Chapo Trap House - Episode 214 - 6 Weird Election Tricks That ACTUALLY Work! feat. David Faris (5/27/18)

Episode Date: May 28, 2018

​Will and Virgil peel back the curtain to give an intimate backstage look at their recent media hit with Jesse "The Body" Ventura on RT.* They're then joined by political scientist David Faris to discuss his book "It's Time To Fight Dirty". Faris out lines all the ways a slim democratic majority could and should shortcut norms and the constitution to build enduring power, while Will and Virgil supply all the reasons they'll probably be too chicken to actually do so. Finally, a reading from the good book. *Note: Our segment seems to have been cut before airing lol we still love you Jesse! Buy the book: chapotraphouse.com

Hello, friends. It's your chopper for the week. Just me and Virgil. Hey, afraid everyone else is off for Memorial Day, paying their respects to our great monuments in this country, Mount Rushmore, the Hollywood sign, Branson, Missouri. It's Virgil and I for this show, and in just a little bit we'll be speaking to David Ferris about his book, It's Time to Fight Dirty, which is his political strategy for rat-fucking the Republicans out of power through procedural life hacks that are able to hack the Constitution and our form of government to hopefully disempower the grotesque right-wing ghouls that we're currently ruled over by. But before then, Virgil and I were going to give you guys a little update.

Well, behind the scenes. Well, behind the scenes on a media hit that we did earlier this week that I think you guys may have seen by now. Yes, we appeared on, what is it, Jesse's World? No, that's the Jesse Waters show. It's called Ventura Boulevard with Jesse. We went on former Minnesota governor and awesome muscle man, great movie star, Chris Kyle Widow owner, Jesse Ventura's RT show. RT on Russia today.

Yeah, we did Compromat. We did active measures and we got to appear on Jesse Ventura's show. Personally, I am a huge fan of Jesse Ventura because of his film work, Predator and the Running Man are easily two of my favorite films of all time. But, oh, Jose Chung's From Outer Space, one of my favorite episodes of TV of all time. So, Jesse has touched my life in a lot of ways. So, I jumped at the opportunity to come on his show even though it was a rather surreal experience. Yeah, so apparently Jesse hosts the show in Minnesota in his basement or something. We did not at an undisclosed location.

So, when we told people we're going on Jesse Ventura's show, they were like, oh, it's awesome. You got to meet the body. Oh, Jesse, the governor, you know, and we're like, no, we didn't even get to see Jesse Ventura. It was just literally a voice in our ear as we sat in a room with like a camera tracking. We couldn't even see ourselves. Yeah. There was no monitor. We were talking into a black box wondering...

We were talking to this camera that was repositioning itself as if we were an alien eye scanning us. And we're sitting there and this guy puts these earpieces on and he just has a thick Russian voice. That was the funniest thing because, I mean, another reason I agreed to go on Jesse's show is because I wanted to go on RT just because I think it would be funny because it would make a lot of people mad. And I think that's funny. I think we're recording this Thursday, so we haven't seen any of the backlash of it yet. Yeah. Hopefully it's real fun.

Hopefully it'll be fun, but... Chappo Trap House took 7 million rubles to appear on the Jesse Ventura program. So Virgil and I, we meet in, you know, RT's, I'm putting in quotes here, green room. It was not a green room. No. It was just a break room for their employees. There was coffee and water, but, you know, no treats. But so we're waiting there in this room and they're like, okay, we're going to get you on in the chair.

Is it about, you know, five to the top of the hour or whatever? That's probably one of their satellites. Yeah, yeah. We didn't get to go to the HQ. And this sort of like teamster looking guy, you know, herds us into the kill room where the all-seeing eye will scan us and capture our souls. So this guy gets into this sort of rough teamster guy, gets us in there and then begins manhandling us and threading microphones through our shirts and feeling our bosoms.

I still have mine on. It's just been recording me for the past week. So we get the earpiece in your ear and I'd never done like a cable news hit like this before. And when it is this sort of like, it's pre-taped. So that wasn't that nerve-wracking that would be going out live. But there's this huge sensory disadvantage when you're in studio and like the host is elsewhere because you can't see them.

You can't even see yourself. Assuming like they're watching everything about you, they're seeing you pick your nose or sweat. But it's just like, all you're getting is just a voice in your ear, even though you know that you're supposed to be talking to a camera. And it's very odd. But the funniest thing was after we got the earpiece in, the sort of the voice who wasn't Jesse's who was being like, okay, we're on in three, you know, whatever, had a thick Russian accent.

And it was just like, thank you for coming on the show. We very much appreciate your work undermining Democratic Party. Pleased to do propaganda for Comrade Putin. Thank you for helping take down Russia, a great enemy near attended. Take down strategic capitalist mastermind Chuck Schumer. So, yeah, but that being said, the actual interview was very fun. Jesse was a joy to talk to. I did get the chance to talk to him about Running Man.

He agreed with my assessment that we are living in the Running Man. He also said before he was just very jobby with us. And he told us the story about how when he did wrestling, he had to have a fake name because back in those days, heels were real heels. Yeah. They would track down your family. Yeah, yeah, people would try to like find you and it didn't kill you and shit. But it was so fun.

Jesse was great to talk to. I'm really hoping now. I mean, again, the other reason I did this, I'm really hoping to get Jesse on our show. I would love to, you know, like the interview was like five minutes. It was just like a rapid barrage of questions. Like we was just like, so Virgil, tell me about how Hubert can unlock the documents that we need to read. It was just like really quick hit. Again, very, very surreal being like, you know, so will Americans hate the Democratic and Republican parties?

What are they going to wake up? Why do people like you? Is it because you talk about real issues? So again, it was great to talk to Jesse. It was like a blur, but I would love to get a chance to have like a real, a longer sit down actual conversation with the former governor to talk about his career in wrestling. He was one of the first people to try to unionize the WWF under Vince McMahon. It didn't work, but I mean, I would love to hear about some of the early days of the World Wrestling Federation. I would love to hear about, you know, the set of Predator, his, you know, the fact that he got his costume measured or he had his biceps measured on, and they were bigger than Arnold's.

I would love to hear just about owning Chris Kyle. So we would love to get Jesse Ventura on the show. I'm really going to try to make it happen. And also to hang out with him. He seems like just a fun guy to talk to. I want to go to the compound in Minnesota. He lives beneath Paisley Park. So, so yeah, Jesse Ventura is great.

Jesse, please come on the show. I guess now just to move on and introduce this interview we're about to do. Again, this guy is David Ferris. He's a professor of political science. And I suspect this interview will be interesting for some. I want to warn you ahead of time we are going to engage in the sin of electoralism and reformism by essentially engaging with the idea of electing Democrats or investing in the American political process through an active voting. Perhaps some of you will, you know, be offended by that. But I think it's an interesting topic of conversation.

