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Medicare For Kumbay'all · Politix

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: If we can agree on some immigration policy that features like not opening the doors
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: to a floodgate of new asylum claims,
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: it can have other provisions that we characterize as abolishing ICE.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like that would be great.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: But that is like literally what would happen.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: See, this is what like.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, everyone, you're listening to a free preview of the Politics Podcast.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone in the Democratic coalition seems to be mad at everyone else in
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: the Democratic coalition.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: They're fighting over primaries,
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: political tactics,
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: and policies,
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: while Donald Trump loots and wrecks the country largely free from scrutiny.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks in part to all of this beefing,
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Trump's approval ratings have stabilized,
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: and the generic ballot for control of Congress has narrowed a bit.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: The good news...
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Good news is that Trump has reignited the war against Iran,
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: which is not actually good news, but politically self-destructive for him.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: And all of this is happening in the dog days of summer
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: when voters aren't paying particularly close attention to politics.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: But if the Democrats are ever to align as a party again, something's going to have to change.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Either one faction or another will have to win, or they'll have to find a truce.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: So the question for this week's episode is what would a truce look like and
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: who would need to concede what to make it happen?
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• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to the Politics Podcast.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Brian Boyler.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Matthew Iglesias.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: So a housekeeping note up top.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: Apparently there's a large community of psychos out there
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: who like watching podcasts instead of just listening to them while doing chores
• 1:58
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• 2:00
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• 2:05
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• 2:08
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• 2:09
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• 2:13
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• 2:21
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• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: We'll link it in the show notes and hit like and hit subscribe and use that platform.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's all the same to us.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: I will probably have to do something about this drab background before too long.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: And Matt might have to replace some of the Hitler-themed literature he has
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: behind him with something a little bit less risky.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: I got, you know, a Petain biography that has nothing to do with Hitler.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like in this digital nomad era,
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: you could make a decent living selling people like prefab library staging,
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: like a fake library to put behind them so they look very learned.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: People do that.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's books by the foot.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, is that a real thing?
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Is it business?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And they'll give you, you can get like,
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: I thought about it because I actually have a ton of empty shelves in this room.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the truth.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: I bought this house from some elderly people, or rather their kids because they passed away.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: The dude who had this house before, he was a huge World War I junkie.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: He had like five books just about the Battle of Stalingrad.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know you could write five whole different books about the Battle of Stalingrad.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's a big battle, Brian.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps if you were a father,
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: you would understand the importance
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: of books about the Battle of Stalingrad.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: But as a World War II dad, I'm very comfortable with it.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I borrow books and give them away for the most part, but we have books.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: They're just on the shelves in our living room,
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: and I obviously don't want to set up my office studio room.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: In the main room of our house.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I use a like basically a small area in a spare bedroom and there's no shelves in here.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so I put a curtain up so that I wouldn't be backlit by the sun.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it works for video free podcasting.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: But now that we're moving to YouTube, it looks pretty, pretty appealing.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to have to change just as the Democratic coalition.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's a good, that's a good, that's a good pivot.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I was going to say,
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: I just want to say that like,
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: like the conversation people are about to hear that you're trying to pivot to,
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: that I'm stubbornly stopping you from pivoting to.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like it will prove that this is about fan service and not just a cynical cash grab
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: because our first video episode, A, the drab curtain.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: B, it will be about healthcare policy and the American class spectrum.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's safe to say we've done basically no prep.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like Matt messaged me Monday and he said, let's talk about Medicare.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, okay.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I have no idea what he had in mind.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: So Matt, talk to me about Medicare.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's how you do it.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you wrote the article.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's the crap.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's how we're doing it.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: No, so, you know, Democrats are fighting.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: We're having primaries.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: People will continue to fight.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's always some, you know, disagreement, et cetera.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it's pretty clear at this point that,
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: you know, on some level, we just keep having the same fight since 2016.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: In which,
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: and Bernie is very explicit about this in a way that his antagonists aren't,
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: but that like he has been touring the country
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: for 10 years now supporting candidates,
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: largely candidates who supported him in the 2016 primary.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, often, as we saw with Platt and her, people with very minimal vetting.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: But some of these people are talented politicians in their own terms,
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and they win.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then she joins the tour.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: And they've won a number of additional primary races.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: But if you count them by the numbers, it's like not that many people in the Bernie caucus.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: But they keep going, and they mostly are playing in safe seats.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: But as we see in Michigan,
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: when they have someone who wants to make a real run for it in a swing state,
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  SPEAKER_00: they're getting behind that guy too.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: And Everything that's happening in the Democratic Party now,
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: from a leadership perspective, is,
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think,
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: dominated by a desire to beat back this insurgency,
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: or at least, like, cauterize it on some level.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: they're not—Hakeem Jeffries, like,
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: when Plattner was going to be the nominee in Maine,
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Chuck Schumer was like, Grant Plattner's the nominee, and I'm getting behind him.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because people in party leadership just, like, try to manage— Whatever shit is on their plate.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: But a big element of the shit that is on Hakeem Jeffries' plate
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  SPEAKER_00: in particular right now is incumbent members of his caucus facing primary challenges
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: from leftists.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it's something they've all got to deal with.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And we need to reach some kind of modus vivendi situation.
