Chapo Trap House - UNLOCKED: 883 - History Doesn’t Repeat Itself…But It Slimes (11/7/24)

Episode Date: November 8, 2024

We have always lived in The Zone. We take in the stunning re-election of Donald Trump, the manifest failure of Kamala Harris, Joe Biden and the entire Democratic party, and all of the myriad obungles that have brought us to this moment. This has happened before, it will happen again…Reasons to be scared, reasons for hope, and assurance that we’re still ready to ride with you all every day. Unlocked from our Patreon for all to hear. To get every episode, subscribe at patreon.com/chapotraphouse.

We rolling? Yeah, we're in. I may not be Dale Earnhardt, but the context of that of which is in motion around me is informed by all the distance traveled between yesterday and a future that is not imagined but realized. I may not be Johnny Knoxville, but I'm standing at the precipice of a crossroads of a country where the ambitions we have with regards to the kind of things that we can reflect on with pride specifically in terms of that which allowed the dreams of one day to become the tomorrow of the next day. I may not be Brian Singer, but I was assigned a husband on David Geffen's yacht in a cash

and stock deal administered by the California Democratic Party and Paramount Global LLC We did it Joe we did it history does not repeat itself, but it runs Greetings, friends. It's Thursday, November 7th, and this is Chopper's Rap House. So obviously, we'll be talking about the election results, and I just want to start off the episode by saying I take no credit for, like, any special insight or predictive powers in saying in the show I thought Trump was going to win because it wasn't like a hard stake I was putting my claim down on and, like, I went back and forth in my head myself over the last week of the election. But like, even in saying I had a feeling he was probably going to win, I could not have

anticipated what an absolute just molly whopping this was. They got mobbed. This was a historic, historic defeat. And there's no way. And I think like any discussion of what happened on Tuesday needs to begin. And we're going to get into the granular details of it. But I think it needs to begin with the acknowledgement of the essential success of Donald Trump and his political movement as the dominant political figure of our time.

And that 2020 was really a fluke. It was a Mickey Mouse bubble election. Yes. And and then like attendant to that observation is the essential failure of Joe Biden, who will go down in history as probably one of the worst presidents, like the F tier president on the entire list of US presidents. It's so incredible because imagine a world where Biden, he sticks to what he implied

he was gonna do the entire time, right? Yeah. Yes. And I don't know if that would have been enough, but maybe if they didn't have like two years of Biden wandering into doors and clipping through the skybox. I don't know. Maybe they wouldn't have shed 20 million votes.

I don't know. I don't know. It's hard to say. And you know, like and like the nature of what just happened is like I like I cannot come on the show and point to any one cause and nor can I come on here and say that, oh, if the Democrats had run a presidential campaign

with me as their advisor and me catering to all of my policy preferences and the message and beliefs that I would want cultivated in this campaign, I cannot say with any certainty that it would have made a difference given how big this blowout is. However, what we do know is the campaign they ran failed. So we know that for certain.

So like that we can say with absolute certainty and then we can get into what maybe they could have done differently. But they got exactly the campaign that they wanted to run. Like you know, if Kamala had broken with Biden on Israel and still lost, then you could point at people like me and say, well, it didn't work. Well, what you did failed and it failed harder than just about anything I've seen in my lifetime. And like any any analysis of this election needs to begin with this one essential fact. Donald Trump won the popular vote with three million fewer votes than he did the last time,

but Kamala had 14 million fewer votes than Joe Biden in 2020. So where did those voters go and what happened? We can start with that. I do want to give a credit for both Will being correct with your vibes based assumption that Trump would win, but also Felix, you had been joking about the 30,000 voter election for like two years. And that is the other story of this election.

It is a turnout disaster for both parties, but for one in particular. Yeah, no, I, the other side though, they call me Mr. Accountability, because I'm always taking it. I thought based on twenty twenty two that a low turnout environment, the thirty thousand voter election would favor Democrats because that is what we we had seen in a post twenty twenty post Dobbs world, especially that did not turn out to be the case. Obviously. One thing like again, you know, I think when Democrats lose an election,

it's now the shittiest time on Twitter, even worse than if you remember 10 years ago when there would be a mass shooting and everyone would go, I tell jokes on here, but please be fucking kind to each other. It's worse than that. Everyone's, it's their specific thing. But one thing we can say for certain is that the constant fever pitch of like, John Kelly

says he's Hitler, January 6, January 6 democracy, democracy. It doesn't work when people are, they have been seeing the same guy for now three consecutive elections. For better or worse, they stop being afraid of him. He just becomes like another stupid fixture of American life. And when someone is like that permanent a part of American life and culture, you can't like, like make people think he's scary. Unfortunately, like, who knows what goes on inside the mind of the average American voter. I think it's a futile attempt to try to get inside anyone's mind. But, you know, I'm reminded of when Bush was reelected. This is a very 2004-esque election.

And I remember my sister at the time saying that like most independents, their calculation in the booth was like, Bush is stupid like my boss. One vote for Bush, please. I mean, to your point about John Kelly in January 6th, and you stressed democracy, and one of the results I saw was that among voters who said that a democracy in the United States was under threat split 50-50 between the two.

So. In terms of like... Well, I do think that there is something to that because it's like, I think that breaks both ways is that, you know, the Republicans just as much think that the institutional position, the institutional capture of Democrats is a threat to what they conceive of as democracy. As Democrats think that the abnormality or whatever the fascism of Trumpism is a threat to democracy Or they're like operating under the same logic as people who say when you get robbed you should just give up your stuff Just let it go it's not worth it. Yes, please take my democracy. Just make eggs 150 a dollar 50 cheaper

We can't lose three cops to suicide ever again. And I guess like, you know, like the thing I was wrong about was I thought the Dobbs effect would carry over on a national level in this election. And it really didn't. I think that is kind of genuinely shocking. Even though, you know, Democrats down ballot and even ballot measures preserving the right to an abortion, all won or outperformed Kamala at every level.

I mean, I don't think you can fully say that it had no effect because there were some pretty surprising split tickets in that regard. Missouri and stuff like that. Yeah, both with referendums and some Senate and congressional races. But I mean, you know, again, I don't know how many people actually watch the Kamala town hall with Anderson Cooper. But I always bring this up. I'm one of me and Hassan are of the 12 Americans that watch that. And one distinct memory I have from it was that Anderson Cooper was

desperately trying to steer her to talking about Dobbs, and she kept talking about two things. One of them was John Kelly. The other one is a Kamala favorite talking point. Her experience prosecuting transnational criminal gangs. That's her August. Yeah, you just could not get her to really talk about it.

And it is that is pretty grim, right? Because the the the signal that a lot of Republicans will take from that is like, oh, it doesn't matter. Trump, of course, being the only one with the real instinct to notice, you know, what happens with referendums and the price they paid only two short years ago for this. Like you can I think you can pick out any one any one of the issues that are relevant to this election. And again, like you can't say that any of them was a decisive factor, but they were all definitely factors.

