Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 3: But enough with that, let's get to the show.
Speaker 1: So, of course, the recriminations have begun within the Democratic Party,
Speaker 1: where they are desperately trying not to learn any of
Speaker 1: the actually correct lessons about what led to their failures. However,
Speaker 1: we wanted to go through some of the finger pointing
Speaker 1: that is going on here. Let's put this up on
Speaker 1: the screen. Apparently you got a bunch of folks out
Speaker 1: there who are mad at George Clooney for being part
Speaker 1: of the charge to push Biden out of the race.
Speaker 1: We can put this element up on the screen, guys.
Speaker 1: The Daily Beast wrote this up. Apparently, George Clooney facing
Speaker 1: a backlash from demoralized Democrats for demanding that Joe Biden
Speaker 1: quit the presidential race. And I do want to say
Speaker 1: I got the election wrong. But I did predict that
Speaker 1: there would be some subset of Demos who were like,
Speaker 1: you know, geez, if we had just.
Speaker 4: Stuck with Joe Biden, then we would have won.
Speaker 3: Ifa is Joe Biden.
Speaker 4: They would have so delusional.
Speaker 2: New Mexico, and they would have lost the popular by
Speaker 2: like ten million votes, not the current five million votes
Speaker 2: that they're currently on. It would have been like a
Speaker 2: four hundred state blowout instead of a three hundred and
Speaker 2: twelve or sorry, four hundred electoral will blowout instead of
Speaker 2: three hundred and twelve electoral votes.
Speaker 3: And the whole thing is ridiculous.
Speaker 4: It is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: And you know, the other I was thinking about this
Speaker 1: that was like, okay, so let's think about the alternative
Speaker 1: universe where you know, Joe Biden just stays in. And
Speaker 1: in the sense it would have been like less painful
Speaker 1: for people because they would have just expected to lose.
Speaker 1: But I think they also then would not have had
Speaker 1: they would have just blamed the loss.
Speaker 4: Just on Joe Biden's page.
Speaker 1: Right, that's right, and it would not have been evident
Speaker 1: that like, no, there's a deeper, fundamental underlying issue here
Speaker 1: that if you all don't reckon with you are just
Speaker 1: going to continue to lose from here on out. So
Speaker 1: you all should still be thanking George Clooney at L
Speaker 1: for helping to, you know, persuade the party to move
Speaker 1: Joe Biden out of the race, even though you know
Speaker 1: where they the original sin is. Of course, well they're
Speaker 1: not the original sin, but in this particular cycle, was
Speaker 1: just deciding not to have a democratic primary at all,
Speaker 1: Like the terror of democracy is what ultimately leads to
Speaker 1: this place. And you know, I fully believe if they
Speaker 1: had actually had a democratic primary, I Thinkamala would have
Speaker 1: been in it. I think Gavin Newsom would have been
Speaker 1: in it. I think other people would have jumped in
Speaker 1: at Gretchen Wimmer, who knows Pete Buddhajice, And maybe I
Speaker 1: think it's possible that Kamala comes out of that primary
Speaker 1: process because just as being the vice president, you have
Speaker 1: a lot of advantages. I don't think that would have happened,
Speaker 1: but I think it's possible.
Speaker 4: But even if that was the.
Speaker 1: Case, she would have had more democratic legitimacy, she would
Speaker 1: have been more tested, she would have had to improve
Speaker 1: her skills in you know, adversarial situations, and she would
Speaker 1: have had an entire primary process to lay out why
Speaker 1: she would be different from Joe Biden. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: I think Biden is in part to blame, of course
Speaker 1: for not sticking by his pledge to be a one
Speaker 1: term president, or at least leading people to believe that
Speaker 1: he would be a one term president, but also all
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party elites who circled the wagons and protected
Speaker 1: this guy from having to face any sort of an
Speaker 1: adversarial process, Like, you need to realize that you'll screwed
Speaker 1: yourselves with that. That was a devastating error on your part.
Speaker 3: It's so obvious.
Speaker 2: And what was actually even crazier is the level of
Speaker 2: pull that these Biden people still have despite their illegitimacy.
Speaker 2: Can we put the next tweet up there on the screen, please,
Speaker 2: the Obama staffers blaming Biden. So David Pluff actually tweeted
Speaker 2: about how they're about how they were starting from behind
Speaker 2: and how they've had like an insurmountable problem. And you know,
Speaker 2: Jackie Heinrich, she tweets here she shows that Obama staffers
Speaker 2: are trying to plan to blame on Biden for Harris's loss.
Speaker 2: Biden World said that Pluff was sanctimonious asshole, he says,
Speaker 2: I find this so unproductive. Joe Biden is a president
Speaker 2: of the United States, and one without you. He successfully
Speaker 2: beat Donald Trump, something he never did. But here's the thing.
