Full transcript:
Mark Schoeff: Good afternoon, and welcome to the National Press Club. We are delighted to have so many people in the room with us for the luncheon today. Our formal program begins in a minute, but before we get started, I wanted to review some housekeeping items. We are live streaming this event, so now would be an excellent time to silence your cell phones to avoid disrupting the broadcast, and I see a lot of people reaching for their phones. Thank you for doing that. We love to take audience questions. If you have a question you’d like me to ask today, please email [email protected]. You’ll also find cards on your seats. If you prefer, you can write your questions on the cards and pass them to a member of our staff, who will collect them and bring them to me up here on the stage, and then I’ll ask as many questions as I can. But I can’t ask what I can’t read. So please write legibly, and also this is important. Please write a question, not an essay, and don’t embed a question in an essay. So ask your question, one question on the card that I can easily pick up and decipher. So, thanks again, and we’ll get started in just a couple moments.
Good afternoon. I’m Mark Schoeff Jr., the 119th president of the National Press Club and the financial services reporter at CQ Roll Call. It is my honor to welcome you to the National Press Club, the place where news happens. Thank you for joining us for our headliners luncheon with Neera Tanden, president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, who will discuss what comes next after the historic midterm elections last week. It is my pleasure to introduce our head table guests today, who are right here in front of me. Please stand up when your name is called, Jamila Huxtable, a reporter at Morning Brew. Emily Wilkins, congressional reporter at CNBC and one of my predecessors as club president, I’m 119. She was 117, right?
OK, yes, two years ago. Zach Cohen, senior budget reporter at Bloomberg Government. Debra Silimeo, president at Silimeo Group. I should mention Zach is the club secretary. Deborah is on the club board, and the next person I’m introducing, Steve Reilly, is the club vice president and the investigative data journalist at—an investigative data journalist at CBS News. And another of my predecessors, Donna Leinwand Lejer, president at DC Media Strategies, former managing editor of USA Today, and I know Donna was president in 2009, but I don’t know what the number was. What number was that? 101st president of the National Press Club. Voters delivered a decisive verdict on Tuesday, with Democrats winning substantial majorities in both the Senate and the House, a result that many see as a rebuke of President Trump. Now comes the harder part: deciding what to do with that power and delivering for the voters who gave it to them. Few people in Washington are better placed to answer these questions than Neera Tanden,who has spent more than three decades helping shape Democratic policy from inside the halls of power.
Ms. Tanden, a graduate of Yale Law School, began her career in the Clinton White House, then served as Sen. Hillary Clinton’s legislative director. In 2011, she became president of the Center for American Progress, one of the most influential progressive think tanks in the country. She returned to the White House during the Biden administration, serving as staff secretary and senior adviser, and then as director of the Domestic Policy Council, helping to steer the president’s domestic agenda.She returned to CAP in 2025. Today, she will lay out where she thinks the Democrats should go from here and which policies she wants the new Congress to enact. Please join me in a warm National Press Club welcome for Center for American Progress President and CEO Neera Tanden.
START SPEECH
Neera Tanden:
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you so much, President Schoeff, for that extremely kind introduction, and I’m incredibly honored to be here at the National Press Club to share my views on the next Congress and the next presidential primaries that are around the corner. I do want to confess, I’m really thrilled with the timing. It’s much better to have this conversation today than it could have been, so it is, it is a kind of new moment in the country when you have a midterm that delivered the biggest blue wave since Watergate. So I really want to say thank you for everyone who’s attending.
I have a lot of friends in the room and a lot of people I’ve worked with in the past, and also new faces, and I look forward to your questions about this moment. I will definitely get to, get to the ideas that I think the new Congress should take up, but I do want to spend a few minutes, maybe just savoring where we are. When the dust settles from last week’s midterms, Democrats will likely have 56 senators—56 senators, just four away from a filibuster-proof majority. They’ll have 260 members of the House of Representatives. Yes, you can woohoo that. 100-seat majority over Republicans. They’ll have 30 governors and trifectas in 22 states. And as important for any, for people’s lives across this country, three-quarters of all Americans will live in states governed by a Democrat. Yeah, you can wow, that. Yes, yes, you can. The seismic scale of this election is still being digested, but I believe one thing is clear: Last week marks the beginning of the end of the MAGA movement in our country. For the first time in a decade, the coalition that fueled MAGA-ism is really fractured.
A new country is dawning, and we can see over the horizon to a country without the extreme vitriolic nature of our politics, the extreme polarization, a country without the targeting and demeaning of various groups unpopular to those in power, a country with vibrant disagreements, not violent insurrections. But to reach that horizon, I believe the Democratic Party must build on last week’s success and make the states that move to the Democratic column, part of the new party’s blue wall, because MAGA will truly end when Republicans recognize that they have to make a choice: Stick with that failing ideology or actually win elections. After last Tuesday, I believe the Republican Party will start to finally truly wrestle with that choice, but it will take 2028 to decide what is the true direction of the Republican Party. History shows us that political movements die when they become so toxic to the politicians that they lose and lose decisively at the ballot box.
Think about the Know-Nothing Party in the mid-1800s. I know it’s just on the tip of everyone’s tongue, the Know-Nothing Party. But just to go back in 1854, you know, they’d grown for a while, and by 1854, they elected 52 members of Congress. The year after that, they elected six governors, but they misgoverned. They handled issues of the day terribly, and their own voters turned away from them. And by 1860, the party didn’t exist anymore. We have more recent examples—the rise of McCarthyism and other things, where we know that people, politicians, will move away from ideas that are failing them. Today, the MAGA coalition is splintering because I would argue MAGA policies are failing. This is a crucial issue. It was—the most important thing in the election, I believe, was the actual results in people’s lives, and I’ll talk a little bit more about that.
