Chapo Trap House - 410 - Memento Bernie (4/13/20)

Episode Date: April 14, 2020

Bye bye, Bernie. Links to things we mentioned in here:Jacobin's panel discussion "Bernie, South Carolina & Black Voters": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwnb0xParBM&feature=youtu.be @criticalbitcast/ https://www.twitch.tv/criticalbitcast to check out our guest spots on their TTRPG show and their charity stream this week. twitch.tv/chapotraphouse to join in on Episode 1's charity stream this Saturday And as always, shop.chapotraphouse.com & youtube.com/chapotraphouse

Hello, it's your choppo from A.I. A gray and rainy day here in New York, which is appropriate. This is the fun episode. This is the episode where we all feel good about everything and our lives and the world. You know, coming to you on Monday recording this the day after or the day of Bernie Sanders' announcement that he has capitulated entirely to the council of dads and will be basically serving them in their upcoming campaign to grill. So what happened was Bernie and Joe were having sex because they're both on the verge of death and Bernie actually got Joe pregnant. So now Bernie has to endorse him. This is the same as the council of dads. But after they both die, that kid will be raised by a council

that represents inroads between the Sanders campaign and the DNC. So it's going to be raised by Nira Tandon, but also Faiz Shakur. There's going to be a lot of hijinks. There's going to be a lot of fun. There's going to be a lot of tears both out of happiness and sadness. And I'm excited for this. Well, so I guess we should just begin by, you know, we've taken a while to record this episode because basically, I mean, let's be honest, a lot of this stuff we've been saying for weeks now. So there's not a whole lot new to say, but, you know, the times do demand it of us. So let's just begin by like, where are all you guys at now that the Sanders campaign has officially, you know, been suspended. It's over. The dream is dead. And now Sanders has endorsed

Biden, which I got to say is something that we, I mean, speaking for myself, I mean, we all knew this was coming, right? Oh yeah. It's hard to say, like, I'm too disappointed. I mean, I simply do not love to see it, but I can't say I feel like completely like betrayed or surprised by any of it. It's awful and it sucks, but it's like, I'm sorry, if we didn't want this to happen, he needed to win, you know, like, this is what losing looks like. It sucks. Yeah. This is what losing is. Yeah. That's what it is. They make you eat dirt. I think, I mean, again, this was always the most likely outcome of the situation. I think Bernie ran a really strong campaign that galvanized a lot of people. I also think that at some point it does make sense to look at, you know, what things

could have been done differently, but ultimately he ran a very good campaign and no campaign will ever be run perfectly. And if you think that, you know, if you think that, like, oh, it's just a matter of running the most perfect campaign possible, look at what we just found out about UK politics right now. I don't know. Where am I at right now? I mean, my apartment is where I'm at. Okay. And I've been in my apartment for a while and that's stressful. But yeah, I mean, like, they were, to some degree, never going to let them have it. It was still, as I said, many times this was still worth a shot, if anything, to expose like the limits. Also, you know, there was like a little Hail Mary we almost pulled there. And I'm just really happy that I'll get to vote for Donald

Trump again. Also, I would say on the question of voting, everyone keeps asking me like, who are you? Are you voting? I'm like, you know what, it kind of doesn't matter. Like voting is like the most minute political form of political participation you can have. I'm still voting for Bernie Sanders. You go with God, do what you feel you have to do. I'm still voting for Bernie Sanders. I would I would definitely like to echo Amber's sentiments on this because this seems to be the one that, you know, everyone is bugging me about and by everyone I mean my parents. And so like, you know, voting Joe Biden in the general election, look, I'm going to vote for Bernie Sanders in the New York primary in June. And that's it. That's my vote this election. That's what I

care about. That's what I'm going to do. I live in New York. I did not vote in the 2016 election. And I am probably not going to vote in this one. If you are a listener of the show or someone's sympathetic to it or just anyone, if you want to vote for Biden in the general election in the fall, like that is up to your own personal moral calculus. And it's not one, it's not something that I'm going to fucking like browbeat and hector you over. Well, it doesn't matter. It doesn't fucking matter. Yeah, like fetishizing fetishize like that is the real delusion of this thing is like fetishizing this ultimately insignificant act and building your political it's like moral identity around it. Yeah, basically, I am not going to morally judge you for whatever name

you're wailing upon the moors. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Well, I'm going to say the same thing that I've said when asked about this. It's out of my hands now. It's out of many of our hands now. Most of the people fucking arguing about this one way or the other. They're the same 200,000 fucking people that argue about everything with each other on Twitter. Most of them live in New York or California. So this is just completely for their own edification. And beyond that, I don't just mean what happens next is out of our hands with the election. I mean, with everything. I mean that if Joe Biden wins, whether he is cartoonishly weak and gives way to Tom Cotton or, you know, the empire carpet guy's son, whether he's let some people think that there will be just some

left that can push Joe Biden along for eight years in a wheelchair. Right. And make him the most progressive candidate ever. The fact is where we're going, I don't know. Where are we going? People can't afford to have fucking kids anymore. There's going to be no more tax base. Social security will be insolvent. There won't be enough bodies to throw into the American Empire sausage grinder. There will be a loss of legitimacy of the federal government. I don't know when, maybe in 30 years, maybe in 10 years. We are heading towards the collapse of this empire. We're heading towards a new thing. I don't know what it is. I don't know what it will be. I, yeah, I mean, that is out of my hands. What happens? Zach is completely out of my fucking hands.

What if that's good? Yeah. Yeah. I love the, the acceleration is now sort of like that we're hoping for some sort of like major disaster and collapse. And it's like, yeah, it's great, isn't it? Aren't you happy? Aren't things really looking up now? Yeah, this rocks, you fucking idiot. Isn't this an opportunity? Yeah. So I mean, I mean, if I was going to give like an optimistic vision of what something good would look like, it would require like a decade of organizing poor communities. The thing that the Sanders campaign needed to overwhelm the new Democratic party of suburbanites, then you could have a mass movement of tens, if not hundreds of millions. And then, you know, maybe it would give someone like J.B. Pritzker, Baby Dino the courage to be

the Medicare for all candidate. I don't know. But as it stands now, the thing I'm optimistic about is the spainification of America and moving back to the Midwest autonomous region, the Great Lakes Autonomous Region specifically. But anyone pressuring me or moralizing to me, none of this matters. It's out of my hands. I'm going to play Counter-Strike with my friends. You could suck my dick from the back of my legs. I actually, again, this is like a weird silver lining, but Basker Sankara said something that kind of like made me smile a little bit. But it's like, he's like, I was looking forward to, or well, maybe not looking forward, but, you know, fantasizing about feeling betrayed by a president's Sanders. Like, you know, being like, wouldn't it be so great if

we had someone who didn't meet our standards and that, but that we respected and believed in enough to hold to standards. And he's like, and now that like his campaign has been not canceled, was suspended or whatever, it's effectively over. Like now he gets to be like immortalized as this saint like perfect creature. And it's like, Bernie died for our sins. They basically threatened to just, you know, throw boomers into a, you know, fucking typhoid colony for COVID to make them vote. He was too good a person to keep going with that. I mean, I don't know, it's really weird. Like, he came out of this, like to anyone who I think is like feels like betrayed by Sanders to like grow up. Yeah. Yeah. Grow up. He was, he was, he was too good for us. Like fuck off. I mean,

