Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 8/19/24 LIVE AT DNC: Biden Humiliated By DNC Lineup, Kamala Reveals Econ Policy, Trump Attacks 'Communist' Dems
Episode Date: August 20, 2024Saagar, Ryan and Emily discuss Biden humiliated by DNC lineup, Kamala opens up new paths to victory, Kamala unveils new economic agenda, Trump brands Kamala a communist, protests erupt at DNC on day o...ne. To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.com/ Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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But let's go ahead and begin, I think,
with the state of the race as things are right now.
Obviously, things are very fast moving.
But what we wanted to start with
is what we're all here for, which is the DNC.
So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. The DNC lineup, who's speaking and what to expect. So the general view of where they
want things, Ryan, is Monday today is, quote, for the people. So the people who are going to be up
on the screen today, we've got Biden and Dr. Jill, Dr. Jill will be speaking, along with the former Secretary of State Hillary,
and a welcome from Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.
I believe we have a couple of union folks.
AOC at nine also.
AOC will be speaking tonight as well.
My joke is that all the least popular people in the Democratic Party are speaking tonight.
Your entire political career is aimed at speaking Thursday, not Monday.
That's right, not Monday.
So today-
Monday's a place to start.
Biden gets to speak.
Dr. Jill,
a true villain,
gets to speak as well.
Our next Surgeon General.
Yeah.
Whoopi Goldberg said it.
Those two will be speaking tonight.
The key is that
they obviously just want everyone
to have amnesia
and forget about Monday
by tomorrow.
So as we can see in front of us,
we've got Obama who will be speaking,
or former President Obama tomorrow,
then the second gentleman, Doug Emhoff,
J.B. Pritzker,
then Wednesday, that's when you've got Tim Walz,
then you've got Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Buttigieg.
Thursday, that's when Harris will actually speak.
So I believe it's literally an order
of like ascending popularity, which is frankly kind of smart. You want people to be thankful for Biden.
That's what they're going to try and do. But they are going to try and forget about him as soon as
possible. He's literally going to Santa Barbara after this. Is that true? Yes. He's not even here
for the rest of the convention. He might be going to Montecito or whatever, but he's going to a
vacation. Wow.
Yeah, near Santa Barbara right after this.
They're truly putting him out to pasture.
So before we get to any of the polls or anything, just give us your reaction,
the general setup of everything.
Many union guys are going to be speaking tonight.
Sean Fain will be speaking tonight, I believe, with a few others.
Interestingly enough, Sean O'Brien from the Teamsters,
not invited to speak here at the DNC.
I think they're a little bit of ruffled feathers after he spoke at the RNC. But Ryan, our resident Democratic expert,
what do you think? If you're Biden, you can't stick around. Yeah. Like, you know, it's also
he wasn't planning on sticking around to begin with because the president is in and out like
they treat it like, you know, and this has been for centuries, that the nominees wouldn't, it was like gauche
for them to actually come and be seen.
Yeah, that was in the old days.
Sometimes they wouldn't even come.
They'd be like, oh, I accept the nomination.
They would say it from the White House or whatever.
And so the thing that that evolved into
is the nominee kind of showing up at the end
or just peeking their head out and saying,
all right, all of my people are doing the things
that I want to, I'm going to go back behind the scenes.
But yeah, if you're Biden, the humiliation is so steep that you've just got to do your
bit Monday and just roll on out.
What is so clear about the response to Biden's departure is that he never had any base.
And we kind of knew that about him.
But Obama has people who follow him.
AOC has people who like her.
Bernie Sanders has people that like him.
Elizabeth Warren has the Warrenites.
You know, she's got that.
It's not, obviously it wasn't enough to get any of them the nomination.
She's got Matt Stoller.
She's got Matt Stoller.
But she's got people.
Yeah.
Biden does not.
And he never has.
He's just been the guy that, you know that put his finger in the wind and very successfully stuck himself dead center of the party, whether it was the 70s, 80s, 70s.
Can you believe that?
70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s or up until today.
But what that also means is that when you no longer have any power, nobody cares.
Yeah, that's true.
You truly are put out.
I mean, it's over.
Yeah, I have. I have. You're exactly right. He's going straight to California and that's it. And
then they're going on vacation. It's kind of truly remarkable. Yep. Emily, we do, however,
before we even get to our if you want to talk about some of the DNC, we've got some polling
as well. Do you want to weigh in on the lineup first and then we'll talk about the polling?
Well, it's similar to what the RNC did. You're just building excitement. And at the RNC,
of course, Trump had just been shot literally in the head. And so there was all of this,
there was this air of almost mystery about suspense, about what he would say. Here,
there's less of that. It's more just, I think our suspense now is seeing the presentation of
Kamala Harris, exactly how almost Obama-esque it is,
because the Washington Post ran a story this morning saying it's not 1968, it feels more like
2008. We're starting to see artists already paint portraits of Kamala Harris that make-
Same guy.
Same guy.
Same guy, yeah.
There have been other renditions of it as well, literally casting Kamala Harris in this Obama-esque
role.
And I think as we go throughout the week, it'll be,
that's one of the big things I'm looking for
is how dramatically they're presenting her.
Yeah, and the problem is that second time is farce problem.
Like Obama had months and months, almost a year actually,
to kind of, to organically build this like real energy behind his truly kind of
historic campaign it was like a two-year slog that's what tommy vietor said today yeah and and
now they're trying to like slap it together in a couple of weeks and they go out and get what's
his name the guy that did the hope hope and change poster and he just kind of redoes it and it sort
of feels like top down kind of applied to people
rather than people kind of pushing it up from the bottom.
Maybe that's enough, though.
A vote is a vote, whether it's for cringe
or whether it's for genuine organic enthusiasm.
Let's stick with that because that's the important thing.
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Because we've only got, what, 79 days now,
I think, until the election,
as of when we're recording,
let's go ahead and put the New York Times Siena poll.
So this poll came out over the weekend,
and it dramatically just shows you
how Kamala Harris has a significant
polling advantage to where Biden was. So here from the New York Times, Sienna, they polled
battleground states as well as the Sun Belt. So what do we see? Arizona, Kamala Harris, 50%,
Trump at 45. That's huge. I mean, Arizona with a five-point spread. North Carolina,
they actually have Kamala leading Trump by two points. Now,
Nevada is where things are interesting. Trump is there at 48, Harris at 47. Georgia, Trump is at 50,
Harris is at 46. What this tells us is that Kamala significantly changes the map for 270
that Biden ever had. I mean, I frankly think his map was dead the day of the debate. But let's say as dead possibly
as him. But whenever he was, let's say previously, whenever he had not done the debate and we think
about what his theoretical map was, he really was reliant on the so-called blue wall. And that was
like Arizona was gone. North Carolina was gone. Nevada even very likely not there. Georgia. He
needed to win Michigan, Pennsylvania,
and Wisconsin, where these North Carolina numbers, the Arizona numbers, and others,
they open up a different possibility for Kamala to get to 270. It also reflects, frankly,
the changing nature of the country. I don't think it's an accident. Arizona and North Carolina are
two of the, I think they have the most dynamic economies in the United States just in the last two years. And both have had massive inflight of population from California, from other blue
states. So they've got a bluer population this time around, people who are much more likely
to vote on abortion and all of that. Yes. And I think we'll have Anderson Clayton,
who's a North Carolina county chair. You guys might've followed that story. She's like 25.
Yeah. She's very young. And won this
grassroots campaign where she overthrew all these old dudes and is taking a
completely different approach to trying to win North Carolina. Obama won it, if I'm
not mistaken, in 2008, right? And so because he did,
Democrats have been just pining for it every time
since then. Well, and they've had Democratic governors since then.
Yeah.
I mean, they have one right now.
They have one right now.
So it's not out of reach.
Arizona seems to be going increasingly blue,
like in the same way that Iowa went from a swing state
to like just deep red at this point.
It feels like Arizona could potentially go that way
for all the reasons you're talking about.
A lot of Democrats coming from both the Northeast
to retire in California,
to retire and also to escape California.
And they bring their voting patterns with them.
And so Biden was the only reason that it was even in play.
They have two Democratic senators.
And don't forget this, They have abortion on the ballot.
And a Democratic governor, Democratic AG.
They had that whole, what is it, 1860s law, and then they had to change it.
But there's actually still going to be a ballot referendum in Arizona, which the abortion
activists fought very hard to put on.
I would not underestimate that, Emily, for turnout-wise.
So it's interesting because we're seeing that reflected at the DNC here.
