Tulsi Gabbard On All Things Democracy [09-12-19]

Welcome to season three of Another Way. I'm Jason Harrow, the executive director and chief counsel of Equal Citizens. On today's episode, we're going to bring you a recording of a town hall that Larry Lessig did in New Hampshire with Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard. It was a great event on Friday, September 6th. And Larry and Tulsi discuss at length lots of issues that we regularly discuss on this podcast that includes why the need for democracy reform is so pressing and why it should be the first item on the agenda of any presidential candidate, as well as her responses to specific issues about campaign finance reform, public financing of campaigns, ranked choice, voting, the electoral college, the voting age, and much more. So, so without further ado, here's Larry's conversation with Representative Tulsi Gabbard on Friday, September 6th.

Welcome to this event sponsored by Equal Citizens, to have a conversation with Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. I'm Larry Lessig. I'm a founder of Equal Citizens, and for what feels like 1000 years, but I'm told is only 12 years, I've been in this extraordinary fight with many of the people in this room to find a way to build the movement to reform this broken and corrupted democracy. And I know that many of you are here because you've heard echoes and words from Tulsi's campaign that shows that we are on a common mission, even if the focus at different points looks different. So this is going to be a wonderful conversation tonight, and I'm grateful to, first, Tulsi, to you for agreeing to be part of this and to you for coming and helping us have this conversation. So the way we're going to do this is I'm going to walk through the questions that map out the range of issues that we've been talking about in New Hampshire and around the country. In the meantime, we've circulated cards that you can write questions on, and we will be collecting questions. And then Adam here and Liz. I don't see Liz. There's Adam back there. We'll gather and then bring them up, and then we'll work through the questions. And that should be the form. Okay, great. So everybody here knows we're honored to have one of the youngest candidates for president a decade. In 2012, you became the first Samoan, American and first Hindu elected to Congress. A decade before that, the you became the youngest woman elected to a legislature ever in American history. But I want to start in a little different place. I want to start with the service part because quite frankly, that's the part that moves me the most. You left the legislature and you joined the National Guard and you served in Iraq. It's. I think it's pronounced. How do we pronounce

the way it sounds? What you're actually. Our camp was about 40 miles north of Baghdad, and this was in 2005, which was still very much during the height of the war. And the camp name was Anaconda, but it was nicknamed Mortaritaville because of the multiple daily mortar attacks that we endured there.

Yeah. So this is real combat. And after the time in Iraq, you came back and you graduated from the Alabama Military Academy with honors, the first woman to do that in the history of that academy. And then you went back into Kuwait from 2008 to 2009. And now I understand you're a major of the National Guard from Hawaii. So I think we all need to start by just saying thank you for that service.

You know, I'm obviously, if I may have just a moment, I just want to recognize. I see a few veterans here. If we could also just ask you to stand and allow us all to thank you and recognize you for your service. Thank you very much. Thank you.

So I'm obviously much older. I'm about the age of Obama, so I'm not that much older. But people my age actually lived through one of the longest period, came to age during one of the longest periods of peace in the last hundred years of America. It's striking to recognize that in the last hundred years, depending on how you count, we've been at war 65 of 100 years. And the longest period of peace is probably either 11 years after World War II, or if you don't count Grenada. I don't know if you count grenada as war 14 years after Vietnam. But you came to age in a moment that was reflecting on the extraordinary events of 9, 11. And that inspired many people to step up and want to serve our nation by defending our nation in a way that for people my age, there just wasn't anything on the horizon like that. And it is striking that we've had a series of presidents since Bill Clinton who are all marked by the fact that they, in some sense, tried to avoid or not step up in exactly that way. And that we are coming to a point again in American history where we look to leaders who've demonstrated this commitment to service. And you have said you've made this essential part of your campaign. I was watching a speech of yours where you said, we won't have the resources we need to deal with that we need until we deal with one central issue. That issue is the cost of war. For too long we've had war mongers from both parties who've dragged us from one unproductive regime change war to another. And that what you want to inspire America to do is to choose between those wars which are defensive, the wars that you say are, you're a hawk on fighting terrorism and those wars we shouldn't be fighting, the part you say you'd be a dove on. Because regime change is a deep American mistake. Now here's the obvious question for a reformer that this incredibly moving argument raises. How do you expect you're going to take on that machine of war? With hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying money spent with extraordinary campaign contributions, with the largest arms exporting industry in the world, with the constant belief that we have to wage the war in the greater Middle east to protect our oil supplies. How are you going to take any of that on before we fix this deeply corrupted democracy?

I think the two go hand in hand. And I know that I'm not alone. And I also know that the most powerful thing that we have in this country is the people of this country. And really this is the only way. This is the only thing that can overcome the big money and the big power of the military industrial complex, of the foreign policy establishment in Washington, of the self serving politicians who are more interested in waging these counterproductive wars that have nothing to do with our national security. In fact, they undermine our national security. They make us less safe, needlessly putting the lives of our brothers and sisters in uniform into harm's way while causing further destruction and death in the countries where these wars are waged. It's making our military weaker, it's stretching our troops thin. In every single measure, these counterproductive wars are against the American interest, the interests of the American people. And the American people get it. You know, this is something that we are hearing from folks in every town and community and city that we go to all across this country. It's a concern of people from across party lines, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Libertarians coming together and saying, hey, we may not agree on any host of other issues, whether it be a few or many, but this is an issue that we recognize as people in this country is central, as you said, it's central to our ability to deal with all of the other concerns and problems that we need to solve. We can't afford to wait. I appreciate so much the work that you're doing to actually strengthen our democracy and make sure that the voices of the American people, every American in this country, is heard through our elections. And having fair, honest elections, we can't afford to wait until another year, another election, another few elections to put an end to this destruction, to this needless waste. Afghanistan is something that's in the news a lot right now as there are ongoing negotiations. The Trump administration is saying that these negotiations have to continue before we need, before we can pull our troops out. These negotiations are important. They should have happened a long time ago, but we should have brought our troops home a long time ago. They're not contingent on these negotiations. Our troops need to come home. There is no reason why we need to continue to have deployed thousands of troops in Afghanistan and we are continuing to see casualties, soldiers who are killed in combat now. And when you ask what is the objective, what is the purpose, you often get this very kind of nefarious, unclear answer. Well, it's for stability. It's to stand, stay engaged. It's to do this, it's to do that. If you don't have a clear objective, which we haven't had in Afghanistan, then we will continue to see perpetual deployments, perpetual loss of life, and a perpetual cost to the American people with the taxpayer dollars coming out of our pockets. This is why I'm in this campaign. I'm running for president, to bring about an end to these wasteful regime change wars and work to end this nuke cold war that we are in. With ever escalating tensions between the United States and nuclear armed countries like Russia and China and the arms race that's increasing as a result, and instead redirect those resources to where we know we need them, serving the people right here at home, things like health care, health care for all things like making sure that every person in this country has clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, basic necessities for human life. This is where our priorities lie and this is where our resources should be going.

