Swing Vote: Do you wish you could have these ideas and beliefs, and still run as a Democrat?
Kinsey: I was a Democrat for forty years. I left for Ralph Nader in 1996 and 2000. I tried to go back in the Democratic Party because I thought it's the only way we're going to get any change. Alan Grayson, there's a true Democrat for you -- he's talking about the true cost of the war, he's saying no money extra, 'You guys take the military budget we gave you. You don't get an extra 150 billion dollars.' Why not have a Bernie Sanders from Colorado? I could be the Bernie Sanders from Colorado. Why not? Why can't Colorado have an independent representative in the United States Senate? Vermont does and Vermont used to be a rock-ribbed Republican state.
Swing Vote: You just mentioned your admiration for Alan Grayson. Let's say he is defeated this November by a Tea Party backed or far-right Republican. What does it say about the state of the country if a true Democrat can be defeated after just one term?
Kinsey: Well, the Tea Party is nuts. There is as much logic in the Tea Party as there is in a three-year old who wants something and wants the world to be the way they wish it was, rather than the way it really is. When I was growing up, the average CEO made like 15 to 20 times more than the average worker in a corporation. Now it's like 250 to 300 times as much. That's supposedly American capitalism. Well the fact of the matter is American capitalism had to be bailed out in the 1930's and we put in place some protection of unions, so unions could at least keep some sort of balance in the economy between the entrepreneurs and those who are working in their factories. Henry Ford knew it; he had to pay his workers enough to buy his cars. That's not the way people have been thinking -- particularly since Reagan. A free market? Free market means all factors of production should be able to move wherever they can be employed in the efficient ways. That includes labor. You can't be in favor of free trade and then say it's illegal for people to come from Mexico to the United States to work because labor had to be just as free to move as capital is free to move. I'm not in favor of that because labor protections for workers are something that should take place between the borders of the United States. You can't talk free trade without requiring that labor be treated fairly and you can't talk free trade without requiring that goods made outside of the United States be made under the same of environmental protections that U.S. businesses have to function under in order to produce things. The whole free trade thing is kind of phony. Government exists to regulate our activities in such a way that we can be productive and wealthy. Regulation was taken out in the neo-liberal belief of the great god of the free marketplace, which is just totally false.
Swing Vote: If you do lose this November, is there a way you would still consider it a victory?
Kinsey: I want to win. I want enough Colorado voters to realize that we need a whole new frame for the way we understand what America is and what we love about it. Not the frame of taking the land from the Indians and slaughtering three herds of a million buffalos each in order to starve out the Indians, to take the land. Using military force to grow the country. Using military force to take half of Mexico from Mexico. Using military force to take the Philippines. We have framed everything in terms of our wonderful boys sacrificing their lives for freedom -- U.S. interventions all over the world. I grieve for the soldiers who died for those things but I don't honor the policies of the U.S. in terms of it having anything of interest but corporate profits and American power. That's not what I think America should be loved for. I think America should be loved for its commitment to individual rights and individual initiative, racial equality, equality between men and women, the belief in democracy -- those are the things that America is really about and should be about.
