SOBRE ESTE EPISÓDIO
Donald Trump and the Republican Party pulled off a pretty remarkable win on Tuesday. Not only did Trump sweep almost every swing state and clinch a popular vote win, he made substantial gains or outright victories with almost every demographic group in the country.
How did Trump do it? Or to put it another way, how did Democrats fuck this up?
There are a lot of different explanations being bantered - so allow me to jump in with my take. I think it largely comes down to five key issues:
- The Economy
- Immigration
- Woke Bullshit
- Foreign Policy - Gaza and Ukraine
- The Messaging Sucked
Today we are joined by political analyst Jake Morgenstern to break it all down.
Twitter: @morgenstern2112
Original post: https://kevinmaley.substack.com/p/five-reasons-why-democrats-lost
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five reasons democrats lost the election and they lost pretty badly.
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So I just had a post that I put up where I there's been a lot of takes on the election and my Democrats lost and I thought it came largely down to five key issues that I thought we could go through one by one.
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So the first was the economy, Number one, immigration.
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Number two, number three, woke bullshit.
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Number four, foreign policy.
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And number five, the messaging sucked.
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And I have a few honorable mentions and would be interested if you had any other thoughts as well.
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Just to those points.
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So I think your list-.
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Well, we're going to go through them one by one.
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Well, hold on.
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But at the outset I'm saying your list is too inclusive of honorable mentions, is apt, because there is clearly no singular reason why the Democrats lost.
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No one can credibly point to a single reason.
00:01:12.894 --> 00:01:15.320
So I look forward to this discussion here, buddy.
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Okay, well, so just a couple of things on the economy overall.
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So voters had said the economy was their number one issue.
00:01:23.847 --> 00:01:36.653
Most voters had said that and that was going into the election Voters across the board not every single person, but most people it was the, I don't know if it was a majority or plurality said the economy was their number one issue.
00:01:36.653 --> 00:01:53.126
And this was kind of perplexing to the Biden Harris people because they were pointing to numbers showing unemployment was low, inflation was going down, inter interest rates just started to come down, gdp was rising Biden would talk about that.
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The US economy was the envy of the world and it was, I think, among advanced industrialized economies, had the best post-COVID recovery.
00:02:03.213 --> 00:02:09.224
So there was a lot of confusion as to why voters would say the economy was not good.
00:02:09.224 --> 00:02:17.028
Most voters were saying they didn't feel the economy was good and they also trusted Trump more than Harris on the economy.
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And so I think it comes down to a couple issues to explain.
00:02:21.704 --> 00:02:27.420
If I could talk to the Harris campaign and the Biden campaign before that, one thing was the high.
00:02:27.420 --> 00:02:52.082
They never factored in how the high interest rates were impacting regular people, how unaffordable it was to buy a home, for example, a housing plank in her kind of small platform where she talked about a few policy issues, but that wasn't helping people who kind of already had homes and were struggling with high interest rates.
00:02:52.082 --> 00:02:58.807
You had you had the impact of inflation, where I don't think people cared that inflation was necessarily going down.
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I mean that's a good thing, but for most people they were feeling the impact of food prices being much higher than they were years ago.
00:03:07.127 --> 00:03:25.866
And then I think one thing that people kind of miss out in a lot of their analysis is there was a lot of temporary COVID aid that came out, first under the Trump administration at the end of his term, the CARES Act that gave a lot of temporary aid to people, and then Biden's I forget.
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I think it was called the American Recovery Act or something like that.
00:03:28.264 --> 00:03:29.507
Maybe that's it.
00:03:29.507 --> 00:03:34.746
Yeah Well, so there, I was just reading this headline before we got on.
00:03:34.746 --> 00:03:38.163
It's from February 2024, and it's in the Washington Post.
00:03:38.163 --> 00:03:44.862
So one of the things that the COVID aid did was expand Medicaid to millions of people.
00:03:44.862 --> 00:03:50.968
And this headline from the Washington post, halfway through unwinding Medicaid enrollment is down about 10 million.
00:03:50.968 --> 00:03:59.939
So 10 million people, as of February 2024, were thrown off their health insurance.
00:03:59.939 --> 00:04:01.199
And then just a few other stats.
00:04:01.199 --> 00:04:02.245
Then I want to get your thoughts.
00:04:02.245 --> 00:04:06.304
This is from Annie Lowry in the Atlantic.
00:04:07.106 --> 00:04:10.921
Going back to interest rates, the mortgage rate more than doubled during the Biden Harris years.
00:04:10.921 --> 00:04:13.673
Credit card balances were unaffordable.
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Car payments went up, homes generally were unaffordable.
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A family purchasing a $400,000 home with 20% down would pay $2,500 a month today versus $1,800 a month three years ago.
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And then other COVID aid that was expiring food aid, so SNAP benefits were expiring.
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There were the forbearance and student loans that were expiring and unemployment benefits were expiring and unemployment benefits were expiring.
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And then there was the child tax credit, which the Biden administration had doubled, and they had halved child poverty under a temporary program.
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That evaporated as well.
00:04:58.872 --> 00:05:07.095
And we saw child poverty double under the Biden administration and we saw poverty increase as well.
00:05:07.095 --> 00:05:23.327
So just again to recap food is more expensive, mortgages are more expensive, housing is more expensive in general, including for rent, millions of people being thrown off their health care, poverty increasing, and yet GDP was growing.
00:05:23.327 --> 00:05:30.725
So is it any wonder that Democrats were not looked at as doing well in the economy?
00:05:31.687 --> 00:05:56.105
No, no, no, I completely agree, and I guess all I can add to that is that I mean you saw the voter or non-voter in the case of the millions who stayed home must have seen that the Democrats were, forgive me, small C, constitutionally incapable of advocating for any of this rollback that you're just describing there.
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They hardly even put up a fight for it.
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Well, they tried with the Build Back.
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Better bill.
00:06:02.146 --> 00:06:03.629
I would the build back better bill?
00:06:03.629 --> 00:06:03.930
I don't know.
00:06:03.930 --> 00:06:15.339
Yes, yes, yes, yes, that's true, but but, but you know they, they let the four, they let the, the forbearance for student loans, just that came right back.
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You know, as soon as the Chamber of Commerce raised a big enough stink, the Democrats acquiesced.
00:06:21.052 --> 00:06:36.790
So so you know, it's it's, it's it, it's the Democrats that people saw the Democrats playing in right into this week, and futile is not the word, but just ineffectual.
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And in a way it's emblematic of this tottering old senile crook who has been bumping into doors for the past two and a half years, if not, if not more.
00:06:47.324 --> 00:06:54.704
I mean, come on, yeah, so so you know, people said, you know, uh, I, I understand why.
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Well, when, when not just things that happened happened, but then the democrats didn't seem to, uh, didn't seem to put up a fight and tried to stave that off.
00:07:09.779 --> 00:07:10.141
Well, another thing.
00:07:10.141 --> 00:07:10.423
So they tried.
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You know, the Biden's COVID recovery bill had all those temporary benefits that were expiring.
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I guess he should have timed it better so that they weren't going to expire right before he was going to be reelected.
00:07:15.668 --> 00:07:20.062
But they, they tried to make a lot of them.
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But but then?
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But then he he is supposed to be, or he is advertised.
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As you know, he's been in politics, you know, for 107 years and he knows all the ins and outs.
00:07:28.115 --> 00:07:38.567
Yeah, Well, that that gets to a point that I was going to make was they tried to make a lot of them permanent under the original Build Back Better bill and Joe Manchin got a lot of shit for this.
00:07:38.567 --> 00:07:42.848
But I think this is actually a critique I would put back on the Biden administration.
00:07:42.848 --> 00:08:07.512
So, if people remember, the original Build Back Better bill was going to have universal pre-K and expanded health benefits and permanent expansion of the child tax credit and all of these things and the price tag was astronomical and Joe Manchin at the time he said I'll agree to 1.5 trillion.
00:08:07.512 --> 00:08:15.244
I think he said initially he would agree to something like that and he played around with the price tag, but what he said was the final bill.
00:08:15.244 --> 00:08:17.869
I don't want any budget gimmicks in that.
00:08:18.730 --> 00:08:37.553
And what the Democrats, especially in the House, did, the Congressional Progressive Caucus was they put everything that instead of choosing a couple of things that they wanted, they put everything in, but they had random sunset provisions under the assumption that they would later become permanent.
00:08:37.553 --> 00:08:48.024
And Joe Manchin was flipping out saying these are budget gimmicks because it's not the true cost of the bill and he was fighting with the White House, I think, instead of Biden, if he.
00:08:48.024 --> 00:08:50.731
I think he was already sunsetted by this point.
00:08:50.731 --> 00:08:52.587
This is very early on in his administration.
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Sunsetted or sundown.
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Sundown, sundown.
