Pod Save America - 2020: Jay Inslee on climate change and beating Donald Trump

Episode Date: April 16, 2019

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee joins Dan Pfeiffer from the campaign trail in New Hampshire to talk about why climate change is the defining issue of his presidential campaign, what he’s learned from running a state government and his plan to beat Donald Trump.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Dan Pfeiffer, coming to you from New Hampshire, where I just recorded an interview with Washington Governor Jay Inslee, who was one of the many, many Democrats running for president. He was here in the state campaigning. Jon Favreau interviewed him at our live show this evening in Concord, but we will be releasing this longer conversation as part of our series of 2020 candidate interviews. It was a great conversation and I hope you enjoy it. Check it out. Governor, thanks for being here. Yeah, beautiful day to run for president. Aren't they all? I think we picked the right state too. That's right. You were the first ever Positive America live show guest when we were in Seattle. Is that true? Yeah, back in early 2017. Wow, you guys are a tremendous success to me.

That's what we tell everyone. It was all because of Governor Inslee. I wanted to start with the issue that you've put at the center of your campaign, climate change. You have billed yourself as the climate change candidate. You've said that what distinguishes you from other candidates is that this is going to be the climate change campaign. What does that mean in terms of how you're running your campaign? How are you different from other candidates when it comes to climate change? Well, number one, I am the only candidate who is saying very specifically and unequivocally that defeating climate change has to be the number one

priority of the United States. It has to be the first, foremost, and paramount duty of the next president. And I firmly believe that. I believe the urgency of the moment is unparalleled, actually, in human history, because we've got exactly one more chance to turn this ship around, or our children and our grandchildren are going to live very, very degraded existences. is clear on this. It is accelerating. It's now starting to touch us where we live. It's burning down our towns like Paradise, California, where I visited. It's flooding the Midwest. I was in Hamburg, Iowa yesterday, where a town, it's been there since 1858, never flooded before. Now it's been virtually destroyed. We're having to raise our roads in the seacoast. Here in New Hampshire, they've got seacoast issues. So everywhere you go, you're learning that this is a beast that has to be confronted. And so we have to have a president to do this.

And I am saying unequivocally that it has to be job one because if it's not job one, it will not get done. It takes, as you know, enormous capital to restructure your economy. And that's fundamentally what we're going to have to do. And so that is a unique position to have said that. It's also unique because I actually believe it. It has an added benefit because I truly believe this. I've been working on this for over 20 years. I co-authored a book about it in 2007, helped start the U.S. Climate Alliance a couple years ago. And we now have 23 states in that regard. Introduced legislation in 2003.

So this has been a longtime pursuit of mine. And I think that I'm uniquely qualified amongst the field to understand from a policy perspective what really needs to get done. And the third uniqueness, and there may be a theme in our discussion, is that instead of having just talked about this, I've actually done things about it. And we've developed a huge wind industry, $6 billion wind industry in our state, in part because of an initiative I worked on. We've built spinoff companies because of my clean energy development fund. We are electrifying our transportation system now. We're going to have 50,000 electric cars on the road here fairly shortly. I just passed 100% clean electrical grid bill through our house, and I hope to sign that shortly.

So that is unique, having been an executive. And I have learned, having been a member of Congress and an executive, that there is a difference between making speeches and actually figuring out the mechanics and the hard work to get something done. So those are three differences that make me unique, I think. What is the Inslee plan to deal with climate change look like? Well, we will be rolling out a very comprehensive plan here in the weeks to come, but I'll give you just a summary, if you will. Bottom line is that we need to have a clean energy economy in the next several decades, and that has to happen. It is a scientific necessity. There is

no doubt about this. And the good news is we know we are capable of doing this because we're seeing the beginning of that technological revolution. We're seeing wind turbines in Iowa. And by the way, Trump is wrong. Wind turbines do not cause cancer. They cause jobs. Okay? This is about jobs fundamentally. And it is important to say that because this is a unique moment where you have two things happening at the same time, just at the right time. Number one, it's a matter of urgent peril, but it is a matter of tremendous economic promise. So our plan is to build on economic promise of clean energy jobs that are now starting across the nation. We would have a multi-sectoral approach where we basically go and look at our economy and build new clean energy jobs to build this decarbonized system.

