#1677 Dems Can't Have Their Billionaires and Beat Them Too: The politics of anti-elitism (Transcript)

Air Date 12/17/2024

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JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast. 

Changing the direction of a political party doesn't happen overnight, and it usually takes a major disrupting event to shake it out of its well-worn groove. The loss of a Harris campaign to Trump and the evident desperation people have for a new economics that actually works for people might finally be enough to put Democrats on track to a more full-throated support of progressive economics. 

For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our Top Takes in about 50 minutes today includes The Daily Show, The Majority Report, The Kyle Kulinski Show, The Muckrake Podcast, and Pod Save America. Then in the additional Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more in three sections: Section A. Why Democrats lost; Section B. Time to fight; and Section C. Moving forward.

Jon Stewart On What Went Wrong For Democrats - The Daily Show - Air Date 11-11-24

JON STEWART: There was a method to the Democrats' madness. 

CLIPS: Democracy and freedom are on the ballot. Our democracy is on the [00:01:00] line. We have to protect democracy. We have to work even harder to make sure that we defend our democracy. We don't get to choose when we're asked to defend democracy. We just have to do it. And this is not a drill. 

JON STEWART: Noble words. And I'm glad to say Democrats did protect democracy. Just for the other side. Because when all is said and done, we had a free and fair election, in which the Democrats had been prepared for almost every scenario... but one.. 

CLIPS: The Harris campaign has built probably the most sophisticated, robust, impressive voter protection program in the history of presidential politics. We have millions in the bank ready, lawyers all over the country that are ready. Democrats have been planning on every one of these options for four years. Are Democrats ready? You bet they are. We have county clerks ready to go, secretaries of state ready to go. 

JON STEWART: So it's all lined up. What are we [00:02:00] forgetting, people? What? We got the lawyers, we got the protecting the d-- What do we got? So, uh, Oh, uh, Jimmy, did you bring the voters? Oh, I thought you were bringing the voters. I brought the "Hate has no home here" posters. Nobody brought the voters? Where are the f***ing voters? It turns out the election was stolen. By more people voting for Donald Trump. It's quite a caper. Ocean's 74 Million. So so now, as many on the left fear the future, as they should, many others rue the past. 

CLIPS: Joe Biden should have dropped out earlier. There should have been an open primary. People never got to know Kamala Harris. They spent too little time talking about the economy. Wildly overestimated the power of the abortion issue. Chose the wrong VP. Managed to alienate historic numbers of Latinos. Abandoned the working class. Democrats need a new way to talk about urban America. Do that Joe [00:03:00] Rogan podcast. 

JON STEWART: Trump spoke, Trump spoke to the people. Democrats never once mentioned Arnold Palmer's c---. Never once!

Yet focus group after focus group said, Got anything on Arnold Palmer's c---? If not, can you at least stand there and sway to Ave Maria for like an hour? Can you at least do that? But it's a delight to hear about why it happened, from so many people who were so wrong about what was going to happen. And everyone has their own pet theory.

But there's one theory that a lot of people seem to be coalescing around. 

CLIPS: They were too woke. Insisting that people use the term Latinx. Too far to the left on transgender rights. You have to say they. No, you have to do this. Stop with the virtue signaling. Step away from woke. Focus less on who is woke and more on who is broke. [00:04:00] Social justice issues take a back seat when your son is in the basement vaping and playing video games and can't find a job.

JON STEWART: I feel like that last guy was really venting more about his son. Everybody else had sort of a broader point, but his was just so specific. You really gotta focus on, let's say, a kid in your basement vaping and just jerking off all over the couch, night after night!

But point taken. Everyone's talking about this wokeness theory. From cable news to the op ed section. And sometimes the op ed section being read on cable news. 

MIKA BRZEZINSKI, HOST, MORNING JOE: We want to get to the Maureen Dowd piece. Maureen Dowd's piece for the New York Times entitled Democrats and the Case of Mistaken Identity Politics.

JON STEWART: Ooh! That was Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski discussing a New York Times column by Maureen Dowd on how [00:05:00] to escape the liberal bubble.

I guess I'll just have to get the Times and read it myself unless there's another way to make this less entertaining. 

MIKA BRZEZINSKI, HOST, MORNING JOE: We're going to read the entire piece, but it's worth it.

JON STEWART: About wokeness? I couldn't even stay woke through that whole f ing thing. Why don't you read us the Wordle? 

I only have one problem with the woke theory. I just didn't recall seeing any Democrats running on woke shit. These were the commercials I saw for the Democrats. 

CLIPS: Sherrod Brown is working to fix our border crisis. Mondaire Jones is working to secure our border. Pat Ryan is restoring order at our southern border. I'm Laura Gillen and I'm here at the border of Nassau County. We're 2,000 miles from Mexico, but we're feeling the migrant crisis almost every day.[00:06:00] 

JON STEWART: In Nassau County? By the way, Suffolk County, make my f ing day. You want a piece of our strip malls? You're gonna have to go through Laura Gillen. Those are the Democrats! The Democrats! I gave the police more money than they even wanted! I gave them planes and tanks! I built a moat around the country and filled it with alligators and chlamydia!

They didn't talk about pronouns. They didn't say Latinx. It was the opposite. 

CLIPS: We can't let China steal Wisconsin jobs. Benefits for illegal immigrants? No way. Blocking support for white farmers? I mean, look at me. Standing with law enforcement against defunding the police. I've owned a gun my whole life. Let me be clear. I don't want boys playing girls sports. You all know me. I've never pushed for sex [00:07:00] changes.

JON STEWART: Well, that's just a weird one at the end there. Come on, guys. You know me. He's like George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life. I'm not the guy who wishes sex yet. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm in your shops every day. Every day. Mary, Mary, it's me, George Bailey. I'm not trying to get you to get a sex change. I'm just wishing I was dead.

And don't forget about Kamala Harris. It's not like she was exactly waving around her NPR tote bag. 

KAMALA HARRIS: I have a Glock.

They didn't do the woke thing. They tried. They acted like Republicans for the last four months. They wore camo hats and went to Cheney family reunions. Do you know how dangerous it is to wear a hunting hat around Cheney's? [00:08:00] Do you have any idea? I thought I had one more rip in me. I didn't.

Democrats were mostly running against an identity that was defined for them, based on a couple of months of post-George Floyd, Defund the police, #MeToo Instagram posts from four years ago. What happened was the country felt like government wasn't working for them, and the Democrats in particular were taking their hard-earned money and giving it to people who didn't deserve it as much as them.

So the Democrats got shellacked. I'm sure any robust examination of better policies is very welcome. But I just want to please assure people, this isn't forever. This is the map in 1984 when Ronald Reagan won. That's the map. The only state the Democrats [00:09:00] won was Minnesota. Yeah. Everyone thought that's the end of the Democrats, but eight years later, there was a Democrat back in office. We don't know what's going to happen in four years, at all. The only thing that is certain is this: 

CLIPS: You all know me. I've never pushed for sex changes.

The Democratic Party Is A Rudderless aShip - The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder - Air Date 11-21-24

DAVID DAYEN: Democrats are somewhat well positioned to take back the House at least. The Senate's going to be a much taller order given the map, and the various inadequacies of Senate apportionment and and just the real difficulties that Democrats have in even lightly red states.

 So there's no reason that Democrats could defer this conversation once again and muddle through and win the House in '26 and then come back and have that primary in '28, and do what they do. 

What I would [00:10:00] say is that Democrats have a massive tendency towards conflict aversion. We see that in the inability to have any conversation about the House and Senate leadership right now. Nobody is talking about the fact that Chuck Schumer, who famously said if we lose two blue collar workers in Pennsylvania, then we'll gain two suburban moms and we can do that across the country -- the very strategy that has now locked Democrats out of a majority coalition in the nation. The fact that there is no, outside of random people, no institutional calls for a leadership election there. Same in the House. There is a bias towards not having these hard conversations, not having these discussions. 

And finger pointing and recriminations is not having the discussion, by the way. It's one thing to just say the party should get more progressive, the party should get [00:11:00] more moderate, or we should throw out this part of the tent, or we should throw out this member of the coalition. That's actually not having the discussion. That's just restating their priors. 

The truth is that we had a national swing away from Democrats at every level in every subgroup. Democrats don't get to play the fun game that they play every time they lose an election where they get to just pick one subgroup and blame them. It's their fault, kick them out of the coalition, then we'll be better off. Never works. But Democrats can't do that now. They lost among everybody. They lost more in big cities than they did in small towns. They lost more among subgroups of color than they did among white people.

So like you can't slice and dice on this and try to put the calculation together for a majority.

There is something structurally wrong. And until you actually have the conversation about it, we're just going to be spinning our wheels. 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: [00:12:00] That structurally wrong thing, is it really, is it a policy thing, or is it a communications? I mean, I just remember in 2012, in the wake of the 2012 of Obama winning, that the Republican Party was like, we're doing an autopsy. And I just remember Sean Hannity going, Folks, we've got to be more open to immigrants. And that lasted for three or four months. And then all of a sudden they realized actually, no, we don't. And then they went on a, what is now a 12-year crusade to demonize immigrants, and it worked. It worked. Like to the point where -- 

DAVID DAYEN: They got Democrats to help them. 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: They basically pulled the Democrats into that vortex. I mean, look, Obama deported a tremendous amount of people. Their strategy was supposedly [00:13:00] in service of trying to help DACA and DAPA and get to some type of piece of legislation that would rationalize the whole process, etc, etc. That's poor tactics. Broadly speaking, their strategy was to welcome immigrants, even though in their minds, they're like, the way only way we can legitimately do it is to deport a ton as well.

Aside from that, obviously not working, is it a question of reorientation of the-- part of their communication strategy, frankly was belied by the fact that, they were both like Mark Cubans out there and they're running on an anti-corporate record, like, how do you, it's tough to square that circle, I guess.

DAVID DAYEN: Yeah, that's what I said about internal contradictions. Do you guys get mad when everybody's out there saying, what we need is a liberal Joe Rogan? And you're like, come on, man. We're right here. 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: She should [00:14:00] have probably done just the Rogan that was there because it's a problem. Does it bother me? No, there's no way to have the exact same thing as them on the right. I've been down this road with Air America. Do we need more communication? Without a doubt. Of course. 

But there is a fundamental misunderstanding, it seems to me, within the campaign professionals. Because, you have people who are saying, we mentioned Joe Scarborough saying, we can't be the party of woke and what not. Kamala Harris was so, I think, effective at avoiding any of those conversations. People knew that she was a black woman, and I have no doubt that that accounts for a significant percentage of votes against her.

Like she's not going to say -- she could say the sun is shining at 12 noon, and there's still going to be some skepticism, like [00:15:00] some irrational skepticism of her, whatever, however it is, because there are people who have -- 

DAVID DAYEN: They also had her on tape saying a bunch of stuff in 2019 as part of her presidential race.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: But the fact is, is that their ability to run with that was, at first, stifled by the whole "you're weird" thing. Because she's not running on this. She said it, yes, on tape. And we have Donald Trump saying that he's going to be a dictator on tape. We have Donald Trump saying, I'm going to grab, people's vaginas and I can get away with it on tape.

But the reason why they're able to have a huge portion of their electorate believe that the agenda of the Democrats is to turn everybody transgender, as opposed to we just believe in rights for everybody is because there was no response. And the proper response to them saying that is "You're weird. We're not talking about that. [00:16:00] You're the ones who are talking about that. We don't have a plank that says we're going to impose transgenderism on everybody. You're the ones bringing this up" and they did not -- 

DAVID DAYEN: That was a great messaging strategy that ended about two weeks after they started it and they never put Tim Walz on television.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Exactly. I think in the Clinton loss, there was probably six, seven, "but fors," right? The margins were close enough that if Comey later doesn't come out, maybe she wins. If she campaigns in Michigan, Wisconsin, maybe she wins. There's literally, I think a half dozen of those. 

In this instance, I think there's no one thing why she lost. There were too many things that contributed to it, because the margins were too big. But there were mistakes made that I think are indicative of a fear of confrontation, that they were overtaken by the people who wanted to be seen as bipartisan.

‘BERNIE WAS RIGHT!’: Corporate Democrat ADMITS DEFEAT - The Kyle Kulinski Show - Air Date 11-18-24

KYLE KULINSKI - HOST, THE KYLE KULINSKI SHOW: He was very hostile to the [00:17:00] idea of Bernie Sanders being the future of the Democratic Party, or I should be clear and say Bernie Sanders ideas being the future of the Democratic Party. Because remember, this is the guy who helped run Bill Clinton's campaign in 1992, and he, in some ways, he's the pioneer of the new Democrat strategy, the triangulation, which basically means Democrats agreed to start taking corporate money and be more like Republicans in order to win.

And Bill Clinton did that, and he won. So conventional wisdom for a generation became, oh, Democrats need to run as centrists, as moderates, as still helping out corporate donors while doing tweaks around the edges to help regular people, right? But James Carville appears to have had some semblance of a change of heart watching Kamala Harris go down in flames. Now, some of his take and his criticism I don't really agree with but other parts of it I think are spot on. So, here we go. Look at this. This is quite [00:18:00] an admission. 

JAMES CARVILLE: I think Senator Sanders has some of a point here. And that is, there were things we could have run on harder that, that have affected the minimum wage. It passes everywhere by 70%. I mean, I know that President Biden was for it and Harris is for it, but we didn't put it front and center. What about taxing the incomes over $400,000 and taking that money and putting it in a first time homebuyer's mortgage relief fund? I mean, there were things that Senator Sanders would favor that we could have put more front and center.

You know, there are a lot of things that are just popular that Democrats are for it. They're popular with every kind of Democrat in the country. They also happen to be popular with independents and even some Republicans. And we should run on a popular thing. A popular thing was not continuing the Biden administration. That was clearly not what people wanted. I think he's a great guy, but people didn't want more of that. And that's what we gave them. 

KYLE KULINSKI - HOST, THE KYLE KULINSKI SHOW: Damn. Never did I think he would ever give Bernie credit on anything. But look, his point is undeniable. When you look at these direct ballot initiatives in states all across the country, including in red states, [00:19:00] oftentimes, you have very clear progressive issues pass with like 60% or more of the vote.

And even in red states, that happens a lot. Raise the minimum wage, paid time off actually passed recently in some states in the last election. And, look, I will give him credit for one thing. He was a corporate democrat triangulator, which I hate, but he was also the guy who gave us the, "It's the economy, stupid." Right? And so, there is some semblance deep inside of this man, there is some semblance of an economic populist trying to get out. But I don't think he realizes that there's a little bit of a contradiction there between being a corporate democrat and being a populist. It's hard to marry those two things together.