And it's one worth considering, even though friends of the show, co-host of the show would regard this as seeking procedural problems to political solutions. That being said, I think the book is interesting. And at the very least lays out a few planks that I think I would really like to see Democratic politicians at all levels of government being put on the record as now as supporting things like a new Voting Rights Act. Things like packing the Supreme Court. Statehood for DC and Puerto Rico. Those are slam dunks. Yeah. These are good things that I think, you know, broadly from a liberal to left-wing point of view can and should support.

You know, there's a moral imperative behind those things as well. I mean, again, what David's book is really about is not just electing Democrats, but like how to change the inherent inequities and, you know, all the old structural biases that are part of the American political system to make it possible, not just to pass progressive or left-wing legislation, but to make it possible to even do that in the first place. And I think his argument is one worth considering that to even get to the point where we can elect nice socialist leaders that we'd all love and support and who believe the same things we do, we do have to confront these terrible problems that put any decent person or anyone with a conscience in this country at an extreme disadvantage. Right. It magnifies the power of this reactionary 40% of the country. That's totally fucking backwards. And it magnifies the power of the capitalist ruling class. Yeah, absolutely. And so we are going to talk to David and...

And you know what? You know, listener, you might not agree with electoralism. You might think this is reformist, but I think what we can all agree on is you should absolutely not email us about this interview. You should not contact us to say that. Actually, anarcho-primitivism is the way to go. We should all live in yurts. No, we're not listening to any of that. Agree. Absolutely. I mean, I think that, again, that is something that a broad, you know, liberal to progressive, to left-wing coalition can agree on. Absolutely. Don't email us to complain about the show. So, on to our interview with David and then another reading from our own book. Ooh.

The intro. So, David Ferris, ladies and gents. Okay. So, joining us now is David Ferris, who is a professor of political science at Roosevelt's University and the author of It's Time to Fight Dirty. How Democrats can build a lasting majority in American politics. We can, as this conversation goes on, maybe push you a little bit on whether anyone should desire the Democrats having a lasting majority in American politics. However, the one thing I think we should begin with and agree on is that the Republican Party does represent a clear and present danger to all of our lives. Human civilization continuing on the planet Earth. Yeah. I mean, you know, if we give another 10 years to these guys, like our grandkids are going to spit roast to death, you know, in like a hellfire, and it's not going to be pleasant for any of us. You know, so we got to get, we got to get rid of them.

Let's just like begin with like the baseline of like what the current political reality of America is, despite being massively unpopular, you have a minority of people, a political minority in this country that represents, let's say between 25 to 35% of the population that now controls all three branches of government. Most state governments just basically has a death grip on all of the levers of power in our government, despite being massively outnumbered by people who would not wish to see them in power. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to disagree with that assessment. And it's, you have a minority government, right, that and they've come to power through sort of conscious manipulations of electoral procedures and a combination of that and like 230 year old designed laws that, you know, there's not a ton we can do about. But I think that the aggregate impact is, it's very difficult for the left to gain power in this country because they start off every election at a massive disadvantage due to some of these problems that are being pretty ruthlessly exploited and pushed further by the contemporary Republican Party. And you trace this meddling back to Gingrich and the Republican Revolution. Yeah, I mean, I think that that Gingrich was one of the first people to realize that if you like, very vocally and openly impugn the integrity of your opponents and call them like slimy and disgusting and, you know, horrible human beings that that hasn't that hasn't impact over time.

But I don't know, it wasn't Gingrich who executed this gerrymandering plan after 2010. It wasn't Gingrich that like designed all these voter ID laws that are that are suppressing the vote. It wasn't Gingrich that did the felony disenfranchisement stuff. So there's all kinds of like terrible things that are happening in American politics that, you know, maybe they started with Gingrich, but some of them started with like Thomas Jefferson too. Like the US Senate is a horrible, undemocratic institution that I would burn to the ground tomorrow morning if I could, but we're stuck with it, you know. So we have to figure out a way to like work around some of these flaws the next time the Democrats are in power. And, you know, like the most obvious manifestation of this is the most recent example of the 2016 election in which the person who received the majority of votes, in fact, lost the election. But not only that, Democrats received far more votes in terms of actual voters for the Congress and the Senate yet still are the minority party. Right. I mean, and that's, you know, that's the impact of our electoral rules, you know, which do matter in really important ways. So the fact that California has 38 million people have the same two senators as the 700,000 people in Wyoming is absurd from like a democratic theoretical standpoint. And that's how you end up with Republicans in control of the Senate, even though they get like many, many fewer votes. And, you know, when you add them all up, we will get to your plan for California, which is probably the most ambitious thing that you lay out in this book. But it's not just that you describe these, like you said, these sort of flaws in the Constitution that are exploited by the Republican Party, like these flaws in our electoral system and the rules for Congress, etc., to exert their will in an undemocratic way. It's more than that in that the Republican Party, as it's currently constituted, really doesn't see anyone who beats them in an election as a legitimate form of government. They don't regard Democratic presidents as legitimately elected or should be treated as such.

Yeah, and they also, you know, they don't recognize like liberal jurisprudence on the courts as like a, you know, as equal to conservative or originalist jurisprudence, which is a real problem. Because if you look at some of the rationalizations for why they got to steal Merrick Garland's seat on the Supreme Court, you know, if you go back like read the National Review, if you can handle it, if you can read the National Review. Oh, I read the National Review quite regularly, sir. Yeah, take a shower afterwards. But like, you know, they were like, well, look, I mean, we can't appoint this person to the Supreme Court because he'd bring Barack Obama's judicial philosophy with him. You know, and it's like, that's not how the institutions are designed, you know. And so they've been acting for the better part of 20 years, at least since I think the 2000 election. As if keeping Democrats out of power justifies just about sort of any escalation, normatively, or even formally, it's been obvious, I feel like it should be obvious for a really long time that the Republican Party is like the single most extreme political party in the entire democratic world. The single most far right political party in the entire democratic world. They're not a censor right party by the standards of any comparable democracy.

No, I mean, they'd be like off the map in a European parliamentary democracy. I mean, one way of thinking about it is like, even some of these European far right parties, like your builders party in the Netherlands. These guys actually believe in the social welfare state, like, like they're terrible races, but they're also like 1000 feet to the left of the contemporary Republican Party in terms of economics. There is no other party in the entire world that's like a super racist and be, you know, let's reduce the modern state to its pre-industrial shell. You know, let's go back to like 1880s level of public spending. You know, that is really unique in the world. I'm pretty sure Gert Wilders or whatever believes in the social welfare state for exclusively for people with jet white hair and who never wear socks with leather shoes and suits. Yeah, I mean, I don't feel like it's a coincidence that a lot of these people like have the same sort of cartoonish look, you know. Yeah. It's like social network effects, you know.

