YouSaid · the spoken record

Josh Elliot

lines on the record
19
first
2024-08-25
most recent
2024-08-25
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1
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Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “There is this fairly well known idea that you can either be a show horse or you can be a workhorse. And I think that what people want out of politics differs greatly from person to person. I have been and continue to be a very policy-driven person, but to be able to push policy, you are going to be able to do that better from higher vantage points. So there's incentive there to be reaching for those higher positions. I know plenty of people that have gotten elected for a term or two and then retired. I know people that have been there for 40 years and have no interest in moving up from their state reposition. I mean, the variability is wide because the variability in human nature is wide. So it really is just all dependent.”

    2024-08-25 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 94. DNC Special: The Young Buck (Josh Elliot) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “It's really dependent. And of that 24,000, and again, I'll speak to my primary that I just went through, 6,000 are DEMs. So many of them know me personally. So for somebody to run a native campaign against me, a lot of those hits just don't stick because people just know who I am. So I have only run positive races, and in my mind, that's the only race I will ever run. That said, When you are running for president and there's over, what, 350 million people in the US, you have to strike that balance between pointing out the deficiencies of your opposition and pointing out what your strengths are. And I think it's fair to point out that Donald Trump is a convicted felon on multiple accounts and is an extremely poor businessman. And the only work he's done has been able to push his name. And he's done that exceptionally well, but that doesn't translate to running government well.”

    2024-08-25 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 94. DNC Special: The Young Buck (Josh Elliot) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Don't mean anything. It just, I mean, when a Republican calls a Democratic communist, it's just like venting. It's divorced from any real meaning. So it just doesn't mean anything to me.”

    2024-08-25 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 94. DNC Special: The Young Buck (Josh Elliot) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “I think she needs to sort of do both and thread that needle. I don't think it can be one way or the other. I think the left is a big part of the party and I think that without an excited left you can't win as a Democrat. But I also think that you need to appeal to that broad base of moderates who just want consistency and stability. And I think that she certainly can do that. I think she's been doing it already. I think that the honeymoon period at some point will end. I don't think we're there right now, but at some point the press will start getting a little bit more critical and the Republicans will find some way to go after her that maybe starts actually sticking. But as of right now, it seems that we are.”

    2024-08-25 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 94. DNC Special: The Young Buck (Josh Elliot) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “But ensuring that people have an opportunity to enter the middle class, and you have to do that by asking the wealthy to pay their fair share. You can sort of hear my Bernie Sanders coming out. I think that to me is where the party needs to go. That doesn't seem to me like a big lefty or progressive thing. That just seems to be where we were for 40 or 50 years that we've strayed from.”

    2024-08-25 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 94. DNC Special: The Young Buck (Josh Elliot) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “I don't understand it either. I think that it speaks to the anger that many Americans feel. And I think that what the Republican Party has done a really good job of is tapping into that anger and using it for their various pet projects, whether it is eliminating the right to abortion or eliminating gun regulation, or it is giving tax cuts to the wealthy. They are happy to tap into that anger for that reason. And I think that many people get confused that they take that anger and then sort of point it in the wrong direction. So it's easy to point toward liberals or Democrats. But the problem is, as I see it, is that we have sort of missed the boat, at least right now, on really angling ourselves towards the class consciousness issue. And that to me is where we've gone wrong. And that if you really focus on the fundamentals of helping people get good jobs and supporting people and not just couching everything as some sort of giveaway.”

    2024-08-25 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 94. DNC Special: The Young Buck (Josh Elliot) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “There are vocal and passionate people. What I would say is that my primary opponent ran almost exclusively on a ceasefire message and I won my race 82-18. I think that there is a place for moderation here while we look to see if there's ways to divest from Israel to ensure that we aren't funding a far-right government because the government and the people are not necessarily one and the same. And I think that what we're seeing is while there's a rise in anti-Semitism and also a concurrent rise in Islamophobia that again choosing one position one way or the other just seems to feed into the other side's hatred. And that's what I've been really, real about. And I think the vast majority of people that I've talked to, again, because I've been going door to door is that there needs to be some sort of middle ground recognizing that we need to be, again, divesting and pushing Israel to find resolution, but also not just being”

    2024-08-25 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 94. DNC Special: The Young Buck (Josh Elliot) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “So I have been vocal internally that I support a ceasefire, but I'm also of Jewish origin, represent a lot of Jewish people in my constituency, and have been concerned with the phrasing of a lot of the resolutions that I've seen. So I see it as sort of a false position to have to choose one side or the other. I think everybody that I talk to agrees that the killing that we're seeing is awful. At the same time, there needs to be an understanding that there were 1,700 people that died that kicked a lot of this off.”

    2024-08-25 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 94. DNC Special: The Young Buck (Josh Elliot) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Think the split was more energy than anything else. I just know that for myself, because I was in a primary and because I take the work very seriously, I canvass, I knock doors every single day when I have a challenger. So for three months, I was knocking doors, and for the first month and a half, as I was talking with people, especially after the debate, every single person I talked to, as a rule, was saying that Biden had to chop out. They were all saying that he had done an excellent job leading the country, but they did not think that he had what it took, again, speaking with other Democrats to be able to take on Trump. And, you know, there are other side issues like the ceasefire resolution, certainly the Gaza and Israeli conflict, I think, is one such place where maybe the left and the Democrats as a party are sort of maybe not seeing eye to eye right now.”