So why is it so hard in Washington for this point to be understood? I mean, there was a period where, you know, in American history, there's always been hawks and doves in both parties that have balanced this imperialist urgent. But there's a period of time in American history recently where that seems to have been gone. And what I'm so excited about in your campaign, like Bernie bringing up single payer healthcare in 2016, or like Andrew Yang talking about UBI in this campaign, you bringing this issue into the center of the debate, whatever happens is an incredibly important step forward. But why is it such a hard step? Why isn't the House filled with people who've come to realize that we have wasted treasure and lives beyond measure for wars that it was obvious we could never win in the sense of being that great nation that the world thought we were at the end of World War II? What is it that makes this so hard?

It's because Washington has too few leaders and far too many followers. You know, when you look back to the vote on the Iraq war, that Iraq authorization to use military force, how few people in both the House and the Senate actually voted against that? And how heavily were they criticized? They were smeared. They were accused of being unpatriotic, that they hated America, that they loved dictators, that they supported Saddam Hussein. The bubble in Washington went on the attack. The bubble that is heavily influenced by the military industrial complex, by this foreign policy establishment. So if you have leaders in Washington who lack courage and conviction, they see what happens to politicians and leaders who actually stand up and say, no, this is not good for the American people. It's not good for our country. And they cower and say, I don't want to go through that. I don't want to have those attacks against me. Well, guess what? We're in a place now where it's become very popular to say, of course the Iraq War was a stupid war. It was a bad war. It's a wasteful war. But how many leaders do you see stepping up and saying, you know what? The regime change war in Syria that our country's been waging since 2011 is a bad, stupid, counterproductive war. How many? See what I'm saying? Same thing in Venezuela right now, there's a regime change effort ongoing, led by our country. In Venezuela, how many politicians are standing up and saying that this is wrong? No, you've got bipartisan support in both of these examples for regime change. So this is why we don't see more people standing up is because we have leaders who lack courage and who fall under the influence and the power of the establishment.

Yeah. And so let's be more precise about the establishment. So I think that the point about not having leaders is a great point. It's not surprising. You know, you have a Congress filled with members who spend anywhere between 30 and 70% of their time sucking up to rich people to get the money they need to get elected or to get their party back into power.

It's true.

And how do you produce leaders when all you're doing is disciplining them to be sycophants? Which is what they have to be if they're going to raise that money. And so we've built a system to discipline, to train these leaders not to be leaders, to train them to reflect what the establishment, as you call it, wants. And one really important part of that establishment is the extraordinary infrastructure that supports the idea of perpetual war. You know, our Constitution says there cannot be a standing army after two years. Right. We've just forgotten that little bit of our Constitution. Maybe it's not a good part to the Constitution. Maybe we do need. I'm not, but I'm saying that the presupposition of America, the peace loving America, is so fundamentally undermined when trillions of dollars are lined up on the side of continuing the war machine, however senseless it might be.

You're not wrong. You know, I think the thing is, look, you've run campaigns, campaigns, they require resources and they require money. I think it's how you're raising that money and who you're raising that money from that makes a big difference. And most people in Washington are, majority of their reliance on money comes from PACs and lobbyists within Washington. You know, hopefully they're still raising money from within their district or from grassroots donors in the country. But unfortunately most of that comes from PACs. And so for those in that situation, they feel threatened when they see how many people now, you know, the last election going to this election, how many campaigns actually can and are being funded by grassroots donors, people giving 5 bucks, 10, 20 bucks, whatever they can. But those contributions coming from individuals, really having people powered campaigns, that's the kind of campaign that I'm running here that changes the paradigm both with how people are spending their time, politicians are spending their time in Washington, but also who they're paying most of their attention to. I think it's important in this way to also look at the inordinate amount of power that's been placed in the hands of our political parties, where there are more limits, more stringent limits on what we as individual candidates are allowed to raise from other individuals. There are capsules, it's $2,800 per election that an individual can contribute to my campaign or to a campaign of a member of Congress. Yet our political parties, they're able to get unlimited amounts of money. And so they have an inordinate amount of power that they can levy over individuals. And I've seen this. When we get elected to Congress, the party bosses come in and say, hey, here's how things work. You gotta fall in line, don't work with Republicans, we might try to beat them in the next election in that seat. So we need you to play ball. Don't support those Republican bills, support the Democrat bills and the same thing happens on the other side. And then you see, therefore, as you said, you see people who are faced with the question of, well, if I vote my conscience and if I vote the way that I think is right, I'm being threatened by my party boss that they will yank their support for my re election campaign efforts, undermining the whole purpose of why I hope people run for office, which is to serve their constituents and to do the right thing for the people.

Yeah. This influence is directed to the politics of hate. The politics of hate profits the parties. It profits the media. We're at this weird moment where everybody benefits. The more we can turn each other against each other.

