How Do We Move Past Trump and Build a Better Country
Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman lay the groundwork for politics in the post-Trump Administration Era while discussing the difficulties of navigating Trump as an anti-president inspiring fascists. Plus, a talk about how to renew the country, build a broader consensus, and possibly save the world at the same time. To support the show and unlock exclusive content, become a patron at http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast The Muckrake Podcast's theme is "I've Seen" by Confusions - Confusion's Spotify
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And the idea that the President is still playing golf and not doing anything about it is beyond my comprehension.
You'd at least think he'd want to go off on a positive note.
I've been saying this from the day I heard they were going to send out tens of millions of ballots.
I said exactly.
Because either they were going to win, or if they didn't win, they'll take us to court.
I probably shouldn't repeat it, but I find this more embarrassing for the country than debilitating for my ability to get started. - Hey everybody, welcome to the McRake Podcast.
I'm Jared Yates Sexton, here as always with Nick Hauselman.
We find ourselves in a new era.
I broke a mirror yesterday.
the muckrake podcast but hopefully knock on wood don't spill any salt don't step on any cracks don't tell any lies hopefully in a new era of american politics i broke a mirror yesterday you did not well it was a mirror it was like a mirrored aged mirrored top of a little table so yeah and i also dropped a uh a uh light bulb maybe that Did they cancel each other out?
That's like 14 years!
I know.
That's like 14 years!
That's like three two-term presidential administrations that you are now responsible for hindering.
I will see you on the other side.
Oh my God, well, speaking of the other side, we have a lot to talk about today, particularly.
I mean, coronavirus is running wild.
We have fascists in the street in Washington DC.
Before we get to that, however, I wanted to have a quick conversation.
I tweeted about this earlier this week and I wanted to talk with Nick about it just to sort of, you know, bring it out front and just discuss it in public.
I think that considering the fact that Donald Trump is the lamest of lame ducks, has no interest in being president right now, is carrying out the most sloppy haphazard coup imaginable, and on top of that is not going away.
He's going to be a constant over the next four years or however long he's around.
He's already been offered a show on Newsmax.
There's already been talks of buying out either OANN or Newsmax as we've predicted.
He's going to continue Pretending to be President of the United States without any consequences, he's going to continue to radicalize his supporters and infect America with his own personal brand of toxin and poison.
So I wanted to have a conversation about what we do about reporting and discussing Trump moving forward.
I would love to hear what your thoughts are to begin with, because I've been thinking about this a lot and sort of mulling over it.
Well, have you ever thought that we'd get to a point where the protesters in the street in favor of Trump would be screaming at Fox News as well and saying that they're equally enemies of the people?
I mean, I wrote about it in the Daily Beast.
I saw it coming a little bit, but I have to tell you within the past few months particularly, it started to really crystallize.
And what we're watching, and by the way, I don't know if you've seen it, but Fox has lost nearly a million interactions in social media recently.
Like, there is a developing giant rift, and Trump is very well aware of it, and so Fox News is starting to lose some of its leverage, which is good news, except for when you remember that further right, further indoctrinating mediums are going to pick up the slack.
Sure.
Well, here's the question.
If, let's just say, obviously Trump has been to Fox News.
He's probably walked through and seen the infrastructure, what that looks like, and how built up that is.
And if he expects anything like that when he walks into OANN or to Newsmax, I mean, it'll be embarrassing when he realizes what is behind the machinations there.
So I'm having a hard time picturing how that would work where he would think, oh yeah, let's just take this over and we'll just restart our own version of Fox News.
That ain't going to happen like that.
And so the reach would suddenly plummets in a way that I don't know how that works.
How would you go about building a new network that would appear on the same number of stations as MSNBC and Fox News?
That's a whole other hurdle that I think would be, you know, a real thing, a real difficult thing to do, especially if God forbid we'd ever have any standards for granting licenses to people now going on the air anymore.
It's not going to be on TV.
Because exactly what you just said is the problem, is that Fox News built up its hold on media based upon what Rupert Murdoch was able to carry out in the deregulating period, where all of a sudden you could just snatch up whatever you wanted and create.
That's how Fox News came about.