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  SPEAKER_00: In which like some element of political effort can be devoted
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  SPEAKER_00: to defeating Republicans rather than infighting.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: So you wrote a piece with a proposition that I think is very logical
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: and probably not going to work, but it makes a lot of sense.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it should be discussed.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: So why don't you tell us all what it's about?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's useful just as a backdrop to – To trace out the dividing lines in
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: the Democratic Party a little bit more explicitly,
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: because you have the Bernie faction,
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  SPEAKER_01: which you described well,
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  SPEAKER_01: and you have the congressional leadership,
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  SPEAKER_01: which is very interested in incumbent protection and also interested in sort
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: of fielding nominees that they believe would stand the best chance of winning,
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  SPEAKER_01: which are often...
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: Candidates who are the most moderate in the field.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: So that's another kind of joint element of leadership and like frontline-ish members
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: who I think are the ones who are most upset about the leftist insurgency.
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  SPEAKER_01: And then you have the aspiring leaders of the whole party,
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  SPEAKER_01: the people basically who want to be president, right?
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you and others who don't like the leftist insurgency find it frustrating
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  SPEAKER_01: that people like Josh Shapiro and even Barack Obama,
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: who can't be president but is clearly like an eminence of the party,
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  SPEAKER_01: just basically sit on their hands while this is happening instead of joining
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: the factional fight to beat back the insurgency.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so what I am proposing,
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: what I propose in this article is Was that a better way to go about this
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: that would be both constructive in that it wouldn't be about fighting
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  SPEAKER_01: and also strategic in that it would entail looking at why
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  SPEAKER_01: the leftist insurgency has strength.
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  SPEAKER_01: Why it's been able to grow from a fringe to something like a third of
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: the voting base of the party over the course of a decade.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: And what I propose is that it draws most of its political power from its views
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: on healthcare policies, specifically Medicare for All.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: Bernie Sanders is a strong supporter of Medicare for All.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: He has a very ambitious Medicare for All bill that is sort of like the thing
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: that stands as their opening bid and Anytime Congress is talking about healthcare.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: But it's not so much the bill as the idea that it's a moral crime and
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  SPEAKER_01: a humanitarian problem in America where the richest society in the world And that
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: at best,
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: when Obamacare was at peak performance,
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: we have 10 to 20 million uninsured Americans.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: When Republicans are attacking Obamacare, we have maybe 30 to 40 million uninsured Americans.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: And that Medicare for All would solve that problem,
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: would basically take healthcare away as this kind of...
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: Instrument of servitude for people, right?
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Where like they stay in jobs that they don't like because they need the healthcare
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: or they die unnecessarily young because they can't see a doctor
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: because they don't have insurance.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: This is the moral core, I say, of the broad left, right?