Speaker 2: David Pluff has now literally crystal deleted his He was
Speaker 2: forced to delete his entire account from Twitter because of
Speaker 2: the pylon from all of the Biden wars. So it
Speaker 2: shows you that acknowledging reality, even today, after this devastating
Speaker 2: loss by the Democratic Party, is still not possible in
Speaker 2: Biden's Washington, and that actually gives me less faith than
Speaker 2: ever that they will ever do anything about it, because
Speaker 2: it's clear now like the internal cult behavior and the
Speaker 2: self reinforcing mechanisms are just too damn strong, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, even when they forced.
Speaker 2: Biden out, it was He's the greatest president ever, selfless,
Speaker 2: god fearing, greatest Jesus Christ. Arnay, you know all this,
Speaker 2: and thank you for going away to but it's like,
Speaker 2: you know, no, Ben, you are hands down. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: say this of the modern era other enjoy Bush. I
Speaker 2: think he's the worst, right, I mean, I don't think
Speaker 2: he can come away from it. And I'm not talking
Speaker 2: about just policy level like look at what he did,
Speaker 2: Like in terms of his stated goals, his stated goal
Speaker 2: was never to really do anything for the country.
Speaker 3: It was just I will save you from Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: Was to end the Trump that.
Speaker 3: Was his That's it.
Speaker 2: And I've talked about this a million times. The very
Speaker 2: first model I ever did for Rising was about Joe
Speaker 2: Biden and how all he ever talked about was defeating
Speaker 2: Donald Trump, and how he never presented any faith, which
Speaker 2: is kind of crazy in retrospect. And now to sit
Speaker 2: here on the other side of his now humiliation and
Speaker 2: now this loss in the popular vote to Donald Trump,
Speaker 2: you are an unambiguous failure. Like, honestly, Jimmy Carter.
Speaker 3: Was more of a successful president than you were, dude,
Speaker 3: of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not only a better person, but literally a
Speaker 2: better president in terms of what he was able to do,
Speaker 2: and even in terms of his loss, like you could
Speaker 2: at least say, like Jimmy won a primary. He also
Speaker 2: ran on quote unquote like healing us from the Watergate agent.
Speaker 2: He was actually primarily successful in that, you know, in
Speaker 2: terms of Biden, like the one thing that he set
Speaker 2: out to do, he failed that dramatically historically.
Speaker 3: Not to mention all the policy stuff that also went wrong.
Speaker 2: Under him, and the one area where we rely on
Speaker 2: the president of the United States for judgment, he failed
Speaker 2: on that too, where he's old and people who have
Speaker 2: real faith, like we know, you know, everybody knows old people,
Speaker 2: and many of them had great humility, and we're just like,
Speaker 2: there's no way that I could be president.
Speaker 3: There is not possible for me. I need to know that.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it's you know, my time in the sun is up. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and that's okay yea.
Speaker 2: And he his narcissism around his family, around himself, led
Speaker 2: to the place of where we are and so really,
Speaker 2: not since George W. Bush have we suffered so deeply
Speaker 2: as a country because of one man's narcissism.
Speaker 3: And also not since George W.
Speaker 2: Bush is one man's narcissism and frankly idiocy has doomed
Speaker 2: his national party to such a historic failure.
Speaker 3: I think that is all correct.
Speaker 1: I just I would assign equal amount of blame though
Speaker 1: to the Democratic Party at leads who are around him,
Speaker 1: who protected him from it as well, because listen, he's
Speaker 1: a president, you know, and he's been seeking the presidency
Speaker 1: for his entire life. No one should be surprised that
Speaker 1: he's such a nurses that he's not going to let
Speaker 1: go of the brass ring. Like that's incredibly predictable. And
Speaker 1: so you had to have people around him who were
Speaker 1: willing to, you know, go against the party and facilitate
Speaker 1: a democratic process. And we could put the next element
Speaker 1: up on the screen from Politico because even though Pluff
Speaker 1: was apparently forced to delete his Twitter account for you know,
Speaker 1: barely barely criticizing Joe Biden, he finds behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: this is kind of this is the conversation that is
Speaker 1: playing out in democratic elite circle. So this is Politico.
Speaker 1: They got this guy, Jim Manly, a top aid to
Speaker 1: former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, to go on the record.
Speaker 1: He said he shouldn't have run. This is no time
Speaker 1: to full punches or be concerned about anyone's feelings. He
Speaker 1: had staff have done an enormous amount of damage.
Speaker 4: To this country.
Speaker 1: And you know, they had a bunch of other quotes,
Speaker 1: most of them anonymous from other party officials, consults, et cetera,
Speaker 1: who were saying very similar things. Because you know, it's
Speaker 1: very obvious at this point, but yeah, it's easy to
Speaker 1: it's easy in retrospect for them to point fingers, but
Speaker 1: these are some of the very same people who were
Speaker 1: in a position to know the level of his decline.
