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Oct. 18, 2022 - The Muckrake Political Podcast

50:21

Midterm Blues With Danielle Moodie

Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman welcome to the show Danielle Moodie, host of #WokeAF Daily and co-host of #democracyish podcasts, to discuss how it looks for Democrats and whether polling should be trusted. They then talk about a rising bout of anti-semitism amongst the GOP and why it's taking root in the party. Support The Muckrake Podcast at http://www.patreon.com/muckrakepodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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	Hey, everybody, welcome to the Muckrake Podcast.
	I am here with Nick Halseman.
	We have a really special show.
	We got Daniel Moody in the house and we'll get to Daniel here in just a second.
	But to go ahead and do a little bit of housecleaning this Thursday, October 20th, 7 p.m.
	Eastern, it's time again to get together.
	We're going to have a live show, a live taping of the Weekender Edition.
	If you want to hang out, see what Nick and I have to say.
	See other people.
	Have a good time.
	All you have to do is go to patreon.com slash muckrank podcast.
	That's this Thursday, October 20th at 7pm Eastern.
	And on that note, speaking of live shows, I'm really excited about this.
	We have just formed a partnership, a formidable partnership with the great, great host of Democracy-ish.
	I've been practicing Rolling that off the tongue all day, and I'm a Hoosier, and it fails every time, Nick.
	You rushed it.
	I rushed it!
	That's exactly... I got ahead of my skis.
	But the Muckrake Podcast and Democracyish are going to team up on election night.
	That's Tuesday, November 8th at 8 p.m.
	Eastern.
	That means that you are going to have exclusive coverage that, quite frankly, cuts beyond all of the bullshit that, unfortunately, you're going to be seeing on the major airwaves.
	And one of the people to join us, along with friend of the pod, Wajahat Ali, is Danielle Moody, who is here with us today.
	Danielle is the host of the Woke AF podcast and co-host of, again, Democracy-ish with Wajahat Ali.
	Danielle, thanks for joining us.
	Thank you so much for having me.
	You know, you're a delightful person, and I hate that we have to have delightful people on the podcast to talk about just absolutely horrendous shit.
	But Danielle, we are a little ways out from this midterm election, which we're going to have this exclusive coverage.
	Nick and I have been talking for a while about how these narratives form, how these campaigns sort of take place over time.
	There was a brief moment where it felt like maybe the Democratic Party was turning things around.
	Maybe momentum was on their side.
	Nick and I had both talked about fearing that that had happened too early, which is a story time and time again.
	Unfortunately, it feels as if things have turned a little bit.
	We're watching, I would say one of the most repulsive slates of candidates in recent modern American political history.
	We have now seen Herschel Walker, who we could talk about multiple episodes here, flashing a prop police badge at a debate and somehow or another the modern conventional ideas that he overperformed.
	Mehmet Oz has continued to embarrass himself.
	Carrie Lake and Blake Masters have already set the table for claiming that their elections were stolen.
	Um, Danielle, how are you feeling about things?
	And why are you positively optimistic about everything?
	Oh, my God, what a wonderful setup.
	So how am I feeling?
	Absolutely fucking nauseous.
	Yep.
	Um, I will say that I think to your to your opener that, um, I do think that Democrats may have had the early advantage, but then lost ground with deciding how to continue to pummel Republicans on their fascism and authoritarianism.
	I mean, you're watching these debates and some of the things that are coming out of these folks' mouths, particularly Marjorie Taylor Greene, Yeah.
	Um, it's not things to be shrugged off, right?
	Like, when you hear Republicans saying that, uh, Democrats are trying to kill us, when you hear things, you know, that are planting the seeds for an election being stolen if you lose, but if you win then all was good, right?
	When you hear these things like, and Democrats are not punching back, as I continue to say, with the level of weight that is required.
	When your political opponents decide to drag you to the sewer, you can't operate on higher ground.
	You have got to meet them where they are, because you're allowing for the voters to make the decisions that, what, that they think better of themselves?
	And we need to understand that, like, people need to be told, why is this your opponent?
	How are they different?
	Why is the Republican Party now just not the party of quote-unquote family values and of being pro-life?
	That they are dangerous.
	And if you're not laying out Right?
	That case for the American people, every time that you have a microphone in front of you, then what are you doing?
	Right?
	You're allowing them to set the narrative and then putting Democrats once again on the defensive.
	So I think we had this great momentum, right, with the Dobbs decision in June.
	But if you're not continuing to not just talk about abortion, but talk about all the ways in which this country is getting ready to be pivoted backwards, and I'm not talking about A couple of decades.
	I'm talking about a couple of centuries, right?
	Then who's handling your messaging?
	Because it shouldn't be this hard.
	I'm kind of curious in this 2022 is a counterpoint.
	Is it possible that voters do not care who the person is they're voting for and what their values are and they're just wanting a rubber stamp for the things that they're talking about which gives them sort of value in that and that gives them a nobility or the the honor because they know personal Walker Whatever he's done clearly doesn't match what he's saying, but they know he'll vote that way.
	So have we gotten to the point now where it doesn't even matter what the character of the candidate is anymore?
	Well, I'll just go ahead and say, I think someone like a Herschel Walker doesn't happen in a vacuum.
	There is no ability whatsoever for a Herschel Walker to suddenly become the king.
