“Get These Incels to Work” (feat. Hasan Piker)

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Play and start hearing the good to be back. Thank you for having me.
After my conversation with Hassan, you'll hear my conversation with Seth Moulton. We talked about the Democratic Party.
We talked about the controversy over his comments around trans athletes. Also on the feed right now, you can hear Dan's conversation with Jen O'Malley, Dylan, Quentin Fulks, David Plouffe, and Stephanie Cutter about what went wrong in the Harris campaign.
We're having a bunch of different conversations about what we learned from the election, where we go from here with a bunch of different voices, one of which is here today. So people are mad that we talked to the Harris campaign.
People are mad we're talking to you. People are mad, and that's okay.
Yeah. But let's start with this.
It's a big tent. It's a big tent.
It's a big tent. It's got Dick Cheney in it.
It's got Dick Cheney in it. It's got Hasan Piker in it.
Yeah. It's got Dan Osborne in it.
It's shouldn't maybe uh feature dick cheney in it but you know everybody else we can i can have a conversation with great great all right now look the main pastime on the left other than being mad for the last few weeks is everyone saying how right they were all along about democrats being out of touch and bound to lose. Arrest me.
Sorry.

So we had a, I sat at this chair, well, maybe not at this chair, but I had the offline interview with, with John, I think a month before the, the election and a lot of the things, a lot of the concerns that I brought up to him, it seemingly came across as somewhat prescient where people went back to the footage and I've been seeing comments that were rather positive about like, you know, okay, he said a lot of stuff there that was objectively correct, seeming. Yeah, I want to talk about one aspect of that, which that you were saying others were saying that hey like trump going on rogan trump going on theo von like something is happening here and we need to understand it we need to address it it's it's real and i remember like my experience it's like seared in my mind of 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 like trump did fucking great in this interview 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 joel rogan made fun of him for that a little bit in the process but like there is something to be said about uh a relatively telegenic person who is able to portray himself as i like to call it honestly dishonest where like 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 I don't think that there is really anyone with that level of television presence on the Democratic Party front. I think like the most skilled orator in the Democratic Party's ranks in the last, you know, last couple of decades was obviously Barack Obama.

And and outside of that, I don, 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 the likes of Ron De Santis. 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 most like that's the one that got everyone's attention. i i said this on cnn uh last night that uh you can't really podcast your way out of this problem like having you know there was that one tweet saying like oh we just have a hundred pot save americas but they all have to look like hassan like that's not that's not how this works oh you think that one that one tweet might have been wrong? But the, yeah, like, I guess, so I agree with that.
You know, it became this couple 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 that would not have changed the outcome of this election 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 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 Democratic Party in some way.
Barack Obama did the same thing. Bernie does the same thing.
AOC does the same thing. Not on, I'm not talking about on policy.
You don't mean it like also in the same direction of running against. No, no, no, no.
But running against the establishment in some way. And just saying, and, and what I, the reason I connect them is because they all did something which is demonstrated that they were not part of the Democratic establishment, both 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 Party, which is just like, it's fucking annoying and like kind of, I don't know, like pedantic in some way. 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 so far it's not that we tack 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 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. There's still plenty of low propensity voters that you have to rely on to win.
And that's 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 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 D.C.
bubble, I think, and the consultant bubble and the media class that saw those ads and were like, oh god this is an incredible ad like they really ruined kamala harris kamala harris had a silly answer to a aclu questionnaire okay that just shows that she is not the most experienced politician this was all the way back and i believe 2020 right she literally had to drop out of the primary anyway uh 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 had 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 good right as especially as opposed to like the post-covid economy and its recovery um 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% 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 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 is looking at that anger and saying, we're going to channel your anger.
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. 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 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 so i want to like break that into kind of how we like the democratic brand how we message and all but then but also like on the policy front so joe biden wins he He tries to kind of build consensus with with Bernie. He brings an AOC.
He goes to the left on on antitrust. He does the Inflation Reduction Act.
He does a post covid relief bill. He cancels as much debt as he can legally,

even though the court is trying to stop him.

Like I, before the last year,

like what my view of this was is Joe Biden,

this consensus Democrat, right?

Actually to the right of the consensus

for most of his career,

somebody that had to be kind of pulled

to where the party was going, did something extraordinary, which is he adapted. He changed.
He governed in a much more progressive way than I think probably like I certainly than I expected. I hope that you expected.
Oh, absolutely. And whether it's because people didn't feel it or people didn't believe it or the way Democrats talk about policy is ineffective.

Like it didn't seem to matter in terms of how people viewed like the Democratic response to the economy. Right.
They were so angry about inflation. They were angry about a bunch of other issues.
And it really didn't matter what Joe Biden said or what Kamala Harris said. They were held responsible.
And I'm just wondering what how you explain that. Right.
Like it seems as though Joe Biden tried to listen to this exact critique and it didn't matter. So yes and no.
Um, I do agree. There are plenty of things that Joe Biden did like beefing up the NLRB and, and letting the FTC, uh, rain hell upon, uh, these, these, uh, monopolies.
There's two issues there though. One is, I think, something that you will agree with as well, that the Democrats don't campaign year-round in the same way that Republicans do on key issues, and they do have a massive communication problem.
That could potentially be solved by having a more robust ecosystem and more collaboration with even the likes of yourself and maybe even someone like myself as well. And they need to always be on.
They need to always be counter messaging against the anti-immigration sentiment. I went back and looked at my commentary from February of 2021, when the story of the Customs and Border Patrol Haitian migrants getting whipped by, you know, horseback Customs and Border Patrol people, officers was in the news.
And I remember talking about how the Republicans are going to keep hitting the immigrants or doing crime note over and over again, because that's the one thing that they have. And it's built around a complete falsehood that undocumented migrants are responsible for incredible amounts of crime.
It's not correct. There is no data to suggest this.
The data actually shows the exact opposite. Undocumented migrants are your neighbors.
They contribute to the economy in very meaningful ways, and they very rarely take anything in return. Why is the Democratic Party not pushing this counter narrative? And they never did.
Instead of pushing that counter narrative, which is based in truth, and talk about how undocumented migrants are responsible for less crime per capita than natural born u.s citizens are or that fentanyl being trafficked across the u.s borders are actually not coming in the knapsack of a otherwise law-abiding abuela but instead it's coming from regular points of entry trafficked by american citizens 90 of the people that are being apprehended uh for for uh chemical compounds necessary for fentanyl or direct drugs that they're trafficking across the border are American citizens. This does not track with the narrative that people believe because the narrative is dominated by the right on this issue.
They should have been counter-messaging against that and they should have been putting bills forward in defense of the moves that, for example, Governor Greg Abbott was engaging in and Ron DeSantis. I said this even back then, that this is actually a fantastic opportunity for the federal government to show that there is a more tolerant approach that, one, they should have immediately pursued Governor Greg Abbott legally and arrested him for human trafficking and tried to prosecute him for human trafficking.
I don't care if it's a constitutional crisis or not. All of this stuff was insanely messed up.
And the federal government dropped the ball. I think the Biden administration dropped the ball by not adding additional funds immediately, sending additional funds immediately to places like Chicago and New York.
And to figure out a better way to transition a lot of these people and integrate them into the American labor force. And instead, they just got stuck in this like legal limbo for no reason.
So. Yeah, I mean, look, why is it that? OK, so Republicans say they sort of lay all these problems at the feet of undocumented immigrants to say they're responsible for crime crime.
No, they're not. But there are obviously undocumented people.
They're people, and some are committing terrible crimes, which they then exploit. But for the most part, these are people that not only are committing crimes at a lower rate, but actually are unable to go to the police when they're victims of crime.
Whether that's a domestic violence, they can't go to the police, or whether that's just sort of the quotidian mayhem of living in America, or a boss taking advantage of you, they can't go to the police, right? Then they say, oh, well, they don't pay taxes. Actually, that's not true.
They pay into Medicare, they pay into Social Security, and they don't get the benefits of it back. And then they say, well, they're driving up the cost of housing.
I do not believe that undocumented people are the reason a house costs $450,000 where it used to cost $350,000. Yeah, I didn't realize they were executives at BlackRock.
The Guatemala migrants are mass purchasing houses and making sure that everyone's a permanent renter. That's the point, though.
It's not a trans person that's your landlord. It's not an undocumented immigrant that's your landlord that's raising the cost of rent.
Your manager is not an undocumented immigrant undocumented immigrant there are two big problems though one is there are a lot of people saying this and and it doesn't break through because there is this right-wing media system that puts out this one story and the second problem is democrats really don't have trust on this issue with the people that they're trying to persuade to see it our way, which I think goes to the point you made before, right? Which is, why is it that Donald Trump can meander around the country rambling, committing what in any other era would be, if not like campaign ending, like campaign harming, ridiculous statements, gaffes, sure, that he can basically be in a strategic

mess. But Kamala Harris has to hit every point exactly right.
If she says the wrong thing on

The View or there's a bad interview from 2020, those things can be campaign ending. And I think

to your point, it goes to something deeper, a kind of a lack of a like kind of, I don't know, core vision or, or, or motivating mission for the current democratic party. Yeah.
Something that is an understandable, easy to communicate, simple policy that you can put your campaign around. So, so we agree on the messaging front a little bit, at least, or the, the of how much right-wing media dominates the ecosystem, the media ecosystem in general, all the way from independent outlets down to traditional media, where as far as I'm saying, it's 73% now, I think, of all news watchers are watching Fox News.
73%. That's an insane percentage.

That's an insane number, right?

So outside of that, though, I think here is the disagreement that we will have.

That while Joe Biden did a bunch of stuff that I agree was positive, it was simply not enough.

And that was something that I was always very critical on as well.

If you see a homeless person and you chuck them two pennies

and they're sitting on the corner of the street,

like, yeah, technically,

their material wealth improved by a percentage,

a decent percentage,

but he's still going to be mad at you

because you just gave him two pennies.

Why doesn't the homeless person understand

that their situation is much better?

