 Restoration, and I am the host here of Finta Kauai Show, Finding Our Future. So here on the show, we talk about sustainability, politics, things that matter to local people and future generations. And we're here every other Tuesday, one to one thirty, and today it's Super Tuesday. So I'm really, really excited to talk about the 2020 election, especially in terms of Hawaii primaries and just in general, having a read on the elections. My guest today is Bart Dain. Bart, thanks so much for being on here. I'd love if you can just give a quick intro of what you do. Well, I wear multiple hats. I think for the purposes of this discussion, I'm a long time Democratic Party activist, and I've been involved in a lot of the presidential campaigns in Hawaii over the years. I'm also right now, I'm the National Committee man for the Democratic Party. So when you hear about the evil DNC, I'm one of the members of the DNC from Hawaii. We are the policymaking body for the National Party. There are 400 and I believe it's 447 members of us. And in addition to members of Congress, we will be potentially be super delegates at the Milwaukee National Convention. OK, well, great segue into conspiracy theories about super delegates and stuff like that. So can you for people who are confused or wary of that whole process, can you just give a rundown if you were to be a super delegate? Like, is there that risk that people are so worried about? And yeah, I just want you to give some some top of the line. Let me give you a little bit of history. The official term for what are being called super delegates had been unpledged delegates. So the unpledged delegates were the Democratic members of Congress, the including both chambers, the US Senate and the House, Democratic governors, a few sort of dignitaries like former party chairs. And in addition, there are about 447 members of the DNC itself. And DNC in this context means the Democratic National Committee. Like I was saying, that is the sort of board of directors for the National Democratic Party. I believe it was in in 1984. They created this category of unpledged delegates and inserted the politicians and the party leaders into the process as a certain percentage of the national delegates with the idea that the super delegates might be able to take control of the rudder should the party start heading towards a reef in the nominating process. So sort of a failsafe backup system. It wouldn't be enough votes to totally control the process, but enough to put their thumb on the scale in order to ensure that a responsible and electable candidate be elected. That has gone through a lot of changes. There was a lot of controversy in 2016 when the super delegates about 93 percent all lined up behind Hillary Clinton before even a single ballot was cast. And so there was a lot of effort to reform the process, make it more democratic so that the nominee will be elected by a vote of delegates to the National Convention, who themselves were a portion relative to the votes received by the candidates in every state's primary and caucus rather than by these powerful insiders. We tried to abolish the super delegate completely, but we reached a compromise that said the automatic delegates this time will not be able to vote in the presidential nominating race until the second ballot. So if no candidate goes into the convention with 50 percent plus of the pledge delegates, those that are elected as a result of the primary vote and the caucus votes, then the super delegates can resume our superpowers and vote on the second or subsequent ballots. So you said you guys tried to abolish it. What I guess from your your sense of what's happening today, do you have confidence of the system? Are you super? Are you also suspicious of how how it will play out? Because of course, there's a lot of the worry that the establishment's anti-Bernie and therefore the super delegates are used as a feel safe to protect from Bernie, not not a dangerous candidate, but just someone that they don't want to be in power. So what is your read on that? Well, I think when we pass this reform, we passed this reform like two years ago after a long process of arguing and it was a compromise. And I think most of us thought it was a far off possibility that they would be that super delegates would ever be reactivated because there'd be a brokered convention. There hasn't been a brokered convention in the Democratic Party since 1952. So there is a rip this year, the way the votes are amassing that no candidate will get at least half, well, half plus of the pledged delegates, so it may be that super delegates will reemerge. If the super delegates do reemerge and do get to vote, they will be about 16% of all the delegates at the National Convention. So you can see if there's a close race, even the close within, you know, within 16%, it is conceivable if the super delegates all voted as a block that they could pick their favorite candidate. And overwhelmingly, I think a majority of the super delegates would support the more conservative establishment candidate. In this race, it appears the race is narrowing down to a two-person race between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. We still aren't sure what the heck the role Bloomberg is