Why Democrats Keep Beating Themselves (And How They Can Stop)

Hi, and welcome back to the Find Out Podcast, episode 10.

Guys, we've made it to double digits.

I think I've saw somewhere that most podcasts fall apart after three because it's so hard to do.

So we already 3x that.

So I think we're

doing pretty good.

Unfortunately, we are down a person today.

Chris has,

as you all know, a little one on the way in a few weeks.

And I think trying to tie up some loose ends before there's no time.

to do that.

So unfortunately, he's not going to be here this week, but he will be back next week.

And before we get into our topics today, just a couple of things.

We have some announcements to make.

Starting this week, because you're listening to this on Tuesday, we're going to be going to two episodes per week because you guys keep asking for more content from us.

So, and since we love the sound of our own voices, we think, why, what better than like to do it twice a week?

So, we'll be going on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

And for the first Tuesday, excuse me, the first Thursday show,

we will have Congressman Pat Ryan, a Democrat from upstate New York, who will be on talking with us about the horrible tax bill that is being written currently in the House.

And I think he's also going to talk to us about how we can also bring more men over to our side, which is obviously something we are trying to do too.

So very excited for that.

I hope you guys all tune in.

And with that, I think we can jump into this week's topics.

We're going to start with some breaking news, or at this point, when you're listening to this, maybe it's not so breaking, but the Supreme Court has been hearing the Trump case on ending birthright citizenship.

There was some information that came out today that suggested that the Supreme Court justices, including the conservatives, are not super into this argument from

the Trump administration.

You know, what do we think about this, guys?

Yeah,

I mean, I think it's incredibly important for people to remember and to know, because I don't think a lot of people know this.

It is not a

birthright citizenship hearing.

It is a federal nationwide injunction hearing, and it was prompted by the birthright citizenship executive order.

And so

it's kind of good and bad because I was just looking through history, and there were examples where the expansion of DACA under Barack Obama, under President Obama, was blocked by a nationwide injunction from a Texas, a conservative Texas judge.

There was another one around immigration, or or there was a one around a trans rights bathroom bill that would have protected access to locker rooms and bathrooms nationwide for transgender students.

And that was also blocked by a conservative judge in Texas with a nationwide injunction.

Nationwide injunctions are a double-edged sword, and they get used by both sides.

They cherry pick the judges and they cherry pick the states to get the outcome they want.

So in this case, it's

concerning that if they say, if they rule against the people, if they rule against us and on behalf of Trump, then it would theoretically allow some level of his executive order to come true until the inevitable actual case attacking that executive order lands in their lap.

And presumably they would take that up, but in the interim, they would be, the government would not be issuing

citizenship documents to individuals who were born here if their parents don't meet the criteria.

So I do want listeners to know that it's not a fire alarm panic case.

It just, it's more of a technical thing, and they might find a way to rule in the weeds a little bit more as well.

I'm curious because I'm not as caught up on this as I want to be.

And I did know that it was an injunction case, but I'm so the Trump administration essentially arguing that they don't want nationwide injunctions to be a thing anymore.

Is that the structure of this case?

Because it suits them.

Right, in the moment, right, right.

But there are so many times where it suited them.

That's very interesting.

I've always hated that structure.

Every single time I've seen, like, this judge in Texas makes it so you maybe can't get, you know, a birth control pill.

Or, you know, that sort of seems insane to me.

So, like, I don't know where I stand on this one.

Because, like, for me personally, birthright citizenship is not an issue that I sort of like live or die on.

It's like, I think we should follow the Constitution and amend it only when it's extreme, you know, when there are extreme circumstances.

I don't think this is an extreme circumstance.

I don't think that there's like a massive problem because of birthright citizenship.

But I also like, I mean, European countries don't do it the way we do it.

They do it with more restrictions.

So, like, I'm on the fence.

So I think it's more of like a question of how do we feel about the concept of, you know, these national injunctions.

Like for me personally, I'd almost rather them not be able to, you know, to change the structure of how they've been and amend them so it can't be as powerful as it is.

So I think that,

I mean, I think it's a little crazy that one judge can like grind everything to a screeching halt, but it is also a check on,

let's say, a lawless president, for example, who is doing all kinds of illegal things.

And really at this point, the levers that we have are public pressure, which do work

and we have seen work on the Trump administration.

But really the only other lever is the courts.

And so it is, I mean, it's, it's tough because it's like right now it suits us, but it's also like we're in an extreme situation with a president that has basically no checks on his power.

And I am okay with gumming up the system a little bit and letting the system work through it rather than getting rid of this.

And then all of a sudden, he does even more extreme stuff in which he comes, then we're fucked.

Right.

Like, and that's, but it's just, but I agree with you that, like, generally speaking, to get things done, it is, it is very bureaucratic and it does slow things down for sure.

I mean, but then again, how many, how many times do you really have something that a president needs to do that's got to get done this fucking fast?

And if it's not done this fucking fast, then it's useless.

Well, by the way, Luke just smashed his mic, which is why you heard that.

Yeah, I did smash my mic.

If you're just listening, he was trying to reach it down below while he was talking.

Well, I would say that the birth control one would be one that you would want to happen immediately, right?

Because that affects people.

A ban or a protection?

Well, it would, well, to the protection because there was an injunction the other way.

Right, right, right.

So that's an example of somebody who is in a moment where, like, if they allow that injunction to stand, they aren't getting birth control.

They're just not going to get the birth control, right?

Like, or so.

What would the structure be if say that Trump wins this case, then what is the structure?

would how would this be handled

so it would go back to i mean that that would that would be part of the ruling is how are they you know what are they allowing uh immediately and from from what i've read it looks like um it would either be limited to the uh the specific states where the judges are so in this case i think it was a california judge who who shut it down so then california would still which obviously there are a lot of immigrants in california and it's the most populous state and so even just that would mitigate the damage of what Trump's doing.

But they could also find a way to say on citizenship issues, on speech and religion issues, like they could just say on, you know, on human rights,

we can have nationwide injunctions because they're that important.