That is not an effective way to communicate to Americansicans that like no you don't understand inflation is actually under control that the economy is rebounding even if it's objective truth because they like most americans don't understand what inflation is and they don't understand that prices are not going to go down in that in that circumstance and that, and I factor this in not just the vibe session communications, but I'm also talking about specifically like even the IRA or many of these other parts of the legislative agenda that Biden put forth that was more progressive than I expected, more progressive than even the Obama administration in many respects. But one, they didn't do a good job of communicating any of those victories.
In my opinion, they did not, they, they did not actually like go to the media regularly to, to show these victories and to showboat and gloat a little bit to a lot of that was also held up in gridlock because we didn't whip votes well enough within our own party. And I think that there was a lot of punishments that should have been dished out to the likes of Joe Manchin and the likes of Kyrsten Sinema.
Rather than offering a Green senator an opportunity to be a prominent fixture of the Democratic Party, I think that a lot more punishments should have been issued towards these people that use the moment in the spotlight to specifically play the role of a rotating villain in the Democratic Party, which has happened time and time again, all the way from Joe Lieberman to the Maggie Hassans of the world, the Kyrsten Sinema, the Joe Manchins of the world, and the problem solvers caucuses within Congress in general. These guys need to get whipped into shape.
Yeah, I just, like, I wish I believed that. I just wish I believed that.
No, but think about it. But I just, like, I don't know how much more you could have gotten out of Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema.
Like, Joe Manchin basically was telegraphing the whole time, like, I'll walk away. And Joe Biden kept him in the tent.
That got judges through. That got the Inflation Reduction Act through.
Like, I just, I do not believe, like, I think we agree on a lot. Like, I just don't believe that there is a version of the Joe Biden presidency that could have been more successful on legislative policy.
I just, I don't see that. You're not going to appreciate what I'm about to say then.
Hit me. Use the IRS and also the SEC and maybe even the FTC to investigate as to why Joe Manchin's brother owns a coal mine and whether there's a conflict of interest there.
Investigate why Joe Manchin's daughter is selling pharmaceutical products to the state of West Virginia when Joe Manchin is directly at odds with uh you know any sort of bill that uh would lower the cost of uh pharmaceuticals so you want the president yes to politicize these agencies and use them to go after people because you want to know why tell me why and hey tell me why because they're doing it at the behest of of uh not only the american people their interests but they're also and this is going to frustrate everyone in this audience, but here's the thing that I get very frustrated about. We have a wide range of listeners across a broad ideological spectrum.
Here's what really frustrates me. What frustrates you? About the way the Democratic Party operates.
They love norms. They love institutions.
For sure. They love civility.
They care about bipartisanship for the sake of bipartisanship, as though that is that some do some don't yeah sure but for the most part the broad communication coming out of the democratic party is that these are the things that they care about these are the top line issues we're going to protect democracy we're going to preserve our institutions the problem is the other side doesn't give a shit about that so i think i want a democratic party that fights for me and others who are marginalized, other people that like desperately need help. And I know that the Republican party is never going to do that.
I'm not one of those guys who's like, Oh, well, you know, at least I, at least the Republicans are kind of listening to what I have to say or, or are, uh, you know, communicating, channeling the anger that I feel like, I don't care. They're, they're charlatans.
They're significantly worse than the Democratic Party. I don't like the Democratic Party for their closeness to the Republican Party.
I want them to be a party that actually fights for the working class, for all Americans unconditionally, regardless of ideology. And you can't do that through bipartisanship with an otherwise, like, hostile entity that is the Republican Party.
And I think there is a lot of hypocrisy there and the, uh, and, and hypocrisy that people can see hypocrisy is the easiest thing that they can understand. You can't say that these guys are fascists.
These guys are racist for eight years for wanting to build a wall and then turn around on, uh, and straight up tell Anderson Cooper in that town hall, well, maybe the wall is a good idea and I want to build it myself I'm going to be the border czar I'm going to be the border party you can't do that Americans look at that and go so you're admitting that you were just lying for the past eight years well it's like again though it's like I think actually like you look at somebody like Dan Osborne right who ran so far ahead of Party, ran as this economic populist. But one of the things he had to do to get there was kind of be tough on immigration.
And actually, like, I think part of it goes back to like if people felt like they knew in their bones, like Bernie Sanders being to me like the signal example, like, you know what Bernie's about. You know what he's for.
You know what motivates him. You know what he cares about.
Same thing for Trump. You know, like, you know when there are issues he doesn't give a fuck about and there's issues he really, really cares about.
Immigration is one, trade, right? Like, you know the things that like, that have been anti-crime, whatever. That there are things that have been in Donald Trump's like kind of brain slowly losing plasticity that are like kind of solid in there.
And for Bernie, you know, like we know why he's in politics and that gives a politician the space to kind of challenge orthodoxies in the party or kind of run counter to it to signal to the people you need to signal to. Now, like, you know, you say, oh, you can't call them fascist and then also work with them like yeah yeah but at the same time joe again like it's like i just don't know what to do with this nuance joe biden like i am glad joe biden did the inflation reduction act and an infrastructure bill and a gun bill and the chips act uh and a bunch of other stuff i'm glad he was able to do all of things.
I'm glad that he was able to use his kind of like moderate brand, whatever, to kind of bring people in and get some stuff done. Like, I don't think the country is better off if he didn't do those things.
So like you describe it as hypocrisy, like it's compromised. Like it, politics requires compromise.
The Republican Party rarely ever compromises. They're uncompromising.
have to beat them but that's not true though right like i i agree with i agree with that on trump but that's just not true like the re they did compromise right they like these are there there are plenty of people on the republican side that were furious at republican senators for going along with some of these biden bills right like those are people that did compromise yeah there a million examples, however, of Republicans that are obstructionists that I'm sure you also love presenting that go back to their town halls and lie about all the money that they brought back home from the bills that they voted against. So ultimately, we now know that political polarization is set in a way that never really existed in American history until the last couple of decades.
Right. I think that parties originally were more geopolitically focused on their immediate needs, like statewide needs.
So you saw you saw this dramatic shift. And now the Republican Party, especially with Mitch McConnell under the Obama administration, showcase that like permanent obstructionism

is not punishable and that gridlock is always considered the administrative party's problem.

If there's any sort of gridlock, it's the fault of the leadership.

And Americans hate gridlock.

Yeah.

That's kind of the reason why I was talking about Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, because

there was a massive, massive moment where like they actually ended up protecting the republican party because they were never going to vote for these bills anyway and now the entire conversation was about like you know madness within the democratic party's caucuses like oh they can't get their ducks in a row right like that was genuinely frustrating to me because it's like if you don't if you'd whipped your votes immediately then you could showcase that the republican party is standing in the way of progress but that's just like that is legislative minutiae what is more important to talk about is broad sweeping legislative changes or a agenda that might even come across as bold and radical in the interest of the american working class joe biden said he wanted to do public option. Everybody knew that wasn't real.
He never talked about it after. He just used the public option.
He slotted that in in the primaries when the party was primed to the Bernie left and everyone was like, you know, trying to communicate their own populist version of what Bernie was doing. And, you knowe biden won the primaries and effectively tabled the the discussion about health care this is still a major problem regardless like yes uh negotiating pharmaceutical prices and ensuring that insulin prices are capped to 35 which is now going to be looking like a trump victory when he's in office doesn't matter it's still good for the American people.
So that's great. But like that is good, but that's not enough.
Yeah. And I think that I think that when you don't do that, when you have this very technocratic third way neoliberal approach, but you sprinkle in a little bit of like anti-corporate, anti-billionaire populism that Joe Biden certainly did, you're a rudderless ship.
You're not communicating effectively like what you are about. And when you don't have a North Star that every single person can point to and say, this is what the party is about, your enemies can portray you as whatever they want.
And that's why the trans, anti-trans ads are even remotely effective because you can make the democratic party look clownish and and inconsistent and even silly and hyper focused on whatever key issues there are because one they rarely ever focus on universality and programs everything has to be means tested which I think is is both on the policy front and on the politics front.

Garbage.

Focus on universal programs, because that way you can cut across every single group and you can disproportionately target marginalized populations, black populations, brown populations and trans people.

These like these people do not exist in a vacuum. They're not magical, mystical beings that are not experiencing the shocks of the market.
They still have to pay rent. They still need workplace protections.
They still need the cost of medicine to go down. Right.
So universal programs capture the attention of all Americans, including this majority white, angry population that is finding themselves in the throes of the Republican reactionary movement. So they need to do that.
And if they don't do that, then the subtle populism of the right is always going to be the only game in town. And they're going to be able to present themselves as anti-establishment while they have billionaires yeah parading around uh all of the uh all the campaign stops like elon musk trying to do that x logo every time he jumps like a child i hate elon musk that is the trick though man they're like so if you listen to the harris campaign's advisors talking to dan pfeiffer i know you did and you had your problems with it um but one place where they agreed is that like hey like everyone's saying oh this trans ad oh this trans ad like it actually might not have been their most effective ad and they were trying to and and what quentin falk said was that like they were actually really trying to target it to get at black men and it looks like maybe that didn't work right like that's what that that sort of we'll see like we're gonna get more data but like the the point that the ad makes is just that like democrats are weird democrats are strange yeah right and like they use trans people as a cudgel yeah to do that but like to the larger point, you have billionaires, just the wealthy, literally the wealthiest man in the world.
The top seven, the top seven donors this election cycle all donated to the Republican Party. And they were donating like 100 million, 200 million dollars.
Like it was crazy. How do you think about the fact that in right wingwing media right now and like right-wing adjacent media, they are managing to be both the party of the wealthiest oligarchs in the world and the kind of traditional moral set trying to impose a specific way of living on people and anti-establishment kind of rebellious politics.
It's Nazi Germany straight up. It's just pure fascism.
That's all this is. It worked.
It worked 100 years ago and it's seemingly working right now. And it's not just the United States of America.
It's all across Western Europe. The only country that bucked the trend of the incumbency disadvantage seemingly was Mexico.
One must ask the question why an old doddering man who was still, you know, relatively telegenic, even though he believed in wood elves, duendes, was able to get a tremendous amount of popularity and then become the transition candidate that actually passed the torch to a younger woman, Claudia Scheinbaum. I'm of course talking about Mexico.
I'm talking about AMLO is the old man. Claudia Scheinbaum was his spiritual and ideological successor in the Morena party.
Why did that happen? Why was AMLO so popular? And why is Claudia Sheinbaum also incredibly popular? Why did Claudia Sheinbaum win the election with even larger margins of victory than AMLO did? It's because they expanded the welfare state, they increased minimum wage, and they made a whole bunch of decisions that genuinely improved the material conditions of a lot of people in Mexico. And that's something that people will never forget.
We talked about the black vote for a second. As far as voter patterns goes, older black populations, like older black voters as a voting bloc, is a more reliable voting bloc for the Democratic Party than younger black voters are.
One must ask the question why? That is because people remember the last time the Democratic Party did something for black people, did something bold, expended social and political capital for black people. And that is something that people do not forget.
If you give people things, they will not forget that. That's why there was a lot of dummies who thought, oh's back we're gonna get some stimmy checks it's not gonna happen but they still remember that because they think oh yeah trump gave us stimmy checks i mean well joe biden expanded i mean like i i know like i know and by the way like i'm not pushing back on any of this because i i don't like agree with the sentiment i just like I am trying in the weeks after this election to just like,

just like question these,

these sort of statements because then it's like,

well,

well,

Joe Biden, uh,

expanded,

uh,

the child tax credit made a huge difference for millions of children.

No,

absolutely.