In transportation, it means we need to electrify our transportation system, which we are doing rapidly, both by some regulatory touch and some incentives to help people finance it. It means we need to electrify our transportation system, which we are doing rapidly, both by some regulatory touch and some incentives to help people finance it. It means building electric charging stations up and down our roads, which we're doing in Washington state. It means doing the R&D that is necessary to continue the development of batteries that are so important to the whole clean energy world. So you need to build a decarbonized transportation system. It means building enormous infrastructure because we know they can't build a birdhouse in Washington, D.C., but we have $70 billion of infrastructure and transportation, 70% of which is for public transportation right now, which is low carbon. 70% of which is for public transportation right now, which is low carbon.

So in their transportation system is a dramatic reversal of the huge carbon dioxide emissions that we have now. We need an enormous R&D effort. Our research and development has been pathetic in the past. We spent more money developing one kind of Jeep than the entire clean energy system of the United States. It means going to a fossil-free electrical grid. And as I indicated, we just passed a bill a couple days ago that would have 100% electrical grid moving fairly rapidly. And we're closing off our coal-fired plants just in the next several years. several years. And throughout this, 100% clean electrical grid, millions of jobs associated with building everything from wind turbines to solar plants to public transportation, an effort to finance this in part by removing the enormous subsidies that taxpayers are

shackled with. $27 billion right now go to the oil and gas companies. That needs, that gravy train needs to stop. And throughout this, we need to embed the idea of a just transition. And a just transition means you take care of the victims frequently, communities of poverty and communities of color, to focus our efforts on the first victims and also help those who are in industries that are going to transition to do the things like we're doing in Centralia in our coal plant, which we have a $55 million fund to help the people during that transition. So that's a quick run through the future. So a couple of questions on that, recognizing that you're going to roll the details later on, but do you see your plan as dramatically different, slightly different

as the Green New Deal that has been proposed in Congress? Oh, I think it's very much consistent with the goals of this. And by the way, I think the Green New Deal has been helpful. It's helpful because it's got people talking about climate change, so that's good. It's helpful because it's raised people's ambitions as to the scope of this. And it's helped bring in more people, communities of color and those in all kinds of new communities to see themselves part of this discussion. So I think it's been really helpful. But we all know, including the drafters of the Green New Deal, we're going to have to all work together to develop the policies to actually make it happen. And that's where I come in working with other people to do that. And we're going to have these very specific proposals.

And it will be based on 20 years of work. This is not a bumper sticker. This is a lifetime work of mine, and I'm excited about rolling it out. So the politics of climate change are very difficult, and they have been for a long time. In your state this past fall, there was a carbon fee that was on the ballot. You worked very hard to try that and get that elected. The state rejected it. In some places, you defeated very handily in the rural areas. What did you learn from that defeat that you would apply to

effort in an Inslee administration to enact climate change legislation that will require, even if you get rid of the filibuster, someone like Joe Manchin or other conservative Democrats to vote for it? Well, number one, I learned that, look, you're up against the biggest special interest in world history. The oil and gas companies put in $32 million to defeat this. And as you know, with $32 million, you can blow a lot of smoke and create a lot of discordant and deceptive information. And that's hard to beat at the ballot. And that's hard to beat at the ballot. I learned that the most important renewable energy source in America is perseverance, meaning you can't give up.

You just got to go to plan B, C, and D, and that's what we're doing. And the good news is that we have multiple avenues to defeat climate change. It isn't just one policy or you're toast. There's all kinds of policies. And so what we're doing now is we turned right around and developed a policy portfolio of things that if I get them through my legislature, we'll have roughly the same carbon pollution reduction as the initiative would have had. And I'm very excited about getting those things through. The third thing I have learned, and it's not so much about the initiative, is that the jobs you can create here

are not just in urban areas. This is a small-town, rural job development program that we are going to be talking about on the trail. So, you know, our carbon fiber manufacturing for electric cars isn't in Seattle. It's in Moses Lake, a small town in central Washington. Our biggest solar panel isn't in Everett in the Western Core. It's in a town of 300 in eastern Washington.

