WEBVTT - Still Don't Panic: An Election Response 0:00:01.760 --> 0:00:07.800 Coolso media, Welcome to it could happen here. On today's episode, 0:00:07.800 --> 0:00:12.160 we have Robert Evans, Harrison Davis, Miowong, James Stout, Margaret Kildroy, 0:00:12.560 --> 0:00:13.600 and I'm Sophie Lickterman. 0:00:13.920 --> 0:00:16.440 This is the post election episode. 0:00:16.840 --> 0:00:22.599 Robert, Yeah, it happened here, is happening has continued to 0:00:22.680 --> 0:00:23.279 happen here. 0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:24.200 Yeah. 0:00:24.320 --> 0:00:27.440 Yeah. This has been a podcast from the beginning about 0:00:27.440 --> 0:00:31.080 things falling apart, which is a great business to be in, 0:00:31.240 --> 0:00:34.519 I guess because they keep doing that. I want to 0:00:34.600 --> 0:00:38.159 start by kind of talking about yesterday's episode, the one 0:00:38.200 --> 0:00:40.159 that I dropped before the election, because I thought a 0:00:40.159 --> 0:00:43.280 lot about like what to put out on the day 0:00:43.479 --> 0:00:47.400 of the election, and I kind of made the call, 0:00:47.560 --> 0:00:51.240 which I don't know regrets the wrong word. I made 0:00:51.240 --> 0:00:53.519 the call yesterday that like, Okay, we've got this new 0:00:53.560 --> 0:00:56.760 poll from Selzer. People are starting to feel like, you know, 0:00:56.800 --> 0:00:59.320 some of this late breaking news is good for Harris. 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:02.080 Some of the post posters are hurting back in that direction. 0:01:02.680 --> 0:01:05.600 I probably should do something to kind of like pump 0:01:05.640 --> 0:01:09.280 the breaks on enthusiasm and remind people that even if 0:01:09.280 --> 0:01:11.360 she wins, there's still a lot of dangers out there, 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:13.080 right because That's what I saw as like the big 0:01:13.120 --> 0:01:16.200 threat model is Harris is likely to win, and then 0:01:16.240 --> 0:01:19.280 people are going to forget about these constitutional sheriffs and 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:21.560 all these different kind of like right wing gules that 0:01:21.600 --> 0:01:24.520 will still be a problem if we don't take care 0:01:24.560 --> 0:01:26.840 of them, right, if we don't do anything to actually 0:01:26.880 --> 0:01:30.640 like hamper their ability to exercise power. So I wrote 0:01:30.640 --> 0:01:34.200 that episode with that in mind, and it turns out 0:01:34.319 --> 0:01:37.000 I was being overly optimistic, and I think it was 0:01:37.040 --> 0:01:41.000 being overly optimistic in part. You know, I tend towards pessimism, 0:01:41.040 --> 0:01:43.279 which is why this show exists in the first place. 0:01:44.000 --> 0:01:45.880 You Know, one of the things that's happened is we've 0:01:45.920 --> 0:01:49.240 gotten bigger and more people have listened. Is whenever like 0:01:49.320 --> 0:01:51.760 shit happens in the world, we get bombarded on the 0:01:51.800 --> 0:01:55.080 subreddit and just like in emails to myself with people 0:01:55.160 --> 0:01:58.000 saying versions of like I don't know what to do, 0:01:58.480 --> 0:02:02.480 using language that's like very worrying sometimes about how hopeless 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:04.919 they feel. And so I've kind of felt a growing 0:02:04.960 --> 0:02:08.919 responsibility to like spread calm and hope, and I think 0:02:08.960 --> 0:02:12.040 that merged to a degree with the you know, after 0:02:12.120 --> 0:02:15.120 my dad died, this desire to like not just be 0:02:15.280 --> 0:02:17.640 sad and de doomer. And I think it led me 0:02:17.680 --> 0:02:21.400 to have, I guess, more of an optimistic Like I 0:02:21.520 --> 0:02:25.720 forced myself into an unreasonably optimistic frame of mind just 0:02:25.720 --> 0:02:28.200 because I thought that was the responsible thing to do. 0:02:28.800 --> 0:02:32.200 And I guess I'm kind of like evaluating that now, 0:02:32.320 --> 0:02:34.600 like what should I have done differently, you know, if 0:02:34.639 --> 0:02:37.440 I'd been in a more logical state of mind. And 0:02:37.600 --> 0:02:39.440 I guess the answer is, I don't know how to 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:42.360 be in a more logical state of mind. Like the 0:02:42.400 --> 0:02:45.120 problem is there's so much, you know, you've got this 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:49.320 hyper object of a political realignment happening in our country 0:02:49.400 --> 0:02:51.880 in this very dark direction you're also trying to deal 0:02:51.919 --> 0:02:54.720 with and I'm sure everyone listening is dealing with versions 0:02:54.760 --> 0:02:57.040 of this on their own. You know, people you care 0:02:57.080 --> 0:03:00.600 about getting sick and dying and you know, losing or 0:03:00.919 --> 0:03:04.120 having to start new ones and embarking, you know, starting 0:03:04.120 --> 0:03:06.600 to become a parent or whatever. Like everybody's got all 0:03:06.639 --> 0:03:09.160 these massive things in their own lives, and like trying 0:03:09.200 --> 0:03:15.200 to keep a completely rational perspective on the political happenings 0:03:15.480 --> 0:03:19.839 in this country while remaining unaffected from like the way 0:03:19.880 --> 0:03:22.799 in which your own life is going to color your 0:03:22.880 --> 0:03:28.040 optimism and biases is probably a hopeless cause to some extent, 0:03:28.440 --> 0:03:30.400 which I guess is part of why we're here to 0:03:30.720 --> 0:03:36.600 try and as a collective offer people our most reasonable, 0:03:36.720 --> 0:03:39.960 sort of averaged opinion about what's going to happen. So 0:03:40.120 --> 0:03:41.880 I guess that's what we're going to try to do here. 0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:43.680 That's what I've got to start with. 0:03:44.600 --> 0:03:48.560 I mean, hope is illogical, but it is necessary, and 0:03:48.760 --> 0:03:52.160 I think that's really where we have to start. I'm 0:03:52.200 --> 0:03:56.320 going to toss over to Margaret real quick about hope. 0:03:56.680 --> 0:03:59.680 Yeah, yeah, yeah, Margaret, fix this for us. 0:03:59.800 --> 0:04:02.640 Well, I just to say just to say, I woke 0:04:02.720 --> 0:04:04.600 up today with some hope, and I think a lot 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:07.120 of that is from my friendship with Margaret, and I 0:04:07.160 --> 0:04:09.000 don't think there's a better person to talk about that 0:04:09.040 --> 0:04:09.360 than her. 0:04:09.600 --> 0:04:11.880 Yeah, Margaret, I appreciate that. 0:04:11.960 --> 0:04:13.600 I often make the joke about the fact that I 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:15.800 name myself kill Joy in my twenties and then became 0:04:15.800 --> 0:04:19.640 a professional optimist. But I think that and I think 0:04:19.640 --> 0:04:21.400 that actually it could happen here. I think folks here 0:04:21.440 --> 0:04:25.760 do it really well. Sometimes determination is almost sometimes the 0:04:26.160 --> 0:04:29.440 right word instead of hope, right because or like optimism 0:04:29.520 --> 0:04:31.200 is always the right word, because you're like, well, bad 0:04:31.240 --> 0:04:33.640 things are happening, and they're going to happen, and they're 0:04:33.680 --> 0:04:36.000 going to keep happening, right, And so sometimes we look 0:04:36.000 --> 0:04:37.720 at like like climate change, for example, which is the 0:04:38.320 --> 0:04:40.840 broader problem. You know, you're like, well, no matter what 0:04:40.839 --> 0:04:42.599 we do, it's going to get worse. And so the 0:04:42.640 --> 0:04:45.479 immediate electoral problem in front of us, like, no matter 0:04:45.520 --> 0:04:48.080 what happens, it's going to get worse before it gets better. 0:04:48.520 --> 0:04:53.839 But we need to stay aware of that and stop 0:04:53.920 --> 0:04:57.120 pretending like the bad things aren't coming. Well, then still 0:04:57.160 --> 0:04:58.960 looking at saying like, well, what can we do? And 0:04:59.520 --> 0:05:01.360 for me, the thing that I focus on. I have 0:05:01.440 --> 0:05:03.640 a therapist friend who talks about how agency is the 0:05:03.680 --> 0:05:07.839 opposite of trauma and that the more that we act 0:05:07.880 --> 0:05:11.120 with agency while bad things are happening, the less that 0:05:11.160 --> 0:05:15.080 they destroy us emotionally. And so I think that focusing 0:05:15.160 --> 0:05:19.799 on what can we do is just incredibly useful and necessary. 