I have noticed that you're seeing party chairs obviously flying from Arizona and others, but they're
getting not only key slots. And I was talking with some others when I was in the airport
because many of the activists and other things were there. And they were like, oh yeah, there's
a lot of energy around Arizona, around North Carolina. So it's clear that the Kamala campaign
and the DNC is doing their best while
we're here in Chicago to elevate the battleground states that are newly in play as a result of Kamala
coming to the ticket. That's a really good point. And the other thing in North Carolina is obviously
Mark Robinson is considered to be a weak candidate. He's obviously a polarizing and
controversial candidate. So what that can do for Democratic turnout in North Carolina,
it's important to note. Now, in that New York Times-Siena poll, the margin is, in most states, it's between plus or minus four. Basically,
it's roughly plus or minus four. So it's kind of a tie.
So yeah, it's basically a dead heat, which is incredible, given where Biden was not that long
ago. And to the point we started talking about this poll on, there is something that I think,
and Ryan, I'm curious what you think, it's not just top down with Kamala Harris. It's also people projecting their, and I'm going to use a
controversial word, the controversial word du jour, joy onto, and I really mean it, that people
are overjoyed that they do not have to vote for Joe Biden. And so you project onto Kamala Harris
that relief. And so some of it,
I do think, you know, there's a group of people in states like North Carolina or Arizona that are
genuinely like excited to rediscover Kamala Harris because they're so desperate to have a good option
instead of arguably one of the worst possible options. I don't know.
Yeah. And what I've heard from Democrats is that what their internal polling is showing is that basically what you described has brought back the Democratic coalition into
the fold. Like Biden's erosion was not because people were switching over to Trump necessarily.
They were dropping into kind of undecided or over to RFK. Yeah. With Kamala back, they have
they've all come back.
So she's brought back that coalition.
But that's not enough on its own.
What they're saying is that in general,
the polls are still showing her up about a point or two.
At this time, Biden and Hillary were both up by six to seven points.
Yes, that's right.
And Democrats need to be up substantially in the national vote
in order to win the electoral college, unless they figure out some new path, which Arizona,
Georgia, North Carolina could actually present to them. I just wanted to add something on that.
Harry Enten made a very good point on CNN last week, where he analyzed where the polls are versus
where they were in 2016 and 2020, and said, actually, Trump, where the polls are now,
if you account for the polling errors and say that they haven't been corrected significantly,
which they weren't from 2016 to 2020, they were corrected a little bit, but not significantly,
then this could still, the polling as it stands right now, could still be showing a Trump victory.
Yeah, I want everyone to, that's my last corollary here, which is let's also just all remember having been burned multiple times, 2020 and also 2022,
where we can't put full stock in all of this. And I would also say I have Nate Silver's election
forecast in front of me, Kamala 53.5% chance of winning the electoral college, Donald Trump at 45.
If we look at polymarket and the betting markets, Kamala currently has 51% and Trump 47%. But I'm actually
reading Nate's book right now, and I highly recommend it. Something he just tries to drum
into people. 47 is very high. Imagine putting, if you had a 47% chance of losing everything,
you should be pretty afraid. You should be afraid. He had Trump in 2016 at about 30, 35.
And that was right. Which was like, that's a really big chance.
Yeah, that's one in three.
One in three.
One in three.
Think about that.
Exactly.
What that means.
You put a gun to your head.
Yeah, you have a one in three chance of death.
Think about that.
Two bullets in a six shooter.
But that's part of what I want.
Nobody asked for this.
I want everyone to internalize how the things are still very, very much in a toss-up right now.
The key that the Democrats are going to be going for is the traditional bump that you get after the convention.
And that's, I mean, part of the reason we're all here
is we expected some chaos.
You know, we had planned this whole thing.
We're like, oh, there's going to be all this chaos for the DNC.
But, I mean, to be honest, there has been protests,
and we're going to cover that a little bit later in the show.
And they're pretty unified right now.
So what they're trying to do is present a full picture of we're in this.
We're ready to beat Trump.
I'm very I've been very interested in Kamala kind of rolling her eyes at Trump attacks.
She's like, oh, the classic.
But we're going to beat him in November.
I'm seeing, you know, in terms of the Democrats and there's been some policy stuff.
We're about to talk about that as well.
But the overall political picture is it's clear that Trump is a little bit flat-footed. Now,
ever since the last time we all spoke, I know you guys have covered some of this,
Trump is basically back on the campaign trail. He'll be having, I think, two,
maybe three events that are just this week, trying to do some DNC counter-program. He's
actually literally doing a rally as we speak right now. There was a press conference with
Rick Scott and Ron Johnson that I heard was quite boring
earlier this morning. Two real genius politicians that we definitely want on our side.
Oh, and they were going after walls for his China connections.
Yeah. And they dipped into Chicago to have a little counter-programming. It doesn't seem
to have worked well. Didn't work? All right. Well, I see. Yeah. So Trump is doing a press
conference right now. It looks like he's at, I think he's in Milwaukee. Anyway, just trying to check in on what they're trying to do, because what they want is counter-programming.
The DNC is happening. It's going to take over the media. Tonight, we've got the Biden speech.
Obviously, there's so much at stake, honestly, even for Biden, because if he melts again on the
stage, that's just going to increase, not just questions about whether they should drop out.
It's like, dude, can you even be president right now? Like, what are you doing? How are we not even talking about
that? That should be the top line tonight. I mean, every single time I read the news about
ceasefires or Ukraine or anything like that, I'm like, I can't believe this melted man is literally
in charge of the country. Like, it's insane. It's an insane thing. Now, he will be on the stage
tonight. I'm very curious to see how he does. I mean, can you imagine if he has a similar debate level meltdown?
And one of the things we're about to get to
with the policy is the tying of Kamala to Trump.
I mean, sorry, Kamala to Biden.
If he does a bad job tonight,
that will actually be a bit of a problem.
Part of the reason, again,
why I think they scheduled him today
just to make sure that if he screws it up,
they can deprogram their way out of it.
But I do think he'll get through his speech.
I think he'll slur his words.
I think he'll mess some stuff up.
Yeah.
But he can still read off a teleprompter to some degree.
And as long as they don't put in things like pause for applause.
Yeah, but he can do that.
He might do that.
But he's done that however many times already.
Really, I mean, he lost the ticket, but he can do that. He might do that. But he's done that however many times already. Really, I mean,
he lost the ticket,
but he's still the president.
So there could not be
a lower bar for him
to have to clear.
Good point.
Well, yeah.
So on that point, Sagar,
I think we can put
this next element
up on the screen.
This is a three.
This is the cringe
celebrity lineup.
So this is the weakness
to the extent there is one
when Democrats have all of
this momentum and they have momentum in polling. They have massive momentum with the press.
Kamala Harris's favorability is going from the most unpopular vice president in modern history
to somebody with pretty high favorability and great treatment in the press. They have all of
this going for them. And then they put a cast of celebrities.
They did something similar in 2020,
but they put this cast of celebrities
in charge of like emceeing the nights.
And one of them is Ana Navarro.
I think probably your favorite.
Of course, my favorite of the UCAS members.
One of your, yeah, your favorites.
Although there's stiff competition,
but Ana Navarro, Kerry Washington,
Tony Goldwyn, Mindy Kaling, we don't know how
front and center that they will be, but I expect this to become a pretty big part of the Republican
counter-programming. And my expectation though, is that with Democrats having all this momentum,
Kamala Harris is on her honeymoon. This extends that honeymoon just a little bit longer. I don't
know that it sticks around until after Labor Day, but I also just think this is going to be Democrats week. There isn't going to be a lot
Republicans can do as in the last month to draw attention away from it and to draw favorability
away. It's just going to, it's going to be a love fest. Yeah. Last, that last thing on this,
then as I kept hearing from the Republicans are like, no, we're going to unload on her after
Labor Day. And I was like, you know, I'm, I just think we're wasting a lot of time here.
You know, there's a lot of time that was wasted in the last couple of weeks where Kamala
is basically allowed to coast.
I mean, how many interviews is this lady done?
Zero.
To reestablish herself.
Zero interviews.
And has totally reestablished her image with the American public.
Reestablish her image with the American public.
The media is literally like coronating this woman like live on television.
In terms of interviews, zero.
Quote, hope to have one scheduled by Labor Day.
Still nothing scheduled.
I was literally out sick for an entire week,
and she still has not scheduled an interview.
That's crazy.
It's August 19th, so she doesn't have to do an interview this entire week.
Right, Ryan?
That gives us the Labor Day.
She's been a candidate for almost a month.
Nothing. I see that she answers for almost a month, nothing.
I see that she answers question in a Sheetz gas station for less than two minutes, you know,
gives one answer, cool.
It's like, it's one of those-
Fakes the Doritos thing, did you see that?
Yeah, doing a fake video about Doritos.