00:08:55.828 --> 00:08:56.421
Yes, thank you.
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If he was really the kind of deft LBJ, I can run the Senate.
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Kind of guy.
00:09:00.446 --> 00:09:00.605
Right.
00:09:01.027 --> 00:09:07.336
He would have been able to handle Manchin better and gone to the House and said look, we've got to pick and choose.
00:09:07.336 --> 00:09:12.932
We've got Manchin agreeing to a price tag, but you got to pick a couple of things.
00:09:12.932 --> 00:09:30.828
You have to choose, unfortunately, between child poverty and universal pre-K and expanded Medicaid benefits, and that's a hard choice to make because they're all I agree with everything they were doing, not tactically, but the goals, and they refused to choose and the whole bill fell apart.
00:09:30.828 --> 00:09:41.166
It later became the Inflation Reduction Act, which is mostly about climate spending, which I liked, but I would say a better president would have been able to have handled that and he was just kind of out to lunch.
00:09:41.721 --> 00:10:03.270
I think whether or not the Democrats could have done better or could not have, I mean and this is I mean, this is just the bind the center left party in this country finds themselves in, you know, of their own making or choosing, or by circumstance, or just, you know, by the arc of history or however you want to characterize it.
00:10:03.360 --> 00:10:06.028
So I guess, in a way, to me it doesn't.
00:10:06.028 --> 00:10:17.629
In a way it also doesn't matter whether or not they chose to be ineffectual because they're democrats, because they're ineffectual because they're democrats, or whether or not, you know, they really could not have done anything anyway, and I guess it almost doesn't.
00:10:17.629 --> 00:10:30.412
In a way, it doesn't make a difference and you'll probably see that sort of narrative, uh, bounce back and forth between the parties in the coming years like a hot potato or whatever, in terms of you know, they could have done this, could have done that.
00:10:30.412 --> 00:10:32.144
They're ineffectual this way.
00:10:32.144 --> 00:10:33.668
They should have done more that way.
00:10:33.668 --> 00:10:39.571
I think we're going to see just circumstances are going to be not what they once were.
00:10:39.571 --> 00:10:40.613
I guess I'll leave it at that.
00:10:41.139 --> 00:10:54.686
Yeah, the other thing I wanted to add just on this topic, and it plays into reason number five I have on the messaging, but with people feeling like the economy was kind of screwed against them, trump had a narrative for that.
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He had, and other commentators have talked about this, but he had a message of these Washington insiders don't care about you, they care more about illegal immigrants who are coming in and taking your jobs and I'm going to fight for you.
00:11:09.129 --> 00:11:21.231
There is kind of an us versus them and it's been pointed out that the Democrats under the Bernie Sanders wing of the party had a narrative, had an explanation, because people need an explanation for what's happening to them.
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The Sanders explanation was it's the plutocrats, it's the millionaires and the billionaires in Washington and fighting against kind of corporate corruption and plutocracy, the 99% against the 1%.
00:11:33.513 --> 00:11:37.889
That was a message that worked really well for Sanders.
00:11:37.889 --> 00:11:43.370
It almost won him the nomination twice until, I would argue, the party kind of coalesced against him party insiders.
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I would not argue against you.
00:11:45.868 --> 00:11:53.214
Yeah, but Harris eschewed, as others say, that narrative.
00:11:53.214 --> 00:12:14.933
And there's an interesting thing from the New York Times talking about how initially Harris embraced that kind of Bernie Sanders critique of big business you know, that's when she was talking about price gouging and that sort of thing but then she apparently she, you know surrounded herself with big donors from Wall Street and Silicon Valley.
00:12:14.933 --> 00:12:17.407
Hold on, I'm getting a notification.
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My Uber is here.
00:12:18.230 --> 00:12:21.028
Yes, ok, going, going right on that.
00:12:21.028 --> 00:12:29.614
So her brother in law is the general counsel of Uber, tony West, and he was a close advisor to her, as was Mark.
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Cuban.
00:12:30.519 --> 00:12:32.105
And so the New York Times reports.
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I'm just quoting the New York Times here.
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Over the course of the campaign, it became clear that Ms Harris would de-emphasize Mr Biden's attacks on big companies in favor of a more conciliatory approach that she hoped would appeal to moderates.
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She wanted corporate leaders in her camp as she tried to outrun the progressive reputation she had gained from the 2020 presidential primary race and she tried to blunt Mr Trump's attacks that she was a communist.
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And a lot of that did come from.
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And it has been reported that Tony West of the world again her brother-in-law, who's the general counsel of Uber, who tries to exploit workers and break unions and pay substandard living wages.
00:13:13.340 --> 00:13:22.653
Right, yeah, no, yeah, I mean I would say yes, except it's funny how this, this always happens always, that they all, they always go with the.
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Uh, you know they always uh, democrats will always break to to go after you know the 45.
00:13:30.626 --> 00:13:34.221
Uh, never trump republicans in the room, all who work at msnbc.
00:13:34.221 --> 00:13:36.846
I mean, it's just just conveniently.
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It's just convenient that not always though because if you think about the 2012 campaign, do you remember that secret recording they found of Mitt Romney where he was talking?
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About 47% of the country.
00:13:48.356 --> 00:14:06.277
They're moochers, they're living, and so that campaign I feel like was the good album of the Democrats were running as were against private equity and the big rich and the corporations whereas they were positioning the Republican opponents as a tool of Wall Street and fucking over the American workers.
00:14:06.822 --> 00:14:09.720
I would sever my analysis between 2012 and 2016.
00:14:09.720 --> 00:14:13.500
And I would also add to the 2012, your 2012 point.
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In 2012, you know, democrats famously ran as Biden, I believe General.
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What was it?
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Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.
00:14:24.129 --> 00:14:24.552
Alive.
00:14:24.552 --> 00:14:34.967
Now the world is basically the opposite.
00:14:34.967 --> 00:14:40.033
Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.
00:14:40.072 --> 00:14:43.075
Talk a little bit more about that when we get to number five messaging.
00:14:43.075 --> 00:14:50.788
But moving on to number two, one of the big major issues in the campaign immigration.
00:14:50.788 --> 00:14:59.400
And so this, I thought, was kind of interesting and I'm interested your thoughts on this, because Harris was in a challenging place on this.
00:14:59.400 --> 00:15:03.913
So when Biden came into office, he loosened some of Trump's border restrictions.
00:15:03.913 --> 00:15:09.744
I don't know why they did not put them back on when millions of people started coming across the border.
00:15:09.744 --> 00:15:14.508
The low number is something like nine million people came across the border.
00:15:14.668 --> 00:15:40.121
They were going all over the country, sometimes shipped by the governor of Texas, but this was being felt in the streets of Chicago and the streets of New York In blue, so-called blue areas of Texas, but this was being felt in the streets of Chicago and the streets of New York In blue, so-called blue areas, and not just Martha's Vineyard but in Massachusetts, the shelters are all full with migrants and they were not stopping it long after it became an issue and you would.
00:15:40.121 --> 00:15:59.592
I was reading this interview with on the South side of Chicago, which is predominantly black, where the city of Chicago is putting up tents and parking lots and kind of displacing or inconveniencing a lot of black working class voters on the south side of Chicago, seeing that their tax money is and hotels with migrants.
00:15:59.592 --> 00:16:36.211
And this is not me arguing against migrants although I do think you shouldn't have uncontrolled border entry but I'm arguing the political impact of not just how Democrats think you're just xenophobic and racist if you're against uncontrolled migration but we're seeing the working class being impacted by that, seeing, you know, the working class struggling economically and they're seeing resources going to house and feed people from other countries and that has an impact and whether you think that's right or not, that does have an impact.
00:16:36.211 --> 00:16:53.355
And so just to set up why Harris's problem and how I think she could have gotten out of it, was they had finally, in I think it's February of this year, they got an immigration bill that she touts a lot.
00:16:53.355 --> 00:17:04.226
Interestingly enough, the only reason they put that immigration bill is they wanted more aid for Ukraine, and they didn't think that Republicans would support it unless they tied it to immigration.
00:17:04.226 --> 00:17:10.759
So this bill was actually immigration Israel aid, which always passes, obviously and then immigration enforcement.
00:17:11.181 --> 00:17:14.030
It was not to the House Republicans liking.
00:17:14.030 --> 00:17:14.602
The Senate.
00:17:14.602 --> 00:17:15.666
Republicans didn't care.
00:17:15.666 --> 00:17:17.265
It was blamed on Trump.
00:17:17.265 --> 00:17:23.480
He may have spiked it, but I think there were some justified reasons for that and the whole thing fell apart.
00:17:23.480 --> 00:17:31.932
But, interestingly enough, after the bill fell apart, the Biden administration issued executive orders putting in more stringent border controls.