0:05:20.000 --> 0:05:23.400 And also the fact that things are in turmoil right 0:05:23.440 --> 0:05:25.279 now and that means lots of bad things are happening 0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:26.279 and the old status. 0:05:26.040 --> 0:05:26.760 Quo is gone. 0:05:26.800 --> 0:05:28.960 We saw that with the defeat of the Democrats. Their 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:30.680 whole thing is that they doubled down on the old 0:05:30.720 --> 0:05:34.520 status quo, and people don't want that. People want something different, 0:05:34.839 --> 0:05:38.160 and Trump offers something different, a very horrible nightmare thing 0:05:38.200 --> 0:05:42.040 that's different, and the Democrats did not offer something different. 0:05:42.320 --> 0:05:44.359 And so I actually think in a weird way, we 0:05:44.440 --> 0:05:47.480 are in a good position to on a grassroots level 0:05:48.279 --> 0:05:52.000 build something different and say that people want something different. 0:05:52.000 --> 0:05:56.560 And I think that by working towards something different and better, well, 0:05:56.560 --> 0:05:59.760 it's the best way to keep our own spirits up. 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:05.760 Yeah, I think, Thanks mac Buye, I absolutely agree, James. 0:06:05.880 --> 0:06:07.400 What's your perspective here? 0:06:07.880 --> 0:06:11.040 Yeah, Like it goes without saying that, like Trump's proposed 0:06:11.040 --> 0:06:15.040 border policies are horrific, and his propos migration policies are horrific. 0:06:15.279 --> 0:06:18.960 Horrises were also bad. I think like that that doesn't 0:06:19.000 --> 0:06:21.600 mean that that Trumps are acceptable or the same, they're not. 0:06:22.240 --> 0:06:25.720 But also, like I think, having spent as much time 0:06:25.720 --> 0:06:27.840 as I have with refugees, having spent as much time 0:06:27.839 --> 0:06:30.360 as I have with people who have gone through things 0:06:30.400 --> 0:06:35.120 that are horrific and like state hostility, state violent, civil war, 0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:39.000 et cetera, like I have a lot of hope that, like, 0:06:39.000 --> 0:06:42.480 like Margaret said, right, there's there's this quote from de Rooti, 0:06:42.520 --> 0:06:46.039 it probably isn't real about how like we're not afraid 0:06:46.080 --> 0:06:48.080 of ruins, and we've lived in ruins our whole lives, 0:06:48.080 --> 0:06:50.680 and we'll build our future in the ruins of the 0:06:50.720 --> 0:06:54.679 old world. But like, when I think about the next 0:06:54.680 --> 0:06:57.760 four years, like the state will be absent or hostile 0:06:58.000 --> 0:07:00.800 right now, absent at best and hostile at work. It's 0:07:00.880 --> 0:07:04.239 been that way at the border for a very long time. Yeah, 0:07:04.279 --> 0:07:06.719 and we've built our little community and our little world. 0:07:06.800 --> 0:07:11.320 And like when I am sad, when I'm despairing, when 0:07:11.320 --> 0:07:14.320 I'm scared, I think about the things that we did 0:07:14.400 --> 0:07:17.800 in the last year, right we fed tens of thousands 0:07:17.840 --> 0:07:22.320 of people by ourselves, and in doing that, we demonstrated 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:24.520 how powerful we are in the absence of the state. 