CNN "State of the Union with Candy Crowley" - Transcript

Interview

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CROWLEY: Joining me here now in Washington, Congressman Chris Van Hollen, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which is a way to say that it's your job to make sure that the House stays majority Democrat.

VAN HOLLEN: Yes, indeed. And I'm very positive and bullish about those prospects.

CROWLEY: Let me play you -- we have a little montage here of some of your candidates and the ads that they're running in their districts. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(UNKNOWN): I don't work for Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid or anyone else.

(UNKNOWN): I like that Jason Altmire's not afraid to stand up to the president.

(UNKNOWN): And Nancy Pelosi.

(UNKNOWN): When President Obama and Nancy Pelosi pressured Chet Edwards, Chet stood up to them and voted no against their trillion- dollar health care bill.

(UNKNOWN): And voted against Nancy Pelosi's energy tax on Hoosier families.

(UNKNOWN): I'm an independent member of Congress. I try to bring people together to make good things happen for our country.

(END VIDEO CLIP) CROWLEY: Now, in that last one, you have a congressman who's a Democrat; an ad in his district showing him next to John Boehner, the Republican leader, saying, look, I voted 80 percent of the time with John Boehner. Is this the sort of way you're going to keep the majority?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, here's the thing, Candy. We're very proud of the fact that we have an ideologically diverse caucus. We have a whole range of different political views.

CROWLEY: But they're talking against the speaker.

VAN HOLLEN: No, what they're doing is talking about their independence on certain issues. There are issues where they stood with the speaker and the president, and there are issues where they opposed the speaker and the president. That's their job. As opposed to on the other side, where you have this ideological purity test, and it's being moved even farther to the right by the Tea Party candidates, which are moving the Republican Party way off to the right.

When Mike Castle, a moderate centrist in Delaware, loses, it sends a message that there's no room for moderates, no room for pragmatists in the Republican Party.

We have a big tent, and we're problem solvers. And that is, I think, what voters are looking for.

CROWLEY: Is that a way of saying you have said to your members, you guys go out and win your district any way you can?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, it's not a matter of saying this to our members. Our members ran their first races by being independent individuals. They share the philosophies of the Democratic Party in terms of making sure that we provide every citizen access to opportunities and the great opportunities this country has to offer. But the fact of the matter is, when they ran the first time as they're running now, they have talked to voters about the issues that are -- they care about and are priorities to the voters in their districts.

CROWLEY: By our count, there are about 30 Democrats out there in swing districts or conservative districts that are running either away from the Democratic record, or saying, you know, distancing themselves from the president and/or Speaker Pelosi. Assuming what you think will come true does, that you hold on to the House, I'm assuming that you wouldn't disagree that it's going to be a little more Republican, and probably the people right now with the best chance of winning and that seem to be holding their own in their districts are those conservative Democrats. Would you agree with that premise?

VAN HOLLEN: I'm not sure that's the case. I think you find a whole range of members who are facing different kind of challenges in their districts. And while you're emphasizing some of the issues where they are separating themselves from the president and the speaker, there are a whole lot of issues where they're very much in support of that agenda. For example, and this goes to the Republican policies as well, the Republicans say they were listening to the American people when they put together this so-called pledge. We find out that it's simply more of the same. One of the most popular items was to end the tax incentives that reward corporations that ship American jobs overseas. Our members are very focused on making it in America, on making sure we keep jobs here in the United States. Republicans totally ignored that aspect of the public, because it didn't fit their agenda. So if you look at a lot of our ads around the country, they're focused on our opposition to privatizing Medicare, which was a Republican budget proposal. They're focused on making sure we protect Social Security against (inaudible) -- but my point is, Candy, yes, there are going to be examples where members are taking a position that's different than the position of the speaker, or of the president. But there are also lots of cases where they're contrasting themselves very clearly to the Republicans and the special interests.

CROWLEY: I guess what I'm saying here is that you are most likely to come back in January to a House that may not be a Republican majority, but that is more conservative than it is right now, at least along the political spectrum. Doesn't this mean that the Democratic Party and the more liberal side of it is going to have to make more compromises? Because you do have a block of conservative Democrats and you're going to have more Republicans.

VAN HOLLEN: Well, if you look at the nature of our caucus today, it is one that results in more compromises because of this broader spectrum.

CROWLEY: Within the caucus. I think people would argue that you actually compromise with Republicans.

VAN HOLLEN: But if you're asking whether if you have a different shaped Congress with the Democrats in the majority, with smaller, smaller majorities, it may well be the case that there are some issues that we would have gotten passed last time that would not be able to pass this time. And I think the president himself has said that we may need to look at, you know, smaller items on certain issues.

But again, I want to emphasize the fact that we are going to continue to focus on making sure we eliminate things like these perverse tax incentives to ship American jobs overseas.

CROWLEY: I want to play you a quick sound bite from the president, who was campaigning in Illinois. Something he said caught our attention.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: So 20 months later, we no longer face the possibility of a second depression. Our economy is growing again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CROWLEY: A strategy memo, Democratic strategy memo went out. Stan Greenberg, pollster, James Carville, Democratic operative, that said stop saying the economy has gotten better. This works against Democrats. It doesn't work for them. In fact, it shoves people into the Republican side. And the go forward-go backward thing doesn't work either. What's your best message?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, our best message is that the Republicans want to take us back to a time when the special interests ran the show. And if you look at their agenda, that's what they're saying. For example, continuing to provide multinational corporations with these tax incentives to ship jobs overseas, saying that we're going to undo the restraints that we finally put on Wall Street when we ended the Bush- Paulsen TARP fund and said we're no longer going to allow Wall Street to run wild at the expense of the American people. They want to turn that around.

And what we're finding now, Candy, is that these special interests are spending millions and millions of dollars of secret money to try and buy a Congress that does their bidding and caters to their special interests, and they won't disclose who's paying for these ads. And I think it's a wake-up call to the American people, because that's what's going on right now. These special interests like the way the economic policies of the Bush administration's worked because they serve special interest agenda very, very well, at the expense of working Americans and taxpayers.

CROWLEY: And quickly, because I'm told we're running out of time here -- in New Jersey, you have a congressman in a county that -- a congressman who's running for re-election. And the charge is, and it's been pretty well documented, that the Democratic Party in the county with Congressman Adler funded and put up a Tea Party candidate in order to split the Republican vote so your congressman could get back in. Is that fair game?

VAN HOLLEN: I'm not -- I'm not familiar with that.

VAN HOLLEN: People should be...

(CROSSTALK)

VAN HOLLEN: No. People should be focused. People should be very focused on their own elections and getting out their messages in these campaigns. And that's what our candidates are doing across the board.

And what is very clear and the reason I'm heartened as we get toward Election Day is people do not want to go back to the same economic policies that created the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression.

Are we satisfied with the pace of the recovery? Of course not. But why would you go back to a set of economic policies that served the big banks, the big oil companies, and the insurance industry at the expense of working Americans? That is not a direction that people want to go.

CROWLEY: Sounds like the populist message is the winning one you're going with. Congressman Chris Van Hollen, thanks so much for being here.

VAN HOLLEN: Candy, thank you.

CROWLEY: Appreciate it.

Up next, we size up the Republicans' chances with Congressman Kevin McCarthy.

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