Latest / Political Commentary Corner / Analyzing Baltimore Sun’s Fake “Moderate” Commentary

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Analyzing Baltimore Sun’s Fake “Moderate” Commentary · Political Commentary Corner

• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome back to Political Commentary Corner.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Lawrence Grand Prix.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: Some of you may know the series Noam Chomsky and understand this concept of manufacturing consent.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: In a media environment, especially, where you're inundated with opinions that have been circumscribed, limited, the political spectrum has been limited to what you're able to hear.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: What is political common sense?
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Your ability to think about politics is not directly propagandized.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like people are telling you to love the state, love the dear ruler.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: But the space of thinkable thoughts is narrowed because the entities that control dominant space in media have a vision of politics, which they call centrist, which may include both sides when it's so narrow to a center that's gone so far right, just including both sides around that center makes you believe that that's the entire scope of permissible political thought.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: The Democratic Party, especially, the historical Democratic Party, the Clinton Democrats, the neoliberal Democrats have been very adamant that their common sense logic around political triangulation, not too far to the left, not too far to the right, if the only mature, realistic, winning politics, is where the most of the people are in real life.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: There's a silent majority of conservatives that just want to, gosh darn it, get stuff done.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: Which requires you to be moderate or conservative once that makes you don't work with Republicans.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: There's no better figure that encapsulates this idea in current Maryland politics than Bobby Zirkin.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: So Bobby Zirkin has unveiled his new podcast on supported by the Baltimore Sun, which is obviously owned by David Smith, who is the executive chairman of Sinclair Media, well-known Trump-supporting Republican.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: So why is he platforming this well-known Democrat?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: What is the political manufacturing of consent that comes with making someone like Bobby Zerkin a prime political commentator for a newspaper which is owned by a Trump right-wing Republican?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: So we're going to look at Bobby Zirkin, we're going to look at his podcast, and we're going to deconstruct what I believe is the manufacturing of consent around a potential Senate run for Bobby Zirkin.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: And almost more importantly, the political common sense that is trying to be reaffirmed in the political space of Maryland and the way he frames arguments, the way he narrates political history, the way he talks about, for example, leaders of a beautiful struggle in a recent episode.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: So with that, I want to thank you.
• 2:57
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• 2:59
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• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: It really helps to get us through the algorithm.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Please continue to check out all the other great media offerings at Black Liberation Media.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: And with that, let's get to it.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: This is someone who graduates Georgetown Law, London School of Economics, then goes on to lead the Maryland Young Democrats that actually speaks at the 96th political convention when Clinton is running for a second term.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: Gets into the House of Delegates in 98, takes office in 99.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: So this is someone who on the Judiciary Committee is operating the Democratic Party agenda in what is really a real hardcore blue dog, moderate democratic state at this time.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's under the leadership of Mike Miller and Mike Bush, the leaders of the Senate and House respectively.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: And Zirkin, in many ways, is being positioned by leadership to be the arbiter of how acceptably left the party is allowed to move.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: So things like the death penalty, things like the Justice Reinvestment Act, which we'll talk about later, is his claim to triangulate as he makes harsher sentences on things like violent crime.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: And he calls that again intelligent triangulation as the person on the Judiciary Committee eventually comes to lead the Judiciary Committee.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: We have clashed with him many times when he was the leader of judiciary.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: And over time, though, he then becomes way more of a bulwark against the left which pushed the Democratic Party.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: In 2018, when a more leftist Democrat won the primary for governor, Ben Jealous, he began to criticize him for going too far to the left on some criminal justice issues, repeatedly classed with groups including us and groups like Progressive Maryland on criminal justice reform.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: And when he eventually leaves the Senate, the state Senate, that is, he begins to criticize the Democrat running for U.S.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: Senate, Angela also Brooks, and starts Democrats for Hogan in Larry Hogan's ultimately unsuccessful run to be the Senate of representing the state of Maryland in D.C.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: He eventually shifts from practicing personal injury law to at times talking about being a sports agent or entering sports law, but now has re-emerged over the past couple of years as a political commentator for the Baltimore Sun, and he has this podcast across the aisle, where he's bringing on especially moderate Democrats and Republicans to talk about the need for bipartisanship, reminiscing about the good old days where you could just have a big debate and then have a beer afterwards and just hash out the issues.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: This is not hyperbole, this is literally the aesthetic of the podcast, and what he is claiming is what he wants to bring to the table.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: So this podcast is on YouTube and is available on things like Spotify as an introductory episode, which I could only find on Spotify.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: And in that introductory podcast, he begins to lay out what he sees as the genesis, the desire to produce this new media space.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: So let's listen to him talk about why he's so focused on taking this political commentary opportunity with the Baltimore Sun.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_05: I know you have discussed October 7th uh at length.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_05: Uh can you talk a little bit about Israel and then and your thoughts on that?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_03: So that was a jarring moment for me.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Jewish and proudly Jewish.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_03: I have you know, October 7th, you have a terrorist organization crossing over the border and murdering, gang raping, uh, torturing, beheading babies, and kidnapping, bringing back into Gaza hundreds of Israeli and citizens from other countries, including a lot of Americans, and you know, torturing them.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you're you're now hearing about women that were brought back into Gaza that were raped every single day for over a year.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_03: You know, what has been shocking to me has been the response from both the fringes of the left and the fringes of the right.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_03: So you have people like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, you have you know candidates for office and actual politicians like Zoran Mandami, you know, in New York City, who is you know, he he is anti-Semitic.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you you have a uh Senate candidate, a US Senate candidate, and he is going to the general election in Maine in Grand Platinum, who has a tattoo, a Nazi tattoo on his chest.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_03: Uh candidate in Michigan, El Saeed, who says he's he's anti-Zionist.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_03: He doesn't believe in the existence of the state of Israel.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, well, why aren't you then, you know, if if you don't believe in the Jewish state, do you also not believe in the 52 other religious nations that are out there, like Pakistan or Egypt, or the Sudan?