Jared Sexton and Nick Hausman critique the Democratic Party’s failure to confront fascism, citing figures like Amy Klobuchar as symbols of neoliberal complacency. They debate whether a labor-progressive movement could dismantle its old guard, proposing people-led tactics inspired by BLM and Occupy Wall Street—like boycotts and anti-corruption reforms—to remove money from politics and expose misconduct, including Trump’s. Unions may join later if momentum grows, but rank-and-file shifts rightward weaken the party’s progressive base. Economic pressure is key, yet mobilization remains the hurdle; Patreon support fuels deeper discussions on these challenges. [Automatically generated summary]
Welcome to the weekend or edition of the Mutcrake podcast.
I'm Jared Sexton here, Nick Hausman.
Nick, I just got off the road.
I'm tired.
I drive a lot.
I'm all over the place.
And I hate to tell people I don't want to spoil anything.
The march of time, the march of time and mortality.
I'm getting older and it takes a toll like it hasn't before.
You're talking about like when you get out of the car, it's a little harder to stand up and stuff like that.
Oh, keep it going, man.
I'm tired, getting out of the car, all of it.
More frequent bathroom breaks, perhaps?
We don't.
We don't need to get into them.
Okay.
Well, anyhow.
Yeah.
You know, it's funny.
There are ways.
And I would say that this complaint might not exist as much in 10 to 15 years as the.
Well, because you are on the side of the devil machines.
Yeah.
It's weird that I am.
Because I am, you know, I am raised amongst the artists and enjoy.
And all the things that are.
You're going to have to be disabused of that.
I'm sorry, because things are about to get hairy when it comes to AI.
You got to be on the right side of history.
Yeah.
It must be like the Gen X in me, where it's like the initial toys that were coming out when I were kids that had the little promise of what we were going to get to eventually, like we are now.
And so you got excited about that.
And I don't know, but you're right.
There needs to be some sort of disavowal of that.
I think another aspect of it.
And by the way, like just even talking about this and thinking about the questions that people sent and thank you, everybody, for the questions, because this is one of my favorite types of shows.
This is a subject we wouldn't normally get into.
I think because you're a little bit older than me, you were steeped more in like the life and idea that the future was going to be good.
Oh, interesting.
Really?
And the technology was going to be good.
Yeah, you're probably right.
Yeah.
And by the time, right?
That's the difference.
I think maybe.
Maybe we're getting down there.
Like, I mean, you watch, you watch more Jetsons than I did.
I'm sure.
All right.
Maybe.
I'm trying to, you're probably like Thundercats or whatever.
You've been going absolutely Thundercats.
Yes.
Like more dystopian stuff.
I'm almost thinking like, yeah, that's fascinating.
You're right.
You're probably right.
There was some notion of like, yes, Star Wars was going to, well, Star Wars had the good and bad and the lightsaber was a good thing that was going to help everybody.
And, you know, I don't know how the lightsaber would help anybody.
Well, you know what?
In the current revolutionary mood that I'm in, I think the lightsaber might help with some things.
Yeah.
By the way, we got a question that involves, I haven't actually read any of the questions.
I just glanced at them and I saw Star Wars.
So I know at some point or another, it's going to get brought up.
I'm so excited about this.
And these episodes are my absolute favorite.
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Concerns About Democratic Party Failure00:07:16
We would have so much more support, particularly in a troubling environment.
You're going to want to listen to this episode because let me tell you what, if you've never heard one of our mailbag episodes, we get asked all kinds of shit.
Like it goes all over the place.
And I think our conversations, I think, are some of the best that we have.
Head over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
Become a patron.
By the way, Discord, I don't know what's going on with Discord.
We might have to self-destruct our Discord in the face of tech oligarchical fascism.
We got to have a discussion at some point about that.
But you will have all kinds of that stuff, special shows, live shows, you name it.
Well, you know, MuckRakers will find a way.
We will, listen, Nick, sure as fuck, we're going to find a way.
That's, you know what?
That might be our new motto.
That is as good as it gets.
We're going to start here with the questions because we have a full mailbag.
The first one is from Walter.
Walter says, hello, Jared and Nick.
Hey, Walter.
My question for the show revolves around the complete and utter failure of the Democratic Party to rise to the occasion and meet this fascist moment that we find ourselves in.
You have Democrats like Amy Klobuchar, who are the quintessescence of craven opportunism and shameless ambition.
Perfect.
And interested in nothing more than the neoliberal status quo, as well as the maintenance of order over justice and the rule of law.