And I think we'll talk about this. But first and foremost, it is the it's just the unpopularity of Biden that she could never, ever shake and never tried to shake and it's like well, do you want to talk about to the economy inflation and I would just say like Americans general sense that their lives suck and are getting worse She had like no answer for that and was associated with an administration that people I you know It connects to their own misery and the fact of the matter is that you know, it connects to their own misery. And the fact of the matter is that for many Americans,

like, you know, for people, particularly if you, you know, are not, you didn't go to college or you have no really invested stake in this country, you despise the leadership of this country and all of our cherished norms and institutions that they were promising to maintain. Well, yeah, there was some indication that perhaps they were considering an Obama 2012 style playbook an Incumbent positioning themselves against big business and you know what I you know big tack that was Impossible because Tony West was going to be one of the most important people in the fucking White House

And then he advised her was he like her brother-in-law? Yes people in the fucking White House. And then he advised her. What is he like her brother-in-law? Yes, he advised her to like quit going after big business. And then they made Mark Cuban their spokesperson. And again, what led me to say Trump is going to win this election was it was the Liz Cheney shit. It was it was the Liz Cheney thing. And it was it was Mark Cuban. And it was like the it was just the idea that like we've seen

this before. When you cater to Republican voters as a Democrat, people are just going to vote for the Republican. Why would you why would you elect the skim milk version when full fat is on offer? Well, it's also like the same as that vice presidential debate where at least in the first 30 minutes was essentially a nonstop spiel of Tim Waltz agreeing with the premise of every single conservative position and saying, you know what, I think JD and I are on the same page. I would handle the execution of immigration reform differently. Yeah.

Donald Trump stopped us from getting the immigration bill. You know, it's like, yeah, it's so incoherent because you're saying this guy is an authoritarian. He's the end of democracy. He's like Hitler, but he's right about immigration. Yes, he's right. I agree that everything is real. I agree on the executive level. Yeah. And it's like, OK, well, what don't you like about it?

Yes. And, you know, speaking of like, onto Gaza, right, because it was certainly a decisive factor in Michigan. But on this issue, it is like it it begins to start relief for me, like, how hard it is to take seriously the harm mitigation argument for voting for Democrats in this election when one sees right now the absolute venom and glee with which angry Democrats are now gloating about how many more people Trump and Netanyahu will kill now. And the thing is, all of the marginalized groups that we were supposed to vote for Kamala to protect,

and you know, immigrants, trans people, Palestinians, the working class, they will be the first to go under the tires. Because we should be clear that like, there will be no teaching a lesson to the Democratic Party here. They will use this election to go even further right. And of those aforementioned groups, I think young people, anti-war activists activists and just people of conscience who couldn't consent to saying, OK, are looking

the other way when it comes to abetting a genocide will be blamed for this loss. And if they had won, they would have been written off as irrelevant, which was the hope and the way that that's the way they ran this campaign was, I think they're like a main goal of it was to make sure that they could write off all of these voters that they're now Blaming for their loss. Yeah, it was gonna be a grim outcome

No matter what it was either going to be, you know what we are going to get which is a marriage of James Dobson and Paul Wolfowitz Or it was going to be the Democratic Party dabbing in the face of toddlers forever the Democratic Party dabbing in the face of toddlers forever. The resistance was sort of a historical aberration. It was a consequence of a very unique media environment, a very unique year, tons of things that just will not be replicated and have not been replicated since. It's hard to see any outcome where the Democratic Party takes any good lesson from anything

that happens. It's so shockingly bad that the least bad calculation they're making is like, we need a liberal Andrew Tate. It's not like the least shitty thing they They're taking it from all of this. And I mean, I like, look, it's, it's kind of, uh, you know, a bittersweet thing to be like, you know, we've been out here, there, people are all over being like, where, where's the, the liberal or the, the progressive left thing that, that speaks to these kind of rude young men. And I'm like, okay, well we, I've spent 20,000 hours editing it, but, uh, you know, if a Soros foundation wants to give us some series a funding, you know,

I'll take that call. Yeah. No, I think now is the time to make the pivot. Not to know, not to Trump, not to Trump, to we're going to be anti Trump Republicans. Well, I mean, it's a growth market. You know, you know what I was thinking about today? Where do the Lincoln Project guys at? The Lincoln Project, you remember that? I'm trying to get some young pussy.

I guess, to go back further here, like, not to relitigate battles of the past, but I think this outcome was basically assured when Obama made that phone call. And when I'm not saying Bernie would have won, or like this isn't Bernie Cope, what I mean is the decision to give it to Joe Biden in 2020 set the stage for all of this. And it didn't necessarily have to be Bernie, sure, throw Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg in there, whatever. But it had to be him.

And you know what? Going even further back, I lay this at Obama's fucking doorstep. He was the one who appointed him vice president. He appointed Joe Biden vice president and Hillary Clinton, his secretary of state, setting up two absolutely brutal presidential election defeats. And if that weren't enough, he had this incredible infrastructure of liberal, you know, everyone's talking about how they need, there needs to be a liberal Tony Hinchcliffe or whatever. No, there needs to be, if you guys were serious about winning, there would be a liberal James Dobson or anyone, you know, Richard Viguerre, someone like that, someone we're talking about

in the upcoming series. But Obama did almost build something like that. They briefly had organizing for America, and then they bungled it away. Because why would you ever want, you know, guaranteed majorities, or at least to be competitive at a state level, or congressionally? Then you actually have to do things.

Yeah, I've seen a lot of commentary today is like Democrats would be like, what went wrong? And there's a certain voice that like, we need to purge our base. And again, they were attempting to do that, but they were expecting to win the election and purge the base. Now they lost the election and they're like,

we need less of a big tent in this party. And what that means is like, you know, get out, get get trans people out of there and certainly get anyone who cares about Palestine out of there. But I guess like this is like purge of the base. It's like that's already you've already accomplished that. Yeah. You've already like they've either purged themselves or like, you know, that's been accomplished. Obama's pitch to young black men was

you're probably too sexist and stupid to vote for a woman. But I don't know. Surprised me. But the thing is, they did vote for Kamala. Yeah, no, that's the thing. This is a quirk of the Democratic media machine. But every year since 2016, it's been the constant haranguing of black male voters for voting like what, like seven percent less blue.

Yeah. Black women, but still like the most reliable group of male voters in the fucking country for Democrats. It's insane. You get treated way better if you go for Democrats by five points. Yeah. As anti-Trump Republicans. Oh, God. Yeah. I mean, like, that's the other thing. Republicans, fewer Republicans voted for Kamala than Biden in 2020.

Once again, once again, this is what you wanted. This is the campaign you run. Happy? Happy with it now? Would you change anything going back? Are you going to change anything next time? Of course not, because this is the electorate they want. And like like I said, it is virtually assured

now that going forward, the Democratic Party will essentially be a neoconservative George W. Bush style party that's nominally in favor of the right to have an abortion. Yeah. Exceptions apply if you are under federal investigation for accepting bribes from Azerbaijan and you're a congressman

from Texas. Then you can be, you're a congressman from Texas. Then you can be, you know, anti-choice. Felix, you mentioned it. I have been enjoying a lot of the commentary that we need Hassan Piker, but with Pod Save America's politics. We need our own Joe Rogan. We need our own Hassan Piker. And the idea is like, well, the extent that Hassan and Joe Rogan have an audience, like a platform or a large audience that trusts them, is because they don't have the politics of Pod Save America.

And by the way, Joe Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders. And as we were talking about, like, the demographic group that did swing big to Trump was Latino men. I seem to remember Bernie winning the Nevada caucus overwhelmingly with Latino support. And what was the Democratic Party's message then? Fuck you. Only South Carolina matters. Well, like, I know, like, things look grim and there's a lot of recriminations, but the long game that AOC is playing, it's looking even smarter. Yeah. No, it's like now they're like, oh, Kamala should have gone on Joe Rogan.