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_03: It's just shocking how far to the fringe both parties have gone.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and that's what this podcast is about.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_03: We are going to we are going to steadfastly and stubbornly stick to the middle and stick to the policy.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: So there's so much to say about that.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Look at the reporting of Ryan Grimm and the Intercept, and he pretty roundly debunks the Housebar propaganda that that was mass rape and behittings of babies on the October 7th attacks.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: But it's not about that.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: The reality is this is don't chase every accusation that is inaccurate when you get to this podcast or other podcasts.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: The goal is not to get bogged down in the specifics.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: The whole point is that they want to bombard you with accusations of either leftist wrongdoing or leftist supporting Hamas and Hamas' human rights abuses to create an equivalent of both sides.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: So Tucker Carlson is the exact same as Graham Platner or Saeed who's running in Michigan.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so when you're in this moment of manufacturing consent, the goal of centering on the most outlandish allegations is to render it beyond thought, beyond something you have to actually interrogate, beyond actually interrogating what the position of someone like Bobby Zergen is.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: To understand that accusations are not entirely, obviously accusations need to be interrogated, but to some extent politically, they serve as manufacturing justifications for your side to do the exact same thing to your opponent that you claim your opponent has done to you.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: So when you look at the actual track record of Israeli detention of Palestinian prisoners, you can see systemic violence, systemic sexual violence.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: And the goal is to render that beyond the system of thought.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's both sides, that means it washes off, which means that all I have to think about is well, I want my taxes cut, so I'll just vote for the moderate Democrat or the Republican.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: By eliminating substantive conversation and by manufacturing the most outlandish allegations of the other side, you eliminate the need to actually interrogate it because it's just common sense.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody does it.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: So why are you focusing on my side when your side does it too?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: So let's move on to criminal justice, let's move on to tax policy, or let's move on to some other issues so I don't have to talk about moderate Democrats supporting a genocide in Gaza and that being a huge thing that's propping up this leftist wave right now.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: Raising the fundamental question why is a former state senator talking about Maryland politics and the Baltimore Sun talking about Israel.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: In addition to I believe he's sincere that he really cares about it and he sincerely holds his beliefs.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Long story short, kind of revealing the big reveal, the logical conclusion is that this is someone who is thinking about a run for Senate.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: He continually attacks Chris Van Halen, the current senator of Maryland, who we're going to talk about later.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: So if Chris Van Halen were to run for president, which apparently he is thinking about, or if he just has to run for re-election, he's up in 28.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: This is a two-year constant political manufacturing of consent bombardment, starting a potential Zirkin campaign, supported by the Baltimore Sun, which is owned by a known right-wing Republican.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: This is the manufacturing of consent.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because in a world where Zerkin can unite, the moderate Clinton Democrats, the folks who support Israel, the Zionists who are still Democrats but are very critical of the Democratic Party not standing strong with Israel, and just moderate common sense Democrats who get spooked on issues of crime that he thinks he can reach through this podcast, he begins to cobble together in his mind a political constituency that could defeat either Van Halen in the Maryland Senate primary, or if Van Halen runs for president, he can't run for the Senate.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: He has to pick one.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: So whoever replaces Van Halen, he can already start his campaign now.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: I believe the first episode of this episode was dropped on election day of the primary, 2026.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's in some ways respect.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's how you manufacture political consent.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: As soon as the election for 2026 is over, you start campaigning for 28, which it looks like is at least putting himself in a position to benefit from if he chooses.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: So of course, if your plan is to unite the Hulgan Democrats, the tough-on-crime, low taxes Democrats versus pro-Israel Democrats, as we talked about consistently, the logic of racialized social control, the logic of safety sue, dominance, and violence, it is impossible to talk about that without talking about criminal justice.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: There is an inevitable link between the logics of racialized social control that dominate, demands domination of brown bodies in Palestine, and almost always correlates with people supporting the domination of Sioux, policing of black bodies here in the United States.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: So not only does Zerkin talk about criminal justice and the loony left or lunatic fringe in the Democratic Party is pushing irresponsible policies in his mind on criminal justice, he specifically talks about Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: Or, as he calls it, facetiously, Leaders of a Beautiful Mind.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I've listened to Zirkin talk about criminal justice policy and specifically call out Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_03: And we've talked about this um that at least from the world that I lived in in Annapolis in the in the in the Judicial Proceedings Committee, whereas criminal law, particularly juvenile justice and criminal justice, that there are groups that are now much more vocal, powerful, and strident.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_03: That like, if you don't do everything they want, and when I say that, I don't mean that you're like sacrificing good things.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_03: Like half the stuff that they wanted, I always found to be like lunacy.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_03: Like I thought it was just dangerous stuff that I didn't think anybody should want.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: My recollection is they often wanted stuff that actually wouldn't even it was dangerous and it wouldn't really help the issue they claimed they wanted to help.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm thinking of a particular particular groups um that like, for example, this group uh I don't know, not to call them whatever, but it's my podcast, leaders of a beautiful mind or something, leaders of a struggle or something like that.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, just like would come down with some of the most asinine ideas, and they would like and if you didn't do it, they would just go out on social media and and trash you or make stuff up, or even when you agreed with them, they pretended like you didn't, and they would just wanted the bill with no amendments.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_02: I remember they would have come, and they still do this now, and I think it they've succeeded somewhat.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_02: Some of these groups don't have come down to say, uh, you know, we want this juvenile justice reform, and we, you know, this one they just passed this year was trying to say that you can't start, they didn't want anybody to start in adult court, they only want them to start in juvenile court for if they're a juvenile.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there's a lot of serious crimes that start in adult court and they should.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, shout out to minority whip Republican Senator Jeff and Reddy for admitting that we've been successful in our ability to manufacture a political shift in Annapolis.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: And again, accusations are oftentimes confessions of what you or your group does being projected onto your opponent.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: So, what is the tactic of the Zionist lobby?
