welcome.

politics and prose at the wharf. i'm brad graham the co-owner of the bookstore, along with wife lissa muscatine and it's really especially exciting to be here this evening for what is the first author talk in our brand new store. big poppy has been at the wharf now for for more than six years but we were at the other end of the wharf as many of you remember and we recently only recently and the last couple of months to this lovely and somewhat larger space and and

it's particularly to have as our inaugural event here a that features several key washington politicians and examines a major trend in american politics. the book is the rebels elizabeth warren. warren bernie sanders and alexandria ocasio-cortez and the struggle for a new american politics. it's by josh green, an experienced reporter who has worked for the washington monthly and the atlantic and currently is national ndent for bloomberg businessweek. his previous book, nearly seven years ago, devil's bargain, was a narrative of the 2016 campaign and how the partnership between donald trump as candidate and steve bannon chief strategist, led to populist nationalist led

to populist nationalist ideas taking hold on the right and eventually in the white house in the rebels looks at how a parallel dynamic has played out on the left with a new strain of populism, a rising there as well in this narrative, the trigger is the 2008 financial crisis and, its aftermath and the story told through the careers of three political figures who have led charge. on the left, warren sanders and aoc forging alliances, working class voters and and demanding significant reforms. these three have given fresh voice to an economic populism that, as josh describes, used to hold sway in the democratic party, now has re-energized the

party's progressive wing. although josh allows this new democratic remains a work progress, he finds hope in the party's shift back towards its roots and towards the dream of a multiracial coalition. moderating this evening's discussion where we're very fortunate to have one of journalism's most knowledgeable political experts, chuck todd is a five time emmy award winner and currently the chief political for nbc news. chuck has held several other prominent roles with the with the network over the years, including chief white house correspondent, political director and of course, moderator of meet the press. so please join me in welcoming josh green and chuck todd.

well, thank you. all right. is this on? can everybody ready? we're excited that we're the inaugural talk here. yeah, we were just told were the inaugural book event at the new politics and prose and had i known, i would have brought a bottle of champagne and we would have christened the event. yeah. so can everybody hear me okay? and everything. everybody's good. all right, let me do a quick i want to i want to introduce you before you introduce me unnecessary. but for it. yeah. no, i'm really safe. chuck here. nobody knows this, but chuck was one of my sort of key, my early political education in the early 2000. i worked in the in the watergate building at the atlantic monthly, a political reporter. and chuck was the editor of the down on the third floor and the way i learned about politics was i would take the elevator and hang out in chuck's office and, kind of absorb all his story ideas. and he's very generous with his political contacts and. one day in early 2004, we had a piece through and the editor came to me and said, hey, could

find somebody to profile really quick? and so i shot down to office. i said, like, who should i write about? you're going to remember this? and he said, you know, you should go out to illinois to democratic senate primary. there's two really interesting candidates there. one of them is a math genius who made his fortune counting in las vegas and then spun it into a hedge fund. the other one, the guy, chuck, that i should write about, was this charismatic, young african-american state senator. so i and all my wisdom went out and i profiled the card counter who who a week after the piece comes out blows up in this epic scandal and is never heard from again. the guy that chuck wanted me to profile, which i did not profile, was named barack obama and hear i hear that he's gone on to have quite a success full political career. ever since i've learned, like, you know, chuck is sort of the first guy i turn to for political wisdom. and i'm thrilled i was doing that. do you remember that? i remember that, larry hall was

larry hall that you know, i always say this about politics and people get to the presidency. look, you certainly some level of of ability to get to the presidency, but you need some interesting luck and barack obama opponents in that u.s. senate race. he had the card counter who was the self-funder, who he not defeating in that primary. right until that guy imploded and then he's up against on paper, a terrific recruit. guy name was jack ryan. jack ryan. so just a great name, right? sounds like a jack ryan looked at he it's my sex scandal of all time because he's the first politician to get chased out of politics for wanting to have sex. his wife now he wanted to have sex with his in a public swingers club. yeah, but he did what it was sort of the strangest aspect to

it. it was. and he was married to a at the time an actress that was very famous on deep space nine. if some you weren't wrong that that was the race. oh it was that it was one of those, you know that was the barack obama you do benefit sometimes from your opponents but the joshua green i got to know what i what i love about josh is that he did he did not come through washington. right. like that is that is why his books on bannon this book here, he at it with sort of scare skeptical fresh eyes. i'm sure they're less fresh now, you know, now that we're we're in middle aged although he's eternally youthful. but it is it is this is why it's like there's a lot of creatures of washington that write report on everything vs of washington. josh is always somebody that is trying to sort of get at the

person we all should be paying more attention to. look, he focused on steve bannon before of us had the stomach to do it. stomach is a good way of. yeah. and it turned to be prescient and important. but i want to start with the premise of your book because i think you do a terrific job of is is you know you may initially think oh this is about the fight inside the democratic party and obviously it is about the rise of the left rise of the new left in the democratic party. but what i thought you did a pretty really job of is is sort of really putting into etching into stone just how much of a political earthquake the financial crisis out to be. and we are still we are still somehow the that is a still a bigger political earthquake than covid. yeah and there's is a reason for it. but i'm going to shut and explain that larger framing before we start to get into the. yeah. i mean to me the 2008 financial

