Former Democratic Presidential Candidate on Building Unity Across Party Lines

Jason Palmer, thank you so much for joining us. Hey, thanks for having me on. It's great to have you, Jason. So after the second assassination attempt on former President Trump, we have a bipartisan investigation underway. Both President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have responded by boosting security and extending gestures of unity. However, the political discourse still remains deeply polarized, both campaigns blaming one another for many of the nation's problems. Do you see a path here to get America back on track in sort of uniting around American values to rebuild trust across party lines? Absolutely. I do think when this election is done, we're going to see many more Americans coming together, more bipartisan legislation. In fact, I've co-founded an organization called Together! which is trying to get 18 young people elected to Congress, eight Democrats, eight Republicans, two Independents to join what's called the Problem Solvers Caucus. There already are 60 people in the House from both sides of the aisle who are committed to bringing our country together. And that piece of legislation that you just talked about, you know, extremely bipartisan, saying that there needs to be more Secret Service protection for all major presidential candidates. And Jason, what elements do you think of the Trump and Harris campaigns messaging do you think could be sort of revamped, refocused to address key issues in a more constructive way for the American people? Well, to a certain degree, elections have to be about drawing distinctions with the other side. But, you know, we all remember those times when we get in disagreements ourselves, either with family members or people at work, and you have to not make it personal. It really needs to be about the exact issue or disagreement that you have and not the name calling, demagoguing the other side. And, you know, I've already seen Kamala Harris do this quite a bit, where she's trying to talk about, you know, she will have a Republican in her cabinet. She will work across the aisle to pass that bipartisan immigration bill, for example. And, you know, I do expect that the Trump camp will hear the same things from the electorate and start changing their messaging leading up to the final day of the election. As you can see, the Trump campaign has also put Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat, as part of their steering committee as well. If you could, tell us more about Together's mission, your mission, your organization's mission and how you decide which candidates to endorse across party lines and what are the platform's ultimate goals? Yeah, the ultimate goal is to build this bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus that already existed in the House, but get more young people into it. So when we were looking at candidates to endorse, we looked for five different things. Number one, were they young? The average age of the candidates we're endorsing is 38 years old. Number two, are they willing to join the Problem Solvers Caucus? We actually asked them to sign a pledge saying they'll join the Problem Solvers Caucus. They'll work across the aisle. Number three, they need to have demonstrated leadership experience in their background because leaders know you do have to work together. You achieve much more as a group than you do individually. And so some of them are entrepreneurs, small business people, military leaders. And then the final two criteria are related to that they're actually running against an opponent who is not in favor of bipartisanship. And part of why I ran for president is I think that 80% of Americans in the middle just want our government to work and to actually do collaboratively the things that make America great. Just briefly, that's what I was going to ask you next. I mean, you have kind of a firsthand look. When you run for president, you're running to be president of everybody in the country, not one particular party. What was your biggest takeaway in your campaign? My biggest takeaway in the campaign is that the current primary system really does force candidates to go to the fringes, either to the far left or to the far right. And that's because not enough Americans vote in primaries. And so if there were one or two reforms that I would make to our electoral system, it would be something called open primaries, where actually anyone could vote in those primaries, whether independent, Democrat, Republican. You could vote for someone on any side of the client. That would bring a lot more people from the center into primaries. And the second is called rank choice voting, where you could actually choose number one, I would want this person in office, number two, number three, number four. That's actually been used in multiple states around the country. And I do think these two reforms will make our system much more common sense, more purple, in fact, is the way that I think about it. If you have red and blue together, it makes purple. Jason Palmer, really appreciate your perspective. Thank you. Thanks for having me on.