00:17:31.932 --> 00:17:38.387
That would have been in the border bill, and it effectively shut down immigration flows.
00:17:38.387 --> 00:17:47.202
So yada, yada, yada, and just a few more points on this the position Harris was in, so she was labeled by the media as border czar.
00:17:47.202 --> 00:17:49.424
Whether that was right or not, that was the nomenclature.
00:17:49.424 --> 00:17:59.051
That's what she got, and I think she should have found a way to address that.
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We're really strong in the border.
00:18:01.653 --> 00:18:10.811
We tried to get a border bill passed, but Trump blocked it and she couldn't account for when the majority of the administration.
00:18:10.811 --> 00:18:15.079
Why did they wait until the last minute?
00:18:15.079 --> 00:18:21.910
And so I want to get your thoughts, but I'm just going to read a quick exchange she had with Anderson Cooper where she had the clip.
00:18:21.910 --> 00:18:24.867
So she's talking at the CNN town hall.
00:18:25.799 --> 00:18:29.108
What did she say to and what did she say to anderson cooper was was this recorded?
00:18:29.108 --> 00:18:35.010
That's something eyes wide shut to function in uh in the hamptons or is that a ditty part?
00:18:35.451 --> 00:18:35.673
so?
00:18:36.595 --> 00:18:44.010
so I thought you said, I thought they're at an anderson cooper town hall and um town hall.
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Yes.
00:18:45.053 --> 00:18:50.365
And she says how immigration was shut down and you know the border is now closed.
00:18:50.365 --> 00:18:56.084
So Cooper says well, why didn't you do that in twenty two and twenty, twenty, twenty two and twenty twenty three.
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She says well, we, you know, we thought we could work with Congress and we thought we could go for a long term fix.
00:19:03.007 --> 00:19:06.383
He says couldn't you have done it at the same time?
00:19:06.383 --> 00:19:09.450
And she said well, here's the thing.
00:19:09.450 --> 00:19:13.125
And then he said do you wish you did the executive orders in 2022 and 2023?
00:19:13.125 --> 00:19:15.732
And she said I think we did the right thing.
00:19:15.732 --> 00:19:19.106
And that's where I want to get your thoughts.
00:19:19.106 --> 00:19:20.570
I mean, she could have said a lot there.
00:19:20.570 --> 00:19:27.244
She could have said you know what we tried, but we made a mistake and now we need to be really tough on immigration.
00:19:27.244 --> 00:19:32.890
But she thought she could run to the right of Donald Trump on immigration, which I'm sorry, no one was buying.
00:19:33.511 --> 00:19:44.714
Okay, I'll slip to the larger point first, which is that you know, on a number of key issues, uh, uh, uh, you know, harris, flip-flops.
00:19:44.714 --> 00:19:50.545
Uh, uh, uh, you know, harris, flip-flops, you know, in a major way.
00:19:50.545 --> 00:19:52.953
And then, and then, if and then she's flip-flopping on certain issues in a major way, then like, then, like.
00:19:52.994 --> 00:20:02.631
How can the average observer not think that every time you know, basically every time you know, she either flip-flops or or or or changes position, or whatever?
00:20:02.631 --> 00:20:28.025
How can they not, just, just how can the average observer not conclude that she is that she says they just got caught what they're doing, or she just got caught what she, she just got caught, and and actually, oh, and actually, uh, no, no, no, I didn't, I didn't do that, like so, in other words, I it's not that, it's not that you know she flips on, uh, fracking or immigration, but then, but then, but then, but then, every time she gets called out for those, she flip-flops.
00:20:28.025 --> 00:20:30.167
But what about these other positions?
00:20:30.167 --> 00:20:40.384
So might the rational observer, might they not be reasonable in thinking that all these other criticisms of her, what if they are also true?
00:20:40.384 --> 00:20:46.011
What if she's also trafficking kids at ping pong, or you know?
00:20:46.011 --> 00:20:47.321
Or what if she?
00:20:47.362 --> 00:20:50.308
didn't have a good explanation for anything right, right.
00:20:50.328 --> 00:20:52.883
Exactly so right, right, right, and this is right.
00:20:52.883 --> 00:20:54.767
It came out of the ether one.
00:20:54.826 --> 00:21:16.846
Someone could like I could have written one on one, something like it's uh, any kind of explanation, but she refused to address right anything that yeah, flip-flop, yes, I think, if she, I think it would have benefited her if she said something like we were trying to use different approaches to immigration and clearly this didn't work, and now we've learned our lesson.
00:21:17.160 --> 00:21:19.008
I mean it wouldn't have won her on immigration.
00:21:19.099 --> 00:21:22.351
But it maybe would have helped her go up a pointer to an immigration.
00:21:22.351 --> 00:21:31.594
And it's one thing where she could have, you know, because she famously on the View said I wouldn't have done anything differently, there's no distance between me and Biden.
00:21:31.594 --> 00:21:38.714
I mean, I think she could have just given that said, like it's clear that immigration didn't quite work out well.
00:21:39.135 --> 00:21:40.059
And I don't think it would have helped her.
00:21:40.059 --> 00:21:45.332
Or you could say you know circumstances have changed, yes, yeah, and by the or you could say or they could say you know circumstances have changed, or yes, yeah.
00:21:59.619 --> 00:22:02.770
And, by the way, this is a criticism that I believe is salient, as you know, without taking, you know, a stand on the substance of themselves.
00:22:02.770 --> 00:22:07.059
You know, it's really just like every time she is called out, she's like, oh, I got my hand in the cookie jar, and then it says something different.
00:22:07.059 --> 00:22:17.128
So might, might, you know again, might the reasonable observer think that all these other criticisms for which he's not yet apologized, might, might she also be, might they also be true?
00:22:17.128 --> 00:22:23.953
And then, if these criticisms are also true, might they, might she also be a really bad, irreversibly tainted candidate?
00:22:23.953 --> 00:22:26.502
And this is just this.
00:22:26.502 --> 00:22:27.527
This is, this is the reason why we're here.
00:22:27.527 --> 00:22:33.446
This is why you have a whole list, as long as a CBS receipt, of reasons why the Democrats, led by Harris, lost.
00:22:34.108 --> 00:22:37.588
Yeah, and one thing I should have pointed out at the beginning of this is some of the numbers.
00:22:37.588 --> 00:22:50.542
I think people are familiar with them, but it's worth pointing out how bad Harris did, and that's measured by where she lost voters as compared to Biden or Clinton.
00:22:50.542 --> 00:22:54.328
She did worse with black voters overall.
00:22:54.328 --> 00:22:57.074
She did especially worse with black men.
00:22:57.480 --> 00:23:05.688
She completely Especially in states where, especially in the swing states, where there was target focused, in other words, where it mattered.
00:23:06.189 --> 00:23:07.773
Yeah, she lost Latino men.
00:23:07.773 --> 00:23:11.442
She did worse than her predecessors with Latina women.
00:23:11.442 --> 00:23:12.525
She.
00:23:12.525 --> 00:23:14.808
She did very bad with the under 30 vote.
00:23:14.808 --> 00:23:16.352
She lost men under 30.
00:23:16.352 --> 00:23:17.840
She lost she.
00:23:17.840 --> 00:23:27.501
She did worse on every demographic group than Bideniden, except for white women with a college degree making more than a hundred thousand dollars a year.
00:23:28.644 --> 00:23:36.506
Aka, like people who watch the view and joy read and I think that's a pretty apt description.
00:23:36.506 --> 00:23:40.998
Speaking of which, let's go to issue number three.
00:23:40.998 --> 00:23:46.248
Reason number three, the episode number three Democrats lost woke bullshit.
00:23:46.248 --> 00:23:49.056
So I've heard a lot of people.
00:23:49.056 --> 00:23:51.342
You know this is kind of being talked about more in the media.
00:23:51.342 --> 00:24:17.147
I will say I don't think it's the number one issue by any means, but I want to kind of set up this narrative of when Biden was running for the presidency in 2020, he campaigned on this idea of a return to normalcy and I think that spoke to the idea that people felt like the country had gone off the rails in many different ways throughout all four years of the Trump administration.
00:24:17.147 --> 00:24:18.531
There is just tons of chaos.
00:24:18.531 --> 00:24:20.503
There is the crazy freakouts.
00:24:20.503 --> 00:24:34.211
It was not just the chaos that Trump himself was doing, but the reaction from people protesting and you know the media freakouts and it's breaking news all the time, and this kind of culminated in COVID.
00:24:34.839 --> 00:24:51.162
And and so Biden campaigned on this idea of like I'm this really old, old school Democrat and I think that appealed to people like, oh, he's a moderate Democrat who will kind of bring it back to normal Democrat who will kind of bring it back to normal.
00:24:51.162 --> 00:24:56.732
But I think some people, as a secondary, tertiary issue, felt like the country was still kind of felt like going a little crazy.