crisis in the aftermath was sort of the defining event of of my the defining political event of my adult lifetime, the crisis and especially the aftermath and. i had a i had an interesting glimpse of it. i was we discussed i was a political reporter for, the atlantic at the time. and my day job, i got to embed tim geithner, barack obama's treasury secretary, right. when obama took over sort of at the at the depths of the crisis but i was also a freelance columnist for the boston globe and got to know elizabeth warren a little bit before her real political career because she was such an important boston figure and because a lot of democratic senators, chuck schumer and harry reid in particular had, kind of grasped on to her as being this important adviser and had brought her to washington. and as soon as the obama administration took over, she became or maybe even before then she became the oversight cop or one of the oversight cops for the bailout money. so she now had this public platform. and it just struck me that

during the day i'd be hanging out with geithner, who'd, you know, the administration would do a great job in coming back from the crisis and, that everything was going to be happy and that was going to be this great historical figure. and then i would, you know, spend the afternoon with warren who was angry that the class was being forgotten and, that all the banks were getting bailed out. and so there was this really interesting kind of split screen that evolved from that. i think there's a scene in the book at the very end where geithner of wakes up and realizes it's after ted kennedy lost, the democrats lost kennedy special reelection. he looked like it was going to kill obama's agenda. you know, geithner sitting there with me in office sort of realizing, oh, my god, america hates us. and there's this huge coming to me. that backlash was kind of the genesis of my last book, devil's to rise about right, right wing. but but i'd kind of come out of the the left policy world and had known warren and followed this story a lot.

and so for this one, i wanted to go back and at the rise of populism on the left which i think has been such an important shaping force in democratic politics, including in joe biden's white house. so what is the difference between i hesitate to call it trump's populism? because he's kind of he kind of is a cipher, right? he kind of just glommed on to it. and in fairness, bannon is sort of a little bit more of a true believer on this. what would you say is the biggest difference between what elizabeth warren wants do with the banks and what steve bannon wants to do with the banks? that's a great question. i mean, i think of bannon's populism and trump's populism as being more culture focused than economically focused. i mean, certainly the animating issues for both those guys are immigration. and there's steady stream of xenophobia and all that coming out of there, although bannon, i think, understood the rhetorical power of economic, if you go back and look at the campaign ads that trump ran in 2016, half

of were about immigration and anti-muslim stuff, but half of them about anti-wall street and. you know, you would have, you know, jamie dimon, janet yellen and lloyd blankfein, who was the head of goldman sachs at the time. so i think bannon understood that component to me, warning especially and senior extent or are more focused on the economic of things. and in. steering government action in a direction that benefits the class. i think more than a steve bannon would want to do. there's something kind of destructive about bannon's of economic populism. i don't think he'd mind if the banks failed, sort of crashed, but i don't think he'd be bending over backwards to be, you know, sending big stimulus checks to working class people, that sort of thing. but but but it's worth saying, too, there is a little bit of an overlap between biden. he's decided to hang on to trump's tariffs on chinese imports and economic nationalism. this is now a bipartisan thing,

isn't it? i think it is for for certain elements of. the democratic party. what was interesting to me is that that was really a that i think warren first and then bernie kind of carried forward in democratic politics biden who's political persona was always kind of working class union scranton joe but was known early in his career as being a great friend of corporate america has really kind of come around on that and up their version of economic populism to the extent that you now see him marching on uaw picket and that sort of thing. joe biden has spent his entire career, i would say is always looking for the center of the democratic party is. this why he was a bussing guy in the seventies that's where the center of the party was he's not a centrist. he's in center of the democratic party, sort of like truly in the middle of that. and it does feel as if he he shifted when sort of the bill clinton wing of the shifted to the right. so did he. and then he's now seems to the

left. is that is that it does feel as if he is he is trying to at least appease the left now. that's absolutely right i mean, biden's first appearance in the book is i think. 2005 2006 when he was the of of left wing folks and had this famous confrontation at a senate hearing with warren, who was then a harvard harvard law professor fighting to push a stronger bill. and biden, as a delaware senator, was defending credit card industry and was very kind of patron izing and nasty to elizabeth warren back then. but now has come all way across. and i think that shows the influence of my on democratic politics and now espouses many of the same policies that warren does my favorite nobody ever remembers this. biden came out last state of the union and actually endorsed a billionaires wealth tax, which everybody everybody forgets. but to me, you know, when i to dc in early 2000 biden was like joking like i think bob dole gave him this nickname the

senator from corporate america because so many corporations are based on the idea that the center from corporate from corporate america is now endorsing a billionaires wealth tax never fails to blow my mind. you did a good job of sort of tracing sort of. you know what i think of here i'm in the middle of reading a new book, henry wallace and. you know, henry wallace was sort of you know, he was left of fdr. right? and he was in that. but you a healthy progressive working class wing of the party through, the fifties, sixties and then it started coming apart in the seventies. you know, i think a lot people trace the wall street democrats to clinton, but you you went further back explain. yeah, i start the book, oddly enough, in 1978 and jimmy carter's white house in the reason i did that, you know is a reporter and author. i'm always interested in the

