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Feb. 18, 2020 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
53:00
Why Michael Bloomberg Is Unelectable

As the Democratic primary grows stranger and stranger, co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman dive into the sudden emergence of Michael Bloomberg as a potential nominee. Discussions include the danger of money in politics, the threat of believing fixing the country is as easy as defeating Donald Trump, and some necessary venting as our politics grows more and more dysfunctional. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Time Text
Sixty billion dollars can buy you a lot of advertising, but it can't erase your record.
There's a lot to talk about with Michael Bloomberg.
Well, I think he's going to have to answer for that and speak to it, and it is going to be critical for us to have a nominee who can authentically lead and who can show growth on these challenges.
I still do not think he is the best candidate for our country.
I don't think that people look at the guy in the White House and say, oh, let's get someone richer.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome to the Muckery Political Podcast.
I'm your co-host, Jared J. Sexton.
I'm here with my co-host, Nick Haussleman.
There's a lot to talk about, obviously, but I'm coming in hot.
I'm really, Nick, I'm Listen, we're developing a relationship with our listeners.
They need to know where we are, where we stand.
I'm hot.
You are.
I'm hot, and I'll tell you why.
The narrative that Mike Bloomberg is somehow or another the magic bullet that is going to take down Donald Trump.
That he is the neoliberal savior who's going to, I don't know, maybe we could put him on an escalator in a building that he owns and he could just come down and, you know, maybe he could pick his own vulnerable population to call rapists and drug dealers and some of them I assume are good people.
You know, maybe we'll just If we got our own Trump, Nick.
If we got our own Donald Trump, maybe everything will be alright.
You know, I can't wrap my head around what I'm supposed to feel, where I'm supposed to be, because again, all I've been focused on is Trump needs to be voted out.
It doesn't necessarily matter who.
And we have had all this prelude of, you know, well, if Bernie wins, of course I'll have to vote for Bernie or if Elizabeth Warren or any of these people win, then it's like, yeah, it doesn't really matter because we have to back them and we have to get Trump out.
And why doesn't Bloomberg fall into this category?
Because he's a racist, sexist, neoliberal who drains everything down into numbers and money and he has shown that the only thing... Oh, by the way, he's like best friends with the president of China.
I'm sorry, the dictator of China who is now installed for life and has installed himself as a god in China.
He's part of that.
He's part of how this economy has become so rigged against people and has become inhumane and insufferable.
And meanwhile, okay, so, and what you just said, I think, I'm so hot.
I'm very, very hot.
I'm so glad we're recording on this today.
Okay, so what you just said, I think, distills down what we're talking about here.
Number one, you know, where is this narrative coming from?
This is from cable news.
This is from institutional papers.
This is from Twitter.
It's from New York people who lived under Bloomberg and, you know, thought it was enjoyable or whatever.
So that's where this is coming from.
The second thing that you said that I think you put your finger on it, which is, this is all about the democratic race and democratic anxiety, and you just said you would vote for Sanders if he was the nominee, but also, like, you're hesitant on there.
Like, you know, let's just put our cards out front.
There are so many other candidates that you could vote for.
that are competent people and like if you don't agree with Bernie Sanders's approach you can go to Elizabeth Warren who by the way the entire media has just pretended like she vanished like like a character on lost that there was like some sort of a mule wheel kicked and and Elizabeth Warren just evaporated and and all of a sudden it's like well I mean you got to choose between Sanders and Klobuchar and Mike Bloomberg and And if that is where our country is, I don't know what to tell people.
Like, I really don't.
Like, the left accepting Mike Bloomberg, who is the embodiment of everything that is wrong with this culture, I don't know what to do with that, Nick.
I really don't.
Like, I might go live in a cave.
I might just live in a cave.
Right.
Well, we've already talked about the death of democracy as we know it, and I guess that would be more along those lines.
Okay, so, Bloomberg, you know, he's being accused of being racist because of Stop and Frisk, right?
That's what we're at, right?
Not to mention a cacophony of comments that have basically said that African-American men are dangerous and need to be watched, which I don't know where everybody else who's listening comes from, but where I come from, that is like the textbook definition of a racist worldview.
I mean and they caught him on something like that talking about numbers and statistics and what it sounded like to me was he must have just come out of a meeting where they presented him all of these facts about like how they're what they're seeing with the rest rates without any nuance or context and so he was just sort of what these are the numbers we see this is why oh so He's a numbers man, Nick.
That's all he can say.
Like, oh, we're going to get a technocrat in there.
Everything will be great as soon as we just figure out the numbers because society is a rector set.
All right.
So that all happened, right?
And we all have these feelings.
Now, you know, are we old enough to remember a guy named Robert Byrd who was a senator who was actually a KKK member but became the most sort of liberal senator and sort of enlightened person we had as far as race goes after that?
Can we give Bloomberg any credit to maybe getting some enlightenment in the interim?
I love that we're now making the argument that Mike Bloomberg should follow the former Grand Wizard of the KKK's example and realize that his KKK worldview is better.
Part of our country is we believe in redemption and the notion of contrition.
Could that exist for Bloomberg?
Okay, so let's sit here and let's talk about what we're talking about, right?
Which is this.
Why are we making the case for Bloomberg here?
Why?
Deep down underneath all the sediment and underneath all of this, why are we making the argument for Bloomberg?
Narrators voice he wasn't making the case for Bloomberg, but I know well right but rhetorically that's what I'm talking about.
