Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 11/16/21: Kamala Disaster, Beto, Tax Cuts, Twitter Bubble, Ai Weiwei, Biden Economy, Progressives, Labor Update, and More!

Episode Date: November 16, 2021

Saagar is joined by guest host Kyle Kulinski to discuss Kamala's failure as VP, Beto's plan to run for TX Gov, Dems tax cuts for the wealthy, why Dems are losing normal voters, a Chinese dissident's warning to the US, foolish progressives, Biden's economy, labor updates with Jonah Furman, and more!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Kyle Kulinski’s Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCldfgbzNILYZA4dmDt4Cd6A Jonah Furman’s Substack: https://whogetsthebird.substack.com/ Labor Reporting: https://www.labornotes.org/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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where you get to watch and listen to the entire show, ad-free and uncut an hour early before everyone else. You get to hear our reactions to each other's monologues. You get to participate in weekly Ask Me Anythings, and you don't need to hear our annoying voices pitching you like I am right now. So what are you waiting for? Go to breakingpoints.com, become a premium member today, which is available in the show notes. Enjoy the show, guys. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. Crystal Ball is unfortunately not feeling so well, but Kyle Kalinske has very graciously agreed to step in at the very last moment. Thank you, Kyle. We really appreciate it.

My pleasure. I've heard that people have been wanting you and I to do a show for a while. That's true. That's true. Here we go. Let's do it. You're welcome. You're welcome, everyone. We have some awesome topics here today. We're obviously sad not to have Crystal. Kyle will be looking at something, and I'll be trying to pull in the lead. So very, very nice of him to slot in at the last moment. We've got Kamala Harris, which we were going to start with. We've got Beto O'Rourke, of course. Tax cut update there on exactly how much of a tax cut the Democrats are currently planning

for multimillionaires and billionaires. A very interesting survey of Twitter, actually, about who the people who are the most prolific tweeters, how that exactly is working out for a lot of people among the activist left, some great data, and then a very stark and prescient warning from Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei. I think that no matter where you fall on the spectrum, you're going to find it interesting. But as we previewed, Kyle, let's start with Kamala Harris, the gift that really does keep on giving. Let's put this up there on the screen. It made big heyday yesterday on political Twitter and inside of the White House. And it was a CNN story saying,

Exasperation and dysfunction inside Kamala Harris's frustrating start as vice president. Now, what you can see actually within the story is that, and again, they are quoting, quote, nearly three dozen former and current former Harris aides, administration officials, Democratic operatives, donors, and outside advisors is a complex reality inside the White House. But really what they point to, Kyle, is the fact that Joe Biden's advisors and those inside of the West Wing think that she's basically terrible. They say she has a terrible approval rating. They say that she doesn't do anything properly

whenever she's on the national stage, how they don't have confidence in her whatsoever. And my favorite part of it was, we're basically too busy to care about her, so we just shunt her off into whatever the orifices are of the West Wing, and we just hope that she doesn't open her mouth, and every once in a while, she embarrasses us. But you very rarely see this type of stuff burst out into the open,

and I feel like, Kyle, we're seeing this over and over again, like little shots from inside of the White House basically saying Kamala is completely terrible, probably as a bid to save their own hide in terms of their polling results, but very revealing nonetheless. You know, one of the interesting things is like Hillary Clinton, for example, is not a popular politician, but there's this interesting thing that happens with people like her where when they're out of the spotlight, their numbers tend to go up. And then when they're in the spotlight, the numbers go down. With Kamala, it seems to not

matter whether she's in the spotlight or not. Her numbers just go down. So the thing I would say is you had to see this coming from a mile away. So just to give everybody some perspective here, her current approval rating is 28%, which is literally like Dick Cheney territory. Yeah, the lowest of many American vice president in modern history. And then, of course, when she ran for president in the Democratic primary, she started out, you know, everybody made fun of her because she called herself a top-tier candidate. Well, at one point, she was a top-tier candidate as soon as she launched, and the media gave her all this fawning praise. And then what happened is, as soon as she started talking and as soon as she decided to make her campaign about banning Trump from Twitter, she just tanked in the polls,

and she didn't even make it to Iowa. Yeah. You know, actually, I can tell a little insider fun story I just remembered. I actually interviewed Trump in my old job as a White House correspondent the day after her presidential announcement. And he was doing that thing. He's like, what do you guys think about these candidates or whatever? And I was like, I don't know. What do you think? You know, you're the one.

I was like, you're the one. He's like, Kamala Harris impressed me with that rollout, right? So even Trump, I can tell you from firsthand experience, was impressed by her rollout. Now, obviously, everybody knows that she's become a total joke. But I think the most important part of the CNN story is not just the sniping one way from the West Wing as Biden's aides. It's also the other way. So Kamala's aides feel very much that she is being put out to dry, that she's being set up to fail, that she's getting a terrible portfolio.

I mean, that is all true. I mean, if you're going to hand somebody the border policy, which currently remains the single most issue area where they are underwater amongst the American people, more so than coronavirus, inflation, and all of that other stuff, it was actually on immigration and specifically on the border. That is her portfolio. They sent her down to the Northern Triangle and all of that, obviously. And it was absolutely interesting to watch the freakout over the story elevate so high that the White House press secretary herself felt the need to weigh in on Twitter. Let's go ahead and put that tweet up there on the screen. Jen Psaki tweets, quote, for anyone who needs to hear it, VP is not only a vital partner to POTUS, but a bold leader who has taken on key important

challenges facing the country from voting rights to addressing root causes of migration to expanding broadband. So if you have to say somebody is a vital partner, then they're generally not a vital partner. It's like that Game of Thrones axiom. It's like a king who has to say he's the king is no king. And obviously, it makes sense, which is that all of this breaking out, Kyle, we saw also Chris Dodd, the former Biden campaign chairman, openly musing about, well, maybe Biden won't run again. There seems to be a tacit acknowledgement in the White House that it's very possible Joe Biden does't run again. There seems to be a tacit acknowledgement in the White House that it's very possible Joe Biden does not run again for president in 2024.

And they're freaking out because they're like, oh my God, we picked Kamala Harris, and this woman would have to face possibly Donald Trump. I mean, I maintain, you know, she'd probably lose, he would probably win like 500 electoral votes if something like that happened. But watching them deal with this in real time, I think, is the crazy part to me. Yeah, you know, I did a segment on my show the other day basically called Dems Are Screwed. I'm sanitizing it a little bit. But the gist of that is Joe Biden, I mean, let's be honest, he's a zombie. He's half dead, okay?

And there was a story that was floating around Twitter the other day. Apparently he passed gas around royalty. Yeah, I saw that with, what's her name? Prince Charles' second wife. So, like, I don't know if it's true. I don't really care if it's true. But the point is, even given all that, he's at 38% in the polls. Kamala's at 28%.

And the other one who's in this conversation, of course, is Mayor Pete. And he's at 37%. So he's below Biden as well. So, I mean, it's just, and then just to give you a couple more facts on this that I found really interesting, an anonymous Kamala staffer said, it's hard to miss the specific energy Biden gives to defend a white man, talking about Mayor Pete when it came to paid parental leave. And I find that that's just too perfect.

It's like the second there's a little bit of pressure, they immediately, let me just use my identity and try to deflect all criticism. And it's like, this is one of the reasons why you have a 28% approval rating. Why would you do that? No, I think in reading and seeing all of the reaction to the story, it's actually more important than the story itself. Because it set off such a fury in Washington. And it was so obvious as well that people who are close to Mayor Pete

were very clearly sniping at her. And I think the reason that I'm spending so much time on this is I do want to underscore, it is extraordinary to see open warfare in the press between the president of the United States and the vice president. It happens in a matter of flailing. And it also happens when you realize like,

oh my gosh, this person might really have to run. The last time I asked around that we ever saw news cycles like this, obviously, other than when, you know, the whole hang Mike Pence thing was happening. Although I think that was a little bit different and unique at the end. It was actually under Al Gore and Bill Clinton. So basically Bill Clinton, Al Gore did not want Bill Clinton to be too identified with his campaign because he didn't want any of his Lewinsky stuff in order to get involved. It actually ended up being a bad decision because Clinton was very popular at the time, despite Monica Lewinsky. But that is really the last time that we have seen in Washington this level of open warfare in the press between a vice president and a president themselves. And just to really put a cherry on top for the fact that this story came out,

you guys are going to love this, which is that while Kamala Harris was at the podium, at the White House, about to give a speech, they spoke over her and said, oh, actually somebody else is going to. It's one of the most cringeworthy moments that I've ever seen. Let's take a listen. Let's take a listen. Please welcome Heather Kurtenbach. In a moment. Please have a seat. Yeah, Kyle, I mean, that's very fortuitous timing, some might say, in terms of having the vice president embarrassed, get embarrassed like that on her territory. I mean, that's very fortuitous timing, some might say, in terms of having the vice president get embarrassed like that on her territory.