This is a job creator in multiple places, and that's important for Democrats. We need to win in the Midwest. We need to do a little better in some of these areas, and this is a great job creator to move forward. Now, you mentioned the filibuster. I don't want to leave the conversation without talking about that. There is absolutely no way to make progress on this without eliminating the filibuster. And that's why I have dedicated that and I've been saying this for several years

and was the first candidate to say that running for president, because you really cannot be dedicated to climate change legislation or health care legislation or anything of any dimension unless the filibuster goes. It has been weaponized by Mitch McConnell. And we have to step up to the plate and realize that senatorial privilege needs to go. Now, how do we do it with the Democrats? You might not get a vote at times with maybe one Democrat. We've got to pick up a couple more seats to give us a little bigger margin. And the voters are going to have a shot. And I think 2020, we have a good reason to believe if we

buckle down, we can win more seats. I believe that. I'm glad you brought up the filibuster. I want to just run through a couple of similar norm-related proposals that have been talked about on the trail. So, Electoral College? Look, I believe in democracy, and then the Electoral College is an artifact of the 13 colonies and it needs to go. We need popular elected officials. And it's kind of the same idea of the reason to get rid of the filibuster. You should have one person, one vote and don't give whoever wants the status quo one and a half votes in the filibuster or privileged states in the electoral college. So yes. And by the way, we can do this without a constitutional amendment because we have this state's agreement where we have states have agreed, and my state is one of them, to be bound by the popular vote to cast our electoral votes that way.

So this can be done even without a constitutional amendment. Statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico? I think it's the right thing. I supported back in, you know, 93, 94, and it's even become more acute as those populations have grown. And you see a little bit why it's necessary when you see how callously indifferent Donald Trump has been to folks who don't look like him. He has two views of that. And statehood has been demonstrated why statehood is important so that these Americans can participate in the process. Last one on this topic, changes to the composition or term limits of the Supreme Court. Well, I think the thing we should start with is making sure that that seat that was stolen is regained.

And, you know, if there is another nomination by a Republican president, we need to make sure that seat is remedied. Because, by the way, that seat was not just stolen from Democrats. It was stolen from the American people. I would not totally rule out other issues. rule out other issues. Amongst all of them, I've heard of any changes in the Supreme Court would be an idea of having rotating members of the Court of Appeals. So you'd have a broader group of judges that could sit over time to sort of reduce the politicization. But I'm not sold on that yet. Let's make sure we write the way, the first way it is, which is to regain that seat. Last week, Senator Sanders introduced the latest version of his Medicare for All legislation.

It was co-sponsored by nearly all of your fellow candidates who are currently serving in the Senate. What is your reaction to the Sanders proposal? And do you have a Medicare for All or health care plan for your campaign? Yeah, well, the first thing I would say is, regrettably, Senator Sanders' bill is going nowhere because he won't come out against the filibuster. And unless you get rid of the filibuster, there's no way major health care reform is going to pass. That's just a reality. So I'm hopeful over time he will follow my lead and join me in saying the filibuster needs to go. My view is that my state is a little bit of a template what we should do on a federal level. We hope to be the first state to embrace a public option. I have a bill advancing right now, and we've been very successful in the implementation of Obamacare.

We've had one of the largest drops of uninsured of any state because our implementation has been so effective. And it's one of the things I've learned being governor. You actually got to produce. You got to implement. It's not just putting it on paper. Our opioid efforts have been very not totally successful, but other people are looking at us for guidance. Then on the federal level, obviously we need universal health care. Then on the federal level, obviously we need universal health care, and I believe the next step ought to be what a Medicare for all who want it right now, which I think you can pass rather than a 10-year argument, which gives you a lower age for automatic eligibility for Medicare and, crucially, an ability for everyone who wants it to enter into the Medicare system. And I think that's the most rapid way that we can make a transition here,

