Senator Markey on the Midterm Elections

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I was honored to sit down with Senator Markey to hear his take on the accomplishments of the Biden Administration and what is at stake in the midterm elections on November 8th.

For more than 40 years, Senator Markey has served the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as a Congressman and U.S. Senator. He has been a national leader and author of some of the most important laws in the areas of energy, the environment, and telecommunications policy. On a bipartisan basis, he has passed more than 500 pieces of legislation into law. He has been a powerful and effective voice for enhancing energy efficiency, transitioning our economy to clean and sustainable energy resources and mitigating the consequences of climate change; bolstering U.S. and global security by staunching nuclear proliferation and promoting arms control; defending human rights; enacting financial reforms to protect consumers and investors against the types of abuses that directly triggered the global recession; ensuring the continued openness of the internet; and advancing the interests of consumers by injecting competitiveness into electric, telecommunications and telephone markets, and protecting the privacy of personal information.

Senator Markey currently serves as Chair of the East Asia, the Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Chair of the Clean Air, Climate and Nuclear Safety Subcommittee of the Environment and Public Committee; as well as a member of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee and the Small Business Committee.

Senator Markey received his B.A. from Boston College and his J.D. from Boston College Law School. He served in the U.S. Army Reserve and two terms in the Massachusetts State House before being elected to Congress.

Connect with Senator Markey

www.markey.senate.gov
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/EdJMarkey
YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/senatormarkey
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/senmarkeymemes
Twitter – https://twitter.com/SenMarkey

For more information on all things Jimmy Tingle

Transcript – Please note, this Transcript is AI Generated. It has not had the discerning ears of a real human to edit it, as such, there are bound to be a few errors

Jimmy Tingle 0:05
Hey everybody, this is Jimmy, welcome back to another episode of the Jimmy tingle show. We have a fantastic guest for you this week. He is barnstorming around the nation, ladies and gentlemen, Poland for the Democratic Party. And for more than 40 years, Senator Ed Markey has been serving the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as a congressman and US senator. He’s been a national leader and author of some of the most important laws in the areas of energy, the environment and telecommunications policy. Listen to this on a bipartisan basis. Okay. This man has helped pass more than 500 pieces of legislation into law. I am honored to welcome our friend and our senator from Massachusetts, the one and only Mr. Ed Markey. Hello, Senator Markey. How are you today?

Senator Markey 0:53
I am so glad to be with you, Jimmy. I love being with you love it.

Jimmy Tingle 0:58
Same here. Same here. We’ve always had a happy occasion. And we’re at a happy occasion today, a few days before the election, and I’m just thrilled that you’re able to squeeze us in. And I know how busy you are. I know you’re barnstorming around New England and Massachusetts and all over the country. Tell us where you’ve been in the last few daysena and who what candidates and what issues you’ve been working on?

Senator Markey 1:20
Well, here in Massachusetts, we have a lot of great candidates. Priscilla Sousa is a Brazilian American young woman who is going to become this next state representative from Framingham. Excellent. And meanwhile, down in Brockton, Rita Mendez is a Brazilian American woman who was about to become a state representative. We’re about to elect two Brazilian American young women to the Massachusetts State Legislature. And that’s what’s really happening here in Massachusetts, and to an amount they’re not the south and west. campaigning, I’ll be up in Lawrence, doing the same thing. And Chelmsford have been in Lynn and Chelsea, have been in Worcester and, and I’ll be out in Chicopee.

Senator Markey 2:15
And Springfield, over the weekend, so I am just doing my absolute best to make sure that Massachusetts, we’re only 2% of America, but we’re not an honorary 2% that we’re gonna, we’re gonna, at a minimum, surpass what we did when McGovern was running in 1972. And try to run the table, Governor, Lieutenant Governor, you know, from, from Mar Healy to Kim Driscoll, she did such a great job, by the way, she’s the mayor of Salem. So if she can manage Halloween in Salem, okay, we manage the state house. And we’ve just got Diana does Oglio and Andrea Campbell, what a diverse set of leaders that are arriving, and so many of them women of color.

Jimmy Tingle 3:04
It’s really something that it’s really something to celebrate. Tell us now, you’ve been with a Biden administration in the last couple of years. Tell us about the accomplishments of the Biden administration, because sometimes it’s getting lost in all the chatter, but tell us what they’ve been able to accomplish in layman’s terms, and what you’re most proud of?