kind of you know and i remember when was hanging out with geithner and warren, you know, seeing the crisis unfold and seeing the government's response unfold, which is obviously back then very heavily tilted toward the financial community and bailing out wall street. a lot of what warren said made made a certain kind of obvious sense to me. well, what about the middle class? what about people who can't pay their mortgage? what about people who are stuck? and so the kind of the question in my from then on was like, well, why was this government's reaction? what was it about the democratic party that shifted from the early, you know, from the sixties early seventies, as you said, when they were known as the party of labor and the party of working class to that was so i don't want to say captured necessarily but but so in sync wall street in the way wall street view the world that they thought that this was this was the way to go and many say it's bob rubin that did this well. right. bill clinton got intoxicated with bob rubin conversations and then. yeah rubin is certainly a

character in the book. i mean, to me the interesting you know, carter in 78 was dealing with high inflation terrible economy, growing unpopularity with voters and wanted do something to turn the economy around and he had run as a populist kind of an anti-war wall street populist who wanted to wipe out the tax, get rid of all the wall street and start anew in a way that would bend things toward, frankly, a very traditional southern democratic position. actually, you know, in many ways true to his roots. but i open the book, the story of the fight of how carter that fight and got rolled by his own party. and the answer was that, you know, the newly organized business class had sold a lot of democrats on the idea of what later became known as supply side economics what was known back then as capital formation. it was it was essentially the argument that, listen, if just give these big banks tax breaks, if you if help capital

formation, it'll grow new businesses, it'll give everybody in the middle class jobs, the economy will recover. democrats will be popular and this is the way forward. and he convinced a lot of democrats in congress to go along with. so the story early in the book is the story carter getting rolled not just wall street and by lobbyists in washington by members of his own party. and to me, it's an important story to because that is the moment i think, which democrats sort fell under the sway of street in a way that kept certainly through bob rubin and bill clinton. but part of it also that these financial firms business generally a, lot of democrats back then saw them as being able to replace money that unions and used to give to the democratic party that they were no longer able to because of how labor had declined by the late seventies. so was just going to say i mean how much was this shift towards being the business community at first and then more embracing it

sort of as the decade went on how much it was just done out of necessity to win elections. i think you know going back i did a bunch of research and even kind of archival research and c-span research looking at how people talked about it back then and early on. i don't think that democrat ads, even the ones pushing this were thinking that, you know, we're just to kind of take take their money and do wall street's bidding. i they convinced i think a lot of them were genuinely that democrats did not have for how to fix and grow the economy 1978 and because there there weren't answers because there weren't populists like warren and bernie sanders. hey, this is the way to go. they wound up going in this other direction instead. but i think what supercharged that and move on on democrats was jimmy carter's loss in 1980 a steamer rolled by ronald reagan. it became clear that politics was a now going to move on to television and be that was going to be much, much more expensive

and so democrats were at this huge disadvantage a lot of them convinced themselves that they needed that they needed to have business support. and if you go back to the early 1980s, which i do in the book, you can look at all of the new generation of democrats, people, paul tsongas, bill bradley, all of these sort of you, even even richard gephardt essentially saying need as democrats to to business on this. there's quote i want to read because this is this is well, first of all, your song is just saying, you know, the economy will work best when private industry leads the way that was an idea that would not have even five years earlier. it's going to be a santa is to do a song. yeah but the one i love most actually the column. at the frog all songs and we're going to the quote i found that i think best expresses kind of like the cold logic and democratic calculation in kind of moving in a business direction actually came from a big neo liberal thinker in the

early eighties who 20 years later wound up being my boss charlie peters. he said, peters wow. he said, arguing why democrats should in a business direction. he said, you to respect what's good about the businessman while at the same time remaining aware that they can be shifts. so i mean, to me to me, you know, these democrats knew what they were doing, but they also listen. we need to find a way to compete with reagan and, you know, a kind of jimmy carter, walter mondale, identity guru, politics really isn't going to fly. all right. let's fast forward to a sort of barack obama's education into the financial system. he was it turned out and you seem to paint this picture, he was much more malleable than perhaps he now probably wishes he was. yeah, i he was he was naive. and i don't mean that in a bad a negative way, but look, it's his in fairness, everybody felt

naive when lehman crashed. i mean there was sort of a that it was certainly a humbling not true but know his experience was senator and what two years of being a u.s. senator with not a lot of experience and in the economy in wall street and certainly not those kinds of situations and you know, obama ended up to people like tim geithner, larry summers, rubin, basically the clinton financial team. yeah, exactly. but clinton but people were, you know, experienced in wall street financial markets, which is obviously important when the economy is collapsing who had deep democratic ties, but who also by that point a lot of influence on ideological outlook of democrats and how they govern. that was a market based approach that was in more or less direct opposition to the way that bernie sanders or elizabeth warren or an aoc had had been really old enough and paying attention at the time, you know, would have wanted it to obama

sort of deferred to these people and got a crisis you know that was largely think influenced by the views of financial community and no surprise focused resources on bailing and propping up that financial community in a way that i don't think paid enough attention to ordinary middle class folks. and that's been the great lesson the democrats have, you know, the forgotten candidacy, you know we we've all memory hold this person but john edwards you know seven two americas was the one. he was it's always funny to me, you know, we all can we talk about john anymore? you know, you whisper about him. he was the populist, the mainstream populist candidate in the democratic side. and he struggling to get traction. yeah, well, i mean, you know, he was the hot guy for a while. that cycle and the two americas speech really resonated. he had obvious political talent. and you know if if he hadn't had