She should have gone on Joe Rogan. Well, I remember when going on Joe Rogan was like platforming an evil, dangerous misogynist. Oh, yeah, she, yeah, no, she friend zoned Bernie after that. It was very cruel. Doing that over Joe Rogan, the form of Joe Rogan that existed in 2020, back before he, you know,

would only have Ben Shabino on, but that like, not doing it when Liz Cheney takes up that same role for the campaign, that's fucking incredible. That's incredible. Do you remember when like AOC and like some other members of the squad were like ingratiating themselves to Biden

right before he dropped out? Yes. Yeah. And everyone was like, no, this is a great calculation because what if he stays in and wins? Then they can do whatever they want. This time, you know, similar arguments for them being so closely tied to the Harris campaign. And I just have to say, I mean, you can't keep associating yourself with fucking losers and not have it rub off on you.

That is, even if you think that's playing it safe, that is a fucking gamble whether you believe it to be or not. Like, I don't know, I can't, there's no real value in predicting the future or predicting the next three years from now but one reason that Bernie was so successful at You know seemingly growing a national base out of nowhere Even though it didn't end up being what he needed it to be was that he wasn't

So intrinsically tied to an incredibly unpopular National Democratic Party Yeah I mean intrinsically tied to an incredibly unpopular National Democratic Party. Yeah. I mean, this is one of the things that I've been thinking about is the helm of going back to the success of Trump is that even though he is like the most, you know, enmeshed in the most corrupt parts of like establishment business stuff, he can always run as a change candidate. He can run as an outsider, even though he's been doing it three times, linking this back to the Obama legacy is now we have, what did Obama went on? Hope and change. He

was a change candidate. And then immediately after running it, we've seen his secretary of state, his vice president, his vice president's vice president. There is no capacity to message that the electorate is across the board wanting desirous of a radical change. I think that it is fairly obvious to see and that there is just simply no capacity to market that from any figure in the Democratic Party. It is all establishment all the way down. Yeah, like AOC may be able, she may have been able to like seize this moment if she wasn't so just completely associated with this shitty party in the eyes of every voter in the fucking country now.

And like to that point, I want to talk about Gaza again, because to me, like, again, like, and I've heard the argument many times before is like, it doesn't rate very high among the concerns of most voters. Like, I take that to be largely true, but it ranks rate very high among the concerns of most voters. I take that to be largely true. But it ranks it very high among the concerns of a certain number of voters. May not be the decisive reason, but like they were certainly willing to risk that for this election. But what I will say is that like even though most Americans may not care particularly about the lives of Palestinians or about Israel or anything like that, what they do care about is when they see their own lives being increasingly desperate and more hard to live

and that their own budget and like, you know, money goes further, you know, money goes shorter than it used to. What they do see is our country spending billions of dollars to starve and murder people halfway around the world. In a country they don't care about. So the answer is if they don't care about it, why are we spending all this fucking money to kill everyone there? I think that's exactly it. And I also think that like, obviously we think about this in a moral dimension, but I think that people just see conflict and instability around the world and say, I would like this

to end. Yeah. And Trump is also able to constantly, even though, even if it's completely a fantasy, to project, I will end the war. It doesn't matter who wins, I will just make it end. Even if he's gonna- He read those polls about how voters wanted to see an end to this war. Even if he's totally disingenuous and everyone in his family and life is intimately tied

to Netanyahu. At the end of the day, he read those polls and spent like, you know, not the bulk of his campaigning, but like made a point in the last two weeks of this campaign to make the argument that he would, that the Democrats are the party of endless war. Yes. And he at least, he at least went out to,

he went to Dearborn and he did the normal things that even a halfway talented retail politician would do He didn't send Bill Clinton there to say King David justifies why your grandma is dead now I mean, I think this goes to like a larger point about the Biden foreign policy regime, which is These guys have like an endless capacity to flatter themselves. I saw Zach Boeckamp of the bridge between Gaza and West Bank.

I can see his tweets again. I've been I've been starved of that for years. He said you'll miss the liberal world order when it's gone. And you know, none of these these guys consider themselves the heirs to Dean Atchison. No, you are not even Brent Scullcroft. Like, there is something to be said about constantly billing yourselves as the adults in the room and the sober decision makers, the biggest pitch of 2020. And then everything that happens in the world is just catastrophe after fucking catastrophe And all you do is smile and nod at it

Well, I mean not just smile and nod at it but like actively foment and exacerbate every single one of these like horrific atrocities that are going on whether it's in Ukraine or Palestine and like you know you got like like national security adviser Jake Sullivan was like very clear from the beginning of the Biden administration that like this was going to be a administration of interventionism. But it would work this time because they would show to middle class voters that like the economic growth and prosperity that came with like military Keynesianism fucking running on the idea that we need to do mini-Libyas forever because it creates jobs. That is like, you might as well just like write in the concept of capital as you candidate.

That's fucking insane. No, and like when people see billions of dollars being spent on this, they like, they might get the impression that the people spending it don't care about their lives. Just a thought here. And then like also, you going to tell me that like, I'm sorry, there were probably millions of,

you know, maybe not as a decisive factor, but there were millions of voters, particularly young people or anti-war voters, who just simply couldn't bring themselves to vote for Kamala Harris because she has crossed the red line of genocide. She made that decision. There were plenty of polls

showing how deeply unpopular supporting this war was among just Democratic voters alone. But the point of this election, their their strategy, their path to victory was based on the idea that they could suppress their own base. You know, everyone I think we're all kind of skeptical on the polling on individual issues and how much they informed votes,

because you know, Biden famously won M4A supporters, of course. But being for an arms embargo would, A, it would be an actual policy that Kamala could talk about that wasn't the Amber Lee Frost Pell Grant loan. The policy that only impacts Amber Lee Frost. Or, you know, more importantly,

it would be a break from Biden. It would be something where it's like, this is different, completely different from what the, I think his numbers are lower than Bush after Katrina. Exactly to that fucking unpopular. It's at least different. It's a break. But no, I mean, I do want to give just

a half a fraction of an ounce of sympathy to Kamala here, Kamala here, because I had to. You can mispronounce her name. No, I had I had to look this. I just looked this up before he started recording the week that Biden announced his

reelection campaign, he had a 39% approval rating. And I really do think that in the end, like this election, I accept, I also think Will's point is true is like this election was over the second Biden got the nomination, but specifically the second that he announced a reelection, I think that the, the election was basically over. I mean, there was just no coming back from his sheer unpopularity. And as you say, she could have run whatever campaign you want. Our perfect campaign, Matt Iglesias' perfect campaign. I don't think that there is any way that any candidate could have come back from 18 months of Biden shuffling around at historic

unpopularity. I think I think that's broadly true. But I do think that like a more competent campaign, something that had shades of like Obama 2012 or something, they would probably have retained the house. There probably would not have been as much of a drag on the down ballot in some states. The die may have been cast, but like, you know, when you look at like when I open up by saying that like we have to acknowledge that like, you know, like you can argue with it, but Trump as a political figure is, you know, like the greatest comeback story in

American history. And like is essentially it is successful. It works. OK. He's won two presidential elections and did the rare thing of like doing it in between presidential terms. The Grover Cleveland. The first Republican to well, I mean, on this show, we think Bush stole

Ohio. Bush lost the two presidential elections. The first Republican to win a majority in the popular vote since I think Reagan. Yeah. Damn. Then you look at that and you look at an election

in which virtually every demographic swung to the right. And I'm seeing like, you know, a lot of commentary now and like, you know, CNN or MSNBC where they're like, Kamala ran a perfect campaign. It's just like the country just, you know, she did everything right and there was nothing we could have done. The political environment. To say that Trump is successful is not to say it would be totally impossible to beat him.