Now, as the Democratic Party charts a path forward from here to the presidential election in 2028, and it almost pains me to use the terms “presidential election” in 2028, we should savor this a little bit more. But I do want to—I do want to talk about what we are learning, what we just learned from these elections to guide us forward. And I think a singular lesson is that there is no permanent red state. The assumption that Democrats and Republicans are just two teams locked in never-ending combat. That assumption is false. It was proven false last week.
For the last decade, we’ve been trapped in this paradigm of two parties, both with hard, immovable bases, trapped in 50-50 elections. But the division of the electorate and the closeness of each election has meant that neither party has been forced to reshape itself, forced to reckon with it. But if Democrats can win in the reddest of states in the country, states like Kansas, South Carolina, and yes, Mississippi, perhaps the hardened scar tissue of polarization is finally breaking down. Yes, great to woohoo that too. Our politics can actually heal. I believe last week laid the groundwork for a fundamental and permanent repudiation of MAGA policies, because the truth is that Trump’s agenda hurt his coalition of working-class voters. Let me say that again. I think the most important issue in this election was actually the result of the president’s policies; his policies spectacularly backfired on the people, many of whom supported him three times.
Working-class Americans, white working-class Americans who make up 39 percent of the electorate, shifted 14 points from 2024 to 2026, so they moved dramatically to leaders like James Talarico, Roy Cooper, and the like. And why did that happen? It’s not rocket science. It’s because Trump’s policies disproportionately burden them. In fact, in my lifetime, I’ve never seen a president so forcefully and intentionally make his own coalition struggle, because when gas goes up $1.50, who pays that? Is it, is it the wealthiest people who pay that? No, it’s the hardest burden on working-class Americans. The tariffs, which raised prices of nearly everything and devastated the livelihoods of thousands of farmers throughout rural communities, that is another thing that has made people struggle.
Add the Medicaid and SNAP cuts, which will kick millions of people off their health care, and have already meant millions of people have lost access to food, food benefits, closing the clinics in the reddest counties in the country. And think of the war in Iran, which increased gas prices, as I noted, to levels unseen in years, for a conflict that nobody wanted. All while the Trump—while Trump and his family and friends were enriching themselves off the presidency, gold bars, private jets, pardons for purchase. For all the talk of alternative facts and political spin, the most important thing is that people voted the way they did because their lived experience told them that the administration was hurting them. And honestly, it’s not even like he seemed particularly sympathetic or concerned, so that allowed Democrats to come in and offer a compelling vision of positive change that won back working-class voters.
Many of these working-class people, white, Black, and Latino, and fueled gains across the country, but particularly in the South. I’m just—because it makes warms my heart, I’m just going to go through some statistics here. Annie Andrews won, flipped South Carolina, a 22-point shift towards Democrats. Scott Colom is flipping Mississippi, a 25 point shift towards Democrats. James Talarico swung Texas 26 points. And let me just stay with Texas a minute. Texas Democrats didn’t just win the Senate, and they didn’t just win the governor’s office. They won the governor’s office, the lieutenant governor’s office, the attorney general’s office, the state supreme court, the state house, every statewide office on the ballot they won. The only person who’s standing as a statewide Republican in Texas is Ted Cruz.
If Democrats can hold on to Texas, that is a little bit of a harbinger of doom for the Republican Party, and it’s when parties face existential threats that they choose, they have to choose between changing or dying. So my argument is that you can see a world in which Republicans do make that choice to change, in a world where Democrats build on these victories. And I’ll give you one more statistic: If the next Democratic nominee for president takes every state that has a Democratic governor this coming January, that nominee would win 392 electoral votes. Yeah, let’s—you can give it up for that too. So the opportunity in front of Democrats is to build on this moment to create a generational realignment in American politics. It’s worth emphasizing: Democrats did not win only by turning out their own voters.
They—people who, they are people who flipped hundreds of seats across the country last Tuesday, and they did that, not just with progressive activists, although the progressive activists are very important. They did it with Latino voters along the Rio Grande who voted for Trump in the aftermath of the border crisis just a few short years ago. They did it with young people, especially men who rejected Democrats in 2024 yet swung more than 30 points in the other way, in the other direction two years later. They did it, we should all acknowledge, with gun owners in Mississippi and farmers in Kansas, they did it with working-class white voters and people of color, including many working-class voters who have cast their ballots for Trump three times, and they did it also with some Republicans. 10% or more of Republicans who voted last week in contested states voted for a Democratic senator for office.
That is a major change in a historic time, and I, you know, I could go on and on, and you know, as I, I like to, I like to think that these moments don’t come, so we could spend all our time talking about this. But I do want to get to some hard truths as well, because how can you be a Democrat unless you think of, like, the downside here and there? Many of these voters are people who are not buyers yet; they are renters. They did not join the Democratic Party; they’re just trying it on for size. Democrats have to seal the deal in the next two years and convince them to stay because, after all, as I just noted, they just switched from who they voted for two years ago to who they’re voting for now, and they can switch again if we fail them. Now, I believe the way to seal that deal is to ensure that the Democratic Party does what it has done best historically, which is to champion the working class, fighting for the underdog, listening to voters, honestly, voters and perhaps fewer interest groups and donors, and making a place where everyone in this country has a fair shot.
So my argument today is very simple: If the Democratic Party wants to end MAGA’s hold on our politics, it should push an agenda in the next Congress that builds on this victory by building a big tent. And I also believe we should do that in the presidential race as well. That agenda should do what candidates who won in red states did: appeal to a broad coalition of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans. And it should produce a candidate for president who can follow this wave and build a broad coalition large enough to end this nightmare permanently. Democrats have their own choices to make. They can improve on Tuesday’s results by building that big tent, or they can go back to 50-50 politics.