Trump is going to go digital.
This is going to be something that people watch either on a website or YouTube or they download on Roku.
I have to imagine, by the way, the number of streaming devices that are going to get sold to these people is going to be shocking.
And the problem is it will probably be like everything that they do.
It'll be very haphazard, sloppy, and on top of that, these people aren't very talented.
So, you know, it's not going to rise up to the level of Fox News.
The problem is that you're going to have a lot of adherents.
You're going to have a bunch of acolytes.
Millions of acolytes.
We're going to follow Trump wherever he goes.
They're not going to care about the quality of it as long as it's feeding them the reality that they want.
So I want to have a discussion about how we're going to cover it and how I think the media should cover it.
And because I would love if we lived in a reality where Trump lost an election and he would simply, I don't know, disappear like an Al Gore.
Just sort of go away for a while and grow a beard and then show back up and I don't know, write a book.
Who knows?
Or maybe just go away in general.
It's not going to happen and Donald Trump is still the head of the Republican Party.
He's still the head of a dangerous fascistic movement in this country.
It's not a possibility to take our eyes off of him in totality.
So here's what I would propose and what I'm hoping that we're able to do on this podcast and I would really hope that anybody listening who has Any sort of a platform or any sort of a media foothold or as a pundit or a reporter.
I hope that they can hear this and possibly find room for it.
I want to report on Trump's influence of the fascistic movement without indulging in all of the stupid, venal, palace intrigue, tabloid bullshit.
I don't want to talk about whether or not Steve Bannon or Jared or Reince or whoever of these idiots in his orbit is in.
You know what I mean?
Who has his ear today?
Oh, I think him and Melania are on the rocks and they haven't been seen together recently.
I feel like we have to jettison all of that.
Meanwhile, all of his antics, all of his stupid bullshit that he tweets, I say that we don't pay attention to it anymore, but we analyze his influence over the right-wing ecosystem because we can't take our eyes off those people.
Well, there's a couple things going on there, because if he goes all digital, it doesn't really have the profound effect that TV still has, believe it or not, even though digital is still... Well, at least here's the reason.
Because so many of us can just mute it.
It'd be really easy for us to never hear any of that, because you can mute it on Twitter, you can hide it on YouTube, and those things will never really bubble up.
It'd actually be nice, because it will be, but you're going to talk about You know, like if you have a wet rug and then you pull it up and you realize all the crap that's grown under there after all those years you didn't realize?
That would be what would happen.
The other thing that's scary about that is that a digital platform is much more monetizable.
So you can ask guys like Alex Jones how he's been doing strictly on a digital platform like YouTube.
It would be on steroids with a guy like Trump because he's already got the infrastructure of people willing to give him any amount of money, probably to the detriment of their own finances, to just give it to him like these preachers do and these evangelical ministers.
There's a couple of things going on there that kind of are maybe even at odds with each other, but I would imagine that they could build something, yes, that would be—no matter how haphazard it would be, it would—I don't know if it would expand the influence as much as it would just galvanize who's already under the tent, in a way that you'd think that for four years of not being in presidency, he would dissipate.
You would hope that that would dissipate, and it's not going to happen.
First of all, I just want to say that is the perfect metaphor for Donald Trump and this movement, which is an old wet rug in a basement somewhere that you haven't moved or looked at in years.
And all of a sudden you pick it up and you're like, my God, how did this happen?
Right, I think that's a perfect metaphor because you brought up Alex Jones and you brought up these evangelical leaders and I have to say so like I know about Alex Jones because I've been on the right-wing extremism beat for a long time and the conspiracy beat for a long time.
I mean there for a while man.
I was I was listening to Alex Jones two to three times a week, you know, just really tuning into it and I have to tell you That paying that much attention to Alex Jones gave me incredible insight into what the paranoid right was cooking up.
That's one of the reasons I was able to cover Trumpism the way that it was, is because that was a precursor.
As was Glenn Beck, right?
You know, back in like 2009, 2010.
Well, the evangelical leaders that you're talking about, particularly the big, giant, mega church leaders, most Americans have no idea who they are.
You know, like they wouldn't be able to name them.
