Opinion | Why This Democratic Governor Seems to Be Over Covid | #ukscams | #datingscams | #european

(SINGING) When you walk in the room, do you have sway?

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I’m Kara Swisher, and you’re listening to “Sway.” My guest today is Colorado Governor Jared Polis. He’s been in the headlines for touting Covid-19 vaccines and also for resisting calls for a statewide mask mandate. Here’s his take.

Strong words for a statesman and especially strong words from a Democrat in charge of a very purple state. But in my experience, Polis has always been very tough to pin down. I’ve been following Jared since the dot com bubble back in the 1990s. Back then, he closed a nearly $800 million deal by age 24. He spent some of that money on a run for Colorado’s board of education and then on a run for Congress.

In 2009, at age 33, he became the state’s first openly gay lawmaker to serve in Washington. Almost a decade later, he became the nation’s first openly gay male governor. I wanted to talk to Polis about his transition from tech to politics, his unexpected approach to handling this pandemic, and whether defying labels is the key to his political future.

Governor Polis, welcome to “Sway.”

Kara, it’s a pleasure to see you, and it’s a pleasure to do the show.

Let’s start with the pandemic. And I want to push you on a few things you said. Back in December, as Omicron was surging, you said the emergency is over and that you wouldn’t impose a statewide mask mandate. Let’s hear a clip.

If your top goal was to follow the science, can you explain this why not vaccines and masks?

Sure, well, I mean, mask wearing is a great way to protect yourself. So it’s really a question of what you kind of equip people with and empower people with versus what you require people to do. So at this point, people know how to protect themselves.

It’s a very different situation than early 2020. We have highly effective vaccines. We even have effective therapies, seemingly more coming online every day. People need to be empowered to manage their own risk profile. And it’s totally understandable. Some people like speeding on their motorcycle without a helmet. I don’t do that, and you probably don’t do that. I don’t know— maybe you do.

No.

But that’s within the risk profile. And people can decide kind of how what kind of risk they want to take on in this Covid world.

And what was the calculation to doing this? Because it got a lot of attention. And a lot of people applauded, other people didn’t. What prompted you not to think that mandates were important any longer?

Well, we hadn’t mandated masks for some time. Like in many states that don’t have statewide mask wearing requirements, to be clear, there’s areas of our state that do require it indoors around others. In fact, I live in one— Boulder. They’ve had mask requirements for a while.

But there’s other areas where, again, with their risk profile as articulated through their local elected leaders, they’ve decided that the cost of masks, the cost to human company, the cost in kids’ education in terms of not being able to model speech and facial recognition, it’s not a huge cost, but it’s reasonable that others have made a different assessment. Simply decided, look, for people who want to be protected, they could get vaccinated and, you know, don’t wear a mask. I’m proud of Colorado as being one of the leaders in vaccination, 85 percent adult population. But the few that aren’t that are still at risk for this virus, they’re not the ones saying everybody else should wear a mask.

This patchwork of policies has confused, I think, the general public in general, whether it’s state, whether it’s national, et cetera. How did you get into thinking about how to do this?

I really think that people should be empowered to make their own decisions based on information. I mean, nothing upsets me more than misinformation in the information marketplace. But we do our best putting good information out there. Every day, we talk about how many people are hospitalized, the percentage that are vaccinated versus unvaccinated. And like in most states, we’re at 80 percent or so of the people who are hospitalized are unvaccinated. They come from that 15 percent of the population, similar for deaths.

We encouraged the third vaccine early on, based on the data. Frankly, I was frustrated by the F.D.A. and C.D.C. delays on moving that third vaccine along because we already saw compelling data that it provided a greater degree of protection. And we would have had less fatalities during the Delta wave if we had moved a little quicker with regard to the third vaccine.

It’s easy to blame the unvaccinated or the C.D.C. or the F.D.A. Is there a public health responsibility of citizens, and then, I guess, their elected officials? Did you think about that?

In a democracy? Yeah, that’s a valid question. I think that is best addressed by the layer of government closest to the people. So if there is that will to draw the line in a different place, in a town, in a county, is it appropriate for them to do so within their mandate as local officials? Yes, they can do that. It’s sort of that social contract, Kara. And we are a very big, diverse state. So we have areas that handle this differently. And it’s not that one is right or wrong. When you take out all the screaming voices on all sides, I think most people get that, that let’s just have a reasonable discussion about trade-offs and pros and cons. And I think at this point in the pandemic, these are all reasonable decisions that different jurisdictions are making.

