 Hey welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us here at the Mechanics Institute. I'm Laura Shepard, Director of Events, so we welcome you to our program and we welcome those of you who are watching on Facebook. First of all, we are very pleased to have this program on the new book California Fights Back, the Golden State in the Age of Trump with author and political analyst Peter Schrag, in conversation with Carla Maranucci, Senior Writer for Politico California Playbook and we're particularly pleased that this program follows Governor Brown's last state of the state address from this morning. So we have lots to talk about. Also I'd like to thank our co-sponsor, Hay Day Books and also Steve Wasserman, publisher of Hay Day for their wonderful publications and also for our many collaborations that have been ongoing for many years. This is part of a series so for all you political junkies, our next event with Hay Day will be on February 15th when we will have a presentation for the new book Ransoming Pagan Babies, The Selected Writings of Warren Hinkel and our guest will be Will Hurst, publisher of The Journal of Alta California with journalists Robert Shear and Deidre English. So please join us on February 15th at 6.30, right here at Mechanics Institute. So once again this is such an important day to be talking about these important subjects about how California is modeling and surviving and thriving in this era. So I'd like to introduce you to our guests. Peter Schrag is a journalist, a scholar of California politics and political history and the author of numerous books. His publications include When Europe Was a Prison Camp, Father and Son Memoirs 1940-41, Final Test, The Battle for Adequacy in America's Schools and Paradise Lost, California's Experience, America's Future, which was a New York Times notable book. Schrag served as a columnist and page editor at the Sacramento Bee for 19 years and was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley's Institute of Governmental Studies from 2011 to 2013. And Carla Maranucci is Politico's California senior political writer and produces the Daily California Playbook. Maranucci formally is of the San Francisco Chronicle and has covered presidential, state and local politics since 1996 in California, including seven gubernatorial elections in the state. She has consistently been named one of California's best political writers and bloggers and is a regular political analyst on KQED, KPCC and radio and television stations around the state and also has appeared on MSNBC, CNN, Fox News and Al Jazeera. So please welcome Peter Schrag and Carla Maranucci. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for being here. It's so great to be with such an engaged audience. I know there's lots of political junkies out here in the audience and this is going to be a great discussion with Peter Schrag. This man is the dean for those of us who've covered California politics. So we're going to leave plenty of time for questions. We want to talk about California. We want to talk about the issues with Trump. But I have to bring it back to what was mentioned. I was just up in Sacramento today in the legislative chambers watching Jerry Brown deliver his 16th and final state address. Peter, I got to get your thoughts on this because Brown came into that chamber to standing ovation to accolades. He took them all in and then he said, as my father would say, I accept your nomination. And then afterwards we asked him, so is this your last campaign? And he said, never say never. So just your thoughts on the end of the era here. Are we going to ever see another politician like Jerry Brown? He's the most interesting political figure that I've met in my life. And I first saw him in his first incarnation as governor. That's now in the late 70s. And when I got to know him a little bit, quite a bit actually. And when he was very accessible to the media and used to hang out at, what was the name of the bar across from the Capitol? I can't remember now. But anyway, and he was very accessible and was a very different personality. And not different personality, but his politics were very different. And he was regarded by many people, including of course the famous Mike Royco remark as a little bit flaky and was a little bit feeling his oats. And he's changed a great deal. Some people say because of Ann Gust, his wife. But I think it's also he's had a lot of experience. He's had a lot of experience in local government. And he often said he now knows what I was doing to local government when I was governor the first time. So he's a fascinating guy. And he's brilliant. And he doesn't hide his light under a bushel. And you get him into a canon law or anything like that. And he's but he's very bright. He's very educated. He's well read. And at their moments when we all thought he was a little bit chilly, a little bit standoffish, despite his accessibility. But there are moments when I've seen him when he's been very tender and very loving and very sweet. We had a mutual friend named Ivan Illich, who was a Catholic Mount Senior and set himself an influence on Jerry, a big influence on Jerry. And when Ivan Illich died and I saw him last at Jerry Brown's where when he was mayor, what I call Jerry Brown's ashram in Oakland, where he lived. And when Illich died a few years later, Jerry wrote the most moving wonderful tribute to Ivan Illich. And I never thought that Jerry could do that. But he was anyway. I've said too much. No, I mean, I think you brought up a couple of things that we want to get into talking about California and its role with Donald Trump. Jerry Brown did not mention Donald Trump by name today. But he definitely took on Donald Trump talking about climate change and other things. We want to talk about that. You know, you have covered politics for decades in California and the national scene. And I just want to start with a kind of a general question in terms of how what is the biggest way do you think? What is the Donald Trump has changed politics, changed the political scene for someone who's seen it all? Well, as I said, as I said to you, Carla earlier, he put a certain four letter word on the front page that never happened before. And I think it's a good, a good symptom, a good emblem of the kind of person he is. And obviously, you could, we could, we could talk till tomorrow morning about all