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tv   AM Joy  MSNBC  December 3, 2016 7:00am-9:01am PST

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one of the wonderful -- it's like earning catal. you asked do i feel free let me put it to you this way. i earned capital in the campaign and now i intend to spend it. it is my style. >> good morning and welcome to "a.m. joy." two days after winning the 2004 election, leaving many in the democratic party utterly shattered, president george w. bush talked about how he wanted to cash in on the capital but
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privatizing social security. by 2005, bush was off on a cross-country tour pedalling his tour to make social security a better deal for younger americans. and privatizing the new deals guarantee of a dignified retirement was his number one priority. despite being out numbered in the house and senate, this is how democrats, the party of fdr and the new deal responded. >> over the recess, democrats who go home prepared to continue talking to the american people about social security and more than 240 town hall meetings on the internet, radio, college campuses and editorial pages and evening news, democrats will present our views. every media market will hear from house democrats. we are working with more than 200 groups to counter president bush and the republicans'
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misrepresentation across the country. republicans know democrats are coming and they are running away from privatization. >> okay. fast forward to today. less than 50 days before his inauguration, donald trump, the man who swore to protect medicare on the campaign trail is compiling a list of privatizers. first, of course, there's house speaker paul ryan who has been trying to gut medicare and turn it into a fistful of vouchers for years as early as next spring. and then there's georgia congressman tom price, the pick for health and human services. price has a long history of wanting to slash medicaid and is the number one fan of ryan's plans to voucherize medicare. so what's the democratic party going to do? this time around, now that's it's trump touring the country to spend the capital that trump who lost the capital vote by 2.5 million votes and counting
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doesn't even have. will the party bring the fight that the democrats brought during bush's second term? senator elizabeth warren gave us an example on monday. >> the american people didn't give democrats majority support so we can come back to washington and play dead. they didn't send us here to whimper, wine or gravel. they sent us here to stand up for what is right. and now they are watching, waiting and hoping, hoping that we will show some spine and start fighting back. >> now, when democrats fought back, they picked up 31 seats in the house. nancy pelosi became the country's first speaker of the house, harry reid became the
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senate majority speaker and the list goes on and on and on. what might they accomplish in the next few years? joining me now for what we're calling our boot camp for democrats, congressman-elect jamie rascan of maryland, howard dean, maria kumar and cornell belcher, pollster and author of "a black man in the white house." thank you all for being here. i want to go to you first, congressman-elect rascan. you've shown the spirit that they want to see in democrats. in your view, is medicare the opening to what we can see as a fighting democratic caucus going in to 2017? >> absolutely it is. the democratic party is the party that built social security, that built medicare and medicaid and the programs
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that created the great american middle class. the republicans will campaign like donald trump did and the minute they get into office, they create a cabinet of billionaires and ceos and white nationalists and it's all about rolling back the gains that we have created for the american middle class and we have to defend the great legacies of the 20th century as we continue to expand social security and the programs that the middle class depends upon. so i think that, you know, we have to stand with the 64.5 or 6 million people who voted for the democrats, which is 2.5 million more than voted for donald trump and we've got to defend the programs and the social infrastructure and the physical infrastructure that the american people depend upon. >> howard dean, you come from the democratic wing of the democratic party, which is why so many people dug you in 2004.
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i want to play some sound of the late teddy kennedy who was, at the time, the liberal line of the senate. this is teddy kennedy talking in january of 2007 to fight a fight that just so the people understand, this is not new, this desire to privatize and repeal 20th century great society programs is a thing republicans have wanted to do for a very long time. this is teddy kennedy talking about how the democrats needed to fight back then. >> and we're looking at $3 billion but we still cannot get a $2.15 over two years. over two years. what is the price, we ask the other side, what is the price that you want from these working men and women? what cost? how much more do we have to give for the private sector in the
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business? how many billion dollars more? when does the greed stop? >> and howard dean, that was teddy kennedy talking about the republicans' refusal to raise the minimum wage. >> well, i didn't hear much consolation. people said, if he has a good plan, i'll work with him. the problem with trump is he's totally unpredictable. he says one thing one day and the next five minutes the position is totally changed. we don't know which donald trump we're getting. although the cabinet makeup is a little frightening. so here's what i think is going to happen. if they -- this is -- first of all, trump is smart. he's got good political instincts. if they go down this route, he will lose his base overnight.
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attacking social security for working people, that's all they've got left. all they've got left. so this would be an -- this is really, i think, driven by the right-wing ideologues. i think trump is going to get it pretty quickly this is a stupid thing to do politically. the other thing, this is an incredibly stupid thing to do in terms of economic management. the truth is, what they want essentlly is to give everyone 401(k)s. you want to turn the retirement system over to wall street which damn near tanked the entire economic system six years ago? i don't think so. so this is just a bad idea, both economically and it's a bad idea politically and i think it's going to have a very short shelf life. >> and chris, i want to go back. first of all, ann coulter has come out on the medicare side, and this is donald trump's biggest fan on the right, she
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said, "medicare is not what the election was fought over. if ryan wants to change medicare, then run for president on that and see how far you get." to her point, the election was not medicare. paul ryan is eager to put these plans in place he keeps rotating to privatize medicare. this was donald trump actually talking about medicare during the campaign. take a listen. >> save medicare, medicaid and social security without cuts. have to do it. get rid of the fraud, get rid of the waste and abuse but save it. people have been paying in for years and now many of the candidates want to cut it. you save it by making the united states, by making us rich again, by taking back all of the money that's being lost. >> chris, we've seen that donald trump has been able to reverse course on almost any promise and his base doesn't care. they don't care what he says, that he's filling the swamp with
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billionaires. will they care if he comes from medicare and goes along with paul ryan's plan to turn it into vouchers? >> well, you know what, you know how crazy this election has been, i'm going to agree with ann coulter. >> whoa. >> i've lost it. >> i'm sorry. >> if paul ryan wants to go after medicare, good luck for him. politically, governor dean is right. this is a disaster in the making. if you boil down and scratch apart what happened here, there was clearly a working class, more so kind of a lower middle class number of americans that voted for trump. especially if you look at the exit polls. and that demographic is -- they are not sitting on, you know, half a million or million dollar retirement accounts. they need medicare when they retire. they need social security. so to go to that issue automatically makes it a bread
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and butter issue that plays right into the democrats' hands and obviously democrats would come after that with everything they've got and that the political capital and impact that it would have for trump would be incredibly negative. now, all of that being said, here's one thing i would caution everyone because, again, what i've seen from donald trump throughout this entire election now and even in the last few weeks, he's an enigma. i'm not saying this is going to happen but there's always a chance where he's playing ryan up and then comes out and pretends like i'm going to fight for medicare and then people go, see, he really is a different kind of republican. so this is the trap that sometimes, you know, trump sets. i don't know if he's being that sophisticated. maybe not. but we have to be very focused and strategic in terms of a response. if he comes after those critical safety-net issues, democrats
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should come after him in a very vocal and aggressive way with everything they have. >> i want to get the full panel in but i want to go back to congressman-elect raskin on this. what do you do if donald trump takes the democrats' side? >> we remind people that they wanted to privatize social security a few years before the 2008 mortgage meltdown crisis and imagine if we had fallen for that propaganda back then. it's the exact same thing. i mean, our party is the party of solidarity among citizens in the united states. we stand together in good times and bad times and hard times and we'll get the country through this. a lot of people in the industrial heartland are hurting and fell for a lot of populist lull buys that donald trump was singing to them and it's very