And in fact, I think a different campaign or a different candidate or a different set of circumstances would have beat him handle it. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think like just everything that could have been done poorly was I always think about like the framing of immigration Right and we brought up about how ridiculous it is to call somebody an authoritarian Anti-democratic and then agree with them on the most important issues of their entire platform But my opponent is an authoritarian Demographic, but we find common ground on the laban's wrong But like the the other thing is when you campaign not that long ago

I'm like kids in cages and we're a nation of immigrants and all of this stuff and then do a complete 180 To you know, this is Trump's border bill. It makes it seem like all the Republican You know, this is Trump's border bill. It makes it seem like all the Republican all the Republican messaging about your immigration policy, that it's open borders, that you are trying to create a new class of voters and you are trying to change the racial demographics of America. It makes it look like you got caught doing that.

And now you're embarrassed. Oh, I'm sorry. You're right. OK, I agree with you. Who is that going to win over? Well, that's what I mean by like the conscious choice by this campaign to, like I said, to disempower, to insult, and in some cases, like, you know, violently suppress their own base of like, you know, progressive, liberal, young people, vulnerable minority groups, like their choice to do that and replace them with moderate Republican voters.

The Nikki Haley vote, which not just didn't work, but like what it does is it just gives voters permission to vote for the Republicans because they're well, I mean, if their policies are basically OK, then like, you know, I guess they're not so evil. The thing that always sends the Republicans into panic

are like the traditional attacks on Republican candidates. They're gonna cut social security. They're gonna, you know, they'll privatize this. They'll, the Obama 2008 and 2012 playbook. It's not gonna win you every fucking election, but it's pretty fucking reliable just based on the fact that like the only answer Republicans seem to have for it is to like shove Rick Scott into a basement for six months every time it happens. To go back to like, you know, to Israel and Gaza and like in any of the any of the roundups from like begrieved democratic plunders today about what went wrong I've done like a word search on all of

them and can find the word Gaza Israel Palestine or war or Ukraine in any in any of these in these sort of obituaries for their fucking failed presidential campaign and you know what like once again you can say that like it wasn't a decisive factor but what I think we what I think has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt is that this Democratic Party, if given the choice between winning a presidential election and not supporting Israel,

will choose losing every fucking time. I think it was Michael Judge of Death Around the Corner who said, it's not that they want to win. They want to win on their own terms and they will sacrifice any election any year for that. Because in the long run that's more important to them than winning one presidential race or flipping the house or whatever because like like the point is to remake their their baby make the Democratic voter in this country

into 1 billion Matt Iglesias. He's he's been really funny to watch. Yeah. Well, did you see his list of like, here's here's like the here's here's like some common sense things for the Democratic Party going forward. And it's just like, what, Matt, what did her campaign do wrong in your opinion? I mean, that's the same thing of like the knee jerk pundit on TV thing of being like these Democrats, they just they need to throw out this woke stuff. And look at that Kamala campaign.

What wokeness was in the Kamala campaign? You can make that argument with Kamala 2019. I won't call it 20. It did not make it to 2020. Yeah, you can make that argument with that campaign, but you

certainly could not hear. I mean, she tried, she tried that playbook. She tried the David Shore playbook who he was in charge of all their media. David Shore was in charge of $700 million of campaign funds. And you know, when people talk about like, oh, like how could Trump turn his whole operation over to like, you know, an autistic ketamine addict and everyone must? Well, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, apparently.

Oh, my God. It's really sad thinking what would have happened if Kamala ran. I heard that the greatest lipstick party in the history of Manhattan was going to be thrown if David Shore is lost. And now we'll never know. greatest lipstick party in the history of Manhattan was going to be thrown. And now we'll never know. Yeah. And again, like to take like the broader view, like once again, we're faced with a situation in which Democrats ask themselves, how could this have happened? And in the end, like just forget

any issue. You have to give people something. You have to make a positive case for why people should vote for you. And once again, it cannot just be that the other guys are worse because the thing is, they're always going to be worse. Do you remember? OK, we all remember the two week period where it seemed like there was some baseline competence in the Harris campaign that they were aware of how excited people were to not have Biden.

The excitement, you know, tons of people. I think all of us have a lot of like regular Democrats in the family. Everyone was so excited to not have to drag this fucking corpse over the finish line. During that time, there were a few like, you know, mini catchphrases that you could say were like the, you know, the motto of the campaign. We're not going back. They're weird. Fucking whatever. You know the the motto of the campaign. We're not going back. They're weird fucking whatever in the after that two-week period Where they just made every shitty choice possible

The only thing I could identify as the campaign's slogan is I'm speaking I'm speaking which I'm speaking and that she was like but you're saying that to someone who's like relatives are probably set on fire in a hospital bed. The exact context for it is it was a day after footage of an Israeli prison guard raping a detainee came out and someone maybe foolishly thought this should maybe be an issue during a presidential campaign. So like context does not do it any favors, but removed from context. What does that convey to people? Shut the fuck up.

Yeah. I'm just thinking of my favorite Andrew Biden ism from the live show on Monday, which is him going, listen, shut up. Listen, kill yourself. Shout out to everyone at the Aratoni Theater on Monday night. That was a drill. That was amazing. It was really nice to have some fun with people before Hell Part II.

Yeah, I have to admit this is pretty embarrassing. I thought the theater was named like Jack Aratoni. Like it was named after a man named Jack Aratoni. Jack is an acronym for Japanese. Japanese American Cultural Center and another thief. And Aratani is a Japanese word, which is very embarrassing.

I play all the yakuza. All the video games you play. Yeah, this is, even when I was on his, I saw how it was written on his son's stream when I was plugging it, this is, I even, even when I was on his, I saw how it was written on his son stream when I was plugging it, I said, oh, I guess this guy is named Jack with three Cs. That's a weird name. He's one of the most famous Hollywood agents,

Jack Maratani. He's, and a Crip. He wouldn't put CK in his name. Just like, another like, staggering and notable fact from this election, just like a statistic, is just how much more money the Kamala campaign had and spent than Donald Trump. We're talking $997.2 million to Trump's $388 million. And half of that went to his legal campaign. Yeah, exactly.

And like, and this is the thing about like the difficulties with analyzing things like presidential elections based on previous presidential elections. Because I think what we're learning now is things like everything that used to like fundamentally decide a presidential campaign, like unemployment numbers, you know, like economic growth, but specifically like the the boots on the ground thing, like a

get out the vote operation, knocking on doors, and then the amount of money raised simply does not mean shit, at least in terms of his predictive ability of who will win an election. People just watch TV and do what the TV says. I mean, like, this should have been kind of evident ever since 2016. I mean, it seems ridiculous now, but in 2016, the conventional wisdom was, among other things, that Hillary would win Ohio. Because Hillary had supposedly

a very organized ground game there, and Trump had people who were enthusiastic, but this is their first time ever doing something like this. You know, in retrospect, absolutely ridiculous, knowing what we know about Ohio. Same thing for Florida. Florida was they thought of Florida as like, you

know, once that gets called, night's over. Um, that should be an indicator that like traditional things like that. I don't know. They, they probably can be of some value in like down ballot races. They may be even of some value in like down ballot races. They may be even of some value against like a non-Trump Republican.

