 Okay, guess what? We're live here on Think Tech. Well, I'm Jay Fidel. Today we're doing, what are we doing? We're doing life in the law. No, we're doing reformers, movers, and shakers. Okay, and I guess it's my public calling. And so, I'm going to be the Uber host, you know, and in Sacramento, we have our regular host for this show, Carl Campania, and he's going to actually host it. And our special guest, really special, thank you for coming down, Tim. That's Tim Vanderveers, the chair of the Democratic Party. Thank you for having me, Jay. As always, Carl, silence your phone. I've already silenced it. Thank you. I was there. Okay, so we're going to talk about, you know, what? The election. What a good thing to talk about on the ninth day of November 2016, a day that remembers yesterday as a historical, for sure, historical day. I feel invigorated. So Carl, you're the host. Take over. Excellent, excellent. Thank you, Jay, so much. I appreciate helping facilitate this. This is my first effort from a Skype hosting, so it's going to be some fun, I think. Tim, thank you again so much for joining us. My pleasure. Yes, you're the new chair. You're not even there for a year at this point. Chair of the Democratic Party of Hawaii. It's an important conversation to have today. So, yes, I'll start as I do. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers, and Reformers. This is our Politics in Hawaii series, and I'm your regular host, Carl Kampanya. So again, thank you, Jay. Thank you, Tim, for joining the show. We're going to be talking today specifically about yesterday's election and the impacts from yesterday's election. What it means for Hawaii. Everything from the presidential. I don't want to spend too much time on that one, but we do need to address that specifically how that may impact Hawaii. What we may really have to be concerned about here in Hawaii from that presidential election. Follow that up with a brief follow up with the mayoral race. We know what happened there. And then also we do have some really interesting, perhaps exciting, but historical news as well as far as our legislature is concerned. With Stanley Chang overcoming Sam Slom in the Senate. So now we have a full Democrat Senate. So we're going to talk about that and see, well, really what that might mean as well. And so that's really where we're going to be, what we're going to talk about. So for starters, I would like to say, hey, Tim, let us know some of your thoughts. I know you've been on Think Tech before. A lot of people have heard you speak recently, NPR, Think Tech, a number of areas. But give us a little bit of a background on you and where you are with the party. And so some of your thoughts are here in Hawaii. So I'm about a 16 year resident of this island. Originally lived on the North Shore, although I live in Honolulu in Kalihi Valley now. And I'm a third year student at the William S. Richardson School of Law. Got some roots in the island. I'm a third generation resident of Hawaii. My grandparents lived here. My mom grew up here for a time when my grandfather was stationed here in the Navy. And I'm a lifelong Democrat, though I grew up in the state of Texas. Come from a long line of New Deal Democrats, a pretty progressive strain of the party coming out of the Great Depression. And people whose lives were impacted greatly by the social contract became out of the New Deal. And so having moved here and realized that this is a Democratic majority state, first time in my life that I had lived in one, I got involved. Though not involved necessarily in the internal workings of the party itself, my involvement was primarily through my labor union starting off. I was a seven year member of Local Five, Unite here as a worker up at Turtle Bay Resort on the North Shore. And as part of Local Five, we did a lot of training. A lot of education, they are an organizing union. So they do a lot in educating their membership and putting a class analysis on situations that you wouldn't otherwise think would involve situations with rich and poor and the levers of power in our country such as environmentalism. But my first involvement with the party specifically was in 2008 as a delegate to our state convention. I was then sent to Wisconsin by Local Five as part of a team from Hawaii that was sent up to help out the AOFAVL CIO's change to win efforts in Wisconsin. And at the time we landed in August to organize on the ground doing canvassing primarily, McCain was up nine points. The day we left, the day after the election, Barack Obama had carried the state and had won the presidency. Apparently, we needed you there last night. That was one of the things that I think came out of last night's analysis. What we're trying to make sense of today, that was one of the things that was mentioned, was not paying enough attention to Democratic bastions. Places that are historically very progressive such as Wisconsin, the home of public unions, of AFSHME, of fightin' Bob LaFollette, of such a proud organized labor history, but not paying as much attention as we should have to the rest