Yeah Yeah, I've been playing the devil's advocate, but okay Why we're making the case we're making the case because we need to get Donald Trump out of the out of office, right?
That's it, right Real real fast Nick because you are a barometer on this stuff.
I think that your instincts on this are fantastic Are you inspired by Mike Bloomberg?
No, I mean, are you walking around did your food taste better?
Are the birds singing a sweeter song?
Are the colors prettier?
I'm not inspired but I do say that I like the style with which he is combating Donald Trump and I do feel that the other candidates should be doing this as well.
See, my idea of a dystopian nightmare is watching billionaires stand in front of cameras and slap fight each other over control of the White House.
Like, if you asked me to write down, like, what is the worst reality to live in?
Oh, and by the way, like, they're not, like, I want people to think about how these debates would work if it was Donald Trump and Mike Bloomberg, who I assume they know each other pretty well from playing golf and tons of charity events.
You know, they've been pretty tight for years.
They're not going to get on stage and talk about racism because it disqualifies both of them, right?
We're going to get them on stage and Donald Trump is just going to get on.
He'll probably, if he debates, we don't even know if he'll debate, but you know, if he debates, he'll probably drag an American flag out and just keep his arm around it like it's his date the whole time.
And meanwhile, They'll just call each other old and fat and short.
Like, that's what politics are becoming.
And I'll tell you, the reason I'm so hot about this is because I've mostly bit my tongue on most of this stuff, right?
And the reason is this.
We have now gone through a couple of years where people, and by the way not just people, but like people who are supposed to be like intelligent, competent people.
Do you know the names they've been throwing out for 2020?
Oprah Winfrey, Dwayne the Rock Johnson, now all of a sudden it's Mike Bloomberg because he upsets Donald Trump with his tweets.
This is madness!
Okay, you know, I'm picturing, so here's what you're doing.
You're picturing the debate or the one-on-one race between Bloomberg and Trump and how clearly it's upsetting you and how it would turn this into a farce and all these different things.
Here's the thing.
Have you forgotten what it's what was like with Hillary Clinton, Rand?
It doesn't really matter who at this point, does it?
I'm so glad you're bringing this up, because now we're talking about electability, right?
That's what this whole thing is, this word electability, and this is what I wanted to go off on today.
Electability is a code word that means, will it appeal to an anonymous, possibly non-existent group of white voters?
Right.
Who are mostly conservative.
And one of the people who's out there making this case right now.
And, you know, sometimes he'll say some things that are smart.
James Carville, like, is just throwing on his best LSU ball cap lately and finding the nearest camera to just be like, well, the voters, I know they don't care about.
It's just like, no, James, you're not talking about anybody who actually exists.
Like when he worked for the Clinton campaign, they went out and they were like, how do we get white Republican men?
That's what electability means.
It's whether or not they can get white Republican men.
The problem is, when you say electability, you're just imprinting your own beliefs on it.
Nobody knows who's going to get elected.
John Kerry got the nomination because he was the most electable and he got the brakes beat off of him.
Hillary Clinton was the most electable and she got beat to a once-in-a-generation candidate who was a total failure at everything he'd ever done.
We can't sit here and say... And by the way, nothing has shown that Mike Bloomberg is electable.
There hasn't been a vote on Mike Bloomberg since he got re-elected mayor of New York City.
He hasn't participated in any primaries.
He's just out there flooding the TV with ads that make it seem like he stepped out of Barack Obama's body.
You know, like Athena emerging from Zeus's forehead.
I can offer some criticism, or I have a problem, a pretty severe problem I have with Bloomberg, is that how could he expect to be the Democratic nominee having not even been in the race for the first four races?
Now that is really, he's not on the ballot in the first four ballots.
So that is really, I think, something that's been hitting me hard.
It's like, that doesn't seem right.
You know, now then again, he can argue he got in late and there's no penalty necessarily for When you want to decide to run for president in theory, there's no law against that, right?
I mean, they have rules that will ultimately be triggered if he can't make it and won't get as far as he thinks he's going to get.
But, you know, that is a certain problem, too.
Like, why should those states be cut out of the process?
Yeah, and why should we allow just extraordinarily wealthy people to just sit on the sidelines and just beam in relentless messages?
And that's part of the problem.
And by the way, you know what?
I'll go there.
I wasn't planning on talking about it today, but it speaks to a real problem with America.
Because people are starting to watch these ads.
They're being inundated with it.
And, you know, we're a couple smart dudes, Nick.
Like, I would sit here and I would tell you that ads don't work on me, or that I never buy products because of ads, and who are these people who buy into ads?
We all do, right?
Advertising works because it's psychological propaganda.
So, we have this person who's just releasing a bunch of propaganda into the bloodstream of America, and it's working.
We should talk about that, but we can't because we don't want to admit that America, like, we're captains of our own destinies, right?
No!
Like, we're very vulnerable to propaganda, and what is happening right now is we have an extraordinarily wealthy person releasing really potent propaganda, and he can do it every day!
Like, I assume right now there's, like, billions of dollars of advertising.
Right now they're circulating, and it feeds into these myths of America.
Mike Bloomberg's not going to talk about what's wrong with America.
Mike Bloomberg's not going to talk about the big issues in America.
Matter of fact, if he got in, it would basically be like a mayorship, right?
Which is where he just sort of makes sure that the garbage gets picked up on time.
And meanwhile, the economic order just keeps getting worse and worse.
I mean, he hasn't had a stop lately where he wasn't like, why would we offer more health care?
