Clinton Political Insider Reveals Secret For Democrats' Success

0:00Hello again, everybody from Newsweek headquarters at the top of the World Trade Center in New York City. This is the 1600. I am Carlo Versano. This country was stone cold dead. New York City, I should say, where it's 90 degrees. It's not even Memorial Day yet. It's already 90 degrees. So we basically just kind of we didn't even have a spring this year. We went right from winter into the hot, humid summer. But hey, we don't really get seasons anymore. I guess that's just sort of the way of the world. But anyway, one of the main beats here at the 1600 in the newsletter and here on the podcast, of course, has been this idea of a third way, a third way of doing things.

0:34If you believe, as I do, as I think many of you guys probably do, that both of our political parties are at this point, you know, hopelessly corrupt or if not corrupt, just ineffectual and no longer working in the best interest of the people that they serve. There just has to be another option. There just has to be a better way of doing politics than this, whether that's within our two-party system or perhaps outside of it. My guest today on the show has quite literally written the book on this topic. He spent the last half century inside some of the most powerful rooms in American politics. Lanny Davis is here with me now.

1:07Lanny, welcome. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. And exactly on topic. Thank you. Of course. So let's just give some people who may not know you a little bit of a background here. And just stop me if I say anything that you think is sort of unfair to your history, your resume. You were classmates at Yale with both George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton back when she went by Hillary Rodham, which is notable. And later on, you were special counsel to Bill Clinton. You helped defend him during the impeachment trial. You're a Democratic lawyer, a super lobbyist who has repped some of the biggest names in the news and in politics over the last several decades.

1:47And your new book, Lanny, is called Finding the Third Way, Lessons in the Politics of Civility from My Journey Through History. Great title. It's part political memoir, part diagnosis of where we went wrong, and importantly, part call to action. So I wanted to ask you to kick us off here. Tell me a little bit about what the call to action is. What is the thesis of this book? I was about to add a little self-commercial that you can find the book in retail stores. But really, Amazon and Barnes & Noble will get it to you overnight. So thank you. This is a very important, pivotal moment in American history because we have a large chunk of voters who are loyal, supportive of President Trump, who are angry with President Trump on a variety of issues that we Democrats share in common with them.

2:39If we Democrats give them a positive alternative because they're clearly negative in the polls, about one-third to one-half of his base, his core voter base, are angry with him on several issues where we Democrats agree with them, such as the Iran war, such as spending credit cards, deficits, and trillions of dollars of increased national debt. So our debt for the first time in U.S. history is greater than our gross domestic product, which is a declaration of bankruptcy for in America just printing money. That's a conservative position. Fiscal responsibility, balanced budget, stop using a credit card, which is to say, let's assume a parent goes around the world, first class airfare, first class hotels, first class meals, comes home with a pile of receipts from a credit card.

3:35dumps them on the bed of their children and says, you pay. That's exactly what Donald Trump is doing. That's what Democrats have done. And that's a conservative position. So my position on third way is not subtle. It's not something you have to research. Look at Bill Clinton's last day in office after two terms as president, where he practiced the philosophy of balancing a budget, leaving behind a surplus, reducing the size of government, yet using government in the Franklin Roosevelt tradition of helping people in need, but with an asterisk, personal responsibility before you take government assistance.

4:20It's all there in plain sight. That is the third way. Conservative on fiscal policy, liberal on or progressive is the word I'm told I have to use on government being a friend, not an enemy. We'll get back to the vocabulary police problem in the Democratic Party, by the way. I say liberal and they say, no, you have to say progressive. Don't tell me what I have to say. My base and my - I'm with you on that. Because we want vocabulary I have to use. Sorry. Franklin Roosevelt called himself a liberal, but we were formed to the word liberal by saying, comes government assistance, the covenant that Bill Clinton announced is in return individual responsibility and national service.

5:03So it goes both ways. And now on cultural issues, whether it's trans issues or anything to do with gender or anything to do with sexual identity, we Democrats have stood for what? Tolerance. I am uncomfortable with trans males competing in female sports. And that's a discomfort. I'm uncomfortable with a young girl going to the restroom in an elementary school with a male. That's discomfort. So I ask for tolerance by people who don't agree with my discomfort. And tolerance goes both ways. We should be sensitive and concerned about people going through gender identity crises. It should be a medical decision with parents involved.

