transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:11] Welcome everybody, I'm Lindsey Drath, the CEO of The Forward Party. Today I've got Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, former Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, and Executive Chair of The Forward Party, and John Goodwin, who is our National Communications Director at Forward. Welcome John.

Speaker 2:
[00:25] Happy to join.

Speaker 1:
[00:25] We're so glad you're here.

Speaker 2:
[00:26] It's exciting.

Speaker 1:
[00:27] I know, it's been Governor Whitman and Lieutenant Governor Healey and I the last few weeks, and we're mixing it up today.

Speaker 2:
[00:31] Awesome.

Speaker 1:
[00:32] It's great, it's great. I want to kind of frame for listeners the last few episodes we started with just kind of a general orientation of who we all are and how we came to this work, what motivates us and why we're doing it. And today, I want to give kind of a framing of the market opportunity. If you look at polls and you talk to the average American, usually we don't have to make the case for why we're doing this. We just came out of the longest government shutdown in American history. So why we're doing this is pretty evident. But what I think really surprises Americans is when we reveal how few people are still registered with the two parties versus how many people are registered as independents. And over the last about 18 months, that number has ranged anywhere from between 45 and 51% of Americans registered as independents. But the barrier for entry for folks who want to serve in office, run and serve in office as independents is really, really high. They don't have the support mechanisms in place that the Republican and Democratic Party provide for those folks. For voters, because of the way our voting systems are structured, in a lot of places, if you're registered as an independent, you actually can't vote in primaries. So, which is messed up for a whole host of reasons. One of which is actually in a lot of places, primaries are paid for by taxpayer dollars. So the idea that you would pay as a taxpayer into a system where you couldn't participate is pretty crazy. And the other statistic that I want to kind of frame today's conversation around is the fact that actually 87% of congressional districts are red or blue. So out of the 435 seats in Congress, there's only about 40 seats that are competitive. So when folks say, you're building a third political party, you must be going in these really competitive races. We say, no, that's where democracy works. If you've got two parties battling it out, that's great. We're going into the 87% that are decidedly non-competitive, where voters really don't have a choice. So I think framing this episode and thinking about that reality and where we're going in and where we're gaining traction is really helpful. So John, you joined as our National Communications Director the same week that Elon Musk tweeted that we should have a new political party.

Speaker 2:
[02:54] Eased right into it.

Speaker 1:
[02:55] I was like hazing, right? John is like fully hazed when he came in. So talk to us about kind of your first impressions as you jumped in, you started working with the states and meeting folks all across the country who had found a political home at Forward.

Speaker 2:
[03:11] Sure. I think the most important part of this was getting to know our volunteers and the state organizations and really how they are the backbone of what the Forward Party is and what we're trying to do because as some of us have heard, you're trying to start the local level community up and build up from there to solve those problems at the community level. These folks believe in the need for the Forward Party. They dedicate their time. They often have jobs. They have families. This is volunteer time and they are so dedicated, so passionate. They were so not only welcoming to me, but they also helped bring me along into this job as a new joiner of the party in this new job, taught me so much, made me feel so welcome. They're just so dedicated, really makes you feel good about your job. When you're on staff, to work with such great, passionate volunteers. And so many of them have been doing this for so long, and have been part of sort of the democracy reform movement, but also the forward party. And I'm just lucky every day that I get to work with such dedicated people who are partners in helping spread the word, recruit candidates, recruit volunteers. It's really been just a great, great welcoming. And I really appreciate that.

Speaker 1:
[04:20] Well, and Lieutenant Governor Healey, in a previous episode, you talked about your journey in politics and the fact that you led the Republican Party of Massachusetts as the state chair. So you have a deep experience in working with grassroots volunteers in the political process. How has that prepared you in your role as executive chair at Ford? How do you think about how you show up in this movement given that experience?

Speaker 3:
[04:46] Yeah, I show up with gratitude, right? I agree with everything you say, John, about our volunteers. The idea that there are hundreds of thousands of now people out there who have signed up to be a part of Forward, who want to volunteer, and they're so idealistic and hardworking, and they believe in America, and they believe in an ideal of America, which was one that I think we grew up probably taking for granted. One where there were three different separate but equal parts of government, the executive in Congress and the courts.

Speaker 1:
[05:25] We talked about the last podcast, the gross overreach now.