Like, so, you know, there are these legislative and progressive policy goals that I would say are broadly shared from liberals to the left that we all sort of have this idea that we'd like to make a more just, equitable, less screwed up society like things like single payer. And what you're saying is first and foremost, in order to do those things, basically the Republican dragon, the dragon energy people have to be slayed. And the way they have to be slayed in a effective manner is by instituting these, raging what you call the same kind of procedural warfare that the right has been so good at in terms of forcing their agenda on a country that, like I said, is the majority of which opposes what they believe in. So, to get to the meteor book, which is this strategy, your plan for like six things that Democrats can do to keep power and in doing so, hopefully make the kind of country that we'd all like to live in. The big ask is, of course, that the Democrats regaining power in the first place, which is an open question at this point. Sure. But again, for the sake of the book and the show, let's assume they do.

And let's assume that there is a Democratic president with full support of Congress ready to go in 2020. The first thing you say that he should do, like the first piece of legislation that he should push out, is statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico, and then splitting California into six states, which, like I said, is probably the most ambitious thing that you describe in this book, and the only thing that actually would need simple congressional approval to do. Before we get to the California solution, just describe briefly what is the moral and procedural case for D.C. and Puerto Rico becoming full-fledged states. Well, sure. I mean, both D.C. and Puerto Rico, everyone that is born in D.C. and Puerto Rico is a birthright American citizen, and neither D.C. nor Puerto Rico have voting representation in Congress, which is just unjustifiable, but with any reasonable theory of how democracy should work. For the case of D.C., you see the impact of that in all kinds of different ways, like Congress can strike items out of the D.C. city budget, people who are arrested in D.C. end up in the federal prison system right away, it's messed up. For Puerto Rico, I mean, over the last year has made it really obvious to me why Puerto Rico needs to be made a state, because no one in D.C. has to answer to the people of Puerto Rico.

Our politics are not perfect, but if Puerto Rico had representatives in Congress, somebody could lose their job when the federal government doesn't respond to a category five hurricane in a prompt fashion and a thousand people die. So, you know, Puerto Rico is in a kind of a legal limbo, and they have been for like a hundred years, right, which is, they're a territory, but they're not a state. There's been a long inconclusive debate in Puerto Rico about what to do about that. And I think that there's real momentum for statehood, particularly since this, like, comically, I don't want to call it comically, because it's tragic, but there's horrendously enough to respond to Hurricane Maria. I think it's like, it's just, it's an easy case to make. You have people that want to be, want to be part of the union. They don't have real representation. And there's just, you know, to me, there's no excuse for not bringing D.C. and Puerto Rico into the union, just as a pure, like, moral, ethical imperative, like that these people need relief from their condition, they need voting rights, and it really should happen on day one. And the procedural being that this would be four new senators in the Senate, basically. Yeah, I mean, like two slam dunk senators out of D.C., for sure. You know, it might take some time for party politics to shake itself out in Puerto Rico, because Puerto Rico has its own political parties that are not Democratic and Republican, but I think that would change pretty quickly if they're brought into the union. And it's hard for me to see in anything but, like, a monumental wave election that we don't get two senators out of Puerto Rico to.

So, I mean, I like to say to people, if D.C. and Puerto Rico had been made states 10 years ago, Democrats would hold the Senate right now. Like, Doug Jones would have been the flip. And the Trump administration would functionally be over, I guess, except for gutting Dodd-Frank, which Democrats would still prop, right? And confirming China Haspel as well. Now, tell me this, though, you talk about statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico, but what do you have against Guam? Nothing. There's actually nothing stopping us from making Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands and American Samoa, if I'm forgetting anything, but all of these overseas territories could be made states. I actually think there is something growing in the Virgin Islands for statehood. I mean, the Constitution doesn't have a minimum population threshold, you know? So, anybody could be a state. It's a matter of whether the people there want to be a state, and I think that we could do that, too. Anybody can be a state? I stopped at D.C. and Puerto Rico because they have active statehood movements, and these other places don't, or they didn't when I wrote this.

I want two senators from the Bikini atoll. So, that's D.C. and Puerto Rico. Like you said, there are active statehood movements. People like Eleanor Holmes Norton has been pushing D.C. statehood forever. The California one, that's the one that's sort of the most eye-popping recommendation that you make, which is make California into six states. There would be 58 states in America now. We'd have to make room on the flag. That would be the main objection to this. Republicans would be like, do you really want to change our flag? He just got this from Home Depot. But what about California is so unique in that it really cries out for this?

California is so big. It's the fifth largest economy in the world. Folks, when California sits around the Electoral College, it sits around the Electoral College. It's one of the most blue-leaning states, but yet it has two senators. Describe your plan to make six or seven states out of California. Yeah, so it would be seven total. Seven states, yeah. It's a unique situation in that California is the largest state in the Union. It's also one of the most, at this point, the most left-wing states in the country.

Hillary Clinton won that state by 30 points. She won Orange County, which no Democrat had won since FDR. So it's like there's been this long-term transformation of California from a contested state into this deep, deep Democratic stronghold. And because so much of the progressive energy in this country is in California, a lot of it ends up getting bottled up in these two senators from California. California clearly does not have the same kind of structural power in American national politics that Wyoming does. And it's just a problem. And if you look at the Senate, even D.C. and Puerto Rico only get us part of the way there to parody in the Senate. There's probably 30 or 31 Republican-leaning states, 19 or 20 Democratic-leaning states, so that in a neutral environment, we're going to lose the Senate more often than we win it. And that's a problem because that means public policy is going to get pulled inexorably to the right, like cycle after cycle after cycle.

If we lose two out of every three elections or three out of every four, it's a problem. But the equal representation in the Senate is like it's written in the Constitution with a special provision that you can't deprive... Even if we want to amend the Constitution to make the Senate equal, we can't do it because we have to have the consent of the states who are being deprived of the equal representation. So it's just like a non-starter. The Constitution is like a noose on this question. And so we have to get creative about workarounds. And I think there's like a logistical case for breaking California up and there's a partisan case for it. I drew a bunch of maps in the book that would have created seven states that voted for Hillary Clinton. All seven of those states would still have access to the Pacific Ocean. I think they'd all be economically viable. And I think there's a case to be made of the people of California also.