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like Bernie Sanders has his stuff about oligarchy.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: There's a wing that's very actually anti-capitalist, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: But the thing that makes it so that people like me Take a close look
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: at people like Bernie is the healthcare issue.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you want to diffuse the left, the best way to do it is to surrender on that issue.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm careful in the piece to note that I think that the Sanders plan
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: as written is unworkable and that it would require the left to engage
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: in some conceding of its own about the design of that program
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: and how you implement it and how you phase it in.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: But if the establishment essentially said,
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: you've been right about this all along,
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: we are going to come to you for a way to implement this workably, that A...
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think that Sanders would say yes.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that he wants the issue more than he wants to solve the problem.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then I think it would deprive the left of the issue that gives it
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: the most compelling case that voters should look to leftist candidates rather
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: than establishment candidates.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because if the establishment candidates can't even say that everybody
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: in America deserves healthcare,
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: then you can't trust them on a whole range of issues.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how, if I was advising Chuck Schumer,
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: I would like say,
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: if you want to win the factional battle in the long run,
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: you should strategically surrender on this issue.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Same thing, Hakeem Jeffries.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: And like,
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: and there are definitely people in the establishment realm, like,
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Pete Buttigieg has run on a plan that's basically the one that I would recommend.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: He calls it Medicare for everyone who wants it or for all who want it,
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: which is, I think, a bit unwieldy.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: I propose calling it Open Medicare or Medicare for anyone.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: But the idea is you just open up Medicare,
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: make it easy for people to buy in,
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: and then it will essentially crush the private health insurance industry over time,
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: leaving Medicare as the incumbent,
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: and then you can just nationalize it essentially at some point.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: I can't read the future,
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: but I think that this would be a wise move given how unsettled things in
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: the party are and how at risk we are of a factional divide,
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: of fractiousness within the Democratic Party,
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: like clearing a path for fascism to endure for another.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so, okay.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think this makes sense as an analysis of,
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it largely reflects how Democrats tried to respond during Trump's first term.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that there was a, you know, Obama passed the Affordable Care Act.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: And his natural inclination, having done that, was to want to move on.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: So like the next thing he tried to do, well, the next thing he successfully did was Dodd-Frank.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then they tried to move on to address climate.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: They tried to move on after his reelection to address immigration.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: When those legislative efforts didn't work,
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: a lot of effort went into Clean Power Plan and DAPA by executive action.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, all the advocacy community was like childcare maybe.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there was like a big scrum for like, what's the next thing?
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: And one thing that Bernie's 2016 campaign clearly showed was that a lot
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: of Democrats were still very motivated by the healthcare issue.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it's also – at that particular time,
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: the mass public had a lot of like Democrats do big healthcare changes sort
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: of fatigue.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: But something that happened during Trump's first term is that the swing voters came
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: to really appreciate the ACA and Democrats regained their sort of trust advantage
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: on healthcare.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I think to a lot of people who are smart,
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: it made sense to say, look, we should return to boldness on healthcare.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's what a lot of our primary voters want.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's what put a lot of wind in Bernie's sails.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it's what's acceptable to the public, right?
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: If the public is going to see progressives go big on something, they want it to be healthcare.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because on an abstract moral values level,
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: voters have pretty progressive instincts on healthcare.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: People don't think that sick people People should have untreated medical ailments
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: because they're too poor, which is really different from a lot of other issues.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think people's sort of baseline instincts on crime
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: and immigration are pretty strict and on health care they're pretty strict.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: But as you pointed out, like we saw this, right?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: So like Pete Buttigieg and also like the Center for American, sorry, backing up even further.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: When Bernie campaigned in 2016 on Medicare for All,
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: it was quite unclear what that actually meant.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: There was this legislation that John Conyers had been co-sponsoring for decades
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: that was called the Medicare for All Act, but the act was incredibly vague.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: In terms of what it actually said.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: It was like,
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: everybody's going to have access to a program that is comparable to Medicare,
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: except it's going to be suitable for people who aren't senior citizens.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because Medicare doesn't have great pediatric benefits, things like that.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: And there's going to be this commission that figures it all out.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was very much like a hand wave of legislation.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what Bernie ran on.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Then people started saying, well,
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: we should come up with something that's like a little bit smarter,
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: a little bit more real than that.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: But also Pramila Jayapal in the House was going in the opposite direction.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: And she was saying, you know, we've got to craft like the new post-John Conyers.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is real now, Medicare for All Act.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where the legislation that you referred to as Bernie's plan comes from.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: It actually post-dates the 2016 campaign.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: So Bernie...