I mean, I don't think it's possible for me to feel bad for Kamala Harris. But look, her staff is not wrong. She is very clearly being set up to fail. And I do think it is quite obvious. I've seen a lot of the Kamala stans on Twitter. They only exist on Twitter, by the way, which we will be getting to in our Twitter segment. And what they are saying is they're like, look at the disrespect that Joe Biden and them are placing on Kamala Harris. They're doing so because they're doing terribly in office. I do think that is, you know, absolutely true, right? They're trying to shunt off some of their responsibility

for their unpopularity. It's like, dude, at the end of the day, you're the president. Like, you picked her to be your vice president. You own this just as much as she does. Yeah, but you know what? She also, she was just a media creation to begin with. Right. So I find it hard to have sympathy for her because she shouldn't be in this position in the first place. I mean, if you couldn't even make it to Iowa in a Democratic primary, why are you the vice president? What was the point of it?

And another interesting fact about this. Now, I don't know if this is true, but it's a rumor floating around Washington, D.C., an Aaron Sorkin rumor. They're saying it's so bad that Biden is considering replacing Kamala and nominating her to a Supreme Court vacancy, which, you know, I don't necessarily buy it, but it's interesting given how much of this has come to a head publicly. The fact that that's even a rumor and some people find it tangible says a lot. Yeah, I'm not sure about that one. Look, I guess anything is possible. I think former presidents or former administration officials have sat on the Supreme Court, so it wouldn't necessarily be without precedent. But I mean, I guess that is an

elegant way of dealing with it. But we wanted to put this little thing, mashup, for all of you together. If you want to know why exactly her approval rating is so bad, we tried to think of the three most recent times that she's stepped out in public and how exactly that's been going for her. Let's take a listen. Just quickly put a button. Do you have any plans to visit the border?

At some point, you know, we are going to the border. We've been to the border. So this whole this whole this whole thing about the border, we've been to the border. We've been to the border. You haven't been to the border. And I haven't been to Europe. And I don't I don't understand the point that you're making. I'm not just love the idea of exploring the unknown. And then there's other things that we just haven't figured out or discovered yet. To think about so much that's out there that we still have to learn. Like, I love that.

I love that. And so I'm very excited about the Space Council. We're going to learn so much as we increasingly, I think, are curious and interested in the potential for the discoveries and the work we can do in space. So that's one of the things I'm most excited about. But the other, you guys are going to see, you're going to literally see the craters on the moon with your own eyes. Oh my goodness. With your own eyes, I'm telling you, it is gonna be unbelievable. Tell everybody you know to vote tomorrow.

Nothing like saying, you wanna meet me tomorrow? What you doing tomorrow? You got any plans tomorrow? Tomorrow's a good day. It's gonna be a good day. But the point is... Oh, God. The space video in particular. Especially after you find out that they're all child actors.

Just a little cherry on the top. So, just a reminder, that's what she's actually like every time she does step out in public. Very rare to see this sort of open warfare. And let's say it will continue to be interesting. I'm excited. Let's move on to this next segment here on Beto O'Rourke. This is really just an all-time favorites here for Crystal. I really wish Crystal was here just because we spent so much of our early time on Rising kind of going after all of these people. And this is really a greatest hits. And I know, Kyle, you were an

essential part of that too. So let's put this up there on the screen. Beto O'Rourke announces his run for the Texas governorship, testing Democrats' strength. First of all, Kyle, it's very interesting. I'm curious for your thoughts on this, which is that Beto O'Rourke came within two points of beating Ted Cruz in the state of Texas. No, no, like absolutely no denying it. That was an extraordinary feat. That being said, that was also 2018. That was a high watermark of the Democratic candidacy. He ended up raising more money than any other Democratic Senate candidate involved. And he still, let's be honest, he totally lost. He became a fake media creation in very much the same way. Ran for president, dropped out. I believe he placed seventh, maybe eighth or something like

that in the Iowa caucuses, despite the fact that Barack Obama, remember this, remember this, Barack Obama thought that Beto really was the guy who could carry on his legacy. And now, Kyle, we're moving into an election cycle. Republicans currently 11 points ahead on the generic ballot. All of the anti-Trump energy around Beto, it was really crystallizing him, right? Which is that it meant he means nothing, but he was there and he curses occasionally and was like, you know, stands up on his counters and all of that. Kind of the epitome

of like the neoliberal, you know, suburban dream of Beto O'Rourke. The guy still lost at that time. Now he's deciding he can run for governor. But I want to get your reaction to his ad, because I hate to say it, it was actually a pretty good opening, starting with something that might actually give him a wedge issue in that governor's race. Let's take a listen to the beginning. I'm running for governor, and I want to tell you why. This past February, when the electricity grid failed and millions of our fellow Texans were without power, which meant that the lights wouldn't turn on, the heat wouldn't run, and pretty soon their pipes froze and the water stopped flowing, they were abandoned by those who were elected to serve and look out for them. It's a symptom of a much larger problem that we have in Texas right now. Those in positions of public trust have stopped listening to, serving, and paying attention to,

and trusting the people of Texas. And so they're not focused on the things that we really want them to do. What do you think, Kyle? I thought that was a very astute way in order to open that ad. Okay. So yes, I agree with that. And to touch on your point about 2018, the reason why Beto did pretty well and overperformed the polls and almost took out Ted Cruz, it's actually because at the time he was positioning himself as an anti-corruption Democrat. That's right. That's true. And he would, you know, talk about the negative impact of big money and how, you know, he's going to not take the big money and change the system. And so when he ran on sort of bread and butter issues and focused on things that mattered, yes, he did well. And, you know, that shouldn't be a newsflash to anybody. If you run

on those sorts of issues, you're going to do well. What we saw with the phenomenal implosion of Beto O'Rourke is that when he got into the Democratic primary, he did anything but that. And I don't want to step on any of the things that we're going to show here, but I guess we'll throw the videos in a little bit, but you mentioned the thing where he's always randomly standing on tables and talking and grandstanding. He leaned into a lot of culture issues and sort of left the economic stuff behind. He had an interview with Oprah, and there was a famous magazine cover where...

Yes, with the dog. So cringy, Vanity Fair. He said stuff like, I'm just born to be in it, man. It was like, it was the celebrification of somebody who like, you gave us no reason to care about you in the first place. So you can't skip right to like the grandstanding, you know, I'm an A-list celebrity type stuff. You need to give us a reason to actually be invested in you. And he didn't. He didn't do that groundwork. And so the fact that virtually all of Obama's people went to go work for him, and he's another one just like Kamala, where he started out high in the polls, and then he immediately imploded. There was talk about like, oh, Beto might run away with this thing when he first launched. And then within like three weeks,

all of a sudden, boom, tanks all the way down. I remember being scared as a Bernie Sanders supporter. I was like, oh my God, this might be the guy. If he stays on message, we might be in trouble. But no, he imploded immediately. What I remember, though, in that campaign is he raised 30-something million dollars. And what I always do, my criticism, because I lived here at the time, was, and I remember saying this on Rising, I'm like, there are more Beto supporters here in Washington. I used to live in Adams Morgan in Washington, D.C.

