Dave Smith dissects the 2020 DNC, arguing its lack of live audience stripped away essential political theater while doubling down on neoconservative foreign policy and misplaced focus on racism over economic distress. He condemns Andrew Cuomo for his COVID response failures, attacks Bernie Sanders as pathetic for dropping out without policy demands, and corrects the record that Trump claimed "bad people" existed on both sides of Charlottesville, not "fine" ones. Ultimately, Smith asserts the convention's reliance on victim narratives and childish assumptions about politician altruism fails to address rising white supremacy or the military-industrial complex effectively. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Watching a Boring Convention00:02:31
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You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Here's your host, Dave Smith.
Hey, what's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm Dave Smith, and I am flying solo for this episode.
We're going to do a DNC recap.
The Democratic National Convention is over and in the books.
And whew, it was something.
Yeah, I got to say, I usually enjoy political theater, even though I really hate politics.
Well, to be honest, I kind of love politics.
I hate that it exists.
I hate the politicians, but I really love the show.
But I did not love this one.
It was, oof, it was pretty, pretty painful.
I watched a lot of the speeches.
I didn't really do it until the last couple days.
And then I've just kind of been watching all of them.
And it's, man, it was just not fun.
It was literally not even for entertainment value.
It wasn't good.
But I wanted to do a recap episode for you good people.
So I suffered through it.
I couldn't even make Robbie the Fire Bernstein go through it with me.
So I'm doing this one solo.
Truth be told, Rob had some scheduling issues.
I was going to make him go through it with me.
But I watched AOC's speech, Hillary Clinton's speech, Michelle Obama, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, obviously Kamala and Biden.
I watched Bernie Sanders' speech.
I watched Elizabeth Warren's speech.
And yeah, there's, oof, it was just not fun.
All right, let me, maybe I'll give you kind of like my bigger takeaways from the Democratic National Convention, and then we could go through some of the featured speakers.
Okay, so number one, my biggest takeaway from all of it was that it was fucking weird to not have a real convention.
The Weirdness of Remote Speeches00:02:55
It's very strange.
It reminded me of at the beginning of the pandemic when like late night talk shows were doing it without, you know, the studio and the audience and all of that shit.
And it really just changes the dynamic.
Like you look at these guys who come off so professional and they just, they feel like amateurs because they don't have all the, you know, smoke and mirrors.
And it was like that.
Political theater is religious by its very nature.
That's, you know, the whole thing relies on this kind of huge stage and this huge crowd and people losing their minds and, you know, like everyone's going crazy and balloons and graffiti.
I mean, glitter and, you know, all this shit.
They rely on all of that.
And without it, there's just a different feel.
And I think it's not nearly as effective propaganda without that stuff.
It's kind of like if you like if you, when you go to church, like if you go to a big church and there's like this beautiful grand, you know, building and you know, you know, you walk in and it's like magnificent.
You just look up these huge ceilings and there's these stained glass windows and then the organs are playing and there's a whole bunch of people around you.
And there's just this kind of feeling that gets created.
And if you removed all of that and you remove all of the people who are around you and you remove the stained glass and you remove the music and you take all of that away and it was just like a one-on-one conversation with some priest and he's just like, hey, so let's talk about what God said.
So God said this in the Bible and this is what I think he meant about it.
It has a very different feeling to it.
And that's kind of how this was.
It was just, you know, even people like Barack Obama, who are very talented speech givers, it's a different feeling when they're talking to you very much in a similar kind of sense to the way I'm talking to you right now.
Just a guy sitting here talking into a camera to you.
It's just, it's different.
There's not the same performance dynamic to all of it.
And, you know, like if you just think about the way I'm talking to you right now compared to how I talk if I'm doing stand-up to a big crowd of people, it's just different.
That's the way we are.
It's just part of the nature of being a person.
And so, yeah, that was something.
It was something interesting to see.
And of course, it ultimately was to the benefit of the Democrats to have it in this format just because this way Biden could have as many takes as he needed to be able to get that speech out.
And I think they would have been pretty nervous about just having to go up there and do one take live in front of an audience.
Racism in the Deep South00:04:41
But they certainly lost out on the effectiveness, the effectiveness of their other propagandists, not being able to take advantage of that.
There's something powerful psychologically for human beings to see Barack Obama get up on stage and see tens of thousands of people lose their mind and they're so excited to see him.
It makes you feel like, oh, wow, he's still so beloved.
And Cuomo or someone like that getting some big reception or that stuff is powerful.
And so they were missing out on all of that.
The ratings were very poor.
I saw some reports that said they were between 40 to 50 percent lower than last year's, or excuse me, than last 2016, the last cycles Democratic National Convention.
So that's not good.