00:24:56.732 --> 00:25:13.015
Where, you know, you have the, the gender norms changing and I will say I think most people, I think the vast majority of people, are probably fine with live and let live and you know, no one cares if you're transgender or gay or whatever.
00:25:13.015 --> 00:25:32.057
But I think when it became this, you know insisting that we can't even talk about the idea of transgender women playing men's sports, because if you even oppose it at all, you are transphobic.
00:25:32.057 --> 00:25:38.053
That you, you know everyone has to put their gender pronouns in their email.
00:25:38.053 --> 00:25:54.503
And it came to a point where and I'm going to quote the New York Times again there were ostensibly liberal women's rights organizations who were stripping the word women from their website.
00:25:54.544 --> 00:25:57.388
So let me just quote the New York Times here.
00:25:57.388 --> 00:26:09.249
So they were talking about how lots of different websites and organizations no longer say women, they say terms like pregnant people, menstruators and bodies with vaginas, so this includes Planned Parenthood.
00:26:09.249 --> 00:26:12.355
Who omits the word women from its homepage?
00:26:12.355 --> 00:26:18.828
Now NARAL, who's another women's rights pro-choice organization, switched out the word women for birthing people.
00:26:18.828 --> 00:26:33.594
The ACLU, which had been a longtime defender of Roe v Wade, when Roe v Wade was overturned, said it threatened several groups, and they listed them black, indigenous and other people of color, lgbtq, community immigrants and young people.
00:26:33.594 --> 00:26:37.513
And then, quoting the New York Times, it left out the most threatened.
00:26:37.513 --> 00:26:40.085
It left out those threatened most of all women.
00:26:40.085 --> 00:26:43.602
They literally didn't talk about women as being threatened by the overturn of Roe v Wade.
00:26:43.602 --> 00:26:47.071
And then just one other thing the British Medical Journal, the Lancet.
00:26:48.121 --> 00:26:50.990
The British Medical Journal of inbred pedophiles.
00:26:53.425 --> 00:26:55.832
It's probably the most prestigious medical journal in the world.
00:27:00.006 --> 00:27:00.528
What do they do?
00:27:00.528 --> 00:27:01.967
Do they examine?
00:27:01.967 --> 00:27:10.233
They have a storied legacy of reconstructing royalty who got their arms blown off in an IRA incident.
00:27:13.221 --> 00:27:14.464
Where is Lord Mountbatten?
00:27:14.464 --> 00:27:30.875
All right, so the Lancet said the Lancet had a cover article about menstruation and instead of mentioning people who menstruate, they refer to people as bodies with vaginas instead of women.
00:27:30.875 --> 00:27:35.930
So again, I don't want to say that the whole thing is about this?
00:27:36.090 --> 00:27:36.932
I don't think it is.
00:27:36.932 --> 00:28:18.332
And I also want to emphasize you know this is not reflective of my views, but how I think the thing that bothered me the most about this kind of whole life, and was an FDR liberal and said like, hey, maybe how long was her life if she was black and had the right to vote and voted for FDR?
00:28:19.259 --> 00:28:19.580
She's old.
00:28:19.961 --> 00:28:26.782
But if she said you know, I don't know about, you know men playing women's sports, If she said that cast it out of the party.
00:28:26.782 --> 00:28:27.904
Yeah, how dare you vote for FDR and play?
00:28:27.924 --> 00:28:28.346
women's sports.
00:28:28.346 --> 00:28:29.248
If she said that, Cast it out of the party.
00:28:29.268 --> 00:28:31.070
Yeah, how dare you say that she voted for SCR and played women's sports?
00:28:31.070 --> 00:28:32.993
You must be cast out of the party.
00:28:32.993 --> 00:28:45.221
I think it's an important point and you know to underscore that point right after the election, seth Moulton, who's a congressman from Massachusetts was giving an interview where he said something like he was talking about the election.
00:28:45.260 --> 00:28:51.644
He said you know, I'll have to admit I have concern for my two little girls getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete.
00:28:51.683 --> 00:29:03.750
But as a Democrat I'm supposed to be afraid to say that Right after he said that some of his staff resigned, some of his other staffers circulated a letter asking him to apologize to the LGBTQ plus community.
00:29:03.750 --> 00:29:06.230
It was his campaign manager who resigned.
00:29:06.230 --> 00:29:21.038
Other Democratic officials asked him to resign and so again, this is to emphasize the idea not of his position, but the fact that he couldn't he was saying I'm afraid to even say this position, and then the reaction kind of reaffirmed.
00:29:21.038 --> 00:29:28.961
That is again underscoring.
00:29:28.961 --> 00:29:57.583
I don't think it's the major issue, but I think the idea that Trump played into one of his closing ads which was one of his most effective ads as measured by a few different outlets was a commercial talking about quoting Kamala Harris saying that she supports transgender surgeries for immigrants in US prisons, and the gist of the commercial is that they're using taxpayer money for this and it ends with a narrator saying Kamala stands for they them, trump stands for you.
00:29:58.125 --> 00:30:21.505
And it was criticized for being transphobic, which of course it kind of is, but I think it heads to a larger point that while you're suffering at the message, while you're suffering economically, she's Democrats are obsessed with these social issues and they're taking your taxpayer money to help migrants who shouldn't even be in this country get surgeries for something you didn't don't even understand.
00:30:21.505 --> 00:30:22.990
That's what they care about.
00:30:22.990 --> 00:30:35.143
I, donald Trump, I'm going to fight for you to put bread on the table, and that's kind of the big point that I'm trying to make here is that it was portrayed as a distraction and I think the Democrats kind of fed into that.
00:30:35.463 --> 00:30:43.092
I don't argue that the Democrats didn't feed into that or, frankly, into any narrative that lets up their downfall.
00:30:43.092 --> 00:31:01.000
However, I mean, then I will disagree with you here, because I mean you know all these examples you cited as the New York Times oh, it's in this highfalutin place, or just congressmen from you know, one of the most posh parts of the country, you know, specifically, like the northeast corner of, like northeast Massachusetts.
00:31:01.000 --> 00:31:03.588
These were even salient issues.
00:31:03.588 --> 00:31:07.619
I don't doubt that they might have resonated with those making the criticisms.
00:31:07.619 --> 00:31:09.382
I don't doubt that they might have resonated with those making the criticisms.
00:31:09.382 --> 00:31:32.400
I would also remind you and listeners that do not forget, that when Donald Trump was running for the nomination in 2015, and, as you may recall, it was coming down to Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, and one of the sort of, like you know, silly issues or questions at the time was like, well, what if, like, caitlyn Jenner came into Trump Tower and needed to use the bathroom?
00:31:32.400 --> 00:31:36.431
And Trump's like, well, I didn't care, and Ted Cruz made a big stink about it.
00:31:36.500 --> 00:31:40.351
And next thing, you know, ted Cruz loses literally middle America.
00:31:40.351 --> 00:31:58.009
He lost a big lead, bigly, the uh, the primary in in indiana and even after uh uh, having a colleague for arena as as his vp nominee to be dropped out and and ted cruz or ted cruz?
00:31:58.009 --> 00:32:00.682
Ted cruz lost and don trump went on, went on to win.
00:32:00.682 --> 00:32:17.868
I guess all that is to say whether, whether, whether, whether it's you know, like elite media outlets gabbing to their, to to their elite audiences, or, or, or whether, or whether it's you know, like elite media outlets gabbing to their, to their elite audiences, or whether or whether it's you know, the 2015-16 Republican primary, I guess I guess was 2016.
00:32:17.868 --> 00:32:39.270
I don't think that that is a salient criticism and it does play into narrative of, as Democrats, as ineffectual in caring more about things that affect only a very small segment of our society as as compared to the rest, but I struggle to think that that was, or I think, one much struggle to think that that was a controlling factor.
00:32:39.853 --> 00:32:42.241
But I was arguing it wasn't a controlling factor.
00:32:42.702 --> 00:32:44.488
I was saying it was not a controlling factor.
00:32:44.508 --> 00:32:46.092
It was a background factor.
00:32:46.112 --> 00:32:46.840
Well, I thought.
00:32:46.840 --> 00:32:48.304
I thought there was a number three.
00:32:48.625 --> 00:32:53.060
I thought there's a number three on your list I'm sorry it was, but they, they interplay with each other.
00:32:53.060 --> 00:33:00.105
It was, I think it was an issue, I think people were sick of it, but I think the economy was number one and abortion was number two.
00:33:00.546 --> 00:33:04.540
Okay, well, everything else was far below that fair enough.
00:33:04.540 --> 00:33:11.614
In any event, I, I, I don't, I don't necessarily share your assessment of that factor, but that's OK.
00:33:13.624 --> 00:33:20.646
OK, so we'll move on to a very interesting one, Number four, foreign policy.