There were Beto stickers everywhere. And I was like, this is the problem. His money is not from Texas. He's not a Texas candidate. He is like a creation of Washington, of New York, of the suburban moms of California. And once again, there's nothing wrong with that, guys. But he is also a Texan. And the more that we've seen his actual numbers in the state, it's not good for

him. Put this up there on the screen. They actually went ahead and did the polling. We covered it at the time, I think when Marshall was sitting in. He was losing to Governor Abbott in a head-to-head race by 42 to 37. And in that poll, they went head-to-head for Governor Abbott with many of the different Democrats in the state. The only person, and again, I don't even know if this guy is a Democrat. I don't really know what he is. The only person who led Governor Abbott in the polls was Matthew McConaughey. And so, you guys know I'm a big fan of Matthew McConaughey. I actually do really hope that he runs. And I think it would be really interesting of a campaign. But McConaughey has until, I believe,

it's December 10th to decide whether he's going to run or not. So that's the filing deadline. So everybody keep your eye on what exactly is happening here. He recently came out and said he was against vaccine mandates for kids. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. You know, he had gotten into a little spat with the surgeon general. That was after, though, he'd actually gone after Governor Abbott for removing the mask mandate. So he's like in an interesting COVID centrist lane. On the Texas abortion law and all that, he didn't really have very much to say in terms of criticizing it in practice. Whenever he was pressed on that by, I think it was Kara Swisher. And he was saying, well, what really is politics? I actually thought it was a very astute answer. So it's possible he runs as an independent or something like that. And Beto

actually recognizes this, Kyle, by going after Matthew McConaughey in a previous interview, whenever he was like, well, you know, I don't even know what he is. Nobody knows what he's doing. You know, he's just, he lives in Austin. He's a nice guy, but he doesn't have positions on things. He's not a real, a real longstanding Democrat. So I would just say Beto O'Rourke, I think he's probably going to raise a lot of money. It seems to be clear. He will obviously have the media attention. But as you pointed to, during the Democratic primary, this man decided to say some things which basically disqualify you as the governor of the state of Texas.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's the AR-15 moment. Let's relive that. Time. Hell yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47. We're not going to allow it to be used against our fellow Americans anymore. Thank you. Yeah. And just so everybody knows, in a Texas Tribune interview, he has continued to stand by the fact that he will not be backing down from the statement of, hell yes, we're going to be taking your AR-15 or AK-47. As a native Texan myself, good luck.

That's all I really have to say to you. Yeah, and in that same interview, because then he tried to make immigration like his main thing. And in that same interview, he was asked specific questions on immigration. So, for example, what should be done to address visa overstays? His response, I quote, I don't know. Yeah, he always does this. Then he was asked, should the United States harmonize its visa system with Mexico to keep better track of who is coming into the country and leaving it? His answer, quote, that's an answer, but that's something we should be debating.

So the thing that he made like the centerpiece of his campaign when he was asked specifics on it, he was like, I don't know. So you're going to have totally amorphous positions on immigration and run for Texas governor. You're going to have an anti-gun position and run for Texas governor. I don't see how this goes well at all. I think it's a good point. And what, again, you're pointing to is, and also immigration is not nationalized in Texas the way that it is in the rest of the country. We actually are on the border. Like, you know, El Paso and Laredo and many of these places actually have to live

with whatever national policy actually is. So your positions on those things really matter, especially in South Texas, where many of the Latino voters who switched to Donald Trump have shown to have positions not in step with the National Democratic Party whatsoever. That is why you continue to see Republican strength there. I think it was McKinney, Texas, which is way down south, just elected a Republican governor for the first Republican mayor for the first time in like decades. And all of this stuff, once again, matters because both on a policy level, but even on a national cultural one, this just seems totally off the base, right? And his response to that is gonna be

to randomly speak Spanish in the middle of a debate and hope like, is this gonna win me points? If I pander harder, will that win me points? And the answer is no, Beto, it won't. Yeah, I'm trying to block out those moments from the Spanish. I completely forgot about it. But anyway, there you go. Beto O'Rourke is running for governor. We'll continue to track it. I predict he will probably flame out and he'll do terribly. But there you go. Laid it out on the table. Let's move on to this next story. This is something, Colin, I absolutely care a lot about.

It's something which has been roiling the debate here in D.C. Crystal and I have been making pains in order to make sure that you guys know of the actual tax increases and cuts within the bill because what they have tried to do is frame all of these phony taxes of, oh, we're doing a minimum tax or, oh, we're going to increase IRS enforcement and that's going to go after the rich. But in terms of the actual provision that made it to the actual text which passed the House of Representatives, what is currently included in that bill is a massive tax cut

for the wealthy. And now we actually know just how much of a tax cut we're talking about. So let's put this up there on the screen. We're talking, of course, about the SALT cap increase from $10,000, as you can see there on the screen. According to the data run by the Nonpartisan Tax Foundation, they have found that over two-thirds of multimillionaires will get a tax cut under the Build Back Better plan. And the reason for that, Kyle, is that by increasing the amount of state taxes that you can deduct for a federal tax burden, they will push it from $10,000 to approximately $70,000 or $80,000. I want you guys to sit at home and think about how wealthy you have to be to be paying $80,000, $90,000 in state income taxes.

That means the highest state income tax in the country is 13% in the state of California. So you still have to be making in a $700,000, $800,000, $900,000 figure for this to even come into play, which means that this will be overwhelmingly targeted, the benefit in terms of the money saved and your ability to deduct from the people at the very highest income of the spectrum. I always take pains to explain that, Kyle, because we hear from people on the show who are like, hey, I make like 200, 300 grand. I live in California. I know that sounds like a lot of money, but it's actually not a lot of money. I understand that you would save money. I'm not downplaying that whatsoever. But you have to understand that 90% of the benefit goes to the very wealthiest in the 1%.

And that's the important part about this. Yeah, so let me give everybody more backstory on this. Because the reason why that ultimately was in the legislation is because that was effectively the only way that the Democrats could guarantee that you get the most hardcore corporatists on board, people like Gottheimer. So in other words, there's no way this thing would have passed without that. Now, having said that, is that a bitter pill that I could swallow if you make up for it in other ways in the legislation, like, for example, a billionaire's tax, like, for example, you know, a corporate tax increase? I could swallow that bitter pill if that was the case, but the fact of the matter is that's not the case. And by the way, it was actually Donald Trump who got rid of the SALT

tax. And now, to be fair, his 2017 tax cut bill overall, 83% of the benefits went to the top 1%, but this was viewed as, it's for blue states for the most part. So it was viewed almost as like a political- It's like New Jersey, California, New York. The SALT tax, again, just to reiterate for people, it's this idea that you can deduct from your federal taxes the amount that you pay in state and local taxes. And that generally goes to wealthy people in blue states. New York City, San Francisco, exactly. So, yeah, the issue here is we were presented the Build Back Better bill as one thing. As, okay, we're going to have a billionaire tax in it or a top marginal tax increase or a corporate tax increase.

And slowly but surely over time, one by one, they stripped those things. And they stripped them because the likes of Mansion and Cinema and other corporatists said, no, I don't want to do that one. No, that one's divisive. No, that one's not okay. So now at the end of the day, we're left with a tax cut for relatively wealthy people in what's supposed to be a progressive piece of legislation. It's absolutely absurd. And I'd vote no every day of the week on this. Yeah. And I think people need to understand too, that the amount that this is going to cost the federal government is $300 billion. And so just so you know,

they could do the entire child tax credit for a year with that type of money. They could actually fund a social welfare program for two or three years in terms of pre-K and all that stuff with that money. In terms of its actual cost, it is the single largest cost within the bill, within the Build Back Better bill. And I know that doesn't sound right, but whenever you're going to take a tax revenue away, it is technically scored as a cost within the legislation itself. That is the reality. And if that wasn't worse, really what it is, is that by some measures, middle class taxes could actually go up. And worse than middle class taxes is an expenditure which, you know, the progressive left cares to care, claims to care a lot about. And our friend Matt Bruneng, who has been doing an excellent job on

this, put it up there on the screen. He's actually shown that under the current Build Back Better plan, if the national average cost of universal pre-K is $10,000 a year, which nationally allocates 504 per preschool-aged child in year one, it would fund pre-K spots for only about 5% of kids. So the pre-K, you know, the pre-K provision within the bill would only actually apply to about 5% of all American children, so it would be pretty ridiculous to call it universal pre-K in any way. And Kyle, the other thing that he's pointed to is that this could actually increase child care costs for a lot of middle-class families in the American South. The reason being that the way that you structure these programs is that you block grant money to the states and then the states get to decide how to spend it. We do this with Medicare, Medicare, you know, because of the federal system. Now, because of that though, and because of the Southern states' likelihood to not want to

disperse it or to use it in a different way or set different income floors and all of that, the practical implication would be that child care costs would actually go up, especially for poor middle class people in the American South, which, by the way, are disproportionately black. Apparently, they claim to care about a lot of these people. So we have a $300 billion tax cut for the wealthiest 1% of Americans. And then we have no actual universal pre-K if you claim to want to espouse those beliefs and you have increase in childcare costs.