And he's basically like, you know, poor people need economic incentives not to be stupid.
Like, What is this?
What is this nightmare that's emerging?
And I don't think he's gonna win the nomination, but the very fact that this blip is happening, I think is just a nightmare.
Okay, you know, I guess you're talking to the complete and utter anxiety I've been feeling and stress I've been having the last two weeks.
It's been gnawing at me I think probably for all the reasons that you just listed even though for me I'm kind of like, you know with a raised eyebrow, you know peeking at Bloomberg and saying okay I mean at the very least if he could lay out a blueprint because again, I do feel like There is this notion that the Democrats are going to eat themselves whole before they even get to the general election and they're going to be all so wounded.
It's kind of like when you're playing a basketball and you go through three seven game series in the playoffs and then you finally get to the NBA Finals and you're just so beaten up and injured and you get swept.
And that's certainly what could happen again here.
It's really an amazing confluence of events, how we got here, where, you know, this is the year we have to have these candidates against an incumbent horrible president who's going to have an advantage.
You know, it's just, how?
And then 2004 was very similar in that notion, too.
Anybody not named John Kerry probably beats Bush.
Although, I mean, again, then it goes to the matter of the polls.
Like, what are the polls telling us?
Are they really real?
Especially in this climate, when you have a guy like Trump, who people might not be willing to admit that they want to vote for him.
It kind of radicalizes the whole notion of how these elections are being processed, and whether or not the polls influence our choosing of who we're choosing, or are we influencing the polls?
There's the great question!
You nailed it, as always.
We don't know!
We don't know!
And sitting around, and part of this is this Epidemic of pundit brain, which is just everybody now because politics is so scary and because it's so anxious-making.
Everyone's paying more attention to it than ever and game-theorying it.
Like, oh, well, I mean, you know, Klobuchar could definitely go into the Midwest and talk to these people.
It's like, I have no proof of that.
Yes, she's Midwestern.
That doesn't mean that you win the Midwest.
Hillary Clinton was from Illinois.
And we forget all this stuff.
You hear why Biden said he didn't win Iowa?
Or he did so poorly?
He says because it wasn't diverse enough.
Well, and who knows even what's going to happen in South Carolina with him.
But we get so caught up in thinking that for whatever reason, it's like the NCAA Tournament.
Which I love more than anything in the world.
I really do.
It's one of my favorite moments all year.
It gets me through rough times knowing that there's going to be another tournament.
I fill out the bracket like everyone else.
Do you know what I do?
I watch a bunch of games.
I scout these teams.
I look at the numbers.
My bracket is still destroyed!
Because there's a huge difference between conventional wisdom and how things play out.
Nobody has any clue.
The numbers don't really mean anything.
Because a number today doesn't mean anything tomorrow.
It goes back to what we keep talking about, which is this idea that tomorrow will look just like today.
Well, guess what?
Mike Bloomberg, who has been a frontrunner in the public consciousness for half a week, the past two days it has been nothing but artillery coming in of him being racist, sexist, and really messed up.
Well, guess what?
That doesn't make him electable!
It doesn't!
And Joe Biden wasn't electable!
And these people that we keep trying to say, well, obviously they're going to win, just vote for something you believe in!
Like, the way that you beat Donald Trump is to find something you believe in and put your energy behind it, as opposed to trying to beat him in a zero-sum game.
Okay, so you answered the question that I didn't get a chance to ask, which is, what is this about?
What are you supposed to use, and how are you supposed to decide who you want to vote for?
So, we have to get back to the, I guess, the ideals of our country, as they were written, as the founding fathers created them, is to vote in who you believe in, And certainly there's a good argument to the fact that this whole process, however messed up it is, is a pretty good vetting process.
If you can make it through this insanity of what we're doing with caucuses and then regular voting, it's insane.
Then it does prove something in theory.
So maybe, you know, the chaos is what, you know, does help you get to electability.
Aside from the polls and all that stuff, it's certainly the process that we're going through, which again, seems like we need to streamline it and make it just much better than it is.
Maybe there's something to that, where because it's so messy and crazy, it actually will produce the best possible candidate.
Well, let's talk crazy.
Here's my idea.
Like, man, getting Bloomberg has just sort of got me all amped up.
Oh my god.
So here's how I'd fix it.
You know, if you were going to fix the primary system, here's how I would do it.
You want a person who is able to manage the United States of America, right?
Which means that they're able to talk to a diverse group of people in different areas, plus they're also able to manage a budget.
Right?
That's a big thing.
And form coalitions and figure things out and how to manage a budget.
It's not about how much money you raise because fundraising has absolutely nothing to do with how you manage a government.
It's actually the complete opposite of that.
So why don't we go in and we have the parties raise a certain amount of money and they distribute it and all of a sudden it's like you have X dollars to go out there and run a national campaign over the next couple of months.
And maybe we can even, like, some people are like, let's just have one primary day.
I don't think so.
I think we're going to have time to learn about these people and watch them develop.
Let's have two or three Super Tuesday-like days and just show people being able to use, you know, different funds to go around the country and make these things.
It doesn't help to have a billionaire who goes out there and spends all his money.
Do you know what doesn't help as president?
A person who has a bunch of money.
What's he gonna do?
Is he gonna throw money at the national debt?
No, he's not.
These skills don't actually translate whatsoever.
But what it does do, and this is the reason why we're having this conversation, and it's the reason we're in this mess, it makes for great TV, and it makes for great news salesmanship.
