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March 4, 2020 - The Muckrake Political Podcast

01:08:16

SPECIAL SUPER TUESDAY COVERAGE

Major changes as the Super Tuesday contests shake up the Democratic Primary. Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the results, Joe Biden's revitalized campaign, how the media has affected the election, Mike Bloomberg's disastrous candidacy, and the heartbreaking nature of politics for true believers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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	But we're going to win because the people understand it is our campaign, our movement, which is best positioned to defeat Trump.
	It's time for America to get back up and once again fight for the proposition that we hold these truths to be self-evident.
	That all men and women are created equal and endowed by the Creator.
	We're certain of daily moral rights.
	We say it so often in school we don't realize how profound it is.
	We've never lived up to those words, but until this president we've never walked away from it.
	Hello everybody, this is a Tuesday night special emergency edition of the Muckrake podcast.
	I am Nick Hauselmann and with my co-host Jared E8 Sexton and it's been a pretty crazy day.
	Super Tuesday has gone unlike what anybody would have thought even a few days ago and I don't even know if I feel more positive or more excited.
	There's something there.
	There's certainly some sort of energy that exists in the world now that is not like I have felt in the last probably three and a half years.
	So I'm wondering, Jared, how you're feeling about all this.
	This is going to be an interesting podcast.
	I feel already sort of like where this thing is going to go and there's so much to talk about.
	Before I say what I'm about to say, I want to preface it in this way.
	I actually admire Joe Biden quite a bit.
	I really do.
	And I think he's been a warrior.
	For a very long time he's been on the right side of a lot of the major battles of the last generation and I think he's a statesman.
	Everyone that I've ever talked to who has known him personally and worked with him sings his praises constantly.
	I have concerns about his presentation, I have concerns about the fact that Trump is Alright, folks, you know, there are going to be some issues here that we should discuss.
	Well, we'll be discussing it for months because I can tell you right now that her emails is going to turn into Ukraine if Biden does in fact win the nomination.
	But I want to put something out there, and tonight made very, very clear, and this is a big, giant thing that I don't think people have grasped yet.
	Joe Biden is winning in states right now where he has no campaign apparatus whatsoever.
	He's winning in states where he did not visit.
	He's winning in states where he didn't run a single television ad or directed marketing.
	He's winning states right now where he didn't have so much as a surrogate speaking on his behalf.
	I currently have on in the background cable news, MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, all those good things.
	They are currently talking amongst themselves.
	And by the way, in the past 48 hours since Biden has been anointed as the new rival to Bernie Sanders, and this is not an endorsement of Bernie Sanders, by the way, while we're at it, for the past 48 hours since the South Carolina primary, which by the way, Nick, Everybody knew that Joe Biden was going to win.
	Period.
	That was baked in the cake.
	Right?
	Right.
	Well, he had the crucial endorsement, and that really apparently loosened the limits.
	Clyburn got him over the finish line for sure.
	But it was the biggest open secret that Joe Biden was going to win that primary.
	You could have marked it down on a calendar like a year ago, before he even announced that he was running for the presidency.
	Okay.
	This is the part you're going to say is rigged.
	I'm not going to say it's rigged.
	It's not about being rigged.
	This actually has nothing to do with the Democratic Party whatsoever.
	This is about the fact that we are now in a post-campaign political era.
	It has completely changed everything whatsoever.
	I want to tell a quick anecdote from 2016.
	I was talking to people on the ground in Pennsylvania in 2016.
	About Donald Trump's chances of winning Pennsylvania.
	Which by the way, Nick, real fast, can you check the record?
	How did Pennsylvania turn out in the 2016 presidential election?
	Yeah, he won by I think 20,000 votes or something.
	Oh that's right, that's right.
	Donald Trump did win Pennsylvania.
	I was told by people on the ground in Pennsylvania that he could never, ever, ever possibly win Pennsylvania because he was losing the yard sign election.
	He couldn't get yard signs out.
	They couldn't get enough yard signs out in people's yards.
	And he wasn't going to every state that he needed to go to.
	And he wasn't shaking hands.
	He wasn't doing any of that stuff.
	What I want to say is this.
	Over the past 48 hours, the narrative has emerged that Joe Biden is the rival of Bernie Sanders.
	It's a two-person race, which by the way, Elizabeth Warren has been completely erased from the presidential election.
	She came in third in Massachusetts tonight.
	And what has happened is, we have actually taken the on-the-ground
	Campaign aspect of politics, which is the that's the foundation of politics American politics in particular It's gone and now the war of politics exists more or less on three channels and a handful of websites on the internet and And this is a big giant thing and we can talk about if it's good or if it's bad or if it's dangerous I happen to think it's a little bit of all of those but It's a truly bizarre night and they're on TV right now and they're like what happened.
	How could this have happened?
	It's like You kind of did this, and I don't think that they understand it.
	It's like Frankenstein and his monster.
	I don't think they understand what they've done.
	So you think that as a result of his big victory at South Carolina, the media whipped up the frenzy that ultimately resulted in the election results that we're seeing now with Biden winning so many states, even though, you know, tons of these votes were probably done, you know, ahead of time in the mail, like, you know, I sent in on Saturday before the results came in in South Carolina.
	So and then, you know, certainly in California, half the votes, I think, were done that way.
	But and as a result, I think Bernie will end up winning It's been called.
	But so you're thinking that's what's going on.
	They whipped up a frenzy there in the last day and a half.
	And all the walk-in voters decided to get on the right.
	Well, what you keep hearing from people who are on the ground is that the people who are in these lines, they keep saying that they have made up their mind either in the last 24 hours or in the last 48.
	Right.
	And what has happened with this country is it's become, and you keep hearing this word and I will pound a table even though it's late.
	I don't want to wake people up.
	You know, I'm in a hotel.
	I don't want to wake up people in the other room yelling about electability.
	That's the fastest way to get management called on you.
	Somebody's yelling about electability in the room next to mine.
	But this idea of electability, which has turned into the American electorate, Voting based upon predictions.
	That's bizarre.
	That's a really weird development in politics, and it's not exactly how we intended for it to work, but it is certainly the shape that our politics has now taken.
	And again, we're not even talking about Joe Biden here.
	This isn't about him as a candidate.
	This isn't about Bernie Sanders.
	It's a little bit about Elizabeth Warren, for sure.
	The fact that she has been completely erased from the 2020 Democratic primary.
	But there is something very odd that has happened, and It's hard to put a finger on and it's hard to really wrap your head around, but it's really giant.
	Well, I turned to my wife earlier today as these numbers are coming in and we're getting more and more shocked every time Biden wins by, you know, these margins.
	And I said to her, I said, you know, do you think that the DNC has rigged these?
	Is there a possibility like the Russians did maybe, you know, in 2016?
	And she kind of said no, and it's probably right.
	But I am almost thinking that, you know, you want to point the finger at the media necessarily.
	But to me, I think this is all because some guys in the back room said, we cannot let Bernie win.
	We're going to have to – and we talked about this before.
	They're going to force Buttigieg and they're going to force Klobuchar to drop out of the race and endorse him.
	Again, you kind of explained how that all worked.