not even that. If you feel betrayed by him, you weren't paying attention the entire time. What happened in 2016? Yeah. This is what, this is what losing looks like. And I mean, at this point, it's not like Bernie's going to run again. I mean, God love him. But like his, his role and whatever the hell this is, is over. Realistically, 80 year old guy, I mean, you know, no likely, basically no chance of running ever again. I mean, whatever is going to happen is not going to be under his rubric. But I don't, he did his thing and I don't understand what people sort of like want, like one guy to do. Like what more could like one guy, one like, you know, Cold War social Democrat, what more could you expect of this like old man who has held the line,

his entire career being marginalized and like, they weren't going to let him win. And in not letting him win, they were also going to just like spread a disease in order to like keep him running. I want to get into the, the, the circuit, the very, uh, let's say novel circumstances surrounding his, his exit from this race to say, my friend, uh, before then, I mean, I just like to say like, like for me personally, like overall, uh, there, like there is no optimistic scenario, at least in the short term of the next like five, 10, 20 years. Like, I mean, we are in the dark times now, the bad guys won. And like, I don't have anything to say that's really going to, uh, you know, like a buck up your morale or spirits, the Sanders campaign, they tried as hard as they

could. And it feels uniquely awful because the reality is they got, we got incredibly close, like closer than anyone has ever gotten before. Way closer than our enemies wanted us to certainly. And, but, you know, ultimately that, I mean, you can, you can take some cold comfort in that, but it didn't work. It didn't work. It, whatever the, his campaign tried to do, it didn't do enough of it to overcome the obstacles that were thrown in his way, or it didn't do enough to anticipate just how hostile, uh, the Democratic party would be to him achieving success within it. That being said, everything that I did and we did on this show, uh, as a part of this campaign to work for Sanders, to support his candidacy and this movement, uh, I will never ever feel

even an ounce of regret, shame or embarrassment about it is something I'll be proud of till the day I die. Absolutely. I sleep fine at night. These people fucking, I hope they wake up in a cold sweat for the rest of their lives, but ultimately it, it didn't work. And it's going to be probably a very, very long time before there is anything like it again at that level in America. I mean, I hope that's not the case, but I got to say, I, I, I really have a hard time seeing a lot of these, a lot of the sort of bright-eyed, you know, commentary about how like, you know, the Sanders movement will, will live on without him. I think he's done, I think he's done an amazing job of like pushing the ball as far as it could possibly go in terms of raising

particularly young people's expectations about what they should demand as just like a very basic, basic like matter of course from any candidate seeking to represent them. But without a leader that can like be at a national stage and mobilize millions of people, uh, there, I'm just like it's, we are left totally rudderless at this point. And there are issues like Medicare for All that are still there and can be organized around and still should be fought for and, and, and worked on and, you know, but like all this idea that like, oh, we have to keep pressuring the Democratic Party. It's just like, well, they've just shown you who they are and what they represent. And if the answer is like, okay, well, we need to build a third party starting now. Okay. It's a start, but like,

you're still talking like 10, 20, I mean, I just, I don't, it's just like, it's, uh, I, I, like, I don't know what the answer is right now. Nobody knows what's upcoming next or what anyone should do next. And like anyone really confidently selling you one way or the other is just sort of like pitching something. They're just sort of selling you. Yeah. I mean, I'm basically going back to what I was doing, like, or what I was into pre Bernie, which is, let's just labor stuff, labor campaign for single payer. The teamsters elections are coming up and I'm really sort of intrigued by those. But like, I think that when there is a failure or let's say a defeat, because failure implies there was something you could have done

to avoid it. And we don't really have any reason to believe that's the case. There are like two tendencies that people tend to resort to. And like one is like despair, like obviously where people, it's not even so much that they usually drop out of politics completely. What they usually do is something like retreat into smaller things and become sort of like church lady activists and do like food not bombs and kind of anarcho stuff or really, really low stakes local electoral politics, but it's still a retreat. And it's still kind of a narrowing of the vision of what people can do. The other thing that people do, and I find this much more obnoxious and I remember it after Wisconsin, I remember it very much after Occupy is that they develop an insane

delusion that they didn't in fact win. They have this weird triumphalist revisionism of what happened. And I think because like accepting that they were defeated is so painful that they just like can't come to grips with it. So they're like, actually, what Bernie did was bigger than Bernie and he laid the groundwork for a future. And it's like, no, there's maybe some, as I said before, there's maybe some copper wiring, we can strip from the Bernie movement on our way out. But mostly we're starting from scratch again. And that's just kind of how it is. Speaking of the copper wiring issue, there is the question of the Bernie campaign infrastructure, which still exists, still has money, still has most importantly, a huge email list and

text list and all that stuff. And there was an article of Jack in last week suggesting that that infrastructure be like maintained and used for issues and down ballot races or whatever. And I mean, I feel like that's certainly the biggest, whatever, that network is certainly the biggest left wing infrastructure grouping within the United States right now. And it would be a shame if it went to totally just goes dismantled without, you know, being used in some way. I don't think it'll be dismantled. I think it'll go to, I think the entire post Bernie vision will be sort of hollowed out and it will become another kind of slowly rightward drifting, you know, a Democratic Party appendage. I guess it depends on how and who is responsible for,

you know, taking it over from that. I mean, it's not a, I don't think you can assume anything as a fay at a complete at this point. Well, I want to talk a little bit about like Amber mentioned it, but like the circumstances that led to him suspending his campaign. So like we've been talking for weeks now, like under quarantine about how these states have decided, you know, against the wishes in many cases of governors and mayors of major metropolitan areas to continue this Democratic primary under plague conditions. And like we know for certain that like in Michigan and Florida, the decision to hold those primaries absolutely spiked the curve in those states and almost certainly led to actual deaths, right? And like that this was what the Democratic Party was

willing to do to, you know, make sure Biden gets across the line. And sure enough, in all of those states, pretty much like after this happened, Biden, you know, crushed them because young people stayed home and old people went out to vote, sort of a, you know, a slightly more intense version of what had been happening all along. But I just want to use one example here of New York state, which is a, you know, huge state with a lot of delegates, of which the polls had Bernie pretty close to Biden. The day Sanders suspended his campaign, our governor, Andrew Cuomo, announced that, oh, by the way, every New Yorker will have a mail-in ballot available to them if they wanted to vote in the new date of the primary in June.