Speaker 1: And instead of you know, enabling a democratic process by
Speaker 1: which democratic base could choose who they wanted to be
Speaker 1: their standard bearer this time around, instead they circled the
Speaker 1: wagons and you know, there you go, here, here we are.
Speaker 4: And there's no guarantees.
Speaker 1: That another nominee with more time could have succeeded, But
Speaker 1: they wouldn't have been in a much much better position
Speaker 1: if they had gone.
Speaker 4: In that direction.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Yeah, And just with all of this, it's just
Speaker 2: so transparent. Their attempts to rewrite history are going to be,
Speaker 2: you know, legend for when Biden events should fs off
Speaker 2: to Delaware and to the beach, he'll ride his memoirs
Speaker 2: and they'll be just as ridiculous and hagiographic as as
Speaker 2: Barack Obamas were. But the attempts, I think, and I
Speaker 2: also wonder whether there may be too much blood on
Speaker 2: everybody's hands, because it's not just Biden, it's a lot
Speaker 2: of people in Congress. So maybe they'll just memory all
Speaker 2: of the entire thing.
Speaker 3: They're like, yeah, it was a crazy thing. Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: We got to move on.
Speaker 2: You know, that's one of the favorite pastimes of theirs
Speaker 2: is we have to move on.
Speaker 4: But remember how mean they were to Dean Phillips.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, yeah, I actually I know, I.
Speaker 4: Guy, allow him an apology.
Speaker 2: You don't kind of stand by this at the time
Speaker 2: when Biden dropped out, I was like, you know, Dane,
Speaker 2: he's kind of like Obama, like, because people remember don't
Speaker 2: really remember. A lot of the key Obama lore is
Speaker 2: that Obama when he was a nobody, literally nobody even.
Speaker 3: Gave a shit what he had to say.
Speaker 2: I think he was a state senator and there was
Speaker 2: one guy with a freaking video camera. So thankfully for Obama,
Speaker 2: Obama gave a speech against the Iraq war and that
Speaker 2: was massively influential for all of the young people who
Speaker 2: caucused for him in Iowa and for a lot of
Speaker 2: the early online energy around his campaign.
Speaker 3: And so Dean, I mean, we have to give the
Speaker 3: man credit.
Speaker 2: Like he was the first of all of them, the
Speaker 2: sitting like actually a sitting member of Congress who bet
Speaker 2: the farm. And he's like, Biden's too old. We got
Speaker 2: to move on, and he tried so to be honest,
Speaker 2: I think Dean like he's got a case, uh for
Speaker 2: I was right and all of you were wrong. And
Speaker 2: like I said too, the Democratic mind, the elite mind
Speaker 2: in particular, like the voters, the base, the MSMEC. The
Speaker 2: one credit you do have to give him is they
Speaker 2: do want to win. They love they hate losing. What
Speaker 2: they actually care about is winning. And so if we
Speaker 2: correctly can diagnosis as a major Biden problem, I.
Speaker 3: Think Dean has a very very bright futurehead of him.
Speaker 1: I do, well, see, I don't know, Yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 1: because there's there's also short memories, you know, the Democratic coalition,
Speaker 1: and lots of contenders for the you know, the happiest
Speaker 1: people right now in Washington are obviously the Republicans, and
Speaker 1: then the list of twenty twenty eight would be true contenders,
Speaker 1: you know, but not any of the women, because Democrats
Speaker 1: are never going to nominate a woman.
Speaker 4: So sorry, Gretchen.
Speaker 1: Widmore, Sorry he should have taken your shot this time,
Speaker 1: they say, wretch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, honestly though, should.
Speaker 4: Have taken your shot. There's lessons in Gavin Newsom should
Speaker 4: have taken your shot.
Speaker 2: There are lessons in this world for politicians. Timidity never
Speaker 2: gets rewarded. Chris Christie absolutely could have been president in
Speaker 2: twenty twelve. I have no question in my mind. I
Speaker 2: think he could have won and could have beat Barack Obama.
Speaker 2: He decided to stay in. He's like, oh trying. Twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: Bridgegate happens and gets as blown out by Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: Now humiliated and now shot.
Speaker 2: See miss Gretchen Whitner, you had a chance. If she
Speaker 2: was like Joe Biden or Kamala I'll see you at
Speaker 2: the convention. I think she would have won. I really
Speaker 2: do not the presidency per se. Maybe she would have lost.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I can't say any of that, you know, after the results,
Speaker 2: but they would have had a shot. And for Gretchen,
Speaker 2: like your time, it will never come again.