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: To just completely deny, to stonewall, to deny any legitimacy to the other side.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what Zirkin is projecting onto us.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: Lunacy ideas, absolutely no give and take, and if you don't agree with us, we slam you on social media.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: What is our capacity to do that compared to the Zionist lobby?
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: It is minuscule.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: But of course, there's no conversation about the specifics of what we were actually debating about.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: Years and years of conversations, multiple different bills, it all gets boiled down to these radicals come down and they just scream and holler and they go on social media and they attack you because their ideas are crazy.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: We actually have recordings of one of the examples of the debates that was talked about, and it was specific around mandatory minimums for gun possession.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is something that he believes is crazy from his own personal experience, but he doesn't have data to back that up.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: We can get into the data later, but let's actually listen to an exchange between LBS Director of Public Policy, Devon Love, and Bobby Zerkin in the Judiciary Proceedings Committee around this exact issue of mandatory minimums for gun possession, which he can't imagine anyone defending.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: But not only do we have data supporting it, Devon gives a very specific example of why fundamentally, if you understand the reality of black life produced through the mass incarceration and disinvestment, his Democratic Party, Zirkin's Democratic Party produced, is rational and logical at times for a black person who is not a predator to feel they need to have a gun to protect themselves, and because of Maryland law, it's almost impossible to get a legal gun.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll go more in depth later.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: But here's Zirkin confronting Dave on and Dave on responding to Zirkin.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_03: Like to lump somebody who's a heroin user together with somebody who is a multiple offender of bringing a gun to a violent crime, to kind of lump them together and say, see, everybody just wants to throw people in jail, is so beyond, in I mean, in my opinion, completely disingenuous to come up without telling them that that's what you're saying, right?
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_03: Without without looking for the bone no, right?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_03: That's the one and the half uh provisional justice for them, that's one of the stuff, and for the cloud production that would find people automatically find the treatment, and you would even develop completely out of the criminal justice system to the government, never even go.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_03: You would never go from advanced, you go right from the courtroom to the treatment problem that's become an unworkable thing.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_03: We talked about the half-controll and probably rightfully stuffed.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_03: What's the world of difference?
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_03: Wouldn't you stop the person who has been convicted multiple times of bringing a gun to a felony, of convicted of bringing a gun to a robbery one time, two times, three times, to save that because we wanted to put some more time on him and somehow we all want mass incarceration?
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_03: Don't you wouldn't you at least have to admit that there was a difference between thoughts on a on a on a out?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_03: That there's a little bit of dis disingenuousness of telling people that we all want to throw all these people in jail and mass incarcerate when really what we were talking about were people who are multiple, multiple, recruit offenders of using guns and crimes.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: So on one hand, so uh if we're saying it's about dealing with people that are committing violent crimes, people that are committing violent crime, then the police will charge people with murder, don't the people with the court, the first attorney and the federal court, when I talk to police officers and people that work with federal agency, the level of disfunction that I mentioned earlier was exposed because of the federal crime, after the border and federal, after while it's difficult to find the people of federal trials.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: When I talk about the first and office and most accomplished, when the close part of the seven parts of this question, accompanied terms of argument with the people who are difficult to want to do.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot here.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: I wish I wouldn't have to dig so deeply into criminal justice policy on this podcast, because there's so much more I want to talk about, but I think it's important.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: This is a few things.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: Zirkin has an inability to distinguish between us and other mainstream nonprofit advocacy groups.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: Those folks are supported by grants, those folks are oftentimes professionals who are college educated, who get money to represent someone else's agenda.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: We are not a nonprofit.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: We are someone who is completely independent and we get our political support, not from a foundation, not from a board, but from community.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: So what he's trying to go for here is that these latte liberals, these white progressives who don't live in communities impacted by crime, have this romantic vision that if we just be nice to these dangerous Sugs, everything will be better, and it's just Pollyanna.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's not us.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: And to the extent he has legitimacy, he says that those groups don't have a theory or practice of building out institutional alternatives to incarceration.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: We actually, to some extent, agree with that, but Zirkin's policy does not reflect that in any way, shape, or form.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: We work with people in the community getting money sometimes directed away from the people that the mainstream nonprofit advocates he critiques talks about and getting it embedded in communities that have been directly impacted by incarceration and programs run by community.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: So his critique about just letting people out and not having any programming, that might apply to some advocates.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: It does not apply to us.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: We've worked diligently to get money in the groups during grassroots violence prevention, the funding of which has led to a massive decline in crime.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: None of this would have happened if we had listened to the common sense policy of someone like Bobby Zerkin, who said, Oh, we just want to lock people up who repeat violent offenders.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's not mass incarceration.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: When we look at the actual data, we see that this.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Is the continual white liberal mythology of the nonviolent drug offender that Zerkin explicitly admits when he crafted his justice reinvestment policy?
