Kat Abu Ghazale’s Democratic primary challenge against Illinois incumbent Jan Schakowsky (since 1999) exposes far-left populism’s cult-like loyalty, where supporters—mirroring right-wing tactics—attack critics over age-based critiques ($250K raised without clear strategy). Her residency shift and focus on gerrymandering-driven primaries clash with passive Democratic strategies, like Schumer’s "Signal Gate" approach, while raising doubts about insider motives. The debate questions whether reciprocal populism—prioritizing symbolic wins over systemic reform—undermines accountability or sparks genuine competition. [Automatically generated summary]
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if you'd like to be interviewed whether to share your experiences or promote your own content please get in touch and we're back with truth unrestricted the podcast that is building language for the disinformation age And back today, back again today with good friend David Bloomberg.
And he is my good friend.
If anyone else wants to fight David Bloomberg, they're going to find me with them in the schoolyard.
Sometimes I bring, sometimes I wear rings.
I fight dirty.
Don't.
Well, where were you earlier this week when I needed you?
I've been taking a break from some of the social media, David.
I needed to, for my sanity and my marriage, I needed to not spend my time staring at a phone.
So sorry.
But you could have just texted me.
You could have said, hey, hey, this is happening.
Jump in.
I'm always there for you, David.
Oh, well, thank you.
Thank you.
I guess.
Why are we here?
Why do you want this meeting?
What's going on?
What happened?
So, yeah, you know, a few weeks back, we discussed how it could sometimes be difficult to work with people who you might agree with on a lot of things, but who have acted in a disingenuous way or attacked you or lied or done other things you would find objectionable, no matter which side of the political aisle they're on.
And earlier this week, I had the distinct displeasure of experiencing it firsthand.
Now, it started when progressive writer, influencer Kat Abu, she's known as Kat Abu, I guess.
I did not know that.
I confirmed that.
I've known her for years as Kat Abu on Twitter.
Okay.
And I believe the full pronunciation of her name is Abu Ghazale.
I may have messed that up.
Abu Ghazale.
Yeah.
Okay.
It was very, very close.
Yes.
For someone who couldn't pronounce Cheyenne Sardarizadeh, that's pretty good for Abu Ghazale.
Okay.
She announced that she, mostly online, that she is running in the Democratic primary for the Illinois 9th Congressional District against Democratic rep Jan, I think it's Schakowsky.
See, I'm equal opportunity name mispronunciation.
I got the Jan.
That was easy.
I got the cat.
See, if I could just call them by first names, I'd be good.
And, you know, Schaikowski has been there, the rep there since 1999.
And I noticed this mostly because I live in Illinois.
I don't live in District 9.
I probably know some people who live there, having looked at it, but I'm not sure.
But I replied on Blue Sky to someone who I'm friendly with because she had brought up some questions about this announcement.
And so do I.
And so before we really get into the meat of the discussion, I do want to make clear, this is not about Kat.
It is about those who essentially became voluntary cult members for her.
They were already primed for this behavior.
They jumped in.
What I did not know is that this cult following already existed.
I had no idea who she was.
I apparently kicked a hornet's nest and did not realize it because I treated her like I would treat anyone else.
Not like, I was going to say not like a cult leader, but I don't think it's her intention to be a cult leader.
I just think she has cultish followers.
Right.
So just we just want to peel that back a little bit.
I try to be a little bit careful about how we throw around the word cult.
There are people who don't think critically about people they are fans of, right?
But cult situations actually pretty much always require a coercive influence, which isn't usually the case with this sort of thing.
It's even a little bit difficult to say that what's happening with Trump is like a cult.
Certainly the people who are fans of Trump are not thinking critically about many of the beliefs they're taking on board.
And that's sort of the thing here.
But I would put it more towards populism than a cult.
Yeah.
That it's an appeal to the masses and that you're often meant to assume that the person is overtly good in an absolute sense rather than to question anything that they're saying, which is something that goes along with populism, right?
Yeah.
I mean, I would, I would say Trumpism MAGA is a cult.
And I think that he definitely wants to be a cult leader.
But yeah, but for her, I have seen nothing to indicate she is like that.
I just see it in the similarity of the followers.
Right.
I also don't think Taylor Swift has a cult, even though her fans are very enthusiastic.
So in the same sense, they interpret everything around her goodness.
And probably they should be a little bit more critical about that.
But Taylor Swift isn't running for office.
Right.
Kat Abu Ghazale is right now.
So, yeah, at that point, you have to be more critical.
Right.
And so I would compare it to in the reality TV world and in other worlds, what we call stans.
Yes.
Not a fan, but a stand.
Someone who is so devoted, such a follower that you cannot say anything even remotely negative or question a person.
Yeah.
Or they will come after you.
Yes, they are absolutely good.
We might even call that.
We did an episode about absolutism, right?
Yeah.
Where you take everything to that absolute and the people get elevated to that as well.
Everything they do is good or everything they do is bad.
Right.
That's not how people work.
Yeah.
And so what happened was, apparently these people already existed.
I did not know that.
I will later talk about how I think Kat should have included certain information in her initial announcement.
Sure.
But it's more important was the way the people were going to discuss acted when I asked about it.
Yeah.
Like I said, why wasn't this in there?
They could have simply acknowledged that it wasn't there.
Instead, they attacked me for asking.
They made up their own reasons.
They attacked the incumbent, despite Kat not having attacked the incumbent, etc.
And so my main questions were, at their essence, why?
It's a simple question.
Why?
Yeah.
She acknowledged in this Rolling Stone article that came out the same day as she made her announcement that she didn't live in that district, but she would be moving into it.
She also acknowledged that Schikowski, quote, has a pretty great track record on her voting.
And she didn't explain, why are you attacking, not attacking, sorry, why are you targeting this particular Democrat who others, I mean, I don't really know her, but others have said that she has a progressive voting record.
So why is a progressive going after a progressive?
It seemed very odd to me.
Even if to my knowledge, said that she had a very progressive voting record.
Jan Schikowski, yeah.
Yeah, so if you're moving somewhere new to run, why go up against someone who you mostly seem to agree with?
And her answer seemed to be in that article, she's been a good congressman, but I want to be better.
Okay, but why?
Why her?
If you're moving anyway, why not go to a district that's purple or even red or has a retiring congressperson?
Now, I will say it's possible Schakowsky will retire.
She is 80.
People were saying, well, she hasn't even announced she's running for re-election.
It's three months into the congressional session.
I'm glad she hasn't announced it yet.
I'd like her to focus on her job before she says, oh, by the way, I'm still continually running, you know.
But yeah, it's possible she'll retire, but why do this?
And yeah, I could see why people were excited about her.
She had a great initial message in that video.
I enjoyed it.
I followed her on Blue Sky.
I reposted it.
Okay.
But why?
She's a great communicator.
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah.
Why go against the person who has easily won that district since 1999?
If you're a candidate, why even put yourself into a situation where it's quite possible you're going to go through a bunch of money and still lose?
You know, why not go after someone whose politics you don't like?
And she seems to be campaigning mostly against current Democrats not adequately fighting Republicans.
I agree with that for some of them.
I don't like the people who make the blanket statements.
Okay.
You want to talk to me about, you know, some of the leaders?
Yes, they are doing a terrible job.
But there are others who are out there fighting the good fight.
There is no, you can't blanket Democrat.
And if you don't, if you, so why not go after one that's actually doing a poor job or go at a Republican directly?
There are Republicans in Illinois, not many of them, thankfully, but there are some.
These were the types of very simple questions I was asking.
In response, I spent much of a couple of days fending off attacks from far-left people on Blue Sky.
And even though I agree with at least 90% of what I've seen her say, I was still attacked viciously.
They lied.
They attacked me personally.
They accused me of all sorts of things.
They lumped me in with people on the right who were apparently attacking her too, which I didn't see.
Well, I'm sure people on the right attack her relentlessly for sure.
But they lumped me in with that, even though it's not that hard.
As being insufficiently supportive of their favorite candidates.
Oh, no, no, no.
They attacked me for saying that I was doing the same things as the other people were.
No, no, but that's, I mean, that's really the real crime that insufficiently supportive of that.
You know, they were quote posting me in an attempt to get others to dunk on me.
So someone with a lot of followers would quote post me and be like, dunk on this.
Now, the thing about Blue Sky is it has something that some other places don't.
You can detach your quote.
