can like us on facebook and follow us on twitter as well my name is jim hart anderson i'm the senior minister at westminster presbyterian church located on nicollet mall and beautiful downtown minneapolis and the moderator of the forum it's my pleasure to introduce today's guest speaker donna brazil is a veteran political strategist and regular commentator on c n n and a b c news she began her political career at the age of nine when she worked to support a city council  who promised to build a playground in her neighborhood some decades later and the numerable state and local campaigns later she is still working for change she has brought her talent and skills for every presidential campaign from one thousand nine hundred six to two thousand she served as campaign manager for candidate al gore during the two thousand election she has been a lecturer at the university of maryland a fellow at harvard's institute of politics and she's currently adjunct professor of women and gender studies at georgetown university in a presentation today the election's over now what she will share her perspective on the challenges facing our president congress and our country in the years ahead ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming to the westminster town hall forum donna brazil indeed it is a great honor to return to the wonderful state of minnesota to be here in this historic church and i want to acknowledge all the elected officials and members of the clergy and of course the church and la community sponsors becky a need of the y w c a all of our community leaders but i must tell you at the age of fifty two yeah this is what it looks like now to those you listen already  pretending to have some hair that's turned into a little bit let's just say gray but about thirty years ago i had an opportunity an opportunity that most young people love to have and that is to work on my first presidential campaign now being a louisianian i didn't have a lot of choices but there was this former from the state of georgia that i liked i'd like to zack's and i could translate everything he said and although i wasn't yet ripe enough to hold a very important influential position i did participate i courage others to get involved  register to vote and a few years later finished my college education i moved up to washington d c had an opportunity to work on the bill the make dr king's birthday a national holiday and then reverend jesse jackson tapped me to work on his campaign to do voter registration campaigns all across the country and when his campaign was over when he came up short on delegates i had one of the rarest opportunities i had the opportunity to work for vice president w little girls like me that grew up poor grew up in the segregated south we looked up to men like walter mondale men like hubert humphrey men who went out there each and every day when they were in the united states senate they were fighting for poor people they were champions for equality and so when i had that opportunity to work walter mondale i got a secondary treat i got an opportunity to also work for geraldine ferraro vice president mondale to like to thank you mr vice president for your tremendous service to our nation for being an inspiration and a role model to so many of us and i can tell you what a great honor it is to see you as well i'm proud to have served on your campaign and i have to tell you since that day i worked on seven more including one way i won  campaigns young people those of you who come forty nine states one more state almost become miss usa without the bikini i'm not looking forward to that well breaking news i'm not on c n n so let me tell you the breaking news those men come out there saying you know what we have solved all the world's problems and we can just tell congress to go back to doing nothing and we solve the problems but i hope i hope they reach an accord if for no other reason i think most americans after this long heated alecto season would just like to see ali to sit down and work together there's nothing wrong with civility there's nothing wrong finding the best ideas and solutions to van's to come and that's what we all want that's what we want so after a tough campaign and a result in victory there's a natural tendency to relax and it's true time is needed to recover one's energy reassess strengths and weaknesses and review press politics and priorities and unless politics is your profession and it is mine or activism is in your blood and it's in my blood there's also a tendency to go back to the other concerns to rely on the people we just elected to give voice to our hopes and aspirations to confront our concerns in simple words to get things done even the losing side has representation that's the power of our system as president john kennedy once said without debate without criticism no ministration no country can succeed and no republic can survive regardless of your party affiliation all politics all politics a preferences we share the same goal the same american dream an opportunity to succeed a support system that rewards hard work but is also there when despite our best efforts we hit a wall of fall on hard times there's a song from the seventies young people forgive me i know i can do some rap but that's another conversation but there's a sound from the seventies some of you might have remembered in a recall a bill with this it was called leno me i was only twelve when it came out but it is a song that still resonates today and the words go you can just call  brother when you need a hand we all need somebody to lean on i just my have a problem that you'll understand we all need somebody to lean on of course i would add sista into the lyrics but after all of the hurricanes i've had in my