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: He decreased the uh policies of incarceration for nonviolent drug offenders and increased the penalties for so-called violent drug offenders.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that actually produces and maintains mass incarceration.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: He can't believe that.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because in his mind, he's bought into the oh, it's everybody being locked up for a dime bag of weed, these nickel bags of crack.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's where all the people being locked up is.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: The data does not support that.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: Mr.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: Logic and data is just wrong here.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: It is the massively long sentences we get to people who are charged with gun possession, uh, second degree assault, first degree assault.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: That is what keeps people in jail for years and years and years.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: So if you have one person in jail for 10 years, that's the same level of incarceration as 10 people in jail for one year.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how you lock in mass incarceration.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's these extremely long sentences, and people come out worse than they were before they came in because they're disconnected from community, and they're more likely to recidivate and violently recidivate because they've been brutalized within an incarceration system that people like Zerkin claim is the only logical, compassionate, pragmatic choice in the face of people's anxieties about crime.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: We've shown the alternative: grassroots violence prevention, producing declines in violence.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: None of his liberal, mainstream, Democrat, Clinton Knight, tough on crime, smart on crime politics produced.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just a reality.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: So another example, Zirkin is now trying to manufacture consent around him being a moderate or leftist by saying he pushed justice reinvestment, which is a policy that says that we're going to, again, make less punitive policies on drug crimes.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: And to the extent we de-incarcerate, we'll reinvest that money we save from not locking people up in the community.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: This was being pushed as a revolutionary policy, progressive policy in the Obama era.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: And him passing it in Maryland with the support of Mike Miller, he claims this is leftist born to fiddle zone crime.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: But again, Mr.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: Smart's, Mr.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: Empire's, look at the data.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: Look at the book, Justice Reinvestment, Winding Down Incarceration.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, Justice Reinvestment, Winding Down Imprisonment.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: One of the most comprehensive analysis of justice reinvestment in America.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: It specifically says that justice reinvestment in America was basically an attempt first to deal with the Great Recession and people not wanting to spend money on prisons.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: It was not about actually caring for the people locked up.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was saying we can't afford to keep locking up so many people.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: Second, it says that it was supposed to be given to community organizations to invest in their capacity to produce things upstream, like jobs and economic development, to prevent incarceration.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's what was sold.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: The book, the actual book, not his vibes, not his common sense, the book says that most of that money got reinvested into the criminal legal system.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: Things like parole and probation, putting people on the box.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't, none of it.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: In the 40 states that did justice reinvestment, none of it actually went to community groups to produce alternatives to incarceration, because that was too difficult.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: It was too difficult to have grassroots, messy community involved.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: What people knew was the criminal legal system, and so they invested in that.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: Finally, the argument that if we decarcerated, put people out of prisons, we would save money, and that money would be given the community was largely proven to be massively overblown.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: You don't actually really save money until you close down the prison.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: Think about it.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: Even if you have less people in the prison, you still gotta secure it, you still gotta light it, you still gotta heat it, you still gotta have food staff, you still gotta have custodial staff, you don't save the money until you shut down the prison.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: So all the mythology of every person we don't incarcerate is like$10,000,$20,000,$30,000 are going to go to the community.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: That did not happen.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: You have a Justice Reinvestment Council with, again, some good people, well-meaning groups, largely mainstream, traditional nonprofit advocacy groups, trying to divvy up just little tiny bits and pieces of money the best they know how.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it largely went into the criminal legal system or the criminal justice system that we're trying to fundamentally disinvest from, like we did with violence prevention from the grassroots and communities that actually brought crime down to historic lows.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: Pretty good for someone who's a crazy leftist liberal, right?