I mean, this is all we're getting from this woman.
Her one-
It's astounding to me.
It's crazy.
Her one non-scripted moment,
well, she said two non-scripted moments.
The second one was scripted. Yeah. It was when she got protested at, well, she said two non-scripted moments. The second one
was scripted. It was when she got protested at the one rally. Oh, that's right. And she did the
head turn, told to shut up. Well, no, she said that they're helping elect Trump. You're helping
elect Trump. And then the second time she got protested, she was on script. She was like,
I hear you. I feel you. We're going to sort this all out. Yes. But yes, like there's there's been there's
been zero. I do think it's worth talking about this complete gap in understanding of the race
between the right and the left right now. I tell me if I tell me how prevalent this view is on the
right. But from my like kind of social media feed, it seems like there's a substantial portion of conservatives who
think that Tim Walz has been a complete catastrophe for Democrats.
They might dump him.
And that Kamala Harris might actually get dumped.
And she's, that Democrats are not behind her.
And it's a complete catastrophe.
I think you might be too online, to be honest.
That's the Laura Loomer world.
Yeah, this is just some more like whatever, some bullshit.
Well, I will just add, I do think there's some serious underestimating,
mis-underestimating going on to quote Ryan's favorite president,
to going on on the right because, well,
I know we're going to get into the attacks that Trump has developed on,
that they have developed on Kamala Harris.
And I know they're scrambling right now.
Like Trump did that press conference with foodstuffs to try and talk about
some of the same thing.
I watched that whole thing. I did not think it went well for Trump. I really didn't.
Yeah. And so it just they don't have anything that's sticking right now but
there is a subsection of the right that to your point there are people that are
very online that have some influence in the campaign and I think they don't
understand that there is some genuine organic support for Kamala Harris among
the public in a way that when you're competing for fractions, which is what's happening in this election,
it's what's happened in every last election since 2016. That is incredibly meaningful. And you have
to deal with those voters. You have to persuade those voters. I think it's crazy that people
flipped on Kamala Harris and went from being like, this woman seems a little weird to inspiration.
Actually, no, you're the weird one.
Yeah, right.
You're weird. Yeah. I, no, you're the weird one. Yeah, right. You're weird. Yeah.
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Let's talk about policy now.
This is important, and this is something I've been dying to get to on the show.
Wish Crystal was here, but we should be able to.
At the very least, she'll be on the show on Wednesday, 100%.
Tomorrow, we're still working that out.
But let's go ahead and begin with the DNC policy platform and its great big rollout.
It appears that in the total shit show that we've already experienced right now at the DNC,
getting our damn press credentials,
took several hours, much longer than it should have,
consequently leading to a lot of the problems
that we have right now.
But what we could see in front of us
is that they forgot to actually release the term,
take the term, quote, Biden's second term,
five separate times, Ryan, out of the DNC platform.
So, I mean, Greg Price has circled all of them
here in front of us.
During President Biden's second term,
they even refer to, like, President Biden
and Vice President Kamala Harris
want to continue their legacy.
I think this was actually, I know this is stupid,
like, it was obviously, like, a mistake of an intern. I think this was actually, I know this is stupid. It was obviously like a mistake of an intern.
I think it's a colossal mistake in that
we should not be talking about Biden at all.
Biden who?
We need to get him on a jet and go to California.
We're not talking about him right now.
What this shows you is the insanity of party functionality.
Like in order to approve the platform,
you have to get everybody together.
You've got the sub platform, you have to get everybody together. You've got the sub-platform, the sub-committees, the committees.
And because they were rushing this so that they could not get Biden off,
they approved this long ago.
Like this was approved a while ago.
It was approved while Biden was still running for president.
And so in order to get his name out of there,
you would have had to
reconvene the entire platform committee and somebody would have to make a motion to strike
his name from there. And I think basically nobody wanted to do that. Yeah. They're just like,
do I want to be the guy that. So you think this was intentional? That's even worse.
It's intentional. It's intentional in the sense that they knew that this was the
document that they had. And they were like, we can either reconvene the entire platform committee,
make that a news story, strike his name and replace, you know, control F, control R with
Harris, or we can just take our lumps on Monday when this rolls out.
Because then you have to vote on it again.
Yeah, they'd have to to vote on it again. That's the bureaucracy.
And then as soon as you are voting
on it again, then you've got uncommitted
delegates who are like, wait a minute.
We're still in here
with this terrible Hamas
and Israel provision.
Let's revisit this. And so I think
they were just like, you know what, screw it.
That is actually insane because that makes
it not an oversight.
That actually makes it not intentional per se, but a consequence of problems.
Nobody's allowed to go in and change a comma in it.
But again, I mean, this is reflective of a bigger problem that they have,
is that if all the polling that we look at, the more that Kamala is the change candidate
and away from Biden, the better off she's doing.
The more that she's tied to Joe candidate and away from Biden, the better off she's doing. The more
that she's tied to Joe Biden and all of his policies, then the worse off that she's doing.
And that actually gets us, Ryan, to these economic proposals. It's been causing quite a stir online.
It'll be fun to talk about here. Kamala gave a economic speech, what was it, yesterday,
on Thursday in North Carolina. Jeff Stein, friend of the show, has a few highlights here I'm going to read off of.
Quote, $6,000 for a newborn tax credit.
That's $3,000 for most children.
$6,000 fully available to the poorest families.
$25,000 down payment subsidy for first-time homebuyers.
A $2,000 annual cap on out-of-pocket prescription drug costs.
Housing supply expansion credits,
a ban on price gouging for food and groceries. That's probably the most controversial element
we have. Eliminate medical debt and EITC expansion, as well as ACA subsidy extension.
So go ahead, Ryan, give us the leftist take, and then Emily and I will give us the counter.
Yeah, this is incredible stuff. And the virtue of it is that it does separate from Biden in the sense that some of this
is new, like the $25,000 down payment going after price gouging.
Sure.
It makes you talk about Kamala Harris distinct from Joe Biden.
On a policy term, we can go through them like the $6 six thousand dollar newborn credit like that's new.
That that I have not seen that from them. That's a new policy. It's a derivative. It's a derivative
of the child tax credit that was extremely popular during the first year or so by administration,
which cut child poverty in half. And then they just doubled child poverty by letting it letting
it lapse. People like that.
I think what they learned from the 2020 Georgia Senate elections
is that offering people money is a cool way to get them to vote for you.
If you remember, they did that.
Do you think that still works in inflation politics before we get to that?
I think it does.
See, that's where I think the counter might be.
Yeah.
Is that given the inflation conversation.
By the way, I'm not saying it costs inflation.
I'm just saying, given that we have inflation.
That's the downside, but we'll see.
I think the price gouging one is a great terrain to be fighting on.
Interesting.
Because it puts the kind of right-wing national populism
on the spot.
It's like-
It forces.
You support, it calls the question.
You're okay with price gouging?
Well, okay.
So Emily, go ahead.
Give us the counter.
Because that's actually been,
that's the one that I've seen the most
like argument online from, right?
So obviously there's been, well, this is, okay.
So let's talk about what actually price gouging,
what that means.
So I had to do a
decent amount of reading here in the last couple of weeks matt stoller as always actually is a very
good explainer on the difference between price controls what price gouging is and what separate
proposals are now kamala was not specific about what a ban on price gouging actually would be so
people like the post read into it yeah i was gonna. Yeah, I was going to say, I actually think it was a, I honestly think it was a mistake for her
because she allowed price gouging.
And by the way, elements of some people in the GOP,
like who's the senator from Iowa?
He's super old.
Chuck Grassley.
People even like Grassley and others
are calling for breaking up meatpacking, right?
I mean, technically that is going after price gouging
in the industry because what you're trying to do
is you're trying to break up the producer monopolies and supply monopolies,
which are then sold to the grocery store.
There's been a lot of confusion about that too because people are like, well, how could
grocery stores be price gouging because they only have a 2% to 3% margin?
What I believe that they're talking about are the actual suppliers to the grocery stores
themselves.
It's not the grocery store.
It's like the Kraft Foods, whatever, whatever that company is. I forget. Yeah.
That owns it anyway. So Emily, give us what you have seen, because I have not seen the right,
this animated about a counter policy issue in quite a long time. The price control thing
really took off from what I could see. And it is, I think it actually is going to set up for,
this will be a real debate on the stage now at this point, because we saw Trump talk about this
at the press conference as well. Well, and that brings up Ryan's really important point,
which is that it actually forces the new right to confront this question of corporate power.