life storms like betsy camille katrina and now sandy and those are just big weather events because we all have personal hurricanes emotional tornados as it were the idea that we all need somebody to lean on and that we're all in this together seem truer than ever there's more that american dream than success whether in business or the arts of the sciences or would have a feel you choose heaven a home a safe place to raise your kids making sure they have a chance to make things better by getting a good education access to health care we sometimes forget that there is this is american dream this this right this right it is a first of them life even before liberty and the pursuit of happiness and it's one of the reasons for the constitution providing for the general welfare the american dream is a universal dream a world of goodness and kindness in a world where there's peace peace nations shall not lift up swart against a nation a world of health and prosperity but we can argue we can argue as americans as citizens of this great country on how to get there how to provide for the common good and we should because no one has a monopoly on good ideas on the truth was david hume said truth emerges from arguments among friends so as i said even the side that loses an election still has a voice still has a representative at the table and that as it should be still an election is about choices the issues were clearly stated often despite the media and my fellow pundits and when an archon is won by an electoral landslide and a popular mandate i think we have to pay attention to the issues in a country as to versus ours it's hard to talk about the will of the people as a unitary thing except in times of great national crisis still i believe president barack obama has a mandate i use that word because it has been a subject of debate recently the debate over whether or not we are going to move the country forward president  ma chose that word he chose it as his slogan and i think we should all look forward as we address the question what now will see that it was a well chosen slogan first though a word about the extent of the president's reelection victory he got three hundred thirty two electoral college  that's almost sixty two percent of the total by any record and that's a landslide his popular vote margin of victory was greater than that of kennedy nixon caught bush his percentage of the popular vote was greater than that of ronald reagan in one nine hundred eighty and bill clinton in ninety six i didn't work on that one but i worked on the other but in congress the theme of fall would also w a year ago most analysts thought the democrats would have a hard time holding on to the united states senate but we increase the democrats increase their numbers there and the democrats also increase and i'm only touching on the results at the national level still the country remains divided governor romney did receive forty seven percent of the popular vote and  so even though the election even though the election was a referendum on the seven critical issues the choice to move forward while clear still contentious i would like to there for talk about what i consider the seven critical issues of the campaign why i feel the results vindicate we made the right choice and the what now for each of them these issues the path the truth versus the path of l people versus money economic fairness versus robin baron vulture capitalism diversity versus homogeneous and open door versus a closed door healthcare versus neglect and the disabled and finally hope versus fear the first issue was with we choose the path the truth or the path of lot we live in a world where information is easy but facts remain stubborn and sometimes facts are hard to find we live in an age where opinions go viral and too often infect the body politics with diseases like slander and irrational hatred facebook used to have a thumbs up thumbs down for responses there's no more thumbs down but there's a lot more unfriend in the speed of thought may match the speed of light instant messaging impulses but the process of thinking things through still takes time the prophet isaiah quoted the lord is saying come let us reason together and god was talking about forgiveness and second chances and such a world to see in a cynical disregard for the truth can grow like well like a virus the simple thing to do here would be to point out the many stretched the truth beyond the breaking point excesses january that's twenty three a week the new york times you know full confession i would never have gotten away with that there's not that much soap in the catholic church the new york times or the pre election analysis said the romney campaign made a strategic decision to set new standards in the use of untrue campaign now that's a polite way of saying they plan to lie a lot and hope people wo notice the washington post title is pre election editorial romney campaign insults voters all this is online you can fact check me i raised this point not to relive the campaign lord knows i don't want to go there here it is in the nature of politicians it is in the nature of politicians sometimes to exaggerate i know that i propose is one of the tools of the trade but running a campaign based on the belief that the public was too ignorant to remember what you said or what you care because you were only other guy well as my friend george will said quit despising the american people and to quote from george will quote a george will but mr will missed a critical point here why did the romney campaign think bald faced lies were a good campaign strategy well why does anybody lie but is anybody lot not just because i think it will work because they've seen it work if we in the media are honest and