Reverend Al Sharpton honors Jesse Jackson’s 69-year legacy, from Operation Breadbasket boycotts to his 1984 presidential campaign that reshaped delegate rules, enabling Obama’s later nomination. Jackson’s voter drives in 1986 and 1988 victories in NYC sparked broader civil rights progress, yet Sharpton warns his nonviolent, multi-issue coalition—voting rights, police reform, economic justice—faces erosion amid media focus on controversies and the Supreme Court’s review of the Voting Rights Act. Democrats must unite behind shared values, not tactics, while embracing grassroots leaders to sustain Jackson’s unfinished fight against inequality and systemic barriers. [Automatically generated summary]
Currently, no votes are scheduled in the House until next Monday.
But members could be called back earlier if the Senate were to return and pass legislation to fund the Homeland Security Department, which has been in a partial shutdown since Saturday.
At the moment, that's unlikely as senators are also spending the week back in their home states and not scheduled to return until next Monday as well.
As always, you can watch more live coverage of the House when lawmakers return here on C-SPAN and, of course, the Senate on our companion network, C-SPAN2.
We are going to take you live now to a news conference with the Reverend Al Sharpton in New York City addressing the death of the Reverend Jesse Jackson.
And they made me the youth director, 13 years old of Operation Breadbasket under the National Director, Reverend Jesse Jackson.
Reverend Jackson was about 27, I was 13, and ever since then, for 69 years, we bonded.
The last time he spoke in New York, he spoke at the House of Justice for us.
I can't think of a time that we were not spending time together.
Now, he was a hard taskmaster.
He would always get on me about why are you on this issue?
You need to be more studied on this.
But he was one who was more responsible than anyone for teaching me activism.
On a personal level, my family and I used to spend every Christmas at the Jackson's house.
And the last two Christmases took my daughters, one who's with us today, to Chicago.
We spent Christmas night at Reverend Jackson's house just five weeks ago.
And last Christmas, we would feed people at the House of Justice and then go to the airport in the afternoon and fly to be with him.
So I will always be able to cherish that I spent his last Christmas with him and spent last days even when he could no longer speak well.
What I think on a broader level is Jesse Jackson changed American politics.
Jesse Jackson changed the civil rights movement.
He was a consequential and transformative figure.
And he changed New York politics.
Let me go in that order.
One, it was when Dr. King died, was killed in 68, he was talking to Jesse Jackson and Ben Branch over the rail at the Lorain Motel in Memphis.
And Reverend Jackson was literally one of the two last people to speak to him.
I always wondered how much trauma that must have been for him to witness Reverend King's assassination.
He never would talk about it too much, but it drove him.
He kept saying, we've got to keep Dr. King's dream alive.
He was 12 years younger than King as I was 13 years younger than him.
And he would always challenge me that your generation's got to do with John Lewis and all of us that were younger than Dr. King did.
He kept the movement going by keeping the economic boycotts of Operation Breadbasket going, by dealing with diversity, by fighting for affirmative action.
You must remember when the late 70s and 80s, when Reaganism rose and there was this backlash on civil rights, Jesse Jackson took the front with John Lewis and others to restore what Dr. King had done.
We romanticized the 60s like they were never challenged.
They were challenged.
We had to renew the Voting Rights Act every five years.
We had to deal with state laws.
And it was Reverend Jackson that did that into our era of having to deal with racial profiling and driving wild black and all.
We learned all that from him.
It was in 1984 when he ran for president that he changed the rules that primaries were governed by.
Where in pre-Jackson, if you ran in New York, for example, and you got 104 delegates, and your opponent got 100 delegates, your opponent got all 204 delegates.
It was Jesse that made it be no, you get your 100, they get 104.
With him changing it to proportional delegate representation is how Barack Obama was made the nominee.
Hillary Clinton won more big states, but he was able to accumulate more delegate votes.
So he literally changed the party in 84.
And then in 86, the midterm elections changed because he had registered so many new voters that had not been calculated before that many of the states turned and the U.S. Senate 86 became Democratic control and maintained a lot of the things that we would have lost under the Reagan era because Jesse Jackson registered those voters.
In 88, he ran, again, got 7 million votes, won the city of New York.
It was his 88 race where he won the city, lost the state to the caucus, but he won the city of New York, which made us believe in 89 we could win.
And we did by electing David Dinkins.
David Dinkins was his coordinator for New York City in 88 and became the mayor in 89 off Jackson votes and the belief we could win it because Jesse Jackson, despite the controversies around him, won the city of New York in 88.