And meanwhile, these people have made millions upon millions upon millions of dollars.
They have millions of people around the world who listen to them and follow them, and most people can't name them.
So what you're saying is exactly right.
There's going to be an insular movement.
There's going to be a group of people, and I think you're exactly right on what you just said, which is the Trump movement isn't going to necessarily grow.
It's not going to necessarily expand.
And I've said this before, and we've talked about this before, it's a cult.
And cults don't usually continue growing exponentially.
They shrink eventually.
And as they shrink, they get down to the nitty and the gritty.
The most concentrated of believers.
I think that's what we're looking at.
I think it would be a mistake to simply tune it out.
Because that's one of the reasons we got to Trump in the first place.
His right-wing extremists and white terrorists were completely ignored.
And by the way, I mean, this weekend, and people laughed about it on Twitter, we had at least 10,000, if not tens of thousands of fascists show up in Washington, D.C.
I mean, they're organizing, they're fundraising, they're communicating, they attacked people, they stabbed people.
Like, we can't turn away from this thing.
But we have to reclaim our reality from Donald Trump.
We cannot let him rule our reality like he has.
Will you let me rule this podcast for a second with some Alex Jones conspiracy stuff now that you've brought him up?
I can't.
I can't wait.
OK, because, you know, you stirred something deep inside me was stirred up when you started talking about that, because I was thinking about how, OK, like, let's look at Nixon, for instance, after 1960, after he lost the election.
He went into the wilderness, you know, got a job working as a as a lawyer at a firm and, you know, doing whatever.
But like he was kind of quiet, didn't really make any noise.
You know, my conspiracy with that was that, you know, they guaranteed him a win if he helped them kill Kennedy.
You know, now that's my crazy conspiracy.
So he, you know, he's like, great, I'll take it in 68, you know, whatever.
Well, you know, however crazy that might sound, how crazy might it sound if Trump is building this thing and there is some notion of, you know, are we even allowed to say this on a podcast?
I don't even know.
But, you know, you can see where I'm going with this, where this is the kind of thing that we're building towards in some idea of reclaiming the rightfully, you know, won throne of Trump.
Something really violent might happen.
It seems reasonable at this point.
That's what's so scary about this.
It's not just reasonable.
It's something that we have to think about.
Because one of the problems with the narrative in this country is that an election happens and suddenly the slate is washed clean.
You know, all of a sudden it's like Donald Trump's been deposed.
All of a sudden Joe Biden's in charge and everything just resets and here we are in a new country and we determine a new face.
This lie of a stolen election is now the reality for Trump supporters.
That's just what they believe.
They literally believe that the presidency of the United States has been stolen.
I said it, you know, I want to say it was last week.
He's going to be an anti-president.
He's going to be in exile.
They're going to treat him like the president everywhere that he goes.
That means, and by the way, every time there is a Democratic President of the United States of America in recent history, there is an uprising among right-wing white supremacist terrorists.
There's always something, and it's either through mass shootings or bombings or just, you know, asynchronous violence.
So what you just said is exactly right.
We are still in danger.
It doesn't matter that we won the election.
We can't turn our backs on this thing.
Matter of fact, if we turn our backs on this thing, and this is the really frightening thing, and we're going to talk a little bit more about this before this episode's over, we have to get rid of this fascistic movement in this country.
Because there's a lot coming down the pike.
And if it's allowed to continue to bloom and grow and gain momentum, The future is very bleak.
So we have to pay attention to it.
But I'm done psychoanalyzing why Trump, you know, who he is and why his mind's all screwed up.
We had Mary Trump come on.
She nailed it.
This is a broken person who does broken things, right?
The only thing that I really want to talk about from now on when it comes to Donald Trump is, is the threat done with him trying to perform a coup?
And what is he making the right wing believe?
And what's it going to lead to?
And I think we need to free our minds from Trumpism, from the zero-sum game that he constantly does.
He's infected our linguistics.
He's affected the way that we talk to one another, the way we think about politics.
We should say, be gone.
Just be done and pay attention to the dangerous aspects of it.
