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unidentified
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West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin come together to preview the year ahead in politics, including the upcoming midterm elections and the political and legislative battles ahead in Washington. | |
| They join host Dasha Burns. | ||
| Bridging the Divide in American Politics. | ||
| Watch Ceasefire today at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Several serving and former lawmakers also passed away in 2025, including some members of the House of Representatives. | ||
| In March of this year, Arizona Democratic Congressman Raul Grijalva passed away at the age of 77. | ||
| Representative Grijalva served in the House of Representatives for more than two decades, representing the state's 7th district, a seat which was then filled by his daughter, Adelita Grijalva. | ||
| In 2016, Representative Grijalva joined C-SPAN to discuss that year's presidential primary elections. | ||
| Newsmakers is pleased to welcome this week Congressman Raul Grajalva, a Democrat representing Arizona 3. | ||
| He is the co-chair of the Progressive Caucus in the House of Representatives, longtime member of the Hispanic Caucus, and the senior Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee. | ||
| Thanks a lot for being with us. | ||
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unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| I appreciate the invite. | ||
| On the political level, that you are among the very first members of Congress to endorse Bernie Sanders in his presidential campaign as well. | ||
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unidentified
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That's true. | |
| Let me introduce the two reporters who will be asking questions this week, Jason Dick, CQ Roll Call Deputy Editor, and Mike DeBonas, the Washington Post Congressional Reporter. | ||
| And Mike, you're up first. | ||
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unidentified
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Thanks, Susan, Congressman. | |
| As Susan mentioned, you were among the first supporters of Bernie Sanders in Congress. | ||
| We're at a point now in the campaign where we're looking at where the voters have been. | ||
| And right now, Senator Sanders is just, you know, he hasn't had a very good showing in the last few weeks. | ||
| He's down in the delegate count. | ||
| Do you see any hope for Bernie Sanders? | ||
| Is this over at this point, or does he still have a path in the nomination? | ||
| It's a path. | ||
| But there's a path there. | ||
| There's a path that involves flipping superdelegates that are either uncommitted or pledged and trying to get them to flip. | ||
| I think it's going to be hard with elected superdelegates. | ||
| They have their own platform from which they can talk. | ||
| And they've made endorsements, so that's a difficult one. | ||
| But there's quite a number. | ||
| We're going to do well as we go finish out this, the rest of the primary ending up in California. | ||
| But math being what it is, we understand that we have a tough road ahead, but there's a commitment, and I agree with Bernie, that we have to let every vote count all the way through. | ||
| This movement, this campaign began with total underestimation of what was possible. | ||
| We've now established that there is a significant block of Democrats on the left and on the progressive side of the agenda. | ||
| And I think it behooves our party to understand that. | ||
| But overall, I think we need to finish it out. | ||
| I think there are statements to be made, issues to continue to promulgate. | ||
| And to fold up the tent is not about an individual, as Bernie has said. | ||
| It's about the message and the issues that we've raised, and they deserve their day. | ||
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unidentified
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What would you consider, and would you think Senator Sanders would consider at the end of this, for lack of a better term, a consolation prize? | |
| Is it the platform that is going to be put together in Philadelphia? | ||
| Is it what Hillary Clinton's going to be talking about as perhaps if she does secure the nomination? | ||
| What is Bernie Sanders, if he is not the nominee, going to want to see come out of that? | ||
| I think the platform is critical. | ||
| I think based on the percentages of voters and the percentages of delegates that have been won, that we'll have a role. | ||
| will have a role to br and the ability to bring things to the floor. | ||
| I think issues like the minimum wage, $15, the climate change issue that Bernie has been very strong about, financial regulation and how we control the concentration of that in the hands of very few institutions, income inequality, which deals with the 15-hour minimum wage. | ||
| I think those are all going to be points that we feel that the people that have supported Bernie, the people that have felt strong about that, college affordability, all those issues, immigration reform as well, and undoing some of the things that were done in 1996 that created this enforcement-only mentality that we've been on. | ||
| All those things are part of a platform. | ||
| And I think if the party is to accommodate the message, not necessarily the messenger, the message, and like I said, there's a chunk of, there's a significant block now on the progressive side of this party of ours, not centrists, that needs to be respected in that process. | ||
| So the platform obviously is going to be an area in which we need to influence what we stand for as a party. | ||
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unidentified
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Congressman, last night in California at a Donald Trump rally, some protests started out peaceful, got progressively uglier. | |
| Passions are running very high on both sides in both contests. | ||
| Are you concerned as we go into the fall campaign and we gear up for the conventions that some of this violence might be, we might be seeing some more of this. | ||
| How concerned are you? | ||
| I'm concerned about it. | ||
| I think that what happened in California outside of Trump's rally, I think his actions and his words are enough for us to be able to rally opposition, and the opposition needs to be expressed at the ballot box. | ||
| And any protest have to be nonviolent. | ||
| And I think anytime that violence erupts, I think you begin to feed a narrative to Trump that he can use very effectively in terms of not only rallying the people that he has, but making himself out to be a victim. | ||
| And I don't think he is a victim by any stretch of the imagination. | ||
| So yeah, I was concerned about it for A, the violence, and B, the narrative that it causes. | ||
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unidentified