But on things like DACA expansion or like, you know, oil and gas drilling or something like that, maybe they would prohibit them from being able to block it nationwide.

the judges right now are sort of, it seems like they're kind of against Trump from the original hearings, or are they kind of like unreadable?

Yeah, the obviously Sotomayor Kagan and Kentanji Brown Jackson are all very much

against them.

But Kavanaugh and Gorsuch and John Roberts and Comey Barrett, Coney Barrett, all were pretty skeptical.

So I think

personally, I don't want to try to read the tea leaves because that burned us on the TikTok ban and a couple of other things.

And Roe v.

Wade, of course.

But from the vibe of their questioning, which did ultimately predict those last cases,

we were looking for

something to feel good about, honestly.

We were looking for hope.

But they did telegraph their decision a little bit in their comments.

And in this case,

I think the most likely outcome

is that they just slap it down and they just say, this is ridiculous.

It's too serious.

And

we're getting by right now just fine with nationwide injunctions.

They're annoying.

But the other thing that it does is

it boils down things to one decision that they can visit instead of having to have what in this case would have to be a class action lawsuit by all of the pregnant undocumented citizens or temporary legal immigrants who are also prohibited from having an anchor baby, as they call them.

they would have to sue individually.

And then those that class action lawsuit would have to get elevated to the Supreme Court.

So it would be a disaster and a shit show in this case.

And with any serious issue,

it would be a disaster.

Yeah, I just don't see John Roberts going along with this.

He is a very, very smart guy.

I disagree with him on pretty much everything politically.

And I think his legacy is already tainted by essentially saying that the president is a king as far as from a kingdom.

Yeah, forever.

forever will be tainted by the immunity.

Yeah, like, I don't think that history is going to look kindly on him.

I also think he knows that.

And I think he sometimes tries to be the moderate, even though he's not really a moderate.

And I think that sometimes you see Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett and Gorsuch, to an extent, sometimes vote in favor of protecting the judiciary's power, essentially.

It's not really about

one president or another, but like this ruling would essentially take power away from the judiciary.

Self-interest from a, from a politician?

Crazy.

I know, wild, right?

Wild.

Wild, wild.

They are unelected activist judges.

They are not politicians.

Oh, yeah, that's what they are.

Actually,

I think several of the conservative judges worked on, well, at least Roberts worked on Bush v.

Gore as a Bush attorney.

So like politicians, no, but worked for politicians.

Absolutely.

I don't think you had any of that with the three liberal justices.

But anyways, it's, you know, we talk about activist judges.

And I noticed that you didn't say anything about Justice Thomas and Justice Alito, who are basically a rubber stamp for whatever Donald Trump wants to do.

Anyway,

and yet they both ruled against him in the 90 ruling on

the illegal deportation.

So

there is a line they won't break.

Somehow it seems weird.

The concepts of a line, at least.

But yeah, so in they're saying it might even be June or July before they announce the ruling on this.

So I don't want people to like, there's going to be a lot of fear-mongering out there with this.

The breaking news and the breaking news.

We have some major breaking news.

Well, actually, you know what?

This is a perfect segue into what the meat of this

episode is supposed to be about is, you know, are Democrats doing enough to win back voters?

Are they doing the right strategies?

And I think everybody here has some strong opinions on this that are not going to really put the party in a very, very good light at the moment.

So

who wants to jump into this first?

Zach, you want to take the...

Are we starting with the David Hogg stuff?

Is that where we're going?

How do you feel about Joe Biden's health and how they manage that?

Do you want to get into that?

That's actually the reason I started making TikToks.

If you go all the way back to my first videos, it's me begging Joe Biden to drop out of the election because he's just not fit to do it.

And I was just like perpetually obsessed with that happening because I knew there was no way he was going to win.

And at least there would be a chance for us to beat Trump if he dropped out.

But I mean, to me, this Biden story is emblematic of so many things that are wrong with the Democratic Party.

The fact that it was this insulated group of insiders that shielded him and the reality of what was going on with him from all of us.

And then pretty much put us in a position where we couldn't do anything but lose in this election because he decided to run again for whatever genius reason.

And then all the people who saw how far gone he was just went, yeah, that's fine.

We'll figure it out.

Ridiculous.

This to me is a huge story that's obviously getting a ton of press on the right side of the aisle when it comes to media.

But the left needs to look at this too and own their role in the fact that Joe Biden and the decisions, the people who made the decisions around Joe Biden single-handedly screwed us over.

Like not only

the Democratic Party, but the country, because we ended up with fucking Trump because of it.

So for those of you that don't know, there is a book that is about to come out, I believe, by Jake Tapper and maybe Alex alex thompson i don't know who it is i know it's the second one but it's jake tapper and there have been a couple of stories that have come out this week one was that um inside you know and they had sources on the inside and i don't think that jake tapper was making things up uh there were discussions with the inner circle about if if biden was to win that they were going to have to start using a wheelchair uh because of his uh inability to walk.

And I think another one that's actually more disturbing is related to George Clooney

and that

article he or the op-ed he wrote in The Times where he asked Biden to drop out.

The reason that he wrote that was that a few weeks before, Joe Biden seemed to not know who he was.

He didn't know who he was.

He had met him many times.

And

he'd had to remind him.

He's like, it's George.

And then he's like, who?

George Clooney.

Like, oh, hey, George.

Like, he clearly didn't know who he was.

So it.

you know, it's obviously always a delicate topic when we're talking about a person and their decline in their elder years.

But really, he's the president of the United States.

And I do feel like that we were misled.

And I'm somebody who's supported Democrats forever, right?

I worked in 08 on the Obama campaign and I worked in the administration and I've worked for governors.

And, you know, it's hard for me to say this, but we were misled and we need to come to grips with that.

And there really needs to be accountability on it.

And I know that's not a popular thing with a lot of Democrats, but it's true.

And it is true.

If Joe, if it was the Joe Biden from 10 years ago, he would have won reelection.

I don't even think it would have really been much of a question.

Even 2020, he would have won, I think.

Yeah, he was.