So God bless Matt Bruning for diving into the details of this because nobody else is diving into the details of this. And this is stuff that major media outlets should be doing, but they're not doing. So credit to him for doing that. Look, call it what it is. This is a neoliberal scam.

That's what it is. And what Democrats have done in the modern era is they try to take things that are a win in name only effectively and then use that. So for example, Obamacare. Obamacare is an individual mandate system. That idea was actually birthed by a right-wing think tank, the Heritage Foundation. It used to be supported, that policy used to be supported by the likes of Chuck Grassley and Newt Gingrich. That's right. It was the 93 response to the Clinton health care plan. That's exactly right.

And so – but then eventually the Democrats end up getting that through, and they act like this is some sort of big win for left ideas. It's simply not. It's a neoliberal scam because it just helps the private insurers. It mandates you go to private insurers and give them more money effectively. Now, this is the same sort of thing we're talking about here. When the Build Back Better bill originally came out, when you went provision by provision, everything was so popular. Eldercare, 79% popular. Medicare drug price negotiations, 73% popular. Lowering Medicare age, 59%. Universal pre-K, 59%. Twitch Free Community College, 58%. You go down the list, everything's popular. But guess what? Voters are going to know it if you pass, first of all, a massively

watered down piece of legislation, and then second of all, when you look at the specifics, it's not even the thing that they say it is. You can't say you're doing child care pre-K and then you get to the specifics of it and it's like, oh, by the way, you're going to end up paying more. People are going to know that and you're going to get punished at the ballot box for it, of course. Which is what happened in Obamacare.

People were like, you said my costs would go down and I could keep my doctor. And I lost my doctor and now the cost has gone up. Yeah. And I can tell you as somebody who now has to purchase insurance out on those private exchanges, it's an exorbitant cost. It's completely ridiculous. You know, even when it was employer based, you're still paying hundreds of dollars a month for, you know, some crazy amount of deductible. It's like, oh, yeah, this is basic insurance. If you get plowed by a car, then sure, you're covered.

But if you have general sickness, God help you. And I think you're pointing to something very clear. Look, you can try and spend this all you want. But at the end of the day, as you're seeing at the food and gas prices, when it actually comes down to it and you got to pay more for your childcare, you're going to know. And you're especially going to know when somebody's like, hey, did you know that not only does your cost go up, but the richest people in this country got a tax cut in the same legislation. They're all doing backflips, just so people know, in terms of how they have shoved

this legislation into, or shoved this provision into this legislation. And I do think it tells you everything you need to know, that this is the only thing that survived. As you said, sure, coalitional trading and all of that, it makes sense. If you, you know, you give the guys one thing as long as you get your thing. But you're not actually getting your thing. You're not getting your thing. No. And look, I'll say it as simply as possible. The model, if you want to win and you want to do the things that are good for the country, the New Deal is the model. You go with broad

universal programs that are actually universal in nature, that are funded by taxes on the wealthy. That's how you win. And the reason why the Democrats don't go in that direction is very simple. They are beholden to the donors. They are beholden to the corporations. They're beholden to the billionaires.

And so what the Democrats try to do is split the difference between the donors and the lobbyists who are telling them what to do and the voters who say, look, we want common sense policies. In 2006, the Democrats ran on lowering drug prices. That's right. 2006. Now we're having this conversation again this time. Kyrsten Sinema takes a million dollars from pharma and then turns around and is now against lowering drug prices. That's right. 2006. Now we're having this conversation again this time. Kyrsten Sinema takes a million dollars from pharma and then turns around and is now against lowering drug prices when she ran and had ads on I'm for lowering drug prices. And then they come to a compromise. Get this. I don't know if you heard this story. Yeah. It's a compromise. We're going to lower 10 drug

prices. Right. And what about the other thousand drugs that are out there? Are those people just screwed? Yeah. You think voters aren't going to see this and then punish you as a result of it? And they are doing that, which is why you see Biden at 38%. It's why you see Kamala at 28%. It's why you see Mayor Pete at 37%. It's why the Republicans are up 10 points in the generic ballot. Sagar, you need to have Democrats up like five points just for them to maintain the status quo. I know. Yeah, we were talking about it yesterday, which is that an 11-point gain is actually higher than it was in the Tea Party wave of 2010. It's double what we saw back then. And that was a 50-seat gain.

So this time around, who the hell knows? Let's see how high it can actually be. Let's go ahead and move on to this because it actually is tied directly. Crystal is the one who spotted this, and I thought it was absolutely fascinating story. So it starts with Ryan Grimm wrote a great story over the intercept, kind of a gut check for a lot of Democrats in the wake of Virginia. Let's put this up there on the screen from Ryan. It's not just white people. Democrats are losing normal voters of all races. And what Ryan points to is that as they continue to look inside of both focus groups and in terms of post-electoral data

in 2021 after the Youngkin victory, they are seeing a drop amongst normal voters of every ethnicity and not just white working class voters. And the thing that they point to is in focus groups is not around critical race theory, as we have seen. The swing voters cared much more about school closures during COVID-19 and the cultural gap between working people and democratic elites who broadly supported the prolonged school closures while enjoying the opportunity to work remotely. I don't think we can underscore how important that was. And of course it makes intuitive sense. School is a natural childcare outlet

for the American working class. They cannot afford other programs and they also cannot work at home. I remember during the pandemic, seeing different cases of, you know, like a father or mother working at a coffee shop and her daughter is in the corner, you know, playing on an iPad, which is shameful, shameful, right? She has to go over and check on her every five minutes or whatever, but that's no way to be. And a normal, you know, white-collar worker can just simply sit at home and they can watch their kid, you know, while they work.

Or, you know, they can do some hybrid schedule. Ask any person who works shift work whether you're allowed to work hybrid. They'll go ahead and laugh in your face. And the real thing that Ryan is pointing to is that on culture, but also in terms of the way things played out with pandemic policy, that the Democrats are losing voters of all stripes largely amongst the lower middle class. And Virginia is very much a bellwether for the nation. I mean, one of the things that we pointed to is that it's very historic for the Virginia gubernatorial race to go in the opposite direction of whoever wins the White House. And that the Virginia gubernatorial race is generally, and again, generally a pretty good indicator of where things are going to go in the midterm elections

because it's off year and it kind of captures what the national mood is. When you put all of that together, what you see is both a cultural backlash. I don't want to diminish it, but I also don't want to give it too much credit. But more importantly, you see a general angst and feeling of people who say, I used to feel that these people were looking out for my interests, and now they're not. And that's why you see such a broad-based loss amongst all coalitions in Virginia. We saw black turnout go down, Hispanic turnout actually go up for the GOP. Youngkin, depending on which exit poll you want to look like, either won an outright

majority of Latino voters, or he actually won like 40, 50%. Regardless, that's a lot. And then amongst white working class voters, that story is obviously very clear in terms of how it came out for Yonkin. So I'm going to tell you my favorite fact that I learned recently. This is going to blow people's minds because it's just so different from modern politics. In 1938, after FDR had been president for a while already, Democrats had 80% of the House of Representatives and 80% of the Senate. And of course, FDR went on to win the presidency four times. This was before we had term limits, of course. And Republicans feared, like, we're never going to win again. And the reason they felt that