So they can't quote post you if you catch it.
Yeah, right.
And, you know, one of them literally threatened me with violence, said he was going to hit me with his car.
When I noted that that was a threat, he amped up his followers to do more of the same.
Right.
Okay.
Now, again.
Here's a question, David.
Just a quick aside.
In Illinois, if you're in prison, do you get the right to vote?
I don't know.
I've never been in prison.
You don't know about that.
I should look that up.
Because I wonder if, you know, I mean, if all these people hit you with their cars and then they get manslaughter charges, that's a whole bunch of presumably voters for Cataboo that maybe won't be able to vote because they're in the city of the United States.
I mean, I suspect they're not in the silly strategy.
Yeah, I suspect they're not in the Illinois 9 district either.
Well, you know, I did not hear from anyone.
Now, I'm not the end-all-be-all or anything.
I did not hear from anyone in the Illinois district saying, I'm in Illinois 9 and I want to vote for Kat.
I did hear from two people who said, I'm in Illinois 9 and I like Jan perfectly fine and I will continue to vote for her.
So, but my point in talking about this here is not so much to dig into the specifics of the candidates.
You know, we're not a news reporting, you know, podcast here, but rather the way her supporters have been acting.
And the fact that all of these supporters are self-described, far-left, or communist.
This is not me leveling an accusation at them.
This is literally in their names in some cases.
Have been acting.
And why, to follow up on our previous podcast, it is so difficult or impossible to work with someone like this.
It's like, yes, I want a lot of the same things you do, but how can I work with you if you don't allow me to ask a simple question without you attacking me?
Yeah.
And for Kat's part in this, she says very explicitly in everything I've seen her say on the topic that, yes, you should question her.
Every politician, including her, should be questioned.
And I think it's especially fun because I don't know if this has come across in the several years that we've been doing podcasts together on this podcast, David, but I'm very cynical about politicians.
You?
All of them.
Every single one.
And I got an immediate thought as soon as she was saying that she's going to run.
I'm like, well, your politician now got to start questioning a lot of stuff.
I mean, this is a woman who I've been watching do very fun content that's poking fun at a lot of things that I agree with.
And I just was like soaking that in.
But now I'm like, okay, well, now, why?
Why is this happening?
What's going on here?
You know, even if you give that as the answer, should I trust that as the answer?
I don't know.
You're a politician now.
Well, right.
Maybe you're lying to me about everything.
I don't know.
Yeah.
And yeah, she did post.
She did a video.
She also posted on Blue Sky, and she generally acknowledged those of us who had questions, saying you should be skeptical of someone running for office.
I'm asking for power, and that deserves scrutiny, especially if you're unfamiliar with me.
That would be me.
Which is why I and everyone else need to earn your vote.
So I reposted this with my own thing and pointing out: hey, her fans need to listen to what she's saying here.
Yeah.
Because they're not acting in an appropriate way.
She even liked what I had posted.
And I applaud her for doing this.
I do think she should have gone a step further and told the A-holes, hey, stop attacking people in my name.
That's not what I'm asking for here.
You know, as far as I know, she didn't, but she at least did, you know, what, you know, something, which is more than what most people would do.
So I want to get into some examples because again, it's not so much about Kat, it's about these stands of hers.
And even in other areas, you know, like I said, it happens in reality TV all the time.
There could be stands that go wild.
And the people that they are standing sometimes have to go on social media and be like, stop it.
Stop it.
Stop acting this way.
You're not.
You're the Stephen Colbert thing when the crowd booze.
You're like, no, no, no, no, this is my guest.
You know, stop that.
You know.
Yeah.
I mean, someone will, you know, something will happen.
Like, I know, you know, again, you know, I bring reality TV and someone will vote out this favorite.
And the stands will go attack the person who did the voting.
And the person's like, wait, we were playing a game.
The point of the game is to vote people out.
It's okay.
You don't go attacking them personally.
Yeah.
So here are some of the examples of the argument points, which I think will help highlight what the problems are here.
So one person said to me, she feels, like a lot of us, that the Democratic Party is failing at both messaging and not pushing winning issues like healthcare and housing costs.
Her reporting on Fox News is fantastic, and she really understands how much reach the right wing has amassed online.
Okay, I agree with a lot of that.
It doesn't explain the questions I was asking, which is, why did you move to fight a sitting Democratic congresswoman who apparently hasn't been part of that problem?
Like no one is saying Schaikowski is failing at messaging and not pushing winning issues.
No, no one has said that.
Right.
So why are you bringing this up?
Another thing, that congresswoman is already in her 80s.
I mean, she's 80.
So technically, yes, she's in her 80s.
But that's in the 80s.
She passed the line.
She's never going back crossing the way.
And the person even said, and while she's been great, okay, there hasn't been a competitive primary there in almost 30 years.
I think now is the time to mentor up the next generation to carry the torch.
Smart, fiery people to get excited about.
And there's a couple things here.
Her age only matters if her age matters.
And I'll get more into that later.
But I've seen nothing indicated it does.
No one is saying Jan Schaikowski is senile.
Okay.
Okay.
And this person complimented Schaikowski.
So why go fight her?
Whether or not there's been a competitive primary has literally nothing to do with anything.
This is something that kept being brought up.
There hasn't been a competitive primary.
So what?
That's not a reason to cause a competitive primary.
Maybe there hasn't been a competitive primary because everybody knows that the people of her district love her.
So why would they bother?
You know, I don't know.
And then the next person, so this continues with the age thing, said, I'll never understand why there's this need to act like people in their 80s and 90s are entitled to their positions of power, especially when we have tons of recent examples of elderly people who simply weren't up to the job and held on too long, both left and right.
Again, this is another situation where someone was bringing up something that I hadn't said.
And no one else had said.
No one said Jan Schikowski is entitled to her job.
No one said anything of the sort.
So why even say that?
It's the straw man argument.
Okay.
And so what I said back was: if someone isn't up to the job, they shouldn't be in the job.
I don't care whether it's due to age or due to stupidity or whatever.
Pete Hegseth, he's not up to the job.
It's not because of his age.
It's because he's a moron.
You know, and so if there is a current rep that's not up to the job, the challenger should be pointing that out.
Instead, she did an interview calling her good.
Seems confusing, yeah.
Yeah.
So I fully recognize her age.
But as I said, age is only an age when it becomes an issue.
My father is the same age, roughly, as Schaikowski.
I know a lot of his friends and the people that live where he lives.
There is a wide variance in their cognitive ability.
Okay.
I have a cousin, a cousin-in-law, whose father was fully with it till he died at the age of almost 100.
Okay.
Why should that person not get to do things because of their age if they are fully with it and they're active?
Some people can still do a good job at an older age.
It's how good a job should be the determining factor, not just pointing to them and saying, oh, well, she's 80.
And so eventually, someone else mentioned, and I also grabbed, I realized Bernie Sanders is 83.
Are these same people calling for him to step down?
You know, Schaikowski won't even be 83 at the end of her term.
Yeah.
So again, people age differently.
Age, in and of itself, is not a valid reason.
If there is a valid reason, point it out.
Point out and say, we've noticed that Schaikowski, you know, she can't get to all her meetings anymore.
She's stuck here.
She's doing this.
She's, you know, forgetting things.
Many of the things we see of Trump.
So these same people weren't calling on Bernie Sanders to stop running around or to step down or never run for reelection, which is rather odd and hypocritical.
He's on a tour right now, right?
Yes.
On the same token, Dick Durbin, one of the senators in Illinois.
He's even older, isn't he?
He's a little bit old.
He's in his 80s also.
I'm not sure we're in his 80s.
I think he's in his early 80s.
I think he's around 80, 81.
I'm calling for him to retire and not run for reelection.
Not because he's old.
It's because he is.
Yeah, he's 80.
Yeah, that's what I thought.
He is wed to the old way of doing things.
He is stuck in the previous era where you can agree with your opponents on some things and disagree on others.
He's one of these Republican or Democratic senators who is voting for some of Trump's candidates.
It's like, no, you should be voting against every single one of them.
But he's wed to the old days.
Well, we can just work together.
No, we can't.
Not at this stage.
Not with Trump.
And so he is not fit for continuing in his office.
But again, not because he's 80.
So that was one big thing.
Okay.
So just want to stop in before we get into the next big thing, David.
Again, we don't want to make this really focused about Kat and what's going on.