Because if you go onto Twitter right now, it is one person after another fighting with each other over their candidates.
And it just creates total out-and-out anarchy.
Where people are clicking on every article that says something good about their candidate or says something bad about them, because what the media needs is win-all spectacles that everybody looks at, whether it makes them angry or makes them happy.
And so we're plugged into this chaos and anarchy and anxiety machine, and it's killing our democracy.
It's absolutely killing our political process.
And that's why we're here!
And we can't talk about that, so instead we have these petty little dumb fights.
Okay, here's a good question for you.
Why does the media like these kind of things?
I mean, you mentioned sort of popularity, whatever, and eyeballs, but really, what are we talking about?
We're talking about OJ Simpson.
Yeah, but okay, and so what does all that do for these networks?
Well, I mean, it's really... So that's the other thing, right?
Is we're talking about whether or not politics should be entertainment or not.
I'll tell you, if I was king, and I wouldn't want to be king because I don't believe in fascism, but if I had the power to change everything immediately, and you know, I was thinking about this.
We should do the Solutions Podcast here coming up.
I think it's time.
I think it's time to do it.
I think that politics should just be as boring as dirt.
We should just care about process and occasionally have moments of inspiration.
I need this to not be a television show.
I need this not to be something like right now cable news is all about selling anxiety and fear.
It's about having people turn on and that's actually one of the real problems right now with this process.
So one of the reasons why Elizabeth Warren doesn't get any coverage is because they're either talking about fear of a socialism platform in a national election or they're talking about the big bad rich man coming along and having a fight.
And that's all they want to talk about.
They don't want to talk about everything in between, which actually creates a really dysfunctional political system.
So I wish it was boring.
I wish we could go to a point where, because people, they believe that people will not eat their vegetables, is what it is.
And instead, they just want candy.
And so they are giving them the most glittery candy that you can ever have.
Well, you know, back in 2004, I developed this ideology where I thought that people running for office should not be allowed to use any words besides nouns and verbs.
That's it.
No adjectives, no adverbs.
And we don't see their picture because what happens?
They end up voting for what they, they're going to lie to you as much as they can.
And they're going to end up voting for what they look like.
So we should not be able to see what they look like.
They should not be able to editorialize any more than just nouns and verbs.
And then, right, and then I like the, by the way, in all seriousness, I like your solution to having a fixed price, a fixed budget that both candidates have to use.
You know, I don't even know if other countries do this or not, but they should.
And it'd be a great test to see how that works.
But I've always been, it's always gnawed at me that it's clear that the, Connection between how much money you raise and the likelihood you win the race are completely and utterly the same thing, basically.
That has always been really frustrating to me to no end.
But then, I mean, again, the capitalists will argue, well, you know, if you really are a viable candidate, you'll be able to raise money, won't be the problem.
But there's just reeks of undemocratic principles.
Well, I thought, okay, so this is going back a little bit.
So back in 2016, I was approached about possibly running for Congress.
And I got pretty excited about it, because I'll tell you this right now, my representative down here is garbage.
Just a garbage candidate who can't even be bothered to show up, you know, and talk to his constituents.
And he's one of those people, he's a very, very wealthy person, which we got to talk about who gets Who gets attracted to politics now, right?
It's people who are either wealthy and they've sort of reached a ceiling where they don't know how to get wealthier and so they're like, well, maybe I should change the tax code.
Or, you know, maybe I'll go and I'll, you know, become head of a board somewhere or something, you know, after I'm senator.
And it's always post-political, right?
It's not actually, like, making a difference for people.
It's how can I open up, like, the next ceiling?
Or you have people like Donald Trump, who are malignant narcissists, who are like, well, you know, I'm one of the most famous people in the country, but that's not enough.
I want everyone talking about me all the time.
So what has happened is, politics, because it has turned into this entertainment spectacle, it drives away people who should be serving in politics.
And I dipped my toe in, and I'll tell you what happened, Nick.
It was immediate.
It was just like, here are your fundraising goals, here are the people who are going to help you, and they started beating down my doors the moment I even considered it, which is like, here is a constituency, here is a group of people, here's a special interest, here's how you raise your money, here's how much time every day it has to be spent fundraising.
It wasn't about making a difference.
It wasn't, because the system isn't built like that anymore.
And we have a bunch of people in this country.
And like, you know, just to be flippant because I'm pissed off about this Bloomberg thing, like we should have boring, somewhat sometimes unattractive people who run for government because they're competent.
And you can't have that anymore.
You can't have someone who is president who doesn't look somewhat like a president, even if it's a caricature like Donald Trump, right?
You have to have somebody who's like a tall white man who has somewhat of a striking physical feature thing going on.
Well, what happens to all the people out there who would be terrific presidents who are not, you know, telegenic or aren't exciting or, you know, don't send chills up people's legs And we've turned it into a charisma contest and an entertainment contest.
And it's kept good people out.
You know, that's a good point.
Obviously, I want to point out Obama did not fit that stereotype that you just described.
And you have to remember, I mean, we've had 200 years of the white man, 50-something, 60-something white man in his suit.
So it will take a while to sort of reprogram that.
I mean, hell, look at like, look at Russia, for instance.
You know, they had the Russian Revolution.
They went to communism for, you know, 70 some years.
And they kind of all, maybe genetically, drift back to like this oligarchy.
They almost like need it.
They want it.
It's something in the DNA.
And I, you know, we're in a younger country, but I almost feel like there's something sort of built in here as well, where like this is what they have to look like.
