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Transcript

Nobody Wants To Fight Trump · Politix

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I guess we just did this whole episode.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like Democrats are fighting and this is just not what they're fighting about.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: They're fighting with each other.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: But they're not fighting Trump.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: They're going to pass his fucking CR.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm saying they're not arguing.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: They are arguing about how much they should fight with the state of Israel.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: They're not arguing about jail time for Trump, whatever.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, yeah, it's suboptimal.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like, I just think you should embrace a more comprehensive vision of doom here.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Hey everyone, you're listening to a free preview of the Politics Podcast.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: This week,
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Senate Democrats choose accommodation over staging a pre-election fight
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: with Donald Trump as they agree to extend annual funding for
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: the federal government past the September 30th shutdown deadline into December.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: We'll talk about what the hell they're thinking.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Then,
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: does this latest indication of conflict aversion militate for a more strategic kind
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: of weakness?
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: We'll talk about Matt's latest big idea that Democrats should help Trump abolish
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: the filibuster now in exchange for allowing Republicans to pass some kind
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: of voter ID law.
• 1:08
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• 1:11
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• 1:16
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• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: upgrade to paid at politics.fm.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to the Politics Podcast.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Brian Boyler.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Matthew Iglesias.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Check me out.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, you're looking good.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And meantime, my set has collapsed.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, that's okay.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: We'll be back soon.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: We just need to get like permanent branding stuff behind us that's portable so that
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: if we have to record from an undisclosed location like you are right now,
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: you can just hang a little thing behind you that says politics.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that sounds good.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: So we got a budget deal.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: A continuing resolution.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yay.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so, what was this even about?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, okay, so, uh,
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was about uncertainty about the,
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: like, the optimal course of action on, I want to say on both parties' parts.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, Every year,
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: the fiscal year ends on September 30th,
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: which means almost every election cycle,
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: something has to be done about the budget before the election.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: And often when power is about to change hands,
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: what they do is say, hey, we don't know how the election is going to turn out.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Let's kick this into the lame duck section or into the early part of the next Congress.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so...
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: House Republicans last week or the week before passed a similar short-term extension
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: of the current budget.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: And almost no Democrats voted for it, but it passed.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: And to me, I thought like, There's a lot going on that's different from normal election cycles.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: There is a president who's openly trying to cheat in the election.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: He has violated every budget agreement that Congress has passed for him
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: since he became president over a year and a half ago.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: And there was a brief shutdown.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: I guess it wasn't actually that brief.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: There was a real shutdown fight near the end of 2025
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: that on the politics, Democrats just won.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought,
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: This is an opportunity,
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: given that Democrats are struggling with their own voters
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: because their voters perceive that they don't stand up to Trump aggressively enough,
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: for them to say, no, we're not going to fund that stuff.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: If you need our votes to fund this government, all that stuff has to end, right?
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: But what does that mean, though?
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because, I mean, there's like a thing that occurs every CR fight.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: I will say,
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: I will say,
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: but first, I just want to say that if you just abstract away the Trump context.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know,
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: there was a different president who was a danger to democracy,
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: but who wasn't, you know, violating budget laws and who was more popular, right?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think that like some uncertainty about what the right course of action here,
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: like this is a zero sum election.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: So when you're talking about the political consequences of tempting
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: a government shutdown or actually shutting down the government,
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: only one party is going to be right about who benefits and who loses from that.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: And both parties are signaling that they don't want to find out the answer, right?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like House Republicans don't want The shutdown, or they don't want to be blamed for a shutdown.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: And likewise, Democrats are saying, we're not confident enough that we can win this.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: So rather than do anything risky, we're going to do something cautious.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think in a lot of contexts,
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: that kind of like, let's just not do this now, makes a lot of sense.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think in this context,
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: looking back at everything that's happened for the last year and a half,
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: looking at what's happened in this primary season,
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: where there's been a fairly large Primary voter rebellion against
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: the Democratic establishment.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: Picking a fight.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Would have made a lot more sense.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to I want to detach from.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that meta question, just like because so, you know.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: The.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Funding was going to expire on September 30th,
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: so we could have had a situation in which the final five weeks of
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: the midterm campaign are dominated by a government shutdown.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: But then the question would be like, what would that be about?