the things and all the problems that he's come with and that has created and the difficulties that people like you try to cover it every day and trying to keep up with this man who will say, who will say red is green today and will say blue is white tomorrow and then we'll reverse himself the next day. So it, it, it, it, it, he is, and we're all kind of attached in some strange way to his ego. We are all being manipulated by that ego, even in our revulsion. And I sometimes used to, you know, my wife goes bananas every time she looks at the headlines. And, and, and obviously she as a, as a woman feels a lot of things even more sharply than I do. And I think many, I suspect many women in this country do as well. The kind of global disrespect you should pardon the oxymoron here for, for women. And, but, but there you could, you could catalog the catalog is endless. I mean, Jerry talked about this today, about what makes California different. And that sets the focus of your book, California Fighting Back Against This. You say in the beginning of the book that, that Trump threatens California's progressive if still imperfect success as a model for the world. Talk a little bit about that. When you talk, you mentioned, you've mentioned, you know, California is different from so many other ways. This is a state that Trump has said is out of control, quote unquote. What, where's California been most successful? What sets California apart, any of you? Well, I mean, one of the things we have to remember is that in the early 90s, California wanted to do what Trump, California wanted to do in California, what Trump wants to do with America. We want to drive out immigrants. We wanted to end any kind of favorable treatment for immigrants. We passed an initiative by a fairly large majority that would have denied all undocumented immigrants the right to schooling, the right to public health care, the right to social services. That was all there. It also required all public police officers, teachers, whatever doctors to report any undocumented immigrants to immigration authorities and to the attorney general and whatnot. So those are all things that we have now reversed 180 degrees. We've now passed the statute of sanctuary laws, whatever, to prohibit people from doing precisely what they were once required to do. They used to talk about Prussians, you know, that Prussians, that anything in Prussia that was not mandatory was prohibited. And there was something similar to that. But in any case, we reversed 180 degrees and in that sense alone, it seems to me, we are a model for the rest, possibly a model for the rest of the country. We've been there, folks. We're where Kansas is now and we're in North Carolina is now and we've gotten over it. And in addition to that, of course, California with its diverse population, majority minority, a state in which in another 30 or 40 years Latinos will be an absolute majority with that diverse population with tolerance of immigrants with strong environmental laws with all of the kind of progressive legislation. We are number six in the world in our economy. We have gained more jobs back since the 2008 recession on average than the country as is all. We've been economically very successful. Jerry Brown talked about that a little bit today. And so we are, and yes, we have lots of problems. And you know, you know them as well as I do. Tons of them having to do with unfunded pension liabilities, housing shortage is dreadful, all series of things. But we have a government that works. This is a government at the moment that works unlike that other government. And in a way, as I was writing this little book, it occurred to me that California is a little bit like we're interposing ourselves, as John Calhoun would have said, or we're nullifying as we're trying to. Obviously, not in the way that Calhoun meant it or not for the purposes that Calhoun intended. But it's also interesting, I can't remember the exact title of the book now it's quoted in this book. The governor of Texas, Rick Perry, about 10 years ago wrote a book that was essentially the case for how we Texas could resist Washington. And strangely, it's a title that is very invocative of what California is doing now, except for a different purpose. But in any case, we are, I think, a model, despite all our flaws and our problems, for where the country might be going or should be going. And that's, of course, also why we've been fighting so hard to protect what we've got and why the attorney general is suing the feds right and left and why the Air Resources Board is sticking to its guns on tight emission controls and why the whole series of things. So we're basically trying to protect what we have and protect. And I think that's not ideological. I think that's totally self-serving. Let's talk immigration. Because you mentioned Prop 187, the kind of ads and the kind of things that voters looked at back then, the ad by Pete Wilson, they keep coming. The Trump campaign released an ad this week that was sort of very similar. Is it just the change in demographics that has changed California's mentality on this one or what? I don't know. I don't know. But it's interesting. And it never struck me until I was working on this little book that the moment, the pivotal moment in a way, came with Schwarzenegger, oddly enough. And Schwarzenegger, when he was elected, well, Schwarzenegger as a person had lots of similarities to Trump. He's egotistical. He's misogynist. He's all of those things. The difference, of course, is that Schwarzenegger really made himself and Trump certainly did not. But Schwarzenegger came in also being very abusive of opponents called Democrats' Girliemen and had all kinds of nasty language about his opponents. And then he ran five ballot measures in 1995. I'm getting, you get old, you get... Which he supported, ran a special election as they were going down to defeat, and they were all creamed by the voters for various reasons. He realized that he had a change. And even before the votes came in, but when the outcome was clear, he changed his tune. A great deal. And all of a sudden became concerned about global warming. He talked about big public works projects. He went left, sort of. And so I think that was kind of an emblem. What caused that partly was that when Pete Wilson supported Prop 187 and ran his reelection campaign in 1994, largely, as you