And, you know, I don't even understand why Trump falls into that, because he's orange.
And much heavier than most of the other presidents we've had that I can remember, right?
We haven't had a heavy president in a long time.
So as far as looks goes, he kind of defies what you're talking about a little bit.
Well, I kind of – I've been reading this book lately.
I'd recommend it to our listeners.
It's a little bit more of a philosophical sort of a jump, but it's called An Audience of One, which basically parallels Donald Trump's life as what the author basically says is a mascot, a living mascot in America, and the rise of television culture and how the two have sort of affected each other as they've gone.
And he basically compares Trump to someone like Colonel Sanders.
Which is someone who actually existed but turned into a fictional character as they existed and then whatever.
And there's like all this old coverage of Trump that like always talks about him looking like Robert Redford.
And that's one of those things where like when he was younger like I guess if he like squinted or you were overcome by the charm of like his wealth or whatever I guess you could have seen it.
But I also want to point this out because you again nailed it.
Russia is the way it is because the people longed for an old sense of importance, right?
They longed for people above them to fix things and they gave up their freedoms and they gave up their liberties and the hope of a better future to let a strong person give us, you know, quote-unquote, take over and take the reins.
And that's how fascism and authoritarian works.
You have a group of people who are very, very afraid of the future and so they're like, will someone else come in and take care of us?
In America, and this is part of the reason I'm hot about Bloomberg, there is a myth that if you are wealthy and powerful, you have earned it.
Right.
Right?
This meritocracy idea.
And obviously, if somebody has a bunch of money, well they should probably be president because the government is supposed to be run as a business.
But it's not.
It's not at all.
And so what's actually happening here, and people don't want to admit it, and I'm sure there are listeners right now who are a little frustrated by me even talking about it, but there's a lot of us who have that ringing in us that it's like, oh my god, Donald Trump's so dangerous, I just wish somebody would come along and take care of the problem.
Which is what neoliberalism sells, is that wealthy people should be in charge because they're wealthy.
And they are the most competent because the market has shown them to be the most competent.
But that's not true.
Donald Trump has shown that that's false.
He's a complete and utter fraud and he's just failed up and up and up.
It's no way to judge somebody.
It's no way to look for a president.
It's just a road to disaster.
You know, those are all very powerful words.
And what I was getting to earlier about the media and why they need this frenzy and the circus and the spectacle and the farcical nature of all this stuff is because of money, right?
They need people to watch and click and read and see the ads and all those things to make money to stay in business.
Which is a very dangerous thing because in theory, you know, the press shouldn't be beholden to money and to profit, you know, the bottom line.
And you now have, you know, and back in the day, I think that they shielded the writers and the journalists and reporters from that part of the business so that they weren't influenced.
But I don't think that that exists anymore.
Everyone wants to see what their analytics are and what the, you know, how many clicks they're getting on their articles.
And so that's shaping how they're reporting the news.
Well, can we talk about that real fast?
Because I'm so glad you brought that up.
So like, you know what?
I don't care.
We're far enough in this podcast.
We've got enough of a listenership.
I feel comfortable talking about this.
So, hey, here we go.
I am a political analyst.
Part of my business is that I look into this stuff and I examine it and I talk about it.
Well, we live in a neoliberal world.
That's a business.
You know what I mean?
When I pick up my phone, which is just over here, this is my business in part.
It's what people think about what I say and whether or not they buy into it.
I'm on Twitter.
I'm on themuckrake.com, which I wish people would check out.
I think I've gotten good feedback from it, so please go check that out.
But it's a business.
And I can tell you right now, from an analytic standpoint, and you and I talk about this show and listens and all of this stuff.
Everyone knows that right now, this particular time period, anyone listening to this, so today is February 17th.
This will come out on the 18th.
We're in a weird period right now.
We're post-impeachment, right?
Which made everyone feel very demoralized, right?
Like there's nothing we can do and Trump can do whatever.
We have Trump and Bill Barr just absolutely consolidating power within the Department of Justice.
But here's the other thing, too, that's been going on.
He hasn't, Donald Trump, he hasn't done anything nuts over the past couple of days.
Do you know what I mean?
Like it was weird that he went to like the Daytona 500 and what he's doing with Barr is a lot of process stuff.
It's a lot of institution sort of coming down.
Well I can tell you as somebody who reports on this stuff and somebody whose business it is to analyze this stuff and I look at the numbers and all that stuff, Do you know when numbers go up?
When he's crazy.
When he does something off-the-wall nuts.
Right?
And he does it a lot because he's a self-destructive person who yearns for attention.
Right?
And from the time that we started talking, maybe he's already done that.
Or maybe he'll do it tomorrow.
It'll come in the next couple of days.
But it's a wave.
And when he does something absolutely off-the-wall batshit crazy, the numbers go up.
And that's coming from a person who's on the outside looking in, as an analyst.
I can tell you that the people at the New York Times, the Washington Post, Fox, all of these places, they look at these numbers, and they know where their bread is buttered.
This is the business that everybody is a part of, and it is the rising tide that rises all ships.
That's just the truth of it, and anybody who denies that isn't being honest.
Like, this is an economy of chaos and anxiety, and he is right in the middle of it.
Right.
And listen, this is a good podcast to really get you going because I'm a shepherd.
You're a good shepherd, Nick.
It's like Fletch when he asks what his occupation was.