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a move on the Republican side,
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: and we will come back to the SAVE Act later,
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: but there was a move on the Republican side to say,
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: we should demand that the SAVE Act be included in And so,
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: had Republicans held that line, I think Democrats obviously would have said no.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: There would have been a government shutdown.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And we would have said the reason that there is a government shutdown is
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: that Republicans are insisting on this SAVE Act.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then the yin and the yang of it would have been that,
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: like, voter ID policies It's a pretty good issue for Republicans.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: But also, we shut down the government over this unrelated demand.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's a pretty bad look for Republicans.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I think Democrats would have felt really comfortable with having that fight.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, despite the slightly dicey messaging around voter ID, right?
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: It would be like, Trump shut down the government because he wants to rig elections.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's the thing.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, can I interject?
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: Let me interject.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: Let me interject.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: Because...
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I think context is critical here.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: In a normal government shutdown fight where it's not Trump who's trying to cheat
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: the election,
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: but there is another authoritarian-like figure who has tried to tilt things his way,
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: but is not identified with an insurrection,
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: is not identified with having tried to coup his way back into power in 2020,
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: then yes,
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: the abstract polling on voter ID would make this a somewhat complicated situation.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: Fraught issue for Democrats.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: But while voter ID may poll decently in the abstract,
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: when Donald Trump is the one pushing it,
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think a super majority of
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: the country understands this is him playing his funny games about trying to cheat
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: in elections again.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it flips and it becomes an asset for Democrats.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: No, I mean, I agree.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, again,
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: to be to be clear,
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: like this is why ultimately like Republicans talked about this a lot for a couple
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: of weeks and ultimately didn't do.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think Democrats like.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Would have loved that scenario because it.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Would.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Democrats would like to be seen by their base as fighting Trump hard.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: But they also have a lot of doubts about specific things that their base would like them to do.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: So the easiest solution for everybody would have been for Trump to pick the fight.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: But once Republicans sort of backed down on that, right,
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: in the House,
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: they included some provision that will let Trump— Do something
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: with Border Patrol funds that I don't totally understand.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: But it was like Republicans like put language in
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: to give Trump additional financial flexibility on the Border Patrol.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: House Democrats said that's unacceptable.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: They voted no overwhelmingly.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Senate Democrats also said that that was unacceptable.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: And we could have had a world in which we were heading toward a shutdown in which
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: the key issue was that Republicans were—and we still might,
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: because this is one of the main ways in which the House and Senate texts differ,
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: that Susan Collins and Senate Republicans agreed to get rid of that kind of stuff.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so now if the House refuses to swallow that language, we will get a government shutdown.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: We will get to fight Trump.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: And once again, we'll be fighting Trump on grounds that I think is a trap for Republicans.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Republicans will be saying, oh, this is good because it's about immigration.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's about border security.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: But Democrats will say, I think more accurately, like this is good.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: This is about us like imposing discipline, rules, normalcy on the budget process.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: It is Trump causing the shutdown.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: But Senate Republicans were willing to give way on that topic.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: So then the question becomes,
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: what could or should Senate Democrats have demanded specifically?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because we had the healthcare fight in which- Look, this is what I was building.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: They talked themselves into it.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I think like- Because Trump is unpopular and he's this sort of singular figure
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: and he's been violating the budgets that Congress has passed all along,
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: it's sort of an embarrassment of riches, right?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: Democrats could pick this fight on multiple grounds,
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: like at the same time if they wanted,
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: all of which I think would yield them political advantage.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: I have like two issues with the way they've gone about this.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I have some thoughts about what I would have wanted to see them demand.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: The one thing that I don't,
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: the non-substantive concerns I have are one, it's August 4th, right?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: There's still two plus months until the election.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Why are they giving up this leverage now?