Well, the reason why in any other normal situation we could say you're gone, we're going to ignore you, you're over, your career is finished, you lose, is because most incumbents who lose an election don't get Six million more votes in the second election that they have, that they'd ultimately lose.
That never happens.
And because of this huge growth, and he's widened his grip over America, the frickin' Republicans now need to be beholden to him still, because they need those same votes, and they know that Trump is going to say, oh, he already did it today for the governor of Ohio.
They know with one tweet, he could end someone else's political career.
Or a couple tweets and maybe a little speech.
Who knows how long it would take, but not much.
It's almost mind-boggling.
I'm not even sure how we're supposed to conceptualize this, but it also adds more fuel to this notion that it was stolen from him.
This is where the people are with this mindset.
You want to end fascism.
Is there a handbook we can read about how to end fascism?
Yeah, I believe it was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, I believe was his name.
He gave us a pretty good guide on it.
And by the way, what you do is you combat fascism as an ideology, as an economic problem, and as a last resort, a military problem.
Murals!
That's a solution.
Murals.
Let's start painting the murals all over the place, right?
That was a big one.
Well, let's hire some people to do some stuff.
And, you know, we were talking before this thing.
There was a really startling segment and tweet that has happened.
There was a nurse in South Dakota who has been treating COVID-19 patients who are dying.
And as they're dying, as they're being killed by this virus, she was so shocked as she explained this, as they're dying, they're yelling at her, COVID's not real.
This is not happening.
That mindset, I mean, it's the most perfect example of what Trumpism has done and what this cultish behavior is.
The fact that a disease could be killing you and you're denying it as it's happened, I think shows us the hold that this is going to have on people and the fight that we have ahead of us.
It's not even... by the way, that reaction against the nurses is when they say, you know, here's... you gotta FaceTime your family.
This is probably the last time you're going to be able to talk to them.
You need to say goodbye.
Yeah.
And their response is, F you.
I have lung cancer.
I have something else.
This is not COVID.
This can't be happening.
And, you know, we've heard a lot of other anecdotal evidence of people actually coming to grips with this at the very end, realizing, oh, shit, I really wasn't smart about how I was living my life.
And now I can't believe this.
and there I'm dead.
And the reason why they know that they need to make this face on call is they're looking at the oxygen levels.
It's like you can't sustain life.
These people are really about to be dead anyway, intubated, and that's it.
It really startled me because I looked through her thread, which went viral, and then I saw her interview on CNN.
And she's actually not even overcome emotionally on CNN talking about it anymore.
It's probably now so it's overwhelmed her to the point where there is no emotion when she's relating these stories of what she's going through in South Dakota, which we all know was where they had this big motorcycle thing And that's really where it started to spread.
Now, here's the other thing.
You know, a lot of people are probably living in the space where they're saying, You know what?
I get it or I don't get it.
It's just, you know, I'm going to live my life and, you know, if it gets me, it gets me, oh well.
Like, that might, that's sort of where they're living at this point, we're moving towards.
And that's all well and good, except for that little detail that you would kill three or four other people in the process.
And that's always been the disconnect.
The asymptomatic transmission of this disease has always been the thing that seems to stymie the Republicans and the people who follow Trump.
And that is the root issue I think that we have.
They don't seem to recognize that they can kill other people. - And it's not just on the right.
Like, I know a lot of people who believe in science, who are intelligent people, academics, liberals, you know, people who voted for Biden and hate Donald Trump, and even they are taking risks right now that are not great.
You know, because they're tired of this thing and they're ready to do whatever.
And I want to point out, like, I'm sure you saw this as well, there was a poll that came out and said 38% of Americans are planning a Thanksgiving right now with 10 or more people.
Like, and that's massive.
You know, that's just a small super spreader event.
There's a difference, I think, in all of this between people who are having a hard time with it and people who are having a hard time Like, being in seclusion for so long.
I am.
It's crazy to me.
Like, it's such a... You know, something we talk about in passing in this show, but as honest as... I mean, the mental health effect of all this is terrible.
It really, really is.
It takes a toll on you.
But there's people who are having a hard time with that and sort of wrapping their heads around how to live in a pandemic and how to survive in this.
Not to mention that American individualism is terrible in this.
We're not good with mandates.