Okay, so yes, so here so to distill that right, you know, he understands that I mean what he's not playing for DHS He doesn't really he's not playing six moves ahead here But he certainly understands that when he needs to get a gin up in certain areas or even approval rating he can yet He'll tweet stuff out and that'll really help him So he's a petulant child That's what it is.
He's just a person who wants attention and there's probably Every time that there's a primary right and all of a sudden everyone's talking about whose opponents gonna be He's gonna do something to act out and get attention because that's his nature It's not like he's like strategizing it just so happens that he's tuned in on that and everybody's tuned into that That's what makes it such a toxic environment Well, the other thing that's interesting is that we all knew that he was going to get acquitted.
And it was almost like, people probably are not old enough to remember, that before they decided to impeach, there was a lot of trepidation about it because it would hand him a win.
And we knew that was going to be a win.
He was just going to be able to campaign on.
I was exonerated on hoax, blah, blah, blah.
And guess what?
That's exactly what happened.
But I wonder if, based on that, if we would have even kind of conceptualized what he's doing now with Barr.
Well, you know, that point, It just occurred to me, and it strikes me as really true.
I'll have to sit with this for a couple days, but this strikes me as true.
I think the acquittal was so demoralizing.
Not because it just made everything clear where we are.
Because it did, right?
It made it very clear where our country is and where it's heading.
But it was also a television show.
And I think we all expected a last second something, right?
Because we've been trained to expect that in our movies and our TV shows.
Right, and all of a sudden, oh, that's John Bolton walking through the door!
You know, low chords on a piano.
John Bolton's gonna save us all, which just saying out loud is crazy.
But I think it's almost like one of those things where, like, you binge a television show and you get emotionally invested in it, And, like, the direction doesn't go the way that you want it to.
And, you know, it bums you out a little bit.
And maybe you don't watch the show as much as you used to.
And I think the entertainment value of it was the demoralizing part.
And I'll tell you, like, talking to people about Department of Justice infringements is not sexy.
Like, nobody wants to talk about what the law is.
I mean, even lawyers will tell you nobody wants to get into what the law is and how it works.
And we're sort of in an aftermath of that.
Well, but yeah, you can take that one step further only because there are plenty of people who will argue like, well, we can't have gay marriage because What would happen next?
Someone's going to want to marry a dog, right?
That was like, that's their thing.
They can conceive of, okay, what would the next logical progression be if we allow that?
Well, that same person who would argue that cannot seem to rationally follow what the next steps would be with what's happening between Trump and Barr.
And that's what's frustrating to the point where it doesn't, it's never had to do with what they care about or they don't care about as far as, or what their ability to process things.
They simply don't care about, Right.
If it's in their – the favor of their candidate or of their person they voted for.
Like that's the doubling down, never wanting to be wrong.
And the only way to do that is to so completely – that's where you get the cult thing where they so completely support Trump no matter what because you have to admit, oh my god, I was wrong about this guy.
And there are people that have done that and it's been a catharsis for them.
But that's a really giant leap for many people to take who don't have that ability.
Yeah, let's have a conversation about that because I mean this is – I'm enjoying this podcast, Nick.
I'm feeling like there's a lot of unloading here, and this is nice.
I like it.
So let's talk about it.
I have really bad news to deliver to everyone.
It would be so much easier to just wake up tomorrow and support Donald Trump.
It would be so much easier.
Because what you would be doing is you would be saying, oh, you know, the past 240 years, America's been pretty good.
And we've been the hero.
And we should feel really good about how we got here.
And there's no big problem going on.
America's great!
All we gotta do is go out in November and vote to keep America great.
That's all!
And I'm winning.
I'm winning so hard.
Like, every day.
Because I'm triggering all those really, really weak liberals.
And, like, that's all that matters.
It doesn't matter, you know, if the roads don't get taken care of.
It doesn't matter if my water is poisonous.
It doesn't matter if climate... I'm sorry, climate change.
I shouldn't even say that.
It's not real.
It's a man-made, you know, myth.
So, like, all of those things... And all those people from Mexico, you know, it's their fault for even trying to enter the country legally.
Right, put them in cages because that's where they belong, right?
Because they're criminals and rapists.
Get them away from their parents.
And by the way, my job's coming back.
Yeah, I don't know when, and I don't see any signs that it's ever coming back, but it'll come back.
So all that stuff.
It's so much easier because you don't have to dive into self-examination and you don't have to reconsider the pull of history and where we've been being on the other side of that and recognizing this as the terror that it is is exhausting.
It's exhausting work.
And that's why authoritarianism works out.
Because this is exhausting.
And you're exactly right.
To sit there and say that the Department of Justice has been turned into a corrupt weapon, like, it's hard to get up in the morning with that.
Right?
And how do you fight it?
Am I supposed to go picket the Department of Justice?
How do you do that?
And meanwhile, I know a lot of people who have been in houses that are falling apart, or maybe they're hoarding, or whatever, and it's a lot easier to pretend there's not a problem than it is to start the hard process, right?
It takes work to get better.
It takes work to confront the problems.
And Trumpism is all about denying all of that.
You just live in a house that's falling apart and pretend that the walls aren't crumbling.
Right.
I mean, that's a great description of what that is and what the thought process is.
I've talked about this before because there's so much torque that would have to exist in a brain like that, in theory, because, you know, you'd be voting against most of your self-interests.
And you know what the twisted thing about it is?
It's almost like they're voting for some sort of aspirational attainment that they might ultimately get.
Like, I might be in the top half of 1% of earners one day, so I don't want my taxes to be high.
