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Howard Dean on Rachel MaddowTranscript:
>> on friday's show, we pulled a full martin luther, finding a door somewhere in the props department and sort of vaguely nailing to that door all the various conservative treaties that have been published in the last year and a half. all the manifestos and candidate pledges and ten-point plans and national agendas that have promoted this year as conservatives try to find what it is they stand for now in their post-bush, post-mccain era. that little bit of maybe should have been rehearsed more theater was meant to show just how many conservative agendas there are out there now, in advance of the national republican party releasing an agenda, an agenda republicans have been promising for months now, but that we still haven't seen.
well, today they finally set a date. this thursday, september 23rd, republicans say they will announce what amounts to their agenda. this year's version of the contract with america. six weeks before the 1994 congressional election, the first midterm election of president clinton's time in office, soon to be speaker of the house, newt gingrich, announced that party's contract with america then. this is supposed to be sort of the same thing this year. except this year, there are two big twists. first republicans this year tried to get their ideas from the internets. they built a website called americaspeakingout.com where they solicited what they described as america's ideas for a republican agenda. flipping through that site today, the single idea that seems to have the most thumbs up votes is "decriminalizing marijuana," legalizing pot. so if the republican legislative agenda for 2011 is really going to be based on what republicans learned on americaspeakingout.com, we can all look forward to would-be speaker john boehner on the cover of " high times" really soon, man. if republicans don't adopt legalizing pot as their legislative agenda -- who thinks they will -- everybody gets to ask why they bothered soliciting american's advice online anyway if they were just going to ignore that advice. but here's the other interesting twist to this big unveiling.
on this thursday, september 23rd, could be a date that is just as important for defining this year's democratic agenda. this thursday, september 23rd, is the day that a lot of health reform goes in to fuller effect. leave it to democrats to make this a complete mystery to 99% of american voters. but six months ago on this show, we told you to mark your calendars for september 23rd. the next day to mark down in your calendar, 90 days after that, is september 23rd. as of september 23rd, it will no longer be legal in this country for insurance companies to deny kids coverage because of a pre-existing condition. as of september 23rd, insurance companies will be prohibited from dropping you when you get sick. no more rescissions. as of september 23rd, insurance companies can no longer impose lifetime limits on your benefits. and if you have children, they can stay on your insurance until the age of 26. all of that will happen in just six months. and that will all happen on the date the republicans choose to unveil their legislative agenda for the midterms. how's that for a scheduling conflict? joining us now is cnbc contributor, former governor of vermont, and former democratic party chairman, dr. howard dean. governor dean, thanks very much for your time.
>> thanks for having me, rachel.
>> so republicans have tried to make health reform into this terrible thing that should be feared and repealed and defunded. isn't this an opportunity for testimonies to run on what health reform really is? i mean, these changes may happen in the law, they may not translate to everybody's lives right away, but they're real concrete changes.
>> they are real changes. and they are good changes. i think that there's a certain amount of education we can do about health care, but by and large, i think we've passed that one by. i think this is really going to be about jobs and the economy, and it's going to be about who's a better steward of the economy, and i think the republicans have got a problem, and i think their president needs to keep reminding the people of this country who got us in the ditch in the first place, as he has more frequently in the last couple of weeks.
>> but you think republicans get to run on how awful health care is with --
>> no.
>> pulling the plug on grandma and all that stuff and democrats shouldn't run on what's good about it?
>> no, they don't get to run on how bad it is, because that will be fine for their base, but they're going to vote for them anyway. average people get that this isn't so bad. republicans know very well that repealing health care is a loser for them. and they don't say it very often. they're trying to change it around to repeal and redo or something like that. their base hates it, but that's their base. that's the tea party people. that's the people who want to tell women what to do and basically become the ayatollahs of america. that's a very small part of the electorate. the big part of the electorate does not want health care repealed. they want it fixed. and it puts the republicans in a bad spot, because their base is so dogmatic and so unwilling to tolerate even from the republicans any difference of opinion.
>> do you see the resurgence of culture war issues on the right? obviously, the economy is the main issue for everybody in the country, but the resurgence of really extreme politics on abortion, a lot of the politics around this don't ask, don't tell issue, the religious freedom issues around muslims and islamophobia, the resurgence of these really hot-button culture war issues, how do you see those playing out in terms of election results?
>> i think it's the last gasp of the right. i think they're incredibly energized. the republicans know that the new generation isn't going to buy any of this. if the republicans succeed in this election, it will be because young people don't vote. but they'll be back in 2012. young people in this country can't stand all this anti-gay bigotry, the anti-immigrant bigotry, the crackpot, obama's a muslim stuff. they don't like all that stuff and they're not going to vote for republicans. you know, the republicans know, the smart ones that are in charge of the party -- some of them are smart in charge of the party. the republicans know that you can't -- you could get to young people by being fiscally conservatism. our kids are more fiscally conservativie ivive than we are, but you can never get to them by attacking their friends. and their friends today are immigrants, gay people, lots of people of different kinds of races, and that's the future of america. so this is really the last gasp of the far right, energy iized by a bad economy.
>> as famously a 50-state strategy guy, when you were democratic party chairman, somebody believed that every republican district should be contested and that every race is at least theoretically winnable, democrats should at least try, what do you think is the key toward getting more democratic voters to actually go vote this year? toward upping democratic enthusiasm?
> well, i do think the president makes all the difference. if he's out there doing what he's doing today, he did a town meeting today, it was very, very good. he -- if he's out there all the time, and he needs to be harry truman. i'll tell you, i have heard more times from people in the street, yeah, you know, if you put the car in "d" it goes forward and if you put the car in "r," it goes backward and you don't want to give the keys to the same people who put us in the ditch. people get that stuff. you don't have to campaign against george bush, but people know who got us in this problem. the president's got to remind people about that and then go on and talk about the positive things he has done and wants to do. and that's the election winner. i've said before on your show, that i don't think we're going to lose either the house or the senate. we simply have better candidates and people are afraid of extremists and they won't vote for them. there'll be some that get elected to the senate, but not many.
>> you stand by your prediction that democrats keep the house and the senate?
>> i do.
>> governor dean, former democratic party chairman, thanks for joining us, gov..
>> thanks for having me on.
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