We're not good with coming together and taking care of other people.
But there's a secondary thing, and I want to talk about this, and I want to talk about how this dovetails into the fascistic thing that we're talking about.
I don't think that the way to combat Trumpist, Trump loyalist, or, you know, COVID deniers, I don't think necessarily, and I think we've seen this, I think that we've seen ample evidence of this, and this nurse telling us this should just be the cherry on top.
I don't think that the way to convince people or the way to change their reality is to Hit them head on.
I don't think it's about attacking them with facts or science or any of that stuff.
I think if any of this is going to get through, and if anything is going to change, it's going to be coming in the back door.
Because I think a lot of what we're talking about right now is an economic motivation that people have, or a political motivation that people have, in order to believe in something that is contradictory.
And so I think that what we have to do is like so for instance with this with the mask thing.
Don't you think people would feel a lot better about the economy shutting down or restrictions on businesses if there was an economic stimulus plan that somehow or another got them ahead?
Wouldn't they suddenly get behind something like that much more than they would being told to shelter in place while not being able to work?
Every economist I've ever spoken to in the last six months have stressed that there's no need to have either lockdown or economic destruction.
They don't work together.
You can have the lockdown and stimulus and keep the economy going, but without the mask idea and without leadership, it doesn't help.
Now, in your backyard, you have this woman, Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Please tell me she doesn't represent your part of Georgia, does she?
She does not, but I'm sure she'd be welcome down here.
By the way, QAnon.
The QAnon representative, by the way.
Just QAnon through and through.
Yeah, she's sitting there doing CrossFit in her hotel room because she thinks that the gyms aren't open, which they are!
They are open!
So it's like, then she goes to like, oh, she criticizes the Democrats for having meetings on a Sunday morning when she wants to go to church.
And the picture is three people with her have masks, and she's not wearing a mask and about to go into church and sing and do all this kind of stuff.
She's going to get COVID.
There's no doubt in my mind she's going to get it.
And here's the only problem with that is we can't vilify anybody for getting COVID.
That's my worry because you start pointing fingers.
Oh, you clearly, you must not have been careful.
You weren't safe.
You didn't wear a mask.
Arne Duncan, of all people, just got it in Chicago.
Neera Tanden got it too.
They were all, Their stories are the same.
We were completely careful.
We didn't talk to anybody.
We didn't go out anywhere.
We have no idea how we got it.
This is the secret virus here that sneaks around.
But this is the problem though is without being able to understand how important masks are, for instance, we could easily.
I never got mine.
gotten the control of this a long time ago and kept the economy going and here we are now it just gets worse every day that goes by that we haven't done any kind of stimulus and you know it's clear that we absolutely need it because when even those twelve hundred dollar checks everyone got back in April I didn't get one I never got mine I never got mine you know did you where's my check Nick Were you eligible for it?
Yes, I was eligible.
Yes, I'm a liberal arts professor.
I'm eligible.
Okay, I don't know.
Call Marjorie and see if she'll get it for you.
It really did seem to help a lot of people.
That was what was interesting.
People got a little bit ahead for that one month because they could pay something they haven't been able to pay for months.
That was really important and that's all we need to do.
What is money?
What is time?
What is money?
Do you remember, Nick, Now that you mention it, do you remember outrage among Republicans and Trumpists over that $1,200 payment?
Do you remember a bunch of people marching in the streets?
Do not give me $1,200!
I don't remember that.
Neither do I.
I don't remember that.
So I'll just say first and foremost, the biggest bullshit thing is that dichotomous division between shutdown or economic stability.
Because it's stupid.
It cost us so much money.
So much money that we didn't shut this thing down and just pay people to stay at home for long enough to let this thing go away.
And here's the problem.
And here's the issue that we're facing.
To do that would suddenly mean that the government can do things.
And by the way, maybe the government has something to say about how the economy is run.
The people who are powerful and wealthy do not want any of us thinking that the government can ever come anywhere near the market or anywhere near our economy.
And to even begin thinking about that opens up a whole range of possibilities.
Now, we were talking about this before we started recording.
In the EU right now, there was a giant stimulus package which just got blocked.