	And even though he's a Georgian hero, right?
	I mean, he is.
	He's like a folk hero in Georgia.
	But that being said, it is so obvious that he's incompetent.
	He has no ability whatsoever.
	I mean, literally, if you isolate any moment from that debate with Raphael Warnock, You had one serious person on the stage, and you had another person that is in need of an intervention.
	And you do not have a candidate like Hershel Walker, and I'm glad that you brought up Marjorie Taylor Greene because her certain style of absolute batshit craziness It's somehow or another sort of inoculated her from like serious analysis.
	Like we kind of like put her over here and don't pay attention to her.
	But a slate of candidates like this, Nick, I think it speaks to an absolute collapse of faith in our system.
	And it basically says the Republican Party has made, and I've said it before, it's sort of like a post-modern recognition, which is representative government isn't real, right?
	You're not having people who are staying up all night worrying over votes, who are considering what's going to happen.
	What you actually need is you need automatons.
	You need people who are going to vote along the lines that a Trumpist agenda is going to carry out.
	And meanwhile, and I was writing about this this weekend, There's a reason to lack faith in this system.
	There's a reason to lack faith in our representative government.
	Because it has been co-opted.
	It has been corrupted.
	And special interests have completely taken over any sort of a political conscience that you could look for.
	So in a way, the Republican Party has been weaponized to accept that.
	But I think this is a larger societal problem.
	You don't reach this point, and Danielle, I'd love to hear what you have to say about it.
	You don't reach this point unless something has seriously gone wrong on like every possible level, you know, top down to a granular level.
	Something has been corrupted, and this lack of faith, I think, has set the table for, I mean, not just an embarrassment, but like a disturbing reality.
	And let me add this, Nick, to your point, have we reached a point where character doesn't matter?
	Well, Donald Trump brought us to this point, right?
	Because Donald Trump's character was not excavated in the way that it should.
	His entire campaign was looked at as a joke, and by which he was given all of the airtime that he could possibly have wanted.
	We knew he wasn't going to pay for it, and he didn't need to, because cable news allowed him to just have a full runway, right, full concert press.
	And so when we were not digging into his character and understanding that Donald Trump raved about grabbing women against their will, right, when we did not call that out and just said, oh, that's just a locker room talk, and we allowed Republicans to walk away with that.
	When he was saying, literally came down the escalator, referring to Mexicans as rapists and murderers, when Donald Trump wasn't beaten back and called a racist, right, and said, well, I don't know if he's really racist.
	That's what the media did.
	So we allowed for Donald Trump, who is the most characterly flawed person to ever run for office in this country, to drag our politics to the gutter.
	So does character matter?
	Absolutely.
	But we allowed for Donald Trump on the left to be considered a joke, to not be considered, to not be combated in a serious way.
	And then what we allowed to open the floodgates for was the wave of Trumpism that is a, that this country is a wash in, and frankly is drowning in.
	Because character actually does matter, right?
	Truth matters.
	But we have allowed us to both sides things that are very much black and white.
	Are you a good person or are you evil?
	I think my point then would be, there is one party where it doesn't matter, right?
	I think that's really what we're making a point is, is that clearly, because look at the candidates they tend to run.
	Roy Moore, direct connection to what's happening with Personal Walker, it's frightening.
	And this is the problem because I don't see how you ever, how do you convince an entire party or the electorate of that party to start valuing character again?
	I can't even wrap my head around that.
	I mean, I would just say that how do you, I'm not trying to convince the deplorables.
	And I think that that's the problem with Democrats in general, is that what we're trying to, I'm not trying to convince the deplorables.
	I'm not trying to convince the people that are wearing Donald Trump muscle t-shirts.
	Like literally, they have this warped view of Donald Trump as like some Superman hero with all these muscles.
	And I'm like, do you even see how ridiculous this is?
	The people that we need to convince are the ones that are being told that the economy is more important than abortion right now.
	That those dots are not being connected.
	That if I'm saddled down with children that I cannot afford, and I am a part of a government structure where the party that is telling me that I have no bodily autonomy is also not providing childcare tax credits or providing me with any ability to care for this expanded family that I did not want.
	Right?
	If I, if the Democratic Party is not connecting the dots back to why this is an economic issue, to why every issue from climate to abortion is an economic issue, then who are, who's really failing here?
	Right?
	So it is, I mean, this is about messaging at the, at the end of the day, and who is good and who is not.
	And for Republicans, they don't let the truth get in the way of a good story.
	And the Democrats are left to do too much explaining when they all need to be doing is calling out.
	So, Nick, I don't know if you remember this, but a couple of weeks ago we were doing an episode and I was talking about the strategists and consultants within the Democratic Party.
	And I had had a couple of people who were reaching out to me who were saying, you know, like after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, there was like this message among Democratic strategists that was like, don't worry, they've already taken care of it.
	We don't have to push this.
	We don't have to talk about it.
	We don't even have to mention it.
	In fact, it will only hurt us by mentioning it more.
	Let the Republicans do that.
	I have to tell you, since that episode and since those couple of strategists and consultants reached out to me, the floodgates have opened.
	And since we talked about that, I have had no less than a half dozen strategists who have reached out to me in order to talk about how pissed off they are about what's going on within the party.