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Gets behind this much more specific,
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: much more detailed, I think probably unworkable, as you were saying, kind of bill.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then Center for American Progress comes out with this plan,
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: which is based on Pete Stark's old Medicare for America program.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Pete Buttigieg has a small twist on that, and he calls it Medicare for all who want it.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: Medicare for America is more sayable.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly,
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think Medicare for All is like a perfectly reasonable term for exactly what
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: the Stark, Buttigieg, whatever program is.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because Medicare, the program that people enroll in, like has premiums, right?
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know,
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: you could say, look,
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: if you are already paying premiums under Medicare for All,
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: you will pay those premiums to get Medicare.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the premiums will be lower.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: If your employer is paying premiums to get Medicare,
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: your employer will have the option of paying those premiums to get you Medicare,
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: which is a better plan of lower premiums.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: That way you avoid the need for this very large explicit tax increase
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: and you give people some reassurance against wild disruptive change.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's a good idea.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: But we actually know what happens When Pete Buttigieg comes out with that plan.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not that,
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: the sort of leaders of the insurgent left say, amazing, we love you, Pete Buttigieg.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: We're all on board now.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it's also not that the voting base of the insurgent left says,
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: you know what, Bernie, like you won the argument.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: This guy, Pete, he's like, he's like way younger.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: He's good at going on TV.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: Establishment leaders don't hate him.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like, let's get behind Pete and deliver Medicare for all.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Instead,
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Pete actually just ends up in this kind of dead zone where he's being flayed
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: by leftists who don't like him because he's not a leftist.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: And he has this actually radical policy commitment on the books
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: that industry stakeholders hate, et cetera, et cetera.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Biden ends up getting the nomination as the guy who did the least on healthcare.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he...
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: He had this very vague plan where he was either going to add a public option
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: that was like really,
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: really minor,
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: or it was going to add a public option that was like really dramatic
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: and would transform the healthcare system.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: And his campaign kept giving contrary guidance as to like which they meant.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: The candidate himself never talked about it.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: After he won the nomination, they do this like unity commission process, right?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: With the Bernie people.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: And-
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: That would have been a chance for the left to say,
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: look, Joe, the thing we care about most is healthcare.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: There's a version of your own campaign plan that's quite radical and left-wing.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Go with that one.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we want you to do.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: But it seemed like they didn't put a lot of emphasis on that in their own unity process.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: The big asks from the left were about climate and wound up being
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: about financial regulation and antitrust policy.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: the left like,
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to say they got what they wanted because
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: in life nobody gets what they wanted, but they got what they bargained for.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like they bargained hard on these FINRAG positions.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: They bargained hard on climate.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And they got a Democratic administration which appointed their people to FINRAG jobs
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: and which was very aggressive on climate.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then,
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: October 7th happened and there was a lot of grassroots anger at
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: the way Biden handled that.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: But even after the debate fiasco,
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: People forget this,
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: but on July 13th,
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like when all the frontline,
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: you and me and everybody was like, we got to fucking get rid of this guy.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like Bernie wrote an op-ed in the New York Times.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, everybody's got to stop giving Sleepy Joe such a hard time.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: I really disagree with him about Gaza,
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: but he's been the greatest progressive visionary since FDR.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: And we should just line up behind him.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because at that time,
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: Bernie was cognizant of the fact that like he had won the main concessions
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: that he had kind of bargained around.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: But then after Kamala lost the election,
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: you know, Bernie, the evening of the election, like puts out this op-ed.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, well,
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: it's no surprise that a Democratic Party that's abandoned the working class has
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: in turn been abandoned by working class voters.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that to me gets at like the core of this insurrectionary dynamic,
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: which is that Bernie Sanders does not Stick to a deal,
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: you know, in the way that you would want to.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: That, like,
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: he's very comfortable in July 2024 saying that despite his, like,
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: palpable inability to run a presidential campaign,
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: Joe Biden's domestic policy is so amazing that we need to stick with him.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then in November 2024,
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: saying that Democrats have abandoned
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: the working class and— I find it aggravating personally.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't think that's true as a way to characterize things.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: But also it's just like a reality that we have to deal with,
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: which is that Bernie and his people feel that they should be in charge.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know, like, that's a reasonable thing to ask for.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: In life, like, you know, clearly Joe Biden felt that he should be in charge.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: Kamala Harris felt that she should be in charge.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had this very hard primary in 2008.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it's a little hard to say in retrospect what that primary was about,
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: but it was definitely about which of them should be the presidential nominee.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I just,
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think we can, like,
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: resolve this until, A, like, they decide if AOC is running for president in 2028.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: And if not her, is it Ro Khanna?