said, that they keep coming, attacks on immigrants. I think close to a million on Latinos registered and became naturalized. And, of course, immediately given that campaign, immediately registered as Democrats. And so you had this great swing. And then, of course, the other thing was that the California Republican Party, to some extent like now the National Republican Party, was not very welcoming to minorities or to women. And so, and to this day, you can see the difference. So it became this whole drift toward the Democrats, which has been ongoing. And those Latinos, they voted. And we know that President Trump is supposed to formally announce on Monday his immigration policy. Some of that is leaking out already. But there are reports that he's going to be coming to California, possibly after the State of the Union address, not to in response to the wild fires or the mudslides, but to visit the border wall prototypes down in San Diego. What's your reaction to that? And what do you think the effects will be if Trump gets what he wants, which is an end to, quote unquote, chain migration, which is really family reunification? That's an aspect of migration of immigration here in California that has brought many strong, you know, engineers and other folks to Silicon Valley, this idea of family reunification. So anyway, your thoughts on him coming to the border wall? My question is, if he comes, can we put up the wall behind him fast enough? I'm not sure. But, you know, this issue of deal making with the Democrats, it's right here in California, those eight border wall prototypes have cost $20 million so far. You know, do you think is Trump going to get what he wants with regard to this wall? And what will be the effects on California if there's no family reunification? I don't think, I don't believe that a wall as a physical wall is at all possible. A wall as a metaphor, maybe something else, increased border patrol, technology, more people, whatever, which they're doing anyway. But it seems to me as a physical thing. I mean, you think about all the ways that the border is no longer a line, it's a community, it's a region. It's a region with just enormous amounts of interchange, families, businesses, kids going to school across the border, all kinds of cross-border health understandings and environmental and water resource. And there's all kinds of stuff. There's no way you can build a wall in the middle of all of that. It's just not possible. And all the transportation, the trade, the tourism, everything that goes back and forth. So I don't think a physical wall, maybe in a couple of spots in the middle of the desert or whatever. But I mean, this was a campaign, some piece of campaign rhetoric that then became a thing. Is he going to make good on the promise, though? We've heard these reports that the Department of Justice is going to go after sanctuary city leaders, mayors possibly, up there in Sacramento today, Kevin De Leon, the State Senate pro tem, have very strong language, kind of bring it on. This is nowhere has California been more of a state of resistance with Becerra, with De Leon, et cetera, than on this issue of sanctuary cities. Is California sort of against the grain on this? I've heard some Democrats say they think this is a risky fact. It is a little bit risky. And it seems to me you have to keep coming back to the fact that federal law is still what it is. And we're interposing ourselves. I also think that if Jeff Sessions tries to arrest Kevin De Leon and prosecute him, he's never going to find a jury within a thousand miles that would convict him. And the same thing would be true for a whole lot of mayors. Well, you've heard Libby Schaff in Oakland where we live say, okay, I'm ready to go to jail. That's right. She doesn't need to worry. I mean, I think that there's some things that, and I'm not enough of a lawyer to know, that some things that where they may try to crack down on banks dealing with marijuana dealers who are, whether they can seize assets, I don't know what the law is on that. But it seems to me again, if they arrest you for smoking pot, they can't convict you. There's not going to be a jury anywhere that's going to convict. I mean, isn't this the issue though? We're talking about the DACA students and these dreamers, because California has more to lose here than any other state. We've got 200,000 people here. 90% of them are in school or working. They contribute millions, 350 million dollars to the state's economy and taxes. These are not slackers in any sense. Is Trump really going to go after these folks considering that California's economy will take a big hit? If California's economy takes a hit, so does the New York Stock Exchange, correct? According to today's paper, he's again softened his tune on that. But I think on that one, I think you have to, it's like, if you don't like what Trump says, let's Mark Twain say, just wait a minute. You don't know where they're going. I don't know what they can do to officials in sanctuary cities. Can they arrest the mayor of Oakland or Libby Shaff or Berkeley or whatever? They arrest Gil Garcetti and whatever. It's hard for me to believe that they can get convictions. This goes to sort of an issue that you deal with in the book, which is, Trump has broken the rules in so many different ways. The rules of engagement are different. You mentioned the four-letter words, the S-hole immigration comment, so forth. That was a headline for a day. Now it's gone. The Stormy Daniels, that would have been a big story on any other administration. It's kind of out of the headlight. It's made her career, though, right? It certainly has. First of all, why does the Republican party not express more outrage? Even evangelicals or leaders were telling Politico this week, they're giving him a mulligan on this whole issue of Stormy Daniels. I mean, I wonder about Republicans, including what used to be people I'd necessarily agreed with, but Republicans who, John McCain or whoever, I sometimes wonder about Susan Collins in Maine, who I always thought was a very thoughtful, but she also voted for the tax bill, right? To some extent, I think they have a tiger by the tail. I don't think they know how to let go, but I think a lot may depend on what happens this November. If, in fact, let's say that the seven Republicans were being targeted in California, let's say the five or six of them