I think you're right to think about it as about the followers.
And the first thing I thought of, and I didn't think of it before we were in the middle of the episode, but the first thing I thought of was Monty Python's Life of Brian, where they said explicitly that they are doing a send-up, but not a send-up of Jesus.
They're doing a send-up of the followers of Jesus who will, instead of looking at the world and doing things, they decide what they want to follow and then look for reasons to follow that thing.
Follow the gourd.
And those things become increasing levels of ridiculousness as you run out of things.
I mean, it says something about our media situation that most of the right-wing media sphere is about giving the fans of that set of beliefs more reasons to continue following along.
That seems to be their entire game.
And it doesn't, you know, this isn't a thing based in facts and reality.
It's red meat for the crowd.
That's really all it is.
It's stay tuned, stay in here, stay with us.
We're going to eventually get everything we want.
It's all of that.
And I think that what people are looking for right now on the left is the opposite of that.
They're looking for the thing that counters that.
And the only thing, this not the only thing, I shouldn't say that.
What some of them have come up with independently, mind you, it's not like they got together and coordinated and put their heads together and planned this out.
They just sort of looked at the situation, said that side is doing things X, Y, and Z that are winning.
So we're going to do that.
Why America here?
They didn't say X, Y, and Z. Whatever.
They listed them.
One, two, three.
If it makes you happier.
One, two, three aren't metric, okay?
They're just.
Neither are X, Y, and Z, by the way.
But if it makes you happy, Z, that's a problem.
No one in America says Z. You want me to say X, Y, and Z?
Yes.
Holy fuck.
Okay.
X, Y, and Z, David, just for you.
But they listed X, Y, and Z, and they said the other side is doing.
Yeah, yeah, I gotta work on my lingo to cross-culturally.
The other side is doing these things, and they're winning.
And therefore, we have to do these things as well.
That's sort of, I mean, this is sort of like football strategy, right?
The other side has really big linebackers.
So we need our own really big linebackers to counter their really big linebackers, right?
And, you know, but if theirs are small and fast and they're running the ball too fast, then we need our own smaller, faster people to outrun their guys who are outrunning the ball, right?
We need the same thing, but that's not, I mean, that sort of works sometimes in football.
And it, again, probably doesn't even work all the time in football.
But it's also the idea that I put forward is that this is like the idea that you should fight fire with fire.
That's not really the case.
Like if a house is burning down and you show up with a flamethrower, how much help are you to what's happening here?
Well, you don't need to fight fire with fire.
You should fight fire with, I don't know, water or other ingredients that put out a fire.
Right.
So it's almost like that's where we're getting is that is that when we look at this situation and people are sort of gaming it out in their heads, they're thinking we need to use the same strategy the other side is using in order to counter what the other side has done.
And I'm arguing that that's not going to work out for anyone.
If anything, that's probably going to lead to just a different tyrannical monster who has a different set of beliefs that are more to the left than they are to the right.
And that's not going to be good for anyone.
No one's going to like that.
I mean, I would say, so a couple things on that.
Sure.
One, yes, this is something I saw like when we did our podcasts on staged, you know, the supposedly, you know, the conspiracy claim that Trump was, there was no assassination attempt, et cetera.
Right.
And also I've seen it on the people who claim that Trump did not really win the election.
That was a conspiracy.
Yeah.
And when I dared to question this over on threads, I had a bunch of people attacking me.
Not even question it to shoot back at it and say, no, we have to stop this.
We should not, you know, be spreading false conspiracy claims.
Yeah.
And there were a couple of them who literally said, well, the other side does, so why shouldn't we?
Yeah.
And it's like, no, no.
Now, sometimes in certain aspects of politics, you do have to, unfortunately, fight fire with fire.
Because the Democrats all too often have sat there and said, well, if we just sit here and do things the old way, much like I'm saying Durbin with Durbin and other stodgy or older, usually, members of the Democratic Party, they just say, well, you know, if we do this, then it will just destroy the Senate norms.
The Senate norms are being destroyed as we speak.
You will not stop the Republicans because they have no norms.
And so I'm not saying blow up the Senate.
I'm saying you have to recognize what they're doing and you need to do whatever you need to do to stop that.
Even if normally you'd say, oh, well, the gentleman from South Dakota, you know, we were going to have lunch and have a conversation about that.
No.
No, you do whatever you can to stop them.
They are, I mean, they are ripping apart the U.S. government right now.
Now is not the time to stand by and say, well, I have this cup of water I can throw.
Oh, well, it's empty, actually.
So I'm just going to stand.
You know.
So there's another point there that I wanted to get to before you get to the next part of what you're doing, which is about this bit about age.
So I've said before that I think age can be very important.
I didn't like during the election when I was trying to cheer for one side or the other.
I didn't get to vote in that election.
I just had to, you know, cheer and say things in support of one or the other.
That I hated having to, you know, bet on the oldest horse in the race.
I didn't think it was much better, of course, that, you know, it didn't appease me that much at all that Trump was not that much younger than Biden.
Age is a sort of thing that doesn't go away.
It's not a temporary condition.
It's not a temporary condition.
It's not the sort of thing you bounce back from.
It's always a downward trajectory in energy and mobility.
And those two things are going to tie together inevitably because the less mobile you are, the less energy you're going to have, vice versa.
And it's a different slide trajectory-wise for every person.
And sometimes that slope sometimes changes dramatically downward and some, you know, pretty much never reverses and goes upward once it starts going down.
Especially after, I'm going to say somewhere around 70-ish, you're really, you know, when you're 50, sometimes you can, you know, change some things in your lifestyle to pull some things back up, but that gets more and more difficult and pretty much outside of your grasp after a certain depth.
And I'm not suggesting that we have, I don't know, like some crazy thing like a date at which you stop doing things like working in an office.
I would hope that by the time I'm 65, I don't have a job where I have to lift heavy things anymore.
But that's just the kind of job I have now.
I'm a blue-collar guy, right?
But if I was working in an office, yeah, I could see myself maybe, you know, the way I am now, working past that if I was in that situation.
But if, for example, it was I was an accountant and it was only, you know, my enrichment that was dependent on my abilities as an accountant.
That's one situation.
If I can convince someone to hire me or I run my own accountant office, whatever, and I do the thing until I'm unable to do it anymore and I'm, you know, which really means at that point, I can't write anymore or whatever the, you know, I can't think anymore, whatever it is.
It's only my fortune and misfortune that teeters on that.
But that's not the case at all with elected officials.
But much less their own fortunes that are moving up and down if they can't do the job.
It's everyone else's fortune and misfortune that has to teeter on this.
And so they should think about that when they make decisions like Biden, where he's already 80 and he was kind of made noises at the start.
He was only going to be one-term president.
And maybe he should make the decision in, you know, December of 2023 to tell everyone, you know what, pick a new candidate.
I'm not going to do this anymore.
I'm already 80.
You know, that's, to me, that's a much more responsible way to look at this because you are very, very important and everyone relies on you.
If you can't do it, it's not just yourself you're letting down.
It's everyone else.
And I don't know, Jan Jerkowski.
I don't know the situation.
Maybe she is just thinking about not doing this anymore.
I also kind of think it's silly to have the Supreme Court run this thing out to the very end of their lives because who knows what level of fitness their minds are near the end of their lives.
I mean, who knows what type of fitness they were in when they were originally appointed for a moment.
Sometimes, but that was the point at which they were vetted and they had to answer questions.
After that point, they don't have to answer any questions anymore.
They answer to each other and they can say whatever to each other.
They can just stay silent if they really want.
They don't have to say anything.
They could just write whatever they want to write, just say yes or no or whatever.
You know, I don't know how wise that is either.
But everyone relies on them.
So, yeah, I think in that case, it's not just about what they want to do anymore.
It's also about what's good for everyone else who relies on them.
And I think a bunch of them, including Dick Durbin and, yeah, Bernie Sanders, people are going to hate that I mentioned his name in this.
He still seems to have a fair amount of energy, but that amount of energy is never going to increase from what it is now.
I mean, next year, it's going to be less than what it is now, pretty much guaranteed, because that's how humans work.
He's not a shape-shifting lizard that's going to inhabit the body of Bernie Sanders.
Yeah, well, as far as you know.
Oh, I'm very certain about this one thing, David.
If there's only one thing I'm sure of that I've never actually seen, that's the thing.