Speaker 3: You're done.
Speaker 2: You know this whole TikTok female thing, like good luck,
Speaker 2: because the retcon on this is we need the bros
Speaker 2: back and a white dude is the light.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think your call is care the first female president
Speaker 2: will be a Republican, like a conservative.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I put my money on somebody like Stara Sanders somebody
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 4: But could be.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just I do think like the problem
Speaker 1: for democratic women is that you have to overcome this
Speaker 1: stuff like oh they're weak, they're not strong enough, blah
Speaker 1: blah blah, they're too liberal. You know, that's like the image,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, I think it's it will be easier
Speaker 1: for a Republican woman ultimately to get elected. But you know,
Speaker 1: like I said, I think even they won't say this publicly,
Speaker 1: they'll say the thing about like, oh, the country's too
Speaker 1: sexist to elect a woman, but privately, the little lesson
Speaker 1: that will be taken is we.
Speaker 4: Just can't nominate a woman ever again.
Speaker 1: So any you know, Gretchen Wimer obviously is the biggest
Speaker 1: loser on that front. But I also think I think
Speaker 1: Gavin Newsom really missed. He was super hot right now.
Speaker 1: And you know, the fact that he's from California is
Speaker 1: going to be a problem for him. The fact he's
Speaker 1: not gonna be in office anymore is going to be
Speaker 1: a problem for him. Like I think he missed his
Speaker 1: shot as well. So there's but we'll see, We'll see
Speaker 1: how it all pans out and what the shape of
Speaker 1: the world is by then, because as if there's one thing.
Speaker 4: We've learned learned, many things can change.
Speaker 1: Absolutely all right, let's go ahead and get to David
Speaker 1: Serota from Lever News to get his reaction to Bernie
Speaker 1: Sanders a letter in his assessment of what went wrong
Speaker 1: for Democrats this week. Lucky to be joined this morning
Speaker 1: by the always insightful David sa of Lever News. Great
Speaker 1: to see my friends.
Speaker 5: Good to see you man, Good to see you too.
Speaker 4: So in your view, what the hell happened this week?
Speaker 6: Well, I mean, I mean, first of all, the Democrats
Speaker 6: got destroyed. I mean, let's just put that on the table.
Speaker 6: They got destroyed. It really wasn't close. I think that. Look,
Speaker 6: I think they had a lot of structural challenges beyond
Speaker 6: just Joe Biden not running in the switch of the
Speaker 6: candidate late. I think the inflation situation redounded to the
Speaker 6: incumbent party. I mean, those are all those were all
Speaker 6: baked in obstacles in this election. But I think the
Speaker 6: party clearly didn't take those obstacles nearly as seriously as
Speaker 6: they could have. And when you look at the class
Speaker 6: realignment in the election, I think what you see is
Speaker 6: the Democrats are perceived as an elite culturally and economically
Speaker 6: elite party that is completely out of touch with where
Speaker 6: the country is and what the country wants, and I
Speaker 6: think that that was shown by the results. And when
Speaker 6: you have a party that doesn't seem to be speaking
Speaker 6: to the material, day to day interests of the country
Speaker 6: and is instead it's economic message is basically like everything
Speaker 6: is okay, or everything is look at what we've already done,
Speaker 6: and not sort of channeling the grievance, the legitimate grievance
Speaker 6: of people in a dystopian economy, then that's what's going
Speaker 6: to happen. Now. I just want to add one thing
Speaker 6: when I say a dystopian economy, Look, I want to
Speaker 6: be clear that the macroeconomic numbers are decent, and they
Speaker 6: could be a lot worse. The day to day lived
Speaker 6: reality under the macro economic numbers that I think is
Speaker 6: what we see in the discontent, whether it's inflation, whether
Speaker 6: it's healthcare, whether it's housing, the essentially the ability to
Speaker 6: afford necessities. And it's not like the Republicans are speaking
Speaker 6: so clearly to those problems either. But you can say
Speaker 6: this about the Republicans. They are naming villains, they are
Speaker 6: naming enemies, they are naming they are diagnosing the problem.
Speaker 5: Maybe they're diagnosis isn't exactly right.
Speaker 6: The Democrats basically aren't really doing that as a party.
Speaker 6: And I'll just add one last thing about that. The
Speaker 6: thing that people liked about Bernie Sanders rallies was always
Speaker 6: funny when people at well, why do people like Bernie
Speaker 6: Sanders rallies in twenty sixteen, twenty twenty, My take on
Speaker 6: that was always that they like to hear at least
Speaker 6: one politician calling out villains, calling out perpetrators, calling out
Speaker 6: the specific essentially economic evildoers in the economy. And they
Speaker 6: like to just hear that. And that's not something the
Speaker 6: Democratic Party does. And that is something that Donald Trump
Speaker 6: and the Republicans do. And there are the election results
Speaker 6: to show you that that's what the public wants.