going to play. But most of the others have dropped out, except, of course, for Tulsi and for Elizabeth Warren. What do you think is the what do you think is Bloomberg's and Warren's strategy in staying? Do you think that they're understanding these rules and in some way trying to help Joe Biden? Like, what do you think? Or do you think that they just hope that they can convince super delegates later on that they can win? What is their? What do you think that they're trying to do by staying so long? First, I contrast what's happening with them versus what happened with Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar who dropped out, right? So they looked at the math. They saw they weren't gaining any traction. Pete did OK in the first two primaries, but it was clear that we didn't catch on with Latino or with African American voters and had no chance of winning the nomination. So I'm pretty sure that they got all kinds of communications, not just from DNC members, but from their major donors, perhaps from in the case of Klobuchar, maybe through the Senate colleagues asking that they drop out in order to help Joe Biden. I think it was very consciously designed to ensure that moderate votes could congeal behind Joe Biden. I mean, this strategy is openly discussed and being promoted in the commercial media. It's not a secret strategy. Now, in the case of Bloomberg and Elizabeth Warren, they are kind of exceptions. First, it actually helped Joe Biden for for Warren to remain in the race, at least through today's vote, because she can collect votes that otherwise would likely go to Bernie. And so the idea, the name of the game right now for all these candidates is to try to keep Bernie from amassing too many delegates. Warren's campaign has put out a memo, which they circulated fairly publicly, which basically acknowledges she doesn't have the chance to win enough delegates herself to win the nomination. So she is angling to make sure we have a broker convention. And then if she goes that convention, she seems to think that even if she's, say, fourth in the delegate count, that she is so appealing as a candidate that the superdelegates will swoop in and give her the nomination. Bloomberg has a different strategy and he's in the category by himself. He's, I believe, the ninth richest man in the United States. He's worth sixty something billion dollars. So he thinks he can basically buy enough ads, convince enough people, probably bribe enough politicians, frankly, that he thinks he might be able to come out of a broker convention with enough votes so that he might be able to win it. So both of them are aiming to get a broker convention. I don't think they're aiming so much to directly help. I didn't get the nomination. I think they both want the nomination, but it serves the interest certainly of Biden for warrant to remain in the race. It does not serve his interest to have Bloomberg in the race, because we'll see what happens today. But Bloomberg is likely to draw off a lot of conservative voters who otherwise would vote for Biden. It just to me, it just is giving me like PTSD to go through something like this again, because after 2016, when there's pretty, I mean, 70 percent of folks in Hawaii voted for Bernie Sanders and, you know, there was all this stuff that came out with Hillary Clinton and the DNC in some ways rigging it towards to favor Hillary and then she lost the general election. So I'm getting a little bit of PTSD that something similar is happening again. The establishment is getting involved. They're strategizing behind the scenes, using money and power to shift what would have happened if democracy had just played out in a cleaner way. And then I'm worried that if Joe Biden or an establishment candidate becomes a nominee that will lose the general election again. So I'm looking for some comfort from you, some other reactions. Just, you know, what are you sensing around all of that? I think those concerns are perfectly valid. What I push back sometimes when people say the DNC is going to do this or the DNC is going to do that. Now, under Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC violated its own charter, was not neutral, saw itself as an extension of the Clinton campaign before she had the nomination wrapped up. And that was wrong. But that's generally universally regarded by DNC members as having been wrong. Tom Perez, the current chair, is much more sensitive to the image and trying to rehabilitate the image of the DNC as a fair and neutral body. And even though this effort to reform superdelegates originally came out of the Bernie campaign, Perez looked at it and embraced it and saw it as important to clean up the image of the party and the DNC. And particularly to overcome the alienation that young voters were feeling that the Democratic Party was too corrupt for them to get involved in. So that young voters are a core demographic that the Democrats are hoping will turn out in large numbers and help us win, not just the White House, but also keep control of Congress and win the US Senate. Do you think that? I mean, it seems like there's kind of two ways that this can play out, right? Bernie could win and there's a whole progressive uprising and, you know, that he wins and maybe