I haven’t chosen a definite candidate who I will vote for in the primaries, but heard Tim Ryan interviewed on NPR’s “Here and Now” on the radio yesterday, and he came across well, as does his website, so I decided to share. Please note that his comments on the radio are based on my memory as best I can; I was driving the car at the time, so couldn’t take notes*.
UPDATE: I have now transcribed the interview; if you’d rather read the details than my summary, just skip on down.***
Economic Progressive
This issue is always extremely important for me. He discussed *rump’s jobs “success,” and stated that his success is actually quite limited. That if you talk with average Americans, they are not seeing economic success. That unemployment numbers do not tell the story any more. People are working 2-3 jobs to support their families, so being “employed” is not the same as being “successful” or “living the American dream”. He says he is in touch with the working class in the industrial Midwest (he represents Ohio) and they have seen job losses and fear for the future and need better wages. He noted that we need a lot more better-paying jobs. As someone in touch with the working class, he will promote policies that will help average American families and bring real economic success.
NOTE: He emphasized that he considers everyone — white, black, brown, blue collar, white collar, everyone who earns a paycheck — working class. He does not discriminate. We all need more job security and bigger paychecks.
Qualifications
According to Axios,** Tim was born and raised in Ohio. He first worked as a staffer for an Ohio representative, then was elected as an Ohio state senator, then has been a United States representative for the past 16 years. He has a position on the House Appropriations Committee. For those who want our candidate to be old enough but not too old, he is 45.
Abortion
This is another big issue for me. He said that he was originally anti-abortion, but he really did not understand the issue. He said that NARAL and others did not write him off, but engaged with him. He said that courageous women have stood up and are standing up, telling their stories of why they needed abortions and what it meant to them and their lives since. He said that as a result, he has completely changed his view and he is now 100% pro-choice, and it should always be a decision made by a woman in consultation with her doctor, and politicans should stay out of it. He hopes that the engaging and storytelling will continue.
NOTE: People do sometimes take stances in opposition to ours for what seem to them at the time good and moral reasons, and we can change their minds with truth and enlightenment.
Nancy Pelosi and Impeachment
As far as I am concerned, this does not affect his candidacy either way, but I think it’s interesting given the controversy of the issue here at DKos. He supports Speaker Pelosi’s slow approach! The interviewer pointed out that he challenged Nancy Pelosi for the House Speaker position, but asked that now he supports her? He said emphatically yes. He thinks that hearings need to be held without any apparent foregone conclusion, to determine if there are grounds for impeachment. He said that the only way a President can be removed is with the understanding of the American people, and hearings are needed to bring that understanding. He said that if hearings make it clear that Trump violated the law, if those hearings are televised and evidence against the president presented to the American people repeatedly as it is uncovered at the hearings, then there will be a consensus that the President needs to be removed and then it can be done. But impeachment talk now is premature.
Donations
If you like this rundown of Tim Ryan and would like to see him in the debates, he needs donations! Just $1 will help, he needs 65,000 donors in less than 60 days. Please see his website at Tim Ryan for America I’m going to donate next time I get paid. I’d like to see him talk more about jobs and abortion rights.
MORE NOTES:
*The NPR link is to the podcast in case anyone wants to listen to fact-check me! LOL, when I Googled “here and now,” it first showed me my location and current time!
**The Axios link gives Tim’s stance on a few more issues in shortened form.
And finally, since I can’t have a diary without an aminal:
For Comments: Let’s not debate all the candidates (other than maybe, “he’d be my 3rd choice,” or some such), but just discuss Rep. Ryan. Thanks!
***update: npr transcription by me:
Due to questions in the comments, in which Tim Ryan has apparently said the exact opposite in the past and even today, I started to doubt my own memory, so I transcribed most of the interview. It extends at the link from about 26 minutes to about 36 minutes, and I transcribed from about 26:30 to about 34:30, after which I thought it was repetitive. I took out some interview questions that I think are obvious from context, and some verbal tics. Everything else is here. If the name of the speaker is not at the front of the paragraph, then it’s Rep. Ryan. As it turns out, I remembered what was said pretty well. Enjoy!
Abortion and Changing Hearts
Interviewer: In your home state,Ohio's new law bans abortion around 6 weeks and there's no exception for rape or incest....
Ryan: Well this is abhorrent, I mean many women don't even know they're pregnant until after 6 weeks,so this is a draconian law. From the federal level, we have to continue to try to fund programs around prevention, around Planned Parenthood, making sure that women in these states still have some access to contraception, so that is going to be really important. But we have to start winning elections, we have to start winning races.And I think we turned the tide on this particular issue with what's happening now, a lot of women very courageously telling their stories about why they had an abortion and what it was like and humanizing this, and that starts to shift the public narrative on it.