	To a person, it's people who are saying, the only thing that's happening in terms of Roe v. Wade and the threat from the Republican Party, basically it has been siloed.
	There's fundraising, and then there's the political apparatus, the campaign apparatus.
	And fundraising, do whatever you need.
	Talk about fascism, talk about authoritarianism, period.
	That's what goes ahead and sort of, you know, makes the money come in.
	On the other hand, politically, they've been told to stay away from it.
	And a large reason, and Danielle went ahead and touched on that, is because, again, of this democratic bullshit that has been in place for decades now, that they're going to somehow or another, and again, this is always what it is, they're going to find a completely mythological voter in Dayton, Ohio, Right.
	Who cares about their bank, their checkbook, but they're made a little bit uncomfortable by social progress.
	That bird has flown.
	And in fact, I would go ahead and make the argument and Danielle brought this up.
	I don't think it's the deplorables you have to reach.
	It's the people in America who have decided that both parties are full of shit, that our representative government does not represent them, that there's nothing that can change regardless of who is president, who's in charge of Congress, whatever.
	And they literally have checked out to the point because they're so bummed out by what has happened.
	And I have to tell you that there are an army of people within the Democratic Party, and these strategists are coming out of the woodwork right now, screaming, I know something's wrong, and I'm watching the party refuse to capitalize on any of these issues or any of the openings that are there.
	Because I have to tell you, these candidates, these Republican candidates, they're losers.
	They are born losers, and not one of them should be capable of winning an election at this point.
	I mean, I wish that we had some.
	I mean, I thought that we did.
	I guess we did.
	We had a bar for who politicians should be, who our representatives should be.
	And when I look at a Hershel Walker, if I was a Republican that was in my right mind, right, which I don't know who they are, but if I was a Republican that was in my right mind, I would feel insulted.
	That this is who you are choosing to represent my values?
	When I look at him, when I look at JD Banz, when I'm looking at these people and I'm saying, I look at Mehmet Oz, like these are the people that you have chosen, like this is how far the party has gone, that this is who you're showcasing as the opponent to Democrats right now?
	And that's the way that I feel like Democrats should be talking about this.
	You should want more, right?
	You don't need to like everything about us, but you should want more for yourselves and for this country than what's being presented to you.
	I wanted to comment on the fact that the idea that the Democratic strategist didn't want to talk much about abortion and Roe v. Wade after the decision came down made sense, I think, in the beginning because the energy was just there, right?
	They had more women than ever registering to vote.
	They were all getting set to deal with this come November.
	But here's the thing I don't want to be overlooked because we talked about this in the past a lot about the Supreme Court itself.
	Um, I need to look a little bit more into the fine workings of how they decide what they see and when and when they wrote on these things.
	But there's no doubt in my mind that they knew that when they decided to do this, when they did in March or whatever it was, they knew that the energy would just dissipate before the election.
	And they didn't want to do it anywhere close to that, knowing because you got to, I guarantee you Lito and Thomas, these guys are looking at the polls too.
	Yeah.
	Real fast, I just want to add on to that because I think you just nailed something.
	Not only is it when the decision was released, and in the lead up to like an election, the summer and the fall are completely disconnected.
	Yeah.
	And not only was it released in the summer which allowed it time to dissipate, the leak That leak gave it an early runtime, and we talked about our suspicions about who released it.
	There is no doubt at this point it was the conservatives that released and leaked that decision to go ahead and make this old news.
	I think you nailed that, yeah.
	Yeah, and so I guess, do we feel like that energy has dissipated?
	Because to me it does, and I'm kind of curious if you're looking at polls or you're just out there listening to people, if you feel like we've lost that urgency that we had, you know, earlier this year.
	I mean, I do.
	I think that the level of urgency has been lost, has been deflated in a way.
	But I also think that it's about the inability of the Democrats to connect these issues, right?
	When you have it framed in the media that says, well, do you think that Democrats did the wrong thing by putting millions of dollars behind abortion instead of kitchen table issues?
	How is the amount of mouths that are around your kitchen table not a kitchen table issue?
	So when you are couching the things that matter to women and people with uteruses as saying like, oh, it's only this small group over here, as opposed to saying how it connects to everything else, that's what the voters need.
	That's what the Democrats needed to have done.
	So it's not just about capitalizing on the Herschel Walker, you know, abortion scandal, right?
	And his ability to make decisions about his future and the future of his family, and then denying, right, millions of people the same ability that he was afforded, right?
	So yes, you can use these scandals, but it's also about keeping the conversation going and allowing people to connect the dots.
	And I want to go ahead, because this is something we need to talk about too, but I want to go ahead and cap off on that.
	The Democratic Party did not release a plan of what would happen if they were given power in November.
	Period.
	There was no plan of how to codify Roe v. Wade into law.
	There was no, this is what we will do, this is what you are voting on.
	The Democratic Party let that momentum move.
	And one of the things that we have found, and we were talking about this before we started recording, And I think, Danielle, you and I, I think we're talking about these polls, and Nick, you said you did too.
	Like, you read these stories in something like the New York Times or the Washington Post, and if you know what you're looking for, you recognize the signs.
	You understand the narrative that's being put forward here.
