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 TandenI 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 TandenSo 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.
Neera TandenI 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 TandenI 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 TandenTrump 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