	It's still amazing to me that they could do it that quickly.
	So this is more to me about the backroom dealings that we used to see back in the 50s and 60s before they had primaries.
	Yeah, so, it's a combination of things, right?
	So, like, number one, to accuse the Democratic Party of a conspiracy is to... It's to accuse ICE of being too hot.
	It's impossible.
	The Democratic Party can't rig a caucus together to go smoothly, much less get a bunch of people in a room and figure out how to do one thing.
	I mean, you have someone like an Amy Klobuchar, right?
	And Amy Klobuchar drops out on the Monday before Super Tuesday.
	And let me tell you something, for a career politician like Amy Klobuchar to give up on the possibility of winning a presidential primary in her home state?
	That's a thing that defines your life.
	You know what I mean?
	Like, that's in your obituary.
	That's in, like, the first paragraph.
	You won your state's presidential primary.
	That's incredible.
	The idea that they could somehow bring that together.
	It's not just the Democratic Party.
	It's the apparatus that sort of exists within the Democratic Party.
	It's, you know, it's Obama-Biden world.
	It's the people who, you know, they know each other.
	They work together.
	It's the analysts.
	It's the people underneath them that put these deals together.
	The Democratic Party can't organize anything, and so it's not necessarily a rigging.
	This is much more of Something really momentous has taken place.
	And I'm sorry to tell Sanders supporters, I know there's a lot of really angry and sad Sanders supporters out there.
	I don't know if you've seen it.
	I've seen so many of them say that they're not going to vote in the 2020 election.
	You deserve four more years of Trump.
	There's a lot of anger right now.
	And I understand anger to a point, but there's a real lack of civility that is kind of there that's kind of scary.
	But I will say that Joe Biden is going to be the nominee of the Democratic Party unless something giant happens now.
	I mean, I can't even imagine at this point some sort of major scandal or major gaffe.
	He's going to be the nominee and it has all happened within the last 72 hours.
	Yeah.
	Well, a couple things.
	You know, to elaborate a little bit more on what turned Klobuchar, what turned Buttigieg to do that, it had to have been the kind of pressure, like, the only person I could think of that could get in their face and tell them what to do and they'd listen would be Obama.
	Like, that's my thinking, is somehow, like, you know, again, because he's about to get into this and I'm sure endorse Biden and then start to campaign for him like he said he would.
	So, you need someone like that.
	Someone like Hillary.
	Someone, you know what I mean, who actually said, we gotta stop.
	Now, we know Hillary was tweaked, was tweaking Bernie not too long ago.
	And she's rightfully angry about how he didn't commit early enough once she got the delegates.
	And I know he campaigned for her in September and October and November and all that stuff.
	But it ended up – the damage was done right away when she got the nomination.
	Oh, her dislike of Bernie Sanders could power a small city.
	It's incredible.
	So that's the kind of person, if it's Obama or Hillary or Bill, who decided that we're going to be the adults in the room.
	We're going to tell these kids to stop playing around.
	and we have to get this guy out.
	Now again, when you frame it as, we have to save the country, right?
	And we have to look at maybe their internal polls, look at how this is gonna play out, and you know what's gonna happen if Bernie wins.
	You now have to take one for the team.
	The only person I feel like that could say that would be one of those three people I mentioned. - So I've had a chance now to rewatch last night's presentation.
	We talked about it on the podcast yesterday that Biden's team sent out this email that's like, if you can get to Texas, get to Texas so you can be at this event.
	And of course, at the event, Klobuchar was there, Buttigieg was there, and Beto O'Rourke was there.
	And they all endorsed Biden in a moment.
	And by the way, I think what you just brought up is a really interesting thing that nobody's going to talk about except for it'll show up in an article probably in like December.
	You know what I mean?
	There'll be like a book where it's like, who is the horse trader who put this together?
	Who was the person who moved all the pieces?
	And I don't know.
	I, you know, you brought up Obama, and Obama certainly has the juice to get something like that taken care of, but Obama is, like, so weirdly principled to, like, a dangerous degree.
	You know, it's like when, when he found out about Russian interference in the 2016 election, he's like, well, I don't want to interfere in the election.
	It's like, dude, you might want to say something, but he didn't want to interfere.
	But I will say this.
	I've rewatched, I've now watched that event and the endorsements, you know, a couple times for each of them.
	That felt like it was its own primary of who wants to be Joe Biden's running mate.
	Right.
	And I did not expect that because the rumors in Democratic circles has been Kamala Harris.
	Period.
	It's just been a drumbeat.
	And you'll notice Kamala Harris did not go out in California and endorse Joe Biden.
	I'm just throwing that out there.
	This is a thing where it's like watching The Godfather, where all the debts are settled in the last few minutes, right?
	If you're really going to get all this stuff together and Harris is going to be his VP, then this is going to be a situation where she would have come out before California, right?
	That's true.
	Well, but here's the thing.
	I'm starting to think about something.
	It might melt the internet down.
	I'm just telling you.
	This is like a big thing.
	I think there's a leader in the clubhouse right now for Joe Biden's VP selection.
	And I think it's Buttigieg.
	And I don't know if you got to watch it, Nick, but he was so effusive about Buttigieg last night.
	And comparing him to his son who had passed away...
	And tonight, he was thanking everybody for their endorsements, and when he got to Buttigieg, you know, it's that political thing that people do, where it's like, Amy Klobuchar, Goddess Minnesota, and thank you Amy, you were great.
	And then he got to Buttigieg, and he's like, I tell ya.
	That is a courageous young man, and he has an unbelievable future.
	And I want to throw this out there.
	There are a lot of people right now who are very upset that Elizabeth Warren got froze out in this whole process.
	And these are people who are going to vote in November, and these are the people that Joe Biden needs to win over, right?
	And we're talking about people who want maybe a progressive, or they want a woman or a person of color.
	If Joe Biden chooses Buttigieg, I mean, the internet, first of all, will go down for a couple of hours.
	That'll be the end of it.
	The rage that will come up from, like, the depths of political Twitter, I think, will cause, like, a giant explosion.
	But it feels weird.
	It feels like it's sort of coming together towards that, and I don't know how to feel about it.
	Right, which is probably why you want to push him to take Warren as the VP.
	I don't think that the Warren people are as vindictive as that, where they're not going to sit out the election for that and be that angry about it.
	The Bernies, like you said, would for sure.
	And even if Bernie does everything right and says everything right and is convincing in saying we have to vote for Biden, those guys are holding on way too tight.
	I don't think that would be the case with Warren, but then again... I don't either.
	Yeah, it's a curious thing, because you're right.
	Was she frozen out?
	Was she simply just not a candidate that grabbed enough people?
	She just couldn't get the votes.
	It's just not there for her.
	And then if you also notice, Biden gave Buttigieg the two-handed squeeze of the backs of the shoulders.
	He didn't do that with anybody else.
	So you don't have a person of color, you don't have a woman, but does it mean anything that he's going to choose the gay guy?
	Does that settle one of those check boxes that someone is desperate to have?
	I hope you're okay over there.
	I'm sorry, I'm laughing because you just described the infamous Joe Biden shoulder rub.
	That's wonderful.