Do you see signs of a burgeoning labor movement combined with the true progressive and leftist agenda on the horizon?
And can this movement be instrumental in either deconstructing the Democratic Party and rebuilding it into a true leftist party?
Or does the leftist movement eventually challenge and replace the old guard of the Democratic Party altogether?
That is a mouthful.
Thank you so much.
Oh, it's actually David, not Walter.
Nick, I'll let you start.
What do you think is going to happen with the Democratic Party?
Just spitball in here.
You know, my fear is that we could get to what he's describing in terms of this more true progressive party.
But my fear is that it would require something so catastrophic of a failure that and then that could take a long, long time before we get to that.
So, yeah, you know, but that said, nobody is satisfied with the status quo of what Obushar represents, really.
You know, and I'm just trying to think, you're talking about we're getting older, right?
Like the turns we're making now, like for me, will pretty much represent like the rest of my life, right?
And so as I'm starting to reflect on that a little bit, you know, I'm starting to realize it's like the time is important here if I want hope to see a different kind of a change.
But again, the worry could very well be that it would take something so awful and something catastrophic to get that change.
And I hope that we can figure out a way to make it happen faster and better and cleaner.
Yeah, there's a lot to answer on this question.
So I'll just kind of take it as it goes.
Based on what you said, the hope, the best hope, I think, in terms of like something quote unquote catastrophic, the best hope is that that something catastrophic is the shredding of the Constitution and the rise of a fascist regime.
Right.
Or, you know, the revelation that the world's elite are nothing more than pedophile criminals and murderers, you know, and maybe that's the thing that turns the tide.
And eventually people look around and they're like, oh my God, the Democrats aren't doing anything about this.
You know, it's funny, Nick, we were talking before we started recording.
You said Schumer, and I was just like, I was ready for anything.
Literally, the only thing I knew is that it was going to be milquetoast bullshit, you know?
And sure enough, you followed through and it was milquetoast bullshit.
And so the answer to the question, I think there are multiple parts here.
One, will it be a labor-led union?
One of the things that I was really hoping, I'm an organizer.
I'm out in the field trying to put together something resembling a movement.
I was so hopeful that as labor was building steam, and you know, we reported on this for years, Nick, there were people who were like at Amazon or Starbucks.
They were, you know, doing these wildcat strikes and, you know, beating them.
They were actually beating the largest corporations in the world.
My hope, and you saw a lot, you know, was like Sean Fane over at UAW, who has been making a lot of noise.
It kept looking like, oh my God, maybe something like that's going to come together.
But I do not see a larger coalition of labor movements that have, they basically, since the destruction of the left in the 20th century, they're all fighting for themselves, you know, and there's a stratification between rank and file members and leadership.
And that's been one of the most damning things from the very beginning.
If there is a movement that would replace the Democratic Party, it would be a people-led movement.
It would be something to imagine it, it would be something like the BLM protest, except for that there would be a numbered agenda that would sort of develop from it, right?
It wouldn't just be altercations with the police around the country.
You would start to see, you would maybe even see some tactics out of like Occupy Wall Street, right?
Actually taking over buildings or taking over parts of towns, you name it, and using technology as well as organic sort of organizing and communication to start putting together what I would say would need to be an anti-corruption reform agenda, which is we need to get money out of politics.
We need to be represented.
On top of that, we need to look into everything from, you know, how the Trump regime has been making money to how senators have been making money, just up and down.
And you create that.
Eventually at some point, the unions would show up.
If they saw that there was movement and momentum, they would start showing up and you would start seeing people leaving their jobs and boycotting.
And it would create sort of a domino effect.
If I can't sit here and tell you that that is for sure what is going to happen, but I can't tell you that it wouldn't, you know, because politics, there's a veneer of stability and immalibility.
Like the idea that you cannot change politics very easily.
We're fed those lies by the Democratic Party, even while the Republican Party shows us it's bullshit.
But it can change very, very quickly.
And we could be looking at something in 2028 or beyond that is completely like outside of what we thought was possible.
Yeah, I hear you.
I think what's sort of startling to me is the rank and file people in unions, the shift rightward politically.
Some have, yeah, some have.
Yeah.
And so I think that's been a little bit of an interesting, and it kind of makes sense too, in some ways.
And I think maybe in the past, that reliance on the progressiveness of like of unions isn't there anymore for the Democratic Party as much as they used.
And they need to work harder to figure that out.
So yeah, I feel like, you know, obviously it's economic, you have to target economics, right?
That's where you have to hit people and make your point.
And again, people have to be willing to do that.
And that's tough.
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