0:07:25.280 --> 0:07:28.280 Because the state wasn't there, or the state was actively hostile, 0:07:28.360 --> 0:07:31.040 we were able to step in and from nothing, we 0:07:31.040 --> 0:07:33.320 were able to build something that took care of people 0:07:33.360 --> 0:07:35.200 who needed to be taken care of. And that like 0:07:35.240 --> 0:07:38.200 we're not special or unique, you know, we didn't have 0:07:38.280 --> 0:07:41.400 like some incredible structure here before. People just showed up 0:07:41.440 --> 0:07:45.480 to help people, and like more people will need to 0:07:45.520 --> 0:07:48.360 do that now, and that will mean that there are 0:07:48.360 --> 0:07:51.000 more people in difficult places who need help, right, But 0:07:51.560 --> 0:07:53.560 that doesn't mean that you can't do it. If we 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:57.120 can do it, you can do it. And having done 0:07:57.160 --> 0:08:02.640 it has made me less. Yes, I just I'm not 0:08:02.760 --> 0:08:04.560 as scared as I would be if I felt like 0:08:04.600 --> 0:08:06.480 I was on my own, or if I felt like 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:10.000 that we can't deal with this, because we can and 0:08:10.040 --> 0:08:13.560 I know that because we have and I want. Obviously 0:08:13.600 --> 0:08:15.360 that's something we're going to focus on. Right we have 0:08:16.320 --> 0:08:19.040 between now and the middle of January. I have no 0:08:19.040 --> 0:08:22.240 idea how many weeks or days that is, but it's 0:08:22.280 --> 0:08:24.400 a lot of time to organize, and it's a lot 0:08:24.440 --> 0:08:27.520 of time to put aside some of the differences we 0:08:27.600 --> 0:08:29.800 might have, some of the petty disagreements, we might have, 0:08:29.920 --> 0:08:31.800 some of the ship that people have said on Twitter 0:08:31.800 --> 0:08:37.120 dot com and like, get together and organize and build 0:08:37.160 --> 0:08:39.480 a way of taking care of each other that doesn't 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:42.560 rely on the state, because that's always been what we 0:08:42.640 --> 0:08:44.960 needed and we need it now even more so. 0:08:45.800 --> 0:08:51.160 Yeah, speaking of what we need now, here's some ads. 0:08:51.480 --> 0:08:59.120 Oh Robert, what else? You just can't stop him? That 0:08:59.280 --> 0:09:01.240 was just physics. There was no other way for. 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:03.120 That to go. An object in motion. 0:09:03.440 --> 0:09:07.000 Yeah, yeah, that was like the oceans forming after the 0:09:07.040 --> 0:09:09.840 moon hit the Earth. Well, whatever happened to make oceans? 0:09:09.880 --> 0:09:11.760 I don't know. I don't know how oceans came about. 0:09:11.880 --> 0:09:16.960 Even they're gonna call him Rubbitt tectonic plate efforts. 0:09:26.360 --> 0:09:29.160 All right, welcome back to it could happen here where 0:09:29.160 --> 0:09:32.439 it is happening here, And Robert still can't help himself 0:09:32.480 --> 0:09:34.079 to make strange ad transitions. 0:09:34.480 --> 0:09:36.559 Garrison, what do you got for us? 0:09:36.840 --> 0:09:41.120 Yeah, I don't know. I I feel like I am 0:09:41.640 --> 0:09:43.760 not an optimist, and I also put a lot of 0:09:43.760 --> 0:09:46.680 work into not being a doomer. I try to be 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:51.000 pretty realistic about a whole bunch of my like thoughts 0:09:51.000 --> 0:09:53.920 and analysis on this sort of thing, and I tend 0:09:53.960 --> 0:09:58.160 towards survival as kind of one of my main, my 0:09:58.280 --> 0:10:00.520 main priorities. And i'd like to we talk a little 0:10:00.520 --> 0:10:02.240 bit about kind of some of what we actually saw 0:10:02.520 --> 0:10:06.120 on election night and some maybe some small like misconceptions 0:10:06.520 --> 0:10:11.360 going around, mainly this kind of idea that the country 0:10:11.400 --> 0:10:14.360 has like wildly swung to the right, like people have 0:10:14.440 --> 0:10:18.560 like overwhelmingly, like more so than ever before, have have 0:10:18.559 --> 0:10:21.400 have voted for like far right figures have voted for 0:10:21.480 --> 0:10:24.960 far right like bills basically wanting this this complete like 0:10:25.080 --> 0:10:27.959 nationalistic takeover. If you look at you know, their presidency, 0:10:28.040 --> 0:10:32.280 the Supreme Court, the House, the Senate, and I mean 0:10:32.400 --> 0:10:35.960 the final count is still coming in. We are recording 0:10:35.960 --> 0:10:39.200 this Wednesday afternoon. It's noon on the West coast right now, 0:10:39.559 --> 0:10:42.640 and Trump has almost the same number of votes as 0:10:42.640 --> 0:10:44.320 he gotten twenty twenty. I think it's a little bit 0:10:44.400 --> 0:10:47.960 under at this point. Now, there is some demographic changes, 0:10:48.040 --> 0:10:51.000 certain groups may have leaned more towards or against Trump 0:10:51.280 --> 0:10:55.000 than in past elections, but the final like averaged popular 0:10:55.080 --> 0:10:58.760 vote number is at this point pretty much the same. Now. 0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:02.160 Kind of why this has happened, why he's still kind 0:11:02.160 --> 0:11:04.800 of sweeping all of these swing states is we've kind 0:11:04.800 --> 0:11:07.440 of had a collapse of trust in the Democratic Party, 0:11:07.840 --> 0:11:10.280 and you could attribute this to a lot of things. 0:11:10.720 --> 0:11:12.920 I don't think it's a single thing. It is obviously 0:11:12.960 --> 0:11:15.800 a confluence of events. I think of one of the 0:11:15.800 --> 0:11:18.040 big things is like nine percent inflation is kind of 0:11:18.040 --> 0:11:21.160 hard to beat if people, to Margaret's point earlier, they're 0:11:21.200 --> 0:11:25.120 looking for something different, and Harris meaningfully was not offering 0:11:25.240 --> 0:11:29.400 anything like substantially different. She's the VP right like it's 0:11:29.679 --> 0:11:31.840 she has that legacy. I don't think Biden could have 0:11:31.840 --> 0:11:34.880 done much more to alter the inflation, but like that, 0:11:34.880 --> 0:11:38.880 that doesn't matter. People people feel this and that's very strong. 0:11:39.160 --> 0:11:41.560 And there's other reasons why people have kind of lost 0:11:41.840 --> 0:11:44.880 faith in the Democratic Party or aren't as willing to 0:11:44.960 --> 0:11:48.720 come out in as high numbers as we saw back 0:11:48.720 --> 0:11:51.520 in twenty twenty. And crucially, but back in twenty twenty, 0:11:51.760 --> 0:11:53.320 in a lot of the swing states, the vote was 0:11:53.400 --> 0:11:56.200 very close. Although the popular vote swung pretty heavily towards 0:11:56.240 --> 0:11:58.480 Biden in a lot of the crucial swing states, in 0:11:58.520 --> 0:12:00.480 some of the states he was only like twenty thousand 0:12:00.520 --> 0:12:03.360 votes ahead. Like it was, it was a pretty tight 0:12:03.440 --> 0:12:04.400 race in some of those states. 0:12:04.600 --> 0:12:05.240 Yeah. 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:07.600 Now, the other thing I'm kind of seeing which kind 0:12:07.600 --> 0:12:10.400 of reflects this idea that like the country has it wildly, 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:14.160 like the average people haven't wildly become a more fascist. 0:12:14.600 --> 0:12:18.040 It's that even in states that have elected Trump, they 0:12:18.080 --> 0:12:21.800 have also passed like a decent number of progressive initiatives, 0:12:21.840 --> 0:12:26.000 including abortion rights. Voters in Arizona and Missouri approved ballid 0:12:26.000 --> 0:12:30.880 initiatives that will serve to protect abortion rights until further 0:12:31.000 --> 0:12:35.400 laws are in the books, and in Maryland, in Montana, Nevada, 0:12:35.440 --> 0:12:39.120 and New York where abortion is legal, and Colorado, where 0:12:39.160 --> 0:12:43.480 there's no laws restricting abortion, they all passed measures that 0:12:43.640 --> 0:12:47.480 enshrine those rights into law. Now, Florida, unfortunately was not 0:12:47.520 --> 0:12:50.520 able to do this due to the super majority rules. 0:12:50.760 --> 0:12:53.560 Even though majority of people did vote for this in Florida, 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:56.640 they did not reach the sixty percent threshold, so that 0:12:56.679 --> 0:12:57.760 did not pass in Florida. 0:12:57.800 --> 0:13:02.280 But fifty seven, yeah, close, and it was an outright majority. 