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clear that this administration is a money-making operation, not just a personal one for donald trump and his family but also for the people in the cabinet and the 1% of the country and the democratic party has got to speak very clearly in a voice that tells america, we are the party of the people, the party that is championing the middle class and privatizing medicare is an incredibly risky thing. it's a very popular program that works well. why would we do that and make that part of the trump money making operation? >> nancy pelosi gave a recent interview to "the washington post" and talked about the strategy back in 2005 to fight social security. she said, "at that time, we committed to each other that we would be unified and disciplined. bush had just been elected. everybody stuck together. the equivalent is what we had in
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'05." would you say that democratic voters would like to see unified and obstructionists because you have republicans who have signaled they like to come for medicare and social security would be next on the list for privatization. >> right. well, this is -- these are the conversations going on in the progressive community, quite frankly, out here in denver where i am right now with the party folks. and some say that we need to take him on and challenge him across the board in the same manner in which the republican did barack obama. there's that class of people. there's also the class of people who say we've got to cut a deal where we can cut a deal. so i think that argument is
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going to be playing out. for me, part of what i think is important for democrats is the future. absolutely we have to protect medicare and social security and those things in the past but if you look at those voters, that's where the marketplace is, the millennials who are very diverse. if 8, 9% of latino and young african-americans don't vote third party, she's probably president of the united states right now. we brought a lot of young voters to the process and they were not necessarily democrats. we have to look to the future and to their issues and protect the issues in the past but we've got to be a forward-looking party and look to the issues of
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the younger voters and bring them back in line and not having them vote third party. >> real quick, same question to you, that's a good point, if the fight that democrats decide to wage on defending the 20th century, medicare, social security, do they then leave out those young voters of color, the future of the party? is that the democrats that you would recommend they stand on or is it something else? >> i think the challenge for the democratic party is they go by the next fire. now everybody is rolling over and saying do we have to focus on white working class? and i would say you have to do the whole thing. you have to go deep and talk to individuals about their values. if donald trump says he wants to save medicare, help him. there are going to be times where you have to stand up and say do not help him because they will be completely anti-ethical to our values.
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the reason i say that is if you look at the 100 days that donald trump wants to say, item number one or two is basically creating term limits among congressional members. that would weaken congressional power. imagine white nationalists that are rising because we gave them the power. what cornell said is if you were only going to look at the generation x and z and millennial generation, they would have -- hillary clinton would have gotten all 500 electoral votes overnight. when you start looking at where democrats should be, in georgia today, 2% of the electorate was latino. so when you talk about building for the future, you have to go into the heartland and into the
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south. >> well, we are going to same congressman jamie raskin back to washington with all of this and we'll check in with you frequently, sir, to see how you are doing and how that fight is going. we appreciate having you and the rest of the panel will be back. next up, donald trump's phone call with taiwan is the big story of the day. after the break, we'll tell you what he's really up to. don't go away. american express open cards can help you take on a new job, or fill a big order or expand your office and take on whatever comes next. find out how american express cards and services can help prepare you for growth at open.com.
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"thank you for serving our country" and i'm like, that's my dad. male vo: no one deserves a warmer welcome home. that's why we're hiring 10,000 members of the military community by the end of 2017. i'm very proud of him. male vo: comcast. you probably woke up this morning to screaming headlines about donald trump breaking decades of diplomatic protocol with a single phone call with taiwan's president. and, yes, it is a big deal that the man who will hold the most powerful position in the world seems to ignore the fact that china considers taiwan a break-away province.
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chin n china's foreign ministry has logged a complaint with the u.s. the real story is the giant red flag it throws up about his fitness and readiness to be president. this reality show over his secretary of state is that much more critical and to raise the issue of a possible conflict of interest. according to newspapers in taiwan, a member of the trump organization visited the country last month and expressed interest in developing, surprise, a hotel there. so was trump's phone call about diplomacy or dollars? back with me, former governor howard dean and teresa kumar. he's not in even in and has caused a diplomatic incident. is it more troubling that he had
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a call with the taiwanese president or that he did so, once again, in a situation where he's got business interests in place? >> i would say it's a combination of both. it's almost not having a historical perspective of why and the sensitive relationships with china really are. a week ago he had a conversation with the argentinean head of state and next thing you know, his project there was green-lighted. so it's a combination of both and i don't know how he decides if he wants to be a businessman first or the president of the free world. >> howard, in that context, you have donald trump so far building an administration that is full of people who have great deals of money at stake, money interests, goldman sachs, the a
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little of them was put together. you have todd ricketts worth $5.3 billion, commerce. betsy devos, 5.1 million, wilbur ross, 2.9 billion. tom price at hss, 13.6 million. jeff sessions as attorney general. we know his views on race are not forward thinking and elaine chao. you have that kind of a cabinet and then you look at mnuchin and zero in on him and this is a guy whose bank foreclosed on a 90-year-old homeowner over a 20 cent homeowner in their mortgage. this include as guy who essentially profited off the mortgage meltdown. with all of that surrounding donald trump and his own
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pecuniary interests in the news, why would working-class americans believe that this is for ten seconds an administration that cares about them? >> i think the jury is going to be out for now. this might chalk up to a liability that will hurt him down the road. right now, for the most part, trump gets a honeymoon. we've been through a brutal election. everyone was upset about the tone of it on all sides. and so i don't think they want to hear about that right now but if things go south like privatizing medicare and social security, this will become an additional liability. i want to say one other quick thing about taiwan. this is not just a diplomatic kerfuffle. they are blaming the taiwanese and use armed forces against them. the question for the taiwanese is, are we willing to carry out our obligations, treaty obligations to taiwan and commit
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american troops to defend taiwan because he made a stupid phone call. this is not just about a kerfuffle, upsetting the stuffy people of the state department. this has real consequences and none of that thinking that went into making this phone call. that's the scary thing about donald trump. >> isn't this the case -- and i'll low it to both of you -- you have a potential beyond hurt feelings but actual real consequences that could befall the incoming president and we also don't know if donald trump is in debt to banks in china and, if so, how much. we don't know what his own personal liabilities are with regard to the countries that he's creating diplomatic crises with. isn't his business interests and conflicts of interest, aren't those germain right now? >> he's clearly making calls on his own behalf and the question
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is if it's on his kids' behalf, is that going to make a difference? this is not going to inflame the american public right now but it's one more stone in donald trump's baggage when things don't go well and things don't always go well for any american president. so this, his billionaire cabinet, gets away with it because people want the election to go away and stop fighting. all of that is going to weigh him down and when he starts to get into trouble which happens to every american president. >> go ahead. >> something to keep in mind, when you look at what he considers a huge win for carrier, it was not a huge win for the american taxpayer and it was all a fluff and show. what i feel he'll do is be a snowm -- showmanship, whether it's trying to create a policy that makes sense, it's all going to be very much the fluff but not the depth. >> yeah, absolutely.