00:33:20.646 --> 00:33:36.970
Speaking of issues that I don't think were the most important issue but I think had an impact in the broader narrative, was the Democrats' foreign policy, and where to begin on the Democrats' foreign policy.
00:33:37.050 --> 00:33:49.536
So one thing I'll say largely, and I think you know I mean no, I'm just, I'm just suggesting that, yeah, that the list.
00:33:50.862 --> 00:33:52.788
Well, we'll just focus on Ukraine and Gaza.
00:33:53.601 --> 00:34:13.605
And I'll say one thing you know Biden lost the House, his in the midterms and so it would be natural that he would not be able to focus on Domestic legislation or legislation as much, but I think his second half of his presidency.
00:34:13.605 --> 00:34:31.460
As Americans were suffering economically, they were seeing billions and billions probably up to $200 billion sent overseas to Ukraine, to Israel, to other countries, while they were suffering and that the whole narrative was ridiculous.
00:34:31.460 --> 00:34:38.365
It was Bush era, like we're fighting for democracy, when it was obviously not true and I'm happy to get into that.
00:34:38.365 --> 00:34:48.554
But I think you know getting into the actual issues I mean Ukraine is a debacle the actual issues mean.
00:34:48.596 --> 00:34:55.742
Ukraine is a debacle and I don't.
00:34:55.742 --> 00:34:57.510
I mean again, we're just sending them so much money and we're not really seeing results.
00:34:57.510 --> 00:34:59.099
But I don't think Ukraine really played, excuse me, into this that much.
00:34:59.099 --> 00:35:05.833
I do think somewhat their Gaza thing did definitely affected Michigan.
00:35:05.833 --> 00:35:09.849
I think it probably had an impact on the youth vote.
00:35:09.849 --> 00:35:16.554
It had an impact on just kind of the stalwart liberal vote, I think.
00:35:16.554 --> 00:35:27.103
So I'm going to quote Peter Beinart right now, also from the New York Times, but he also writes for Jewish Currents and so he's in multiple publications.
00:35:27.103 --> 00:35:31.532
So he wrote over the past year excuse me, over the past year.
00:35:31.632 --> 00:35:40.831
Israel's slaughter and starvation of Palestinians, funded by US taxpayers and live streamed on social media, has triggered one of the greatest surges in progressive activism in a generation.
00:35:40.831 --> 00:35:50.945
Many Americans, roused to action by their government's complicity in Gaza's destruction, have no personal connection to Palestine and Israel, and the point that he's making there is it's not just Arabs.
00:35:50.945 --> 00:36:00.583
So he says, like many Americans who protested South African apartheid or the Vietnam War, their motive is not ethnic or religious, it is moral.
00:36:00.583 --> 00:36:03.449
All of this provided Mr Trump an opportunity.
00:36:03.548 --> 00:36:14.000
According to the New York Times, his campaign found that undecided voters in swing states were about six times as likely as other swing state voters to be motivated by the war in Gaza.
00:36:14.000 --> 00:36:15.442
Mr Trump wooed them.
00:36:15.442 --> 00:36:28.697
He pledged to help quote return the Middle East to peace and lambasted former Representative Liz Cheney, a Republican, with whom is Harris had chosen to campaign as a radical war hawk.
00:36:28.697 --> 00:36:31.161
And so the point that he's making.
00:36:31.161 --> 00:36:33.186
There is not just that.
00:36:33.186 --> 00:36:46.847
We can talk about the data in Michigan, which I think is pretty clear, especially with Democratic senators running ahead of Harris in Michigan and winning in Michigan and taking a kind of more nuanced view of the war.
00:36:46.847 --> 00:36:56.170
Harris was instead campaigning with Liz fucking Cheney, and there's a number of other issues that I mean ways she fucked up on Gaza.
00:36:56.579 --> 00:37:06.599
But I want to emphasize Bynard's point was it's not just that, it's not just that and, for context, michigan has the largest Arab-American population in the country.
00:37:07.081 --> 00:37:26.548
But the point that Bynard is making is it's not just Arab American voters, it's young voters, it's kind of the base, the kind of activist base, the kind of people who protested the war in Vietnam or a generation earlier apartheid or a generation before that Vietnam, and that that did affect turnout.
00:37:26.548 --> 00:37:28.661
I don't know that it was determinative.
00:37:28.661 --> 00:37:35.327
But when it comes down to I mean this, this bound to being a close election on the popular road, at least in in the swing states.
00:37:35.327 --> 00:37:38.530
And you got to look at the broader picture of a.
00:37:38.530 --> 00:37:54.963
It's just a country suffering economically and administration just obsessed with sending weapons overseas, trying to sell it as an economic program because it's helping Raytheon and Lockheed Martin because they might be building bombs here, although there's objectively no economic benefit.
00:37:54.963 --> 00:38:15.744
That we've seen and just the moral atrocities that a Democratic administration is selling, I think takes a dent out of support and energy for the party from the people who are usually the most energetic and that's the young base of the party Right and I completely agree.
00:38:16.019 --> 00:38:37.047
But I also think that, just as I was obviously in my opinion funnily alluding to earlier, where I'm saying that this is like the opposite of the 2012 election and that General Motors is alive and Osama bin Laden is dead, I think people looked around and saw the world was on fire.
00:38:37.047 --> 00:38:38.168
Massive amounts of dollars.
00:38:38.168 --> 00:38:57.530
We're going to uh, uh, these, the, you know, these four uh, which I believe that americans are more and more viewing with an increased, uh, isolationist eye.
00:38:57.530 --> 00:39:13.563
So I don't think yes, I agree with you that that foreign policy doesn't necessarily matter singularly, but but it plays into and supports a larger narrative of she is for they, they them, and he is with us.
00:39:13.563 --> 00:39:18.132
So that's how I think this all ties together.
00:39:18.701 --> 00:39:22.068
How offensive was it to you that she was campaigning with Liz Cheney?
00:39:22.068 --> 00:39:27.347
And not only that, she was touting Dick Cheney.
00:39:27.347 --> 00:39:30.134
So it's not as if she tried to get distance from the father.
00:39:30.134 --> 00:39:34.952
She was touting Dick Cheney's endorsement, calling him an American patriot and thanking him for his service.
00:39:34.952 --> 00:39:38.489
He killed a million people and set up an illegal torture regime.
00:39:39.121 --> 00:39:43.032
I was offended that Donald Trump thought there could only be nine guns pointed at him.
00:39:43.481 --> 00:39:52.313
And we should be clear about that, like he was saying that she was a chicken hawkk, not that the media totally misreported this he wasn't saying that she should be shot in a firing squad.
00:39:52.313 --> 00:40:01.106
He was saying, if you're gonna advocate for these wars that you're so gun happy about right, go and fight them yourself, which everyone used to say during the george w bush years.
00:40:01.306 --> 00:40:02.028
I support him.
00:40:02.028 --> 00:40:03.070
Yes, I guess.
00:40:03.070 --> 00:40:10.594
Yes, yes, yes, I mean she's a war mongering genocidal monster who's never made a country she doesn't want to invade?
00:40:10.940 --> 00:40:12.827
There's no distance between her and her father.
00:40:12.827 --> 00:40:19.273
She also worked in the George W Bush administration and the State Department helping all these war crimes occur.
00:40:19.273 --> 00:40:22.228
She's never repudiated those views.
00:40:23.059 --> 00:40:25.628
She's going to have her own circle of hell named after her.
00:40:25.648 --> 00:40:30.856
I mean come on yeah, Well, after that the family name and her father would be there.
00:40:30.856 --> 00:40:33.288
Did that bother you that she was going around?
00:40:33.288 --> 00:40:35.226
Yes, having like women's clinics.
00:40:36.923 --> 00:40:39.329
Believe it or not, as a human being, it bothered me.
00:40:40.032 --> 00:40:44.367
Yeah, I mean, what a dumb fucking move.
00:40:44.367 --> 00:40:47.592
And it wasn't just dumb, it was insulting, like it truly was.
00:40:47.592 --> 00:40:48.054
Yes, yeah.
00:40:51.340 --> 00:40:53.244
Right move, and it wasn't just dumb, it was insulting, like it.
00:40:53.244 --> 00:40:55.610
Yes, yeah, right, right, right, so right, and does that not undercut, like to the extent you know?
00:40:55.610 --> 00:40:56.311
Yeah, you know they're.
00:40:56.311 --> 00:41:00.873
They're people like you and me who are so-called older millennials who came in political age.
00:41:00.873 --> 00:41:09.827
Uh, you know when, when, when bush's hitler and, by the way, all these criticisms of the bush administration in his cohorts were were correct and were right.
00:41:10.309 --> 00:41:10.510
Yep.
00:41:12.625 --> 00:41:13.909
And now they're walking this back.