But again, in the same way that like Biden's military kanzianism was like running capital itself, running against Trump is running against TV itself. He's the spirit of TV. That's like in the line in Matt's poem where he says, we just want to be entertaining and Trump is cool media. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of, speaking of Chill Dog, speaking of Hillary Clinton,

do you think that there's anyone alive right now who is happier to see Kamala lose than Hillary Clinton? Oh my God. She would. If Kamala had won even the popular vote in law, like half a point more than her, oh my, there's no telling what would happen. St. Valentine's Day massacre at brunch. Because like, yeah, like now like there's another candidate

who's even worse than her who ate shit even harder losing to Donald Trump. And not only that, but remember, you remember like a couple weeks before the election, there was like some interview like, I think the headline of the interview was like Hillary Clinton's advice on how to beat Donald Trump Yes, and I was like what do the opposite of everything I did but no in that interview She said I wouldn't work I wouldn't worry about it because there's no James Comey this time to throw things off

And like I'm sorry that is your consciously rat fucking Kamala's campaign. Yeah. Seriously, she was trying to get them to lose. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This means we have at least another four years of like Hillary media appearances where she comes out wearing like a chain mail cassock. OK.

Another another element of this recent election that's fun to consider is like you're seeing it now in the, I would say, rather muted reaction. I mean, people are, they're doing the, the, hey, like, let's remember the good times and like, you know, like just be kind to others and just freaking laugh sometimes. But the thing is, like, the response this time has been way more muted than in 2016 or 2020 on both sides because like this is just so decisive you can't point to anything to be like, oh, like it was stolen or either way or Russia intervened or whatever.

But the thing is like think back to 2020 and the like the contention among Donald Trump supporters that Joe Biden stole the election. I think at this point, like it leads me to one of two thoughts. The Democrats did so badly that it makes me wonder whether they did steal 2020 And just forgot to steal it this time. I have a different thought I think latinx worked You know latinx wasn't really rolled out in 2016 We were in latinx like I think version point 079.

Latinx 1.0 dropped in 2020. This is the year that everyone that's probably the first thing they said to you when you like phone banked for Kamala. Don't say Latinx. We need to bring it back. Absolutely.

Yeah. If you are a liberal out there and you see like graffiti that you think like, you know, MS-13 did just right, don't tag over it. liberal out there and you see like graffiti that you think like, you know, MS13 did. Just don't tag over it, but just put like Latinx and like little letters under it. Like we need to like if you guys

want to win again, you got to bring that back. And, you know, like another like narrative that's coalescing right now is that like that like there was just simply nothing Kamala could do to overcome like the essential racism and misogyny of this country. And you know, it has a certain ring to it because of the racist and misogynistic character

of Trump and his political movement. However, it's harder to make that argument when in fact there is only one political party in this country getting whiter with every election and it ain't the Republicans. Yeah. party in this country getting whiter with every election and it ain't the Republicans. Yeah, and I just I'll say again and also Kamala won women by only eight points which is the lowest in for a Democrat in I don't know how many elections. After the jobs effect. So where do you go with that? Like you know like you're gonna blame it all on racism because you know like

and that's the message people are getting like again like well why are so many like why we see like a shift to the Republicans from like, you can say they are racist, but like, what is your message doing to counter that? Because it doesn't seem to be working. Well, yeah. And also like saying they're racist kind of falls flat when they're racist, but they're totally right on immigration. Like, again, I'm sorry. Or they're or they're racist. But like, you know, let's be honest, human'm sorry. Or they're racist.

But like, you know, let's be honest, human rights, they're not for everybody. You know, like there's certain people that they got to go. They got to go away. They sent fucking I know that everyone is rightfully concentrated on Rachie Torres and Bill Clinton being sent to Michigan, which I almost feel like they were trying to win the race while losing Michigan to prove a point feel like they were trying to win the race while losing Michigan to prove a point, to like rub everyone's noses in it.

They sent Kathy Hochul to Pennsylvania. What the fuck was that? Trying to get all the anti congestion pricing voters to New York from Philadelphia. And like I saw Richie today being like, you know, like Donald Trump has no better friend than the left. Like the Democrats need to get serious and get back to communicating to the issues that matter to working class people. I saw Richie today being like, you know, like Donald Trump has no better friend than the left. Like the Democrats need to get serious and get back to communicating to the issues that matter to working class people.

It's like, motherfucker, like you have your public persona as a congressman have done nothing but talk about like how we can prosecute college students for treason for not loving Netanyahu enough. Richie Torres is biggest thing before the election happened was a feud with Hassan Piker, a very one sided feud. Yeah, we just need liberal Hassan Piker. I saw someone say we need 15 liberal Ben Shapiro's and I'm like, that's all I see. There's like 10,000 of them to begin with.

But what we need to like find one and promote him heavily. Chris, you you listen to the the Pod Save America boys today and their election wrap up. I'd be interested to hear what what they have to say after failing to save America yet again. I mean, very somber and there's much work to do tone. I mean, there are a few key points that I've kind of like articulated some of my takeaways already. But, you know, again, one of the things that I just kept coming back to that they're like kind of groping at, but it's like, we

don't have a story to tell, which I think is a more liberal way of saying that we don't have convictions or real ideology. Yeah, yeah. You know, and it is things like, Oh, I guess Kamala's policies weren't connecting because they're totally You know she she comes out with like a handful of things, but they're totally incoherent because there's no coherence to Her whole ideology. She's an empty vessel to that it reminds me of like people like trying to explain why no one like Star Wars And Marvel movies as much as they used to yeah exactly stories just aren't good enough anymore

It's also stuff like you know they're trying to parse through some of these exit polls and stuff being like, you know, more people saw Donald Trump is too extreme, but also they meant like extreme in a cool way, like extreme. The thing because at the same time, it's like the majority of the exit polls say that we need change. And I think that comes back to this thing of being like, everybody hates whatever they conceive of as the establishment and their needs to like, and this is also on the Democrats running towards moderation, running towards safety

continuity, like we are the respectable ones in the room is that there isn't a, there isn't a actual contradiction between people seeing Donald Trump as too extreme because people also say that we need change. And this is the promise of Donald Trump is that there will be a radical change from the status quo of the moment. So you're saying it would be helpful if Democrats had someone who has a legitimate claim to being like an outsider in the party. Like maybe even had legal problems. But someone with experience, executive experience,

in like Great Lakes state. Yes. Oh, I can think of a guy. Governor Bulgoyevich? It's time to come home. There was also, But like also, to your earlier point about like the Democrats being like, promising like, you know, no more insanity.