So I think we need to back up just a pinch, though, because sometimes our viewers, they get upset that we get into the weeds and we're talking too much inside baseball.

So for anyone who doesn't know, George Clooney is an actor.

He was in, he played the role of Seth Gecko and From Dusk Till Dawn, a classic Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez film.

I love that movie.

Great movie.

That movie is great.

It's a really, it's an important film.

And I think our viewers need to, they need to see it.

They need to talk about it.

And most importantly, they need to recognize who George Clooney is so that they don't make the same mistake that our president made.

So it's more like one of those more you know things.

Can we do the graphics?

Do we have a graphics department?

We can do the star.

Maybe we could do a slightly different version of it and get away with it.

You know,

in seriousness, though,

I mean, it's a very serious movie.

There's vampires and shit.

Are you saying that Joe Biden turned into a vampire?

Quentin, what that was?

Quentin Karatino wrote himself into that movie so he could drink wine off of Salmo Hayek's feet.

That's a challenge.

That's what I think.

He did do that.

That's like the most 90s

action film star thing that you could think of.

That wouldn't necessarily fly right now, but I don't think so.

We give him lots of leeway because he makes lots of good movies.

But no, I mean,

this is a difficult one one for me because I'm just beyond livid that the Democrats do stuff like this because it's what everybody hates this about all politicians.

It's like the thing that we hate most about politicians in the whole political theater is all of this grandstanding and showboating and like just the inauthenticity of the whole thing.

And so that they're going and doing that.

is infuriating.

But at the same time, you know, we propped up wrongfully a very old man who is trying to do the best thing.

And they are propping up a very old man who is a like surrounded by Nazis and trying to destroy everything.

And so like, I want to, I want to keep accountability exactly and squarely where it belongs.

Inside the Democratic Party, we have people to hold accountable and we have processes and systems to change.

But on behalf of the country, it's still Trump and Trump's voters who did this to us.

That's where it is for me because somebody asked me like in a comment the other day, what I would change about the 24 election.

And what I would do is to never have Joe Biden run again.

I mean, he ran as a fucking transitional candidate in 2020, said he was going to, you know, whatever.

Do the whole fucking process part thing, you know,

find a new candidate, even if, even if he runs in the primary and you say, okay, he wins, whatever.

I don't think he would.

He wouldn't.

Then you, you don't give the right all this ammunition about, well, look at how old Joe Biden is because they ran with that from the day he started all the way up until election day, even when he wasn't on the fucking ballot anymore because there was all this well they tried to hide it and like there's a little bit of truth in that there's a lot of truth in that that's this and i think that yeah there's a little bit of truth in that and like if without that ammunition you get to throw back look how old donald trump is yeah like all of the speech pathologists who analyzed his speeches from 2016 versus now where the average word length has halved Like, that's a completely different story.

Like, you get to talk about that all you fucking like.

I always have a hard time with this kind of stuff, though, because I think we do this a lot on the left.

Like we go, yeah, the thing we did was bad, but look how bad Trump is.

It's like, I think we should keep these two things separate.

Like, yes, Trump's an old man.

He's definitely nowhere near what Biden is in terms of cognition.

Like Biden's worse off.

There's no question in my mind.

Like Trump is obviously not doing well.

I wouldn't pick him out of a billion people to be president.

But I wouldn't pick Joe Biden out of a billion people to be president either.

And I think we need to like not deflect the blame and try to rechange the story back to being like, well, well, look, Trump's old too.

It's like, yeah, Trump's old too, but Trump didn't lie to you about his abilities to be, you know, a functional human being.

Until that debate where Joe Biden just fell off a fucking cliff and faceplanted at the bottom, I had no idea he was this bad.

I thought he was like, you know, 2020, Joe, minus a little bit.

And I was like, that's okay.

I'm cool with that.

I'll hang with it.

But then once that debate happened, I was like, oh my God, this guy is not functional.

And that was a huge problem.

It was awesome.

It was the worst day of 2024 besides election day.

Like this

terrible.

I watched every debate, and I think I turned it off a third, maybe half of the way in.

I was like, oh, fuck.

There's a train wreck.

This is happening.

He sounded like he barely existed.

He was all raspy, couldn't complete a thought.

He just kept saying, they're lies.

They're lies.

Everything's lies.

It was like, dude, oh,

the back half was better somehow.

Like, somehow, magically, like a switch flipped when they took the break, and he came back out.

I was like, oh, he's not so bad now.

But

backstage, dude, you're getting absolutely massacred.

And he's going to be the next president.

Yeah, you need to fucking wake up.

So

the thing that it still confuses me to this day is that the part that the the campaign wanted that debate and they were hyping it hyping it over and over again they did these videos of him before he walked out on stage you know drinking the this water that bought like this joe biden water thing they had whatever and like

this is where i think there's there was a disconnect and i think that this is why there was a small group of people who really knew what was going on and a lot of people who didn't because there's no way i know a lot of those people on that campaign there is no way that they knew this stuff.

Like if they were pushing that, there's just a well-kept secret.

It was.

And now that we're seeing these reports from the book and whatever, and we could say whatever about people selling books off this stuff, but like, you know, they knew this, this, that was not the first time that that happened.

And I don't, I think the party's kind of just like eh, and like moved on.

And yes, we lost, and that should be, that's a big punishment.

But, you know, this kind of leads into the other part that we, I want to talk to you guys about, which is, have Democrats learned anything since November?

And that's a, that's a wide question that you could we could probably spend 16 hours on but we're going to spend like 20.

um have do democrats feel like that they have learned anything from uh the crushing loss in november i don't think so i mean i haven't seen i haven't seen anything institutionally that makes me go oh they get it now like i think that they're sort of like searching for an answer at this point but i mean to give them credit The circumstances don't really give them any opportunity to figure out their shit.

Like they really have just, they're adrift and they have like no power.

And it's very hard to like figure out how you want to use power if you don't have any of it.

So I feel like Democrats are sort of in this odd position where they just don't have the circumstances to rebuild.

But at the same time, like I haven't seen really anything that's made me go, oh, okay, they learned their lesson.

They're structuring things right.