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like Donald Trump is going to take this budget if it passes,
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: if it becomes law,
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: and then he's going to start fucking around in the election again.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: And And Democrats can be like,
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: oh, no, what are we going to do to stop him from fucking running the election?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, well, you just handed away your last piece of leverage.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: So that's one.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: The other is whether they were going to surrender now or surrender later or have
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: a fight now or have a fight later.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: What they've done is they've given their number one Senate target,
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: Susan Collins,
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: this incredible talking point that she managed to prevent this government shutdown
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: by working in a bipartisan way across the aisle, blah, blah, blah.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: They need to make her seem much more unreasonable.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: And they've allowed her to, once again, claim the mantle of reason.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the political half of my concern.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Substantively,
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think you can make the same arguments now that you could have made in March
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: of last year,
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: in September of last year,
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: that Donald Trump is violating laws left and right,
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: particularly pertaining to the budget.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: So he's not going to get our votes for the budget until we put in place measures,
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: enforceable ones, that would stop him from doing that.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: However, what I really think is...
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: And the strongest possible grounds, I think, they could have chosen would have been
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: To insist on measures that basically assure that this will be a free
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: and fair midterm election, right?
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: But like what?
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, okay.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: So Trump has drafted an executive order that would basically prohibit delivery
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: of mail-in ballots to states that aren't handing over their voter rolls to him.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: He's trying to get the Supreme Court to okay this.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: But there could be a measure defunding that as like that order is not legal.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: OK, you can't put it.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: You can't finalize it.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: You can't implement it.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: Trump is like overseeing ordering DOJ to conduct
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: a federal criminal investigation that's predicated on the big lie that
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: the 2020 election was stolen.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: They could say that has to stop.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: They could require Trump to return ballots to Fulton County.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: They could place,
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: it would be technically redundant,
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: I guess,
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: because federal law is already kind of on our side on this one,
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: but that specifically prohibits the deployment of federal agents and troops
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: to polling places.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: And they could basically say, look,
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: we are not going to fund the dirty tricks Trump wants to play to cheat in
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: the election against us.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: We are not going to pay for our own Right.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: And like it seemingly just did not occur to them that they could do this.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: And now I, you know, unless this deal falls apart.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: But who is them?
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, yes, I agree with you.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is an idea that seems at a moment of like very intense infighting
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: among Democrats that nobody has raised at all.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that has no traction.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I raised it.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I just mean like.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Part of the difficulty of.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, difficulty.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like, the nature of these things is like,
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: you know, in the last government shutdown, it got a little bit awkward.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Where it was like,
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: left-wing people, progressives, like, clearly wanted to have a government shutdown.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: And frontline members were skeptical.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so we wound up getting a government shutdown because the people
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: who really wanted a government shutdown...
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Found a basis for a shutdown that the frontline members were comfortable with.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: And as we discussed at the time,
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: as I think a lot of like thinky people discussed ad nauseum,
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: it wasn't the most logical thing that I've ever seen happen in American politics.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like the relationship between the demands and the continuing resolution was pretty fuzzy.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: But it worked pretty well because it...
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Obtained an actual consensus among the relevant people.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, the work on something like that just takes a lot of time.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, I mean, yeah, like, I mean, if I was in a meeting.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think it just takes different Democrats, right?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like, if you could swap out Jean Shaheen and senators like her for ones that,
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: like, understood what was happening in America and what Donald Trump was up to.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: You would need to swap out, like,
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Bernie Sanders has been touring the country nonstop for the past four or five weeks,
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: relentlessly slagging the Democratic establishment.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: I fucking hate Bernie Sanders at this point.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: But like Bernie Sanders,
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: who stood by Joe Biden in the July days,
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: who said that Joe Biden was the greatest progressive president we've had since FDR,
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: who then immediately after the election said Joe Biden betrayed the middle class.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: He's like he's back on his bullshit.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Where, like,
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: every single Democrat who doesn't agree with Bernie Sanders,
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: according to Bernie Sanders, is corrupt and is a tool of the oligarchy.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: And the only thing he cares about is, like,
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: defeating Janet Mills,
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: defeating Haley Stevens, defeating Matt Mazdam in the Michigan 7 primary, right?
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like, he's at war, on fuego, with the Democratic establishment.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: He is the reason why,
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: like, people do not see a clear difference on corruption between the parties.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because, like, he keeps saying Democrats are...
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: And Bernie
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: formed a nexus of senators, right?