    2024-08-25 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 94. DNC Special: The Young Buck (Josh Elliot) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “So my mother opened a little grocery store 27 years ago and her and I co-owned that now. So I have the flexibility. I live about five minutes from the store, manage the store, and we have great staff who've been there since we opened. And I am just lucky to be able to do both those things.”

    2024-08-25 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 94. DNC Special: The Young Buck (Josh Elliot) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “February to May, and then you run free election. And being a House member, there's 151 of us. There's 36 of us in the Senate.”

    2024-08-25 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 94. DNC Special: The Young Buck (Josh Elliot) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “It is a part-time legislature. Every state is different, so that's how we do it in Connecticut. When I first got elected, we were paid $28,000 a year, which is in no way livable. We just gave ourselves a raise for the first time in about 18 years to $40,000. Again, not something particularly livable in a state like Connecticut, but a little bit better. I think the idea was with paying less and having to be part-time, you give a wider range of people who are in there. But now it does seem to be a little bit more people who are doctors, attorneys, realtors, people who are retired who are independently wealthy. We've sort of winnowed down the field for who can do this job, which I don't love. I think maybe being full-time or being paid more would be better. We are, like I said, part-time, so the first year you get elected in these two-year terms, you are in from January to June. The idea is that that is a budget year and you are crafting a $26 billion a year budget. In the second year, it is from”

    2024-08-25 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 94. DNC Special: The Young Buck (Josh Elliot) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Yeah. Do you not have a Connecticut I came in as being somebody who had his elbows out and I came in with a chip on my shoulder and I also realized very soon that I would be somebody who would be there for a while. And because I would be there for a while, I wanted to do the job well. To me, doing the job well did not depend on how I was dressed. And so I've passed a number of major pieces of legislation. One of the big things I helped pass was a bill to ensure that telecommunications are free for people who are incarcerated. We went from being the most expensive state in the country to the first state to make these telephone calls free. And in the past eight years, I've now worked my way up to be the speaker's right-hand man. I'm the chair of the screening committee or the steering committee, depending on what chamber you're in. And so I have my fingerprints on every single bill that comes through the house. And I've done it in shorts.”

    2024-08-25 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 94. DNC Special: The Young Buck (Josh Elliot) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “So it was a caucus process. So we have five congressional districts in Connecticut. And in each congressional district, four men and four women would be elected. So first the notice went out and I was interested. I'd never been before. So I talked with a few of my colleagues. I talked with Sarah Locke, our executive director in Connecticut, and I said, how do I do this? So first the suggestion was talk to a woman because it's easier if you work with somebody. So I talked again with one of my colleagues. And then she said, talk to a couple of the chairs. I talked a couple Democratic town committee chairs and it became clear that the process was more about organizing a larger slate of around eight or so people or eight if you can get it and so we did so over the course of a couple weeks organize with a number of folk got a lot of people to come out to the caucuses and then i was voted in”

    2024-08-25 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 94. DNC Special: The Young Buck (Josh Elliot) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Sadly, no. I tell no to a lot of people. I'm here with my girlfriend, and she is also unable to get into the halls of the convention tonight from 5 to 10 or 8 or whatever it is.”

    2024-08-25 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 94. DNC Special: The Young Buck (Josh Elliot) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Here? Not so much. At least not so far as what I've seen. So, this is the first convention I've been to. It went from being what was going to be a fairly, let's just say, I'll say, boring convention, to one that's very exciting and I get requests almost every day from somebody who wants to be here. I was bought in when this was Biden. And for those of us who are bought in, we're the ones who get to be here for something that's remarkable and historic.”

    2024-08-25 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 94. DNC Special: The Young Buck (Josh Elliot) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “I would be considered a fairly progressive Democrat, yes. In my first term, I restarted the Progressive Caucus after about 20 years' worth of dormancy. This cycle, I started the tax equity caucus. I'm fighting for fair taxation. I'm fighting for criminal justice reform. I was a major player and the increase to the minimum wage and the enactment of paid family and medical leave. So yeah, I would say a pretty left individual.”

    2024-08-25 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 94. DNC Special: The Young Buck (Josh Elliot) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “About two towns away. I lived there for a number of years. I left for New York. I lived in Virginia, came back in my early 20s to go to law school, and I went to Quinnip Law. And that is why I am now a representative in Hamden. I moved around the corner from the law school. Politics was nowhere in my sightline. It just happened to me. I got really involved with the Bernie Sanders for president campaign. I did work around the state for about a year as a volunteer. The working families party approached me, asked me if I would primary the sitting speaker of the house from the left. I said yes. He ended up going into early retirement. So it was a proxy fight between labor and the local folk. And I worked hard, got lucky, and here I am. I got elected around 31.”

    2024-08-25 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 94. DNC Special: The Young Buck (Josh Elliot) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “I'm not saying that all my colleagues love it, but I'm saying that I have been in office for eight years. I just won a bruising primary. The general election will be in November, but there's nobody running against me. So unless something that I cannot foresee happens, I will be elected to my fifth term. But yes, I am a more casually styled legislator.”

    2024-08-25 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 94. DNC Special: The Young Buck (Josh Elliot) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source