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which is why it's very dangerous for us in the media to just read his tweets as if they are news. >> exactly right. >> howard dean, maria teresa kumar will be back. what's in a name? why democrats need to learn how to win the branding war. stay with us. says it won't let up for a while. the cadillac xt5... what should we do? ...tailored to you. wait it out. equipped with apple carplay compatibility.
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in north carolina's race for governor, it's down to durham. mccrory is trying to avoid the jaws of defeat. with an order for a recount of 94,000 votes in durham county, mccrory trails his opponent roy cooper by more than 10,000 votes. he's refused to concede and used allegations of voter fraud to challenge the votes in a dozen of counties. durham's board of elections, which was at mccrory's request
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on november 18th. but the decision was overturned and the republican board member said the ballots in question included irregularities. although a state election official who proofread the results said they were accurate. the recount could take up to a week and cost the state tens and thousands of dollars and even then republican officials have not ruled out the possibility, wait for it, of recounting the entire state. up next, building a new and improved democratic party. is it time to reboot the democratic party brand? stay with us.
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as a supervisor at pg&e, it's my job to protect public safety, keeping the power lines clear, while also protecting the environment. the natural world is a beautiful thing, the work that we do helps us protect it.
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public education is definitely a big part of our job, to teach our customers about the best type of trees to plant around the power lines. we want to keep the power on for our customers. we want to keep our community safe. this is our community, this is where we live. we need to make sure that we have a beautiful place for our children to live. together, we're building a better california. president obama reflected on his legacy and the way forward for the democratic party after its stunning election defeat. he was asked about the well-worn narrative that the democrats failed to recognize, the
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economics of the working class. the president responded by saying this is not simply an economic issue. how do we rethink our storytelling, the messaging and digital media so we can make a persuasive case across the country. joining me to figure out how to answer that question, jimmy williams, host of d.c. podcast and maria teresa kumar and cornell belcher. it was the new deal, we have nothing to fear but fear itself. if you go to john f. kennedy, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. let me play you lyndon johnson's branding of the democratic party in 1964 at the university of michigan. >> we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful siety but upward to the great society.
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the great society rests on abundance and liberty for all. it demands an end to poverty and racial injustice to which we are totally committed to in our time. >> let's fast forward to january 8th, 2008, when barack obama, then senator, after losing in new hampshire to hillary clinton. >> when we have faced down impossible lies, when we have been told that we are not ready or we shouldn't try or that we can't, generations of americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of the people, yes, we can. yes, we can. yes, we can. >> i want to go around the panel and start with you, jimmy williams. what is the simple elevator pitch of the democratic party right now?
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>> i'm a democrat and i'm not sure. look, the politics is simple. either you're for people or against people and if you are for them, you have to tell them that you are for them and why you're for them and they have to believe you. and this election, we can sit around and rehash what happened. a lot of americans didn't think that hillary clinton in certain areas was for them. and if that's the case, then they didn't vote for her and they did not do that. i had lunch -- i'll give you one example. i had lunch with a friend of mine, 45-year-old white progressive male and he -- clearly for hillary clinton and he said, i've got to be honest with you, i voted for clinton but at no point in the campaign did i ever hear her speak to me as a white male. now, that's a messaging issue and that's a problem. now, that doesn't mean that hillary clinton should have not spoken to lgbt issues, to latino issues, african-american issues, to the working class, et cetera, et cetera. but if a progressive male tells me that, white man tells me
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that, i think that's something that the democratic party needs to think about, a messaging issue when it comes to suburban and ex-urban people that don't feel like we talk to them, only at them. >> cornell belcher, you know, as our pollster on the panel here, there is this big debate among democrats, whether or not they should throw what they are calling identity politics, which is a slanderous way of saying don't talk about people of color, lgbt anymore because we need to focus on white, working-class people and there's a debate on whether to do that or not. in your view, is that a smart thing to do and what is the one line of the democratic party right now? >> look, this idealhat the democrats need to spend more time having a conversation with white voters is patently absurd. we spend 80% of our resources
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chasing this mythical white swing voter. the truth is, people want their country back and they saw donald trump to give them their country back. unless we inoculate some of the polarization, we haven't been winning them over the last decade, we are not going to win more. do we spend more time and resources chasing a shrinking marketplace that is increasingly more resistant to you or spend more resources at a growing marketplace that is less resistant to you? that's the real question. should we win more voters? absolutely. it would be patently absurd for the democratic party. however, to double down and spend more of its resources to chase a shrinking marketplace that is increasingly more resistance and unless there's a party realignment. unless you have an emotional attachment to this, from a pure market standpoint, the future is with younger voters and with the
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growing marketplace and that's not to say we should ignore blue collar white voters and have an inclusive conversation. we can't continue to have a conversation about white people voting against their economic interests. howard dean said this eight years ago. no, they are not voting against their economic interests. that's a conversation democrats need to have from a cultural standpoint, what the president was talking about. but the democratic party has to look to the future marketplace and expand that and we lost to a guy who got less of a percentage of the vote than mitt romney, right? it's not like they are expanding the party. they are expanding their tent. we have to go after those voters that made up that 51, 52% for barack obama. look, this electorate was 2% browner than the electorate that barack obama was in and four years from now, if we do what we are supposed to do, it's going
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to be 2% more browner. that's not to mean we are against white voters but we have to be more inclusive. >> maria, isn't that the case, if hillary clinton turns out 50,000 more black voters in philadelphia and milwaukee, she wins. >> i think this is where i'm going to channel the girl scout model. make new friends but keep the old ones. they didn't maintain both. i believe that while you have to make sure that you're addressing the issues of white working class, it doesn't mean that that is not synonymous with the same issues and struggles that african-americans and latinos are, working on, especially when it comes to education and the economy. very rarely in this election did you hear anybody talk about straight about poverty and what was happening in rural areas and because of that, that was a missed opportunity. again, let's not forget, when you -- i want to go back to my example of georgia. latinos were 2% and 13% are
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represented by latinos. the future is in this growing electorate that is changing rather quickly. two-thirds of voters were kids of color and so if you're not having those conversation and values, they are marching for minimum wage and immigration and policy issues that fit seamlessly into the agenda but not communicated at the ground level. we deeply believe in that but you have to recognize you have to touch people where they are and go to the nooks and crannies and be careful about what their issues are. i would recommend they do a big listening tour, go down deep and say, let's have a moment of cross cultural understanding because it's about demographics.