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just him and Elizabeth Warren,
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: it's now Chris Van Hollen,
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: it's Tina Smith,
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: and they've done joint endorsements for Penny Flanagan,
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: for other people,
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: and they have articulated the A quote unquote fight club critique of Chuck Schumer.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: They have an alternate leadership candidate in Chris Van Hollen.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: And like, they didn't put any of this out.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like they want to fight about Israel.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: Look,
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: I agree with you that progressives are somewhat free riding in this primary season
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: on Democratic base voter discontent with the establishment that has to do
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: with fighting Trump.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: And instead of offering them a better way to fight Trump,
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: they are offering them a different policy vision than
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: the current Democratic leadership is willing to stand behind.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: And that is suboptimal.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: I just feel like this is like fake, though.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: That like they're not angry with the Democratic.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's like the Democratic Party leadership would like to fight Donald Trump.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: Progressives would like to fight the Democratic Party leadership about Israel.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: But but.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: The first part of what you said is not true,
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: because if the Democratic Party establishment wanted to fight Trump,
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: Patty Murray wouldn't have cut this deal with Susan Collins that's great
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: for Susan Collins, that doesn't demand anything of Donald Trump.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: They did get one concession that is not nothing, but it's close to nothing.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: There is this...
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: Separate rule that Russ Vought and the administration want to finalize
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: that would basically give them total partisan control
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: over all federal grant writing.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like the scientific community is really rattled by this because it's basically like,
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: it would turn the funding of science into like
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: a Republican shell game
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: where it's like, oh,
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: the only science that the federal government is Funding now is anti-vaccine
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: or is climate denial or whatever.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's a bad rule.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: It should be killed.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: This CR delays implementation of it for the term of the CR.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: So there won't be any progress towards finalizing it between the time this CR passes
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: and December or something.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's not nothing, but it's not much.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: If what you said was true, there would have been a list of demands.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: Just like when Republicans wanted to fight Barack Obama,
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: John Boehner would go to the mic and say, here are my demands.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: If you want our votes for the debt limit or to fund the government,
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: you need to give us this stuff.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't do that.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: And my contention is that doing stuff like that,
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we are now a bit late, but in the previous budget fights in-
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: Basically all along over the NDAA,
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: every time there's a leverage point,
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: if that is how Democrats had been operating,
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: with the confidence that they could win and that eventually Trump would yield back
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of the power that he's stolen from them,
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: Then Bernie Sanders would have had
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: a much harder time convincing Democratic primary voters to take a flyer
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: on Abdul El-Sayed,
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: on Graham Plattner,
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: on these insurgent candidates in New York because the electric would have said,
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: OK, look, like we got we got our ass handed to us.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know how the Democratic Party lost two of three elections to Donald Trump,
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: but at least they got right back up off the mat and are fighting him.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: But that's what happened.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's like you got to get somebody more left wing.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: That just doesn't, I don't know.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like a little,
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: every day I wake up and what I see is left-wing people saying,
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: we are singularly focused on purging pro-Israel Democrats from the Democratic Party
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: because we believe that Israel is really, really bad.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: And we believe in imposing an arms embargo on Israel.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: And we think that the donors who disagree with us are really, really bad.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the main focus of our political movement.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I see people saying this.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then I watch the election results.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: And those people are winning.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't see that they have any reason to
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: change their course of action.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, no.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: But then I hear these other people,
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: like you and Amanda Lipman and stuff,
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: people who don't seem to care that much about Israel,
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: suggesting that, like, really, this is about some other thing.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: But I just...
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: They would do what they...
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: They would try to advance their priorities,
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: they being the progressive insurgency, no matter what.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like, they're a political faction.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's what they want.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: They want their vision to succeed.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: What I'm talking about is, like, you don't need me to interview Ryan Grimm on this podcast.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: You need me to interview a Whitmer to Syed.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: Voter from Michigan.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: Why did you stop?