But let me remind us all of a world, or let me, let’s think about that world where we build that big tent. You don’t have to wake up every morning wondering what the president did overnight. You don’t have to worry if we just started a new war without telling anybody, or decided to launch a trade war with Canadians or some other group of people who’ve been our friends for 50 years, or in the most harrowing way, you don’t have to worry about a president who is targeting communities who are vulnerable. If national Democrats give candidates the choice, they give them the ability to win in red and purple states. If they give Democrat—if Democrats give the country a choice by relentlessly focusing on voters who just took a chance on them, we can make this permanent and change the course of history.
So I have some, I have some friendly advice for some of my friends and peers in Washington. The next two years should not be an opportunity for every organization or group in D.C. to dust off their wish list for the last decade. It’s not a time to pressure Congress to fruitlessly spend time, political capital on ideas that we couldn’t get done in a Democratic trifecta just a few years ago. It is time to ensure and relentlessly ensure we deliver for the voters who just trusted us. And you know what?
That’s a message that unites people as diverse as Mayor Mamdani in New York and Sen.-elect Sherrod Sherrod Brown from Ohio, and Gov.-elect Hinojosa, that governing is about delivering and delivering for working-class people. Winning will require many groups to hold their fire when some of these new members don’t take 100% of the votes they like. It will mean giving. It will also mean emulating candidates like James Talarico and Roy Cooper because the truth is, the candidates who won the biggest electoral victories last week married a populist economic critique with practical ideas to make people’s lives better. They coupled an economic approach that coupled that kind of economic approach with moderate stances on issues like crime and immigration. I’ll just talk about a few of them.
James Talarico’s campaign was grounded in a theory of vertical polarization versus horizontal polarization. Just to say what that means, he was a robust critic of the wealthiest and well-connected kind of taking the spoils of the country at the expense of the rest of us. He recognized that wealthy elites are too often pitting us against each other, whether through tax policy or algorithms. And he rejected a politics that tell us the real threats around us are immigrants or Muslims or trans kids. He ran a profoundly populist campaign, but he also was practical on economic issues and moderated on some issues, like the border and crime. Or take Roy Cooper, campaigned on the simplest of slogans: “Make stuff cost less.” Pretty good to me, and he was populist on economic issues and health care in particular. He argued for that the government should renegotiate drug prices. He criticized a tax code that’s skewed towards billionaires. He also rejected—but he also, you know, kind of rejected this false dichotomy on law and order and touted funding for police and his work on crime as a governor. And that’s what it takes to win these states. But you know, there’s a lot of discourse between the base of the Democratic Party and moderates, and I’m here to say that it takes two wings in the party in the Democratic Party: the left and the center, the populists and the normies. It takes two wings to actually fly. It takes both of them. And there are some who will interpret this differently. They’ll say you only need one or you only need the other, but I think in the vortex of the left-center fights that we’ve had over the last couple of years, we lose sight of the fact that it’s pairing economic populism with moderation on some social and economic, social and security issues that actually meets working-class voters where they are. After all, working-class people experience crime at a slightly higher rate than other people, and even young people, even young people, prefer fighters who are also moderates. I know this totally—just like just will blow everyone’s mind in this room, but the state where the Democrat flipped the most young people in America, first was North Carolina, and the second was Texas. It may surprise you that Roy Cooper was an electoral juggernaut with young people, but Roy Cooper was an electoral juggernaut with young people, as was James Talarico. Talarico, Cooper, Hamilton, Turek, Andrews, Brown, and the other candidates who flipped their seats, proved that you can have a big tent. You can get and mobilize lots of Democrats, and you can appeal to moderates. And it is not a wishy-washy politics of the lowest common denominator. It is a politics and ideas that are centered on fighting hard for working people. All of these leaders called for change, not chaos; transformation, not destruction; and that is what we have to deliver So to cement this new majority, we need to ensure that we keep faith with the people who felt betrayed by Trump, bringing down the cost of living and giving working-class people more room to simply breathe. So what should a new Congress do as really delivering on these issues that I talked about, and you might be surprised, but a think tank like the Center for American Progress has a few ideas about what to do about these issues and how we can focus on costs and corruption.
Congress—we believe Congress should prevent health insurance companies from gouging their customers, saving people $1,000 a year on premiums, Congress can help states freeze utilities for consumers struggling to keep the heat on, should require data centers to pay their fair share, and ensure that no Americans’ utility rates or water rates are going up simply because the wealthiest tech companies need data centers in their communities. First, before we do all of these things, though, Leader Jeffries and Congress should focus on fixing the damage that Congress, that Trump just passed—just caused, extending the health tax credits that Trump let expire, reversing Trump’s Medicaid and SNAP cuts, rolling back Trump’s tariff regime, and ending the war in Iran. And I want to say, almost everyone who won last week focused like a laser beam on ending the Iran war.
And a lot of people will say there’s nothing Congress can do to lower costs, but I’m here to tell you that is wrong because if we just ended the tariffs and the Iran war, the average family would save $3,000. OK, that’s a lot of money to families. These things have been extremely expensive, and a Congress religiously focused on lowering these costs will ensure that people will be better off. And you know what? There’ll be a lot of issues that hopefully a bunch of Republican senators before in the Senate will come around to. But if they don’t, let’s make where we stand crystal clear. If Republicans don’t want to pass these things, let’s make it clear to the country. So, that’s what we should do on the affirmative side. I do believe that Democrats should also exercise their newfound subpoena power to the fullest, put the oversight committees to work, and really all committees. This administration’s corruption is vast. Americans have a right to know who got paid and what and by whom. And there’s been a debate over the last week or so about retribution versus accountability. But I’m here to say, Republican, even some Republicans, lots of Independents and Democrats can tell the difference between accountability and retribution.