	It's getting late in the night over on the East Coast.
	Well, I'll throw this out there.
	First of all, I don't think Elizabeth Warren is the type of person who would hold a grudge or would not work with him.
	I think it's more about I think it's more of the grassroots and more of the people on the internet who are outraged.
	You know what I mean?
	Who are really upset about how... Yeah, so I don't think Warren would.
	I will throw in real fast, and this is something that I want people to keep an eye on.
	Bernie's remarks tonight, and his posture towards Biden, What happens in this is it fluctuates, right?
	Like, you know, it's like Mike Bloomberg was out there tonight and we gotta talk about Mike Bloomberg.
	You know what?
	It's been a long day.
	Well, he's gotta be out.
	And we gotta talk about the colossal embarrassment of a campaign that he ran.
	Because, you know, I gotta get my jolly somewhere, Nick.
	I gotta enjoy that.
	But, um, you know, Bernie's... So Bloomberg's out there tonight and he knows his campaign's over and he's like, yeah, we're going to go win and somebody's going to beat Trump.
	And you start fluctuating how you present yourself.
	Bernie's speech tonight was not like, we're going to consolidate and we're going to find middle ground.
	Like he did everything but call Biden like a neoliberal shill.
	And a dangerous return to normalcy, and a lie, and a charlatan.
	I'm sorry.
	The only problem, like, you know, I know he hit him on the Iraq war vote, I believe.
	And he also hit him on Social Security voting against, you know, expanding Social Security and things like that.
	I don't think that that's going to – that's not going to take hold.
	I don't think he's going to get more people to vote for him on those issues.
	And if that's what he's going to hit Biden on – I don't think he is either.
	Right.
	If that's what he's going to hit Biden on, I think it's going to be a problem for him.
	See, I don't think it's actually going to gain purchase.
	Again, if I was a betting person, again, we've talked about how useless it is to actually predict politics.
	But I think Biden's going to win this nomination.
	But I'll tell you what, I do not think Bernie Sanders is going to go down peacefully, is what I'm saying.
	And here's the thing, do you know when the next scheduled Democratic debate is?
	No.
	March 15th.
	Okay.
	That's a long ways away.
	Beware.
	Beware!
	Yes, it is a long way away.
	It's almost a week away.
	Yeah, it's a long ways away, and there is so much time for Bernie to snipe at him and drag Biden through the mud.
	And he showed four years ago, he doesn't quit.
	You're not going to turn on your TV one night and you're going to be like, oh my god, Bernie Sanders is conceding and getting out of the race.
	That doesn't happen.
	And he's going to keep getting delegates.
	I mean, this convention, everything I know about politics tells me this next convention is going to be an escalation of the last one where there were near riots.
	So I think this thing is going to get a whole lot uglier before it calms down.
	All right, well then I guess you're saying that Biden wouldn't pick Bernie as a VP.
	Okay, if this is a simulation, and it's starting to feel like it is, and you ran this simulation a hundred times, it would happen never.
	Not once.
	Not a single time.
	The Whopper would spit out.
	Not a chance.
	Okay, there's a new reference for today.
	The Whopper.
	Okay, let me throw this out there, because before it gets too late and we get too far away from the Obama thing, part of me thinks that the reason why he stepped in here and did that, you know, and had the voice, because again, there's only, you know, you can count on your one hand the people who would have enough power to really to do this, because you said the Democratic Party's got a lot of moving parts, they don't have that kind of, you know, that kind of centralized control, but Part of me thinks that maybe Obama feels like he is responsible for this to some degree.
	If you really want to trace this back, right, Trump decides to run because Obama humiliated him at the Correspondents' Dinner.
	And honestly, there could be some feeling of that where he's now stepping in to kind of, you know, I mean he was going to step in anyway, but I just wonder, it kind of hit me, and I wonder if that's what he's feeling at all.
	I'm so glad you brought that up.
	And again, I think sometimes there's a thing that you bring up, because your instincts are very good on this.
	There's a story that we haven't told, and the story of Obama and Biden.
	Obama has a wonderful relationship with Joe Biden, right?
	I mean, I don't know if you've seen it, the surprise awarding of the presidential medal.
	Which is just one of the most like emotional political moments that you could possibly ever watch.
	Well, not anymore.
	Yeah, giving out at the State of the Union, Rush Limbaugh really tainted it.
	But I will say that if you watch them and you talk to people who know them, there's a genuine affection.
	But there's a couple of things that Obama has done With Biden.
	He owes Biden something and I'll tell you why.
	Going into 2016, one of the reasons Biden didn't run is because Obama didn't promise him that he would give him an endorsement because he didn't want to step in between him and Hillary.
	And that hurt Biden quite a bit.
	And not only the fact that Biden lost his son, but the fact that Obama wasn't going to go ahead and come out and endorse him and push him through really made him, it was a big part of him not running, and I think it hurt him personally.
	And we talked about this back when I was in Iowa.
	He really suffered in Iowa because Obama has refused to endorse him.
	Because he doesn't want to put his thumb on the scale and he wants to stay above the fray.
	So there's been these moments with Biden and Obama.
	There's like a really weird relationship.
	There's like a really interesting story to be looked at there.
	You know, whether or not Obama made a call or two, or had somebody else make a call or two, or whatever, that would not shock me.
	But at some point or another, he kind of owes him an endorsement.
	He really does.
	I know he's going to wait until whatever.
	Maybe it'll be a thing where Biden's going to win the nomination, and you're going to see Obama at every event.
	You know what I mean?
	There's a real possibility of something like that.
	And again, he doesn't want to endorse someone who's going to lose.
	We've seen that a lot in the past in these presidential elections.
	And, you know, by the way, I went back and looked at Adelaide Stevenson in 56.
	Just kind of wanted to study that a little bit.
	And just to throw it out there, he almost had John F. Kennedy as his vice presidential running mate that year.
	And John F. Kennedy actually ended up being lucky that he wasn't because the way they, you know, Stevenson let the DNC basically choose who it was going to be.
	But had Kennedy even ran with him and gotten waxed, then he might not have won in 60.
	Right.
	Like that changes a whole lot of different things.
	So same idea here where Obama, you know, he doesn't want to endorse.
	And he probably was familiar with how Biden runs presidential campaigns.
	Right.
	Not great.
	Especially against Hillary.
	So he probably was also worried about that.
	Now, why would he do it now is because, well, here we are and it's all about getting rid of Trump.
	So everyone's all hands on deck.
	You're going to see Hillary.
	You're going to see Bill.
	You're going to see Obama.
	Hell, maybe Jimmy Carter can get out there a little bit and do something for us because that's how serious this is.
	And so I love what you just said, too, about that notion of he owes him an endorsement.
	And there is this sort of history where there are some amends to be made for a lot of different things into the country, into the world.
	And everyone's going to have to come clean and do their fourth step and make sure that this actually gets turned into the right thing.
	The fourth step?
	I would be really interested... What's the step where you have to apologize to everybody?
	Oh, I think that's 12.
	I can't remember where it is, but that's the 12-step program.
	I would be really interested to see somebody go through the record and find all of the times that Barack Obama has even said the name Donald Trump.