Except the people.

Except the people. But the point is we've got to find a way to build that movement. What's so exciting across the country in 2018 was the number of citizen driven state reform efforts which succeeded. Like Michigan had this extraordinary movement to end gerrymandering led by an extraordinary 20 something year old woman, Katie Fahey, who just put a Facebook post up, anybody want to work on ending gerrymandering in Michigan? And it ended up being thousands of people rallying to do that. And one of the central principles in her campaign was it was forbidden to utter the word Democrat or Republican. It was a committed, cross partisan effort. Like it was not about one party or the other, it was about citizens. And you see that everywhere at the grassroots level. But when you get to Washington, that framework is naive or stupid or unproductive. And it's exactly what you're saying. Because that's the way in which they keep this machine going.

And it is a machine. It's a whole industry. It's a whole business really. When you look at it, the parties are not existing as a, in the way that they should, as a conduit in a medium to be able to make sure that our rights are being upheld and that our voices are being heard. There's a lot of money in this. And you saw this in the decision that was made a few months ago, for example, by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that they would no longer do business with any political consultant or contractor that supported a candidate challenging an incumbent. It's about the money. It's about the money and bullying people out of stepping up and saying, hey, you know what? I think I can serve our community or our country in a way that's different from the person who's currently there.

Okay, so you've walked the walk. You've been anti PAC from the very beginning. That's why you're running this campaign right now. You've supported reform legislation from the very beginning. You were one of the Original sponsors on HR20, which was a public funding for Congressional campaigns proposal. And you are on HR1, which was the most extraordinary reform package passed by the House since the Voting Rights act of 1965. So to make sure we're all on the same page here, this bill changes the way Congressional campaigns are funded in a fundamental way. It addresses gerrymandering from the federal level. It requires standards to end partisan gerrymandering. It deals with the revolving door in a really aggressive and ethics focused way. It commits to dealing with the Voting Rights act, to restoring the Voting Rights act and assuring automatic vote registration. We've never in this 40 years of this fight, seen anything close to this. And it gives real hope that if the Democrats in the House not only see the package of reform that's necessary, but understand it needs to be the first thing HR1, then we begin to have people in Washington to understand just how critically important this is. So your support for HR1 I think, is really incredibly important. What I want to do is walk through some of the elements and see, you know, where there might be room to move or things to be made better. So one of the most important parts of HR1 is a proposal to change the way campaigns are funded. And the proposal says small dollar contributions get matched. And if you're a candidate who takes only small dollar contributions, it can be matched in a very big way. In one version, it was up to 9 to 1. I think the final version was 7, 6 to 1. So what that means is candidates have a very strong interest in raising small contributions that can be matched. And they change dramatically their focus and how they fund their campaigns. Now, right now in the reform field, there's a debate because there are some who are saying that's a great idea, but an even better idea would be to give to every voter democracy dollars. So Rokuhanna in the House has a bill to say everybody gets $50 of democracy 50 democracy dollars. Andrew Yang says 100. Kirsten Gillibrand said 200 per election. So in one cycle you could have 600. This is all based on something that Seattle is doing. In Seattle, they've created $50 coupons that every voter gets to fund their, to give to candidates, to help them fund their campaign. And it has radically changed the kinds of people who give money, like ordinary people now give money. And they raise money from people all across the city, as opposed to small pockets where you have these fundraisers. So HR1 has a proposal to think about a pilot that would have what they call vouchers in this sense. But I take it you're not opposed to even more ambitious ways to make sure people are part of the part?

Yeah, no, not at all. I think it's great that we're coming up with different ideas that really help us reach the most important objective, which is getting more people involved in our democracy. And to me, that's what it is. I had a town hall the other day where a woman came in. She was a retiree, but she brought her checkbook and she wrote a $50 check. And she said, I'm really sorry that this is all that I can afford, but I just want you to know that I support what you're doing. And to me, that $50 means so much more than the dollar amount that's written on the check, because that means that I've earned her support and she is now invested in our campaign. I think that's where this focus really on grassroots contributions does so much. It brings people together, invested together, and it's, again, keeps campaigns focused on where we should be focused, which is on the people who we are asking to serve. I'm asking for your trust and your confidence to be able to advocate and serve you and serve your interests, and to be able to have folks who are giving whatever they can to be a part of that. And if that means matching funds or vouchers or some other means, I think the more we can increase those options, the more accessible our elections are and the more involved our electorate is. And that's really. That's really the point of all this.

Okay, so we're on common ground. And it's. I think this is one of the most hopeful proposals on the horizon here. We're also on common ground, I guess, about the gerrymandering reform. There's absolutely. What's interesting is for a long time, people didn't realize the federal government has the power to at least solve gerrymandering for congressional elections. I can't do anything for state gerrymandering. But rather than spending seven years in courts paying millions of dollars to lawyers. Not that I'm against lawyers. I make lawyers for a living. But the point is, rather than this slow process through the courts, which the Supreme Court has now slapped down, we could overnight end the project of partisan gerrymandering for Congress. What about something that Hawaii has just adopted for the party? Allocation of votes, Ranked choice voting. Now, this could be a really critical issue at the general election. People here, I'm sure, know a little bit about ranked choice voting because New Hampshire just went through this struggle about whether you would adopt it in your primary. Unfortunately, the state decided not to. But basically, ranked choice says you go in and you just list your preferences. Number one, Tulsi. Number two, I don't know. Number three, I don't know. But the point is, you list your preferences. If your number one choice doesn't qualify is not in the top, I don't know what the number is.5, then your second choice vote gets counted. And if your second choice vote doesn't qualify, then your third choice vote gets canceled. But the point is, by the end, the people who are selected are actually liked by a significant proportion of the public. And when it's just two and you're coming down to finding the one person who has more than 50% support, you can at least say this person is supported by a majority of Americans. So this is a really important innovation, which turns out is not such an innovation. New Hampshire had something like this in 1792. Turns out you guys are always ahead, it turns out. But obviously the failure to have ranked choice decided some pretty important elections, like 2000. If Florida had had ranked choice, a state where George Bush won by 537 votes, yet 96,000 people had voted for Ralph Nader, I think enough of those Ralph Nader votes would have said, okay, number two, maybe Al Gore rather than George Bush. And we would have had a radically different future if that had happened. So are you supporting the movement to spread ranked choice both in the primaries and in the general election?