lose, and they're replaced by Democrats, that's not sure either. The fact that Ed Royce could very well be replaced by another Republican. But let's the same, assume that they lose enough, let's say they lose their majority in the House, I think that might change the party's tune and probably would change it even before the election when they begin to see what's going on, as Schwarzenegger did in 2005, that they start changing their tune on DACA, on ACA, on whatever. But why do you think that hasn't happened yet? For instance, let's take Kevin McCarthy. He's been in every photo op with President Trump recently on the tax bill and everything else, even though a lot of folks in his district will be hurt by that tax bill, by Obamacare, any kind of attempts at Obamacare repeal, DACA and so forth. He, Devin Nunes is another one who's been out there just aggressively pushing the Trump agenda, and yet they're hanging tough with him. I don't know. Again, I think they're focused on that narrow, relatively narrow constituency. I mean, let's remember that Trump did not win the popular vote in 2016 and that his base is what is a 30-something percent. So, and I think that those Republicans are still, and of course, the way that districts are organized and carried matter in many states, not in this state, by the way, because we do have a fair redistricting, reasonably fair redistricting process now, but in many states, if one of those safe Republican districts, you worry about being hit from the right and not by the Democrats. There is concern too that California is with its top two primary, that this may play into whether the House can flip or not. Right now, we have 67 Democratic challengers coming forward for those 17 Republican House seats here in California. 14 Republican House Republicans all together in the House. Yeah, 14. Okay, 67 Democratic challengers. There is some concern that with that many Democrats, the party's influence is going to be diminished and you could end up with two Republicans in some of those seats. Do you see that happen? I'm not enough of a, I need Bruce Cain to tell me, but I do think that one of my worries, and I was never a particularly hardcore Democrat, I was kind of mugwump or something, but it's certainly true that I worry that the Democrats will screw it up for themselves. How so? Why? Well, between, in San Francisco, they called the moderates and the progressives. Some people would say it's between the left and the far left, but whatever it is, the division, and we've had it in California, the fight over the chair of the party, they almost went after Anthony Rendon. That's right. The whole issue of single-payer? Because, yeah, on single-payer, which was never going to, you know, we've got the whole issue of the impeachment and Steyer. I find that, but that also may be showing my age now, that I'm too old and I'm not sympathetic enough with these young Turks, but I worry that, again, the whole issue about impeachment, which until both houses of Congress change, there isn't a prayer, and then you've got spence. Pence. It's underpence. So, I mean, you're right. There's a lot to, do the Democrats have a message? Have you seen an effect you have not? No, I think, I mean, as I said, I think one of my hopes here is that California is partly a message. Obviously, that's not a political position, but it seems to me it's something out there. And California historically has always been, did I just get louder? California has always been bellwether, you know, for the country. This is where things happen often first. And somebody asked me today at an interview, it said, but isn't California often considered way out there and beyond, you know, and I said, yes, flaky and kooky and all of that, and that's all true. But California and is different, but California often is also first on many things. So, and I know that doesn't get you to the Democrats' message, I'm worried about the Democrats not getting a message and being getting hung up on things that will again cater that we will have our own left-wing tea party, if it were, maybe we really do. And that, and as we know, the tea party has not been very good for the Republican Party. Yeah, I mean, and I want to get into how you see 2018 and 2020, but I just want to hear your thoughts on the one place that Jerry Brown really has pushed back on Donald Trump is the whole issue of climate change. It's been said that he has become the global ambassador, the world's ambassador on this issue of climate change. How often, you know, with offshore drilling, the environmental issues. Just talk a little bit about that and how California, is that going to hurt Trump or? Well, I think yes, the trouble is I don't know whether the offshore drilling, I don't think anything's going to happen for quite a while, if ever, for lots of reasons, procedural and legal challenges and whatnot. And, you know, and they're already, and what they did with Florida, giving Florida an exception was really stupid. And I mean, they're not known for being policy geniuses. But on the sanctuary thing, I don't know to what extent that will ever be a big issue in Kansas. You know, that somebody's going to say, I'm not going to vote for Democrats because they've got sanctuary cities in California. I don't know. I think they'll say that's the crazies out on the Pacific. And so I don't see that. I think the same thing is true with marijuana. I think the country is pretty much liberalized itself in marijuana. Yeah, I mean, just your thoughts on that, because as you know, like on January 1st, California became the world's largest legal recreational market. It's a market that's expected to be worth $7 billion within a very short time. There's already hundreds of businesses registered here. And Attorney General Jeff Sussins just threw a monkey wrench into it in January by saying, well, wait a minute, maybe we might start prosecuting, you know, before they said that was not our priority. He's now signaled that maybe it's going to be again. You know, is this just another place for California? I just don't know who he's going to get convictions on. It's hard for me to know. The two things that worry me most are the tax bill. And I was thinking about something else. There's a health care issue also. Well, there's a health care, but there was something else that they were starting to get on. Now it slipped my mind. I'll think of it in