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: And like,
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: if not him,
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: it's like, what is the, it's a who whom contest, I think, not a Medicare contest.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, like, I don't think your version of the history is wrong.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: I just, I think that the inflection points you imbue with a lot
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: of significance look very different in hindsight than they looked in the moment,
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: And you may be right that Bernie's not going to stop until he or his successor is
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: in charge of the party and they do the political revolution,
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: but manifesting as like a sweeping out of the old establishment professional class
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: and the emergence of this new one and they try to govern and prove
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: that it's actually just like a better politics overall.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's true.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's...
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: Also possible that if Kamala Harris had done what I'm proposing when she took over
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: from Joe Biden to say, oh,
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was a mistake both on the part of progressives and on the part of Biden
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: to give up on the remaining uninsured population.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: And Bernie's been right about this all along.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I win,
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: my
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: primary objective is going to be To build out the Medicare system for everyone.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: What happens then?
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Does that help her eat into the group of people that she lost because of Gaza stuff?
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: Does that change the way Bernie talks about the race between her and Trump?
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think it does, but you may be right.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: You may be right.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: The latter point, look,
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: I think like, In some ways, it would have been a good idea to do what she's saying.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: But I really want you to think about the question.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: Is there any universe?
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think, because look at Bernie's statements in November 2024.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: And this is just who he is.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's his style of politics.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody even remarks on it.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: But he
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: did not acknowledge anything about Bernie.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what he said about the Biden administration at the time, about, like,
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: the extent to which the Biden administration embraced his ideas about antitrust
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: and monopolies and climate.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I just don't think that there is any universe in which
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: the Democratic establishment loses that race.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: And Bernie's response to the establishment losing the race is anything other than,
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: fuck you guys, you're losers.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, hang on.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: A, my idea is that it's possible that you wouldn't have lost.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I agree that she should have won.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: That would have been helpful.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: The second thing that I'm saying, though,
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: is that I agree because I'm like persnickety about trying to be consistent that
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: That it's a bad idea to say we lost,
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: ergo, it's because my politics weren't fully embraced.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's the politician's version of the pundit's fallacy.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: I don't like it.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a game that I play.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: I don't like it when anyone plays that game left or center or right.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: But like,
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: let's talk about the same story that you described,
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: but like begin with Obamacare, right?
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: It seemed a little silly in the moment because from the campaign in 2008 through
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: the enactment of Obamacare,
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: the idea of the public option whittled from this transformative thing
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: where basically a Medicare-like option would crowd out
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: the private insurance industry and be a glide path to single payer
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: to this like Penny Annie little option.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: And
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: that
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: did not seem like a hill worth dying on.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: People who know about health policy were kind of telling the left, like, suck it up.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like, this is not worth killing the bill over.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: But, like, it is true that what they wanted in the first place would have been transformative.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: And that it got bargained away to industry by Obama.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: And they carried that with them for a long time.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: That was a bitter pill for them to swallow.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: And they never really got over it, right?
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: But Obamacare becomes law.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then what happens?
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't work great at first, right?