belt. That's a pretty stinging critique. As well as Michigan, very surprising in Pennsylvania polls, and that's a whole other topic. But as far as Wisconsin, you mentioned that, but then take a look at what has happened over the past eight years there with regards to the governor, with regards to Scott Walker there, with regards to Paul Ryan, there's been an uptick there in what the Republicans have been doing in Wisconsin. So is it really a surprise? No, not given the fact that the Koch brothers have been pouring such tremendous amounts of money into that state. It's not a surprise at all. They made it a priority. They poured a bunch of money into it, and they were able to keep Scott Walker in power, and it was the devastating effect for the unions in that state. But if you read books like What's the Matter with Kansas, you sort of start to understand how that narrative works for working people, how organizations like the Koch brothers are able to go into places that are traditionally progressive, like Kansas, such a proud progressive history, and completely turn that state around using the culture wars, using divisive, fear-based tactics, as we saw largely last night, and it's got a really bad effect. You've got folks voting against their self-interest. You've got poor people voting for less government and less social safety net, and it is devastating. So what we have is cognitive dissonance. Absolutely. You bet. And an inability to reconnect exactly what you were saying. People voting against their best interests, because they've been disconnected from that reality, or from those possibilities, from that New Deal mentality. They've been disconnected from it. It's been demonstrated to them perhaps, or it's been just told to them over and over again, or has it just been tied to the cultural-slash-religious approach? And has the GOP, has the Republican been able to build their base as a foundation of more of a religious visceral conservatism, as opposed to economic? That's a tough one. I think it's kind of all of the above. It's very complex, the reasons why they're able to co-opt primarily white working-class voters into a cause that you wouldn't necessarily think would be something they should be voting for. It's interesting to see the evangelical vote coalesce around Trump last night, though, especially given his history. I heard a really interesting interview this morning on NPR. I hope I can mention NPR on this show. Please do. Tim, it's closely associated with that. I know, Jay, through HPR days. But it was an interesting interview with a Baptist preacher from Texas who was defending Trump's actions in a way that I thought was just not connecting the dots. I mean, really giving him a pass on things like sexual assault and talking about how Christians can look past that to vote for a candidate who's anti-abortion. It just baffles the mind. His defense on that was just because somebody does sexual assault doesn't mean he wouldn't be a good president. And we know a lot of people who are evangelists who do sexual assault. That doesn't mean they're not good evangelists. It's hard to accept what he said. I don't get it. To me, that's the definition of cognitive dissonance. It's the definition of hypocrisy, which means it's based, their decision process is based more in whatever part of the ideology is more important to them that they think that him as president will still be able to help them achieve their, I guess, Uber goal from that perspective. And so therefore we're going to sweep away everything else. The fascinating part, and it's been talked about by, I don't know, every pundit possible, is how all of that has happened. All of those discussions have happened. He's had so much that's been brought up that has been negative and yet it's been swept away. And you put any of that, any one of those things onto any other traditional politician candidate, it would have destroyed him. It would have been over. I agree. And I think there's that aspect working right now, but there was also this undercurrent. You had an outside populist candidate running against an insider establishment person, who was Hillary Clinton, and people were ready for a change. And unfortunately that change manifests itself in the form of Donald Trump, a billionaire who has nothing in common with working people, who could care less about governing, who could care less about policy. And I think, I think we'll probably run his presidency, his administration, much like he's run his businesses. I think you'll make Mike Pence his chief operating officer. And unfortunately, Mike Pence believes the stuff that he talks about. I don't think Donald Trump has the courage of his convictions, but I think Mike Pence believes the craziness that he espouses. Before we go into the break, Tim, let me ask you a question that's growing on my mind. Sure. You know, it seems like, from what you say and many others, is that the people who voted for him have been deceived. And when it gets, when it gets, rubber meets the road on this, they're going to find out that he's not at all what they