So I'm not talking about somebody that just is some removed figure in history.
He literally changed American politics, New York politics, and kept the civil rights movement going and then raised some of us that have been in the forefront in the first part of the 21st century to do what we do.
And he's been there with us.
When we did George Floyd, he was right there in the church with us when I did the eulogy.
He was there with us with Trayvon Maud.
He never stopped.
I once said to him, you already in history.
You've gotten all the honors.
Why do you keep going?
He said, I never learned how to retire.
He said, you got to remember how Dr. King was killed at 39 years old.
Med Gevers was killed at 39 years old.
Malcolm X was killed at 39.
We were never raised to be 40 years old.
He said, I woke up one day at 55.
There's no retirement plan for us.
And he kept going until this morning.
So my whole life and the whole country and the world was changed.
Don't forget he went and got hostages from Iraq, hostages from Syria that no one else could get for this country.
Never got the credit he was due.
But he said to me that those that need the credit don't deserve it, and those that deserve the credit don't need it.
Well, I'm going to make sure as long as I'm alive, he gets the credit, Reverend Jesse Jackson.
On this Saturday out, regular Saturday Action Rally will be at the historic Mother Amy Zion Church.
It's the church that Frederick Douglass spoke at.
It's the church that Sojourn the Truth at the altar.
Changed her name from a slave name to Sojourn the Truth.
It's the church that Madam C.J. Walker's funeral is at, church that Paul Robeson was a member of.
His brother was one of the pastors.
So in Black History Month, we're going to dedicate the action rally this week to Jesse Jackson, which was the last place, last organization he spoke for in the city of New York.
Last time to Harlem, when he left the House of Justice, we took him to Sylvia's.
And I'll never forget when he finished.
We had to help with the fault.
And he told, wheel me into the kitchen.
And he shook hands with all of the people in Sylvia's restaurant, shook hands with him in the kitchen.
That's the last time he was here.
So we're going to honor him.
We're asking all of our city officials to join us there.
We are the organization that Dr. Jackson worked with, and we're going to honor him this Saturday.
We want all of them to come and give their condolences in a New York salute to Reverend Jesse Jackson.
Any questions?
unidentified
Yeah, Reverend Sharpton, what did he open your eyes to?
What did he help you realize that you didn't know or weren't aware of or I could have batteries?
He opened my eyes that we could make a difference, we could make change, that we could not be cynical.
So by him running, as never had been an elected official, with most black elected officials at that time not with him in 84, when he ran and did that, I believed that we could make a difference.
We could change laws, which is why I went from just being bitter to trying to be better and be able to help change the system by not just fighting the system, but fighting it inside and outside at the same time.
What he did for me personally, I was born and raised in Brooklyn.
My father left when I was 10.
Unlike many other ministers that I looked up to, I didn't come from a high pedigree, a nice family with my father and grandfather and great-grandfather preachers.
My father left.
Jesse was born out of wedlock.
He taught me, his slogan was, I am somebody.
It's not how you're born, it's where you go with it.
So he made me believe even a kid on welfare in Brownsville, Brooklyn, could be somebody because of Jesse Jackson taught me that.
Look what he did, born out of wedlock in Greenville, South Carolina.
If he could do it, I could do it.
It's easy for a preacher that's got PhD and his daddy was a big preaching granddaddy.
It's easy for him to do it.
It wasn't easy for Jesse.
And he taught me that it didn't have to be easy for me, but I can make it anywhere.
unidentified
Good morning, Reverend Sharpen.
I was just looking at some of your archived video this morning.
One of them that just popped up was the March of 1995 against the social service cuts against Governor Pataki.
What do you remember?
Take us back to that day and what you remember about how powerful that day was with Reverend Jackson.
And I decided we were going to do a 10-day walk from New York to Albany.
And we started at the Canaan Baptist Church where Wyatt T. Walker was pastor in Dr. King's Aid.
And we'd walk a mile and a half a day.
Reverend Jackson flew in and said, I'm going to start the march with y'all and finish with y'all.
And I said to him, oh, you're not doing all 10 days?
He said, I'm not overweight.
You need to walk.
So we would laugh about that.
And he met us in Albany.
And we marched on George Pataki and got a lot of the legislation restored.
That's how much he had local impact.
He worked a lot with 1199.
He worked with National Action Network.
But he would know, he would call me, we used to talk at 6 o'clock every morning.