Speaker 2: That is interesting. We have a letter from Bernie Sanders.
Speaker 2: I want to get your reaction to. Let's put it
Speaker 2: up there.
Speaker 3: On the screen.
Speaker 2: He says openly, quote, it should come as no great
Speaker 2: surprise that a Democratic Party which is abandoned working class
Speaker 2: people should find that the working class has abandoned them. Well,
Speaker 2: the big money interest and well paid consultants who control
Speaker 2: the Democratic Party learn from any real lessons from this
Speaker 2: disastrous campaign. You were a veteran of the Bernie Sanders campaign, David,
Speaker 2: and we've talked a lot about I think over the
Speaker 2: years about what went wrong also inside the Sanders campaign
Speaker 2: and really inside of the Sanders movement itself to where
Speaker 2: it stands. But do you see any avenue and acceptance
Speaker 2: of this message amongst the Democratic Party today?
Speaker 6: Here's what is at first of all, I think Bernie's
Speaker 6: one hundred percent right. I mean, he's not saying anything
Speaker 6: he hasn't said before, and he's exactly right, just as
Speaker 6: he has been. I think that the problem is, or
Speaker 6: the fear is, is that the consultant class of the
Speaker 6: Democratic Party, the operative class of the Democratic Party, and
Speaker 6: frankly the pundits and the sort of affiliated Democratic media
Speaker 6: have an economic and financial incentive not to talk to
Speaker 6: the working class in the sense that the political class
Speaker 6: of the Democratic Party is tied to the donor class,
Speaker 6: to the corporate class. And so what I fear what
Speaker 6: Bernie Sanders is saying, which is correct, what I fear
Speaker 6: that it will be how it will be interpreted, is
Speaker 6: we have to move only culturally right, We have to
Speaker 6: go back to Bill Clinton, you know, school uniforms, like
Speaker 6: the whole cultural triangulation. While continuing to push neoliberal economics.
Speaker 6: I mean that was Bill Clinton's innovation, right, I mean,
Speaker 6: and I put that in quotes, but you know, move
Speaker 6: culturally to the right while pushing neoliberal economics. And that
Speaker 6: defines what so called centrism is instead of what centrism
Speaker 6: was under the sort of the New Deal Democratic Party,
Speaker 6: which was speak to populist economics and sometimes you'd have
Speaker 6: people in different parts of the country elected officials who
Speaker 6: were culturally somewhat different from Democrats liberal orthodoxy.
Speaker 5: That has completely flipped.
Speaker 6: And I think the question is whether the consulting class,
Speaker 6: the people who make decisions about what the party's brand is,
Speaker 6: whether they're too essentially tied to the corporate class and
Speaker 6: the donor class that are at the center of the problem.
Speaker 6: I guess I'll put it in more briefly, which is
Speaker 6: to say, if you're trying to both speak to working
Speaker 6: class voters and a pee and enrich and satisfy the
Speaker 6: donor class, you're going to either sound incoherent or you're
Speaker 6: only going to talk about a narrow set of issues
Speaker 6: that doesn't really tap into the real economic grievances of
Speaker 6: the working class because you're too busy trying to appease
Speaker 6: the donor class that's creating those economic problems.
Speaker 1: So the pushback that I've gotten within my own household
Speaker 1: to my analysis, which is similar to yours, similar to Bernie's,
Speaker 1: that like y'ell screwed up when you killed the Bernie Sanders,
Speaker 1: you know, evolution in the cradle, Like when you spent
Speaker 1: the last ten years as your primary political focus being
Speaker 1: to crush any semblance of a left populist class first movement,
Speaker 1: Like that's where you're really screwed up. And that's been
Speaker 1: ongoing for years and years now. The pushback I get
Speaker 1: is okay, but look at the Biden administration, like great
Speaker 1: on antitrust, great on labor, Bernie Sanders was influential, ron
Speaker 1: Klain Bernie Sanders, you know, you had the whole bill
Speaker 1: back better effort. They did do some stuff. Kamala ran
Speaker 1: on price gouging. She wasn't the focus of her paid
Speaker 1: media like her earned media campaign, but the paid media
Speaker 1: was overwhelmingly sort of like class woorish and one of
Speaker 1: the things that I've used to Rebut this notion is
Speaker 1: something I've been talking about for a while that you know,
Speaker 1: while the anti trust and the labor stuff is really
Speaker 1: important sort of medium to long term. The real story
Speaker 1: of the Biden administration is the cutting of the social
Speaker 1: safety net that was erected under COVID.
Speaker 4: And there was a chart.