Like I have seen nothing, but again, they don't really have to do anything right now.

So I just don't know.

I'm like hoping that they figure it out, but I'm not expecting it.

No, I, I, the the seniority problem

where seniority is apparently the only thing that matters in the democratic party is really

really painful to watch happen and and to watch it play out because i've seen it at at local levels and regional levels state levels and then you see it you see the results of it happening behind the scenes which is Everybody gets into a room and then they all sort of quietly sit around the people who have been in the party the longest and who have like held the most titles.

And then everybody just kind of gives them money and attention.

And then it's like, we all look around and it's like, nobody wants to be a dick about it.

And so they all just think,

I guess, you know, John's been here the longest.

So he should be precinct captain and run for office and whatever.

And like, that's the way that we pick candidates.

And that's the way we do things because it's this

we just, we just want to be respectful of it.

It's like, dude, I'm sorry, but it's real bad.

And if you're not getting it done, if you're not shipping shit, if you're not delivering, we just, we can't.

You can have a position somewhere be in a committee.

You can be behind the scenes.

You're doing good work.

You have the right beliefs.

You vote for the right people, but you're not delivering for the party.

And more importantly, for American citizens who desperately need progressive leaders to go out with a blowtorch and just annihilate all of this shit that Trump is doing.

So I, as somebody who I actually almost worked for the DNC at one point, probably 10, 15 years ago,

I was just starting to like you, Tim.

Hey, hey, come on.

I didn't, I didn't work there.

I will

have anything to say.

I don't have anything negative to say about that.

But here's the deal.

Seniority needs to go away.

I just, it, it, we are not in a world in which we can just like pick somebody because they are in a safe blue district and they never have to campaign.

And then they just like glide into this thing when they're 85 years old.

I, I, I, I, competition is always good.

People get stagnant when they they are not pushed.

So if you are somebody who is just like, oh, I'm next in line for appropriations just because

I've lived longer than everybody, I'll outlived everybody.

That is not the reason to entrust somebody with a position that actually appropriates trillions of dollars per year.

I'm sorry, this is not a

t-ball game where you get a participation trophy.

Like it's madness.

Like this happened with house oversight.

It was Jerry Connolly,

who was the most senior person there with stage four lung cancer at 74 years old.

And he beat AOC because it was quote unquote his turn.

What happened?

Two months later, he had to resign because he's got stage four.

I don't know if it's lung cancer.

It's something bad.

So then we're starting all over again with a new election.

Like this shit has to stop.

And like, it's not a game.

And I'm really tired of it.

And, you know, like, it's, it's hard to, to, to say enough is enough, but but like,

what are we doing?

He has, he has esophageal cancer.

Yeah.

So it's, that's a bad, that's a as bad.

That's a bad one to everybody.

You have to fucking talk all the time.

Yeah.

The irony that we can sit around as a party and talk about all of the things that Joe Biden should have done differently.

And then we are given an opportunity.

to redo that whole thing.

We can, we can literally do correctly what we are now also saying in the same breath, what Biden should have done.

And you look at, you know, and you look at David Hogg and what he's doing, the second we get an opportunity, we just run away from it.

With AOC,

we run the opposite direction because we realize that, as I've said before, hard things are hard.

And moving on and transitioning into the future with this party is going to be difficult.

And there are people who have been waiting 30 years for a committee seat or for the chair of whatever and it and they won't get it.

They don't deserve it and they won't get it and they shouldn't get it just because they put in the time.

I don't care how much money they have.

I don't care how many years they've served and I don't care how old they are.

Yeah.

So for those of you who don't know, David Hogg was recently elected as one of the vice chairs of the DNC.

He is a former, he was in

Parkland.

Parkland.

He was one of the survivors from the Parkland shooting and he's done a lot of work on gun violence prevention and has sort of over the years morphed more into

someone that's of note in the Democratic Party.

And he won this race to be a vice chair.

Shortly after that, he announced that he was going to start raising money to fund primary challenges for certain Democrats, I think only in safe districts.

I think was maybe the case.

Yeah, because his focus was more in that realm.

Those are the people who serve for, those are the Pelosis and the Schumers.

You know, they just close to re-election.

They've been serving longer than I've been allowed.

I mean, Joe Biden got into the Senate eight years before I was born, and I am 46 years old.

Right.

So,

you know, but anyway, so the party is furious with him.

And for those who don't know, the Democratic, the DNC generally stays out of primaries, and they support the Democrat that is nominated to win.

So this is very outside the lane for them.

And they are now moving to kick him out of this because of what he is doing.

Is that the right idea?

Is that the wrong idea?

Cancer.

Is it fault on both sides?

I think there's fault on both sides, me personally, because I'll be the outlier here 100%.

I don't like his strategies.

I don't like his presentation.

I think, like, yes, we need to make changes and we got to focus in on getting these old people out and focus on new ideas, all that.

The way he came out of the gate was just like, not it.

I mean, let's look at analog as the successful party right now in terms of winning elections is the Republican Party right now.

And they have two distinct factions, regular people and MAGA.

And they don't dissect that.

They put them smashed together.

They don't fight each other.

They don't try to primary each other.

They just go, whoever's going to win is going to win.

We're all kumbaya, and though we hate each other, we're going to make it work and we're going to have our messaging combined.

The first thing this guy comes out of the gate is, let's just fight each other.

Terrible idea.

And the fact that he's come out with like this hyper aggression towards anybody who doesn't agree with him just shows his age.

He's 25.

He doesn't know how to lead at all.

He may have smart ideas and have little, you know, regionally understand how to do things.

I don't agree with anything he came to the table with in terms of like a macro approach.

It's just not smart.

But, you know, if people like it because it's different, I think different's good.

I think he's wrong.

But I don't think the party should kick him out just because they don't agree with him.

I think they should try to work with him and figure it out.

That's the whole point, you know.

So I agree with a lot of that.

I don't like it.

Also, because we just elected a new DNC chair who hasn't had an opportunity to do anything yet because he was just elected the same time that David Hogg was, which is Ken Martin, who, by all accounts, everybody thinks is a very smart operator, did amazing work with the Minnesota party and totally gets digital and all these things.