He would call me and say, what are y'all doing about this referendum?
I said, how do you know about that?
But he was constantly kept his hand on the pulse on what was going on around the country.
unidentified
Reverend Charter, can you speak to how he was a bridge between generations of Dr. King's generation, your generation, and the generations today of the social justice movement?
I think that Jesse Jackson was a bridge that was not given credit for.
He was the youngest person on Dr. King's staff.
So he was attractive to people like me that was a generation behind him because he was more here.
He used to wear a Martin Luther King medallion.
That's where I got that from.
And he used to wear a vest.
I never saw him wear a suit and tie until about 1972.
And he had big afro.
So he wasn't the style of the conservative preachers like Dr. King was.
And he then was able to understand our generation of saying, no justice, no peace, rather than I am somebody.
And he was the bridge that would say, but let us get something done.
And he would be there.
So whether it was in the 70s and 80s where we were fighting around the issues of Howard Beach and Yousef Hawkins, which he came in and visited the funeral home with me at Yusuf Hawkins, or then later in the 21st century, if it was Trayvon Martin, he came and stood with us.
He would stand behind us as much as he would lead us, but he would stand behind us.
I used to say he's leading from the back now because he'd be there.
And I think that he was never threatened by those older than him or younger than him.
He just wanted us to keep our eyes on the prize.
unidentified
And what about his commitment to peaceful protests and peaceful change at a time when there was a lot of violence?
He was adamant that we always keep nonviolence because he said you're going to, first of all, he said you must have the moral standing that those we're fighting don't have.
And if you become as immoral as them, not caring about life and the like, then you're not fighting a cause.
You're fighting for who can have more power.
So he definitely would always say that.
He would always say to me, if he heard I was going to do something, I'll make sure that there is no violence.
Make sure that you don't step outside of Dr. King's principles.
And I think he also would always reprimand us about language, not only violence in terms of physical, but your language must communicate justice, not revenge.
He was very, very hard on me about that.
unidentified
Reverend Morton, what would you say to those in the media, elected officials, others who are efforting to define Jesse Jackson's legacy in death by criticism, controversies that he had during his life, as opposed to the lifetime of accomplishments that you talked about recently?
So sometimes when you're climbing up steep mountains, you might slip and skid your knee.
But the story is he climbed that mountain.
unidentified
Hi, good morning.
Thank you for having us.
I wanted to ask if there was anything from the Reverend's legacy you hope the new generation and the Democratic Party, the civil rights movement, heed going forward.
I think that what I would hope they heed is that we continue to protect the right to vote, that we protect the Voting Rights Act, and that we protect the economic movements of not having an imbalance where the super rich get rich at the expense of the poor,
and that we remain rainbow, multicultural, that we fight for immigration rights and civil rights, that we deal with policing and deal with vice.
And I think that he represented that.
We cannot take the rainbow out of the movement.
We cannot take the nonviolence out, but we must protect the right to vote.
Everything Dr. King and Reverend Jackson stood for is at risk right now.
Supreme Court is weighing right now Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
Right now we're seeing what's going on with ICE and deportation.
So we have the challenge not to mourn Jesse Jackson, but we need to use our mornings, which is what we're going to do Saturday to say there must be a movement.
He would not want us to have sanctimonious mornings if we weren't going to get up and do the work.
unidentified
So many speeches over the years, so many important quotes.
Which one is the most significant to you or the most personal in terms of what you remember?
I think that his 84 Democratic Convention speech, Our Time Has Come, was a classic because it gave us hope.
I think that when he came back in 88, Keep Hope Alive was a classic.
There's so many, but Reverend Jackson had, last time he was at, time before that, when he was at the House of Justice, he had a book of sermons that he had come out with.
And that's when I knew he was, I knew he was stumbling and at Parkinson's.
And I asked him to sign the book to me.
He could only do the first J.
And I keep that book at home, a book of all his sermons.
But he couldn't even sign his name, but he still came to Harlem to do what he could do.
unidentified
Reverend Sharman, one other question.
In terms of his unfinished business around the economic justice issues like food insecurity, health care for people that he touched on at many points in his life, what do you say to that?
We cannot make mockery with just mourning him and letting it go.
And DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion, which has now been wiped out by this president administration, that was Jesse Jackson saying we've got to diversify boardrooms, diversify employment for blacks, for women, for Browns, for LGBTQ.
So we are sitting at a stage where everything he fought for is at risk.
And if we want to mourn him, we've got to preserve what he fought for.
unidentified
Thank you.
