Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:04 Freedom democratic not needed. I am confident that the democratic party will reunite on the basis of democratic principles and that together we will March towards a democratic victory in 1980.
Speaker 1 00:00:22 I think the democratic leadership understands that we need to bring those people into the party. We need to transform the party. We need to make the democratic party, a democratic party with a small beat.
Speaker 0 00:00:35 The future of the party is working class. And I think that what I represent and, and perhaps, you know, Senator Sanders also Senator Warren, there's a lot of working class champions in the democratic party. And I do think that that's the future. You're
Speaker 2 00:00:50 Welcome talking strategy, making history I'm Dick flux activist, retired professor of sociology and a really old
Speaker 3 00:01:02 Guy. And I'm DACA Lera, more hall, a slightly less old guy, and also an activist and political strategist. And this season on talking strategy, making history, we're going to be talking about one of the big questions for progressive strategy here in the United States, in what we're calling a Hitchhiker's guide to the democratic party.
Speaker 2 00:01:26 So we are just a few days after the authoritative sources, as well as the mathematics. I've made it clear that Joe Biden's been elected certain people, including the president of the United States is at this moment claiming that the matter is undecided. Um, I personally think that he's, uh, mostly doing a con because he's raising a lot of money that his, his followers think is going into his campaign in the courts and so forth, but which is actually going into making up the campaign debt. But it's a good time for us to take a look at the election post-election conversation is what this is. And I would begin by saying an observation that I have not the best data to support, but which I really believe in that a lot of the certainly working class vote that Trump gets is based on the increasing tendency of white workers in the rust belt, kind of places to feel that the democratic party doesn't connect with them.
Speaker 2 00:02:41 Isn't interested in them, just stains them, has abandoned them in favor of well non, uh, nonwhites in favor of gays in favor of women in favor of all the groups that seem to the white workers that I'm speaking to be. Uh, now having the privileges of attention, at least from say the democratic party and Trump has been a master as Reagan was to some extent. Uh, so this goes back that far, he's a master at appealing to those kinds of grievances and resentments and building upon them and making himself seem to be the channel of these. And along with, I think that attitude probably goes in attitude that has given up on the idea that government is going to be a vehicle for helping people like them in the situations that they're in, namely very declining communities, declining economic chances, uh, rising levels of, um, you know, addiction and other dysfunctional things because of the sense of despair, that's all seems to be correlated with what I'm referring to.
Speaker 2 00:04:00 So, um, as far as I'm concerned, the coming of the Biden administration presents an opportunity to challenge and reach, uh, many of those voters, uh, with an agenda. And it has to be a clearly stated and believable agenda of programs and policies that can actually help them deal with their problems. So, um, I guess my first feeling about the advent of the Biden administration is that it it's a moment that's very much an opportunity, but also a peril. The moment where this administration comes in with a clear set of, uh, programs that will bring back jobs that will help people support their income and raise their wages, um, that will provide social benefits that allow them more freedom. The first point being a stimulus bill that will actually support people's income as we enter a new lockdown of the economy because of the spread of the COVID, uh, the frightening spread of the COVID that's 0.1.
Speaker 2 00:05:23 And that may be able to be given before, uh, inauguration day, if McConnell will cooperate at all, which is doubtful, but maybe, uh, once in a jobs program, based on the infrastructure, uh, investment ideas. And those include a lot of investment in alternative energy and other green, uh, programs, according to Biden in the campaign, 18 million jobs could come from the kind of agenda that he's talking about. So that's really important universal childcare, which is something that Warren, uh, foregrounded and something, even that Ivanka Trump said she was for something like this, wouldn't that be liberating for a lot of working class families, if there was real government support for childcare, uh, those are two, of course, in the healthcare domain, the promise has been at least to have a public option and, uh, and to expand, uh, Medicare to younger, uh, parts of the population to people under 65 and in the COVID period, that may be an, a very important thing to try to push, uh, and the labor rights.
