Former Congressman John Delaney, who made something of a splash by explaining to the country Wednesday night that no one asks him about Robert Mueller, joined me this morning:

Audio:

06-28hhs-delaney

Transcript:

HH: John Delaney just joins us now. Congressman, how are you?

JD: Good, Hugh. How are you doing?

HH: I’m great. Thank you for saving my Blue Cross.

JD: Yeah.

HH: I do not want my Blue Cross to be taken away. It’s worked well, and I’m a union member by the way, AFTRA-SAG. And I don’t want AFTRA-SAG benefits to go away, either. Did you get some applause from the union people out there?

JD: I did. Yeah, I mean, look. It’s just about choices. The American people want choices. And they ought to have them. It’s also about economics, as you know.

HH: What would Medicare, yeah, what would Medicare for all cost?

JD: $33 trillion dollars.

HH: Wow.

JD: I know. It kind of takes your breath away a little bit, doesn’t it?

HH: Well, does anyone in your party understand that’s not tenable? That’s 150% of the national debt.

JD: Right, listen, I don’t think, that’s a detail that a lot of people don’t focus on. You know, as I said the other night, we have to be the party that has workable solutions. We’ve got to tell people how we’re going to pay for them. And then we have to tell people how we’re going to get it done politically, right? That should be our jobs. And you know, what’s different about me is for everything I’ve proposed, I explain why it’s workable. People can disagree, but I have an opinion as to why it’s workable. I tell people how I’m going to pay for it. And I lay out how I think I can get it done politically, which as you know is incredibly hard for any of this stuff.

HH: As the framers intended it to be.

JD: Exactly.

HH: There’s supposed to be a deliberative…it’s just the way it’s supposed to work. Now Congressman…

JD: I think if they came back and saw us today, they would say well, it took you a little too long to do a few things, but fundamentally, your freedom and liberty has been protected.

HH: Yes.

JD: And they’d be okay with that.

HH: We are a republic of liberty. Yes, that’s why you’re dangerously close to making sense to Republicans. And there are a few of you. Your buddy, Tim Ryan, and Michael Bennet…

JD: Yeah.

HH: …and I think you’re all kind of, Seth Moulton, you’re in that lane marked reasonable, and therefore you must be silenced. Did you feel you got a fair amount of time?

JD: Well, no, I had to fight in like crazy to get the amount of time I was able to get, and it wasn’t as much as others. So no, I mean, I would do these debates so differently. I would give everyone the same question. I’d give 10 questions, rotate who goes first, have a, give us 30 seconds to answer it, just to get all the important issues on the table. And then the second half of the debate, they can do it any way they want.

HH: Let me ask you about Robert Mueller, because…

JD: Yeah.

HH: His name was not mentioned last night, not at all.

JD: Right.

HH: You killed it as an issue, and I wonder what the reaction is within your party to the truth-speaking, that you spoke truth to power last night. The resistance doesn’t want to hear what you said. What’s the reaction been?

JD: Yeah, I mean, it’s been mixed. A lot of people applaud what I had to say, because it took some courage to say that people actually don’t care that much about the Mueller report, which is what I find when I campaign in places outside of Washington, D.C. But other people are obviously angry about it, because they think it’s a central issue. And you know, but I just, you know, I’ve done more campaigning and talked to more Democratic primary voters than anyone. And they don’t ask about it. I mean, it comes up every once in a while, but you know, fundamentally, they can’t even follow this stuff. I mean, most members of Congress can’t even follow the back and forth that goes on, on a daily basis on cable television over the Mueller report.

HH: Well, I…

JD: And I’m not saying this condoning the President in any respect. I’ve been very clear with my views of how he’s conducted himself. But I think if we want to beat him, I mean, if we want to impeach him, we should impeach him at the ballot box in 2020.

HH: Now here’s my next irony for you, Congressman. Pete Buttigieg is getting a great deal of praise for being level-headed and calm.

JD: Yes.

HH: You also were very level-headed and calm. Why does the mayor of a town that would fit inside of Donald Trump’s many developments many times over get more notice and respect than you do who built a business of, I don’t know how many people you employed, but it was a large…

JD: A couple thousand, yes.

HH: Couple thousand. Why is that?

JD: You know, I don’t know. I mean, I think it’s a good question. I mean, I was on the stage with Bill de Blasio, and you know, his police force is, and you know, Bill de Blasio and I don’t line up politically, but he’s got a police force of 30,000 people. The police force in South Bend, Indiana is 200 to put it into perspective.

HH: So what is, he won last night. He and Kamala Harris won last night. In fact, let me go to Senator Harris. What did you make of her takeout of Joe Biden on bussing?

JD: I just think at the end of the day what’s really important for us to do is to try to deal with what I view as current day, present day racial injustice, which I think still exists in this country. I don’t think it’s that relevant to the American people, you know, who Joe Biden talked to 30, 40 years ago. I don’t believe Joe Biden is a racist at all, you know, period, full stop. I mean, obviously, the story she shared was a heartfelt story, and it reminded people of how African-Americans were treated at a time when we were dealing with some difficult school issues, and I applaud her for telling the story. But I just think we should be focusing on what we’re going to do to fix racism today and not worry about what someone who is not a racist was doing 40 years ago in the Senate chamber with some person that you know, most Americans don’t even know who he is. I mean, we all know his record, which is as a terrible segregationist. But that’s my opinion.