i am in the media i work for c n n and a b c news we are unable to call to this information i'm being polite because the way we approach information and debate can be described in a host of ways we've seen fact check and sites online and in print recently and that's a good thing there are blogs that correct liberal bias and blocks that catch conservative imbalance but it raises a question where did journalists why they're not fact checking while the people who are doing and interviews in the investigations why are they not doing their job even the pundits and the opinion makers should be constrained by facts and required to support positions with evidence and logic if we were doing that today ladies and gentlemen we would have a different conversation a media that plays he said she said that's more interested in access and accuracy isn't doing its job perhaps nothing else the problem more than the controversy over nate silver he's a blogger for the new york times he comes up with these little mathematical models who might win and who might lose based on the numbers never been a number of women but i even played a powerball once they said my chance and one hundred seventy five million i say i'm going back to making gumbo finishing up all the leftover turkey but nate silver came under a lot of attack he came out he was just trying to look at the numbers and yet there were so many in the mainstream media and others who just criticize him because he was getting it right and that it wasn't fit in the so called narrative of the ra the point is that candidates duplicity can succeed only with the media complicity but we can take this and you know just like to go on t v and you agree with the conservative or the conservative agree with you in the we have to play these roles are liberal this one is conservative with some days i'm conservative you know i mean on some subjects i'm very conservative you will never find me and then often they say whoa we need we need to talk about race we've got a black woman on television let's talk about rates all we did talk about jen we got a woman on t v let's talk about that and off at the time i'm going old and grumpy what category will that fit one day and gentlemen we have to remember the words of thomas jefferson who said if a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization it expects what never was never will be we have a responsibility to educate ourselves to be informed to x critical questions to know what those questions really are passions are important but if they bore on us to reality let me give you an example have you ever seen those yellow support the troops ribbon sometime they come in red white and blue patriotic who doesn't believe that we should support our brave men and women but do you know how your representative a senator voted on the last veteran benefit of jobs bill because we don't talk about it it's not sensational enough not sexy enough and by the way i've had more conversations about sex and birth control than i've had an opportunity to read fifty shades of gr words journalists and standards belong together the second choice was money up people money up people now this is really a consequence of the first money talks and  if the past election hasn't already confirmed that the advent of the super pac the introduction of unsupervised outside money nobody knew where a lot of money came from accountability matters in our democracy for example in cincinnati voter intimidation billboards went up in poor neighborhoods minority neighborhoods and the sign company when pressed to disclose who paid for them who put them up he didn't know there was no it was blank i can to be blank i can be put up by anonymous someone paid for it it's very important ladies and gentlemen to find ways to curtail all of this money in politics you don't need a billion dollars six billion dollars to run a campaign we spent six billion dollars this election cycle and i can tell you that was a lot of wasted money the flood of money threaten threaten to drown the voters internalised detector it wasn't just the negativity of the hysterical hyperball of so many of them there they reminded me of the ship the stripes of metal fall airplanes would drop in world war two to overwhelm a radar system with a false echo there was so much stuff filling the airways it was hard to see clearly through it all in the election and in president obama ground game big corporate money air attack but that doesn't mean that we've come to fiscal senses corporations are not people and they should not be allowed to sensually by a bribe their way the people versus money is not just an election issue it spills over so to speak into fiscal policy and thus the next big choice we had in the campaign what we opt for economic fairness  who's i used to pray when i would go to those republican debates and he started talking oh my dear god don't you know because as a southerner you just don't like that and he was just as a lawyer please somebody just pat him on the back just maybe just cough without waldo governor romney disavowed his infamous forty seven percent comment his remarks after the election when he claimed that president obama won because he gave gifts to his base i'm that's as much a part of american dream is making it big as my friend george will also said and i'm quoting george it's been well said that you have a political problem when the voters don't like you but you but you've got a real problem when the voters think you don't like them it would be a mistake to think there romney is the only one who despises the american people in this culture a robber baron vulture capitalism mentality i have more to say about health care debate which shouldn't be but there is a high profit motive driving it