a minute. Okay. I mean, for those reasons, I think you're seeing Tom Steyer's campaign. Now he's putting millions of dollars into it. So let's talk about what it looks like ahead for 2018. First of all, do you think Nancy Pelosi is going to end up being the speaker? Well, again, we could do worse. And as you know, there's a debate within the Democratic Party whether she should be. You understand that. And that's one of those problems, you know, whether you get somebody who's younger and newer. And I haven't watched her that closely when she was speaker. She seemed to do okay. But does the party need to look to another generation now at this point? I think that tends to be a little bit of a false issue. I don't know what is characteristic of the new generation. That means they want single payer. They're not going to get single payer in California or nationally. I mean, not at this point. There's just too much. The same thing, you know, it's not going to happen. I'm trying to think of, there must be this, well, there's the Tom Steyer thing about impeachment. Yeah, I mean, is he, this is a huge campaign. It's millions of dollars. He's all over the tube all the time. Is he pushing the party and its grassroots to really, to push this issue? Are they going to be able to ignore an impeachment campaign? Well, if they don't win the house, necessarily they will ignore it. But he's putting a lot of money into that as well. Yeah, I want to understand that if he wants, if he can elect Democrats. But the idea of, I mean, I think to some extent, Trump for the vaguely left liberal Democrats and all those organizations, Planned Parenthood, Environmental Defense Fund, all of them, he's been a great fundraiser for them. I mean, I've never, my inbox is jammed with pictures every day. Did you know they're about to take over your, take out your house? Or they're about to take your, send your children to prison or whatever, send $5 or $10, whatever you can. And I get them dozens of them every day. And they've been a great fundraiser. And Trump gets in his own way, trips over his own feet. Pence will be more focused in some ways, probably more effective. Maybe not as crazy. Maybe he won't go to war with North Korea, that's readily. That sounds like a joke, it shouldn't be. No, in fact, Jerry Brown mentioned today that the doomsday clock, we've moved closer to doomsday as of today. And then he said, it's closer than, it's, we're now closer than we've been since the Cold War, to some kind of nuclear confrontation. And I don't know what Trump will do if, when the cops are knocking on the door, what he would do then. And I mean, that was literally taking him off the jail. But if they get really close to the family on obstruction of justice, I don't know what he'll do. And, you know, he'll try to fire Mueller, I don't know what. Well, he said, we've, yeah, we want to talk about this because we've got some Californians that are really at the center of this, Adam Schiff, as the ranking Democrat on House. He seems to be a good guy, huh? Yeah, I mean, I'm just curious your thoughts on him and his future, you know, here in California. He has become a national figure based on, he is just all over the tube on this, on this issue. He's a former prosecutor and someone who comes off as very sort of studied intellectual, sort of an anti-Trump. He's been a big figure. Eric Swalwell here from the Bay Area is another one who's turned up to be a Jackie Spear, all of them on the Intel committee. Do you think this thing goes with, Trump has said he wants to be interviewed by Robert Mueller under oath, then his lawyer said, wait a minute, no, maybe not so much today. Several people tweeted that Trump doesn't understand that whether he speaks to the FBI under oath or not under oath, it's still a crime to lie to them. But what, do you see this going anywhere? What's your thoughts? I don't know. I think it may not go any further than this conversation. I don't know. I don't know whether the, but it seems, it's just another mark of how different he is. And I don't know whether that conversation will be an interview or will it be a, you know, so how would you have for breakfast, you know, you know, how's the wife, you know, whether it's anything, you know, so it's hard to know. Yeah. Well, someone else who's had a big role in this has been Diane Feinstein. I want to talk to you a little bit about her. She's being challenged. She's being primary. Yeah, I was going to ask you about Kevin De Leon. Yeah. Yeah. First of all, your thoughts, because you mentioned the, the, the schism within the Democratic Party between the left and the far left in San Francisco. Yeah. In San Francisco. What about Feinstein? The recent poll that we had in Politico, our playbook indicated she's one of the five most vulnerable U.S. senators in the country right now. Do you, do you think she's that vulnerable? What, what, what do you give? How do you look at her prospects? I don't know. And I, as I said, I don't know. I, I mean, it may be that people have just gotten tired of her. I mean, it may be, and she said, couldn't she, she's guilty of saying, saying something tentatively nice about Trump once, which is, I guess, is enough for some people to want to get her, get her out of there. But that's what she says. She said at the Commonwealth Club that she, I think that she hoped he could be a good president. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's not having a lot of trouble. You know, you know, I, you know, I hope that my three-year-old sleeps through the night, you know. But, but, but, you know, she's, I mean, I've always respected her and I thought she was, but, and, and, but. Do you think that the last, this, this issue about the, the divide in the Democratic Party here. Well, he certainly represents part of that. Yeah. A younger Latino electorate. Right. And, and there's a lot of, the other issue is there's a lot of hunger among some of these younger politicians in California to move up and there's no place to go. Yes. You've had, you've had Jerry blocking the. Well, Jerry's gone now. He's about to go. Yeah. Yeah. I tried. I tried. Okay. How do you, how do you see that one, by the way? Okay. The governor's ways. You've got Gavin Newsom. Antonia Virigosa, the state treasurer, John Chang. Yeah. Delaney Easton on the Democratic side. You know, who, who looks to you like you're going to feel Jerry