Speaker 2 00:06:46 Well, $15 minimum wage would raise wages, uh, changing the NLRB to make it accommodating to union efforts would be really, um, something straight forward to be done. So that's an agenda. However, the problem of course, is that Democrats, uh, may not control the Senate, or even with a 50 50 Senate, it will be very difficult to pass some of these things. So executive action is going to be a critical part of whether incredible agenda of economy talking about can be achieved. So the point I'm making to wind it up is, um, that's both good politics and the national desperate need requires a degree of articulation of the program types of things that I've been talking about better than the Democrats have been doing all these years.
Speaker 3 00:07:40 I definitely agree with the necessity for a set of narratives and arguments and policies that appeal to working people across race lines and across cultural lines and regional lines, um, including the white working class and, and, and let's be real middle-class and even upper middle-class folks from, uh, predominantly white and rural areas and small cities. That's the universe of voters that Democrats have been losing steadily, you know, in, in, in little fits and, and bumps. But the overall trend has been that we've been losing those voters from the coalition for decades and decades. And there's an intentional strategy on the part of Republicans to win those voters based on, uh, appeals on cultural so-called cultural questions, like gender and sexuality and religion, and the role of religion in society. But also we have to be honest with an economic argument that small government is better for these people and that cutting taxes and services, but keeping low through depressing wages is a, is a good program.
Speaker 3 00:09:00 And what you highlight is Democrats for years and years and years, haven't had a counter to that argument that what some people talk about as like the rhetorical Christmas tree that we can then hang other policies and ideas on weed, but we don't have that overarching counter-argument. So all of that I agree with, and I do think that this is maybe the, the only super nice hopeful thing I'll say about Biden in this conversation, but I will say it, which is that he's probably well-placed culturally and, uh, as a somewhat trusted figure in mainstream American politics, he's a good messenger for such a, uh, an articulation. He's a good messenger for those voters, but I got to say, he's not going to get anything done. Legislatively, nothing will happen. Nothing major is going to happen legislatively while Republicans control the Senate. And, and not just a majority, but even if there's a tiny democratic majority that would still depend on, you know, the more right-wing or centrist Democrats to get anything done. Yeah. We're not going to see, you know, major investments in childcare or healthcare and, and nothing that costs money. It's just not going to happen.
Speaker 2 00:10:20 There is a possibility there was in previous generations that a small number, at least. So the Republicans would vote for certain kinds of measures. And let me illustrate by saying, for example, all the talk, even by Trump of infrastructure investment might be, I'm not, I'm not saying it can or even should be, but might be a chance to woo three or four or five senators, which of course would not be enough given the filibuster rule if McConnell and company want to block such a thing, but at least there is a possible strategy by, by, by people to frame certain legislative ideas as ones that some Republicans could support the childcare. I don't know what Ivanka Trump meant, but just was an issue she favored in some way. She was just trying
Speaker 3 00:11:21 To keep her, she was just trying to keep her liberal friends, uh, that she likes to go to cocktail parties with in new York's.
Speaker 2 00:11:28 So can the Democrats come back and say, okay, we're ready to propose the following universal childcare or government supported childcare.
Speaker 3 00:11:38 I think they should. But my point is, no one should hope that that gets passed. And, and, and more than that, but it's more than that because like on the infrastructure question specifically, yes, you probably could cobble together an infrastructure bill that gets a couple of Republican senators, but it will be chock full of poison pills. That's the problem. It'll be, anti-union, it'll be, let's build a bunch of toll roads that corporations own. I mean, I was part of a network of folks led by like working families party types in New York, um, who were working overtime all during the Trump years to make sure that Democrats in Congress held the line. And didn't just to score a few points, pass a really reactionary neoliberal so-called infrastructure bill, which would have just guaranteed Trump's reelection. So, and I don't want to make the perfect, the enemy of the good or say, like, we shouldn't take opportunities to move the ball forward, but especially on something like a multi-billion dollar, a trillion dollar multi-year infrastructure program, just like the bailout, uh, under Obama is the kind of thing you gotta get, right. Or you'll just be sowing the seeds of your next defeat.
