What I Heard During a Town Hall in Germany

I think I can speak for many of us, hopefully all of us here, when I say I love America. But I don't live there. I feel like I can't live there right now. I think there's various reasons, but mainly, and this was before Trump that I came, there's things where I feel like the American dream is kind of too narrow and too limited. If I had to name a couple reasons why I feel like I can't go back, it would be affordable healthcare that I have here. I don't need a car. And affordable childcare. Thank you very much, Berlin. But I think these are major issues where, I can't even talk to my American friends because they don't, I kind of want to keep it a secret. I feel so bad that I enjoy these things and these privileges that should not be privileges. And so I really like the tone of what are we for, and I'd love to hear more about your vision and if it can be so bold and so big to include that tent too, to these privileges, making them a reality. Because I think we'd all love to go out and campaign on that. I was talking earlier about, you have no hope of a true political democracy without an economic democracy. If people, as you just said, don't feel as though they have a future in our country, or more importantly, if their children will not have a successful future in this country, then you get some of the outcomes that we have seen over the last 10 years. And that's exactly how people feel about being able to see a doctor or afford a home or not have to work two or three jobs or be able to afford childcare or send their kid to a world-class public school. And I don't know what the education system is like in Berlin, but maybe that's another privilege or advantage that you enjoy. Opponents to all of these very common sense proposals will say, that's socialist or Marxist or communist or whatever epithet they want to throw at the idea. The really interesting thing when we think about it is we are the wealthiest, most powerful country, not just on the planet today, but in the whole history of the world. We do not lack for the resources to accomplish every single one of the things that you just mentioned and that probably anybody else could come up with that I think it's really interesting your framing. We think about them sometimes as privileges. They should just be human rights. You know, my ability to see a doctor when I need to. As a woman, your ability to make your own decisions about your own body and your own future and your own healthcare without the government becoming involved as it is every single day in the state of Texas right now. We don't lack for the resources, we just lack for the political will. And to the gentleman's point earlier about Mamdani style, short, meme-ified, punchy, you can fit it on a bumper sticker lines. I mean, everything that you just said would be able to do that, right? And much of what you've just talked about has been a cornerstone of the American left for as long as there's been American left, at least in the 20th century. Think about, when we're talking about the fight that our party is currently missing, think about where we were at the end of the 1920s in America, when you had the rise of populism across the planet, here in Europe and obviously back home. And there were really two paths we could have taken. There was an authoritarian populism, Charles Lindbergh, America first, the first America first, the American Nazi party, which sold out Madison Square Garden. And then you had a liberal democratic populism embodied in Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who said, you know what? This system is completely broken. I am going to blow it up and establish a new one. Social security, call it communist or socialist, if you wish, this is what the American people want and I'm going to deliver it. And I wear your hatred, he said something like, as a badge of honor. Screw the elites, the corporate interests, the millionaires and the billionaires, I'm going to deliver for the people. What you're just describing is delivering for the people. If you had, we talked about New Mexico earlier, where some of this is happening, Minnesota, where some of this is happening, an American president who would, as Mandela Barnes said in Wisconsin, drive the car like they stole it once they're in the White House and deliver on all these things. And yes, you're going to be called socialist and communist and Republicans are going to say the worst things, but you do your best to listen, to compromise where you need to, but you move forward because you have to. Man, I think the slogans are important, the ideas are essential, delivering on it would transform America. It would be good for you. You come back to this country and live with us. But it would be great for the Democratic Party. That's our brand going forward, right? Are you the brand of these impotent, whining, complaining, we don't like this, this thing is horrible, why can't we have that? You know, you're talking too much about this, you didn't use the right thing on this, or are we the party that gets ---- done? And the things that we get done, you know, measurably improve the lives of the people that we serve. So I love the way that you put it, including the sense of almost embarrassment you feel at enjoying these things when so many of your fellow Americans back home cannot. So let's find a way to get it done. I like that. I'm gonna remember the Berlin platform for our future.