expected. And he wasn't worth supporting and he wasn't worth voting for. Yeah. Thomas Friedman yesterday in the New York Times had a phenomenal opinion piece. And what he said is we've had a lot of, you know, controversy and contention over the past eight years of Obama where Congress wouldn't agree. We had the cliff and all those things. Now, we are likely to have controversy that's worse. And for a while, for his administration. And so the question I put to you as dealt with by Thomas Friedman is can the Republic handle this? This is very stressful to the country, to the Constitution. Are we going to be okay? We're going to be okay. I believe, personally, we're going to be okay. I'm an optimist, though. And coming out of the optimism that was the Barack Obama, the two terms of Barack Obama into what seems like a very dark time, what they call the looking into the abyss last night, I think, on TV, I think we're going to be fine. We've survived eight years of George W. Bush. I think the world is as rattled as the United States is. And that's one of the big differences there. I mean, that's one of the big differences. The world is not certain right now. And it's not just the difference between, well, yeah, we endured. We were able to make it through George W. Bush's eight years. Well, we didn't have the divisiveness. We didn't have the obstructionism. We didn't have the division of the country back then quite the way we have it now. I was having a conversation last night where I pointed out, although I did not vote personally for George W. Bush, and though I really believe that there was a problem there with that election, Gore conceded and I said, okay, you know what? That's fine now. George W. Bush now becomes my president that I have to be behind as well. And if there's something I don't agree with, it's incumbent upon me to stand up and fight for it. That's exactly right. And to Jay's point as well, I believe we're going to be okay because I believe we're still going to be able to speak out. And I don't want to think about what happens if we're not able to speak out. But first amendment will save us. It may very well save us. And I think it's incumbent upon each and every one of us to not just be scared but to do something about it and to stand up for what we believe in. We have to not just show folks that they were deceived. We have to engage them. And that's where we failed last night. We have to articulate where we're coming from, what we're all about as Democrats or as independents, what we believe in that is absolutely against Donald Trump. And we have to make sure that we're out there and out front and speaking out when something's wrong. In a Chinese sense, these are interesting times. We are in very interesting times. And that's why we're going to take a short break. We'll be back. Hi, I'm Stacy Hayashi and you can catch me on Mondays at 11 on Think Tech Hawaii. Stacy to the rescue. See you then. Hey everybody, my name is David Chang and I'm the new host of a new show, The Art of Thinking Smart. I'm really excited to be able to share with you secrets on giving yourself the smart edge in life. We're going to have awesome guests and answers of mine from the political, military, business, nonprofit, you name it. So it's something for everybody. Aloha, I'm Kaley Ikeena, president of the Grassroot Institute. If you want to be an informed citizen, we invite you to watch every week as we bring wonderful guests together on Ehana Kako, a weekly program on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network every Monday at 2 o'clock p.m. We talk with people who know what they're talking about when it comes to the economy or the government or to building a better society. So we'll see you then on Ehana Kako, which means let's work together every Monday at 2 o'clock p.m. on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network. Aloha. Fired up, man. Okay, we're back for a live. I'm Jay Fardellis of Think Tech. Mover Shake is Reformers and I'm the Uber host sitting with Tim Van Vier, the chair of the Democratic Party in this really interesting time in the Chinese sense following Election Day yesterday. And our host is in Sacramento. That's Carl Campania. Carl, take it over for the second part. Excellent. Thank you again, Jay. And thanks again, Tim, for joining us. So yeah, let me recap real quick what we were just talking about and put it into some issue context for a minute. And then we'll move on to more local stuff that is really what this whole series is more about than just the national thing. So to begin with, what we now have is the GOP, the Republicans now control all free branches of government. So does that mean that obstructionism over the past eight years worked? That's an important question. That's something to be considered. Will Donald Trump, President-elect Trump fall in line with the full GOP agenda or will his more liberal side come out? We don't know. And a lot of people are talking about that. What is that going to mean? And in the areas of concern, that includes health care. Well, they're already jumping for