Speaker 2 00:12:53 Well, it isn't just that I think it's even deeper and more profound and I'm very glad you did what you said, what you just did. Let's look back to the thirties. So FDR ma is famous for having passed social security, uh, and the Wagner act, the Magna Carta of the labor movement, those kinds of bills, but in order to pass them, many of those bills, like the labor law, he had to agree with the Southern block of the democratic party, which was very powerful to exclude occupational categories where blacks were predominant. And we have been living ever since with that compromise, he had to take off the table for social security healthcare. The original idea was that healthcare would be built into the social security system, right. And they took that off and we're still waiting for the realization of what in the thirties was believed to be a necessary part of, so of the, um, uh, of the welfare state.
Speaker 2 00:14:03 So, and then Obamacare, the, the, it wasn't just Republicans. It was max baulk us moderate Democrat who engineered the failure of the public option in Obamacare will Obamacare is a politically popular program, but with great flaws that everyone is recognizing, right. And that the Republicans were able to exploit to great effect. Exactly. So, so, uh, I guess 0.1 here in our, uh, in our wisdom imparting effort here on the podcast, is that a strategy of the Democrats in the Senate to try to frame legislation that some Republicans will support has first of all, the likelihood of failure because of the filibuster rule. But secondly, and more importantly, it actually might be a backfiring thing to do given both the political get ferments and benefits in the short run, but also bad for the society to have watered down programs at a time when so millions of people are unemployed and needing major change. Um, so I guess Dick and <inaudible> are recommending to the Democrats that they fight for two years in order to get into a better political position to pass real transformative programs, which they have advocated or many of them have advocated in the past, but I believe they need to have concrete evidence for the two years from now that they can accomplish something that helps people. Do you have any ideas about what executive actions can be taken gay one and for the first hundred days and beyond that would make a difference in people's lives, no
Speaker 3 00:15:54 Lawyer, but let me pretend that I'm a lawyer and a constitutional scholar, but I, I think that there, there are things stimulus programs, you know, there's money that can be put out into the economy to, to, uh, you know, generate spending and keep people in their homes, a whole bunch of relief programs that can be funded by executive order within limits. And I do think that those are the kinds of things that you can get a few safely. You could say, get a few Republicans to switch sides on. Um, so I do think that there's a whole piece of COVID response, economic relief that Biden will be able to push through between executive powers and, uh, wrangling a couple of Republican votes in the Senate. Maybe, probably there's obviously a whole host of environmental foreign policy, including immigration, uh, issues that, uh, Biden can undo the damage that Trump did and even move the ball forward on.
Speaker 3 00:17:03 And in addition to that, I think that there's a, a really, really important sense in which the country needs a period of calm to get through this public health crisis. And that's going to make having one, the white house feel extremely worth all the, all the trouble and all the pain and, and, and possible disappointments along the way there will need to be after COVID. If there is such a thing, the kind of a new deal level, uh, investment in direct job creation that we're going to need. That's a fight that's going to last several years, probably probably we'll match up precisely with the midterm elections. And that will be a real opportunity to go after and knock out senators that just acted to stop relief, to stop infrastructure, to stop job creation. So I don't want to sound like super pessimistic. I actually am somewhat optimistic that I think we've clawed back some of the losses that Trump handed to us among certain kinds of voters in the Midwest and the rust belt.
Speaker 3 00:18:16 That's a good thing. We have the presidency, which is a very powerful position to say the least, but I think we also have a setup by which we have some really great articulations of big policy frontiers from folks like, uh, Alexandria, Ocasio, Cortez, or Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in the Senate. So we have this great set of things to be aspiring to at the same time that the Republicans have no prod positive program themselves and are only going to be saying no. And if we, if we're partisan and we play hard ball and stop being like, we've got to just deliver some garbage thing to say that we've done something and let's sell it all out to the Republicans. If we can hold lines and be a little more, yeah, tough minded, partisan, and even selfish as an organization, we'll be in a very good place to actually deliver real change after we get the Senate.