The day Sanders suspended his campaign and, you know, here to for they had just said, we're going forward with the primary and like we don't need mail-in ballots or they're susceptible to fraud, blah, blah, blah. And I think it's not an exaggeration at all to say that the way they've managed this primary process after this pandemic has hit was basically like a national hostage situation in which they did help hold the idea of sending people out into crowded gyms and libraries and fucking polling locations all over the country, you know, under a plague as a basically incentive for Bernie to drop out. And I think ultimately that's one of the reasons he did is that he couldn't bear the thought of letting this continue if he could stop it by himself. 100%. I mean, like,

it was blackmail. They took hostages. That's how invested in getting a Joe Biden ticket they are. I would respect that kind of ruthlessness if it was for anything of any substance or principle. If it was in any way like politically ambitious, I would almost like kind of like revere that kind of like cold-blooded, steely-eyed dedication, just that ruthlessness. But they're doing this for Joe Biden. It is insane. Sometimes you got to sometimes you got to lay out the red carpet for all of Max and Jack's. It's so funny. It's so funny to go through all this just for this fucking imbecile. Just for this doddery piece of shit. They kill people. They kill people. They kill people for a guy for a guy who just sees like any like they're showing in pictures

of Kamala and he's like, yeah, that's my daughter, Mac. That's either dude. That's who they did it for. They did it for. People fucking died for this dumb shit. That owed. Let's go. One thing I'll say that I think I was wrong about recently is I was very confident a couple weeks ago that they were going to swap out Biden for Andrew Cuomo at the convention because they were like, oh, come on. Joe's just not all there and Cuomo's the new hotness. He's the portrait of like Democratic leadership and crisis that we need right now. Now, I think I was totally wrong about that because they can't do that with Cuomo when he's presiding over the single worst coronavirus outbreak in the entire world right now. New York, New York, New York.

A thousand people have already died and that's what we know of. New York is like when the Mongols threw corpses over the walls of Kiev right now. Yeah, put that fucking dumb shit in there. Let's go. So I mean, the fact the matter is that it is going to be Biden and, you know, this is what they did to make that happen. Now, I want to get into like some of the, I guess, like some of the what ifs or like the scenarios about like, you know, the Sanders campaign and like what went wrong or what could have happened. And I'm borrowing this from the YouTuber, secular talk, Kyle. Sorry, I'm going to butcher his last name. Anyway, he did a video on this. Yeah, I thought he was talking sense about this. And, you know, we've talked about it before, but basically there are

three categories of opinion when it comes to analyzing, like doing a kind of post-mortem on the Sanders campaign about like what he could have done differently or sort of critiques, if you will. And they break it around like this. And you've probably heard them before on this show. One, he should have been a lot more aggressive with his opponents in the Democratic Party. Two, he should have been a lot nicer and more conciliatory with his opponents, the Democratic Party and the average Democratic voter. And three, none of it matters because it was totally rigged against him from the beginning. And there's literally nothing he could have done differently that would have changed the result. That it was like it was a it was a completely rigged game

from the beginning. And under no circumstances whatsoever, could he have done anything that would have resulted in this. I'm not sure that those are mutually exclusive categories though. I know, exactly. And I think I think if you look at all three of them, there's varying levels of truth in all of them, surprisingly, even even that he could have been nicer one, which is the easiest one to dismiss outright, because it's the weakest in my opinion. But I mean, the idea that like, I think personally, he could have been a lot more aggressive to Joe Biden and, you know, the people against him, right? I mean, he could have talked about what they were, what we all have talked, know that they did to him and are doing him. He could have called Joe Biden a liar

for all the times that Joe Biden lied to his face on stage with him at debate after debate or in many public statements. He could have said, when asked, I don't think Joe Biden can defeat Donald Trump, only I can. Like, you know, these are these are, I guess, like, maybe you could say they're like nitpicky or whatever. But you could also say maybe he oversold how much of an insurgent he was to the average Democratic voter who I guess now we have figured out really doesn't like that or is turned off by that. And then the primary voter, yeah, the third one that it was like all rigged from the beginning, kind of hard to argue against that. But you that's like leaving aside the idea that like, but for a few things, like Sanders like would be leading right now. Like,

if it were not for the Bloody Monday situation, if we lived in a democracy and we weren't under under a plague, yes. And, you know, like, we look for look, we know for sure Iowa was just a straight up fraud. That was like textbook, like actual like election theft. Whether you can say that like everything that came after that is was also like the discrepancies and exit polls or whatever. Like there's, and again, you know, credit to secular talk, we talked about this, like there's just not enough evidence there to say one way or the other. You can have your suspicions, but it's like you can't really state confidently and not appear like a total crank one way or the other. Right. But again, like I don't think we should lose sight of the fact

is this question like why didn't the Sanders campaign work? I mean, you can also ask how come it worked as well as it did. Right. How come like how did it actually achieve so much and how come they did make the entire party take literally unprecedented steps to stop him from being the nominee? Because head Buttigieg and Klobuchar not dropped out. Sanders would be clearly have the plurality of the delegates. Right. And they would be talking, we would be talking about how they would steal it from him at the convention and not just, you know, that it's Joe Biden outright. Nope. Like without any questions. I think that's a good point. And I don't think that I think when you bring that up, people are like, well, it doesn't really matter how close you got

because you have to like, you know, the only winning is winning. And I definitely agree with that. But that's not what we're saying. I think at least what I'm saying and what I think you're saying is like, well, we found some very exploitable weaknesses in the Democratic Party. And Bernie wasn't supposed to get that far, which means that they, well, we're not going to, I don't, I think at this point, we're not going to take the party. I think that's, I think that's fine. I mean, I, that's what I believe. But I also think that this was worth trying. And it was worth a shot, even if it was a Hail Mary, because it was the biggest little window of opportunity we'd had in our lifetime. And even if it was rigged from the beginning, it's helpful to at least illustrate

to everyone what the limits of the utility of the Democratic Party can be, which this laid all, laid all of that out very bare. But like, looking at how hard they had to fight against Bernie is actually kind of interesting. And I think that's something like moving forward, you know, whatever direction kind of like, you know, the post Sanders, you know, socialists take it work, it's worth looking at the Democratic Party as adversaries and analyzing the kind of tactics they had to undertake to fight Bernie and how sometimes they weren't nearly as successful as they thought they would be. They didn't expect them to get that far. So, you know, they're not a, they're not an impenetrable like fortress. But also, ultimately, though, the Sanders campaign's

vision of how they would win and like their model of like political mobilization and change, it got very far, but it didn't go far enough. People ultimately did not turn out in the numbers that they needed to ultimately win. Young people didn't turn out enough and he not enough people who had dropped out of the political process and didn't vote turned out enough or even really at all. So, I mean, what do we make of that? I mean, I think that that's again, like a separate conversation about like, I think it was always a super, super, super long shot. And it was always very much rigged against him, despite the fact that it was still worth doing because hey, who knows. But it is worth it, I think, to discuss maybe what organizing techniques worked and what organizing

techniques didn't, which I think is sort of like a topic of conversation now. Because even if you, even if it's still a long shot, even if it does nothing to improve your actual ability to win an election, you still want to get as many votes as you can, if anything to sort of heighten the contradictions and to show like what mass support for this person adds up to and what that means to the Democratic Party was just apparently just bull and shit. I think what would Bernie have had to do to win is a separate, because I think maybe nothing, is a separate question from what could the campaign have done better to get more people voting for Bernie? Because one does not necessarily result in the other, as we know. Yeah. But will I have a really good seg for you? Okay, seg, seg me.