I'm sure that he's not a shape-shifting alien that's taken the body of Bernie Sanders.
I mean, but it still comes down to fitness for duty.
Well, I'd play pickleball with people in their 70s and 80s, 20 or 30 years older than me.
Yeah.
And they whoop me.
Okay.
Okay.
They are with it mentally.
They're with it physically.
Right.
But should they gamble on themselves?
Well, that's the lives of their family and neighbors.
It's more a question of should we gamble on them.
If I saw them, let's say they were running for office here.
Now, first of all, I wouldn't vote for most of them because mostly they're Republicans.
But aside from that issue, for the ones who are not, if they ran, yeah, I'd seriously consider voting for them because I see no indication, especially for a two-year office.
Okay.
We're not talking a Senate office where it's six years.
We're not talking Supreme Court, where I know you don't run, although in state Supreme Courts you do.
We're not talking Supreme Court where it's for life.
We're not talking president, even where it's four years and you're the one person in charge as opposed to a member of a larger group.
Yeah.
That's what we're dealing with here with Schikowski.
I've seen no indication.
Nobody has said she is unfit.
Even all the people who are attacking me, all they could come up with is she's 80.
They didn't say she's 80 and she's unfit.
They didn't say she's shown signs of dementia.
They said she's 80.
That is not enough.
Now, would I want to be running for reelection when I'm 80?
No.
I retired from my state job the minute that I could.
The minute.
Because it is not my goal to continue doing that.
Even though I was in a role where I could guide policy, I could write laws.
I could write regulations.
I didn't want that.
Some people are built differently.
Some people, they want to be in power or alternatively, to take a better view, to help people for as long as they can.
Okay.
I can't judge that independently, but I can judge, are you a good candidate for reasons other than your age?
That's what matters to me.
You can be 30 and be a moron.
You can be 85 and be brilliant.
I'm not going to select the moron over the brilliant person just because of their age.
Well, sure.
But I just wanted to bring it up because I think more of these aging politicians, and I don't care what part of they're from, they should think about how responsible or irresponsible it is to put the world in a situation where the world has to pull them down rather than they step down on their own.
Because, you know, they don't, you know, they don't know how things are going to turn out in the next, you know, two years or however long they're going to be in office.
But I think it's fair to say that they know how aging works.
It's unlikely that they don't know how aging works, right?
But aging works differently.
Like I said.
Well, no, Flogging pattern.
It never works in reverse.
So like it's always on a dictionary.
We never see them slow patterns.
I have seen people get more active and, you know, as they get older.
Beyond a certain age, it's not.
Well, beyond, but it's not even beyond a certain age.
You can slow it.
You can certainly slow the decline.
Yeah.
And then sometimes you slow it and it still eventually gets to a point and drops off.
I mean, eventually.
Yes, but for some people that having everyone rely on them in this way, where it's, it's, I wonder if we haven't got to a point where we haven't questioned that enough, where we say, yeah, okay, sure.
You want to do it.
And if it's a thing you just want to do, then yeah, you get to do it because you want to do it and you got elected.
But I still wonder if it's if it's not something that's, like I say, just irresponsible.
Because maybe they should consider not doing it.
Like right now, you have, like, I think we mentioned it in a previous episode.
What you need, what Canada also needs in the States right now is especially Democratic federal politicians who have a lot of energy.
And God save Bernie Sanders.
He seems to still have a fair amount.
But is it still enough?
Like, could a 45-year-old do more than he's doing?
I don't know.
Let them step up and try.
Well, that's what cats do.
I mean, right?
Well, but she's stepping up for someone who, again, you can't just say she's 80 and leave it at that.
No, no, but she's stepping up and giving it a shot.
She's giving it a shot, but give it a shot against someone who, and again, I didn't want to make this.
No, no, I know, I know.
She did not do a statement, but she did it to us.
Oh, God.
Okay.
But then explain why you're going against her.
Yeah.
And if the reason is literally she's 80, well, then that's a bad reason.
That appears to be.
I'm telling you.
Right.
Absolutely.
And she needs to be more clear about that in a lot of ways.
You know, she has given reasons, multiple reasons.
You know, and I'm not sure.
I don't know if I should believe her.
She's a politician now, right?
I think that, I mean, personally, I want to believe her reasons.
Yes.
And that's a bias of mine, and I recognize that, but I do want to believe them.
Her reasons, as stated, are that she wants, she has the neighborhood in mind that she wants to live in.
She moved to Chicago last year.
She didn't get to live in the neighborhood she wanted to live in because it was in a hurry and blah, blah, blah, blah.
And she still is trying to move there and she intends to be living there in the next year or whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah.
That's her reason.
I think what we're seeing in this particular case is, you know, like if you saw someone who was, you know, for eight years, they've been an aide to a different congressional senator.
And now they live in the, I don't know, fourth district and they're going to move to the eighth district and they're going to run because they've just kind of finished their whatever apprenticeship under a different senator and they're going to be a senator now.
And I mean, that's what you might call someone who's like a political insider, knows a lot more about the process from the very inside, inside the office, seeing everything run day to day.
And that person, I think your questions are probably more on point.
I think they would be more politically calculated in which seat they're running for because they are an insider.
And maybe that's unfair too, because maybe they have the exact same reasons.
But I would be more suspicious of that particular person because they are on the inside.
Okay, but this again, again, in this situation, it didn't seem to have territory here.
I know, I know.
You did this to me, Dave.
No, no, no.
You did this to you.
No, no, it's not.
It's never my fault, David.
I will fight you.
Oh, my God.
The point is, I asked these questions.
Yeah, yeah.
When I was asking these questions, she had not put out that video.
That's true.
That's exactly right.
And she could have manufacturing their own reasons that they had imagined that would be cover for her.
Exactly.
And that's where we get to that.
And that's a problem.
Why couldn't these people have said, I don't know why she's choosing to do that?
Yes.
And it's okay that I don't know because everything I've seen from her fails to explain that.
You're right.
Let's wait and find out.
Or let's just ask her.
Yeah.
Well, like one did.
One said, well, just ask her.
And like, she's been tagged on many of these.
She has not responded.
I will note also that when she made that little video where she did explain it, it seemed like she said specifically, people have been asking.
I'm sure you weren't the only person that was asking that question.
I care.
I did because I jumped in when other people were.
And probably not the only person who got jumped on when they did so.
So I guarantee that.
But the point is, she should have known this would be a question.
Yeah, maybe.
And she was being called a carpetbagger before I ever jumped in.
Oh, yeah.
I was going to call her a carpetbagger.
I can't believe someone else thought of it.
Because she didn't even live in Illinois a year ago.
And now she comes to Illinois, and then she's not even in the district.
And the point of a representative, in theory, is you represent the members of your district.
How can you represent the members of your district when you don't even know the people in your district?
True.
It does turn out, however, that she did grow up in Illinois.
I don't know how far Evanston is from Chicago.
It's a suburb.
It's near or like I said, it could be kind of thing.
Yeah, right.
So, yeah, she grew up there.
So she does know Illinois and Chicago and all the neighborhoods.
She knows it from then.
I mean, you know.
I mean, so if she were a person like from Texas, you know, we could, whatever, we would say, yeah, well, she doesn't know anything.
But she grew up.
She is from Texas.
I don't know when she grew up in Illinois because most of your other articles said she's from Texas.
Well, she said she grew up in Evanston video.
She might be lying.
I don't know.
No, I don't think she's lying, but the question is, what grew up mean?
Was she two?
Was she 12?
Was she 18?
There's a big difference there.
Yeah, I'm uncertain.
Yeah, I don't know.
And so the point is, though, the people who were felt the need to stump for their person, right?
Right.
Well, not just stump for their person, but attack anyone who would ask this question.
Well, that's what's passing for stumping for your chosen candidate now is become a rabbit dog and bite as hard at everyone who would step forward against your chosen candidate.
And that's, I mean, people have been talking about it for a long time about how the increasing polarity in the political sphere and you can't have civil conversations about this sort of thing anymore.
And this is where it leads.
This is really where it leads.
It's literally me and other people asking a question.
And then they would come up with these grand statements.
Like, oh, well, if you want to shift the party to the left, you have to move the whole party left.
And, you know, da, And I was like, okay, but if you want to move the party left, why are you starting with someone who already has a good progressive record?
You are moving that.
Let's say that you win that district.
You have shifted the party left a little tiny increment.