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: No, because I don't think that that's true,
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: because I think the reason that people believe
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: that they're just they're getting their information
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: from these like left wing media sources that keep just like lying to them about
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: the Democratic Party.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it actually does matter what Ryan Grimm wants.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: I don't I don't believe that like Normie Dems in Michigan are reading books.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: Drop site news and learning about politics from Ryan Grimm.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think that they lost the election.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Young voters obviously are not reading anything.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: They are subliterate morons who get their information about politics
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: from TikTok influencers who are solely focused on Israel.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe they'll find this YouTube video.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: They are not going to hit like or subscribe if you call them illiterate morons.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Probably not.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, like it is what it is.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: And You know,
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: maybe if Democrats said they're not going to fund the CR
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: unless Donald Trump holds arms sales to Israel,
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: like, I think that would have created a lot of intraparty peace.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, except a bunch of Democrats would defect and they wouldn't have held that line.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: But to me,
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: what is most noteworthy about this issue Summer drama is the lack of drama
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: that like we have had.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: We had a long time in which the left factionalists in Congress maintained
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: the pretense that their complaint with Chuck Schumer was Brian Boitler's complaint.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to say Schumer is glad about this Israel-focused left-wing insurgency,
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: but it's clear that it has made his practical day-to-day caucus management easier.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like,
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: if these people wanted to say,
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: if Bernie and Warren and Chris Van Hollen and Tina Smith and Ed Markey,
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: if they'd all been like,
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: no votes for a CR unless it stops Trump's effort to steal the election, right?
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: Then, like, Abdul would have started saying that.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Plattner would have started saying that.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: Mills and Stevens would have immediately rushed to agree with them to try
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: to avoid losing their primaries.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: You would have gotten back into the dynamic that we had before.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: Look,
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: I— In which— I admit that both factions
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: have assessed the politics of the moment,
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: the demands of the moment, incredibly poorly.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: And Donald Trump is just like walking between them to a dictatorship.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: I hope that Al-Sayed today or after he wins the primary tonight,
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: like when you listen to this,
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: he'll probably be the nominee for Senate,
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: that he says,
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: now that I've defeated the Democratic Party establishment and I'm turning
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: to defeating Republicans,
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to ask Democrats in the Senate,
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: Who are scared of what's coming because they see that I just defeated them.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: To not let this CR pass until Donald Trump's efforts to overturn
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: the midterm elections are illegalized.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: That would be great.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then I think that what you're saying would happen.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: People would start to get on board with it.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: But either faction could have...
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: Been like, hey,
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: the most pressing problem in America right now is Donald Trump wants to use
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: the money that we're appropriating to his government to cheat against us in
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: the election.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we should try to do something to stop him.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: And nobody, not the people you hate and not the moderates that like I'm happy to see defeated.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: But I just want
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: to talk about like,
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: life goes on day by day,
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: week by week, month by month, and we learn things about the world.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: And like,
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think that there was a hypothesis out there about like,
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: what is this insurgency about?
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: What does the left want?
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Who really wants to fight Trump, et cetera, et cetera.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that it's not that like what Chuck Schumer is doing is like new here
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: or what like Gene Shaheen and the more establishment older members,
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: they are behaving exactly as everyone has always characterized their behavior.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: What is new this summer, July,
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: August of 2026,
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: is that we are seeing what it is that the left block,
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: like, actually thinks about this.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: And, like, what are they really doing?
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it should be an update.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Ben Rhodes did this, I don't want to say great, but he did a lengthy thread last night.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: It will be a very good thing for the Democratic Party if Abdul El-Sayed wins.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: It is nothing.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: AIPAC has spent over $30 million to defeat Abdul,
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: running flagrantly dishonest ads that,
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: among other things,
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: give the false impression that Barack Obama endorsed Haley Stevens.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: They lie because they can't make any argument for war crimes or their tax dollars.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the most important thing.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: Abdul will be a great senator.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: He will fight for Michigan, not for any special interest.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: He'll be an expert on health care,
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: a brilliant legislator, bring a different voice to the U.S. Senate.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: I hope he's there for a long time.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: But it is also the case that AIPAC must lose.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: Schumer and Gillibrand and the people who don't understand why Democrats keep losing must lose.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Money must lose.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: Abdul and Michigan voters can show that democracy is still something that is
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: the hands of the people.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: And why do you think they've spent tens of millions of dollars trying to defeat Abdul?
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's because they want you to feel powerless.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: So you think nothing can change.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's why Trump won.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's why nothing ever changes.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like a game that you aren't allowed to play.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like,
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: That is the left's thesis,
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: that like the most important moral question of our day is U.S.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: arms sales to Israel,
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: that the reason that Trump won is that Joe Biden continued
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: to facilitate arms transfers to Israel,
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: and that like the critical thing is not James Tallarico in Texas.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's not Josh Turek in Iowa.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's not Sherrod Brown in Ohio.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's not Mary Peltola in Alaska.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's not even really Abdul versus Mike Rogers in Michigan, right?