That's not a good sign for them.
And, you know, whatever.
We could get into more when I talk about Biden in terms of how, you know, how you would grade this thing, just in terms of political effectiveness.
But we'll get into that in a little bit.
Another major, major theme that, of course, was just disgusting, but was pretty hard to avoid was there was a major pro-war theme in the Democratic Convention.
They basically, you know, once again, just like in 2016, they're really doubling down on we are the home of the neocons now, and we are the home of the Bush-Obama foreign policy, the consensus, as they would call it.
That was left very clear.
And they touted out all of these national security, you know, people who are all for Joe Biden.
They're all in on Joe Biden and blatantly telling you that Joe Biden would get back to the business of getting America involved in wars all over the world.
They really, I mean, John Kerry's speech, it was just, it was like sickening how much he was talking about, you know, like the greatest moment in American history was in 1945 when our young boys were dying in Europe, as he put it, to liberate the world.
You know, in reality, of course, that war gave half of Europe over to Stalin.
I wouldn't exactly consider that liberating people.
They handed half of the continent over to a more genocidal maniac than even Adolf Hitler.
And, but, you know, whatever, fuck that.
This is the national mythology.
And so, yeah, wasn't it so great when your kids were getting killed in 1945?
Well, elect Joe Biden and we can get your kids killed in Syria or wherever the fuck the next front for the war is.
And it was really something to watch.
It was truly, truly disgusting.
And also, I just, I kind of wonder why they even think this is good politics.
I mean, everybody who pays attention knows that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris represent the military-industrial complex agenda, but I just don't understand why they would want to advertise it.
I mean, it's been proven over and over again that this stuff is deeply, deeply unpopular and just obviously just, you know, incredibly evil, which is probably more important.
So the other theme that you could not escape listening to the Democratic National Convention was the theme of racism.
This was like almost every speaker brought it up.
It was from, you know, AOC, Bernie Sanders, Michelle Obama, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, definitely Kamala Harris, Joe Biden himself, all of it.
The whole, I mean, just so much talk about racism.
And I got to say, it's even for someone like me who, you know, pays pretty close attention to all this stuff.
I really just, sometimes you just take a step back and you go, I can't believe they're actually going down this path.
I mean, you would think they were like, like if there was a convention in fucking Alabama in 1956, they would not have talked about racism this much.
Why They Ignore Real Problems00:03:16
And you would think that was our society.
You would basically think we were the deep South in the 50s, the way they talk about racism.
It is this huge problem that must be overcome in the country.
And it's just, it's pretty unbelievable considering what's going on, like what the year 2020 has been.
This is some real shit is going on.
People all around the country, I mean, millions and millions of people are like terrified about the prospects for their future.
I mean, we're going to end up closing schools again.
Half of the country is in a situation where if you close schools, they're two family working households.
They have no idea how they're going to make this work.
People have blown through their savings.
Property values have fallen.
Crime is on the rise.
And we're talking about mean feelings or people not liking other people in a country where it's really not that big of a problem.
Like in a country where the vast majority of people find racism to be repugnant and awful.
And, you know, even though everyone has their own, you know, prejudices, in general, they think that any like being really shitty to someone because of the color of their skin is wrong, which it is.
But still, it's just this major theme, major theme.
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One of the things that really bothered me, and I mentioned before, you know, the speeches I listened to, I guess I didn't listen to every single person and every single segment and piece that they had at the convention, but I saw not one, not one mention of the rioting and the violence and the looting.
Nothing.
Pedophile Shit Confirmed00:10:22
We're just not going to address that.
It was really something.
I mean, multiple people.
I know that Andrew Cuomo and Joe Biden both brought up Charlottesville, which I like, I really wonder, you know, to like the average person out there, because I'm so like obsessed with all this shit that I'm a little bit removed from just what like the regular, a regular guy thinks when they're hearing this shit, especially a regular Democratic voter.
But is it, you know, like this is, you know, you talk about racism over and over again, and your example is Charlottesville.
It's like, yeah, remember three years ago when a couple hundred people had a march in Charlottesville?
Yeah, that's like how, how, after 2020, how could that be on anyone's mind as like a top priority of voting?
Oh, yeah, we really, we got to get those 200 people from three years ago that, you know, believe bad things about minorities.
I, it's just very, I don't know, found very strange.
And especially given that currently we have all of this chaos in the streets, like it's literally going on while they're giving these speeches.
And no one mentioned it.
And I got to say, I just found it just particularly despicable that Michelle Obama and Barack Obama wouldn't say anything about it.
Because if those guys actually had any compation in them, compassion, excuse me, for the people being victimized in this crime wave of like mob violence, you know, it might actually mean something for one of those people to say something.