when the part of the former head of public relations at cigna explain wall street strange poll on health care and he said up quote of company if one's company medical loss ratio was set a nine point nine percent and one quarter next what it was seventy point two percent it seems like a small movement but investors will think that's ridiculous and it's horrible the term medical loss ratio is the insurance company newspeak term for pain health care benefits simply put the goal of investors and insurance companies to spend as little as possible on republicans shouldn't be party should be the party that protects the rich yet he refuses to implement the obamacare medicaid expansion that would greatly benefit the poor and the disable the non rich in my home state and some conservatives still want to privatized social security medicare even at the after the financial fiscal meltdown of the bush years now speaking of the fiscal the current debate now you know i'm catholic so i start lo take out time i love you baptists and speaking of the fiscal the current a bit on the so called fiscal cliff which according to many analysts is really a fiscal pothole this is an example of the ongoing fair share versus robin robin baron debate two points here of fiscal pothole because if the deadline passes a lot of problems the automatic cuts will c can be fixed retroactively somebody people believe by the new congress kevin drum of mother jones has a good article explaining the economics of it all but this goes back to the true choice and the responsibility of the media fiscal cliff is more dramatic more panic inducing than fiscal staircase we need to ask why do politicians or the media operate always in crisis mode is that the only way to get out tension the only way will become high information citizens or is the way to keep low information low information to suppress and political involvement gauge made by ordinary citizens i don't know the answers to those questions but what now they need to be x and we need to discuss them our economic problems are solvable if we don't equate the deficit with an immediate foreclosure on our future if we don't accept evasions an exemption for the wealthy in our s or sturdy for the rest of us obamacare will reduce the deficit requiring the rich to pay their fair share the same percentage they paid when bill clinton was president will also go a long way  says diverse i to be all about it as diverse as warren buffett and stephen king have said taxes more in fact bill kristol is on fox news a bonafide conservative as they come he said you know what it won't kill the country if we raise taxes a little bit millionaires thomas jefferson said i hope that we shall question his birth there aristocracy of money corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country he wasn't a member of the boston tea party but they're still an irony in all of this so people are equal equal government exist to protect equality which means equal access to life equal access to liberty and equal access to the pursuit of happiness if we insist if we insist on being part of the discussion and the debate we will find solutions to all of our problems now this brings me to another truth about the last election the past election was a triumph for diversity of diversity i woke up the day after the election and i started reading we're a diverse are black people there hispanics asian americans there openly gay people and yes there my god this was a triumph for diversity for what another irony should be a conservative value that we live in a nation where we are not judged by the color of skin by the content of a character after the election fox news bill o'reil that the demographics are changing the what established a man is now the minority that dirge was echoed by many on the right with names that again ironically testified to the diversity of the country there's a tendency to sanitize history to appropriate the term traditional american value now and dog whistle terms traditional american voter and talk about one side of the equation but the white establishment quote unquote built this power on the backs of others women blacks other minorities native americans and immigrants all history is messy our history is very messy and score with slogans perhaps we should spend more time studying the nitty this isn't just about big government small government but gold to lots of government just the right side to secure the right of all the people all whom are created equal secure in their rights against robber baron conglomerates and secure their rights against the imposition of a just ideology if we are to be a free society we must be a diverse society we don't have to agree we don't even have to approve but we have no right to subjugate others now ladies and gentlemen at some point we're going to shift the paradigm and even an ever so slightly this is going to have we lift our lamp a size to golden door or will we bar the entrance to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness slam it shut and their faces we associate open door with immigration and certainly that's appropriate one of the great issues before us what now will be immigration reform it's a messy issue like our history as jon stewart observed and we won't find a workable solution it can't guarantee is that we'll look at our own history hispanic influence goes beyond tex mex q zeen or the sort of record of immigrants when it comes to immigration before we can have a solution we need a resolution and not a new year's resolution of good intentions without a change in attitude we have to stop being afraid of people who are different and stop allowing out  and stop along ourselves to be manipulated into the other we are americans and the american pie is big