HH: All right. Now talk to me a little bit about the Vice President going full Johnny Appleseed on building 500,000 electric car charging stations immediately. There are 57,000 such things already. That kind of a claim ignores local land use laws, permitting laws, curb cuts, all the kind of normal, practical stuff that someone who’s actually built something, and I was a lawyer for developers forever, has to get done. I’m sure you had to pull a few permits for your building facilities for your employees.

JD: Yeah.

HH: That’s just crazy talk, isn’t it?

JD: Well, and I also think, look, I think that to some extent, he’s missing the point. We’ve got to get our, in my opinion, our climate policy right. My solution, which is a carbon fee paired with a dividend. So you know, every penny you raise through the carbon tax goes right back to the American people in an annual dividend. So you know, it never touches anyone’s hands. That will change incentives. That will encourage building a tremendous number of electrical vehicles. And that will encourage the private sector to build the network of charging stations that are needed, because you’ll have a market incentive for people to switch to electric vehicles over gasoline vehicles through a carbon tax, through a revenue-neutral carbon tax where it goes out one pocket and back in the other on the American people.

HH: That’s reasonable, Congressman. What I’m getting at is a bigger picture, which is I hear a lot of fantasy on this debate stage. I hear a lot of unicorns dancing with Bigfoot.

JD: Yeah.

HH: And when I hear 500,000 transfer stations or charging stations, along with we’re going to get rid of Electoral College and we’re going to expand the Supreme Court, stuff that requires Constitutional amendments that you and I both know not even Maryland, your home state, would ever vote to abolish the Electoral College. It’s got a good deal under the Electoral College.

JD: Yup.

HH: Shouldn’t there be a factcheck on reality of the political solution being proposed, because a lot of what I heard last night is simply not, I mean, gun buybacks? We’ve got, that just is not going to happen.

JD: Of course not, and it’s a distraction from the real issues. I mean, these people are running on impossible promises, not real solutions. And there’s a lot of things we’ve got to solve in this country. You know, we’ve got a situation where European countries spend one-quarter of what we do on pharmaceuticals, and the United States, the citizens of the U.S., are basically subsidizing the entire global pharmaceutical industry, right? That’s an issue that has to be dealt with, in my opinion, by the next president.

HH: All right, my last question to you, Congressman, we’re running low on time here.

JD: Sure.

HH: …is that the seriousness of the debate is not high. And it’s been almost a straight line drop since 1960 forward. The first four Nixon-Kennedy debates were very serious affairs.

JD: Yes.

HH: And they keep getting worse. How do you arrest that trend? How do you get seriousness and substance back into these conversations?

JD: It’s hard. I mean, you know, unless the debate moderators insist on really having a serious conversation, I mean, in many ways, you know, late night entertainment has too big of a footprint on our politics, right? It’s become more important what some late night comedian thinks of the political candidates, which is almost irrelevant to anything they have to say. It’s, you know, how they look or whatever, whatever, whatever. You know, do they make a funny face? Do they, you know, that’s what seems to matter. I mean, we have to return to this notion that this is actually a job, right? You know, and I said the other night, I don’t just want to be the president to be the president, I want to be the president to do the job. We have to get back to that.

HH: So are you optimistic about your campaign at this point? Do you think it got out of the gates with enough to get you, it’s like the NCAA’s. You’ve just got to get to the next round. Did you get to the next round?

JD: Yeah, that’s, I do. You know, Lincoln had a great expression. You can only paddle to the next bend in the river. The next bend in the river for me is to point out to the Democratic Party that this mindless following of Bernie Sanders down his path of Medicare for all is a disaster, and we have to go in a different direction. If I can do that, I will have changed the direction of the primary on the most important issue to voters, and then I’m in the game.

HH: But it’s too late. Everybody but you raised their hand, didn’t they? Isn’t everyone from…

JD: Yeah, yeah.

HH: Everybody but you said yeah, let’s spend $33 trillion dollars that we don’t have.

JD: Well, this is the thing none of them even think about. You know, Medicare Advantage, which is the Medicare option that our seniors have, half of them are electing it, right? So you turn 65, you can take straight Medicare, or you can get Medicare Advantage. It doesn’t cost you anything more, but you get more benefits. That’s private insurance.

HH: That is…

JD: They’re running on taking, we’re running on taking health care away from 50% of our seniors of the health care they’ve chosen, and forcing them back into basic Medicare. I mean, how’s that going to go politically for the Democratic Party?

HH: Oh, I’m just got to put you away, because we’ve got to put you in a box. You are dangerously close to talking sense to the center of the country and winning elections, Congressman. So thank you. Thank you for joining me. Congratulations on a first round. We’ll talk to you after the second round.

JD: Thanks, Hugh. Bye.

End of interview.