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>> chris, i'm sorry i didn't ask maria my question but does the democratic party have a line who explains who they are, like great society like, yes, we can, like let's make america great again. >> no, we do not. which is the fundamental problem and the national level all the way down. to me, it's kind of really simple. we as democrats believe in a better america. we believe that every hardworking man and woman has earned the right to a better, fairer, more just life. and that, to me, encapsulates everything that we as democrats fight for. now, i think we need to be really brutally honest about what happened in this election because this was not an anomaly and i personally get a little frustrated when i hear folks kind of talk about, well, this was just somehow a few points
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here, a few points there. the last four national elections, if you include the last two midterms, we've lost three of them. we've lost more governor seats, senate seats, house seats that we should have won and now the white house. we have a fundamental problem. this is not about moving more towards the white vote at the expense of the black vote or hispanic vote. this is about the challenge that we have as a democratic party to come up with a defining message that is aspirational and we simply have not done that. >> yep. we are going to talk more about that in this hour and keep you around. chris kofinis and maria teresa kumar, thank you. a new disease sweeping across the country. we'll tell you about ade. more "a.m. joy" after the break. beyond is a natural pet food
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follow us on snapchat and instagram. up next, i'm joined by party chair jamie harrison who is currently in the running to be chairman of the dnc. more "a.m. joy," next. l is for layers of luxury. a is for alll the way back. r is for read my mind. and i... can't see a thing. s... see you in the morning. polaris, from united.
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we have shrank our map. we cannot be a party that is trying no the to lose. >> this needs to be the very last election cycle in which the presidential candidate takes over the dnc. >> no more turning over the checkbook to a presidential campaign. it's absolutely absurd that that's what we do every time. >> since the surprise defeat in the presidential election, they gathered for the most important task being figuring out who exact three their new leader will be.
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they heard from a panel of now three candidates, congressman keith ellison of minnesota, ray buckley, the chairman of the new hampshire democratic party and jamie harrison who joins me now. jamie, great to see you. thanks for being here. so let's give you an opportunity to make your elevator pitch for why you and not congressman ellison, who has the support of senator bernie sanders and not the new hampshire democratic party. why should you be democratic chair. >> a number of years i served as executive democratic caucus when we took the majority back and i became the floor director and i did that when i was 29 and 30 years old i had to bring together progressives, blue dogs, black caucus members to pass every vote in the house in
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the floor with 218 votes. but in addition to having that experience for the past 5 1/2 years, i've been focused on rebuilding a state party in the ruby red south so i know the hurdles that state parties are facing right now and the challenges that we're facing and the importance of having a partner in washington, d.c., at the dnc in order to get over that hump. >> and where do you come down on this question, which i think is the false debate, but that democrats insist on having, as to whether or not they are spending too much time talking about quote/unquote, identity politics, which means black and brown folks, lgbt people in marginalized communities and whether or not they should devote more resources to the white working class. where do you stand on that debate? >> the one thing is, i don't want to see any territory to the republicans because they are coming to our territory to fight. right now in maryland, ruby
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blue, the bluest of blue, democrats need to go back into republican territories and at the end of the day, states like kansas and south carolina and two senators to the united states senate, they also go on legislation that impacts the red state. as chair, i want to focus on a 50-state strategy, also invest in territories, democrats abroad because we have to do that. but we need to let the base of our party now, the african-americans, the latino community, the asian community, native americans. we need to let them know that we hear them, that they are special and we can't say it in terms of our word. it has to play out in our actions. >> yep. let me quickly ask you, james
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clyburn endorsed you. what do you say to those that say yo young and the sanders world is behind keith ellison. how do you answer that? >> they don't know what they are talking about. i was young at 29 when i was executive director of the house democrats and young at 30 when i ran the full operation. never lost a vote. when we took back control of the house and passed legislation, the fair act and the youngest chair in south carolina history, first african-american. so i have a history of being a young person and going out there and showing people that you can change the world and to all is my sister says, the haters continue to hate but i'm going to do the work a to rebuild this party. >> jamie harrison, thank you for being here. we want to extend a conversation
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to keith ellison. we invite them all to come on as well. thank you for giving us your elevator pitch. appreciate it. >> thank you, joy. take care. next up, donald trump may soon be putting your child's education up for sale. we'll show you who is cashing in. stay with us.