And on the other hand, it's going to force the establishment left that is now helmed by Kamala Harris,
who is suggesting anti-price gouging measures sort of vaguely. We don't know exactly what they
would look like. The Washington Post jumped in with their editorial board and caught a lot of
flack for going in hot. Not a lot of flack from everyone. There were some people who were really
glad to see the Washington Post, some people in the tech community and the corporate community who celebrated the Washington
Post editorial. So did the right. And this is where the politics and the ideology, if we separate
them for a moment, the politics and the substance for a moment, politically, it was absolutely 100%
a gift to the right because they know, and Ryan, you know this too, you can really fear monger with socialism.
You can do the same with capitalism too when you're polling. But the right feels like when
they can tie socialism to Democrats in the suburbs, in places like Pennsylvania, in places
like Michigan, that is a huge, huge help for them. That gets some of those skeptical Trump people back over on their side.
They thought that in 2018, it was like their godsend.
That's what they felt.
Now you can, you know, make it, and in 2022,
you can make a judgment on whether it works, but they love that.
They think it's a huge boost right into their veins
when they can tie people to socialism.
It can be really cringe when you're doing it. Like it can It can be really cringe when you're doing it. It can be really, really cringe when you're doing it. At the same time, it is something
that voters can look at and say it sort of is easier to build a narrative about someone being
far left when you can talk about that. So I have some polling in front of me that Matt Stoller had.
So it says, using antitrust to enforce laws against price gouging and price fixing has a net 42%
approval rating around decreasing inflation and others. I do wonder-
But it depends on how you're talking about it.
I don't know. By the way, that's what I was about to say. That's why I do wonder whether
it was a mistake. I'm actually curious, Ryan, what you think about this whole price control
discourse. Because there is one way of talking about it,
like breaking up meat pack.
I mean, people in the Midwest support that,
agriculturalists support that, rural people support that.
Do you think that the Kamala people made a mistake
by making it seem like they were gonna enforce
full-blown price control?
Because she hasn't even disavowed that at this point.
Politically, I'm actually honestly not quite sure.
I'm pretty sure Crystal would support price control.
I've been thinking about it.
I just feel like it's such a drastic,
well, okay, but that's what I was gonna say.
To me, it's a very drastic measure.
I'm like, are we really at price control right now?
You know what I mean?
When we have the ability to, if we break up meat packing,
if we look at some of the share buyback
and other things that some of these companies have done.
Yeah, I agree with you.
So there are multiple states, including Arkansas,
like red states,
that have price gouging legislation on the books,
which basically after a 10% threshold of increase of price
requires the company to like file a disclosure
with the state as to why a price
in a critical industry is going up.
And then people,
I think there's some input process around that. So, I mean, we do have red states that are on the books
that have these measures in place. When you put it that way, I'm like, yeah, it seems kind of
reasonable. Like if you have a critical industry or like food, meat, or eggs, which we all had that
big egg inflation recently, if the company has to do it, at least they don't have to do anything.
They just have to justify like justify and explain here is why.
I mean, the other thing is when you consider it,
we give these companies and these food producers in particular,
these people get a shitload of benefits from the U.S. government.
The farm bill is packed full.
By the way, eggs are not supposed to be the same price today
that they were in the 1970s.
It's because they get all these subsidies.
Yes, economy and scale, et cetera,
but these are some of the most subsidized people
on the planet.
Also huge beneficiaries of government policy.
So when people are like,
oh, the government should get involved in prices,
I'm like, the only place-
We already do.
That's what I was gonna say.
The problem to me is like,
well, we already massively subsidized these companies.
So it's almost like the airlines.
Like, well, should we really allow them to gouge us
when we bailed them out like 15 times since 9-11? I don't know. I mean,
at a certain point, we can either have a laissez-faire or not. And, you know, I'm not
sure why some are allowed or not. In terms of the politics, I think Emily might be right.
There could be a suburban backlash. This is also a decent test, though though of the does policy even matter theory like will this resonate
right now it's elites the who are arguing about it online silicon valley venture capitalists
price capital about price controls capitalism and all that does that penetrate like i honestly
have no idea and i just i just want to say quickly i think it was a mistake to not be specific
to release a really vague thing that allows the right to say, this is our new boogeyman of socialism. Right. But if she were specific,
I think that would instigate a much more interesting, on the price gouging,
a more interesting policy conversation. I don't know. I think if you can bait the Republicans
into defending corporate price gouging, then you're on good. No, which they are. Some people
have. Some of them. You're right. Some people are like, no, we always have to let the market decide or whatever.
Yeah, I think that they lose that argument because I think that people in general, when
prices get too high, they want somebody to do something about it.
And if somebody's saying, you know, it's because of concentrated corporate power and we're
going to police them and that's going to drive down prices, you're like, good. I mean, again, if we're not talking about price controls,
we're talking about just breaking up like food monopolies. Yeah, that should be happening. I
mean, there is a, I think, what is it? Cheez-Its and Eggos just got bought by, I forget, by like
$33 billion by another major food conglomerate. And what does everybody bitch about? Shrinkflation,
inflation. Oh, the price of my groceries is going up.
I'm like, well, yeah, why do you think?
Do you think they're spending $33 billion
of the goodness of their heart?
No, it's because they wanna roll it up
into a larger company and then increase the price
and monopolize the profit and have economy of scale.
The question is, as a country, considering again,
how much subsidy that we give to all these food producers and others, especially whenever it comes to meat. I mean, these are some of the most
paybead industries in the entire United States. They get so many carve-outs, cutouts, tax benefits,
and other things from the government. Then why shouldn't we be able to say, no, you're not
allowed to merge to each other and poke the consumer? That is different, though, from a
price control, right? And I think that is where the conversation has to go. The overlap comes in when the companies start to understand,
okay, my price is a signal now to Lena Kahn
that I'm a monopoly.
Because there's a couple of different ways
you can raise prices.
And one of the ways is by being a monopoly,
not having any outside competition to jack up prices.
And if a company knows, okay, if I do that,
I'm going to start getting some antitrust scrutiny,
then that factors into their boardroom decisions
when they're like, what should the price of this be?
And when they got one guy arguing,
let's do a 12% bump.
It's like, okay, what do the lawyers think?
Like, can we actually get away with that?
And like, probably not. Let's do 7%. Yeah. Any last thoughts on prices before we should talk about
the CTC stuff? Yeah. Because that actually, that's probably the interesting, most interesting part
where you had JD Vance propose a $5,000 child tax credit. He actually pissed some people on
the write-off with that. And Kamala was like, wait, why not $6,000? And I was like, whoa,
that's kind of interesting. I mean, and then Kamala's copying the tax on tips thing. But I mean,
we could view that at least as a net positive for some change between the two parties. Trump
has not explicitly endorsed the $5,000 tax credit. I think he said he would consider it or whatever.
But at the very least, the running mate has said it, endorsed a $5,000 tax credit.
She has embraced the tax on tips thing.
So has Trump.
So there is now, I mean,
a pretty big change from,
let's say 2012 politics,
where both of these would not have been proposed
by any major party, Emily.
Yeah, I mean, I think you'd have to be a partisan hack
to see this as anything but an improvement
in the political discourse.
And hopefully it translates into policy wins for people who have populist inclinations on these issues.
But to say that's not a good thing where they're trying to outdo each other on policies that are positive for working people.
Like, that's great.
What do you think of that, Ryan?
Yeah.
Agree.
Like, love that it's coming back. It got, it got cut out of the IRA at the end when Joe Manchin was
like, I'm not doing 3.5, I'll do 1.7, figure out what you're going to cut housing and the,
and basically the care economy stuff are, are what got cut. And it plunged millions of people
back into poverty, which is insane.
On the housing front, by the way, I think the housing part is very smart from the Kamala people
is the first major proposal. But if we zoom out a little bit here, isn't the best attack from the
GOP? Hey, why didn't you do any of this? Like while you were the president or while you were
in the administration? I feel like they don't even have to respond necessarily. They can just say
you have been the vice president. You have not proposed any of this. If you wanted some of this,
did you push for it? And what is it? They had hundreds of billions of dollars in the IRA and
zero Republicans voted for it. That's fair. Fair point. And Joe Manchin stripped it out.
CARES Act? Which one was the first Biden? No, the American Rescue Plan.
American Rescue Plan.
That was like a $2 trillion. There was some in there,
but it was the IRA that had the comprehensive
affordable care, affordable housing
legislation. I think, by the way,
that's a fair and accurate attack
and retort. Go ahead. Well, the Republicans
would say it was loaded up with all kinds
of green energy.
They would say economy killing green energy, blah, blah, blah.
Inflationary policies is what they would say, just on a political level.
But this is pretty, I don't know.
I think this is like the central attack that Republicans have on Kamala Harris is, you know, not just chameleon Kamala.