Okay, so there's a lot of speculation going on about what could have been done better and if that would have resulted in a Bernie win. I don't think at this point it would have. I think it's pretty clear. But we joked about this a lot on the show. And Matt in particular, like really emphasized this point. But I think we can't underestimate how little the Democrats cared about actually winning the election. And I think that if they had allowed Bernie, or somehow he had been able to even win the nomination, we were always like, well, Bernie beats Trump. And that's true. That was the candidate that if we lived in democracy would be the best candidate to beat Trump. But I think even if they had let him get that far, they would have thrown the

fucking election. They would rather Bernie lose. And we know that. We know that they're like that. We know that they're willing to do that. And all you have to do is look at what, you know, the Labour Party did to Corbyn. These people would rather lose. So yeah, let's talk about that because this is a bit of actual news and not something that we've basically talked about for the last couple of weeks. But yeah, like so this is fun because it is, I always like it when conspiracies or conspiracy theories become matters of public record and objective fact. And I don't know if you've been following this listener, but there's this huge cast of like WhatsApp messages and emails from the Labour Party that were just released that lay

out basically as far back as 2017. The right of the Labour Party, including party officials, tried as hard as possible to throw the election to Theresa May in 2017. And had they not done that, there was a good chance Jeremy Corbyn would have been the prime minister in that election and then worked to stab him in the back like up until this most recent election. I mean, and this includes things like misallocation of resources to very safe Labour districts and away from competitive ones, shutting momentum out of key decisions and then just like also just like sniping behind people's backs. But like stating explicitly that they were there to make sure the Tories won and that Corbyn was defeated. And then a big centerpiece of that campaign,

of course, was the Labour's anti-Semitism problem where if you followed UK politics, that was basically all you read about for two years. And we now know that like, for example, in 2019, half of all of the interparty claims about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party were filed by one guy. Maybe he experienced a lot of anti-Semitism. Maybe it was just like, you know, he was just like the epicenter. He was a human shield of anti-Semitism. What a brave man. No, but like, you know, there are certain schlamazels that just like attract, you know, hatred and loathing. He's just the most unlucky guy. Yeah. Oh, God, it's happening to me again. We were always obviously like interested in Corbyn as a test case for like, you know, someone who,

you know, was successful in a kind of try or at least initially successful or like God as far as anyone could get. Attempting to take over a like sort of neoliberal center left, I guess if you want to call it party, with a popular dedicated democratic movement. It was like his own infrastructure, his own voters that were outside of, you know, the Labour Party corral. And, you know, as we see in these documents, there's a very good chance he came very close to winning that election in 2017 and was intentionally knee-capped by his own party, preventing him winning that election, and then who worked for the next two and a half, three years to stab him in the back at every single opportunity. Yeah, the same, the same, the same people that made him fucking throw 2019

with the fucking olive branch through Ramoners. They would have done the same fucking thing to Bernie. Yeah, absolutely. Because they would, fundamentally, they would rather have Theresa May, the Labour Party would rather have Theresa May than a Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn. They would rather have Boris Johnson than a Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn. The Democratic Party would rather President Donald Trump than a Democratic Party with Bernie Sanders as head of state. That's what they want. Yeah, and you know what the Ramoners got for their troubles? They got hard brags it and they lost. Brexit anyway, good job. With Corbyn, you would have had a fucking negotiator in there, almost like how the American Empire is collapsing

no matter who's president, no matter what's happening. With Bernie, you would have had a negotiator. Maybe we, maybe people could have kids, maybe we could have a country with dignity. They didn't look like fucking shit that wasn't falling apart at the fucking seams, but you're going to get that anyway and you're still probably going to lose. Good work. And you know, like the thing is like, obviously the idea that Jeremy Corbyn was like a vicious anti-Semite is absurd on its face. All of you, like, you know, if you ever tried to like suss out what these actual claims were, they basically were just being like mildly critical of Israel. It was people, yeah, it was people who have 100, it was people who have 100 fucking pictures of them

with Likud politicians saying that Corbyn is a Nazi because he happened to be at the same conference with someone they didn't like. It's the same fucking thing. And anyone, anyone you fucking listened to, anyone you heard who was talking about how, you know, I'm on the left, but Corbyn makes me uneasy. This is your permission to never fucking listen to that person again, never fucking listen to that person, never, ever in your fucking life. That's someone who at best, at fucking best, all they cared about was people feeling sorry for them. Yeah. That was their main thing. And at worst they were anti-Semiteurs. Yes, you never have to fucking hear their fucking voices ever again in your life. Everyone who even gave a moment's credence to that idea is something worse

than a sucker. And many of them are like quite considerably worse than that. I talked about that when I wrote the it's Bernie bitch thing where it was like because you saw it happening and it's this weird form of social control. The same thing happened, you know, here with like the Bernie bros or like Bernie's not good on race. And you would have one person who definitely did not believe that at all was a pure cynic, total bad actor. And they would say, yeah, well, Bernie's not good on race or the Bernie bros are a problem or, you know, Bernie, you know, you know, isn't nice to girls or something. And you would have then like Clockwork, a bunch of other concern trolls sort of do the same thing that didn't believe it. And then there would be

people who were like, oh, well, I didn't think so, but they were just totally, there were total groups and marks. And so they would believe it. And then you would have these other people who knew that the bad actors didn't believe it, but they had to pretend like they were willing to take it seriously so that these other people, these rubes and marks that do believe it. It's just this gigantic fucking moral blackmail because no one has the balls or the skepticism to just stand up and be like, no, I think that's complete bullshit. I don't give a shit what you say. I think you're a liar. No, I don't believe that that's a problem. And you know what else? I don't believe that you believe that that's a problem. No, Amber is completely right.

Right. These people, their goal for the past five years has been to look at anyone who looks at the state of the UK, the US, anywhere and sees the lack of human dignity, the fucking pain of people's lives, how shitty and hopeless everything is to look at those people who noticed that and raise an issue about that and make them apologize for it. That's what it's always been about. Well, it's even worse than that though, because it's not like they just gin up some anti-semitism issue within the labor party. What the real bombshell of the report is that the people in charge of going through and doing the disciplinary procedure for anti-semitism complaints were intentionally botching it to make Corbin look bad. They were literally, they were saying,

they were saying, oh my God, Corbin's not doing anything about anti-semitism in the labor party. And the reason he quote unquote wasn't doing anything about these claims, sure half of them were made up, but even the ones that were real or whatever the fuck, were being handled by people who were bot, who were dragging their feet on purpose. It was completely manufactured. And also speaking of, you know, bigotry, a lot of the messages and emails sent to Miss Cache were these same labor politicians being incredibly bigoted about Muslim candidates, about Diane Abbott. I mean, like these people, they do not care about, you know, prejudice or like, you know, decency or being, you know, against bigotry of any kind.

And like here's the other thing, like Corbin and Sanders, like two transparently decent men who were made into monsters by people like Boris Johnson and Hillary Clinton. Who do you think is more personally anti-semitic, Jeremy Corbin or Boris Johnson? If you can seriously answer that question. Think about in the future. This is the thing I like to think about when I realize like how absurd the political moment is, is that I just have to remember that it's fine because one day I'll be dead. But I think about the future and I think about like, how will they explain Jeremy Corbin's loss in a rapidly declining country that, you know, supported his policies? How will they explain how they smeared him to people and like kids in history classes?