Yeah, yeah.
But if you go after someone in a purple district, if you go after someone in a red district, then you're shifting the party left a whole lot more.
Right.
See, this is what I'm saying: is that I think that if this had been, you know, in a parallel universe where it's not catnaboo or whatever, it's, you know, a person who's been aide to Congress woman Z, not Zed Z, David, in the, you know, fourth district, and they're going to move to the ninth district or whatever.
That seems to me a situation that they are, like what you're saying, specifically targeting a thing.
We had that happen here.
There was a case, I think it's probably less likely to be true.
Maybe we find out that I'm wrong and it is true.
But it seems like another thing she's mentioned in her videos is that she's doing this to try to not just, you know, become a congressperson, but also to show people how it works.
Because I think that we get to a spot where we don't, when we don't know how anything works, we don't try anything.
There's fewer people who try to become, there's this idea.
I don't know if you heard of it, David.
There's this idea that there's a deep state filled only with political insiders that and they are the ones who know how to navigate all of the political spaces in the halls of power everywhere.
They know where to get the water that's clean once you get into the jungle that is the state office in it's not Illinois that's the state office, is it?
It's the, where is the, what's the capital of Illinois?
Springfield?
Springfield.
Springfield's the one.
I was having trouble.
I learned them all in the ninth grade, David, and it's not all of them come back to me all the time.
Why?
I didn't learn anything about Canada.
We'll get to that in a different episode, David.
It's north, right?
It's somewhere north of me.
Cold.
It's going to be the 51st state.
I don't know.
If I'm in Michigan, it's also somewhere to the east of me.
I don't know how this works, but so I understand what you're saying.
She wanted to do it to be an inspiration.
And I think she wants to sort of pierce the, like, and I, you know, there is the, the idea that there's a deep state is part of a conspiracy belief.
But part of that conspiracy belief is based on some real things that are there.
There's a, there's almost like a wall, like an impermeable barrier.
And she's trying to expose part of the barrier to show that it's permeable.
People can cross it.
Seemingly ordinary people, she's not really an ordinary person.
That's what I was going to say.
She wants to show people how to do it, but she's someone who already has a rabid fan base.
Well, yeah, yeah.
She doesn't have an advantage over you who would do it, right?
Exactly.
You don't have a rabid fan base.
You have a regular ordinary fan base, David.
Yeah, of people who aren't even listening to you for politics, really, mostly.
Yeah.
So they should.
They should listen to you for politics.
You're a very informed person.
Well, thank you.
Except for Canadian capitals.
But yeah, so I understand the inspirational value about it.
And one person even said that to me.
I'm worried about the Democrat-leaning, apolitical young voters we aren't attracting.
Okay.
But then why focus on an area that's already hardcore Democrat?
That doesn't help in attracting apolitical young voters.
And you want to inspire?
Well, then inspire by beating someone who is who needs to be beaten.
Go on that fight.
Be the David against the Goliath.
Don't be someone who's going up against someone who's just maybe incrementally not as good as you in your opinion.
That's not an inspiring story.
There are no fairy tales about the knight who slew the puppy dog, you know, or who slew the, you know, David going up, you know, David going up against the five foot seven inch guy.
No, it's against the Goliath.
Yeah.
You know, or about the, I mean, there's no stories written about the other relatively small guy that was going to fight Goliath, but that David tripped and pushed into the sand and ran in front of and then, you know, got Goliath instead, right?
Like, yeah.
So this is where we get back to more of her supporters.
And some of them are fairly big names along the way.
Oh, yeah.
So she goes on really big name podcasts.
I mean, I've seen her on a lot of, yeah, all the big names know who she is and would invite her on in a moment.
Yeah, I didn't.
But it's no surprise to me that she had a Rolling Stone article the moment she was to me.
I was like, who is this that she gets a Rolling Stone article?
Oh, but like Parker Malloy, who is a writer with a pretty big following.
Yeah.
I said, you know, I had posted on there, why is she, why is she choosing to go here?
And Malloy responded, because this is the city where she lives.
And I responded.
It's an overly simple answer.
Yes.
I hadn't looked into the situation there.
Yeah, I was like, no, it's not.
How many districts alone are just in Chicago itself?
Yeah, I was like, no, it's not.
And I quoted either Rolling Stone or Economic Times saying she does not currently live there.
And Parker Malloy, big time writer, blogger, whatever she does, didn't respond.
Someone who should have known the answer and therefore not said it to me beforehand just chose not to respond to me.
Yeah.
Noah Berlatsky, another progressive writer who may or may not also know Kat, he jumped in.
He said, well, she's been a progressive journalist for years.
People move all the time.
And I was like, okay, if people move all the time, again, this is before she said anything.
Explain why she chosen to move to that district and face that Democratic representative.
And by the way, people don't, quote unquote, move all the time just to primary someone.
Right.
But I caution against the rule about coincidences.
They're not always not coincidences, right?
Like, so we have, you know, if we're going to say about conspiracy theories that some things happen by coincidence, we have to, you know, at least pay some mind that sometimes these things are coincidences, right?
Oh, right.
But the thing is, again, she hadn't explained any of this.
And here he is jumping out using his platform to spread this when he doesn't even know the answer.
And then he was doing, he was making the same arguments that some of the other people were.
Now, I will say this for him.
He was not a jerk.
He was not an a-hole.
As a matter of fact, when the person threatened me, he stepped in and said, whoa, hold on here.
You have gone too far.
Yeah, really.
And so, whereas other people jumped in and said, yeah, I'll hit him with my car too.
So, so.
What is happening down there, David?
I know.
But he still did not think things through properly.
You know, he would not address what I was asking.
You can't just say you're angry at Dems because Dems are not fighting Trump.
Like I said earlier, Democrats are not a single entity.
Everyone is different, especially in Illinois.
I can want Schumer to step down.
I can want Durbin to retire.
I'm not saying every Democrat should be primaried, which is literally what some people were saying.
Every Democrat should be primarily.
Well, that's a huge waste of money.
That is a huge waste of money that could be spent fighting the actual Trumpers.
Some are good.
Some are a waste of money.
And so, you know, we went back and forth without getting into even more details.
It was, we just went back and forth without giving an answer.
I kept asking a question.
He would give a non-answer.
I would ask a question.
He would give a non-answer.
And the point in all of this was at the time, and perhaps even still now, she had not done a good job of explaining why she was targeting that particular seat.
And I noted repeatedly, I'll hear her out, but she was already out there collecting money without even explaining that.
Last I saw, over a quarter million dollars has gone into her campaign fund.
Okay.
Now, on a grand scale of things, on the scale of Elon Money dumping $20 million into the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, a quarter million dollars is nothing.
Wisconsin Supreme Court race, yeah.
I mean, you laugh, but it actually is very important.
No, yeah, I know.
I just know it sounds ridiculous.
One guy should be able to do that for one single state.
Yes.
But it seems to me that $250,000, if it was going to be spent by, you know, people who wanted to support Democrats or progressives or whatever, could be better spent.
She should have led with why she was targeting this district.
And especially if you're charging into a district where you've never lived.
But fine.
The thing is, nobody ever gave a good answer.
And probably because she hadn't herself.
Then just admit that.
Be honest.
Yeah.
Don't try to feed me all sorts of BS.
Don't attack me.
Don't pretend you have answered me.
Don't, if I ask you what one plus one is, don't tell me the sky is blue.
You know, just answer me.
And the thing is, spending money in that race at this moment does not seem to make sense.
It seems like a waste.
It seems like if she wanted to do all this, she could have moved somewhere else.
There are lots of districts in that same area.
Okay.
I don't know that when I have moved, I have ever said I want to live specifically in this neighborhood.
Some people do.
But that is, you know, that area of Chicago and the suburbs have a lot of districts in it.
They're almost striped.
Yeah.
I'd love to show a map of it.
But, you know.
Do you want to see a map real quick?
No, that's okay.
I've seen it.
But I mean, my city, my town has four districts in it.
They split Springfield into four districts.
It's ridiculous.
It's a city of 100,000 people.
So does it make sense?
That's the question I was asking.
Does it make sense to spend this money in this way?
And I'm not even saying it should go to someone else.
I'm saying maybe it would have made more sense for her to go somewhere else.
And again, she can answer all of these things.
Everybody can decide for themselves and should decide for themselves what they want to do when it comes to her.