The child,

the expansion of the child tax credit was fantastic,

but it,

it didn't continue.

It was so successful and it didn't continue. Like like do you think american people know why that happened i i don't i don't who's at fault if american people don't know why that uh happened it's a well that's a that's a i think some of it is democrats some of it is the mainstream media some of it is the right-wing media and some of it by the way is the left it left.
It is the media of the left. Right.
Like I think the first couple of years that there were there's been so many moments where by great frustration, I think, in the way politics is talk about is often people do not want to to do the work of figuring out who's actually responsible. Right.
Like Republicans will shut down the government and mainstream sources will say, Washington gridlock continues, right? Or Joe Biden will be stymied in some way or Barack Obama will be stymied. Why didn't Barack Obama do this? Why didn't Barack Obama do that when he had a majority, right? He said, well, because it's actually, you know what? In the Senate, having 49 votes to get rid of the filibuster

and having 50 votes to get rid of the filibuster

is a difference between doing a ton of shit

and not being able to do anything.

That's not the result of 49 people.

That's the result of one person.

Can I bring up something really quick?

This conversation that you and I are having,

have you ever heard a Republican have this conversation?

Well, what do you mean? Like Republicans are talking this way? Have you ever heard a Republican go, sorry, we couldn't get this done because we simply did not have the votes? Is that ever like a real, significant, front-facing, public conversation that the Republicans have? I mean, I feel like you want the answer to be no, but I do think the answer is yes. I can't recall the time.
Maybe, no, I'm asking you. No, I think on their side, I think the, I mean, they have over the last decade, slowly but surely gotten rid of the people who are pointing out the actual things that stand in their way, right? Like they went after Kevin McCarthy.
They went out, well, yeah, like, and sometimes that works. Sometimes that leaves them like pretty well stuck.
I mean, like Donald Trump was president for four years. He wanted to repeal the Affordable Care Acts.
He didn't have the votes, right? There was a big conversation about why he didn't have the votes that like the there have been like republican the republican base had like furious with spending bills spending bills that were passed right what did donald trump do after when john mccain struck down the affordable care act well what did he do he took out the individual mandate regardless he did well he did what the same thing a democratic president would do do as much as you can legislatively and when it fails use your executive power which is what biden has done on student loans and a bunch of other issues yeah so my point is he still got the most significant aspect of his uh you know uh agenda across and in the process he utilized the bully pulpit to laser john mccain and effectively bully John McCain in a way that I've never seen a Democratic president turn around and communicate about Joe Biden. I'll hear it about the left, about how they're naysayers, how they're spoilers.
I never hear it about conservative Democrats. And I think it's the coalition that you want to have is my point.
And I think Democrats win or lose want to win by their own like established policies and the way that they want to win. And they're willing to lose if necessary, as long as they still maintain the overarching attitude that they have.
I just think that is... Or maybe they're just bad and wrong.
Well, I just think they're like, I think people need to be persuaded. I think people need to be persuaded.
Like David Plouffe talking to Pfeiffer yesterday. He's like, look, you go to a swing state.
You got a certain percentage of liberals, progressives, you have a certain percentage of conservatives and you got this vast swath of moderates. You need them.
You need them. Now, I think where you're right is like there is something about a Democratic establishment, establishment figures that feel more comfortable with a Liz Cheney sitting at the table than with a leftist sitting at the table.
It's gross. And that the disagreements with Liz Cheney are more kind of are acceptable and the disagreements to the left are less acceptable.
But one must ask the question, why is that acceptable? Liz Cheney is anti-LGBT. Liz Cheney is anti-abortion.
Liz Cheney is anti-Democratic Party. Liz Cheney is the daughter of a rabid, warmongering, terrorist sociopath, Dick Cheney.
And yet there are Democrats who are more comfortable with her than people who also would totally be on board with the Democratic Party, but I don't know, have maybe sometimes identical opinions of Liz Cheney on even LGBT issues. Like Joe Rogan is a great example of this.
The Democratic Party has consistently utilized and weaponized in the most cynical ways possible identity politics. And I say this as someone who is infinitely more progressive than the average Democrat on these issues.
They just use it. They use it against Bernie.
They use it against every single person. And now they're dropping it themselves.
That makes every Democrat look like a silly fool. That makes it does the eyes of americans they go you called us racist you called us transphobic you called us crazy and now you're saying okay my bad we got to drop this woke shit like of course people are gonna go all right i guess like i'm primed into now believing the republicans like you're pushing your base towards being more open minded to right wing policy is the only thing you're doing.
And that's how and that's the only thing you're doing when you don't actually claw back a lot of the things that the Republicans, the former Republican administration engages in. Like Democrats are very good at, you know, trying to fix the deficit.
They're the only real deficit hawks.ks. Republicans certainly don't care.
They only use it as a weapon to wield, to communicate against the Democratic agenda. But outside of that, on foreign policy, Joe Biden said he was going to be an effective foreign policy leader.
He did NATO. He kept talking about NATO, Jack, AUKUS, as though that was going to be— loved talking about it's like i've never been more i've never been more like nervous in politics like other than the day before an election than when joe biden was still in the

race and he did that press conference oh yeah and he was like he talked about aucus it's like no one

knows what the fuck aucus is yeah five eyes aucus that's a deep cut that is a deep cut but like

joe biden was like i am i'm the you know adult in the room, Jack. I'm going to bring back America into the global stage.
The way that the American public sees that is like, there's war in Ukraine. And that's not even Joe Biden's fault.
I understand that. Vladimir Putin decided, I'm going to do the insane thing.
I'm going to invade Ukraine. That's psychotic.
But the way that people see it they're like why are we giving money to ukraine when we're not fixing the potholes why are we giving money to ukraine when the isp suck here what the hell's going on why are we giving money to ukraine where we don't have health care we have homeless people everywhere and then on top of that they see that instability as like something that is joe biden's fault fair or unfair doesn't matter they they attribute it to joe biden same thing with israel palestine they look to what is going on and they're like this is insane like why biden will come out and say or used to come out and say uh you know we're gonna do a two-state solution benjamin and now the next day we'll be like fuck the two state what do you mean how about no state literally the next day and and biden kept trying to do this thing where he was like finger wagging where he's like oh we're i'm really i'm gonna give him a heart to heart right you know real man to man for a lot of americans they saw that as like you're weak you're old you're weak you're feeble and you're getting dog walked by an american ally and in a very public and very embarrassing way and there's a metric ton of violence that's happening on top of that like he ironically destroyed the the goodwill that a lot of people had uh coming in to his administration with the with the last i guess like post-afghanistan withdrawal everything was bad after that with with respect to joe biden's foreign policy it also just like i it's it's also tied to i still defend the afghan withdrawal by the way and i think the democrats also dropped the ball on that too because they're uh they they should have stand stood 10 toes down and said that was the right thing to do we exhibited political courage and for the record republicans tried to do a 13 you know the 13 of our best soldiers died in Afghanistan thing over and over again, the cynical thing that they tried to do. Yeah.
I mean, the Republicans are shameless. Democrats are less so.
No, they should be shameless. I'm just, I'm just, I'm describing what the issue is.
Yeah. I mean, part of this though, like I, like huge policy problem and how the body administration has responded to the war in Gaza.

But on that issue, on a bunch of foreign policy issues, a bunch of domestic issues, some of the problem has been Joe Biden gave a State of the Union, which was good. And everyone's like, OK, I'm just that's what happened.
But other than that, he has been such an ineffective communicator that and it has gotten so much worse over the last year yeah because he's old as fuck I know I know but like we're in this moment where we're like kind of trying to like what went wrong what about this what about that people are so mad like the people are like the answers that that Kamala's advisors gave were unsatisfying yeah they are unsying. But so much of this is just like there was a giant anti incumbent fervor around the world.
Joe Biden was completely unable to articulate a defense of his policies. Right.
Like the fact that there is inflation and people are mad about inflation is not a reason alone. Like that does like that can explain why we lost if you accept that we had no agency in competing against that argument.
But like Joe Biden certainly had no, like just could not communicate effectively. I think you'll see what happens when someone effectively bullies corporations, regardless of being a right wing Republican in the upcoming Trump administration.
Things are going to get significantly worse for every single person, including the people that voted for Donald Trump. One of the funniest aspects of the tariffs conversation that's happening right now is that Donald Trump is going to implement broad tariffs on 45% of all trade that comes in and out of the United States of America.
Mexico, Canada, and China comprise 45% of all trade. He wants the tariff every single one.
Tariffs are obviously an entry fee that the American corporations are going to be paying. None of the countries are going to be paying for these tariffs.
It's a policy that's going to destroy dropshippers, which overwhelmingly vote for Donald Trump, and the Trump merchandise industry. So that's pretty funny.
But having said that, it's going to be devastating for the economy. Now, what do I think Trump will do in the process? He'll obviously use tariffs to basically get corporations and industries and sector leaders on board with his agenda.
So when he says jump, they say how high or I'm going to slap you with tariffs and it's going to actually punish you. It's going to hurt your bottom line.
And I think that's part of the reason why they're going to do that. The other reason is it's a regressive tax.
It's a broad sales tax on all consumers that disproportionately affects the working poor. And Rehoboans love that shit.
But he also, at times, I think, will just institute the Defense Production Act or something. We'll see it.
We kind of saw it in COVID as well when it was a necessity. But that's the thing.
The American government is powerful. All governments are powerful, but the American government is especially powerful.
it's the wealthiest nation on the planet and the way that it runs is basically it's like 50

companies in a trench coat we are working at the behest of corporations we we feed them with our

tax dollars that turn into subsidies for them. They utilize those subsidies to, I guess, lower production costs, but then they use that to increase their profit margins and engage in what used to be illegal pre-Ronald Reagan, stock buybacks and the like, market manipulation of all different sorts.
And we're constantly deregulating the economy. And I think that it's not just about having like a populist message, it's about actually implementing said populist message and show who your real enemies are.
Like not be afraid to say, these people are fucking your life up and if you are truly the pro working class party as the democrats want to be as they claim they were historically right and there were certainly times when they were then you have to say these corporations and the wealthy that have given us money as well as the republican Party and always have been hedging their bets are the real reason why you're feeling this economic anxiety. The real reason why you feel hopeless, that you will never be able to own a home, that you'll never be able to retire.
And the Republicans are always in defense of them. They will distract you with lies.
they will say your fellow neighbors, you know, your God-fearing Christian, Muslim, whatever Jewish neighbors are your enemy. When in fact, we know what the problem is.
So we're going to bring them to heel. This kind of messaging is terrifying, obviously for many different reasons.
And it will never happen within the Democratic Party. But in the absence of that, I don't think that's true why we'll see in the no i think you'll just get focus grouped uh messaging and means testing about the opportunity economy which kamala harris presented at a time when people were you know when when wage growth had uh never actually caught up to to uh the never caught the cost of living cost of housing yeah which by the way is like you need to be but this is but like oh you need to deflate housing that's a that that you need to build you need to build vast amounts of housing yeah the the federal jobs program get these fucking incels to work well we got to get these incels to work no get them to work give them give them whether they like it or not they're going to get good well-paying jobs with good benefits're gonna get socialized medicine gotta put the incels and they're gonna and they're gonna work none of this neat stuff anymore they can't they can't be online all the time they're they're too online it's your business now you're gonna now you're coming after your own business fine i'm i'm happy for like it i would i would drop everything if we got universal health care and a federal jobs program and we're building public housing all around the country.
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A little bit a little bit what do you think what do you like what what is the appeal there cranks just cranks yeah anti-establishment cranks um there's a lot of them there's the uh the tulsi gabbard uh constituency which is like marginal it's not all that significant but yeah i i think that the the online left is not as robust a media ecosystem as like people think it is in general and besides that they don't have any sort of like political motion regardless right you know i have disagreements with uh the the closest congress members uh that are ideologically as close uh a lot closely aligned with myself as possible but I still have many disagreements with them. And outside of that, I think, like, these guys that, you know, like RFK Jr.
because they think he's going to make America healthy again, you know, they just like the crank stuff. Yeah.
That's what it is. I mean, you know, you talk to, like, when I'm really, like like four years, I guess eight years ago, Jesus.