joy that they get to repeal Obamacare. Well, you know what? I heard Mitch McConnell talk about repealing Obamacare immediately. It's number one on the agenda. He didn't say replace. So what does that mean? That's funny. He didn't mention that. Yeah. Yeah. And then we have the Supreme Court. There's going to be up to four seats that get to be appointed in the next four years. Now, we're talking about civil rights. We're talking about women's rights, abortion rights, equal pay, paid family leave, the LGBTQ rights, marriage equality, all of these things that we've been able to progress on could just disappear. They could just go away. Possibly. And these are the real concerns. Immigration. Will there be deportations? Will there be a wall? I think that's ridiculous. But will there be deportations? People are scared. I have friends that I have seen on Facebook talk about, do I need to move? I'm scared. I'm not sure as I go from one part of the country to another part of the country, should I be afraid because I'm brown? That's a real concern that people have now. What does it really mean? Foreign policy questions, okay, well, how are we going to interact with Russia and China and Syria and Iran and North Korea? How are we going to do that? Will the war machine be kicked into high gear? Some people fear that this is going to now become, this is the precipice of World War III maybe. Are we really going to see that? The economy concerns. The stock market. We already know the stock market went down and now it's rebounded a little bit. Okay, what's really going to happen? Trump expressed his plan to invest in infrastructure. Well, over the last eight years at least, the GOP has declined to pay for that infrastructure. So what does that mean? Are they now going to get in line behind him and do that? And what hypocrisy is going to be able to see? You see, if they do that, has bullying, xenophobia, sexism and racism all been emboldened now and given a voice and an outlet and a means to express itself? Carl, don't jump off a low-hot tower. Let me just ask one question to Tim that comes out of all of this. We heard some terrible rhetoric from him during the last 18 months. Terrible, intolerable, terrible. But there's always the possibility that when he gets out of the contest, when he's won the game, now he can sit back and be more reflective and thoughtful, more reasonable. Are you optimistic about that? I'm not optimistic about that because I've seen him for long enough in many different contexts to know better than that. I mean, he was a little circumspect last night, but give it a couple of weeks and the same old Donald Trump will come out. And that's a bad thing for the country. But to Carl's point, as far as... I mean, I think that the top of that was being a party in opposition again. Having lost the House, having lost the Senate, or still not in control of the Senate. And now the presidency. What that looks like for the Democrats. I don't think obstructionism... I don't think this is obstructionism paying off. It might have paid off in the sense that the president... the presidency went to the Republican Party. But you saw what happened when Newt Gingrich and that Congress shut down the government the first time. Tremendous backlash. And I'm very hopeful that that will happen again in 2018. But the Democrats have a big job here. We need to make it clear to the American people that our membership, that government works. That we are the government. That the government has a fundamental role in people's lives. And if you try to shrink government, if you run for office with the purpose of shrinking government so small that you can drown it in a bathtub, as Grover Norquist said, you don't really have much of a role to play to help your friends and neighbors. There is no social safety net. And how do we look out for our old folks, right? Now we're talking about the Great Depression again. And so to me, it's as much about us articulating our vision of what we want to see for the country as it is being a party in opposition. But being a party in opposition means you have to stand up and defend the things that we fought so long for. The courts is what I'm more concerned with. And I'd be interested to see what you have to say about that, Jack. About the courts? Yeah, absolutely. The Supreme Court is going to swing all the way right now. And it's going to be a different kind of thing. And I'm very concerned about what Carl said. That all these rights that we have achieved, not only in the Obama administration, but for the last 100 years are now all at risk in the Supreme Court. Absolutely. So let's try to transition a little bit. So again, I thank you for that recap there, I guess. Let's try to transition. So one question from Hawaii perspective, and even we'll take this nationally real quick, one answer, one question or one word response. Tim, might Bernie Sanders have won last night? Yes. That's my personal opinion, not the opinion of the party, but Bernie Sanders might have won last night. And I think something we talked about before this interview