Speaker 2 00:19:19 Right. And it's more than just the party. Uh, it's the, it's the grassroots organizing networks that have, are now very, to me, very inspiring across the country, for which such an agenda will be a framework for, for organizing. I think, um, the green new deal, one of the beauties of it is it's that kind of framework, which I I'm under the impression, there are many groups now on a local level, uh, trying to organize around it. Uh, and if it's articulated as not necessarily, I mean, Biden seems averse to calling it the green new deal, but a lot of his, uh, agenda for infrastructure is very, it's the green new deal. And I think we got to stop. If there are people who think we've got to call it this, otherwise it's not real. If he, if he wants to do the green new deal while calling it the Biden, bringing back better program, um, the four B program that's okay with me, uh, provided it has the substance, uh, that is transformative embedded. And that can actually work with respect to both climate change and the economy, but there's the rub. Yeah. And the green new deal will not be adopted at once. Uh, it's going to be probably a series of diff
Speaker 3 00:20:47 The concrete colored, new deal, whatever we want to the old new deal, the gray new deal was also a long-term project. So,
Speaker 2 00:20:54 Um, but there are things that, uh, I think are, are potentially able to be done by Biden as president, including of course reversing a lot of the deregulation with respect to the environment that's right. Uh, rejoining the Paris Accords, but with real trumpeting, if you will, of the idea that rejoining it is not just on paper, we are recommitting and here's how we're doing it. We're, we're, we're going back to this Obama program and that one and going beyond them and so forth. So that's one area, a second. That's kind of interesting because it is really substantial for people's daily lives. Apparently there are things the president can do to relieve the student debt that, you know, billions upon billions of dollars that people not just young people, but people now more advanced in years. Tell me about it. Do you still have student loans? Yes. And you're really long in the two molds. Yeah, exactly. So, so, uh, apparently I don't know the mechanism of this, but apparently it's within the president's authority to, uh, take moves through executive action that would actually relieve that
Speaker 3 00:22:15 At least huge chunks of it. Yeah. I've read that too. That's a great example.
Speaker 2 00:22:19 And that would be dramatic and should be done as quickly as possible because it helps the economy to put money back into people's pockets. And it's also so popular an idea. So incredible an idea that, that this debt that's been built into people's budget and their anxieties could be relieved. That would be, yeah, that would be great. Um, the let's talk about labor in this connection. I was just talking to a friend of both you and me, Harrison Weber. Who's a full-time, uh, organizer for the national nurses union in Maine. And, um, he's talking about the frustrations of being a labor organizer, uh, in the, in the environment particularly created by, uh, the failure of the NLRA national labor relations act to be enforced at all under Republican administrations in particularly Trump, but even under the Obama years, it took quite a long time before Obama instituted some changes in the functioning of the labor relations board that were really helpful to organizers. And of course they, this is what Harrison was telling me. And those went away as soon as Trump came in. Yeah. These have to do with the ability of unions to freely contact people in a, to have elections in a timely fashion to undercut this incredibly frightening industry of union busting that has grown up in this country. So just changing who is sitting on the NLRB would be a major step. It really matters who the members of that board are because they adjudicate all these individual cases of union, employer conflict.
Speaker 3 00:24:13 Yeah. The NLRB is a perfect example of one of those things that make it always a good thing to elect a Democrat over a Republican for president. And I remember going back to the, you know, the fiasco of 2000 and Eric Alterman writing, you know, something that became very relevant in my life as I moved into graduate school and joined the labor movement. But, you know, the, literally the difference between whether graduate student employees in private universities have the right to collectively bargain depends on who's on the NLRB. And, and just from president to president, they just switched the ruling. And so you have this group of workers that have rights when there's a Democrat and don't when there's a Republican. So yes, a better, more pro-labor NLRB will help workers a lot and help people get back stolen wages and help people that are already in unions have more power in the, in the, uh, bargaining process.