I think that the federalism in this country was designed to give people access to a government that's closer to them than the national government, particularly in the case of California, which is like a million miles away from D.C. And it's so huge, I think, that there is a lot of frustration in California about state politics, about the remoteness of Sacramento. And so, again, it's the kind of thing where I'm like, I actually think this would be a good idea to break up California. But it's also it's also partisan hardball. I think you can't count on all 14 of those senators being Democrats all the time. But I think like between 10 and 14, you know, like 10 would be the low point. Well, you mentioned that delegation. You do say that, you know, in the past, if you had pursued the same plan, it would not would be almost guaranteed that you'd create a bunch of Republican leading states because there is a lot of California that is extremely conservative. You basically, the way you draw the lines is that you're basically making states out of like the seven major cities in California and the areas surrounding them.

And it's sort of you'd have to be very careful about how you draw these lines, right? I mean, like, would this require sort of a kind of gerrymandering? Yeah, I mean, it is gerrymandering in a way. I mean, but again, it's like if you think about like the predicament of the planet, like the predicament of Democrats nationally, the left nationally more broadly, I really think it justifies something like this. Because again, it's not unconstitutional. Like there's a procedure in the Constitution for creating states out of existing states. You need an act of the state legislature and then you need an act of Congress. I think also, in this case, you obviously need the consent of the people of California.

I don't recommend just like doing this over their heads if they don't want it. Well, you know, initiative needs to be endorsed. But you also say because of California has this weird quirk with their referendum system where, you know, any referendum can be put up for a vote. Like that would be the sort of the end to this is get that on the ballot. Hey, do we want to create seven states out of California? And they would actually the Californians would have to vote on that. But I mean, they voted for Arnold Schwarzenegger to be their governor. So if I recall correctly, I'd have to look this up after the show, but there is an initiative on the ballot bank ruled by an eccentric billionaire to split California into three states.

But it's pulling very poorly, like four to one against. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, I like to divide the ideas in this book into two camps. You know, there's like low hanging fruit that I think could be accomplished in month one. And then there's stuff that's like a that's like an ideological project that we'd have to pursue over over the course of a number of years. Yeah, I think seven California's falls into the second camp of like, I obviously don't think this is this can happen in the first year. It's more like an attempt to open up a conversation about the idea of dividing California in some way, shape, or form to benefit, you know, to benefit the Democratic Party. But I think like, do you see in Puerto Rico, that's month one California, we should not count on that happening, I think, even maybe in somebody's first term. There could be, you know, I'm thinking it through there could be an incentive for state legislature legislators to support this thinking, oh, all of these new federal seats are open now.

I mean, like if you're if you're in the California State House, like suddenly you look in the mirror and you see like, you know, like Governor of Sacramento, you know, like Governor of San Diego. Suddenly, you're a presidential contender because you're a governor instead of a state legislator. Yeah, you know, you've got like instead of Feinstein having to run against six other people, they could all be senators, you know. So everybody would everybody gets a sentence. So yeah, even from a self interest perspective, I could see people in the California state government like really, really getting down with this. I think I think the real problem is people in California, when I tell them this idea, I get this look like, you know, you're out of your mind. And you're from Illinois, so tell me what to do with my state, you know. Well, I mean, like the other thing would be like every one of these new states created out of South California would each have more people in it than almost every other state in America.

Exactly. They'd all still be quite large. Yeah, no, they'd be huge states. Now you mentioned like a possible retaliation should the California plan ever become a reality would be to the Republicans to do the same and break Texas up into a bunch of different states hoping to get the same share of their newly formed Senate seats. But you say that like that would be a little bit more of an iffy proposition for Republicans would be a little bit more dangerous or harder to predict for them that like to guarantee that they would get like, I don't know, a dozen new Republican senators. Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of problems with it. I mean, one is that is that Texas, you know, Texas is trending in the opposite direction from from California, California is becoming bluer every day, whereas Texas is trending purple. And so I think that the breaking up Texas really has the potential to backfire on Republicans, because of the definitely sort of demographic changes that are underway in the state of Texas.

I don't think it's a swing state in the next decade, but I think it's moving that direction. And if you wanted to break Texas up into five pieces, you know, unless you want to stick like Austin, San Antonio, Dallas and Houston into the same state, and have a bunch of like bankrupt like you know, like you just can't you can't do it without creating a couple of Democratic states in this way. So I think at most they could draw the lines and get a couple of extra Republican senators out of it. Also, all of their belt buckles would be worthless. Yeah, they'd have to print, you know, the snake flag would have to be redone. You know, it's really it's an iffy proposition. There's also a really strong sense of identity in Texas that I think this would not go over well anyway. Don't mess with Texas. Okay, so we draw our boundaries now moving on from from this like the next the next peg in your platform here is one that is my I think personal favorite.

And that is court packing, good old fashioned court packing, adding more justices to the Supreme Court and creating a whole bunch of new federal judgeships as well. Obviously, you know, I prefer sort of a pelican brief option for the current Supreme Court, but barring that. Again, you mentioned the Constitution does not mention how many judges need to be on the Supreme Court. FDR tried this. Could you talk a little bit about FDR's court packing plan, how it ended up and how your plan would be different than that? Yeah, sure. I mean, first of all, I don't like to call it court packing. I like to call it enhanced court appointment techniques. So I think it's like, yeah, I mean, we all remember the FDR thing. I think FDR was losing the administration was losing case after case, where key elements of the New Deal were being struck down by this by a conservative Supreme Court. And he finally, you know, won reelection in 36 with these towering majorities like that we will spend the rest of our lives dreaming about getting these majorities in Congress. I mean, I couldn't get anything done. And so, you know, he said, let's let's pack the Supreme Court.

It would, it would add a justice to the court for I think was everybody that was over 70, which at the time I think would have added six seats to the Supreme Court. Five or six came about the top of my head. But it was like age based, you know, it was like, if you don't get out of here, you old people, we're going to add justices to the court. And ultimately, his Democratic allies in Congress balked and they were like, we're not going to do this as too disruptive. I think one thing that's been lost to history a little bit is that his allies in Congress were willing to go along with a plan that would have added fewer than five justices to the court. And no, because it would have been, you know, they saw it as too disruptive. But Democrats in Congress were actually what they really were willing to add seats to the court, just not according to FDR's exact plan. And so here again, we have a case where we have a conservative court majority that's completely legitimate. I mean, it's not just the theft of Merrick Garland's seat. It's, it's six of the last seven presidential elections have been, you know, the Democrats have won the popular vote in those elections. If you add up the votes for the Senate since 92, Democrats have won 30 million more votes for the U.S. Senate.