started, Carl, was the debate, I wouldn't call it a civil war, as I think you characterize it as, but the debate within the Democratic Party, it's been going on for a very, very long time. And I was enthused coming out of convention that we had set our differences aside and come out of that convention a stronger party. But the debate is basically between New Deal Democrats, the more progressive wing of the party and the third way, which are the more centrist Democrats. They each have their pros and cons, right? The New Deal saved our country from the depths of the Great Depression. The third way probably was the only party that could have come to power after the years of Reagan and the first Bush. And it worked, actually. And there were some progressive things that came out of that. But I think what we've seen tonight is the future of the party largely being ignored. And by and large, young people broke for the more progressive New Deal-style politics, the Democratic Party. And that, in my opinion, is the future that we need to get engaged and get involved and make sure that those are the folks that are leading us into the future. I agree, because that's the next question, where do we go from here? And now that we have at least a perceived void or power vacuum in certainly at that level, okay, we have to figure out who's going to be stepping up and who's going to stand up and what that's going to mean and how that is going to be, I guess, presented and by whom. So that's an important question that I know we're going to be finding out in the coming years. I want to say very quickly, Carl, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I do want to say while I can speculate about Bernie Sanders, it's important not only to engage young people, it's also important for us as Democrats to come together. And that's what I had hoped we could do out of convention. I certainly got behind our candidate, Hillary Clinton. I thought she was by and far and away the best candidate in this race, and it's who I voted for. But we've got to come together as Democrats, no matter who the nominee is next time, in a way that we're actually really out there engaging the grassroots, because I don't know that that happened. Obviously it didn't happen. And at the end of the election, all of the rhetoric and all of the emotions that happened around the convention and all of that, by the time we got to November 8th, we did. We coalesced. We came together. Jill Stein didn't get a big bump. Gary Johnson didn't get a big bump. Yeah, Carl, the problem here is that just as the Republican Party was all splintered in the course of this, so was the Democratic Party. And you alluded to it a minute ago, Tim, that the Democratic Party has some work to do. It has some changes to make. We connect with the people who are going to determine the next presidential election. What is that work? What has to happen? It's not only Hawaii. In fact, it's not Hawaii at all, because it's pretty together here on the mainland is a problem. Sorry, go ahead, Carl. I'll say that's the next question, though. How does that national election last night impact Hawaii? Where does it impact Hawaii? Well, as far as the Democratic Party, it starts at the top, right? We've got to reorganize the DNC. We have to be able to give people a sense that the DNC is being above board and is fair and open in all of the business it conducts especially between the candidates of our own party. So we've got a clean house at the DNC, in my opinion. So that starts now as a chair. But we are in good stead here in our local party, but we've got a lot of work to do at the local level as well because by and large what we can do in Hawaii in reflecting our values and sending a congressional delegation to Democrats to Washington, D.C., we're going to be able to help other states in doing so. And so we've got to be able to be strong enough here, especially by the next midterm, to be able to go out and adopt a state, if you will, or go out and help other states, some of the swing states and reinvigorate those Democrats there, remind them of their history. We've got such a proud history in this party, the Democratic Revolution of 54, which came straight out of the New Deal. That's where we need to go, in my opinion. Carl, you really ought to take a few minutes now, talk about state elections. We only have three, four minutes left. Exactly, exactly. So real quick. All right, so Mayor Orrell, we know Kirk Haldwell won re-election. So that pretty much means what was happening before the election is going to continue happening. The questions that exist there, okay, great. Since it was, you know, was it actually closer than we thought it was going to be, or was it further apart? I don't know what the answer to that, and there's a lot of debate for those, but fine. But because it was as close as it was, does that show that the people's opinion on rail, and will that impact any of that? And the bigger question is, but still hanging out there, we've got to build it, how are we going to pay for it? Those are the questions there. There's no