Joe Kennedy could be the Democrats’ best hope. But is that what he wants?

POLITICO's Off Message

POLITICO

News, Daily News, Politics

4.5 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2018

⏱️ 39 minutes

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Summary

Rep. Joe Kennedy III sits down to talk about why Democrats need a big, messy primary in 2020, the reason he thinks Joe Biden would've defeated Trump, his time as Elizabeth Warren's student at Harvard Law, and what it's like to learn about your family members in history class. Last week, Kennedy gave the Democratic response to President Trump's State of the Union speech. The rebuttal heralded Kennedy's arrival in the national conversation at a time when Democrats are desperate to find the right messenger to lead the part into the future. Could that messenger be Kennedy himself? He’s a 37-year-old congressman at a time when the best-known figures in the party have wrinkles and gray hair; he’s started to make a name for himself as a leading liberal voice on health care and other issues; he chairs Congress’s Transgender Equality Task Force; he speaks fluent Spanish from his service with the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic; he met his wife in Elizabeth Warren’s class at Harvard Law. He has the most revered family name in all of Democratic politics. Listen to the full interview now, and visit POLITICO Magazine to read the whole story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Off Message. I'm Isaac Dover. What would it take if someone, say, oh, Joe, we really want you to run for president in 2020, you know, that or whatever, 2024. Is there something that you would feel like, okay, that's that? I don't see that happening. I just don't. You know, I- Someone said to me, the Oprah Winfrey Joe Kennedy ticket. That's that might do it, right? That might do it. Oprah's, if I could sail in
0:22.8	under as Oprah's VP. So Oprah, if you're listening, go for it. Today's guest, Joe Kennedy,
0:30.0	Congressman from Massachusetts, whom I sat down with in his district office last week the afternoon
0:34.8	after he gave the official democratic response to President Trump's
0:38.4	State of the Union.
0:40.3	I was there in person the night of the speech in the auto shop of a technical school in
0:44.0	Fall River at the south end of his district.
0:46.7	In the room, I could see the black Mustang with its hood up that was positioned in the
0:50.4	back of the shot behind his shoulder.
0:52.3	I could not see, though, whatever was going on
0:54.1	with the glare off his lips. He says it was too much chapstick, but as you'll hear, he also has a
0:59.4	pretty clear argument of what it says about anyone who spends a lot of time focusing on that, or making
1:03.9	fun of him for it. Like usual, for speeches like that, they gave the reporters a copy of the prepared
1:08.4	text about 30 minutes before it started.
1:11.5	It was simple.
1:12.6	Five pages.
1:17.2	A pretty well-done version of uplifting, Obama-style unifying rhetoric.
1:26.4	The big promise was that in response to what he called the false choices being offered by President Trump and his administration, Democrats choose both.
1:29.8	Okay, here's the problem. Democrats don't have any idea who to choose to lead the party or what they're even looking for. There's this whole
1:33.9	angsty what's our message debate going on constantly, but the truth is, what was Donald
1:38.5	Trump's message? Make America great again? What does that mean specifically? What was Obama's? Hope? Change? Not exactly a 14-point
1:48.5	plan. So since Joe Kennedy's the messenger that Democrats chose for themselves to go up against Trump
	...

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