I am. And this is something that I've just been. And it's really cool because it's been at unrig, the summit. You've heard of unrig? That was the first gathering that I went to where there was a group of people there who were lobbying and pushing for ranked choice voting. And they gave me some information at that time, it was last year, I hadn't really heard much about it. And so I had to educate myself and have been really interested and encouraged by the growing support for this at the local level. But really see, see how it makes sense and, and could have such an impact at the national level. And really just being in a place where we as voters are at, We're. We're able to vote for who we want to vote for.

Yeah. Without worrying about, are you throwing your votes.

Exactly.

So in this election, which.

Which, by the way, that was the issue in 2016. Right. Well, you've got to vote for who you think can win and who can beat the other guy, rather than actually just voting for who you think the best candidate is. Right.

And voters, it turns out, play what economists call this beauty contest, which is they vote for the person they think other people will find the most attractive, not the person they themselves find the most attractive, because for some psychological reason, you just want to be with the winner. But especially at a moment like this where the Democratic Party, for example, has so many interesting ideas on the table. And rather than saying, we just have to vote for the person we know is going to beat Donald Trump, if we could say, look, I really like the anti war or the anti interventionist perspective, I really like the ubi, I really like the reform commitment and begin to say that through votes, then the party has to listen. Yeah.

No, I'm encouraged that we've seen progress in my home state of Hawaii in this and in a couple other states. But again, how much more this is entering kind of the center of our public discourse, I think bodes well.

Yeah. Okay, then one other part of HR, one where there might be some interesting conversation here is what's thought of as vote suppression or the ability for people to participate in the political process. Florida, as you remember, in 2018, passed a voter disenfranchisement amendment to their referendum. Overwhelmingly, something like 61% of the state voted to enfranchise felons in Florida, even though the most any Democrat got in that state was something like 49%. So the point is, Republicans, Independents, and Democrats united on the idea that we should be extending as broadly as we can the franchise to bring people back into the political process. Now, you've not been as encouraging on the idea of felon enfranchisement.

Actually, no. I strongly support this and have learned. I listened to a podcast recently that went into detail about Florida's past on this issue and what people had to go through to get their voting rights restored. And they featured a few different individuals that they formed, followed, who were going through this process. And the wait time is very, very long for, you know, someone to go and put their application and saying, you know, I. I want to earn my right to vote back. And ultimately, even after the whole wait period, I think they had hearings once a quarter or something like that, with ultimately the governor being in the position to Decide after hearing a testimony arbitrarily whether or not he felt that you have earned the right to exercise your voice through our democracy. No. So I've supported in Congress and continue to support and congratulate states like Florida for doing this. I understand it's being challenged now there, unfortunately, but it just shows why we need to keep raising this issue to make sure that we're taking this kind of action that can strengthen our democracy and respect the voices that of the people in this country.

Okay, so that's grade two. Then we have this institution, this bizarre institution of the Electoral College. Now you know, many people look at the Electoral College and they think the real problem with the Electoral College is it sometimes elects people who are not actually the winner of the popular vote, which it does. And indeed we can show statistically. This great professor at Princeton Wong has demonstrated that in close elections there's probably a 35% chance that it will not select the winner of the popular vote. And that's not. It will select the Republican when the Democrat won. It doesn't matter about the party. The point is it will be increasingly bad at picking the majority winner. So many people focus on that. That's not really the part that I am anxious about. What I'm anxious about is every four years presidential candidates care only about the so called swing states. I mean you happen to live in one, which means you get television ads for candidates running for office 24, seven between. Well, I guess that's only ads you have on television or political ads. Right, but the point is in swing states, candidates run in non swing states, they don't care. So you don't go to Hawaii, you don't go to Texas, you don't go to Massachusetts.

You don't get, I go to Hawaii all the time.

No, you do, but I think you've got Hawaii locked up. But the point is these swing states, this kind of other nation made up of these 14 states in 2016, 95% of campaign appearances were in these 14 states. 99% of campaign spending were in these 14 states. The only time you went to New York or California was to raise money. So these swing states, they pick our president. We've outsourced the election of our president to these swing states. Now these swing states don't represent America. You know, actually New Hampshire comes close in many important ways to represent America. But in general, the swing states are older, they're whiter, their industry is not 20, even late 20th century industry. There are seven and a half times the number of people in Solar energy in America as mine coal. But you never hear about solar energy because those people are in Texas. And in California you hear about coal mining because those are swing state issues. So the real seems to me the real problem with the Electoral College is it doesn't give us a president who represents America. So what do you think we should be doing to try to reform this college to get us a president who actually is represented?

I think this is such an important point. And if you look at some of the debate that's happening now, there's not agreement about even amongst presidential, Democratic presidential candidates about reform. There are some who are advocating for getting rid of it altogether and only going towards the popular vote. That's not the position that I hold because I think it's important for the reasons that we would be reminded of the reasons why the Electoral College is put in place in the the first place. So that states like mine, small states like mine in Hawaii actually do have a voice in the process, but the current system is not representative of the votes that are being cast. And to me, that's the biggest problem that I see. And the second thing is for those who want to get rid of the Electoral College, that would require a constitutional amendment that would take a very, very, very long time to actually turn into reality, if at all. So I think the approach that we need to take is one that does not require a constitutional amendment that would make it so that the electoral votes that come from each state are actually proportional and representative of the votes that are cast in that state for one candidate or another. And getting rid of the current winner take all situations that we have. I think to me, that is what's at the heart of the problem here, because then you have people only focusing on certain states where they do the math. And frankly, this is what Trump did in 2016. They focused on those states where they felt that they could win over enough Democrats in order to win the state and then get enough of those winner take all votes, rather than seeing the value and the importance of our democracy, of a representative democracy to make sure that every vote is heard, heard and counted and that those votes are counted and represented through a proportional electoral college system.