It's really like you were the vice president.
You're telling people you're going to do X, Y and Z. And I don't know how powerful of an attack that is when
Democrats are doing everything in their power, except for on the platform, as we just discussed,
to distance themselves from Joe Biden to the point where he's not even presiding over the DNC
after the first night. I mean, it's not really that powerful when she's saying,
I'm going to step in and be my own person. Yeah. I think on the – well, actually, what's interesting, too, on the housing front, the attack I saw, which I thought was interesting from JD.
I want to get your response to this.
He was like – so what did he say?
He went, Kamala – she said $25,000 down payment for first-time homebuyers.
And the question that he immediately threw out is he's like, oh, Kamala wants to build more houses for illegal immigrants. Now you can say whether that's good or bad.
If you want, they'll be doing the building. Okay. Well, but what I thought was smart is I was like,
wait a second, doesn't that just then force the question? Cause she never said this is going to
go to people on citizenship or not. Right. But it would at least force the question of like,
Hey, wait, does your plan apply to people who are illegal immigrants?
And then you put her in a position where, I mean, if she says yes, you know, that would be bad.
And if she said no, then that would also perhaps spark a backlash on the left.
So I immediately was like, that's kind of a genius attack because she didn't specify.
So now you actually have to ask the question around that and pivot to the immigration line, which is, of course, the best issue right now for the GOP. Genius in that sense, sure. But I'm also
like the GOP is going to want to have a response to that because that goes beyond immigration on
the substance of how to get more people in the first time. I completely agree with you. And that
is an issue that literally all of our viewers care about. I mean, housing is the number one issue,
I think, for our viewers. But not just rental I mean, housing is the number one issue for I think for our viewers. So, but not rent, not just rental,
like this question of being able to access
the American dream by owning property
and land and a home.
And then being able to,
you see this show up in polling
of young people all the time
is like being able to get married
and start a family.
So many people see that contingent
on owning a home.
And that's like,
there's so many different things downstream of the
housing question that people on the right, our friends, have been talking about for a really
long time. How do we get more people to own homes? A lot of people say you just got to build, build,
build. So the answer has to, there has to be a substantive answer as opposed to a rebuttal.
The rebuttal, I think you're right. There's a really smart way to go about it,
but you can't just distract.
You have to also offer a solution.
Right now, the only retort I've had is,
well, if you deport all the illegals,
then the amount of housing supply will go up.
And I was like, well, you know, maybe they're right.
But then who's going to build it, though?
What?
American can build it.
What?
Really?
They don't take any money?
They don't like money?
I mean.
You're proposing a housing subsidy. Why can't it go to them? They don't like money? Huh? I mean. Oh, you're proposing a housing subsidy.
Why?
Why can't it go to them?
I don't see the issue.
Well, first of all, Democrats have sold out on this issue.
There's no chance that they're giving this subsidy to undocumented immigrants.
That's just not happening.
You can rep the undocumented freezing here on the show.
Absolutely not.
Absolutely not happening because you need the documents to file your taxes to get the subsidies.
So it's not happening.
But also, yes,
like more housing is good.
No, I agree.
I actually thought
it was the,
everyone was focusing
on the pricing thing.
Everyone was also focusing
on the CTC.
The housing one
is the one that popped me
just because I know
from when we do segments
here on the show,
it's the number one issue that we cover, which is totally uncovered by mainstream me. Just because I know from when we do segments here on the show, it's the number one issue
that we cover,
which is totally uncovered
by mainstream media.
And it always does
incredibly well.
Because people are like,
yeah, you know what?
It's bullshit.
Me and my husband,
we just got married.
We had enough for a down payment.
Now the interest rates are up
and the prices are still high.
We can't afford it.
And the mortgage payment
is like triple or whatever
what we had budgeted
in our take home pay.
It's impossible.
The more you start to look at that, I'm like, that to me, if they could get some money behind
an ad campaign or anything like that, even just talking about the issue, very, very intelligent.
And to me, I think it was actually, it might be one of the more popular elements of what
she proposed.
And I had not, the only GOP response I'd seen was on immigration.
And we're going to talk about the protests in just a bit, but when you're
struggling, potentially you have this potential challenge in front of you with young voters.
These are the people that are our age, right? Squarely in our demographic, this is their number
one issue, basically. It's student loan debt and it's housing. And when you can come with a $25,000
credit for first-time homebuyers. I think it's really brilliant.
And it's forcing Republicans to explain what they're going to do, which is likely, I mean,
it's like healthcare, right? It's like saying I'm for Medicare for all. And then having Republicans
be like, well, I'm for this patchwork of deregulation. You can't explain it in a way
that is politically viable or politically superior to the average voter because it's a
pretty big solution for a lot of people's problems. And what you hear as a counter is that,
oh, well, this is useless because it will just raise the price of housing by $25,000.
But you have to remember that not every buyer is a first-time home buyer. So economically speaking,
the math should work out that it actually does for houses that are in the first-time home buyer. Economically speaking, the math should work out
that it actually does
for houses that are
in the first-time home buyer range.
It should increase the price
by something,
but not 25.
So some of the subsidy
will be eaten up
by price increase.
Well, subsidies also work
in different ways.
If it's on a tax,
they could apply it
to mortgage interest or whatever.
There's a lot of different ways
you can implement this.
And what does that do to supply?
And it's just hard to know.
Didn't they increase his supply?
They had a home builder credit that was in there as well.
That's what they're saying.
Look, I mean, we'll see.
Again, do I think any of this stuff will actually happen?
Probably not, given the way that-
Quickly on Obamacare, they're talking about,
so during the beginning of the pandemic,
you had that, basically the ACA was completely subsidized.
It took what was a really crappy insurance program to a really great insurance program that also expired when they didn't include it in the IRA.
And now she's talking about bringing that subsidy back.
And it's happening the same time that Trump has been saying on his stump speech
that he's not going to repeal the ACA. You've seen the line. He says, unless we come up with
something better, and by better, I mean better for you, not for the government, so cheaper and
better insurance, by which he means we're not coming up with anything better. So at minimum,
you're going to get the ACA staying in place and you
may even get subsidies. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for
kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often
unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution.
But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld
of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family
that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually
like a horror movie.
In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long.
You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free
on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today.
Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone,
I've learned one thing.
No town is too small for murder.
I'm Katherine Townsend.
I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country
begging for help with unsolved murders.
I was calling about the murder of my husband
at the cold case.
They've never found her.
And it haunts me to this day.
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Let's go ahead and put this one up on the screen.
This is from Trump's Twitter account himself.
It features a photo.
He's back.
Yeah, he's truly back.
Don't threaten me with a good time.
Yeah, I was gonna say.
The red, what is it, the sickle and the hammer
of communism, it says Chicago.
Basically, this aligns very much, Emily,
with the socialist and the communist attack that we've seen increasingly come from the GOP.
So I'm curious what you think of their – what do you think of the decision to go all in with this?
Because this actually came before price control debate.
That's before that – that tweet actually went up before that.
It was then followed up with in some of these press conferences and elsewhere.
So I'm of two minds about this because on the one hand, obviously, it depends on how you talk.
Like you can do a lot of polling on things like Medicare for all and you can find massive public support for it.
You phrase it a little differently.
You can find massive, massive public support against it.
So this socialism as a political football or communism as a political football, it always
depends on the framing because it's not just cut and dry. You know, you call someone a socialist
and it's all over. But Republicans do feel like with suburban women in particular in past elections,
recent election cycles, they've felt that it is really powerful to be able to tie Democrats to
socialism. And Trump is going full communism, threatening
Ryan with a good time over here. But seriously, I think there is as cringe and boomery as
that looked. I actually do think that if they frame it better throughout the next several
months and they're running those ads tying Kamala Harris to communism, socialism in suburban
Philadelphia or suburban Detroit, whatever, they're competing
over fractions here. This is an election of fractions, just like 16 and 20. And it's an
electoral college election. And so if you're playing tug of war over socialism and Republicans
are doing a job that frames it, again, we're just talking about politics. We're not talking
about the substance. But if you're framing it in a way that successfully fear mongers, it can really work. I think those
attacks work. I don't know. I'm curious what Ryan thinks about that, because you get people on the
left to say, you know, we pull Medicare for all. It's super popular. We pull forgiving college debt,
super popular. And then sometimes when those policies trickle into the real world,
Republicans make successful attacks. And student loan debt is a really good, all that. To the extent that it can hurt them, it's only because
it makes people think, oh, wait, somebody's going to have to get taxed to pay for that.