So it's like the American people have spoken very clearly that they want Democrats staffing the federal judiciary. And one thing that, you know, one thing that we can thank Republicans for when they, when they did the Garland thing is that I think they really torpedoed any remaining norms or informal expectations about how the Supreme Court should be, you know, how people should be appointed to it. And so again, here's a case where it's like it's, it's not, it's not unconstitutional to expand the size of the Supreme Court. Democrats could add one seat, they could add three seats, they could add five seats, pick a number, you know, I guess it need to be even numbers, we want to keep the odd number. So two, four, six, whatever, whatever it needs to be to get to get that liberal majority on the Supreme Court, because so many of the other problems with our political system, including like the like the ocean of untraceable cash that gets dumped into every, like, you know, podunk state legislative race in this country at this point. It all springs from like terrible decisions authored by this conservative court, like I have not breathed a day in my entire life with a liberal court majority, like this country has been in the death grip of a conservative majority in the Supreme Court since the 1970s, like since I was born.

And so again, here's something we could do it's constitutional, it would be perceived as hardball, it would be hardball. And I think that the circumstances really justify doing that. Yeah, it would be hardball. But I think as you pointed out, I mean, this current Supreme Court and the, you know, the decisions they're rendering, in my opinion, is an intolerable situation for anyone who has any hope of a better quality of life in this country. And this is there fulfilling the goals of like the Powell memo for going back 40 years to basically erase all of the new deal, erase any, any representation for workers to challenge their employers or seek a redress of grievances. This is just a massive shift in class power and just snipping away like the last threadbare vestiges of social welfare. And not only that, but like, should a Democratic Congress pass any kind of progressive legislation, you can be, you can guarantee that Roberts and Gorsuch and Stutz has spent way to their entire life to find a reason to declare something like single payer health care unconstitutional. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I mean, you know, if you've heard this, you know, like the Constitution in exile, I mean, we're, you know, we're one seat on the Supreme Court away from the New Deal functionally being erased. You know, I'm not convinced that Roberts would go along with it, but like, you know, I'm not convinced he wouldn't either. But like if Kennedy or any of the Democrats dies or steps aside, we're looking at a real like a real judicial hellscape. Because these are people that really like all they care about is the original text of the Constitution, but they actually really don't even care about that. All they really care is about is about property rights and corporate power and the preservation of white supremacy. And so, you know, there's stuff that we can do about this. And the objection is like, oh, what about the escalation? And I'm like, man, the escalation already happened.

You know, we're living through it. I mean, we have like a lawless administration right now governing the country. They stole the swing seat on the Supreme Court. And so why not return fire? You know, like the idea that we're going to come back into power and Republicans will be like, oh, no, I'm so, so sorry. I'm so, so sorry about Merrick Carlin and everything we've done for the last 10 years. It's delusional, you know, like we have to come in and we have to play hardball. So it is, you know, it is hard to imagine a new Democratic president wanting to spend capital on this contentious fight right off the bat instead of thinking, OK, well, just wait for, you know, someone to die.

Yeah, I mean, the problem is it's a lottery, you know. And under this lottery system for the Supreme Court, people, you know, people from outside of the president's party, like everybody who was appointed by a Republican will have incredibly strong incentives to hang on until, like, you know, they don't recognize their grandchildren anymore. You know what I mean? Like they won't step aside because those are those are the incentives that the system that we have sets up. It's like you hang on as long as possible until you can be replaced by somebody from your own party. And so really what we'd be waiting for is a death, you know, or a serious illness. And there's no guarantee that that'll happen. I mean, Clarence Thomas doesn't look healthy to me, but I have no idea, you know, neither does President Trump.

So, you know, when I know when he died, we did some research into Antonin Scalia. And to be honest, the fact that he lived that long is fucking incredible. So again, you can't count on any of this stuff. And also, sorry, notorious RGB fans, maybe she should have retired when she had a chance. You know what I mean? Oh, there's no question that she should have stepped aside in 2013. Yeah. Yeah.

And Breyer, too. I mean, they also they also just like anybody that's like over 60 should have stepped aside in 2013 while Democrats still had the Senate. And the Democrats should have appointed some sort of like doogie howzers, no wonder legal mind. He was like 18 years old. Yeah. But that's the other thing, like the age thing here. You mentioned that there's this sort of sweet spot that you have to aim for between like, you know, old enough to have experience, but not like too old to just be like a crypt keeper like Google. But also getting rid of lifetime appointments for these judges, right?

We got to do that, too. Yeah. I mean, that's in the book. I'm like, why not offer them a compromise? Let's amend the Constitution. Let's get rid of this problem once and for all. Every president will get to make two appointments to the Supreme Court. We could actually spell out advice and consent obligations like, you know, Senate can spike one nominee. They can spike two nominees, but they can't spike three or whatever.

Like, you know, pick a procedure. We could think about it. But Republicans are going to say no to that. Like it's not going to happen. And so I think that to me, that just like 100% justifies the hard ball of packing the courts and not just the Supreme Court, but you can also expand the district courts, the appellate courts. You can create new ones, which has been done in the past, you know, and there is a workload problem in some of those courts. So I remember I saw something the other day about federal judge appointments at like this point in the Obama administration versus this point in the Trump administration. And the Trump had just been like full steam ahead.

He has gotten in like three times as many people as Obama even tried to. And they are all like people who, you know, gas dogs for fun, our street magicians, you know, just like absolute lunatics and monsters getting in these lifetime appointments that are going to shape law in this country until I'm dead probably. I'm not even that old. No, until like these people will be in office until I'm nearing retirement, you know, which is very depressing. I mean, one of the things that Republicans did in the last two years of the Obama administration was they held up. They didn't allow them to confirm really anyone. And so there were just hundreds of vacancies on the federal courts when Trump came into office. And so he's going to be able to do in four years what it took Obama eight years to do, which is to flip partying control of district court after district court and appellate court after appellate court.

And, you know, it's all, again, perfectly constitutional, right? But it depended on Republicans playing hardball saying like you don't get to fill any of these seats basically in 2015 and 2016. And so again, all of that behavior, which was really transgressive in terms of the expectations of American politics in the past, I think justifies, you know, a further escalation. And then people who worry about the next escalation, I just, you know, it's like we're not going to have a democracy to worry about if we don't do some of this stuff over the next few cycles. Well, that is what is incredible to me about this, the idea of like, I remember during the Obama administration, again, they absolutely should have gotten rid of the filibuster when they had the chance and had some sort of a legislative legacy to at least even get dismantled by the Trump administration. But they didn't because it was just all about, you know, the friendship and comity of the Senate. Like this idea that like, oh, what are the Republicans going to do in retaliation? It's like they're already doing it.