Like, for example, this is a guy who's vehemently against Medicare for All. He's stated that over and over throughout the years. But, James, the exact same reason you say, "Hey run on raising the minimum wage," is the exact same reason why you should also say "Run on universal health care," right? And the part [00:20:00] that I think he misses and I don't think any corporate democrat will ever get this is you genuinely need a politics of division. You need a politics of enemies You need to portray yourself and your voters as the protagonist in a grand narrative in a grand story where you're taking on the evil doers who are dragging this nation down and for Democrats and liberals and leftists, it has to be the billionaires, the multinational corporations, the big money donors who give so much money to politicians and then politicians represent them and screw over you.

But look, take a dub where we can get one, man. This is a dub right here. This is James Carville, legendary corporate Democrat strategist, who's like, "You know what? You know what? Raising the minimum wage, maybe you should have put that front and center, that seems like a good idea. I think Bernie Sanders is right about some things. I think Bernie's right about some things." But the even more important point, and this is probably Kamala's fatal flaw, was when she literally didn't even try to [00:21:00] distance herself from Biden even a little bit. I mean, that's really, In retrospect, that's the thing that I think everybody agrees on. That, you know, you didn't distance yourself from Biden even a little bit.

You had no answer when asked, what would you do differently? And that could have been, I mean, that is no matter what else you say, you're also signing up as the status quo candidate in that respect. And so people went for Trump's anger and Trump's incorrect answers over no answers, right? And so that's how we ended up where we are, but it's a cold day in hell y'all. It's a cold day in hell because James Carville just said something true. Now, he didn't bring it up in this clip but there's also, he's also been going around blaming wokeness. Look, take it from a guy who has, who I'm on the left, and I have been categorized as an anti-woke leftist, right? That's how I've been viewed, is Kyle's an anti-woke leftist.

Take it from somebody who's in that category. Wokeness did not lose this election for Democrats. It just didn't. [00:22:00] Like I said, Kamala never mentioned race, never mentioned gender, never mentioned trans people, or pronouns, or Latinx, or cancel culture, or political correctness, or anything that you would associate with wokeness.

None of it was mentioned, and she lost, so you just can't blame wokeness. It makes absolutely no sense. And so he's wrong on that part of the analysis, but he's right on the, it's the economy, stupid, and minimum wage being front and center would have been a big thing. But more than that is really about having a narrative, and being angry, right? Trump believes in Trump, there's no denying that, and Trump is very angry, there's no denying that. And perhaps you need anger, and you need something to believe in, and a narrative, and a story, and people just weren't buying, they just didn't think Kamala was authentic and believed in much of anything, I don't think.

Right, so, we could all Monday morning quarterback, which I'm sure we'll continue to do endlessly, but look, write it down, write it down, cause this matters. David Brooks, David Brooks, elite, moderate, said, "You know, maybe Bernie was right." [00:23:00] James Carville, "Yeah, yeah, maybe Bernie was right." Jen Psaki, "Yeah, maybe Bernie was right."

There's people, like Jon Favreau, the Pod Save bro, some of them at times, yeah, yeah, maybe Bernie had a point, right? So you're getting a number of people now, who are kind of waking up a little bit to the reality. But I will say, that is counterbalanced with the exact same number of people, if not more, who are saying, let's just throw trans people under the bus and that's how we win. Like, Jesus Christ, that's dark and that's loathsome. 

Assad Ousted From Syria - The Muckrake Political Podcast - Air Date 12-10-24

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: A new report in the times from Nicholas Nahamas, Maya King, and Zolan Kano Youngs with a report out of Philadelphia where the democratic party underperformed, leading to the state of Pennsylvania, one of the main swing states in the election ended up falling.

Organizers have been reaching out and particularly organizers in communities of color who deal with Black and Latino voters. They have come out to say that they were so worried about the lack of outreach to voters of color by the Harris [00:24:00] campaign that they went rogue, that they started doing it themselves without permission, and over the time they said that thousands of voters in these communities of color said that they hadn't heard from the campaign, they didn't feel like the campaign cared about them, and that instead the focus of the race was on, not only digital ads, but digital ads and outreach that was focused on White suburban voters, White professionals, and basically that they weren't allowed to do their job that they traditionally do. Quite frankly, I think this report is very convincing and it sounds a lot like reports that I've heard from around the country so far.

NICK HASSELMAN - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Well, I think we've spent a lot of time in denial during the campaign, honestly. And I think part of it was it seems to me that there were huge sections of people of color who didn't trust Kamala Harris, for a variety of reasons. Looking at this reporting, and showing how they put all of their resources... cause it's really damning. when you're talking about having campaign offices in the inner city areas that don't have [00:25:00] any paper, they don't have office supplies, and then they have to go to the nice areas and raid them for supplies. That speaks volumes to why maybe they didn't trust her.

So I suspect that to see this now, and we can expect all sorts of, people lighting the campaign on fire who were part of the campaign, but this one really hit hard, because the Harris campaign had purported to be standing up for marginalized communities and people of color and trying to use her identity as part of that campaign, and they were justified in feeling of that distrust for her. 

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Yeah, there's a couple of things going off of what you were saying that I just want to highlight. The first thing is this, when Harris took over as the nominee from Biden, I had said, I will learn a lot about what's going on with how long the Biden campaign team stays in control of the Harris campaign, which happened the entire time. We're now hearing a bunch of reports that Harris brought in a couple of people that she felt close to, but that [00:26:00] mainly it was the Biden campaign team that took care of things. That isn't necessarily a Kamala Harris decision, that isn't necessarily about Harris as a candidate. I don't think she had much control over the campaign, to be honest with you. And by the way, not winning a primary kind of does that sometimes, to just get the baton and then run with it. 

When you have a primary, we've talked about the Barack Obama campaign back in 2008, he effectively wrestled control of the Democratic party away from the Clinton machine, and then restructured it, which we're still dealing with. What we are seeing here is the consequence of a couple of things —the Biden team, you might remember when we covered it, Nick, they held calls back whenever the red States, the Republican States were starting to gerrymander stuff and take purge voting rolls of Black people, Black community said, we need your help, and they said, "Hey, good luck out organizing us." And what did they say since the election, they've said over and over that the problem was the base. It was all of these interest groups that got [00:27:00] too "woke". And what is "woke"? It's a code name for saying we actually care about people of color and oppressed peoples.

Meanwhile, this entire apparatus of the Democratic Party is basically controlled by a group of technocratic analysts and strategists who got rich off of this. It was the strategist and all of the analytical groups that they worked with, and they didn't see people of color as one of the bases they needed to take care of, they took them for granted. And reporting like this, the actual on the ground experience of this stuff, and we're starting to see things floating up about Harris campaign staffers, people of color, who say that they were discriminated against by this campaign. 

There was a Black woman at the front of the ticket, but the people behind the scenes were the same old White retread campaign strategist that were behind Joe Biden and have controlled the party for a while. And they've taken this space completely for granted, which is one of the reasons why Donald Trump was able [00:28:00] to change the demographics of the electorate

His campaign, as bad as it was, as bad as the ground game was, they went into these places. We've said on this podcast, we said, he's going into New York City. He shouldn't be in New York city, that's not a place for him to be campaigning. But a lot of what happened here, it reflects a larger problem in the democratic party that is only getting worse at the moment. 

NICK HASSELMAN - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: He went in front of the national Black journalists association to question her race and nothing happened to him. That would have been a campaign ending blunder of all blunders... 

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: 20 years ago, yes.

NICK HASSELMAN - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: ...instead, he increased that electorate. What does it say about the Harris campaign that he can increase electorate after saying shit like that? I don't know if you were aware, but I was talking to someone who was intentionally connected to the Harris campaign. And they were saying to me the other day that the internal polling before the Biden debate was really bad. He was going to get waxed by 20 points, something like that. 

And by the way, when I heard that, I was like, that's interesting, because that wasn't what we were [00:29:00] seeing necessarily in the front page. 

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Nick, I saw an archived internal poll before the debate that had Biden down 11 points. 

NICK HASSELMAN - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: What that tells me was that they, and the Biden campaign wanted the debate early, and I think I questioned this when it happened, but the only explanation for that is because they knew that how bad it was going to be and they need to get him out of the race. And then the fact that if they had, they'd done it in a normal time, Biden wouldn't have dropped out. Cause again, the reason why I bring this up is that Harris campaign continues to rest in their laurels that they were so far behind when they started that look, we got all the way...

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Oh we won. We actually won by losing.

NICK HASSELMAN - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Yeah. It's but That said, she had a four point lead at some point in a month and a half out, and then every day 0. 1% lower every day. There was an inexorable leaking of votes they could not stop, couldn't do anything. And they had six weeks to do something and they couldn't. 

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: That graph is, "Oh, we're going to take care of prices. Oh, they're weird. Those people shouldn't be doing that. Oh, Goldman Sachs, Liz Cheney. Dick [00:30:00] Cheney. Economist are behind me." It was so obvious what happened, but the people behind this have not reckoned with anything that you and I have been talking about or anybody who's even been tangentially related to the campaign. It was an absolute disaster, and we're talking about this, not because it's the 2024 campaign, but because this can't happen again. It has to change. Going back to the previous segment, you can't pardon Trump and talk about how it was a political hit job. 

We talked about it on the weekend or for Friday. You can't pardon everybody in the administration and be like, "our bad. I guess we committed some crimes according to some people, we need to be careful." The Democratic party is in a moment of crisis and this type of stuff is an invitation to accept reality and change course, because if this doesn't get fixed, oh, it's going to get real bad.

Can Ben Wikler Fix The Democratic Party? - The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder - Air Date 12-4-24

BEN WIKLER: The soul of the Democratic Party is the fight for working people. Ours is the party that built the middle class, that won breakthroughs on civil rights and [00:31:00] women's rights and workers rights and freedom and opportunity for all. It's the party that welcomed me as a high school student in Wisconsin to volunteer for Tammy Baldwin when she first won a seat in Congress.

Today, the country that we love needs the Democratic Party to be stronger, to unite, to fight and to win. I'm Ben Wickler. I'm the chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. I've spent my life working in politics, advocacy, and new media. In Wisconsin, we built a permanent campaign. We organize and communicate year round in every corner of the state; rural, suburban, urban, red, blue, and purple areas alike.

Since I've been our state party chair, we've flipped our state Supreme Court majority, reelected our great Democratic governor, Tony Evers, and in this very tough year for Democrats nationwide, a six point swing towards Trump. We closed that gap to a point and a half. Making Wisconsin the closest state in the country. We sent Tammy Baldwin back for a third term in the U. S. Senate, and we flipped 14 state legislative seats that put us on track for majorities in both [00:32:00] chambers in 2026. When the polls are within the margin of error, we win by the margin of effort. And what has made a difference in Wisconsin can make a difference everywhere. We need a nationwide permanent campaign.

A 50 state strategy in every state and every territory across the United States. That means raising a ton of money and bringing together millions of volunteers. 

CLIPS: Ben Wickler is doing an extraordinary job. You've done a ridiculous job. Ben Wickler, he knows how to organize. Wisconsin Democrats have outraised republicans 4 to 1 this year.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Listen, we didn't see more of the ad, but look, this is gonna be voted on by members of the DNC, I think there's what, like 500 or so members. You can go is it benwickler.com to help. 

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: He's definitely the best of the candidates right now. 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah. I mean, look, I think there's a lot to be said for Ken Martin, who is the head of the Minnesota DFL. I'm not as familiar [00:33:00] with his work but I can tell you, like, I know, I think every job that Ben Wickler has ever had, frankly. Starting, he was a producer for Al Franken at Air America and then went on to move on, then went on to Avaz. He's from Wisconsin. People were surprised when, I think, when he decided to run for Wisconsin chair. Because he hadn't been there in a while, and he just came in and he just hit it out of the park. 

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I mean, the headwinds that he was facing, like, the proof is in the pudding if the Democrats are serious about winning and we know that's an uphill climb. But the Wisconsin, after Obama was elected in 2008, became the laboratory for right-wing politics, almost in what we're seeing in Florida right now.

Where it's a different flavor, but they gerrymandered the hell out of that state. They led the way under Scott Walker with his Koch money on right to work and busting [00:34:00] unions, and they rigged the game in such a way that, the Republicans had a significant advantage in the state of Wisconsin. And within 12 years, they've really turned that around.

As he mentioned in his ad, Harris performed best of all of the swing states, which she lost all of them, in Wisconsin. And I think that he can make that case. This is the kind of pick that would be rational if the DNC chooses to be rational. But they did just pick Jamie Harrison, who's retweeting Mueller She Wrote and things like that. So if they really want to say we've learned a lesson, this is the kind of pick that you go with. I mean, Martin O'Malley, I don't know what he's doing. I don't know what leverage he thinks he has, but. 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: He, I mean, he's been the chair. He's been the running the social security administration, which is, great.

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Great, great.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I'm all in favor of that. People know I love, but what Wickler has been doing has been exactly what you want somebody to do on a national level. He has been [00:35:00] facing a well financed Republican movement. And he has dealt with gerrymandering. He has dealt with supreme court races. He understands the importance of all these things and how they translate nationally. And he's done it in a state that has been, as sort of like teetering as can be over the past, I think five, six years that he's been working on it. It's benwickler.com. 

And Penny in New Mexico says, "Do you understand what donations would go to if we donate to Ben's campaign to DNC chair?" I'm not 100% sure, but my, I suspect you've got to reach 500 people. And I would imagine what you want to do is send out mailers, you want to call, you want to maybe you want to travel and visit. This is all speculation on my part. You want to visit a different key members of the DNC who may have sway with [00:36:00] four, five, or six, or ten other people. I don't know. This is all, I'm just guessing. But it's a good question. But I imagine it's something of that nature. And, Noah from Tampa says, "The best argument for Wickler is that Republicans are afraid of him. Always go with the people the Republicans are most afraid of." I mean, look, for me the most important aspect is that he has a proven track record of winning in a rather inhospitable situation.

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Exactly. And, he, I think, would actually use the DNC to coordinate with state parties. Like, this has been an issue really since Obama. And Jamie Harrison, (thank you) did, I think they started to donate more to state parties. 

But this needs to be a national strategy that is cohesive. Because like, out of this election, we understand, The Democrats message is incoherent. They're the party of people making over $100,000 a year, but they also have [00:37:00] Shawn Fain coming and speaking. Like, what is the coalition you're trying to build? How can you make it so that it works nationally, where people know what the Democratic Party brand is? Because right now the brand is toxic, as Bernie Sanders told John Nichols in that interview, where he encouraged people to run as independents when it makes strategic sense, and I think that does make sense in rural white states right now, and then go from there. But, that's the problem right now, is that there isn't necessarily a coordinated message or strategy. And like we know every, for all the stuff with Trumpism, their one thing is like it's immigration, immigration, immigration, immigration. And if you were to ask the average person what the Democrats stand for, they don't know. 