Yeah. So if it's proportional, that's better than what we've got. If it's proportional and they could cast fractional votes so you could get 1.24 electoral votes, then that would actually make it perfectly representative because if the fraction goes down to 100,000th, then that's basically just reflecting the the vote. But it's still done state by state, and small states still get a thumb on the scale. That's the important point. I think one of the things the national popular vote people are not thinking about is how do you run a national election with 51 separate jurisdictions doing the counting, with 51 separate sets of rules?

Right.

But through a system like you're describing, we solve that problem because we're still doing it state by state, but we could get close, closer to something that's proportional. Yeah. Whether it takes an amendment or not is a hard question. Do you support the idea of an amendment to buttress this range of Democratic reform that you've been talking about? Would it be a good idea? I mean, we can admit it's incredibly hard to imagine it happening, but would it be a good idea to add to the Constitution the changes that would embed the type of changes you want to pass through legislation?

I think we've looked through a whole host of changes here, and I think if as we go through that, and you're the constitutional expert, not me, but if we look at some that would require or would be strengthened by looking at how we can. How we can strengthen our Constitution, it's certainly something we should consider, but I don't think that we can afford to wait. And we've got to continue to try to get bills like HR1 passed through the Senate and signed into law.

Okay, so you're a candidate who supports fundamental change. You supported HR1. Would you support what we could call POTUS1? Take all the packages of reforms that you've talked about, put them together into one bill. Would you say that like Nancy Pelosi, you think that's the first thing Congress should take up in 2021 under the Tulsi Gabbard administration?

Yeah, I think it is, because this is central to everything else. And the fact that that legislation includes. Includes things that deal with campaign finance reform, that deal with closing this revolving door in Washington that allows whether it's elected officials or senior government officials to be in a position where they are providing oversight or regulation over an industry, then leave that and go work for the industry that they were supposed to be exercising oversight for and get a massive payout is. I mean, it's of kind corruption. It's corruption, plain and simple. And so how can we begin to bring about the kinds of, whether it's regulatory changes or legislative changes, so long as you have this corruption taking place, where you have the very few and the very rich and powerful who are the ones really who are deciding the policies that are being made, the rules that are being passed in our government to the detriment of the rest of us.

In the military industrial congressional complex, 75% of the lobbyists have revolved through the military or the government. They're revolving door lobbyists. So this is exactly the point that you're trying to.

And we're talking about lobbyists here, but also you look at Wall street regulators, FCC regulators, you see the same thing happening in these critical places where we as people, we as voters are supposed to trust that the people in this position have our best interest at heart, that they are the consumer protectors, when really that's. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Okay, we're going to gather questions. Let's just put on the table this weirdness around the debates to make sure that we all understand what's happened here. So the DNC has a approved list of polls, and they say you have to get a certain percentage from the approved list of polls. You've clearly gotten that percentage from a wide range of polls. You've clearly raised the number of small contributions you need to qualify, but you will not be in the next debate. So what's the end game here? Do you think more of these events will rally more, more people so that you get on the approved list of polls, or do you think we can get the DNC to actually be more open in the polls that they're going to consider to see why somebody who, I think you're number six in New Hampshire in polling should definitely be on the debate stage so more people have a chance to hear these views.

I think we pursue all avenues of approach. You know, we're not just going to rely and have faith and trust that the DNC is at the end of the day going to do the right thing. We need to push them in that direction. We need to call a spade a spade. We need to call for more transparency and really just point out the fact that unless we have transparency in this process, then voters won't trust that the process is working. And if voters don't trust that the process is working, then you, then you see people stay home, feel like they have an incentive to actually go in and vote and be involved in a way that they don't feel represents their interest. So, you know, I hope that, you know, Tom Perez and the DNC recognize that it's the interest of the Democratic Party to listen to the people, to make sure that that transparency is there to reassess the initial decision that they made about what polls they'll count and see that a number of those polls that they've chosen as qualifying aren't even polling at all and therefore aren't contributing to this criteria. But again, we'll call on the DNC to do the right thing. I ask for all of your help in doing that because it's in all of our interests. But meantime, we're continuing to push our campaign forward, recognizing that it is not the DNC who decides the election, it's you. Especially voters in New Hampshire, especially voters in Iowa. And so we are, we're on the road. We are taking our campaign to every part of your state and look forward to being here a lot in the next several months and using every platform possible to be able to let voters across the country know who I am, the experience that I bring to the job of president and commander in chief and ask, ask for their support.

Excellent. Let's have some questions.

As we get into the questions, I want to make one point on this because I think it's very applicable to this about how as we talk about money and politics, we have to recognize that media time is money. And so when you look at the big network cable network channels, the cable channels, there is a clear choice about who is getting more airtime, who is getting less airtime, when really we're talking about money and politics. You see how much of an influence big media has in our elections and making those decisions on their own, failing to recognize that we the people are the ones who own the public airwaves and instead they're making their own choices. And I think this is an area that's a major problem that is not being addressed that we've got to begin to start to tackle if we're serious about really reforming our democracy and making sure that the interests of the people are being served.

Okay, so you. Yes, let's. So we have a favorite questioner in a number of these events. We've had this wonderful Ellie Zinc, 10 year old who has asked questions every single time now. And here's one more question. I'm going to frame it, as she puts it, how will you fix our democracy? We've talked about what you would do, but I think the real thrust of this is how will you make it happen? How can you give us faith that actually the politicians can fix this broken system?

