The populist Ohio senator passed on running for president. But he has a few ideas on how to deal with the coronavirus, defeat Trump, and elect Joe Biden in November
during one of several long conversations this past winter and spring. “One of the things about Ted Kennedy was his joy of life, his joy of service. I bring that to my campaigns; I bring that to this job. I don’t think I could’ve brought it to a presidential race, and fundamentally, that more than anything kept me out.”
I wrote the letter, I think, about a week after he disbanded it. The admiral in charge of this office had worked for [George W.] Bush, managing the international combating of malaria. Then he worked for Obama on a global-health-security office, where the function of the office was to surveil countries around the world for epidemics that might evolve into a pandemic.
Should we listen to what the president says in the middle of this pandemic if he’s going to say things that are wrong? There was a line in the op-ed: “For the stay-in-office-at-all-costs representatives and senators, fear is the motivator.” When did staying in office at all costs become the be-all and end-all of one’s existence here?
We knew in my [2018] race we had to get one out of seven Trump voters. We knew it was mostly female Trump voters, and we did. And we did it with progressive populism, not the phony divide populism of Trump. Real populism is never anti-Semitic and never racist and never divisive. It brings people together. You campaign through the eyes of workers, and you govern through the eyes of workers. You do it in an inclusive way.
Whether you punch a clock or swipe a badge or work for tips or are raising kids or taking care of sick parents — [Martin Luther] King said that no job is menial if it pays an adequate wage. And you illustrate that in part by stories. My wife’s mother was a home-care worker. She died at 62. Her dad died at 69. Connie has said that they wore out their bodies so we didn’t have to wear out ours.
My dad always took care of people whether they could pay or not. I remember he had a thing of arrowheads in his office, a display of them. A patient had given them to him because they couldn’t pay. That really did have a socializing effect on me. I heard what they’d say about scabs. I walked picket lines. It was a Republican county overall, but with a strong union presence. I guess that’s where I learned politics more than anything.
Pope Francis said — and my wife hates it when I use this one, but she’s not here, so what the heck? — but Pope Francis exhorted his parish priests to go out and smell like the flock, which has a different connotation, but it really is go out and be among the flock. I think that none of us does that enough. I think I do it more than most, but I don’t do it nearly enough.
Did it surprise you to see Biden have such a good night [on Super Tuesday]? Or were those “Biden is done” narratives wrong?
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