I remember after Trump won the first time. What I was feeling at the time, which I'm still feeling now, is that the two challenges, right? Is that like at a moment where someone like Trump is ascendant, like how do you keep this big left together, this big tent together from? Yes, it includes the kind of pro-democracy anti-Trump right runs all the way to The far left and leftists.
How do you keep that big group of people together? And I do think like you're right like there is just in part because there's just so much money behind it like the online right is I think it's it's bigger and more influential, but it also knows how to get on board, right? Like, it knows, like, it fights, it has disagreements, it pushes, but then it knows, like, for our ends, for our goals, we all need to get behind, whether it's Trump or in previous elections, it was getting behind, like, Romney-like figures, McCain-like figures. Like, they get behind those figures.
And sometimes it feels like on on the left like there's no moment at which we say all right we've had the fight we've had the we've had we've had the debate we disagree on a whole bunch of stuff hey everybody we're gonna get together we're gonna make sure that we stop Donald Trump we elect Joe Biden as much as we let Kamala Harris like that moment doesn't come and like 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.
But it is, it does require, it does like everyone is responsible. yeah I think uh just as I was very critical of Bernie Sanders's campaign despite you know

still loving Bernie uh because he was nowhere near as aggressive as he could have been in the primaries. And it definitely should have probably gone on more independent media route in a similar vein to Donald Trump.
I am still, because I blame the on bernie's campaign strategies in the primaries despite recognizing the the structural hurdles of like a left-wing populace coming out of a democratic party primary where it's like the laser focused audience that goes out and votes at those things or like the msnbc watcher base that is like objectively terrified of someone like that because people are saying he's going to, you know, 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 like you can have a billion point five, right? You can have ground game.
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, I guess, 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 Trump, 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. So that guy is going to go and vote for Trump regardless.
right on the other other side, though, if your top line communication, 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 outflank the Democratic Party and get people to to vote for Kamala Harris in a way that that sticks in a way that is going to be successful, no matter how much influence I wield.
It's not. Yeah, I'm not even just talking about.
Yes. Take your point.
Most people are just not voting. That's the problem.
But but the challenge, right, is that like there are like these three let's say you say there's these three kind of media ecosystems. There's the right wing one.
There's a 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 mean, like, I don't I think they're trying to pressure Democrats to be a more moral and just version of itself. I think I probably spend more time shitting on the Republican Party than the Democratic Party, but yeah.
But I'm saying when we're talking about like, when the right is talking, when 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 place, right? There is no like big kind of fun, exciting media environment. Yeah.
Outside of, I guess, fucking this table where like you have a lot of people that are like critical of the Democratic Party, like annoyed by the same things we're talking about. But ultimately, it's just like we got to win and we have to get behind these people.
well but again it is because for many people on the right-wing ecosystem like 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 no i i agree that that's what are they offering well yeah no i know we gotta fucking figure it doesn't matter to me i'm i'm rich okay like i mean i probably might go to prison if project esther uh it gets uh kicked in or if they denaturalize me or something but hey come on you know i mean who knows we'll we'll see but you can but i mean you can be rich abroad that is true but my point is but i like i like 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 is that, the point I'm making is that, I care about my fellow Americans. I care about them, their lives getting better.
They're 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 most regime-pilled

propaganda minister you've ever

seen. But I can't do that

if the Democratic Party is not offering anything.

I guess what I...

And I think that's all fair.

I don't know. propaganda minister you've ever seen that's what i want for you but i can't do that if the democratic party is not offering anything i i guess what i i here's what i i and i i think that's all fair i guess like where i'm like what i'm trying to see is like 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 that kind of story, right? And then in concert with that, like, it is a kind of like, to go, we do need a kind of like 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.
If we were consistently critical, 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 Dropside News, former Intercept guys like Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grimm.
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 depressed by no matter who wins, we are still cooked,

was my attitude, but certainly understanding

and recognizing that John Trump

is going to be far worse than Kamala Harris, of course.

And Chopo Trap House, right?

So these are some of the largest media companies out there on the left, right 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 like, uh, you know, trust b trust busting and numerous other accomplishments that the Democratic Party actually brought forward than they did.
And it didn't matter. My point is, 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 he went to the UAW picket line. We didn't forget that.
We talked about that. It didn't matter.
it it's not enough especially when there is uh a 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 it became the major focus of a lot of people.
And there's nothing you can do in that moment when people are, you know, 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, you know, unlimited weapons to Israel over and over again, never restraining Israel. Everybody knew exactly what was going to happen.
It had happened before and it was going to be much worse. And yet no restraint whatsoever.

And 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.
But 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 uh an advocate for palestinian emancipation for the past 10 years publicly i've never seen this groundswell of uh this this uh this massive sea change this 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, like Israel having the nuclear first strike capability. What an insane conversation we're having after 12 months of genocide.
Like that's, You know, Americans fancy themselves to be peaceful people.

It's a lie america's uh 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. He did four years of no peaceful dove shit whatsoever.
And then he turned around and after October 7 was still able to effectively outflank the Democrats on this issue despite the fact that he got $100 million from Miriam Adelson, Sheldon Adelson's wife, to potentially annex the West Bank and put rabid evangelical freaks like Mike Huckabee

as the Israeli ambassador.

These guys are insane.

It is very heartbreaking for me too.

I think one of the reasons people

will be mad that you're on the show

is because you're a proud anti-Zionist. You said that.
I've gotten shit for saying anti-semi i was like damn joining us today anti-semi dumbass yeah no but that but like i actually like a couple like uh two or three years ago i said on ponte america like that i described myself as a zionist which got people upset too. But what I, what I said then, and what I still say now is, and I actually had the same conversation with Bernie is you ought to denounce the destruction and death in Gaza.
You ought to denounce the moral abomination that is taking over the West bank on its own terms because it is morally reprehensible. It is despicable.
These are war crimes being committed against innocent Palestinians who are paying with their lives for the crimes of Hamas. You don't need to go further than that.
But I actually do go further than that. And what I say is is you're saying dismantle the Zionist entity.
Is that what you're saying? No, I'm not. And so what I'm saying is, well, what I like, I'm not saying that what I'm saying is it is also terrible for Israel.
And you don't need to care about that. No, I agree.
No, I know. I do care.
And and that and like I what Bernie said, like, I always appreciate what he has to say on this issue. What he said is that basically even Israel does not understand the way in which they're becoming an isolated pariah nation.
And so people will be mad to have someone who is a self-proclaimed anti-Zionist on this show. But like, I am someone who has called himself a Zionist and I am against this because I believe it doesn't serve Israel's interest either.
And that to me is what is so devastating about the outcome of this election, in part because of policy, in part because Joe Biden is such an incomprehensible messenger on one of the most delicate and contentious topics in American politics. We now have Donald Trump, who is able to kind of allide what his actual views would be on this issue.
And like, you know, we have seen what happens in Israel when you have someone like Trump in power at a moment of crisis. And now there is Trump back in office here.
And if you are concerned about the lives of Palestinians, if you're concerned about continuing instability and violence and death in that region, this election has just made everything so much fucking worse. I think American foreign policy being so uniparty on this issue is genuinely frustrating.
And it's genuinely damaging for Israel because we recognize how our fellow Americans are becoming more reactionary every single day, especially with this new Trump election. You see people that formerly maybe had different opinions go, you know what, maybe it is good to deport 20 million people violently by utilizing the military potentially.
This is something that the Donald Trump administration has said they're going to do. Well, at the very least, even if people don't believe that'll happen or didn't understand, like the expectation that Donaldald trump taking all these extreme positions would be enough yeah wasn't that just wasn't true yeah so i i what i'm trying to explain here is that before you know it people can succumb to reactionary feelings and reactionary sentiment and find themselves in the throes of a fascist ideology without even recognizing it.
And I think examining that is important in an academic setting. That's why we have Holocaust studies, right? That's why we have genocide studies as an entire field to specifically understand exactly how Nazi Germany got to that position or fascist Italy got to the position that it got to.
And, and I think that, you know, you might even disagree with me on this, but like, that's where Israel is. That's where Israel is at right now.
They have become an incredibly angry culture, an incredibly angry country that has succumbed, especially since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, who wasn't exactly a great guy for Palestinians either. I mean, he was known as the guy who deliberately tasked the Israeli security forces in breaking the hands of children for, you know, stone throwing, right, in the first intifada.
That guy was the, like, off-ramp for peace negotiations with Palestinians. And they assassinated him and his assassins and people who are backing his assassins

like Itamar Ben-Givir, like Bezalov Smatrich are now firmly a part of the Israeli establishment,

the current government coalition.

Yeah. Well, I also, there are also hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have protested this

government.