Speaker 3 00:25:11 But as we all know, the entire collective bargaining system, the entire industrial relations regime, as we'd say, in political science in the United States is completely broken and completely pro boss and completely pro corporate. And, and here we just had in California, a bunch of a consortium of terrible employers get together and pass a ballot measure to carve out even more special rights for them as employers. So like we're not winning on the overall fight for democracy in the workplace or workers power in the economy. And I, I'm still one of these people that thinks we need a major overhaul of the, the industrial relations system and the laws regarding collective bargaining. I don't think that there's like a, a militancy pure militancy solution by which like labor can just forget about collective bargaining and build other kinds of new unions and have power. I, I just, I think you need the bargaining mechanism and that's something we need a very strong majority in the Senate for,
Speaker 2 00:26:18 Well, yes, but, but the agenda can start immediately in terms of specific ideas that can be, be organized the rest. Right.
Speaker 3 00:26:26 And, and Biden was probably going to be better on union issues than Obama was. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 2 00:26:31 The Obama's always been depicted as someone with not much empathy or sympathy for the labor movement, uh, or the, or unions let's put it very specifically. And Gary Hart type vibe is staking a lot, I think on being a friend of the, of the labor movement. Um, for example, just announced that on the transition teams, there are something like more than two dozen union representatives, not just in the labor area of the transition, but labor department area, but across the board. And they made a special point of announcing this and listing the names of all these union staffers and, and officials who are now part of the transition team. I, that could be purely symbolic, or it could be quite meaningful in terms of what we are referring to. Now, I want to make a point here about this. That is part of what I think is necessary.
Speaker 2 00:27:32 Strategic thinking on the part of people. I just read an article in the economist magazine about the collapse of macro economics because of COVID because of the, you know, tremendously obvious crisis of capitalism, but it wasn't just COVID that they were talking about. It was the incredibly growing inequality in the capitalist countries, in the industrial countries that, um, they are referring to. And the point they were making, which struck me, uh, one of the points they're making is that wages have to rise if the economies have any capacity ability to grow. And one way and crucial way to enable wages to rise is to empower unions in a way that they're not now empowered. This is what the economist is saying. Certain corporate type economists are now beginning to advocate. And the reason I think that it's not only important in the case, in this particular instance, but no, I want, I want to notice, I want myself to notice in others, what's going on in the discourse in the corporate elite and in the, uh, sort of ruling class media and academic circles that lends itself to reform because that's part of what was happening back in the thirties in that new deal period, was this split within the corporate world.
Speaker 2 00:29:05 And the upper-class about supporting major reform, saving capitalism. The fact that oil companies or pharmaceutical companies are, um, very much against regulation and want, you know, want to be in control of, of politics is maybe very contradictory to saving the system at this point. So, and in this case, I was struck by the fact that the economist was saying, you've got to build up the empowerment of unions. Uh, you know, uh, another example of that is Elizabeth Warren advocated putting workers, significant numbers of workers on major corporate boards. Uh, that's an interesting idea which needs a lot more discussion. So, so I don't know, there are many more points and we'll come back to this kind of discussion about what's the policies that we need now that can be both politically positive and also necessary for the public. I did mention the $15 minimum wage is another one that is very straightforward to advocate. Uh, and that one that could get Republican votes, believe it or not in the Senate, given that as we just saw in Florida, 60% support on the ballot for $15 minimum wage there, even though the state went for Trump, maybe that's a message to some Republican senators that they should support a minimum wage rise in the Senate. But the danger is they'll say, oh, let's go for $12. And that will be settled on which you and I presumably don't think is a good way to go,
Speaker 3 00:30:51 Right? Cause that will be, that will be, that becomes the standard. Yeah. A lot of those things be great to get in. Maybe next season, we can get a deeper dive into macro economic questions and capitalism and socialism and the reformability of those things. And that's where this, the role of enlightened, you know, economic elites or corporate elites, uh, becomes important because you do have, uh, your, your George <inaudible> and others who are like, Hey, we love capitalism and finance and so, so forth, but things are out of control and we need more controls from the international level on down and stronger, stronger unions and consumer organizations and so forth. So yes, there is, there's a part of the economic elite that, that kind of gets that. And that would be great to see them, you know, step up a little bit, but, but the, the thing that, and this is relevant to our topic, this season of the democratic party, the thing that I hope for from the Democrats, more than any specific policy proposal or better arguments for policies is for them to be more big Pete partisan near the thing that has just totally held us back is that we can't count on all of our votes in the Senate.