0:13:02.400 --> 0:13:02.640 Yeah. 0:13:02.720 --> 0:13:05.320 So people are willing to vote for these types of things, 0:13:05.480 --> 0:13:08.080 even if they're unwilling to vote for a Democrat at 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:10.240 the top of the ticket, and like, this is something 0:13:10.280 --> 0:13:12.720 that is worth considering when trying to figure out what 0:13:12.840 --> 0:13:15.920 exactly happened here and consider why people have kind of 0:13:15.960 --> 0:13:19.200 lost faith in the Democratic Party as a reliable institution 0:13:19.360 --> 0:13:22.199 to improve their lives or represent the things that they 0:13:22.200 --> 0:13:24.960 believe in, the gaza issue being kind of the prime 0:13:25.000 --> 0:13:28.520 example of this in the past year. One other thing 0:13:28.679 --> 0:13:30.960 I was thinking about this morning when trying to kind 0:13:30.960 --> 0:13:34.040 of look forward and imagine what the next four years 0:13:34.040 --> 0:13:38.200 would look like, specifically with the concern of figures like 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:42.520 Elon Musk and RFK Junior being put into pretty important 0:13:42.679 --> 0:13:45.960 positions of government. Right, the idea that RFK Junior is 0:13:45.960 --> 0:13:47.920 going to be in charge of the CDC and determine 0:13:47.920 --> 0:13:51.800 public health policies for the country is a very worrying prospect. 0:13:52.200 --> 0:13:55.360 Having Elon Musk in a senior advisory role in some 0:13:55.520 --> 0:14:01.160 kind of governmental department of efficiency doesn't sound. But as 0:14:01.160 --> 0:14:04.080 I was having my coffee next to a beautiful river 0:14:04.120 --> 0:14:06.880 in the mountains of North Georgia this morning, I was 0:14:06.920 --> 0:14:10.240 thinking about Steve Bannon because my brain is just fucked 0:14:10.280 --> 0:14:14.200 up like that, but specifically how Trump used Steve Bannon 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:17.400 to get elected back in twenty sixteen, even though Bannon's 0:14:17.440 --> 0:14:21.000 actual tenure at the White House was quite short lived 0:14:21.400 --> 0:14:25.560 for whatever reasons like personality clashes with Trump happen all 0:14:25.600 --> 0:14:28.440 the time, and he loses friends and advisors at a 0:14:28.440 --> 0:14:31.920 pretty frequent rate. And I think, because Trump is just 0:14:32.040 --> 0:14:36.360 like petty and you know, ablest and a bad guy, 0:14:36.440 --> 0:14:39.640 he might just find RFK Junior and Elon Musk annoying 0:14:39.760 --> 0:14:42.720 to be around. Considering rf K Junior's his speech impediment 0:14:42.920 --> 0:14:47.680 and Elon Musk's apparent neurodiversity, Trump just might not want 0:14:47.720 --> 0:14:50.960 to be around them. So even though he did utilize 0:14:50.960 --> 0:14:54.360 both these figures to get elected, albeit slightly later on 0:14:54.400 --> 0:14:56.760 in the campaign, it took a while for Musk to 0:14:56.840 --> 0:14:59.480 kind of worm his way into Trump's or bit. I 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:03.160 am not convinced that they will have direct access to 0:15:03.240 --> 0:15:06.880 Trump for very long. Now. This could happen, but if 0:15:06.880 --> 0:15:09.480 you look at Steve Bannon, who was similarly a worrying figure, 0:15:09.840 --> 0:15:13.240 he did not last very long beside Trump. So something 0:15:13.360 --> 0:15:15.480 like this could happen now, I don't think it'll happen 0:15:15.520 --> 0:15:18.400 the exact same way. Elon Musk has been positioning himself 0:15:18.600 --> 0:15:21.560 to have the government be reliant on him for contracting, 0:15:22.240 --> 0:15:25.120 and he'll probably continue to exist in some form in 0:15:25.200 --> 0:15:28.400 that regard, but in terms of his like direct influence 0:15:28.440 --> 0:15:32.960 on the White House and controlling sectors of government, this 0:15:33.200 --> 0:15:37.480 won't necessarily be a four year thing. I think that 0:15:37.640 --> 0:15:41.400 is most of what I had on this topic. 0:15:41.480 --> 0:15:41.760 I guess. 0:15:41.840 --> 0:15:44.840 I guess. The other thing is, like it turns out 0:15:45.320 --> 0:15:48.440 in Harris's efforts to kind of court independence and court 0:15:48.840 --> 0:15:52.360 like Republicans that largely that largely failed. 