	Because it can't be much.
	Like, even in all of his criticisms, so that's what Obama's about, right?
	Obama's about, and that again, and it's one of the reasons why he was able to win the presidency as the first African American president, is because he was able to like elevate the way that he spoke about the world.
	He didn't get the dirt on him, right?
	He was above it and he was better than it.
	I, you know, when he gives a speech and he goes after Trump, it's not, he never says Donald Trump is a problem.
	He talks about American ideals and principles and what we should be and what we shouldn't be and it's much more esoteric.
	It'll be really interesting to see if Biden is the nominee, and it seems like he will be, it'll be really interesting to see if Obama takes the gloves off because I think he, I don't think he's very interested in seeming like he is vindictive.
	Well, yeah, but when he did campaign for Hillary, he did, he was critical of Trump and he did, you know, in certain terms, you know, state his displeasure and things like that.
	I remember maybe before, after Trump won, or no, during the, you know, during the election, yeah, he definitely did some stuff while he was still president.
	But you know what I mean?
	But since then, certainly, I mean, he's just been... Have we even heard from Obama at all?
	I can't even... Well, that's the... He gave a speech, but that's the tradition of the presidency.
	After you leave office, you don't criticize the person.
	But of course, that's, you know, these things are all meant to be broken.
	But I will say, for anybody who is concerned about Biden's campaign, and there are reasons to be concerned.
	There just are.
	And again, this goes back to the media narrative and what I was talking about, how we've moved in this era.
	I can't tell you particularly what the policy of Joe Biden is right now, besides beating Trump and going back to something better.
	There's nothing there.
	And there's time to build it.
	There's time to come up with big plans or big ideas, even though he's winning as a moderate, who's more of a return to dignity.
	His speeches have been problematic, but I will say they've been getting better.
	Which tells me that his team is getting better.
	The team that I saw out in Iowa was just a disaster.
	And it's not that.
	Something has gotten better there.
	It's like what you said in Last Spot.
	He's probably now amassing all the best of the Buttigieg campaign and Klobuchar.
	And Bloomberg, you know, which we'll get to in a second.
	So when you said that, that was actually, yes, that was a light bulb where I'm like, oh, he's finally going to get the apparatus around him of the people who can really just get in there and fix everything.
	Yeah, and the other thing about it is, I think there will probably come a moment in the next, it depends on where the delegates end up going, but, oh man, I think I just saw that Bloomberg might be in second in California right now.
	Really?
	How about that?
	He's going to be part of it?
	I don't know.
	Maybe I just saw them out of the corner of my eye.
	Live podcasting, everybody.
	Live podcasting.
	Well, you know, there's so many votes in California.
	And I believe the stat is like 50% of them are mailed in ahead of time.
	So if they're anything like me, they were mailed in way before South Carolina.
	And that whole Biden bump didn't affect anything.
	Now, the returns as they come in from everybody voting today might balance some of those things out.
	So I don't think we're going to find out anything about California for days.
	How are you feeling about your vote for Tulsa Gabbard?
	Are you feeling pretty good about that?
	You feel like you might tip the scales?
	Why do they even put her picture up?
	It's amazing.
	I will throw this out there.
	Okay, so real fast.
	I got to finish my thought before I got distracted by shiny, glitzy objects.
	So there's probably going to be a moment when Biden starts taking up momentum that all the old Obama guys are going to come and weigh in on this because they've been working really hard on focus groups.
	They've been working really hard on research for all this thing.
	I mean, they're media geniuses.
	You know, they know how to do this stuff.
	They know how to write speeches.
	They understand how this stuff's supposed to work.
	And on top of that, they know how to win in the Rust Belt.
	They know how to win those states that Obama took, particularly in 2008, and didn't lose in 2012.
	So they're going to get that.
	But real fast, I brought up Tulsi Gabbard, who took second in American Samoa.
	And real fast, my co-host, Nick Hausamann, the most contested primary of Super Tuesday.
	Can you tell the beautiful people who listen to this podcast who won American Samoa?
	Michael Bloomberg spent I think for each vote he got in that in the American Samoa he spent what like maybe like $200,000 each?
	There's only like a hundred votes there I think right?
	He, Michael Bloomberg, spent half a billion dollars.
	Half a billion dollars and by the way i at some point we're going to do our podcast that's like how to make things better this isn't going to be on my list but it should be on my list there should be a certain point with money where we stop telling the dollar amount and we start measuring it out in how many schools could have been built with that about that amount of money how many towns could have been revitalized how much student debt could have been erased
	how much homelessness - How this could have been a race, yeah. - Right, how society could have been better.
	And all of that money, and I mean, I guess local TV stations who run his ads needed money, but the majority of it went to an army of consultants who showed up in Bloomberg's office and was like, yeah boss, that's great, you're gonna be the next president.
	And just lied to his face as he's just like looking around at his face on campaign materials.
	It's just a beautiful disaster and it's everything that's wrong with this country.
	Well, that's what I asked on Twitter today earlier, was like, I want to know, I want to see the polling that he saw before he entered the race that indicated to him he had any chance of winning.
	Now, my wife, my lovely wife, had reminded me that, you know, when he kind of jumped in, it was when Biden was completely faltering post-impeachment and he wasn't getting any ground.
	It was before Iowa, but it wasn't like he just seemed to be stuck in the mud.
	It seemed like what Trump did worked.
	So I kind of get like, okay, here's our chance.
	But I still can't believe, especially looking back on it now, that any poll would have been so off that would have said that he had, you know, any kind of significant chance.
	Because certainly now, as we see that, you know, none of these races are going to yield him any results.
	So if that's the case, and they really did see true polling, then this is just a vanity project for him.
	It absolutely was, and as always, Nick's doctor partner makes a wonderful point in addition to the podcast.
	As always, last, I believe it was the last podcast, she's telling us about coronavirus, now she's telling us about Bloomberg's thing.
	We gotta get her on here sometime.
	No, it's...
	It's so amazing to look at how this thing happened.
	I was going off on this.
	One of my main things is this idea of electability.
	Electability this, electability that.
	It doesn't mean anything.
	It's a totally made up word and most of the time it's people who think that other people should vote for their candidate and that other people are stupid.
	It's what it is.
	And can they attract white conservative men to vote for them?
	That's what electability means and it has its roots back in Bill Clinton and all that stuff.
	If everybody like can remember a couple of weeks ago, and I know in this current environment that that is like a decade ago, a generation before, everybody was on Twitter and they're like, yeah, I understand that Michael Bloomberg had a bunch of racist politics and he was really a creep towards women, but he's electable.
	And it was for days, and I was losing my mind.
	I was like, what are you talking about?
	He's electable.
	We haven't seen a poll that shows him being electable.
	But what happened was, as Biden was swooning, there was a spot, right?
	It was like, Bernie Sanders is over here, and Bernie Sanders has momentum.
	Who is going to be the one person that every night on TV, they're like, this person and this person.
	Head-to-head, the horse race.
	They win this week, they win that week.
	It was Biden's spot all along, and everyone knew he was going to win South Carolina, right?
	But Bloomberg got put in there, and that's what I'm talking about with the media coverage.