Senator Markey 3:24
Okay, well, number one, they call it the inflation Reduction Act. But if you want to just call it what it was, it was the biggest single clean energy climate bill ever passed by any country in the history of the world. Credit Suisse is saying that the $369 billion

Senator Markey 3:45
in that bill is going to unleash $1.7 trillion worth of of investment in our country. And it’s going to be a revolution in wind and solar, of all electric vehicles, battery storage technologies, it’s going to create, it’s going to create jobs by the millions. It’s going to save people money by the billions and it’s going to unleash investments by the trillions in our society. So that’s huge.

Jimmy Tingle 4:16
That’s when I must be very gratifying for you. You’ve been on board with the environmental causes going back to the 70s

Senator Markey 4:23
Well, it politics is not for sprinters, okay, it’s America. And liberals liberals are usually right but too soon you gotta wait for people to catch up that you know, the, you know, we had President Bush calling algo ozone man like it was a big joke. And I And and so now, the whole world accepts the the reality that the planet is running a fever. There are no emergency rooms for planets, and we have to engage in preventative care and we can do that by unleashing this clean energy of The union job creating revolution. And that was just signed by Joe Biden in August. And it is big. And, you know, I could go on and on, but I’ll just go back to the the legislation that we were able to pass to protect our economy. You know, the, the the bills, it was trillions of dollars, but it made sure that restaurants stayed open. It made sure that other companies didn’t have to close it made sure that universities could stay in existence, it made sure that community colleges could provide the resources that they provide to young people, it made sure the community health centers were able to stay open. And so I’m very proud of that. It’s it almost seems like it’s ancient history, that we were doing that in March of 2021. That was right before the like Peloponnesian Wars. It was just last just last year that we did that, you know,

Jimmy Tingle 6:06
and you know, I have to tell you, it also helped the theaters in the entertainment industry. They there’s 1000s, and 1000s of dollars went into theaters to keep them afloat, with the PPP loans and the shuttered venue, grants that were available to people. So it was a tremendous example of pretty bipartisan as well, initially, getting money out there to two people in this country, it was a tremendous accomplishment.

Senator Markey 6:33
I got I got to vote for Catan g brown Jackson is the first black woman ever on the Supreme Court, I got to vote for a gun safety law that actually passed, miraculously, and it was signed by President Biden, I got to vote for a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, now that we’re going to use to replace the Cape Cod wretches, we’re going to be using it to help have East West Rail in Massachusetts, from Boston out to Springfield, and community if the community will have access to that 1.2 trillion for broadband deployment for water projects. And that’s so that’s so last October. That’s right, in terms of the Biden year, the Biden accomplishments. So part of our job is getting out the message, you know, we had proposed, and we were able to get the legislation that could deal with them.

Jimmy Tingle 7:34
Right. But tell us tell the listeners what’s at stake in this with this election? What’s at stake for the Senate? What’s at stake for the house? If we keep the Senate what does it mean, if we keep the house? What does it mean? And if we lose one or the other? What does it mean?

Senator Markey 7:48
Well, unfortunately, across the country, the Trump election deniers are running very well in state after state. And if they win, which we cannot allow to happen, democracy literally could be at stake we would have in place in state after state elected officials who would be denying the actual counting of the votes that produced a different result than Donald Trump wanted, especially in 2024. If as we expect, he’s going to be announcing once again for President in the next week or so. So there’s so much at stake. And that’s why it’s imperative for people to get out and to vote in Massachusetts, but all across the country in Arizona, in New Hampshire, in Georgia and Pennsylvania, where all of these races are just too close to call. Tim Ryan in Ohio, I mean, there’s just so many races at on the Senate side, especially that a too close to call. There’s probably five of them. But if the Democrats can hold on Maggie Hasson up in New Hampshire, then the Republican ability to be able to thwart democratic principles will be very much more limited than if they win the House and the Senate. Right?

Jimmy Tingle 9:10
Tell me Senator Markey, at this late date, what can people do? I mean, what would you encourage our listeners to do? We have many, many people who are very politically active that listen to this show, and are on our email list. What would you like us to do in the last few days of this election?