Yeah. For different reasons, but yeah, no, for sure.
Yes. I just think it's important.
Yes. Like Israel is responsible for Israel's actions, but we do need to separate Benjamin Netanyahu and his conduct from the Israeli people in the same.
That doesn't mean they're not responsible in the same way that America is not George W. Bush.
Right. But America is responsible for what George W.
Bush, when he is in command of our armed forces. But we understand that distinction.
No, no, of course. The problem is you have to also look at the Overton window, though, in any society, in any culture, in any country, right? And I think that, and I come from, I'm Turkish.
Like like i come from a country with a with a conscription like i i understand how what ultra nationalism is i've lived through it i've experienced it i know what it's like when turkish people hear me say like that the armenian genocide is real for example like that's like a non-starter right that's like you can't say that what you talking about? I learned in school that it wasn't real, right? I understand how a country can become more and more right-wing where even the liberal position is still committed to the maintenance of an apartheid. And I think that that is where we're at with Israel.
And we have to restrain Israel as we are the number one partner of Israel, whether it be the weapons that we give to Israel, whether it be the financial support that we give to Israel, or whether it be the trade partnership that we have or the financial partnership that we have with Israeli companies. we have a lot of influence over what Israel does.
And I think over the course of the last couple of decades,

especially with benjamin netanyahu israel has become a more and more right-wing nation but see but like yes because it is a it is a country that now views itself as being isolated and under siege right yeah like this has all gotten to be so kind of hopeless and Israel faces recrimination from around the world feels isolated feels like it needs to turn inward to protect itself views itself as being it's going under attack well it's like the question right to me is like how do you break that cycle I agree it requires a ton of American pressure but it also I I think, like like anti-Zionist fervor. Like to me, like anti-Zionism itself is not a path to where we ultimately need to go, which is peace, peace and Palestinian self-determination, right? Like that's what I believe in.
Like that's what I care about. That's where I want this.
Likerael as a country that no longer feels constantly under threat palestinians being able to live uh in peace and safety without being under occupation uh in control of their own destiny and to me like that like it's become a kind like that is a two-state solution and anything that drives towards that i think is is ultimately the direction to now, we're moving in the opposite direction, which is why this all feels so hopeless to me.

Well, I mean, look, I used to be of that same mindset maybe like a decade ago as well, where I resort to the likes of Avi Shalem on this or Ilan Pape on this in terms of like my analysis of it. But like the settlement operations in the so-called peace process uh that were again funded by america as well and still funded to this day by like the likes of kufi christians united for israel which is the the the oftentimes not talked about part of this equation that is significant and dare i say more significant than whatever jewish americans think about israel like Israel like it's the right-wing evangelical Christians that are uh the number one funders of of the settlement project but it's also like no consequences for the expansion of settlements yeah well that's and the use of settlement like that what was once expanding settlements as part of a negotiation tactic towards what would ultimately have been a solution is now just a plan to take over the West Bank.
Yeah, no, it's developing Bantastans, which they did. And my point is that that has made it virtually impossible for a two state solution to exist, which is why I think that like Israel already maintains sovereignty and that as an apartheid state, what needs to happen is to abolish the apartheid, which is something that unfortunately many Israelis refuse to reckon with, at least right now, because that would mean 5 million Palestinians, including the 2.5 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, would now constitute a demographic majority in this area, in this land that Israel enforces sovereignty over.
And that is terrifying for its demographic destiny, its demographic goals in general. Well, just also, that's something to add.
Like, you can point, like, it's also something that Israel has never gone to assent to. No, I understand that, which is why I think, like, the pressure campaigns, albeit, you know minimal but um the the the change in attitude in the way that a lot of people see this dynamic is significant.
And I think that inevitably things will change. And we're seeing it right now.
We're seeing it with the ICC decision. This is a truly unique moment.
We're seeing it with the ICJ court case. We'll see where it goes but i think that uh i understand why even members in the state department that i would directly be at odds with in the way that we examine the world uh have have from the start tried to say this can't happen that we need to use the liberal zionist off-ramp immediately we need to just like

you know put benny gotts in charge or something like we need to just like single out benjamin and yahoo say he's the bad guy and then move in the direction where like a more uh manageable more liberal person a more moderate person can uh be be left responsible and and and restrain israel in some way in order to to continue Israel being an unsinkable aircraft carrier in a resource-rich region. And they didn't even listen to that.
The top of the administration just didn't even listen to that. Well, because Netanyahu is an obstacle to any kind of peace.
I mean, this is a, like, we have been in moments in the recent past where Palestinians and Israelis were at the table and peace seemed within reach, right? And that seems very far away right now. We were, we were, we were.
And that seems very far away right now. But to me, that still seems closer than a single state.
And to me, there's that sort of a future of heading towards that is a future of a lot more chaos and violence and terror and horror. And so I like come back to my view remains that like the future that the only hope is some kind of a two state solution.
As far as that seems right now, people want to say otherwise fine. But I think they're going to I think they're going to annex the the west bank i think that's what i think is gonna happen let's move we got we got trump is gonna and trump is gonna let it happen like trump this is the thing like and and it's not even because trump is like ideologically committed to the zionist project in the way that like joe biden was it's because miriam madison gave him a hundred million dollars that's it trump doesn't give a fuck yeah he doesn't give a shit about anything.
He's just like, yeah, these guys gave me money. Uh, I'm gonna, I'm going to listen to her.
And that's it. And that was really funny because like, that's what he's talked about in the, uh, in the antisemitism conference that he put together.
If you recall, he was like, I've done so much for you Jews. Why won't you vote for me? That's what he kept saying.
He's like, if I lose, it's because of you, Jews. I know, I know, I know.
And it was insane because like in his mind, he thinks that's the only thing that American Jews care about. Like it's the, it's the dual loyalty trope, but you also can't do that trope in a, in a woke way on mainstream media either.
When you are, you know, not, I'm not saying you're doing this. I'm just saying like, you also can't do that in a, in a more woke way when you're talking about Israel in, in as many liberal outlets do sometimes when they talk about like, well, you know, you just want, uh, Israel to perish, I think.
And you're probably anti-Semitic and that, uh, you know, uh, it's just, uh, Israel has demographic concerns. It's like, okay, well that's America has demographic concerns America has white demographic concerns that's not a con that's a non-starter for me you know what I mean I don't care like yeah I mean there is also a ton of anti-Semitism I know I know you know I know like I just make sure because yes and yeah it's skyrocketing and like that but like again like we got to move on from this, but like, it's just that you see it in our politics, you see it in politics around Israel, like this kind of vicious circle of people feel under threat, they turn inward, they become less and less empathetic towards their neighbors.
That leads them to be more and more isolated. And to me, it's like, the question is not like, I don't like, I'm not even interested in like philosophical debates, ideologically, it's like, how do you break that human cycle, right? And I think on our side, it starts with a policy that recognizes that it is in Israel's interest to stop the violence and to stop the killing.
And that moving towards something like the annexation of the West Bank or the permanent occupation of Gaza or whatever it may be is ultimately not in Israel's interest. I know that that makes me sound like a neoliberal shill, but that is what I think.
No, I understand where you're coming from. I don't disagree with you.
I think that that's why I was trying to bring it back to American politics. And I don't think it's an accident that in the past three decades,

every single Western capitalist nation,

uh,

firmly planted within the,

the heart of empire firmly within the,

the,

uh,

the comfortable bosom of American imperialism has shifted dramatically to the right.

And in that process, I think, or leading up to that, there was a lot of austerity, a lot of clawing back of social safety nets, a lot of privatization that took place that some people call the inshittification of the economy or the inshittification of everything. and in that process I think people got more and more angry

and the only people that benefit from that the economy or the institution of everything. And in that process, I think people got more and more

angry. And the only people that benefit from that anger are always going to be far right figures

that can point to people that are defenseless and people that are less powerful than you are.

And they were able to successfully use the anger to redirect that towards nationalist

sentiment, to redirect that towards racism, homophobia, bigotry of all different sorts.

And that's why you're seeing the reform movement grow in the UK with Nigel Farage, who now has a

higher approval rating than the very conservative Tory adjacent labor leadership. When

Thank you. with Nigel Farage, who now has a higher approval rating than the very conservative Tory-adjacent labor leadership, Winn-Kir Starmer.
That's why you're seeing the AFD grow in momentum in Germany. That's why you're seeing Le Pen's party grow as well.
Even if she goes to jail, her movement will not go away. And in every single in every single instance you have centrist moderate moderate to like center-right neoliberal party leadership constantly trying to maintain the hegemonic status of neoliberalism and losing out to populist far-right messaging every step along the way because when material conditions worsen okay and you might look at the technology technological improvements and say what do you mean material conditions are worsening like i can order a uber uh eats and and immediately have it in my doorstep but like overall uh the the important things like educational attainment health care uh public transit if we're talking about europe we don't even have that here in America.
We can talk about it here too. You know, home ownership.
These sorts of things are just getting worse and worse year over year. And it truly ruins people's lives and it leaves them angry and confused.
And right-wingers like Donald Trump or fascists like those in Europe, like Maloney's party in Italy as well well or gert wielders in the netherlands like these guys use that opportunity to say you know why you're mad because muslim refugees came in and they ruined your beautiful european culture it's it's the challenge right is that like things aren't getting worse on every metric they're not and if you were to look at the last i don't know 50 years of american politics, and if you just showed people the economic data, and you said, I want you to find on this chart where the United States elected a fascist dunce, you would not pick 2024. You might pick 2008.
You might pick 1992.

You might pick after the stagflation of the 70s.

You might, there are a bunch of times you might say, well, if it's someplace here, it must have been then. And so I do think we have to, I think housing is a big part of it.
I think people being furious that life didn't seem to come, like people are, I think, traumatized by the pandemic in ways we're still kind of, it's to see and hard to find in polling right i think there's like a deep anger about like hey wait things never got back to normal i don't feel normal cost didn't come back down life seems worse in in measurable and immeasurable ways and i do think part of it is like yes it's material's material, but it's also, I think. Spiritual.

It is.

It is.

There is something, there is something, I think that there was a bargain people were making

when all the restaurants where they knew the owners closed and they were replaced by fucking

Panera Breads and Subways and chains.

And when their supermarkets became chains and the Walmarts came in, right.

When people like to blame Walmart, Walmart is both a symptom and a cause, right.

I think like there was a bargain people made.

And the bargain was i'm going to give up on the kind of dignity and community and sense of place and belonging that i used to experience in my town for this cheap stuff but it better be fucking cheap yeah it's not but but but but i think people are very bad at understanding what they want and people i i do think that there's this collective feeling of like hey we traded something away to these corporations and some of it we did unwillingly some of it we did willingly but we're not happy with the outcome and i do think that that's about community i do think that's about about about meaning yeah what you're just i mean you're describing alienation but yeah i am but like but but that is a big part of it marxian sense not like alienation in the normal understanding of of it but like yes you're right americans feel isolated everyone feels isolated everyone feels alienated they feel alienated from their labor and uh and and besides that there is no there is no sense of identity and i i talk about this quite frequently, actually. Our consumption is the only marker for identity.
Even guns is a very important political identity for a lot of Americans. That's consumption.
That's no different than an expensive Gucci bag. It's actually more expensive in many instances.
And the culture that surrounds it is still ultimately at the point of consumption and when uh when when there is a hurdle in front of that whether it's cost or because you just simply can't go and and buy it at the store or whatever during covid in the shut uh lockdowns everything falls apart because we're a very fragile nation that is built on this idea that like as long as i get shit for cheap i'm I don't really care. As long as the cost of eggs will go down, you know, 20 cents or a dollar, I don't care if 20 million migrants get deported is the calculation that some people made.
And many people said, it's not going to happen anyway. Now there is the other side of this story, but that's why I want to hear the other side, but I just wanted to say the side is, what I was trying to say is, this is what Kamala Harris did wrong, in my opinion.
She could have gone up there and said, I am going to arrest the Walton family. And if she was able to successfully say, I'm going to arrest the Walton family, and they're going to stand trial, okay? In a military tribunal.
And that is going to make egg prices $ dollars cheaper it's going to be eggs are gonna be 10 cents again americans would have voted for that that's my point so you don't have to go that crazy obviously no i know i know well i guess it just like this to me like these are the twin problems of dealing with a fascist threat one is keeping a big fractious progressive, illiberal movement together. The other is how you defend the value of institutions that don't do that.
And I know you're being.