together with obviously bargaining with pharmaceuticals so we can reduce the pharmaceutical costs that people are exposed to. And another issue that a lot of discussion on the campaign trail is gun safety laws. And you lost your seat in Congress in part because of votes on gun control laws. What did you learn from that and how would you approach that issue as president? Well, what I learned, as you know, I cast one of the pivotal votes during the Clinton administration to ban assault weapons. And when I did that, I knew I was jeopardizing my seat in Congress. And that did happen. I was freed for other duties by the

voters. And it's painful to lose something you really believe in, which is working in Congress. But what I learned is that you never regret what you do for conviction. And I've never regretted that vote. I've always believed it was the right vote then. I believe it's the right vote now. I really had no regrets. And the thing that shows there's a little justice in this sorry world is that now I'm governor of a state that has embraced three measures, very aggressive measures, which are actually probably one of the leading states on gun safety now. So we've adopted bans on bump stocks. We've adopted extreme risk protection acts. We've adopted increasing age for assault weapons. We've adopted bills that require gun owner responsibility. So

now as governor, I've been able to move the ball. And we are now, you know, Frank, the NRA is in retreat in our state because we have a governor who's been able to push back against them with the courage of my convictions, and that's working. So I think the country is ready for common-sense gun legislation. I'm happy to pursue it as president, and we need somebody with the spine to do it, and I think I've demonstrated I have that capability. And I take it from this, you think that politics have changed on this issue since the 90s. Yes, yes. There's no question that politics have changed. You know, there's kind of Yes. There's no question that politics have changed. You know, there's kind of a general theme here. I think politics is changing much more rapidly than many politicians understand.

It's changed on gun safety dramatically because of the losses in our schools. And I'm willing to confront Trump on this. By the way, I went to the White House and personally confronted him after the shootings, and he wanted to arm first-grade teachers with pistols on their hip. But I went and looked him in the eye and said, that's a ridiculous idea. And by the way, you should quit tweeting so much and listen to educators. They're changing on marijuana, where we have legalized marijuana in our state, and it has been an unbridled success in a variety of ways. And they're changing on issues of criminal justice reform, where I now have offered pardons to people who had marijuana convictions and I've ended the death penalty.

They're just changing – they're changing on climate change very rapidly because people have seen the destruction. This is no longer just a line on a graph. It's actual seeing cities burn down. They're changing on the willingness of people to embrace helping working people. That's why I've been successful. We've passed the best paid family leave in America. We've passed the highest minimum wage. I've been the first person to be the first governor to pass net neutrality.

I've been the first person to, the first governor to pass net neutrality. We've passed a gender pay equity bill because we have this radical notion that women should be paid the same as men. The point I want to make is I think we need leaders who recognize the foment and the willingness of Americans to move forward. And we've done that in my state. And I think this is a template for success for the United States. All of the things I've just mentioned that we've accomplished in Washington, I think we can do federally. And what would your approach be that would be different than the one President Obama took to try to get some of those things done? How does that changing politics manifest itself in a strategy to enact these pieces of legislation, these policies? Well, I think the things we've done in Washington should be federal policies.

And there's a couple that we have not yet passed that I hope to in the future. Again, I believe as the politics change, we'll be able to do this. Why could I do this where the incredibly talented, amazingly dynamic President Obama could not? It's because we're later in the arc of history. There's more people who want to do it now. And I think we're in that position to recognize

that ability to do that. Another issue that's gotten a lot of discussion on the campaign trail is the role that large tech companies have in our economy. You're the governor of Washington State, and Seattle's one of the tech centers in America. Amazon is headquartered there. Microsoft's also in your state. If you were to be president, you would have regulatory authority over these companies. And is Amazon, in your view, too big, too powerful, in need of greater regulatory scrutiny? How would you approach these companies?

Well, I think that there is a need for some approaches to some of these issues that needs modernization, regardless of the size of the company. regardless of the size of the company. If you look at internet privacy, for instance, we need privacy legislation that will give consumers and users adequate degree of privacy. We need that for small, medium, and large companies. And that's why we are moving forward with a privacy bill. Right now, my legislature, it's not a done deal yet. We're working on some kinks.