00:41:13.909 --> 00:41:26.947
No wonder people say to him no wonder, you know, perhaps you know youth in Dearborn, michigan were like huh, you know it's November, it's cold, I just didn't bother to get out of the house today.
00:41:27.500 --> 00:41:28.396
Well, I want to read you the data on the house today.
00:41:28.396 --> 00:41:31.963
Well, I can, I want to read you the data on dearborn, but first I want to read you a.
00:41:31.963 --> 00:41:40.152
So as a quote from donald trump, so as data on dearborn george w bush administration library.
00:41:40.152 --> 00:41:42.438
Probably this is what so she's going.
00:41:42.438 --> 00:41:43.541
Harris goes to michigan.
00:41:43.541 --> 00:41:44.063
This is um.
00:41:44.063 --> 00:41:45.224
Trump goes to michigan.
00:41:45.846 --> 00:41:52.284
In quoting him, I'll try and uh yeah, at least he went, at least at least he tried hear me, hear me out.
00:41:52.385 --> 00:41:54.190
This is my trump thank you.
00:41:54.190 --> 00:42:06.907
This is a quote from him many muslim and americans, and arab americans have friends and family living in the middle east, and kamala is campaigning with warmongers like liz cheney.
00:42:06.907 --> 00:42:15.931
They want to get the Arab vote, they want to get the Muslim votes, so she begs Liz Cheney, whose father virtually destroyed the Middle East.
00:42:15.931 --> 00:42:18.344
I don't think that's working out too well.
00:42:18.344 --> 00:42:20.371
That's a quote from Trump.
00:42:21.001 --> 00:42:27.844
And the data on Dearborn, which is the largest Arab majority city in the United States, which Biden won.
00:42:27.844 --> 00:42:29.248
Biden won Dearborn, michigan.
00:42:29.248 --> 00:42:31.347
75% of the vote.
00:42:31.347 --> 00:42:36.889
You know how much Harris got 27% of the vote.
00:42:36.889 --> 00:42:39.286
Oh my God, 27% of the vote.
00:42:41.284 --> 00:42:52.219
You have to be like a theoretical physicist to figure out the, the negative imaginary integer to quantify how much her share of the vote decreased it's.
00:42:52.280 --> 00:42:53.623
I mean, she fucked up.
00:42:53.623 --> 00:42:57.452
And again I want to emphasize who is the senator that just won?
00:42:57.452 --> 00:43:00.565
Was it Slotkin Slotkin, Michigan?
00:43:00.565 --> 00:43:04.052
Yeah, so she's the senator-elect, alyssa Slotkin.
00:43:04.052 --> 00:43:07.146
So she was a Democratic House representative for Michigan.
00:43:07.146 --> 00:43:08.829
She was running for the Senate.
00:43:08.829 --> 00:43:09.733
She won.
00:43:09.733 --> 00:43:19.393
I don't have her statements up in front of me, but when she was asked about Gaza and Israel, she had a much more nuanced view where she would more.
00:43:19.393 --> 00:43:30.110
And of course, kamala had this line of like we're working so hard for a ceasefire and we're going to help the Palestinians live in dignity and peace, but then you're going around campaigning with Liz Cheney.
00:43:30.110 --> 00:43:31.697
You can't have it both ways.
00:43:31.697 --> 00:43:48.382
So Alyssa Slotkin again, I don't have her statements in front of me, but she had a much more kind of favorable not disparaging Israel, because you're not allowed to do that but she had a more nuanced view and she didn't campaign with Liz Cheney.
00:43:48.382 --> 00:43:51.385
She won statewide in Michigan as a.
00:43:51.425 --> 00:43:55.268
Democrat and Harris lost Yep, yep.
00:43:55.268 --> 00:44:00.862
Okay, before we go to the fifth, any other thoughts on the fourth reason?
00:44:00.862 --> 00:44:03.557
No no no, no, you got them all.
00:44:03.557 --> 00:44:04.059
Okay.
00:44:04.059 --> 00:44:20.181
Number five, the last big one, and this is something we've kind of talked about throughout, but this is the messaging sucked, and so just to kind of set this up so Harris centered her campaign around freedom.
00:44:20.181 --> 00:44:22.396
Do you remember she had Beyonce?
00:44:22.436 --> 00:44:22.677
Yes.
00:44:23.159 --> 00:44:27.121
Yes, Her Beyonce song goes like freedom, freedom.
00:44:27.121 --> 00:44:28.896
Of course Beyonce never sang it.
00:44:29.331 --> 00:44:29.751
I don't want.
00:44:29.751 --> 00:44:31.958
I don't want your podcast to get demonetized there.
00:44:31.958 --> 00:44:35.179
My friend, I'm singing Richie Valens.
00:44:36.130 --> 00:44:45.838
OK so she she also centered a significant amount of her campaign around, I think it's fair to say, two issues One abortion, the other authoritarianism.
00:44:45.838 --> 00:44:50.760
So abortion, again, I think it's an important issue.
00:44:51.429 --> 00:45:04.501
Right, right, a lot of people, both of which are not not not bad and salient issues she made it like the there was a like the end all be all.
00:45:04.601 --> 00:45:06.293
I mean she went down.
00:45:06.293 --> 00:45:06.954
Well, hold on.
00:45:06.954 --> 00:45:10.501
She went down overall with women.
00:45:10.501 --> 00:45:13.393
She did worse with women than Joe Biden.
00:45:13.393 --> 00:45:17.483
She was playing on this idea that women will be so freaked out by Dobbs.
00:45:17.483 --> 00:45:24.958
One thing that's interesting, that's interesting that Democrats didn't appreciate was, hold on, that Trump moderated on abortion.
00:45:24.958 --> 00:45:32.460
So the Republican Party, since Roe v Wade, has had a plank in its platform saying we want to criminalize abortion.
00:45:32.460 --> 00:45:38.014
Trump made them take it out and of course you could say it's because Dobbs happened, they didn't need it.
00:45:38.014 --> 00:45:41.079
But they you know they would, a lot of them still want a national ban.
00:45:41.458 --> 00:45:44.963
He said he would veto a national ban on abortion.
00:45:45.423 --> 00:45:49.594
I think it got kind of moderated out a little bit.
00:45:49.795 --> 00:46:05.715
The majority of the country is in favor of abortion and in some cases, but not all cases they say and you know there's obviously geographical differences, but she kind of made it like the thing of her campaign.
00:46:05.715 --> 00:46:11.619
And then the other plank of her campaign that I thought was so stupid was Trump's a fascist, trump's Hitler.
00:46:11.619 --> 00:46:13.601
This is the last election ever.
00:46:13.601 --> 00:46:22.806
You know, at her last election or, I'm sorry, at her last rally where she had fucking Oprah Winfrey come out, oprah told people that this will be the last election we ever have.
00:46:23.427 --> 00:46:23.847
For how much?
00:46:24.612 --> 00:46:25.155
For how much?
00:46:25.155 --> 00:46:25.717
For how much?
00:46:25.717 --> 00:46:27.655
I heard that was a rumor.
00:46:27.655 --> 00:46:29.516
So supposedly Oprah was paid a million dollars.
00:46:29.516 --> 00:46:30.518
Oprah denies that.
00:46:30.518 --> 00:46:32.697
I kind of think it probably was not true.
00:46:32.949 --> 00:46:33.989
They did excessively spend it.
00:46:34.530 --> 00:46:35.952
Or her spokespeople denied it.
00:46:35.952 --> 00:46:36.972
No, she denied it.
00:46:36.972 --> 00:46:40.916
She like TM TMZ founder or something, and she said, no, that's not true.
00:46:40.916 --> 00:46:44.940
And I believe the Harris campaign did spend very stupidly.
00:46:44.940 --> 00:46:46.581
They spent $100,000 in the.
00:46:46.581 --> 00:46:47.583
Call her daddy.
00:46:47.983 --> 00:46:50.945
Right, they refused to go on Joe Rogan, but so I.
00:47:01.989 --> 00:47:02.271
Set that aside.
00:47:02.271 --> 00:47:06.664
Yeah, a different article, not from the New York Times that talking about, there was an internal memo that was found that the Harris campaign had, that was leaked to the press.
00:47:06.664 --> 00:47:13.181
That said attacking Trump's fascism is not that persuasive and it basically said that this is not moving voters.
00:47:13.181 --> 00:47:20.452
And yet they went over and over again saying you know, it's the Third Reich or the Fourth Reich, I guess, and it's going to be so awful.
00:47:20.452 --> 00:47:25.438
And, by the way, trump is at the White House today shaking hands with Joe Biden.
00:47:25.438 --> 00:47:27.740
They're smiling, they're laughing, it's all great.
00:47:27.740 --> 00:47:31.786
You know, harris, when she gave her concession speech, is like, oh, we'll live to fight another day.