And Trump, he cut my taxes. Democrats, I think they like to raise taxes. But overall, I don't
think the communism thing is going to land at all. I mean, we also, like we mentioned Roe v. Wade earlier, that's still an
overriding issue. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's be clear. We're debating things on the merits,
like where they stand. Like immigration and abortion are the two most important
issues of where we're actually very divided. Economy is like number three. That's within
that framework is kind of where I'm thinking. Now, I'm not saying it's number three for voter priorities. It's just that it's more of a mixed bag. So I was explaining
this today, actually here, the dog walk podcast presented by Barstool Sports, where people should
go subscribe to. And they're like, well, what do you think about this election? They're like,
do you think this could become a class-based election? And I was like, no. And I was like,
and I wish it weren't that way. but where are we the absolute most divided?
Immigration and abortion.
Those are genuinely, in my opinion,
like irreconcilable questions.
Like somebody has to win.
We're either gonna have a ton of illegal immigrants
who continue to come in every year or we're not.
We're either gonna kick them out or we're not.
That is an irreconcilable question
of which we have to decide.
Are we gonna have a border wall or not?
Abortion, are we gonna be pro-choice or are we going to be pro-choice? Like, are we going to
allow Alabama and all these other states to have this? Or are we going to allow Trump to come in
and what is it? RU486, whatever that, the myth of Prestone. Is that legal or is it not legal?
That is an irreconcilable political question. On the economic ones, it's a little bit less, right?
So now we have candidates talking about both kind of endorse the CTC.
Yes, the tax rate and all that.
But a lesson I really internalized, Ryan, from 2022 is that, you know, the economy can be bad.
And look, it was way worse then than it is now.
And people will still just be like, I don't care.
I care way more about abortion.
And whether the tail end of that can continue through today, I actually have no idea what that is.
But I still think that those two cultural issues, the reason that they'll be more determinative is they're just so much more likely to get somebody to come out to vote.
Like if you're a Republican, you hate the immigrate, the border situation, you got to crawl over broken glass.
If you're a Democrat and you are just pissed off, or especially if you're in Arizona or Texas, somewhere like that,
you better come out to vote.
You'd be an idiot, frankly, not to go out to vote.
Because if that's your number one issue, like, yeah, there's a one party.
That's actually the one thing that they actually kind of want to do
and could do if they got into power.
So it just seems so determinative of getting people out to vote.
And I think that's because people have lost faith, for the most part, in our political system to solve economic problems. Yes, that's right. That's very determinative of getting people out to vote. And I think that's because people have lost faith for the most part in our political system
to solve economic problems.
Yes, that's right.
That's very true.
People on the margins believe it.
But in general, the typical voter is like, eh.
So therefore, what can a politician do?
And a politician can, as they've shown, can ban abortion or they can legalize abortion.
They can build a wall.
They can not build a wall.
Democrats are trying to completely capitulate on immigration
to take that away from Republicans as much as they can.
The only thing they can do is they can mess with taxes.
And so if you're super rich or pretty rich
and you don't care about or are against abortion rights,
then the Republican Party is still your party.
That's still your party.
But for the kind of upper middle class and middle class Democrats
who are like, I don't like paying a whole lot of taxes,
but I don't like to admit that among my liberal friends,
and I support abortion rights, so I'm voting for the Democrats.
Yeah, but the Dems also bottom off.
One of the things they did is they're like,
well, it used to be 250.
Now it's 400.
Now it's 400.
That's a lot of money, okay?
$400,000?
I mean, what is that?
That means all but the top 2%.
You're losing like 5% or 2% or something.
Yeah, I mean, that's crazy.
Like 98% of the country doesn't make $400,000.
The question is, has that trickled down culturally
to people who are like, okay, Democrats actually aren't going to raise taxes on me. And
it may have trickled down by now. Well, I'm not sure. I mean, yeah, it's been years now of the
$400,000 number. Go ahead. That Trump post looks like a boomer email, obviously. That's basically
what it looks like. But I don't know, Producer Mac, if it's possible to get A1 back up on the
screen. The Democrats, Republicans did this as well. It's like a typical convention thing, but they put, um, one of their nights is listed for fighting
for our freedoms. That's the theme. Yeah. Wednesday, a fight for our freedom. So you
have Tim Waltz speaking, uh, Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Pete Buttigieg. So that is certainly
going to be, uh, a night where there's a lot of conversation about abortion. And that's clearly, I think it's very
clearly a winning issue for Democrats in places like Michigan, where you're fighting for especially
suburban women. But that's also the same demographic that Republicans think they can
win over with this tug of war over socialism. And so communism might not even be as potent as
socialism because it feels less believable with Kamala
Harris for a lot of people because Kamala Harris has come out now and capitulated on immigration.
She has come out and said, you know, she's going to do, what's another good example? There's
immigration. Fracking. Fracking. Yeah, that's a great example. Another fantastic example.
The thing is with those two is, again, is that if you look at the word clouds that we commissioned at Breaking Point, incompetent is number one. I don't think
that the socialism, communism stuff, I don't think it hits. They call everybody a socialist. They
call everybody a communist. Just like liberals always call Republicans fascists. It's like,
why should I believe you? If Mitt Romney is just as much of a fascist as Trump, you're an idiot.
What are we talking about? And skepticism in government plays into that too
because they might think, well, you know what?
Maybe she is actually personally a socialist.
Her dad was, dad's a Marxist.
They're not going to do anything.
But they can't actually do it.
They're a bunch of liars.
Well, remember, and that didn't work.
And it didn't work on Obama at all.
It did not work on Obama.
And so I think if someone is an outspoken
democratic socialist and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
or an Ilhan Omar,
then Republicans will try to tie Democrats to this
person who is openly says that they espouse democratic socialism. And that I do think works.
Kamala Harris. But even Bernie was like neck and neck and head to heads with Trump,
calling himself a socialist. Right, but it's still fractional, right? You can still get those votes
to turn the election just a tiny little bit in the electoral college. But part of my frustration
here is incompetence is sitting there waiting. I agree. Like the flip-flop. That is all I'm talking about. I agree.
You, like the lady who, you know, how many clips did we play on our, what was it, our Monday show,
Mac, where we talked about immigration, right? And we had clips that juxtaposed her new border ad as
opposed to how she used to talk. I'm like, get out of here, lady. I don't believe a single word
that you say here
on the border.
And actually, if we look and we think about
some of those attacks that score the highest
against Kamala, the border czar attack is number one.
And I think it should be, because I'm like,
lady, you were called the border czar.
Under your administration, there were eight to 10 million
illegal immigrants who entered this country.
Do you stand by that or not?
Is that something that you would change? Yes or no? Now she says yes. Now when she's the presidential candidate, I'm like, okay,
I don't think that makes a lot of sense here. So the incompetent and the flip-flop line just seems
so much more potent to me because that is something that both leftists and people on the
right and even like independents, they can all agree with. That was incompetent was a big one,
even amongst Democrats.
I think it's a more powerful line.
Yeah.
It is powerful, but her opponent is Donald Trump.
Yeah, but nobody cares.
He has been, he has been,
he has been president and competence would not be
the big buzzword that you associate with that four years.
But the Trump, the Trump sort of nostalgia, what are Democrats referring it to?
Trump nostalgia.
Actually, a lot of people would probably read into him,
foreign policy-wise and economic-wise, more competence
because whether it's rose-colored lenses or what,
there are a lot of voters who felt like they were better off economically
and in terms of national security under Donald Trump.
I don't know how popular or
how powerful that is anymore either. Well, I did see that too. I saw, I think it was a Fox News
interview. I was just looking for it now where they asked JD about the plan to whatever, get
prices in control. And he's like, President Trump was already president. He's like, he's already,
you know, he got prices under control then. He'll return everything back to that. And I was like,
well, you know, even if it's not true or not, that's actually quite smart. It's a real thing
Democrats have to deal with. Yeah, it's a real thing that people feel. They're like,
when Trump was president, gas was X, groceries were Y. Now Biden is president and it's not.
I feel like he didn't do anything about that. Now Kamala, who is literally his vice president,
says she wants to do something four years later. Like, do I really credibly think that? I'm not
so sure. I mean, at the same time, this is where the Trump nostalgia
on foreign policy, on an economic policy, that's probably where he's the biggest beneficiary of.
And I mean, if I'm thinking to the Trump attacks, like the attacks that Kamala and them have used
on Trump more recently, it is very much like a roll your eyes and avoid the chaos. And I think
that again, to give them credit, I think that's smart. Instead of
buying into the concern
trolling of like, our children are
watching and can you believe what he said
this time? It's very much
like, okay, whatever, we've seen this movie
before, let's beat him at the ballot box
in November. And to make it like a bigger
thing. Again, I think that is smart
coming from the Democrats right now. Yeah, I think
that's right. And the weird kind of counter fits into that in that because when
you're calling somebody weird, you're not condemning them. You're not even you're not
passing kind of moral judgment necessarily. You're just saying kind of weird, like not
just not my that's that's not how I would do it.