Talk about the screaming voices because we just did an interview with Emily Oster and Ashish Jha of Brown University. And boy, did I get a lot of screaming voices on all sides. It was fascinating. People either were very much, “you aren’t taking it seriously enough.” Emily Oster had pushed for school openings rather early— attacked for that. I’d never seen such a thing.

Well, that’s good for the media, right? And so the media will naturally gravitate to the voices that are louder and more interesting and more strident in many cases. I don’t think that’s where most Americans are, on either extreme. I don’t think most Americans are saying, mask everybody up. You got to force them. Line them up. Be China. I don’t think there’s, you know, too many that are saying, no one should ever wear a mask anywhere. How dare you wear a mask? That oppresses my freedom.

Are there a few in both camps? There are. And I get it. They get outsized attention because they’re interesting and they’re strident. I think most people understand and have a basic understanding of the risks that this virus presents to them, the steps they need to take to reduce those risks.

Some are taking them, and others are saying you know, I haven’t been able to date or go to nightclubs for a year and a half. And I want to go out and have fun. And if I get a little sick, I get a little sick. I’ve been vaccinated, I’m protected. That’s my choice, and that’s a reasonable decision for them to make. So we try to respect all those choices. And I think— the term is overused, but I truly feel it’s the silent majority, that that’s where they fall.

One of the things you said is essentially that the unvaccinated suffer at their own peril, which you just mentioned. I think you said that it’s their own damn fault, essentially. How do you think about the unvaccinated versus the vaccinated people who are getting breakthrough infections, which you just talked about? And then it also affects people who have to scramble when their staffs call in sick.

Well, I think like anybody, many of Coloradans and Americans have family members that are in that category. And it’s sad. It’s frustrating. I feel that for everybody who risks unnecessary loss because of a decision that they’ve made. And we try to engage with folks who haven’t yet been vaccinated every way we can, encouraging their doctors and caregivers to reach out and explain the benefits, the faith-based community. Many churches have been strongly supportive of making sure their members protect themselves. You know, it’s a very clear-cut decision to get vaccinated. This is not something like the benefit is slightly more than the risk. I mean, it’s many multiples of risk reduction. And you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. So you do your best, and you go to sleep every night knowing that you did your best.

So one of the things that a lot of people in the Democratic Party is that you have to do everything in your power to reduce the transmission of Covid-19. Do you think that’s been a mistake at this point?

Well, you really have to put this in perspective. I don’t think there’s anybody in the Democratic Party— maybe there’s somebody, but certainly not the Democrats as a whole— that supported anything they could to reduce transmission. Look at China. Look at New Zealand. Look at countries that have done that. America never had a zero Covid policy.

So I think Democrats and Republicans might have slightly different parameters they’re operating under. But in the global continuum of response, I think they’re a bit closer than you’ve seen in countries that have had complete long-term shutdowns prolonged for periods of time and forced testing on every person or binding vaccination requirements, many other things you’ve seen. So I, mean in the global perspective, we’re a little bit closer than it might seem.

It’s an interesting comparison to China. This doesn’t work in this country, is essentially what you’re saying.

We don’t have an authoritarian country, nor should we aspire to one. They have levers that a democratic country doesn’t have and shouldn’t have. And China is using them at the expense of the freedom of their own people, and also, by the way, at the expense of their economy.

So are mask mandates authoritarian, do you think?

They’re a choice, right? So as I said, the town I live in requires them in stores, in public places. There’s many areas of Colorado where they don’t. At this point, again, in the pandemic, the emergency phase early on, lack of supplies, lack of ventilators, we’re past that. Now it’s about empowering people to make the right choices and also what the community standards are that reflect the values of each community in terms of those trade-offs of risk and safety.

Do you ever feel yourself pushed and pulled in that regard? Because your state is sort of purple, and there’s some that are much more no mandates, there’s some— I’m guessing Boulder— please, more mandates. One of your strategists told Axios, it’s not left, it’s not right, it’s Polis. I’m not sure what that means.

Yeah, and first of all, these are not traditionally aligned. I don’t think this sort of caution is aligned to left or right. Unfortunately, because of the pre-existing partisan divide in our country, I think it got grafted onto that. But this is not an inherently left or right consideration about the degree that public health orders should dictate one’s behavior in the public sphere.

So one of the things— I’m not sure— you want to use your political capital on this. Is that correct?