00:47:32.431 --> 00:47:43.626
When you look at the Twitter speech and, as we understand, on the call with supporters right.
00:47:43.971 --> 00:47:54.148
Yes, but I was going to say when you look at the, there's like the libs of TikTok will have videos of people for some reason Friends of the pod libs of TikTok?
00:47:54.409 --> 00:47:55.110
No, no, not them.
00:47:55.251 --> 00:48:02.135
I mean just average people, just kind of having mental breakdowns and freaking out because they believe that Trump is Hitler.
00:48:02.135 --> 00:48:23.717
Obviously the Harris and Biden people didn't actually believe that, but I think this I mean CNN, new York Times, msnbc, you know everything is Trump's a fascist.
00:48:23.717 --> 00:48:30.275
That example before of him saying Liz Cheney is a chicken hawk and they twist it to he wanted her assassinated.
00:48:30.971 --> 00:48:40.476
But like I could have told you, abortion important issue, don't make it like basically one of the only issues.
00:48:40.476 --> 00:48:53.172
And yet she did, I, I mean, and she, she did worse with women right biden, she, she lost white women, I mean, she apparently that that magic did not work right, right.
00:48:53.333 --> 00:48:57.237
So, yeah, I mean again, I will, I mean I'll largely agree with you.
00:48:57.237 --> 00:49:17.213
I I think part of the downfall here is that Harris and her campaign I think deliberately because they had no other choice conflated the two and so, yes, trump might overturn Roe v Wade.
00:49:17.213 --> 00:49:23.257
Obviously, I think I would characterize myself as an institute observer of American politics.
00:49:23.257 --> 00:49:32.360
I think if that legislation came to his desk it's quite possible he might sign that piece of legislation.
00:49:32.740 --> 00:49:34.724
But setting that aside, Wait a national ban on abortion?
00:49:34.724 --> 00:49:35.485
I don't think he would.
00:49:35.485 --> 00:49:37.936
I don't think it would get to him.
00:49:37.936 --> 00:49:38.518
I don't think.
00:49:38.518 --> 00:49:43.177
I think his allies in Congress would make sure it never shows up on the floor.
00:49:43.639 --> 00:49:44.922
I think, I think he misunderstood.
00:49:45.070 --> 00:49:46.333
Johnson's going to put that on the floor.
00:49:46.373 --> 00:50:03.315
He's a, I think I well okay, all right, okay, well, well, I, I, I, I think I don't think most of them even give a shit about abortion.
00:50:03.315 --> 00:50:03.936
They're same with him.
00:50:03.936 --> 00:50:05.239
I think Trump cares about abortion.
00:50:05.239 --> 00:50:05.719
No, no, no, but, but, but.
00:50:05.719 --> 00:50:06.822
But let's set that aside.
00:50:06.862 --> 00:50:20.570
My criticism here is that the Harris campaign was saying you know, you know their way to victory here, and they were deliberately conflating that with Trump is Hitler.
00:50:21.032 --> 00:50:24.914
And I'm sorry, you know Trump is Hitler, trump has been on the scene.
00:50:24.914 --> 00:50:54.039
Then if he's trying to, you know, launder that, you know, with the whole, because he wants to potentially, you know, make abortion illegal at the national level, I just don't think any of that criticism washed.
00:50:54.039 --> 00:51:04.592
In fact, it was probably watered down with this criticism of Trump as Hitler, because I just don't think anyone took that to be the real thing.
00:51:04.592 --> 00:51:22.903
Because here we are in the year of our Lord 2024, and we've survived this far, and we're under the great fourth year of the wonderful Biden administration, and we've already survived four years from Trump and even more if you count the number of years he's been on the national scene.
00:51:22.903 --> 00:51:39.065
People know him is what you're saying at the national level, when people saw that he's not Hitler.
00:51:39.065 --> 00:51:48.481
Ergo he's not going to have any regressive effect on access to abortion or abortion rights.
00:51:48.481 --> 00:51:53.974
So I think that was counterproductive to try and wash those two together.
00:51:54.615 --> 00:51:56.179
Yeah, I think overall.
00:51:56.179 --> 00:52:03.572
I mean I wish I sat in the room with her communications people Like the.
00:52:03.572 --> 00:52:09.170
I mean I'm not saying this would have solved it, but her just the messaging sucked.
00:52:09.170 --> 00:52:13.159
And again her own internal documents said they knew it.
00:52:13.159 --> 00:52:17.177
But yes, yeah, but yes, it just was not working.
00:52:17.177 --> 00:52:18.000
You know why?
00:52:18.000 --> 00:52:21.641
It's because she didn't want to criticize Wall Street.
00:52:21.641 --> 00:52:24.503
She didn't want to criticize her donors, right?
00:52:24.503 --> 00:52:27.840
She didn't want to criticize Silicon Valley because Mark Cuban might be mad.
00:52:27.840 --> 00:52:33.061
She can stand up for her brother-in-law Right, tony West.
00:52:33.202 --> 00:52:35.072
Yeah, yeah, you know that's another thing.
00:52:35.132 --> 00:52:44.480
Is she at the Democratic the head of the one of the largest unions in the country, the Teamsters Union?
00:52:44.480 --> 00:52:47.994
I think his name is Sean O'Brien.
00:52:47.994 --> 00:52:52.117
Yeah, sean O'Brien, yeah, yeah, yeah, oh, yeah, so he so hold on.
00:52:52.117 --> 00:52:55.155
So he asked, he asked both parties.
00:52:55.155 --> 00:52:56.456
Could I speak at your convention?
00:52:56.456 --> 00:53:10.195
And unions are traditionally a Democratic affiliated apparatus, because democrats tend to be more pro-union the rnc, the republican national convention, you know, and with trump's acquiescence, let him speak at the rnt.
00:53:10.235 --> 00:53:17.402
He gave a fantastic speech, right critical of republicans, but it was also yep praising some it was positive.
00:53:17.402 --> 00:53:22.010
It's positive too, yeah and democrats kamal harris's campaign would not let him speak.
00:53:22.010 --> 00:53:29.179
The head of the one of the largest unions in the country would not let him speak at the democratic national convention why do you think?
00:53:29.199 --> 00:53:32.309
that was because they were control freaks.
00:53:32.309 --> 00:53:33.132
They wanted to.
00:53:33.132 --> 00:53:38.411
He said this they wanted to pre-approve his speech and edit it, and he said that with the rnc too.
00:53:38.411 --> 00:53:40.219
The rnc tried to edit his speech and susan w, and he said that with the RNC too.
00:53:40.219 --> 00:53:51.590
The RNC tried to edit his speech and Susan Wiles, who was Trump's campaign manager now his chief of staff stopped them and said let him say whatever he wants to say, Cause he said I'm not going to speak if you try to edit it.
00:53:52.072 --> 00:53:57.518
I think that's a credit to the Republicans, and especially the Trump campaign and I've never even heard of her except on paper.
00:53:57.518 --> 00:53:58.380
But that's a credit.
00:53:58.420 --> 00:54:07.527
But they but they said like we'll take I mean Trump can take criticism because he knows it'll help the broader message, whereas the Harris campaign was so insecure.
00:54:07.527 --> 00:54:10.695
They wanted if you watch any of the DNC it was.
00:54:10.695 --> 00:54:15.523
I mean I'd rather put a gun to my head, but it was every speech was the exact same.
00:54:15.523 --> 00:54:19.117
And it was, which happens at almost every convention.
00:54:19.197 --> 00:54:20.460
But how?
00:54:20.519 --> 00:54:21.322
wonderful she is.
00:54:21.322 --> 00:54:22.996
He might have gone off script.
00:54:22.996 --> 00:54:28.891
He's not going to attack her directly but he would have said you know, I love I'm guessing I love Democrats, they're great.
00:54:28.891 --> 00:54:41.777
But you know, we felt betrayed by NAFTA and you know PNTR with PN, permanent trade relations without normal trade relations with China, and that sort of thing, and right, but so what Like?
00:54:41.777 --> 00:54:42.619
So what?
00:54:42.619 --> 00:54:43.855
So they wouldn't let him speak.
00:54:43.855 --> 00:54:50.280
They also wouldn't let a single Palestinian speak at the I mean just over and over again.
00:54:50.300 --> 00:54:54.791
She, yeah, right, and it wasn't just speaking, it was like it wasn't like I even congregate.
00:54:54.791 --> 00:54:55.413
You're like being like?
00:54:55.452 --> 00:54:55.873
you know the.
00:54:56.213 --> 00:55:07.643
The same breath of yeah, they were ejecting Palestinians from their prominent Arab Americans from their rallies.
00:55:07.764 --> 00:55:15.155
Okay, so bad messaging, very, very bad.
00:55:15.155 --> 00:55:18.802
So those are again the tough issues that I think they lost the economy.