	These polls that are being spotlight right now leading into the final stretch of this campaign, what we're seeing is that in one poll after another from New York Times, Monmouth, you name it, all of them say that the trend right now is Republican, In the direction of the Republicans saying that they trust Republicans to run the economy.
	Which, by the way, if you want to know about horseshit mythology, that's about the worst horseshit mythology ever.
	That's like handing a spiraling plane over to a passenger to go ahead and run it into the ground.
	That's what that is.
	In the midst of all of this, what we keep finding, and this is what drives me up the fucking wall, we treat the economy like it's a separate issue.
	Like it's something that has nothing to do with national security, with abortion, with Every single part of this.
	And when we do that, and the Democrats, by the way, allow that to happen.
	They have no ability whatsoever, and it's either an unwillingness or an incapability.
	It's one or the other depending upon the individual or the candidate.
	They have lost the ability to say there are reasons, economic reasons, why things like the overturning of Roe v. Wade have happened.
	There are economic reasons why that they're saying now there is a nearly 100% possibility of a recession at this point.
	Like, there are reasons why this is happening that can be explained.
	And meanwhile, New York Times, Washington Post, NBC News, you name it, all of the mainstream sort of gatekeepers, they will not explain that to people.
	They treat it like it's phenomena that doesn't have anything to do with one another, and the Democratic Party, and Danielle, I'd love to hear what you have to say about this, it's either an unwillingness or an incapability to do it, and it has hamstrung them, I mean, for decades now, but in this election particularly, if it goes the way it looks like it's going, this is on them.
	This is on them for not having a different message or some type of a plan.
	The sad thing is, is that, Jared, when you say that this is on them, it's going to be on top of us.
	That's right.
	Right?
	Like, do you know what I'm saying?
	Like, so, so they're missing.
	Democrats operate, and I just want to say, and then I'll answer your question.
	Democrats operate in a way, right now, that they have this belief that they're going to get a second bite at the apple.
	That they have the belief that this election, this midterm election, isn't the last fair and free election this country is going to see.
	That when you allow 300 and some odd election deniers to take hold of power at the state, local, and federal level, and think that somehow they're going to continue to look at the Constitution as the living, breathing document that it is?
	Like, you're insane!
	So, you know, I look at these issues and I think that you're right.
	They do, they create this idea around the economy.
	And either they're talking about the Dow, right?
	Either they're talking about the Dow tanking, they're talking about these things that don't affect real people's lives.
	Do you know what is also an economic issue outside of abortion that Americans are waking up to?
	Climate change.
	I don't know if we think that we have an abundance of money that is wrapped up in FEMA that is going to be able to, every time we have another historic century storm, that somehow there's going to be just a flood of billions of dollars to go and rebuild Fort Myer and go and rebuild Puerto Rico and go and rebuild Kansas.
	We don't!
	Right, so your ignorance around climate issues, right, around the climate crisis is going to literally cost us billions of dollars.
	Trillions.
	That we don't have, trillions of dollars that we don't have the ability to be, to afford, right?
	So like if you are again not looking at every single one of these headline issues and making the case for the American people as to why giving the, you know, giving The economy over to Republicans, to your point, I and I in my head, I say it's like akin to giving a pack of matches, a lighter and gasoline to a pyromaniac, right?
	Like, are we and we think that they're not going to burn the whole shit down?
	Like, you know, so I again, I It is going to be the failure of the Democratic Party to do exactly what they've been doing wrong for decades, which is messaging, which is telling the people, like, you're concerned about gas in your car and concerned about prescription drug costs, where there's only one party that has put together policies and plans in order to make your life a little more breathable.
	Right?
	Because instead of referring to these Republicans as your friends from across the aisle and say we are able to come to the table together, no you're not!
	They voted against all the ways in which we could give Americans a little bit of relief in their paychecks as we're headed into this recession.
	So if you're not telling the story, right, then you're allowing them the space to make up their own.
	And what we don't need right now, weeks out of this election, are voters making up their own stories about who the Democrats and Republicans are.
	You know, I don't want to play the devil's advocate here, but I almost feel like, I mean, certainly if you want to talk about historical trends that go back a century or more, maybe there's nothing that you're going to be able to do to change the fact that the midterms are going to switch the Republicans, you know, on a downhill.
	It's a hard road.
	It's a hard road.
	Right.
	So it's, so it's like, I don't know exactly, like if they're sitting there wringing their hands, trying to figure this out too, because they know that like, It almost doesn't matter.
	Like, you can guarantee they're not going to get enough turnout, basically.
	And it has to kind of go to that, right?
	Because if you see the kind of turnout we had, you know, in the 2020 election, where we had the most votes ever, well, you would assume, especially in the face of Roe v. Wade and the other things we're dealing with, that, okay, they'd come out again.
	But they're not right and we know this already like no matter what you do and you look how it's dissipated with the energy we had.
	So I don't know.
	I don't want to make it seem like they should just they give up and they don't even try but it definitely feels like there's something hardwired into the system as it is that will indicate that it almost doesn't matter what you do or say.
	It literally is a thing where the Democratic Party has, and by the way, we've talked about this before, the Democratic Party has always been a reactive party.
	The Republican Party sets the battlefield, it sets the linguistic and the rhetorical battle, you know, and they are so Terrified of being seen as radical or dangerous or whatever.