You know,
you Trump,
you do you,
JD Vance,
you do you,
but strikes me as a bit weird.
And it doesn't come off as preachy in the way that set the,
such a terrible tone for the Hillary campaign.
Yeah,
that's true.
The preachiness from the Hillary people was,
I think the single biggest,
but. I do think Democrats though,
are feeling so confident with Kamala Harris that they have slipped into that
a couple of times and it's too early to say
whether it becomes a dominant tone of the campaign.
But Ryan has an example right here, Ryan's new hat.
Rocking my new hat from Emily's List.
Oh, I thought you embroidered that.
I did not.
He hand embroidered himself.
If you can't read it, it says unburdened.
Right, yes. And he's got it on now. There are times where I do think because of that level
of confidence in the honeymoon, which I also think this will extend it. I think you'll see
cracks in the honeymoon start to show up after Labor Day because the sugar high can only last
so long when Kamala Harris is the nominee. It's not to say she's not still a much,
much, much better candidate than Joe Biden and the media is still going to bat for her hard,
but it's just natural. It's the up and down of politics. And so when that happens,
we will see how Democrats react. Do they react by doubling down in a 2016-esque way that goes
into those commercials with the children watching Donald Trump swear. Who knows? Which is just not effective. Well, don't forget about this. The next
presidential debate, the first debate is actually going to take place on September 10th. So that's
only 20 days or so away. So we're going to go through this week of the DNC. You get the sugar
high. Then you get about a week where they're both going to define each other. And then they're both
on a stage. And, you know, we're now actually that's real game on like that's game time. And the real question is, can she withstand the Trump
performance? Like, what does it look like with Donald Trump on the stage with Kamala? Genuinely,
nobody knows because this Kamala, who are you? Like, what do you believe? Are you more confident?
I think she has been actually. She's a lot more confident because she didn't actually have to win
the nomination. I mean, I think honestly, if I were her, a lot more confident because she didn't actually have to win the nomination.
I think honestly, if I were her,
I'd be pretty confident too, right?
If somebody was like, hey, you went from,
like you were number two, you were loyal,
now you're number one, you don't even have to fight for it.
We got you, here's your campaign manager,
here's a couple hundred million.
I'd be like, I only have to do this for a hundred days,
I don't have to leave my house for two years and all this,
I could be president, I mean, that sounds pretty cool, right? I would be flying high. And there's the Sarah Palin playbook
of debate performance was, you know, they said, okay, they did the math. They were like,
we need 22 minutes. Yes, that's right. Of soundbites that are going to get clipped because
it turns out that people don't actually like an incredible rejoinder.
You know, you've got your viral moment right there, but it doesn't need to be that.
It can just be saying something mean about the other person in a clever way, completely
unprompted and not even answering the question.
Right.
So all she has to do is have like, let's say, 45 minutes, if it's a long debate of of canned
prosecutorial arguments that she's going to dish
at trump and then she has to deliver them and we know that she can do that in short form she did
that little bus thing to to joe biden remember that one i was that i was that little girl yep
yeah didn't actually hold make a whole lot of sense um because wasn't, it didn't fit the busting policy, whatever.
It doesn't matter.
It sounded like a good quip and it landed
and it worked for her in that moment.
I've said this too, and this is the biggest problem,
is that Biden gave a once in a century performance
where he actually just melted down,
like immediately in the first 10 minutes.
But most people, the reason that debates
traditionally don't matter is if you are a politician
of any
reasonable talent, surviving for 45 minutes, actually less with commercial breaks, it's not
that far. You can do it. You can do it. Just platitude your way through, whatever. And then
let the K-Hive. He did it in 2020. Are they gone? Trump did that in 2020. It was fine. Biden did
that in 2020. He was fine. I mean, Hillary, like she gave, what is it? The pundits all said Hillary
won all three. Guess what? Trump still won the election, okay?
Because it's not that hard.
It's not that difficult, actually,
to get through a lot of these debates.
I mean, he won all three, to be clear.
Wrong, wrong.
Yeah, my favorite Trump moment is,
yeah, you'd be in jail.
That's all time, top tier, you would be in jail.
That's as good as it gets.
But yeah, in general, I think what we can just say
is the Trump campaign's having difficulty
defining Kamala Harris Harris going into this.
They are trying to do counterprogramming.
It's not really working.
They're going to be all over, you know, press.
But everybody's here.
You know, people are rightfully, I think, covering Biden, covering the DNC, what's going to happen.
And then how they define her in that one to two week period afterwards and then leading into the debate, that's the key stretch.
So I really think, guys,
that the election begins after this week.
That's like the real general election.
Let's see where the,
like she's gonna get her sugar high.
They've got two weeks there right before that debate.
And then the debate is like fully,
that's the sprint all the way till election day.
Yeah, I agree with that.
Yeah, and starting basically head to head
or maybe with Harris behind where she needs to be.
Like if she, cause she needs to be-
Yeah, that's right.
Comfortable.
Further up on Trump.
I mean, yeah, like we said, 47% chance.
I mean, that's high.
Honestly, I would take that bet for Trump.
Like I think that's underestimating Trump
and I still think he's got 51%.
Like 50, it's coin toss,
but if you put a gun to my head,
I still think he would win.
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Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated
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We have some video from Chicago.
This actually happened last night
as all of us were getting in.
So our producer, Mac, is going to go ahead and cue
that up. But there was an event. I think it was at Grant Park. Is that right? Anyway, there was an
event here in Chicago. And the event was like a DNC type thing. And there was a stage where
protesters actually were able to get up on the stage and actually grab the microphone and began shouting to the crowd.
So, Mac, can we cue see they're taking the stage there.
And then our very own Emily, actually here on the ground, had an interview with a protester.
Matt, can we go ahead and cue that up?
And I will toss to it.
But Emily, before we get to that, just tell us about what it was like to walk with some
of those protesters.
Things are kicking off a little bit right now, too.
What did you see when you were there?
Well, obviously, we're at the DNC.
So you guys made me go talk to the protesters.
That's why you're dressed up like a lefty.
Right?
I was dressed like a leftist.
And I was like, this is how I always dress.
Just get beaten down.
No, no, they would love us.
There were people.
Yeah, I met a couple breakers in the wild, which was always fun.
But, you know, I talked to a handful of people who were there at the protest.
It was big but scattered.
So on a couple baseball fields in Union Park here in Chicago.
And one of the questions that I wanted to put to protesters is, are you with Kamala Harris or are you uncommitted? And talked to one woman who
said she was voting for Kamala, but she was kind of nervous to say that, to be honest, and was
like intentionally on the outskirts of the protest. Yeah, right. And I did, though, this was a big
takeaway for me. I talked to a few people who said they would genuinely support voting for Kamala Harris if a ceasefire negotiation is reached, if there's a ceasefire agreement that is reached by the Biden-Harris administration, that that would legitimately perhaps send them out to vote for Kamala Harris. Now, to be fair, this is a crowd of people who are pretty hard left. You know, there's some Antifa type elements in the crowd, mixing in with the crowd.
There's people from the usual Democratic protest groups that go to all of these types of events.
But even so, when a potential ceasefire is what brings in this fractional election,
where there's tug of war over all of these different fractional groups of voters in states like Michigan.
There are people from outside of Chicago here, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania.
When that's what you're doing in this tug of war, young voters in particular, it's possible
that-
Could be a vote, yeah.
And we were just about to talk about that, the ceasefire negotiations.
Let's take a listen then to this video that Emily shot with a protester.
Are you going to support Kamala Harris? Are you uncommitted?
She's not getting my vote unless she can permanently cease fire in Gaza and stop sending weapons to kill innocent children and babies.
So and I talked to a few people who had the exact same perspective, said, you know,
I will legitimately consider voting for the Biden-Harris ticket, or I sound like the Dem
platform, which also we should note began with a land acknowledgement. Oh, did it really?
Importantly. Wow, I didn't know that. Yes. So, but there were a handful of people who said,
you know, even in this hard, this crowd of like genuine leftists who said they would vote for
the Harris ticket if there's a ceasefire agreement. Interesting. Ryan, what do you think?
Right. So the question then becomes, and also, but think, yeah, to your point, this is, these are the
committed folks who, there'll be a bigger rally tomorrow, but 1,000, 2,000 people out there today,
you think? I'd say, yeah. And it's building to Thursday, right? I heard some organizers trying to say 15,000.
I didn't see that.
There definitely was not 15,000.