So I don't understand what this this fear is about like, oh, imagine a Republican Party that gets really crazy and out of pocket. It's just like it's already there. Like, what do you what are you afraid of? What do you think is going to happen by, I don't know, you know, giving it as good as you get? I mean, I don't know if you've ever seen Monty Python's Life of Brian, but, you know, when they were executing the guy for a heresy in the beginning of the movie. And he keeps, you know, he keeps saying heretical things in the guard. It's about to stone him deaf. It's like, you're only making it worse. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's like, how could it be any worse? You know, like, I don't I can't imagine things getting much worse than they are right now, except that I do think, you know, we have a couple of opportunities to win power over the next two cycles. If we don't, you know, I think that we really are like heading down the kind of the Russia road of like, you know, it's like a charade democracy that that's not real. It doesn't have any real content to it. It's just, it's just, you know, ruled by the wealthy for the wealthy, you know, using every procedural tool available to them. Yeah. Now, just real real quickly, like the the last two things that you talk about are his first electoral reform and you talk about changing the way changing the winner take all form of elections. Could you explain that?

Sure. Yeah. So we run 435 separate elections to the House of Representatives in this country, and they're all decided on on plurality winners. Right. So you can win those elections with 40% of the two problems with this. Is it leads to it leads to two party isn't right like this one of the few findings that a lot of political science people agree on is that you know this system leads to fewer major political parties. 60% of Americans say that they want a third or fourth choice when they go to vote in our electoral system really mitigates against that. Okay, so that's one problem.

The other problem is that like in 2012, Democrats won more votes for the House and yet did not win the House of Representatives and people estimate that we need to win the House vote nationally by like either between seven or 11 points in November to actually take back control. And that's because of things like gerrymandering. That's, that's, you know, Democrats increasingly and Republicans living apart, you know, Democrats clustering together in cities like I don't have a single Republican friend in Chicago. Like, you know, I wouldn't know, I wouldn't know where to find one, you know, like everyone I know as a leftist, you know, but that's a problem for drawing district lines. Right. So there's a reform out there pushed by a group called fair vote that would instead of having a single member district, you know, you'd have three or five member district and and those people will be elected according to rank choice voting so that you could, you know, you could vote your heart with your first choice like vote for the working families party, the Green Party, whoever. And if that person doesn't win, your vote is then redistributed instead of throwing it away. Your second choice candidate gets your vote.

So it would avoid, you know, what's happening in California right now where Democrats have made screw themselves by running too many candidates in this top two primary system. This is where this is another case where rank choice voting really help. It would eliminate Jared. You couldn't Jeremy. You can't Jeremy into this mouth. Okay. So Jeremy would be gone like politicians don't pick the wrong voters anymore. And it's a form of proportional representation right on the idea that like, you know, the percentage of votes that a political party gets should in some way shape or form translate roughly into the percentage of seats that they get. And that's like not what we have an American democracy right now. And again, the way that we prefer the house, not on the Constitution. It's like you could fix it with a simple law after Congress time with the president, and then it's gone and the whole system is transformed. And I think Americans would really like the system that comes out of that. I think we'd have four or five parties in Congress. And people would no longer feel like they have to vote for a party that doesn't really represent what they believe, which is I think another thing that contributes to to the decline of the system.

People are checked out. Yeah, I mean, it also contributes to I mean, this gets to the the last thing which is about voter suppression but also voter turnout like what you're describing also deeply demoralizes people from the electoral process. Yeah, you know, there's a there's a really like inspirational effort going on in a lot of states right now to restore the rights of ex felons who are deprived of the right to vote in many states to get people automatically registered to vote to get rid of some of these voter ID laws. But I think something a lot of people don't realize is that there's a there's a clause in the US Constitution that gives Congress the right to do whatever they want to the state procedures for federal elections. So all of these things are something that could be wiped away with a single piece of national legislation called the modern voting rights act. It could outlaw voter ID laws that are clearly designed to suppress the minority vote. It could create automatic voter registration, so that you don't have to navigate this like complex bureaucracy to get registered to vote you just are registered to vote. It would create a holiday for federal elections so that people wouldn't have to make that you know like a lot of things that would drive up turnout, because like 90 million people sat out the 2016 presidential election. And a lot of that was because the candidates but a lot of it is because there's just there's so many different ways that people are prevented or discouraged from voting in this country. And there's one thing we know about those 90 million people that didn't vote is that is that they're less educated, they're less well off. They're people that we know statistically would would vote for the left and higher numbers than they would the right. So to me this is just like it's like a slam dunk. It's another month one thing. You come out with this expansive piece of legislation that fixes a lot of these problems. I think you saw the impact of this in Virginia. When they re enfranchise like 170,000 ex felons and then magically

Democrats blew out their polling projections. So it's another thing that I'm like I cannot believe that this wasn't addressed the last time the last time Democrats held unified power in DC but you know hopefully they'll have another opportunity and I think it's really important because when turnout goes up, you know, the fortunes of the left go up to. I think it's pretty simple. I mean, Virginia and I were discussing some ways to not just increase turnout for the a left wing population but also to let's be honest, I'm impressed the votes of people we wish would not participate in our democratic process. So I was thinking just blaring rap music at all polling places would be a good place to start instead of a literacy test, you are read a monologue from to identify all the SoundCloud rappers that he references. Yeah, some sort of like a new form of like literacy tests at the polls but based only on the type of shit that like Felix is really interested in. I was thinking voting by Snapchat filter just on election day. There's like a there's a you know a Snapchat filter that's like Republican or Democrat you swipe which one you want. I think that could get a lot of young people out there. I think you should have to vote by a star key sub tweets voting voting by kissing booth where you're presented but but a member of your sex. So you vote by kissing someone in your vote counts more if you kiss longer and more or you can have voting take place in a in a bathroom that's accessible to tenders, you know. Oh, Virgil you also remember you also mentioned you only get the franchise if you've achieved a victory Royale and Fortnight. That's one idea. I also think that before you vote you should have to officiate an interracial marriage. So yeah, like or you know, I also I mean this is my radical suggestion here I don't think you should be allowed to vote after I don't know 65.

Like as soon as you start collecting Social Security, it's like you should have the best most generous pension provided by the government, a top of the line health care, but you don't get to vote anymore because it's sort of like you're just you're running out the clock now it's not really your country anymore so your opinions are less valid as the people who are going to have to live in it for another 40 or 50 years. Well, I like a G Jax idea that everyone in the planet should get to vote for the American president except for America. Yeah, that's not bad too. I think we've lost that privilege. Yeah, absolutely. There's not not too much left but like I do want to get we've gone through now the strategies that you lay out for sort of keeping and maintaining power and making it possible to achieve the kind of legislation in society that we'd all like to live in. However, in reading your book like going through this there's this idea that like the Democrats have to take power take back power to do any of this stuff. But I'm wondering like in reading this book, I felt like it's sort of obviously the Republican Party is what we're concerned about because they control government. In terms of actually implementing this strategy, I was struck that it seemed to me that the biggest impediment to that is the Democratic Party itself as it is currently constituted on an institutional level.