So what is the plan of action to defend voting rights?
Well, I think the plan has to be how did we get voting rights in the first place?
And that is mobilizing, marching, nonviolent protests.
But the thing we have that they didn't have in 65, we have enough people in the Senate and the House to re-legislate if we come out and vote.
If we come out in the right numbers, A member of National Action Network named Hakeem Jeffries would be the speaker of the house and could call the hearings and find out what's really going on in ICE.
So, every time it looks hard to me, I think about how hard it was for Jesse when he was a student leader in North Carolina, how hard it was for Dr. King.
We don't had a right to complain.
They turned the country upside down and they didn't even have social media.
You know, Dr. King didn't know what a cell phone was, didn't know what TikTok is.
Oh, this is Reverend Malcolm Bird, who pastors the church that we're at on Sunday.
unidentified
He's also CO of National Action Network.
Thanks very much.
The Reverend Al Sharpton speaking on the death of the Reverend Jesse Jackson.
All day today on C-SPAN 2, we'll have programming from our archives of Jesse Jackson in his own words, speaking at conventions about his life and legacy and his presidential campaigns.
Again, that's on C-SPAN 2 all day.
On Tuesday, President Trump will deliver the annual State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress, which will include an update on the economy, immigration enforcement, and other administration policies over the past year.
Our live coverage will start at 7 p.m. Eastern on the C-SPAN networks.
C-SPAN is as unbiased as you can get.
You are so fair.
I don't know how anybody can say otherwise.
You guys do the most important work for everyone in this country.
I love C-SPAN because I get to hear all the voices.
You bring these divergent viewpoints and you present both sides of an issue and you allow people to make up their own minds.
I absolutely love C-SPAN.
I love to hear both sides.
I've watched every morning and it is unbiased.
And you bring in factual information for the callers to understand where they are in their comments.
This is probably the only place that we can hear honest opinion of Americans across the country.
You guys at C-SPAN are doing such a wonderful job of allowing free exchange of ideas without a lot of interruptions.
Thank you, C-SPAN, for being a light in the dark.
Former President Barack Obama sat down for an interview with progressive podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen.
He condemned the video that was shared by President Trump, depicting him and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes.
The former president also criticizes the state of public discourse, calling the current political climate a clown show, and urges Democrats to engage in vigorous debate without abandoning democratic norms.
Well, first of all, I think it's important to recognize that the majority of the American people find this behavior deeply troubling.
You know, it is true that it gets attention.
It's true that it's a distraction.
But as I'm traveling around the country, as you're traveling around the country, you meet people, they still believe in decency, courtesy, kindness.
And there's this sort of clown show that's happening in social media and on television.
And what is true is that there doesn't seem to be any shame about this among people who used to feel like you had to have some sort of decorum and a sense of propriety and respect for the office, right?
So that's been lost.
But the reason I point out that I don't think the majority of the American people approve of this is because ultimately the answer is going to come from the American people.
And we just saw this in Minnesota and Minneapolis.
It is important for us to recognize the unprecedented nature of what ICE was doing in Minneapolis, St. Paul, the way that federal agents, ICE agents, were being deployed without any clear guidelines, training,
pulling people out of their homes, using five-year-olds to try to bait their parents.
All the stuff that we saw, tear gassing, crowds simply who were standing there not breaking any laws.
So the rogue behavior of agents of the federal government is deeply concerning and dangerous.
But we should take a moment to appreciate the extraordinary outpouring of organizing, community building, decency, neighbors buying groceries for folks, accompanying children to school, teachers who were standing up for their kids, not just randomly,
But in a systematic, organized way, citizens saying this is not the America we believe in and we're going to fight back and we're going to push back with the truth and with cameras and with peaceful protests and and shining a light on the sort of behavior that in the past we've seen in authoritarian countries.
And we've seen in dictatorships.
but we have not seen in America.
And that kind of heroic, sustained behavior in sub-zero weather by ordinary people is what should give us hope.
And it should remind us that at the end of the day, the way we get a democracy that's working, the way we get policies that actually are helping working families get ahead, the way that we restore norms, rule of law, decency, it's going to be because we, citizens, are activated and paying attention and saying enough and saying,
we have a different idea of what the American family should look like and community should look like.
And that is what I'm seeing across the board.
So, you know, I was on a panel a while back and I said, you know, a lot of the values that we say we subscribe to during easy times, during peaceful times, it's easy to say we believe in those things.