Like, you know, no more craziness. Like, you know, it's just safe status quo. And then you get elected and like the world is like more violent and insane than it's ever been. And it happened under their fucking presidency. Yeah. that it's ever been and it happened under their fucking presidency. Yeah, it's just like like like horrendous wars and instability everywhere, including several of them being actively supported and, you know, and expanded. But it's just like we like they let Israel like now basically like

it started war in Lebanon as well. We we we talk about this a bit in our upcoming series about conservative ink and how it grew to be what it is today, which is now incredibly relevant But when we talked about um, you know being God Do you remember the Benghazi hearings and how much conservative media was about Benghazi? Those really did hurt Hillary but not because people like necessarily thought oh oh, she killed Chris Stevens on purpose because she was gay with him. It was effective because Hillary's image was again,

the adult in the room, someone who makes sober, tough decisions and like, hey, you may not like her, but she always knows when to make the right call. That's who you want answering the phone at 3 a.m., famously. It's hard to do that when the sort of locus of the media coverage about you is about a disastrous policy which you authored,

which in this case was the Libya Intervention, which was all her, it was all her. Even though the onus is on Obama for letting her do that. That was it had her name all over it. She was very proud of it. It's the same thing. Sir, like, you know, stuff about like the Ukrainian fucking prosecutor or whatever, all these weird things where Trump talks about Nellie or they don't really have

salience with independent voters. But the fact that you can look at the state of the world and the supposed adults in the room, that does account for something. They also spend a lot of time or a little bit of time saying like, oh, we built this media company up because we desperately wanted to get more people involved and affect change and we organize vote save America or whatever their their outreach program is. And we organize vote save America or whatever their outreach program is. And we went in.

And then we we got people to go. We got people to go knock doors and get involved in politics for the first time. And it's a real hit that, you know, to feel like that it was not useful and didn't work. And all I could have met think of was James Franco on the gallows in a ballad. Buster Scugs going first time. Yeah, we've been there. Vote Save America is so fucking stupid.

They should call themselves vote goats. The vote goat. Yeah. Well, you know, like speaking like to the pod boys about being on that gallow, I do want to bring it up because like, you know, it's been circulating today, like Bernie Sanders came out with like a statement about like we, basically the point is, he is trying to chart a path forward and diagnose the problem with this election. He said, the pull quote is that, when we abandon the working class, we shouldn't be surprised when they abandon us. And I'm just wondering what you guys think about that because obviously he I mean, he's trying to speak some kind of reality. But at the same time, it's like you knew this about all of them for years now and then you did everything to support them.

Yeah, I don't quite know what to do. Like, you know, I don't quite know what to do with that. Like your sober attempt to, you know, like sort of chart a new course for the party rings a little hollow when you spent this whole election supporting them. That's the same people. Yeah, no, it's the same problem as AOC. Yeah. Like it would be great if, you know, like Mel and Sean, you have this credibility in the eyes of Americans for not being

a part of this, you know, incumbent administration everyone fucking hates. But unfortunately, I mean, there's really only one elected official I can think of who isn't tarnished in this way. And it's Rashida Tlaib. Yeah. I expect her to take a leadership role in the Democratic Party going forward. But yeah, I mean, like that is the thing I keep coming back to is that this idea of credibility

and even in Bernie's statement, right, where it's like you can't just like adopt a few policies and say that that is going to win people back. You have to have a credibility and a history of evincing a outlook on the world that gives shape to these policies in a real way. And I mean, obviously for people like us, it would be, you know, a really good container for the these kinds of stories credibility is Marxism but for a politician you can't just say well Oh, we need to win the working class back where we're going to you know

Maybe talk about the Pro Act for a few minutes. It has to be part of a long-standing program that identifies enemies and outlies ways that they will be defeated. It's the identifying enemies thing that's so important because like when you consider the success of Donald Trump or like the MAGA political movement, the thing is it gives people an enemy. It allows people to direct the hatred and rage that they feel in their own lives either like at themselves, but kind of like,

also says it's not your fault. And you can say like, it's deeply evil that he's saying it's the fault of, you know, immigrants or feminists or whatever, like some other. But the thing is, it gives people something, a direction for their anger. And I'm sorry, like the Democratic Party's message is that like, nobody should be angry.

And the anger is bad equals hatred which equals bigotry yeah, like you get so much mileage just based on who your enemies are and That is sort of the problem with both AOC and Bernie as standard bearers going forward In an environment like that where enemies are so vitally important, you cannot be that deathly afraid of people yelling at you. That cannot dictate your every fucking action. Donald Trump has had half of America yelling at him in a full scream for a decade. He just won the second term of the presidency.

He is probably the most yelled at man in American history. Yes. Like, like if we're doing it both adjusted for population and just, um, nominally the most yelled at man in history, that, yeah. Like, do you remember like big companies like Uber, all the, they were on Trump's advisory board and they got yelled at so bad for just even being in the room with Trump. This is actually something I did want to talk about briefly.

Also a part about like what is the shifting of these coalitions because for so long, a huge part of the Democratic coalition was this, the tech elite. And like pandering towards like tech entrepreneurship and saying that these people are powerful, rich, entrepreneurial success, part of the thriving American economy, but they are liberal. And I think that a key thing that happened just in October is like basically every single one came out and was like,

actually now I'm with Trump. Yeah. And it's because like, again, like going back to Obama, like they had a chance to strangle this deeply violent predatory industry in the crib with basic regulation, but they've allowed all of these dipshits to get fabulously wealthy, like addicting the youth of America to like high, high risk investments in spurious, you know, bullshit. Yeah. Thank you, Black Keys, for your support of the Ohio Senate race.

Yes. I was in speculation on where things go from here. Because like, A, what do we make of Trump's second term? I think everyone's big fear is that like, oh, like this time he'll be like a more competent authoritarian or fascist. Well, what do we make of that? Because like, look, I like he's got the trifecta now. So I mean, like, it's really everything's on the table. It's a trifecta, but it's going to be very slim majority in the house. I think that they're probably not going to try to do repeal and replace ever again.

That was like too difficult and like cost them too much political capital. And you know, they tried it at a time when they had better numbers in the house. I, it's hard to say because like, you remember Trump like 2019 ish, right before COVID, how like the main problem with his administration was that it wasn't about anything. Mm-hmm. I

Kind of see them running into a similar problem in the next like couple years Just based on how thin the majority in that house is How many people in the coalition kind of hate each other? but in the meantime You're probably going to see things like, you know, we're going to put Starlink everywhere. Like bullshit like that. I mean, well, when we were talking about this, I think yesterday, you said a word that I

think is going to resonate with at least me about what this I imagine this administration being like. And that was vandalism of like, just what can we smash and grab from the American infrastructure? Yeah. And what that will look like is like I said, like every regulatory agency and the destruction of all regulatory agencies and like the privatization of like every function of government that they can do quick and fast in a way that will be difficult to,

to to re put together, but like without much concerted strategy or effort. It's real stripping the wiring. It'll be like- I'm really looking forward to RFK in charge of the FDA. That is the word, that makes me wanna do a one-man January 6th. That he's gonna be doing press conferences. Why didn't they run on that?

You're gonna have to hear this asshole shitty voice every day. And I was talking to Matt about this the other day and he was like, like the masculinity crisis in America. And I was like, R.F.K. fixes this. He takes the fluoride out of the water and puts HGH in.

We're bulking up. We're getting our boys nice and big. See, I don't think he's even going to get the position. I think they're going to sell him out immediately. I mean, he might. It's like more trouble than it's worth for them, but that doesn't stop them before.

I mean, what was the average length of friendship in the Trump one administration? Oh, like two weeks. Yeah. I mean, I've seen already people speculating about how long the the honeymoon with Elon will work, work out for him. I mean, I don't know, Elon seems ready to supplicate himself to maximum extent to get whatever he wants to get his trade war with China over electric vehicles or whatever it is. I do think you're right that it is going to be like sort of like a half hazard rampage against the administrative state.