Speaker 3 00:32:21 We, we, we, we tolerate, it seems like Pelosi tolerates, a right wing rump of Democrats in the house and sort of like allows them to take terrible votes on things like women's right to choose, um, and then wants to protect and protect their seats while, you know, beating the left up with a stick, every chance she gets. But all of that is to say that the things that I think should be the biggest priorities have gotta be getting statehood for DC, holding a statehood referendum for Puerto Rico and seeing where they want to go. They went ahead ending the filibuster and being willing to put more justices on courts. These partisan acts of saying, look, we're, we're gonna, we're going to have power, the power that we have. We're gonna actually do things to try to, uh, strengthen that power and extend that power. That's what Republicans have been doing better than us for 30 or 40 years. And that's why they are influential. So on policy way above their numbers.
Speaker 2 00:33:30 Well, maybe it's good that we aren't going to be able to bring those things into, into reality in any way, or even propose them realistically for two years, because I think we need a certain amount of time to really educate in a, in a deeper way, larger numbers of the public that these measures are a good thing. Um, rather than, uh, because I would be afraid myself of being too preoccupied with those things rather than things that can actually affect people's lives right now. That's, that's part of why I'm making the points that I'm making
Speaker 3 00:34:08 Your point. I agree. I agree. It's some kind of, of balance though. And my, my concern, I really think that we've overemphasized to the rhetorical. We've put a lot of money and energy into thinking about framing and messaging and all of that. And when it comes to the actual levers of political power were baffled by them or afraid to use them. And until we were over that as a party and as a movement, you know, as a broader left, um, I think we're going to, we're going to just like continue to get stymied in snow
Speaker 2 00:34:49 Well, um, but now we don't have the power in Congress to do anything of what you, you just listed before, uh, in terms of expanding, uh, you know, getting rid of the filibuster expanding membership in the Senate, expanding the courts. Uh, but, uh, what AOC said the other day in response to, uh, right wing democratic tax on her and, and on the, uh, uh, on the squad and on the left left in the democratic party, she said, yeah, but you, people don't even know how to run campaigns in the world that we're living in now. So she's putting emphasis on the practical organizing and, and, and, uh, technical ways of building the party and, uh, uh, you know, Howard Dean, he advocated a 50 state strategy, but has that ever been really implemented where it has, this is a dramatic, positive about this campaign in Wisconsin and Georgia are two cases in point where deep extensive organizing had been done, uh, in states that were not, you know, they were red states and the, in the elect 2016 and Georgia for very long time, it's paid off.
Speaker 2 00:36:12 So, uh, I would think maybe you'll agree with me that the first step and the one that's within the control of the party is a ranger investment in party building across the country, even in areas that seem to be, uh, very inhospitable for it. Um, and the result of that in Georgia and in Wisconsin, I think, but particularly in Georgia is dramatically bigger base and, and engagement of peop of ordinary people in progressive directions for the country. And that's maybe largely because a lot of the people being organized are people of color, but it could well be that similar kinds of efforts in, I mean, I'm aware of, uh, efforts in the mill towns in Western Pennsylvania of progressive activists doing deep organizing, not just necessarily within the democratic party, but, but that is part of the process that they're working on. So maybe, maybe, uh, one good strategic, um, point that you and I could advance together here in our conversation is if you can't really, uh, do the partisanship in Congress that will pay off politically because you don't control the Congress.