he was a general. But there's another side that's like, OK, well, Joe Biden could win. Potentially alienate a lot of the younger, more progressive voters that don't resonate with him, nor the complex tactics of the way the Democratic Party runs their primary system. But then there's this idea that the down ballot races like the House, Senate, local races will do better with the Joe Biden nomination. And I don't know enough about that. I don't want to believe that it should because I am personally a Bernie Sanders supporter, but I just want to know is that, you know, is that true that the down ballot races would probably do better without a Bernie Sanders nomination? Let me make clear that I said I've worked in various campaigns. I am a volunteer for Bernie's campaign this time. I'm not an officer of that. I don't have any official role, but I support Bernie Sanders. And I actually think he is the stronger candidate. I think the dominant corporate media is telling us, yes, Biden is the stronger candidate. And a lot of people buy that because it's bombarded with that. I don't think it's true. I don't think, and a recent talking point, which only started about 10 days ago, was that a nomination of Biden would help the down ticket races. I don't think that's true. I think that the strategy behind Bernie is that by appealing to working class interests, then those voters who were alienated and who've given up on voting either Democrat or Republican, or if instead, if they don't think the Democrats represent their class interests are open to appeals based on racism or nationalism, homophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment, etc. And Bernie actually leads together a much more unifying message. There is a division, but the division is basically between the 1% and the 99%. So Bernie is trying to prove to working in middle class people that government can serve their interests and doesn't just have to serve, in his phrase, the interests of the millionaires and billionaires. So that would generate, we think, a larger turnout, which would help sweep more Democrats into office. Yeah, it seems like turnout is a really important thing here. And is that the turnout effect Trump's win as well? Was there a big turnout on that side for him to be able to have that surprising win in 2016? There was a low turnout among a lot of groups in that election. One of the groups, in particular, African-American turnout was very reduced. Now, the establishment people want to say that's because the Russians were targeting the black Americans to dissuade them. But I don't think Hillary encouraged them. I don't think they trusted her, not just on the basis of being black, but also on the basis of being working class. So I think that, yes, turnout was down. Hillary also didn't campaign in the so-called Rust Belt states of the Northern Midwest, and we lost those states very surprisingly, and that really caused the election to go. And I think that an appeal that appeals to working people, but working people of all ethnicities, not just white working class, I think will actually increase our turnout. What will happen this time, we'll have to see, but I think overall in the future, that's the appeal we have to make. The Democratic Party has become the party of essentially the liberal professional class and not the working class anymore. And I think that's a fatal weakness and has resulted in low turnout. We say that in Hawaii, the turnout in Hawaii is among the lowest in the country, and the Democrats probably more controlled here than in any other state. Yeah, I have so much to ask you about the national stuff, but let's get into the primary for Hawaii just so I don't miss that. It's quite confusing for, I know I'm a millennial, a lot of my friends are just like, they don't know why there's so many steps involved with being able to register in the primary. So can you just explain that on a basic level, how one is to vote for the first time or in the primary specifically? Yeah, so the first thing people have to understand is that this election, we're calling it a primary for the first time. In the past we've used the caucus structure, but this primary is not run by the government. It's not the office elections, it's not the county clerks. It is being run by the party itself on our dime with our volunteers and our technology. So in order to participate, even if you voted in the last, say gubernatorial primary where it was EGAY versus Hanabusa, that doesn't make you a formal member of the Democratic Party. And in order to vote in this upcoming presidential primary, you have to be one, a registered voter, and two, you have to join the Democratic Party. So in order to do that, people can do that online, it's fairly easy. So there's the website there. And so if you go to the homepage of the Democratic Party, which is hoeydemocrats.org, you will see in that little red circle that I've highlighted there, there's a button, small button that says join. If you click on that, you will bring up an enrollment page, which is this page here, and you just fill out your contact information, date of birth, et cetera, and you submit that, and that will cause you to join the Democratic Party. Even though this is closed to anyone except for party members, it