And they're going to have to say, well, okay, there was this thing called Brexit and then everyone's eyes will glaze over. And they're like, but then there was also this like very distracting cultural issue where they said he was an anti-semitic. And obviously this classroom full of children are going to have to be like, wait, why? And the teacher won't be able to answer it without getting into like advanced group psychology because it's so fucking insane. Because the cynicism and the moral insecurity and the gullibility of fucking British and American Liberals forms this deranged kind of like, I hate saying group think because it's like overused, but it forms this deranged kind of like social environment where you can just say something

that's completely untrue about someone. And even the people who don't believe it feel compelled to pretend like the people who are saying they believe it, like are somehow valid. And it's like, okay, I hear what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. I think this is again, if you want to talk about also that hypothetical classroom, it will be taught by the neo golden horde, the conate that the UK will gracefully be under. God willing, the end of England, the golden horde finally decapitates the EU in the year 2050. Insha Allah, my stomach doesn't kill me. I'm able to see you. But like, to this point about like, why, like otherwise, well-meaning people play along with this or like even not well-meaning people. I mean, this gets into the other big sort of X factor

in all of this, which is the role of the media. And you know, if you look at like the fact that like the Guardian probably had no fewer than 10,000 articles bemoaning what an evil bad man Jeremy Corbyn is, I think for the average person, even though if they like, they in their, in their, in their minds is like, well, he never seemed like a bigoted hateful person to me or like, I don't really understand what's anti-semitic about this. If you see that narrative, if you just people say it enough times, I think people just conclude, well, like, well, there's obviously like something to it. I don't think that's it at all. I don't think that's it at all. I don't think that's it at all. I think people like, especially in the UK where they have even less

trust for the media than they do in the US, I don't think the media makes people believe things. I think people are actually a little more savvy about their media consumption than we give them credit for. I think what they see is a media that was against Jeremy Corbyn, that was against Bernie Sanders, and they don't believe it, but they think, well, fix is in. The entire establishment is against him. Like they're going to do him dirty. And what the media is capable of doing is not necessarily spreading lies. I mean, that happens sometimes, but it's usually not that effective. What they're more capable of doing is spreading sort of insecurity and shaking your faith and making you narrowing your window of political possibility. Like

there's, I just don't think that there are that many people that believe that Jeremy Corbyn was a fucking anti-Semite. And I think even the people who said, well, labor is anti-Semitism problem. Most of them didn't believe it either. They just felt like they had to placate these other people and play this game. I don't think, I mean, whatever, there's certain situations that are so influential to us and to people our age about media lies that kind of made us over estimate the media's power, specifically the Iraq war. That is a specific situation where people relied to, they believed it, and we went forward with one of the greatest atrocities in modern history. But this shit, this shit is about shaking your confidence. This shit is about

making you believe that he can't win because there's too many people against him. When really, it's like, it's the man behind the curtain. It's a fucking, it's like 20 people with blue check marks. But then it worked though, that they did influence people. They do have the ability to manufacture. They do have the ability to influence people. I'm not saying they don't. I'm saying they don't have the ability to make people believe lies the way they believe they do. What's the practical difference when the end result is the same? Nobody will vote for a left candidate because they think that the fix is in or they think he's unelectable. What difference does it make what you've done to the inside of the people? I think the practical difference is

that you actually do have people on your side. It's not going to vote for you. What difference does it make? Because it's the difference between getting a vote by instilling confidence and getting a vote by winning an argument. I don't think there's any practical difference. The vote's not won either way. We still lose. The media has done their job. I think it is a distinction with a difference. What's the difference? The difference is that the task is different. You're not trying to convince people that Jeremy Corbett isn't an anti-Semite, which is what the dumb left tried to do. You're trying to convince people that what the media is saying about Jeremy Corbett is a big fucking smear job and they don't fucking matter. You're trying to convince people

that the media is just a bunch of fucking spectacle and to ignore it and not let them psych you out. Well, I mean, but that didn't happen. It didn't happen either. No, it didn't happen, but it didn't happen here either. You know what? That's going to have to be the thing that we do. Like, sorry, it didn't happen last time. Sorry, it didn't happen this time. But that's the thing. Yes, it didn't work that time. It didn't work this other time. But that is the challenge. It's going to be hard and we're not going to succeed at it most of the time. But you keep doing it. Oh, the question I just have is who are we talking to? Are we talking to, like, let's talk about America specifically. Like, clearly, a majority of, like, an absolute majority of Democratic

primary voters, the people who vote in Democratic primaries, if they didn't believe what the mainstream media was saying about Bernie, they took the message from it that he was unelectable. It's, in either way, he was not an option for them, no matter what he said. And then there's the other group of people who we were hoping to get, the people who are not taking their cues from the media, either by believing what they say or take, or taking their attitude towards Sanders as, like, an indication of his viability. And they did not, and not enough of them were reached to be mobilized to vote for him. So where, because if the, because whatever your rhetorical attitude is going to be different depending on which group of people you're talking to. So which one are the

ones that we should, which I guess the question is which one, which group of people is the one that maybe in retrospect should have been more addressed more explicitly with a specific message or in the future should be. I think the latter just because, and I'm not saying this is a moral position, just because I think they're the bigger group of people. Right. But we've seen that even though they're a bigger group, they are harder to reach. Well, we're trying for a harder task. Right. But we're doing something hard. Yeah. No one wants to hear that. Like, you're going to fail like nine times out of 10. Because it's very hard. People do want to have to, they need some sort of, I mean, yeah, they might know they're going to fail, but they need to know that they could win.

Well, I'm telling you, we can win. All right. But I guess I, what's the, what's the, like, how do you get to the people who have decided that politics is not real for good reason? I mean, who saw the Sanders campaign and were completely unmoved by any part of it. I don't have like that kind of alchemy recipe. I don't know. But if you say, like, were to look at the Sanders campaign and its success, a lot of the people that it did reach were people who were non-voters. So clearly, there's something there. There is such a thing as a moment or a leader or an agenda that activates people who were previously not activated, that sort of, you know, shakes off their skepticism and sort of whatever gives them permission to hope

and believe a little bit. I don't know how to make that. I don't, if I knew how to make that, we would have full communism. But it happens. And I think sometimes a lot of it is just sort of left up to chance. I mean, like, there was nothing that made sense about the Bernie movement. I was so sure that, like, I was going to spend the rest of my life, like, slowly building a labor movement and, like, maybe we would get one major social democratic reform before I died. And, like, that was fine for me. I made my peace with it a long time ago. And then the Sanders thing, like, fell in our lap. And, like, I hate it because I hate electoral politics. Like, I hate them. And I hate the Democratic Party. And I hate having to deal with that

shit. But you don't turn down an opportunity like that. Because, again, very narrow window of opportunity. But the biggest narrow window we've ever had in our lifetimes. So you just fucking did it. And it was insanely successful for no reason. I mean, not for no reason. But, you know, it was inexplicable. And there's always, like, this weird chaos, like, elements to politics where, like, a thing happens and everything you knew goes out the window. Sometimes that's a disaster, like, a fucking pandemic. Sometimes that's just, like, some weird old politician that's been a backbencher forever that everyone ignored and laughed at and thought was a crackpot, suddenly, like, goes forward. And even when that happens, you know, they don't usually win. But