answers there. I'm just running through this. The housing and homelessness concerns are some of the other issues while we're going to continue the current policy, and we're going to continue on with that and hope that all works. Some concerns from the Democratic Party, from the Republican Party, from the state of Hawaii is, okay, well, who are we looking for for 2020 for the mayor? Okay, these are things to be considered, okay, fine. Now, the more interesting topic, more interesting because mayor is, we're going to get more of the same. As far as state Senate is concerned, it's now 25 to zero. Stanley Chang was able to win against Sam Slom. It's now 25 to zero in the Senate. What real impact is that going to have? The House of Republicans are down one now because Sean Quinlan won. He overcame Feki Puhah. Happy to hear that. Yeah, so now the House is down. It's now 45 to six, and then we've heard all these rumors about the possibility of maybe they're going to lose one more. So there'll be 46 to five maybe if that happens. My question is, Tim, from your perspective, and by all means, Jay, jump in on this. What does it really mean for Hawaii? How important is that really? It's such a dominant one-sided legislature. Is it really that? Are we really, does that really mean we're progressive? What does it really mean? What do you think that this means now? Jay, take this one. Just kidding. I do have some comments. Good. I'm happy to hear them, actually. I'll make it very brief. I don't know, as far as brass tax, that it really means that much in the Senate. I think there's been a lot of time talking about what it means to lose Stan Slum, or Sam Slum, rather. I think the people of East Hawaii deserved a progressive voice, and they got one last night in Stanley Channel. I'm very proud that he won that seat. He worked very, very hard in that district in our coordinated campaign. Worked very hard to help him win last night. But Sam Slum was one voice, albeit a very vocal minority, but he was one voice. And so as far as the actual day-to-day business of our Senate, I don't know that it matters that much. Same goes for the House. I think oftentimes there's sort of a false equivalency. The Republican Party here is not on the same stage as the Democratic Party, and so I don't think they should be given equal footing until they can get their own House in order and actually build a party. I think it will be interesting, however, to highlight some of the differences between our Democrats, because we do have a very diverse party, which is a good thing. We can have that debate. I don't know that the Republican Party can have it. They were able to have it last night, evidently, and come to terms with an elected president. But I don't know that it is maybe earth-shattering, as some folks say it is. Yeah, I agree. I don't think that it is. And I think that, rather than me talking about, yeah, Jake, what have you got? What have you got to offer there? Well, we're out of time, but let me just throw this thought at you. You say the Democratic Party is inclusive, and it includes, you know, from one side of the spectrum to the other. I think the Democratic Party is sitting pretty. I think if the Republican Party ever got its act together, they would knock off a lot of voters. By simply taking a position that's not so left that's a little more right, not as right as the Republican Party traditionally or on the mainland, but right for Hawaii. And I think things will change. Right now, it seems pretty bleak for the Republicans, and they argue with each other all the time, which is really silly. But one of these days, Tim, watch out. Well, the last question... Same nationally, though. The Democrats are going to do the same thing nationally, so I put that right back at you, Jake. Okay. The last question to leave for everyone... We're out of time, so why don't you make a statement about what you wanted to discuss? Okay, well, yeah, it's not a question for anyone to answer right now, but if that happens, if they stand up, but are we really as... I don't know, are we really as dominant? And I think that's part of what Tim was trying to say. We're not necessarily as dominant. And if the Republican Party got up and if we actually tried to define and draw lines, we would realize that a number of our elected officials who call themselves Democrats really more aligned with the Republicans, and that's an important thing to understand. And is that a bad thing? Is that a good thing? That's what I leave with, though. The last one thing you have to say about this election and about this discussion, and that is it has revitalized interest. I don't think we changed a lot on the voting percentages, although we did, on some extent, nationally. But I do think that people are more aware they're more thinking about this, they're more thinking about the kinds of issues you've been considering. And so maybe if I could find a bright side here, it's hard to find a bright side. Maybe this country can be more akamai about political issues going forward. Elections have consequences. We gotta organize.