Biden right now is talking about possible things that we could do.
What's being floated?
$10,000 worth of student loan forgiveness.
Not enough.
It's not enough.
Listen, thank you.
I appreciate the thought.
And by the way, the Republicans are going to act like it's a socialist dictatorial takeover when they talk about this.
$10,000 for someone who went to college and relied on loans is not even an appetizer.
It's like the iced tea that they bring you before you eat your dinner.
And why is it $10,000, by the way, Nick?
Because it's trying to save our housing market.
It's trying to take $10,000 worth of student debt and reinvest it in housing down payments.
Here's the thing, and this is what no one wants to talk about because the market's up.
Our economy's in deep shit.
It's in deep shit.
It is, I mean, it is a stack of teacups a mile high, and it is moving left and right.
And if you want to talk about fascism, What happens when economies crash and the myth of a country starts to waver?
Fascism grows.
And I'm telling you right now, we have a lot of people who are alienated and frustrated and fascism is looking pretty good to them in terms of a way to empower themselves.
Because fascism is about taking the problems of capitalism and making them feel better.
And making it feel like you have power and enforcing austerity on other people.
Right now, we have to do something to save this economy and to save us from COVID.
Those two things, they're inextricably linked.
And we have to stop pretending like it's either a shutdown or the economy.
It's total and utter bullshit.
Well, more of that bullshit that's wrapped into individuals is, okay, so Marjorie Taylor Greene, this lady, says, you know, Sleepy Joe says masks are patriotic.
Now I get where, they're not really patriotic in my mind, they're simply like a social, a public health crisis solution, but he calls it patriotic.
He's trying to be a leader.
I get it.
So she says, masks aren't, they are oppressive.
Masks are oppressive.
Democrats want to control every aspect of your life.
Masks are just the start.
So the rallying cry against these things is that they want to oppress you.
And yet they continually invite the oppression from guys like Trump without even realizing And perhaps that's the, I guess that's the genius of Trump, is that he's been able to convince these people to want fascism and reject what they perceive as fascism, when really that part of it is just for the betterment of mankind.
It really is.
And when you put it that way, when I put it that way, You start to realize how far apart we are and how there's never going to be an equal footing where we can figure out a way to communicate with each other.
So I don't think that you have to.
I think that's the thing, is the economic incentive and the political incentive.
So what Marjorie is talking about, and she is just a stone cold moron, it has no basis in reality.
By the way, you're around leftist Twitter.
Leftist Twitter can't agree on shit.
Shit.
Leftists can't agree on anything.
The idea of a left-wing dictator in this country consolidating power and rule?
Are you kidding me?
We wouldn't be able to agree on the color of our uniforms, much less what we would carry out.
It's ridiculous.
It's a total lie.
The problem is that people have an economic and a political incentive to believe it.
So what we need to do is we need to go big or go home.
We need to throw some money at this problem.
We need to invest in the American people.
We need to work on the inequality of our economy.
I was talking last night on my Bourbon Talk livestream.
I think that we need to go into middle America and just reinvigorate industry and build windmills, build solar panels, Build all these alternative energy things because, by the way, climate change is not only real, but if you want to see what fascism can do, wait until all of a sudden resources start declining and land starts declining and all of a sudden all these people who are separated start getting condensed in the middle.
Holy shit!
But I would say go ahead and pay people to believe in climate change.
And if they have an economic incentive to believe in climate change and it means having factories and jobs, you better damn well believe it that they're gonna get on board for alternative energy, right?
And all of a sudden we're not having conversations about, oh the Democrats are doing this, they're doing that, they're doing that.
If you give people an incentive beyond the political incentive, they'll go with it.
So we have to do what FDR did.
We have to take the temperature off a little bit.
Cool it down a little bit, right?
So we're not having terrorist attacks.
So we're not having violence in the streets.
We have to basically pay people to reinvest in society and feel like they have hope in something approaching in America or a better vision.
And if we don't do that, I'm sorry to tell you, close up shop.
That's the end of it.
Because something is becoming very obvious.
Donald Trump is a precursor.
He is a precursor for something larger, more focused, more disciplined, smarter, and more competent.