5:48But the cultural issues that Donald Trump has demagogued on is where Bill Clinton would have a moderate position. So liberal, conservative and moderate, I've just described the third way that a majority of the American people, including Trump voters who don't believe in endless wars and are against the Iran war, we have a new majority we can create. And that's what the book calls for. I mean, I completely agree with your diagnosis. It's something I've written about a lot. It feels like you're basically calling for a sort of return to Clintonism, which again, I would agree with. I would vote for Bill Clinton today.

6:29I would vote for 1992 Bill Clinton today. Do you think 1992 Bill Clinton could win a Democratic primary in the current environment? Well, not only do I think he could win, but the positions I just described, supported by data, including opposition to the Iran war and endless wars with Donald Trump has violated that promise in the heart of the Democratic Party, which got me involved in politics, was opposition to the Vietnam War, an endless war for no purpose, where 50 ,000 kids died for no reason. And the Iran war, and by the way, I would like to declare every media person that interviews Trump, where he says we've got to get rid of Iranian nuclear weapon, is guilty of malpractice by not following up.

7:18Wait a minute. You tore up the treaty with international inspectors on the ground in Tehran, on the ground, inspecting to eliminate nuclear weapons. You tore that up just as he tore up the agreement that was a bipartisan agreement to secure our borders with tough measures. He tore up that agreement and opposed it. So every reporter who hears him say this war is about ending nuclear possession, nuclear weapons in Iran, who doesn't immediately interrupt him, wait a minute, you tore that treaty up with people on the ground inspecting, is guilty of malpractice. And by the way, it's almost every mainstream reporter, it's not easy to get in the way of a Donald Trump lie, which is we're doing this for nuclear weapons.

8:03But that's really, I'm sorry for the long answer. The Iran war and lots of other issues is where we Democrats and the Clinton third way have a majority of the country. And now we have to it's the policy stupid. We have to give people an alternative. Well, especially on Iran. I mean, the other the other follow up is you told us that you obliterated their nuclear program last summer. So like which is it? But anyway, hold that thought for a second. um here's here's the thing that comes to my mind when we're having this conversation because again i i agree with the thesis but i feel like what people hear when they hear what you know the the sort of diagnosis that you're giving is they hear okay like this sort of mushy centrism that doesn't that we have sort of seen time and time again doesn't actually have a political constituency i think about somebody like michael bennett who i interviewed back in god 2020 when he was running for president.

8:55I thought he was a great guy. I thought he said all the right things. He pulled a zero percent in that primary. Right. I mean, maybe that was just him. But there's other examples of people who sort of try and do this and they don't have the, you know, the talents of somebody like Bill Clinton. Is that what it comes down to? Sort of like a talent issue? No, it comes down to very principled and defined positions on issues. Michael Bennett has been a very successful reelected senator from Colorado where he's attracted Republican and independent votes as well as Democrats. It's not about a mushy center.

9:28It's highly principled positions on issues, balanced budgets, not spending credit cards and having our kids have to pay. That's a specific position. It's not mushy center. It's to the contrary. It's opposition to Donald Trump increasing the national debt and telling our children and our grandchildren to pay. The most important change from the current is the cultural positions. We should be for secure borders. That's not mushy. And if you read Clinton's 1995 State of the Union speech, he quoted Barbara Jordan, one of the great liberal icons, the late Barbara Jordan, heading his Immigration Reform Commission, saying we must have secure borders.

10:09What happened to that? That's not mushy. That's a very principled position upholding the rule of law and our nation's security. Why didn't the Biden administration run on that? Why didn't Kamala Harris run on that? So this is not about a mushy center. It's Bill Clinton's principled positions that happened to capture people from the right, from the left and the center because they agreed with his positions. I mean, I think the answer to the question of why did Biden fail and Kamala both fail so badly on the immigration issue, I mean, to me, the answer is they became enthralled with the left flank that is now the sort of activist base of the party, right?

10:50Which is to say that they ignored history. Is Barbara Jordan one of the great iconic liberals of all time? The late Barbara Jordan, are they afraid of her being labeled as a centrist or as a whatever the labeling is? The point is they did, and I happen to agree with you, they listened to a slice of the Democratic Party that's a minority of a minority who are people who say, well, a secure border means that you have no heart. Excuse me. It means enforcing the rule of law. And if people who stood in line and got into this country legally, it is not fair to allow other people to jump in front of them.