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: Again, we talked ad nauseum about the mythology of the nonviolent drunk offender, the inability to reflect black people's humanity that might lead them to feel the need to carry a weapon.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: I I I can't repetulate that all here now.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: Please look at some of our other podcasts on Social Black Power or other episodes of Political Commentary Corner where we deconstruct this mythology.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: It is logical and rational if you're in a cash economy, even if you're not selling drugs, you're not trying to be a predator, you're not trying to rob people just to protect yourself.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's in a deterrent signal.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you lose your cash, you can't pay rent, your family's evicted, you can't have a legal gun, because just by being black in Baltimore, you're gonna get charges, which are gonna prevent you from having a concealed carry permit.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: People consistently say, you know, if someone's trying to get me and shoot me, I'd rather have the gun on me and get put in jail than not have it on me and die.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: The point is we've deconstructed one of Zerkin's pillars of his leftist bona fides, which is the Justice Reinvestment Act, which he's gonna, I believe, run on in 28, claiming that he's a smart, intelligent, progressive, moderate, but still leftist.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: It is ridiculous.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um The other piece that he's gonna run on is the idea that he banned fracking.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: So in this moment of talking about data centers and talking about energy prices, he's gonna claim to be a moderate and that he banned fracking, but he supports increased energy for the state of Maryland, you know, unleashing Maryland's energy potentials, things like natural gas.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to play a clip because part of the goal of focusing on Zionism and tough on crime is to really say, well, I don't know if the left is right about Zionism.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: I maybe I believe that I'm scared about crime, what I really care about is my pocketbook.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: So he's trying to set up the left is so busy talking about immigrants and huggers uh criminals, they don't care about your pocketbook.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: So his pivot is really gonna be hard on the moderate affordability argument, which is leftist, the whole abundance thing that we we talked about a little bit on other podcasts, that too caring about the environment, the damn spotted owls, the uh community groups that are afraid of energy production are making it so we can't make energy, which is hurting your pocketbooks.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna play a quote from the aforementioned minority whip, Justin Reddy, which I believe is kind of a soft form of climate denihilism.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I want you to just listen to it, so it's gonna set up an argument about deconstructing this mythology of him being a moderate on energy and a moderate on these climate issues, these environmental issues that he's gonna claim are central to his appeal in a potential Senate run.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: So here's a clip that he uh in the conversation he had with the Republican talking about their approach to climate.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_02: So why is our energy prices so much higher?
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: Why are energy prices so much higher?
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_02: And the governor will talk about how they're hiring all over the country.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, some um all over the country.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_02: But in Maryland is one of the highest in the entire country.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_02: Now, because of this lack of investment in energy, in what I would call thermal energy generation from coal, natural natural gas, nuclear, we we basically import over 40% of our energy.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: Well, just like Impacty, it's cheaper to make your meal at home than it's to port around.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_02: We have the other problem where we've had multiple, multiple power plants, call and natural gas shut down now in the last 15 years, replaced with nothing, other than solar investment and stuff like that, which again, solar can put some more energy on the grid, but it's not the scale that you really need.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: They're subsidizing solar and wind and other types of these renewables that the state is requiring the energy companies.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: You have to have a certain very high percentage of your energy mix come from solar, but it's not just any solar, it has to be solar produced in Maryland.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_02: Maryland is one of the few states that's part of this regional greenhouse gas initiative.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_02: I call it a spam, but we're trying not to be too super important to the time.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_02: We say whatever you want, the other states that I mean we admitted that.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_02: We're part of that, and all the states that are what's called Reggie pay higher energy rates.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_02: But that's on top of this RPS standard, and it's on top of uh some of the other things I've talked about.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't understand the aversion of natural gas.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's completely clean.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_02: It it is something that people claim they think it'll run out eventually, but it's like it's clean and affordable.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_02: And why would you not want to put that as part of your energy mix?
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: We can debate coal.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I'm I actually think with what we do to clean coal now, it's it's pretty it's relatively clean.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_02: It is, I guess, quote unquote, dirty of the natural gas.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: I don't understand the resistance to natural gas.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: This is very, very important because nowhere in this analysis of stupid lefty climate hug a polar bear Democrats are increasing your energy costs, none of that blames anything on data centers, which we know are massiving demand for energy.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: If he seems to like to attack the governor, he could attack the governor on their support for AI and data centers, but my guess is Bobby Zerkin likely agrees on centering on data centers.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: And this is important because this is the pivot that's coming for the centrist Democrats.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: They aren't going to support data centers completely full stop.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: What they're gonna do is they're gonna say, I support data centers when they bring their own energy.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: And what that energy is likely to be is largely natural gas with diesel backups and some solar.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: Natural gas, as anyone with half a brain knows, produces particulate carbons, tiny, tiny pieces of carbon that are microscopic.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: Less than coal, which is why it's called a clean, natural alternative to coal, but still produces particular carbon.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: Particular carbon gets stuck in your body, which can cause you to have a stroke or a heart attack or die.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: The scenarios that from other countries, we don't have great data on this in America because the natural gas industry, I believe, has been very good at not allowing studies to be funded that critique natural gas.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: But look at South Korea.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: A study came out saying that if we have natural gas in South Korea compared to solar, natural gas route over the next 30 years would produce 30,000 additional deaths if we allow natural gas from its natural course to peak in 10 years and decline over the next 20.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: 30,000 from those increased emissions of particular carbons.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: Also produces nitrous oxide, sulfur oxide, which flares up the respiratory tract, produces asthma attacks, particular carbon can lead to strokes, and all these other negative health impacts.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: The important piece again is that this will be concentrated in communities that lack political power, which is why people have talked about environmental racism, and even the white rural community has been very adamant about being concerned about data centers because of the noise, because of the loss of property value, but also because a lot of them bring natural gas power plants to back up the data center.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: Data center can't go down.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's where the cloud is.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: All these solid state hard drives that store all this data that AI is using, these hyperscale data centers that are running AI, are bigger, more energy hungry, and require more natural gas than even the current projections of the health impact of natural gas assume.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: So when the Republicans talking about I don't get why natural gas is such a problem, I believe him.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because Republicans don't talk about environmental racism.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: They don't talk about the concentration of these impacts, which are likely far more than even some of the worst projections before the AI boom, about concentrating these natural gas either backup plants or actual fully operational power plants in minority communities.