Senator Markey 9:27
Well, everyone who is out there can still be an MVP that is asked for more volunteer packets and VP, and does it there’s an election near you, where over these final four days, you can go out there and bring a few doorbells. But you don’t even have to do that in this electronic era, where all you need is a digital skill set and plugging into the local democratic organization, because they’ll have the calls for you. They’ll have the work which you can do sitting right there in your living room. him to be able to enhance the turnout. If you’re sitting in Massachusetts, you can be calling in to Georgia to try to ensure that there’s a get out the vote, you can be calling into New Hampshire, you can be calling into Arizona. And if you’re living in California, you can be calling into the same states. So my recommendation is because we have this ability now to be able to work digitally, that no one has an excuse for why they cannot participate in this electoral sprint between now and Tuesday night at eight o’clock.

Jimmy Tingle 10:35
All right. Well, Senator Markey, you know, I’m on Michael Moore’s email list as well. And Michael Moore, which is completely against the grain of the pundits, he’s saying, He’s predicting, and I want to see what happens, he’s predicting a huge democratic win. He’s predicting that because of the young vote, the young people vote, the student loan, debt relief, right? The climate bill, the infrastructure bill, all of this is hugely important, the whole pro choice dimension to this election that’s on the ballot, it literally on the ballot, Michael Moore is saying that we’re going to have the young people coming out, and the women coming out voter registration is up around the country. And for people not to be despondent and not to say, oh, boy, this is, you know, this was doom and gloom. He’s saying, and I agree with them, at least in spirit, let’s get out there and not give up and realize this is our election. If we do the right thing, and everybody does their job, as Bill Belichick says, if you do your job, we’re gonna win.

Senator Markey 11:39
Well, I’m living proof. When I ran the first time, I won by 120 votes. Now, if on Friday night, I got discouraged, I wouldn’t have rung the doorbells on Saturday, and Sunday and Monday, and I wouldn’t be sitting here right now. So the only the Paranoid Survive in politics, you know, oh, my God, what happens if I don’t do the work? And so, to the extent to which I’ll give you an example, back in 2020, I had a primary challenger. And I in a lot of experts said, Ed Markey can’t win. And I ran on the green New Deal, I ran with Alexandria Ocasio Cortes endorsing me. And here’s the crazy statistic. We doubled the turnout of any historical turnout for 18 to 34 year olds in Massachusetts history, we doubled the vote. Because as you’re saying they cared about climate change. They cared about social justice. They cared about the kinds of threats that the Republicans were posing in our country. So I agree with Michael Moore. There’s something happening out there in terms of voter turnout. It’s breaking records all across the country right now. And the dog’s decision on abortion, the gun safety issues, the climate change issues, the assault on democracy, which Trump and his supporters are just, you know, implementing day after day. I think our side is motivated. Ordinarily, in the off year, that is the year after a presidential election, the party that one has a lower level of intensity, that’s not happening this year. Odds is skyrocketing. And I’m I agree with Michael, this could be upset Central, all the way across the board. All of the pundits like those who predicted Harry Truman would lose in 1948, will be sitting on the sidelines, getting ready to give their lectures over at the Kennedy School to make sure why the voters who are wrong, knock them out.

Jimmy Tingle 13:56
From your lips to God’s ears. Senator Ed Markey, thank you so much for joining us for taking time out of your busy schedule. You’re really such a trooper on behalf of the people of this state, and just democracy in general, over 500 pieces of legislation that he authored or co authored and helped pass in his 40 years of public service. That’s remarkable. And the idea that you do it in a bipartisan manner largely is huge, and we need more of that. So keep up the great work. Thanks a million for joining us today. And Senator Markey, if people want to find you or learn more about what you’re doing, where can they find you?

Senator Markey 14:32
They can find me dead markey.com

Jimmy Tingle 14:35
ed markey.com. Alrighty, Senator Markey, thank you so much for joining us. Keep the faith. We’ll see you on the campaign trail. I’m getting psyched now to go up to New Hampshire and knock on doors.

Senator Markey 14:45
Yes. This is what Massachusetts people grew up there on Mars in the final weekend and in New Hampshire sync six inches. So many of us are up there ringing doorbells are going up everywhere else. Come on. Come on up.

Jimmy Tingle 14:57
We got to help Maggie Hasson and crisp AP US and everybody else is on the ballot up there. Thanks a million Edie, great to see you.

Senator Markey 15:04
Thank you, Jimmy.

Jimmy Tingle 15:05
Thank you for joining us today. This has been a humor for humanity production. Our mission is your mission humor for humanity. Jimmy tingle.com Thank you

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