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what's causing the unemployment levels to be so high and i pinpoint that back to the educational system. when you see that people have no opportunity to go to schools or good skchools, nor do they have access to have training for a vocation, that really becomes key. so mr. trump is focusing on school choice. >> good morning. welcome back to "a.m. joy." the fiery debate has intensified
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since election day and even more so with the education pick for secretary, betsy devos, a koch brothers aligned mega donor. she's a major supporter of charter schools and vouchers, both of which divert tax dollars that would ordinarily go to taxes that would support public schools. devos and her husband helped to pass the state's first charter school law and right-to-work legislation. she's an advocate for school's choice and some say devos has consistently pushed a corporate agenda to privatize and
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de-professionalize education. joining me is aaron palace of teacher's college and political analyst, jonathan altar and charles pierce. first to you, aaron. thank you and welcome to the show. you recently wrote an op-ed piece on november 25th, you wrote, "as traditional public schools wither, more families are driven to the private sector. it makes teaching less attractive and teachers leave the field in droves." if you can just summarize the dangers of diverting money to charter schools. >> traditional districts have lost a lot of their base funding as money has moved to the charter schools and the plan proposed by president-elect that
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might support private schools as well as charter schools would do that even further. the district needs base support. when that money gets cut as students move to other types of schooling, there's simply less funding available to maintain the traditional services that traditional districts have provided. >> maria, this is real attractiveness to this idea of charter schools because we highlight the goods one. my kids have been in charter schools and we have taken them out of charter schools because they are not all good. there is this attractiveness to it. donald trump's educational plan is an additional federal investment of 20 billion towards the school choice and states collectively contribute another 110 billion of their own education budgets. meaning essentially they could take the money out of public schools, give it to families,
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whether it's vouchers to go to private schools or charter schools, that's attractive to a lot of minority parents. is it dangerous? >> it is attractive and latinos are split. there's a tremendous lack of data. one thing that is happening with all american kids in public schools, we did a show on this on latino usa. we called it the 1%. one out of four students is latino in american public schools. what do those students bring? oftentimes they are seen as a negative with lower reading skills but they bring in tremendous social skills. how do you bring in that sensibility across the educational system and if you're moving towards privatizing, which does seem very attractive, how do you actually assure that they are responding to this new group of students that are out there that are changing who we are as americans? i mean, we should be having more
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bilingual education, more classes for english language learners. how do we bring that sensibility into a conversation when we're focusing on privatization versus public spending, it gets very complicated. >> charlie pierce, one of the things that republicans have long said, omorosa has said on this show, the way that republicans think that they can eat into the minority vote and into african-american and hispanic voters is through education and school choice. they've made that an issue. so privatization seems like a way to pull in minority voters but also a way, let's be honest, to allow people to make money off of the school system. it's another profit center for people like betsy devos that she's hostile to. "never has anyone been appointed to lead in the past 150 years who was hostile to public education the way she is." this is a double-edged sword.
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what should democrats do to message against it? >> i think they should message against the privatization, the stuff that we call the commons, the stuff that is for all of us. right now the president-elect is putting together a cabinet that basically contains four different kinds of people. people who are really inexperienced, billionaires, people with czy ideas and billionaires who have crazy ideas and are inexperienced and betsy devos is right at the top. >> not only that, her family has roots in the right-wing causes that have been at the fore for decades. richard devos, her father-in-law, is the co-founder of amway, worth about $5.1 billion, and finance chair of the committee in 1980s. dick devos, her husband, is a republican -- was the republican nominee for governor in 2006. he lost. he was elected to michigan's board of education in 1990.
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she's the former chair of the michigan state gop, was a champion of i virs rating public unions in that state and eric prince, her brother, is the founder of black water, privatization of military and its functions. we really are seeing the onset of a group of people around donald trump who are all about turning public sector goods into profit centers for individuals. >> that's true. and i think what progressives need to do -- and i come to this as an education reformer who's been very supportive of highly effective charter schools but betsy devos' problem is she's a hypocrite. she wants to shut down traditional failing public schools but protect failing charter schools and that doesn't really wash. she's also a supporter of for-profit schoolshich are a disaster and vouchers, which are a disaster. but i think progressives need to
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not go too far into the anti-charter movement. charter schools are not private schools. they are public schools. the highly effective ones, about one-fifth of all charter schools, are killing it. they are doing a great job graduating over 90% of their kids, getting them all the way through college. and so what we need to do in resisting betsy devos is to say, look, if you want to try to supplement good charter schools, fine. but the rest of the privatization agenda, no way. >> aaron, i once was on the board of a charter school. i've seen the way they work and was not impressed with some of what i saw because one of the things that charter schools do to the point, they are public schools but they also can be selective about who gets to be there and can pump themselves up by only pulling in the kids in a community who are going to be helpful to the school, who will make the school get a higher great and leaving kids who are the most in need, mentally
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disabled, emotionally disabled out which makes the public schools even worse. >> that's true. many charter schools have tried to state their reputations on the ability to produce high test scores and the best way to do that is to recruit kids that are going to be successful. that means leaving out english language learns and there's evidence that the charter sector serve as lower proportion of those kinds of students than traditional public schools. jonathan is right. they are highly diverse. there are some good charter schools. what progressives need to do is figure out how to encourage regulation that will allow the good schools to grow while closing down the ones that are failing and michigan, unfortunately, in betsy devos' area, has been a disaster area, with 85% of the charters run by
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fo for-profit organizations. >> there's the magic work that republicans have said that they have come to destroy, regulations. that's something that donald trump is against. >> a interestingly, joy, i'm interested that you were serving on the board. there's a real appeal there. speaking specifically about latino parents and latino folks involved, they need to get more involved. one of the things that happens is that, for example, in mexico, you send your kid to a school and that's -- they are taking care of it. we need to be much more engaged in terms of what is happening in our country but particularly if charter schools are going to be taking off, latino who are educators, involved, who know policy, who are representing their community got to be involved. this is a time to bring their voice into the conversation. and their particular needs, which i think again benefit all of us into the conversation. >> and charlie, that is a point, right? that you're seeing these sort of
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corporate interests come in and sometimes there's only a handful running lots and lots of these schools, almost like a chain restaurant almost, and you don't have a lot of people from the communities involved. >> yeah. i'm less anguine that having charter schooled without proper regulation and oversight, you can keep the corporate world out because the corporate world will keep hammering you and hammering you until you let them in. we had a referendum in massachusetts to lift our statewide cap on public schools and massachusetts, of course, is the place where the american public school was invented. it went down in flames. largely because people reacted to the amount of out of state corporate money coming in to lift the cap and the fear was that the more money -- the more charter schools you opened, the less local control you would have, the less regulation and eventually down the road you wind up with a situation like we have in detroit where i am now
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which, as the gentleman said earlier, is a cat trastrophe. >> and people go into this to make money. thank you all for sticking with us. "a.m. joy" returns and you'll want to tune in tomorrow when i figure out how to read this prompter. and lawrence tribe will breakdown donald trump's conflicts of interests and elijah cummings will be here to tell us why the oversight committee will not investigate. up next, thousands of veterans are about to stand side by side with protesters at the north dakota pipeline.