shoes? It's a very tough question. I think it's a very tough question. I don't, at the moment, I'm not totally enamored of any of them. I don't know Chang at all. So I don't, I can't say about Chang. You know, we've all watched, I watched Virigosa when he was in Sacramento. He was. These are going to be big shoes to fill though, aren't they? In terms of. Well, Jerry, they will, they will all sink in his shoes. I mean, I mean, I mean, no, there's absolutely. I mean, it wasn't one of his strengths that he could, in some respects, was the adults in the room up there. Many people, including yourself. And I'm worried that any one of them will pay too high a price to get elected. And we'll have too many debts to pay once he gets elected. And which Jerry resisted and Jerry was, at some ways, by his nature, a skin flint and a good friend. And I thought Jerry was coming out of his seminary experience, whatever. Always thought a hair shirt was good for you. It helped develop character. And so. But I, I'm not impressed, totally impressed by any of them. Yeah, I want to hear, you know, we're going to open up to some questions now. I just want to last one. 2020. How is Kamala Harris looking to you? She's the one who keeps getting mentioned as a potential challenger to Trump. That's right. That's right. And, but, but of course, that was in between that we had Oprah. She was a moment. She popped up and popped down California. Anyway, I the little I've seen of her and watched her, I think I'm very impressed is she is she president in 2020? Who knows? I mean, who knows? And that's that again, it's kind of formalist, like thinking she's black, she's a woman. You know, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, so many things can happen between now and then. Oh, yeah. And this is this is now an old man talking. But, but I really, I mean, you know, I mean, you know, and how many, how many things have I written that turned out six months later to be totally wrong? Okay, let's open it up to questions. Where do you think California should push back on Trump? By the way, I'd like to get your thoughts to get your thoughts to Peter. So let's let's hear from some of you in the audience in terms of what I have a question here. Yeah, hold on. How do we give government enough power to be effective and not enough to be corrupted? Did you hear that one, Peter? How do you give government enough power to be effective and not enough to be corrupted? I think that's a 20 million dollar question. I don't know. Money. I don't know the answer to that. I thought the one thing that was a good suggestion that Trump made a couple of weeks ago was to bring back pork, believe it or not, that pork made Congress function better, that if you could get something for your own district and you could and you could wheel and deal for that, that might make Congress do public works projects and all of that kind of stuff. But I think that's probably the only thing that I but and I'm not sure where that's corruption or it's whatever it is. You know, the names again escape me, but when we passed the Fair Political Practices Act back in 70, whatever it was, there were a lot of people, including George de Gommagian, by the way, who said that this is a law that prohibited people from basically being whined and dined by lobbyists and all of that kind of stuff. So all the good parties that used to take place at the Senator Hotel paid for by lobbyists, which were all basically to which people of both parties were invited and they had a good time together and they drank together and whatever, that that made everything in California friendlier and easier and people got along better and there wasn't this extreme partisanship. I think there's some truth to that. So I think one of the things that maybe we have done that has increased dysfunction is that we've made it less corrupt or try to make it less corrupt. But I'm on the fringes on this thing. But who was the Republican from Marin County? Forget now. Is there a Republican from Marin County? Yes. Well, San Francisco, he was a moderate. Milton Marx. But it wasn't Milton, it was somebody. Anyway, you got the right guy and I had the wrong guy. But anyway, I thought it was a good point about that political reform act may have in fact made things nastier politically in Sacramento. But I don't know about corruption. That's a good question. I don't know the answer. All right. Good question back there. Question here. I think one way, first of all, to counteract Trump is to make liberal use of the 10th Amendment, especially when the United States fails to enact certain policies, we could step into the breach. I think it's also instructive that the book of Ezekiel ends with a building plan and not a lecture, which means you do the do instead of doing the talk. And I think that's exactly what we're doing here in the Bay Area through local regional agencies, which are working on common problems, whether it's transportation, whether it's cleaning up the Bay. So I think that's another way to contract it. But I think you're also missing the elephant in the room. And that is the hit that we have taken as a result of the climate conditions. I believe that as a result of the fires and the floods were over $10 billion in the whole. And if anyone thinks it's going to get better next year, forget it. Just take a look outside. You're not going to see rain for another month. And we're going to have some bad situations. So my question is, couldn't California maybe take full lead in starting a process of desolination? I'm not trying to minimize the complications, but other countries are doing that, which will not only change the policy in California, but could change the policy in other states because we could bring water to other states where they have good land, but no water. So we can literally change what's happening in other places. And I'm wondering, why aren't we going in that direction? You've raised a good point with Sherry Brown raised today, which is the climate issue and its impact on the fires and the mudslides here in California. And he has raised the issue of the incredible cost to California on this. Trump, he said, all nations have signed on, of course, to the Paris Climate Change Agreement, except for one. And that's because of one man in Washington said that today. But the point is raised, the desolination issue has been brought up in Southern