0:15:52.640 --> 0:15:54.320 Massive failure, massive failure. 0:15:54.400 --> 0:15:56.040 I mean again, it turns out when you have a 0:15:56.080 --> 0:15:58.920 party that's running as kind of like a mini fascist party, 0:15:58.960 --> 0:16:00.760 and then you have another party that's as just a 0:16:00.800 --> 0:16:01.560 conservative party. 0:16:01.600 --> 0:16:02.840 We've got Dick Cheney. 0:16:03.240 --> 0:16:05.960 Yeah, it's not a solid opposition party. Like, why like 0:16:06.240 --> 0:16:09.000 this hasn't worked for like the second time in a row. 0:16:09.240 --> 0:16:12.320 The stats are almost identical to twenty twenty on this 0:16:12.400 --> 0:16:16.320 issue of Republicans voting for the Republican Party. In fact, 0:16:16.480 --> 0:16:20.280 it was slightly few slightly fewer of them voted Republican 0:16:20.320 --> 0:16:22.760 back in twenty twenty. More of them voted Republican in 0:16:22.800 --> 0:16:25.080 twenty twenty four. I think it's about one percent. 0:16:25.560 --> 0:16:30.320 Trying to court the conservative vote means that the conservatives 0:16:30.360 --> 0:16:32.320 are going to vote for conservative. 0:16:31.840 --> 0:16:33.960 Maybe we should have an actual opposition party if you 0:16:33.960 --> 0:16:35.359 believe in electoral politics. 0:16:36.120 --> 0:16:39.040 Yeah no, I mean, like the lesson people should take 0:16:39.080 --> 0:16:42.160 from trump Ism. Trump did not get where he is 0:16:42.920 --> 0:16:47.680 by courting the conservative vote. Now, Trump took over the 0:16:47.720 --> 0:16:51.920 Republican Party and made it the Trump Party. And yeah, 0:16:52.400 --> 0:16:56.280 like that is what worked, right, Like, and that's that's 0:16:56.320 --> 0:16:59.640 the actual lesson. Like, the reason why Dick Cheney was 0:16:59.640 --> 0:17:04.399 fucking doing appearances with Kamala Harris was because conservatives, what 0:17:04.440 --> 0:17:07.280 we had known as conservatives prior to Trump coming to 0:17:07.359 --> 0:17:11.960 power largely are out of the picture, right, Like the 0:17:12.000 --> 0:17:15.560 new crop of guys are all weirdos that have molded 0:17:15.600 --> 0:17:20.600 themselves in the image of Trump since his rise to power. Right. Yeah, 0:17:20.640 --> 0:17:23.439 And one of the things that is, like, the lesson 0:17:23.480 --> 0:17:26.080 is not we need to make our own Trump, although 0:17:26.080 --> 0:17:28.320 by god, some people are going to take that lesson 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:30.640 out of this. The lesson is that, sure, you have 0:17:30.720 --> 0:17:34.399 to come to people with a vision, right, Like, you 0:17:34.440 --> 0:17:36.760 don't come to people by saying, well, what if we 0:17:36.800 --> 0:17:39.080 put a Republican in our cabinet? Right, what if it's 0:17:39.119 --> 0:17:41.320 basically the same as this last thing that you're not 0:17:41.359 --> 0:17:44.360 really that happy with, but instead with more Cheney. Right, 0:17:44.400 --> 0:17:47.200 it turns out that doesn't drive foot or enthusiasm, and hey, 0:17:47.320 --> 0:17:50.080 like that's you know, I'm hitting the Libs pretty hard 0:17:50.080 --> 0:17:52.560 because this is like the most catastrophic failure of any 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:55.840 political party in living memory. Right, So they do deserve 0:17:55.880 --> 0:17:58.600 to be hit. But it's not like the left accomplished 0:17:58.640 --> 0:18:02.480 anything right, either electorally or otherwise. Right, there is no 0:18:02.760 --> 0:18:07.280 organized national left wing movement that is worth talking about 0:18:07.600 --> 0:18:10.600 in any kind of building power way, Like it simply 0:18:10.640 --> 0:18:11.400 doesn't exist. 0:18:11.640 --> 0:18:16.760 And ignoring the blind loyalty that people have for Trump 0:18:17.640 --> 0:18:21.800 was a mistake. Yeah, not considering like targeting that audience. 