11:29So it's worth debating the issue. But when I'm labeled as or Bill Clinton is labeled as a quote centrist because labeling is the problem. I'm supposed to say I'm a progressive and not a liberal. I don't care what labels you think I should use. Let's talk substance. And I think on immigration, we we miss the moment because it's a liberal position to uphold the rule of law. That's what we say this president is not doing. The rule of law should have been enforced. But we also forget to say, I'm sorry, I'm so long here. Donald Trump had an opportunity because of a bipartisan agreement in the United States Senate for a tough immigration secure border law.

12:14He killed that. Now, why wasn't that the major issue in the presidential campaign? I'm sorry to say that Vice President Harris was not willing to take on the base of her party by quoting Barbara Jordan's position on a secure border. It's a mystery to me. No, I again agree with you again. So you've said that there's there's fault on both sides for sort of this moment of political polarization that we're in that, you know, both Trump and Democrats demonize political differences. Obviously, there's obvious truth to that. But I think a lot of people will hear it, though, and say that there's an asymmetry that's sort of being erased here.

12:55And this is – I sort of agree with that too, right? I'm back to being a mushy centrist. Maybe that's just who I am. I don't know. But, I mean, look at the news today. Donald Trump just essentially extorted the American taxpayer, me and you, to the tune of almost$2 billion for a settlement from the IRS, his own government, that he's going to use to pay out the people who stormed the Capitol on January 6th. I mean, is there an equivalent to that kind of blatant out-in-the-open corruption on the Democratic side? No, but you have to give people something positive. I think the Trump voter would say that's terrible.

13:33But what do I do? I have nobody else to vote for because what are the Democrats saying? We're not giving them an alternative. And I have a lot of friends who voted for Donald Trump who dislike his policies, his corruption, his autocracy. There's so much wrong and what I disagree with Mr. Trump about. But I constantly hear people say to me, but what are you guys saying as an alternative? And my question back rhetorically, not to you personally, is who in the Democratic Party is commanding a national audience to speak the message that I'm suggesting? We have no one because we don't have the House.

14:07We don't have the Senate. We only have the Democratic National Committee, which is utterly incompetent to command message wars. So we have nobody to challenge an incumbent president who can command the media. And that's our bad. And we need to do something about having messengers. We have governors, governor of Kentucky, governor of Michigan, governor of Illinois, who should be on national television, paid or otherwise, challenging that corruption of him paying himself off for a settlement of a case that's an absurd case, selling stock right before he makes a decision, exhorting people to buy a stock that he just purchased.

14:45This is a level of corruption we haven't seen in American history, and there's a lot of competitors to that statement. But we don't have the voice in the Democratic Party that commands national attention. That's on the DNC. That's on Chuck Schumer. That's on the speaker. That's on the minority leader. We have no ability to speak nationally unless our party gets its act together. Again, I mean, I hope that they're listening because you are preaching to the choir here, my friend. And I was going to save this question for later, but who do you think that could be in 2028? Because I'll tell you who I think it could be who doesn't get a lot of attention, partly because he doesn't do what you're saying, which is he doesn't go out and pound the tables, go on Fox News and make this argument.

15:27And that's John Ossoff, the senator in Georgia, who I think is an underrated talent in the Democratic election. And he's won in Georgia. And I would give you the governor of Michigan, Andy Beshear in Kentucky, who in a Trump state is able to get through to Trump voters. We've got a dozen governors who could be our candidate for president and would be Trump. But we have to have a system that encourages winning general elections. Right now, our party base loves winning primaries, but then loses the swing voters in the swing states. And I think we do have governors that can do that. It's I guess I mean, I think what's happening is these these guys are all I've written about this.

16:11These guys are all thinking, guys and women are thinking to themselves, look, Trump is is is destroying his own presidency, whether it's with Iran, whether it's with the blatant corruption or anything else. Let's just sit back and let him do his thing. Like, why are we going to why are we going to get in the in the way? But the problem with that, to your point, is that it doesn't leave anybody with an alternative. People are just going to tune out. Right. And our base vetoes doing something about it because everybody fears being labeled. And our base, which is I'm a liberal Democrat. I'm on the left side of the spectrum on every issue I can think of because I define liberal as paying our bills and not leaving tabs to our children.