And if we don't get this thing put to bed, if we don't figure out a way to make this country work, this country is going to fall apart and fascism is going to rise from its grave.
Bear with me for one second because I've used this analogy before, and it might take a second to even understand how I got there.
But I used to talk about how the Palestinians' plight in comparison to what the Israelis are trying to do and how they're trying to make that all work.
And what we've seen in the past were like in Gaza when they've had settlements that they've abandoned.
And the Palestinians just kind of, instead of taking it over and using the infrastructure, they just destroy everything that was in there.
Nice buildings, things they could use that would really help their lives.
And so my take on it was, well, the only way they're ever going to make that work is if, okay, they go into these terrible neighborhoods, these really downtrodden neighborhoods, and they build like a state-of-the-art hospital.
And someone's like, well, they're just going to blow that up.
I'm like, OK.
They go and they build another hospital.
Like, they literally keep doing this until eventually they understand we are here trying to help you.
OK, so what you're describing is in some weird way is that we need to convince the right and the people who are Trumpists that the government is here to help you and that they can help you if you let them.
Right.
It sounds like that's what you're saying.
Well, I'll just say real fast just to bring this home because I think there's a lot of argument to be made about Israelis and Palestinians and this isn't the episode to do that.
I would make it even closer and more modern which is affordable care.
People thought that that was a tyrannical takeover.
They love it.
Yeah.
They love it because it helps people go out and do things that help people.
And when they have an economic incentive to believe, they will believe.
But until then, they have every incentive not to believe.
And right now, we're giving them alienation in return.
Do you remember what happened in the midterms as soon as they passed Obamacare?
Everybody that passed it in the democratic society lost, right?
Obama's almost supermajority in the Senate just disappeared overnight.
The House was already under control of the Republicans as it was.
They lost control of the government for this because they were so vilified for it.
I will say real fast, just to get the record set, one of the biggest faults of the Obama administration, and I know why they did it, but it doesn't make it any better, is that they did some really impressive things, but they were afraid to spike the football.
They were afraid to take the credit for the things that they did.
This is the part where you say you wish that they take the football and throw it as hard as they could into Joe Lieberman's groin like they did in the last, what was that, the Bill Burt Reynolds movie?
The Longest Yard?
The Longest Yard?
I'll tell you what, if you can make a movie of a football being thrown at Joe Lieberman's crotch for the Like, just on repeat for two and a half hours, I'm on board.
For sure.
I'm on board.
I mean, there wasn't a bigger laugh in the theater when he does it, because then they say, OK, same play.
And they do it again to the warden.
I will say, real fast, so I'm on the record.
I think this is important.
Joe Lieberman might have been the worst vice presidential pick, besides maybe Sarah Palin, since Andrew Johnson.
Since Andrew Johnson, which led to the end of Reconstruction and the continuance of white supremacy in America.
Joe Lieberman was that big of a disastrous pick.
And his legacy is that you and me and the people that we love and care about do not have comprehensive health care.
He is the worst.
Yeah, he was probably the worst elected official since Senator Palpatine was elected to his position.
And it's no surprise they look alike.
So yeah, it really was frustrating.
So here's what you have.
But again, they knew that.
I think the Democrats knew, you know what, we're going to take a huge hit for this.
But we knew how important it was to get Obamacare passed.
And then you're right, years later, it's like gay marriage.
I mean, I think we've shifted with gay marriage.
That's why they're so afraid of Second Amendment stuff, right?
Because if we get any kind of laws passed six, seven years from now, everyone's like, yeah, this is nice.
No one's mass killing each other anymore in the streets.
Maybe we should keep this as a law or maybe look at it to do some more with that.
But yeah, in reality, I remember having discussions with Republicans saying Obamacare, if it passes, will be the destruction of society.
And I really think they meant it.
They thought that their buildings would fall down like a nuclear bomb hit.
Yep.
Well, and let's just be clear about something.
One of the big, giant problems with the Democratic Party for the past 30 years is that the Democratic Party is so damn terrified that the Republicans are going to call them socialists and that they're going to call them liberals and that they're going to say they're trying to create a big government and they're trying to...
