He was a beer maker, a restaurant tour, a mayor, a governor, and now he is the senator from Colorado, at least one of the two.
John Hickenlooper, Welcome.
To the program.
Glad to be with you. We just had a.
Wonderful conversation that I wish had been on the radio about about conventions and what is expected to be happening here. And you've spoken at a convention before. How many conventions have you been to?
So I never went to a convention until I had that reckless idea I was going to run for mayor of Denver in two thousand and three, so I did. I obviously went two thousand and four to Boston, and then two thousand and eight when we hosted the Obama convention in Denver, which I mean, this convention has got a lot of excitement. It might even be as much excitement as Obama had. But that was a wild time for the city of Dever.
Well, this election is a wild time for Democrats. I mean it's been I've said multiple times on the show recently. I used to say anything can happen in politics, and then this last.
Summer has happened.
So now it really means anything can happen. Quoted as as talking about the former or the current president, excuse me for more, candidate Joe Biden making a decision. Were you part of that process or were you around that process?
And how what do you know about that? So I wasn't involved in the process. I did make comments that I had known Joe Biden from when I first ran for mayor. He was in the Senate and I met him a couple of times. He gave me some advice when I was thinking about running for governor. He said, I'll come out, I'll help you. I'll come out and campaign for you if that's best. I'll campaign against you if that helps you more. Right. He was his true
Joe Biden's self. My point was when I when I made comments that Joe Biden has always done what he thought was best for the country. Who was never one of these people that talked about me, me me I, I he always put his his country before his ambition, and that we should I kept saying, we should trust him, we should give him time, we should let him make
this decision because he will do what's right. And he you know, if you look at what we got done in twenty one and twenty twenty two with Infrastructure Bill, the Chips plus Science Act, I mean, all those things, the Inflation Reduction Act. We got more investment into the building blocks for a strong economy than we've done in the previous thirty years. And Joe Biden gets a lot of credit for that. So he was going to go
down as a great president. But he was you know, there were so many people, so many of you know, we were getting three thousand calls in those previous three weeks at our call centers and emails around Denver and around all of Colorado, and they were ninety two percent saying that he shouldn't run.
Well, the switch to Kamala Harris as the candidate has certainly energized Democrats. I mean the energy here at the DNC is palpable. I mean, people are excited. And I'm going to be honest the speed with which the party has immediately not just to support Kamala Harris, but enthusiastically support Kamala Harris. So let's be clear about that. This isn't like, oh, this is our candidate.
Now. People are stoked. Yeah, were you surprised by that at all? I was surprised a little bit. But I you know, in my brief campaign for president back in twenty twenty, as I tell my wife Robin, I did get to two percent in the polls.
That's two percent more than I have.
You go, well, you're just getting started. You're just getting started. But I you know, Kamala Harris has a an energy. She's she's just really electric when she's on her game. And you know, when she's one of twenty two candidates running for president twenty twenty, that was not her element, right, It didn't really show her off to her strength.
I was going to ask you about that because that was a big field and she didn't have any support.
So what do you think.
Is it just because people are aware that she's part of the Biden administration and are more aware of her now than they were back then.
That's part of it, for sure. She's the vice president United States and so they're paying more attention. But she's also grown in these last four years. She's traveled all over the world. She's met with the smartest scientists, she's met with the top government leaders from around the world, and she's been in substantive negotiations around all manner of issues.
So she's grown, I think, dramatically as a person, but that energy is still there and hearing her stories of her childhood, I mean, she didn't get any breaks from her family. Her mother was a determined to make sure her kids got an education right. That was the building block of their lives. And obviously Kamal Harris has taken advantage of that in a way that you know, I mean, she's got a really good chance of being the next president of the United States.
I've been asking as many people as I can. I wish I had more policy positions officially to ask about, but she unrolled some economic policy positions last Friday. What are your thoughts on what she's already said.
Yeah, I support this notion that we've got to build the economy for the middle class, where working people for decades have been slipping behind. When you put it in inflation, going back all the way to nineteen eighty, the percentage of this country that is in the middle class has shrunk. And there are a lot of arguments about why that is and how to improve that. But I think what she's talking about, where we're trying to get people back to work in places where you know, manufacturing like the
auto industry places. But you know, Joe Biden made that a commitment that he was going to address manufacturing in America, and we passed those bills. So all of a sudden, we're building infrastructure, We're building bridges and roads, we're building factories, we're back in the chip business. These are the kinds of changes that help the middle class. These are middle class jobs when you have to build stuff, when you're building infrastructure.