California. And I think it's one of the projects that the Trump administration is looking at. But it's a good point on climate change. I mean, this is the one area where Trump is really at loggerheads with California and continues to be. And he didn't have much to say about the wildfires and mudslides. And we're saying that he didn't come out here for that, and hasn't really sort of acknowledged what's going on here on that issue. Jerry talked quite a bit about adapting to getting prepared for climate and the effects of climate. But he talked mainly about water storage, as I recall, building dams and reservoirs and the desolination. I don't know what the economics of that are, what the costs are in terms of energy and all of that. And I just don't, I have not studied it. And I don't know. But the long term view, I think, is one thing that Jerry Brown did bring up today. Yes. The other aspect of that was high speed rail. He defended it today and said, California will be the first to do this project. And, yes, it will be expensive. He even said the Bay Bridge, that ended up $6 billion over cost. Yeah, I know that. But that won't happen with high speed rail. His defense of it was very strong today. He's hoping to get federal money. Is Trump going to give him any money for high speed rail? Well, he'll get it from President Pence. This is one that, I don't know where Jerry, I mean, he's so hard headed in so many things. And I love, I love riding French trains. I love the TGV. But it's a totally different geography, it's different environment, it's different everything, different economics, and a different culture. It's just not comparable. And I just, I don't see it, I don't see it happening. Now maybe, and I think to some extent, this is he trying to make good with his father. The legacy issue. Yeah, yeah. Trying to be, well, both the big projects, both of them, water and transportation. Yeah. And, you know, he poor mouthed Pat for all those years, never specifically, but I think this may, and I'm being a little bit too Freudian here, but everyone else has been Freudian with Jerry. We had another question back there. For the first time in, I guess, really my adult life, I'm going to have, I'm not going to be teaching full time this coming fall. And therefore, I would like to become involved politically in campaign work in a way that I haven't had the opportunity to be. There are probably seven or eight, maybe nine congressional districts in California that will be a hard fought, most of them in the South. And there's the Senate race in Nevada with Jackie Rosen running. I wonder if either of you or both of you have any advice for me about where you think at this moment, at least, it might be most valuable for me to go to help on the ground in terms of the coming election. Well, you know, I'm not that I can give you advice in terms of, you know, how I don't want to be partisan in that respect. But if you want to know what the most vulnerable races are, you know, obviously the race in the, in ISIS, Darrell Issa's district, that's not going to be an open race. That's much easier race to win than when Issa was there. Ed Royce as well. There's already a very spirited race there between Gilsus Narrows and former State Senator Bob Huff. That's another district that's going to be important. And I think one of the most vulnerable Californians here is Dana Rohrbacher. He's up there on the top five, and he's going to continue to run. You know, there's other people in the room here who are working on this, who want to work on this grassroots stuff too. And I think that has been the difference, hasn't it, Peter, in terms of the kind of engagement you've seen, the women's marches, the, what about that? Is that, is that different than anything else you've seen in your career? Well, I, I, obviously there's been a, there's been a good fallout from the whole women's activism and all the people who are running for office all over the country. We've never had anything like this before that could also become a little bit internally destructive. But at the moment it's, it's certainly an encouraging sign. I don't have any, I don't have any particular wisdom about where you would be most effective in terms of knocking off some of those seven Republicans to have quit. And I don't know who's running. You, you said. And I think another district that has been targeted by a couple of PACs, one of them supported by Ellen Towsher is the Jeff Denlem's district. Is it another one considered to be, Yes. Right. Really important to, to Democrats and really possible, you know. And those are all districts that were carried by Hillary Clinton. Yes. I think they were. Right. The seven districts, seven districts in California were carried by Hillary Clinton have Republican House members and those are the ones that Towsher's PAC and others are, are really focusing on right now. What are all, all of those are going to flip is the question, Peter, even, I mean, do you see right now his poll numbers are anywhere from the thirties to the low forties. Do you think this, the wave, this wave is going to happen or the Democrats are going to screw it up at your view? They got lots of time to do it. I mean, as I said, your question was absolutely right. What's their message? And is it just to do away to, to block Trump? Or is there going to be something else? And I don't know, I don't know what, what those things are. I don't know to what extent, as you said, Tom Steyer will push them to the impeachment message, which I think is also a mistake. Not because I wouldn't like to see Trump gone, but because it's very hard to get there. And then if you get there, you've got another bad guy. So it's, it's not yet. So, and, and, and Trump, I mean, Pence is just, you know, he's beholden to the Koch brothers and he's, he's, he's a full religious nut. Pardon if I offended anybody, but, but if you, if you can't say religious nut, and you can say that other word that Trump uses, you know. Well, I think we're going to close it, but your, your final thoughts, your title, your book is California Fights Back. Is California going to continue to keep up the fight, you think, even after Jerry Brown was gone? What, what's your prospects for? Well, Becerra, Becerra is obviously also running for something. And I, he'll keep it up, I think. I assume Gavin Newsom would, given his behavior in San Francisco, going, what