You know, it's easy to believe in free speech when it doesn't seem like the government's trying to crack down on free speech.
It's easy to say that we believe in the golden rule when we aren't at risk of being arrested when we exercise the golden rule.
Right now we're being tested.
And the good news is what we saw in Minneapolis and St. Paul and what we're seeing in places across the country, including here in Los Angeles, has been the American people saying, no, you know what, at least a good number of the American people saying we're going to live up to those values that we say we believe in.
And as long as we have folks doing that, I feel like we're going to get through this.
unidentified
So I hear and appreciate what you're saying about the agency of individuals.
As we look toward our elected officials, our Democratic leaders, I think something that I've been having a lot of trouble reconciling is for so long it's felt like Democrats are solely focused on protecting norms, institutions, processes, and then you've got a Republican Party that sees what it wants and will find a way to get it.
Laws be damned, Constitution be damned, rules be damned.
And we're seeing that play out right now.
And so, you know, given this massive asymmetry, where it often leaves us feeling like it's a Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown over and over and over again situation, what needs to be done?
And do you think that our Democratic leadership and our Democratic elected officials understand that for the first time?
Well, look, I think we have to acknowledge that we've got the harder job.
So we believe in government as a tool for good, as a potential force to create more jobs and as a way to make sure that the planet doesn't roast and to make sure that as we move forward and the economy grows,
that everybody and not just some are benefiting and that kids are getting a good education.
And what that means is that we have to think about the consequences of our actions.
We have to try to figure out how do we get working majorities to actually pass laws and to implement those laws and to make things happen.
Tearing stuff down doesn't require all that.
So when you talk about Republicans, for example, it seems like they see what they want and they just go after it.
Well, they've passed one significant piece of legislation since they've been for all the hoopla.
They haven't actually codified and institutionalized much of anything.
They have poured a huge amount of money into ICE and their immigration agenda.
And they've cut taxes for really wealthy people.
And now they're trying to unravel a bunch of rules and norms and laws that are already in place.
That's an easier job.
So I say that because we should accept the responsibility and the challenge that our job is going to be a little bit harder.
Because in order for us to get stuff done, like let's say the Affordable Care Act, well, we've got to cobble together a majority and we've got to persuade and we've got to convince.
And so I do think that there have been some unwillingness on the part of Democrats in the past to break down some of the institutional barriers for us getting stuff done just because, well, it's always been done that way.
And I'll give you an example that frustrated the heck out of me when I was president, which was the filibuster in the Senate.
The Senate is already structurally skewed and anti-majoritarian, right?
Like it's hard for majorities to get stuff done, whether it's trying to pass civil rights legislation in the 60s or trying to get gun control legislation or what have you, because even though majority people support it, Delaware and Wyoming have the same number of senators as California.
So that would require a constitutional amendment.
You then compound that with a filibuster.
And the truth is, is that Democrats for some time have been traditionalists in wanting to preserve that when it blocks us from making government effective, which in turn makes people feel like government is corrupt and not caring about them.
Which then lends itself to the kind of, it gives folks like Trump an opening.
So redistricting is another good example of where I strongly believe we should not be having politicians draw lines that determine who's voting for them.
We should have voters decide who their politicians are.
And I've worked with Eric Holder to help set up the terrific work that the NDRC has been doing to try to make sure that we have fair maps.
But the fact that Governor Newsom here in California and others said, well, if they're going to try to gerrymander their way out of losing this upcoming midterm, then we're going to respond.
And we're going to respond in a lawful way where we put it up to a referendum and let people decide and not just give away the store because of traditions.
That was the right response.
So I do think that I don't want us to simply duplicate the behavior of the other side.
I don't want us to have a slash and burn strategy where we don't care about rule of law, we don't care about some of the guardrails around our democracy.
We start lying and having no regard for the truth the way the other side seems to be comfortable with right now.
Because if that's how we fight, then we lose what we're fighting for.
But that doesn't mean we have to get punked or be saps.
Or to cling to traditions just for the sake of tradition.
I think what we have to continually evaluate is in this moment in time, how do we make sure that we can advance our agenda in a way that reflects what's good for ordinary folks, not special interests, not simply the well-to-do.
And how do we do that in a way that's consistent with integrity, honesty, democracy, the values that we claim to want to uphold?
And I think it's possible to do that.
But the reason I started with reminding ourselves, yes, we have a harder job, because sometimes I think we're tough on Democrats saying, why aren't you being as mean and tough and nasty as they are?