I'm being hyperbolic

I'm exaggerating

but like

I think that

for far too long

you know

deregulation

and

and

unconditionally

supporting corporations

and even having

what you just described

as like the the formative opinion on antitrust like as long as the consumer is happy as long as the prices are low we don't care if you monopolize that's the right that's the rights view i mean we like democrats are now fight fight like nobody some of this is like we're fighting back on that stuff no but so that was the that was the right view but that was kind of uniparty for a very long time at least since the 90s i think the the the but this is like this is i think conservatives had an ideological view of this yeah the bork view of this they came in and they said antitrust doesn't mean what it says in the law it doesn't mean what it says in people's experience of what a monopoly does it's this one specific definition which makes it really hard to stop mergers said, wait, hold on. Like kind of Democrats just didn't have a strong view on this.
It just wasn't a motivating. It wasn't.
It wasn't. I know, but why? Why didn't they? Well, I think they first, I think that like, I think the intellectual academic left had to catch up to the damage this was doing.
I think Democrats just didn't focus on it, didn't care about it. I also think there is money from donors.
Of course, of course, I'm not, I know you don't need to rhetorically cue me up. I know.
But that's like, I think sometimes it is, I think it is not people saying, oh, I wish we would go after these giant monopolies more, but I got this donation. So no, now I'm not.
But it's a culture, a kind of pro-business culture, right? That like kind of pervaded Democrats since the 90s that made conversations about this kind of thing harder to have, which is different now because Lena Khan is now the chair of the FTC, right? Elizabeth Warren created this Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, right? Like there has been a shift, but it is both a not enough and not a shift in people's actual understanding of what the Democratic Party is for. There's's no immediate gratification that comes from that i know and the immediate gratification that that is supposed to happen could happen potentially with uh wide sweeping legislative agenda changes overall or like uh clearly communicating a pathway towards like a more just outcome for health care for example like that's not something that we're invested in.
Like things that touch people's lives immediately

is going to yield very positive benefits.

I will say this,

I think as far as like Lena Kahn

or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,

these are fantastic things

that happen under the watchful eye of the Biden regime. Well, Barack Obama.
And Barack Obama as well. the problem here however is that once again i think out of genuine fear maybe that they would disrupt or upset uh the tony west coalition of the democratic uh party, you know, all of these like major donors that donate to the Democratic Party, they didn't do a good job even explaining what they were doing.
And I'll tell you why. Just real quick.
I just want to give you an example of the IRS, right? Joe Biden funded the IRS. Every dollar that goes to the IRS, I think is like, what, seven extra dollars or 30, up to 35, if I'm not mistaken.
I don't know the exact numbers, but like every dollar that you spend on the IRS, you get 35 in return in America's coffers, right? That's massive. That's fantastic.
Republicans hate that. They hate the IRS.
And many Americans also hate the IRS as well. They hate paying taxes, partially because they don't see anything in return for it.
Even though the IRS getting more funds actually retrieved a lot of, you know, tax dodgers that were refusing to pay taxes. And on top of that, their investigations concluded that I think Cocaca-cola was uh was was had avoided or had evaded taxes to the tune of 16 billion dollars right one company i never heard that from the biden administration they never went out they never went out and said this is why we funded the irs yeah not because we want to come after you uh and your and your trailer okay in in the trailer park uh with our armed agents or whatever republicans other hand, were like 85,000 armed agents are coming to your house.
They're going to kill you. They're going to take away your children and they're going to take your guns and they're going to take your trailer park.
Look, I think we paid for not having an effective communicator in the president. Like, I think we paid dearly for that.
It's not just the president. I know it's not just the president.
know i know it's not just i know it's attack dogs sick on every every television uh show i think i do think part of the challenge is a lot of people are talking about what these agents would actually do it just doesn't get covered doesn't get attention just doesn't matter people don't cover this kind of stuff that's a pop that's part of it i'm not saying there aren't democrats i i like i agree with you like democrats need to have a kind of combative like if that's anything we take from Donald Trump becoming president. Clearly, we need somebody.
People want a fighter. They want a fighter.
They want a fighter. And you can't fight for opportunity economy and $50,000 in tax credits for startups.
That is not something to fight for. You need to be a fighter and you need to fight for things that are universally good and that people want, healthcare, fixing the housing market, things like that.
Well, she did do that. I agree with you.
But again, even her communication on that is like so much of the Democratic Party is now officially captured by what we would look back in the past as unimaginably right-wing uh economic policies like tax cuts and and uh tax cuts in a public private partnership when i hear those words i'm like i'm not regime pilled yeah i want to be regime pilled i want to i want to champion the the uh social democratic regime i want to make i want to make the democratic party make olaf palme look like a a fucking revisionist uh right-wing reactionary okay that's what i want i want trains i want trains i want i want better uh better public transit better transit i want more i want you i want i want socialized housing like okay that's see but you're you're stopping i don't know but like what what do you mean we can't get into it we can't get out of time i mean but what i'm saying is like i am for building millions upon millions of houses everywhere that's what i'm for yeah but no no public private partnership build it with federal publicly funded employees and build it as a mechanism to claw to to claw back the uh the insane uh housing market prices to lower them by force okay that's what i think all right i think if you said that a lot of americans would be like i like that i i think if some i think if a democratic democratic politician got up there and said we are going to employ millions of americans we're gonna have a national jobs program to employ millions of Americans building millions of houses. I think that would be very popular.
I agree. Yeah.
Okay. You're regime-pilled as well.
I am regime-pilled. Now, I did go on your feed yesterday to see what you've been up to.
Oh my god. Can we just put this up? I think I know what you're going to post.
I was looking for what your reaction was to the Harris campaign podcast, and I just found this. And I just thought, is this what the Joe Rogan of the left would post? I think Joe Rogan posts.
Donald Trump wins, and you're like, I think I know what I need to do. I need to post Hull.
Yeah Are you getting good reactions to this? Is this getting what you need? Well I wanted to show my progress It's been a while That's like from 2021 until now And I mean I do I do talk about my fitness journey quite a bit You do Pilates? No I train I weight train and then I play basketball What you doing for cardio? Basketball. Basketball? Yeah, I play basketball three times a week, sometimes four.
And that's been very good. I also track my macro nutrients.
I track all my calories. What does that do for you? What do you mean? It's that right there.
You think that's what it's doing? Picture on the right. That's how I got there.
Oh. Yeah.
I use Manjaro. It's awesome.
Oh, nice. I have family members that use it as well and it's been very helpful.
Yeah, I don't have to think about it anymore. Yeah, I mean, it's great.
It's fantastic. Do you feel like it's stopped your other addictive tendencies as well? Yeah.
I'm a better driver. Isn't that weird? Isn't that weird? Maybe because you're not on your phone or something no i think it's because my like like my i'm not spending so much of my like mental energy on like diet and so like i'm just a little bit less kind of spent and like kind of i don't know um impulsive yeah around other things and so like i don't feel some need to like get home two minutes faster it's hard to explain like i don't feel as much of a need to find justice on the roads i understand that makes sense yeah you asked me no i i 100 get it you asked me like how why you track your calories or whatever like i get uh i get a lot of comfort from the rigidity of my schedule my regimen and i don't even think about it because it's just a habit that i have at this point and for that reason it's not even a thing i think about at all it doesn't weigh on me but when i was uh you know when i was eating in a very unhealthy way uh it did constantly weigh on me i was like oh i'm but it feels so good but also it's so bad for me but then you, you know.
You feel like you're a little bit hopeless. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's true in politics too. For sure.
I mean, definitely. But, you know, you got to focus on whatever small victory you can have.
And it's the same for fitness. And like I said, going back to the Joe Rogan of the Left conversation, I, you know, this is definitely something that I talk to my community about quite a bit.
And there's a lot of people in my community that have also gone on their own fitness journey. I've been able to inspire them to, to do this as well.
And I think it's, it's important to, to be physically healthy. I do like just to make one, just to close this out, because we've gone on too long, but like, there is something about like, like in terms of meaning and like a spiritual, right? Like, I a reason that that there's been an appeal of people like the jordan petersons of the world and some of the kind of more like self-help right-wing types yeah and like i do think there are a lot of people out there looking for not just sort of answers in politics but like answers about like like, why does, like, I feel unfulfilled working, not working, whatever it may be.
Like, I feel like I'm missing like community and the kind of leadership that would come from community. And like, I don't think that, I do think that's why sometimes you see like, I don't know, like, even on like the shows we do, like, I do feel like there's like a hunger for like something broader than just a political program, but like more of a kind of way of grappling with the fact that this version of modern life kind of dares us to ruin our own lives.
Yeah. You know? I offer that in my broadcast every day.
I mean i i talk about my own personal journeys and i offer advice i used to have an advice segment as well i haven't done it in a while but like uh you know i'm gonna bring it back and that's why i also like collaborate with other content creators even if i don't align with them politically agree with them politically at all but uh you know there are plenty of people that i know who are my friends who i think as long as they're like relatively charitable and good and kind people even if we don't agree on everything politically it doesn't matter um and and you know i i find myself in these bro spaces a lot i've been on every single almost every single podcast that trump has been on yeah and and many of them are are run by my friends like impulsive uh my buddy Mike Malak is is logan paul skull is not the biggest fan of logan paul but i love mike mike is a fantastic human being uh he has an incredible journey of of overcoming uh addiction uh and and he wrote about it as well he had a new york times bestseller bradley martin with the nelk boys i don't really know the nelk boys but like bradley martin i like a lot he owns zoo culture he's a he's a real meathead and and that's the and andrew schultz as well i've been on that podcast too like these are a lot of these podcasts i've been on as well and like these guys and their audiences are receptive to yeah to what i have to say and i think like optics play a role in that for sure like the way i carry myself the way i am naturally authentically i think is is uh a package that young men are are not immediately dismissive of and i'm very aware of that and i try to use that for good and i try to use that to like explain to people that like it's not cool to you know shit on random people for no reason like let them live like what the fuck is this to you it's not gonna fix your life yeah you're being a kind of a loser an entitled little loser and it's not good and that does work baby energy it works and i think my the size of my community now and and the makeup of it uh is is a proof of that reality like i a couple years ago i didn't have the numbers that i have uh, every single person, virtually every single person in my audience will tell you that like, there is one key issue that I have dramatically changed their opinion on, whether it be American foreign policy, whether it be the way that they, uh, you know, viewed trans people and were transphobic, but now they're not, or, or even racist, uh, opinions. So, uh, yeah, that's, that's what I try to do to the best of my ability in my little corner of the internet.
It's on, Piker. Good to see you.
Yeah, thanks for having me. When we come back, Congressman Seth Moulton.
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Terms and conditions apply. Joining us now, he's represented Massachusetts six districts since 2015.
Welcome back to Pod Save America. It's Congressman Seth Moulton.
John, it's great to be here. Thanks so much for having me back.
All right. So if you look at the map, it's a sea of arrows pointing red, including in Massachusetts.
Nearly every county in Massachusetts shifted right. Both of the counties in your district did.
Everybody loves, after we lose an election, to know why we lost the election. Did you see signs before that made you think this was, uh, uh, that, that we were in trouble? Oh yeah.
This didn't surprise me at all. Um, I've, I've actually thought for past a year, year and a half that, uh, that, that we were likely to lose.
And, and, and listen, I wasn't just sitting back. I was working hard, uh, on a winning strategy.
I've been campaigning all over the country. And I have this group of veterans called Serve America who've been running in some of the toughest house seats across the country to try to flip seats that we need to win to win the house back and to hold the tough seats that we have.
We had an 89% win rate as of there's still a couple elections that haven't been called. So I've actually been working on a really successful strategy, but by and large, it just felt like a lot of Americans thought the Democratic Party was out of touch.
And when I, I remember being in Pennsylvania just a week before election day, and I did not have a good feeling. How much of that do you explain by people were just really fucking pissed about inflation, didn't believe they were seeing the benefits of Joe Biden's policies, had a really negative opinion about Joe Biden.
And as we've seen all around the world, there is just an anti-incumbent, anti-establishment fervor. And the fact that Kamala Harris got so close to winning actually speaks to the fact that we mitigated what was a trend around the world.
I mean, look, there's definitely an argument there. But I think too often Democrats use that as an excuse because look at the opposition here.
We are running against the first convicted felon to be president of the United States. We're running against a party that's got a civil war playing out across the country between traditional Republicans and MAGA Republicans.
I mean, they couldn't even elect a speaker of the House for three weeks. That's never happened in American history either.
Never in American history have a president's senior advisors, including military officials who usually don't get involved in politics, come out and said, this guy's unfit to be commander-in-chief. So my argument would be, I get there's anti-incumbency problems, I get there's inflation, but we were essentially running against half an incumbent himself, and this should have been easy.
We should have been cleaning up from school board to president of the United States. And so the fact that we lost it all is real cause for concern.
Yeah. So in the wake of it, I like have these two competing instincts.
One is to want to be open and just listen to all the different perspectives on what went wrong. And, but at the same time, I end up feeling pretty suspicious when people say what they've always said.
Right. You know, and I and I include in that Bernie Sanders puts out a statement after saying that Democrats have abandoned the working class.
I don't believe that's true. I'm sure there are ways in which it's true.
But Joe Biden was an incredibly progressive president and did a lot of what Bernie Sanders had advocated for him to do. So obviously, the answer is going to be more nuanced than that.
Then I see Democrats like Alyssa Slotkin saying that it's identity politics. But we've been through news cycles about more center left figures blaming identity politics.
Then I see you talking about how, you know, Democrats need to have a debate about how we talk about trans issues because Donald Trump ran this ad about trans issues. And I wonder, like, wait a second, like, are people going to the explanations that they have had in the past for the parts of the Democratic coalition that they just find annoying.
And, you know, when we lose an election, I blame the people that I don't like, or that I have a disagreement with, or that I, in some ways, find irritable. I mean, I think it's a really fair question.
And we should always be suspicious. I mean, literally, we should have these debates about these tough issues, right? But what I would say is, you know, look, you don't have to agree with Bernie Sanders, but you can't say that we have followed his economic plan.
I mean, I think there's actually a really legitimate argument for a more populist economic policy, and I don't think we've adopted that. I think Alyssa Slotkin raises identity politics because a lot of Americans, not just Democrats in tough seats, but a lot of Americans think that the Democratic Party is obsessed with identity politics.
So I'm not sure we've put that issue to bed. And I'll tell you, a lot of independents that I hear from, including Marines that I served with, for example, overseas, who really don't like a draft dodger to be commander in chief and don't really want to vote for Donald Trump.
But they say to me, you know, you guys are obsessed with identity politics or some other reason why we're just sort of out of touch. That is something that I hear.
And I think also on contentious issues, like, look, I did this 20 minute interview with the New York Times and talked about a lot of places where I think the Democrats are out of touch or just not trusted on issues. And they picked out this quote about trans women in sports.
But I do think it was a problem that Harris really just didn't even have a response to this vicious, hateful ad that honestly, Republicans clearly had data to say it was successful because they put $200 million behind it or something. And when you can't even respond to that, then A, it's bad politics because they can just clobber you over the head with it and win on issues like that.
But also it does a real disservice to the communities that only the Democratic Party will be there to protect. Because if we just cede the ground to Republicans and let them get their hateful policies through because we don't even have a reasonable response, then they win.
And that's dangerous for our party politically, but it's also dangerous for exactly the folks like trans people and trans kids who genuinely need our support and protection. So, you know, everybody's come back to this.
So, you know, the ACLU does this questionnaire, then she's asked about it. That answer becomes the basis for this ad.
And there's clearly a choice, and not just on this issue, but when she was asked about the policy changes she's had since 2020, tried to make it about values to avoid kind of creating a news cycle of she has changed her position. And when she was asked about this issue in an interview, she said some version of that was just the Trump administration policy, and it was a way to kind of get out of it.
Now, you can say that that should have gone a different way. But more broadly, you know, the Biden administration puts out a compromise policy on trans athletes to try to answer some of the concerns that people have and some of the attention that it gets while trying to stave off outright hateful Republican bans.
Right. Like Democ like that was an attempt to kind of do.
I think Joe Biden did what I think you are asking Democrats to do, to try to kind of enter this contentious issue, try to have the debate and try to kind of signal some kind of compromise. The problem, right, is that like Democrats aren't obsessed with this issue.
Republicans have a strategy of elevating, drawing attention to, making salient this issue to try to make us talk about this issue. Sarah McBride, about to start in Congress.
She didn't come saying, I'd like to talk about where I'm going to go to the bathroom, please. That's Nancy Mace and Republicans are thrusting it upon us.
And so how much of when you say, oh, voters think, voters think, or people think, independents think that Democrats are obsessed with these issues, how much are you kind of blaming Democrats for living in a broken media ecosystem? Well, look, I mean, it's, you're right, John, there's no question that Republicans are the ones bringing up these issues, badgering us over the head about it, right?