so many problems his personal life, you know, could have maybe maybe been a few. i why obama didn't adopt the two americas i think the anti brand of his his whole brand was are red white america white you know blue america where you the united states of america. so in some ways to was almost counterintuitive i think that's i think what he was trying to preach. yeah i mean he was still looking at a kind of post-partisan politics which which seemed possible then bridging an awfully now know, awfully naive yeah, yeah. so so the thing that i was by in reading this book over the last couple of weeks is where the rebels now are they i say this in that i know they're there but is it well it's biden's presidency trump's a real challenge we're going to keep our heads down and wait for the next moment or what. yeah mean i think you know and i sort of get this at the end of

the book the measure of success when i was traveling with warren and for a while with bernie in in the fall of 2016, in the early months of 2020, during that democratic when they were both running for president was of course. well, you know, if one of these guys wins, we'll have a true populist as is the democratic nominee. and in the white that was their big hope. it didn't happen. there was a lot of despondent see on the left in the aftermath, but you look at the way biden has governed, you know, rather than winning the nominee passion and pivoting to the center, the way people traditionally do, biden locked up the nomination, kind of pivoted to the left. and as a president, he has worked to enshrine a lot of the policies all three of these characters were pushing, not just in the multiple of of stimulus and response, the covid crash and the beefed up unemployment benefit. it's and the student loan forgiveness and eviction freezes and small business loans and all

the stuff that should have happened at warren wanted to happen back in 2009. and didn't you know, this time they did and not only that but you know biden also passed the biggest climate bill probably in us history, which was, you know, a big victory for ocasio-cortez, even though it wasn't touted as a climate bill, it was sort of buried the in the ira because that's what it took to get joe manchin and kirsten cinnamon board. but i think one of the reasons that these three characters have been so quiet is because they do have so much influence in the biden white house, not just terms of personnel. as you know, warren likes to say, personnel is policy. and a lot of old staffers are in their bit because i think they realize, i guess this would be my view. i don't i don't know that it's their view, but i think biden has managed to accomplish in terms of populist policies in getting them into law than a president sanders or a president. warren could have. because, as you know, the senate picks up that from i think you're right. i think if do start with truth serum, she might have another

chance to do that but it took somebody like a joe biden to get joe manchin kirsten cinema to go along with spending this kind of money, passing these kind of policies. and i that somebody like a president bernie would have would have coded too radical for manchin to succeed. so you the thing i point to the measure really is look if any of the three of these candidates were unhappy about joe biden's presidency, they could have challenged him in the primaries. this year, aoc turns 35 in october and so she could technically for president this cycle in the fact that of the three of them have chosen to do so. i think reflects the fact that not only that trump is a threat, but that they're getting a lot of what they want me go back let's say elizabeth warren what did she you know without me putting the so what did she want to have done in the financial crisis? is it simply guaranteed

foreclosure of a home worth 500,000 or less? i mean? is it something like that? i mean, i certainly, you know, looking at how we handled covid, which is just, you know, i always look at it, we we had a choice. a depression between a depression and inflation. give me inflation every day, the week. right. i think we've all you know, what was life like in oh nine and what was like i think we will if you experienced both you would take inflation what would warren have done well you can go back you can go back and look at what it was she would at the time because you know she was never one to hide her light under a bushel she had you know all sorts of ideas about what geithner and obama should be i mean she was really before she was anything she was sort of tim geithner's nemesis. and you know, as i write about the book, you know would go on the daily show and sort of proselytize on behalf of her ideas. it's a great scene you paint in there with geithner at treasury in this ornate room in his first meeting with warren's condition. yeah, it's quite a want to spoil

it too much but it's just you paint the visual that this really was these to look look i heard plenty from tim geithner about his feelings about elizabeth warren. yeah i was also in the middle of writing a book about obama at the time. yeah. and it oh, yes. not not a lot of love lauren was probably the most unpopular person in that west wing for a period of time i think for a pretty long period of time. yeah. but warren then had plenty of ideas about what the government should be doing in response to the crisis can go back and find them all and there's a laundry list obama did almost of them back then i think partly, because they didn't think that they needed to. they that their plan was going to be sufficient to kind of lift up the economy and everybody in the middle class. but i think it's telling that if you flash forward to covid crisis hitting, the first guy to take up some of her ideas was not joe biden. it was donald trump. and so we got a stimulus immediately that was twice the size of the one that obama had passed. yeah. beefed up unemployment benefits

that were all of it focused on the middle class. you know, obviously, trump is never going to credit elizabeth warren for that. but but certainly they had taken lessons from the response. well, there's person you highlight in here. let me bring it up. neil. yeah. who also part of you know that name may ring bell from you. he was also part of the the team that was right. he did a mea culpa before covid. yeah. kashkari was one of hank paulson's deputies in the treasury who dealt with the immediate fallout from lehman brothers in the crisis and later in life. going on now, an important fed in a really kind of admirable guy who has spoken loudly and publicly throughout the covid crisis about what he thinks, bush and obama did wrong. the financial crisis in the thing that kashkari had said was, you know in hindsight, we aired in not focusing bailout money on middle class. we were so worried that some