	They have to find a foil.
	They have to find Candidate A and Candidate B, and it just so happened he fit the Candidacy B or whatever.
	But he's just a total failure, and he spent $500 million Dollars, Nick!
	Well, let's go back to the point you made in the very beginning of the pod, which was how this has so radically changed, even over the last four years, of how you run, or even eight years, because, and actually I'm really happy about this, at least Bloomberg seems to be proving that no longer can you simply, you know, does the most money yield the most votes.
	Now, if you want to look at more proof of that, just look at Donald Trump.
	He got so much free publicity in 2016, their apparatus was so mismanaged, and they didn't know how to have any boots on the ground.
	They barely had any advertising at all, except for Facebook, because they understood where the modern people are, how to communicate in the modern world.
	So, in some respects, with the Internet the way it is, here's the thing I said before, too.
	The insanity of this process, for however much we should fix the way we run our primaries and all these things, if you make it through it and you get that nomination, you're as vetted as possible, in theory.
	That said, when Trump wins the nomination in 2016, you would say, well that certainly didn't work because he shouldn't have been able to get through that gauntlet the way they've set it up and still win.
	But the reason why that one happened was because it was a unique situation where the Republican Party was dead.
	And Trump comes in as the zombie creator and creates a zombie apocalypse party.
	So again, one in a million chance of that's going to happen.
	But other than that, that's why I feel like, you know, here we are with Biden.
	We can kind of maybe get behind him because if he can make it through that, then there is a lot of viability to him.
	Even in the abstract versus like the electability notion, he's simply, you know, he's the guy that can galvanize everybody more than anybody else.
	But what you just talked about is the important thing.
	You are electable if you have been elected.
	Right?
	That's the whole thing.
	When you talk about electability, you're talking about future things that nobody has any clue about.
	All of the polls that showed what Super Tuesday was going to look like have been upended in 48 hours.
	You can't predict any of this stuff.
	And right now on television, and you know it's on mute, but right now the conversation is about how Joe Biden is electable.
	Or, you know, they're not talking about how Bernie's electable because that's one of the reasons why we're in, you know, the place where we are.
	But right now they're talking about how Joe Biden is electable.
	For all we know in the morning, we're gonna wake up when the alarm goes off and there's a scandal.
	Or, you know, there's something breaking or something happened or there's been a shift or something.
	We just don't know.
	And so when you play this game and you do all this stuff, I mean, think about, I mean, uh, Bloomberg.
	Bloomberg cleaned up with a bunch of early voting because people are like, he might be the alternative.
	He might be the one that comes up.
	So I'm gonna predict it now with my vote versus I'm gonna vote for the person that I think is important.
	And real fast I'm gonna throw this out there and this is something that people should be talking about but they're absolutely not and it's because people don't like looking in the mirror and they don't like examining themselves.
	So Michael Bloomberg has has promised that even if he loses the nomination and he is going to lose so badly and it's so embarrassing and it makes me so happy Nick like I have to tell you there we don't have a lot of wins in this modern political environment but watching Mike Bloomberg be destroyed Mike Bloomberg has promised that he's going to continue giving his money to the Democratic Party.
	He's going to continue funding all this stuff.
	And by the way, he'll do so with a super PAC.
	He'll form Mike for America for Democrats or whatever.
	Well, what's happening is, this is the fulfillment of money in politics and the super PAC problem and Citizens United.
	It just so happens that Democrats now have a billionaire.
	Right?
	Fair?
	Yeah.
	I think it's really problematic that everyone's just fine with that.
	Because we shouldn't be focused on an arms race of billionaires.
	And if we are against Citizens United, we should be troubled by this.
	I'm not saying not to take his money, but I'm saying just the open embrace of it.
	And they've been talking about it all day.
	It's just like, it is a piece on the chessboard that's going to come out at some point.
	It's like bringing out the queen to move all around the board.
	It's like, oh, we do have Bloomberg's money.
	Well, we're just accepting now that PACs and billionaires and money and politics are just a way of life.
	Like, I thought we all agreed that this was a problem, but of course you gotta deal with Trump.
	And again, I'm talking about a thought exercise and, you know, talking about where we're at, but it's just really disturbing to me.
	Yeah.
	And every year goes by, there's less and less talk about reforming that part of it as well, getting money out of the politics.
	And no one's talked about it at all, really.
	And I think even Elizabeth Warren, who had pledged no super PACs, was then ready to go and let's get money if we need it for the super PACs.
	So we definitely need to reform that.
	Again, I don't know how that's ever going to happen unless you have a straight, you know, White House, Congress and Senate, and even then, you know, super majority of one of those or the Senate just to get that thing done.
	It sounds great.
	And for what it's worth, you know, and Bloomberg, you know, with this terrible showing tonight, because he put all his eggs in the Super Tuesday basket pretty much.
	Supposedly he hasn't got any advertising time anywhere else in the country after today.
	So that's a big tell for me that he's out and he's going to pull out and he's going to get behind whoever that's going to be.
	You know, again, this is sort of like the movie version of this would be the end of the Avengers when they all come in to fight Thanos at the end.
	That's what we're looking for, right?
	But the one asshole who's gonna screw up that last shot, when they all come running in and we all cheer, because I don't know if you saw the movie, but people were out of their seats cheering.
	The one guy who's gonna be like, you know, Thanos' friend is Bernie.
	He's gonna be like, sorry guys, I want that glove too, and he's gonna You just took Bernie Sanders, a public servant who's worked his entire life trying to work for working class people, and you're now putting him on the same team as a universal genocidal maniac.
	Well, let's make one thing clear.
	servant who has worked his entire life trying to work for working class people.
	And you're like now putting them on the same team as like a universal genocidal maniac.
	Well, let's make one thing clear that that genocidal maniac had he was so radical in his idea and he's true.
	So truly believe that it was the right thing to do.
	You know, that has echoes here, Jared.
	There is some notion of balance in the universe, whatever he's saying.
	There's people who like, you know, there's people who like the dark side.
	I don't know.
	I'm laughing because it just took a turn that I was not expecting.
	You started in on the Avengers analogy and I just didn't know where all the people were and I started imagining all of a sudden.
	Right.
	Well, you know me.
	I'm looking for that visceral, you know, emotional connection even though I'm also in that listability thing where I didn't want to vote for Bernie because, you know, he wasn't getting elected.
	But, you know, I'm looking for those moments, those cinematic moments where the lights fade up, the music rises, and the hair extends on the back of my neck, and Martin Sheen comes in and wins the election.
	I, now all of a sudden, I'm never going to be able to watch an Avengers movie without expecting Martin Sheen as Jed Bartlett to walk on screen.
	Or Bernie, the staff that shoots lasers.
	I gotta throw this out there.
	You know, I assume there are people, and again, I said this in the last episode, I don't know what the political demographics are of the people who listen to this podcast.
	I really don't.
	I don't know who they're voting for, I don't know what they're doing, I don't know who they're out there supporting.
	We don't know who you support.
	Thank you.
	I try really hard.
	I don't want anyone to know who I support.
	I love that.
	I take a lot of pride in that.