	They have been backed into, and quite frankly, it's a near checkmate is what it is, what the Republican Party has done to them.
	The Democrats have been turned into the defenders of the institutions.
	They've had to become the people that say, you know what?
	Things might not have been great, but they're better than whatever's going to happen over here.
	And again, that doesn't fly when people lose their faith in institutions and when people realize it's been a raw deal all along.
	The Democrats have gone ahead and accepted this, and they have no offer whatsoever about how to make things particularly better.
	They can do it around the edges, right?
	There's some means testing things that they can do.
	They can do this over here.
	The Republicans at this point...
	The message is, guess what?
	We're not really going to make your life better, but the people that you hate, we're going to make their lives fucking miserable.
	And the real secret behind that is that they will make the people's lives miserable, and then it'll come back to you.
	And that's how it always goes.
	They go ahead and they bring you in by saying, we'll make their lives miserable, your lives won't get that much better, and then eventually they come for you.
	This whole thing is an expression, and this is one of the reasons why I think this midterm could have been different, Nick.
	Because we are currently, like, we're not just at a precipice.
	We're on like a super slide, you know, at a county fair.
	And things are going fast.
	And this midterm in particularly is an expression of a larger economic shift that's happening in this country.
	And by the way, while we're on the subject of things like the New York Times, Washington Post, NBC News, MSNBC, they are giving swing voters All of the reason that they need to go ahead and vote for a Republican.
	Something like what's happening with John Fetterman.
	That basically, they're taking a man's medical condition.
	He's shown he's capable.
	He's capable of going out, doing the job.
	We all know that he is.
	They are saying, hey, you know what?
	Maybe his health isn't all that great.
	And you know, Mehmet Oz isn't great, but I mean, he doesn't need closed captioning to do an interview.
	Like, it is an expression that a lot of these people, and Danielle and I talked about this on the last time we did a podcast together.
	These supposedly moderate, middle-class white people are opening the door for some of the worst, most grotesque possibilities in this country, and this didn't need to happen.
	This midterm, I think, Nick, could have been different, but you're right.
	The Democrats had an uphill climb, and in this case, all of those sort of elements are against them.
	I don't know.
	Danielle, how do you feel about that?
	You know, I wrote a piece for the Daily Beast, my latest one, which was basically talking about why Democrats are the real patriots.
	And that was the messaging that they needed and still use to frame up where we are right now, which is that, yeah, of course, in every midterm election, the party that is in power loses seats, right?
	We're not in usual times.
	We're not dealing with the usual Republican Party, right?
	We're dealing with a weaponized Supreme Court, right?
	That has multiple people sitting on there that are in stolen seats.
	We're dealing with the fact that we still have a slow moving coup that is not that slow that's happening.
	We have these candidates, Republican candidates that are using political violence rhetoric in their campaigning, right?
	They are signaling and showing you what rule looks like, what this country looks like.
	We have people that are talking about America for the first time as a backsliding democracy, right?
	So this is not normal times.
	And it is Democrats' jobs to say that, right?
	Like, we are living in a time with global health pandemic where the Republican Party voted against increased economic care.
	To Americans, right?
	Where Ron DeSantis is just able to use leftover COVID money that he allowed people in Florida to die of to go ahead and pull political stunts with human beings as if they're animals, charting them all around the country.
	So why aren't we calling out?
	This is the party, right?
	They are giving you everything.
	To say to the American people, this is who we are.
	We're not perfect.
	We're not by any means saying that Democrats are imperfect, but we're not crazy, right?
	We're not sadists, right?
	Like, so if you can't make the case with these cartoon villains that they have literally shown themselves to be, then my goodness, what the hell are you doing?
	Oh, go ahead.
	Oh, you know, Biden dipped his toe in this by using the word fascism or semi-fascist.
	I'm glad you brought that up.
	Go ahead.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And, and, you know, obviously they must look at the reaction to that, right?
	Cause this is all about AB testing to see what they should be talking about.
	And it must not have gone over that well, right?
	Because he kind of stopped and I don't hear too many of the other democratic leaders using that kind of language either.
	They're probably still so afraid of the deplorables.
	Well, you know, label, you know, and again, the other problem we are dealing with, which is directly related to this, this election is that the gerrymandered congressional districts are so locked in intractable as it is anyway, that for the House representatives, I don't know if it matters at this point.
	And as a result, it's like shame on the voters.
	I kind of feel like I know we need to have leaders that are leading is supposed to give us all the you know, the impetus to know how to vote, but like, I've soured on the people, a lot of the people who are voting on this, because there has to be some semblance of knowledge of what they're voting for and who they're voting for, and they don't care.
	Well, and I think, and I'm so glad you brought up the semi-fascist comment, because that's exactly where I was going to go with this.
	Because there's something else we need to talk about before we bring this plane in for a landing.
	Like, for Joe Biden, Who is one of the most classical examples of modern Democratic moderates.
	He has been right there in the middle.
	That's always been his talent, has been to find that centrist position between the Democratic and the Republican Party.
	The fact that this person who said the Republicans are going to wake up from their fever, you know, all these things are getting better.
	The fact that he, through his administration, all the people advising him, felt like he could say semi-fascist tells you how far the Republican Party has moved into fascism, first of all.
	Second of all, semi-fascism is a lot like being semi-pregnant.