under deserving person in a mcmansion who didn't really need this would get it and it would blow up in our face. and instead what happened is we kind of impoverished a generation of americans who really needed the government's help. and he came out after after the covid crash and said, need to go big look p loans, right? yes. there's always a couple of stories, but don't it actually turned out you know i think it was marco who said look, just it out the door. yeah you know we'll worry we'll worry about. and i do think that it helped that the thing responsible for the last big crash was not wall street banks were a little pathogen that was neither republican nor democrat and would not be politicized for months and months and months until after after the government response in the bailout money had started going out the door. but all you have to do is look at the a state of the economy. today i work at i at businessweek, so i'm sort of inundated with financial numbers

all. and i sit and work with with lots of economic nerds who school me on these things and it took about seven years to recover all the jobs from the great financial crisis. we've recovered them in two years after covid. yeah, unemployment rate is back. what it was the eisenhower presidency and if you have to check your four on ks you they are near highs and so to back to your original question it's clear that the argument that these and others have made that that a really active, robust government response in the economy, behalf of the middle class can be successful has been borne out by what we've seen over the last couple of years. i will tell you this, if you ever want to spend spend some time understanding what drives people to do what happened on january six, i spent read a lot about the people that are convicted, read about their lives. we've gotten to point. it's remarkable how many of them had a finance got hit hard during the financial and in many

ways you start to see the dots okay which these folks got radicalized by feeling like they got left behind in oh nine and they never got over it. right. and it and you can see how that that comes it is this to me is the most important part of what you've done here is, trying to this this is what this is why we're where we are at, how we responded to the financial crisis. well, in a sort of theme theme in the book and in my journalism since then too, is that that's kind of anger is what gave rise to to donald trump because when i hanging around with tim geithner in 2009 as he was putting together the response he had a he had a favorite phrase that was supposed to, i think, make him, you know, serious and sober and kind of committed to a good he said, you know what? voters want is old testament justice was his phrase, old testament judgment when failed to do that, obama stooped when not going to do that, we're going to recapitalize the banks.

we're going to go we're not going to punish people or throw anybody in jail. well, what was what was donald, if not like the living in body met of old testament justice when he ran in 2016. you know, smiting the establishment in both parties against the banks and the political establishment. and i think it just goes to show that the power that populism have in a political context, especially early in light of of a terrible recession, like the ones we had then and like the one we had after covid. i mean, i'm a close friend and in my life who said, this is great. the clintons and the bushes you know, they're just both parties. and the clintons said and then after trump got elected, i said, well, you got your wish. i you wanted to get rid of the clintons in the bushes. you're going to to everything comes to the price. yeah. we all learned that everything comes with a price. how many political parties are actually inside the democratic party? who? that's a question. i mean, a bunch of them, you know, like when you and i were coming up, it was just kind of the left wing and the centrists. now.

now, i think of it as more balkanized around issues and and identity. so know you still have a kind of a smaller pro-business wall street wing you have do those folks have more in common with the business wing of the republican party now like it it is joe is joe manchin and mitt romney closer ideologically joe manchin and say joe biden these days the way i think of is business minded republicans. you know, these are the guys that read business where you can kind of filter through my daily reporting world. they now have more common with centrist democrats. i mean, these are people are george bush voters. they're now joe biden. they may have been mitt romney voters probably were probably the last republican that the last mitt romney voter. so, i mean, that's also now a strain of kind of democratic voters. then you've got know, the climate group i think of as sort of being their own their own group. and you see from this little, little different you know you could certainly put aoc that category, but a lot of the younger activist that i

encounter in my kind of reporting work are really kind of climate first. like they don't they don't view themselves as well. i'm a progressive in opposition to the kind of the centrist wing they think of themselves as being climate voters. you know, now i think especially after october 7th, there's a whole generation now that's being shaped by israel and hamas and it's going to be a different style. yeah, you're right. some overlap, but there's to be. yeah, it's a broad tent. i mean, whether whether they can all get behind joe biden in the fall, i kind of have this theory that our our polarization could be eased if we actually broke up both parties, like both parties are too big, for their coalitions. you know, if you've got to go from aoc to john. yeah, well, democratic coalition right now, i mean, you see it's like that's a big, you know, that tends to have a huge hole in it. yeah you said you know in any other country joe biden and i would not in the same political party because there's only two in the us we're both democrats. yeah a little political gossip that i thought was fun in here a what if if scott brown doesn't a

u.s. senate seat where's elizabeth warren today? ooh, that's good question. she would have become rachel maddow as replacement of the 9 p.m. hour as she's real good on tv. mm hmm. i remember first time i saw her, i. i caught her on newshour. i think that was sort of like the first time that you'd start to see her sort of. and you're like, oh, my god. she speaks. she doesn't speak economic. yeah, right. like it didn't it didn't have. well, my first encounter was i spent 2008, i was writing a big profile, chuck schumer for i can't remember what reason, but i was i was hanging out with schumer and we were embedded. and schumer was absolutely on fire with elizabeth warren because schumer used to write this is going to sound weird. schumer used to write this about an imaginary family in long island called the baileys. do you remember this? yeah. they were middle class.