Well, you know, when I was president of the United States, I suppose I could have simply unilaterally ordered the military to go into some red state and harass and intimidate a governor there or cut off funding for states that didn't vote for me.
I could have exercised that prerogative, but that is contrary to how I think our democracy is supposed to work.
And I think we shouldn't get discouraged by the fact that we have a tougher job.
What we should do is expect that our side is smart enough to figure it out.
unidentified
So you had mentioned persuasion, and I think that that's a really good point here, because as we eventually head toward a next general election cycle, we're going to be contending with a lot of the same infighting that's plagued Democrats before.
You'll often have leftists and progressives butting up against liberals and moderates.
And look, you are the ultimate pragmatist.
And so what advice do you have as we head toward this election cycle, you know, this eventual 2028 election cycle, so that we don't devolve into the same 2016 era Bernie Hillary redux that feels like it always consumes the left?
Well, look, first of all, I think it's important to remember that the divisions in the Democratic Party tend to get magnified in the media.
Relative to the divides that exist in most other countries where you have a parliamentary system, you have multiple parties, and you got the Green Party, and you got the center-left party, and you've got a Socialist Party, and sometimes you've got a Communist Party.
Our differences get exaggerated.
Listen, Bernie Sanders believes, just like Nancy Pelosi believes, just like Chuck Schumer believes, just like Hakeem Jeffries believes, just like AOC believes, in equality and non-discrimination against people because of race or gender or sexual orientation.
Well, all Democrats believe in that.
That's a core value.
Democrats believe that government should provide a strong safety net for people when they're down on their luck.
Everybody I just mentioned believes in that.
Everybody believes that there should be some regulation of the market so that you don't have monopolies and oligopolies that are simply dictating the terms of the economy and that we should have a tax system that levels out some of the inequalities that result.
So I think it's important for us to remind ourselves as a starting point: what do we have in common?
Most of the time, the differences are tactical.
It has to do with, well, How much of a tax hike can people put up with?
How much regulation should we be thinking about when it comes to climate change?
And if we recognize that typically the arguments in the Democratic Party aren't about core values, but are really around tactics and how do you get stuff done.
Now we can have a robust debate.
And I want a robust debate.
And what we can also do is not try to nationalize every issue all the time.
This last off-year election, I think, was a great example.
You've got a candidate like Spanberger in Virginia, who runs what would be considered a more centrist campaign and runs a terrific campaign.
And then you've got Mandami in New York, who runs a explicitly socialist grassroots campaign and excites and mobilizes folks.
A recent one, this idea that the quote-unquote abundance agenda is somehow a sellout and folks on the left getting exercised because, oh, this is part of this sort of corporate Democrats trying to take over the party.
Well, no, not really.
I think it is entirely legitimate to say, for example, we need to build more affordable housing, which is going to require higher taxes on people like me and people who are well off in order to subsidize the construction of affordable housing, let's say in a place like California.
And also be able to say, you know what?
There are a bunch of well-intentioned rules and zoning laws and so forth that baby boomers like me and existing homeowners have used to block the construction of affordable housing, even in Democratic cities.
And so if we want to actually deliver housing rather than have some abstract argument, then we've got to figure out not an either or of do we spend more money or do we reform some of these things that are preventing the construction of affordable housing.
We have to do both.
And I want us to have those arguments.
And one last thing I think I've noticed in a lot of our internal arguments, a lot of which, by the way, are taking place online and ordinary voters, this is all completely off their radar screen.
One of the things I think it's important for Democrats, for us also to recognize, progressives to recognize, folks on the left to recognize, it's possible for us to have a moral sense of what is right and true and what needs to be done,
and also recognize that we are in a particular time and place here in America, and voters are...
are not going to agree with us 100% on everything, and so it is not a sellout.
It's not a betrayal to say that we're going to shape our agenda and our message in a way that allows us to build a working majority to get stuff done.
And I think particularly around social issues, sometimes we get confused around this.
You witness what happened in Minneapolis and you say to yourself, morally speaking, that five-year-old child who's standing in front of that SUV as his father's being dragged off, that child is equal to mine or any child.
His immigration status, his nationality, does not change the love and decency that we should be showing that child.
But what is also true is that we're a nation of laws, we have borders, and we've got to figure out an immigration policy that is orderly and that is fair and is enforced in a sensible way that is compatible with our values, but may not fully capture the degree to which that kid should have the same chances in life as a U.S. citizen kid.