Like for Barack Obama, you know, he probably still has a little bit of sway amongst those types.
And if he were to come out and be like, you know, look, like, I'm all for, you know, whatever police accountability and police brutality is horrible, but you are like, you need to stop breaking windows.
You need to stop assaulting people right now.
If you're doing that, you are no friend of the cause of, you know, like racial justice or whatever.
Just would have been nice for him to say one thing.
But I suppose that wouldn't have been politically helpful to even acknowledge that this exists or is a problem.
And I think that tells you something about Barack Obama and what he values.
But literally, nobody talked about it as if it's even like as if it's not even happening, just not even a problem.
And this is part of the reason why I've been saying for a while that I think that libertarians should be defending very loudly the people, the property owners, the business owners who are terrorized and have had their homes and lives and businesses and bodies in many cases destroyed by this mob violence.
I just think nobody else is strongly standing up for these people.
And why wouldn't you?
It's the right thing to do.
And it's great for product differentiation and marketing and all that shit.
So just seems like a no-brainer to me, but people don't want to take my advice.
So I should say a lot do, but some don't.
Okay, so let's go through the list a little bit.
Oh, and the other thing that was just a major theme was just that there was like woke insanity all over the place.
And that the Democrats, it's really interesting to watch after this primary, where they had a very serious left-wing challenger in Bernie Sanders, who up until Super Tuesday was pretty much the presumptive nominee.
It really looked like Bernie Sanders was going to win this whole thing.
And you saw the entire Democratic establishment join together and squash him out.
Like it was the entire corporate press and all of the Democratic establishment joined together to make sure they stopped Bernie Sanders from getting the nomination.
If you remember, that's when, you know, all that shit happened, where Klobuchar and Buttigeg and all of them dropped out, endorsed Biden.
All the people came out, Beto and Kamala, and all these people came out, endorsed Biden.
Elizabeth Moran stayed in the race and kept taking shots at Bernie.
And then ultimately, even though it was clearly, it was basically a two-man race the entire time between Biden and Bernie, that Bernie doesn't end up even being considered for VP or a cabinet position.
It goes with, they go with Kamala Harris.
So it shows you how much they really do not like the lefty economic ideas, but they love the woke bullshit.
They love that because then they can kind of feel like, well, look, we are appealing to the left.
Look, we're pretty left-wing, right?
But they don't have to actually, you know, give up on any of this kind of like banker military industrial complex controlled economy.
So it's, it's, anyway, I thought that was also worth mentioning.
Okay, let's start with AOC, who I got to say, you know, she gave a fucking dumbass AOC speech.
What else are you going to expect from her?
But she did.
Her only notable moment was that she endorsed Bernie Sanders or Bernard Sanders.
But so she did, she did endorse him.
And I got to say, I mean, I don't have much to say about AOC's speech.
It was just, you know, idiotic and very typical of AOC.
But there was something about you almost kind of got to respect her willingness to buck the party establishment and just go, no, fuck you.
I'm not supporting who you want me to.
So I don't know.
I thought that was at least of note here.
Talking DNC.
Got to fuel up.
All right.
Andrew Cuomo.
Man, this is, I'm really, I was almost trying to think like what was the most infuriating speech out there.
And there, there were many that really, really bothered me.
I think I would probably give it to Michelle Obama, but Andrew Cuomo, he was definitely in contention.
I mean, it is really the idea that the governor of New York would be viewed as some hero right now after everything that's gone on.
I mean, literally, the fucking state is the most devastated it's been in my lifetime.
New York City has just been destroyed under this guy's leadership.
And he's going to come out there and tell you about what a success he's been in New York and how everything is Trump's fault.
You would think, right, if we were living in like a normal world and not the upside down, that Andrew Cuomo would not want to talk about COVID.
Like he probably wouldn't want to talk about that.
But no, no, no.
That's what he wants to talk about.
That's what his whole thing starts as.
That's the theme of his whole speech.
It's what a great job he did with COVID.
I don't even know what to say about it.
It's the most cartoonish, bizarre thing ever.
The guy with the worst track record by far, no competition.
The governor with, I mean, I guess de Blasio could compete with him, but the governor with the worst track record, the most deaths, the highest number of cases, like everything you could think of, the guy who was demanding the federal government send more ventilators in as they were killing people with ventilators.
The guy who forced nursing homes to take known COVID positive patients into the nursing homes.
This guy is responsible for hundreds, if not thousands of deaths.
But he's going to get up here and brag about what a great job he did and how this is all Trump's fault.
It was just maddening to listen to.
And a little bit, you know, it was like one of those things where it's like it pisses you off quite a bit, but then you almost like admire the gall that someone would have to, you're like, God damn, almost got to almost got to give him credit.