“Get These Incels to Work” (feat. Hasan Piker) Part 1 - Pod Save America - Air Date 11-27-24

JOHN LOVETT - HOST, POD SAVE AMERICA: There's no moment at which we say, "all right, we've had the fight. We've had the debate. We disagree on a whole bunch of stuff. Hey, everybody, we're going to get together and we're going to make sure that we stop Donald Trump. We elect Joe Biden or we elect Kamala Harris." That moment doesn't [00:38:00] come. I'm not saying that Democrats in power aren't in part responsible for that, I think part of what we need to do is figure out a politics that brings people in. Everyone is responsible. 

HASAN PIKER: Just as I was very critical of Bernie Sanders' campaign despite still loving Bernie because he was nowhere near as aggressive as he could have been in the primaries and should have probably gone on more independent media route in a similar vein to Donald Trump. Because I blame the fault on Bernie's campaign strategies in the primaries, despite recognizing the structural hurdles of a left wing populist coming out of a Democratic party primary where it's the laser focused audience that goes out and votes at those things are the MSNBC watcher base that is objectively terrified of someone like that because people are saying he's going to start executing wealthy people, it's still his fault. And it's still the campaign's fault in this regard as well. 

And that's why I brought forward the point that you can have a billion point five. You can have ground game. [00:39:00] None of that matters if the message is not actually addressing the real issues that Americans are facing. And the reason why I think the Republicans can go out and vote for the Republican party and don't usually sit it out, and instead are able to suck it up and say, yeah, we're still going to vote for Donald Trump is because there are single issue voters out there and they know that Trump is going to protect it.

People that like guns are going to be like, "I like my guns. I want my guns to be protected. I want to be able to marry my gun. I want to be able to have sex with my gun. I know Donald Trump is going to be the guy that lets that happen. And I know the Democrats are going to shun me for wanting to have sex with my gun, that guy is going to go and vote for Trump regardless. 

On the other side though, if your top line communication and your major policy prescriptions are like, "We have to preserve these institutions, we have to preserve civility, and we have to preserve democracy," at a time when Americans are like, I don't give a fuck about democracy, just lower the price of eggs, Then, There's no way that I could [00:40:00] outflank the Democratic Party and get people to vote for Kamala Harris in a way that sticks, in a way that is going to be successful, no matter how much influence I wield.

JOHN LOVETT - HOST, POD SAVE AMERICA: Yes, take your point.

HASAN PIKER: Most people are just not voting, that's the problem. 

JOHN LOVETT - HOST, POD SAVE AMERICA: The challenge is that let's say you say there's these three kind of media ecosystems. There's the right-wing one, there's the kind of mainstream one, and there's the left one.

The one on the right, is built to attack Democrats. The one in the middle is built to attack Washington and politics, and the one on the left is built to attack Democrats. It is. I think they're trying to pressure Democrats to be a more moral and just version of itself. 

HASAN PIKER: I probably spend more time shitting on the Republican Party than the Democratic Party, but yeah.

JOHN LOVETT - HOST, POD SAVE AMERICA: But I'm saying when we're talking about right-wing media, it is trying to be a team player, and it is attacking Democrats and supporting Republicans. The middle is attacking both, and the left is attacking Democrats and Republicans. There is no big, fun, exciting, media environment, outside of, fucking, this table, where you have a lot of people that are critical of the Democratic [00:41:00] Party, annoyed by the same things we're talking about, but ultimately it's just we got to win, and we have to get behind these people. 

HASAN PIKER: But again, it is because, for many people on the right-wing ecosystem they have their toys, they have their treats, and the Republicans are giving them those toys and those treats. Whereas, the Democrats are offering, what? What are they offering? 

JOHN LOVETT - HOST, POD SAVE AMERICA: No, I know, we gotta fucking figure it out. 

HASAN PIKER: It doesn't matter to me I'm rich. Okay, I probably might go to prison if Project Esther gets kicked in, or if they denaturalize me or something. Who knows? We'll see.

JOHN LOVETT - HOST, POD SAVE AMERICA: You can be rich abroad.

HASAN PIKER: That is true, but my point is I like being here. I like trying to solve some of the problems in America, at least. But, overall the point is not that I'm rich, the point I'm making is that, I care about my fellow Americans. I care about them, their lives getting better, improving their material conditions. And I recognize that, if Democrats keep losing, then Republicans are going to keep ruining this country further, and I want the Democrats to win. I want to be the [00:42:00] most regime pilled propaganda minister you've ever seen. But I can't do that if the Democratic Party is not offering anything. 

JOHN LOVETT - HOST, POD SAVE AMERICA: And I think that's all fair. I guess what I'm trying to see is what is the path to the Democrats creating the kind of story that's backed by candidates, that's backed by message, that's backed by policy, that's backed by having the right enemies, telling that kind of story, and then in concert with that, we do need a virtuous circle where then more and more people in left media start to accept that the vehicle for changing this country for the better is the Democratic party. 

 

HASAN PIKER: I mean I can't speak for everybody else on the left I don't know who you're talking about when you say this, but like I can speak to my friends that are over at Drop Site News, former Intercept guys like Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim. I can speak to a Majority Report that was way more in the tank for Kamala than I was for sure. Like they were very openly more excited at the prospect of Kamala Harris. I was definitely a lot more [00:43:00] depressed by no matter who wins, we're still cooked it was my attitude, but like certainly understanding and recognizing that Donald Trump is going to be far worse than Kamala Harris, of course, and Chapo Trap House. 

So these are some of the largest media companies out there on the left, outside of the orbit of the Democratic party. Every single one of these outlets, myself included, talked more about the Biden administration's accomplishments with the NLRB, with Lena Khan at the FTC with trust busting, and numerous other accomplishments that the Democratic Party actually brought forward than they did, and it didn't matter.

My point is there was, we always defended, we always, always defended the Afghan withdrawal unconditionally. You never saw that on even, you barely saw that on MSNBC. We always defended that. We always defended Lena Khan. We always defended the NLRB. We always defended the walking, the symbolic move that Joe Biden made when [00:44:00] he went to the UAW picket line. We didn't forget that. We talked about that. It didn't matter. 

It's not enough, especially when there's so much that Joe Biden did, I think, outside of the economic pressures that Americans were experiencing that was certainly going to play a pivotal role in the election, but there's so much that he did in the month of October in 2023, that just completely wiped that, that made it impossible to defend him, because the major focus of a lot of people and there's nothing you can do in that moment when people are seeing exactly what's going on and getting frustrated. 

He unveiled the right-wing immigration bill on October 5th, 2023, I might be getting the date wrong, but it was like literally two days before October 7th, he did that, and then October 7th happened, and he went and he bear hugged Netanyahu and kept giving unlimited weapons to Israel over and over again, never restraining Israel. Everybody knew exactly what was going to happen. It had happened [00:45:00] before and it was going to be much worse. And yet, no restraint whatsoever. 

It has, I think, diminished America's soft-power capabilities on the global stage further. It has eroded America's influence and soft-power capabilities in the Western world. Obviously the Global South already knew what was up, they've always known, but they have no power. They have no voice. It doesn't matter. The populations in Western Europe recognizing what was going on and actually starting to protest against it, I mean, that's different. I'm saying this as someone who's been an advocate for Palestinian emancipation for the past 10 years publicly. I've never seen this groundswell, this massive sea change, this attitude shift in such a dramatic fashion over the course of the last 12 months, and they did not address that at all. And instead they hugged and kissed neocons and talked about, even in the VP debate, Israel having the nuclear first strike capability. What an insane conversation we're having after 12 months of genocide.

Americans fancy [00:46:00] themselves to be peaceful people. It's a lie. America's foreign interventions are anything but peaceful. Even then the media ecosystem usually just shelters Americans from the genuine devastating impact of America's actions globally, but for that reason, Americans can at least feel like they're peaceful doves. Which is why Donald Trump, despite never being a peaceful dove, was able to effectively communicate that he was actually anti Iraq war against Hillary Clinton in 2016, which was a resilient message that actually showcased him as more moderate than Hillary Clinton in the eyes of many Americans.

Note from the Editor on the Democrats perception gap and Ben Wikler for the DNC

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with The Daily Show breaking down the failures of the Harris campaign. The Majority Report discussed messaging and strategy challenges for Democrats. The Kyle Kulinski Show looked at the shifting sentiments of centrists who are beginning to recognize the electoral benefits of progressive economics. The Muckrake Political Podcast criticized Democrats' failure of proper organizing and overdependence on [00:47:00] technocratic strategists. The Majority Report praised the candidacy of Ben Wickler for DNC chair. And Pod Save America spoke with Hasan Piker about key failures of Democrats. 

And those were just the Top Takes. There's a lot more in the Deeper Dive section. 

But first, a reminder that this show is supported by members who get access to bonus episodes featuring the production crew here discussing all manner of important and interesting topics, often making each other laugh in the process. And a reminder that our winter sale for memberships is currently going on; they're 20% off until the end of the year. So support independent media and get bonus shows for yourself or to send us a gift for the holiday. Discounts and gifting are available both on our site and through Patreon, so whichever you prefer, go for it. All the relevant links are in the show notes, or just go to BestOfTheLeft.com/support. There you will also find links to bookshop.org for Dead Tree Books and their [00:48:00] sister site, libro.fm for audio books. Both are certified benefit corporations that help support brick and mortar bookshops, while you get the benefit of the convenience of online shopping. In short, they're decidedly non-evil compared to other online bookstores, and shopping through our links help support this show as well. So again, head to BestOfTheLeft.com/support or follow the links in the show notes to grab your own membership, currently on discount. Or snap up a gift membership for this wintry gift-giving season. 

As always, if regular membership isn't in the cards for you, shoot me an email requesting a financial hardship membership, because we don't let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing more information. 

Now I have a couple of thoughts to add to our topic today. 

The first is about the perception gap that Democrats are suffering from. I think this is important context. Without a doubt, those who say the Democrats have gone too far to the left have two [00:49:00] problems. First, they're definitely talking about social issues: your trans rights, your abortion rights, anything that they put under the wokeism umbrella. It's very unlikely they're talking about economics. So any suggestion that people like Bernie Sanders are wrong about taxing the hell out of billionaires because people don't like wokeism should be understood as completely nonsensical. That is a non sequitur. Those are not on the same spectrum. Those are two different elements of the left, rarely intersecting. 

Secondly, they're not even right about how much Democrats support those woke issues that people seem to be somewhat annoyed about. The perception gap has been built by Democrats allowing themselves and their positions to be more effectively framed by the opposition than from themselves.

Biden actually had some pretty good economic policies, but the whole party was crap about bragging on those [00:50:00] things. And it's not because they were spending all of their time talking about trans kids. People just got the impression that that's what they were doing, because they weren't saying anything interesting enough to break through the messaging cycles. Meanwhile, Trump and company framed them as woke fascists, without much response.

So a strong, full-throated embrace of economic populism wouldn't just be good policy and good politics; it would be good messaging that would help drown out the bullshit from the other side, because it would be interesting enough that people would take notice. 

Now the second note I have for the show today is about Ben Wickler. And I don't often meet with powerful and influential people. Some of them, listen to the show, but I don't meet with them. But I did have a meeting with Ben Wickler. Now fittingly, the meeting took place before Ben became any degree of powerful or very -- [00:51:00] maybe he was a little influential. We both produce podcasts way back in the day. I still do. I don't think he does anymore. And the first iteration of his show is called The Flaming Sword of Justice, which is a great name. And then that show sort of morphed into a show called The Good Fight, not to be confused with another show by the same name, but with a different host. Very old school listeners from, I think more than 10 years ago now, may have heard some clips from Ben's shows played on Best of the Left. 

Well, Ben and I met up, talked podcasting shop, and I came away from that meeting feeling lazy, unprepared, and unambitious, because Ben came prepared with written questions for me, and very impressive answers to some of the questions that I had that demonstrated how that sort of meeting was the norm for him. Meaning he [00:52:00] was obviously regularly meeting with people who he felt could give him some advice or suggestions that he could turn around and use to make his work better, more effective, more impactful. 

Now it turns out this wasn't a one-off. I sorta got the sense that it wasn't. But similarly, while prepping for this show, I came across an article by Thom Hartmann, who we feature regularly. And the article was titled "Ben Wickler for DNC chair." And Thom starts with a very similar story. It says, "I don't recall the year, I think it was 2008, but I remember well, Louise and I am meeting Ben Wickler over snacks and drinks at a small party at John Nichols' home in Madison, Wisconsin. As we left, Louise remarked to me, 'That kid's going places; keep an eye on him.' Ben has more than fulfilled her prediction, leading Wisconsin Democrats to victory after victory. This weekend, he announced he's running for head of the DNC. This is a [00:53:00] truly big deal." End quote. 

So here's how I now think about Ben and that meeting I had with him. This is just for context. Some people are social climbers. They try to get in good with the right people to elevate their own social status. And then you have the corporate climbers, those who do what they can to get ahead in business and finance to improve their own financial status. Of course, those aren't mutually exclusive. But Ben is a progress climber. He really cares about making a difference, building power to change policy for good. And he recognized, apparently a long time ago, that meeting with people, asking for advice, taking meticulous notes, learning best practices, and then implementing that into his work was the best way that he could take a role in making that progress happen. 

So in terms of being excited about Ben running to lead the DNC, it's [00:54:00] not just about the policies that I know he supports. It's about how he goes about his work -- always learning, always trying to improve, putting that into action, and repeating the cycle. The results he's had in Wisconsin seem to be bearing that out. 

So, if you can get a message to one of the few hundred people voting on that leadership position, please pass this message along. And just for fun, here's one of my favorite old clips of Ben Wickler on the good fight.

Let us whisper of a dream - The Good Fight - Air Date 11-21-13

BEN WIKLER: Everyone has a dream. Some kids want to become citizens. Some adults want to retire with dignity. Me, I have a dream too. I've always dreamt of a string of man-made private islands that spell out my own first name in the Pacific Ocean, within chopper distance of my corporate headquarters. But now, I may not get a chance to realize [00:55:00] my dream.

Hi, I'm Bradley Scaife Koch, healthcare entrepreneur. For years, my network of cut-rate insurance companies, for-profit emergency care centers, and especially my medical debt collection agencies have been making my dream come true. We're almost done with the letter B, and it's a sight to behold. 

But now, thanks to Obamacare, all of that may come to an end. Obamacare makes preventative healthcare for free. Free cancer screenings, free physical exams, free vaccines. Free, I mean, to you. But for me, and for all of us who profit when preventable conditions go unprevented, this so-called freedom isn't free at all. You see, I can't stock my island chain with menageries of sequined bedecked endangered species with the kind of money you make from early [00:56:00] detection.