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attorney general loretta lynch is deploying federal mediators to north dakota to try to diffuse tension between law enforcement and a native american tribe protesting the dakota access line. they are vowing to continue their fight despite a monday deadline to clear their camp. the sioux tribe have stood their ground for months facing dogs and police water cannons. in a statement, pipeline building partners say the protest is no longer about native american rights. they say, "it is a protest being orchestrated and led by extreme environmentalists who are committed to elimination of fossil fuels." let's bring in cal perry. cal, give us the latest. it looks very cold there. have people begun to leave the camp?
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we know this monday deadline is looming. tell us what is going on. >> reporter: you know, nobody is leaving. everybody that i've spoken to have said they are going to stay regardless of the weather. they say there's a cold front coming on tuesday. ha-ha, it's already cold. it's supposed to go into the single digits, minus 20 with the windchill. i'm already freezing so i can't imagine what that will feel like. the other buzz of the day, potentially 2,000 veterans on their way and we are waiting for tulsi gabbard from hawaii. you've been here for months and it seems like we're building up to this day on monday. are you worried about what could happen on monday? >> i'm not at all. i think the governor has backed off on his earlier -- the rhetoric to get us out and i think that things are not going to happen as he wants them to play out and no one is leaving. we're all here for the long haul. >> reporter: is seems like the authorities and in my conversations with them yesterday, they understand the
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optics of what has happened in the past are very poor and now we have an influx of veterans coming in. do you think that's going to help? do you think it will be a negative? what's your thoughts on that? >> i think that we're here for a reason. we're here because we're united in prayer and i think the veterans are coming in to help support that in a peaceful way. we've been peaceful and patient and prayerful this whole time under direction from the chairman and everyone else. that's our agenda. we want to just convince the hearts and minds of folks that veterans are here to help us with that. >> cal, would you mind asking chas if she and other protesters, water protectors are happy thus far with the obama administration's response? >> no, not at all. i think there's a lot more that the obama administration could do. i think they could scrap the whole permit right now as it is and have them reapply. that would be an excellent way for them to help.
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i think the obama administration has done, you know, what they could to deal with this climate change thing which a lot of us are here for but not enough. this is a huge time for us as a species and we need to be having a real conversation and we're not. they could start having a real conversation based on science and instead of politics and fear andhat would be something that everyone could do. and, also, we've been doing this consultation now for 500 years and people come to us and we say "no" and it doesn't matter. and so i think that's an issue here, too. we said "no" to this pipeline two years ago and still we're still here saying no. >> how do you balance the need to raise awareness about the issue of the pipeline but at the same time, you see all of these flags behind us of all of the different tribes and this is a
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promise of national sovereignty, promises made by the u.s. government that were then rolled back. how do you focus on both at the time? >> it's complicated. it's hard. there's a lot of different agendas and reasons why folks are here. i'm here as a tribal person and for what i said just now, that we've been saying "no" to these projects since time began and no one is ever hearing our voice and now, for whatever reason, our "no" got amplified by the other organizations coming to support us. we've been saying "no" to these things and saying "no" to climate destruction. we're saying "yes" to our future and we're getting bombarded by rubber bullets because we want a future for our country? come on, it's 2016. >> chas, does it concern you that the incoming president was invested in the company that's building that pipeline? are you concerned that you won't
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have an administration that's listening to you after january 20th? >> well, it doesn't really feel like we've had an administration that's been listening to us now. i don't think things are going to change. the head of the snake has changed maybe or what have you but we've been out here for months and w haven't had any help from this administration right now. i mean, literally, our people are being attacked by dogs and no one is helping us because we want water. i mean, fresh water. it's kind of ridiculous when you think about it. i don't think that the incoming administration is going to be any more helpful than the one right now. so -- >> cal, thank you very much. chas, thank you very much for talking with us. we will continue to follow up on the story. stay warm, guys. stay safe. thank you both. >> thank you for coming. up next, are you feeling anxious? do you feel the urge to yell at somebody at your local starbucks? coming up, the malady that is
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gum crisis averted. do you suffer from occasional because you voted for donald trump? >> you're trash. >> why? >> because i voted for trump. >> so what? >> trump. >> do you experience feelings of discomfort on flights until you know the entire cabin agrees with the ballot that you cast on november 8th? >> donald trump, baby! that's right. this man knows what's up. [ bleep ]. donald trump. [ applause ] it's your president, every damn one of you.
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if you don't like it, too bad. >> do you feel anxious when workers at the local deli serve people of color before you because they took the required ticket while you just opted to stand near the counter and shot for service like the real american? >> i have the right to film. you guys are crazy racists. i was waiting here first. it doesn't matter if i hold a ticket or not. you get it. >> do you experience feelings of rage when black employees at arts and craft stores offer you a reusable bag for a dollar rather than a free plastic bag? if you've experienced any of the above, you might be suffering from ade, acute discrimination. some rants can help and after january 20th, you can find that
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at the white house near you. >> and that person was saying for months that there's no way that donald trump can break the blue wall, right? we didn't break it. we shattered that sucker. we shattered it. that poor wall is busted up. so i'll never forget it because it just felt so good. >> side effects can include paranoia, irrational fear and trumped-up anger and dry mouth. this may be a sign of our grand democratic experiment. assume nothing. unlike hellmann's, kraft real mayo spreads on smoother and still has no artificial flavors. no wonder the holidays taste so good.
