something that others in the podcasting world, the Slow Democracy movement, have done and experiment with this as a way to help support our work. We're gonna associate with Patreon, and if you become a supporter of the podcast on Patreon, then we're going to include additional content that might help make these issues deeper or more interesting, especially for those keen to understand them. We're going to add an Ask Me Anything episode, and if you agree to a certain level of financial support, then you'll both get the eternal links to these, to this new content, and also to other material that we want to pull together to make this as valuable to you as it needs to be for us. So you'll find on the website and at the links from this podcast the opportunity to join through Patreon, and we hope you'll be able to do that too. Sam.