If we get it passed, it'll probably be on the equivalents actually even better, I think, than the California law. And I think that that's the kind of thing that we ought to do federally. I think that we have to look at tax policy that where we've had tax policies for large corporations, which were they have not simply paid their freight. Now, that's most obviously apparent in the oil and gas industry and coal industry, where there's $27 billion of subsidy that needs to be eliminated. We need to take that money back, not reach into taxpayers' pockets and take it out to give to these companies that have no particular claim to it. And that money can be used for clean energy efforts as well.

I think that we need to look for ways to not allow large corporations to hold communities hostage on the issue of jobs. And there's been this pernicious practice where communities, a corporation will say, you know, if I don't get a tax break of X, I'm going to move 20,000 jobs somewhere, and then have two communities compete to the lowest common denominator. I think that we ought to think about ways to use the federal tax code to eliminate their ability to do those. I think on the antitrust side, there are some things that antitrust should always be under review because to look at it under the current situation, there might be some things we can look at that. I'm not necessarily a bot that there should be some like just bright line of dollars.

I don't think that probably gets to the real heart of the problem in an antitrust sense, which is to really look at what the impact is in that particular industry. I think that's a better approach on moving forward. Governor, I also wanted to ask you about another issue involving criminal justice reform and electoral reform. In the state of Vermont, something Bernie Sanders has been talking about recently, voting rights are inalienable in that felons do not have to reapply for them afterwards. Is that something that you think should be nationwide? Should voting rights be inalienable in this country? Well, in a sense, they are or can be in our state because you just have to apply. And if you've fulfilled your obligation and we've reduced what you have to do at this point to make it achievable, yes, we want people when they've done their penance to

be able to regain their place in democracy. And that's important to give people respect, to be able to regain their place in democracy. And that's important to give people respect, to make them feel they're part of the community. And everything we can do to help them get back into jobs is very, very important. We're doing some really good things in my state on criminal justice reform, one of which is banning the box. So right now, unfortunately, in a lot of places, you know, in your job application, they ask, have you ever been convicted of a crime? And if you say yes, you never even get a second look. So we've banned that process.

We have eliminated the death penalty because of the racial disparity that has been so pernicious through our criminal justice system. I mentioned that I'm the first governor to offer pardons for marijuana convictions because the drug war we know has been one of the reasons for such high rates of incarceration of communities of color. So we're moving forward in a lot of different ways to reduce some of the racial disparity in our system. And I'm glad we're moving forward. I hope we do it federally. If you were president, you would obviously have the ability to give out pardons for those sorts of unfair drug-related sentences.

Is that something you would be open to doing as you came in office? I would certainly look at this because I think we've seen, particularly in the drug war, onerous measures that have created more heartache than they've created safety for citizens. And I think that part of the things I've done on the pardons and legalization of marijuana, which I believe we should do federally, obviously, which I would suggest to people, we've had a very good success on this. We've had no great significant increase for youthful involvement. We've had $700 million

generated we can use for schools for kids and health care for people. So I would look at that. I think about that. I can't tell you there's any blanket thing I can commit to you right now, but I think it is something worthwhile looking at. On the foreign policy side, Bibi Netanyahu won re-election recently, which poses great, if not mortal threat to the idea of a peace process and a two-state solution. As president, how would you look to reinvigorate that process and engage with both the Israelis and the Palestinians? Well, I would start with the presumption that I've been a long supporter of a democratic and secure Israel. It's a dream to continue that. And I'd want to be committed to the security of Israel. But I'd also be committed to

a two-state solution, which Netanyahu's most recent comments have jeopardized. And I would be willing to have that creative discussion to try to keep this effort alive to try to get some solution here. And I am willing to have that conversation. And hopefully it's productive. Now, I don't have because no human has a way to snap your fingers and solve this problem. But I think a willingness to have a simultaneously commitment to the security of Israel and a commitment to have a democratic Israel, which is very difficult if you don't eventually end up with a two-state solution, to have both of those. So I would be committed to every way productively to try to achieve that. Another issue the presidents face is the relationship between presidents and Congress when authorization for use of military force from after September 11th to authorize troops in Syria. Mike Pompeo has floated a theory that you could use that for a conflict with Iran. How would you think as president about the balance between asking Congress for authority and the