Thank you for your question, Ellie. The politicians won't fix the broken system. The people will. The people will because we've got a lot of politicians whose whole careers have been built around a broken system that ultimately serves their interests. Or their ability to stay in power, but not serving the interests of the people. And this is where I find a lot of hope and inspiration around our campaign and the message that we're bringing forward, which is really one that's focused on bringing to fruition Abraham Lincoln's vision, which was having a government that is of the people, by the people and for the people. And what we're seeing is that this message resonates with people who are Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Libertarians, Americans who are coming together and recognizing that we stand on this common ground as fellow Americans with a deep appreciation for the freedoms and principles that our country was founded upon. And recognizing that united we stand, divided we fall. We've got to make sure that we change our current governance, which is of, by and for the rich and powerful, and actually make sure that we are electing leaders to lead our country who are of, by and for the people.

Okay, vote by home, vote at home, vote by mail.

I think this is critical. We, we have one of the counties in our state of Hawaii, Kauai county, that has just moved to complete absentee voting, voting by mail or voting from home. I think Oregon is another state that has 100% absentee voting. And their voter participation rates, I think are higher than most states in the country. So I think it's something we've got to look at. I'm a little bit torn just personally on making it mandatory. I personally like to go to the polling place on election day myself. I know there's a lot of other folks who'd like to do the same. But I think this also, and maybe there'll be another question on this, but this also is a good point on election security. And something that I've been very active on and been a leader on in Congress is election security. And, you know, people trying to meddle in our elections has been in the news a lot, especially in the last few years. But Congress has failed to act, to do the most important thing to secure our elections against anyone who tries to meddle in or change our votes. And that is to mandate either paper ballots or voter verified paper backups. If you're using an electronic system, I think the number right now is 14 states in our country don't have any kind of paper record at all of the votes that are being cast. And when you look at how sophisticated hackers have become and are quick, they're in a race to always try to break the system. And our concern about this, to me, this is the biggest vulnerability in our elections. The fact that if someone, whether it's an individual or a country or some rogue act, are coming in and actually manipulating the votes that have been cast in any one of these states and they have no way to audit, there's no paper record of those votes that are cast, then you have the ability to throw an entire election. I think this is really dangerous and undermines the heart of our democracy. If we can't trust that our votes will be counted, then what can we trust?

So that's a perfect example of the sort of issue that outside of Washington seems so obvious.

Exactly.

But inside of Washington, people like Mitch McConnell, the Dark Lord, would refer to this as Democratic power grab. It's just about Democrats trying to rig the system to their advantage. How do they live with that kind of hypocrisy bubbling around in their head?

I think it speaks to a deeper issue of hyper partisanship and divisiveness. And we see it in both parties where they're saying, well, yes, we're only going to encourage Democrats to register to vote and to go out and cast their vote, and we don't really care if anybody else shows up, and vice versa, to strengthen our democracy. And this is why I appreciate the work that Equal Citizens is doing, is because you're taking a nonpartisan approach and you're telling everyone, everyone in this country that your voice matters and that our country is stronger, our democracy is stronger. When everyone gets involved and exercises your right to vote and make sure that your voice is heard.

Automatic vote registration and Same day registration,

100% on both fronts.

Should we have federal standards that put.

I'm going to add, I'm going to add something to automatic voter registration, same day registration. I'm going to add open primaries to that. Thank you. Got that. Here in New Hampshire, we've got open primaries in Hawaii where people can go and they can register on the day of the election to go, go in and vote. We, we've got to get rid of these barriers. I think New York, if I'm not mistaken, if you want to vote in the Democratic primary in New York next year, the deadline to register as a Democrat is this year. Is this year. It's the same thing. I remember some of Trump's kids couldn't vote for him in the election because they hadn't registered as Republicans and switched parties to go and vote for him. But there were a lot of people in New York who went out in 2016. They wanted to vote for Bernie Sanders, they wanted to vote, but they hadn't registered the previous year. So they were completely shut out of the primary process. It's these kinds of obstacles that we've got to get rid of. If we're honest and authentic in our calls for engagement, we can't say, yes, come out. Your voice matters. Get involved in the process. But you've got to plan a year in advance before you do anything.

Yeah. Should the federal government have standards for vote purging when states, for example, decide who should be kicked off of their voting list with these incredible techniques that are obviously designed to kick one party off more than another?

Yeah, yeah, I think there should be federal standards. You know, we all know that the states are empowered to be the ones who administer elections. And this is the excuse that Mitch McConnell uses when he is not allowing a paper ballot bill to get to the floor of the Senate for a vote saying, well, the federal government shouldn't overstep its boundaries and meddle in the state's business. But those, those states administer federal elections as well. And when you start arbitrarily purging voter rolls, you've got people showing up on election day day saying, I've been registered to vote my whole life. Maybe they're in the military and they got deployed or they were serving overseas, or they've been gone for a few years and then they come back, show up on election day and are told, no, you can't vote because we decided to delete your name off the voter roll. I think this does such a disservice to voters and it's anti Democratic 16 year old voting. I'm a yes on this. How many of you agree with that? I'm curious. So there was actually an amendment in Congress that brought this up and no one had ever asked me that question before. It wasn't anything I'd ever thought about before. And my first thought was like, I don't know, until I started to look into it a little bit more. And I think there are really strong arguments about how kids at 16 years old can go to work, they're starting to pay taxes. And I found the arguments to be very compelling. I talked to a group of high schoolers about this and I asked them, same thing, raise your hands. Half of them raised their hands saying yes, the other half said no. So I think it's an interesting conversation. But look, if you see the young people in high school who are leading the charge on race, really important issues, who are really engaged in the issues that they care about, whether it be climate change or a number of other things, gosh, I have a lot of hope.

Okay, so not 16, 13. 13 year old Sienna, is it? Shower. She asks a question which is close to the issue in many middle schools, close to the hearts of many people in middle school. She says, I'm in middle school and concerned about E cigarettes and vapes by teens. How would you help keep teens safe?