The ball's on this guy to fucking brag about his handling of COVID when he was, as I said, you know, did the worst, the worst job that any governor has done, like demonstrably, like very clearly.
There's not even really a point of contention.
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All right.
So did AOC Andrew Cuomo?
Clinton Scandals and BlueChew00:12:08
Bill Clinton speaking was just hilarious.
The day he was speaking, those pictures of him getting massaged by one of Jeffrey Epstein's victims came out.
I mean, it's just, it really goes to show something about the state of the country and the state of the media, where it's basically all been confirmed that the former president of the United States was doing some pedophile shit.
I mean, okay, I guess we don't know for a fact he's a pedophile.
We know for a fact that he was fucking a 22-year-old in the Oval Office.
We know for a fact that he's hanging out with a pedophile on his plane dozens of times.
And we know for a fact that he's getting a massage from an underage chick who was one of the victims of this pedophile running this pedophile ring.
So, you know, technically, I guess that's what we know.
So, but pretty much we know this guy was involved in some pedophile shit.
And that is not even news.
Like, I mean, it's big news on the internet and shit, but like in the corporate press, it's like, no, we're just not going to talk about that's just not even that big of a thing.
Oof, I mean, that says something pretty profound about our society.
Okay.
So that was pretty funny that he talked.
The other moment that was just the funniest thing ever was Elizabeth Warren spoke addressing the Native American caucus.
Sometimes it seems like these people are like trying to lose.
I don't exactly get it.
But yeah, she addressed the Native American caucus, and they actually had to turn off the comments of the live stream because she was just getting hammered in them, which was pretty glorious.
All right.
So Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton spoke.
Holy shit.
The funny thing about Hillary Clinton speaking is that she always brings up what happened.
The title of her book, What Happened in 2016.
But as soon as she speaks, she answers the question of what happened.
And Hillary Clinton starts speaking, and you're like, oh, yeah, of course.
This is why you lost because you're you.
And then she's giving all the, she cannot let it go.
She's still talking about, she's still right now, she's still talking about how Donald Trump stole the election.
It was stolen from her, how she got more votes, and he was still able to steal this thing.
It's really, you know, it's, it's, it's really, it's like sad and petty, and it, it just, it, it makes you pity her, to be honest.
But it's also in stark contrast with one of the entire themes of the night and the major theme of Barack Obama's speech about how great democracy is.
Democracy is so great.
And the big problem with Donald Trump is that he's undermining democracy.
And, you know, it's like, okay, well, if that's undermining democracy, what is it when you constantly say that the guy who was elected didn't really get elected?
He stole it.
That would seem like undermining, you know, democracy too.
I mean, you can imagine if Republicans had been floating out, you know, conspiracy theories about how Barack Obama wasn't really the president.
They would have been pretty quick to point that out that this is bad for democracy and all that shit.
Of course, you know, I don't really give a shit about what's bad for democracy.
In fact, I cheer on whatever is bad for democracy because democracy is bad for freedom.
Should go to next.
Michelle Obama.
I actually think she probably, to me, takes the prize for the most infuriating speech of the convention.
It was just, you know, it's really funny when you see like kind of the disconnect between the way the professional pundits see this stuff and then the way, you know, I see it or other normal people see it.
If you ask them, Michelle Obama is like an angel amongst mere mortals.
She's just perfect and glamorous and eloquent and kind and just so amazing.
What a powerful speech.
They all talk about her like she's a fucking goddess.
But when I look at it, I just see this like bitter, nasty, resentful, ungrateful human being with absolutely nothing to contribute and just lecturing the country.
I thought her speech was despicable.
Just, I mean, she, the whole thing's about racism.
She talks about the endless list of black people who are murdered in this country.
I don't know what she's talking about.
I mean, so far this year, I believe there's been seven black people, unarmed black people murdered by the cops.
I mean, there's been a lot more black people than that murdered, but of course they're, you know, the vast, vast, vast majority of the time being murdered by other black people, usually gang members.
I don't, anyway, but this is proof of the, you know, the problem of racism.
She also said at one point that she, you know, she said that she hates politics.
And she said, as you guys know, I hate politics.
And it's like, okay, well, if you really hate politics, you don't need to be giving a political speech at the Democratic National Convention.
So my guess is you don't actually hate politics that much.
Maybe you don't hate politics as much as you think.
And then she says, I know a lot of people will disagree with what I'm saying right now because I'm a black woman speaking at the Democratic National Convention.
So that's, you know, basically it's like you, if you disagree with her, it's well, obviously that's because you're racist.
And it's that framing of things that is, I guess, has been very effective for those types for a long time, but it's complete bullshit.
And it's just outrageous.