And I'm wondering what your thoughts are about that. You know, I mean, I agree and I disagree to a certain extent. I mean, I think that we've seen a lot of change inside the Democratic Party since 2008. So like, you know, the Democratic Party that held the Senate in 2009 to 2013. In a lot of ways it's gone. There's some people that are still there. But I think that, you know, the sort of the policy center of the party has been moved left. In a lot of ways that's that's a lot of credit due to the to the Bernie Sanders movement and everybody was kind of fighting to move the party that left. But I think that there's, you know, it takes a long time to transform a party from the inside. And so a lot of these older folks who are committed to a different way of doing things through a different economic model, who came of age during the Clinton era, you know, they just have to be pushed out of power, they have to leave power. They have to be successfully challenged in race after race. And that's that's going to take time. Progressive left is not winning every single battle that they engage in right now. But I think that they are really reinvigorated in a way that I've never seen in my life. And I find that really heartening.

So, you know, I guess my I guess what I would say is like the Democrat like right now the Democratic Party is the is the national vehicle of progressive change in this country. It is really far from perfect. I think there's some people that need to go. You know, starting with the 17 people that voted to get Frank. There's a lot of people, particularly in the Senate, who are wedded to old institutions and norms that are dead. And you just don't get it. Like, I think that they don't get what people feel like every day people feel the problems in this country. But I do think that we'd be better off under a Democratic government than we would under Republican, and that we can simultaneously try to make that happen. Hold people in the party accountable once they get into office. And if they stray too far off the reservation, then we challenge them in primaries, get much more aggressive about that just like Republicans have done. You know, and I'm thinking about like the last relationship to organize labor, you know, they were they were promised card check in 2008. They never got it. And so that's the kind of you know, that's the kind of policy stuff that what the real trick there is maintaining engagement for the left beyond the election itself. So when we get into, you know, if and when we get into power in 2021, we can't just be like, All right, cool, like everything's solved, because then you're going to see the parents are back. Democratic politicians just like sort of like they'll snip the money in the wind and they'll just like walk off towards it. If we don't hold an accountable if we don't get the right kind of people in the office.

Sorry, that was a long answer to your question. No, I mean, and when I was preparing for the interview today, I just came across a piece in the Washington Post by Jeff Stein about what happens to what happened to New Jersey Democrats when they ran on a millionaire tax and then got elected. And wouldn't you know it? They're not so hot on the millionaire tax anymore. So they're in like, New Jerseyans are taxed enough as it is. But but like the point that you make in the book is that like, the Republican Party really is the body through which this demon known as the conservative movement occupies. And the Democratic Party is really not a political party as such is more of just sort of a collection of different interest groups jockeying for power. Could you sort of delineate a little bit more of like the actual difference between these two parties and how they operate? Sure. I mean, I think at least like this century. What you've seen as Republicans have been transformed into like a European style parliamentary party. That is, they have high levels of internal discipline. They're rigidly committed to an ideological agenda, you know, to the point where they like, they can't even vote to raise revenue through closing a tax loophole, right, because people from the heritage like River Norquist will go crazy and try to drown them. And so that's very different from the Democratic Party, which is, which is I think is a coalition of different groups who work together loosely, who don't always share a set of policy preferences across the issues.

But it's like, you know, teachers unions and organized labor, people of color, students, you know, young people, that's an unwieldy coalition to try to get on the same page about about policy change. And I think one thing that's encouraging to me is I think the data is starting to reflect that the, you know, the people in Congress are moving to the left, you know, so they're to the left of where they were three years ago. You know, more left than they were 10 years ago, because Republicans have complete like they've finished their long march, right, like they are all there at the far right. And I think a lot of people are skeptical of the idea of what we need in this country is for the for the Democrats to march off to the far left. But I think that there's a asymmetry is not just in terms of how the parties are comprised, but in terms of how the parties act and power. I think there's still too many Democrats who are committed to this idea that what they ought to be doing in an office and what voters reward is bipartisanship. And there's like no evidence for that at all. And in fact, it just confuses the Democratic base and frustrates the Democratic base.

And I don't think that that's going to work as a strategy in the long run. Like, do I want them to go off as far to the left as Republicans have gone off to the right? I don't know, it depends on the policy, you know, but I want them to start acting like a parliamentary block in the same way that Republicans are. Yeah. But like, in order to get to that point of moving, like, if our goal is to move the Democratic party to the left and not just annihilate it completely as I suspect many of our listeners would dearly hope for, you do mention that, you know, not to relitigate the 2016 primaries will all be doomed to do until the earth just fries itself in the oceans boil. But hey, that's our bread and butter on this show is endlessly relitigating the Democratic primary. In the beginning of the book, you outline sort of three broad strategies in this inter liberal Democratic debate about where the party needs to go. The first would be the Bernie Sanders model of appealing to working class voters with a more left wing populism, sort of more traditionally Democratic socialist message.

The second is the centrist route, which is about, you know, peeling off moderate suburban Republicans and independents who don't like Trump and like sort of bringing them into the fold or, you know, persuading them to jump ship. And the third would just be like 2016 as an outlier, just keep doing what worked for Obama in 08 and 2012 and just double down on the, you know, this idea that the demographics and the youth of this country are just inevitably tilted in our favor. I'm wondering, as a political scientist, why is number two on this list of strategies even up for debate after the 2016 election? I mean, in my mind, it's not. I mean, I don't think that this message is having any resonance with with actual Democratic voters. I mean, I think that this message is largely being pushed by like Mark Penn and a handful of other people that work in the New York Times who are terrible writers and terrible thinkers and who like whose fingers are so far from the pulse of what actual Democratic voters want. You know, I don't know how these things keep getting published, but it's out there as like a potential strategy. And I think that the way it is sort of embodied an actual electoral strategy is really only in these like really good super red districts where we think that we might be able to pick off a house seat. I don't think you're actually seeing these kind of candidates win in suburban districts. It's not happening like we had our primary in Illinois a couple of months ago. And we saw real progressives win in pretty Republican suburban counties in Illinois or districts in Illinois, which is evidence. I think that people like Democratic primary voters are not necessarily seeing the strategic choices in that binary form, you know,

and I don't see anyone in the real like Mark Penn mold winning primaries and then getting forward into the general election. I mean, I think even Conor Lamb is like nowhere near the kind of creature that these center or center writers imagine that they should be, you know. Yeah. I mean, but there's still a lot of procedural hurdles to clear to have a more open Democratic primary process. I mean, there's still a lot of these procedural hacks that are these sort of locks and dams through super delegates and closed primaries and things like that that are hamstringing a more progressive or left wing Democratic Party. Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, I don't know what's happening in the DNC right now. It's shocking to me. There are still super delegates in the system. I hope that getting rid of them as part of a compromise. I think if we want more people in the process, I also think that we need to talk seriously about getting rid of caucuses, which, you know, and this is a this is a way of life. This is like a Bernie Hillary truce. It's like you get to get rid of super delegates. We get to get rid of caucuses and we all agree to have open primaries. I think that that's a reasonable compromise because caucuses as cool as they are. Yeah, what's cooler than standing in a high school gym for 10 hours? What's that?