00:55:18.882 --> 00:55:19.364
I agree.
00:55:19.730 --> 00:55:21.255
Immigration woke bullshit.
00:55:21.255 --> 00:55:22.610
Foreign policy messaging suck.
00:55:22.610 --> 00:55:31.072
I will just, at the end here, want to go over my honorable mentions and see if you have any thoughts on that.
00:55:31.072 --> 00:55:33.378
I'm just going to run through them quick, without detail.
00:55:33.398 --> 00:55:35.353
So pick your poison here.
00:55:35.514 --> 00:55:37.177
She just had complete lack of conviction.
00:55:37.177 --> 00:55:40.215
We kind of talked about this, but I think the idea that- no.
00:55:40.215 --> 00:55:42.481
I disagree with you strongly there.
00:55:42.481 --> 00:55:46.681
That she was able to flip-flop on so many issues showed that she had no conviction.
00:55:46.681 --> 00:55:49.657
Another one she was seen as the establishment candidate.
00:55:49.657 --> 00:55:51.282
She was embracing the FBI.
00:55:52.190 --> 00:55:53.673
This is the Democrats in general.
00:55:53.673 --> 00:55:56.501
Let me run through them real quick and then react to them.
00:55:56.710 --> 00:56:02.813
So the Democrats are seen as embracing the CIAia, the fbi, the fda, big pharma, all that.
00:56:02.813 --> 00:56:06.126
She didn't handle media well, she refused to go on joe rogan.
00:56:06.126 --> 00:56:07.269
She also embraced wall street.
00:56:07.369 --> 00:56:11.300
I guess I already said that one hold on a whole one second, one second, one second.
00:56:11.300 --> 00:56:18.619
Did you, did you not see recently that it was alleged, at least that was her name, jennifer Palmieri?
00:56:18.619 --> 00:56:20.641
With regard to Joe, Rogan.
00:56:21.282 --> 00:56:29.003
I saw that this was in the Financial Times, so she was at some event sponsored by big banks talking about the campaign.
00:56:29.003 --> 00:56:36.340
She she was an advisor to the Harris campaign and a Hillary Clinton acolyte and she said when it came in that they were invited to go.
00:56:36.340 --> 00:56:42.809
And Joe Rogan, which people should understand, is the largest podcast in the history of the world.
00:56:42.809 --> 00:56:47.161
It has regularly 10 to 12, 15 million downloads.
00:56:47.161 --> 00:56:55.476
For comparison, cnn gets 100,000 people watching on a good night and probably like 20,000 in the key demographics.
00:56:55.476 --> 00:56:58.920
The Trump interview with Rogan is at 80 million downloads.
00:56:58.920 --> 00:57:01.777
So this is the largest audience she probably would have gotten.
00:57:01.777 --> 00:57:04.563
Her convention speech got something like 10 million views.
00:57:04.563 --> 00:57:10.112
This would have been the largest audience she would have gotten to key demographic men who she did bad with.
00:57:10.112 --> 00:57:12.677
But she could have enjoyed Rogan people.
00:57:12.677 --> 00:57:14.121
The media makes him out to be a Nazi.
00:57:14.141 --> 00:57:34.123
He's very, very nice, basically liberal guy and yes, I think would have been completely fair and fine with her, but her Paul Mary said that when she was invited, Harris's staff freaked out and were opposed to it and they thought there would be backlash and it wouldn't look well.
00:57:34.322 --> 00:57:37.570
And then so that is that is so.
00:57:37.570 --> 00:57:40.199
So I understand that that is false.
00:57:41.364 --> 00:57:42.407
How do you know it's false?
00:57:42.407 --> 00:57:42.949
It was just reported.
00:57:42.949 --> 00:57:45.077
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, oh, false.
00:57:45.077 --> 00:57:46.494
Their perception was false.
00:57:47.617 --> 00:58:20.498
Yes, obviously, because well, what I'm getting at is that they knew, you know, jennifer Palmieri and her staff knew that their boss could not survive for 30 minutes, much less an hour, much less three hours on that show without making a fool of herself, and so, I guess, in a way, to her credit, she dove on a bullet and did not let her.
00:58:20.498 --> 00:58:26.960
I guess now former boss take the blame, but in my estimation that's what happened.
00:58:29.050 --> 00:58:44.554
I mean yeah, to his credit, joe Rogan lets people talk on like almost any other outlet in the whole, whatever Twitter or podcast verse or whatever I mean and so that's admirable.
00:58:44.554 --> 00:58:48.802
But that's enough to be not salient.
00:58:48.802 --> 00:58:58.538
But Jennifer Palmieri knew that she could not let her boss be open minded, which is a generous way of putting it, you know.
00:58:58.677 --> 00:58:59.440
For three hours.
00:58:59.440 --> 00:59:02.038
I don't think Jennifer PalmieriPalmer was making the decision.
00:59:02.038 --> 00:59:06.936
She was just reporting out that the staff freaked out, and I think this is probably true.
00:59:06.936 --> 00:59:10.440
The staff is probably woke and they thought oh my God, he's so bad?
00:59:11.193 --> 00:59:12.056
I think that's not true.
00:59:13.070 --> 00:59:13.472
It might be.
00:59:13.472 --> 00:59:17.556
Yeah, all right, so those are, those are the major honorable mentions.
00:59:17.556 --> 00:59:31.840
So the party, the establishment, as with media, lack of convention conviction and just an overall bad candidate she was not a good candidate and you can't.
00:59:31.840 --> 00:59:35.581
You can't always get your Obamas or your bill Clintons.
00:59:35.581 --> 00:59:38.918
I don't think he was that great of a president, but he was.
00:59:38.918 --> 00:59:40.858
He had great charisma.
00:59:42.753 --> 00:59:47.914
Yeah, oh my God, oh my God, yes, yes, yes, all three, all three.
00:59:47.954 --> 01:00:13.905
You know, we and I, I kind of think, and maybe we can kind of close out on this thought and get your thoughts on this, but I wonder if this was Biden angrily spiting the party that spurned him, because, from what we now know, so he, after, after the horrible debate that we all watched, he got pushed for a month to get out and he was refusing.
01:00:13.905 --> 01:00:15.112
He was becoming angry.
01:00:15.112 --> 01:00:24.242
As you know, senile old people challenge, it happens to them, and he thought he was getting attacked by Pelosi and the Obama people and all that.
01:00:24.242 --> 01:00:25.695
So they all.
01:00:25.889 --> 01:00:34.036
A word on the street was, and Pelosi has said what they wanted was him to step aside and then have kind of like a mini primary.
01:00:34.036 --> 01:00:41.110
They did not want an anointment of Harris, because they knew she had terrible numbers and was not a good candidate.
01:00:41.690 --> 01:00:56.773
So he does this thing where he says I'm going to step aside, and then on the way out later he endorses Harris and people should understand he had delegates from the fake primary that he had where they pushed out all the other candidates.
01:00:56.773 --> 01:00:58.579
The delegates were pledged to him.
01:00:58.579 --> 01:01:00.492
They were all Biden supporters.
01:01:00.492 --> 01:01:04.280
So when he endorses Harris, he's basically handing her the nomination.
01:01:04.280 --> 01:01:07.016
No one could have challenged her at that point.
01:01:07.016 --> 01:01:13.114
I wonder if it was a big fuck you to the Democratic Party, a fuck you to Pelosi and Obama.
01:01:13.114 --> 01:01:14.197
Who he blames?
01:01:14.197 --> 01:01:18.092
I don't think it's fair to blame only them, but who he blames.
01:01:18.092 --> 01:01:23.402
And that's why when you looked at Trump at the White House today, Biden had the biggest smile on his face.
01:01:24.931 --> 01:01:48.010
Well, I mean, my suggestion, or my explanation is that there's no way to know, because sundowning and angry and I know this without enlightening your audience to a personal experience with my family I mean, if I was sundowning and angry and now he's got a smile on his face when he's doing you know something.
01:01:48.010 --> 01:01:55.793
He's angry when he's doing thing x and then something happens y, and he's got a different disposition about him, you know.
01:01:55.793 --> 01:02:00.581
I mean, like I, there is no causal relation between the two.
01:02:00.581 --> 01:02:11.320
Nevertheless, I would suggest it's quite possible and I think we should just leave that to the listeners' imaginations as to whether or not he's a he's.
01:02:11.320 --> 01:02:20.722
He's a supremely vindictive asshole, would you just be really funny, and we should all be appreciative of that possibility.
01:02:21.250 --> 01:02:23.197
And now he retires to Rehoboth Beach.
01:02:23.197 --> 01:02:24.652
All right, jake.
01:02:24.652 --> 01:02:29.130
Thanks so much for coming on, toodles, much appreciated.
01:02:29.130 --> 01:02:29.731
We'll see you next time.