I mean, I just, I find it so outrageous that this woman who is, you know, a multi-millionaire, she's speaking from what, her $10 million home in Mar-a-Lago.
Her husband was elected twice as president by this country.
And she like her, she's there to lecture the country about how horrible and racist they are.
It's like your very existence disproves your premise.
I mean, just imagine, like, there's something about that that I just like.
It drives me crazy.
By the way, and I'm Jewish, and it drives me crazy when Jews do that shit too.
Talk about how anti-Semitic this country is.
It's like Jewish people are doing wonderfully well in this country.
If you come to a country as a minority and you are able to succeed there and have a really great life, your comment on that society should probably be something like grateful or thankful, appreciative, then to turn around and lecture everybody else about, you know, how, and this is like dominant on the woke left.
This is where you hear like, you know, Hollywood, you know, you know, actors, anyone, any minority in Hollywood lecturing everybody else about, you know, how terrible it is to be a minority while they're literally paid, you know, $20 million to play make-believe in front of a camera.
And I mean, for Michelle Obama to be sitting there in her $10 million home, you know, speaking a night before her husband, who was elected and then re-elected about how racist the country is, was just, I just, just find it horrible.
Truly, truly, truly awful.
And then Barack Obama spoke.
And he, I got to say, I didn't find it very impressive.
And I've always been one to give credit to Barack Obama.
He is an incredible public speaker.
This was not, I didn't think it was so great.
I think that there's something about, you know, like same with Bill Clinton, these guys who, I mean, Bill Clinton's obviously a bit older and has lost more of a step than Obama has, but there's something about them where they're these really great speakers, very talented politicians.
But as they get older and you've just kind of seen it over and over again, it just like, it doesn't have quite the same impact that it used to.
And they just kind of, it's almost like with Obama, so he wasn't, he, he was like, he wasn't, you know, in front of a crowd and he didn't kind of have that thing that he, like that energy that he normally has.
And he seemed more desperate.
I mean, he, he was, he was darker than than he ever is.
He, he was talking about, you know, basically about how like the country could be lost.
He gave this story, kind of like the brief story of America, which was just just such bullshit.
And, you know, it was all about how the history of America is democracy.
That, you know, what's so great about the Constitution is that they gave us a democracy.
For anyone who knows anything about history, it's just, it's all complete bullshit.
I mean, if you had asked any one of the founders, if you had asked any one of the people who signed that document, if they had just given us democracy, they would have said absolutely not.
And it was pretty clear.
And as Obama admitted, I mean, you keep what even white men, for the most part, couldn't vote.
But he was like, well, and then basically they gave us democracy.
This is why our country is so great.
And what's so great about it is that we kept extending democracy, you know, so then we let black people vote and women vote and all of this other stuff.
And now democracy is under threat.
And this is, you know, just such a dangerous thing.
And I don't know.
I mean, I guess we'll see how effective it actually is.
But I just found it to be really weak and uninspiring.
And it did not contain Obama's usual oratory brilliance.
And so that was, you know, just kind of fell flat for me.
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It's also, again, much like some of the others, like Hillary Clinton, it came off as very petty, very petty to me.
It's like the same with the Hillary Clinton thing.
Vague Promises and Blah Blah00:15:22
Like, there's no, and I suppose you can't expect to see any of this at a convention speech, but there's no reflection, no, you know, ownership of any mistakes or anything like that.
It's like Barack Obama is basically like, look, we were really, really great, and Trump is just so terrible.
And that's why everything's bad right now.
There's nothing, you know, like something really petty about the last president launching such vicious, nasty attacks and unfair attacks against the current president.
You know, for all the people who complain about, you know, like the polarization of the country, and that's that was a huge message of this campaign: we have to unite and bring people together, and only Joe Biden can do that.
But there's nothing, you know, what's more divisive than the former president talking about how terrible the current president is in the nastiest ways.
And there's plenty that's fair to criticize Donald Trump for, but the stuff they're throwing at him is basically like, it's his fault that COVID came.
It's his fault.
So we're blaming him for how he presided over the situation when COVID came to the country.
Yet we're praising Andrew Cuomo for doing such a great job.
It's just like the most bonkers shit ever.
I don't know what to say about it.
Bernie Sanders.
Man, was that one pathetic?
Just fucking sad.
Like, I almost feel bad for the people who really believed in Bernie Sanders.
And there are a lot of them.
There are a lot of like true believers in Bernie Sanders.
But man, it's got to be sad to have a hero like that.
Like, I'm really lucky that my hero was Ron Paul, and he's just always such a fucking boss.
Happy birthday, by the way, to Ron Paul, turned 85 yesterday.
That guy just would never let you down with any of this bullshit.
Like he'd stand on principle.