Accountability is simply trying to find out who paid this administration bribes to stop rules that would hurt working-class people, or help working-class people. That’s accountability. That’s not retribution. We cannot let people define accountability to mean something punitive. It’s actually just about the rule of law and enforcing it. So I would argue the fastest way to earn the trust of voters and the voters who just came to this place is for us to focus on corruption and also ensure that we are holding up our own end of the bargain. As I said, last week’s voters are renters, not buyers. And when it comes to corruption, a real challenge is that they believe kind of all parties, all politicians are corrupt. And it’s crucial that Democrats in Congress undo that perception, and the fastest way for them to do that is to ensure that they ban congressional stock trading in the first week of a new Congress. You can applaud for that.
Thank you. In fact, I would argue they should go further. There’s a robust anti-corruption agenda. Democrats should require all senior government officials in all three branches to sell their portfolios and put their assets in blind trusts or index funds, so that no one has to worry that they’re profiting off the decisions they make in government. They should bar federal employees from participating in prediction markets; that is also just wacky. Every member of Congress has to hold themselves to a high standard and relentlessly focus on ensuring this really simple promise: that when they go to Washington, they’re actually worried about the voters’ needs and not their own financial needs. That is another step. Holding the administration account—holding themselves accountable is another way to end the MAGA situation we’ve been in. So, the last thing is, the last few words I’ll say is about the vision for 2028. And here I want to have some self-analysis, which is—I think a fundamental challenge in the Biden administration was that we had and the president had himself a vision or sort of an analysis of his presidency, and it was really that the previous Trump administration had broken a lot of norms and that we need to really restore things in the country.
So it really was more about restoration than change. And I think this would be a singular mistake going forward. The country is desperate for change. It is desperate for not just fixing what Trump has broken, but ideas to actually address the really dire needs of working-class people, average people in this country. It’s not, again, just to restore what was honestly not working that well but transform to a better country in the future. The way to get out of this cycle of polarization is to address its actual causes, and I believe the cause of MAGA is that so many Americans have lost faith that the American dream still exists. I know it sounds very cliche, but I think it is fundamentally true that people are pessimistic about the future. In 2010, at the height of the Great Recession, about 60% of Americans agree that people like me have a great, like, all of us, have a good chance to improve our standard of living. In 2024, it dropped to 25 percent.
Only a quarter of the American people believe that the American dream is actually alive for them and their families. And you know, I would say pessimism begets fear, and fear begets hate. So as we turn this corner, I think the country is really demanding a vision of a future where people, everyone is succeeding, and that we have real ideas to make people’s lives better. So in 2028, we need to focus on—in 2026, and 2027, and 2028, the next Congress really focus in on how to lower costs. But for 28 and beyond, we need political leaders who can truly tackle how we can just, we can also raise incomes, create more economic mobility, more economic security for the broad middle of this country. And at base, I believe that means campaigning and delivering on a much higher minimum wage, but it also means developing an AI agenda that ensures that the benefits of AI go to all of us and not just a handful of trillionaires that could leave many of us destitute. That is not going to be a world that Americans just silently enter into, and that is, it’s upon all of us to change that. And I think they should also ensure fundamentally that we rewrite this tax code so it’s not so skewed towards the benefits of the ultra-rich in our country, again, the first trillionaire.
That’s just crazy. So I think I’m really optimistic. CAP’s going to have a lot of ideas on these topics over the next couple of years, and—or next couple of months, I should say. And I believe that this is a moment, as I said, for a realignment. So as I close, I just want to say to everyone that I was here in November of 2006. I was living in Washington, D.C., in a different moment 20 years ago, and Democrats did really well in those midterms. They had huge gains in the House and in the Senate. Not as good as last week, but pretty significant gains. Nobody in Washington could have told you, in November of 2006, that in a few short years we would have the first Black president in the country with the largest electoral victory of anyone of the 21st century. So that is a way of saying politics can change very quickly in this country, and I do believe that in the next two years, it is our job to take those voters who just took a leap of faith. People who voted for Trump three times, people who voted never before, and many people who voted many, many different times for Democrats. Take all of those people and put them, assemble them in a very big tent. There’s another piece of really good news of the last week or so. This was one of the ugliest campaigns.
Also, more money spent on attacking trans issues and Sharia law and Muslims and immigrants and every group that has been subject to attack were attacked over and over and over again on every screen in America, but it didn’t work. Didn’t work because people could see their own experience, and if we hold true to those voters who just took a chance on us, and deliver for them, I believe we can end this MAGA nightmare and keep the faith of the American people. Thank you very much. Man, that was longer than I thought. So sorry.
END SPEECH
Mark Schoeff: You covered a lot of ground. Covered a lot of questions I was going to ask, but I’m going to ask. Go ahead. I’ll ask them anyway. Try to put a different twist on them. Thank you for being with us today.
Neera Tanden: Thank you for having me.
Schoeff: Bottom line: Did the Democrats win the election on November 3, or did Republicans lose it?
Tanden: I think it’s both. So I think people, there were voters who were open to Democrats in states like Kansas and Texas, like in these very red states, Mississippi, South Carolina. I’ll just keep saying those states over and over again. I think voters, you know, elections are long-term conversations with the people, with the public, and I think because of Trump’s failures, you know, particularly the tariffs and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and then really the Iran war. A lot of people moved against him, but you know those voters faced a choice that had been for Trump before. They could sit home, they could vote for a Republican, or they could vote for a Democrat. I think the campaigns of hate really were trying to get them scared into voting for Republicans, but I think—so I think they opened up to thinking of the possibility of voting for a Democrat because of Trump’s failures, but they could all have just stayed home. There was persuasion, you know. There was persuasion to get people who voted for Trump two years ago to come out and vote for somebody else, and I think it’s because they had, as I said, a kind of economic populism, a practical economic populism that really focused on ways to deliver. And then they also, honestly, address some of the concerns people have had about Democrats in the past on things like crime and immigration.