Oh my god, please sir, please sir, don't call me a liberal.
Do not call me a progressive.
I mean, listen, neoliberalism is wonderful.
No, this is market-based.
That's absolutely... And then what happens?
They slap them around and they call them socialists and liberals even if they do what the Republicans wanted them to do in the first place.
So here's the thing, Jack.
Quit worrying about it and pass the shit that you want to pass.
Go big or go home.
Joe Biden, you're going to be the 46th President of the United States of America.
This is what you've wanted your entire career.
You got it.
Do you just want to go in and have the Republicans deadlock literally everything and have the Supreme Court just swat everything down?
Or do you want to go in with guns blazing and say, this is what we're doing.
It's going to help people.
And by the way, the Supreme Court right now is trying to take jobs away from you.
So do you want that or do you want me to pack the court?
And all of a sudden you have middle America that's like, fuck the Supreme Court, I want jobs.
Right.
So you can change this thing.
By the way, the Supreme Court blinked because they didn't want it on their hands, millions of people dead.
And that's basically what the argument would be with repealing Obamacare.
You would go up in front of the Supreme Court and say, Do you really want, Alito, your legacy to be that you killed a bunch of people because you took away their health care with this decision?
And they clearly don't seem to want to do that right now.
So they have a recognition of what their legacy could be as well.
This word legacy is thrown around way too easily these days.
I think that that's a really important point to make, that there might actually be some faith in the fact that the Supreme Court might have a conscience as well.
But you are absolutely right.
The idea that they would have to go in there, and again, this is why the Senate races in Georgia are so, so important, because if they could just get those two, and it doesn't even look like they're going to win either of them now.
Do you have a good feeling for those races?
Yeah, conventional wisdom thinks that they have a better chance of both winning at this point.
Oh, really?
I get bad vibes.
I mean, it's just my vibes.
I gotta play better vibes.
That Warnock is... I don't know.
I feel like they're getting outraised with money and all that stuff.
Money doesn't matter anymore.
That's the sad truth of it.
As long as you keep pace.
It's like what we were talking about the other day.
These consultants and strategists just leech off of campaigns left and right.
So it's not even about money anymore.
At this point it's It's more about, are they going to call people to the polls to vote for something?
And that's something that Ossoff and Warnock both have to figure out, is what do they stand for?
Because listen, I'm going to vote for them.
I'm in Georgia.
I think that they should both win over their opponents who are terrible politicians, who are completely unethical, and they're batshit insane.
So I'm going to vote for both Ossoff and Warnock.
But I'm telling you something right now, I've been watching their ads for, God, it feels like 20 years.
They don't stand for anything.
They don't tell you what they want to go.
Warnings ads!
Have you watched any of these things?
No.
Oh my god!
They're literally like, I like puppies.
And that's not an exaggeration.
It's literally, I like puppies.
That is a big part of his ad campaign right now.
You do not get Georgians to vote Democratic in a presidential election and then go out and send two senators in special elections to help that person get a majority unless you give a plan that they should be voting for.
Because for whatever reason, Americans love divided government.
They love having one branch of one party and another branch of another.
They love it.
They can't get enough of it, man.
It's better than sliced pizza.
But the only way you're going to pull this off is if you tell people what you actually believe, which brings us back to the democratic problem, which is they need to start making a plan.
They need to go big or they need to go home.
All this dancing around, tap dancing around ideology.
It's going to fail.
Alright, so on that note, we're gonna come back on Friday for our usual second episode, but we're gonna have an extra special bonus episode for our Patreon subscribers.
All you gotta do is go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast become a patron in order to unlock that.
We're gonna tape a reaction to 1994's Forrest Gump.
And Nick and I are going to break down the movie.
We're going to talk about the movie itself, but we're also going to talk about the political elements of it.
Obviously, this touches on a bunch of moments, but we're also going to talk about how history is portrayed in popular culture, what it does to our beliefs, and what that sort of perpetuates.
So we've already talked about it.
We're going to have a spirited discussion.
It'll get emotional.
It might even get emotional.
There might be a couple tears here and there.
So, again, that's patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
In the meantime, everybody, you can find Nick over at Can You Hear Me?