16:53What's liberal about telling my children to pay my bills? And what's liberal about the secure borders just drives me nuts because that's the rule of law. We're saying that Donald Trump ignores the rule of law. Why doesn't that apply to securing our borders? So our liberal base needs to understand that they're defining us as being liberals because we are in favor of being compassionate and using government to help people. Well, I'll take that accusation. Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, all of our Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton, did pretty well with using government to help people. But Bill Clinton put an asterisk.

17:34You have to do something in return if you take government assistance. That's the new Democrat, the reformed liberalism that he articulated and that's what we need to do. Crime is another issue that both he and Hillary sort of I think understood better than any of the current crop of Democrats. I mean I think – I've been paying close attention to the mayoral race in Los Angeles. And you have people like Karen Bass and her competitors to the left. they're out there like rolling their eyes at taxpayers who ask them questions like I wouldn't I mean I'm all for helping the homeless but I don't want a homeless encampment literally abutting in my children's school I don't want my kids walking through a a tent city to go to school that's not a crazy thing right so it's a conflict of the heart and the head homelessness is a tragedy for the people who are homeless.

18:28They don't choose to be homeless. Most of them are mentally ill or literally out of luck and out of money, and they have nowhere to live. Nobody chooses that life. So the heart aches for people like that. But we also have to be respectful of citizens who have to put up with the difficulty. So we need to find the solution. We need to at least address it and not say, oh, it's illiberal to say we have to do something about the homeless. It's a matter of defining our principles, not mushy center again. pushing back on that, defining our principles as what is illiberal about safety on the streets and about having homeless people taken care of, but not putting out the rest of the population and having difficulty of dealing with people who are in tent cities.

19:17So we Democrats have to stop allowing our left base to define us as illiberal when we're very strong on anti-crime measures, as President Clinton was. Balancing budgets is a liberal position, not a conservative position. And most importantly, public safety and crime. Who suffers from crime? It's largely poor black people who are more statistically vulnerable to crime in their neighborhoods than wealthy white people. Who are also part of the base of the Democratic Party. Yes. And mostly my most important message for your audience is there is the possibility of an historic realignment of the parties in this coming midterm elections.

20:02We have one third of Trump voters who don't like the war in Iran, who don't like deficit spending, who believe that Trump has broken his promises. We Democrats agree with them. We oppose Trump on those policies. We have the makings of a new coalition of centrist and liberal Democrats and Trump voters who oppose the Iran war, who favor balanced budgets, and who want government to assist people, but with responsibility and individual responsibility to give back to the country. That's a winning new coalition that could endure for the future. We just need a leader or a bunch of leaders ready to articulate a policy and have a mechanism to get the message out.

20:47So on that mechanism, I want to get back to this idea of civility. You co-founded something called the Civility Project that urged, I believe, all 535 members of Congress and all 50 governors to sign a pledge to act civilly in their political day-to-day lives. Not a crazy ask. Three people signed that pledge. What does that say about the vote? That's why I kind of laughed when you mentioned it because it's a very painful laugh. That is correct. The late Senator Joe Lieberman came up with the idea and I helped him try to find people to sign up. I said everyone's going to agree with civility. But this fear of the base, the Republicans fear the Trump base.

21:28Democrats fear our so-called liberal base. I say so-called liberal because I don't believe it's liberal to allow anyone to cross the border and violate our laws. But we are fearful of our bases and we Democrats have to stand up for the principles and reject the labeling. And we have a majority of the American people, including at least one third of Trump's voters who will say, I agree with you. If you don't mind, Lenny, I'd like to sort of go back in time a little bit to your Yale days. the book opens on Yale. You've befriended George W. Bush. He's a fraternity brother of yours. You met Hillary Rodham before she meets Bill Clinton.

22:11So you formed relationships with people who would become two presidents, three senators, three governors. You've described Hillary as the person you thought would be the first president of the baby boomer generation. That was before she introduced you to Bill. So what did you get wrong about her trajectory? She fell in love with a guy that is a brilliant politician. and I think I thank you for reading the book. I wrote a chapter saying, no, it's your turn. When she told me, I think I've met the first president of the United States out of our generation. So before I met Bill Clinton, I asked her about him because I knew that she was interested.