is very easy for anyone to join the Democratic Party provided that they are a registered voter and they have to say that they support the principles of the Democratic Party and will abide by our rules. Meaning if someone is a diehard Republican, for example, they cannot in good faith vote in our presidential race. Now what we have here is this is a mock-up of a ballot. This is not the real ballot, the real ballot is different colors and different layout, but this is to give people an idea. We are using ranked choice voting for the first time, meaning you get to mark your first choice, your second choice, and your third choice. Now, the field is much smaller now, people are dropping out, but the ballot will still have a lot of those names if the candidates dropped out after a certain deadline of a few weeks ago. By marking that ballot, everyone should mark their first choice. And you can mark a second choice and it's not going to help someone else defeat your candidate. It's not like there's an incentive to plunk like there are in some elections. You can in good conduct, or you can just vote your first choice. Now, if your candidate drops out before the ballot is counted, or if your candidate fails to attain 15% of the vote, then your vote will be transferred to your second choice. Now, on our ballot of people who are still running, we may have at least one candidate who's probably not going to get 15% of the vote. So if you still in good conscience want to vote for that candidate, then go ahead and do it, but protect the strength of your vote by allowing your vote then if that candidate fails to get 15%, your vote will still count for your second choice candidate. So this process is being handled mostly by mail. So if people join by, I believe it's by March 8th, then they will get a ballot mailed to them, but it'll also be a walk-in voting. There will be a walk-in election on April 4th, which is a Saturday, and there will be 21 voting centers run by the party across the state of Hawaii. I think there are five on the Big Island. I think there are three in Maui County, one in Lihue and I think that leaves 10 or 11 for Oahu. You can vote in any one of them. It doesn't have to be in your neighborhood. In fact, it doesn't even have to be on your island and you will get a ballot and you will be able to mark and cast your ballot that day. And those voting centers will be open from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., lots of hours on a Saturday where one can stop by any one of these voting centers. If you are not a registered voter, you can register that day on site. If you have not yet joined the Democratic Party or you have friends who want to vote and they're not members of the party, they can go that day, fill out the paperwork and then vote and leave. Okay, that was awesome. That's all the information I wanted to cover for the local stuff. So that was really, really good. Thank you for covering that. So I guess the main thing is just for convenience sake, for folks who don't hit that deadline, which is five days from today, they won't be able to do it by mail, which I think is personally the most convenient option, especially for people like young people and even elderly people who just need to or want to stay at home or don't have the time to leave work and stuff like that. So do it by March 8th if you want to get it in the mail. And I'm guessing you need to mail it in before April 4th for it to be counted. Is there a rule around that? Yes, yes. And if they're worried in the final days or so, they can actually take it and drop it off in one of the voting centers. But those who want to have a convenience of mailing should mail it at least a couple of days before then. If it comes in on the 4th, I believe there's a cutoff period by maybe three o'clock or whatever, ballots would be picked up from the post office and those will be counted. But if it comes in after hours, then you're out of luck. Okay. And then for procrastinators out there, which I believe Hawaii has many of them and you missed the deadline, you don't get your mail in ballot, you can go April 4th day of to one of the polling centers anywhere on your island and you can register as a Democrat that day and you can vote that day. Can you also register to vote that day as well or do you have to have that before? Yeah, if you register to vote and we don't say register as a Democrat because that causes confusion, we say enroll in the party or join the party. Got it. Okay, good. Okay, well good. That's so helpful. That gives me a little bit of relief that people can do it that day if they do forget. Because I know there's been a few deadlines that came up. So that's really helpful. I do really want to push this idea of I've been telling people you can vote in your pajamas and this is the first year in the state of Hawaii that you can stay at home and get your ballot in your mail if you're registered and enrolled and then do it all at home and do your research and talk to your friends and family members and then just stick it back in your mailbox. So it's super simple to do. And I know for me, I'm in the ballot like all my phone researching like things because I don't know about every single section of that ballot. So it'll, I'm really