And I just feel bad for people who have like, I get to have such an awesome hero and you guys got to be a Bernie Sanders fucking fan.
Just pathetic.
As Bernie Sanders, like after all these years of, you know, being against, you know, the banks and he's against, you know, I guess he pretends to be against the wars and against inequality and all of this shit.
And then you got to look at a Joe Biden Kamala Harris ticket, like just a ticket of like banker-approved war hawks and go up there and just give a speech about how Trump is so uniquely terrible and we have so much racism in the country and blah, blah, blah.
Just your boring standard fucking democratic speech and almost nothing of like, again, it's like, it was so removed from the year 2020.
Like, look at what's going on in the country around the world.
I mean, even if Bernie Sanders had some dumbass, lefty welfarist, you know, plan, like you would think he would at least talk about how much the working class is hurting right now.
And not just stupid things like blaming Trump or blaming the Republicans or whatever or blaming racism, but like, okay, man, there's some, there's some real shit going on right here and people need relief.
And here's, you know, what we need to do.
None of that.
Just, and by the way, they gave him a really short speech, too.
It wasn't even like a long featured speech.
It's unbelievable for how good he did in the fucking primary season, how much he just rolled over and leveraged it into nothing.
I mean, he got nothing.
You know, like, usually, if you're in a situation where, okay, you've got, let's say, you know, let's just say the numbers were like 40, 60, which I don't even think that's exactly accurate.
But let's just say, like, Bernie Sanders is like 40% of the Democratic Party, and Joe Biden's got 60%.
And at a certain point, it becomes like obvious that Joe Biden's going to be the nominee.
And of course, he wants you, Bernie Sanders, to drop out of the race and endorse him because he wants your for he needs to consolidate power.
He needs to get all the, you know, as close to 100% of the Democrats voting for him as possible.
And you know that the 40% supporting you were like a real passionate, and at least 20% is like hardcore passionate, like burn your bust, right?
Like that was the saying, burn your bust.
So those, those people, you got to find a way to pull them over.
I need you to drop out of the race and enthusiastically endorse me.
Well, okay.
Like the Ron Paul solution to that was like, I'm not going to compromise with you because I'm going to stand on principle.
So fuck you.
I mean, Ron Paul wouldn't say that because he's too nice of a guy, but that's more or less the message.
It's like, no, I'm not going to drop out and I'm not going to endorse you because you don't stand for any of the shit I stand for.
So I'm going to stay in until I feel like dropping out and you'll never get my endorsement and I'm going to tell my people not to support you.
That's like the Ron Paul answer, which to me is the principled response.
But the Bernie Sanders answer is, okay, I'll drop out and I'll endorse you.
But you would at least think in that situation, right?
When you've, when you're holding those cards, if you're willing to play ball, you'd at least go, all right, well, I got some leverage here, right?
I mean, you want something from me that I'm willing to give you, but what do I get in return?
I mean, if Bernie Sanders really cared about any of these issues, he clearly could have leveraged something.
I want a position in your cabinet.
I want blah, blah, blah, blah.
I want nothing, literally nothing.
It'll get some minor little tweaks to the platform.
A platform means nothing.
Literally, the Democratic or Republican platform means absolutely nothing.
I mean, the Republicans had in their platform, I think, up until, I mean, it's not in there anymore, but they used to have like abolishing the Department of Education in there.
So, what does that mean?
You think they're actually going to abolish the Department of Education?
Of course not.
In fact, I think they doubled the size of the Department of Education in 2000 when they had the Congress and the presidency with that no child left behind bullshit.
So, anyways, just sad.
It's just sad.
That's ultimately Bernie Sanders' legacy.
And I know there's people who I respect a lot, like Jimmy Dore, who was like a Bernie guy who's like, Yeah, Bernie's legacy ultimately is him just being a bitch and getting nothing done for the issues he claimed to care about.
All right.
Anybody else that I want to talk about before we get to the big two?
Okay, I guess not.
All right, Kamala Harris, the vice presidential nominee.
Kamala Harris, whew, she is Hillary Clinton 2.0.
Man, she just, she is just bad at this.
Just bad.
The other thing that's really, you know, there's something interesting about like, like, this is how much more talented of a politician Barack Obama was than Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris.
Barack Obama never ran on, I'm the first black president, or I'm going to be the first black president.
That is not what he ran on.
If you go back and look at any of his campaign speeches from 2008, that was not the campaign.
Now, there was some winks and nods.
I mean, change, you know, you can say change, obviously, you know, like there.
There's something about that that is like, hey, this is something different here, right?
Like, you haven't had presidents who look like me before.
Okay, fine.
But that's about as much as it ever came to.
He really did not run.