they were like second generation immigrant exist and they didn't exist. they were like this make believe family like espn anchors, emmys. i don't know if any of you. yeah they'd made up names. right. but but for schumer he would use them as this kind of like device to talk about what democrats should be doing. and it needs to be policies that the baileys and he discovered elizabeth warren in like literally physically me to see her one time up in the capitol right before the 2000 election because he thought that warren scholarship the two income trap like lint academic validity to his imaginary family like everything warren had studied and found out about bankrupt seen the stresses the economy and the american family like this woman had done. and i it was weird but i met warren who is, you know, instantly captivating, fluent, wonderful and talking to reporters. that's how i got to know her for the boston globe. right. and it kind of, you know, glommed onto her ever since we read about something that in that was more potential than maybe some of us ever believed and that was how close elizabeth

warren came being hillary clinton's running mate in 2016. obviously, they must have hit it off when i think a lot of people never thought they did it off. yeah. yeah. a debate i used to have with some of warren's advisers leading up to like 2014, 2015 was, you know, she she had become this huge national figure. there was now an elizabeth warren wing of the democratic party. and it was sort of an open would she would she run in 2016 and challenge hillary clinton and was of the view that she should do it a either she would beat hillary clinton in wings. i thought she was a pretty good politician. but what i thought was more likely was that she would run against hillary lose but because clinton especially at the time was such a political cipher, i think what would have happened was clinton would have absorbed warren's politic, move to the left, gotten elected and been much more of a kind of style

democrat than the clintons. you know, her husband's era had been. and warren thought that, too, and decided not to challenge her, but was very interested in playing the inside game, having influence and one of clinton's staffers going to phillip ryan i know you know had become consumed during clinton's campaign about the idea of you know we need to do something to kind of appeal to this left and wrote a long memo which i got a hold up for the book's right making the case laying out the case for why elizabeth warren be a good vice president and the two of them met in secret they hit it off pretty well i think what happened in the was that clinton might have worried that warren outshine her and instead chose the kind of blandest guy she could. and tim. but you wonder what history would have been like. yeah. running against donald trump if you'd had a populist like warren on the ticket, the the thing elizabeth warren. and i'd love for you to speak to this. i think there's something by the way, i know we're getting

towards the end. if you do have a question, line up now and i will take them over here in the last couple of minutes that we have here. you're welcome to do that. but elizabeth warren is somebody who i think it's horrendous press. and when you spend time with her, you don't understand why she gets horrendous press this is it. she i think she does small rooms really well, like it is. it hard not to be captivated her in a small room? yeah. i think her hurt political superpower. this this translates into kind of the small vibe is that she's able take really complicated stuff and not just boil it down into kind of layman's language but make it sound like just plain common sense she's wonderful explainer in the way she explains things kind of her audience to believe that will of course what she's proposing is not radical and left wing and crazy, but but perfectly

reasonable and sort of thing we ought to do. i think that the reason she gets bad press is her you know the she's had since since 2020 i think it's been to try and push the democrats to the left on certain where she can so she's been very vocal on some things that you know biden want to talk about or democrats really aren't interested in litigating and it just hasn't you know, part of it is the fact that, you know, in a divided washington and even before, you know, with a 5050 senate, there's just not a lot of radical things democrats can, you know, when you need to convince joe manchin, kirsten cinnamon to get anything done, your focus going to be on the center. it's probably not going be on the sorts of things that warren wants to do. let's pop a question. go ahead. hello first of all, a huge of your books like devil's bargain is one of my favorites. i still recommend to people all

the time my questions actually comparing that book to this one, one of my favorite parts about that book was the extensive treatment that you gave the mercers. is there an equivalent on the left that? you know, that's that's a great question. somebody asked me the other day who who's the steve bannon on the left. i don't think there is one. the mercer family, for people who don't know bob mercer, is a wildly rich, reclusive hedge fund who, through his rebecca, funded breitbart news for a number of years which was steve bannon's website, sent a ton of money to donald trump, like vaguely the steve bannon patron. steve bannon patron, but also donald patron back in kind of 15 and 16, like the money behind trump. i don't think that there is i, i guess if you went on fox news asked that question, the answer would be george soros or somebody like that. but i don't think there is a

particular like moneybags democrat, like rich person who pulls strings or has influence in quite the way did. and i also, i don't think that there's really a steve bannon on the left, but there is an attempt is it is it reed hastings? is he the linkedin founder. that's yeah. the text. yeah. they're trying to play a role. right. you know i've been around long enough that i've seen rich tech people with lots of yeah. in a real about washington and how politics works think oh well i'm going throw all my money i'm going to like solve for this and move fast and break things and completely reorganize american politics and it never works. thank you. oh, thank you. are you what do you think i think one of the hardest, biggest challenges that joe biden has is going to be explaining what a second term what what is that we're getting with the second term, right. he's part one of his argument is you got to stop trump.

but part two of the argument is going to be and here's what i'm going to do. yeah. what is the what do they want to hear? because right now he's not articulate any second term vision at all and at some point i know bernie is going to get cranky about this. yeah. you know, and he's got to start it's about we've got to have a vision. you know, you do that well. well, you know. chuck, josh, josh, let me finish anyway. what? what they want to see and i assume if biden doesn't do it, they're going to fill the blanks. yeah, it's funny. people that i talked to in my professional life who are sort of most frustrated with biden are democratic, elected officials because of that exact question. really isn't a second term agenda. right. and stuff that biden does talk about, you know, while not invalid or these kind of gauzy notions of. well, we have to preserve american democracy and authoritarianism.

