00:00We were speaking about some Republican colleagues, have you seen any Republican colleagues who
00:06are outwardly supporting Trump but have indicated that they want to work with you to resist
00:11him?
00:12Well, there's two parts to that question, you know, it turns out, I don't know if you
00:21know this, but I'm sort of an old white guy, and so every time we go to and from votes
00:28we all get crowded in an elevator and often I find myself, you know, surrounded by a group
00:33of other old white guys who self-identify as Republicans, and so they start talking
00:40among themselves not realizing, you know, that there's a spy aboard.
00:46And often, you know, there's uncomfortable jokes made about how horrible Trump is.
00:50So among themselves they understand how far off of normal he has pulled their party.
00:56And then when I have individual conversations, you know, often I have a piece of legislation
01:01I'm trying to find a partner for, and I have my staff look around and say, you know, he's
01:06a doctor, maybe he'll get on board with something pro-science or something like that.
01:10And so, you know, I talk to them, and then sometimes it comes up with a positive result.
01:18But it's, right now, they're just so afraid of being primary.
01:24This is the problem.
01:25Donald Trump gets all his power, and that's actually a problem with our system, as well
01:30as the problem with Donald Trump, because it should not be possible for someone like
01:34Donald Trump to have the power he does.
01:37And the good thing, the good thing, is that he has all the power from one thing, which
01:44is the separate Republican partisan primaries.
01:48He gets all his power by threatening Republicans to put a well-funded primary challenger.
01:55And so that, but it's interesting, there are some states that do not have separate partisan
02:00primaries, like California has top two.
02:02Alaska, interestingly, has rank choice.
02:05And they went to rank choice for the simple reason of keeping Sarah Palin out of Congress.
02:11So remember, when they ran their rank choice thing, they, you know, Sarah Palin had a plurality,
02:20and in a normal system, she would be in Congress.
02:23It turns out she was nobody's second choice, and the way that they reallocated the votes
02:28in the rank choice system to include second place, she lost big.
02:33And we got a moderate Democrat, and since then we've gotten a moderate Republican.
02:38And so that this is a powerful force toward the center.
02:41And actually, even in California, where they have a simple top two, where the top two advance
02:46in the Democratic Party, Donald Trump doesn't even try to play in California, because if
02:51he endorses someone in California, that makes them less likely to win, even in the Republican
02:55district.
02:57So there's a motion in Illinois to start going over either to open primaries or to rank choice
03:03primaries.
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