The problem is the people who were relentlessly attacking others.
And yeah, I think that we get to a point where, like, we're at a point in our sort of world, larger world, where people are allergic to saying that they don't know.
Yes.
In a lot of ways, the online argumentation gets to a point where you almost spike the ball and declare that you win when the other side says it doesn't know.
And I think that's very unhelpful.
And I think that's a lot of the, I mean, the inside the inner workings of the machine that drives an argument like the one you describe, that's sort of layered in, laced into all the parts of it that no one wants to just say, you know what, I don't know.
I don't know why she did that.
You know, like, how the hell am I supposed to know?
You know, like, why, why couldn't all of them said that?
I don't know why she did it.
I don't know why she did it.
You know, asking her.
All they had to do was the only thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All they had to do was say something of these people out there.
I don't want to, you know, because not everybody didn't say anything.
You know what I mean?
They probably didn't answer because even like saying it out loud that you don't know is also kind of seen as a social negative almost.
Or why bother to get involved in an online discussion if you don't have anything to contribute?
I mean, that doesn't stop some people.
But, you know, all they had to say was, I support her generally.
I have known of her for all these years.
And I think, you know, I like her ideas.
Let's wait and see.
Yeah.
I'd like to see more.
Yeah.
It's the start of a campaign.
Even the people who said that also.
Yeah.
You know, got to be a year and a half of whatever.
Yeah.
Yeah.
If she doesn't come up with an answer before, I don't know, October then of next year, then she probably shouldn't get in office.
I don't know.
Yeah.
And that was the thing.
Even some people who said that still felt the need to attack me.
Like they couldn't just say that and leave it as it was.
They also had to attack.
And so what the result of this was, now, I know you almost, or maybe never, I was going to say almost never or maybe never block anyone.
You try to share.
I think there might have been five total people I blocked in the history of Twitter.
I am similar, but not to that extent.
I err on the side of trying to talk to people, even when it's clear I won't get anywhere, until it's really clear, and then I'm just done with you.
I have rarely blocked anyone on Blue Sky.
It is telling.
The number of people that I blocked in like one and a half days went up several hundred percent just from this because I was not dealing with honest people.
Yeah.
You know, and of course I was blocked by some people as well.
Amusingly, so they on because Blue Sky is open source, there are other things that are add-ons.
And so there's one that you can subscribe to that tells you what lists you've been added to and also when you've been blocked.
And so I subscribed to it just because I find it amusing.
And I kept getting notifications of being blocked.
And I would look at it and I'd be like, I have never interacted with this person in my life.
And I think that they saw what someone else was saying about me or something like that.
And they decided to block me, which, to be honest, I was perfectly fine with because it saved me the trouble.
If they were going to act like these other people, then fine.
Now I don't have to block you.
But it circles back to the question that we asked in the previous podcast.
How can we work with people like this?
We can agree that Trump is horrendous.
We can agree even that the Democrats need to fight more, certain Democrats.
We can agree with many of the political points.
But if you don't agree with them on every single solitary item, 100%, if you are not a member of their standem, I was going to say cult, but in deference to you, I won't say cult.
And you're sufficiently enthusiastic about their candidates that they choose.
You will be viciously attacked.
It is truly like a MAGA of the left.
I pointed that out to them.
They really don't like to hear that, but it's true.
No, no.
They definitely don't like to hear that.
But it's true.
There was no logical thought.
It was attack to attack.
I can't work with someone like that.
I don't know how to work with someone like that.
And unlike the true MAGA, we're not all going to bend the knee.
You know, the Republicans, it doesn't matter who you are.
You bend the knee.
You, Senator Bill Cassidy, a friggin doctor who says, oh, well, I'm in charge of this committee and I could stop RFK Jr. from becoming the new head of health, but I'm not going to do that because he promised me it would be okay.
Things are not okay.
And he is not doing anything.
He was like, oh, we'll put up guardrails.
BS.
Why?
You got to do more than just say that you're going to put up guardrails.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's what all the Republicans have become.
You know, the first time that Republican office holders actually started questioning anything recently was the whole Signal Gate thing.
Yeah.
And even then, it's so mild.
Hakeem Jeffries finally had a ball he could swing at.
And did he do anything?
Well, what could he do?
He did.
He wrote, I mean, he wrote it up.
He went, you know, the Democrats in the House are rather limited in what they can actually do.
They can't call for hearings.
They can yell and scream.
Well, okay.
That's what they can do.
Can they at least start doing that then?
I don't know.
They did.
I mean, and this is, again, this is something that I have a problem with, with the people.
Yeah.
Okay, you say that.
No, no, I'm cynical.
Yeah, but I at least do that.
Bernie Sanders went on a tour.
Bernie Sanders.
But let's be clear about one thing.
Part of what Bernie Sanders is saying on that tour.
This is going to get you in trouble if anyone's listening for an hour here.
Part of Bernie, what Bernie Sanders is saying on that tour is don't become a Democrat, become an independent.
So don't hold Bernie Sanders up as an example of what Democrats should be doing.
Well, I didn't even hear that before, but I mean, at least he's doing that.
I mean, it's better than sitting silent in an office waiting for the end so that you can say, I told you so somehow.
Yes.
That seems to be Hakeem Jeffries' stance on this.
And I'm like, well, okay, man, but we got to wait for them to screw it up so that you can.
No, that's Schumer's stance.
That's Schumer's stance is wait for them to screw it up.
He's literally said that.
Yeah, well, Hakeem Jeffries said he's going to wait for a ball he could hit before he'd swing.
He doesn't even have a bat.
Yeah, I know.
Yeah, he's not even playing in this game.
No, he's playing.
But again, in the Senate, at least you have the filibuster.
Schumer gave away the filibuster.
Yeah.
Okay?
He gave away the one tool he had.
He had a bat and he gave it away.
Yeah.
Okay.
Jeffries doesn't even have a bat.
All he can do is yell from the sidelines.
And he is.
Maybe not as loud as you want.
Yeah, well, he should be yelling louder and more often.
But again, that's, you know, that.
Yeah.
But that's just me.
Yeah.
Well, it's not just you.
It's not people.
Yeah, no, but I've.
The criticism should be more aimed at the people who can do something about it.
The Schumer, the Durbins, the, you know, those they can use.
If Hakeem Jeffries yells louder and more often, does it encourage the Schumers and the Durbins and the other senators to do to think that they might have someone more or less?
Does it include other state legislatures or governors that stand up and say, okay, well, at least if something else happens and I, you know, I do have at least one loud guy that's prominent in Washington.
Like, like, like, it's not only like the idea that you might get a notable difference that you can put on paper that was a change in a law or a new thing passed or whatever.
It might just be a perception thing where you being louder encourages other people to stand up and also say, you know what?
He's right.
Schumer also doesn't care what he says.
Schumer Jeffries tried to.
Whose fault is that?
Is that Schumer's or Jeffries or both?
No, it's Schumer.
Okay.
And what about all the other people and all the state places where the state's rights are going to be a thing or whatever?
Wouldn't that mean the governors have at least a little bit more power, maybe?
But like if some of them are staying quiet because they are worried that if they stick their head up too much, they'll be alone in that fight, then like, isn't that a thing where if you're louder, you might encourage other people who maybe have their own little bit of power to also be louder and to also, you know, do some more things.
Like we want to talk about your individual power.
Way off of topic here.
Yeah, I know.
We're way off topic.
This is how you are, you are asserting that Jeffries is not doing anything.
I am telling you, I have seen him doing what he can do, and you are coming up with these hypotheticals.
Well, I am coming up with hypothesis.
Very much like what the people are saying about Kat.
Well, if she stands up and runs here, then that'll encourage others.
Will it?
Pritcher has been out there screaming and yelling.
The governor of Illinois, a fellow billionaire of, you know, Musk, not as much, but has been out there screaming and yelling, taking on Trump at every opportunity.
The, you know, the governor of Maine took on Trump.
And then on the flip side, you get the governor of California starting a podcast so he can talk to right-wing people.
Let me start on fucking Newsome.
Yeah.
So, so this is why I say you can't talk about Democrats as a whole.
Well, no, I'm not.
Jeffrey's, but Jeffrey's pushed the Senate to reject the budget.
And Schumer, against the will of most of his own party, against the will of most of his own senators, gathered enough people to push that budget through.
That is not anyone's fault but Schumer and those who joined him, like Durbin.