That said, I think I, you know, and I don't particularly like him running for this and then doing this from the inside, but I don't think they should kick him out.

I think that he was voted in.

And I can't tell you how many times last year that people kept saying to me, well, you didn't even have a primary.

You just installed Kamala.

And like, this is, they're doing it again, right?

Where

that they're like, they're doing something.

what undemocratic they're not i mean it wasn't a democracy like the members vote it's like nobody but like he did did win, but they're doing, but they're pushing the narrative again that, like, anybody who steps out of line is gone.

And voters don't like that stuff.

We keep feeding it, too.

That's the thing.

Like, again, there's a little bit of truth in that.

And it's bad.

It's real bad.

Purity ruins politics and it ruins political parties, especially when you are up against a purity machine with MAGA.

And they have, I mean, they have gotten this to a fine art and a science, and everybody's gotten on board with it.

We can't do that same thing on the left.

It can't be chaos versus chaos and idiocy versus idiocy.

We have to have a big tent party and let's actually showcase, and I hate that expression, but we have to actually, Tim, to your point, showcase what happens when people actually have to win arguments and actually have to compete.

for the power and authority that they have.

They get better at what they do.

Barack Obama didn't show up in 2007 and say, I'm going to be a candidate for the president and beat Hillary Clinton because he was lucky.

He did it because he spent years sharpening his craft.

I mean,

you look at what Pete Buttigieg is doing right now.

He is out in front of the firing squad over and over and over, talking to people who are willing to say and do almost anything to win the argument with him.

And he uses that as an opportunity to sharpen himself.

And now he's, I think, hands down by far, by a million miles, the best debater on progressive issues issues in the country.

For sure.

And that is what we need to produce.

And so

I sort of read some of David Hogg's stuff a little bit.

He's, you know, maybe

more focused on things that I'm less focused on.

I think gun violence is catastrophically important, to be very clear.

And I support all of the things that he is fighting for there.

And how he's doing it, I would do it differently.

But I also don't care because if our candidates are better, they should be able to beat the people that David Hogg is endorsing.

If he wants to go and dump money into primary challengers, sure,

win, fucking win, beat him, be better than that candidate despite the money.

And then you get to be the nominee, and now you're smarter and you're better at debating, you're better at defending progressive positions and your track record.

So

this can end well if we just let it play out.

We have three years.

That's where I stand.

So, Luke, I want to ask you as our resident youth, youth representative.

So David Hogg's 25, you're 21, 21, 22.

22 in a month.

Oh, going to have a big birthday celebration.

What is it?

You seeing the David Hogg stuff, you know, what does it say when like a 25-year-old gets elected as vice chair?

Then immediately they're like, you got to go.

Does that like, what is the reaction that you or your friends have?

I mean, I don't know if they talk about it, but, you know,

does it seem like it's like, we don't care what the young, what young people have to say?

Shut up, get line, or is it like?

I mean, that's like that's what you're saying in the DNC's responses?

Yeah, I mean, I think he probably came out a little strong.

Immediately coming out the gate, like fuck everybody is not the best player, especially not if you want to have a future in what you're doing, which I think he does.

But like at the same time,

if he's anything like me, he's watched the last fucking 15 years be pretty much the exact same over and over again.

And he's had jack shit to do about it.

Like, it's not like he, he's had any power before, at least not that I know about.

So, I can understand coming out and be like, all right, let's, let's fucking change something here.

And

if he didn't do it, I don't know that I see anybody else doing it.

I mean, maybe Ken Martin was going to do something radical like that, but I kind of doubt it.

Like,

what I read on it is somebody who's watched it happen for five, six, 10 years and gone, yeah, that's that's fucking enough.

And I, I could understand that, like, especially when if you, if he had a, if he tried to have a future, like, straight up without walking into this role, he's got like 30 years before he gets into a spot of power.

Like this party is talking incessantly about how, oh, we need young votes or we need young voices and young votes.

Well, why the fuck do you have a bunch of geriatric old coops in positions of power that are talking all the time?

Like, I don't want to watch Chuck Schumer pull his glasses down and fucking talk over him for 45 minutes about a strongly worded letter.

That doesn't do fuck all.

I agree with you.

One thing, and this just brings me to something I realized the other day, which was like me as a a moderate,

I like the old, like the Biden approach to politics, but Luke is right.

Like the only way to really shift things is to embrace a sort of aggressive, progressive approach.

And like, for me, if I'm a Democratic strategist right now, I'm going all in on the opposite approach.

I'm going to try to do democratic socialism in America.

I'm going to try to embrace all the things that younger people want the Democratic Party to embrace and put young people at the forefront of that conversation.

That could wildly change the narrative on how Democrats are going to do in the next elections.

Because if they just go, eh, fuck it, we'll just go back to the old stuff, you know, the hits, they're going to lose again.

So exactly.

Because like you are never going to convince young people that they should shut up and they should just accept the fact that old people know more than them.

Yeah, this is life.

Just old people do know more than them, but you're never going to convince them, especially not when the alternative is the right side of things who says, yeah, we like what you're saying.

Like, here, come over here and have our candy.

We won't do anything.

Exactly.

We'll creep in a van.

Like, they're luring them into the van.

I think people our age and older forget something, and that is, Luke, how old were you in 2008?

Five.

Do you remember?

Do you remember Barack Obama's election?

Vaguely.

I remember my parents were really excited.

They were like super excited.

I remember Trump's first election vividly, but I don't remember very much of Biden.

This is,

this is my point.

Young people.

young liberal progressive people in this country did not experience 2008, did not experience the

euphoria of winning after eight years of George Bush and

lying us into wars and blowing up the deficit.

Like, we know what that feels like, but these guys have never experienced a country where they have a young, energetic candidate pushing things that will make their lives better.

Biden doesn't count because that was, first of all, he was old and it was COVID.

There wasn't a real campaign.

So it was all done from home.

These guys don't know.

So like we have to understand why they're angry.

They've never experienced it.