Speaker 2 00:37:35 Maybe that's a good thing because you then have to order, you know, really invest in the grassroots, uh, across the country, Texas, and other case, you know, we should know more about, you know, what happened in Texas, what was successful and why do they still not carry the state? Why did they lose certain congressional seats, uh, or in game them, if they thought they would even California? What, why did, why did certain people were elected to Congress in 2018, lose their seats in this election? Why did prop 15 fail? I want to get back to that last point in a minute, but, um, I keep ranting and not giving you a chance to talk. So it's
Speaker 3 00:38:17 A ranty kind of moment. Maybe it is American history. Yeah. I mean, I don't think that there's any real contradiction or, um, give and take between being more partisan in the legislatures and being out building party electorally, uh, there's no trade off. You don't have to choose one or the other by any means. And in fact, um, there's a really important relationship between them because it's a lot easier to mobilize people when you can point to a reason to give the party power. And that's kind of what everyone's afraid to make an argument for. Everyone wants to make, uh, arguments based on, well, we, if we run progressive candidates, they can individually through their own charisma and great policies, get more voters or no, they should be more moderate and they should, they'll individually attract more voters and, and, and very little conversation about why should we, or, or what are the arguments and the evidence that we can go to a voter and say, Hey, we, you should, you should vote for Christie Smith.
Speaker 3 00:39:25 Not, not because she's a special snowflake, but because the Democrats should have control over Congress, because these are the things we want to do with that control. I mean, I still look back to the most brilliant congressional campaign of my lifetime, the most brilliant partisan campaign for Congress that I ever seen, which was the contract with America in the nineties and the brain child of, of Newt Gingrich. Yeah. That was an election where the Republicans went out and said, we have a plan for America. You've got to give us partisan control. So vote for the Republicans. And it was, it was not only really effective at turning out the vote and flipping Congress, but it gave Repub the Republican majority in Congress, a clear mandate in terms of the media and discourse to like move an agenda. We don't do that. And we've got to do
Speaker 2 00:40:17 That. And, and we hope maybe in the Georgia special election thing might be an opportunity to begin to experiment with that very kind of approach because why should people turn out and why should they vote in that election? It's because of what we can do with a democratic control rather than Republican control, of course, that will have its counterpart in the Republican saying, don't dare to let the Democrats take over. Right. I want to say a word about the Republican party, because I've been playing with what I'm about to say for, for years, but now it's, I think the proof is all around me. This is not a governing party. This is a literally a convention of rockets of con jobs that has been put together to pretend to be a political party that they can govern. But it's really, uh, an amazing series of swindles.
Speaker 2 00:41:15 And the proof of it is Trump himself. Uh, you know, everyone's been frightened, frightened, frightened, he's staging a coup I think it's going to be clear starting today, which is Thursday, uh, November 12th, that, uh, there's going to be. And more evidence that that all has been about in the post-election. Most of it is not only self-glorification, but self enrichment, literally, um, through his fund fundraising that's been going on for this. But, um, when you look at all of these powerful streams in the Republican ranks of, of, uh, you know, cultures like evangelism, political evangelism, white nationalism anti-immigrant stuff, all of these are swindles, you know, Steve, uh, Steve Bannon is under indictment for swindling people by raising money for the wall, but he pocketed himself. That is such a perfect example of what I'm talking about. And I'm bringing it up in context of what you were saying before, because that's another argument for empowering the democratic party in Congress. Noam Chomsky said they're the most dangerous political organization on the planet, and that's not an exaggeration when you think about climate change and their denial of it, but the danger is also day-to-day their crux. Yeah. I sound like I'm making a campaign speech, but I'm saying this as a sociologist. Well, as
Speaker 3 00:42:53 A sociologist, I think you'd probably agree that, you know, our political parties are always more than one thing. And I think there, there is a, just a completely cynical business slash criminal element in the Republican party, or like a profit seeking element. I think we have it too in the democratic party, but, but it's, it's just a whole nother level on the Republican side and, and has taken power in the party on the Republican side in a way. But I think it's also an ideological organization. It's also a political party. I mean, of course it, if you think about it as like, you know, five small crooks in a horse costume, um, or whatever, or an elephant costume, so to speak, like it, it is it's, it's definitely like a pantomime party, but it does a better job of pantomiming it than we do. I feel like, um, there's some ways in which they're far less disciplined than the democratic party and far less coherent, um, organizationally, but, oh man, a Republican sounds like a Republican and Republicans will support Republicans and Republicans will vote for Republicans in a way that is just always so much more effort on our side.
Speaker 3 00:44:06 And maybe that comparison itself needs its own episode.