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: Again, maybe not Baltimore City, but like PG County, like working class black and brown suburbs where they have land for a power plant.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: Historically, like we see in Memphis with XAI, no, um X Elon Musk formerly Twitter, those are the communities that are gonna be disproportionately burdened by these power plants.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: What we're gonna see is like not people dropping like flowers, but like a 1 per 2% increase in mortality amongst people who are most vulnerable to heart disease and strokes.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be just like COVID, where that was roughly the deaferate.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: Where the conservatives are just gonna deny, deny, deny.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: I don't see it, you're making it up.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: And the people on the ground are being like, our people are dying.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: Our elders are dying, our village is dying.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a Democrat, a moderate, logical, common sense Democrat, platforming just Republican, doing this soft climate denialism, and not even talking about the fact that natural gas produces carbon dioxide, which warms the planet, which is going to potentially make the earth uninhabitable.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: This isn't even a climate argument.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: This is a health argument, but also an affordability argument.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because when these people go to the hospital, that cost them and the state millions of dollars.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: There's actually another study that's done that says that because Maryland has shifted so hard to green energies with this deeply critiqued renewable portfolio standard by the Republican, they've actually saved, according to this study from RMI,$60 million in social and health care costs that would have been accrued if we have kept on the path of coal and natural gas.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: But you don't see that$60 million.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's in your pocket.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: All you see is your energy bill saying it's going up, and it's easy to blame these stupid Democrats who care more about spotted aisles and Sugs not going to jail than your energy bill.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: This is important because again, this is the game the centrist Democrats play nationwide that we're likely to see played out here in Maryland, even if Zirkin doesn't run.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_01: Where again, it is the excesses of out-of-touch latte liberals, the people who live in the DC suburbs, the out-of-touch with the common man.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: We just want our energy bills to be cheap.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: We don't care where the energy comes from, because the environmental impact of that energy production will be on rural white people.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: And again, largely working class black and brown people who traditionally have not had the political power to fight back.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: So this talk about data centers, AI, energy production, environmental racism is going to become a big issue.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: The Green Party has been very adamant calling for an AI data center ban for exactly these issues.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: That again, I would like to see and wonder if the Mr.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'll talk to anybody, Mr.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: Zirkin, I'll platform anybody will actually have people on who can make the intelligent best case argument for these issues.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: One of the great things about critiquing centrist Democrats is they have no ideology, they have no ideological coherence, they go to where they think the money and the polling is in trying to consolidate some sort of centrist block of voters.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: So it's very easy for them to find themselves in directly contradictory spaces.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: And in the episode I told you about that, it's an intro podcast that did not make it to YouTube, but did make it to Spotify.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: Actually pulled the audio from Spotify to cut this clip.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because here we have again the logical, moderate, centrist Democrat taking a stance on Iran, which I think is very demonstrative of the inability to have any actual political coherence when it comes to the stances they're actually taking.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: So let's listen to what Bobby Durkin actually said about Iran.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_05: Now are we gonna touch upon uh international policies as well?
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we are.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_03: The war in Iran, you know, I thought I thought that what the president did was absolutely correct.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um Iran is the head of the snake.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_03: They mowed down 40,000, 50,000 of their own citizens.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, they were just out in the street protesting and they literally just shot them all to death.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_03: You can't have that in a civilized world.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, when he said, We're coming, you know, help is on its way, help should be on its way.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_03: And that doesn't mean bombing some things and then calling it quits.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_03: That means going all the way and and giving these people hope and freedom, and all they're asking for is freedom.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think what he's doing right now is correct.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um so all of a sudden it went from doing the right thing to doing the wrong thing, and I think you could end up with a worse situation if he doesn't finish the job.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: I can't know for sure if the episode was left off YouTube because of carelessness or because of something in the original intro episode they didn't want shown to a larger audience.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: If it is the latter, I think it is because of this clip.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_01: This is a little bit unhinged.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: This is a Democrat who is theoretically saying we should quote unquote Trump should finish the job in Iran.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what that means.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think it reflects a Zionist Democrat centrist fantasy where Trump does all the imperial violence Democrats secretly wish they could do and support, but Trump gets all the blowback for it and they can then come in in 28, claim they were against it, really before it, and then take advantage of the capitalist neo-imperialist space that Trump's colonial neo-colonial violence opens up.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: So whether that be Latin America, Maduro, killing the Ayatollah, Palestine, this is a fantasy of a particular centrist democrat that has been constrained by the niceties of international law, perception, alliances, and Trump's liberation from that.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: They want to be able to come in and claim to be against the style in which he did it.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: But basically support the substance.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: And what you're seeing here is the manufacturing of more or less an explicit APAC Democrat.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: Someone who can take money from the same people that fund um the people we talked about in the 41st districts, whether that's a Democrat Majority for Israel, United for Democracy Project, they won't they don't they may not think they even need the fig leaf of not calling it APAC in Maryland.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: Because even in the midst of a nationwide backlash to APAC, the ability to elect someone like Boffo in Southern Maryland.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the suburbs of DC, the Maryland side, that's the house that the Clintons build.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: And this is very much Zirkin is very much a product of that political movement.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a question for the left, this is a question for the state of Maryland.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: What we're seeing here for the next two years is gonna be the Baltimore Sun giving space for someone like Zirkin to manufacture either his campaign or someone in his image to either take out or take on the current senator Van Halen or raise someone else to take on Van Halen.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I've heard some people questioning Van Halen for his connections to his wife, limitations, and let's actually listen to the final clip.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually Zirkin being explicit in his critique of Van Halen.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: So we can hear the game he's gonna try to play, or someone else is gonna play in 28, as we hear him talk about Van Halen, which he's almost certainly gonna do even more of over the next two years.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: So here's Zirkin on Van Halen.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_03: Just to be perfectly honest, with our own United States Senator here in Maryland, Chris Van Halen.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_03: I knew him back in the General Assembly.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_03: I was in the House of Delegates when Chris was in the state was in the state senate.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_03: And I remember watching him kind of I don't want to say lap around like a puppy dog, but we'll just say that.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_03: After Mike Miller, everywhere where Mike Miller went, Chris Van Halen was like one small step behind trying to see what he could do to please Mike Miller.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_03: So he was a moderate conservative back then in the state senate, right?