Well, you’re always going to upset some people, right? So there are those who say, why aren’t you banning vaccine mandates or banning mask requirements? And there have been some governors that have done that.

Ron DeSantis.

I believe that was the wrong step. I believe of freedom of association. And if some companies want to have vaccine requirements, they’re certainly able to. That’s their decision.

That’s kind of an interesting theory because it’s become very popular. People have been celebrating you for that. You’re running for re-election in 2022. Someone called you Ron DeSantis of the left to me, which I thought was pretty funny. Obviously, the Florida governor’s approach to Covid has paid off for him politically. Are you thinking of this, about your political future?

Yeah, no, I think that all 50 governors— and it mostly has been governors making the call, right, in the face of somewhat erratic national leadership and kind of ceding it to the states early on, and that continues. But I think everybody has really just tried to do the best balance of what’s right for their people.

So it sort of brings back what kind of Democrat are you. Do you identify yourself as a centrist Democrat, like Senator Manchin? You’re definitely getting love from conservative media with your approach. The National Journal called it a winning model for the Democratic Party’s future.

Well, again, I don’t view that as a left or right issue. When I was in Congress for 10 years, I tried to always do what was right. And that meant sometimes aligning with Democrats, sometimes aligning with folks that were skeptical of big government on the right. You said, am I like Joe Manchin? I don’t think so because I had a big altercation with him. He wanted to ban early on Bitcoin and crypto. And he wrote this letter to the, whatever it was, the Comptroller, saying we should ban crypto. I took his letter, and I substituted physical dollar bills in every place that he had put crypto because I said dollars are untraceable. They can be used for criminal transactions. We should ban dollar bills, I basically said, and threw that back at them. So I’m not at all the same kind of Democrat that he is.

Well, where would you put yourself? Speaking on Tucker Carlson’s show, Dana Perino called your approach to mask mandates, for example, fearless. She named you as one of Biden’s possible replacements, should he not run again in 2024. Is that something you think about?

No, definitely not. It’s something I definitely don’t think about and I don’t want to do because I served my time in Washington 10 years. I am so happy to be back in Colorado with the kids. And whether I’m governor for another year or five years, because I have a re-election this year so I’ll either be governor for another year or five years, and then there’s term limits, I will be very happy to return to the private sector. And I’m not a pundit. I don’t know what people call me, but I just try to look at every issue critically. I try to be a creative thinker. I try not to fall into dogma. And I try to base my opinions on data.

Mm-hmm. I don’t know if you remember this, but I used to call you Alex Keaton because you had the briefcase and the suit, and your parents were sort of the, I guess, hippie ads that—

They really were, literally, hippies in the ‘70s.

Yeah, the van.

I mean literally, that’s actually what they were. Anti-war demonstrations and my dad was in S.D.S. at college and all that stuff. And I grew up in that kind of household. I was very business oriented. Loved business— will probably return to it someday, serial entrepreneur.

So you don’t want to run for president. You don’t want to keep going in politics. You’d rather go back to business.

I love the civic sector, love education. I started a charter school and was superintendent of a charter school. I really enjoyed that work. That was kind of social entrepreneurship. It was a lot like being an entrepreneur. I’m 110 percent focused on this job. And if I have the honor of doing it for another four years, Colorado’s great. Come visit. We have world class skiing.

I’ve heard.

World fishing, you name it.

All right, OK. All right, that’s the ad for the state. Don’t need an ad for Colorado.

Californians are moving here every day, Kara, including for the lower taxes—

OK, all right.

—the significantly lower taxes.

Yeah, not Kara Swisher. But OK, I like high taxes.

We’ll be back in a minute. If you like this interview and want to hear others, follow us on your favorite podcast app. You’ll be able to catch up on “Sway” episodes you may have missed, like my conversation with San Francisco Mayor London Breed, and you’ll get new ones delivered directly to you. More with Governor Polis after the break.

All right, Colorado is a purple state. It’s a big mix of red and blue pockets, just like our nation. This means, on one hand, you have you. On the other, you have Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, who allegedly had ties to January 6 rioters. How do you make sense of this constituency? And how does it impact the way you run a state with such a range of politics?

Well, as a statewide governor, you need to be a uniter, not a divider fundamentally. And that means we’ve got to have a Colorado where a conservative Christian rancher can live alongside a non-binary vegan communist, and they can get along. And we can all make Colorado a better place.

So I love that, some very nice talking points. But actually, how do you manage—

It’s harder in practice that it is in theory, but we do our best.

Is the future of Colorado people like you or people like Boebert?