And his DNC speech in 2008, it was, first off, I mean, it was like what Barack Obama always did.
It was empty and it was like platitudes, but it was beautiful.
It was a beautiful speech.
Like, if you are just, if you are in the world of public speaking at all, you should watch Barack Obama's DNC speech from 2006 and from 2008.
They were like just masterful.
They're just like, I still, you know, I think I've quoted them on the show before, but I still remember parts of his 2008 speech.
Again, it's just, it's not like, you know, specific at all.
It's just incredibly vague, nice sounding things.
But, you know, he had this one line in 2008.
He was like, I forget exactly.
He goes, he's like, I love this country and so do you.
And so does John McCain.
The men and women who have fought for this country have been Democrats and Republicans and independents, but they died together.
They fought together.
They bled together.
They did not fight defending a red America or a blue America.
They fought defending the United States of America.
You know, there's like really powerful lines.
It just like gets the crowd up on their feet.
And like, just real.
And by the way, I do, as much as Barack Obama is the enemy and I love liberty and he loves big government, I do think it's important to learn from stuff like that.
Like libertarians, we're going to need a leader who can get people out of their seat and get them excited.
And like, this is what moves people.
And, but that was the type of shit that Obama would talk about.
He would like move people.
He would, he would try to inspire people.
Again, with vague nonsense like that, but powerful, vague nonsense.
But it wasn't like, hey, look, I'm a black guy.
Okay.
Vote for me because I'm black.
Hillary Clinton was like, I'm a woman.
How about that?
The glass ceiling.
I'll be the first female president.
You know, like that was, she brought it up over and over because she's got nothing else.
So Kamala Harris goes right in.
First fucking thing.
Like that's right there.
I'm a black woman.
Here was my struggle.
My struggle was being a black woman.
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Like that's, and, and it's got to, you know, it's like, again, kind of like the Michelle Obama thing.
It's just really, frankly insulting and absurd to just see anybody who is on stage at the Democratic National Convention as the nominee, accepting the nomination for vice president of the United States of America to start talking about what a victim they are.
It's just like, it's batshit crazy.
Like you're talking to an audience of regular people.
We're supposed to look at you and go, man, she's got it tough.
What a fucking, just awful life you've led.
It's like, it's just so bizarre.
But that's the whole thing is this kind of, you know, like victim narrative of because she's a black woman, I'm such a victim.
And then just a, just a really bad speech and uninspiring.
And she's just, she's not good at politics, much like Hillary Clinton.
Just not good at this.
Being likable is important, especially seeing as how you guys, you know, you can never talk about what your real agenda is because it's not very popular to go, you know, we want to continue the banker control of the economy and we want to, you know, continue to fund the military-industrial complex and all this shit.
So you just have to speak in these vague, you know, kind of nonsense things.
So you might as well be somewhat likable because otherwise, what the fuck are how are you going to appeal to people?
And she does not have that.
All right.
Finally, we'll get to Joe Biden.
Okay.
I want to be fair about this and I want to be honest with you guys.
And I'm going to judge Joe Biden on a Joe Biden curve.
I want to judge Joe Biden on what was realistically a realistic expectation for Joe Biden going into this and how we've seen him perform in debates and in interviews and things like that.
And I will tell you that for Joe Biden, in this speech, he knocked it out of the fucking park.
And that is the truth.
For Joe Biden, for what this could have been and what we've seen him do in the past, it was this was as good as he could do.
I don't know what type of shit they pumped into him and how many takes it took before they got it, but he delivered a coherent speech with minimal stutters and stumbles.
And if you're a Joe Biden, I mean, like if you're working in Joe Biden's campaign, you're like, yes, we got it.
Now all we got to do is duck the debates and let the chips fall where they may.
And we think we've got a shot at this.
He got through it and he did not a bad job.
You know, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't enough to be, it was like Joe Biden did the absolute best that Joe Biden could do.
And it was still just whatever.
You know, not judging on a Joe Biden curve.
It was just, it was a whatever speech.
Again, he brought up Charlottesville, and which is, if you remember, was in his first campaign ad when he announced he was running for president.
He brought up Charlottesville and he actually made Charlottesville his origin story, at least in terms of running for president, not his origin story.
He was probably already in his 70s at that point.
But he said that after Charlottesville, when Donald Trump said there were fine people on both sides, that's when he knew he had to run for president because, you know, and that's the whole thing.
We have to save the soul of the United States of America.
And Charlottesville happened and Donald Trump said this.
And, you know, if you can just forgive, or, you know, I mean, obviously, there's like the reality of the situation, which is just that, number one, this is such fucking bullshit.
Like, it's just not true.
It is not true that Charlottesville happened and Biden was like, oh my God, I have to run for president.