Speaker 2 00:44:10 Yeah. Well, I w I would like to make one other point, which is again, to be taken up in a future episode, but the point having to do with how the fight within the democratic party between, let's say broadly speaking, left and center, uh, how, how it's conducted. And, um, uh, the dangers are, to me, sidetracked in tribalism. Like you measure your success. If you're in one side or another, the conflict by, you know, what your numerical support for you. Yeah. But even worse than that is the denigration and destruction of that, which is needed to maintain a winning electoral coalition. So how do we, I've been thinking post-election that people talk about a debate in the democratic party, but it's a debate that takes place in sound bites, you know, on the media when, in fact the party itself. And I think you'll resonate with this. It's probably something I've learned from you is the party should be a framework and forum for serious debate, not just soundbite attacks, right. But really setting up opportunities for people who are in the party to argue about policy program and direction without, you know, in the spirit of we're all one party that has to win elections on a national level.
Speaker 3 00:45:44 That's right. We all have to normalize intro party debate, and that's finding space for it where that we don't really always have. Um, because we're just so focused on being an electoral operation. So finding more actual institutional space affiliated to, or inside the democratic party where that fosters policy debate and ideological debate and so forth would be great. And getting the media, you know, correcting the media every time they put out a headline, that's like hysterical, AOC screams it, Lily livered, uh, corporate Dems and the Dems are falling apart. It's like, just, can we normalize that? There's some people who think that AOC is analysis is right, including me. I think she's been pretty much straight on the money in, in her analysis. And then there's folks who like Nancy Pelosi and, and so forth who think that, you know, it's the left's fault that we lost seats.
Speaker 3 00:46:40 We were adults and can have that debate without it being like, oh, this is the end of the Democrats. And let me throw this out, because this is something that I've been playing with in my head writing on a little bit, but this, this question of how to have debates without, uh, it being a circular firing squad. Conceptually, I've been trying to, because I don't like terms like tribal. I think they're kind of racist, frankly, but it makes it a little too psychological or psycho-social. Whereas I think that there's three different levels at which we have to be able to think about politics. And ultimately we should have this, uh, movement level, you know, w where we're talking about what are our broad, broadest values of freedom and democracy and justice and equality. And that together makes us something called the left or progressives or social Democrats, socialists, democratic socialists.
Speaker 3 00:47:37 However, we want to define that within it. And there's different traditions within it, but broadly speaking, there's this thing called the left a project. That is the whole reason we do any of this. Why, why do we have a democratic party? Well, it's to it's to move an agenda. That's part of this larger project of human liberation and human freedom. So there's the movement we have to always be loyal to and thinking about, because that's ultimately why we do any of it. Then we have the party and the party needs us to be patriotic to it. And defensive of it, it's the tool by which we fight the other party, the Republicans who are always worse than Democrats. So we have to have the rhetorical ability and the organizational ability to say, regardless of our internal fights or critiques, I'm pro democratic party, I want it to win more seats because the Republicans are terrible and we have to take seats from them.
Speaker 3 00:48:31 So we have to have that loyalty. And then within that, of course we have factions and there's no harm in that. That's a perfectly healthy thing in a democratic system that you've got people that are more conservative and people that are more radical or socialist oriented, but you also have factions that aren't even just left, right? Like people that are like, Hey, the most important thing we gotta be working on is climate or the environment they might. Then you could say, that's a community within the party. And, but the point is nobody should do any factional things that ultimately hurt the party. And the party should understand that it has factions. And all of us should be able to recognize that in the end, we're all trying to achieve some overarching set of goals, which means we have to listen to people that are outside of the party, but part of the movement. And I don't say that to say, I I've got all of those levels figured out or exactly how to balance them in any given moment. But I think if people would remind themselves that all three of those levels are happening, all of them are important and all of them happen simultaneously. It could help us stop making a zero sum between am I a Democrat or a progressive
Speaker 3 00:50:02 Hey, everyone, thanks so much for tuning into our little podcast here. If you want to hear more and support us as well as get access to full length interviews and other goodies, you can support us at patrion.com/t S M H