way is because when you look at FDR and you look at his New Deal policies, they were so popular and helped people so much in a tangible way that he very simply materially delivered for the American people. Now, my message to Democrats is very simple. You have to materially deliver for the American people or they're not going to believe you. And then they're going or they're not going to believe you. And then they're going to start looking not only to other politicians, but also to other issues as a stand in for class. So, you know, that's and in fact, that's what I think is going on here is in a way, culture has become a stand in for class and economics, because when there's a total lack of anybody helping you economically. Well, then you say, well, then who can I most align with culturally? Who most meets my values, if you will? And on that, Democrats swing and a miss. I mean,

again, I don't want to step on the next graphic. I'm not sure we have it, but- No, you can put it up there. Okay, go ahead. The Pew Research thing, yeah. Yeah, so when you look at Biden to Youngkin voters, this is the thing that I was going to bring up. When you look at Biden to Youngkin voters, what they said is, we agree more with Democrats on their stated economic policies, but we're way more with the Republicans on the culture stuff. And again, when Democrats didn't deliver on the economic stuff, then it's like, okay, then I guess I'll just default to the

culture stuff. And those are the people who ended up going Biden to Youngkin. And then, of course, you have that new Jacobin study that came out. Yeah, that's right. We covered it on the show. And what did they find? They found that the most electorally successful lane for Congress is what they call populist progressive, which is like, go left on economics. And when it comes to culture, my move is, I'd be curious to see what you think of this. My move is just like relative agnosticism. I'm not going to scold you. I'm not going to call you racist. I'm not going to call you every negative label under the sun.

I'll tell you what my positions are on those issues. And sure, my positions might be further left than some of the folks who are watching this show. But we can be honest about that. We can have a conversation. But I'm not going to scold you for those things. But what I will tell you is, on the economic stuff, this is what my main point is. I'm going to drive this home over and over and over and over. And then you might say, hey, even if I disagree with this guy on some of the cultural stuff, at least I know where he

stands on this. Yeah, it's very true. I have that book behind me. It's one of my favorites, Freedom from Fear, of the history of the FDR presidency. And they drive that home very clearly. By the way, if you think culture wars are new to the US, not true, okay? We had plenty of culture wars in the 1930s, I can assure you that, around socialism, about segregation, about the American South, about interventionism, isolationism. These were real things. And we had recent immigrant populations who had real inclinations towards one thing or the other. None of this is new. It happens every time. The difference was, is that great leaders were able to transcend those in favor of a higher ideal. One of my favorite things

when reading the history of Abraham Lincoln was, you wouldn't believe the culture wars they had to deal with back in the 1860s. Catholics and Protestants, drinking versus temperance, all of that. But ultimately, he was able to use these coalitions to unite people towards the higher ideal of saving the union, FDR, obviously, around saving the country, many in certain ways. And the reason why we have that graphic, can we rethrow that up there on the screen, please, the Twitter one, which is that the biggest problem that we have in American politics right now is that almost everything is driven by Twitter usage. This is actually a problem of right and left. I was just looking today, I saw a U.S.

Congressman, Jim Banks, tweeting a sure Jan meme at Jen Psaki over Kamala Harris. And I was just like, dude, I know that he probably didn't even tweet that. It was like a social media director, a comms director. And the only reason that they do it is because they get clout with other people on Congress, like other staffers who are like, oh, that was such a funny meme. Now, here's the thing. The people they represent are not on Twitter at all. And actually, what we learned from this Pew Research polling is that the behaviors and attitudes of U.S. adults on Twitter, we show a minority of Twitter users produce a majority of the tweets. Obviously, that is going to be the case, but most active tweeters are less likely to view the tone or civility of discussions as a major problem on the site. This is something that Crystal honed in on and which I think is

really important, which is that when you have the people who produce the vast majority of the content on a website, which is overwhelmingly not just used, but on all the time by political media elites, and those people value less civil conversation, we get the tone set from the very top. I see this constantly. I cannot tell you how many times when I was working as a White House correspondent that everybody in the White House press corps was driving and asking questions based on what was happening on Twitter. And this has a terrible feedback loop because what happens then is that the people in the White House only care about what's happening on Twitter. People in Congress only care what's happening on Twitter. I can even give you a personal example. I could say something here on this show. This show is watched by

millions of people. And it is almost like shouting out into the ether in terms of whether somebody in Congress were to notice. I could tweet something, right? I could send a tweet critical of a member of Congress. The exact same thing that I would say here on the show. It would probably go to, I don't know, a couple hundred thousand followers, maybe a million people, you know, if you're lucky, but not even close to the same level of distribution. And that would be, my phone would be ringing. People would be like, oh my God, because they pay attention to that, right? And I've had this happen, just so people know. And I think that's a very important insight into what these people actually care about. They care about what other elites are

saying. And whenever that is the case, then our politics are going to be downstream from these tiny minority of extremists. They don't believe in talking the way that you and I are talking right now around civil discussion. And that's what's eroded so much of the norms in the country. Yeah. And to your point, I think there's another similar dynamic that goes on with elite media, where especially when you look at the Democrats, the polls show the Democrats have more trust in mainstream media than Republicans do. Yes. And so you see that in Democratic administrations. I remember talking to Representative Ro Khanna and asking him about the withdrawal from Afghanistan, you from Afghanistan in the midst of when everything was unfolding. And I basically said to him, so what do you think the likelihood is that President Biden pulls out

of Iraq next? And he looked at me and he was like, it's just not happening. It's basically not going to happen. Why is that? Because he listened to and believed and took at face value all of the chatter in elite media. And of course, in elite media, it was unanimous. They were wall to wall against it. Everything, you know, the house was on fire. Everybody go crazy. Meanwhile, when we were in Afghanistan, we allied with warlords who had child sex slaves. And that barely got half a day of news.

I actually, I did so much work on that story back in the day, 2015, 2016. I tried my damnedest in order to chase it. Other Pentagon correspondents, nobody was interested. It was a, the big story was that New York Times story that you're talking about. Then there was actually a report which was commissioned by Congress. Patrick Leahy, I'll always give him credit for this. He cared a lot about this issue. He commissioned a report. Pentagon classified it and nobody could get their hands on it. When is the last time Congress suddenly didn't know how to leak classified information? It's not that they couldn't leak it. It's that nobody was chasing the story. They didn't care. That's a perfect example. I always try to bring that up.

One of the most heinous acts of the U.S. military in Afghanistan, which was essentially covered up by the press. They just didn't care that much. Yeah. And you can see it even now with Build Back Better, how Joe Biden invited Kyrsten Sinema to the signing ceremony for the traditional infrastructure bill and two lobbyists who helped killed his higher taxes on billionaires. He invited them to the signing ceremony. And the thing that he's internalized now, and the media will push this out there, is that if anything, you were too ambitious with the bill. The problem is not that you stripped out all the popular provisions

and it was a skeleton bill and it was watered down and now you're cutting taxes for the rich and the universal childcare thing is a scam. They don't look at it like that. They'll look at it, well, the media is telling me that if anything, I was too ambitious and I have to be more moderate and more centrist and take out more popular policies.

And it's the brain worms, man, whether it's on Twitter or whether it's dealing with elite media, they're not in touch with working people. Yeah. It was funny. I had an Uber driver. He knew who I was. He was like, he's like, Hey, should I care about the debt? And I was like, well, I was like, why are you asking me that? He's like, you know, they told me I should care. And I was like, yeah, but do you care? He's like, no. And I'm like, then don't worry about it. Yeah. So there you go. All right, let's move on to this. This really caught my eye. A shocking segment here with

Ai Weiwei. For people who don't know who he is, he's a Chinese dissident, an artist. I actually had the opportunity to talk to him a little bit on Clubhouse back in the day around what he thought the most effective way in order to compel change within the Chinese regime would be whenever it comes to Uyghurs and the genocide that is happening there in Xinjiang. I know I just triggered many people in the comment section. But what I think is very important is Ai Weiwei, who lived through the Cultural Revolution, is giving a warning to American citizens in an interview on Firing Line with Margaret Hoover, where she seems a little surprised by his answer.