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i live right here in auburn, i absolutely love this community. once i moved here i didn't want to live anywhere else. i love that people in this community are willing to come together to make a difference for other people's lives. together, we're building a better california. i have been discriminated
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against twice by you. >> no, ma'am. >> yes, i have. twice. this woman screamed at me across the store like an animal. like an animal. >> many people have recorded angry outbursts from their fellow citizens and these incidents have had two common threads. the people recording claim to be trump supporters and that they are discriminated out of nowhere there's been so many cases like this that we have coined the term for the phenomenon, acute discrimination envy. while certainly not all trump supporters have been involved in incidents like this and they are not representative of every trump voter, a new poll offers very interesting insights. 49% of trump supporters and 49% of republicans, according to the poll, feels that increasing diversity comes at the expense of white people. some americans are experiencing a al sense of anger and dread
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along with an apparent desire to recast the history of discrimination with themselves as the victim. joining me is host of fake the nation podcast and a new book and tim wise, anti-racism educator. tim, there's an interesting pieces of data in this piir poll. they say it comes at the expense of white americans. clinton supporters, only 16% say 21% of democrats say that and if you jump to republicans, it's 49% and white working-class voters, it's 4 in 10. what is going on that people feel diversity is hurting them? >> well, when you are a member of a group that's been able to take for granted its normalcy, its centrality to the narrative
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of what america means and you have to suddenly share that designation with people who don't look like, pray like you, they feel decentered and to have 70%, 80% feels like oppression. what's really interesting about these videos, they really demonstrate the fragility of whiteness and prove the extent to which white americans continue to have advantage and privilege. here's what i mean. if you think getting slow service at a starbucks is oppression, then clearly you've never been racially profiled by the new york police department. if you think that being asked to reuse a bag at michaels is oppression, you've never been choked like eric garner was. being shot by an officer in the back from a distance of 17 feet, he can't get a conviction for m. clearly when white folks are claiming to be the victims, we're proving how little we understand victimization.
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it's not having rue in "the hunger games" movie be an actress. >> it's a good point. one of the common threads is a sense of people who should be euphoric, their guy won, but they seem to be angry that they feel the additional thing that is oppression is people not being happy that donald trump won, that that, too, is seen as some sort of discrimination. >> yeah, i would agree. as a matter of fact, it's bizarre to win and then feel discriminated against. for those of us, people of color, we don't win and feel discriminated against. we lose and are discriminated against. so i think these people have to ponder how are they going to treat this condition, ade, if their guy who won is going to undermine the health care and, as you said, privatize medicare and everything else. they are going to need it for that condition. >> and the interesting thing is,
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you've seen a lot of these sputtering incidents of violence, against people of color, muslim-americans. there was one reported, a woman attacked by multiple men on the platform at 23rd street and park avenue subway stop. they pulled off her jihab yelled trump at her. 61% of voters said the election was the last chance to avert american's decline, that they saw this as a chance to stop the decline of america because of their perception that lots of muslims and immigrants are coming to the country. >> i think the declines are very strange, the ones that they are picking up on. for instance, the incident in michael's where a woman was asked to buy a $1 shopping bag to carry her larger items and do
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people have access to shopping bags? like, is that what has been happening? so i feel like it's strange and also a woman who is probably on her way to a yoga class is not your -- the symbol of the decline of the american empire. so i think we need to kind of calm down for a second, really think about the shopping back and what it means and recognize that it doesn't mean that you're being discriminated against. >> and really, it was 45 minutes. you have this hair trigger sense that the anger and rage inside of these people, you are being racist against me as a white person. that is happening constantly now and they are associated it with, well, because i voted for donald trump. >> so a couple of things. i think it's important that we realize the people who actually feel this kind of rage, i'm
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hoping, right, is actually a numerical minority in our country, that they actually are. and if you look at just in terms of the popular vote, so take the popular vote and then you come down to who voted for donald trump and the fact that -- it's a small -- so i think we need to realize that. i'm all about compassion. i would hopefully try to give a little bit of compassion. but where did the narrative come from that as we become a more diverse society, that it means a loss for somebody else? and i have to look at the mainstream media. like again, i hate to just kind of go there in a big way, but if you have a mainstream american news media that is not diverse in its own newsrooms and they are reporting about data that is clear, are they bringing their
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perspective of, oh, my god, change, it's going to mean something. whereas, for example, i run my own newsroom. it's a diverse newsroom. we are committed to reporting about the demographic change and latinos. so this kind of demographic change for us is not, oh, my god, it is who we are. and the question is, why do we as our country, why do we fear who we already are? >> tim, i will ask you that question. if you have people taking in messages from the media that say that, you know, the only time that you're talking about immigration is showing sort of frightening pictures of people coming over the border, people who don't even live in a border state fear there is an influx of migrants that they think are criminals, that they think are fright continuing, are we presenting such a distorted picture writ large that people who even live in a completely uniform communities are afraid of people of color, afraid that they are coming? >> well, of course. the research on this going back
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15, 20 years is clear that the media does present oftentimes dimensional images of immigrants, of black folks in communities and that's why donald trump was able to say all black people live in hell. they get shot walking out the door. that's an image that the media has portrayed. clearly, the media bears a responsibility. even though it may be a small minority, the real key for us going forward is how many white folks are not going to be silent collaborators? how many are going to challenge those people? the good news is, in some of these incidents, white folks have challenged. that's the key. white folks are going to have to figure out, how are we going to live in this skin? are we going to be allies acting in solidarity with people of color to change this? >> and i'll stick with you for one second, tim. why do you suppose no one stood up on the plane when the man used the "b" road to refer to women sitting right near him and
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what was weird in that video, unlike the michael's video, the woman went on a 45-minute rant. it was weird for me that even men did not stand up to the guy on the flight. why do you think that didn't happen? >> well, i think, one, there's internalized misogyny that allows us to accept that word and it has to do with the type of confinement of the airplane and that guy appeared to be out of control, maybe drunk and there was real violence so we have to talk about how it's being driven by racism and alpha male behavior that the new president of the united states has made entirely normal. we have to be willing to stand up to all of that. >> you just gave me a great book and it's a hilarious title. how to make white people laugh. are we putting too much responsibility on people of color, on religious minorities
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to make trump voters feel more comfortable? are we going too far? >> what about behaving in a civil fashion? i would take on the responsibility of being an ambassador for my people and i relish people and meeting people and if people are going to associate iranian-american-muslims which i am, they are so obsessed with red glasses and red lipstick and blue earrings, that's a great stereotype. let us promote that stereotype through me. so i'm fine with that. if you're just a good person, you're immediately going to be a representative of whatever, of your town, high school, whatever it is. so you're sort of -- we're always kind of operating in that. in situations it might turn violent like the one on the plane, it's really important to kind of use noncomplementary
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behavior and de-escalate the situation. when someone says go back to your own country and i'll come back to them and say, where did you get that teacher? i say something odd or weird because i try to flip the script like we have a conversation and if you disarm them there's a possibility there. >> you know, that's interesting. because even though i'm saying they're a small minority, we're going to do an interview with michael german, the real-life character, an fbi white agent who goes undercover after 9/11 into white supremacist organizations. so i am saying they are a minority. the truth is, what we'll talk about with white german is the fact that there is a structural operational backbone to white supremacist thought which is something we have to recognize and deal with. >> we're out of time. i want to give you the last word
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on that, tim wise. people are overaccusing the media who are back in business as a result of the trump campaign. do you think people are overblowing that? >> they never went out of business. they are being emboldened. there is an upsurge of organizing with groups like surge showing up for racial justice. there are just as many folks out there trying to organize against this as there are trying to o organize for it. >> thank you. coming up at noon. new reaction to trump's phone call with the leader of taiwan. the big question, will it damage relations with china. first, our boot camp for democrats. what should voters do? that's after the break.