	There's no such thing, right?
	You are either pregnant or you're not.
	And in this case, this is a situation where the Republican Party, by the way, is not just into fascism, not just into authoritarianism.
	And by the way, Nick, you nailed this a long time ago and it's something I think about almost every day reading the news.
	It's the mask that slips.
	And part of this is, and this is something we probably should have talked about in this podcast earlier, we need to talk about crypto-fascists.
	We need to talk about crypto-Nazis.
	And when we say that, that isn't about NFTs, this isn't about blockchains, this is about the fact that there are people walking amongst us who are fascist and who are Nazis.
	It didn't just end in the 1940s.
	World War II didn't wipe this out.
	This white supremacist ideology has been here all along.
	Now, all of a sudden, The mask isn't just slipping.
	The mask has been thrown out the window.
	It's rolling down the highway.
	One of the things that we're seeing, and it is escalating quickly, fascists and Nazis rely on a few very predictable tropes and cycles and narratives.
	Right now, we're taking it to the next level, which is anti-Semitic conspiracy theory peddling.
	And it's not a coincidence, by the way.
	That for years we've been seeing globalist with, you know, parentheses around it.
	That we've been talking about Zionist conspiracies.
	It's not a conspiracy, you know, it's not a coincidence that Kanye West goes on Tucker Carlson and suddenly starts talking about, you know, Jewish conspiracies against him.
	Or he's now talking about, like, people planting fake people in his house, you name it.
	He's now also been approached by Candace Owens, apparently, to go ahead and try and buy Parler, which we gotta talk about for a second.
	But also now, Donald Trump, who has always peddled dog whistles, or sirens, depending on what you're paying attention to, is now coming out openly talking about Jews needing to get their business together and needing to be more like Israeli Jews.
	Danielle, I want to hear your take on all of this, but I have to say, it's like watching a Pokemon evolve.
	Like it is moving to its next level.
	And there's a lot of different reasons for that.
	But yeah, I want to hear what you have to say about that, Daniel.
	I mean, the thing that I will tell people is, you know, sometimes in the United States, we are so insular that we don't pay attention to the trends that are happening abroad.
	Georgia Maloney, Italy.
	When you have somebody who is backed by Steve Bannon, backed by Donald Trump, the far right, this isn't just an American problem that is happening.
	It's a global problem that is happening.
	And anti-Semitism, anti, you know, being homophobic and transphobic and anti-Black, these are all part of the same monster that you're talking about, Jared.
	And I think that, again, Mainstream media spends too much time contorting itself into political pretzels trying to figure out whether what Donald Trump or what Kanye West has said is actually anti-Semitic or is it not?
	Like, why do we waste so much time on the fucking debate aspect of it instead of being honest about what's being said?
	When you tell Jewish people in America, that they should, you know, pay attention before it's quote-unquote too late?
	Too late for what, Donald Trump?
	That's the question that the media should be asking.
	Too late for what?
	Right?
	Too late for the good white evangelical Christians to start planting, what, the burning crosses on their lawns?
	Too late for them to start, you know, to run from lynchers?
	What exactly are you talking about?
	Those are the kinds of follow-up questions that I want.
	And the fact is, is that we have always allowed a certain amount of anti-Semitism in this country to be okay.
	Right?
	We have always, and we have always, always, I mean, the fact that it is 2022, and I still have to have a conversation about why we have a campaign around Black Lives Matter, because they have never mattered.
	Black lives have never mattered in this country, is why we have to yell it.
	Right?
	It's why we have to have campaigns around it.
	And then we are pushed back into saying multiculturalism when it's really about anti-Blackness.
	So I think that Americans have to be honest about why these ideas are allowed not just to be seeded in the United States, but why they are allowed to grow in such abundance.
	And it's because it goes back to the fact that we don't tell the truth about who we are.
	We don't tell the truth about our founding.
	We don't tell the truth about why Jewish people have been attacked in this country, why anti-Semitism is on the rise, because you will, because there are members of Congress that are sitting there that are saying these things and so, you know, I think that again, it is a, it is almost malpractice.
	For Democrats not to call out this type of rhetoric.
	It is malpractice for them not to say, this is who, if you don't vote, this is who you're voting for.
	And if you're casting a ballot for Republicans, you are casting a ballot for anti-Semitism.
	You are casting a ballot for homophobia, for transphobia, for anti-blackness.
	Right?
	So this is what you are casting a ballot for.
	The only people that I see that are doing this well, right, is the Lincoln Project and the consistent, you know, ads that they run.
	Why aren't those ads coming from the DNC?
	Right?
	Why aren't those ads, like, why didn't they pull together every bit of money?
	Why didn't they learn anything?
	I haven't seen one political ad, can I tell you?
	Not on my timeline, not on Instagram, not on TikTok, not anywhere.
	Not one political ad.
	Right?
	So, I just started seeing things on the television behind me.
	You know, I'm in New York.
	Lee Zeldin is able to be closing a gap right now, and the man is talking about putting guns in New York City schools.
	Are you crazy?
	Right?
	So like, again, you know, for me, it's like, we should not be debating the if and the if about anti-Semitism and what this political party is doing.
	We should just be calling it out and saying to the voter, is this who you want?
	Is this your king?