Schoeff: And you mentioned both sides of the Democratic Party contributing to the victory. But let’s get a little more specific. Who contributed the most to the big wins last Tuesday? Was it the moderates? Because the new Democrat coalition on Capitol Hill is certainly jumping out there and taking credit, or is it the progressives farther to the left, and even the Democratic Socialists who perhaps lit some electoral fires, or at least enthusiasm—lit some electoral enthusiasm. Who was the first among equals?
Tanden: Well, I mean, when you look at who won the elections, you know, I think it was a lot of sort of, I don’t know what the term is, normie Dems, moderates. But I do want to, I do want to emphasize something here, which is you know Mayor Mamdani has focused really like a laser beam on affordability, as has James Talarico. You know, these are, they’re both people who have talked about—Roy Cooper talked about how the tax system is skewed towards billionaires. I think there was—I think what was interesting about last week is Democrats across the country took a kind of progressive critique of the economy that it’s working for just the rich and well-connected, and they mirrored it with very practical ideas of how to make your life better. You know, how to lower health care costs and how to lower housing costs, how to lower utilities, and that—so I see that as two wings, like a kind of progressive critique married with practical populist ideas, and those are both wings of the party. I mean, if you look at the raw numbers, you see a lot more moderates win, but I don’t want to take away from the role of that critique, that was really very crucial to people, leaders, new leaders in Texas. You know, Gina Hinojosa and James Talarico were fighting the data centers, kind of tooth and nail. So, you know, I think these—you know, I have been guilty myself of perhaps living in these paradigms, but I think it’s important to realize that this was a victory for all wings.
Schoeff: You said near the end of your speech, if I heard it correctly, that there’s something wrong with trillionaires.
Tanden: Yeah.
Schoeff: In other words, so do you think, does the Democratic Party think there ought not be trillionaires?
Tanden: Well, so this is a really important issue. I mean, trillions—trillionaires, that’s a lot of money. I don’t know, like—I don’t really like trillionaires. But let me take the issue of billionaires.
Schoeff: Well, go ahead. OK.
Tanden: You know, I mean, when you talk to like, if you check in with the public, like a lot of the public, you know, even a lot of Democrats think like billionaires can exist, like people who create a lot of value, but they really are angry that billionaires have, you know, are getting tax cuts, and they’re really angry they’re getting tax cuts while we’re cutting health care for working-class people. Like that is like what sense does that make? And then on the other side of it is, I think vast swaths of Americans think it’s wrong that billionaires have a billion times more political power of everybody else. That’s not democracy. So I think it’s both. I think, like, billionaires, you can believe, and and I think it’s OK for billionaires to exist, OK, but I think it’s really I I would agree with those on the left, and pretty much the whole country who believe, you know, we shouldn’t have a tax code where it’s like the tax rates for billionaires are so much lower than the tax rates for waitresses. It’s like, and we, you know, these things are not inevitable. We could actually fix them, and I think this will be a big, robust debate, you know, in the Democratic Party. There was a wealth tax in California proposition, very liberal state. It was voted down, but that doesn’t mean those people don’t believe in higher taxes for the very wealthy. You know these are all consistent ideas, right?
Schoeff: You mentioned the Democratic Party has been rented right now, not purchased by the voters. What do you think has to happen in the first 100 days of the new Congress to close the deal, to make it a purchase? If you had to crystallize it, especially now that you’ve got the voters’ attention, and before the presidential campaigns swing into full, full, full-on mode, what do you have to do?
Tanden: I think it’s crucial that they are relentlessly focused on cost of living, like day after day, first day, second day, third day, first six months. I mean, there’s issues to take on on corruption; I talked about the stock bansBut I would say that I think it’s it’s really important that you know Leader Jeffries, soon-to-be Speaker Jeffries, has discussed undoing SNAP and other things—Medicaid—cuts and the premium tax credits, extending the, going back to extending the premium tax credits. This is real money for people. The premium tax credits are doubling the premium tax credits, the cost of that over the last year or so has meant millions of people have lost their health insurance simply because they can’t afford it.
This is thousands of dollars to people. But I also think we have to think about ways to lower costs for everybody. We are going into an expensive winter. It’s going to be particularly expensive in many parts of the country, particularly in the northern sections of the country. CAP has put forward specific ideas of how to insulate everyone from higher utility costs. I think we need to take up ideas like that. Ensuring that we’re lowering premiums. We put forward ideas on how to address market concentration, hospital concentration that would translate into $1,000 lower premiums for people, which will help everybody. So there are specific ideas that they should take up immediately to undo things. Undoing the tariffs would help a lot of people. I think they have to think about how we are communicating to everyone, particularly working-class people who just voted for us. Not us, Democrats, I should say, that they’re on their side. So it’s specific things to undo what Trump has done, but it’s also broader policies that can help larger and larger swaths of Americans.
Schoeff: But to undo what Trump has done, you’d have to get Trump to agree to sign the bill. So so how do you, how do the Democrats on Capitol Hill pass legislation that actually gets enacted when they have President Trump down at the other end of Pennsylvania saying he’s going to be Mr. Veto.
Tanden: Yeah, so I think this is a really important thing. I do not think that over the two next years, people in America are going to forget that Donald Trump was president, or is president. And I think the last person who’s going to let them to forget that, let them forget that is named Donald Trump, and so like, do I think that Democrats are going to own everything that happens in Washington? No, they won’t. Trump will own things, in particular if he’s vetoing very popular things. I mean, just as a reminder, support for the Iran war is, like, in the high 20s. Support for tariffs is in the low 30s. There are a lot of Republicans who hate the Iran war and hate tariffs, and those are two policies that, you know, there’s a—if you’re a Josh Hawley on Medicaid cuts, what are you going to do?