I do wonder if there's going to be like a Steve Mnuchin figure there, someone who's like, okay, okay, okay, that you can go right up to the point where you like scare the markets. Yeah. Like, are they actually going to do this tariff stuff? It would be hilarious. Could you imagine? The GDP just halves in like a month. I mean, and that's another thing that Will, that you said about like, accomplishing their goals and maintaining this

Fantastic victory that they had. I mean you're taking maybe you can expand on this is like you said yesterday They will fuck this up. Oh, no, I totally agree Yeah, I mean like I mean the question is how much damage will they do in doing this? I'm not trying to undersell the very real fears that people may have but I mean like yeah Like these people are stupid and they're cowards. These men are cowards, basically. So I would just, you know, like a buck up, you know? Yeah. Like or at least don't show fear to the most pathetic individuals on the planet.

If I could be serious for a second, I remember we talked about this during the first spate of like really terrible anti-choice laws in the States in 2022 and right after Dobbs. There are going to be maybe some personal tests for you, especially if you live in a red state. Are you prepared to like perhaps lie to law enforcement about if somebody is pregnant or not,

if they took the pill? You are going to have to find out certain things about yourself perhaps, about how, you are going to have to find out certain things about yourself, perhaps, about how far you are willing to go. But, you know, these men are cowards and they will fuck this up. But you may you may have to find some resolve that you never. Or you may have to consider moving, which is an option as well. Like as you know, like I think we're going to see a lot of that now is like, you know,

states are giving free reign to more or less legalized slavery. Thank you, California. Or just like all of the truly evil things that I know we're all thinking about. For the time being, at least, I think you're going to see a sorting of people moving to states that won't actively endanger their life, at least for the time being. And like, that's very grim, but like, it's a reality that I think a lot of people are, you know, are rightfully considering right now. I will also say that I am personally very scared about how seriously they take the deport 20 million people thing, because that is something that seems like it could lead to very, very gross

cruelty in the country. Yeah, no question. Yeah, no question. But also, like, I wish that this is something again, thinking about that VP debate about, like, basically agreeing on the diagnosis of the border, where I just wish that one person had asked Vance Trump about what does the mechanics of that look like? Like, is the federal army going to be going door to door in like Georgia asking for people's

papers? Is that something that people actually thought through? And if they had that picture painted for them, is it something that would be as popular? I mean, I'm sure they're going to try to use some of that, but like also keep in mind that like the economies of all these states depend on illegal immigration, illegal or undocumented labor. Yeah. But I mean, it's sort of the same thing with Dobbs where it's like you can only keep upping the ante verbally so long before people actually have to see

some blood. So that wasn't good enough. Where do the Democrats go from here? Because the name I'm hearing is that this is it's gruesome newsome. It's the Newsom Imperium now. I've heard, I've heard Big Slime. Jay Shapiro.

Well yeah. Yeah, I've heard Jay Shapiro is, you know, he's the man to beat. He sees he's rolling dice on the corner. He's drinking a quarter water. He's doing Cameron's order from Paid in Full. He's saying, can I have an extra water, B? I mean, yeah, best of luck to them.

I mean, who the fuck knows? Like, yeah, who they got? Who they got? Who they got that's good. I mean, it comes, I've been saying over and over, but it like, unless somebody is able to articulate a vision, a new and different vision of the future that has some kind of break with some kind of establishment, I don't see there being any path forward for the Democrats. I think that we're going to have like a game of like one term, maybe sometimes two term hot potato,

between all branches of government, except for the judicial branch for the next like 20, 30 years. And if anyone is capable of breaking that, they are not someone we know of nationally right now. Yeah. Right. They're someone who possibly they're like now a state

representative or state senator, if that, you know. And like I've seen a lot of talk to you about like, oh, like this campaign was run on economic populism. And Joe Biden was the most pro-union president and pro-working class president we've ever had and they betrayed him or whatever. And like, you know, I just see someone say that calling Joe Biden the most pro-union

president of your lifetime is like someone saying of someone else, they were the best lay of my life and they've only had sex with like three people. And the thing is like, you can point to these like, you know, like the nibbling around the edges that the Democratic Party always does. Like, oh, he went to a picket line or, you know, like he supported X, Y, or Z. Good for him. But like when you're talking about like when housing, healthcare, education is more expensive than it's ever been and the National Democratic Party cannot even fucking offer the public option then all of these like things like We are no raising the minimum wage a dollar

It's really not going to be anything in any deal a new do new deal or a new greet like that There's no coordinated program that links all these things together in a vision of how your life will be universally improved under a democratic the median age for a new home buyer is 56. Oh my God. It's 56. Think about, okay, even with a lot of insurance plans,

a stay in the hospital costs as much as a fucking car. Average home buyer, 50 fucking six years old. There is, did you see any, any ideas or policies directed towards these problems by any party? No, both parties have totally just forfeited, thrown up their hands. These are just gonna be facts of American life because they put more into the GDP.

There are things that get like double counted in the GDP and that's worth the squeeze. God, I'm just thinking about that home buying age stat and how much that must be weighted by the mass amount of home of just pure home buys themselves that are just boomers downsizing and probably like selling their homes to BlackRock or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. It's like if you're a renter, what the fuck state do you have in the future of this country?

Like, why would you care when someone tells you that like, oh, this guy's going to destroy our democracy, or like make life worth or whatever? Like Matt said, if I don't have a piece of the pie, why would I care whose thumb is in it? Yeah. He had a lot of good lines in that one. Yeah, that was a great poem. I want to give a quick shout out to,

I wouldn't say full enemy, but yeah, one time at loggerheads, perhaps. And now someone who I would say, I don't want to speak for her, at least an acquaintance, at least a positive acquaintance. Aisha Siddiqui pushing hoops, formerly, the way that Kamala missed the fact that she exists in the context of all that came before her. miss the fact that she exists in the context of all that came before her. Biden. I thought that was a great line. Can I do a quick just hell of presidents thought about Biden?

Yeah, please. So when we did hell of presidents and we're kind of evaluating how the how to judge like the quality of a presidency over the past, you know, something that is key to Matt's view of history is this idea of like contingency of like, you have these moments, these fluid moments and how you react to them is how you are judged by history and how we judge our best presidents, your Lincolns, your FDRs who make the most of their moments and how we judge, at least how we appreciate our worst presidents, your Andrew Johnsons, your Truman's of having this fluid moment and squandering it or wasting it or walking

back progress at a key moment that cobbles it for a generation. And I do think that when you're thinking about Biden, that he did have this moment, as you said at the beginning, and Mickey Mouse election where he, because of basically COVID was able to, you know, get in across the line and defeat this person who is a genuine threat to the country. And by the way, like if they did steal that election, good for them. They should have done it a second time. Yes. But then seeing this fragile victory

in the threat of the return of this person who maintained basically their same victory coalition and having the ego against all signs to say, I alone can fix this and then squandering and running again, it up spectacularly. I think that for wasting a moment, a key moment of contingency to build on success and having the honor to step down when he was manifestly declining, that is my assertion of why he needs to be relegated for that decision alone to the Johnson and Truman tier. The Sloan tier. Completely agree. I mean, what's also among it's also very funny that among his poor decisions is picking

Kamala in the first place. When he knew when it should have been a whole premise of his election that I that my presidency will be fragile based on my age alone and going for as many presidents do going for the one person

that makes him look stronger by their weakness. No, like this isn't a pattern in all, like in really a lot of, Republican and Democrat, but like Democrats have suffered for this, like and now the whole country, like you know, this is what they brought us to, is choosing your vice president based on someone who is dumber and weaker than you.