	Is this your man?
	Right?
	Because this is only going to get worse.
	And Martin Niemöller He had that poem, first they come for, right?
	First they come for all of the low-hanging fruit, the people that they don't think matter, like trans kids, right?
	Like queer kids.
	First they come for them, and they pass these bills.
	Then they come for the blacks, and they pass these bills.
	Then they come for people with uteruses, and they tell you that you no longer have bodily autonomy.
	They keep coming, and there will be nobody left to stop them.
	I do want to weigh in a little bit on that, on what Trump had said about the Israeli thing, because I think it's an interesting thing to sort of parse.
	Forgive me if I was a little bit late to the recording.
	I was in the How We Control The World meeting, the weekly meeting we have.
	Are there more meetings now?
	I knew it!
	We talked about it and I think what we figured out was that the before it's too late is what he was threatening is before Israel's wipe off the face of the map.
	I think that's what he's trying to say.
	But that is the it's interesting trigger because you have Jews who obviously would not want that to happen.
	But you have evangelicals, and Jared, you'll have to weigh in this a bit more.
	I think those are the people that want that to happen.
	Absolutely, they do.
	And they want it to happen because this is how heaven on earth begins, so that's the process, right?
	And God forbid anybody who isn't of that faith, we don't get to go to heaven, it's just them.
	But nonetheless, so this is the interesting pull, I think, which probably encapsulates the entire GOP, where they have every different idea, none of them fit together, and they all pull at each other in opposite ways.
	And this is another good reason to be completely confused.
	And I think that's what they want out of the GOP.
	Yeah, and to go ahead and clarify that, basically what Donald Trump did there, which is what he always does in his brutish, ugly way, is he makes very apparent what is actually at the heart of reactionary right-wing thinking, which is there are good Jews and there are bad Jews.
	The good Jews are in Israel because we need them to die.
	Like, that's literally what the Republican evangelical base believes.
	Which is, we have to have them in order to have our evangelical apocalypse.
	Like, they literally see them as pawns in a very much larger game.
	And it helps, by the way, of course, that Netanyahu was absolutely corrupt and an authoritarian who fit right in with Orban, Trump, Putin, you name it.
	The bad Jews, of course, are anybody who questions anything else and doesn't fall in line and doesn't go ahead and go along with this entire project.
	And I have to tell you, it's a brand new weird innovation that follows historical innovations.
	Evangelicalism, and particularly power structures, and this is one of the reasons why Jews have always been oppressed in this regard, they've always been seen as sort of an escape valve to go ahead and carry out everything from lending to power plays and whatever.
	And then, and here is the really important part of all of this, When are Jews particularly oppressed and targeted?
	When things go bad.
	When things start getting really, really bad and things start falling apart, you need a scapegoat.
	And to go off what Danielle was saying, the scapegoats are almost always the same because they are the opponents of white patriarchal dominance.
	It's going to be Jewish people, it's going to be gay people, trans people, women, it's going to be people of color, and the poor, by the way, if they get in the way.
	Those things are always sort of amalgamated into this larger Protocols of the Elders of Zion, New World Order, Deep State, QAnon, whatever you want to call it.
	This stuff, and I got to tell you, and this is I don't know how you all feel about this, or how you sort of process it.
	This might be the way to end this.
	Like, I have gotten to the point watching this, and it's so predictable.
	And it's so obvious what's going on.
	That like, when I wake up in the morning, and I see Kanye West is now pushing, you know, this anti-Semitic shit.
	And by the way, like, do not discount the fact that there is an economy for this.
	Like, this parlor thing is going to be about opening up not just for antisemites, but also opening up areas for reactionary populations that we can't even begin to understand what's going to come out of the groundwork there.
	But on top of that, it is not shocking.
	That Donald Trump comes out and says this.
	And I hate that that's where we've reached, but all of this has become so normalized, and our media has done such a crack-up job of laundering it for these people.
	And Danielle, I don't know how you feel about it, but for me, it pisses me off, but there's still a part of me that's just like, of course this is what's happening.
	Of course this is where this is going.
	You know, I am so angry, as people know who listen to my show.
	I'm so angry on a regular basis.
	But I got to tell you that what I realized is that what we are fighting for with trying to provide people with information, trying to clarify, which clearly is like looking through mud these days, is the fact that the future that we're fighting for may not be one that we all see.
	Right.
	Right.
	And I think that that begins to take the pressure off of the fact that we're going to live through this and get back to a sense of normal.
	We are not, right?
	But what we do need to understand and why we do need to have a level of hopefulness is that I want to be hopeful that The next generations will get to the other side, right?
	And that what they create after what we once knew and understood as American democracy sees its final sunset, right?
	Because I believe that it's going to.
	That what comes out on the other side of this is how to do things better, right?
	And sometimes things have to get really bad Before they even begin to rise from the ashes again.
	And that's what I want people to truly understand.
	Nick, can I ask you a question real fast on this?
	How do you feel as this sort of current bubbles up?
	Like as the trajectory moves into this and it just becomes more and more overt.
	Like how do you process this?
	I mean, you know, is there a certain, like, you know, tinge of excitement to the notion of, hey, wait, we really control the world?
	Like, all those things?
	Like, does that make me feel, like, you know, good?