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's dealing this defeat to AIPAC.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: And like,
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying those are like the only people who have ever done anything that's bad
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: or like tactically blundered or something like that.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: But like,
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like I've been in like a like a years long quest to get you
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: to like address squarely the fact that like there's a big growing influential block
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: of people on the left who just like.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: Don't it's not that they're pro Trump, but like.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: Their energy is about Democratic Party, moving Democratic Party issue positioning to the left.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: And they're not,
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: they will opportunistically pick up the banner of resistance when it sort
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: of helps them grind this axe.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: But other times when you're running against Dan Goldman or Espelot or
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: when you're trying to, you know, they'll just go the other way.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I Look,
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: like this brings us right back to where we were five minutes ago,
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: where I'm like, the key question to me is like, why are they succeeding?
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: And part of it is that there is a growing faction.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: People who vote in Democratic primaries who agree with the left
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: on the merits.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: But there's still a very large contingent,
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: an overlapping one,
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: that either disagrees or is concerned that this new left-wing movement
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: that is uncompromising and takes positions that are more controversial will make
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: the party less electable.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: Some of those people are throwing in with the left anyway.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: And my thesis is that it's because they do not trust
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: the Democratic Party establishment's ability to fight or their instincts
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: for what wins elections because they lost two of three elections to Donald Trump.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: So you have this divide over the issue questions.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: What I don't think you have is any divide at all over the question of
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: when there's leverage to bring Trump to heel, should we use it or not?
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think that that's like a 100 to zero question in the Democratic, or like 90-10, right?
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: And one way to kind of outflank or just...
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: And sap the insurgency of some of its power to persuade voters to vote for them is
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: to say, hey,
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: we are going to fight out these issues in primaries on the Senate floor,
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: on the House floor.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: But you can trust that we got the message from the election that you don't,
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: from the 2024 election, that we need to fight Trump harder.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: That it was a huge mistake to like basically let him get away after the insurrection.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: And we are going to use whatever powers we have as a minority to stop him now.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like message heard.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: And like I think that if you found me – like you should like listen to focus groups
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: of Democratic primary voters in Michigan, Maine.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: They are not – like some of them have become more radical in their policy views,
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: but they are by and large not like echoing the kinds of sentiments that you read –
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: In Ben Rhodes' Twitter thread.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it is important for Democrats to prove that the way AIPAC tries to play
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: in Democratic primaries...
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: Doesn't work and will backfire.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's a little bit orthogonal to the question of fighting Trump directly, but not totally.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: We can talk about that in a minute if you want.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: But they're not breathing fire the way Ben Rhodes was.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: They just want Democrats who will fight Trump harder.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: And because progressives tend to have a more pugilistic affect,
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: and also because they're the only option available other than the establishment,
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: all the energy is flowing to them.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not because progressives are more pure.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: Progressives just have safe seats.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you have a safe seat, you can just fucking say whatever.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're a voter and you look at Abdul El-Sayed versus Haley Stevens
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: and you just try to assess based on how they talk,
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: how they carry themselves,
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: which one of these people has the confidence to stand up to Donald Trump,
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: rightly or wrongly, most of them are going to say Abdul.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, maybe they will, maybe they won't.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: But like analytically, it makes no sense.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: Haley Stevens' position is...
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: Chuck Schumer should
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: be Senate Majority Leader.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: Is that Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden...
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: Kamala Harris were like good people who were much, much better than Donald Trump.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it was important to help them win elections.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: Abdullah Sayed's position is that Hillary Clinton,
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: Joe Biden,
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: Kamala Harris are genocidaires who are corrupt pawns of the corporate establishment
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: and that the stakes between Trump and establishment Democrats are small.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's not real.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just that it's not really about fighting Donald Trump harder.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's that it's like the opposite of that.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's based on the view that just Democrats should be more left wing.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that's fine.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: And like I can retire.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: You should read what Abdul El-Sayed said to like Muslim voters in Michigan
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: after Harris sealed up the nomination.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: I have.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: He did not say she's a Genesee dare who should lose to Donald Trump.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: I understand.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: But like that's his position.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's Ben Rhodes' view.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: He said it, like,
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: is that the Democratic Party is worthless and stands for nothing because
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: of its complicity in genocide.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, all the people involved in this love insurgency, like, they go both ways on it, right?