Speaker 3:
[05:28] That people without, of all parties, believed without any question in the US Constitution and enforcing that, that everyone across the political spectrum believed in rule of law, that all of our laws should be applied equally to every citizen. And there were just a number of things. The idea that you could actually collaborate with someone across the aisle in the best interest of your constituents, and that that was acceptable. In fact, it was good. That those kinds of things have become so rare, and yet when I'm talking to our volunteers, I know that they still appreciate that. And that they're looking for a home that's going to continue to embrace those very American core values that they would like to see the country continue to embrace.

Speaker 2:
[06:22] And I love the diversity we see in our volunteers and our state parties, whether it's age, gender, you know, wealth, everything, right? They're so different, and they bring so much to the table, which also enables us to learn from them and avoid the group think. And one thing that's different about Forward Party is we at headquarters are not telling these people what they have to say and how they have to think. We work collaboratively with them. We learn from them and they say, here's what's going on in California. Here's what the party and the volunteers in California are hearing and here's how we think.

Speaker 1:
[06:57] We just did that with gerrymandering, right?

Speaker 2:
[06:58] Exactly right.

Speaker 1:
[07:00] There were some differences of opinion across the country about how to respond to the reaction of the California Democratic Party in introducing Proposition 50 to counterbalance the gerrymandering happening, fueled by Governor Abbott in Texas. We polled the board California members. How do you guys feel about this?

Speaker 2:
[07:20] Yeah. We very easily could have said, here's the party position on this. You need to fall in line, you need to echo this. But we didn't.

Speaker 1:
[07:27] Well, actually, I didn't share the same position that they did.

Speaker 2:
[07:31] Right.

Speaker 1:
[07:31] But that's not my job as CEO.

Speaker 2:
[07:33] Even amongst our board and staff, we have these debates. And I think the important part is, and the huge difference is, we take the time and the steps to go and listen and find out. I think in the two party system, so often it is just top down and it's decided by the parties, the head of the parties in DC. But even then, the outside influencers on those heads of the party, right? So you've got the outside forces, the interest groups and the advocacy groups who are then telling the leaders what to think, and that gets funneled through. We do it completely differently, and it's so refreshing. And I just want to go back to sort of your, what you said at the beginning. When I tell people where I work and what I'm doing, the two responses I get most often, whether it's family, friends, strangers, is thank you, or it's about time. They're so eager for it. But they never had the options. They never had something else they could do and someone else who could support. They were so grateful and they wanted to learn more. How are you going to do it? Why are you doing it? What about this? It's fascinating. It's everyone, every walk of life is interested in this. They see the need.

Speaker 1:
[08:36] They all say it's about time.

Speaker 2:
[08:37] It's about time.

Speaker 1:
[08:38] It's about time.

Speaker 2:
[08:39] It's exactly right.

Speaker 3:
[08:40] And people want to know how they can get involved. Absolutely. They're very interested because if you don't take action, then you feel helpless in the face of everything you see happening in the country, all of the backing off of all of our basic democratic principles. And people feel that they can't control it. But you can by volunteering, by getting involved, by running for office, and Forward gives you that vehicle. And it's an enormously welcoming group and smart and thoughtful. And they don't agree on everything. And independents are not a monolith. They don't all believe in the same thing or think the same thing. But they're all critical thinkers. They are people, they're independent for a reason, because they don't want to be told what to think. And so engaging them in conversation, finding out the best answer for a particular area, a particular state, a region, it's been really an educational process. And I'm very glad to be engaged in it.

Speaker 1:
[09:49] I think process is key, right? This is a process. We didn't stand something up one day and say this is fully baked. And we are building this, and we are constantly inviting people as we are right now. Come, come and build this with us. And the idea of building a container or a vessel for independence doesn't presume that they all think the same way. It's that it's really difficult for independence to gain traction in the current political environment based on the way the two parties have legally structured ballot access, voting opportunities, things like that.

Speaker 3:
[10:24] So they may fight each other on 99% of the issues, but the one thing they can agree on is that there should be two parties and only two parties.

Speaker 2:
[10:34] Absolutely.

Speaker 1:
[10:34] John always says that.

Speaker 2:
[10:35] I say all the time, the only thing they hate more than each other is a third party. Right? They fight tooth and nail against each other, but they need each other. They rely on each other for fund raising, for support. They need each other. They do not need us. They do not want us. We would disrupt their little duopoly, really make things harder for them, and that scares them more than anything. And I think when I talk to the volunteers, when I talk to folks, we've got a great balance of folks who are formerly Republican, formerly Democrat, but so many have just always been independent. And I think that's the most encouraging to me is not only are we giving people a home who feel like they're orphans from those two parties, but people who never had a home, who've always just been independent, whether it's they vote for the candidate that speaks to them based on what's going on right now, or those real independent thinkers, those people are getting a home for the first time. There's been some efforts before, but it's not just folks who feel one party has left them behind, it's folks who never had a party. And that's really exciting to me and really exciting for them when I talk to them.

