Neera Tanden: So far Trump has done everything he could possibly do to...

Religious liberty should mean religious liberty for everyone, employees as well.

Neera Tanden

liberty religious mean

From my perspective, we actually have to have a stronger, bolder economic message that's not just for white working-class voters, but for people who don't go to college who are white, black, Latino, or wherever. We have to communicate that we care about Detroit and Appalachia, and people suffering in both are problems for the country and a problem for the Democratic Party, not just one or just the other.

Neera Tanden

party college country

I think Donald Trump was successful in capturing "drain the swamp, change Washington, a big screw-you to the status quo" - which has already been ironic since election night. But it was one of his big messages, and there's a broader sense of how to address the feelings of so many people left behind by the economy.

Neera Tanden

successful night thinking

I think that Democrats have to think through answers we haven't in the past: How we are going to create those jobs? How should we restructure the entire tax code? Should we have things like a payroll tax, when jobs are so scarce? They weren't - basically the architecture of our employment law, tax law, all these things were from the 1930s - and I do think that one benefit of Donald Trump, which is not worth it, but one perverse thing is, he has widened the scope of things that we should discuss.

Neera Tanden

architecture past thinking

We don't have great answers to what jobs will look like in 10, 20, 30 years. And I think it's right for people to have some anxiety in a world where driverless cars are going to take over. Like, how are you going - it's gotten really, how are you going to have a job in 10 years, and how are your kids going to have a job in 10 years, if you haven't gone to college or had a lot of hand-ups in the system, basically.

Neera Tanden

college kids thinking

Trump is dividing people against each other; he's going to try and sow racial division; so you have to figure out an answer. I think really the only answer for the Democratic Party, or for progressives at large, is to have an answer about how these people who haven't been to college, who haven't had a lot of things given to them in life, are going to do better, year after year after year.

Neera Tanden

party college thinking

I hate to say that not everything is politics, but not everything is politics.

Neera Tanden

i-hate hate

I think Trump wanted to use his 2016 campaign to basically say to a lot of folks that liberals hate you. And we have to show a bolder economic plan than we have before, one, I think, that needs to be focused on jobs, that communicates to those voters that we do care, that we care as much about their success as any other success, anyone else's success.

Neera Tanden

care hate thinking

I think a core principle of the Democratic Party has to be a defense of equal rights for every American. At the same time, when you look at the election, and not just the 2016 election, but the elections to come, Democrats have to do better than we did in 2016 in communities, in rural communities where people feel like they've been in a slow burn recession or depression for years, not just months.

Neera Tanden

party people thinking

I do think that the Trump presidency, even for the resistance, there is pre-Charlottesville and a post-Charlottesville moment, and Donald Trump's response to Charlottesville was a kind of extraordinarily shameful moment, I think, actually for the country.

Neera Tanden

kind country thinking

I think a lot of people - to be candid about it - are like, if Donald Trump can be president, so can I. And I think there's a whole crop, a new generation of people who aren't on the tip of anyone's tongue, just like Bill Clinton wasn't on anyone's tongue; just like a lot of people didn't expect Barack Obama to take off like he did. I think we will have a lot of new people running, and there are obviously a lot of fantastic people who have run before, or standard-bearers, right. All right. So, I think there's just going to be a ton of those people.

Neera Tanden

running people thinking

The truth of it is Trump has shown... that there's a strong appetite for bold solutions to significant problems, trump's disruption, and many of his lunatic ideas, have widened the aperture of what's acceptable in the policy debates.

Neera Tanden

us-news

Incremental solutions communicate that the problem is not so large, that is what Trump championed. If you think the problem is big you have a bold solution to it. I think that makes sense to people.

Neera Tanden

us-news

There is a question of level and scope, but... I don't know that it is going to be successful, in a Democratic primary, to criticize Sen. Warren for doing so much, and I don't even know it's going to be effective in a general election.

Neera Tanden

us-news

There's like five assaults on progressive values a day, depending on the tweets, he's doing nothing to make anyone do anything but dislike him.

Neera Tanden

top-news

WIC gives poor moms money for food for their kids, for formula -- for the barest of essentials, i do not understand the rhetoric of Ivanka Trump and her women's empowerment message, saying these things and slashing WIC funding.

Neera Tanden

top-news

And now we have estimates from this plan that he endorsed that 15 million people would lose it, the reality is here, people relied on him, they voted for him for who've got the Affordable Care Act to saying they would keep their coverage and it would get better. And the Ryan plan is less coverage at a highest cost, worse all around.

Neera Tanden

politics

The reality is that Donald Trump promised voters that they would keep their coverage.

Neera Tanden

politics

I hear the point that this really needs to be a mission about what she's going to do as president. She has to work on making sure everyone feels part of that. And her language can shift a little bit on that point, but I always get a little anxious about these kinds of comparisons because we ask questions about women, about what they're talking about themselves too much. ... All male candidates do that all the time.

Neera Tanden

politics

It's a fascinating moment because we are entering 2016, and the court has the potential to place itself in the heart of the political debate that we are having in the country.

Neera Tanden

politics

So far Trump has done everything he could possibly do to pit Americans against each other, to sow division, to fuel distrust of American against American, to adopt a kind of Bannonite strategy of fueling racial antagonism, xenophobic antagonism against Dreamers, et cetera.