	I actually, so like, I'm a very political guy.
	I have a lot of political opinions.
	I have an open political life.
	I'm outspoken online.
	But I'll tell you this, my students don't have a clue what my politics are.
	You know, everybody thinks about, like, the indoctrinating professor or whatever, and at one point I tell my students, I'm like, just so you know, I'm active in politics, I do this stuff, and they're like, Are you a Democrat or a Republican?
	I'm like, I did well.
	I did all right here.
	You know, I don't want to be indoctrinated.
	So that's very nice that you don't know who I support.
	That's good.
	But I will say, I assume that we have listeners who are Bernie Sanders supporters.
	And I want to take a minute, so we're having a good time.
	Tonight, and Elizabeth Warren supporters too, for that matter, Tonight's one of those really rough nights.
	And I think all the time.
	So I was one of my first national campaigns was Howard Dean.
	And I believed in Howard Dean like nobody's business.
	And I think he would have been a wonderful president.
	And I think they made a huge mistake in what they did to him.
	The night that Bernie dropped out, I will never forget for the rest of my life.
	I was so heartbroken, Nick.
	And politics, it breaks your heart.
	Wait, Bernie or Howard Dean?
	Howard Dean.
	When he dropped out, it broke my heart.
	And that's the flip side of this thing.
	We want people to be passionate about politics.
	But when you're passionate, it means you can have your heart broken.
	And tonight's a really rough night for people who are for Bernie Sanders and for Elizabeth Warren.
	Because let's call this what it is.
	This is center-left, center-democratic politics winning tonight.
	That's what happened on Super Tuesday.
	People are calling Biden a moderate, but that's not exactly right.
	He's an older Democrat.
	He's much in the vein of the Democratic Party that a lot of people are frustrated with and have problems with.
	I want to put this out there because And you know, I want to talk about it for a second.
	I would love to know what you think and and what your reaction is because I We've been talking since we started this podcast about beating Trump and how we need to be Trump and that's like, you know, you know the top thing or whatever What do you say right now to somebody who supports Bernie Sanders or somebody who supports Elizabeth Warren and they have watched
	this resurrection of Joe Biden and this constant drumbeat to find the alternative to Bernie Sanders and that he's too radical and he's dangerous and he wants to change too much.
	Now, what do you think you say to them?
	Because I'm still trying to run my head around.
	I've got my own thoughts, but I want to hear what you have to say.
	Like, what do you say about people who want change and want to see big reform?
	Like, what do you say when something like this happens?
	Because there's like a heartbreak.
	Well, and certainly the Warren supporters, who would differentiate themselves from Bernie supporters, would probably argue that they're very similar, but Warren has better ways of achieving these goals that Bernie talks about.
	And so that's probably, you know, sort of where they would reside, and take solace in the fact that she was just much more sort of organized and hyper-focused.
	Not necessarily smarter, but just had a clear train of thought, and certainly no one is as well-prepared as Warren is.
	She's got every plan written out and completely, you know, solved from day one, right?
	But can I say three things really, really quickly about Warren?
	Here's the reason why I think that, or actually four, real, real fast, I promise.
	So four reasons why Elizabeth Warren is in the position that she is.
	Okay.
	Number one is because she's a woman and the misogyny is real and there are the leftover remains of the 2016 election and what happened there.
	The next up is that she was pretty much erased from all coverage and it was because they lumped her in with Bernie Sanders and she was not a favorite of corporate cable news.
	That's number two.
	Number three is she peaked way too early with all the plans.
	And America can get your plans earlier on in the primaries, but plans don't work in the debate time and when it comes to these speeches and as you're ramping up to caucuses and all that stuff.
	And then finally, number four, we're not good with plans in general.
	We very much vote based on feelings, and the people who love Elizabeth Warren and are inspired by her love her and are very inspired by her, but other people see her as a wonk, and this country really doesn't like experts and people who are overtly capable.
	So I think those are the four reasons, and they're all problematic.
	I also think that everyone is much more pragmatic as well.
	We've all been burned.
	If you haven't been burned before 2016, you are now burned and had three and a half years to really deal with how these things work and how disappointment can ravage you anyway.
	So, you know, it's almost like...
	You know how a lot of people are feeling so disenfranchised and feeling so frustrated with Trump and how all these different things are happening?
	And there's a lot of people of color who are just like, yeah, you're finally now seeing what we've been living through our entire lives.
	And I kind of almost feel like maybe Warren supporters would be the same way.
	We're like, we know what this is like.
	Completely surprised that anything is gonna happen that's gonna derail our candidacy for whatever reason and certainly being a woman it could be very one of those things because I think I told you weeks and weeks ago there was polls that indicated that if it was between Biden and Trump the people would vote for Biden but if it's between Warren and Trump people would vote for Trump those same people would vote for Trump instead.
	There's really no other way to take that besides they wouldn't vote for a woman.
	Even though Hillary won by three million more votes, and I get it, most of the country or some of the country is ready for that.
	But you're right, it's still these remnants of whatever that still is.
	But I do think that, you know, it's not like they're going to just sort of give up and not want to vote and not want to be part of the process.
	I feel like they're going to shrug their shoulders, carry on, and, you know, hope that the next person that comes along, the next woman that comes along that can really, you know, grab hold of the reins and actually win this thing will be, you know, that's who they'll get behind.
	And we'll be tossing.
	Yeah, I, I really, I really worry about, cause now, now that this race is like, not just taking shape, but we're entering a new phase, you know what I mean?
	Like we're probably going to have Bernie versus Biden for a while and it's going to be, it's going to be trench warfare and it's going to be pretty brutal.
	It really is.
	Um, but now that we've entered it, you now look back on the democratic primary and how, The women were marginalized and the people of color were eliminated early, before we even got to any contest.
	And all of a sudden you talk about electability and what that ends up meaning and how these people looked at the whole thing.
	And you realize that electability is often a euphemism for, will white voters vote for this?
	And then, you know, you turn on the news and they talk about like African American voters as if they're all alike.
	You know, and people of color and how they vote and they're all like... It's a very demoralizing thing.
	It really, really is.
	But I would offer this to people tonight who are...
	Brokenhearted and frustrated.
	And I totally understand.
	The good news is that America changes so much in four years that we have literally no idea where we will be in 2024.
	We just don't.
	You know, we have no idea if Trump's going to get reelected.
	We have no idea if he'll, you know, look at term limits.
	We have no idea if Ivanka or Donald Trump Jr.
	That'll be quite the primary when the two Trump kids are taking each other on in the Republican primary.
	You know, we have no idea where this country's going or what it's doing, but there's always a possibility that the people you care about and the issues that you care about can come back around again and can gain purchase.
	Because if you... I don't know about you, Nick, and we've talked about this a lot as Bernie Sanders has gained wins and purchase.
	I never thought in my life that an open socialist could be a frontrunner for as long as he was.
	Right.
	You know what I mean?
	Or he could gain crowds and acceptance the way he did.
	That's a major, major change.
	And, you know, when your candidate loses, it feels like your worldview has been completely rebuked.
	Right?
	It feels like how you feel about the world and how you feel about how the world should work, it's the world telling you you're wrong and that you need to get in reality or do whatever.