Okay?
And I know they had their excuses.
They're wrong.
They're wedded to the old ways.
But the people we need to be criticizing are not Jeffries.
It's the people who are doing literally nothing, like Schumer.
Well, Schumer has his own cross to bear, that's for sure.
He's his own part in this.
I'm definitely not, you know, this isn't a thing where I can criticize one or the other.
I can criticize both, actually.
Yes, but you can't criticize them for the same thing.
One has the power to do certain things.
One does not.
No, but this isn't only about actual political power.
Yeah, he's elected to a position and that's a position with political power.
But, you know, it's like when you're in survivor and if you never say that you might consider going against a person, do you guarantee that no one else will also volunteer to help you get rid of a certain person?
Like is is being just willing to talk about it with other people?
Is it you know, when he literally says, I'm only going to swing at the balls I know I can hit.
Does that let down a whole bunch of other people who would otherwise be louder and noisier and maybe push some other more popular agenda to get something else done or to or to get like even even that that might encourage some people in some other districts who are in Republican districts to discourage their representative.
Representative from.
from supporting things that are terrible.
Like if like just staying silent is its own and he's not, you're right.
I exaggerate when I say he's silent, but he's not as loud as he nearly could be.
He got loud about this last thing.
Before that, he was, you know, I've almost forgot who he was, except for he said that one thing about, you know, baseball metaphor.
You know, look, I'm not a DAO.
I almost forgot that he said that.
You know, I'm not saying he's perfect.
I should not have said that.
None of them are perfect.
Yeah.
He should not have said what you quoted him as saying.
You're right about that.
Right.
But he's also, he's not, he's just not very loud.
But does being loud do anything?
Because let me just tell you that.
So let's circle back.
Does it encourage some people to also get loud?
Yes.
But like if he's one of the prominent leaders of that side of the political spectrum, does he have a, you know, does he, by doing things, encourage other people to do things?
I don't know because here's the thing.
That's a useful question, I think.
But, you know, you talked about Bernie going out and having these big rallies.
Well, he is.
Yeah.
Okay.
You know who else had really big rallies that we talked about?
Kamala Harris.
Yeah, Kamala Harris.
Yeah.
She runs.
Yeah.
What fucking good did that do?
Yes, right.
Rallies alone aren't enough.
Okay.
She got lots of people together.
That was great.
It looked great.
Everyone was there that was for her.
But you know who goes to the rallies?
The people who are already involved.
Yeah.
Okay.
True.
It's not.
It's alone.
It's not enough.
It's you need other things.
Yeah.
I mean, but he's not sitting in an office waiting for the other side to screw something up.
No, that seemed to be the whole strategy for the Democratic Party.
It does seem to be the strategy for works because they screwed something up.
It literally is.
I mean, Schumer literally stated that.
We're not even interpreting there.
No, I didn't have to draw a lot of lines.
Yeah.
Right.
And yes, that's, again, a reason, you know, and it's like, okay, here's Signal Gate.
Here's my football play.
I'm going to give the other side the ball and wait till they fumble it.
Yeah.
That's a terrible strategy, I think.
You know.
But you're right.
We are way off topic.
We're almost.
I mean, this is fun.
This is fun, though.
We almost need to cut this and make it a whole new podcast here.
Yeah, maybe.
Let's reel it back in here.
So Kat said, not to make it all about Kat, but she said she wants to, she feels that there should be more competition.
I think that she's right, frankly, about that.
You know, I don't know whether she purposely chose this or not or whatever.
I can't see into her heart to know that.
I don't know.
She has a reason, whether that reason is true or not.
I don't know.
Maybe we'll find out later that she was very calculating and steeple fingered and she knew that there was going to be poison put in the tea at the certain point that she's going to become the, I don't know, maybe.
But to me, what she's doing looks more like journalism than politics, actually.
Like she's almost like an embedded reporter in a military engagement, more than anything else.
Like she's going to become essentially a combatant in this political fight and in doing so, show everyone else kind of what it's like and how it happens because a lot of people don't, you know, they wouldn't have the first clue as to what the hell they would do.
They think, quite literally, and probably for a lot of good reasons that, you know, the Democratic Party should have to own for, and actually probably the Republicans too, that only the people that they like get to run is kind of where they got to, where it may be.
Well, I mean, that's part of the big conspiracy.
You know, there's a conspiracy, but it's also probably in some parts some level of truth to that.
I mean, there's some level of truth, but there's still the whole conspiracy that, oh, the evil Democrats wouldn't let Bernie run.
No, it's the people who voted that wouldn't let Bernie run.
That's in the case of Bernie, right?
See, what there isn't is there isn't like a meeting of the, you know, the Democratic Party local in Illinois where they have a big chart with all the names on there and they say, okay, which of these people is going to get a chance to run and which of them is going to get denied the chance to run and blah, blah, blah.
I mean, they do endorsements.
You know, they're not going to be able to do that.
Right, but that's not the same thing as what I was describing, which is kind of what the picture is portrayed from the conspiracist point of view.
Yes.
Is that they get together, they steeple their fingers.
They definitely steeple their fingers, David.
Because I've seen them in the videos where they do it.
They steeple their fingers much like this.
They bang them together like that, just like Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies played by famous Canadian Mike Myers and both parts, by the way, Dr. Evil and they plan.
They have a board.
They move the names up and down the board based on who they like the best.
And, you know, the aide from the senator or the congressperson from the fourth district, they've been there for this long.
They get to move their name up the list and they'll get to go in this one.
And we're going to, that one, this one.
We choose them before they ever know who's going to run.
We've worked it all out.
It's like that's the deep state conspiracy, right?
And that's not really happening.
But what is happening is sort of a, it's like a filtering process by familiarity.
So you get the same thing actually in Hollywood.
Famous case, George Clooney goes to become an actor.
Why?
Because he has a cousin who went to become an actor.
His cousin didn't have great success, but knew an agent, said, Yeah, people become actors here.
It happens.
George Clooney first believes it's possible, then goes there, meets the agent, becomes an actor himself.
And so, you know, the idea that you'll have people who are related to other people in Hollywood is not any mystery at all once you think about it.
And for the same reason, the fact that you'll have people in politics who are becoming politicians who are the person running based on the fact that they know people who were in, yeah, that's not a mystery either, but that becomes its own kind of closed circle.
And that, you know, it doesn't purposely deny and gatekeep the, you know, quote-unquote new blood from getting in there.
But by the fact that the people who would be the, you know, new blood don't know how they could possibly go about that process sort of guarantees it just by the nature of how the thing is currently working.
And there's also as just a political machine, right?
Yeah, I mean, but there's also the issue that if you want to represent a district, maybe you should know the people in that district.
Well, you know, because that helps you to run in that district.
You know, I mean, if I wanted to go run for office here, I know multiple alder people.
I know the head of the Park District Board, also in elected position.
I know, you know, several of the other people here because I've worked on their various campaigns at times.
I have talked to them.
I know them.
I'm friendly with some of them.
I would be able to do it if I wanted to.
I don't.
I considered it at some point, but I would be able to do it.
And I would know who to talk to and where to start.
It's similar even in a regular job situation.
When I worked for state government, there were organizations and consultants and law firms that I worked with or against all the time.
Okay.
And there was one in particular that I knew hired retired state employees for particular positions.
And I was friendly with those people.
And I knew when I retired, I could probably get a job with them.
Or I could at least try.
And so what happened?
I retired and they offered me a job.
And I said, no, thanks.
I like being retired.
You know, but would they have retired?
You know, if I had, if they had hired me and followed along with the other people who they had hired who had been similar to me, someone else could have been, oh, that's not fair.
They're only hiring these people.
Well, yeah, because they know these people and they know these people know their stuff from their time working for the state.
You know, it's not a conspiracy to hire those people.
You hire the people with the experience.
Well, and nepotism, we was hoping eventually on my long list of podcast episode topics to have one specifically dedicated to nepotism.
It never happened.
It probably never will.
But as a as a sort of a force in human nature, we treat it as though it's cronyism and it's a force always used to get unqualified people into positions.
And at some point along the line, there is some of that.
But almost no one actually wants to hire their unqualified and incompetent nephew to do anything at all important, right?
You might get them hired to do a job where they don't do anything important and just collect money.
There's a particular name for that kind of job.
I don't know how to pronounce it, but I think it's pronounced something like sinecure.
It's a word from old Roman.