but i think that the problem that these three would have with that is, listen, you're going to get the democracy voters. you're going to get the people who to hate trump. they're going to show up and vote you or whoever the democratic nominee is on the ticket. it's the people like the ones that you talked about who have been buffeted by the financial crisis of the crash or people who are just, you know, struggling to make sure that their kid can go to school. they fund their retirement, that they can pay their mortgage, you know, people with ordinary kitchen table who might look at joe and think, yeah, it looks like he's lost a step. maybe what's what's he really going to do for me? i think what they want to hear is a clear second term vision that focuses those kinds of things and, lets voters have a sense of, okay if i hold my nose and vote for this guy, here's what we're going to get. and maybe need to go back and through this that there's a name it is rarely in this book who was perhaps future player in democratic politics?

and it's the vice president. where does she fit in all this? you know, she's she's an interesting thing. i mean, you certainly wouldn't call her a populist, although was the first, you know, in 2018, 20, 2017, 2018. she flirted with it. she flirted with it when it looked like for a few for a few years there that the whole party about to shift strong to the left. kamala harris was the first person to come out and endorse bernie, the first senator, i think, to come out endorsed bernie's medicare for all. medicare for all. first, she was fought. she was against it. exactly. exactly she and a massive lead backed away from it. yeah. it wasn't enough to, you know, to preserve her candidacy in 2020, but she landed on her feet as joe biden's vice president. she's not a name that comes up a lot in my conversations report that say something like she's not seen as sort. but then again biden was sort of a it's funny how much of a how much of a backbencher you paint biden as until he's until he's

the nominee. yeah you really what look when when he i mean i was i was just saying this at dinner. i mean, i remember in 2020, in the democratic primaries, i was i was sort of hopping back and forth, bernie and warren for this book is that's where people were yeah well and also he was going to the biden there was a biden event near my hotel and i went there and know sparsely attended he was introduced by chris dodd and john kerry who looked even older than than he did and he just looked like a guy was going to you know, there's going to be another cycle where joe runs for president, gets 1%, gets angry and drops after new hampshire. i mean, nobody really this coming, you know, i think in the end you know warren rose a time than bernie did people just kind of got frightened. yeah a bernie wouldn't be able to defeat donald trump and biden got in there but i don't think harris is viewed by a lot people as a formidable politician. let me go back to elizabeth warren here a minute, because on one hand, here's somebody who figured, hey, you guys are out of touch about america's

finances. but she there is this sense that this wing of the party is out of touch with the culture, the middle of america. do they this, i'm not sure. tacit glee, maybe, but no. i mean, i think the big mistake that warren and bernie both made 2020 was they thought that america wanted to turn to the left in the entire democratic primary, maybe the exception of joe biden kind of revolved around this full version of lefty not not just left on economic policy, but on medicare for all. no. what it costs. and abolishing private insurance and opening up or decriminalize border crossings and that america just was not ready for that and was not looking it. if you go back and look at what the democratic primaries were litigated over in 2020, everybody of going through each other's medicare for all plan, $30 trillion, you know, with a fine. but are we sure? are we this wing of the party

doesn't the argument and win the nomination in 2020 if covid doesn't happen. that's a good question think i still think that biden would won because what most democratic voters wanted the thing that unified them all was they wanted get rid of joe biden. and so you can can jump donald trump sorry donald trump's was maybe now it would be the other. i mean, here we are. biden's poll numbers. i don't want to know. but, you know, because you had in the fall, you know, there there was a period and i think september 2019, where warren is leading the polls all the talk in the primaries was on billionaires tax and the wealth tax. the two billionaires who wanted to run mike bloomberg and tom steyer had not gotten into the race and it looked things were going to kind of move in that direction. you know, she faded. bernie. bernie came up and then you get this period in march where everybody sort has a oh, wait a minute, it was just do we really want to risk naming this guy,

you know, to run against donald trump? and in the end, people people decided they didn't. and that's how we wound up with joe biden. and that's biden's best case again this time around, isn't a huge difference between bernie and everybody else in that bernie just this from the day he woke up okay when it was when he was you know he came out of the womb and. he was fighting the billionaires and the billionaires. thomas dewey, go to hell. right. like he was where elizabeth warren and aoc lived. like the life they brought him to this place, i guess. i think that's i mean, yeah. warren was a republican at one point. yeah, right. i think that's right. i mean, i remember being in dc in the early 2000, you know, bernie be like there'd be like a like a, you know, 430 to 1 vote in the house or something. and bernie was always the one and everybody knew who he was. nobody might put him on meet the press. first time i put on meet the press, i had the job for a

month. you know, he's in the room and i thank him for coming on. and he says it's the first time i've ever been invited on meet the press. and i, i told him, i said, frankly, that's shameful i mean, whatever. like you've been in you've been in congress, you were a senator at that point. he'd a senator for at least five years. you know, and he had been a congressman for four, four over a decade. and the only socialist like it, it was it was this town over. he ignored him. yeah. in the same way they. overly ignored the polls in. a weird way in that you didn't realize. hey, you may think they're crazy here. they have real traction out there, but forget i mean, bernie, back before he ran for president. wasn't like the meme. you know, that he is today. he was this like crotchety old guy in the people, this crotchety old, but the people that had the strongest dislike him, i think i quote him in the book but i used to talk to barney frank a lot know big liberal hated bernie you know

because bernie would never and would never go along and. it was a big pain in the -- if you're trying to put a coalition together, you know that they could get something progressive passed. and so, you know, not a lot of love there, but terms of consistency. yeah, he's been consistent along. he still is. i think the only time that bernie has really kind of curbed his views has been during the biden administration. i mean, i think he has evolved late in his career and recognized that it's better to get a loaf than to hold out for the whole thing and get nothing. and so he wasn't out there. you know, he made push to get a bigger stimulus and the build back better plan and of that stuff. but when it became clear that joe manchin was going to block that, bernie didn't walk away and say, i'm not going to vote for this and crash the hole. no, i think the bernie of 25 years ago would have done that. i think you're 100 person. bernie did not. no, no, no, no. he in that sense, he enjoys having the ear of the president and he likes having it. he never had the ear of obama never had the ear of a woman for 30 years. he never having influence. right? yeah. all right.