it does happen sometimes. And I think the one thing that people don't want to admit is that some of this shit is reliant on luck. Like, you want to do the best job you can with everything. You want to be very serious about the mistakes you've made. You want to be provident and vigilant and loyal and very serious. But at the same time, you have to accept that sometimes you're just fucked because, you know, the House usually wins. Okay, well, then what about the, what about this, the, what I'm hearing from a lot of people is that, like, you know, this shows that electoralism of any kind or participating in worthwhile parties or elections is, you know, fool's gold to begin with and should never be considered again going forward. What do

we make, what do we make of that take? Because, I mean, let's be honest, there's, that argument certainly is annoying, as most of the people making it are, certainly has a little bit more ammunition now, looking at the results of what just happened. Well, I mean, I believed that, you know, during like Obama, and then I didn't believe it. And if you asked me whether I would try like electoral politics again, I mean, given this experience, probably not, I would certainly be more skeptical of it. But also, I don't know, never say never, like, whatever, I changed my mind about electoralism for Bernie. I've just learned to accept that I don't know what the conditions are going to be. I will say I am extremely, extremely, extremely skeptical

of the possibility that there will ever be a candidate that I believe the Democrats, one will allow to win and actually has decent politics that won't be watered down immediately. I don't see myself wasting my time on other campaigns, other electoral campaigns after this. But I don't know, who knows, I might, you know, shit falls in your lap. Well, how about the the weakest of the arguments about, you know, could have would have should have, which is that, you know, Sanders was too mean, he was never a Democrat, and you can't you can't run for election as a Democrat, vowing to take over the Democratic Party or attack its leadership. And then conversely, now that he's he's out of the race, that the way to enact a left

agenda going forward is working within the party through, you know, an endorsement and voting for Joe Biden, because that will be the key that unlocks some sort of influence for the coalition that he's built in the first place. I mean, I mean, I can dismiss that one because I just think that this idea that like, oh, no, no, no, like, like, you know, you know, the way to show that you have power is to vote in a Biden Democratic coalition and like help them achieve their goals, because then you'll be useful to them. I just like, I just think that the weakest possible argument is saying that the way to demonstrate power is by capitulating entirely and showing the Democratic Party that there's literally nothing that they can do that will cause you not to vote for them.

And like, this is where I'm like, also, if you think about like the Labor Party example, right, like them stabbing their own leadership and their own candidate in the back and throwing the basically throwing the election to a right wing party. I mean, it's grotesque, it's disgusting, but it does show that the people involved in this are dead fucking serious about power, their own power, and the ideological project with which they're a part of and that they're willing to throw an election in the short term for the sake of their broader political goals. I mean, they're well, they're willing to be rendered absolutely powerless. I mean, to quote the architect from the matrix, there's a level of survival they're willing to accept, meaning that

they'd be fine as a permanent minority party as long as the current leadership maintains control. As long as they can still fuck children, they're fine. Exactly. But like, as long as they still get those invitations to Martha's Vineyard and Little St. James. I mean, it's not like, it's not totally about like, you know, their personal social life and jobs. These people are committed to a, you know, a like a neoliberal class politics that is... Yeah, which the other party will carry out too. Yes, exactly. That's what I mean. That's what I mean. And like, you know, like that, it shows that like, you know, the ruling class is willing in like, in one of their own parties

to lose an election if it means getting rid of a challenger or a wing of the party that is a threat to their ideological goal, which is, you know, a cruel or more awful society. But you should keep that in mind about, you know, oh, like not voting for Biden equals a vote for Trump, you know what I mean? And sort of like, you have to be willing to show that you mean business by losing an election if it is better for your long term goals in the future. Do you think that holds water at all? What do you mean? That's what they believe or that's what I believe? I don't know. Like again, like clearly like this is not an election. Clearly this is like, you know, a fight between two corporations that we have no say in. Again, I'm voting for Bernie because it'll make

me feel good. And I like the idea of posterity, but it's not really a political thing. I mean, again, voting for a presidential election is the smallest thing you can do. But like, it doesn't really, it's not really up to me. You know, like Felix said, like my, both my power and responsibility ends with Bernie. Yeah, I mean, if we were to do what the ex-warrant people and some of the media people wanted us to do, if I told every listener to go out and vote Biden, how many of them do you think would do it? Even if they did, you know, most of them seem to live in very blue states. There are a lot that live in hopelessly red states. What effect would it have? What would happen is we, if we said, hey, vote for Biden, a lot of

people would say, those guys suck. I'm not listening to that show anymore. They'd be right. Yeah, they'd be right. Yeah. It's in your hands now, riding with Biden. Good luck. Get out there. Knock on those doors. Ring those phones. Yeah, I'll see you. If any of you, any of my community elders, you guys pick up counter strike. Should you lose as I did, you're invited to my discord. I need someone older and with shittier reflexes than me so I can feel good. And if you people out there, you Biden people, if you're comfortable voting for someone who was endorsed by someone who was endorsed by Joe Rogan, go ahead, but I can't do that personally. Yeah. It's a little too much for me. Yeah. I

can't endorse misogyny and racism like that. Sorry. I love the moral transitive property of endorsements. Yeah. I mean, look, I think like it's, there's a lot of pressure like right now that we're all sort of feeling to give like a definitive post Bernie episode, but that's not how their shit works. You know, grief comes in waves. You'll probably hear about Bernie again pretty soon. So I don't want to put too much like weight on this episode as being like an ultimate post Bernie show. But also you guys, we're going to get to watch Biden Trump debate. You know what sucks about this? I literally predicted this and I could have been the guy who predicted it. I know. I fucked up. I could have fucking. I'm just hoping for the fucking sons

debate because they got it. We're going to get it. We're going to get it because like I could see Hunter like getting like taking a massive bump, looking at his phone, seeing the thing about Don Jr. challenging him and being like, fuck, let's do it. Oh my God. And then he signs the contract and like, and then the next day, you know, all the Biden people are like, you idiot, what are you doing? This is awful. He's like, what? I'm going to fuck it. I'm going to own this guy. I'm going to, I'm going to tell him who the real drug addict is. If Joe wins, it's because of Hunter magic. And you know, like Hunter, I think Hunter could be moved on Medicare for all. He's a fucking way better guy than Joe way better. Yeah. It's just exponentially better.