Let's take a listen. In your book, you're describing the directives of Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution that would be distributed publicly every night. And then you write, this is your quote, "'They served a function similar "'to Donald Trump's late night tweets while in office. "'They were the direct communication "'of a leader's thoughts to his devoted followers, "'enhancing the sanctity of his authority.'" So do you see Donald Trump as an authoritarian?

I, well, I don't, you know, he, if you are authoritarian, you have to have a system in supporting you. You cannot just be authoritarian by yourself. But certainly in United States, with today's condition, you can easily have an authoritarian. In many ways, you're already in the authoritarian state, you just don't know it. How so? Many things happen today in the US. This can be compared to the Cultural Revolution in China. Like what? Like people trying to be unified in certain political correctness.

That is very dangerous. Very interesting that he would respond with that, Kyle. By the way, he's not like a conservative or something. I think people should realize that. Yeah, it started with Trump, a question about Trump. Yes, it started with a question about Trump. And I've heard him, like I said, I was in that clubhouse room with him one time, and he has very astute kind of observations of the West and how exactly political correctness is reminiscent to the Cultural Revolution in China.

It was stunning to me that both that he saw that Margaret Hoover didn't know where it was going, kind of like what he was talking about. It shocked me, too, at the end. Yeah, I mean, I was like, what? I was like, what? Where'd that come from? That is such a very prescient quote. But it, yeah, I mean, it struck me that to him, he would see some of what's happening in our higher culture in terms of the attempts to shut down conversation. And as we've covered here on the show, that is not an

exclusive phenomenon limited to the American left. And much of the conversation that we have right now, a politics in terms of the culture war wars about who can control, who gets to shut down whom rather than let's just let everybody talk. But he seeing that and warning that on American national television, and I guess credit to PBS too for airing it. I thought it was a pretty, pretty stark moment. Yeah. So I have a bunch of stuff to say about that. So to the political correctness point, if you focus on social media, this is something I've talked about quite a bit, and the idea that I find most interesting is regulating large social media platforms and treating them like public utilities so that you expand constitutional protections,

you expand First Amendment free speech protections. And so with a system like that, yes, you still can't do direct threats of violence, which is illegal. But basically outside of some very narrow and limited things, it's a true open platform. You can say what you want. It's the expansion of the public square. I do think that when we're talking about social media, that's the best answer or at least the least bad answer that we have. You know, other people have good ideas, too, in terms of like, hey, maybe we should just break up a lot of these big social media companies. I'm more a fan of regulate them like public utilities. So that would help address that issue. But to his authoritarianism point,

look, maybe I go a step further than him. I think we are surrounded by authoritarians. So when you look back at the Bush administration, torture, NSA spying on everybody, collecting everybody's metadata without a warrant, Guantanamo Bay. To his point about Trump, I think, of course, it's fair to call him an authoritarian. It's fair to call every post-World War II American president an authoritarian. It's not like all of a sudden under Trump we shut down Guantanamo Bay. It's not like a lot of those problems went away. He also continued all the illegal wars overseas and drone bombing and same thing under Joe Biden. But with Trump in particular, I don't know if you remember this, Sagar, but, you know, when he was president, he called for banning flag burning.

Yeah, I remember that. Which, by the way, is not the conservative position. Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the most well-known conservative justices, said, look, I don't like it. I don't like what it represents. I don't like what it stands for. But of course it's protected speech. It's, you know, a sign of disapproval of what the government is doing. So he said, of course you have to allow that. Trump also said he wanted to crack down on the media and, quote, open up the libel laws.

He very famously threatened to sue Bill Maher over a joke that compared him to an orangutan. So, I mean, listen, he is in many ways the ultimatebel laws. He very famously threatened to sue Bill Maher over a joke that compared him to an orangutan. So, I mean, listen, he is in many ways the ultimate snowflake, and we are in many ways surrounded by authoritarians. And another example of that is the anti-BDS laws that are on the books. Yeah, insane. And there's anti-protest laws on the books in over 20 states. So, yeah, I think we're surrounded by authoritarians on the left and the right, and authoritarians have been in power for decades. And so, yeah, I think we're surrounded by authoritarians on the left and the right, and authoritarians have been in power for decades. And so yeah, I think we're already there. That's not to say that we're equal to some horrendous dictatorship, but it is to say that we got a lot of problems that we need to fix, and he seems to understand that. Yeah, he does understand that.

More important what it is is that if you read about the Cultural Revolution in China, you try to understand, you're like, how did this happen? Like, what exactly was it? And what it was, it was a highly dedicated group of, you know, these college students, like true believers in Mao. And then you also had the inability and both to speak out in the public square of people to just say, hey, like, this is totally crazy. And next thing you know, when you don't do that, it spirals completely out of control within like two years. Within two or three years, all of Chinese society is totally transformed.

You have people being beaten in the streets. You have high standing officials who helped found the country. Their kids are being thrown out of windows and they're shipped off to some crazy province, even if they're not killed. I mean, it went totally off the rails. Nobody is claiming that's what it went totally off the rails. Nobody is claiming

that's what's happening here in the US. But what I think a large part of the current backlash to the dominant culture is, is to pointing to the feeling of, I just want to be left alone. This is actually very different from the social panics of the 1990s, when people were much more culturally conservative, like, let's just be honest. And there was, you know, more of an attempt to, like, ban speech or ban a certain type of video games, of course, or even to try and compel behavior, you know, around gay issues, stuff like that. Now it is very much a social libertarianism of, like, hey, just leave me alone, man. I see this very much in the critical race theory debate. It's very much a social libertarianism of like, hey, just leave me alone, man. I see this very much in the critical race theory debate. It's very much like, look, just you leave us alone. You're like,

you keep your BS out of the schools, leave my kids be. I see it in the colleges in terms of the backlash against the compelling of speech. I see it also in BDF. I mean, look, no foreign country should come into our country and tell us what to think. No way. Okay? That's not what we're about whatsoever. It applies to the Gulf and it applies to Israel just as much. That's part of the problem I see, that people in America, we have it baked into us from the frontier of just a distinct feeling of we need to be left alone, especially in the year 2021.

So I think Ai Weiwei is at least speaking to that. I don't want to put words in his mouth or anything, but I've always found him a pretty interesting figure. Yeah. Hear, hear. All right, let's get to my monologue. The most meaningful thing that I hear from people about this show is that it helped them bridge conflict within families or within friendships. How watching the show made them understand people's perspectives, talk things through, and establish a new paradigm for why something may not make sense to you, but could matter a lot to another person. It starts from a place of just acknowledging that the other person is a human being,

with the right to think and feel just like you. Part of my goal today is to bridge the gap on the economy, or more importantly, how we feel about the economy. One of the problems with the culture war and pitting people against each other is simply don't listen to each other if we don't agree. And when that happens, it drives people into even more echo chambers and makes them harder and less easy to reach in their ways. Pretty much everybody can agree right now that the economy is terrible. But where people start to differ is on the why,

the what, and more importantly, what should be done about it. My friend Joe Weisenthal, writing in the Bloomberg newsletter, put it really eloquently. Stock market and job market are booming, and yet U.S. consumer sentiment is a 10-year low. How? Well, the good news is that we all agree at least on one thing. Prices are too damn high, especially food and gas, which hits the pocketbooks and household balance sheets the absolute hardest. That's the easy one. But high food and gas prices alone shouldn't account for such mega dissatisfaction within the populace. You dig deeper and you actually see the American story, as Joe Weisenthal highlights in his

newsletter. Right now, there is a 48-point gap between Democrats and Republicans in how they feel about the economy. Democrats obviously feeling more optimistic, but what's really crazy is that is not even the worst polarization gap. The worst was back in 2018, where there was a 50-point gap in how Democrats felt about the economy versus the GOP. Let that sink in a little bit. When Trump was president, there was a 50-point gap between Republicans who thought the economy was awesome and Democrats who thought it was terrible. Today, it's the opposite. That's how much polarization drives people in their perceptions. Now look, obviously there are real concerns here. But just how catastrophic do Republicans feel?