i've got a good question. oh, okay. i was just going to say we're getting close to wrapping up. but so, josh, you're boss in your two books. you know, you've looked movements for change in both the major parties. what do you think the chance of the us ever seeing a third political party. what's good question. it's it seems like it's got to happen because both of the parties are so separated and i run into many people like like my my who just says, you know, i'm politically homeless, don't want to vote for either one of these people. i think the problem with third parties up until now is that they tend to be these kind of like weirdly utopian, haphazard things that are thrown together by rich guys, you know. so you have like no labels in and things like that that don't really stand for anybody. they're just some rich person's idea of, well, i'm going to start organization and see if i can kind of gin something up or it's someone like a howard schultz, the starbucks guy,

chairman, you know, who for a while flirted running as an independent and was was kind of shut bloomberg even for i think i think even before yeah yeah before i mean even even bloomberg the end was like, all right, well, i have to run a democrat if i'm going to run for president. there's there's not really a third party path forward, but it seems like the sort of thing that's got to happen and, you know, i don't know, maybe if maybe if biden loses, the democratic party sort of splits up in a way that, you know, produces a centrist party in a progressive party. and maybe that's the path forward. yeah, go ahead. and you're violating the rule, but go ahead. we'll make you the last question. and then i'm going to because he actually stole my last question. i was going to go down think if you ever go. so i feel like both kind of alluded to the thing that really stands to me, which is like any time that democrats have a great idea, like we need a white christian man to sell it, you know, like i need a, i need to pull tim kaine out.

like i need to pull joe biden because that's who the new one will be. mark kelly but you know, the new version of tim kaine and that he's a tim kaine, you're being benched so yeah. so like what's deal is that going to be how it is for the next for my lifetime. are we moving? i don't think it is. i'll let you do it, but i don't either. i mean, i think we're we're i think, you know, it. i'll be very to see what happens in. the next open fight for the presidential campaign. so let me give you a scenario that i've curious about. so let's say joe biden announces tomorrow he's not going to run. okay. which it like, right? vice president harris announces immediately j.b. pritzker announces gavin newsom announces meaning all all. your favorite white guys. right. well, quickly, get it right. especially the ones that already money. and then there's going to be a gretchen whitmer and the

pressure for that there is going to be put on her not to get in to or harm the chances. kamala harris. i don't like. is the democratic party still this place where hey there are only can be one woman or there only can be one candidate of color. there can be 17 white guys, right? that sort of thing. i think we're going to be past that. but i don't know i'm i'm outlining a scenario where i, i don't, i think the i think the there will be a lot of tension over this issue. let me let me answer the question in a slightly elliptical way, because the one question nobody's asked, is aoc going to run for president? and the other question that i sort get asked and i'm going to i'm going to answer your question sort of down this avenue is, you know, what's the future for this kind of economic populism who who is going to kind of carry this mantle forward in 2028? i don't i, i don't think that that because of that has enough

broad enough appeal to really ever at least at this point or four years from now when a democratic nomination win the white house. the way she knows this. yes, she's extraordinarily savvy about her own politics. yeah yeah. but i think the path forward for this version of populism that i write about will be sort of the biden model. not not in the sort of old, tired, white guy sense, but in the sense that it takes a safe seeming candidate with broad appeal to carry these policies forward. but i don't think that it has to be in the form of an white guy. i mean, i think the two of the people most interesting, 20, 28 who certainly especially if biden gets reelected and sort of validates the policies that these guys have lifted and that biden is running, could be somebody like, a raphael warnock, the senator from georgia, i think would be fantastic and have broad appeal. or gretchen whitmer if she wants to run as a sensible midwestern mom who's focused on the middle class. so i certainly think that the

time is coming i think i actually believe if there were really smoke filled rooms spill be the ticket the dnc would be whitmer warnock warnock whitmer. yeah, right. you know, depending who had more delegates. yeah. you know, no white guy. yeah. and i think that's more likely not in fairness. so thank god. congratulations by the book. he's here to sign the book. and what's the bobbleheads tell about the bobbleheads? i. brought my own, actually, but no, i think yeah, i think they're for sale. i saw some when i was walking and took notes. all right. but if you take out of the package, they're no longer worth as much on ebay, right? yeah, that's right. that's right. and if you prefer i saw they also had a trump behind bars bobbleheads all over there, too. so that might be more to your taste or to your you should get stripe ties. trump stripe. yeah, they're all black and white anyway, so copies of joshua's book are available to check out does he'll be over

here at the table signing. thanks again for coming everybody. the presiding officer: the senate will come to order. the chaplain, dr. barry black, will lead the senate in prayer.