then seemed against the grain on the gay marriage issue, which we all, including me, thought was a mistake at the time. And turned out he was just a few years ahead of the rest of us. So, but, but, so I think there are people running and will keep it up. I don't know, I assume if, if Kevin Lelione actually does run for a Senate, for the Senate, I assume that he's, then he's going to be gone. Well, presumably maybe he'll be in the Senate, but he won't be in the legislature. And so, and the next governor, I assume will be one of those two, but could be, I can't believe, I can't believe it would be Delaney's. And, so do you think, and your last prediction here, is Trump reelected in 2020? You know, this is a, this is a bet I could safely bet both ways, because I probably won't be around myself in 2020. So, so, so I'll, I'll give you a thousand to one on either side, either side you want and just try to collect. Okay. We have, we have another question. Okay. Go ahead. Go ahead. Okay. Go with the second couple more. Question. Yes. I was very taken with your remarks and I'm very interested in hearing you speak more about the Democratic Party. I'm from San Francisco, and I experienced the progressive moderate split. And I want to know if it occurs in Sacramento and how that, if it exists, how will it impact your vision about California being a model? Does the progressive, you know, split here in San Francisco sort of give you any clue as to what's going to happen in Sacramento and, how does that change? Well, I think, I think San Francisco in many ways is still a place apart. And, and in, in lots of respects. Okay. And if you, if you go 80 miles east or south, southeast, you're in a very different world. If you go to Modesto or Madeira, you're in a totally different world. And, and with the different cultures and different everything. And, and, and obviously the Democrats don't need to do anything to win in San Francisco. They just have to be here. So, so the issue is going to be, as the question there is, what happens in the Central Valley? What happens in Orange County? What happens in Southern California generally? And as I said, those are different worlds. And, and it's a different, it's a different culture. And what happens in that respect, San Francisco may be symbolic of some other divisions in the National Party, and maybe in, in the state as well. But not necessarily in individual districts that have to be one of our Democrats. Yes. I think we have one other question there. Hi. I'm here to challenge opinion with facts. Can you guess which state has the highest poverty rate in the country? According to the Census Bureau supplemental poverty measure, it's California. One in five residents is poor. What is Jerry Brown doing about poverty in California? And how can we better utilize the state's resources to help people instead of fighting some, a president basically? What can we do to eliminate poverty in California? Yeah. The poverty issue that was brought up by Jerry Brown today. And that's a, although very slightly. And it's an issue that a lot of conservatives have raised, which is, yeah, California's doing great economically, but one out of five are in poverty, live in poverty here in this state. So in that respect, California's not doing so great. It's another success of Jerry Brown that he's getting Republicans to talk about poverty. But there are, but, but those are some issues, Peter, that he hasn't had, tackled homelessness, income inequality, affordable housing. It's all there. I mean, they did pass that one set of bills on the housing. I think it's very marginal. I think the big problem is, and it's one of the drawbacks, by the way, of our tight environmental laws is that it makes, it opens the door much more to nimbyism and makes it tougher to build affordable housing. The other big problem, which hasn't been talked about, it's amazing. We didn't mention it today at all, Proposition 13. And Proposition 13 has also created part of the housing problem. That doesn't deal with the absolute issue of poverty. And I think your question is very appropriate. And I don't know to what extent the state itself has the resources or the wherewithal or the machinery to deal with that. We do have an earned income tax credit that I think we're one of the few states in the country has it. So we've done a little bit to about addressing it. We've done some subsidized housing, but not nearly enough. And I, but beyond that, the poverty issue is really, really more of a federal issue than it is a state issue. As I said, I don't think we've done enough. We could do more. Yeah. And I think it is an issue that you're going to hear the governor's candidate talk about. You're already starting to, but I think that is a very good question about the future of California. You've got one last question. Last question. Yeah. Last question here. The gentleman is having a lot more free time in the future. There are three organizations, the Indivisible Movement, Swing Left, and Sister District. Our three organizations, Swing Left is a little more partisan, but they're all based on getting people to register to vote and actually show up at the polls. So it's very grass root. It's not from the top down, it's from the bottom up. And I think in the U.S., the more people we get to vote, the better. Another question about where California can lead or comment is, I definitely think on the climate is the best leverage that California has, because we have so many square miles of terrain. We also have a funny mixture. We have the really highly visible thing of offshore drilling, but we have tons of extractive industry inside the state with mining and drilling and also water management and water conservation that are part of addressing climate change that Californians can do. Maybe not quite as fast as China. I think China can turn on a dime, but it's possible that California can lead in that department. Yeah. Good point. There's a lot of possibilities for political action in Peter. I think you've said everyone's thinking about how they can get engaged in the next election with this book. I just really want to thank you for your insights tonight. Can we give Peter, thank you so much. So much thanks to Peter Schrag and Paul Marnucci, and we're going to let you come up and talk to them personally and pick up the heyday, broadside, California fights back. Thank you for joining us.