Well, as Joe points out, Republican consumer sentiment right now is lower than it was at the very height of the financial crisis in 2008. Now, part of that is polarization. But what I so appreciate about Joe's analysis is this. Within the GOP, there is also a constituency that is dramatically overrepresented. That is small business owners. And just think about how much of the ringer that small business owners have been put through over the last two years. They were shut down during COVID. They lost their employees. It's been chaos, mask mandates and vaccines and all that stuff. And they're finally back up and running, and they end up reopening during one of the largest labor market disruptions

in modern memory. That's the important part of this to me. I, rightfully, I think many of you too, you're celebrating the great resignation. I want workers to make a lot more money and have more options. I want moms and dads to stay home if they think that's right for them, to raise their kids and transition to a one household income if they so desire. But with those desires, there is a cost. Now, most of that cost is going to be borne by Starbucks, McDonald's, John Deere, and other mega corporations who can afford to pay higher wages, and they should. But we can't also ignore every tiny little small business in America that has a help wanted sign and is really struggling, while the richest people in America got a lot richer right now. And the problem we have is that creating false choices.

Right now, the GOP only wants to talk about small business, and they want to ignore the workers and the great resignation. The Democrats are mostly happy to celebrate or at least tolerate the great resignation. But then when it comes to COVID policy, they're very happy to screw the small businesses. It is a true false choice that you have to pick. And instead, we are being gaslighted to think that it is one or the other. And it really doesn't have to be. Instead, all it takes is an understanding of one another. On the worker side, people who watch this show know well that

people have gotten no real wage increase in almost 40 years, that their power in the workplace has diminished greatly over the last four decades, and that increasingly any benefit or hope of retirement or normal life is slipping from their grasp. It is on small business owners and others to actually understand that. And on the other side, you also got to recognize neighborhood hardware store or yogurt shop is not the same thing as McDonald's or Starbucks. That perhaps their margins mean life or death for the people who own them, and that unlike the stock market billionaires that got a lot poorer, not richer during the pandemic. I'm honestly not sure what the solution is. My reference would probably be to target government aid only to small firms and then let them compete with

the big chains on an equal playing field. That would give workers higher wages, equalize the playing field for the small business. But I'll probably die of old age before I see or hear something sensible like that proposed in Congress. So while we're waiting for all of that to catch up, the message of this one is hokey but simple. Just think about things not from your perspective but everybody else's. Think about both those perspectives, how they fit into society, and how it all ends up shaking out eventually. Too much about politics right now is about satisfying different coalitions only within one party instead of trying to create new ones, trying to think about how to broaden your appeal, or even better, to help people regardless of political affiliation. I'm not sure that I'll

actually live to see that come into practice on the national stage, but I do think by adopting a new mindset, you can actually try and see a way out of the trouble that we are in today. I'm curious what you think, Kyle, because, you know, when I first saw that data, I was like, man, this is totally nuts. Partisanship has rotted people's brains so much. One more thing, I promise. Just wanted to make sure you knew about my podcast with Kyle Kalinsky. It's called Crystal Kyle and Friends, where we do long form interviews with people like Noam Chomsky, Cornel West and Glenn Greenwald. You can listen on any podcast platform,

or you can subscribe over on Substack to get the video a day early. We're going to stop bugging you now. Enjoy. Okay, so since we don't have a crystals monologue today, Kyle picked a topic that him and I are going to discuss. What are we taking a look at, Kyle? Yeah, so the White House is apparently bracing, this is according to New York Times Business, the White House is bracing lawmakers for a, quote, disappointing estimate from the CBO

on the House Democrats' legislation, which is likely to find that the cost of the package will not be fully paid for with new tax revenue. So they're basically saying, hey, listen, I hope all you guys are still forward in the coalition, but this is what we're facing right now. So the director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said on Monday that the IRS proposal would yield far less than what the White House was counting on to help pay for its bill. About $120 billion over a decade versus the White House said, listen, this is $400 billion that we're counting on. So this is the – look, it's the accounting tricks, if you will, that the White House used to try to say, hey, it's fully paid 400 billion that we're counting on. So this is the, look, it's the accounting tricks, if you will, that the White House used to try to say, hey, it's fully

paid for, it's fully paid for. Honestly, and I'm curious to see what you think of this. I find the whole conversation a little silly anyway, because the same people who were demanding that this Build Back Better bill be deficit neutral are the same people who just voted for an infrastructure bill, the traditional infrastructure bill, which added about $250 billion to the deficit. So it just seems like they're looking for anything they possibly can, the corporate wing of the Democratic Party. They're like, ah, I wanted to, but I can't. The other thing is inflation. Joe Biden's like, oh my God, there's inflation, now I can't do it. Well, what he doesn't tell you is inflation is because of the supply chain. It's not necessarily because of the big spending. So he has that mistaken belief,

or he knows it's not true, but he's using that as the excuse because he didn't want to vote for it anyway. Yeah, Crystal and I were talking about this at the time. The biggest foolish, the most foolish thing that the progressives did is they said, well, we're going to vote for it pending the CBO score for our moderate colleagues. And Crystal and I were like, I've been around town for a while. I remember, here's what happened during the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. The Republicans were like, the CBO score. The CBO came out and scored it as way less deficit neutral or whatever than they said. And they said, screw the CBO. We don't care. And then they just published their own report from like the Joint Committee on Taxation or whatever saying that it was. And then just passed it, saying, actually, this is all that really matters. I knew, and I think Crystal did as well, that the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, which does this scoring, was not necessarily going to score it in the way that the White House wanted. They almost never do. That's their job,

by the way. And so when you have that happen, now Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, and others have the out if they want it. If they want it, right, Kyle? Or at the very least, what they can say is, well, how much is that? $280 billion now? Strip that out. So they're going to point to a program and just kill it. Gone. And that's going to be the one thing necessarily that a donor maybe wanted out or they were opposed to or whatever in the first place. And that is just the $200 billion that we know of on the IRS proposal. There is no guarantee that they score some of their other taxes in the same way. This is really important for people to understand. A lot of the money and stuff that they say, unless it's verified by somebody like the Tax

Foundation or whatever, don't believe a word of what they say because they game it and try and make it apply to more people than it might necessarily. Their job is to actually make it look how it actually would in practice. But to the deficit politics, look, you're right. I mean, the Pentagon, nobody cares if that step is a spending, right? The Iraq War, Afghanistan, oh, it's all good. We'll borrow as much money as possible. Whenever it comes to social spending, oh, everybody cares about the deficit again. So I agree it's ridiculous. The way the media discusses this is so incredibly dishonest because when they talk about

military spending, they give you what it is annually. They give you that number. When they were talking about Build Back Better, and I'm guilty of this as well, I didn't realize this until after the fact, when they said that $3.5 trillion number, that was over a decade. And so it shows they're subtly gaming the way that you over a decade. And so it shows they're like subtly gaming the way that you interpret these things. And bottom line is, listen, progressives got totally played. And

I said on my show, I wouldn't even vote for this $1.75 trillion package, period. The only way I would vote for that is if progressives also got commitments from Biden on executive orders. Because I think the bill was so watered down, so ridiculous. As we discussed today, it's even more ridiculous than I had realized. The fact that now there's tax cuts for the wealthy in there. And now we're talking about, you know, a child care system that's basically a complete scam. So I look at it and I say, there's no way I'm voting for that.