Speaker 1: We can put this up on the screen, guys, this
Speaker 1: Biden adman shifted from build back Better to austerity chart
Speaker 1: that shows you know, yeah, in the beginning parts of
Speaker 1: the administration, look at what all the fight was about.
Speaker 1: It was about a lot of the sort of Bernie
Speaker 1: Sanders ish elements of you know, a social safety net
Speaker 1: embodied by build back Better. And then they shifted in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two to just talking about austerity effectively national debt, deficit,
Speaker 1: daily mentions. The other piece, though, I think is really
Speaker 1: critical what you were naming, which is that it's one
Speaker 1: thing to have, as Kamala did, like a list of
Speaker 1: economic policies that are good, that are genuinely good, we're
Speaker 1: genuinely popular, et cetera. It's another thing to have a
Speaker 1: story and a narrative about what has gone wrong in
Speaker 1: the country, who the villains are, who the heroes are,
Speaker 1: how we're going to fix it, et cetera. And to me,
Speaker 1: that's really the core of what they're missing and what
Speaker 1: you know, Bernie Sanders was very authentic and compelling and
Speaker 1: credible in identifying.
Speaker 6: Look, the Democratic Party does not like to name the
Speaker 6: villains because the Democratic Party is in a lot of
Speaker 6: ways and that with the villains, like there's a hesitancy
Speaker 6: to specifically name the villains because the villains are in
Speaker 6: the house right that they're they're they're afraid of that.
Speaker 6: I think your point about what the Biden administration did,
Speaker 6: I mean there's there's there's two important points that relate
Speaker 6: to that, which is, one, there's a somewhat unique situation
Speaker 6: in the sense that Joe Biden's cognitive decline made it
Speaker 6: much harder for Joe Biden to sell the policies that
Speaker 6: Joe Biden was doing sellable policies about the economy. So
Speaker 6: I think, you know, one thing that's important to remember
Speaker 6: is that three quarters of the job of being president
Speaker 6: is not sitting in the situation room making decisions. It's
Speaker 6: actually selling your policies and telling a story about your policies,
Speaker 6: and the Democrats the president was simply not able to
Speaker 6: do that. So I think it's not a great test
Speaker 6: case to say, oh, well, you know, he put forward
Speaker 6: all these He did these good things on the CFPB
Speaker 6: at the FTC Department of Labor, and the voters sort
Speaker 6: of rejected that. No, those policies basically weren't even sold,
Speaker 6: They weren't even pitched to the public as part of
Speaker 6: a story really of what the White House was doing.
Speaker 6: The second point, though, is when the American Rescue Plan passed.
Speaker 6: That's when Biden's poll numbers were the highest. When there
Speaker 6: was a creation of a real social safety net, a
Speaker 6: real investment in the working class, and guess what, Biden
Speaker 6: was popular. The problem is is that then it expired
Speaker 6: and people got cut off.
Speaker 5: And so when people get something.
Speaker 6: Realize like life can be a little bit better, that
Speaker 6: the government can actually do something, and then they wake
Speaker 6: up a year later and it's like, psych, we're just
Speaker 6: gonna rip that away.
Speaker 5: Guess what. Lots of those people that might have swung
Speaker 5: over to you in the election, they're not going to
Speaker 5: be happy.
Speaker 6: And I think that it's not to say that that's
Speaker 6: the reason this election happened, but it is to say,
Speaker 6: all of these things kind of pile up. You don't
Speaker 6: sell your agenda because of the situation in the White House.
Speaker 6: You've torn away benefits that people liked having and realized
Speaker 6: they could have, but the government isn't providing that to them.
Speaker 6: The parties not naming villains. The other guy is naming
Speaker 6: villain and is promising some kind of change.
Speaker 5: So guess what here we are?
Speaker 2: Yeah, David, one thing I wanted to get your take on.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you'll love this. Can we put the Ezra
Speaker 2: Kline says that Bernie was right. Let's put this up
Speaker 2: there on the screen. There's been a lot of discussion
Speaker 2: here about Joe Rogan, by the way, which is very
Speaker 2: annoying because it's not about Rogan the man, obviously, it's
Speaker 2: just about the sphere and like what that represents. He says,
Speaker 2: Rogan with simbolic is something bigger. There is an alienation
Speaker 2: that has grown between young men and much of the
Speaker 2: Democratic Party for years. There has been no real way
Speaker 2: of talking about masculinity in liberal circles that didn't attach
Speaker 2: the word toxic. Before it, there has been a reveling
Speaker 2: in growing female strength and a deep critique of male culture.
Speaker 2: You can have any view you want on the merits,
Speaker 2: but it had its consequences. Whatever you think of Walls,
Speaker 2: he's a vice presential pick, and that's not part of
Speaker 2: the ticket that people vote for.
Speaker 3: I'm just curious.