Well, she represents one of our congressional districts. We have six others that might not get as much press as she does, but are very active in the United States Congress and doing great things every day. My successor from the district I live in, Joe Neguse, who’s the first Eritrean-American. He’s first generation American in the United States Congress and first African-American representative from the state of Colorado. He was one of the House impeachment managers on the Trump impeachment.

I mean, we have a lot of other great folks, too. So it’s a diverse state, as you said. Are there people in our state who think and believe as Lauren Boebert does? Absolutely, and other people that think and believe as Joe Manchin or even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Yeah, it’s a diverse state. We got everything represented here. And that’s a good thing.

And yet you don’t cringe at some of the things she says. You just smile and wave?

Well, I strongly disagree with some of them, I’m sure. Obviously, if she did play any role in the January 6 uprising, she should be held accountable. I don’t know for a fact that she did, but I mean, I hope that that’s all investigated. And I don’t want to cast aspersions if she didn’t. But again, we have a lot of folks here. And learning how to get along and learning how to get more out of the sum total of our parts is what we hope to do as a state.

All right, this is all going to matter in the midterms, but also in 2024, given how many Republicans believe the big lie. The numbers are quite amazing when you look at them. We’re seeing ruminations of Trump Republican machine. You’re trying to seduce electors. Your Secretary of State is currently suing a Republican County clerk. What steps are you taking to safeguard elections? Because a lot of it will come down to the states.

We actually do have a very strong electoral system here. And it actually worked. And you cited there was a Mesa County clerk. She’s in line with the pillow guy and a lot of those election deniers. And—

Mike Lindell is the pillow guy.

Yes, exactly. She actually flew with him around for a while and was hiding, but in any event, the Republican County commissioners, our Democratic Secretary of State, Jena Griswold, worked out a plan to have another person administer their elections there. We have Election Day voter registration. We have universal mail-in ballot in Colorado. And we’ve had that since before it was controversial. We just want to make sure that people can exercise their right to vote in a safe and secure way. And we have very little if no fraud. And we make it as easy as possible to cast your ballot.

Are you worried overall on these moves by Republicans, and especially since the Voting Rights bill did not pass?

You know, the Democrats are right on this. There should not be any barriers to you exercising your right to vote. Where Republican viewpoints should be taken into account is if you’re not eligible to vote, there should be a system that prevents you from illegally casting a ballot. And we can and we must do both, right? Of course if you’re not eligible to vote, you shouldn’t be able to vote. It goes without saying. Likewise, if you are able to vote, you shouldn’t have so many requirements where you are deterred or prevented from your own constitutional right to have a say in how you’re governed.

Well, that sounds very lovely as a governor of Colorado that’s working there, but there is this very aggressive attempt to change laws across the country and states. How do you look at that?

Well, if it means less polling places, longer lines, that’s outrageous, right? So again, I mean, there are so many states and so many things going on. So if it means that we get the all-star game because we have great voting rights, I’m all for it. We actually got the all-star game over that, if you recall. They pulled out of Atlanta, and I’m a big baseball fan, so that was thrilling to me.

But it’s about more than baseball. It’s about our fundamental rights in a democracy. So again, I don’t know exactly all the proposals in the different states. But if it means longer lines, less polling places, people being purged from voter rolls, those are all inconsistent with what a democracy should be and what we should aspire to.

Do you think this sort of version in the way you think about it of reasonableness, which sounds very reasonable— we should get along. We should do this. We should listen to this person— is possible today?

Yeah, I mean, on voting rights in particular, again, one area I wish the Democrats would talk about more is we want to prevent people who are not eligible to vote from casting illegal ballots. We also want to make sure there’s laws in place and implementation to prevent people from voting multiple times. Nothing’s easy in politics.

I think the frustrating part right now is that there seems to be more partisanship for the sake of partisanship. And I don’t believe being a member of a party is a bad thing. I’ve been a Democrat my whole life. I’m proud to be a Democrat. But I think when it trumps ideology— pardon the use of the term— when it really becomes about your party rather than even your beliefs, that’s where it becomes a problem.

And how do you solve that?

Well, gosh. I mean, in Colorado, we just do what we can every day on policy. So I mean, we work— I think 95 percent of the bills I signed were supported by both Democrats and Republicans, bipartisan bills. We got a good bipartisan infrastructure package done. And by the way, they did nationally, too. That’s great. Democrats and Republicans came together on roads. I don’t want to, by any means, pretend like somehow, Colorado is some oasis of nonpartisanship—

And good ski slopes.