Speaker 1:
[11:37] Well, I think for our candidates, too, I mean, I think about people who feel called to serve, and they want, like you and Governor Whitman talked about in a previous episode, like, what really motivated you, and you all were policy people, you wanted to come up with solutions, policy solutions to deep problems facing, facing the United States. And if you're called to run and to serve, but you're scared that you're going to immediately alienate, you know, a huge portion of your community by affiliating with one party or the other, you've gotten so toxic. I think that I hope that those candidates come and find us and say, I really want to run, I really want to serve, but I don't want to turn all of these people off.

Speaker 3:
[12:17] Well, and our military officers who are leaving the military service often are very, very concerned about the future of the country. And they want to continue to serve in some capacity, but they don't want to do it on a partisan basis because the essence of being in the military is that you serve the country, you serve the Constitution, you don't serve a specific president or a specific party in particular. And so when they get out of their service, they often do want to do this, but they're very concerned about choosing. So the Forward Party has actually been able to offer to many number of wonderful candidates who are former military officers, so many veterans coming out. Who've been able to come out and really connect with people, and their motivation is just service.

Speaker 1:
[13:12] Just service.

Speaker 3:
[13:13] They just want to continue to serve.

Speaker 2:
[13:15] I think an important part for candidates as well is so many now, so many folks who want to run, qualified people who say, I know I can't get through the primary. I am, my positions are too nuanced. I am too much of a free thinker. I don't check all the boxes. If I ran for Republican, if I ran for Democrat, the party itself or the voters will reject me.

Speaker 1:
[13:38] Well, remind John to go back, because we talked about this in a previous episode, but for new listeners and people who aren't super familiar with the primary system, talk to us about what is a primary and why would someone who had a nuanced independent position feel that they couldn't get through it?

Speaker 2:
[13:53] Yeah, the primary is when the party selects their candidate for the general election in November. And the rules are different in every state, sometimes even in localities. But for example, in Virginia, they have the conference, right?

Speaker 1:
[14:10] Uh-huh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[14:11] And that's like...

Speaker 1:
[14:12] They have a convention.

Speaker 2:
[14:13] Convention.

Speaker 1:
[14:14] They have a primary convention.

Speaker 2:
[14:15] That's like 6,000 people in a sports arena. That's who decides who everyone else in the state, in the Commonwealth...

Speaker 1:
[14:21] Can have people who are caregivers to take over, to care for their family, travel, which means they can afford to travel to Richmond or wherever.

Speaker 2:
[14:29] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[14:30] And then they actually care to spend an entire weekend. Those are going to be folks who are pretty dug in on a particular issue, right?

Speaker 2:
[14:38] Exactly. Most of them are probably volunteers or party officials already. And if a candidate runs in that primary or in that convention and they don't fit the purity test of those voters, then they're not going to have a chance. This removes a lot of the accountability in the system because you've got candidates who just stick out their positions based on what's going to get them to the primary a lot of times, rather than listening to their voters.

Speaker 1:
[15:03] The imagery of that convention hall right now. And that those are the people who are choosing the folks that are to represent us.

Speaker 3:
[15:11] Yeah. That's deeply concerned. I lost my nominating convention for lieutenant governor in Massachusetts.

Speaker 1:
[15:18] Did you really?

Speaker 3:
[15:19] I did. And I got over the threshold that allowed you to run anyway and to have a primary. But I wouldn't have been selected. And I was chairman of the Republican Party at the time. But I was too liberal for the nominating convention. And so I think it's really important.

Speaker 1:
[15:38] But not for the entire electorate of the Commonwealth because you won.

Speaker 3:
[15:42] Yes, exactly. So that's why it's so hard for these candidates that are picked as the nominees in these kind of situations, the primary situations, to appeal to a broader electorate because they weren't picked by that electorate. They were picked by others.

Speaker 2:
[16:01] And in those close primaries or in the conventions, they only have to appeal to those party insiders who are showing up to vote. And outside of a convention, even the primary election that is often publicly funded, which is a whole other thing when people are denied the right to vote in a publicly funded election, but they still only have to appeal to the party insiders and that 10, 13, 17% of the voter from their own party who's going to turn out for them. They do not have to have any accountability or listen to or appeal to the broader electorate.