	So I think the people who are broken hearted and demoralized, like I know for myself, you nurse those wounds and then you get back up off the mat.
	That's the only thing you can do.
	So the one thing about what you get worried about, though, is if you suffer those kind of defeats, you know, one or two or three times in a row, it could change your worldview.
	It could change your progressivism.
	You could actually become less progressive.
	And I know that happens sort of naturally over time, or at least that's what the prevailing people will say.
	But I know plenty of people who are 70s and 80s who are still as dedicated to the progressive cause as they had ever been in the 60s.
	But that's the worry you have.
	And that's where we start to get into that authoritarianism is where, you know, people get beaten down, beaten down.
	What's the point?
	That said, people who don't get beaten down say, what's the point?
	Never vote anyway.
	Right.
	We've got we got I don't know that half the population.
	Maybe now it's creeping up toward half.
	But like, you know, so many people in this country for so many years has never voted and never felt like they were enfranchised anyway.
	And maybe the only good thing out of this is that as we're seeing these primary numbers come in, They're huge increases over 2016.
	Huge.
	Massive.
	And that's important.
	Because maybe the future will be that we so completely honor our elections again, right?
	I feel like we've lost some of that sanctity of that ballot box and then you pull the lever and all those things that, you know, when you're growing up as a kid and you watch your father looking up at him or your mother doing that.
	And maybe we'll get back to that.
	Maybe we'll get back to that sense of duty we need, that we have, that doesn't exist anymore, about doing that.
	You know, maybe we'll get back to, you know, people want to serve on a jury when they get called to jury duty.
	You know, those kind of things.
	Maybe we can get back to a society where that actually happens again.
	I kind of feel like, you know, we obviously need leadership for that, but that could be maybe where we're going to.
	We're in a huge reaction to what we've gone through the last four years, and hopefully only the last four years.
	If we manage to rebuke Trumpism, I think it's going to restore a lot of the idealism in this country and it's not going to feel as make or break.
	And that's a dangerous thing, too.
	If we get away from Trumpism and we bring somebody in and suddenly it feels like everything's fine, we have a lot of institutional rot that led to Trump in the first place, right?
	But we've crossed over in the midnight hour, and I'm feeling earnest and I'm feeling emotional about this, so I just want to share a quick anecdote.
	I was really, really lucky.
	I got invited back to my alma mater, Indiana State, the past couple days to give a speech at this Human Rights Day thing.
	And part of it is hosted by this group, the Sisters of Providence.
	They're sort of like a more liberal nunnery.
	They run a place called St.
	Mary of the Woods.
	These are the type of nuns who are social justice warriors.
	when you go to like an anti-war rally, they are there.
	And they are the ones with the signs, they are organizing.
	I mean, man alive are they just, they are fierce.
	And I saw them in 2003 at all the Iraq war protests where I felt so alone.
	I was in Indiana, the drumbeats of war were building up, it felt inevitable, and you're getting screamed at and harassed.
	And I was talking to one of the sisters the night before last, and I'd seen her at that Iraq War Rally, and she had talked a little bit that night about being at Vietnam War Rallies, and she had talked about being at the first Gulf War Rally, and she'd been at the Afghanistan Rally, and she'd been at the Death Penalty Rally, and she'd been at this, and Human Rights, and you know, disarmament.
	And I said to, right, and I just said to her, I was like, you know, I'm dealing with all this stuff in politics and trying to fight this good fight.
	And I was like, I get so, so tired.
	And I was like, you know, I've always seen you and you've always inspired me.
	And I was like, well, how do you do it?
	What do you do?
	And she's like, I remember that people see me.
	And I remember that people, you know, see me and they're like, oh, I'm not alone.
	And so other people will do it and then other people will see them.
	And it was a really hopeful thing because this is a person who has fought a lot of losing battles.
	You know what I mean?
	Like losing battles aren't always losses.
	Sometimes they're They're losses that can lead to wins, or they're losses that can at least lead to a decent human life.
	And I just hope people realize that, because politics is a hard thing.
	And what we're watching is a hard thing on so many different levels.
	And there's so many reasons to be disheartened.
	But I hope that's okay.
	I hope that that helps, because I know how disheartening it can be.
	It's really tough.
	We just went through this with Biden.
	This is the roller coaster, man.
	We've gone all the way around and back again.
	And you always hear those people pay lip service to that notion of never give up.
	But I gotta tell you, when he said that tonight, because he mentioned that in the beginning of his speech, it did ring.
	It rings completely true.
	Because here's a guy who, yeah, was completely written off.
	And now, again, a lot can happen.
	And all sorts of different things might... This is his third run.
	It's his third run for the president.
	And so much can happen in between now and July when the convention happens that we don't know.
	But certainly to see him, you know, to be able to offer firsthand testimony.
	And also you can include all of his other two runs where they completely imploded, too, to get to here because he's not running in a vacuum.
	You know, everyone knows that he got in trouble for plagiarizing something in 88.
	And now here we are.
	So it is.
	You're right.
	And this goes for every walk of life and every different version of your life in different places where you're.
	that you have to deal with, there really isn't much choice besides having to just keep going on and continue to maintain that faith.
	And if there's anybody who's gonna be able to understand that and practice that in real life, it would be a nun, you know, who their whole life is dedicated basically to that.
	So, you know, it is heartening.
	And I think that that's, when you're around those rallies, it's hard to explain, right?
	But there is an energy, a shared energy.
	And by the way, even if all the Bernie supporters and I were at the same rally together, we would have that.
	That energy would exist, a flow between everybody and uplift everybody.
	And that's sort of what's exciting about this possibility of, can we all just come together in a common cause, Bernie too and all of his supporters.
	If we could do that, I mean, we could levitate buildings.
	Yeah, and I guess that's something that I would like to touch on.
	And, you know, I've been doing this thing lately.
	Social media and primaries are really ugly.
	I don't know if you've noticed this.
	I mean, it's really bad.
	Like, if you mention a candidate's name on, like, a Twitter, there's like five different groups of people who just land on you.
	And it's just like, you know, it's like down in, down in Georgia.
	It's like, you know, the buzzards all of a sudden, you know, landing out in the middle of the road and pulling at a carcass.
	It's rough.
	But I think one of the things that we forget is that so many people are acting in good faith, but suspecting other people of acting in bad faith.
	You know what I mean?
	So this whole idea of Bernie Sanders supporters, and yes, they are aggressive, and yes, they harass people, they really do think that they are revolutionaries.
	And when you're in a revolution, things get ugly, and you reject past ideas, and you don't do it always in a kind way.
	You know what I mean?
	And then there's other people who are like, they really want to get rid of Trump, and so this electability thing sounds like the right way to go, because nothing else makes sense in this world right now.
	And so it's like, you know, it's like finding the North Star and piloting it by it.
	But I really, I would say, so like, again, I mentioned this earlier, I've seen a lot tonight, a lot of Sanders supporters are like, you are on your own for November.
	I'm not going to vote for the Democratic candidate.
	Go screw yourselves.
	I'm done with the Democratic Party.
	Give them some space.
	You know what I mean?