It was an actual job given to retired soldiers who were important, like lower level officers who couldn't get into politics themselves, but you still wanted them to be seen to be treating them well.
So you give them this sort of gift job.
It's a job where they're not expected to do anything, but they still collect a salary.
And this word has been filtered down.
And this is kind of how we view nepotism now is that it's a gift given to someone that they didn't deserve.
And that if they're doing anything, it's always going to be rife with incompetence.
Right.
And that was another thing.
In actual fact, nepotism doesn't really work like that.
Like, like you, you hire the people you trust and you only trust the people you know.
So it's much more likely you're going to hire people you know over people you don't know whenever you have a choice.
Yeah, I mean, even at the state agency where I work, they had a summer worker program for kids who were in like the first year of college or so.
Yeah.
And a lot of times people who worked there, their kids would be hired for it.
Both of my kids worked for a summer there.
Yeah.
And people would be like, oh my gosh, that's terrible.
Well, the thing is, we knew about it.
Yeah.
Why did I know about it?
I knew about it because I worked there and I knew there was a summer program so they could apply for it.
They weren't given special treatment.
We knew.
As a matter of fact, they even went to a drawing to make sure if there were more people that it would be, you know, done by a drawing.
And they made sure that the kids who were hired were not working with any of their relatives.
You know, there were whole families at the agency where I was.
There was literally, like, there were, there was a husband, wife, and two brothers all working for the agency.
Was that nepotism?
No, it was because they knew about it.
It was nepotism, just not the kind of nepotism that leads to like incompetence.
Because the other side of nepotism that makes it like actually work is that when you get a job and someone you know and respect got you that job, the tendency is that you don't want to disappoint that person.
So you show up, you do the job.
Well, none of these people even work together.
Well, a couple of them might have, but I mean, they didn't early work together.
It's you.
You don't need to work together, but like the idea that if you disappoint the person you are working for, that the other person that you know and respect, whoever that is, your uncle or whatever, is going to hear about it.
And then they're going to give you crap about it.
It's a drive to encourage you to do all the things you're supposed to do.
Mop the floor when you're supposed to mop the floor.
All those things, whatever it is, you know, do the filing, whatever the job is.
You know, for me, it was working on an oil rig for my uncle and him reminding me every single day, I don't want anyone to think that you got this job just because you have the same last name as me.
Make sure you're doing everything.
And that was that was a driver, man.
It was, it was like, yeah, I got to make sure I do this because otherwise I'm going to let down my family member, this person I respect.
Like, and so that's a, that's a drive.
Like, we, this isn't a, we treat this nepotism as though it's a thing that degrades the quality of life, like it's DEI or something.
But that's, you know, yeah, but that's not what it is.
Even DEI isn't what they say it is.
But it's not a thing that just invites in incompetence.
It actually, how it works with people, people try to work harder to live up to a standard that's set for them.
But it's no surprise that there is a sort of an insider-outsider thing that happens with this sort of situation.
But I think what Kat is sort of trying to, in her own whatever, however successful she is at it really, way is to try to, you know, break that barrier even a little bit, expose it somehow.
You know what I mean?
And show that a person who's not on the inside can do it and to show people how that happens so that maybe they could.
Whether that she's successful or not, I don't know.
I think that's a great idea if that's really the thing she's going to really do.
Or whether it's just a thing she uses as a reason to become a politician.
I mean, there are certain things.
Now, to get back to nepotism, obviously there are negatives.
Not everybody is like you.
Not everybody was like me, where they work hard because they were going to get some people truly are hired only.
It's a mixed bag, man.
Make their sister-in-law happy.
I'll hire your good-for-nothing nephew.
Yeah, right.
Take care.
Whatever.
But in this case, there have been discussions of like, well, other people have lined up and waited their turn for Schaikowski to retire and they're going to be upset.
And I agree.
Nobody is guaranteed their turn.
You have to fight for that.
So if Schaukowski does retire, no, you don't automatically get it.
And if Cat wants to fight for it, then Cat fights for it.
And I think in some portion of this, this is something to do with the acceptance that the Democratic Party had to just lay down and have Biden just be the next presidential candidate and not have any more prominent contenders.
Whether that was the right idea or not, I don't know.
But I mean, I think that's in some small way what she's saying is that no one should get that job without having a real competition for it because it's a very important job, right?
And Biden shouldn't have just been walked to the podium for his second term either, is kind of what she's saying, right?
You know, I think that there's, it's a mixed bag, right?
I think that the kind of primary process that tears people down with insults and everything else is something that's bad.
But I think that politics doesn't need to be like that.
Politics in Canada is slowly becoming what it is now in the States.
But it didn't used to be, it used to be a, I mean, we've followed that trend more slowly.
It's seeping in slowly, but even now we still have candidates congratulating each other when they get the seat.
We still have, You know, they work against, you know, you're in the opposition party, still work against them, but they're still, you know, they haven't got down to the point where they're, they're, you know, poisoning each other's coffee or anything, which is almost what they're at in the U.S. now, right?
Don't let that guy get your coffee for you, man.
Like, don't drink it, you know.
I think that I think that, you know, maybe she's too optimistic.
Maybe, maybe what she's going for is too optimistic.
Maybe we're at a point where we're never going to get back to a place where it can be civil like that again.
We can have a competition for a primary and the winner comes out of it without being, you know, knee-deep in blood, you know?
I think you can, but you still need to separate yourself.
It doesn't have to be full-on negative.
Well, yeah.
Yeah.
But if you decide to come in and you're up against someone who has been there since 1999, doing by all accounts a good job, you can't just say, I'm going to be better.
You need to explain why you're going to be better.
And being different is not enough of a reason.
We might get a chance to hear her argument for that.
And it might be that, you know, it's just a whole bunch of smoke, right?
Well, but the other thing is, again, see, we weren't going to get into this.
Ah, she did it to us, David.
Oh, you did it to us.
It's a show.
No, it's you.
Oh, God.
And, but the point is, if you're going to come into a new district, that should be the first thing on your mind.
This is why I am the better person.
It should be number one, in my opinion.
Because otherwise, why are you doing it?
And I'm sorry, because I'm buying a house there is not a valid reason for why you want to run against someone.
I don't know.
So, I mean, if she knows that she won't be living in her current district, then she won't qualify for that district, right?
She will.
You don't have to live in the district when you're in Illinois.
Oh, really?
Yes.
Oh.
i didn't know that why why would they make you not have to live in the i'm i'm 90 sure about that one um Is it because they gerrymandered everyone out of their own districts so much that they made that exception?
You know what?
Everyone just.
Okay.
All right.
Well, I think we talked this to death, David.
I don't know if anyone's going to listen all the way through.
So maybe they won't hear all the times we have to get dragged back into this whole cat Abugazale thing.
Oh.
Okay.
Sorry.
That's a national rule.
The Constitution requires that members of the House be at least 25 years old, have been a U.S. citizen for at least seven years and live in the state they represent, but not necessarily the district.
Okay.
Oh, okay.
Well, it could still be because they gerrymandered everyone out of their own districts.
Well, no, because that was way back in the early – I think that's the Constitution.
So I don't think they had gerrymandering back then.
I'm going to – I'm going to wait to get my fact checker on that.
We'll see.
Okay.
Yeah.
My fact-checking team.
Yes.
You get them on that.
The whole team, David.
We're all going to work on it.
Yes.
All right.
Well, we'll wrap this up then.
Where can people find you, David?
Your regular stuff that's non-political that you talk about.
Well, for everything, they can find me on Linktree, which is Linktree slash David Bloomberg.
I'm Blue Sky.
You can find me, not to argue with me or, you know, whatever.
Well, I mean, if you don't want to respectfully disagree with me, fine.
You'll be wrong if you do, but, you know, fine.
I'm Blue Sky.
I'm at David Bloomberg.
For absolutely non-political reality TV stuff, you can find my videos on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram as at David Bloomberg TV.
Great.
And as I mentioned, or maybe I forgot to mention, I can't remember if I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast because it's been so long.
If anyone has any questions, comments, complaints, concerns about this podcast, you can send that email to truthunrestricted at gmail.com.
And I'm taking a break, although every once in a while I just kind of, you know, scroll for 10 minutes or so.
But I will go back eventually to some social media of some kind.
I'm at Spencer G. Watson on Twitter and at Spencer Watson on Blue Sky.