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_03: He was he was a guy that just whatever the leadership told him to do, he would do.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_03: Why?
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_03: Because Chris Van Halen's overriding moral and principle is whatever's best for Chris Van Holland to get ahead.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_03: So when he was in the state senate, it was, you know, kind of being Mike Miller's guy, you know, his briefcase.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_03: And now he's decided that being the younger, Bernie, you know, smarter, probably Bernie Sanders, that's his new thing.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_03: And so now he's way out on the left fringe screaming all kinds of stuff, which are false.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_03: And when he's called on them, he just moves on to the next thing.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_03: And what he's doing is so awful.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's not even borderline anti-Semitism.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_03: He is way crossed over the line into anti-Semitism with the type of rhetoric that he is putting out there, and he's putting people's lives in danger with his false statements and half-truths about what's going on in the Middle East.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_03: He knows better.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_03: But like I said, Chris Van Halen's overriding principle is whatever's good for Chris Van Halen, and for whatever, you know, he sees the politics, and he's like, he sees that the far left lane is his way to power, or he thinks that way.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_03: We're gonna fight against that here.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_03: And by the way, he can sit in this seat anytime he wants.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_03: I've I've sent text messages to him.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_03: He knows that he can come here anytime and debate me on these issues.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_03: Anytime, just name the day, and you can sit here and we can and and answer questions.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: So the playbook here is not entirely direct, but it's very clear.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: What you expect is Zurkin to attack Van Halen as an anti-Semite.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly what he does.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_01: Van Halen has been critical of the excesses of the denial of aid to Palestinians in the West Bank.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_01: He has been vocal on supporting folks to the left in the Democratic Party.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: So he's going to paint him not just with the brush of anti-Semitism, but also with the brush of Graham Platner, who he's repeatedly talked about in multiple episodes.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: So he's claiming that the permissiveness, the lack of uh vetting, the lack of precision that the left somehow has a culture of sexual accepting sexual violence or accepting deviancy, whether it is being weak on crime or supporting Graham Platiner.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_01: He went to the Democratic Convention in 96.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: So this is Clinton.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: This is post-Wanita Broderick.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_01: So let's not talk about Lewinsky, let's talk about Wanita Broderick when Clinton is in Arkansas with a credible complaint of not just sexual harassment but sexual assault against him by Wanita Broderick.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: Zirkin is very much in the vein of the political logic of a James Carlyle.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: James Carlyle famously said of another Clinton accused of Paula Jones that's what you get when you drag a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: Which, to translate, for people who don't speak Louisiana, is saying that she's doing It for the money.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_01: She is following the hundred dollar bill, like you know, imagine a cartoon, you know, someone uh puts it on a fishing rod or something like that.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: This is the kind of ridiculous, misogynistic political not not just rhetoric, but reality.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, you have Joe Biden lobbying support behind Clarence Thomas.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: It is ridiculous to claim that censorists somehow have some sort of majority of valor when it comes to standing up to sexual violence in the political space.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: But it's part of a larger conceptual theory of painting the left as somehow within the context of the new left of the 70s, the free love, um, these people are not politically serious, they led to the moral majority, led to the silent majority, led to the backlash of Reagan.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_01: And this is the political environment that has produced a Bobby Zirkin.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: The theory is that showing any weakness on foreign policy, being constantly tough and viciously attacking the left, so you're not attached to the perceived, there's this perceived, again, silent majority of Nixon era that's going to viciously attack you and destroy you politically, when of course the Democrats lost multiple elections in a row after the voting rights and civil rights movement.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: This someone's his only political move, his instinct beaten into him through his political training in the 90s, is to constantly shre up his right flank when it comes to foreign policy and war, and be as hawkish as possible on foreign policy and war and criminal justice.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now the party has shifted left, so we can't be as hawkish as uh Clinton was.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: Clinton supported the death penalty, obviously mandatory minimum crime bill, all that.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: But it's still the same political instinct, and of course the political instinct is to viciously and violently punch left to demonstrate to people in the center that you're gonna be an enemy to the forces, political forces that they're scared of.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_01: So again, we're seeing the manufacturing of an explicit, clear APRAC, DMFI, UPD Democrat.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_01: Is the left in Maryland gonna be able to cobble itself together, because it's not a sure thing, especially if Van Halen chooses to run for president, it'll be open C.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a sure thing that an APAC Democrat cannot win in Maryland.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: That is not the reality.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: It may be the reality in other states, it's not the reality here.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: So it are there specific foreign policy concessions or interests or domestic policy interests that we want to use to leverage to support Van Halen.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: If you have concerns about Van Halen or if you just understand the political reality, this is an opportunity to have a senator who is beholden to organize political forces on the left, and the key word there is organize.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's so easy to hop on the podcast and just say all the Democrats are bought and sold.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: This is potentially a late career turn for Van Halen.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_01: He has not always painted himself as a progressive champion, and that is exactly the line of attack that Zirkin is going to use against him.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: So, in addition to cutting himself off from any of the Zionist Democrats or any of the centrist Democrats, he's going to viciously attack him in terms of him not being a real leftist, with the goal of deflating leftist turnout in a primary or in a to be able to defeat him in a primary.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_01: So in a world where Van Halen is claiming the Bernie wing of the party, he's claiming a more progressive wing in this moment.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: The ability to say, oh, he was Mike Miller's laddog when he was in Annapolis, he carried the water for Democratic Party leadership.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: That is designed to be able to impinge his ability to motivate a both a leftist turnout, but also people who are just generally disaffected from politics, who want to see a champion, someone who is challenging corporate power, his ability to brand himself as that would be able to have him potentially bring in new voters into the process that aren't going to come out for Zirkin.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: So that's not to say that you can't question Van Holland's leftist bona fides, but if you are, are you going to have specific concrete demands that you can organize and push him on to be able to ensure that we're actually getting any concessions out of the vote?