Speaker 1:
[16:34] Well, these are some of the crazy statistics that come out. When you talk about, okay, so assume a third, a third, a third, which actually is not the case in most places because we know that there's more independents, but let's assume a third, a third, a third in a particular congressional district, Republicans, Democrats and independents. So you're only looking at a third of the electorate who's even empowered to vote, who's even legally able to vote in that primary and then just that swath of the electorate that shows up. And if it's in one of these 87% of congressional districts that I referenced at the top of this conversation, that means that what you're looking at, no more than 8% of the entire population.

Speaker 3:
[17:18] 15 if you're lucky.

Speaker 1:
[17:19] 15 if you're lucky has chosen that person that's representing you.

Speaker 2:
[17:23] That's exactly right.

Speaker 3:
[17:25] And so when we think about democracy, yes, there's voting involved with that, but it's not representative democracy. So when we have candidates come to us, and as independents, for example, they can go directly to the general election. If they can get on the ballot, that is to say, if they're able to get past that, that gives them the opportunity to have another viewpoint on the ballot and to have a choice. And I think what many people don't know actually is that in, oh gosh, almost 80% of the races, certainly 70%, people don't have a choice. They don't have any other choice on the ballot. They walk in. Or even if they do have a choice, that choice is from a party that is so marginalized that it's a foregone conclusion who's going to win.

Speaker 1:
[18:17] So that's your home state.

Speaker 3:
[18:18] That's my home state.

Speaker 1:
[18:19] Nine congressional districts.

Speaker 3:
[18:20] It's Utah, it's Nebraska. It's all these red or blue states where the people who are in the opposing parties there, few as they are, know that they don't even have to show up to vote because their vote will never count.

Speaker 1:
[18:36] And the increasing number of independents.

Speaker 2:
[18:38] And it's decided in the primary.

Speaker 3:
[18:40] And it's decided in the primary. So not only does your vote not count, but you're going to get the most extreme version of what you don't believe in.

Speaker 2:
[18:48] Is that correct?

Speaker 3:
[18:50] So we're trying to bring in another voice in the middle, there somewhere, which is not to say they're a moderate, they're just a different independent voice that is accountable to the local constituents and allow them to put their ideas out there and compete in the open forum of ideas. And we'll see what happens. Maybe something will happen like we saw in Dan Osborne's race last time when he was running for Senate. No one had ever heard of Dan Osborne. He was not an experienced candidate. He showed up. He was a veteran. He was a unionist. He had a point of view. But he was not someone who anyone expected to do well. And he walked away with 47% of the vote against a Republican incumbent in a state that everyone thinks that winning as a Republican is a foregone conclusion. And he came within three percentage points of unseating Deb Fischer. So how does that work? The answer is, there's all this pent up energy of people who want to have a choice and are never given a choice. So that's the space we want to be in. We want to be the second party.

Speaker 1:
[20:02] We have to pay attention to the voters. The voters are telling the political leadership across the country that they want something different, that the status quo is not working. Unfortunately, we're getting folks who I think tend to be a little bit of like, blow it up, right? Like, you know, whether it's drain the swamp or whatever, that are not encouraging the strengthening of our institutions, but rather the dismantling of our institutions. How do we think about, how are we thinking about that?

Speaker 3:
[20:32] Could I push on that a little bit? Because I think that a lot of times when people hear that I've started a third party, they say, well, you must hate everything that President Trump has been doing. And I would say the objectives of what he's been trying to do in some cases, to streamline federal government, to make it more efficient and effective, that's something that the Grace Commission was doing back in the Reagan era. I mean, this has been a goal of politicians throughout history to try to make-

Speaker 1:
[21:06] Efficiency in government is a good thing.

Speaker 3:
[21:08] Efficiency in government is a good thing. The question is, how do you do it? Are you doing it in such a way that you dehumanize public servants and deny them their livelihood when they haven't done anything wrong? That's probably not a good way to do it. Do you do it in such a way that people in America are denied critical services or that they have their privacy violated potentially by data that's being shared with private companies? No, these things are not how you go about it. But so it's possible to say, yes, I believe that the border should be closed, but I don't believe that the border should be closed in the way that is so punishing and dehumanizing to immigrants. There's a way of saying yes and or yes but to some of those things. And so we're not necessarily going to say that all the ideas from one party or the other are bad ideas. We're going to say the goals of these are good or the goals of those are good. We absolutely, the Democratic Party has some great ideas that I feel are poorly executed. And I do believe that everyone should have access to health care, but I don't necessarily agree with the idea that all health care should be publicly administered. So how do we find that conversation that allows the good ideas from both sides, and a lot of new ideas to pour into the political discussion? Because right now, we're not going to get any new ideas from either political party as it's constituted. They want us to keep arguing.