You said you were against the Medicaid cuts to begin with, and when that comes to you, what are you going to vote for President Trump, or are you going to vote—So I mean, I think there’s a lot of opportunities for big kind of changes here. But if Trump doesn’t pass these things, I think the most important thing Democrats need to do is put up votes that are popular. And if Republicans stand in their way, make the argument relentlessly in the presidential primaries that it’s really just Republicans holding them up, and I’ll just say a quick word about this. In 2007 and 2008, I was on Hillary Clinton’s presidential primary, and back then, it was Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, and they put up votes, they had legislation that actually made it to Bush’s desk, and he vetoed it.
And any time that happened, and it happened quite often, every single person in the Democratic primary would say, “We are just one president away from helping you.” It will set up the debate for why we need to go in this direction versus that direction. So I think we need to be really aggressive. We should—Democrats should try to make deals where they can because we do have to deliver, but we should be unapologetic when we’re standing on the side of working-class people to actually deliver lower costs for people. And you know, if Trump wants to be against them, he can continue that path, and there’ll be worse results for them in 2028.
Schoeff: Trump and his aides are pursuing this unitary executive theory. He’ll still be a unitary executive even with Democratic majorities on the Hill. One way to push back against that is holding hearings and investigating. What’s the right balance between investigating and legislating, and what’s the line between accountability and overreach?
Tanden: Yeah, I think we, I think leaders have to walk and chew gum. I mean, I think this idea that no one voted for, like, accountability is totally false. A lot of people—I mean, a big part of this election, and why a lot of people, like who are pretty moderate to conservative people, voted for Democrats is because they fundamentally believe, after the last year and a half, that no Republican would hold Trump accountable, because no Republican has held Trump accountable in the last year and a half. It was, like, a very logical thing. I think this was a big reason why Susan Collins finally lost, because she didn’t—she, you know, people sort of were like, yeah, not really. You’re not really holding him accountable. You take votes against him when it doesn’t really matter. So I think it’s a crucial element to this, and I guess I would say there are a lot of ways that people connect corruption to costs, and a lot of the best candidates drove that message, particularly in the last few weeks. Like, you know, the Iran war you could argue is a policy issue, but you know when the president just kind of single-handedly goes out to do this, and then the people who are negotiating around this are his son-in-law, who’s taken billions of dollars in his business from the Saudis.
You know, people will build, connect these things between, like, kind of a group of really rich people paying off bribes for policy changes that are hurting them, and, like, you know, I honestly think people think in a world where billionaires are giving political donations to a party and then they come into power and they cut taxes for that party and raise—make people lose health care, they kind of think that’s corrupt too. You know, like it feeds a broader corruption. So I personally think they have to walk and chew gum. They can’t not deliver on lower costs. But the beauty of accountability is that it can happen through your committees while your work is really happening, is focused on bills that’ll help people.
Schoeff: Well, and President Trump is not the only obstacle in the way of getting law bills enacted into law. There’s also the 60-vote threshold in the Senate. So let me get to some questions from audience members. This is from National Press Club member Alan Kotok. Should the Senate Democrats abolish the filibuster?
Tanden: So this is what I’m speaking about when I say all the things people wanted to do before, its not just a moment to do them. I guess from my perspective, I don’t totally understand, like, what the point of ending the filibuster is if Trump is in power. I mean, I think that there should be a robust debate for 28 about the anti-democratic nature of the filibuster and whether—you know no country, no other country has a mechanism like the filibuster. It’s very unique to the United States, and maybe it’s the thing that time has truly gone. We should remember that for the filibuster, Republicans would have passed the SAVE Act, which might have meant a slightly different election. So, you know, I think that’s an important debate to have in the country. I think I would have that debate when you have a Democratic president. We don’t know what will happen in 2028. It would be ironic to get rid of the filibuster, and then leave people very vulnerable in some kind of massive change election in 28. So I think that’s an important debate for the presidential debate, for the presidentials, and perhaps less so right now.
Schoeff: All right. Question from Emily Wilkins, who I introduced earlier. A number of incoming lawmakers have vowed not to back Democratic leader, House leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for leadership. How should Jeffries and Schumer respond, and how should they handle Democratic Socialists of America and progressive—Democratic Socialists of America and progressive lawmakers?
Tanden: Well, I mean, just the dirty little secret here is that they both won such huge majorities that I don’t think either one of them are in jeopardy, and maybe their best response is to just win their races. You know, I mean, Leader Jeffries has a 100-seat majority. The incoming progressive squad or block will be 10 votes of that 100-seat majority. So I think that this is a lot of, like, online discourse, and AOC has come out in favor of Jeffries, so I don’t really see this as a real discussion. I think everyone should have a discussion about the future of the Senate, the future of the House. I would be very surprised if we do not have a Majority Leader Schumer and a Speaker Jeffries, and I will say, I just want to be clear about this.
I told this story last week. You know, in December of 2024, December of 2024, Chuck Schumer invited Scott Colom and his dad to his Brooklyn apartment, and, like, strategized to get him to run. OK, I didn’t know who Scott Colom was. You know, nobody knew who he was. Like, you know, I mean, I think the important element of being a leader of a caucus, you know, is is communicating and other things. But really, crucially, it is to win an election in which you can hold Donald Trump accountable, and that was done last week with a lot of candidates, not 100 percent, but a lot of candidates that Chuck Schumer and Jeffries got to run in the first place. And so should have a robust debate about these things. But in my mind, like I actually think that was a pretty successful demonstration of skill.
Schoeff: Well, another issue that comes up in Democratic schisms, so to speak, especially when it comes to Jeffries and Democratic schisms.
Tanden: What are you talking about? They never exist. We never talk about them.
Schoeff: When it comes to Jeffries and Schumer, there are splits within the Democratic Party, about support for Israel, and opposition to Jeffries and Schumer arises from concerns about their the support that they get from PACs, Israel PACs or PACs that support Israel and so forth. So, Skip, question from a club member, Skip Columnhauser, how important is it to listen to the people who are making those charges against Jeffries and Schumer?