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One other thing, while we're on the political subject, you know, if, in fact, Hillary Clinton secures the nomination, obviously we're starting to talk a lot about the VEP stakes, so to speak, who she might share a ticket with. | |
| Is there someone out there, I don't know, maybe Raul Grahalva, who she might pick that is going to be able to bridge the divide that has emerged in the party between the Clinton supporters and the Sanders? | ||
| That would be the winners, and you're mentioning Hillary in this instance. | ||
| That's her process. | ||
| And I think it is almost impossible to interject yourself into that process and say it must be so-and-so in order to satisfy us or satisfy this train of thought in the political sense. | ||
| I think there are candidates that can be bridge builders, but that's been a discretion in the past, and I think it's going to continue to be a discretion in this convention to the nominee. | ||
| But it behooves, as I said earlier, to understand that there is a significant block, 40, 42 percent at this point, of voters that have gone with Bernie and independence, where independents are allowed to vote. | ||
| That's another issue at the platform. | ||
| The role of independents in Democratic primaries and their ability to participate is a huge issue for the campaign that need to be looked at, need to be accommodated. | ||
| Is that a personality that does that? | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| But I think the content of the platform does that, I think, with more substance. | ||
| While you're talking about open primaries, another issue that's been important to the campaign and revisiting is the whole concept of eliminating the superdelegates. | ||
| Do you see pushing that in Philadelphia? | ||
| Yeah, when I mentioned superdelegates, I think that there's the question of proportionality, winner-take-all, how that whole process works, I think has to be discussed. | ||
| I mean, the superdelegates were put in there to try to keep extremes from dominating. | ||
| Well, the fact of the matter is that, you know, it plays now a role way out of proportion to any navigating that it was intended to do at the beginning, political navigating. | ||
| Superdelegates, unelected, appointed by the party structure, appointed by state parties, appointed by national parties. | ||
| I don't think they've earned the ability to make those kinds of decisions in the sense that everybody else has to go through a process, the delegates. | ||
| I'm a superdelegate. | ||
| I'd be glad to have that be a contested issue down the road because if we are going to make our party more Democratic, we have to take that specter out, reform that specter, change how it's applied. | ||
| I don't know the exact outcome, but superdelegates, their role, the number of them that exist, I think it's all open for change. | ||
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unidentified
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James Publishing, go ahead. | |
| Congressman, as a native Arizonan, I've been hearing for about 20 years or so that Democrats are really focusing on trying to turn Arizona into a purple state, into a swing state. | ||
| Is a Trump nomination for the Republican Party, is that something that could be a tipping point in Arizona? | ||
| I think it can be. | ||
| I think it can be in Arizona. | ||
| It can reestablish the party in New Mexico. | ||
| It could be decisive in Colorado, Florida, and specifically among Latino voters. | ||
| Registration has gone up tremendously. | ||
| Turnout will be high. | ||
| I told people that a lot of strategies for turnout will have to go out the window if Trump's the nominee, which he appears to be going to be. | ||
| And that would help in Arizona because the underperforming among Latino voters in Arizona has been what's hurt statewide races and in some congressional areas and state legislative races. | ||
| So you raise that performance. | ||
| These are new voters that have not voted before. | ||
| They don't have alliances to anything. | ||
| And they're new voters going in. | ||
| They're motivated by a need to defend their existence in this country. | ||
| They can play a huge role, a huge role. | ||
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unidentified
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Looking at some of the other races that we've seen, as a co-chair of the Progressive Caucus, you've seen one of your members, Donna Edwards, ran for Senate seat. | |
| She wasn't able to prevail over Chris Van Hollen in Maryland. | ||
| In Pennsylvania, we had a similar dynamic in the presidential, in the Senate race there. | ||
| John Fetterman, who is a Senate, who is a Sanders endorser and tried to align with Bernie Sanders, wasn't able to get through there. | ||
| What do you make of these races where progressives have tried to take on, so to speak, the establishment Democrats and haven't quite made it? | ||
| Are there any lessons from these races? | ||
| Do you think progressives are getting enough support from the party to make a difference? | ||
| I think that ties into your question about the convention. | ||
| It ties into your question about state parties, county parties, their infrastructure, their political infrastructure, and the national parties. | ||
| The fact that the coziness of how decisions are made, who's annoying it and who's not, kind of precludes the kind of competitive races that you need to have in order for this party to establish its identity. | ||
| And that's what's going on with the Democratic Party and maybe politics as a whole in this country defining who we are as a nation politically. | ||
| And I think for our party, I think those races are healthy. | ||
| They're necessary. | ||
| And the fact that some prevailed and others didn't, I don't think it was as clear. | ||
| I think in the Van Holland-Edwards race, you know, Van Holland had some cred on a lot of progressive issues and he was able to talk about that. | ||
| He had some cred among immigration advocates that he was able to talk about and get support on. | ||
| And so it wasn't as clearly defined. | ||
| But I would suggest that as we go forward, you're going to see, particularly at a legislative level, lower down the ticket, local races, more and more progressives jumping into races, feeling now that they have an opportunity, and hopefully the party structure and that infrastructure will begin to recognize that this is a healthy process as opposed to trying to suppress that effort. | ||
| I think a clean racist, I'm seeing it in Arizona, young people are running with very progressive agendas and running for legislatures, running for city councils, and doing well. | ||
| Are they winning all the time? | ||
| No. | ||
| But it's an evolution and people are kind of flexing their ability. | ||
| You know, for many years, you kind of felt isolated. | ||
| You're out here. | ||
| I'm the only one thinking this, so I should either be careful what I say or not say it at all. |