	You don't have to jump in their comments and tell them how wrong they are.
	Hopefully they'll figure it out.
	Maybe they won't.
	Maybe when I'm there at the DNC in Milwaukee, maybe I'll be in the middle of a riot and I'll get tear gassed.
	Who knows?
	It's happened before.
	But, you know, I guess kindness and reconciliation is obviously the way to go, but it's got to be about empathy, and I think that's the thing that's missing in this country, is we have to be able to look at each other and remember empathy, you know?
	Because I think that's the missing ingredient in all this.
	Well, can I get anecdotal on you now?
	Yeah, I'm ready.
	Well, you know, a lot of the Bernie supporters were kind of attacking me and my Twitter timeline.
	And I don't have nearly as many followers as you, but I get out there a little bit.
	And I was harping against this.
	I was so panicked for the last several months that if he wins, Trump will just be able to beat him easily.
	we'll just be able to beat him easily.
	And they would kind of slide in my mentions.
	So one of the guys who had a back and forth for a while ultimately blocked me.
	And today at 9:00 in the morning, I get a tweet from him saying, you know, I was disappointed in your opinion of Bloomberg, but I unblocked you and I'm following you.
	I realized that everyone is entitled to their opinion and ideals.
	And, you know, honestly, coming from someone who supported Bernie and hearing from so many of those people who were so belligerent in the way they dealt with that, that was like something that gave me cause for hope, too.
	Now, it's under the context of, all of a sudden, even by nine o'clock in my time, We're starting to get a sense of what Joe was going to do, you know, in a little bit.
	And so maybe they're having their writing on the wall, too, and realizing, well, you know, we better reconcile because this might not turn out the way we want it to.
	All those things are good.
	And that was encouraging, even just that little tiny interaction today.
	Thank you, Will, for that, because it made me feel that, you know, we could have that final scene.
	we could have that final scene in, uh, well, I, I, I, I keep one.
	Have you seen the scene I'm talking about?
	I'm assuming you've seen the movie.
	Yes, absolutely.
	Absolutely, I have.
	I'm sorry, it's just, it was so earnest that then we moved right into Disney World.
	That was amazing.
	I really enjoyed that.
	I live in a world of, you know, movie context.
	California.
	California.
	There we go.
	I just, I think it's one of those things where And I don't know about you, but I really hoped after 2016 that we would learn from all of our mistakes.
	And we did not.
	Like, we just didn't.
	And we're just jumping knee-deep into all of our old mistakes and learning to make them even worse.
	Like, this primary was like 2016, but just with the temperature turned up to a whole new degree.
	I don't know.
	You think this is like Trump and Cruz and Rubio?
	No, no, no.
	I'm talking on the Democratic side.
	The Republican thing was different because you have Trump with his army of proto-fascists.
	I had Nazis showing up at my door.
	I was thinking about this the other day.
	Things have changed a little bit from 2016 because they all got kicked off of Twitter or they moved away from it or you know Whatever it is but it's like at this point in the process like I was having people show up at my door and send me like pictures of myself and like my family chopped in chopped up to pieces and and and that was like this really dangerous different type of thing and one of the reasons I started sounding the alarm once I did but like in the Democratic primary it just went into total all-out warfare
	Among all of these different bases and it happened so fast and there was no way to even try and reconcile it or Institute like a ceasefire and now Now we're in this weird Moment and you know, I sometimes it's not well sometimes it's not always great to talk about politics and use analogy of war But it's almost like we're in that moment like in World War I where there's not a whole lot of advancing to do anymore.
	You know, it's just, it's body counts.
	It's just casualties and damages and hurt feelings.
	And, you know, the next few weeks are going to be rough and possibly the next couple of months are going to be rough.
	But I think we have to somehow or another come to our senses.
	Well, hey, if the United States and the Taliban can sit down at a table and shake hands and come up with some sort of agreement, which is not an agreement in favor of the U.S., but whatever, they're How have we not talked about that?
	Yeah, but no one's talked about that.
	And I think it's partly because at least what I've studied about this is that, you know, the Trump administration would be embarrassed by what they ended up negotiating.
	It wasn't a great deal on their end.
	But the deal being that we're just gonna get out of your way.
	And they'll probably be able to constitute whatever they want to do again, like they did in Afghanistan before 2001.
	But either way, get the troops home, whatever.
	But the point is that they sat down at a table and that's what all these conflicts end up having to happen that way.
	You know, you can talk about ISIS and we're going to destroy every single ISIS in the world.
	You know, 100 years from now, 20 years from now, 50 years from now, whatever that's going to be, it's going to be somebody on our side and somebody on their side sitting down and shaking hands and coming up with some agreement.
	Yeah, man, I could talk for a long time about what a tragedy.
	Almost 19 years, hundreds of thousands of people dead.
	The amount of money that we spent on Afghanistan and Iraq made sure that an entire generation was burdened with debt and had lesser opportunities, ruined our economy, ruined any government spending or projects that could have possibly happened, stagnated the American progress for like 20 years.
	20 years.
	And again, killed 100,000 people.
	Before it was all said and done, we had military operations in over 60 countries.
	And on top of that, oh yeah, we tortured and violated human rights and civil liberties, left and right.
	But you know, whatever.
	Good job.
	The ultimate point would be that we're right back where we started.
	I know.
	I'm going to save this because talking about Afghanistan is just going to bum everybody out because it's the worst possible thing.
	I mean, before Osama bin Laden, like 90.
	I'm going to save this.
	What?
	I'm going to save this because talking about Afghanistan is just going to bum everybody out because it's the worst possible thing.
	All right.
	As somebody who is out there with signs and writing really bad undergraduate college poetry and listening to old Bob Dylan albums and standing side by side with Sisters of Providence and nuns who were out there on the front lines.
	It didn't stop the war.
	You don't always stop the war.
	Most of the time you don't stop the war.
	But I can tell you I sleep better at night because I knew which side of the line I was on.
	And hopefully the people listening who are hurt and the people who are frustrated tonight and they feel like maybe change is never possible, it does help you sleep better at night.
	To know that you had your principles and you stood up for them.
	And I hope that helps because this has been Really a tiring process, this primary.
	I don't know about you, I feel like I've aged.
	I've got a little bit more gray in my beard.
	You know, maybe I'm not moving as quick as I used to, just from this primary.
	But, you know, it's taking shape.
	We are very, very thankful you've been here for the ride so far.
	I definitely am enjoying this more, if enjoying is the right word, but I'm definitely getting more out of this from the conversation I'm having with Nick and the conversation Having with our listeners and we are so so grateful for you and all the support you've given us Please continue to like and subscribe rate us all that stuff.
	It helps all the time share us on social media I think we're having some conversations here that need to be happening elsewhere But we're really glad to be the place that can give you those conversations.
	So thank you so much and I We're going to see you next week.
	I assume this race is going to give us some more stories by then.
	Who knows, Nick?
	Maybe we'll have an emergency podcast as coronavirus ravages the world.
	Anyway, so we'll talk to you here soon.
	Thank you so much, everybody.
	I am J.Y.
	Sexton.
	Nick on Twitter is at, can you hear me, smh.

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