If you want to fall asleep to the sight of a chimpanzee in a reflective neon pink unitard shimmering in the light of a solid platinum disco ball, as I do, then you need the kind of profits that can only be reaped from full-blown medical emergencies.

Obamacare's tragic focus on preventing tragedies may turn America, this hallowed land of opportunity, into just another unmarked mass grave full of the corpses of the hopes of people like me. Because achieving my American dream, that's a preventable condition too. Next time you think about giving healthcare.gov another whirl, think about that mass grave. Think about my islands never existing. Think about my chimp without his unitard. And join me at [00:57:00] StopThisObamacareMonsterBeforePeopleStartPreventingHighlyProfitableEmergencies.

org. 

That B's getting lonely. It's time to put a Radley in the Pacific.

SECTION A - WHY DEMOCRATS LOST

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now we'll continue to dive deeper on three topics today. Next up, Section A- Why Democrats lost, followed by Section B- Time to fight, and Section C- Moving forward.

Man Oh Man: Why Male Voters Shifted Right - The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart - Air Date 11-21-24

JOHN STEWART - HOST, THE WEEKLY SHOW: I almost think that for men it is like a cultural comfort It's that idea of that the locker room has been taken from us You And you can't do what we used to do in the locker room, which is, uh, incredibly scatological and, uh, perverse and anti gay rhetoric.

Like all that sort of stuff has been taken away and you're almost seeing it. You know, now if a Christian Pulisic scores a goal, he does the Trump dance. If somebody scores a touchdown, they do the Trump. Like there is a, and I haven't seen this before, a celebratory reaction from men that I hadn't seen [00:58:00] before.

Like there is a zeitgeist. There is a cultural moment for men and for Trump that I think liberals and Democrats especially are like, wait, what we had Beyonce. Like now you got everybody doing the, the Trump dance on things. I think there's a, a shock that's occurring. Do you think that's correct, Danny?

ANNIE LOWREY: Yeah, and I think that the fact that you are seeing millennials is perhaps the kind of like peak liberal generation and Gen Zers are shifting back the other direction as really interesting. You know, I think when you talk to the, to liberals or to Democrats and they, you know, 15 years ago they might have said like demography is destiny and like we're going to become a solid majority party because the country is becoming, um, less white, more Latino, more black, uh, more Asian.

And this is our future. And I think that even now, right? You know, there's a sense of like, we have all of the young people. And once the old people have died off and we got all the young people, then we're going to win for forever. 

JOHN STEWART - HOST, THE WEEKLY SHOW: Hard thing [00:59:00] to wait for, but okay.

ANNIE LOWREY: Right? Like these people, you would, you would hear this kind of derisiveness about Republicans about, you know, well, they're racist and they're sexist and they can't even do policy.

They don't do policy. They didn't do the ACA. People come to their senses and recognize that, you know, And I think that Democrats lost sight of just what voters were telling them. I really feel this way about inflation. I really feel this way about the unlikability of candidates. They were kind of constructing these intellectual arguments about how voters would come home and they didn't.

And voters were very clear throughout the entirety of this election that they were not crazy about Joe Biden, that they didn't think the economy was great. And that they felt that whether it was fair or not, and who cares, you know, that they felt like they, the culture had shifted in a way that they hadn't Liked, right?

And so I think that, you know, probably for Democrats, there's just like a lot of listening to, and a lot of, you know, belief that if you're saying that, well, like good people vote for us and bad people vote for the other guy, 

JOHN STEWART - HOST, THE WEEKLY SHOW: right?

ANNIE LOWREY: I think that's kind of a hard message. 

JOHN STEWART - HOST, THE WEEKLY SHOW: You have to take it out of that moral component.

You have to take it out of that righteousness. It [01:00:00] almost sounds like, like if, if you're making arguments to people that we're moral and you're immoral boy, that's, that's not going to play great. And is that what, In some ways men were reacting to Richard. I 

ANNIE LOWREY: think so.

RICHARD REEVES: Yeah. And I think like to put it bluntly, a lot of men felt like the message from Democrats wasn't that men had problems.

It was the men are the problem. Oh, that's, that's interesting. And I don't want to overstate this. And I think this is related to this triumphalism thing you're just talking about, John, which is this sense of like free at last, like in a way. And the question is like, Free at last to be, what, a rampant misogynist who wants to roll back women's rights, et cetera.

That is not the, that is not the median 24 year old man who voted for Trump, right? That is not what they were. But it is a kind of like, okay, I can, we can have a joke. I can, you know, I have a certain, I'm not going to be told I'm toxic. I mean, it is interesting that the term toxic masculinity was basically born in 2016.

Um, and has been a big part of the kind of culture for those, and eight [01:01:00] years is a long time in the life of a 24 year old or an 18 year old. And so I think what's happened is that partly as a result of the first Trump term, we're in a like a pinball game of backlash. We've had the backlash, to the backlash, to the backlash, and I've lost count, I don't know where we are at this point, but It's a Bo Burnham song, for God's sakes.

Right, it's like, I don't know where we are, but it's like, and so a lot of men, a lot of the young men that I know and I kind of talk to and feel about, it's like, it's not that they're actually against gender equality, or a lot of these things, they're just kind of over the earnestness. They're just over it a bit.

They they want to just be able to just be a little bit 

JOHN STEWART - HOST, THE WEEKLY SHOW: and maybe it's the the lack of Of grace, but the the difficulty is in in the moment that we're in Social media wise there's really no position liberal conservative anything that isn't attacked Viciously like you know by everybody, you know, it's how do you get at it?

How do you get people to not feel like that when? It feels like on [01:02:00] Twitter or on Facebook and those things, everybody is poised to attack at all times. It's not just men that are attacked. Women are attacked. Liberals are attacked. Conservatives are attacked. Everybody attacks. 

ANNIE LOWREY: Yeah, it's really hard. And I think it's really hard for liberals and Democrats when they're like, well, look what the Republicans say about us.

JOHN STEWART - HOST, THE WEEKLY SHOW: That's, that's my point. Yeah,

ANNIE LOWREY: exactly. It's, it's like, it's not fair. Like what? You're, you're saying that, um, you can 

JOHN STEWART - HOST, THE WEEKLY SHOW: call me a terrorist sympathizer, but I can't call you racist. You're 

ANNIE LOWREY: like dunking on gay couples and gender diverse little kids and mixed status families and. People who just want reproductive freedom and people who would go march for somebody else's rights, right?

Like, what's wrong with that? It's um, it's a very tense and tough moment. And I think that you're right, John, to bring it back to the fact that yeah, Trump stoked white nationalism. That is just true. Right? Uh, he doesn't dog whistle. He openly uses racist language, sexist language, um, constantly, constantly.

Um, [01:03:00] and it's not just nativism. It's not just about immigrants, right? It's like literally othering people. And so I do think that we're in this, you know, kind of dissonant moment. Um, uh, that's like hard for both sides. Um, and I agree that, you know, I don't, I'm not sure that social media, it's one of the ones where I'm like, I'm not sure if we went back and we just didn't invent it.

I actually think it would be better. I think so. I'm not, I'm not a hundred percent sure on that, but I think so. Right,

Why Kamala Harris lost (according to regular people) - Garrison Hayes - Air Date 12-9-24

GARRISON HAYES - HOST, GARRISON HAYES: I think the takes that I encountered for why Kamala Harris lost can be broken down into three categories. Let's call the first one perception. 

SPEAKER 1: Hi, excuse me. The 

GARRISON HAYES - HOST, GARRISON HAYES: very first person I talked to was a guy named Rich, an older white man who splits his time between Florida and Georgia.

Why do you think that Kamala Harris lost the selection? 

SPEAKER 2: I think, uh, Kamala and the Democratic Party, they, uh, they assume everybody that votes for Trump is a Nazi or evil, and they don't understand that they're just regular people, but they talk down to them, and I think that caused a lot of Trump votes.

GARRISON HAYES - HOST, GARRISON HAYES: Rich's perspective for better, [01:04:00] or for worse is probably more common than many folks in the Democratic Party would care to admit. This idea that Democrats are too judgmental, too high and mighty, too accusatory of Trump supporters, this take has come up often in the conversations that I've had with Trump voters over the last year.

year. So I'm not surprised to hear it in this context as well. You're saying Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party more broadly, is this something that you think has been going on for some time or is this more specific to Kamala Harris? 

SPEAKER 2: No, I would say it goes back to when Hillary ran. 

SPEAKER 5: You can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.

SPEAKER 2: Bill Clinton didn't do it. You know, he was a Democrat. Uh, I'd say back to Hillary. 

GARRISON HAYES - HOST, GARRISON HAYES: The problem, I think, is that Kamala Harris ran an intentionally inclusive campaign. She reached across the aisle, campaigned with Republicans. She condemned Joe Biden's garbage comment explicitly. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.

KAMALA HARRIS (2): I [01:05:00] strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for. for it. And I've made that clear throughout my career, including my speech last night before I think this all happened. 

GARRISON HAYES - HOST, GARRISON HAYES: But for rich, and I suspect for many others, it's hard to separate Kamala Harris from that broader, long standing idea.

SPEAKER 2: Both sides are divisive, and that bothers me. But I I think the Democrats are a little more divisive because I call people names more than I get from the Republicans. 

GARRISON HAYES - HOST, GARRISON HAYES: I'll be honest, I wasn't really sure what to say to this. The only way you can come to the conclusion that Democrats are the only people doing name calling is if you exist in a media bubble that doesn't show you this stuff.

She's 

GRANT CARDONE: a fake, a fraud. She's a pretender. Her and her pimp handlers will destroy our country. Kamala has imported criminal migrants from prisons and jails. She is the devil, whoever screamed that out. She is the [01:06:00] anti Christ. 

SPEAKER 4: She is some sick bastard, that Hillary Clinton, huh? 

GARRISON HAYES - HOST, GARRISON HAYES: Again, my goal isn't really to criticize any of the people that I spoke to.

These are regular folks. The only reasonable assumption is that they're doing the best they can with what they've got. But a lesson I've learned time and time again in my reporting is that perception is is everything, and right-wing media is excellent at shaping narratives about anyone to their left, all while shielding Trump supporters from understanding, seeing, facing the grossest elements of his political movement.

Between now and the next election, what would you say to Democrats on how to speak to a voter like you? 

SPEAKER 2: Just move a little closer to the center and convince me that you want the whole country to get together. 

GARRISON HAYES - HOST, GARRISON HAYES: Do you think it's possible for Democrats to change? in a way that would, you know, benefit them in upcoming elections.

SPEAKER 3: I don't think that the issue is Democrats. 

GARRISON HAYES - HOST, GARRISON HAYES: That's [01:07:00] Dehate. He voted for Kamala Harris and had a very different perspective from Rich. 

SPEAKER 3: I think that's like asking, to me, do we think institutionalized racism would change? It could, but is it actually going to change? 

GARRISON HAYES - HOST, GARRISON HAYES: Which brings me to this guy on a horse. Did you vote for Donald Trump?

Yeah. And, and, and I mean, this is interesting. What motivated you to vote for him? 

SPEAKER 1: Uh, change, change, mostly, uh, what we got going on, all this craziness, all that. So yeah. When you say craziness, what comes to mind? All this stuff about, you know, the kids in school and, you know, all types of just, you know, nonsense that we shouldn't have to deal with, or our kids having to deal with, so yeah.

GARRISON HAYES - HOST, GARRISON HAYES: And did you feel as though Kamala Harris was promoting that? Of course she was. 

SPEAKER 1: In what way? In plenty of ways. You've seen a lot of those interviews, so that speaks for itself. You see, it speaks for itself. A lot of those interviews she did, that's [01:08:00] what they stand for, so. And I ain't with it. I think he's 

GARRISON HAYES - HOST, GARRISON HAYES: referring to the interview cut into this ad.

KAMALA HARRIS (2): Every transgender inmate would have access. 

GARRISON HAYES - HOST, GARRISON HAYES: Kamala's for they them. President Trump is for you. I'm Donald J. Trump, and I approve this message. That interview was from 2019. And the insane thing about this ad To me is that the gender affirming care for prisoners policy that she's referring to that policy, according to the New York Times, was the law during Trump's first term.

But for some voters, this is perceived as a stain on Kamala Harris, all because she saw the law as a good thing. And did you feel as though Kamala Harris was promoting that? Of course you will. I cannot emphasize enough the chasm, the gap between people's perception of basic facts in this election. What would, like, the Democratic Party have to do to get a person like you to vote for them?

SPEAKER 1: Change their whole perspective of all that stuff right there, you know, cut out a lot of that. You know, that's the main thing. [01:09:00] When you say that stuff, I think what comes to my mind is like, LGBTQ. Is that what? That's exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, see, well, outrage won't get down like that.

Man for woman, woman for man. That's it. Bottom line. 

GARRISON HAYES - HOST, GARRISON HAYES: What do you say to someone who's like, you know, what's, you can be with a woman, but what's stopping like somebody else from being with who they want to be with? Ain't 

SPEAKER 1: stopping nobody from being us. They just, they got their belief and I got mine and that's all it is to it.

So they can do what they want to do. Everybody got the answer to God. 

GARRISON HAYES - HOST, GARRISON HAYES: And you, and for you, like homosexuality or transgenderism is like a sin. A sin, definitely. Okay, So reason number one Is perception. And I think based on the conversations that I had, reason number two is disengagement. I won't spend too much time here, but the most common answer that I got from folks, both on camera and off camera was I'm not into politics.

SPEAKER 5: Wrong person to ask. Not into politics. No, that's real. That's real. Thank you for it. No, thank 

GARRISON HAYES - HOST, GARRISON HAYES: you for your time. Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump by about a percent. And a [01:10:00] half low voter turnout absolutely played a part in this election. In fact, there's this map floating around the internet that shows who'd win each state.

If didn't vote was a candidate that non existent candidate would be president. Right now, Philadelphia saw about a 3 percent decrease in turnout. That 3 percent represents tens of thousands of votes in a heavily democratic city. Compare that with the 2. 1 percent increase in the rest of the state, and it becomes clear why Kamala Harris lost Pennsylvania.

Michigan tells a similar story. Detroit saw a 4 percent decrease in turnout compared to 2020. And truthfully, I blame Democrats for this. I think Kamala Harris ran a pretty good campaign which, in hindsight, was almost always destined to end in defeat. Between the ongoing US funded genocide in Gaza, the Democratic Party's failures to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, their failure to effectively inform the public about what they've done, the truth is that Democrats came up short in giving the electorate something [01:11:00] to vote for instead of just giving folks something to vote for.

Against. 

SPEAKER 3: I also feel like a lot of people are from my peers that I spoke to. A lot of people are indifferent about the two and a lot of people didn't vote. A lot of people didn't show up, so that's another huge part of the problem as well. 