Tanden: You know, I know I sound hopelessly naive here, but I actually think that there’s a growing kind of consensus on some of these issues, you know. I think even Netanyahu said a few weeks ago that, like, they don’t need the United States to give them arms, and I think there’ll be a big—I think there’s a lot of consensus about offensive weapons and making sure that any policy, any weapons the United States sells to other countries follow our own values. And so you know I think there’ll be some rich debate and discussion about these issues.
But I will say you know what’s really interesting to me, like you go into these debates on Democratic primaries, and it’s like, I’m sorry, it’s like like a lot of talk about the war and the war—the Israeli war in Gaza, which is an important issue, and we should not take away from it. But, like, if you go talk to Americans across this country, the war that they were consumed by was the Iran war that they are paying for. So my actual view is these are important debates to have, and we should have them. And the presidential campaigns will have these debates, even you know, like people from all over, Governor Shapiro’s not-for-free aid to Israel, and holding Israel accountable. There’s a, you know I think there’s a convergence, but I find what I find really surprising in these primaries is that there’s so much more of a discussion of what Israel did in Gaza than what our government has been doing in Iran for the last year and a half.
On the first day of this war, our country bombed a school full of children. Our country bombed a full school full of children. I saw very few of those pictures on my social media feed, but that is what has been done in our name, and actually most Americans care a lot more about that. And I just wish in our Democratic primary we talked about both of these things. But what is interesting across the country, you know, in Kansas, in Ohio, in Texas, in Mississippi, everyone, all those campaigns that won, relentlessly focused on the war and ending it, the Iran war.
Schoeff: Another audience question from senior budget reporter at Bloomberg Government Zach Cohen: How hard, how hard of a bargain should Democrats drive on whether to raise the debt ceiling next year?
Tanden: I feel like this is cheating because I said I remember we were walking in here and I was like, oh, I don’t have a good answer on what to do on the debt ceiling, so I feel like this is, like, very unfair to me. But now I’m just gonna wing it. Here’s what I would say: I don’t think anyone should default on the debt, but I think there are a lot of ways in which Democrats could take positions that 70% of the country holds and really use and really talk about that with the debt ceiling. Good example to me is ending the Iran war. It actually adds to our debt to have this war, so, you know, I think that’s something to consider talking about that. But at the end of the day, it is a function of dysfunctional, not functional politics, to make the debt ceiling and threats over, like, ending the American economy and hurting millions and hundreds of millions of people, like subject to, like, political debate. So you know, like, we don’t, we should not be in a world where we are literally threatening to go off a cliff. But a negotiation around it is—like, seems in order.
Schoeff: You you had mentioned, or you’ve mentioned tariffs a couple of times this afternoon, question from Jeehye, Washington bureau chief of JoongAng Ilbo from South Korea. Democrats have identified President Trump’s tariffs on Canada as an early priority for repeal. What about tariffs on other key U.S. allies, particularly South Korea and Japan? Should Democrats seek to roll back those tariffs as well, including tariffs imposed under Section 232, or do you expect those measures to remain in place under a Democratic-controlled Congress?
Tanden: You know, what’s really interesting about what Donald Trump has done to Democrats of many, he’s done many things. But one of—an issue that I find so interesting is that Democrats are more pro-free trade today than they have been in 20 years because they hate what Trump has done. So I think of that as a real opportunity. I think that it’s, I think–you know, I worked in the Biden administration. There are legitimate reasons to use industrial policy and perhaps tariffs in specific industries where we have countries like China dumping to undermine particular manufacturing or other areas. But that is not the same as like the howitzer of doing irrational tariffs. And let’s just be honest: what these tariffs are based on.
These tariffs are based on: Do these countries cower and bend enough to the president? They are not based on—like, they’re not a national emergency. There’s no like—there’s no, like, rationality behind these, and you know the Canadian tariffs seem really crazy to me. So I think we should undo most of the tariffs. That’s my posture. I think we’ve learned some important facts about tariffs. They are that American workers and people pay for them. This thing that they don’t is ridiculous. And you know, like if it were me, on day one, I would just get rid of all tariffs on food. And you know, I’d pass a bill saying no tariffs on food. And if Republicans want to keep the tariffs on food, good for them. And so I’d say for a lot of these tariffs on our allies, they make very little sense. These tariffs, particularly on countries where you know their wages are as high or higher American workers, like, these don’t really make sense. And I think people get that they don’t make sense, and we should end them.
Schoeff: Another question from the audience, also sort of along the lines of the unitary executive: How should Democrats respond to tactics Stephen Miller and Russell Vought use to attempt to continue to govern without Republicans controlling Congress? To extrapolate.
Tanden: Yeah, you mean, like, executive orders.
Schoeff: Yeah, I think what the questioner is asking is, what if they become even more aggressive now that Republicans aren’t in control on the Hill?
Tanden: I mean, what could give you the clue that they might be more aggressive? Stephen Miller, perhaps as chief of staff. Like, I mean, I looked at that on Friday, and I was just really like, oh my god! Like, people, it’s like, is anyone even sharing the news of what happened with Donald Trump is he getting, like, any facts here? Like, I just was—I mean, I guess what I’d say is what we learned on last Tuesday is that actually the greatest level of accountability in the country are voters, and I think the Republican Party learned that if they don’t check the president in any way, shape, or form, they will face the consequences of that.
So I think that it creates an incentive structure for Republicans of all stripes to try to pull them—pull Trump back. But I also say, my experience with humans is that if they tell you to, you know, they tell you they want something, and they ask you to do something, and then you just do the opposite, they tend to get angrier. So I think if you, you know, you get this resounding thrubbing that no one has had in 50 years, and then your your posture is, “Eh, I’m just doubling down on every single thing I did that made you all angry in the first place,” like, people can get angrier. They can decide, you know, to get a worse election in two years. So you know, from a political lens, I would say that would be a very destructive policy for them. But I hope for the country that they choose not to take it.