	Like, it kind of just, I mean, here's the thing, there are, depends on where you live and where you are, you know, you might not ever feel any kind of anti-Semitism.
	It doesn't really, it's like you're watching it from a very separate, you know, this is not anything that's connected to me.
	Generally, where I end up feeling it in terms of when we're looking at the political sphere in Judaism is when a politician who's Jewish screws up and has to leave office in disgrace.
	Those are the times where we really, as a community, I tend to feel like get really upset and frustrated about it.
	But at the very least, I think the frustration is born out of, I know how many Jews are going to agree with what Trump said.
	And it's the same feeling you have as how many, you know, rational, normal people in America agree with what he says politically on other issues as well.
	And it just boils down to, I guess, it's a political thing.
	It doesn't have anything to do with the religion itself.
	And that's what's probably soul-killing and frustrating about the whole thing.
	Well, I just want to put a quick stamp on this, and I think we're all in agreement on this.
	What pisses me off the most about this moment, first of all, Republicans are going to Republican.
	Period.
	That's all that it is.
	Like, that group is going to seize as much power as they possibly can.
	I mean, you know, it's like blaming a fish for swimming.
	It really, truly is.
	That's who they are, that's how they work.
	And that's how they've always worked.
	What pisses me off to no end are the people who should know better.
	It's the people who should be campaigning against this, the people who should be defeating it, the people who should be covering this better.
	And on top of that, it's watching this get legitimized.
	It's watching day in and day out, watching, you know, whether it's journalists or politicians who are terrified of the consequences of calling this what it is, or who are providing, as I was talking about with the Federman thing, or even Roe v. Wade, they're providing mental outlets for people to accept it, to go ahead and go along with it, and maybe even enjoy it.
	You know, jump into it.
	Fill your lungs up with it.
	That's what pisses me off.
	And Danielle, I want to hear from you on this before we sign off.
	The thing that pisses me off is that none of this is hidden, that none of this is inexplicable, and yet it's just continually treated as if it's normal and as if nobody could have ever imagined any of this, even though, I mean, Nick, I was talking about this the other day.
	We're going on like three years Of talking about this.
	Danielle, you've been talking about this for forever.
	Like, none of this is hidden, and that's what pisses me off.
	Danielle, I'll give you the last word on this.
	Yeah, you know, none of... It is so predictable.
	Like, I feel like, you know, we're in that episode of Scooby-Doo where the mask is coming off, but we already knew who the villain was.
	Old man Parker!
	Right?
	Yeah, like it's and so what I think is what's really frustrating is that, you know, we like to believe that the American voter is more in touch and tapped in than they are.
	And if we are not going to tell the story to these people, if we're not going to connect the dots, if we're not going to tell them, you know, what they thought was impossible, because that's the thing.
	We've been forced by this idea of American exceptionalism as if we believe that what has transpired around the globe can never come here.
	And so now here it is, and we're still stuck in this idea of disbelief, right?
	Like, oh my goodness, I can't believe this is happening.
	Well, it is happening, and it's happening every day, and our democracy is slipping through a sieve right now.
	And we're still pretending like all is normal.
	And I joked the other day and I said, you know, when the end of the world was coming, I didn't think that I would still have to go to work.
	I didn't, like, sci-fi lied to me.
	I thought that we were all going to be on a beach with a bonfire and some alcohol and just, you know, waiting for the wave to hit.
	So, you know, we are living in terrifying times, but people got to wake up to realize that You know, it is happening, right?
	We still have a little bit of time to maybe pull the reins back from over the cliff, but like, you know, it's a little bit of time.
	You know, I too did think of the apocalypse like Deep Impact, which is one of my favorite apocalypse movies.
	Me too.
	You should at least be able to go there with your dad and share a last poignant moment.
	That's how it should work.
	Again, we've been sitting here hanging out.
	We've been very lucky to have Danielle Moody as our guest, who is the host of Woke AF and co-host of Democracyish.
	Can you tell the good people where to find you?
	You can find me running my mouth all over Twitter, um, at D2Sense, D-E-E-T-W-O-C-E-N-T-S.
	I'm also on TikTok, Danielle Moody, M-O-O-D-I-E, underscore.
	Um, and just all over the place, writing at the Daily Beast and, you know, on all the podcast outlets.
	And again, Democracyish and the Muckrake Podcast coming together like chocolate and peanut butter on November 8th at 8 p.m.
	Eastern.
	That's right.
	We will be providing the only coverage of the midterm elections that you're going to need to watch.
	I gotta tell you, Danielle, I got a good feeling it's going to be a good time.
	It's going to be light.
	It's not going to be nerve-wracking whatsoever.
	I think we're going to be total fine.
	No vodka or bourbon is going to be needed at all.
	What encouraged?
	I don't know if I can attend.
	If I have to do this thing totally sober, Nick, I don't know, man.
	I don't know either.
	Alright, and just a reminder real fast to everybody, we're going to be doing a live taping of the Weekender episode this Thursday, October 20th at 7pm Eastern.
	Go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
	Again, it didn't come off the tongue exactly right.
	I stopped.
	I brought it back.
	We're alright.
	We're alright, Nick.
	All is well.
	All is well.
	All right, everybody.
	If you need us before then you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me?
	SMH.
	You can find me at J.Y.
	Sexton.

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