Speaker 2: You know, you lived through a lot of these fights,
Speaker 2: and the Rogan when I remember quite well, because it
Speaker 2: was a big schism.
Speaker 3: I think online.
Speaker 2: I remember AOC coming out and denouncing Rogan after Bernie Sanders' appearance,
Speaker 2: when obviously the whole case for him going on was, Look,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm trying to win. I'm trying to reach
Speaker 2: as many people as possible. So what do you make
Speaker 2: of this now the retrospective has proven obviously that's correct strategy.
Speaker 6: Well, Look, I had hoped after the Bernie Sanders campaign
Speaker 6: in twenty twenty, I hope that we were going to win.
Speaker 6: We didn't get I had hoped that Bernie Sanders would
Speaker 6: play a role and would become a figure analogous to
Speaker 6: Barry Goldwater in nineteen sixty four, as Barry Goldwater was
Speaker 6: to the Republican Party.
Speaker 5: Not to say that Bernie Sanders is Berry Goldwater like on.
Speaker 6: Policy, but the story of the Republican Party is essentially
Speaker 6: Barry Goldwater was the intellectual anchor, the ideological anchor of
Speaker 6: the Republican Party, a sort of guiding light and from
Speaker 6: there came acolytes who later were able to win office,
Speaker 6: Ronald Reagan as an example. I had hoped that that's
Speaker 6: what would happen after twenty twenty, and it really didn't
Speaker 6: happen because the dynamics of the inside the Democratic Party
Speaker 6: are fundamentally different than the Republican Party. The Republican Party
Speaker 6: has become more of a revolutionary party in the sense
Speaker 6: of there's turnover, there's an internal battle. The Democratic Party
Speaker 6: really has become much more top down, really much more
Speaker 6: in some ways, it's not exactly a cult, but sort
Speaker 6: of a machine that isn't really a forum for that
Speaker 6: discontent to birth something new. And so what happened is
Speaker 6: that Bernie Sanders was essentially laughed at, scoffed at, mocked
Speaker 6: by the media elites that are aligned with the Democratic
Speaker 6: Party by sort of the Democratic noise machine.
Speaker 5: He was brushed to the side.
Speaker 6: Maybe he's kind of a you know, pat him on
Speaker 6: the head, Nice run, Bernie, but not necessarily the ideological
Speaker 6: figure to inspire acolytes in the future.
Speaker 5: Maybe that's changing now.
Speaker 6: Maybe maybe this this realization that hey, Bernie, Bernie's theory
Speaker 6: of politics was right, Maybe that can bring about something
Speaker 6: new now. But I've been We've seen this before. It
Speaker 6: didn't happen after twenty sixteen. I'm not sure it's going
Speaker 6: to happen now. I'm not sure this party can reform itself.
Speaker 6: I don't know what it will do. Like, if it
Speaker 6: didn't happen before, why is it going to happen now?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 6: But maybe look, maybe getting your ass kicked so badly
Speaker 6: like they did this week, maybe that will shake something,
Speaker 6: shake out something.
Speaker 5: I don't know, Osbal.
Speaker 1: I think it's worth interrogating, though, why the Republican Party
Speaker 1: was able to be overthrown by the trumpst movement and
Speaker 1: why the Democratic Party was totally unwilling and moved having
Speaker 1: in earth and used tactics both legitimate and illegitimate to
Speaker 1: make sure that they stamped down the Bernie Sanders movement.
Speaker 1: And it's because fundamentally, you know, the Trump movement is
Speaker 1: friendly to capital, you know, at least any sort of
Speaker 1: like CEO who's willing to be loyal and friendly and
Speaker 1: not speak ill of him, like he gave them a
Speaker 1: giant tax cut. They you know, they were happy with
Speaker 1: the stock market performance. They're happy to go back to that.
Speaker 1: They hate the Biden administration and their attack on you know,
Speaker 1: their move towards trust busting and embrace of labor, et cetera.
Speaker 1: You know, Trump, he did all the like union busting
Speaker 1: and tax cut giving and whatever. So when it came
Speaker 1: down to it, even though a lot of Wall Street
Speaker 1: and CEO types like they didn't like this sort of chaos,
Speaker 1: they didn't like his vulgarity, but he didn't really threaten
Speaker 1: their class interests, Whereas on the Democratic Party you have
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, similar wealthy the Mark Cubans
Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party and you know, those sorts of
Speaker 1: people whose class interests were actively threatened by the Bernie
Speaker 1: Sanders movement. And so it created a much more intense
Speaker 1: backlash and ultimately much more effective war on that, you.
Speaker 4: Know, on that movement.
Speaker 1: And none of that has changed, Like that landscape is
Speaker 1: still there. It's not gone away. So that's why I'm
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not this time around, right.