Speaker 1:
[22:54] Yeah, they're not incentivized to.

Speaker 2:
[22:56] They figured out how to raise money, how to stay in power, and how to use those levers without having new ideas. They have figured it out.

Speaker 3:
[23:03] And they're never going to solve any of those problems.

Speaker 2:
[23:05] That's exactly right.

Speaker 3:
[23:06] We're going to nurture them and save them and exploit them over time, whether it's immigration or abortion or marriage equality, whatever it is, it's just going to be kept out there in limbo and distracting us from the real issues of the fact that people can't pay for an education in college. They can't put food on the table. They have job insecurity. They can't get the medical care that they need. Those are the issues. We need to be thinking about, how do we care for our elderly? How do we care for our children before they go to school? What are we doing as a society? Why aren't we questioning these things more deeply right now?

Speaker 1:
[23:48] I think this conversation is so important because The Forward Party was not launched with a prescriptive platform. We don't have partisan litmus tests. You have to have this position on that. But it doesn't mean that we don't care deeply about these issues. It's actually a huge motivator for so many of us that are in the work. How do we solve these problems? You have to create the environment for problem solving. The environment for problem solving doesn't exist in the two-party system. How do we build that forward? How do we inspire people to come and run and then subsequently serve outside the two-party system to get to the crux of this? John, talk about some of the challenges that you've experienced in crafting that, like how we are telling our story. We do have a slogan. It's not left, not right, forward.

Speaker 2:
[24:38] Sure.

Speaker 1:
[24:39] But outside of that slogan, then we've got a lot of pushback, a lot of stuff that folks will say, well, but this is why it can't work. And what do you stand for here? How are you experiencing that as National Communications Director?

Speaker 2:
[24:51] Yeah, it's a very timely question. I'm actually hosting tonight and I host monthly a communications workshop for volunteers to help them with their message development and how they communicate about Ford, because it is tricky and can be.

Speaker 1:
[25:04] And then they push the feedback back to you.

Speaker 2:
[25:06] Exactly right. And this is what we're hearing and then I can workshop and come back with some more talking points. But when it comes to problem solving and coming up with a policy, it's very important to have it start at the local level because your agriculture policy in Texas is going to be different than your agriculture policy in Massachusetts. And to force that rigidity across all these places in this giant country, which is what the parties do, is not helping anyone. That's how problems don't can solve. So we start with our values. And we've heard in previous podcasts some of our values talked about earlier. Dignity and respect and rule of law, abiding by the Constitution, using data and science to build policy.

Speaker 1:
[25:51] For decision making.

Speaker 2:
[25:52] Yeah, exactly. Crazy, right? Not just, you're hard. Let's look at it.

Speaker 1:
[25:57] Let's look at the data.

Speaker 2:
[25:59] So when I do this training, what I often talk about is, we tell our candidates and our officials to look at a policy problem and then go through our values and apply our values to how you're going to solve it. So if you want to talk about immigration, for example, you start with immigration and you say, okay, here's the problem, you know, borders are inconsistently open and closed, but we've also got a lot of immigrants who are already here. So if you start with, okay, my values that I'm going to use to approach this problem are rule of law. So we want to formulate a policy that listens to the rule of law, but also takes into account dignity and respect for humans. So that's where I start with my policy development. Now, look at the problem and I say, okay, let's apply these two things and you work through that, you use your community input, what your constituents are saying, and you probably land up somewhere like, we should have better control of our borders, but we also have to find a solution that is humane, because these are people we're talking about, and they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. So how do we balance rule of law, and dignity and respect for humans, to come up with a policy solution?

Speaker 3:
[27:07] We're looking at, we're embracing our constitution, and our constitution talks about human dignity. It talks about that people have rights. They have rights to be brought before the court, if they're arrested, that they have to be treated in a humane way, there can't be cruel and unusual punishment. There's all these parameters, they're all also right there in our constitution, that we can apply.

Speaker 2:
[27:30] Exactly right. So that's how we let our candidates come up with their own policy solutions, because there's no room for nuance. And when you eliminate the nuance, then you eliminate that ability to, can't say compromise, I guess, but compromise and come up with solutions. And problem-solve, right? The two parties have removed a lot of that nuance. You're either pro or con, and you hear it all the time in the language that's used by talking heads of the media and by party officials. You're pro, you're con. They never talk about, oh, what a great nuanced policy position this person's bringing to the table. That might actually solve the problem. Oh, you want to, you know, close the borders, but also take care of the people that are already here. You are just anti-immigration, because one part of it is, you know, close the borders. The other, you know, one of the parties is going to tag you as, and they're going to drive it home and drive it home, drive it home. That's how the system works now. If you say we should, you know, have a better policy for legal immigration, oh, you're just for open borders. No, you know, there's no room for that nuance of what your policy position is. They tag you one way or the other, and the media ecosystem just continues to drive that home for people.