inherent authority of a commander-in-chief to wage war? Well, the first thing is I wouldn't ask for the authority if it was a boneheaded idea. And that's one of the reasons I was such a vocal opponent of the Iraq War. See, I teed you out for the Iraq War thing. Well, it's still a very painful thing because I saw disaster looming. It was clearly based on intelligence that was puffed up. It was based on people who had no concept what they were doing during the Bush administration. And it was very painful to me because I saw this,

it was like watching a train heading for a canyon where the bridge was out and could not stop it. And I did everything I could to stop it. So the first thing I would do was to be appropriately humble on our ability to think that we can reshape cultures and countries. And I think that we've seen quite a number of mistakes in my lifetime where presidents have been a little bit too conceited about their ability to reshape other cultures. And so I would start there. start there. I do think that in the sanctions for war, that they have to be much more limited. And I voted for the, essentially after 9-11, I voted for the authorization. Never dreamed that it would have been to this extent. And if we had our life to live over again, we would have tried to put some more sideboards on it. But I think we certainly need to do that right now because of this administration's absolute chaotic,

unprincipled, go-it-alone policy that threatens the Iran deal. And if they're seriously thinking of that, and you never know what Trump's really seriously thinking about, but if they really are, then Congress does need to specifically rein that in. And maybe there's some possibility to do that because some of the Republicans are starting to understand the danger he represents. When you have a Senator Grassley calling Trump's view on wind power idiotic, maybe we'll get some help to try to rein in this rogue president. You are one of, I think we're at 15, 16 candidates running for president. It's a historically large, historically diverse, historically talented field of Democrats.

As you think about your campaign, how do you plan to stand out in a way that allows you to make your case to voters and have a real shot to win this nomination? Well, first off, I respect all the other candidates. I think there's probably about 15 of them would make fine vice presidents in their future. So we'll see about that. Well, look, I stand out in two principal means. Number one, as we've talked about, I'm the only candidate who's committed to make defeating climate change number one. And I think that's a very important thing because I've learned as a governor to govern as to choose and setting a priority is the most important thing you do as a president. And so I've laid out my prioritization. No other candidate has

been willing to commit to that. And I think it's probably because they don't believe it, or maybe they're just afraid because they listen to their pollsters and think that this isn't important enough. I disagree with them on that. In fact, there's a poll in Iowa of Democratic primary voters showing that defeating climate change is tied for the number one priority of voters. So that is a fundamental difference. It is a fundamental difference having had the chops to be able to do this because I've been at this for 20 years. And it's a fundamental difference that I've actually achieved progress in my state, knowing how to actually get this done. And the deeper one, or the additional one, because some people said, well, is that the only thing you're running on? I said, no, it's I'm running on the fact that I'm the only executive who's got

the best paid family leave. It is. And I've passed the best paid family leave in the United States because I believe very intrinsically that we have to allow working families to be able to have a life. We've passed the best minimum wage. No one else can say that in this race. No one else can say that they signed the first net neutrality bill in the United States. And this is something I worked on in Congress for quite a period of time. Couldn't get it done in Congress, but I got it done as a chief executive. We've adopted the gender pay equity bill.

No one else can say that they've got one, I don't think, as good as we do. We've done a reproductive parity act. There are a few other states that have that, but I think in this field, I'm probably the only one that's passed one. As a governor, and I think in this field I'm probably the only one that's passed one as a governor. And I think another point is that I've been able to have some real successes even with the Republican Senate.

So we passed a couple years ago the best and biggest transportation package in the history of our state, $70 billion worth of work, and I did that even with the Republican Senate. We had a similar success on education funding. And through working for a lot of sweat equity to get a bill through, we have several billion dollars of additional help, including real big advances in early child education. And this is something I've believed in for a quarter of a century. And we've now got slots for an additional 8,000 students. We've had a tuition decrease. We've had one of the most robust, richest financial plan for scholarships for our students.