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like the private exchanges in the states.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: But healthcare.gov is this fiasco.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: It looks like it might fail to launch.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: It does okay by the time Obama's out of office,
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: but they nominate the person who opposes single payer.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, they nominate the person who opposes single payer.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: She loses the election.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then Republicans make a kill shot run at the Affordable Care Act
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: and almost succeed in repealing it,
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: exposing it as this extremely politically vulnerable construct.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so this
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: reinvigorates the idea that Democrats should re-embrace healthcare as
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: an organizing principle.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: In the 2020 primary, as you say, Bernie's...
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: Stumping for single payer.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: Buttigieg is stumping for Medicare for all who want it.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: Biden is like the name recognition,
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: but like everyone's third choice seemingly,
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: but good enough to win is
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: running on a public option,
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: but like vague,
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: vaguely, you know, like maybe a really good one, maybe a really pointless one.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: And Democrats win that election.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then the public option just poof, it vanishes.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you're right that responsibility for that lies both with progressives
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: and with centrists.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was a collective decision.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: My recollection and my understanding going back and reviewing the reporting at the time.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: Is that when Democrats had 51 votes,
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: there was just like an understanding that it wouldn't pass.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: So it was not worth fighting over.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: It was not like back in 2009 where Democrats had 60 votes.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, we're giving this public option away to Joe Lieberman.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: And like, why don't we just do it with 50 votes?
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: It was really like, we don't have any margin.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: And if Joe Manchin opposes this thing, it's dead.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: So let's not waste time fighting over it.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: But also,
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: and this is like,
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: Where I think like it is arguable that progressives made the wrong call,
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: but from the vantage point of 2021,
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: it was not crazy for them to say, look,
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: the last time we had a democratic president,
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: we insured half of the uninsured population and we created a right for everyone
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: to access the healthcare system.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: That was a pretty big step, but we did nothing on climate change.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: And if we go back to healthcare instead of Like passing billions and billions
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: and billions of dollars for clean energy.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: We're, we're not going to have a second chance to do that.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: And, and we're going to regret it.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: So they,
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: they made a choice to like,
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: if we have to choose between these two things, we pick climate.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: From the vantage point of 2021, I don't know that that's crazy.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like they didn't know Donald Trump was going to come back.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't know Joe Biden was going to shit the bed on the debate stage.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't know.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't know.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't know.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: And, and,
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: So then the election happens,
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: Trump wins, and Republicans take another run at healthcare.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: And this time they throw,
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: we'll find out,
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: but somewhere probably between 10 and 20 million people off their health plans,
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: And from the vantage point of today,
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think that the vulnerabilities of Obamacare have proven very manifest.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think the left just wins the moral argument,
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: as you say,
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: about like people shouldn't die because they can't afford health insurance.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: And Democrats are stuck in this factional fight that centers heavily
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: on this question of like,
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: is the establishment too either timid or compromised by private industry
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: to actually stand up for the little guy?
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's the place where the policy divide between left and center is large and durable.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: But so now is the moment to say, you know what?
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, you're right.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: Let's unify around that.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: And let's do it this time.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like Obama ran on a public option.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't happen.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: Joe Biden ran on a public option.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't happen.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: But I, Pete Buttigieg or Josh Shapiro or whoever, when I say it, I mean it.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: And the way you know I mean it is because I am telling Bernie Sanders I'm doing this
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: because he persuaded me that it's the right thing
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: to do.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then you have to work on the details.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: I just like,
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think you have to have this conversation with like,
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: Brian Grimm or somebody else on the left,
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: because I look at like,
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: so I was looking through the list of Medicare for All Act co-sponsors, right?
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: So remember, this is Bernie's bill.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: This is the bill that Brian Boitler thinks is unworkable and too far left-wing.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, can I say it's not that it's too far left wing.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's like it is blind to like,
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: it imagines the existence of physical capacity that doesn't exist.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you have some doubts, right?
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: But this bill is out there.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: Bernie is for it.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Abdul is for it, et cetera.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, who else is for this is Wesley Bell.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: In Missouri, who is currently facing a Bernie-backed primary challenger from the left.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: Deanna Degetti, who just lost to a Bernie-backed primary challenger from the left in Colorado.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: Adriano Espelon, who just lost to a Bernie-backed primary challenger from the left.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: Dan Goldman, who lost to a Bernie-backed primary challenger from the left.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: They were all on the bill.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: So...