0:18:21.920 --> 0:18:24.760 It doesn't seem like all of the January sixth ads 0:18:24.880 --> 0:18:25.919 did anything at all. 0:18:26.000 --> 0:18:27.280 No, did fuck all. 0:18:27.359 --> 0:18:31.120 I mean, in fact, in fact statistically they did they 0:18:31.119 --> 0:18:34.320 did nothing. They did nothing to hurt Trump. Yeah, if 0:18:34.400 --> 0:18:38.080 Trump gets essentially the same total number of votes, they 0:18:38.080 --> 0:18:41.399 didn't do anything to hurt him like that, Like that 0:18:41.640 --> 0:18:43.720 strategy was not that was not successful. 0:18:43.800 --> 0:18:44.640 Yeah, you have to. 0:18:44.600 --> 0:18:48.080 Offer something, and just the large swath of like electoral 0:18:48.119 --> 0:18:51.520 nihilism that the that the Democratic Party keeps keeps running 0:18:51.600 --> 0:18:54.480 up against continues to be its most like existential threat. 0:18:55.040 --> 0:18:58.040 Robert Gary and I at the RNC talked to a 0:18:58.119 --> 0:19:02.160 variety of people who who did not give a flying 0:19:02.400 --> 0:19:04.359 fuck about Trump's record. 0:19:04.400 --> 0:19:04.919 Well, of course not. 0:19:04.920 --> 0:19:08.760 All they cared about was no, they had blind loyalty. 0:19:08.800 --> 0:19:11.760 Timp I posted this on Twitter dot com, and I'm 0:19:11.760 --> 0:19:15.000 thinking specifically of the woman that was like compared Trump's 0:19:15.280 --> 0:19:18.959 evil for lack of a better word, Oh, sometimes he's ridiculous, 0:19:19.400 --> 0:19:24.119 like my husband, and that blind loyalty and the Democrats 0:19:24.119 --> 0:19:27.320 weren't gonna fucking flip those people. That was not gonna happen. 0:19:27.720 --> 0:19:31.480 They took a gamble, wasn't even really a gamble. They 0:19:31.520 --> 0:19:33.680 took a gamble on the wrong crowd, and like that 0:19:33.680 --> 0:19:37.520 that's not effective, But you know it's not really here 0:19:37.600 --> 0:19:40.439 or there at this point. It happened kind of like 0:19:40.680 --> 0:19:43.680 now what, Yeah, we haven't really heard from me much, 0:19:43.760 --> 0:19:47.560 so I'm gonna I'm gonna shoot over to Mia. 0:19:47.760 --> 0:19:49.960 Yeah, and I mean I think I think where I'm 0:19:49.960 --> 0:19:53.360 at is that Okay, we're in this moment. Are one 0:19:53.359 --> 0:19:57.879 of our biggest advantages is that were not the Democrats. Right, 0:19:58.160 --> 0:20:00.520 this has been a fairly comprehensive refer random on the 0:20:00.520 --> 0:20:05.119 failure of the Democrats to offer anything. We also like 0:20:05.800 --> 0:20:08.040 screwed up offering a better world. 0:20:08.280 --> 0:20:08.399 Right. 0:20:08.640 --> 0:20:09.719 This is you know, if you look, if you look 0:20:09.720 --> 0:20:11.359 at what happened to twenty twenty, and you look at 0:20:11.359 --> 0:20:13.359 the places that we actually sort of like, I mean 0:20:13.440 --> 0:20:15.080 took power as a strong word, but like there are 0:20:15.119 --> 0:20:18.720 places where we ran the cops out, and we screwed 0:20:18.800 --> 0:20:23.679 up making those places like a world that was like 0:20:23.760 --> 0:20:27.600 ideologically compelling it off to spread. And like we're not 0:20:27.600 --> 0:20:29.840 going to get like a third do over of that, right, 0:20:29.880 --> 0:20:32.600 we have to be able to sort of like when 0:20:32.640 --> 0:20:34.120 the moment arise, we have to be able to actually 0:20:34.160 --> 0:20:36.760 create a world that is better enough than this one 0:20:37.680 --> 0:20:42.159 that we can move. But that's not impossible. Yeah, I 0:20:42.160 --> 0:20:44.159 think what we have right now is we have a 0:20:44.200 --> 0:20:46.679 period of time before Trump takes power, and we have 0:20:46.840 --> 0:20:48.800 this time to sort of wash our beasts. We have 0:20:48.880 --> 0:20:51.560 this time to organize, We have this time to plan 0:20:52.600 --> 0:20:55.479 and I think the at least part of what we 0:20:55.520 --> 0:20:58.119 need to do. And we'll get into this more like 0:20:58.240 --> 0:21:01.200 in other episodes and totally later too. You know, there's 0:21:01.200 --> 0:21:04.000 there's there's the obvious tasks of organization. There's getting people 0:21:04.000 --> 0:21:06.840