GARRISON HAYES - HOST, GARRISON HAYES: I think Dante represents the third and final reason. I heard for why Kamala Harris lost America has a problem and that problem.

Is that we are impossibly divided. Whether it's some combination of sexism and racism. Uh, honestly, they didn't elect a white woman. I wasn't surprised they didn't elect a black woman. 

SPEAKER 3: People weren't willing to change. People don't want change. People are, we say racism is dead, but it's really not. Whether 

GARRISON HAYES - HOST, GARRISON HAYES: it's homophobia or xenophobia.

I think 

SPEAKER 5: as a woman, I'm interested in protecting my own rights. I'm interested as a queer woman, protecting my right to marry. Y'all 

SPEAKER 1: see, well, our race won't get down like that. Man for 

GARRISON HAYES - HOST, GARRISON HAYES: woman, woman for man. Whether it's. Our diverging views of the economy and what it takes to lift people out of 

SPEAKER 5: poverty. And I just think generally she had a better plan for [01:12:00] someone like me and everyone else who may not be as fortunate.

GARRISON HAYES - HOST, GARRISON HAYES: The problem that has become sharply apparent to me while traveling the country throughout this election cycle is that many of us live in what feels like totally different worlds. There's this like conversation about all the young white men who are. You know, breaking for Trump and what are your thoughts on on that dynamic specifically?

SPEAKER 4: Uh, yeah, I don't, I don't know about that. I'm, I'm not, I'm neither. I mean, I'm white, but I'm not young and I'm not, I didn't vote for Trump. So 

GARRISON HAYES - HOST, GARRISON HAYES: yeah. Yeah. But anybody in your life or people that, you know, maybe some of the reasons why I'm 

SPEAKER 4: from California. So, you know, I'm not, I'm, I'm fairly out of touch with that.

And 

GARRISON HAYES - HOST, GARRISON HAYES: we don't watch the season. Where, where, where do you get your political information when you are looking at politics? Family. And friends. And did you vote this election? Yes. And while it may feel like the different worlds we are living in are irreconcilable, the truth is that we actually live in the [01:13:00] same world.

We have to share this thing. So, I asked Dehate how, in his opinion, We could move forward post election and I really appreciated his response. What would you say to this country then as it relates to moving forward? I mean, what's your message to America post election? 

SPEAKER 3: I don't know if I have a message. Can I have a second to think about that one?

Yeah, of course. Of course. Of course. My

message to America going forward is to be mindful, be vigilant. And move as if it's you, even if it's not you, um, everybody says they voted for what benefited them best, but did you actually, um, and then to me, a lot of people, especially from the religious perspective said they voted for Trump because he was a more faith based or Christian candidate, but the Bible often talks about free will.

And that's a huge principle. Um, so if God gives us free will, why are you looking to take that away from others? Um, so just to be considerate until and consider, you know, When it could be your rights or [01:14:00] the rights of your kids and your loved ones and move based off that, move with empathy, move with grace and be mindful.

Going after the elites (with George Packer) - Stay Tuned with Preet - Air Date 12-12-24

PREET BHARARA - HOST, STAY TUNED WITH PREET: There's an important cognitive dissonance here for members of the establishment like me. I'm not going to speak for you. As you write in the piece, Trump's basic appeal is a vow to take power away from the elites and invaders who have imposed these changes and return the country to its rightful owners: the real Americans. And he is, I have a caveat with respect to what I'm about to say, but he is populating the cabinet and his brain trust in particular with the most elite, most wealthy people who have ever walked the face of earth, right? Literally, the most wealthy people who've ever walked the face of the earth. How they are not elites I'm not sure. I do think, by the way, that maybe part of the answer is that there's a hypocrisy when Democrats talk about [01:15:00] billionaires being bad people in some sense, because Democrats have billionaires too. And you had someone during the Democratic National Convention, if I recall correctly, who was invading against the scourge of billionaires after a Democratic elected billionaire had just been at the lectern.

So, if you want, you can address either one of those. If there's hypocrisy on the Democratic side with respect to wealth and success and billionaires, but also this revolution or this, this tantrum, or this reaction, whatever you want to call it. Is it real or is it just bullshit? 

GEORGE PACKER: I think there is a fair amount of bullshit to it. And you've kind of put your finger, sorry to say, on the bullshit. 

PREET BHARARA - HOST, STAY TUNED WITH PREET: Well, that'll get me in trouble.

GEORGE PACKER: That's unpleasant. Yeah, there are, we're talking about different kinds of elites. When the Republicans talk about elites, when MAGA goes after the elites, they're talking about [01:16:00] professional elites. Educated professionals, people in media, in academia, in the professions, people with college degrees or more.

Republicans have their own elites. They're mostly business elites. They're mostly people who actually make more money than a podcast host or a staff writer. But they somehow try to claim that they're not really elites because, why? Because they are going after the institutions, higher education, journalism, law, that the other elites occupy and defend. And Trump is the perfect, you could say, avatar of this because yes, he may be a billionaire, although we're not sure about that, but he's full of resentment of the elites going [01:17:00] back to his days as a Queens real estate developer or the son of one.

PREET BHARARA - HOST, STAY TUNED WITH PREET: But he also inhabits or in him inhabits a contradiction depending on what you think of elite. So this same guy has gigantic apartments. He puts names on the buildings that he owns. He has a gold plated toilet, but he also eats a Big Mac, right? He also puts ketchup on his steak. 

GEORGE PACKER: And he has a Queens accent.

PREET BHARARA - HOST, STAY TUNED WITH PREET: And he has a Queens accent. How does all that work? 

GEORGE PACKER: Well, he has been a self styled outsider all his life. God knows it may go back to actually secretly hating his father. I don't know. But he has been someone who is ready to disrupt and trash and trample on all of our sensitivities, on our values, on our norms, and get away with it. And he, here he is getting away with it in really the biggest way [01:18:00] imaginable. And I think in his resentments and in his willingness to trash, he sort of releases an energy in people with far less money and far less celebrity who also feel as if that society has somehow either left them behind, or screwed them over or put other people in place ahead of them who don't belong there.

And so Trump is able to speak for them when he said in 2016, I am your voice. That really resonated with his followers. It didn't resonate with people who think of him as a fraud because it sounded more fraudulent. But, it's a powerful message. And so what I'm saying is you don't have to be poor to go after the elites.

You can be a billionaire and get away with it. But I think the key thing here is Republican elites are economic elites and Democratic elites are cultural elites. And so if politics is [01:19:00] played out on the terrain of culture, it's the Democrats who end up having to defend things that people want to get rid of. And that's why that long period of the Reagan revolution was so terrible for the Democratic Party. Even though the party won presidencies over and over again, they gradually lost the support of all those people making less than $100,000 or $80,000. Who saw the party as caring about issues that they didn't care about and not caring about them. Because even though you could stand up and say, I'm for paid family medical leave, I'm for a higher minimum wage, I'm for this and that. If people don't see a change in their economic lives and in their well being and their optimism about their children's well being, they don't care what your policy positions are. And for a lot of reasons, there haven't been the kind of changes people have wanted [01:20:00] for decades now, and that seems in the end to benefit someone like Trump.

“Get These Incels to Work” (feat. Hasan Piker) Part 2 - Pod Save America - Air Date 11-27-24

JOHN LOVETT - HOST, POD SAVE AMERICA: It's like seared in my mind of Trump being on Joe Rogan because of how like my path of understanding it because what I saw first were a bunch of people taking clips and saying, wow, Rogan really didn't like Trump.

Trump is a mess on this show. He comes across terribly. Rogan was like giving Trump space to hang himself rhetorically, and then I watch it, and I'm like, Trump did fucking great in this interview. 

HASAN PIKER: Yeah, he's very telegenic. That's the thing that, like, a lot of people, I guess, refuse to factor in for some weird reason, is that yeah, he, he definitely rambles on, he likes to call it the weave, and even Joe Rogan made fun of him for that a little bit in the process, but like, There is something to be said about, uh, a, a relatively telegenic person who is able to portray himself as, I like to call it, uh, honestly dishonest.

Yeah, yeah. Where, like, [01:21:00] everybody knows he's a bit of a scumbag, but he's your scumbag, and he's able to get that across to a lot of people, and, and, uh, I don't think that there is Really, anyone with that level of, of television presence on the Democratic Party front, I think like the most skilled orator in the Democratic Party's ranks in the last Uh, you know, last couple of decades was obviously Barack Obama and outside of that, I don't, I think like in a lot of instances, purely from an optics point of view, Democrats track is like technocratic, elitist, too serious about everything that they talk about.

And there's certainly a lot of that on the Republican party side as well. And we've seen failed initiatives from establishment Republicans that tried to recreate the Trump phenomenon with, uh, the likes of Ron DeSantis. And that was a massive failure, but ultimately, I think this goes beyond podcasts.

This is something that I've been talking about quite frequently. I know the podcast thing is like the [01:22:00] most, like, that's the one that got everyone's attention. But I said this on CNN last night that, uh, you can't really podcast your way out of this problem. There was that one tweet saying like, Oh, we just got to have a hundred pot.

Save America's, but they all have to look like Hassan. Like, that's not, that's not how this works. Oh, 

JOHN LOVETT - HOST, POD SAVE AMERICA: you think that one, that one tweet might've been wrong, but the, uh, so I agree with that. You know, it became this, the couple, the kind of like, I don't know, like just have had this devastating loss to trump and everybody's looking for these sort of little explanations that all feel, they just feel silly, like, oh, we need a joe Rogan of the left and even saying, like, I don't even want to talk about how stupid that is anymore because even that has become Stupid, but I'm like I I do agree that like people are like, oh well, she should have gone on Rogan All right.

Yeah, sure. I I think so too. 

HASAN PIKER: That would not have changed the outcome of this election 

JOHN LOVETT - HOST, POD SAVE AMERICA: There's a larger problem to what you're getting at Which is like why don't we have figures and where like we think they would do great on that show? And why is [01:23:00] someone like Joe Rogan now who was four years ago open to Bernie now suddenly open to Trump like that's the deeper problem like you look at like successful democratic messengers or progressive messengers over the last like decades and you think alright well Bill Clinton obviously was successful and he like ran against the The Democratic Party in some way.

Barack Obama did the same thing. Bernie does the same thing. AOTC does the same thing. Not on, I'm not talking about on policy, but you 

HASAN PIKER: don't mean it like also in the same direction of running. No, no, no, no, 

JOHN LOVETT - HOST, POD SAVE AMERICA: but running against the establishment in some way and just saying, and and what the reason I connect them is because they all did something which is Demonstrated that they were not part of the democratic establishment, both like on policy and rhetorically, right?

Like, that's what they all did. And I'm just wondering, like, what there's a place where there's like kind of an alignment. Of like the Seth Moulton critique of the Democratic Party and the lefty critique of the Democratic [01:24:00] Party, which is just like, it's fucking annoying and like, kind of, I don't know, like pedantic in some way.

HASAN PIKER: Here's the thing. I think it's an incorrect interpretation, an incorrect autopsy to look back at a thing that the Democratic Party did not do at all. And then say, it's actually that reason. It's not anything that we did so far. It's not that we tacked to the right over and over again. Despite people like myself and many others saying like, don't do this.

You're going to hemorrhage the base. You're going to hemorrhage the base of support. You are going to cut away at your turnout. You're going to cut across, uh, many different constituencies that you rely on to create an effective coalition. And it's, it's a very dangerous gamble to assume that you can decouple a lot of these people in the suburbs, a lot of like white women specifically away from the Republican party and vote for you instead.

I know that they're high propensity voters, but it doesn't matter. Uh, there's still plenty of low propensity voters that you have to rely on to win. And that's [01:25:00] precisely what the democratic party did. They hyper focused on these key constituencies. Despite the fact that polls were seemingly deadlocked after 30 million dollars of ad spend in key suburbs, right?

Like it showed at least for I said this time and time again, it showed someone from the outside looking in that the message was not working and you can have the best ground game possible. You can have, you know, hundreds of thousands of people all across the country door knocking, but if the top down message that you're communicating is not resonating with people, then you're not going to be able to win an election.

You're not going to have the effective turnout necessary to win this election. And that is precisely what happened. Now, does that mean that Trump's messaging was good? Of course not. It wasn't, it was actually pretty bad. And I would even go so far as to say the anti trans ads were actually a distraction and not good.

It was only effective in the DC bubble, I think, and the consultant bubble and the, and the media class that saw those ads and were like, Oh my God. [01:26:00] This is an incredible ad. Like, they really ruined Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris had a silly answer to an ACLU questionnaire. Okay, that just shows that she is not the most experienced politician.

This was all the way back in, I believe, 2020, right? She literally had to drop out of the primary. Anyway, at that time, that's one thing. Okay, but that should not be a campaign killer. If you personally think that that's a campaign killer, then your campaign is weak. This message across the board should never be able to end a single campaign.

Then Teflon Don is real. I mean, the man, uh, had the, the grab him by the pussy tape come out as the October surprise in 2016, and he still won. And since then, there's been a litany of different controversies, including, but not limited to straight up undermining American democracy by doing January 6th. And yet people are still.

Voting for him. And one must ask the question, why? And I think overall, the same exact problems that persisted in 2016 when the economy was seemingly very [01:27:00] good, right? Especially as opposed to like the post COVID economy and its recovery. People were still very frustrated with what was going on. The notion that, uh, in the wealthiest nation on earth, we have 600, 000 people sleeping outside every night.

The idea that, you know, we have a, we have the concept of medical bankruptcy is an insane phenomenon that doesn't exist in any other OECD nation. Like the, the fact that 60 percent of the American public doesn't have 400 in emergency spending. Like these are all very real. Economic anxieties. I'm using that term specifically because, you know, it's a, it's one thing that people like to hyper focus on that, that creates volatility, that creates instability and it creates a, a, a base of, of angry people.

And if the democratic party is not addressing that anger and addressing their material problems and earnestly telling them, like, we're going to fix that shit. Okay. And the other side. He's looking at that anger and saying, we're going to channel your anger. [01:28:00] You have every right to be angry and you know who you should be angry at?

Those who have less than you, you know, you should be angry at the working poor, the homeless people that are doing crimes left and right, uh, black and brown people, undocumented migrants that are doing incredible amounts of crimes. They're killing hundreds of thousands of Americans and trans people. And, and the democratic party only cares about those people.

And they don't care about you. And that message resonates with a base of support, not because they are, uh, intrinsically evil, that message resonates with a base of support because they're angry and one of the two major parties is not even remotely interested in addressing that anger and trying to tell them what the solution to that anger actually is and what the real problem is.

SECTION B - TIME TO FIGHT

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering Section B- Time to fight.