I said, what's cooler than standing in a high school gym for 10 hours? Yeah, and who doesn't have 10 hours to vote? So I think the goal should be like, let's get more people involved in the primaries on the philosophy that the more people we have voting in the primaries, the better candidates will get and the more they'll reflect the actual preferences of Democratic voters. So to me, anything that gets more people out in primaries is a reform that we should be working towards. But, but you're right. I mean, we do want to reduce the ability of elites inside the party to direct to direct outcomes. I think it's the way that politics worked for a long time. I think it was uncontroversial until recently, but I also think it's totally out of step with what voters now expect from their political parties. You know, you don't want to not have a party structure at all, like a party structure that's able to avert disaster in a race here and there. But I don't think that anybody, I don't think very many Democratic voters want the elites in the party to have this much power. David Ferris, on the final note of what we all want to need, my last question for you. Would Bernie have won? Yeah.

You heard it here first. You heard it here. That's it. I have to out myself as a Clinton supporter from the primaries. Now, cut his mic. Cut his mic. Yeah. Chris, cut him off. This interview's over.

I had to come to Jesus' moment after the election, and I do think in retrospect, you know, that, you know, I should have just believed the polls. The polls showed Bernie doing better in the general election. I think there's a real argument to be made that voters saw something in him that they didn't see in the other candidates. I remember back in 2016 when I walked into my classrooms, which are full of 18-year-olds, and they all loved Bernie Sanders. They loved, loved, loved Bernie Sanders. And that's evidence that he's speaking to people who want a different kind of politics in a way that Hillary Clinton didn't. He has a cogency to the ideological platform that I think many other Democrats lack. And I think that he would have been a much better foil for the sort of like galloping, impending corruption of what we were seeing in a Trump administration. So, you know, there's no way to know for sure, because obviously they would have thrown a lot of stuff at him.

But yeah, gun in my head. Yeah, I think you would have won. David Ferris, the book is, It's Time to Fight Dirty, available in bookstores now. Thank you so much for joining us, David. Thank you, David. Thanks, Brad. Have a safe. Cheers. Bye. And now a reading from the book of Chapo.

By the book. I have selected this reading. It is the introduction to chapter two, Libs, in which we outline our thesis statement on the problem with the American Lib. So I will now dive into this. This chapter begins with two epigraphs. What did liberals do that was so offensive to the Republican Party, Senator? I'll tell you what they did. Liberals got women the right to vote.

Liberals got African Americans the right to vote. Liberals created social security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. What did conservatives do?

They opposed every one of those programs. Everyone. So when you try to hurl the word liberal at my feet as if it were something dirty, something to run away from, something that I should be ashamed of, it won't work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and wear it as a badge of honor. Those are the words of presidential candidate Matt Santos, as played by Jimmy Smith's on the television program, The West Wing. Followed by the second epigraph, if the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule? Anton Chigur, no country for old men. Okay, now our own words. Prick a liberal, do they not bleed?

Of course, they'll bleed all over you like a Romanov's second cousin. Do they not, like us, prefer things to be good rather than bad? In some very general sense, yes. And, as the first epigraph above lays out, do they not have a record of popular legislation to their name? To be sure. And boy, do they love to bring it up. Why, then, do we hate the lib? The essential problem is not that liberals are as bad as conservatives, but rather there is a giant sucking void at the core of their being.

In the place of real beliefs, liberals have guilty consciences. In the place of politics, they have a democratic process to assuage those consciences. This process pits tepid reforms against a deranged and revanchist right wing with no such inclination towards consensus or incrementalism. Despite its claim to the mantle of American progress, the liberal algorithm produces positive social change or legislation only when pressured, sometimes terrorized, by militant and or popular left wing movements. Without an organized and popular left, liberals end up negotiating themselves into oblivion, moving the country inevitably to the right. If you're of the millennial generation and even slightly left of center, liberals in the Democratic Party have been the only game in town as long as you've been alive. Your parents most likely protested the Vietnam War and supported the civil rights movement, and have been patting themselves on the back ever since. But the litany of bold progressive legislation liberals always point to is at least 30 years old, and it's been eroded by both Republican and Democratic governments since.

All those great liberal achievements have been systematically dismantled both by the right, who've made such destruction their mission, and Democrats and liberals themselves who believe they have to innovate their ideas and move to the center to win elections. Your parents likely considered themselves pretty radical when they were your age. They were known to enjoy good vibrations, solid wages backed by union power, a college education that cost the nickel, and the ability to go to the doctor without selling their car to pay for it. But since those days, America has jerked to the right, and so liberals had to do the same in order to win elections and keep the country from moving further right. This is the basic liberal mantra, and it's fitting that it takes the form of an excuse. Its end result is a political system irrevocably weighted towards the forces of reaction. Coincidentally, by almost every metric, you are poorer and your life is more precarious than your parents were at a similar age. Get over it, Snowflake. This book is your participation trophy. Unfortunately, the eternal wimp out shows no signs of slowing down. These days, there are two kinds of liberals, those who vote for Democrats because the alternative is worse, and those who get teary-eyed at the thought of supporting Cory Booker or some similarly phony slug. The latter are just moderate Republicans and should be written off completely. The former deserve better, and probably have some misplaced attachment to the political tradition of standing up to the right wing. These poor souls can be spared the Chapo Re-education Center with our patented Lib-Oviko treatment, but only if they have imbibed the lessons in history laid out in this chapter and inform on their parents to Chapo Central Committee.

That is the introduction to the Lib's chapter in the Chapo Guide to Revolution in Stores, August 21st. Well, that sounds like a book I like to buy. You'd be crazy not to buy this book. And interestingly, all of the information you need to buy the book can be found at ChapoTrapHouse.com, which has links to booksellers where you can pre-order the book. That about does it for this week's show. Virgil, it was a pleasure co-hosting with you without the rest of those riff-raff cutting in. Oh, you are a gentleman and a scholar. Thank you very much, Sharer. You are a cat and a dog. More of a cat, though.

Until next time, bye. The scientists have yet to discover how neural networks create self-consciousness, let alone how the human brain processes two-dimensional retinal images into the three-dimensional phenomenon known as perception. Yet you somehow brazenly declare seeing is believing? Mr. Crickinson, your scientific illiteracy makes me shudder. And I wouldn't flaunt your ignorance by telling anyone that you saw anything last night other than the planet Venus. Because if you do, you're a dead man. You can't threaten me. I just did.