Number two, Trump didn't say that.
Like, it's unbelievable how much some of these like lies just persist.
And again, I would love if there were people knocking Trump for the right reasons, I'd be all about, you know, like out there cheering, agreeing with them.
If they were sitting there and saying, like, holy shit, Donald Trump has been such a fucking disaster.
He's literally just does, you know, he's basically his foreign policy is let's just be Israel and Saudi Arabia's bitch.
He's way too much of a hawk on Iran.
He's done nothing about the crisis in Yemen except make it worse.
He never pulls troops out when he promises he's going to.
He had all these plans and we're still bogged down in all these foreign conflicts.
He spends, he makes Obama look like a fiscal conservative with the way he's fucking spends money.
He's destroyed the chance of, you know, like in any sense getting our fiscal house in order.
You know, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Statues, Hawks, and Broken Deals00:05:12
There's probably a whole bunch of others that you could go off and name.
I'd be right there with you.
Absolutely.
All fair criticisms.
But I'm sorry.
He did not say there were good people on both sides at Charlottesville.
It's not.
And if you actually go back and look at the video, he clarifies right away.
Right away.
What he said was he goes, you know, there were people who wanted, he was talking about the Confederate statues.
And he goes, there were people who wanted the statues down and people who wanted the statues to stay up.
And it's a contentious issue.
And there were very good people on both sides of that of that issue.
And then someone else goes, so are you saying like that the neo-Nazis and the alt-right guys are very good people?
And he goes, no, I'm talking about the issue of whether we should tear down the statues.
He was actually being kind of generous and going like not just taking the hardline conservative position that like the good people don't want to destroy our history and there's all these bad people who want to tear statues down.
He was saying, yeah, no, there's a lot of good people who think this represents racism.
And so they want to tear down a statue of Robert E. Lee.
And then there's a lot of good people who just think this represents history and want to keep it up.
It was a completely reasonable thing to say.
And what he did say about the conflict at Charlottesville was not that there were good people on both sides.
He said that there were bad people on both sides.
He was making the point that like, yeah, the alt-righters and those guys, I don't like them, but the Antifa guys over there are pretty bad too.
So don't like that, which is completely fair and true.
Like there's nothing wrong.
It was like perfect what he said.
You know, I mean, it's Trump.
So he would describe it as perfect.
But of all the things to hit Donald Trump on, it's just the most retarded.
But so whatever, leaving all that aside, it's even, you know, it just goes back to what I was saying before.
I just wonder, like, after the year 2020, how is it possible that you're counting on voters, on like the average voter, to be really concerned about Charlottesville?
It's just like, it's so bizarre to me that they would even attempt to use that.
It's like we just, the, the, the reason you're running is because white supremacy was about to take over.
And I don't know.
It just seemed very strange to me.
You know, aside from that, it was a lot of promises.
There's a lot of promises about how good things are.
The whole theme of the convention was basically there's racism everywhere.
We're against racism.
And Donald Trump's responsible for everything.
He's responsible for the, you know, every last COVID death.
He's responsible for the, you know, the state of racism in America.
He praises dictators abroad.
It was amazing to hear people like in the Obama administration talk about how they're praising dictators and that's his big problem that they're there for democracy, but Trump praises dictators.
I mean, go listen to what Obama said about the death of the Saudi king.
You know, he has no problem praising dictators and they have no interest in democracy unless it's the cover for that they're using to go fucking arm ISIS or something like that.
But anyway, as a whole, I will say not the worst, just politically speaking, not the worst convention for the Democrats.
I mean, I did think the ratings were down.
It was kind of bullshit, like not very compelling messages, but they got out of there with what the biggest danger was that Biden was not going to be able to pull off giving a speech, which was a very real concern.
And he pulled it off.
Wasn't a great speech.
Wasn't that inspiring of a speech, but it was fine.
It wasn't terrible.
He talked about, you know, like the one part that I thought was good and powerful was when he talked about, you know, people out there who have lost loved ones and how he's lost loved ones and, you know, like what it's like to go through that.
And he did a decent job.
And the thing that they're running on, the other major theme of the convention was that Joe Biden cares.
Joe Biden cares about people and Donald Trump doesn't.
And I certainly get where that's effective.
In fact, I know like some people in my wife's family who are like kind of blue-pilled Democrats.
And that resonates with them.
It resonates with them.
They're like, this Trump guy just doesn't care about anyone, which that part I certainly understand.
I mean, you can easily look at Trump and understand why someone would be like, this guy just doesn't fucking give a shit about anyone except himself.
That part's true.
But just imagine how childish and blue-pilled you have to be to think that any of these politicians fucking care about you.
It's a hard thing to even imagine what it's like to think that way.