Speaker 3:
[28:39] So people have to be willing to listen longer than the sound bite. If you're going to have a more nuanced position, a more balanced position, honestly, an intelligent position. And so what I see about the Forward Party members is that they're willing to listen, and they're willing to think, and they do want to look at the data, and they have open minds. They're not completely set always in, they don't walk into a discussion with a preordained outcome. And again, I think this is part of that independent streak that we see in our membership, and we hope that that survives. We're not looking to have everybody conform. In fact, we're really hoping that that kind of debate and discussion, in a very dignified way, you know, that we can disagree better.

Speaker 2:
[29:34] Absolutely.

Speaker 3:
[29:36] And we do. There's also the value of grace, you know, this notion of grace and tolerance that people talk about a lot. And I think that's so important that we need to allow people to change their mind.

Speaker 2:
[29:51] Yep.

Speaker 3:
[29:52] If they grow and they learn new facts and they actually are able to change their mind, we should allow, even politicians should be allowed to change their mind, not as the wind blows, but as they become better informed.

Speaker 2:
[30:06] It should be a positive attribute to grow and to learn and to educate yourself. And to be able to say, I started out here, I talked to people, I learned this, I took a trip somewhere and saw how the policy would actually impact these people. And it enlightened me and changed my mind. But no, that's not acceptable in the two party system.

Speaker 3:
[30:24] It's a very scary thing for a politician on either the left or the right to do that, we hope that forward politicians can in fact become informed by speaking to their constituents, by doing research, and come up with that more balanced approach that you're describing. And hopefully their voters will allow them the extra couple seconds to express what that position is.

Speaker 2:
[30:48] The world is dynamic, it is not static. And the policy prescriptions need to also be dynamic to match a changing world. They can not be set back in the 50s, or even, you know, knock on wood, founding fathers, right? It has to be dynamic, it has to be changing at all times. I just don't think the current system allows that growth, and it's going to continue to set us back. You know, I have a young son, I always think about, is his education in the government setting him up for the future that he's going to face? And I'm just not only not convinced, I'm pretty scared that he's not. I think we've talked about AI and technology, and Andrew Yang becoming an expert on this issue and talking about it publicly when no one else was. It's more important now than ever. What's going to happen to jobs, education in the face of technology and AI? But I don't hear too many people talking about it.

Speaker 3:
[31:37] And if people are going to make intelligent policies, you know, critical policies having to do with AI, or even just, you know, how social media uses algorithms to feed us hateful speech and things that are polarizing, people are going to have to be able to stop long enough to really listen and understand how these things work. AI is a very complicated and rapidly evolving phenomenon. I don't think that I know everything that I need to know about it. I'm trying to learn more every day. And I know that our legislators in Congress and elsewhere probably don't have the time to truly understand everything that they need to. And many of them aren't from the digital generation, the digital native generation that might find it more comprehensible. So we need to have politicians, we need to have people representing us who understand that society isn't just going to evolve slowly over the next few years. It's going to begin to transform at a rate of speed that we will not be able to understand. And if we aren't right there with it, if we don't get those guardrails on AI and social media and other pieces of technology that are emerging right now, we won't be able to get the guardrails on them later. And we won't be able to have the conversation.

Speaker 1:
[33:03] These are new dynamics that you all are talking about as we sit here in 2026. But let's look at health care. In the fall, the thing that just paralyzed Congress and ultimately the government was over an issue that is not new, right? How we are providing health care to the American people is not a new issue. And in fact, an extension of the Affordable Care Act tax subsidies was something that 78% of Americans could agree on. And yet, there was no space for politicians on both sides of the aisle to come together and explore how to apply even a temporary stopgap, much less something that's a sustainable solution, but even a temporary stopgap, because they're using it as political fodder to fight against the other party, and the American people are suffering as a result. Now, how extraordinary to actually have the space to, as opposed to just kicking the can down the road and having a temporary extension on a tax subsidy, we actually give time and space and resources for deep exploration and understanding of how we can address these things. And that's what we want to empower it forward.

Speaker 2:
[34:12] Yeah, I have a friend who's the CEO of a tech company, and he's sort of a thought leader in the space, and I learn a lot from him. He tells his employees, I want you to spend 90% of your time understanding the problem and then 10% fixing it. And just imagine if you applied that sort of corporate understanding to politics.