This is something that I think more and more people are learning about now how harmful these things are. And I think it's important that we set up rules in place to make sure, just as we do with cigarettes, similarly, that we're not harming people who happen to be in the area of those who may be choosing to use these things. I think it's also a problem that so many of these E cigarettes and vaping, you know, they have like bubblegum flavor and all these other things are actually catering to young people without informing them about what all of the toxins are and the harm that can come about to their health as a result. I think this is one of those things that was put out there. Again, there's not a lot of research, there's not a lot of information about the damaging effect that it has on people.

Yeah, surprise, surprise, it has damaging effects. And when you have this focused campaign on kids, that's permitted because the Supreme Court has said there's very little regulation that's allowed to stop them from targeting kids. It's. I mean, I have kids this age too. It's a really, it's a really devastating problem. Here's a, here's an impossible question.

An impossible question.

Yeah, here it is. When you are president, how will you end congressional gridlock to pass your agenda?

This is not an impossible question.

Excellent. That's the right answer.

It's an impossible question. It's a necessary question. And the reason why we have the gridlock that we've had for so long is because of the hyper partisanship and the deep divides both in Washington, but that are also a reflection of what we're seeing happening in the country. And it's happening because you have people in positions of power. This goes back to some of the things that we talked about that you have such strong political parties whose interest is solely in how do we win the next election rather than how do we come together and work through differences to solve problems and deliver results to the people. So you can have, and this is what I've seen throughout my time in Congress, you can have a bill that if the Republicans, when the Republicans were in charge of this Democrat bill, they wouldn't bring it to the floor for A vote because they didn't want to help the introducing member in their next election. But they get reintroduced by a Republican, and then they'll bring it to the floor for a vote. And vice versa. Vice versa. Democrat in charge don't want to bring the Republican bill, but we will bring the Democrat bill to the floor for a vote. It is this kind of hyper partisanship that's got to change. And the way it changes is by we as voters setting standards and expectations for the leaders who we have the choice to either have hire or fire. I think this is something that's really critical and is at the heart of how we have to be able to come together if we're interested in actually solving any problems in this country. And what I find is so interesting is that in our own lives, in our own families, workplace, school, whatever, we're around people who we disagree with. We can talk about different issues or disagree on ideas without being disagreeable and saying, you know, I'm good, you're evil, I'm right, you're wrong. No, we work through things just to get through our daily lives. But somehow in politics, it's gotten to the place where you are either with me or against me. I am completely right. And if you don't agree with me, you are completely wrong. And you hate America and the American people. Like, seriously, this is the kind of rhetoric that goes on in Washington, and it does not allow any space. There is no mutual respect. It doesn't allow any space for real dialogue, real debate, a real exchange of ideas and people coming together, working in the best interest of the people. And so how we end this gridlock is by dealing with some of the reform issues with the power that political parties have, and by people who want to see a Congress that serves their interests, rather the interests of one party or another demanding this change from their elected leaders.

We are so exhausted by the world the way it is. This political system is just literally exhausting. I mean, not just the president, but the whole system. And I think you're exactly right. There's a desperate desire for people to see something different.

Your point is really important. That, yes, many of us have deep concerns about the policies coming out of this administration, but it's a mistake for us to think that this coming election is only about defeating Donald Trump. We have to remember that there are people struggling and suffering in this country, deep problems that frustrated us prior to November of 2016. And unless we recognize that, we will never be in a place where we're actually dealing with the root causes of these problems and the systemic change that we're talking about here, where across party lines we've seen the rich and powerful, the military industrial complex, the very few in positions of power where they're serving their own interests and not ours. And to me, that's at the heart of the kind of change that we need to make.

So we have three great questions about Citizens United States. First, what would you do about it? But two are specifically about whether you would support the American Promise pledge to get an amendment to address the problem of money in politics.

I'm not familiar with this pledge. I would love to see it, but for all of my seven, almost seven years in Congress, I have support. Oh, she's got it right there. All right, I will see you after this. Thank you. Yeah, we've got to overturn Citizens United and I think it has to be done through an amendment to the Constitution.

So what's great about American Promise is they are addressing this in exactly the way you would endorse. What they've done is they've set up a national organization that's working grassroots in a cross partisan way, meetings that have Republicans and Democrats to talk about what should this amendment be like and move it through the states. And so this is an incredibly important part of this democracy movement, but it's on the constitutional side.

I think that's what's so cool about this, is that you won't see this change coming from politicians who are only focused on elections because they benefit from those super PACs that are used funneling this dark money that none of us really know where it's from coming, coming from to push either one candidate or another or one issue or another. But people see what's really going on across party lines and we recognize how corrupting that influence is and how much it drowns out the voices of voters. And so I look forward to talking to you after this.

But what's really important about this movement is to realize we don't have to get the amendment in order to begin to make changes to our. We need the amendment, but we need to recognize we can make fundamental changes without it. The vice president, Mr. Biden, just today said that before we could change the way we fund campaigns, we have to pass a constitutional amendment, which we know is just not true. We have to give people hope that there's actually something you could do in the first days of your administration that would fix this system if we're going to get them out to fight for this type of change. This is a critically important point. So Here's a question we've not had many raised many times, although it's a question that America is struggling with, and it's something obviously you've thought a lot about. How would you achieve what you believe should be an appropriately secure border?