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: But, like, it's...
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: Let me say one more thing.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's what they're saying.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: Let me say one more thing about it.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: And, like, I would love to see you...
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: Dialogue with them,
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: because I think that you sometimes think that actually the stakes
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: between mainstream Democrats and MAGA Republicans are quite high.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: But then whenever anything concrete comes,
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: like you always want to be on the side of the leftists because they're cool.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: And to be clear, they are winning.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like my advice to anyone,
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: if you're in Democratic Party politics today, right,
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: if you hold elective office at any level,
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: you almost certainly hold office in a safe seat.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: And if you take positions that hurt you with the polls by two,
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: three, four, five points, it's not going to damage you, right?
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like, your seat is safe.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to win anyway.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: You should just totally throw Iglesias under the bus.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: Agree with Abdul and Bernie about everything.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you ever criticize those people, you should probably just retire.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like, just join the cult.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's the correct careerist way to go forward.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: It will make it harder.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: For Turek, for Politola, for Brown, etc.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: It will make it harder to actually beat MAGA.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: But individually, get on the band.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: These guys are winning.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: And they are going to win no matter what.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because the whole information ecosystem is busted.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is all wrong.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: Donald Trump's disapproval rating is in the 60s, right?
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: The position I'm taking is not, well,
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: like I'm torn because I kind of think that the electability stuff is really real,
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: blah, blah, blah.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: No, what I'm trying to do is like, let's abstract away the left's controversial position.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: And let's abstract away the incremental things that the center of the party wants
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: to do that the left capitalizes upon to be like, look, these people have no balls.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: They're corrupt, whatever.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: And talk about like where agreement lies.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: And like the biggest reservoir of agreement is fuck Donald Trump.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, but this is what I'm saying.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: There is an incredibly profound disagreement about this because
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: the leftists keep saying explicitly over and over and over again
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: that moderate Democrats are corrupt.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: They don't say moderate Democrats.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: They don't say moderate Democrats have a different judgment from me
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: on certain public policy issues.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: They say uniformly that 100% of the policy disagreement inside
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: the Democratic Party is caused totalistically by financial corruption.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that makes it impossible to create a unified message against Trump.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: It makes it much harder for them to say we are a party that stands foursquare
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: against Trump's corruption.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: I agree with that.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think that the question of like,
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: should you use these leverage moments to fight Trump in
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: the Democratic electorate is, as I said, like a 90-10 position.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm saying that progressives and moderates should unite on that instead
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: of doing all the bullshit about whatever.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: And look,
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: let me say one thing about Ben and then – One last thing about Michigan,
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: and then we should talk about your idea on the other side.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: What Ben said is,
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: reasonably in line with what most of the activists working with
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: the left insurgent candidates think.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think Ben...
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: From his professional experience of one,
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: aligning with Barack Obama,
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: who rose to power,
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: taking a moral stand against the corruption of both parties vis-a-vis the Iraq War,
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: sees something about the Syed situation that rhymes with that
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: and thinks this might be a good way to heal the Democratic Party in the way
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: that Obama was able to heal it for a time.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: I also think that when he got into power...
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: He watched how Netanyahu played in our politics and how AIPAC played in our politics.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like rightfully very upset about how that all went down.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so he has a particular axe to grind with AIPAC that is a bit different than
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: the like Gaza related reasons that some primary voters
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: and many progressive candidates have to grind with AIPAC.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: For him,
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: it's mostly the democracy stuff where AIPAC has all this money and they play
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: in primaries.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's more than it is about the specific foreign policy of Joe Biden
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: and Kamala Harris and blah, blah, blah.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: So there's that.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm happy to see if Ben wants to do something on this show or an off message
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: to talk about if you had seen Chuck Schumer be a better fighter all along,
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: do you think that I just I just I feel like this take.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like unresponsive to the events that we have seen play out this summer.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: We're just over and over and over again.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: People keep saying,
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: people keep saying,
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: here's a Congressional Progressive Caucus member who has never voted for any deal
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: with Trump, who supports Medicare for All.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm telling an alternate history.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: But who is pro-Israel.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: And like, I want to defeat them in a primary and then they win.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: I am telling an alternate, I am positing an alternate history.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: In which Democrats like Schumer,
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: like Stevens had adopted a more righteous posture after the 2024 election.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: I get you.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: I hear what you're saying.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then they wouldn't be in such dire straits.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: They are now in dire straits and the left is pushing the agenda that it was going
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: to push anyway.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: I just think it's like after the New York primaries,
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: like I went back and I looked and I see like,
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: has Brian Boydler ever said anything about any of these people who just lost?