I mean, we never had a problem with bathroom policy until Nancy Mace makes a huge issue of it. And it's obviously an effort to just attack this one path-breaking woman who's coming to Congress.
But the problem is, again, that if we just don't even have a response, then they're going to keep doing this because it works for them. And if we don't engage in this issue or refuse to debate it unless it's exactly on our terms, or have an absolutist position that the majority of Americans don't agree with.
Remember, there are a lot of Democrats who just think the only answer to trans women in sports is not the Biden's administration's compromise policy. But it's just an absolutist view that no, there's no restrictions whatsoever, which of course, I mean, the Olympics doesn't even agree with that, right? So it's totally reasonable to have this debate.
And yet the people, I mean, the fellow Democrats response to my even just raising the issue was no, there's no, there's no room for debate here. You can't even bring that up.
I mean, the backlash really proved the broader point that I was trying to make. But I also think that, you know, this was exactly what the Republicans were able to do with immigration.
I was, I remember being on the House floor last year, and there are some people, colleagues running for this position of Democratic messaging, like chair, committee chair, supposedly in charge of Democratic messaging for the House. And I asked one of the candidates what she, how she thought we should deal with immigration.
And her answer was, we should not talk about immigration. I said, well, I actually think a lot of people are concerned about it because it does seem there's a real problem at the Southern border.
It's just dangerous. It's dangerous to talk about it because it's used against immigrants.
And I just don't think that strategy has worked. It's why, even though we do have a reasonable bipartisan immigration policy, in part represented by the bipartisan deal in the Senate, Trump and the Republicans have just been able to clobber us over the head because there was a period where Democrats were just denying it was even a problem.
So totally legitimate concern. Like, yes, Republicans are the ones weaponizing these issues.
But if we want to win the debate, settle it, and then focus on the things that we want to talk about, we have to do that. We can't just we can't just cede this to the Republicans.
We have to win. So on immigration, though, it's so that it sounds like what you're like.
Sometimes I think what we're doing is saying, like, boy, we made a bunch of mistakes in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 that have we have rectified but have not successfully drawn attention to that in the public imagination. Most Democrats in the House embraced a pretty conservative bipartisan border deal.
Kamala Harris embraced that deal. Joe Biden embraced that deal.
It's, you know, if the problem is a bunch of people running for president shouldn't have raised their hands about decriminalizing the border in 2020, great. But I can't, we can't go back in time and change what happened then.
But it seems like a lot of what you're saying has been addressed. The problem is, is it that people don't believe it? Because you just, you're pointing to, yeah, there are gonna be some Democrats that disagree with what you're saying, but that's the debate, we're having it.
Look, well, I don't, I actually don't, I think the backlash against me was not, we should have this debate. And here's my opposing view.
It was literally, you can't talk about this. Well, you did, I have to say, you did say it in a pretty dickish way.
Like you said it, you said it, and you said, you said, I don't want my daughters overrun by a man on the football field. Like that sucks.
Like that't you didn't exactly invite the best version of yourself look but this is the problem john like you step back from this discussion right and just hear two democrats talking about the precise word choice and whether it was sensitive or not which i agree it wasn't the most perhaps the most sensitive words like this is exactly how a lot of americans feel that the democrats are out of touch and that we are obsessing on these things rather than just having a reasonable discussion. I mean, yes, we're not always, not everyone is going to get the terminology exactly right, even, you know, fellow Democrats, and I'll take that criticism.
But we got to be able to take on the issues. But look, the broader point here, right, the broader point is that, you know, I mean, just to go back to immigration, right, because you're right.
I think the broader point you're bringing up is in some places we have fixed our problems. Right.
We are talking about the border. We do have a reasonable immigration policy.
And so therefore the question is, if we have a reasonable immigration policy, and Trump's immigration policy is both unrealistic and just hateful, I mean, it's going to tear apart families and communities across the country if he's able to deport millions of Americans, not to mention it will raise inflation, which obviously people don't want. Then why is it that the American public trusts Republicans more on immigration than Democrats? Why is it that we have a great economic policy? Harris's plan would not only continue to bring down inflation, but would actually reduce the deficit, something that Republicans used to care about.
Trump's policy would triple the deficit and dramatically increase inflation because deporting Americans, raising tariffs, and tax cuts for billionaires all contribute to inflation. And yet the American public trusted Republicans more on the economy.