But, you know, we've got to accommodate the reality that the majority of the American people think that there's a difference between somebody who's a U.S. citizen and somebody who's not, and that they want an orderly immigration system.
And sometimes I think what happens in the online debate is if somebody suggests, well, we have to have some immigration enforcement, then somebody's going to point at that child and say, so you don't care about that kid, so you must be a bad person.
The same would be true, let's say, here in Los Angeles around the homeless issue.
I think morally, ethically speaking, it is an atrocity that in a country this wealthy, we have people just on the streets.
And we should insist on policies that recognize their full humanity, people who are houseless, and be able to provide them the help and resources that they need.
But we should also recognize that the average person doesn't want to have to navigate around a tent city in the middle of downtown, and that we're not going to be able to build a working majority and support for the resources that we need to help folks like that,
whether it's drug treatment or temporary housing or what have you, we're not going to be able to generate support for it if we simply say, you know what, it's not their fault, and so they should be able to do whatever they want, because that's a losing political strategy.
That doesn't mean that we care less about those folks.
It means if we really care about them, then we've got to try to figure out how do we gain majority support and be practical in terms of what we can get through at this moment in time and build on those victories.
That a lot of times is the arguments that are taking place, but they become sort of performative and people start saying, you know, oh, you're selling out.
Or conversely, I think sometimes folks at the center say, you know, you're being impractical and dismissing legitimate critiques and concerns.
And what we need to be able to do is to maintain both ideas at the same time, which is our long-term goals have to be driven by our values and our core beliefs and our ethics and our morals in the sense that every person counts.
And short-term, we've got to win elections.
And anyway, the good news is I think that the folks that we are fighting politically, the current White House, this administration, and their enablers, they're behaving so badly.
They're doing such crazy stuff that it shouldn't be hard for our side to coalesce.
around the areas where we agree on and focus on that.
And I think that that is going to happen if we are effective in winning the midterms, if we then have a robust primary for who's going to be the next Democratic president.
We shouldn't be afraid of having a robust debate.
I want all comers to sort this out.
I benefited from having about as grueling a primary as I could have.
It made me a better candidate.
It ultimately made me a better president because I had been tested.
My ideas had been tested.
The story I was telling about America had been tested.
And that's what we should be looking for rather than expecting that somehow we're going to all come up with some consensus blueprint master plan that everybody's going to execute.
Democrats aren't good at doing that anyway.
unidentified
Yeah.
Well, I think one block of voters who I think there has been particular focus paid to right now is young voters.
And you were able to mobilize a generation of young voters in a way that hadn't been done before.
I got involved in politics because of you.
And in fact, a lot of millennials, folks my age got involved in politics because of you.
Like when I was a student, you could not find any other students on campus who were not supporting your campaign.
Democrats and you had owned the cultural zeitgeist in a way that hadn't been done before and frankly hasn't been done since.
And we've seen a shift happen, obviously, from 2008, 2012 up to 2024.
And for the first time, we saw Democrats really lose their grip on culture in a way that hadn't happened before.
And so what is your advice in terms of remobilizing a generation of Americans that we've had trouble mobilizing up to this point?
But the truth is, half of the references that my daughters make about social media, TikTok, et cetera, I don't know who they're talking about.
There is an element of at some point, you age out.
You're not connected directly to the immediate struggles that folks are going through.
And so I'm not making a hard and fast rule here, but I do think that Democrats do well when we have candidates who are plugged into the moment, to the zeitgeist, to the times, and the particular struggles that folks are thinking about as they look towards the future rather than look backward toward the past.
And so some of it is choosing candidates who check that box.
I do think that there is an element of joy that needs to that Democrats lost sometimes.
Our campaign was fun.
We had some, look, it wasn't always fun for me, but we built a community.
We gave people a sense that if you are part of this, you're doing something meaningful.
And it wasn't just talk.
Young people ran our campaigns.
We empowered them.
We put them in charge.
They were out there figuring stuff out.
I'm not the person who was figuring out our media strategy.
I was not the person who was out there knocking on doors and talking to voters and creating events.
It was 20 and 30 year olds.
And so what happened in our campaign and what you recently saw in Mamdani's campaign in New York, when there's that sense of joy and engagement and involvement, then people feel like, all right, this is not just some transactional grind.
This is me becoming part of a community and joining with others.
And I think young people will respond to that.
And then a corollary to that is I do think that culturally, and I've talked about this before, we did turn off.
