Key for Democrats to Win Independents Is Communicating Policies: Rep. Jimmy Panetta

Congressman Jimmy Panetta from California. Congressman Panetta, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, let me tell you. How are you enjoying the convention? This is the fourth day. There's been like a crescendo of energies. How are you feeling the ambience today? And that's exactly it. You're definitely feeling an amount of energy that you really haven't experienced, especially recently. But once we knew that Kamala Harris was our nominee and is going to be the next president of the United States, you can kind of walk on the energy. The best analogy that I've heard is someone basically opened up the windows and this huge amount of fresh air just came in. And it's about it. It's a fresh air, a wind that we're going to be riding all the way through November. You can sense it tonight and you're going to sense it going forward as well. And Congressman, do you feel that wave will also be felt down the ballot in Senate races and Congress races? You're seeing it right now, hands down. In members that I've talked to in those tough purple districts, to be frank, they were worried. And I think you understood that when basically you saw President Joe Biden make the right decision and step down, you not only felt it at the presidential level, you felt it at the congressional level, you felt it at the Senate level. So you're going to see the down ballot races pick up a lot of momentum, especially these next couple of days, what, 70 days, 70, 75 days right now. So we're feeling pretty confident. But look, as they've been saying throughout this convention, and as we know, you can never count your chickens before they're hatched. We cannot take anything for granted. As happy and the momentum that we're going to ride after tonight, we got to make sure we ride it all the way through the finish line. As Coach Wall said, you got to go through the finish line. You got to go through the ticker tape. You got to play all the way till the very end and then some. And that's basically the attitude that I believe Democrats are going to have going into it. We've learned our lesson from 2016, especially now against the ex-president. We got to realize we can't underestimate him. We can't underestimate his voters. So we got to make sure we get our voters out there. We got to make sure we get independents out there. And that's been the theme throughout this convention is do something. Not just vote, but get people signed up to vote. Get people registered. Get them ready to vote. And what's their plan to vote? And that's how we're going to win. Congressman, you mentioned something very critical in this election, independent voters. Tonight, we're going to hear from candidate Harris. What do you expect to hear from her policy-wise that would move the needle for independents? Yeah, I think what you're going to see is a good conversation. Obviously, politically, she's going to hit the political points. But policy-wise, she's going to continue to talk about what's necessary on the domestic front. The earned income tax credit. The child tax credit. Making sure there's affordable housing. And then hopefully she'll talk about foreign policy. And that we're going to continue to support our partners in Ukraine. And make sure that we continue to be the world leader because we want an order in the world. And so I believe basically she's going to hit the right points. Obviously, political. Continue to ride the momentum. But she does have to provide some serious policy points going forward. Not just tonight, but going forward as well. Because I think that's what independent people want to hear. They do want to show that she's tough on the border, which I think she's going to talk about. But then she's also going to talk about the inflation. How people are feeling about the prices. And what steps she has been doing. But what steps we're going to continue to take going forward. So that we can reduce inflation. Even though it's coming down, we've got to make sure people are feeling it at the stores. And so that's what she's tried to hit on with her recent policy speeches. And hopefully she'll be doing this tonight. But what you're going to see is obviously a ride of the political wave. But she's got to start working in the policies that are going to affect people's kitchen table issues. And I think we're going to start talking about that tonight.