And it's almost in the same twisted, bizarro version of us aspiring to a better country that's progressive and continues to build on the achievements we've already made and not go backwards.
There's some weird parallel there.
And again, what they've weaponized now is that it's the zero-sum where one of those has to win and the other has to lose.
And I kind of feel the same way though, right?
I feel like, you know what, they have to lose.
There's no other choice, but the bad guys need to be exposed and lose.
And there are, by the way, there's probably a whole subset who would say, you know what, it's bad, but don't worry, eventually it will be settled.
It will come out, like all the things are going to happen.
Don't, you know, don't be so alarmist.
And there's those people too that also make this a volatile mixture.
Elect Mike Bloomberg.
That's the campaign slogan!
Because what you're saying is exactly what is at the heart of that thing.
Somebody said to me the other day, it really hit me because I think it boiled it down.
It's something, you know, that I've thought or whatever, but he told me, he said, what really broke my heart is in November of 2016, I realized that I didn't live in the country that I thought I lived in.
And you know, it was one of those things where everybody was just in complete denial about what America had become and what Trump represented and whether or not he could actually win.
And the idea now is that if somebody beats Trump, right, if somebody in November of 2020 beats Trump,
The idea that we can sacrifice all of our ideals and all of our truly held beliefs as long as someone beats him and it doesn't matter who it is if it's Bloomberg or Sanders or Warren or Klobuchar or whatever or Buttigieg like if person X beats him there is a group of people in this country who are gonna be like oh the country's back which I'm sorry to deliver this bad news but I'm on Iran I don't care anymore
That's the exact same thing as believing the phrase, make America great again.
Because the phrase make America great again is about a state of mind.
It's not about reality.
It's not about making America better.
Having someone beat Donald Trump is just, it's going into that house and covering up the mold.
Right?
It's just throwing some paint on it.
Because it doesn't matter.
Bad things are still going to be going on in this country.
We're still going to have the problems we've got.
We have to make big institutional changes.
And simply getting him out of office doesn't fix it.
It's the start.
But it's not the end of the process.
Well, I have bad news for you, Jared.
Did something happen?
No.
Bloomberg is going to win.
I've just seen it.
I've had my premonition and I really think he's going to win.
Now, the one thing we can hope for is that some of these things he's said and done, he might maybe overcorrect for in the opposite direction to sort of make sure that you understand I'm not those things anymore.
There's that possibility.
Or it's a way station on our way to what you are describing is getting that someone you know if it's if he picks Warren as his vice president and then she gets you know whatever I'm trying I'm spitballing here but you know maybe it is a way station where we need a breath you know that said it's like how do we get when you look after the after the the 60s and the tumultuousness of that era the rebound was what you know it's basically was Reagan You know, because of all that.
And that's what the country seems to be comfortable doing.
And so, the argument could very well be that we would get, that the rebound from Trump would be, should be Bernie.
Like, that almost makes sense, doesn't it?
In some weird way.
I have... So, real quick plug, because we are on a neoliberal world.
My book, American Rule, How a Nation Can Conquer the World but Failed Its People, available for pre-order.
Was my reckoning with what American history has been.
Where it started, where it's moved, where we are.
It was good to learn it, but it was also, it was also a big weight to understand like how our history has been and how many mistakes we've made.
Right.
And with every passing year, it just gains momentum and heft, you know, tradition and momentum and how it goes.
So the times when I've been feeling down, like in the past couple of weeks, like, you know, really, really in an existential crisis about where this country is going and where it might end up.
I do this thing where I try to think about the answer.
Do you know what I mean?
Like the one thing that I can do or everyone can do and all of a sudden it just happens.
But when you do that it puts so much pressure on the answer that the answer just vanishes.
You know?
It just disintegrates.
It crumbles.
Um, the truth is that I don't know where the country goes and I don't know what's happening.
The only thing that I can have power over is voting for something I believe in.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, actually saying, this is what I think would make things better.
I really hope everyone else comes along with me.
And maybe I'll campaign for someone and maybe I'll, you know, call people or whatever.
But that's the only thing I know what to do.
It goes back to your idea of inspiration.
I think that's what we need.
You know, I want to agree it sounds great, but it also sounds like you're describing how Al Gore lost.
Oh, yeah.
Well, I mean, Al Gore went the other way.
Al Gore's entire campaign was electability.
Right?
It was like, I'm not gonna, like, shake the boat too much, and hopefully somewhere down the line, like, somebody will get on board.
But Al Gore didn't go out there and talk about climate change.
He didn't talk about, you know, restructuring things.
Like, he basically ran against George W. Bush as the Democratic version of George W. Bush, which was Bill Clinton's playbook against George H.W.
Bush.
And yeah, it worked for Clinton.
It didn't work for Gore.
Right.
Right.
That, I mean, and again, if we want to talk about shenanigans in 2016, we could also go back to 2000 and probably find Russian interference there.
I wouldn't be surprised at this point, you know.
But certainly, the Republicans did to that election what the Russians did to the 2016 election.
No, they screwed it.
They absolutely screwed it.
So that's the other thing.
But you know what?
They're just getting back to the Democrats for 1960 and John F. Kennedy.
Oh man, that logic is so toxic and awful.
I know.
And it just ends up into, I know this is a ridiculous thing to drop on a political podcast, but I mean that's just like a Romeo and Juliet epochs on both of their houses.
I mean, if we're just going to go back and forth and be like, well, real fast, do you know whose name we haven't brought up in all of this?