And importantly, of all the things that I've been able to do, one of the, to me, one of the most gratifying is I got 12% pay increases for our educators last year. This is a big deal to me because I think the best thing you need is a good teacher in a classroom. My dad was a biology teacher, so I'm a believer in this. The first debate is coming up in a couple months here. The DNC put in place standards to get into that debate involving polling numbers and an ability to generate contributions online. How is your campaign doing in meeting that threshold? We're still working on it. And as you know, anyone who'd like to help on that, get 65,000 donors, they can go to jensley.com. And I do hope people will think about that because

regardless who you want to serve, we want to make sure climate change is on that debate stage. We want to make sure we've got somebody who's very aggressive on this issue who is never going to let this happen again. We're in the last three presidential cycles. We had exactly four minutes of debate time. So if you believe climate change needs to be on that stage, if you can go to jamesley.com, you can send anything from a buck on up, that would be wonderful to make sure that that works. stage. If you can go to jamesley.com, you can send anything from a buck on up. That would be wonderful to make sure that that works. Do you think the thresholds that DNC set are fair or a good idea? I haven't really thought through that. Whatever they are, they are.

You know, having some threshold makes sense. I couldn't argue with it right now. Last question for you, Governor. Democrats very much want, in polls, they say they want someone who can win which is sort of an obvious answer because why would you want someone who would lose right right but the ability to and everyone's going to have their own art you know no one really knows what electability is every candidate will have their own argument part of whoever the nominee is has to be someone who can deal with trump right and there are different theories about how to do that. And I think a lot of us believe that the approach we took in 2016 obviously did not work. And Trump was able to dominate the conversation and drown out Democratic messaging. If you were the Democratic nominee, what would be your theory about dealing with Trump as he's giving you some ridiculous

nickname, he's tweeting about you, you're seeing absurd, unfair, and inaccurate attacks. How would you navigate those waters? Well, I know he likes nicknames, but the only thing he's going to call me is Mr. President. That's about all he's going to get to do. Look, I feel very comfortable in a confrontation with him, in part because I've already had one at the White House that I described. And I think I'm a very good contrast because I am an optimist look i'm an optimist about defeating climate change and i really believe we can and will do this he is a pessimist i'm a person who believes in the can-do spirit of america he's in the can't do we just can't do this we can't invent new wind turbines right we can't and we can't invent electric cars

i'm a person who believes in the expansionist nature of the American story that we have been in a very unique country that has led the world in so many different ways. He just wants to hide from the world and break up every alliance we have and have a much diminished view of the ambitions of the United States. I'm a person who believes in diversity and inclusion. He believes that diversity is a vice because he's threatened by people who don't look like him. He fundamentally believes that for him to win, somebody else has to lose. And that's why he's damaged so much our international relationships. I believe that you do better when you work with other countries. That's one of the reasons I committed to the Paris climate change agreement. So I think I'm a very good contrast to him as a person in outlook. And I also believe in my ability to win

tough races. And one of the reasons is we, this last year, won seven governorships while I was the chair of the Democratic Governors Association. And one of the reasons we won those seats is we insisted on having messages that responded to the desire for economic growth, for job growth, for better schools, for better roads. And we addressed that sort of effort that really spoke to some of those people we didn't reach in 2016. I know how to win Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, and Kansas because we did it this year in the governor's races. And I think the kind of message I represent is the one that allowed me to succeed when I started my political career in about a 63% Republican district, an agricultural community in a town of 3,000,

where I learned to win because I spoke to people about where they live, about their need for jobs. And this clean energy jobs message is fundamentally a job creation message. And I believe that in 2007 when I co-authored this book, which is about how you create clean energy jobs. So I feel very good about the contrast and the prospects of winning this. And I think we're going to be a united party and I'd like to carry that flag. Governor Inslee, thank you for joining us

on Pots of America. Thanks, Dan. Keep talking. Thank you. Bye.