And that's why the thing is like everything, especially with the Corona and everything, I bet we don't even get debates. I bet Trump just doesn't debate him. And because there's because they'll probably still be in lockdown. They'll just not have one. I think they'll probably do do something where they like a call in or whatever, just because I don't think Trump could resist this because Biden is so weakened now. That is true. I don't think he would have debated Bernie, but I think there is a good chance he will want to slap around the old man. He wants to win. He wants to own the man who he clearly recognizes as a senile decrepit fossil. I'm going to get some Chinese research chemicals

to take to watch whatever happens. If it does, I'll say that. Well, I mean, I think you should stay away from those harmful and natural drugs. We can get you something from God's own green earth. The thing that apes take to get high fentanyl grows in the ground. I thought you were going to be like, look, we're going to bury melons. We're going to let them ferment. We're going to dig them up like those elephants and get drunk. Oh, man. Oh, if I could get. Oh, I will huff Jankham and watch the Trump Biden debates. Oh, man. Oh, you know what I'm going to get really into during this time? Monkey husbandry. I've been getting really into monkeys, if you guys have noticed. Jim Jones. Yeah. I have noticed your

monkey content has really upped. I've enjoyed it. You know, Jim Jones, when he lived in Indiana, he sold monkeys door to door. I don't agree with that. I don't think that they're, I don't think that you should exploit them. I think they should be your friend. Yeah. Yeah. If I had a given, I'd be his friend. Because they will rip your dick off. Yeah. No, champs and champs. I respect champs, but we can't be friends. Look, if either Bernie had won, if Bernie had won, or I had cashed in on my Biden prediction that I was doing for almost all of 2019 that I was totally right about. And I became, you know, we either pod savified the show

and just fucking cat, like fucking eight figgies, mad decent, going nutty. I would live my dream life of moving back to the Midwest. I would have two boars always, two Portuguese water dogs, and three Gibbons, and they'd all be friends. But there's really no reason I can't do that now. I just have to go into that. It's fun. Live your life. You've only got one to live. Yeah. No. Imagine like, imagine the Gibbons riding the boars. I know. I was already imagining it. I was already imagining little narrow saddles. Yes. Yes. They love each other. All of them. Well, you know, this sucks, but I don't know. It doesn't suck worse than it did before. Like, you know, the loss of hope is what kills you or whatever. But, you know, we were living

through it before and we're going to keep living through it. God bless you. I think it sucks slightly worse than before just because of how close we were and, like, you know, what I felt going into Super Tuesday versus after it. And, you know, if this is a moment for me at Culpa's, like, forget the Sanders campaign. I just mean the Chapo campaign. And by that, I mean me personally. If I had a feeling in any regard, it was I did not take Biden seriously until it was too late because, like, I just I thought, like, there was no fucking way that, like, I just thought his support was shallow and that, like, after he lost as badly as he did in those early states, that, like, the one thing that he was pitching, which was electability and reliability,

was, like, revealed, I mean, I was just, like, who the fuck would take him seriously after that. No, I thought that about that too, Will. And I thought Buttigieg and Klobuchar were, like, and then eventually Bloomberg were, like, way more intimidating prospects because I just thought, like, Joe Biden was completely a paper tiger. And I guess I was, like, because I just couldn't imagine the depth of actual, like, how much so many Democratic primary voters actually liked this guy and had a confidence in him. That's what I think. Yeah. But the thing is, like, you didn't know and now you know, like, you learn and you can't beat yourself up about it. I think, like, this is literally how you learn, like. I mean, I'm not, like, beating myself up over it

because, like, I don't think it was, like, ridiculous. It's insane. It's insane, like, how just, like, disgusting and cynical the party is. And it's insane that, like, people are made to feel safe by Joe Biden. Like, you just thought the world was a little more sane. Oh, I thought the party itself, like, wouldn't, like, they would have chosen someone else to be, you know, their avatar, their standard bearer. Someone lose it. And, you know, like, I don't feel, like, ashamed or embarrassed about it because I'm not beating myself up over it because it was not an insane thing to conclude, given that he finished fucking, what, fifth in New Hampshire. You know what I mean? Like, it just, I thought he was done. Well, I mean, what happened to us is that there's two

chunks of Democratic voters and there's white ones and black ones. The white ones were divided between all the different white candidates and Bernie and the black ones were all united behind Biden. And then when that was revealed on South Carolina, then the way to beat Bernie was made clear. There's one undivided base here. So get all the people who are dividing everyone else out around him, the guy who has an actual, like, undivided base and then boom, you're done. And that was it. That's all talk. There's a very good conversation on a Jacobins little show between, like, Willie Leggett, Adolfrey Jr., Michael Brooks moderates it, and Cedric Johnson, where they just, they talk about the quote unquote black vote. And it's very edifying and everyone

should watch it. We can link that in the description. Yeah. But yeah, Will, I just wanted to say I had a period of feeling bad about that too personally, but I think that it was after New Hampshire, after Iowa, Nevada, like, yeah, no, it would be insane to make that prediction, even if it turned out to be right. Uh, no, you lived and you learned. Uh, you know, and like, I always thought Biden was going to win South Carolina, but I didn't, I thought Bernie would have been like a decent to strong second place. And he just, you know, fucking blew the doors off. Like, he just romped. And then even after the dropout, like, I just thought, look, like Biden has been revealed as a weak candidate and like is getting literally like it is cognitive function is declining in real time

on television. And I just thought like, Bernie's personally popular among Democratic voters and all his policies are overwhelmingly popular. So I was just even with people who voted for Biden, even people voted for Biden, like I like Medicare for all voting for Joe Biden. And that means that the media has some sort of power to do something that we underestimate it and that I honestly don't know how to counteract. Well, I mean, I think it's also doesn't make a lot of sense to like necessarily assume you can attribute that to the media. I mean, a lot of, particularly in the South, these Democratic Party clubs are very active. You get a lot of older, especially like, you know, middle class, like black women in them. And they do a lot of work

according to like how the Democrat, their local Democratic Party Club operates. I mean, there is actually a ground game for the Democrats that is like, I don't know, some sort of like weird legacy in the South. I don't know. I mean, there's a lot going on and we're not going to figure it all out in one episode. But like, well, I mean, like the easy things about like, oh, Bernie had four years to win over the black vote. And you know, he fucked that up or he didn't do enough. Like that doesn't work either. There is no black vote. Like this is a cudgel that now like smug fucking white Biden supporters are going to use against you. But the fact of the matter is the only two candidates in the Democratic primary that had any significant

non white support at all were Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. And like, and when it comes to like, and Bernie Sanders had like 70% of like all Latino Democratic primary voters across all age category, whereas Biden, like if the African American vote broke down along age, pretty much like every other fucking vote. And like the fact of the matter is that young people didn't turn out in anywhere near the numbers as the old people who fucking hated him. Well, that's the thing is that in some states, young people did young young voters ship was up, but old votership was up even more. The old people were mobilized against Bernie. That's the thing. Like they actually overwhelm the degree to which young people did increase those middle class people like hate

Trump and they like the whole like the Trump effect, like I think has also galvanized a lot of the sort of like right wing of the party. So like, we got to get this guy out. But I mean, like, no, at this point, nobody can doubt that if Bernie Sanders was not in the race or had dropped out early, Buttigieg and Klobuchar would have stayed in the fucking race and it would have proceeded like any other primary where everyone, you know, fights among each other until there's like, you know, a victor rather than preemptively dropping out before the, you know, the biggest, you know, primary day of the season. And that's why they did it was to stop Bernie Sanders. And it was, as we know now, Obama who fucking, you know, was the guy who flipped the switch for that one

after not doing or saying anything political for the last four fucking years, at least. Yeah. So I mean, like, that's it. That's a good indication of, yeah, where the party and their voters are at. But I have a question. All right. And it's about the people who worked on the campaign and were involved in the campaign. And the actual, you know, you guys discussed the logistics of, you know, Bernie's campaign is per structure and where that goes and whether this, as a movement has any place to go right now. But my question is more a woo woo. It's a Marianne question. It's about mindset. And I'm wondering if any of you think that the mindset change or the effect on people's like how they think about an approach politics that these two