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earlier this week, kellogg's announced it would pull its advertising from breitbart.com
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which caused them to prevent a boycott of the breakfast cereal tweets. how about whitees before breakfast? don't you just love cocoa stop and frisky? and apple back boots and how about some coffee to go with your corn-flicts of interest and a lovely bowl of special kkk. not exactly the breakfast of champions. up next, what voters can do besides making funny cereal memes to fight back. introducing drug-free aleve direct therapy. a tens device with high intensity power that uses technology once only available in doctors' offices. its wireless remote lets you control the intensity,
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in an interview with "rolling stone" magazine, president obama was asked whether the history would constrain donald trump to some extent. he replied, the american people
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themselves active in participating and engaged. so are you the voters up to the challenge? what should you do next? with some advice, i'm joined by mark thompson, and author of the book. we have met our full screen, "how to make white people laugh." let's talk about what the voters themselves should do. jimmy, give some advice to the democratic voter feeling sad, but who wants an action plan for themselves over the next four years. >> well, i think you have to just be as educated as you possibly can. a highly educated voter is a good voter. a noneducated voter is not a good voter, as we have seen. but in order for someone to become educated about who they're going to vote for, you have to give them a reason to do that. so, i mean, listen, i think voting was down something like 1% this time off of 2012, we had certain groups that didn't show up. we didn't give them a reason to show up. that's not a dig on hillary clinton, simply a fact of life. and if you want people to actually be involved in their
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civics -- we don't even teach civics, maria. we don't even teach kids what civics is. or -- civics are. so you have to give them a reason to like their government, to like sausage-making and to think that the government is doing good by them and by their taxpayer dollars. if you don't, they're not going to show up. so donald trump needs to do something very smart. he's doing exactly the opposite of everything that he said. if he does that, he could win re-election. if he doesn't, it might be hard for him. >> mark, you know they're talking about giving people a reason to vote. we were talking about some of the stats that never really get talked about in the news. african-american unemployment, which has been at record highs for decades and decades, even nf good times down to 8% overall, african-american women, 7.1%. black men, 7.7%. latino down to 5.7%. 178,000 jocks created in the past month. the dow at 20,000. in a sense, a lot of the voters
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who wound up showing up and voting third party or taking it as an ideological purity vote are almost benefitting from not being in crisis, right? the votes in 2008 were done in an economic crisis. we're going over a cliff. now without that crisis, and with the average donald trump voter making $70,000 a year, not economic anxiety, are people almost just voting or not voting without really thinking it through and not even caring about the stats or not knowing about them? >> i think our constituency, well, and the culture of our constituency, when it was presented as donald trump being so deplorable, and i agree he was. a lot of people's attitude was that there's no way he's going to win. and that was probably enough for that 1% to stay home. i think we kind of took that for granted. saying that lls, though, we talked about sore winners in the earlier segment. we really didn't lose. this was sort of a successful failure. so much for the low turn -- jim just said, it's 1% off. she is close to barack obama's
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2012 total. and nobody thought that was going to happen, either. so so much for, as you mentioned, the economic anxiety, things are not as bad, people upset about the economy. the economy is doing well nine years of private sector job growth, unemployment rate going down. so i think we as voters on our side, whether we voted third party or not. and it's no secret, i do have affinity for third party movements, need to act if we actually did win some things. the majority of americans voted a democratic way. voted for hillary clinton. voted for democratic senators, voted for democratic house of representatives. perhaps the attitude we ought to have is, first of all, people should be fully educated as voters. it starts at the local level. we've got to change some of the state houses and state legislators in time for redistricting, so we can undermine the gerrymandering they have done for the past decade. and then also understand that if
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we're not building real and legitimate and viable third parties, make the democratic party the third party. after all, it has the most diverse base and the most diverse tent. >> and maria, the idea of a third party vote and self righteous statement as opposed to being a pragmatic voter who votes for the person who you would most like to be negotiating within the white house. you're not voting for martin luther king jr., you're voting for lyndon johnson and people are looking for that savior to vote for and if they don't feel that internal thrill, they say that's not enough for me. i just did a piece for the daily beast saying exactly the same thing. you need to start thinking as democratic voters, about your local d.a., mayor, sheriff -- sheriff clark up for re-election in 2018. do democratic voters and the party need to think more about that? >> i made a list of what people should do. and not just liberals or progressives, but in general. first of all, they should run.
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and i've -- i have to tell you, i've been around a couple of high-profile people who you would never think would say that they were thinking about running who are saying, i'm going to run. people even in the entertainment world who are saying, i'm going to run and i'm just like, okay, i can't wait to see what that looks like. i have students from mine in chicago who have said, i'm going run. so let's think about that. let's just -- what does that look like? i also said, you know, this is a time when we need people to support you and your show. but also independent media. right? because we are not fake news. right? we are trusted, we are reliable. the work that we do. the other thing, talk to everybody. engage. don't be afraid. also, exercise and meditate. >> absolutely. the last word for you, what should people do? >> i don't know. we should make midterm elections really sexy. like, what is the exciting thing about midterm elections? political comedians, as one -- we talk about -- we do a lot of -- around the presidential
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election. let's see if we can do that around midterm elections. >> make mayor elections sexy. thank you guys. that is our show for today. be sure to join us tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. eastern. next, the squabbling between the clinton and trump campaigns. why they're still arguing over who won and why. sheinelle jones will bring you the latest at the top of the hour. when you find something worth waiting for, we'll help you invest to protect it for the future. financial guidance while you're mastering life. from chase, so you can.
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