That message, I think is one that's going to resonate because people I have noticed a shift in messaging from the Biden campaigns saying look at the numbers, the economies are great, the economy is great. That obviously didn't resonate with the people that you're talking about, people who are paying higher prices at the grocery store. So there definitely has been a shift at this convention in that messaging.
Yeah, and change is slow, but the bottom of everything is And this is when I ran for mayor and Ryan ran for governor. I was the first thing I always talked about was the economy. How do you how can you build an economy that's going to grow and as it grows more people do better. And I think that's the challenge for any state. I mean, even Colorado. We've done great. I mean, I think Governor Poles has done a great job of keeping that tech growth and
yet the same time encouraging advanced manufacturing. We have a lot of aerospace. All that stuff has to kind of reinforce each other. But you got to make sure the working people are participating in that success. And as Colorado has done that, it hasn't happened everywhere in the country.
And I think that's something that Kamala Harris. I mean, when you look at her and hear what she's saying, that's what she's talking about this whole when she talked to the autoworkers and talked about the importance of freedom. Freedom to be able to love who you want, freedom to be able to afford, not to have if you lose your job for three months, you lose your housing, not to be you know, freedom for fear of losing
your housing. All those freedoms are things that come from a more financially secure household or a more financially secure person.
Well, Senator, I am a deficit hawk. I have been a deficit hawk for the last twenty years as a Radio unaware. I've been very disappointed in the Republican Party and the Democratic Party when it comes to spending. Yesterday Governor Jared Polis said, look, we've got to do something about the deficit. I would love it if anyone got
serious about deficit spending in DC. Is that even a conversation that's happening in DC right now or people like me just going to sit out here in panic and wait for the sky to fall.
No. I I had a meeting right before lunch on exactly that and looking at some of the big issues that are affecting that deficit. But you know, taking a hard look at no one side, not the Republican side, not the Democrats side, is going to have the answer. So it's going to be a compromise. No one's going to be happy with the solution. But the first step is to recognize, as you say, we've got a deathit problem is you look at the percentage of GDP. We're over one hundred percent of GDP.
Now, no nation thrives with that kind of skewed GDP to debt ration, and.
It makes us weaker. And it's not just weaker in terms of our money for education or for healthcare, but for the economy, for reinvesting economy, and for our defense. I mean, we need to be investing in infrastructure, and we can't just be borrowing it and say we're going to pay down the road. We need to make those investments, but we have to all chip in together to make sure that happens in a way that we can afford it.
Well, if you want me to come to one of these meetings and do a whole presentation on the fall of the Roman Empire because of hyper inflation, because of overspending, I'd be happy and just put me in coach.
I'm ready, I can do it.
What are you looking forward to tonight from the speakers? We've got Pete Bodhaje Edge, We've got Bill Clinton. Obviously, Tim Walls is going to accept the nomination for Vice president tonight. What are you looking for out of tonight's speeches.
Well, so I haven't gotten a chance to spend time with Tim Walls yet because I wasn't in the house when he was in the House office ever been in the House. And I'm looking forward to seeing firsthand on a real you know, national landscape on a big screen, see what he's about I also, I mean Pete Bodhajedge.
You know, one of the reasons I only got to two percent when I was right for president was he came in and he is so adept at explaining complex issues, especially economic issues, in a way that's you're at the kitchen table accessible accessible, which you know Bill Clinton was very good with that as well. And I can't wait to see Buddha Jedge talking and then here Clinton talking. And obviously Bill Clinton's not, you know, forty five years old or fifty years old anymore, He's not going to
be maybe quite as sharp as he was. But I talked to Clinton a few months ago and he was as sharp as attack. So i'd like to I can't wait to see the two of them, see how they frame the moment.
Oh, that's a good way to look at it. Senator Johnhickenloper, I appreciate your time. I know you got other stuff to do, but thank you so much for stopping by today and talking to my listeners.
No, always pleasure.