I think maybe the most dangerous thing is that

the last time anybody felt that that I really saw was Bernie Sanders.

And he's proven, he proved that you don't have to be young to lead that movement, but you do have to have the right ideas and you have to be passionate about it.

You have to fucking care.

And he cared.

And I was, I, I was a Hillary supporter.

I got, I did not like how that whole, that whole thing went down.

But when you look at it in hindsight and you look at what happened to those people, they were passionately,

they loved his policies and they loved how he presented the ideas that are further left than almost anything anybody in the Democratic Party is saying right now, even eight, 10 years ago.

And then they saw the institutional machine.

just run him over.

I think it happened the way it happened.

You know, she won the nomination.

She was the candidate.

It was all fair.

Nobody got anything robbed or stolen.

But the last time that they were really passionate about a candidate was 2016, Bernie Sanders.

And there wasn't anything like that, to your point, in 2020.

And 2024,

I started feeling that around Kamala, but I also think we don't fully appreciate that the United States is more sexist than we are anything else, in my opinion.

And we did not know that we were coming up against a built-in 45-point disadvantage where there's just half of the country just isn't apparently capable of voting for the correct person.

It's interesting, though, because like, if you go back to Obama, obviously the big concern with him was that he was the first black candidate ever that was going to be in that position.

And I, what the Democratic Party said was, who gives a shit?

He's awesome.

It's great.

And I'm sort of drawing a parallel with, Rich, what you were saying earlier about Budicie.

Like, Budice is amazing.

Like, he's, he's really going out there and just killing it across the board.

And the thing that I like so much about him is that he connects with the people that don't agree with him so well.

And, like, obviously, the big knock on Budigej from people who don't want him to run is that he's gay, and that's like going to really hurt him, his chances.

And to me, the more I start to think about it, I'm like, he kind of is like the modern-day Obama in a way where, like, there is a part of him that people are going to look at and go, I don't know, if we're ready for this, but beneath it is like hands down, the best candidate and the best person to run the whole show.

And I really think the time is good.

Like I made a video about this recently where my knock on him is he's kind of boring.

But after four years of Trump, boring is awesome.

Like boring and being able to connect with people and like understanding how they feel.

He might be the word grocery means.

He might be like a superstar.

You see double down on that?

Yeah.

I think it was today.

Oh, God.

He was like, oh, yeah, I invented the word grocery.

He's insane.

He said it again.

It's a beautiful word, grocery.

It's kind of an old-fashioned term last time.

And

what was the other word that he said he invented?

Equalize.

That's what it was.

He said he invented the word equalized.

Now the cognition is coming into play here.

See, but that's what I'm saying.

Like, if we'd been able to run with that cognition shit a year ago, it might have been a different thing.

There was also another problem, which I don't really have a great solution to, which is we lost.

a lot of votes on the Gaza situation.

And I don't think the Democrats have really,

I don't think that Democrats have really come to terms with that.

And I don't think that,

you know, it is a very complicated issue, right?

Because this is a thing that goes back centuries, you know, and so it's hard.

But, you know, Americans could see that Gaza was effectively bulldozed.

And we didn't say really anything about it.

Biden really didn't say anything about it.

Connelly didn't say that.

What's that?

I was so thrown off by that because it was just like, what, like, Trump isn't offering a bet.

He's offering something worse.

Like, what, I don't understand the argument from people who didn't vote because of Gaza.

It's like, yeah, both sides suck on on this, but Trump is aggressively worse and he's proving it now.

It's just the purity war within the party because I don't think Republicans, Republicans certainly don't care about Palestinians.

No, I don't even know where it is.

Jewish voters vote 65 or so percent for Democrats typically.

So one right here.

There's not a whole lot going on on the Republican side on this issue.

This is one of those times where we took the opportunity to destroy ourselves with an issue that split the party in half, not because it needed to, but because that's kind of what we do.

We look for opportunities to purify.

What could we have done differently?

Like I just trying to go back and litigate it.

Like, what do we say?

Like, that was the, like, what do we say that you say, say that you pursue a completely different, you know, situation that's happening.

Like,

being quiet about a genocide is not a terrible thing.

Oh, yeah, no, that's

a terrible play.

Peace the ceasefire.

But Harris did say that.

Like, Harris was pretty clear on her position.

It's pretty much what you just said.

Like, she supported a ceasefire ceasefire, and you know, she still wanted to keep Israel, you know, not attacked.

I think the problem is that the administration, not her specifically, but the administration put several red lines in place for Deton Yahoo, and he just bulldozed right all

literally, he bulldozed over them, and they did nothing.

Bombed over them.

Bombed over them.

I mean, they, you know,

first of all, I agree that Israel had a right to defend itself after that horrific terrorist attack on October 6th, but that doesn't give you carte blanche to wipe somebody off, a whole group of people off the map.

And that is what is happening.

And now it's even worse because now Trump basically said, yeah, you can go do that.

If they don't give you a peace deal, just like wipe them off the map, which is ethnic cleansing.

Yeah.

So, so, like, but I get it.

Like, Democrats are supposed to, it's not a fair fight, but Democrats are supposed to be better.

Democrats are supposed to stand up for values, and they're also supposed to be able to tell their friends when they're doing things that are wrong.

And what Benjamin Netanyahu has done in Gaza over the last year is abhorrent.

Super Roman.

Last 10 years.

Well, I mean, we can go go further, right?

But like, I mean, he is a monster.

And that is not a condemnation of Israel.

That is a condemnation of a politician.

And I do think that there is an important distinction there.

He is a monster.

Most Israelis think he's a monster.

And, but like, we did nothing.

And I think when young voters in particular and Muslim Americans saw that there was going to be no difference between, at least in their opinion, the difference between a Harris administration and a Trump administration, they were like, well, we're going to send a signal.

So the next time there's an election in four years, you'll listen to us.

And I kind of laughed at it.

Not laughed at it, but I kind of rolled my eyes at it because I agree with you.

Like there's no doubt that Kamala Harris would be light years better for Palestinians than Donald Trump.

Oh, yeah.