But we do our best to work together here. And I think as a whole, we’re doing a little bit better than the nation.

So one of the things people blamed— this is something you’re familiar with— is tech, that social media, it’s amplified. Weaponized is something that I’ve talked about. You have a long background here. You did get out early. You had the greeting card company, the online flower delivery— very entrepreneurial. But since then, it’s changed. What do you think about what’s happened in the tech industry in terms of politics? I know when you were in Congress, you were sort of in the forefront of a lot of bills.

Yeah, so two things on that. One is you always have to make sure that the medicine isn’t worse than the disease. And using big government to co-opt big tech, you have to be very careful. I think having an honest discussion about the disease is good. In terms of social media, honestly, what it does is it allows for more of a reflection of who we are, good, bad, and ugly.

And unfortunately, just as there was ugly in people in the 1950s, when politicians prevented schools from being desegregated, there’s ugly now. It’s out there. It’s public. And they have access to the soapbox. But it’s just a reflection of who we are. And we should be better as people. I hope we’re better people. And some of that lies in education. I’m a champion, as you know, of preschool and kindergarten and better investment in schools. But you can’t expect it to fundamentally— you know, anything, any innovation to fundamentally change who we are, good, bad, or other.

So what about regulation? There’s a lot of movement of antitrust. There’s all kinds of bills. You’ve been in that game before. Do you think that regulation’s a problem for tech? Or do you think it’s necessary?

Well, I mean, we don’t live in a world with no regulations, of course. Antitrust is a serious area. I would look at it in terms of, is there monopoly-like practices where— and you might recall this was talked about with Microsoft back in the ‘90s, and now it’s moved on to different kinds of companies. But you look at specific examples and practices. Have they leveraged, for instance, a monopoly in one area for an unfair competitive advantage in another that hurts incumbents or the startup ecosystem or others? So, yeah, I mean, you need to take a good analytical eye on antitrust issues.

I think in terms of the effect on society, it’s a lot harder because we believe very strongly in the value of free speech. I do. I think Republicans and Democrats do. And while companies can make their own policies with regard to free speech, I think we should be very, very reluctant for government to interfere with free speech.

OK, so recently, I had Elizabeth Warren on the show, Senator Warren. And she talked about how tech bazillionaires aren’t paying enough taxes. That’s another sort of area that they’re looking at because these have now become the wealthiest people in the world. You yourself, I think ProPublica reported that you paid zero federal income tax 2013 to 2015. Can you talk about taxes?

Yeah, and you can imagine how frustrating it is to kind of explain when— and you know very well how, when I make my money, some years, I made a lot of money. If I had a gain, I paid a tax. Other years, I lost money. I wish I didn’t, but I didn’t make money those years. And so you can’t pay a tax those years. I think one of the practices that should be looked at and has been used by folks like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos is this indefinite deferral of capital gains by essentially borrowing at a very low interest rate against your gain and indefinitely—

Yeah, so you have no income ever.

Yeah, no income ever, right? So I sold my companies, I paid the tax. I’m proud of it. I paid taxes those years. And maybe it should be a few points higher. Whatever it is, it is. But this indefinite deferral, I think it’s a problem. And I don’t know how you— you know, I don’t think it’s hard to address. I think a policy that addresses that would be a good thing because it’s a legitimate issue. It really is—

That people don’t have to have any income, that they can just defer income forever.

That’s correct. And essentially what you do is, and how this works— and you’ve probably explained this to your listeners— is, if you have large gains in a company, rather than sell it and pay a tax, you borrow against your gains at a very low interest rate. And you can just live off of and do whatever you want off of the money that you borrow, which is effectively tax-free money because you never actually recognize the gains. So some form of ensuring that people—

So changing that.

Changing that, whether it’s paying taxes when you somehow get your capital back, whether it’s through a loan or a sale instrument, some way of treating that in a more similar way would be good.

What about the amount of money in politics? Obviously, today, there was some statistic about tech putting a lot of lobbying into it. You’ve been criticized for using your money to get into power. Obviously, this is the law of the land with the Supreme Court and citizens united. But is it something you think a lot about, given you have a lot of money?

I do. I’d love to find better ways to fund campaigns. I mean, it’s actually probably gotten a little bit worse even than it was five or 10 years ago because now, if you look at it, the folks that are rewarded on the campaign finance side are those most strident voices that we talked about earlier. For instance, our own Congresswoman Lauren Boebert does very well in her fundraising. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez does very well in her fundraising. And by the way, I’m not insinuating equivalency between them. I’m just saying that because they have very popular social media followings, they do well on fundraising.