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's this difference between co-sponsoring a bill and passing it
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: when you have
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: concurrent majorities.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's the thing that's missing.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: I understand your view of that, but that raises again the question of what is the deal?
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because Wesley Bell can't pass the Medicare for All Act when he has concurrent majorities.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: He's never served in a Congress with concurrent majorities.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: Dan Goldman,
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: a Medicare for All Act co-sponsor who was He was defeated by
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: a left-wing primary challenger also.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't serve in a Congress like that.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: Nadia Velazquez,
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: who didn't lose a primary challenge,
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: but it was like she and Mamdani backed different people to succeed her,
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: and Mamdani's person won, her person lost.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: But she's been on Medicare for All Acts from before this Medicare for All Act existed.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: Is it her fault?
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: That the public option didn't pass when Joe Biden was right?
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: You seem to disagree with their,
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: and reasonably so, with the choice of people who they are choosing to primary.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: What I am saying is that if the public option existed now,
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: that those primary challenges would have been structurally much weaker
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: than they were and had a much lower chance of success.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's my argument.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I guess I'm trying to ask though, like I'm trying to assess this proposal as a,
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: Way to achieve factional peace.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: And what I'm seeing is that like,
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: the primary in Michigan is unfortunate and it's causing people a lot of service,
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: you know, for understandable reasons.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: At the same time, like it's an open Senate seat.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like Abdul is allowed to run for the Senate if he wants to, to an open seat.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it's totally fair for left-wing people to say,
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: we like Abdul better, you should vote for him.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think this primarying of incumbents is like, I mean,
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: of course you're allowed to mount primary challenges to incumbents,
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: but it's unusual.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it like, it raises the question of like, what are you doing?
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: I, as a moderate Democrat,
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not, like, crying into my soup about Espaillat or Daggetti or Dan Goldman.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: All these people are very left-wing, in my opinion.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like, they're Medicare for All co-sponsors.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's fine by me
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: if what the left wants
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: to do is replace Congressional Progressive Caucus members with other people
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: who are further to the left of the CBC.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't think that the people doing this are, like, crazy people.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I think they want to replace randos who they don't know,
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: who are long veteran members of Congress,
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: with people who are loyal to them and to their group.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that they now see Israel as the good factional wedge issue for them.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: At another time, they saw Medicare for All as the good factional wedge issue for them.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: There was a brief moment when Abolish ICE was sort of their key factional wedge issue.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: But they know that incumbents are trying to box them out, right?
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so when Pete Buttigieg says Medicare for all who want it,
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: what they hear is we've got Pete Buttigieg running scared.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: When they see Nancy Pelosi and Jonah Goose and Jake Auchincloss voting
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: to cut off aid to Israel, they don't say, OMG, I love Jake Auchincloss now.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: They say...
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: I've got Jake running scared.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I think Jake voted the right way on this bill.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like,
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think the left's position on monetary aid to Israel is correct on the merits,
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: and it is good of Joe Negus and Jake Auchincloss and 100 other House members
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: to acknowledge that.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't think that that puts an end to the insurgency.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because the insurgency is about itself.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I get, wait, I just want one last thought.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: That, like,
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: I am more interested in In the opposite bargain,
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: which is not like, what can the establishment give to Bernie Sanders?
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: But it's like, Bernie, like, who do you want to be Senate Majority Leader?
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: And are you puppet mastering this person?
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: Or is this person speaking for themselves?
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: And whichever way it is, what dialogue can that person have with Bernie Sanders?