But I also understand why, like, they watched their family members get wiped off the map and Joe Biden called them a bunch of terrorists.

I mean, that's the challenge is like both, but that's the issue with this to me is that both sides of this fight suck.

Like, you know,

Israel is doing horrible things.

Hamas is doing horrible things.

There's terrible shit on both.

Like, You can't switch sides because then you're supporting Hamas pretty much, and that's a mistake.

So it's like, it's a lose-lose.

You can't win this argument.

So I think that what they tried to do was sort of like slink out of it, like Homer Simpson, just dipping into the fucking trucks.

And they're just like, I don't know.

It will never work.

Never.

It will never work.

But if you take a hard line either direction, you're fucked.

Like, that's the challenge with this thing is like, if you slink away, you're fucked.

If you take a hard line for either side, you're fucked.

There really wasn't a good answer.

So like, you know, I think, look, I think if Democrats had handled all the rest of it differently, then it wouldn't have mattered as much because they would have been able to actually have won on the merits of the messaging.

But instead, this was just another thing that siphoned away support for them.

And then there's another quick thing before we go to, we're doing a new segment today, so you guys get ready.

It's, uh, we're gonna, I should have teased at the beginning to keep everybody listening, but um.

Brian Tyler Collin, who is a very popular YouTube commentator, political commentator, has recently come out against Democrats continuing to use the same tactics, which they have done, which piss piss off everybody, which is SMS, like send them text messages without opting in and emails incessantly.

And this is one that I believe in because in 2008, I was on the email team for Obama for America.

And we did your fault.

Tim's domain.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Nope, nope, nope.

Tim is grandfathered into this shit.

First of all, I didn't send fundraising emails because

I was the state-based email person.

So like I was doing all the messaging to get people out to vote, get voter protection lawyers, office openings, which used to be these big events in that in that election.

But we also used to send messages from like David Pluff would do like a five minute like, here's the, here's how we're spending your money and here's where we're focusing our time or doing these things.

And now all we get from Democrats is money, money, money, money, money, money, money.

And my problem with that is that we raised more money than Donald Trump and we got crushed.

And so this is, you know, I would not have talked about this too much, but like, I know everybody is frustrated about it.

And I, I think the Democrats need to wake up and realize that like, you know, we have a brand problem and like constantly spamming people for this stuff isn't, isn't going to solve our problem.

It's going to affect, make it worse and turn more people off.

That was horrible.

I got one like a month ago and it literally made me mad.

I was like, what, what money, what is my money going to do for you?

Nothing.

What the fuck am I giving you money for?

It's a ridiculous assertion.

Like, it's what?

At that point, two, three months into Trump's administration, what the fuck am I paying you for?

Like, it makes no sense.

Well, and what are they show?

Show me something worth buying, right?

Yeah, yeah, give me a thing that I want to pay for.

Yeah, because what has happened, what happened in the first several months, where they held little signs at his speech, you guys remember that shit?

They held like this is not normal, liar.

He lied, Trump lied.

Congratulations.

Duh.

Is that what you need?

They should have all stood up.

That's what you need the money for.

So they all got kicked out.

They need to buy those little signs.

That's why they need your $4 donation so that they can buy more.

This is not right signs or this is not normal.

No,

this comes back to the whole point of how we got here in this conversation, which is

Biden did a thing that he shouldn't have done.

We didn't take the opportunity to do the right thing the first time.

And now we're in the same position with people like David Hogg and with activists within the party.

And we're trying to push them out.

We had the opportunity to fix what we did wrong with Biden, and we apparently are not going to do that, or I should say the Democrats are apparently not going to do that.

And now there's another, now they're asking us for money so that we can pay them to continue to do the exact same things that now it appears will have two really good lines in the sand that they just like just walked right over.

I mean, no, I haven't donated a dollar since election day to anybody.

I started making videos and yelling about it because this is way, way, way more useful and way more influential in the world than giving $50 a month to Chuck Schumer to be Chuck Schumer.

I have a question.

It's related to this, but only partially.

Should we have run a primary when Biden dropped out?

Do you think that would have made a difference?

No.

No.

It was too late.

And also

fundraising and canvassing the country, it would have been...

And nobody serious would have run.

I don't know.

I thought the same thing for so long.

And recently, when we're getting into discussion about like, how do we break down the things that Democrats are are making, you know, making errors in, to me, they didn't take the chance because it was risky.

And I think like Democrats' biggest problem is they don't do risky things.

And frankly, I think you would have erased one of the biggest problems you had from swing voters in this, which was Kamala Harris was installed.

She, and she's also attached to the administration they didn't want to vote for in the first place.

I think it might have ended up different.

I really do.

I think that you might have traded some

voters in the middle for

to lose votes from our base, which is black women because i think if you say to the sitting vice president of the united states who is the first black woman to be in either vice president or president that you know three months before the election we don't think you're good enough so we're going to run everybody i think you would have turned off more of the base and i think we probably would have lost by even more also it's just you can't set up a 50-state operation in that short amount of time no yeah that's not impossible no i understand that this just comes back to this is on biden I mean, he

100%.

He should have dropped out.

I mean, he should have announced

to be a one-term president.

I do not want to be 95 years old in the White House, so I will not be running for a second term and just spend the four years.

You know, they'll call him a lame duck president, whatever.

We had a pandemic to get out of.

We had a depression, essentially, for a little while there.

We had plenty of things to clean up.

And he could have gotten a lot of really good work done, and he could have set up the Democratic Party to still be the change candidate going into 2024.

Yeah, which was robbed from us.

Yeah, there's no question.

This is on Biden.

I just, I initially, I, Tim, I agree with almost everything that you said, you know, if you rewind me two weeks, but recently I've just been thinking, like, I think there's all value, those are all valid arguments, but I, I think, like, Democrats just have to embrace a riskier attitude.

And, you know, maybe they shouldn't do it when it's like three months to go for a presidential election, but they need to start thinking about like what I think they look at things and go, why shouldn't we do it?

And I think now they need to start thinking about why, you know, we should just try it, you know?