What I would love to find a way to do is just empower the individual. Back when I was in Congress, there was a bill that I sponsored, a campaign finance reform, that would give a refundable tax credit to every American that they could then, you know, if they chose to use it, donate to the campaign of their choice, kind of empowering that silent majority, rather than folks that are just kind of listening to the echo chambers on either side.

Would you say you’re the leader of the silent majority or one of the leaders?

I never thought about myself that way. I’m not usually very silent. I’m pretty outspoken. But I mean, I think we need more civility. I think that we need to not listen just to the screaming, loudest voices. We should try to really focus on common sense and what we can do together. There are many other elected officials in that boat probably on both sides of the aisle— governors, state legislators who have that style.

OK, I want to ask about the crisis you’ve been dealing with other than Covid, the Marshall fire. This is the most destructive fire scene in Colorado. On December 30, over 1,000 homes were destroyed just north of Denver. It used to be there was a fire season in the American West. Now with this kind of winter urban wildfire, it doesn’t feel like the case. It’s now year round. Do you think this was an aberration, or are you preparing for more crises like this?

With the changing climate, first of all, where we were in December, we had, which is unheard of in Colorado, really essentially no snow in the Denver, Boulder area. Usually, it snows in October. So very dry conditions on grasslands near where these homes were. Couple that with the drought, and then we had 105 mile per hour wind gusts. So, yes, we’re seeing a lot more climate-related events in our state and across the whole country. We had the three largest wildfires in the history of our state in 2020.

How do you practically deal with these kind of environmental emergencies? Is there a tech solution? What are you looking at specifically?

So it’s all of the above, right? So last summer, we got authorization to buy a lot of advanced technology, including fire helicopters. California has them, too, for early interdiction. But if you look at this particular fire, 105 mile an hour winds, we were grounded. I mean, there was no technology that we had that we could use. I mean, we were barely able to fight it on the ground.

So technology has its limits. It’s humbling. It’s humbling in the human experience to think that, in fact, despite the greatest technology we have, which absolutely could play a role, when you’re grounded with 105 mile an hour winds, you just have to hope and pray that the weather changes. And that’s where we were left this last December.

So technology is part of it. But it’s also about building for climate resiliency, which means home defense perimeters, community and subdevelopment defense perimeters, better management of forests, and of course, better enforcement. A lot of our fires— this one is under investigation, but our other fires, some of them were human caused, so those practices around fireworks and campfires and those sorts of things, too.

Is this going to be a year-long thing for anyone who governs in a western state?

Yeah, I mean, the fact that we had our most destructive fire in the history of Colorado in December, right? It used to be a fire season— June, July, August, maybe September. It’s absolutely year round. And you see that in California, Colorado, Idaho, Oregon— you name it. And it’s really become an elevated risk no matter where you live.

All right, last question. What’s the most challenging thing governing right now, just in general?

I mean, probably because it’s on my mind and we talked about earlier, but the partisan divide is absolutely frustrating. And of course, nobody loves Covid-19. And I just want to be clear, when you have three or four bad decisions, there’s just no good decision. It’s horrible that the world is swept up in this. This is terrible that people are dying and people are sick. So technology has dealt a blow against it. But technology hasn’t solved for it yet, right, with the vaccines and now the therapies. So I’m hopeful that here in the next few months or year, technology will more fully solve for Covid-19.

And what are the wounds that won’t heal?

Oh, gosh. I mean, I think that we’re in a place where trust in the civic sphere has been even further undermined. It’s going to be very hard to bridge the gap and try to get— we talked about getting the Christian conservative rancher living in harmony with the non-binary vegan socialist and trying to agree that, yes, we’re all Americans. We’re proud to be Americans. And we want to leave our state and our country and our world better off.

All right, Governor Polis, thank you so much.

Thank you.

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“Sway” is a production of New York Times Opinion. It’s produced by Nayeema Raza, Blakeney Schick, Daphne Chen, Caitlin O’Keefe, and Wyatt Orme; edited by Nayeema Raza, with original music by Isaac Jones, mixing by Isaac Jones and Carole Sabouraud, and fact-checking by Kate Sinclair. Special thanks to Shannon Busta, Kristin Lin, and Kristina Samulewski. Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of New York Times Opinion audio.

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