Bernie Sanders campaigns has had will have any kind of meaningful lasting effect? Because the thing that I keep thinking about is all the people that we met on the road. And of course, we were mostly hanging out with hardcore Sanders partisans. But every single person I've met involved in the Bernie Sanders campaign in every single way, I just don't ever see them going back to a liberal, democratic, big tent type of politics. Like these are people who now know what they want. They might not know how to get them get it now because who knows how to get anything. But there is, I, at least from what I've seen a wake of people behind this campaign who have a much clearer understanding of politics and what they want and need and can fight to get

politically because of these two campaigns. And I'm just wondering if any of you guys have any thoughts on that or think that that will be something that has any kind of effect or purchase in the future? I agree. But not only that, it's not just about the fact that we now have at least a small group of people whose politics are relatively solid and who have standards like political red lines, but also those people learned skills from organizing. That is how you do shit. It's not just about raising your expectations and raising your standards and learning all the tricks of the Democratic Party. It's like organizing, you get experience doing it and you get better at it. And really boring nuts and bolts shit, really boring

administrative work and making sure you keep contact with people and really getting people activated at having those conversations. Those are skills. And the fact that we had a bunch of good people learn those skills is really great. It's a great fucking boot camp for whatever they want to do moving forward. I tend to agree that that's good, but this gets back to my original point about in the absence of a leader and politics, it takes place on the level of millions of people. You're still far away from power, even if you know what you want or even have some vague idea of how to achieve it. There needs to be a captain. There needs to be a unifying purpose and drive to this that I think is going to be very hard to rekindle in the absence of

someone like Bernie Sanders. I don't even see us rekindling something or building it. I think it's going to be a combination between a bunch of slow, steady work and then one of those weird anomalous moments where chaos drops a strange opportunity in your lap and you chase it down. I mean, I guess if we're looking to wrap things up, I guess my concluding thoughts on this is that the Sanders campaign did matter. It did mean something, but you can't get around the fact at the end of the day. The goal was to achieve power and we were defeated. We were defeated and I guess it's going to be a long time before we get this close again. I don't know how we're going to get that close again. What I will say is what I won't be doing is for the people who are looking

to tamp down the dirt on this entire moment in our politics from 2016 to 2020 now and a nascent. The genesis of what could be like something approaching a social democratic movement or left-wing politics in this country, I certainly will not be admitting defeat on their terms or coming to heel to fucking take them seriously or pay or work with them or be nice to them ever, ever again. I know who my friends are. I know who my enemies are. I have no regrets. I apologize for nothing. I'm not trying to sell anyone a silver lining to any of this because, like I said, we are in the dark times now, but even in failure, what we did won't be undone certainly for the people who did it, for what they did. At the end of the day, even in failure,

there is there is dignity and anyone who supported Bernie Sanders as much as they could, anyone who was down for him, they get their name written in the book of life. They are real ones and everyone who vacillated, sat on the fence or worked against him is dead for eternity. I'm taking a little breather here in choir, but you have to know that I'm in this for life. A lot of people are now, a lot of people decided they're in this for life after this, and I don't know if you're in it for life, too. I'm happy to keep going with you. Any final thoughts, boys? No, I don't have something to sit up.

I got some routine plugs if we've got time here at the end. Yeah, let's do it. Let's keep it normal with some plugs. All right. First up is two different Twitch streams. Will, Matt, and I did a guest spot on our friend, friend of the shows, Shannon Strucci's actual play podcast. It's called Critical Bits. It's very good. I enjoyed a lot, but they have a big yearly promotional event called Spider Day that has a bunch of different people from all over the internet doing guest bits on their thing. It's very fun to celebrate it. It comes out this week, Critical Bits Cast. It comes out this week on the 17th.

They're doing a Spider Day streaming weekend where they'll be running 10 different games on Twitch for hours this weekend. It all supports the Covenant House and GA, which is a charity to help homeless and displaced youths with a focus on LGBTQIA youths. Check them out. They will be on Twitch this weekend, twitch.tv slash Critical Bits Cast, and check out Spider Day over on the Critical Bits podcast. As well, if you're Twitch streaming this weekend, I know that episode one is doing a big benefit show over on our Twitch feed. That's twitch.tv slash Chappah Trap House. That'll be featuring a lot of people, including people on this very episode. Felix, do you have any more information

that you'd like to plug about that? You probably know more about it than I do. For people who have been listening to my NBC drama podcast, there may be quite a surprise on that stream. Excellent. The new episode of that will come out tomorrow. It would have come out today, but my audition crash and I lost almost all of the edits. It's okay. It's okay. Also, real quick, this Wednesday night at midnight, Eastern Standard Time, Catherine and I will be going on Derek and Drill's Truth Point. We will be taking questions about love and relationships in the time of the plague, or just in general. We will be on Truth Point, the adult swim stream with Derek and Drill on Wednesday. Oh, yeah, I forgot. I'm doing Seeking Derangements later

today. It's a new podcast by Ben Mora, who you guys know, and Paul Ma, the demon poster. If you don't know already, you will. Oh, you'll know that demon. Very funny show. I urge everyone to check it out. It's fucking great. We love Ben. Ben was done dirty by the 34-year-old boy reporter Scott Bixby and the Clintonite rag daily beast, but you can support him there. If you love Ben, if you love little demons of online, fucking check it out. You'll have a great time. Amber's been on it. It fucking, it's great. It rips. It's great. And finally, just while I'm doing regular plugs, we have new shirts available shop.chapotraphouse.com. The newest design is one of my all-time favorites, finally commemorating

the hot couch. Join hot couch nation. Go to shop.chapotraphouse.com. And of course, as always, youtube.com slash Chappatrap House to check out some of our videos. Every time I mention it, I get slightly closer to getting that trophy. So we're getting there. Give Chris a trophy. That's, uh, that's all I've got for this one. Everybody good? Cheers. All right. Cheers. Bye. Thanks everyone. Bye. Jim Dwyer, my his last trip to the shores where his father's lying. About 15 minutes later, we had our first taste of whiskey. There was uncles giving lectures on ancient Irish history. The men all started telling jokes and a women like a frisky.

Before five o'clock in the evening, every bastard there was testing. Pretty well gone away. There's nothing left to say. Farewell to New York City boys, the Bastanen PA. He took them out with a well-on cloud and they often heard him say, I'm a freeborn man of the USA. He fought the champ in Pittsburgh and he slashed him to the ground. He took on tiny Tartanella and only went one round. He never had no time for rights for drink or dice or horse. But he never threw a fight when the fight was right, so they sent him to the war. Pretty well gone away. There's nothing left to say. West Lawnshire Joe and an air of gold where he loves an American. The calling of the rosary smashed one from far away.

I'm a freeborn man of the USA. West Lawnshire Joe and an air of gold where he loves an American. The calling of the rosary smashed one from far away. I'm a freeborn man of the USA. I'm a freeborn man of the USA. I'm a freeborn man of the USA.