enough big enough for all of us to get a slice now there's also another issue about access and that is access to the polls there's no place in our democracy for four six seven hou we must have an open door to the voting process as well there's no more fundamental right than access to the polls the litany of abuses is too long to go to go into right now suffice to say voter fraud itself is a fraud this is the simple what now reform the election process so that we have a standard system so that voting is easy no long lines no id no cage and no machines without a paper trail or some means of independent verification we should protect everyone's right to vote in this country because a person without a vote is a person without protection that thought comes from lyndon baines johnson who also said the vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised for breaking down  justice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison people because they are different let's keep the door open for all people f now we know we're going to keep obamacare but we're going to have to protect it every step of the way as we implemented across the country here's what i know as a child born to charity hospital in new orleans here's what i know no one should lose their home because they cannot pay a medical bill no one should suffer even die because they can't afford a prescription drug and everyone should pay into the system because at some point we need health care for selves or our loved ones and again we should not fear government involvement in our health care system that is there is an appropriate role for government and help and to implement the new law and speaking of the fear government and this is our last issue because i know tim is getting ner this past election we had to choose between hope and fear one campaign argue we should be afraid afraid of women making choices about their health care young people making choices about their education or choices voters would make what would happen to faith in god if climate change was real as if god is so limited one campaign feed the forty seven percent and low the ninety nine percent the other campaign argued for hope perhaps not as much as the last time around but perhaps more in a different way but this too is still a choice that still confront us it is the last of the seven issues but in some way hope vs fear is a big is what now it is the biggest what now of all we have problems some can be so some are innate to the nature of being human political solutions in order to form a more perfect union establish justice and security blessings i would like to close with a few thoughts on our choices on the what now that lies ahead we can approach future afraid to care too much as eleanor roosevelt said for fear that the other person does not care at all we can approach the future as babe ruth approached the plate never letting the fear of striking out hold us back because we're americans and we're resilient and when we come together we somehow another of find ways to stick together to support one another we can actually outsells what now realize the future will move in increments step by step and that we will have failures we will make mistakes there will be distress there will be crisis to manage but we will we will come back and we can rebuild stronger and safer in the future but i keep the words dr martin luther king jr close to me and i hope you will too as  we must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope never lose hope what now we have each other and we have a great country and let's go forward together to seize the moment and to have a blessed future thank you and god bless you a thank you donna brazil you're listening to the westminster town hall forum broadcast from westminster presbyterian church and nicolette mall downtown minneapolis learn more about the forum online at westminster forum dot org you're going to like us on facebook and follow us on twitter as well i'm tim howard anderson senior minister at westminster presbyterian church moderator of the forum our speaker today is political strategist donna brazil will be taking questions from arse for our speaker from the radio audience through twitter and facebook twitter handle as westminster t h f find us on facebook at westminster town hall forum and now while the ushers collect questions from the in house audience i want to thank the co sponsor of today's program the white o c a of minneapolis and its president becky ro for their commitment to empowering women and girls and to promoting racial and gender justice and now donna brazil if you would return to the pope and i will present the questions from our audience first question as the first question as do with religion and politics over the years you've been involved in a lot of campaigns and interested in hearing your perspective on the rise of religion as a as an issue in the campaigns and leading toward success or failure  campaigns i've always believe in separation of church and state but there's no question that as a public servant my faith has guided me in the decisions that i've had to make but the passion and  back the bible says to whom much is given much is required and that is something i believe in but to use religion to demean and to divide and what we've seen in his last election to somehow another tell a woman what right she has a right she cannot have with regard to make one sexual orientation a topic of religious fever i think we have to be very careful how religion is used in our society and i think all politicians and political leaders must also be extremely my for the fact that though we are a religious nation there's many of our fellow citizens who are not part of the faithful and yet they have strong beliefs and so