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer for almost all of them was no.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: You said something praising Diana DeGetti like 19 years ago when you were working at TPM.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote a lot about Dan Goldman when he was in.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: But this is what I was going to say.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: But Dan Goldman specifically,
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: you'd written about like a fair amount in a praising way because he's a fighter
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: against Trump.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: And like you had like singled him out on that regard.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then he lost in a primary where the only issue was Israel.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: He lost quite badly.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I just think that's what this is about.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: That was as good a test as we can get.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: What if we had a true anti-Trump warrior who's also a safe seat guy
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: who had always been like,
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: fuck Trump, fuck Trump, fuck Trump, but who's not a fuck Israel guy.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, no, we care more about Israel.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think Dan Goldman likewise should be upset with Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because, look, like Dan Goldman signed up.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how this happened.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if he went to them or they came to him.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_01: But during the first Trump impeachment over the Ukraine stuff, he became the lead counsel.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: And Democrats in that impeachment,
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: they did it as a box checking exercise overall, which was a problem.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: But they did smartly turn over the questioning,
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: most of the questioning and the investigative work in the open hearings to
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: a prosecutor rather than have all the members of the committee kind
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: of do their typical five minutes of grandstanding.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: And Dan Goldman did a good job in that regard.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: He was crucially doing a good job under the auspices of Pelosi's leadership.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: He was signing up to do The party leadership's impeachment,
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: not the open-ended inquiry that a prosecutor with free reign would have run.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so a lot of leads went unchaste, and that is what it was.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think Dan Goldman did a good job with that,
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: and if he had – Had the,
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: been able to know what was coming and said, no,
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: they hired me for this job and I am not going to leave stones unturned just
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_01: because they want to get this impeachment over with quickly.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: He might be in a different case right now,
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: but what happened is it's not like Democratic primary voters are like, Well, like,
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: let's mine the records of these incumbents and see which ones
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: of them have been slightly more.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, of course, of course.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, we
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: need a leadership change.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, yeah, I did not write about New York House primary.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_00: According to them,
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: are motivated singularly
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: by a desire to overthrow the Democratic Party
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: on the basis
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: of Israel.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: And people like you, right?
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote a very long piece, Matt,
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: about how the theory behind what Zoran Mamdani did in weighing in on these primaries
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_01: and getting these challengers nominated but effectively elected
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_01: to Congress does not match the It's a theory of power about taking over
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_01: the Democratic Party, not about fighting Trump.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_01: It is unfortunate to me that they are not using this opportunity they have because
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: the Democratic establishment squandered the trust of voters to promote the idea
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: that what we first need to do is defeat fascism.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then if we do, we'll have an opening.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: To do left wing policy.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: They, they're putting the cart before the horse and it's a mistake.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I wish they weren't doing it.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that like swapping out Brad Lander for Dan or swapping out Dan Goldman
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: for Brad Lander, like makes the democratic party less capable of fighting Trump.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_01: It just means that I like,
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: it just happens to be the case that neither Dan Goldman by being like, uh, like,
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: like, uh, uh,
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like a good soldier for the leadership,
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: nor Brad Lander are thinking to themselves, how can we better fight Trump?
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like the caucus,
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: the boiler caucus in Congress is tiny, and that is why I'm very frustrated with it.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's take a break.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_01: Talk about the filibuster.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: But you have worn me down enough that I think I'm going
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: to reluctantly endorse your terrible idea.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it's terrible.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about it on the other side.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_01: If you're listening and you want to hear the whole conversation,
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: go to politics.fm and upgrade your subscription.