Where do the Democrats go from here? - BBC News - Air Date 12-7-24

SARAH SMITH - HOST, AMERICAST: There has been plenty said about what's gone wrong, and it really is important now that they start looking ahead to see how they can put it right. But of course, there's great disagreement over that. I mean, it was reported yesterday that [01:29:00] the Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz, who's also a member of the Democratic leadership, that he said anyone who has a grand strategy is full of crap. But he thinks that Democrats need to keep things simple. Now, maybe it's not the most elegant language, but he probably has summed up what one of the problems for the Democrats is there, that nobody has a grand strategy. They've got to identify the problem first, I think, before you can come up with the solution. And Anthony, to what extent do you think they have identified what went wrong? 

ANTHONY ZURCHER: I think they understand that they're having issues with working class voters, blue collar voters, and not just white working class, which was Donald Trump's base in 2016, but also Hispanic and some Black working class voters. And part of that is a reflection of the economic circumstances this year. And that will, in theory, resolve itself over time, or at the very least, if the public's still angry, they're not going to blame the Democrats for it. They'll blame the Republicans for it. And so I will say almost they don't need a grand strategy, right?

Being the [01:30:00] opposition that's not in power and criticizing Donald Trump could be their strategy, at least in the short term. It worked for Donald Trump. That was essentially his strategy over the past two years was saying "The Democrats have botched it all up. Send me back in and I'll fix it." That could be their message until we get to the presidential primary process after the midterm elections where you're going to have candidates trying to paint a vision for the future and you're going to get contrasting visions. And you'll have what I think is probably going to be a robust contest for the nomination and it's the democratic voters and all these primary states that are going to decide what the party should do going forward.

SARAH SMITH - HOST, AMERICAST: There are lots of critics and people who would say, I think we even know some of them, who would say that the issue was wokeness, that the Democratic Party had been infected by a woke mind virus, and that they were obsessed with talking about what pronouns people were using, about whether transgender men were competing in women's sports and getting into the dressing rooms, and that they were obsessing over diversity and inclusion [01:31:00] at the expense of talking about things people really cared about. To what extent is that legitimate? 

MARIANNA SPRING: Yeah, Sarah it's the kind of conversation that has very much dominated the online world since the election including X, Musk's X. And I think, therefore, it kind of is on the minds of the Democrats, regardless of whether it matters so much or not.

Issues that are considered too quote "woke" and to what extent the Democrats are seen as being or were seen as being sort of out of touch with what a lot of people care about. I think some of that comes down to, as we've chatted about quite extensively, like messaging on issues that people care about, like the economy and immigration.

But nonetheless, you know, the question of, using pronouns or some of the things that the Democrats have perhaps been associated with, including in attack ads that were targeted at them by Trump's campaign. It will be really interesting to see going forward where that ends up. And you guys might have seen in some conservative or right leaning media outlets, there were some stories about [01:32:00] Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, the Democrat who they were suggesting or alleging that she'd removed the pronouns she/her from her social media account from X in particular. It's not entirely clear whether she made the decision to do that, whether there are changes to her profile and that just sort of happened.

But I think it is interesting to think of whether someone like her is, who is considered a left leaning Democrat and who has been very vocal on kind of progressive issues, whether she also, is thinking about how to tailor that messaging in a way that has kind of mass appeal rather than appealing to a group of people perhaps who are used to doing things like that, like using their pronouns when there are a lot of Americans who won't be doing that and aren't used to it.

I mean, I don't know how much we think that they will change the kind of entire tone of their discussions , the Democrats, off the back of some of those issues you just spoke about, Sarah. 

SARAH SMITH - HOST, AMERICAST: Well, or whether they need to, because although the Republicans did attack them for this a lot, and there was that ad that ran in Pennsylvania extensively saying Kamala Harris is for they/them, Donald [01:33:00] Trump is for you, making a point about the pronouns.

She didn't campaign on any of this stuff. She didn't say any woke things, didn't even make a point about being a female candidate or a Black candidate either. And I didn't see or hear coming from the Democrats any of this stuff. It was all from the Republican side saying they're too elitist and they're too woke.

ANTHONY ZURCHER: Right. I remember when we were in Chicago, well, we were remarking how transgender issues, and even gender issues full stop, were not really highlighted by any of the speakers at that convention. So I think it's the ghost of 2019 and 2020 and what Kamala Harris ran on in her failed presidential bid that year, that really came back to haunt her. And that is, may not be something that comes back to haunt the next Democratic presidential nominee. I think it will certainly be something. That Democratic voters will keep in mind when they're picking a candidate in 2028. And if you look at the Democrats who won across the board in congressional elections, [01:34:00] they actually did pretty well. They won all the battleground states except Pennsylvania in the Senate races.

They picked up a seat in the U. S. House of Representatives. We're going to have a very narrow margin in the House of Representatives as 220 to 215 with the Republicans in control. And because three Republicans have moved on to the Trump administration or yeah, in one case just dropped out and disappeared off the face of the earth.

 It's gonna be 217 to 215. So, Democrats know how to win elections and they won elections this year. It was just the top of the ticket where they took it on the chin. And you're right the top of the ticket, that one ad in Pennsylvania, other swing states, about the, they/them really did hurt. And it probably is not something that Democrats are going to be exposed to the next go around. 

SARAH SMITH - HOST, AMERICAST: Maybe they'll be better at stamping on it and saying, it's Republicans who are obsessed with whether or not transgender boys are playing in girls sports and say, look, stop obsessing about the sports team. Don't worry about whether the schools are funded properly, whether the children have got the books to [01:35:00] read and whether they've got I've got enough to eat to be able to learn, and that you're the guys who are obsessed with transgender sports. But yeah, they didn't stamp on it well enough, but it's a mistake, I think, to say that they campaigned on it.

Henry Wallace & the Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party w/ John Nichols - The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder - Air Date 5-21-20

JOHN NICHOLS: So imagine this, just within the Democratic Party. In 1968,

the leading vote getter in the primaries they had, and they didn't have as many primaries then, was Eugene McCarthy. He got 38 percent of the vote nationally. The number two vote getter was Bobby Kennedy, who got 31 percent of the vote. And then, um, you know, you had some independent African American candidates and in some other places or African American leaders in places like DC, who also were getting substantial numbers of votes for an anti war civil rights, social justice agenda.

And so when you pull all of these components together, you can say without a question, that, you know, the anti war movement, uh, in those primaries, in that process of choosing a Democratic nominee in 68, it got around 70, 75 percent of the [01:36:00] vote. Hubert Humphrey got 2 percent of the vote in the primaries.

Hubert Humphrey got nominated and he lost. Right. The polls show, the polls show that had they nominated McCarthy, he was well ahead of Nixon. And so there the party chose its status quo. It chose not to embrace movements. It chose not to go forward and it crumbled and at a critical point. And now the movements continued.

And so 1970, who do you see getting elected to Congress? Beating Democratic incumbents, Ron Dellums, a radical out of Oakland and Berkeley, uh, Bella Abso. a radical out of New York City. Two years later, Elizabeth Holtzman beating, you know, one of the senior Democrats in Congress. I mean, you, these movements continued and they continued both in the streets, but also to try and fight for the soul of the Democratic Party.

72, a grassroots movement taking advantage of changes in rules, nominates George McGovern for president United States. Um, he is backed [01:37:00] by a multiracial, multiethnic coalition. It is quite remarkable what McGovern did and immediately. After he's nominated, elites in the Democratic Party, a huge number, we're talking about cabinet secretaries, former cabinet secretaries, governors, senators, members of Congress, mayors around the country, form Democrats for Nixon.

They actively campaign, buying full page ads in newspapers, TV, radio, against their nominee. Because their nominee was trying to move them forward, right? So you saw this incredible battle along the way for the soul of the Democratic Party with the establishment power not giving up an inch. And I mean, fighting as hard as it could.

And I read all about this in the book, how these battles go back and forth. And it's a tremendous struggle. Yeah, 

MICHAEL BROOKS - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I'm sorry. Go ahead.

JOHN NICHOLS: Yeah, go ahead. I'd say ultimately, Um, the neoliberals, the corporatists were always looking for a way in, you know, a way to, to do it. They changed rules, [01:38:00] they canceled midterm conferences, they created superdelegates, they began to open the flood of money into the party.

And I would argue that last thing, opening the flood of money into the party, really, tipped the balance, uh, for a substantial period of time, you know, through the 80s into the 90s, uh, toward really a stark neoliberalism, uh, and, and it was, you know, at that period, it can be safely said that for a substantial period of time, uh, the soul of the Democratic Party was lost.

MICHAEL BROOKS - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I think the big concern too is, is, is how did some of these same trajectory, you know, that, that, In parallel to this process that labor unions started to get blamed for Vietnam and bashed for McGovern and, and so this demonizing of the really important and positive legacies of the New Deal of the Great Society that were right and correct, uh, in terms of [01:39:00] economic policies and, and basically if you understood it.

You know, a Philip Randolph's agenda was we're going to get rid of American apartheid and we're going to have a social democracy for everybody. I mean, that's, that's, and that's, I think basically still the thing that if you have the kind of politics we have, you're still fighting against the multitude of forces today.

Cause you have to fight against, you know, the, the, you know, the brutality and the, and the xenophobia and everything else, the Republican party, you have to fight against the, you know, woke nonsense, neoliberals. In the 90s, you had to fight against the Clinton Democrats. So I guess my, my, my, I want to just speak to that too, because somehow it seems like this class that came in, in the 70s in Congress, that some of them were great and they kind of became important, almost like gadfly kind of figures like Dellums was, you know, he would put out a peace budget in the 80s and it was great and it was cool, but he didn't have much, you know, [01:40:00] power.

In the Democratic Party. And then, you know, some of these other folks came in with, again, a certain kind of liberalism and anti Vietnam, uh, sentiment. But, by the time you get to the 90s, they had made their peace with foreign interventions. And, all along the way, they were actually very comfortable with attacking New Deal and Great Society programs and, and kind of embracing Reagan economics.

And, you know, maybe even Joe Biden kind of comes in here because he would be kind of part of that class. 

JOHN NICHOLS: Well, he certainly was at, at periods along the way. Um, that's a terrific question. Because it gets to the real kind of heart and soul struggles that took place. And a lot of my book is devoted to, to that period.

Um, and there are many heroes, right? Plenty of villains, but many heroes. Jesse Jackson fought against this whole thing. When they formed the, uh, uh, Democratic Leadership Council, which was the neoliberal, you know, force, uh, that Clinton and others were [01:41:00] associated with. Um, Jesse Jackson called him Democrats for the leisure class.

And he continued to put forward a vision. of economic and social and racial justice that was deeply linked to peace and that was deeply linked to environmental concerns. Um, and, and here's the interesting thing about again, how the democratic party by closing its door, right, by, by pulling in rather than being open to movements, uh, here they had this amazing thing.

The rainbow coalition came into being and what anticipated the future more than the rainbow coalition, right? This idea of You know, this, this multiracial coalition that brought trade unionists and uh, and civil rights campaigners and women's rights campaigners and LGBTQ community folks that reached out to Arab Americans and said, you too can be a part of these coalitions.

Uh, you know, this was, this was big deal stuff. And in 1988, uh, no less a figure than Johnny Apple, the great, uh, New York [01:42:00] Times writer Um, and, and others, many, many good writers at that time said the dynamism of the 88 campaign was Jackson. He was the guy who really excited people. He didn't get the nomination.

And my book is not about winners always. You know, a lot of times, a lot of people I write about lost. But they, they didn't lose merely, they didn't lose because their ideas were bad. They lost because structural challenges were in their way. And the interesting part was that in 88, Jackson gave what was arguably the best speech ever at a Democratic National Convention.

I would argue his speech to that convention was miraculous. It was amazing. I invite people to go back and listen to it. Um, and it was electric. And what did they do? It was great. they turned around and said, Oh, well, hey, thanks a lot. And, uh, by the way, instead of you, the guy who came in second, very strong, young, dynamic figure with a lot of following, um, who really could expand the base of the party being thought about [01:43:00] as vice presidential candidate.

We're going to choose Lloyd Benson, the Senator closest to bankers, a guy who literally had spent his life fighting against and defeating progressives in Texas. Uh, we're gonna make him the vice president because that's going to be how we win this out. Right? They, this whole concept. Well, what did they do?

They lost Texas and every southern state, right? But they also lost California and Vermont and, you know, all sorts of states that would quickly become very liberal places. And, and in the book, I asked the question, I ran the numbers. What if you put Jesse Jackson on the ticket in 88? You might not have won.

But I, these narrow defeats they had in all sorts of states across the country, I think a very good chance they would have prevailed and you would have had a different course for the Democratic Party. The tragedy of it is, is that I think there are people who at that period were involved in the Democratic Party who were more willing to lose than to give up control of one of the two political parties for purposes of their status quo [01:44:00] vision. Their, you know, maintenance of a conservative, frankly, economically conservative, neoliberal, and often neoconservative vision.

Why We Can’t Play Nice With the Democratic Party - The Bitchuation Room (with Francesca Fiorentini) - Air Date 12-10-24

JONATHAN SMUCKER: Trump's 2024 campaign was weaker than his 2016 campaign, but it's working because the Democrats are so committed to not disciplining any kind of a message about fighting for working class people.

And, and, you know, whenever I say stuff like this, people are like, Oh yeah, but like Kamala had all these great ads in Pennsylvania about raising the minimum wage, et cetera. That's true. There was some good stuff, right? They don't have an ounce of the message discipline that the Trump campaign has. Right?

And I'm not just talking about message, right? Because I think message, it all weaves together. But I'm also not just talking about policy. I think that there's a, there's a tendency. on the left and among liberals to, to be like, wait, how does [01:45:00] this populism stuff work at all? Because if you look at policy, Trump is antithetical and the Republicans are antithetical to the working class.

That's all true, right? I think it's still fundamentally true. I think Michael Moore really got it right in 2016 in his description of Trump is a human Molotov cocktail. That a lot of people who feel left behind by an economic system in a political system that's been rigged for the few against the many, they feel that they can, they can throw that human Molotov cocktail into that system.

And when then Democrats are campaigning on defend democracy. It sounds like defend the status quo. Yes. Yes. And, and, and that every time the Democrats do something good, which honestly Biden did a lot of really good things like Biden broke from neoliberalism in very important ways. Right. But every time vocal Democrats try to fight it and defeat it or, and it, it creates this muddled message problem where.

People don't know [01:46:00] away from it. 

FRANCESCA FIORENTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: He doesn't plant his flag on the, on the victories that he did have, or he doesn't, when he's, you know, blocked from, you know, sweeping student loan debt relief, like he doesn't, you know, blame these whatever activist judges or like these, you know, astroturfed organizations and, and, and court cases that are trying to undo it all.