22:49I had already graduated law school. And after I met him, I - Did you set them up? No, I didn't actually. She had told me she was interested. I had already graduated, came back to visit. But my point is that when I met him, I saw that he had a magical political, this born skill. To call him the natural. And it was like iron filings to a magnet. When he first was introduced to me, his first question to me is, tell me about yourself. And that's Bill Clinton. He zooms in on you like you're the only person in the room. He's interested in you. He's that way with all voters. He wasn't running for election when he met me, but that's the way he was.

23:33And he has just unparalleled skills. And they're genuine. They're not insincere. But I still thought to myself when I met Hillary Rodham before she met Bill Clinton, this is an amazingly qualified, this was in law school where I decided she's going to be our first president out of our 60s generation. And we all thought the 60s, with all the terrible tragedies of the 60s, assassination of Martin Luther King, John Kennedy, and Vietnam War, that somebody out of our generation of the 60s would be president. We all had to figure out who turned out to be Bill Clinton. I thought it should have been Hillary.

24:12I also want to push you a little bit on your friendship with George W. Bush, which is a centerpiece of the book's bipartisan argument. Bush and you, interesting case, right? You guys are both obviously, you know, I think good people, disagree on almost everything probably politically. What is the friendship that you've cultivated with W prove about politics beyond the fact that just, you know, personal friendships can survive ideology? Let me ask you a better question, a better way to phrase that because I could argue that political insiders sort of being able to be friendly across the aisle actually shows to a lot of people the exact problem of our politics, which is that you – it's not that you can't be friends with your political opponents but that it's all kind of a game and it's about whether you're in the club or out of the club.

24:59What do you say to that? Words matter. you have to learn to in the key message of my book is you have to learn to disagree agreeably and there's a very clear lesson I try to teach don't start out your sentence when somebody disagrees with you politically with the word you start out with the word I believe you state your own belief and then listen to the other person's belief number one that's civility you listen and you disagree. Secondly, you actually may change your mind or you may convert because you've listened and you've said something where you find something in common. The classic example specifically is today.

25:43If I'm talking to a Trump voter who loves Trump for all the reasons that I disagree with, as soon as I say, do you agree with this war in Iran with the hike in gasoline prices where he changes his mind within 30 minutes why we're doing this? And he'll say no. I said, okay, We have that in common. What else do we have in common? I'm against a big government that spends money that we don't have leaving the tab to our kids. Whoa, I thought you were a liberal Democrat. I am. It's liberal to be in favor of balanced budget. So you see, the common ground theme is to disagree agreeably and look for common ground, which you are uniting on principle with people who are for Donald Trump.

26:26That's the answer. No, very well said. And it's funny. It's just making me I'm laughing because I think about, you know, I get a lot of emails from our audiences, I'd say, mostly liberal Democrats like you and I. But there's also some some mega people and a lot of Trump supporters, a lot of centrist, a lot of sort of independent, you know, maybe lean right. And they're actually the ones who are most, I find in my personal experience, most amenable to disagreeing and most amenable to hearing other sides. The worst feedback I get is when I say anything that could even remotely be construed as supportive of Donald Trump, of any one specific thing he's done or said.

27:05They come out of the woodwork. The liberals come out of the woodwork to call me names. The right doesn't really do that, interestingly. I don't know if that's something that you've noticed in your own sort of life or maybe it's just completely anecdotal and means nothing. But I always come back to that because it always strikes me. I have experienced both sides being intolerant of disagreement. And I think it's because they're using the language that starts with the word you and it becomes accusatory and labels. I certainly profoundly am in disagreement with Donald Trump, most importantly on his ignoring the rule of law, on his ignoring the difference between truth and lies, etc.

27:49But I have friends who voted for Donald Trump, as I said earlier. So I think it's more important for the Democrats like me who oppose Trump, and really I consider Trump to be a danger to the rule of law, to be able to find common this more than ever right now is Trump has alienated one third of his voters, according to all the polls, starting with the war in Iran. But let's look at the economy and other issues that he's lost his voters. We have some common ground. I think the ultimate answer to your question is civility means to disagree agreeably and not to use the U word and use personal attacks and demonizing when you're having a disagreement on Trump.