The only way I would have is if Joe Biden signed an executive order to abolish student debt, which, of of course he's not going to do. If Joe Biden signed an executive order to free every nonviolent drug offender in the entire country, signed an executive order to change marijuana from Schedule 1 to Schedule 5, I would have given Joe Biden a list of like 10 things and said, listen, here are my demands. I will not vote for this as a left congressperson unless you meet this. Don't even come talk to me unless you're going to do some of these things. And progressives not only didn't do that, they didn't stick by their original word of,

we're going to keep the bills linked together. Twice they did that, but then finally, when there's just a little bit of pressure, Joe Manchin gives a press conference and wags his finger at them. They're like, okay, you're right. We're going to de-link them and we're going to trust that Biden got them behind the scenes to do the right thing, even though publicly Manchin was like, I am not going to do the right thing. I'm not in favor of this bill. I still can't believe

that they did that. I honestly think it's crazy that they just buckled so openly and they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the CBO will come forward. It was like, are you crazy? I mean, are you like a novice here? Any basic observer of general legislative politics could have told you that this was going to happen. It happens to every single bill. They get scored in a way outside of the partisan system. That's how it works. So, look, I'm glad you picked this. It is very important. It just goes to show you both how full of it they were in their promise and a big preview of what's to come. From what I'm hearing on the calendar, this thing is still very far from actually coming to passage in terms of the legislative stuff. It could be looking well into December, not before Thanksgiving. And that's a

lot of time. The more time you have, the more stuff that gets chopped, the closer you get to some Christmas deadline vote where people are forced to vote for it in the House, and there we go. So, all right. We've got a great guest standing by, Jonah Fuhrman. Let's get to it. Joining us now, our old friend Jonah Furman from Labor Notes. He covers everything that's going on with the unions and the big strikes. It's strikes giving, some people are saying out there on Twitter. So Jonah, we wanted to bring you on for an update here around what is happening with IATSE, which are many of these workers in Hollywood who operate the cameras and more. They had voted, I believe, to authorize a

strike. Then they called it off because they were offered a new contract. And now we have a development in terms of what exactly has happened with the contract itself. Let's put this up there on the screen. The majority of the voters actually voted against the new agreement. But by the way the delegate system works, it was actually ratified by the delegates. So technically the contract has passed as acceptable. Tell us what's going on here. This seems crazy to me. Yeah, it is. It's kind of crazy. It's not unheard of. But basically, IATSE was negotiating two big contracts collectively covering about 60,000 film and TV workers. And, you know, they hold a ratification vote that in most cases means majority rules. If a majority of the members accept it, then it passes and it's

the new union contract for the next three years. If a majority reject it, you know, it goes down and they have to renegotiate or go on strike. What we saw here is that IATSE has a peculiar delegate system that works basically like the electoral college that made it possible for a majority of the people who are going to work under this contract to say, no, we don't want it. We want you to renegotiate it. And yet this is now the new contract because of, you know, essentially a majority of locals said yes, even though a majority of workers did not say yes. So it's very interesting to see that we will now have a union contract that the majority of the workers under it have actually said they didn't want. Wow.

So what was the percentage of the vote and what are the terms of the deal that are questionable? Well, so on the second question, the big terms of the deal, the thing people talk about the most is the turnaround time, right? So if you work in film and TV, you are working these insanely long days and they wanted minimum turnaround times of, I've heard different numbers, but 12 hours, 14 hours, basically meaning the time you get between having to report back to work. So saying a 12-hour turnaround means they're limited to a 12-hour workday, which is, you know, it's not like we fought for the eight-hour day for 150 years. So that was one big issue. There was also some questions around, you know, how pensions are funded and more in

the weeds things. But in terms of percentage, it was really narrow. It was something like 50.2% of the popular vote rejected the big contract, and something like 51 or 52% of the delegates, you know, affirmed the contract. So it's all above board. It wasn't rigged. It's just an undemocratic system that has these, you know, outcomes that are unfavorable to the rank and file members.

I'll also say that, you know, people say, oh, you should get involved and change the system if you want. A lot of these folks are first time activated because there's something on the table, like a strike that they're really excited about. And suddenly they're learning their first big experience with their union is actually majority doesn't rule. And even though, you know, you wanted to turn it down, that's not how it went. Yeah. Well, welcome to democracy, folks. Hopefully get involved a little bit in terms of how this stuff works. The other one that we wanted to talk about with you, Jonah, is some remarkable polling. Let's put this up there on the screen.

From the Des Moines Register in Iowa, that Iowans favor the UAW members over John Deere executives by a 3-to-1 margin. I don't think, Jonah, that we have seen public support for unions and striking members like this in, what, like 70 years in the public square? I think it's amazing. Yeah, I mean, one thing I would note about this poll is it happened after they rejected the second agreement. So there was a lot of the sort of if you following the ins and outs of this, there was a first agreement that was rejected by the John Deere workers. Then they doubled the raise offer and short up the pensions and then members rejected it again. And there was a lot of hand wringing about, oh, people are going to think we're greedy if we don't accept this, you know, this 10 percent raise.

Clearly, that's not the case. The public is with these workers and far more than, you know, it 10% raise, clearly that's not the case. The public is with these workers. And far more than, you know, it's 10,000 workers, which is a lot, but it's not like that's the whole population of Iowa. Not everyone has a relative of John Deere that they're supporting. There's just a mood that, you know, we think corporate America has gone too far and we stand with the union members fighting back. Right. I covered that second proposal, and I jumped the gun a little bit. I guessed that the workers would accept it, and I was wrong. And I thought, well, hey, look, this is a win. Look at all the victories we got here. So where is that negotiation at right now? And are they drawing a hard line on the pre-1997 structure? So right now, basically

tomorrow, on Wednesday, we will see the vote on the new agreement, which is really, you know, the union called it the same agreement with modest modifications. It does provide a little bit more money for a small group of the workers. And the question is, will workers basically say, okay, the strike has gone long enough and we'll consolidate our gains. I think the big thing to note about the Deere strike is between the first and second contract, they went from defense to offense. So they were defending against a bad contract that would kill the pension for new hires, that was going to provide sub-inflation raises. They rejected it and said, actually,

we're going to go on the march. We're going to get what we actually deserve. The question really is one of strategy. Do members think that if they keep striking now, they can win more? Or do they sort of take the company at their word that this really is the final offer? What's interesting is they rejected the second one, and the company said, that was our last offer. And then within a week, they were back at the negotiating table and adding sweeteners. So it's pretty unclear what the calculus here is for rank-and-file members. Can they get more from the company? Either way, it's a massive win. I mean, a 10% wage increase in the first year and saving the pension for all new hires.

These are not things we're used to seeing in the 21st century private sector labor movement. We are not used to seeing it at all. So, Jono, tell me, are people taking note of the public support, of the solidarity that people are showing out there, and thinking about going on even more strikes right now? I mean, that's part of it for the Deere workers. You talk to them and they say, is the public going to turn on us? You know, John Deere is taking out ads in the local papers and local media, essentially trying to sell the public on the idea that the workers are being greedy and it's not working. So I don't know what that means for this, you know, final vote, if it's the final vote or if it means they're going to keep going. I will say more broadly,

you know, there's clearly workers are taking note of it. They're saying, look, the deer workers are striking, the Kellogg workers are striking, and it's not the public turning on them. I mean, the corporations are, of course, turning the screws, but I don't think there's a feeling that we've run out of runway in terms of public support for this kind of stuff. Yeah. Well, it's always great having you, Jonah. We really appreciate your analysis and your updates. Appreciate you joining us very much. Crystal was sad that she couldn't be here today, so thanks, man. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. Absolutely. Thank you guys so much for watching. So thanks, man. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. Absolutely.

Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. If you can subscribe and become a supporter of Today, it means the world. We are considering a big number of expansions in order to bring on

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last minute. Thank you very much, man. It was my absolute pleasure doing a show with you. It was just as fun as I thought it would be, and I hope everybody out there enjoyed it. Crystal will be back soon, so don't worry. I said the same thing. When I was sitting in your chair, I said the same thing. Guys, it's okay. He'll be back very shortly. Please tolerate me for a day. But if I can do a shameless plug myself, everybody go subscribe to Secular Talk on YouTube. That's where I do my show. And thank you very much. Link down there in the description. You guys all know Kyle's channel already. If you're not, go ahead and subscribe. We appreciate that very much. And Crystal and I will be back on Thursday. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation.

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