excited to vote by mail for the first time. And that option is now kind of the standard for all the elections this year. Can you go through the dates in August and November and the differences of those that people specifically in Hawaii should know about and why maybe the primaries are more important than the general here in Hawaii? Okay, well, the first important distinction to be made is between the presidential primary that the party is running. And I gotta say, we are hoping that the state will take over running of the presidential primary. It would require that there be a distinct and separate primary for the presidential run. We would hope that all parties would use the presidential primary in the springtime because it has to be in the springtime because we have to elect delegates to go to the national conventions both Republican and Democrat. And those are held in the summer. So people have to be designated as delegates and a lot of proportion of the votes that can they receive a well in advance for that. So it can't be combined with the August primary that the state uses for other races. So the August primary is again, it's not directly related to this but there'll be a primary for your state house for U.S. Congress. I don't think the U.S. Senate is on the ballot and the presidential race won't be on that ballot. And then in November will be the general election where people get to vote for whoever wins the various primaries or in our case would be the nominating process at the national convention for the presidential race. It'll either be, well, it'll be a good candidate wherever we come up with would be a good candidate. I hope. And then just that piece about local elections in August and how we're a blue state and why that August election sometimes not matters more but is more important than people think than the general. Can you just explain that a little bit? Yeah, you're raising a good point because the Democrats win almost all the elections here and right now Democrats hold, I think out of the 51 house seats I believe there are five Republicans, maybe there are six, if I blink, I might have missed one. There is only one Republican state senator. So the real contest occur in the Democratic primary. So I actually am of the school of thought even though this may offend my friends who are incumbents in the legislature, I believe that we have to shake up the legislature and elect better people sometimes with fresh ideas. In my view, ideas that are less sort of in the aligned with the business community and more aligned with the interests of working people, stronger protections for the environment, et cetera. Like right now we see the minimum wage bill which allegedly the Democrats all are committed to support at $15 an hour as a step towards a living wage. The Democratic leadership of the legislature has pledged they're not gonna go higher than $13 an hour and they're gonna drag, slow walk that out over four years to go into effect. Now that's offensive to most of us who are active Democrats. I think perhaps it's gonna require a little bit of shake up in the house and in the Senate to put in Democrats who actually believe in the Democratic platform and in traditional Democratic values rather than the yuppies that have taken over the big square building. Yes, exactly. That's how I feel too. And it's not the most popular idea if you talk to some folks who are entrenched but I think looking at where we are in terms of our social and environmental issues we need to move a lot faster than currently government is willing to move. So thank you for saying that. And last minute here, final thoughts. It's super Tuesday, super important day. How are you feeling about 2020 and what should we expect moving forward? Well, today being super Tuesday it's like probably the most dangerous day of the year for someone to be asked to prognosticate on what's going on. I'm keeping the TV off and I'll wait hopefully until fairly late in the day before I start looking at the returns and see what happens. I've got my fingers crossed. I think you're right there in these multiple crises. I know you're doing a lot of work on environmental stuff but I think that we have an environmental crisis. We have the international security crisis. We've been involved in these endless wars. The economic inequality in the United States is getting worse and worse. Right now we're seeing our inability of our healthcare process, healthcare system to deal with the danger of epidemics. So I think we have multiple crises and I think we have to start moving fast. I think of both the state and the national level there's just too much complacency by careerists who are only concerned with their own careers and the interests of their friends and those that donate to them and really don't share the views of regular working people. So we have to mix it up and put in more people who actually have the working class experience and face the same problems that other working people do. So they're more sympathetic to the notion that government can be an instrument to improve our lives. Yes, well, I couldn't agree more. And that's our show. So thank you so much, Bayer, for being on and I hope I get to talk to you in person soon. Okay, glad to be on. Thank you. Thanks.