Speaker 1:
[34:31] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[34:32] Understand the problem. I mean, I think we glance over it, we don't have enough time, we just decide or you're told what your position is. But if these politicians could actually understand it, and that's what we're trying to empower forward candidates to do. To understand it, look at the data.

Speaker 3:
[34:46] And healthcare is hard. So, what is now known as Obamacare is a derivative or took inspiration from what came out of our administration during the Romney administration in Massachusetts, which was called Romney Care. But the idea, the idea behind it was that every American should have health care coverage. And it should be affordable. And there should be a range of coverage that should be affordable for every person. And that everyone should participate. And so, it was very controversial to do this. But there are three legs of the stool when it comes to healthcare. There's access, there's quality, and there's affordability. And we were attempting to create access. It doesn't matter if there's high quality healthcare, if you can't get it. If it's only there for the wealthy, and you're poor, and it's the best in the world. Everyone says that healthcare in America is the best in the world. Well, it might be if you can access it, and if you can afford it. And so, what was done under Obamacare was expanding access. And they were able to bring in some federal funding to allow some subsidies for people who couldn't afford those policies to come in and participate in the Medicaid system. And cutting back on those subsidies is a tragedy for many families who are fighting serious diseases around the country and children who need help, who need their parents healthy.

Speaker 1:
[36:17] With subsidies, it's still the leading cause of bankruptcy.

Speaker 3:
[36:20] Exactly.

Speaker 1:
[36:21] With the subsidies.

Speaker 3:
[36:21] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[36:22] Leading cause of bankruptcy.

Speaker 3:
[36:23] And so we didn't address the affordability issue. We only address the access issue. And so it's, like I said, there are three legs to that stool. So we can't do anything that's going to decrease the quality of health care. Americans deserve the best quality health care that can be available. But we also have to figure out a way, how can everyone get it and how can it be gotten at a rate that makes sense? For all of us financially. And I believe that we're a wealthy enough country at this point, that we need to be able to figure out how that can be a base for people. When you talk about human dignity, what creates human dignity more than access to health care? And what denies someone their dignity more than someone who's ill and they can't get help?

Speaker 2:
[37:12] Especially our youngest and most vulnerable. I mean, it is so sad. I think that's a great point.

Speaker 3:
[37:17] So we need to be able to talk about this as a human issue, as something that is not something that should separate us. Every single person, whatever your political belief is, is going to need health care at some point in their life. And how do we do it? We have to ask ourselves, how is the best way to do that?

Speaker 2:
[37:36] I think when we tie this back to the shutdown last fall and how the major trigger of that was the ACDA subsidies, what was the media saying at this time and what were the parties?

Speaker 1:
[37:50] Who's winning?

Speaker 2:
[37:51] Which side is winning?

Speaker 1:
[37:52] Over and over again.

Speaker 2:
[37:54] That's all it was. The entire debate for the 43 days or 35 days was, who's winning, Republicans or Democrats? Well, we know who was losing.

Speaker 1:
[38:01] The American people.

Speaker 2:
[38:02] Yeah, but this whole debate, it was just the two sides. Who's winning this shutdown? Is it the Republicans or is it the Democrats? And it's just so eye-opening. And the American people should get really upset at that framing of their SNAP benefits, their health care, their jobs, their travel. Everything was disrupted because these two sides were trying to win against each other, not win for their constituents. And it should be so, so upsetting. That's exactly what we're trying to change, right? Bring in what's happening back home, what's happening to the people you serve, and try to win for them. That's the candidates we want. Problem solvers, the voice of their communities, not folks who are just there to stay in power and win it for their side.

Speaker 1:
[38:48] Well, Tim Kaine was one of the Democratic senators that crossed the aisle to reopen the government, and he had over 400,000, has over 400,000 federal employees in the state of Virginia. So that's someone that went back and said, this isn't about Democrats winning or Republicans winning. And he was skewered by members of his own party, absolutely skewered. And he said, my job is to get these people back to work. They're my constituents.

Speaker 3:
[39:15] So to harken back to our last episode, we were talking about how only a half dozen Congress people could completely change that dynamic.

Speaker 1:
[39:26] Fulcrum.

Speaker 3:
[39:27] The fulcrum strategy. So if we can find independent candidates, half a dozen of them from anywhere in the country, they don't have to be from swing states. They could be from any state.

Speaker 1:
[39:39] Well, actually, based on what we were talking about at the beginning of the conversation, specifically don't be from swing states.