Like, and again, and I think we've talked about this before. Many people have talked about it and not being able to squarely say, It is corporate greed that is, you know, causing all of us to suffer and that needs to be reigned. And I'm not afraid of naming that. And of course, Kamala Harris cozying up to things like even the crypto industry, um, and having sort of like the opportunity economy, which is so like if, if Biden was a break from neoliberalism, nothing sounds more neoliberal than saying opportunity economy in my book.

Um, yeah. 

JONATHAN SMUCKER: And I mean, the, the problem of inflation is huge right now. I mean, you talk to, this is in the piece too. My dad's just [01:47:00] talking about like all the people he knows who are struggling to pay their rent and. You know, what Biden and Kamala and the Democrats had to do was to articulate that crisis.

Like have it be less about just the, the, the price of eggs and milk and more about these fundamental costs of childcare and housing and education, um, that have, have taken people to the brink that then when the price of groceries goes up on top of that, right. People are past that point and and and and not just articulate the crisis in a way that resonates with people But name the culprits name the price gouging name the developers and the landlords and the the The thing is she did, 

FRANCESCA FIORENTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Jonathan.

Like that's the thing is she totally did. The problem is, and I think this is like the sad truth, is that we didn't really believe her. Like, I don't think [01:48:00] that people, I mean, there's many, many factors that it was the Democrats to lose. There's many factors. Biden should have gotten out, gotten out of the race way earlier, but she talked about housing.

She talked about corporate price gouging. She talked about the cost of She talked about All of these things. But we didn't believe, I think the majority of people did not believe her because again, without kind of a broad vision, without a fighting spirit, without a, the reason we don't have these things is because we keep on doing like, you know, we keep on giving subsidies to these same corporations that I'm allegedly trying to go after that.

We're like, there's no seriousness there. And then you add, obviously, you know, the Gaza, you know, Ridiculousness in terms of not listening to the bass, but yeah. 

JONATHAN SMUCKER: And parading around the country with Liz Cheney and 

FRANCESCA FIORENTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: 100%. I want to ask you really specifically on the trans stuff and the cultural stuff that I think you're right to say are getting conflated because they're such easy distractions that the right is using.

What do you think? What do you think is [01:49:00] the method to combat that? Do you think you, as I think Kamala Harris did, sort of like tried to not talk about the issues and sort of come with her own message, or do you think you talk about it head on and put it in a framework that can neutralize some of the bite of these so called cultural issues?

What do 

JONATHAN SMUCKER: you think? First of all, you know, some of this, the, the stuff that, that's gone around with, you know, Matt Iglesias and the Pod Save people and, uh, whoever else have kind of like thinking that the Democratic Party has gone too woke. It's absolute bullshit, right? Like one, like there are social movements raising issues.

Um, you know, the, the, the, the article that kind of kicked this off, uh, You know, in name, Sunrise Movement and Working Families Party. These are organizations that have pressured the Democratic Party to take popular positions on things like a Green New Deal, massive economic, um, uh, investment, uh, reigning in [01:50:00] Wall Street, getting corporate money out of, out of politics.

Like these are popular positions and those organizations in particular, Sunrise Movement and Working Families Party, have only pushed The Democratic Party to take on popular economic positions, right? So this piece, we just have to like put this to bed. This is bullshit. The Democratic Party tacked right on these issues.

They didn't listen to a lot of these groups. I mean, especially on immigration and on Gaza on foreign policy. Right. Um, and you know, the, the, the second thing is, you know, the Democratic Party is a broad coalition made up of a lot of groups that have particular grievances based on their identity as people of color, particular, you know, black people, Latino people, um, LGBTQ people, right?

And they join into this coalition because they have a set of issues that are very important to them. And it's not a winning strategy to say, Hey, come to the table, but shut up about the thing you [01:51:00] care the most about. That's not going to get us anywhere, right? That's, that's a politician problem to figure out how you are going to fight for the issues that are important to members of your coalition in a way that is popular, right?

It's not on the social movement groups and the outsider organizations to make it palatable electorally to you. That's on the Democratic Party, right? But they're not going to get somewhere by just throwing groups under the bus.

SECTION C - MOVING FORWARD

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally Section C- Moving forward.

Trump’s Gilded Cabinet - The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich - Air Date 12-7-24

MICHAEL LAHANAS-CALDERÓN: Trump, the individual used the simplest, biggest messages and behind him is the very specific evil policy wonks of Project 2025, going straight down the list of every agency they want to cut, and every government employee they want to harass. 

ROBERT REICH - HOST, THE COFFEE KLATCH: But the point is that Trump campaigned as a strong man. And the unstated premise, and sometimes stated premise, was I will do it. I am tough. I'm a thug. I will break through everything else and I will do it and I'll do it on your behalf. That's what his [01:52:00] message was. It was very simple. 

HEATHER LOFTHOUSE: Also, I feel like if you do polling from people after this whole thing and you say, what do, people have probably done this, but what does Trump, what did Trump stand for? What did Kamala stand for? I mean, this is overly reductionist, but in three words, it would be interesting to see if there was more variation, I would think, on the Kamala side. I mean, to your point about we want to know, we want to feel it exactly. We want to feel that you are pushing things, that you have our backs, and it felt like it almost was piecemeal without a unifying thread somehow. 

ROBERT REICH - HOST, THE COFFEE KLATCH: Well and in fairness, she only had three months.

HEATHER LOFTHOUSE: I know and she was fabulous I'm, just thinking here we are on the... 

ROBERT REICH - HOST, THE COFFEE KLATCH: I think on the debate stage she was the best that I've ever seen. But I think you're pointing out something that is really important Heather and that is that Kamala Harris never said the word inequality. I mean, she never talked about corruption. She never talked about the influence of big money in politics. She never talked about the themes [01:53:00] that really are underlying the dysfunction of our entire system. The themes that get people to, not celebrate the death of a CEO of a healthcare, but at least, not ridicule a healthcare system.

And United Health, and bring out the anger that people have. Trump responded to that anger. She did not. 

MICHAEL LAHANAS-CALDERÓN: Well, I have a question to pose to the both of you then. Because I think this is a question I hear a lot among my peers. Regardless of whether or not Ben Wickler gets 448 DNC delegates who are nameless individuals, party elites that, to the best of my knowledge, I don't really know.

ROBERT REICH - HOST, THE COFFEE KLATCH: By the way 448, just so we're clear.

MICHAEL LAHANAS-CALDERÓN: Oh, 448. Thank you.

ROBERT REICH - HOST, THE COFFEE KLATCH: That's the number of people who are voting... 

HEATHER LOFTHOUSE: On the committee. 

ROBERT REICH - HOST, THE COFFEE KLATCH: February 1st. That's a fairly tiny number of people. Yeah. Okay. I'm sorry. 

MICHAEL LAHANAS-CALDERÓN: Forgive my cynicism in bringing up that number. I think it was, as someone who's not involved deeply in Democratic Party leadership race knowledge, it was kind of surprising [01:54:00] to me. I mean all of this talk you were just saying a minute ago, about how there are no mass membership clubs and no direct involvement with the members, I think that, getting back to my point, this is why so many people feel disconnected, right? Even for us to say Ben Wickler would be a phenomenal candidate to run the DNC, and he would be, I don't know what the mechanism is directly for me to influence that. 

ROBERT REICH - HOST, THE COFFEE KLATCH: And contrast this with the MAGA, the hats and the buttons. And the membership I mean, this is a membership organization. People love to talk about it. It's I'm a MAGA. What do they say with Democrats? Nobody says I'm a Democrat. 

HEATHER LOFTHOUSE: No, they say *whispers* "I'm a Democrat."

ROBERT REICH - HOST, THE COFFEE KLATCH: They say *whispers unintelligibly*

MICHAEL LAHANAS-CALDERÓN: Exactly. But that brings me to the question then, is the Democratic Party still the way forward? I'm not saying I have a strong opinion on that necessarily at this point, but I think that it's a question I hear a lot of my friends ask me. They feel let down, or they feel disappointed, or they're not sure that the Democrats are going to stand up to Trump in this [01:55:00] next administration, even in the way that they did in the first one.

ROBERT REICH - HOST, THE COFFEE KLATCH: Suppose AOC tomorrow was going to say, "Okay, I'm going to start a new party of young people who are progressives, a young progressive party." And here she lists access to housing, and access to college, cheaper access to college. 

HEATHER LOFTHOUSE: Healthcare.

ROBERT REICH - HOST, THE COFFEE KLATCH: And healthcare.

HEATHER LOFTHOUSE: Student debt out. 

ROBERT REICH - HOST, THE COFFEE KLATCH: Student debt. So, what then? Would your friends be excited? 

MICHAEL LAHANAS-CALDERÓN: I think they would be excited to hear somebody who is expressing interest in their, what they're interested in, and what they want, right? And I think that having members on the periphery of the democratic leadership, historically, saying those sorts of things has never felt fully satisfying. And it feels like there's always half measures or attempts to introduce it and say, well, no, well, we can't go too far. You know, we can't, let's not get crazy. We're not going to advocate for it. 

ROBERT REICH - HOST, THE COFFEE KLATCH: Listen, Bernie Sanders in 2016. Now you were not yet born, but in 2016, Bernie Sanders did run for president and he had a very elaborate [01:56:00] and cogent and coherent and powerful platform. And the Democratic National Committee cut him off at the knees. 

HEATHER LOFTHOUSE: Yeah. And what about the people who say that's too, we, the stakes are so high. That's too radical. That's too, we have to be careful. Let's just make smaller steps. Let's do a little of those things that you mentioned, Michael, because they are important, but let's stay where we are. Let's not ruffle too many feathers. 

ROBERT REICH - HOST, THE COFFEE KLATCH: Well, the problem is you sound like you by not ruffling feathers and by being so careful, you are protecting the status quo. You are the establishment, and we, this, the most powerful movement in American politics today is anti-establishment anger at a system that seems rigged against average working people. I mean, that's it.

Reconfiguring the Democratic Party - Woke AF Daily - Air Date 12-4-24

DANIELLE MOODIE - HOST, WOKE AF DAILY: Here's what Democrats are really good at and what they're doing right now which is just a ton of finger pointing a ton of finger pointing a ton of complaining and Just doing the same things over and over again and expecting a different result. [01:57:00] Donald trump and maga Upended the political norms 10 years ago and we're still grappling with like what that means and understanding what that means as we're getting ready to go now into a new wave that is now going to finish the job that began in 2017 to decimate our institutions to decimate credibility and in that time span.

It's as if Democrats, not even as if, they haven't learned anything. And so, while people are still saying, Oh, well, Kamala Harris sounded like an institutionalist, Is that because she was coherent? Is that because she showed that she understood how government works? And what people want right now is just to break things?

I guess that's what I'm trying to understand. Because if you're talking about, This vibe check of somebody ushering in joy and truth versus somebody that says, I'm going to break everything and I'm going to make people pay for it. And that [01:58:00] being what resonated. I don't know how, how you would ever combat that because again, we're trying to operate in a place of fact and information and Donald Trump is not, 

DR. JONATHAN METZL: I was on a panel for NPR right before the election and it was with um, Rachel Bitkafer who was saying, we're wasting all our money on positive ads.

We should just be doing negative ads all the time because that's the only way to combat this. And I, I've thought a lot about this. I mean, you know, that's what you do when you lose, when you lose you. Figure out, you know, what the hell, how can we not lose again? Uh, and I, and it's true, we are quite good at that, but also I do think that there's a post mortem that is important right now, right?

I mean, there are different, they're just decisions that we have to make now about how to go forward. And so I don't think finger pointing is, I mean, I wouldn't call it finger pointing. I think that there's a post mortem that needs to happen that is instructive about, I want to know where we went wrong.

And so. I don't know. I mean, [01:59:00] I guess you're right. Like, should we have hired? Should we have just put up somebody? I mean, it's all relative. We lost. So you tell me, how do we go forward? 

DANIELLE MOODIE - HOST, WOKE AF DAILY: I mean, I guess my question is like, well, one, I don't think that we're being honest. I don't think that Democrats are being honest.

And I don't think that there is. Again, I think that you need to look at quote unquote failure in a different way. Donald Trump did not receive a mandate. He did not win overwhelmingly. You're talking about like a percentage point. You're talking about a handful of votes, literally in a handful of states.

And so when you're competing with somebody that is telling you that these people are to blame for your ills. And I'm saying. No, they're not. It's actually the rich, but that's not the message that Kamala Harris had. Her message was, we're going to reach across the aisle. I'm going to put a Republican in my cabinet, but here are the ways in which for black men, for Latino men, I can make life better and offer up these different [02:00:00] opportunities.

I think that people wanted a quick fix. And even if that quick fix is a lie. That's what they went for, and I wonder, though, in hindsight, if Kamala Harris had just hammered home an economic message. Which was that the Biden administration didn't have anything to defend. We have the best economy. You just saw, of course, after the election, lowest Thanksgiving prices, lowest cost for dinner, like jobs have returned, all of these things.

If you had focused solely on that. On a progressive populist message as opposed to linking arms with Republicans that to me is the only thing the message that should have been hammered over and over and over again, and that wasn't and there was still this push to what no longer exists as the center, which kind of made in some ways Kamala Harris seemed like Republican liked.

DR. JONATHAN METZL: Yeah, again, you know, it's just, [02:01:00] I mean, I guess the question now is in response to the Democrats, Go farther left or do they go toward the center? I mean, this is 

DANIELLE MOODIE - HOST, WOKE AF DAILY: there is no center So that like that's my argument now is that like that is a false question to ask because the center doesn't exist So you either continue to follow the extremists over a cliff or you retain?

And reimagine what it is that the progressive base actually wants 

DR. JONATHAN METZL: I was reading an interesting article this morning that asked, you know, would higher turnout have helped Kamala Harris? Was this a question of turnout? And it's just funny because it mirrored something that I've been thinking, which is, it just really felt like Republicans were playing by different rules than we were for this election.

And so, there's something about like, Winning hearts and minds they were doing something else. I don't know what it was. But yeah, I mean, I hope you're right I'm not gonna I'm not gonna push back except to say that I hope you're right. I hope we get a chance to fix this [02:02:00] I hope there's still a system in which we can fix this.

Let's see how that plays out 

DANIELLE MOODIE - HOST, WOKE AF DAILY: I guess the fact is is that it isn't going to play out because I have said for the longest time and I hope to be wrong that I don't think that we actually get another bite at the apple here everyone wants to hold their breath and believe that there's going to be an opportunity in midterms I'm going to disagree with that statement I don't think that there's going to be an opportunity with midterms because I don't think that we're having them and so that being said.

If you have an entire now fascist MAGA movement that has no guardrails, that is completely unleashed, the response to that can't be centrist thinking. And I'm wondering in your mind what it takes then for Democrats to realize that they once again have been chasing the wrong dragon. I 

DR. JONATHAN METZL: mean, again, the rules of everything because of all the dismantling that's about to happen, the rules.