And I think my personal view, and I don't know if I'm right, the view I'm proposing is that this is a place where people just feel like

we might have the right policies, but there's a cultural mismatch.

Like we're too preachy rather than listening to Americans,

or we're standing in our ivory towers and we're not hearing the problems of working people, especially in rural communities. There's a sense that people just don't trust us, even if we do have the right policies.
And that's where I think we've really got to look ourselves in the mirror. I mean, look, I'm sitting here in Massachusetts with three Harvard degrees, right? Like, I'm part of the problem on the face of it.
That's offensive. But here's the issue, right? I got into this whole business because of my time in the Marines and feeling that I saw the consequences of failed leadership in Washington when I was serving four tours in Iraq.
And I worked hard. I worked hard to get through school and to, you know, get to Harvard.
I'm living proof that C's get degrees, so I didn't have a stellar academic career at that august institution. But when I showed up to my Marine platoon, my biggest liability was that Harvard degree.
Because these guys, some of the best Americans I've ever met, 18,

19, 20-year-old kids, really, from across the country who wanted to serve, they looked at me and said, he might be book smart, but he's probably not street smart, and he's liable to get us killed. And so when I show up with this degree, I've worked so hard for much of my life to earn, and it's literally my biggest liability.

What I quickly learned is this degree, I've worked so hard for much of my life to earn, and it's literally my biggest liability. What I quickly learned is that's not going to get their trust.
And standing here and saying, well, let me tell you what I know because I went to Harvard, and let me tell you how we're going to do this, is not the way to earn the trust of those Marines. And I think it's similar for us in the Democratic Party, especially where we're concentrated in cities and urban areas, we're concentrated on the coast.
We just can't have this cultural arrogance of always telling people, oh, we're right and you're wrong. Not only you're wrong, but you're a bad person if you don't agree with us.
That's what a lot of Americans hear from Democrats. I had to say to these fellow Marines, I respect you.
I hear you. And that's how I'm going to earn your trust, not by trotting out my degree.
Yeah. Well, I think that's smart.
I think nobody from Harvard should ever trot out their degree. But I think you're right about that.
And by the way, I also think, especially when when it comes to issues that like like I think we have backslid on LGBT issues, specifically on trans issues. Right.
And I think it's worth thinking about how that happens. And I think part of it, to your point, is we need to like not assume people have a lot of knowledge, not assume people are approaching it with bad faith.
The reason I'm criticizing you and I'm talking to you about this in this way is because I'm holding you to a higher standard.

If there are people that are new to this issue, I genuinely believe that the more people know trans people talk about this, I think that that's good for this debate. I think we will win this debate.
I think there's a difference, though, between how we talk about this with people we're trying to persuade and help understand that, no, like this bathroom issue, like AOC's what AOC said about it, I thought was like, like perfect.

Right. Basically saying that, like, hey, like this is just a crazy thing that makes women and girls unsafe.

Right. Like that was one way to talk about.
But like, I think people want a member of Congress and a Democrat who's introducing a debate about a sensitive topic to be to be someone that they can trust to lead that conversation in a way that doesn't make them feel like he's not on their side. And I think that was the problem.
Right. Like, I think you're right.
Like, we need to talk about like, I think that there's completely a conversation that has to be had around sports specifically. right wing Republicans, they're obsessed with the sports issue.
And like I want like I don't want sports like I just want trans people to be safe and not to be afraid to go to the bathroom or the airport. Right.
Like and just to be able to live their lives. And if there's any way in which the issue around sports is a distraction from that or that there's legitimate questions and nuance that needs to be addressed, like we should have that conversation.

But to the larger point that you're making, yes, like Democrats have this front of the classroom vibe, right? That like we are hand raisers, we are teacher, you forgot to assign us homework types and we need more like back of the classroom energy. One of your colleagues who talked to John also did a conversation with the New York Times, Marie Glusenkamp Perez, and she said we need to keep it local and that we shouldn't be represented by any more lawyers.
Where's your head on the lawyers? Are we done with lawyers? I guess. I mean, look, some of your best friends are lawyers.
Some of your best friends are lawyers. Oh, my God.
Who am I going to offend by this comment? She's not afraid. She's not afraid.
I gosh. If you know me, I mean, you know me a little bit better.
I'm always railing on lawyers. Yeah, it's easy to go after a trans quarterback.
But now lawyers suddenly are skittish. I think that I think that this is part of the problem with the Biden administration.
You know, look, I'm like a foreign policy. Everyone asks me, like, what do you think about the Biden administration's policy on Ukraine? And my answer is, I think they've done everything right three to six months late.
And why? Because rather than being an administration filled with decision makers and executives and people who've run companies and whatnot, real leaders, right? It's filled with a lot of lawyers who are just obsessing over every detail and hemming and hawing and i don't know is this going to cause this or that and what about the particular legal restrictions like just get them the guns like yeah just get them the artillery just get them the tanks fuck harvard fuck lawyers that's where i'm at well at least we can all agree on that but but but you know look there are a lot of americans who like we do have, if we want to be the majority party, if we want to win, to me, this is all about winning. We can't advance any of our agenda, any of these issues that we believe are so important, if we don't start winning elections again.
And you just simply can't, by definition, win elections if you're not in touch, you're not relatable to the majority of Americans. And so we have to pay attention to what the majority of Americans are thinking.
Meet them where they are, have a discussion on their terms. And then, you know what? We can try to bring them around to ours.
I agree with that. Democrats are preachy.
I feel like everybody's right. Bernie has a point.
I agree with you. The Democrats are pretty annoying.
I'm pretty annoying. I'm a pretty annoying Democrat myself.
Look, I can be pretty damn annoying myself too. But like, look, can we talk, okay, what's the action plan here, right? Yeah, what are we gonna do? What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do? First thing is, I think we need to, like, we can't just say we need to listen more.
We need to preach less. We need to actually very publicly go out and listen to Americans and make that a very public thing where leaders of our party, like Chuck Schumer, sitting at a cafe in Ohio, like if he wants to be the leader of the Senate, if he wants to be the face of Democrats in the Senate, he needs to get down with farmers and sit on a tractor and just not to make a photo op, but actually to listen to what they're saying, listen to what their concerns are.
So I think that we need to actually practice that idea. The second thing is you brought it up, actually, these interest groups, right? I mean, another word for it is lobbyists.
And we always rail against Republicans for being beholden to the gun lobby and the oil lobby. It's totally true.
They totally are. They're afraid of these folks.
But we're afraid of some of our own lobbyists. And we are beholden to these candidate surveys.
And we stress over them. Like, we would just, you know, not do that.
Like, just, you know, listen more to people outside of Washington rather than inside the Beltway folks who sometimes don't even represent their own interest groups, right? They're more extreme than many of their constituents, right? And then the third thing is we've got to elevate more leaders in our party who know how to win in these tough districts. Like you look at some of the Serve America guys like Pat Ryan, Abigail Spanberger, Alyssa Slotkin, Jerry Golden, who won the most Trump district in the entire country.
I mean, these men and women who are true leaders in the Congress, they don't get to be chairs of committees. They don't get to be leaders of Democrats in leadership positions in the House because those all go to people in safe districts.
Everyone in a leadership position, almost to a person, is in a safe district. And so we never hear from the perspectives of people who do have to talk to independents, who do have to earn every vote because they might lose an election and they only win by, you know, a sliver like Slocken, like Golden.
We need to elevate more of those leaders in the party. And I think those are three concrete things, more listening, less preaching, and actually show it, you know, actually elevate leaders who, you know, can, can make, you know, can, can actually tell us how we need to win across, across the country and, and, and, you know, do these, and then pay more attention to them and the people rather than the interest groups and lobbyists.
It doesn't mean that they don't matter and that their views aren't important, but we can't be beholden to them. What do you think about ranked choice voting? I love it.
I love it because, I mean, it's a tricky concept to understand. I believe that if someone had just sat down with the founding fathers and explained ranked choice voting, we would have it.
Because it just ultimately results in candidates who are more representative of the majority of people. And you're smarter than I am, so you can probably do a better job of actually explaining why that's the case.
But that's the bottom line is you actually tend to get people who are more representative of the broader electorate as opposed to just, okay, you win a primary by running to the extreme right or the extreme left, and then you get an extreme conservative and extreme liberal in the general election, and people feel like, wait a minute, I'm kind of in the middle, and I don't know which way to go, which way to choose. And that's how we get these very polarized districts and these very polarized members

of Congress.

And I agree with all that.

And I just until I think people are brave enough to really take on the lawyers publicly,

I think we're going to be I think we need to start an anti lawyers movement.

I mean, it's begun.

It's begun.

I mean, I checked.

I checked your I before I was like, I was actually and this is I'm sorry. Maybe this is slightly insulting.
I was like, is Seth a lawyer? I got to look it up. Oh, God.
I'm sorry. But you do have three degrees from Harvard.
Are there no other schools? Were there no others? You don't speak like a lawyer. You don't speak like a lawyer.
Were there no other schools you thought you might want to check out? No other quads? You got to go to Harvard three times? I know. They didn't let me in once.
I'm never going to. I've been rejected by Harvard as many times as you've gone there.
That's something that happened to me. Well, Harvard makes mistakes too, John.
And that's important to keep in mind. Congressman Seth Moulton, thank you so much for your time.
Really appreciate it. Been great.
Great to be here. Thanks.
Thanks to Seth Moulton. Thank you to Sam Piker for joining us.
Now, as I said at the top, there's a conversation Dan had with Jen O'Malley, Dylan, David Plough, Quentin Fulks, and Stephanie Cutter from the Harris campaign. Afterwards, Dan took questions from listeners about the interview and had a bunch of really interesting thoughts on what he learned, what more there is to learn.
That is now available as an exclusive bonus episode for subscribers on the Friend of the Pod feed. Reminder, when you subscribe to Friends of the Pod, you're also supporting Crooked's mission to build a progressive media ecosystem.
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That's our show. On Friday, we'll be dropping our annual Thanksgiving mailbag episode with tons of great questions from you all.
And then John, Tommy, and I will be back in your feeds on Tuesday morning. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.
We're recording this on Wednesday. I already spatchcocked the turkey.
Cut the backbone right out. It was a whole procedure.
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