I think there was a certain way of talking about issues for Democrats where we sounded like scolds.
And I've said this before, there was a virtue signaling that made it seem as if ordinary folks, if they did not say things exactly the right way or meet this litmus test, that they were being chastised, pushed away.
And the truth is, most of us, all of us, are complicated and we have blind spots and sometimes we say dumb stuff.
And if you want to create an environment that is welcoming and makes people feel, okay, there's room for me here, then the message and the story we tell has to be, all right, none of us are perfect.
All of us count.
We all have good in us that we can tap into.
We can all learn from each other.
And I think that is something we need to recover.
That's part of the fun of politics.
That's part of the community and the social bonding that can come about.
And we saw that in Minneapolis.
Somebody showed me a friend of mine, Michelle Norris, is from Minnesota, and she was up there and she was going around talking to neighbors and people she had known for a long time as they were mobilizing protests and activities around ICE.
And she showed me a clip of this street band that was performing every night after all these activities had been taking place and protests, et cetera.
And they were just out there and they were playing music and I'm trying to figure out how they were playing horns and drums, et cetera, in like zero degree weather, because I would not have been able to put my lips on a trumpet.
And people were celebrating what they had accomplished.
And it was an embodiment of the values that make us care about other people.
And that, I think, is a spirit that when Democrats tap into that spirit, then we win.
The other side does the mean, angry, exclusive, us-them, divisive politics.
And people who did not speak Spanish and have never been to Puerto Rico, they saw that elderly woman serving a drink and the kids dancing with their grandmas.
And it was intergenerational.
And it was a reminder of what Dr. King called the beloved community can look like, which is not perfect, and it's messy sometimes.
And I guarantee you, not all those lyrics were probably politically correct.
And if you translated them, people are complicated.
But there was a sense of, all right, there's room for everybody here.
And that, I think, is where we win.
unidentified
You know, your presidential center is opening up this summer, and you've dedicated your post-presidency to lifting up the next generation of leaders, oftentimes in defiance of people begging and pleading with you to stay involved in the political process.
And so why is it important for you to defer to those people, especially at a moment where it feels like there is a vacuum of leadership on the left?
You are among, if not the most popular politician in America.
And so you're right here, you know.
And so why is it important for you in this moment to make sure that you defer to others?
Well, first of all, I'm not a politician anymore, and I can't be, right?
I mean, I guess technically I could run for city council or something, but I'm not in elected office.
I don't have levers of power.
I'm term-limited out.
And by the way, I believe in the Constitution, and also I believe in my marriage, and Michelle would divorce me even if I could run again.
But I've always believed, I mean, this has been a central tenet of my work even before I was in elected office, that our job as leaders is to lift up other leaders, to empower others, to find their gifts and help them exercise those gifts.
And so when I left the presidency, I said, what's our foundation going to do?
We care about climate change.
We care about racial justice.
We care about health care.
We care about a whole bunch of issues, and I work on those issues.
Right now, I'm spending a lot of time Helping to think about how we're going to respond to AI as it's coming down the pike, and it's moving fast.
So I care about specific issues, but the thing I thought I could do uniquely, Michelle and I still have the capacity, not just here in the United States, but globally, to inspire and motivate young people and invite them into this process.
And that's what we need.
We just talked about it.
You look at where excitement's going to come from, it's going to come from the 20, 30-year-olds who know firsthand what it means to not be able to buy a house, know firsthand what it means to see some of the latter's opportunity being taken away, have grown up in a moment in which there's more social isolation, right?
And so, and understand both the good and the bad of social media.
And so, they're the ones who are going to craft these, who are going to remake our institutions so that they are consistent with the values that are, I think, timeless.
And so, what we've tried to do at the foundation has been to identify potential leaders, not just with traditional credentials, not just the kids coming out of fancy schools or with the top grades, but union organizers and grassroots organizers, as well as journalists,
and teachers and healthcare professionals and human rights activists.
And we've now had thousands of folks go through the program, and these are folks who are doing remarkable stuff at very young ages.
I mean, they're setting up health clinics in sub-Saharan Africa, or they're designing new programs for intervention to help with the opioid crisis in Appalachia, or they're working on how do we educate kids using technology in remote rural areas and Native American reservations.
Remarkable folks are doing amazing stuff.
And the Presidential Center, which will be opening up in June, is going to be the hub around which all this activity happens.
And there'll be a museum with Michelle's dresses, since that's what people want to see.
We'll have some sports memorabilia and some cool stuff in there.