This is a really important question, and I think it's a debate that's ongoing about what. What does border security look like? Some people advocating for a change in laws that would essentially allow for open borders. I think that part of the comprehensive immigration reform that we need has three major areas. One is reforming our legal immigration system that is deeply broken and that is only worsening the problem that we have with people who are seeking to enter our country between ports of entry rather than through, you know, our ports of energy, whether it be the air or by land or sea. The second thing is the asylum laws that we have and the lack of resources that we have dedicated to those seeking asylum are extremely deficient. There are better ways that we can make this work, whether it's immediately dedicating resources to the border with judges and administrators and so forth, but also making it possible for people to seek asylum in the countries, in their home countries. So we don't have the situation now where people feel like their only option is to, you know, walk thousands of miles to try to make it to our border and hope that they actually. That they actually get there. But the third one is about secure borders. And unfortunately, Trump has made this a political issue, a political promise that he made to build a wall from sea to shining, which doesn't make sense at all if the concern is security at the border. Let's figure out how we make sure we have a secure border, because unless our border is secure, we don't have a country. And look at what is the most effective and cost efficient way to do that. In some areas, a barrier of some sort may make the most sense. In other areas, with the use of infrared and technology and so forth, there are other options, options that may be more effective and cost efficient for taxpayers.

So this is an interesting question, testing your anti regime change ideology. How would you support democracy abroad? What's our role in making the world a better world for democracy?

This is a very good question that I think is not debated often enough in Washington. You know, I've been on the Foreign Affairs Committee for several years now, for almost my whole time in Congress. And there is the assumption that the United States has the authority to go and build many American democracies in other countries and impose our style of governance in other places. And other people. And even if this is coming from a place of very good intention of wanting to help people in those countries, the fact is that, that that kind of change can only come about organically within that country. And we've seen throughout our history how many times our efforts to do so, often by toppling a dictator or an authoritarian regime in another country and instead putting in a place, a leader that we like or that actually serves our interests, it doesn't end up serving the interests of the people in those countries. So I think we've got to respect the sovereignty of other countries, whether we agree with what's what their governance is or not, and understand that real change can only be brought about in those countries. Just like we wouldn't want any other country coming in here and telling us how we should run our elections, who should lead our country, we've got to be able to respect the same in other countries. And if we want to inspire change, let's inspire change by being the strongest, most perfect union that we possibly can.

Absolutely. I remember the days when Reagan used to utter this controversial rhetoric, which is no longer controversial, but we wanted to be this shining city on the hill. What's interesting about that rhetoric is it's saying, you're inspiring by being shiny, right? But if you're not the shining city anymore, you're not going to inspire anybody. And if we just became a great democracy again, we can argue about whether we've ever been a great. But if we could be be a great democracy, then we could inspire many other nations to copy us.

I couldn't agree more. And I think that the view that many other countries have of the United States with the policies that our country has had for so long of being the world's police, has had a detrimental impact. Where folks don't see us as that shining city on a hill, they instead see a country with the most powerful military in the world threatening and bullying and saying, well, we are going to come in and topple you, this government. We're going to do this and that in your country, really undermining what our potential could be. And for me, as president, I would lead with a foreign policy that's based on cooperation rather than conflict, that provides us the opportunity for other countries working with other countries, like China, for example, to be able to work out our differences, deal with the trade negotiations that we need to have, while also creating the space for us to work together on areas of common interest to address things like climate change. Because if we're serious about addressing this climate problem that sits before us. It's not only one that is posed to the United States. Because the fact is that even if we did every single thing that we needed to do and wanted to do tomorrow, it wouldn't even begin to come close to being enough to deal with the problems that we're facing. It requires us to be able to work with other countries. And so long as we have policies that are focused on being the world's police, that are focused on conflict, we won't have those relations, we won't be able to have that space to work together, to be able to solve these global challenges together.

I once had the opportunity to speak to in Iraq and I was speaking to kids that were in high school and one kid raised his hand and he said, do you realize you believe in the Death Star and that's your foreign policy? And I said, what do you mean? He said, star wars, the Death Star, that's what you are doing. And there's this moment of wow, there's a lot to that. And it didn't work so well in Star Wars. Why do we believe it's going to work well here? And I think this approach, how do we get people to want to work with us is the critical approach. Okay, we've had a couple questions and we're coming to an end. But a couple questions around this I want to make sure we cover. So I mean, first of all, you're running an incredible campaign. I was saying before we came onto the stage that I was driving through South Carolina. Tulsi is everywhere in South Carolina, all across the roads and all in the, I mean, even signs in people's yards. So this is a campaign that's just beginning. It's not a campaign that's ending. But many people who see this debate as the qualification to continue will ask, well, what are you going to do if you can't go further? Are you going to continue to commit to fight for, you know, the issues that I know you care deeply about peace and, and America as the peace loving America we know it was founded to be. I hope you also want to fight for reform. Is that how you see it? If it doesn't go the way you expect? Some people are saying, would you be a third party candidate? So I wonder how you think about or answer those questions.

Sure, fair questions. We're taking our campaign all the way to the convention. So we're going to continue debate or no debate. We're taking this all the way because of who we're fighting for and the change that we're seeking to bring about. I will not be running as a third party candidate. I will continue to fight for the nomination to be in a position to defeat Trump and start to do the tough work that's necessary to bring about the great change that we need to see in many of the areas that we talked about. If that doesn't work out, I'm committed to continuing to bring about this change and continuing to build this movement that we've already seen begun forming.

Okay, so as our gift. So this hat evokes for many people in this room a very familiar reference. The reference is Doris Haddock, aka Granny D. Granny D, 20 years ago this year, began a walk from California to Washington, D.C. she was 88 when she began the walk. She was 90 when she finished. And all across the country, she had on her chest a sign that said campaign finance reform. And of course, as she walked into Washington, there were hundreds walking with her, including many members of Congress who had zipped out for the last mile to walk in with her. And part of this responsibility of this movement was to help to get the Bipartisan Campaign Reform act passed, as it was passed 20 years ago. This is the style of Granny D's hat. We'd love to give this to you, Tulsi, that you can wear it sometimes to remember exactly how long this fight has been going for and how much more. How many more miles we have to walk before we can stop. Please join me in thanking Dulcie.

Daddy. Thank you so much, so much for your ongoing work to bring about this reform. And thanks to all of you for taking the time to be here and join us this evening. Really appreciate it. Thank you.