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: Moderates to like win our endorsement because like I'm much more comfortable
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: with like Zohan Mamdani is mayor of New York and is retaining
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: the police commissioner who he inherited and is under pressure to make good
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: on politics.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yimby commitments that he made.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: just like being the policy demand around this rather than fighting about
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: who specifically gets to be in charge.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think it's been very unproductive for the establishment
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: to keep moving left to try to meet the demands of the insurgents,
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: only for the insurgents to do like endless rug pulls.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's a handful of people who our revolution is supporting in frontline races
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: who I think are totally good, totally reasonable people.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: They just like happen to be people who like were Bernie endorsers in 2016.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, you're getting to where I think I'm going.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: One thing I want to say is that like- I think we may be quibbling over,
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: and if I wrote it this way in the article to make it sound like this would bring
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: about factional peace rather than just bring the factional insurgency down to
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: a low boil where it wasn't something that people in your wing of the party have
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: to worry about,
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: that's more what I'm talking about,
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: is that if the establishment and the center and basically
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: the whole party gives progressives the W on health care,
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: What it does is it makes it so that the kinds of candidates
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: who might mount primary challengers on the basis
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: of being left factionalists are going to have to persuade primary voters to vote
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: for them with a different set of issues that I think are not going to be
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: as palatable as the healthcare issue.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: Not that things like Gaza won't happen that create openings or ice or whatever.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: The factional fighting will continue.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: But the issue that makes it so that normie people get attracted...
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: To the Bernie faction will be more or less resolved.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so you'll have some of the people who you think are like good candidates and they might win.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: But as you say, they're reasonable, good candidates.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: But then there'll be people like Daria Lisa Chevalier, right?
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that if the left becomes defined by people who are talking
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: about abolishing capital, about,
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: like mandating that fossil fuels stay in the ground about, you know what I mean?
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: Not that they're going to stop mounting primary challenges.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: They'll just be less dangerous primary challenges.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think, though,
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: that the reason I know that a lot of the people who lost were Medicare
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: for All Act co-sponsors, though,
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: is that the logic of this movement,
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: the logic of the political revolution,
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: is that You can't say if you're Adriano Espelot.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like, look, like I've been working for Medicare for All.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: I've been working for Public Option.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: I've been doing all this stuff all these years.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, if you want those things to happen, don't give me a hard time in Washington Heights.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like we have to win Senate races.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's not what they say and what primary voters believe is that like,
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: We need cohort replacement of the personnel because there's nefarious corruption
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: and rotating villains and so on and so forth.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they should be going for Josh Gottheimer instead of for Dan Goldman.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: I agree.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: But what Dan Goldman should be doing is telling Josh Gottheimer,
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: stop being such a fucking simp.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think, I guess, I mean, I think we should take a break.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean,
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: I just like,
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: I genuinely think That, like,
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: what I need from this, one way or the other, is some line that Bernie will stick to.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like,
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: some version of if Kamala is under pressure from her donors to throw Lena Kahn under
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: the bus, I don't want Kamala to throw Lena Kahn under the bus.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so I agree that if Kamala doesn't throw Lena Kahn under the bus,
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: I, in turn, will not throw Kamala under the bus if it doesn't work out.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think Bernie will ever make a deal like that, which is fair to him.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you are allowed in politics for your viewpoint just to be like,
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think I should have been the nominee in 2016.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think these people are jackasses and I want to be in charge or I want a person
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: who I trust to be in charge.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: But like we should understand the insurgency on those terms and negotiate from
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: a standpoint of like, okay,
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: like if you're calling the play,
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: something we've talked about before, it's like there's no six for 26.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right now,
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: the Democrats have laid out because I think the mutual concern on both sides is
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: that like the left doesn't want to like embrace a like good,
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: short, finite, achievable list.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the center doesn't want to like
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: Embrace a 90 bajillion term laundry list.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like everyone is just sort of happier not having a six
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: for 26 agenda item rather than trying to agree on one.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that's bad.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like I wish we would try to get to yes on something and like actually agree
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: on what we're running on.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: I have good news for you on the other side of the paywall because I – I don't think
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_01: the situation is quite as hopeless or cynical as you're describing,
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: and I'll tell you why.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_01: But if you want to hear why,
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: go to YouTube or go to Substack, sign up for politics.fm, hit like, hit subscribe.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think those are the things you have to say when you're on YouTube.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to do it.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: Smash that like button, bro.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: But get the upgraded subscription so that we can keep doing this show.