Schoeff: I’ll combine. We’re going just a bit into extra time, as they say in soccer.
Tanden: Yeah, it’s my fault. I apologize.
Schoeff: But as the official, I have complete control of the clock, just like in soccer.
Tanden: I mean, just to be clear, no one has barred the doors. They could leave, so you have complete control, but…
Schoeff: But we’re wrapping up here.
Audience member: Keep going!
Tanden: Oh my God, I love you.
Schoeff: I’m going to try to combine a couple of audience questions. You had mentioned the Democratic Party hasn’t been bought yet. I suppose that’s a way of saying the brand hasn’t necessarily, the political brand hasn’t necessarily been embraced by the people who’ve made a–who voted, the majority vast majority of people who voted on Tuesday. So what are some of your favorite? Who are some of your favorite incoming Democratic members of Congress? How do you think they won, and how might they change the Democratic brand?
Tanden: Yeah, you know this is such a awesome question, and I talked a lot about senators, so I’ll talk a little bit about House members. And I think a really big theme with the House and the Senate was this idea of service, but not necessarily exclusively political experience, but public service. So you know, I’m super excited by Nancy Lacore, who won South Carolina one, who’s a general. I mean, a woman general in Congress. I feel like that’s gonna be really—I would be scared of her if I were there. It’s likely there’ll be another woman general who beat Lauren Boebert, and you have people like Sam Forstag, who’s—you know, who’s a union leader. I think it’s Bob Harvie is also a union leader.
There’s teachers and prosecutors, and, you know, some traditional politicians too. But I think one of the things that really kind of united in Annie Andrews and in Adam Adam Hamilton was you know, one is like a reverend you know, like he runs the biggest church in Kansas. The other one is a pediatrician. They talked about the ways that they serve people, and a big argument in their races against the Republicans is that those Republicans had lost sight of serving South Carolina or Kansas, and we’re really serving the political needs of the president. And I think this is a really important message to give space to these people. Like there are going to be voters, there are going to be candidates who take you know some votes, or not candidates.
There are going to be incoming members of Congress and senators who take some votes that not every keyboard warrior, like, loves, but we have to give them space to actually represent those people who just took a chance on them. Not everything that we, like, love every moment—of course, I will say this all the time: a big tent is important, but a big tent has tentpoles, and there are some tentpoles in the Democratic Party, like protecting civil rights, not supporting anti-Semitism or Islamophobia or racism or homophobia or any group that’s attacked. But there’s also a pretty big tent, and we demonstrate big-tent politics works, and it also means giving space to candidates sometimes who have to represent their districts and states in ways that we don’t 100% love, but actually is better for them.
Schoeff: Before I ask the final question, let me take a moment to thank the organizers of today’s event: Headliners Committee Chair Jen Judson, past National Press Club President Donna Leinwand Leger, National Press Club Executive Director Didier Saugy, and the entire and the entire club staff, two of whom you’ve met, two of whom you met walking in, no doubt Cecily and Madison. Thank you as well. We also invite you to join us November 19 for our next headliners event with Congressman Don Bacon. We will get his thoughts as he exits Congress, and that will be another engaging conversation, I’m sure. For more information on that and other events, we invite you to look at the Press Club website, press.org. And now, Neera, it’s my honor to present you with the coveted National Press Club mug.
Tanden: I love it! Oh my God, I love it! Thank you.
Schoeff: For our last question, I’m going to go back to something that came in from the audience and combine it with something you and I talked about at lunch. President Trump has done a lot to cause people to lose faith, not just in politics but in the free press. He’s certainly tried to impose a lot of restrictions on the press, and we’ve fought back against him each step of the way here at the National Press Club, joining with other press freedom advocates. What would your advice be for journalists, and particularly for a perhaps future journalist, your son, who is working at his campus newspaper?
Tanden: Yeah, yeah, he doesn’t have a job yet. He’s not actually a journalist until he gets his job.
Schoeff: But his campus newspaper at Loyola.
Tanden: He is deputy editor of his school newspaper at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles.
Schoeff: OK, well, great. I’m a huge advocate of student journalism, and there’s nothing better you can do on campus than work for your campus paper. But anyway, what would your advice be for journalists? What would your advice be for your son who wants to become a journalist?
Tanden: You know, I know the media takes a lot of hits from all sides. I have been known to critique a particular piece here and there myself, but, you know, I would say, and maybe I’ll start with democracy, and then come to your question, and maybe this is a good way to end. Tuesday’s election showed to me that, you know, we aren’t Orban’s Hungary or Putin’s Russia, you know, people did see facts and not like them, and that reality was really important. And it also, you know, I was here in Washington. I came back to CAP in February of 2025, and you know, in March, in April, the president was attacking law firms and universities and the free press, and let’s acknowledge that it was members of all three groups that were caving.
Not just the law firms, not the universities, but we did get some caving from some elements of the media. Over the last year and a half, though, and with some increasing vigor, perhaps as the polls changed, we had a free media that was crucial to voters being able to decide for themselves what reality was, And I think we’re all going to tell our grandchildren what we did, and great grandchildren what we did in this era, because people will look back and believe that this was one of the ugliest periods. Not the ugliest. This is a country that’s had lots of ugly periods, but this has been a very ugly period. But it will be the journalists who told the truth, amongst many others, who will be the heroes of this time. And so, I want to end this speech, end this sit-down, perhaps, with a broad toast to all the journalists who have fearlessly reported at a time where the stakes of lawsuits, threats, terminations have been greater than any in my lifetime. So you’re all nonpartisan, but I think the broad democracy element of last Tuesday was a testament to you as well.
Schoeff: Thanks for being with us. This was a lot of fun.
Tanden: Yeah, it’s great. Thank you.