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: Or is it just going to be generic, he's one of the same, he's not the real thing?
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: That sort of general leftism.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: And not to say that's not legitimate, but in a world where, again, Maryland is a southern state, it is a slave state, it is a blue dog democratic state, there is a real possibility that, again, if Van Holland, especially if he runs for president, that's going to be open seat, potentially in 28.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: What can we do to produce a platform that we center as a community, leftist, progressive, whatever you want to call it, to force politicians to be able to meet our demands, to be able to get our turnout so that we can both block not even a centrist, but a right-wing Democrat like Bobby Zerkin, especially on things like foreign policy.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: But not just block him, but actually get someone in office, in a federal office, that can be forced to concede on critical demands.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if we looked at Latin America, well, if we looked at AFRICOM, or if we looked at defunding the military and investing in communities, we've looked at a variety of issues and make specific, concrete demands and organize constituency.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_01: We relate to reparations, whether it's HR-40 or some other reparations policy, and demand it for our support in a primary, for us to vigorously rally support behind you, door knock, for us to be able to do online advocacy.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna do it around our issues and our platform, which is gonna benefit you if you support our platform.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we have two years, and we don't know what's gonna happen, we don't know who's gonna run.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_01: But this is the reality of how consent is manufactured in the political space.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_01: We're seeing it happen in real time, it's gonna continue, and we need to figure out how we as a community organize ourselves because this isn't gonna stop anytime soon.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_01: The clip that we played with Dave On engaged with Bobby Zirkin, that's because Dave On is annapolis to testify against these sort of mandatory minimum bills.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_01: This again, quote unquote, smart on crime, centrist democrat triangulation that holds the nonviolent drug offender up that we praise and uses that to beat down the so-called evil, violent, repeat violent offender.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_01: Being able to be in these spaces and to push back on that logic is very, very important.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: And we're able to do it because we have the support of people that give us money every month.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, we say it consistently we're not a nonprofit, which means that we have the ability to directly engage in the political process and directly ask for your support.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_01: So it goes to political advocacy and machine building that can consistently be a presence in Annapolis, be a presence where these conversations are being had, to be the thorn in the side that Zirkin's talking about, to be the thorn in the side that Justin Ruddy is talking about.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's because we have the support of folks like you, especially folks who choose to give us a small amount of money every month, be it$10,$20,$25,$50.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_01: We call them sustainers.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: So go to lbsbaltima.com slash sustain.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_01: Even the rhetoric of our adversaries, I think, begins to show that we're building a model with some degree of proven effectiveness, whether it's pushing back and defending against these tough-on crime policies or pushing things like reparations of the war on drugs, the overturning the veto of the reparation study bill, and getting money from things like cannabis legalization, investing in communities impacted by the war on drugs.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: Being able to have support from you all means that we have the space to operate to help design the implementation and continue to advocate to build upon these successes in Maryland.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're able to, please go to lbfbaltimore.com/slash sustain.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_01: You'll be able to sign up for any amount of money you can give per month.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_01: Please continue to like and subscribe and share the podcast, especially when you're dealing with local politics.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_01: We know that this is not going to be the type of podcast that goes viral.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have a multi-million dollar machine behind us like the Baltimore Sun.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_01: And even so, I think that we can get enough views on this podcast from what I've seen to potentially challenge Bobby's podcast.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_01: So please continue to like and subscribe and share to this podcast.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_01: And but also continue to like and share the other work happening on Black Liberation Media at the collective.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_01: So many people from the other podcasts check out this podcast, and so many people from this chat podcast check out so many of the other podcasts.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_01: So that synergy, that collective methodology helps us push back against the media consolidation and the conservative manufacturing of consent done by people like the Baltimore Sun.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_01: So again, we thank you.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_01: We appreciate your support, and we'll see you next time as we continue to interrogate these kinds of issues on Political Commentary Corner.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_01: See you soon.