Ami Bera on Why Biden’s Tuesday Was Super for House Democrats [15:07-20:08]

Democrat and how are new Democrats different from, say, blue dog Democrats or congressional progressive caucus Democrats? You know, when there's now 104 of us and we're the largest caucus in the Democratic Party, what a new Democrat is, is we're really problem solvers. We're focused on coming up with pragmatic solutions, you know, we're looking for pro-growth, pro-job agendas and policies, you know, we all as Democrats want to address universal coverage and make sure every American has coverage that they can go, go see a doctor if they get sick, but we're taking an incremental approach that builds off of the Affordable Care Act. You know, we've got policies like auto enrollment, which would get another 10 to 13 million people who qualify for low-cost or no-cost healthcare into the system, but we're not looking for a revolution. We're looking at getting back to an agenda that allows us to govern and move the country forward. And so the new Dem Action Fund is in place to try to help elect and re-elect members who would support policies like that. What exactly does the Action Fund do to support these candidates? You know, the Action Fund will, you know, as candidates, we work with them on making sure they knew how to understand policy, you know, giving them the resources to talk about what take coronavirus and things like that, you know, what are the issues of the day. Now, as members, you know, 32 of the frontline members, better than most fallen roll ones are new Dems. So, we'll help them raise money, we'll give them advice as they put together their campaigns. Yeah, if you look at the D-Triplecy leadership, 11 of the 12 leaders of the D-Triplecy are new Dems. And so there's this real overlap between our leaders, D-Triplecy leaders, and the frontline members. It really is making sure these most vulnerable members get re-elected. And the Action Fund supported a few candidates who had some success on Tuesday. I saw, you know, Wendy Davis and Gina or T's Jones in Texas, they both won their primaries. Those are a couple of top offensive opportunities in November. Yeah, no, and, you know, if you look at one of the California Special Elections, Christy Smith, you know, came out on top of that special election, you know, for the California 25 seats. Overall, it was a pretty good night. What other races are on your radar? Any candidates really stick out, or any races you're closely paying attention to? Yeah, you know, we've got a number of endorsed candidates. You know, we're looking at the Washington 3 race where Carolyn Long is running against Amy Hurr, our Butler, you know, Betsy Durkson-Lonigan and Illinois 13 against Rodney Davis, Dan FT Han and Minnesota 1 against Haggadorn, the open Susan Brooks seat. We've endorsed Christina Hale, mentioned Gina R. T's Jones, you know, the Pennsylvania 10 seat with Eugene DePoswale, Florida 16 seat with Margaret Kid, and then you mentioned Wendy Davis and the Arizona 6 seat with Harold Tipbernini. Some of these are candidates that ran last cycle and came pretty close, and now they're building out pretty strong races, and you know, we're the first caucus to really get out there and endorse candidates. A lot of these are red to blue candidates as well. How does the new Democrat Coalition Action Fund vet candidates and determine whether they are new Democrat material and merit your support? You know, we will ask them about, you know, how they would approach certain policy issue areas like healthcare, prescription drugs, energy policy. They'll go through an interview process with a few of us as well, but then we'll also look at the type of race that they're putting together, what's their plan to win, et cetera. Are they raising the resources necessary to run a competitive campaign? And then, you know, if they're good, ideologic bit with us, we'll go and make that decision to endorse them, and then, you know, we will do what we can to both them raise money for them, but also give them that advice on the policy side as well as the campaign side. And Congressman, you're no stranger to close races in the competitive Sacramento County District, although you won more comfortably in 2018 when seven California Democrats, now in your delegation, flipped competitive districts held by Republicans. Which of your California Democratic freshmen colleagues do flip those seats? Are you races? Which race is there? Are you watching? Which ones do you think will be the most competitive there? You know, I haven't very familiar with those close, cutting edge races where you barely win. I'm glad I'm in a safer spot. You know, when I look at the California Democrats, you know, we know TJ Cox who, you know,