I think that's right.

I think like, and I think that's why we've seen them doing the same stuff over and over again.

And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

And just because that tactic, because the answer you're going to get is, well, that's the only way we can raise money.

And I'm like, first of all, that's bullshit.

Second of all, like, you know, look how much money Kamala Harris raised.

Like a billion dollars.

And also the most amount of money is not the most important thing anymore.

Like we are at a saturation point.

We have to be changing hearts and minds.

And I'm sorry, you don't do that with TV ads anymore.

It doesn't

That's why I think Harris having a primary, at least having the chance to win that primary as opposed to just installing her, actually would have been a really good thing because it's exactly that point.

It's like, yeah, is it hard to build out a financial ecosystem to support whoever wins?

Yeah.

But at the same time, we're giving the whole slate of people to share exactly with the hearts and minds of voters why they should be the candidate as opposed to being like, no, it's her.

Who would have run?

I don't know.

That's the dangerous part for any candidate.

Yeah, that's it would have.

If it became, if the DNC had adopted the strategy of, let's try it, let's, you know, we're going to do this, I think that people would have run.

But I think, you know, if it was a contested thing, people probably would have been like, I just give it to her.

Do you guys want to see the hardest pivot ever?

I'm going to pull us off.

All right.

As much as I want to talk about 2024,

Tim, you said money doesn't change hearts and minds, but you know what does change hearts and minds?

$45 million

military parades for your dear leader.

And so so, I want to take a moment to invite,

I'm not going to steal Luke's thunder.

Maybe I'll come up with a different term.

I want to invite anybody who supports or attends or donates or contributes to a $45 million military parade, which is planned to include warplanes,

tanks,

soldiers, and be on Trump's birthday.

I want to invite you to

join up in Luke's favorite expression, which now I'm going to kick over to Luke because I think he has a message to share with us.

Yeah, you can go ahead and get fucked.

And also,

side note to somebody else that can get fucked is Christy Noam.

I don't know if you guys have been watching the Homeland Security

House committee thing, but yesterday, Eric Swawel repeatedly asked her, like, yo, what's the deal with that MS-13 Photoshop bullshit?

She refused to answer the fact or to say that it was Photoshop.

She claimed she hadn't even seen the picture.

And that is fucking ridiculous.

If they'll lie to you about this, they'll lie to you about fucking anything.

And if you're still pretending that it's okay, that, you know, maybe Trump just didn't know it was Photoshop.

Yeah, fuck off.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the newest segment of the Find Out podcast, where Luke tells somebody every week to get fucked.

So we get like a good get fucked t-shirt.

That's a weird thing.

We got a double feature this week.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, $45 million for that.

And I heard Christy Noam's also getting a $50 million plane to travel around.

And I worked at the Interior Department.

And we, you know, Interior manages like a third of the land in the United States.

And neither Secretary I worked for had a private plane.

But apparently, Christy Noam needs a $50 million jet to go along with the $400 million jet that Trump is getting from Qatar.

which is a like security nightmare and probably may never become Air Force One because frankly, like how on earth?

Actually, they said it would cost several hundred million dollars

to actually, you'd have to take it apart, scan everything, and put it back together.

I read in the billions.

I read in the billions.

It's

possible.

And it would take beyond the end of his term.

Yeah, you go to LBL.

He's like, he's stepping foot in that plane.

That thing is going to sit in front of his library like a little toy, a little gold Trump plane toy in front of his dumb presidential library for the rest of eternity.

And we'll have to tear it down like a fucking Confederate.

What's even in his library?

Fucking Art of the Deal that he didn't even write it all

that he didn't even write trump bible that never sold and that's just going to be the whole library it's just going to be all trump bibles with a fucking gold jet in front of it well there you actually fucking scripts of the apprentice you could fill a library with all of the failed things he's done as a businessman trump vodka trump stakes trump ice trump airlines trump university

i forgot about trump airlines trump watches did you see did you guys see the the lady in maryland who was pissed because her trump watch said rump on it

the face of it had uh they they misprinted it doesn't have a T on it and it's apparently commonplace that these Trump watches say rump.

Are you saying that a Trump something Trump made was not of good quality?

No, that's impossible.

Imagine flying on a Trump airlines plane.

Imagine how unsafe you would feel on that fucking plane.

Absolutely not.

Absolutely.

The fucking thing will fly and fall out of the sky.

It's crazy.

I think you notice that

it's just a gold bar and you're like, what the fuck?

But it's a piece of lead.

It's just painted gold because he doesn't have charge.

I bet Trump ice was like 32.1 degrees Fahrenheit.

It just drips everywhere.

Yeah, it just drips all the time.

Constantly melting really slowly.

Oh, God.

All right.

Well, I tell you what, guys, I think that we might have reached the end of this episode today.

As a reminder, first of all, thank you.

I'm glad you all stuck around for the new segment, Get Fucked With Luke,

which will be happening every week.

We probably won't do it while we have our

Congress.

We better not do it in front of us.

Congressman Ryan is not going to, we're not going to do it in front of him.

He wants to invite somebody to get fucked.

I mean, if he had somebody in mind, I could probably do it on this.

May not be such a bad idea.

Okay.

Well, maybe once we fully brand this as your thing, candidates will ask or whoever will ask if they can get you to say one.

But yeah, so a reminder, we're going to two a week.

Starting Thursday is going to be our first Thursday episode with Congressman Pat Ryan, the Democrat from New York.

We're very excited to have him.

He's got an amazing background.

Also, want to make sure that you guys are all subscribing to us wherever you get your podcasts and also over on Substack.

Going to two episodes per week is not a cheap endeavor.

So if you could support us with that, we would appreciate that.

We also have, and I'm wearing it, our merchandise.

uh that you can get at findout podcast.com uh all made in the us and union made where we could get it uh and then until then everybody thank you for tuning in we appreciate it you got us us to episode 10, so we're doing real well, and we'll be excited to ring in episode 100 with the same group of people.

Hopefully, we'll all still be standing when that happens.

So, have a great day, everybody, and we'll see you again on Thursday.