Michael Avenatti!
Who's going to prison?
Who was the anti-Trump for months?
And everyone's like, he'll be our bully to stand up to the other bully.
That's what happens.
People were trying to get Michael Avenatti to run for the Democratic nomination.
And he's going to prison.
Yeah, that is crazy.
And I actually liked him, believe it or not.
Well, right, because he was winning points for your team!
That's a natural inclination!
And we don't like talking about that.
I'm so glad that you can now, in the wake of it, look at it and understand that that's where it's been.
But most people can't, and it turns into like a fugue state where we forget what we supported and where we were.
Yes, as trucks are driving by loudly in the background of my house.
Sorry about that.
Podcast excellence.
You know what, though?
I feel good about this.
I feel good about this podcast.
This was necessary.
It was.
It does feel great.
It wasn't doom and gloom, even though you're sort of shitting on the entire democratic field in some way or another.
I'm shitting on the democratic process and what it's become.
Right, exactly.
I actually think the Democratic Party has good nominees.
I really do.
I think they have good candidates.
And all of this fear and dread that has led to Michael Bloomberg is largely a creation of a media that is profiting off people's anxiety.
Listen, there are polls.
You want to talk about polls and numbers?
There isn't a person in the field who loses to Trump right now in the polls.
And yet the media is just like, this would be the apocalypse.
This would be done, you know, if Sanders won or Warren or Buttigieg or Klobuchar.
They don't need Bloomberg.
He is an opportunist.
He doesn't want to be president because he wants to lead.
He doesn't have ideas!
If I asked you right now, Nick, what would you say is his idea?
Right, he hasn't released anything as far as I can tell.
You beat Donald Trump.
You beat Donald Trump.
That's it.
That's not an idea.
That's not a way to run a country.
Right.
Well, hey, maybe he'll release those things.
It's not like he didn't prepare for that and have a platform ready, even though it's not come out yet.
We'll have to see.
I say Warren and Buttigieg are the top two people who are most qualified and most electable.
No, I don't even want a selectable.
Those are the two people that I would sort of have to choose from.
What about you?
I would say literally anybody in the field would make a better president than Donald Trump.
And by the way, I think Bloomberg would make a better president, but I think it's just a different side of the coin.
And actually, I think a Bloomberg presidency would conceal a lot of the institutional rot, and we would just see the neoliberal system grow and become more complicated.
I wish Buttigieg did not crap on progress as much as he does.
I think there's a lot of really, really craven appeals to, again, white male Republicans.
I wish the media would treat Elizabeth Warren like an existing person.
Klobuchar I've got my problems with, Sanders I've got my problems with.
So I don't know, but I think they would all make better presidents.
I think it's hard to make that argument that they wouldn't.
Right.
All right.
Well, and again, anybody's better than Trump.
So let's let's also not forget that.
But yes, it's a real we have to explore this even more.
I feel like there's more to this, this notion of like, who are we going to elect?
Who is the most electable?
And what does that mean in terms of how that's going to how they're going to govern versus just yeah, just burning it down just to get rid of somebody and then making sure that that somebody gets prosecuted and thrown in prison.
Because, you know what, I almost feel like that's what I look forward to the most, and it's really horrible.
Well, I mean, when you have an authoritarian dictator in office, you kind of wish that they would get their comeuppance.
I mean, that's a natural feel.
I'm halfway through Parasite right now, and I just can't wait to find out.
I'm just praying that they're going to meet an awful end.
Well, first of all, Parasite's a great movie.
Second of all, we have to take a moment with that.
And we have to understand if not that it's the exact same thing as what happened with Trumpism, you got to think there's a lot of people who, you know, looked at liberals and Democrats and they've been told that they're criminals and dangerous people and and they were waiting on them to get their comeuppance.
Right?
They wanted the system to be used against them.
So we have to... One thing that we have to do is we have to recognize the similarities in how we view politics and how we come at politics.
And we have to be very careful to look at what Trumpism has done and not fall into that poison because there's no emergence from that.
If we just create our own Trump, We're going to go down a similar road.
Like, it's probably not going to be kids in cages, but it's going to be problematic on its own.
We have to aspire to something different.
I agree.
I agree.
And so we'll have to find out.
And certainly I want to hear more from Bloomberg, at least as far as his platform, to kind of at least even picture what that might look like, and then actually be convinced that that's what he would do versus just, you know, make up a platform that sounds good and get elected, which is a lot of what, you know, people who run, they do, you know.
And so, you know, we'll have to find out.
I guess we know it when we see it, and we'll have to wait and find out when we hear it what it's going to look like.
Well, on that note, I think we've seen what he does with power.
You know?
He was the mayor of the largest city in the country and one of the metropolitans of the world.
And he, you know, enabled just blatant... He enabled a surveillance state.
He enabled racist policies.
That's what he did with power.
He revealed himself in power.
And I don't trust this person to go into a situation and govern fairly.
He's already shown what he does with it.
And we have to start learning that with these people.
I mean, we have to understand that, like, they're making decisions with power.
And that's what gives me hesitance and pause.
These people reveal themselves in public life, and we have a good idea what he would do.
We just do.
Well, I think that sums it up right there.
And I don't know, maybe I'll take us out on this one, Jared, because you usually do it.
But thank you so much for joining us, everybody.
This is a terrific conversation.
And if you like it, make sure to like and subscribe on iTunes or wherever else you listen to your podcasts.
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Sexton and Can You Hear Me?
SMH.
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