i am very careful not to allow them to and anyway my judgment to impose my beliefs on other people to concrete steps each of us can take to protect voting for all of us well you did one this i think we have to be very mindful that there's an attempt in this country to dilute the voting power and strength of ordinary citizens who just want to you know go out there and have a say in the election we we are we the people not we the corporations are we to special interests and so it's important that we have access to the ballot box i would hope that we would spend the next two years cleaning up all of the electoral mess that we made over the past four years when many of our political leaders tried to change the rules in the middle game my mother once called that she shooting i'm i'm i am i am profoundly distress over the tone and tenor of the conversation that's taken place over the potential nomination she hasn't been nominated susan rice has served this country don and distinction and not only for this president barack obama but also for bill clinton she served in the clinton administration she's well qualified if the president decides tsunami her nominate her to be secretary of state to hold that position by the way ladies and gentlemen i believe that hillary clinton did a i would hope that senator mccain and senator graham and others would give her an opportunity if she is nominated by the president to make her case you know in a fog of war you know the intelligence is often proven wrong we saw that with colin powell went to the united nations had before we began to what i call do that low partisan thing and say gotcha gotcha gotcha susan rice deserve better she's a great american and i will always support her you know i you know i i i have come to know a lot of politicians by virtue of only being in the political arena for much of my adult life too i like to think that you know i know president obama is a good man mitt romney's a good man i mean let's put the good of the country ahead of our little political parties our political parties are so small i mean a majority of voters are no longer democrats or republicans you're independent you're not even affiliated with eit her the you know the major political parties and yet we we pretend that you belong to me you belong to me but you know what the majority of you decide that and so i think they should figure out two or three things that they could do well and follow up on it is a shame that after a contentious election the luiza has to go and sit down and rehabilitate his or her life when perhaps there are some good ideas that could come from the other campaign and other side and see if you will in a fight for you know maybe we can make it happen so i don't i'm not saying that mitt romney's shelf life should exist for the next four years but i am saying that let's find what we can do together especially given the quote unquote the conversation that we're having now about the so called fiscal pothole staircase slope you know cliff that we're about to all experience together here's a question from minnesota high school student most complicated question we've had today ok would you welcome a budget compromise defined by republican ideas for instance capping deductions to raise revenues or would that be inconsistent with your values was you know i wasn't a math major but i do believe that the math needs to add up ladies and gentlemen we need to get our fiscal house in order but we cannot do it one hand tied behind that we cannot do it by just cutting services and programs designed to help the poor middle and working class i believe that every child in america to have a head start to help this do i believe that we should be able to protect our vironment i believe that we should when we open up a can of can of tuna fish the f d a should have the resources to make sure that is not poison and that we are well protected i also believe that we need to tackle climate change in this country let me tell you i grew up in a hurricane now was and so was i believe that we need to allow these taxes to raise look at if they do nothing and we're going to go back to the defense budget of two thousand and seven and we're going to go back to the tax rate of the clinton gore years that produced twenty three twenty three million jobs and we had a fiscal surplus when we left office and hand d over to george bush and dick cheney time for one more question yes or what has inspired you to continue pursuing politics in such a frustratingly partisan atmosphere you know my grandmother was a wonderful woman she grew up in the state of mississippi and so every evening when we would come home from my parents were two three jobs my mother was a maid my father a janitor and when my mother got off from work she went downtown the french quarter on st charles avenue my father did all kinds of jobs so that they could take care of us and they put out an out of us through college inspires me to stay in public service is that my parents could never have done this without help without the support of community church neighbors but also the government yes many of us had to go to school on pell grants student loans some of us played bass got bad knees for it but we had help and so what inspires me to stay in public life to stay on the each and every day is because i want to give the next child a head start and he i want that next kid who grows up poor struggling mother who was so hard three days before she died she said i'm too tired she was fifty two she had no health care i lost my dad just a few months ago he was eighty one he had health care because he was a veteran for bronze stars in korea but i watched my mom because she had no ability to get health care throughout my years in public like i said i