Are going to be totally different. And [02:03:00] so I do worry that we have a lot of institutionalists who are still running the party. And I think what we need right now is outside the box people in a way. And so I don't know, because I don't know there's some plan. I mean, when you have somebody at the head of the department of education and the FBI and every other organization, who's In place to basically destroy that organization as it's been known and remake it the rules are just going to be Totally different.

And so I guess I hope we have people who are nimble and forceful and bare knuckles enough to combat that. I just think that the rules are different and we have to, there's something very responsive about it. So I'm not, I'm not avoiding that question. It's just, we're about to create a new reality here. I mean, I feel it most deeply with health, for example.

I mean, that's kind of where I'm consumed right now, because dismantling All the health infrastructure that Kennedy and those guys are going to do is going to be [02:04:00] catastrophic, and it's going to create new realities. And so to then say, we just need to build things back the way they were is not going to work.

Democrats shuffle leadership in prep for Trump fight; Raskin takes mantle of democratic lodestar - Alex Wagner Tonight - Air Date 12-6-24

REP. JAMIE RASKIN: Generational politics is obviously always present in Congress and in the country, but I think what's really happening is that the Democrats, uh, feel that we are in the fight of our lives and we want to deploy and redeploy people to different. positions to get ready for the fight to defend our democracy, our freedom and our constitution.

And I think that's really what's going on right now. 

ALEX WAGNER - HOST, ALEX WAGNER TONIGHT: Is everybody on board with this sort of changing of the guard? If you will. I know that leader Hakeem Jeffries says only the caucus is working its will and we're doing it in a cordial fashion. Now I will say, I know that's supposed to be a non position, but not doing anything about, you know, changing leadership roles is, it's not.

A position in and of itself.

REP. JAMIE RASKIN: Yeah, well, I think it's true that it's cordial, but it's, um, it's democratic with a small d. That is, it's all based on conversation [02:05:00] and dialogue. I've had hundreds of conversations with my colleagues about how best to arrange ourselves for the coming fight. I mean, you've probably noticed, Alex, that there is a, a robust Republican trifecta right now.

The margin in the House is razor thin and the thinnest it's been in like a century, but they still have a tiny majority. And we need to figure out the best strategies to either pull over moderate Republicans in districts that Biden won or Harris won. Um, to side with us on issues like gun safety and women's right to choose.

Um, and we certainly need to be messaging a lot more effectively to America about what it is we're standing for and what we're fighting for. Um, and so that means we need to be messaging more effectively, uh, to your audience and then even beyond the MSNBC audience to the rest of America and some people who are watching Fox News right now.

ALEX WAGNER - HOST, ALEX WAGNER TONIGHT: Can I ask, um, you know, [02:06:00] because the news today is that Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is throwing her hat in the ring for the, uh, ranking seat on the, or, sorry, the Democratic, uh, top Democratic seat on the Oversight Committee. Do you think she would be a good choice? 

REP. JAMIE RASKIN: Um, I think she'd be an excellent choice. Um, I think, um, think that, uh, you know, our colleague from Virginia, Jerry Conley, would be an excellent choice, and they offer, uh, different strengths, um, and, uh, you know, different visions, but they've worked closely together, and we've all worked closely together as a team.

Um, AOC, of course, has been my vice ranking member, so she's very familiar with my style. Uh, Jerry Connolly has been on the committee for a lot longer, and he's familiar with the history and evolution of the committee. So we're gonna have a really interesting conversation about what we want to happen on the oversight committee, both in minority and when we take the Congress back in 2026, what we're gonna do.

with the Oversight Committee to make sure that the government is an instrument for the people and not a plaything for [02:07:00] billionaires. I think we already have a record number of billionaires who have been nominated or assigned by Donald Trump to his new cabinet. Uh, there's a name for that and it's called oligarchy or plutocracy.

It's government for the wealthiest and not for the working people, and I know that was their big pose during the campaign, but America is in for a cold shower here when we see who's really benefiting from the government they're putting into place. 

ALEX WAGNER - HOST, ALEX WAGNER TONIGHT: Yeah, I think if you take even non Senate confirmed positions in the Trump administration, it's the net worth is like 340 billion to, to your point.

But I do want to go back to something that you said about what this moment demands. And you mentioned, you know, Democrats need to talk to and appeal to people who aren't just watching. our fabulous channel, but are also watching other networks like Fox. And when you think of someone like, for example, AOC, who is an incredible voice in the democratic party and who has, I should note, worked in a bipartisan fashion across the aisle on some key [02:08:00] initiatives.

She's worked even hand in hand with Matt Gaetz, not exactly known as, um, uh, uh, uh, liberal squish. But the impression is that she is, you know, liberal firebrand. And in the context of appealing to more people from across the aisle, you know, does that hurt the broader effort to, you know, widen the aperture, if you will, if you have someone like her sitting atop one of the most powerful committees in Congress?

REP. JAMIE RASKIN: Yeah. I mean, I think tough questions like that are going to be asked during this process. And I know they were asked, you know, in, in my, um, campaign for the Judiciary Committee position, um, uh, which still continues. We've got several more days before the actual election takes place. Um, and you know, we have to have those kind of hard soul searching, um, soliloquies and meditations as we go through this.

And I think Do you want to have one right now on air? 

ALEX WAGNER - HOST, ALEX WAGNER TONIGHT: And tell me what you think. [02:09:00]

REP. JAMIE RASKIN: Well, you know, the AOC who's in her third term as a representative is very different from the AOC who first entered. Inevitably, you become like that when you're a member of Congress and you've got to deal with the people.

the right-wing Republicans and conservative Republicans and liberal members of your caucus and conservative members of your caucus and a hierarchy and so on. And I'm sure, you know, Jerry Connolly, our other candidate, is a very changed, uh, candidate from when he first began on the Oversight Committee.

And he's somebody who was in a swing district and is now in a very blue district. So, uh, Um, these things change, but I do think that the times call upon us to be able to figure out how to expand the Democratic Party and to make us really the party of democracy because after all, that's what we are. The GOP does not even claim to be standing for democracy anymore.

They are arranged on quasi monarchical principles, and uh, their leader is surrounded by a [02:10:00] bunch oligarchs. That's a very different form of government than what we've got here. And I agree it's more difficult on our side because we really are a party based on pluralism and diversity. We bring in people all across the racial, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, geographic spectrum, and so on.

And we are traditionally the party of the working class, the middle class, um, in America. So, uh, we got to put, uh, uh, A lot of different elements together to deal in this new environment, which is complicated by really segmented and decentralized media systems. 

ALEX WAGNER - HOST, ALEX WAGNER TONIGHT: You know, President, former President Obama talked, I think quite eloquently about the work ahead, that it's not just for the woke, but for the waking, that this is about a generational effort to begin to trust each other again.

BREAKING: HUGE announcement about Democrats' future - Brian Tyler Cohen - Air Date 12-1-24

BRIAN TYLER COHEN - HOST, BRIAN TYLER COHEN: Ben, what would you change about the way that the DNC is currently run? 

BEN WIKLER: I am really grateful for the extraordinary folks who work at the DNC for Chair Jamie [02:11:00] Harrison. I also think we need more. We need a bigger operation. It'll take more resources to do it, and we're going to need, uh, Those folks all over the country to chip in, to become monthly donors, to support that effort.

And we need more people power because I think the opportunity is for the Democratic National Committee to partner with all the states, to build the kind of plan that we've been executing in Wisconsin and that you've seen in some places in states around the country. We need to do that everywhere to think through not just how we.

Get ready for the midterms and the, and the, and the presidential race in 2028. But to look at things like Supreme court races, if we had, uh, had not lost the Supreme court majority in North Carolina a few years ago, then Republicans wouldn't have been able to gerrymander that state. That cost us three.

Democratic house seats, and we would have had a majority in the U. S. House right now. If it weren't for state Supreme Court losses in North Carolina years ago, I think we need to be winning those kinds of fights. And so I think the big shift is to help to grow the Democratic National Committee's capacity and focus to [02:12:00] be able to engage in planning it for the long term.

In these races that are far from the national spotlight with all of the states so that we can build and fight up and down the ballot in every kind of community in every kind of county in the way that we've been doing in Wisconsin and can do nationwide. 

BRIAN TYLER COHEN - HOST, BRIAN TYLER COHEN: Now you'd mentioned fundraising and I know that this has been a bit of a pressure point here with with Democrats across the country.

So what do you do about the fundraising situation? Because I know a lot of people watching this are tired of the request. They feel that the requests are relentless. Um, and it makes us feel like Pawns in some big money up money making operation where they basically just exist to squeeze every dime out of us until we're no longer Able to give any money and then the relationship turns sour so it's not not exactly a you know What I would consider a healthy relationship here that said I understand that all of this costs money Especially when the other side has someone like Elon Musk who's willing to just write a blank check.

So, how do you reconcile this? 

BEN WIKLER: So I think the beginning of successful fundraising [02:13:00] relationships, both for the people chipping in a few bucks a month and for the folks who then spend that money is trust and respect that that affects how you communicate about what is happening. I think having transparency and having honesty about what you're actually raising funds to do, being able to report back to people about how their funds were used and the kind of effect it had if you fall short.

Talking through what you do differently. And if, if you succeed actually analyzing what things worked, spending money as efficiently as you can. So I think if you run an efficient operation, it is actually possible to make it bigger because people like to, to donate, if they feel like their money is actually being put to good use to have a real effect and that is what we do.

I think the feeling of exhaustion and being hammered and being, you know, pulled apart. It comes from getting a relentless flood of messages, all which are kind of hair on fire and, you know, the polar coaster and, and give people a sense that maybe it's, maybe it's all BS. Maybe it's not real. If you, if you started from a position of, We're on this journey together, and, uh, we need your time as volunteers.

We [02:14:00] need funds to be able to, to hire folks so we can better use your time as volunteers. You know, here are the, here are the fights that we're engaging in. Here's the result of those fights. My experience in Wisconsin, we've raised more money than any other state party in the Democratic, uh, side over the last, uh, Uh, from folks who have been here for the last six years, as far as we've been able to calculate.

Uh, but we hear a lot from donors after elections that they feel really good about having contributed to the work, because they can see the effect that it had and they're hungry for the next fight right now. We have a state Supreme court race in Wisconsin in the spring of 2025. We're, it is urgent that we have the resources to fight there because that will affect the future of the U S house majority.

Wisconsin state led us through the majorities, reproductive freedom, workers rights, public education in our state. It's a big high stakes fight and we're up front about all that and asking people to support it. That's the kind of thing that I, you know, we absolutely, I want to ask folks for support of the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

And I think we bring that same lens to the national party's fundraising. And I think the DNC should work with ActBlue, with our, with our, uh, partner campaigns and candidate committees to, to, uh, Really rethink [02:15:00] how we do democratic fundraising in general to try to, uh, to, to make a better experience for folks that are investing because people tend to want to do more of things that feel good when they do them.

And it should be a great experience to, to contribute to Democrats to fight for our shared values. 

BRIAN TYLER COHEN - HOST, BRIAN TYLER COHEN: There, there does seem to be something of an issue where there are certain races because they might be higher profile, might be sexier, um, that, that garner a lot of money. And they might be completely unwinnable.

I mean, if you look at, if you look at the amount of money, for example, that went to Amy McGrath, the amount of money that went to Marjorie Taylor Greene's opponent, if some of that money went to other campaigns, other candidates who are running across the country who could have really used it and whose races were Clearly, objectively, much more winnable than going up against Mitch McConnell in Kentucky or Marjorie Taylor Greene in Georgia.

Um, it, it, how do you view that and is there anything that, that you would look to do as DNC chair that might rectify some of those kind of inequities? 

BEN WIKLER: So, donors [02:16:00] give for lots of different reasons. Sometimes they give to throw up a middle finger to someone that they just absolutely loathe, even if it's going to be tough to defeat them in the, in the election and I get that.

I think that the job of the Democratic National Committee Chair, and, uh, for, for folks in leadership positions in state parties across the country, a key part of the job will be to make what's important, compelling. To make what's effective, also viral. And sometimes that's a cultural strategy, sometimes that's a communication strategy.

But to me, you know, communicating here's, here's what we're going to try to do to win. Here's why this race, here's why this fight, here's why this new approach to data, whatever the thing might be, here's why it's absolutely essential to the things that you and I both care about that can help to, to bring attention to things that, that need to grow.

And I think we've been able to do that really effectively in Wisconsin. We've been able, because of that, to invest, for example, in the state legislative races in this election cycle. Uh, we were able to, to raise and support state legislative candidates with 20 million. And that has put us on track to potentially win majorities in both legislative chambers in [02:17:00] 2026.

Uh, Republicans. I went from a, an 11 seat majority to just having two more seats, uh, that, that Democrats need to win to be able to win a majority in that chamber. Um, and in the state assembly, they had 15 seat edge. Now they only have five. That kind of work in races that, you know, are not the thing that people wake up and open their favorite, uh, you know, uh, uh, micro blogging app, whatever blue sky and Twitter and threads are this month, these days, uh, they might not be the things they think about first, but I do think that.

If we, if we can bring the focus of our movement to the things that, that really make a difference and people throw everything they can at them, and then we win, then we have a shared sense that we did something important together, and that gets people fired up for the next fight. What brings disillusionment is when people feel like, What they did didn't count, or they feel like they did it on false premises and they were, they were focusing their attention and their work and their effort and their hard earned money on things that actually made no difference at all.

That, that is incredibly frustrating. But when you feel like [02:18:00] you're a part of something that, that actually made a difference about the things you care the most about, then it becomes something that you, you want to make a part of your life for years to come.

Credits

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today. As always, keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or anything else. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991, or simply email me to [email protected]. 

The additional sections of the show included clips from The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart, Garrison Hayes, Stay Tuned with Preet, Pod Save America, BBC News, The Majority Report, The Bitchuation Room, The Coffee Klatch, Woke AF Daily, Alex Wagner Tonight, and Brian Taylor Cohen. Further details are in the show notes. 

Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our transcriptionist quartet, Ken Brian, Ben, and Lara for their volunteer work helping put our transcripts together. [02:19:00] Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her bonus show co-hosting. 

And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You can join them by signing up today at BestOfTheLeft.com/support or through our Patreon page. Hurry while memberships are on discount through the end of the year. Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny weekly bonus episodes, in addition to there being no ads and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. You'll find that link in the show notes, along with the link to join our Discord community, where you can also continue the discussion. And don't forget to follow us on any and all new social media platforms that you may be joining these days during the Xodus. 

So coming to from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington, DC, my name is Jay!, and this has been the Best of the Left podcast coming to twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show from BestOfTheLeft.com.


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