Choosing someone specifically who cannot win a presidential election and is unpopular. Yes. It's like remembering the Irishman where Jimmy Hoffa is telling Frank Sheeran, he's like he's explaining about how you never want to have your number two guy be smarter or better than you are. And Frank is looking at him being like, I hope he's not

talking about me. I what's so incredible about this is that Biden was mere months away from getting a legacy that he so richly did not deserve. Biden, one of the worst, dumbest losers ever in this latter 20th century pantheon of democratic losers. Someone who plagiarized Neil Kinnick of all fucking people, ran on anti-busing, got the first hair plugs ever and they looked insane, voted for the Iraq war, whipped votes for it, smeared Anita Hill, all this shit.

He was gonna go out like a hero because the moment that his brain turned, the moment that he said Presidental Trump, he would start transitioning to, you know, a forward-thinking member of the party. He could have ridden off into the sunset and been finally remembered in a way that he just so does not deserve.

But, you know, he's still Joe. He pulled it out at the last second and decided to relegate himself to Johnson tier. He decided that the- Truly amazing. In a way, it is possible that Joe Biden decided that the Democratic party needs to die with him. Yeah, honestly. Yeah.

I mean, a funny outcome would be if he dies in the lame duck in the lame duck session and I saw someone saying that, like, you know, Joe Biden should really just resign now and give Kamala the chance to be our first female president for like a week. And I'm like, gee, what are the chances Biden isn't absolutely vibrating with incandescent rage over Kamala's betrayal of him right now? I'm sure he thought he was. I'm sure he'll be magnanimous and charitable like he's always been in public life. But like, no, Joe is so mad at Kamala and the party right now.

You know he has got to be furious because he I'm sure he believes that he would have won this election. Oh, 100%. 100%. I mean, I got to say, I do really genuinely do feel sympathy with like your average Democratic liberal voter who genuinely thought that Trump was done after he lost the last time and they're like and just cannot believe that like you cannot believe it. He did January 6th.

Yeah. I mean I know that we like laugh about that but I mean's like, I do agree with the Libs here that it is genuinely amazing that that was not a permanently disqualifying bungle. After that, like Gatorade was like, we will never allow Donald Trump to drink Gatorade. He was the most announced man in America. Like the official Twitter account for Austin Powers Gold member. It's like we will never let Donald Trump watch us. But yeah, I guess it's like the hatred and fear that like, you know, America trademark and all the like, you know, responsible, honorable people within it had for Donald Trump is the

proximate cause of his popularity. Because it's just like when all the people that you hate despise and fear this man, he must be doing something right. And like, the idea that like, again, they didn't really want to run against him, they wanted to just be like, we'll let the courts handle it. And like, you know, all of his convictions

are going nowhere now. I mean, that's over, that's done. Well, he still has to be sentenced to Georgia. What if he has to like, at like six months in county? I hope against hopes that that goes through just to see what how that works out logistically more than anything. That would be so funny. Like world leaders are trying to bribe him by putting money on his commissary.

No, I think actually the Trump when he gets in office should pardon Hunter Biden. That should be like the reach of the bill. Yeah, I think that'd be cool. That'd be nice of him. And it's funny because Joe's like, I'm not pardoning Hunter. Yeah. Well, he's probably going to pardon Eric Adams. Oh, yeah. Oh, Eric Adams.

He's one of the big winners. Oh, my God. He really made out clean here like just like Ludicrous corruption just fleecing the city the coffers of the city of New York of tens of billions of dollars Got him dead to rights. He's being pardoned. He's gonna still be mayor of New York Unless someone unless someone good runs against them. There is actually a good guy running. I'm gonna look into that He's I don't forget his name at the moment, but he probably not win. But well, I mean, like I said, I wish I had some better or more coherent closing thoughts, but like the problem with doing an episode like this is if Chris and I were talking about earlier, is it like, cause you also listened to our post 2016 episode

as well. Yeah, I went back and listened to We Live in the Zone now. And is the title of this episode We Continue to Live in the Zone. We continue to live in the zone. We continue to live in the zone. The thing is like, I just, you know, all of this has happened before all of it will happen again. And I've said it all before, and I suppose I have to say it all again. Yeah.

I mean, I guess to be like serious and corny, you know, I'm thinking back to that like post 2016 moment where everything was very scary, mostly because it was so new and uncharted. And I think that one of the scarier parts of now is that we kind of know how this goes and it is charted and that chart is terrifying. But also like just thinking about that concept of contingency and how, you know, I've been going through a lot of Matt's history stuff recently. Just that post 2016 moment also led to a big flourishing of alternatives, of alternative ways to think about and do politics. And obviously we have lived in eight years of those being systematically crushed

and snuffed out. But as you said, at the end of that 2016 episode, I can't go on, I must go on. And it is still, as it always is, time to look to your friends, look to the people around you that need help and that you can build community and build capacity with in whatever way makes sense to you and wait for those moments of contingency. And you might never know when they come up, but then when they do, you take that capacity and you do what you can with it. And who knows if there is any actual hope in there because we don't know what those contingent moments might be, but you got to stay frosty. Yeah.

I mean, I was thinking, cause I saw like in Kamala's address to the nation, and by the way, it was hilarious that she didn't speak at Howard University on election night. Yes. That was a perfect campaign filled with contempt for everyone. With absolute contempt and hatred for all of humanity. And yeah, she couldn't even face her own supporters, the people who believed in her the most. Once again, all this has happened before, all of it will happen again. But one of the things she said is like, now is not the time to lose hope.

You have to keep organizing, building power. You have to organize around political issues. But not certain political issues, because if you do that, we'll send the cops to arrest you and suppress it. I guess what I point to coming on, Chris, is like, yes, we've seen a flourishing of alternatives. This show being like, you know, like, again, we don't have power, but like, you know, we're a voice. We have dual power. The thing is power, but like, you know, we're a voice like... We have dual power. We have dual power. The thing is, whether it's, you know, organizing in solidarity with Palestine or labor or whatever, we've seen all attempts to do this snuffed out over and over again.

All I would say is you have to keep making them snuff it out. Yes. You have to keep making them show people who they are. You know, you have to make them expend the effort to suppress popular movements in this country. In that way of snuffing, show who the enemies are. I would remind people that there are people in Lebanon, in Palestine, who have lost their entire families, who have seen the world as they know it destroyed over and over and over and over again

over the course of their lives. Like for decades. They have not known a world that is not destroyed every few months. And at least one thing in the past year and just before that as someone who's followed this, that I've always been inspired by is not just their resilience, but just their grace and how little they let their oppressors get them down.

How they still have things in their life that they look forward to, things that they're happy about, ups and downs like anyone else, that they will not let Israel take the color out of their lives for lack of a less corny term. And if they can do that, I think everyone else here can too. Well, I'm looking forward to seeing how much stupider everything gets with you guys. You know, right after the election, one of our like points of hope was that Chelsea Manning got out. This time it's young thug. Yes, true. History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.

But it slimes. History doesn't rhyme, but okay, great. we're not going to do better than that. Yeah. All right, let's go out on that. Until next time, everybody. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Don't worry.

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