Thread by @daveweigel

I’m in Vegas for the SEIU/CAP forum, which organizers want candidates to use for *specific* executive actions presidents can take to expand the labor movement.

"Many people here today want to join a union, but you can’t,” SEIU’s Mary Kay Henry says at start.

Kamala Harris's first big idea here: "Banning right-to-work laws." Also says she'd "use her executive authority to make sure barriers are not in place to do the advocacy they need to do."

Sanders has previously called for banning right-to-work, which could not pass a GOP Senate.

Harris on somewhat firmer footing when talking about economic stress -- which she uses to talk about her LIFT Act tax cut.

Harris gets up from the seat where she had been sitting across from @greenhousenyt, and the crowd gets a little more responsive. "You know how expensive it is to replace tires on a car?" Lots of "YES!" in the room.

Twice, Harris has said she wants to repeal the entire 2017 bill. But @greenhousenyt's Q was about whether she'd want to legislatively limit corporate stock buybacks -- she hasn't really answered. (There is a robust debate on the left about banning those buybacks.)

First audience Q is what Harris would do to allow McDonalds workers to organize. After some boilerplate, she suggests she'd call the company's CEO to push them to the bargaining table -- which is a version of what SEIU wants.

Harris, asked about labor classification of rideshare drivers: "We need to support the right of people to strike, support the right of people to collectively bargain, and I would."

Can't read @greenhousenyt's poker face, but Harris's time onstage here will not combat the idea that she is running on big broad inspiration and not getting specific enough.

Klobuchar getting into a stemwinder about passing the public option, and @greenhousenyt stops her to take another audience Q. "Hopefully you ask about pharma, because I've got a good story."

The Q ends up being about TPS, but Klobuchar is ready with an immigration reform answer.

Another specific Q: Would Klobuchar allow workers to organize with other unions if they were blocked from organizing by their employer? She says yes.

It's not a specific issue, but both Klobuchar and O'Rourke have emphasized that they stumped in rural communities and listened to voters.

But both Klobuchar and O'Rourke ran behind Obama 2012 in some red rural counties, even while beating his MN/TX margin from that year.

O'Rourke gets a student debt question and reiterates that he wants student debt wiped "if you're doing public service." He takes the answer into a condemnation of money being wasted on wars; move that to make college cheaper.

O'Rourke tells audience that he met with Harry Reid before he got to forum, talked about the passage of the ACA. It's a way for O'Rourke to explain why he supports the Medicare for America Act -- implication, that it can pass, unlike some ideas.

Julian Castro, like many of the candidates onstage, refers to what workers have suffered over "the last 40 years." Again, a big difference with Biden's launch: Every other Dem presumes that the last two Dems presided over some setbacks, and Trump could not have won otherwise.

Castro tells audience that his campaign staff is "about to unionize" and he's paying "even our interns" a $15 minimum wage.

Castro had announced his intention to recognize a union before Sanders did, but the Sanders campaign organized first.

A rare mention, at this forum, of the Obama admin: Castro notes that it cut homelessness among veterans by nearly 50 percent over six years.

Castro, who has not really gotten much attention since his launch, is really clicking with this crowd -- plenty of Latinx workers in it. Lots of anecdotes from his San Antonio work, and about executive actions a POTUS could take to grow the green energy industry.

"Companies are cutting corners in classifying employees as contractors -- it's creating a whole generation of people who don't have health insurance."

Hickenlooper's intro is all about the minimum wage: "We will take this country to $15 hour. And in cities where the cost of living is higher, we will go above $15 an hour."

Hickenlooper, who emphasizes that he has the most business experience in the field, talks about convincing bosses that a $15 min wage is worth it: "You show that whether it's a restaurant owner or an employee at any level, they will be successful in recognizing an opportunity."

Hickenlooper is, remarkably, the only Dem using a slam-dunk applause line: As POTUS he'd work to reverse the Janus decision. (Doing so means either passing a law or waiting for Thomas to retire or pass away, to replace him with a liberal.)

It's the end of the day and Warren gets the loopiest intro: As "a senator from Massachusetts since 1913" who's a bankruptcy expert but is not personally bankrupt.

Warren closing out the day with some cheers for saying "I've got a plan!" and a simple frame: "We gotta re-write a couple structural rules in our economy."

Warren on the wealth tax: "You made a great fortune -- or inherited it -- but keep in mind, you got it from workers who all of us paid to educate."

Asked about how to rebuild labor, Warren, like Harris, says she wants card check, an aggressive NLRB, and -- an SEIU priority -- an end to a Trump regulation that prevents health aides paid by Medicaid from having union dues taken out of paychecks.

Harris didn't say the last part btw

Warren talking about one of her pre-campaign policy ideas -- putting workers on corporate boards -- imitates a CEO "getting the vapors" over it. "'Oh, my! Oh, my!' My response to that is: Too bad."

Kind of wish every Dem had been asked about McDonald's, but Warren and Harris have both now gotten with the SEIU position of cajoling the company to bargain with workers. "How about we hold McDonald's responsible for what are, in fact, McDonald's employees?"

Warren is not as I-have-a-plan heavy as she was at the start, closing more aspirationally on stuff she'd protect from the GOP. "Democrats have not gotten out and fought enough on Medicaid."

Final Q to Warren is a nice soft one about how she'd overcome big money opposition as candidate/president. "Are you telling me that the billionaires don't want me to be president of the United States? Damn, you just upset my plans!"