Speaker 3:
[39:43] No, we're not looking there.

Speaker 1:
[39:44] Be from a state where there is no competition at all, and it's one party control. Be one of the seven congressional districts out of nine in Massachusetts, where the Republican Party didn't run anyone in opposition of the Democratic incumbent in 2024. Seven out of nine.

Speaker 3:
[40:00] So all we need to do, and look, we need the people who are listening to this podcast today to look into their hearts and say, can they or can someone they know run for Congress in 2026, and be part of that incredibly brave group that saves the country by injecting some common sense into the congressional discussions, and be the deciding vote. Be the deciding vote on opening and closing the government, on passing the budget, on selecting the speaker, on what the agenda is. Be the deciding vote on every single issue. And it's not that hard. But right now, if we just abandon the country to the two-party duopoly, we're going to get more of the same. This is not going to change if the Democratic Party is in power next time. We're going to just see more of the same. We are not, it's going to bounce back and forth, and back and forth, and the American people are the ones that are going to suffer.

Speaker 1:
[41:03] Well, you both raised your hands and ran for office. That's the thing, we need people to run for Congress, but we also need to build the bench. Do you not feel that you're ready to be part of that fulcrum now, but aspirationally, you'd love to do that. I met Lieutenant Governor Healey when I was on Mitt Romney's presidential campaign in 2012. The day after we lost, a group of us gathered together, and you can imagine we were just exhausted emotionally, physically exhausted having been on a presidential campaign. One of the campaign leaders said to us, he said, as you sit here in this room today, I want you to think about what Mitt Romney did. I want you to think about the audacity to think that you can be the leader of the greatest country that humankind has ever known. The audacity of running for president of the United States. He said, when you leave this room and you think about everybody's going to go and need to get new jobs, he said, I want you to harness that. And I want you to look at the job above the one you know you're qualified for. And I want you to harness some of that audacity. And I hope that our listeners who are feeling called and moved to do something harness some of that audacity because, my gosh, we're building a new political party in this country. We have to have some of that chutzpah every day. When we show up for work, and you all both said, I want to do this, I'm going to help, and you ran, John?

Speaker 2:
[42:30] Yeah, I did.

Speaker 1:
[42:31] You ran? And Lieutenant Governor, you had an incredible campaign.

Speaker 3:
[42:34] I ran more than a few times, and I lost more than I won.

Speaker 1:
[42:38] But you were audacious.

Speaker 3:
[42:39] But the thing that I can say about it is that these were the best experiences of my life. I saw the best in people. You hear about the worst, you know about how hard it is to run, that people will attack you on social media or in the media generally. And the truth is that all fades over time because of what you can accomplish, how you can change people's lives for the better, and the very public interested people who come out and selflessly volunteer for you because they believe in the things you believe. And it is so inspirational. If anyone has felt that they at all could possibly think about wanting to run, all I can say is that you should do it, whether it's for city council or whether it's school board or mayor, step up and do it and you won't regret it. It is not an experience that I've ever heard anyone say, I regret doing that. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[43:36] I think you'll both know the punchline to this, but I think of back to November and all the success Forward Party had at the ballot in the off-year election. There's one candidate that stood out to me because he ran for the local office that most people don't think about very often, but the impact he's going to have is astronomical. And I'm talking about a candidate for sheriff in a county in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 1:
[44:01] Bucks County.

Speaker 2:
[44:02] And he was a forward-endorsed candidate taking on an incumbent. He ran mostly on the issue of returning dignity to the office because it had become politicized. And the major sort of turning point was the incumbent's cooperation with ICE on arresting and deporting immigrants. So he ran for a small office in the scheme of things, a sheriff of a county, but what an impact that candidate is going to have on the people of his community.

Speaker 1:
[44:32] Absolutely.

Speaker 2:
[44:33] And, you know, I think we're really proud that he ran as a forward-endorsed candidate and just really shines a light to me on the power of local office, right? He's changing people's lives as a sheriff in a county.

Speaker 3:
[44:46] We have 70 or more now, elected officials who are affiliated with Forward or are Forward candidates, mostly mayors and city councilors and folks at a local level. But we also have someone affiliated with us in the US. Senate, someone affiliated with us in the House of Representatives. So we are making progress, but there could be so much more. We just need more people to have the courage to step up and embrace the idea that you don't have to go left or right, you can go forward.

Speaker 1:
[45:20] John Goodwin, Kerry Healey.

Speaker 2:
[45:22] Thanks for having me. This is great.

Speaker 1:
[45:23] Thank you guys.

Speaker 2:
[45:24] My pleasure.