But these are the hardcore folks.
So if even those folks are like,
you know, I'm open to voting for Harris,
that suggests that there's a real opening there.
And the news out of Doha in these negotiations
is that Netanyahu had been demanding two key things,
IDF control of the
Philadelphia corridor, which is the area in Rafah, the border between Egypt and Gaza.
And then another checkpoint, IDF control of Netzarim corridor, which would divide
North Gaza from South Gaza, which is just utterly insane. They're not agreeing to like turning it into another, into that.
And so he has since, Netanyahu has backed away from the Netsarim corridor in exchange for a small but somewhat regulated IDF presence in the Philadelphia corridor, in that border.
So it's possible that Hamas could agree to that. And since Netanyahu's already presented it,
it's difficult for him to then back out
if they say, you know what, we'll take that.
We'll see.
Like, optimism towards a ceasefire is for suckers.
Like, it's been a fool's game the entire time.
But it does seem like everyone has an incentive
to reach a deal at this point,
especially with Iran saying, we won't retaliate.
Can you just expand a bit, though, on a tweet that you put out today?
You said the whole Israel portion is a huge slap in the face to uncommitted.
Talk to us about that.
By the way, we should have a section in every show dedicated to making Ryan, holding him accountable for his own tweets.
As long as you don't hold me accountable for my tweets.
So
the platform was released today.
You can find it on my
Twitter feed. I have a link to it there.
The
Israel-Palestine part
starts on page 83
and it reads as if APAC wrote it.
Really? Yeah. Interesting.
This part that jumped out at me here,
basically they have a one-sided condemnation
of conflict-related sexual violence aimed only at Hamas,
which is taking, now this, like,
it was done a couple weeks ago, but still,
it's now being published in the context of the Knesset having an open debate
about whether the acknowledged rape of Palestinian detainees is legally okay or not. Not a question
whether it happened but whether it actually is okay and good that it was done. In that context, to only call out Hamas is a huge slap in the face.
But separate from that, it just goes on and says that the Palestinians are the ones who don't care about a two-state solution.
In the context of the Israeli government explicitly, legally, officially, repeatedly saying they do not support a two-state solution.
The DNC platform says it's the Palestinians that are the obstacle to a two-state solution.
So then why is the protest?
And it just bashes Iran for like two pages.
Right. But then what's up with the protesters, right? Because like you just said, Dave Weigel,
who we may be able to get on the show at some point this week, said that the protest organizers
were like, oh, we're going to have 30,000, 40 people. There's nothing close. I've seen it close to 100 reports saying
they're expecting close to 100,000 people. We're all here in Chicago. None of us have
seen any of that. We'll see what we'll see what they do tomorrow. Yeah. Let's see what
happens tomorrow. Cops everywhere. There are cops literally everywhere. This is actually one of the
things I want to bring up. I think, you know, when you go to these types of events, as we all
have in the past and you cover them, you can feel if there's an air of tension. And that's definitely not what I felt
today. The kids in strollers, t-shirts being sold, all of that. I will say though, to the point Ryan's
making about the platform, this is going to be something that speakers have to confront in one
way or the other. It's going to be a question that they're confronted with by delegates in the
hallways, and those videos are going to go viral. It's going to be happening all week.
And I do wonder if building up to Kamala Harris's speech, the tension starts to build as well,
as more and more people are coming for different days of protests. And maybe, Ryan, you even have
some knowledge of what these organizers are doing and planning for. But I get the sense it's
possible that right now there's not a lot of tension.
Tension could build as people interact with cops throughout the week. This city is blanketed with
law enforcement. You guys have all probably noticed that blanketed with law enforcement.
Every street corner, it's like New York in the old days, like it's literally like five cops.
If frustration builds, tension can build. And everyone knows the main address this week is happening on Thursday.
So it's possible to me that some of this accumulates throughout the week.
What do you think, Ryan?
Yeah.
And the handful of people I know are trying to organize a floor protest.
That will be interesting.
We'll be down on the floor for that.
So everyone stay.
One thing just for programming wise, we're doing these before the main events.
And then every day after, we will summarize previous, give our reaction, and also preview a little bit of what's coming.
The reason we're doing it that way is so that we can actually – we have our passes to be on the floor so that we can be there when stuff is going down.
That's when stuff happens.
That's when stuff is happening. Like not only the speeches, but like what you just said. I mean, if we see some floor protests, uncommitted protests and
all that, we'll be able to report what that was like, you know, to be there. And that'll be really
interesting, actually. But we'll see. I think if they pull it off, I think it'd be really small.
And, you know, the uncommitted leadership has, you know, a lot of operatives who are also
Democrats. Like they are. I'm not saying they're
not deeply committed to the cause, but they're also Democrats and they don't want to see Trump
elected. So they're caught between their own personal politics and also, you know, the demands
of a lot of them to say, don't support the Democrats at all. Is it possible we think that,
I mean, this is appropriately cynical that the Biden administration is leaking reports of proximity to a ceasefire this week that are way
more favorable than reality in order to sort of stanch some of this?
But they couldn't get Netanyahu to say. Well, actually, they can.
I don't know. I kind of think they could.
They can absolutely get Netanyahu to do anything they want. They just have refused up until this point.
So it is also possible that the uncommitted pressure is driving the Biden-Harris administration to pressure Netanyahu in a way that they've completely refused to.
But what about even in the battle of public relations where we saw that Barack Ravid scoop last week?
You know, are they trying to frame this as being way closer?
Because when I'm out there talking to these protesters,
that's really on their mind.
If there's a ceasefire, that changes their mind about the ticket itself.
That is really interesting.
That's like some LBJ Vietnam stuff.
Yeah, if Humphrey would have gotten done,
he almost certainly would have won.
If Nixon and Kisdrejn treasonously gone to the Viet Cong.
He's so mad. It's true.
Fake news.
There's no actual evidence.
We're going to have to do 1980 now too.
People looked into it.
I'm just saying.
Okay, guys, I think, Mac, do we have anything else
we're supposed to talk about?
Oh, Cornel West showed up, you know, by the way.
Oh, Cornel West, that's right.
We were supposed to put that up there.
He made it.
Which, you know what, can I just say,
yeah, so this is the picture.
Yeah, Abandon Harris.
Wow, I like it.
So this is really interesting to me because we could have had a be having a very know, above 10% support, which what
we're looking at now with RFK Jr. post Biden dropping from the ticket, it's going down,
I think in 538, he's around like 5.5, 5%. So it just, this could have been a dramatically
different convention along the sort of 1968 lines had someone like Cornell West really,
really got a campaign off the ground. This is barely on ballots.
I'm disappointed for us because the whole reason that we decided, you know,
budget wise, we're like, well, we can only pick one.
Which one do we go to?
We go to the DNC because Biden is old.
He's fading.
You know, we're going to have crazy protests.
Forcing me to go to both.
Yeah.
Well, you get, yeah, you decided on your own.
My marriage also got in the way because of,
I was literally getting married the week of the RNC.
So it made it a little bit easier.
But I mean, a lot of the chaos, it hasn't materialized yet.
Now I could be totally wrong, like you said.
Things could build, things could happen,
but the stage is not currently set,
at least I think, for 1968.
Now watch, tomorrow will be the craziest day ever.
After I say it.
We're like Trump, we want a refund.
Yeah, I want a refund.
I wanna talk to the manager.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I was promised complete insanity,
and I have not run into it yet,
even though we've had the worst logistics of all time.
We deserve a refund.
I'm going to keep calling them out for that
because I'm still pissed.
Where's my refund?
But, you know, the RNC, remember,
they close the credentials at like 6.30 p.m.
Anyway, it's always something like that.
I guess it's always just baked in.
Okay, everybody, thank you so much for bearing with us.
Reminder, we've got that premium subscriber promo right now.
One month free trial.
What is it?
DNCfree, all caps, breakingpoints.com.
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Support our work and you will also be able to participate.
Tomorrow during our live stream,
you'll be able to ask us questions and all that.
Crystal will be here in Chicago on Wednesday.
We're gonna give some exclusive benefits, being able to ask questions, getting all that. Crystal will be here in Chicago on Wednesday. We're going to give some exclusive benefits,
being able to ask questions,
getting the stuff early as well.
So don't worry about that.
Otherwise, we've got to head over
to the United Center
to go to the actual convention floor.
So we'll see you all tomorrow.
We'll recap President Biden's speech
and give you all of our reaction,
as well as preview what Obama, Clinton,
and Kama all have to say.
We'll see you later.
We will be unburdened by what has been.
You look like Taibbi in the hat.
I can't tell.
You do look a little bit Taibbi, yes.
That's true.
Okay.
We'll see you guys later.
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