Interviewer: You once considered yourself “pro-life”. What made you change your mind?
Ryan: I changed my mind when I started meeting women who explained to me exactly what they were going through, and really I began to understand how complicated and complex pregnancies are, and that the government has no business being between the doctor and the woman.
Interviewer: You are Catholic, correct?... Do your beliefs today conflict with your faith?
Ryan: I believe my faith supports my position, because to me being Catholic, to me being Christian, to me following the teachings of Jesus is about being compassionate and open-hearted toward people who you shouldn't be judging. And to me, I don't understand all of the different scenarios that women are under, and nobody does, and so you show compassion.
[Your humble transcriptionist: “Nobody understands”! LOL!]
Interviewer: ….You said that you believe there are people of good conscience on both sides of the abortion argument. Do you think that's still true today with this wave of new restrictive state laws that we have been seeing?
Ryan: I don't think you want to have a blanket view of everybody on every issue. Clearly the people pushing these laws are political in nature, they're very narrow-minded. But I do feel there's a lot of people in the gray area, who maybe have never met anyone who has had an abortion, this isn't something they maybe necessarily think about a lot. But once they hear these stories, they may be persuaded to have a different view, and you don't want to close that down. Just like Planned Parenthood and Cecile Richards and the leaders at NARAL, when I came in to Congress as a pro-life Democrat, they didn't cut me off, they didn't ignore me, they engaged me. And it led to me opening my heart and mind to this issue.
Trade/Tariffs/China
Ryan: Well being tough on China is one thing, being completely erratic with no strategy and dragging businesses and farmers through the mud, using them as pawns in the game, is not the way to beat China. Tariffs are meant to be very targeted for particular reasons, like when China dumps steel on our country and puts people out of work, you have a targeted approach through the World Trade Organization, through the International Trade Commission to remedy that situation.
Interviewer: So you disagree with this tit for tat the president is in with China on the tariffs.
Ryan: Yes, it's destabilizing, I mean it's killing the farmers. I was out in Iowa just this weekend,and they are getting annihilated, the manufacturing around agriculture, the community, the schools, everything is being affected by this. And the bottom line is we're not going to defeat China with tariffs. It's the equivalent of the wall, you know, it's not the right way to do it. You beat China by out-competing them, by dominating the new technologies, wind, solar, electric vehicles,artificial intelligence, additive manufacturing. We should be reinvesting back in the United States and beating them on the economic playing field. He does this because he knows he's going to get in the news cycle and it's a way for him to look tough. I don't want you to look tough, I want you to be tough.
Economy
Ryan: The economy is not strong.All you have to do is go to normal neighborhoods, normal communities,and you will see that the majority of Americans are still struggling.We have blown past the metrics of the unemployment rate actually mattering for most people. I mean, people have 2 or 3 jobs. Yeah, the unemployment rate is low. They're saying there's been a bump in the income, it's 20 bucks a week. People have loans, health care is still a major issue, people are still losing their retirement. We have lost thousands of jobs in my community around General Motors, Ford just laid off thousands of people. I am telling you, this is not working.This is the biggest myth going, is the president saying we have a booming economy. We do not.
Impeachment
We need to continue to have the hearings, and to publicly put Mueller in public in front of the judiciary committee, we need to bring everybody before Congress publicly, on TV, and then see where we go from there. And if it leads to impeachment, then that's where we have to go. But I think it's important for us to educate the American people around this issue.
Nancy Pelosi and Election Strategy
Interviewer: Are you satisfied with the job that Nancy Pelosi is doing so far?
Ryan: I am. I think she understands the strategy here, she is holding the caucus together and I think she is doing a good job. I think she is right on this. I want to continue to go down this road. We need to build public support for anything that is going to happen, and that is only going to happen by very public hearings, until we get all of the facts out, and the American people totally understand that this guy did obstruct justice, it's pretty clear.
My position is... I have always had an enormous amount of respect for her and I have always said that, even through challenging her. I do think that the Democrats have failed to have a real robust message for working class people in places like Ohio, these states that Donald Trump came in and won. That is my concern is that people that I represent, white, black, brown, gay,straight, people who work for a living, take a shower after work,aren't really represented in today's politics. You know, the issue of competing with China and wages and everything else, we have to talk with people about those issues or they are not going to vote for us and there is a chance that Donald Trump could win again. So that was my concern, is that our party has become very, very coastal, and very, very focused on issues that are not resonating with working class people in the United States.