Speaker 6: And the politicians and the political actors inside the Democratic
Speaker 6: Party ultimately rely on that donor class for the resources
Speaker 6: to buy second beach houses and mansions.
Speaker 1: And I'm not joking sort of, that's really.
Speaker 6: Yeah, right, Like I mean, and and for super PACs
Speaker 6: and for ad spending. Right, So there is a financial
Speaker 6: iron triangle there inside the Democratic Party that is structurally
Speaker 6: aligned against Bernie Sanders and a class based politics. And
Speaker 6: we're going to about to see whether that iron triangle
Speaker 6: can withstand even a shellacking like that happened, an electoral
Speaker 6: shellacking that so obviously proves the Democrats have a massive
Speaker 6: political problem.
Speaker 1: So the last thing I just had to get to
Speaker 1: your quicker reaction to is David Brooks is even now like, huh,
Speaker 1: maybe that Bernie Sanders was Honestly, can we put this
Speaker 1: element up on the screen, because this is just incredibly
Speaker 1: we wrote this and the pages of the New York Times.
Speaker 1: Maybe the Democrats have to embrace a Bernie Sanders style disruption,
Speaker 1: something that will make people like me feel uncomfortable. And
Speaker 1: it's like, I'll just let you react to it, because
Speaker 1: I know when I first shared this with you were
Speaker 1: you had to go and look it up to make
Speaker 1: sure that this is actually real, because it's so it's
Speaker 1: so unbelievable.
Speaker 6: From this particular I toggle when I see stuff like this,
Speaker 6: I toggle between I'm so glad this is such a
Speaker 6: wonderful realization for you.
Speaker 5: You're such a genius.
Speaker 6: How did you arrive at this brilliant revelation that all
Speaker 6: of us, for the last thirty years have been saying. Right,
Speaker 6: I mean, I have gray hair on my head and
Speaker 6: I look ten years older than I am, because I've
Speaker 6: been saying this kind of thing for thirty years, only
Speaker 6: to be laughed at and scoffed at and vilified and
Speaker 6: ostracized by the same kind of people as David Brooks. Essentially, right,
Speaker 6: So I toggle between, you know, sort of eye rolling.
Speaker 6: So also listen, better late than never? Right, Like, hey,
Speaker 6: you're late to the game. You're thirty years late. It's fine.
Speaker 6: That's what The New York Times does. They show up
Speaker 6: to a story thirty years late and pretend it's a
Speaker 6: great revelation. Okay, that's their business model. But like, hey, welcome, right,
Speaker 6: Like if everyone's realizing this now, you know there's still
Speaker 6: a future here that we have to fight for.
Speaker 5: So better late than never.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, you know, if there were, on the
Speaker 1: off chance, yes, yeah, that there was a Sanders esque
Speaker 1: movement that arose from the Ashes, David Brooks would be
Speaker 1: first in line to crush it and stamp it.
Speaker 4: Out once again.
Speaker 3: Under percent David.
Speaker 1: Always great to see you, Always love your insights. Tell
Speaker 1: people where to support lever News, which you guys definitely
Speaker 1: should be doing. You know, one of the most important,
Speaker 1: I think, independent media outlets that is truly out there
Speaker 1: with the investigative reporting that you all do, which is
Speaker 1: pretty unmatched across independent media. You guys have now drop
Speaker 1: site News both doing a fantastic job.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 6: Everyone can go to levernews dot com become a subscriber.
Speaker 6: I would really appreciate that, And I should say, if
Speaker 6: you want to know how we got to this moment,
Speaker 6: especially the moment of big money politics, go subscribe in
Speaker 6: your app to master Plan. It's our podcast. It's about
Speaker 6: the fifty year history to legalize big money politics.
Speaker 1: Highly recommend Yeah, highly recommend it. It's truly essential listening
Speaker 1: to understand how we got to this particular political moment.
Speaker 1: So once again, great to see you.
Speaker 5: David, Good to see you man, Thanks to both of you.
Speaker 3: Appreciate your pleasure.
Speaker 2: Thank you guys so much for watching. It's been a
Speaker 2: really fun week to cover and experience this.
Speaker 3: With all of you. I know, for you.
Speaker 2: It's even when you lose, you know, come on, you
Speaker 2: gotta be you hear a good support.
Speaker 3: It's all right.
Speaker 4: Yeah's not gonna lie about my emotional stagment.
Speaker 3: The best is yet to come, Crystal. That's what Kamberly
Speaker 3: Gilfoyle told us, and she was right.
Speaker 2: The best is yet to come for breaking points at least.
Speaker 2: So thank you guys. We love you and if anything
Speaker 2: breaks over the weekend, we'll see you.
Speaker 3: Otherwise, we'll see you on Monday.