Chapo Trap House - Episode 224 - Cortez the Killer feat. Trevor Beaulieu and Katherine Krueger (7/2/18)

Episode Date: July 2, 2018

Pulling at a thread from last week's episode, we look at a round up of panicked and outraged takes on how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's victory will spell doom for socialism, doom for democrats and/or an all out race war, depending on which crank you ask. Buy Tickets for Virgil's Event Here: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/virgiltexas

So, Jesse, here's some of the things that the winner stands for. She wants ban on guns, she's again, as you heard, is opposed to ICE, the immigration control folks, and she wants campaign finance reform. What do you think, Jeff? Keep telling me all these wacky things she believes. This is great for Republicans. It's too far left. It's not the principles that are sustainable and work unless you would like to run for

office in Dennis Waylock. Hello, friends, it's your chopper for this week. I'm sad to report that Amber is sick and Felix is in Chicago, but don't fret, we've still got a full house. We've got some ringers that we're bringing in to replace them, starting with Tee, our friend, AKA Ricky Rawls, host of Champagne Sharks. Tee, how's it going? Hey, what's going on?

How's everybody doing? I'm even calling by my full name now, Trevor Bull U, like, it's all good. Okay, Trevor. Doxed, you heard of your first doxed. Again, we're all joining now on a sweltering day in Brooklyn, 100 degrees, that New York City Summer Fielding is here to stay, but also, friend of the show, Katherine Krieger. Hello. Katherine, hello.

I host nothing, but I'm sitting in. Katherine Krieger of Splinter in an act of blatant cronyism on my part. Oh, guys, it's been a week now since the elections, since the special election, not the special election, since the Democratic primary that we talked about on our last show, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her stunning upset victory. And at the end of our most recent show, I said that you are going to see in the coming days and weeks a reaction to Ocasio-Cortez's victory that is going to try to get you to doubt yourself or to believe that it's not important and more importantly than anything

to try to get you to believe that the Democratic party should absolutely not, even for a second, think that this could work or that there's a future in it. So I'd like to go through now a week's worth of takes and analyze them with my co-hosts and our guest hosts. Let's begin with Daniella Greenbaum in Business Insider headline. Democrats need to choose. Are they the party of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or the party of Michael Bloomberg? Oh, God, don't make me choose.

It's a tough choice. This is the Sophie's choice for the Democratic party right now. Can't we compromise? Can't we have universal health care and ban soda? Those are the two choices, a guy who's not a Democrat and someone who is. How about your universal health care, but they stop and frisk every patient when they come in? Daniella Greenbaum, who by the way, I looked into her, she is basically like the off-brand

Barry Weiss, like she went to Barnard. She went to Barnard instead of Columbia, went to the Wall Street Journal and was also head of Barnard's like young college scientist organization. That's not even like a go-bots to a Transformers. That's like some, some like tie thing called transforming machine creature. So, uh, Daniella writes, the Republican Party had a big tent. Then in 2016, it's fringe elements elected Donald Trump, leaving moderates politically home.

We're, we're, we're not in an election. The fringe somehow won. That's kind of odd. It seemed like by definition, the fringe would be the minority. The fringe elements of the Republican weird, who again, overwhelmingly voted for and now approve of the job Donald Trump is doing as president, elected him president, leaving moderates politically homeless and Democrats and Democrats, both politically and emotionally disturbed.

There's too much going on there. Wait. So the Republican Party was the party of the fringe and the moderates and the Democrats were the party of the fringe. It doesn't say. It just says that they're in disarray, but it just says, it just basically, the Republican Party had a big tent. Right.

And that was bad. And then the alienated the moderates, uh, all 10 of them who, none of whom voted for Hillary Clinton. Yeah. Uh, who are now what, holding us hostage, like until the Democrats get serious about, uh, deficit reduction, they're going to, they're going to write in their support. Yeah. They're going to write in George HW Bush or Colin Powell or whatever stupid thing old

people do. Uh, they had a big tent, but then unfortunately the tent became small and they just won a presidential election and every, yeah. Okay. No, they, like the, the center beam got pulled out and then it fell on everyone and they were all running around. Yeah. Um, so she says here, the news this week highlighted two very different kind of Democrats earlier

in the week came the familiar rumors and rumblings that former New York city mayor, Michael Bloomberg, not a Democrat, not a Democrat, former New York city mayor, Michael Bloomberg was an independent, his entire, and a Republican. Yeah. He was literally never a Democrat when he was planning to run for president in 2020. Did he become a Democrat at some point? She says here, Bloomberg is a political independent at the moment, but reports have suggested he would run this time as a Democrat.

I'll buy it. He can have it. So he's a Democrat. What do we guys, what do we got to do to get him to jump in the race? Speak at the DNC. Yes. He did. He fucking loved it.

He was a prime time speaker for Hillary. Yeah. We've heard, we've heard he stepped up on a, on a stack of phone books. He ran as a Democrat. Right. No, not never for New York City mayor. No. Oh, so he was never always ran as an independent and a Republican.

Well, he was a Republican when he was, so wait, wasn't this whole thing about Bernie not being a real Democrat? Yeah. No, no, that, that is, uh, that's totally unrelated. Well, now my Michael Bloomberg is now a Democrat by like the transitive properties of a theoretical future state in which he might run as a Democrat. Yeah. Well, and Bloomberg is also about to pour a bunch of money into the midterms, right?

If you see those. Yeah. To support Republicans like Peter King of Long Island. Yeah, exactly. You know what? Every, every cycle early on, there's some story about some rich asshole who's going to spend a billion dollars on one party or the other. And it's going to matter.

And does anyone ever check the receipts on that? I, I'm going to spend a five billion dollars, uh, to elect, uh, libertarians. I heard it here first, Virgil is spending five billion dollars. The Koch brothers do the natural law party is coming back. The Koch brothers do legitimately data slay down huge amounts of money and Sheldon Adelson too. They actually do spend a ton of fucking money on election. I mean, the other problem to me is if you do have the receipts, doesn't that cause a

different problem is in why is this one fucking person or two fucking people donating billions and what's the quid pro quo there? Like, no, they just, they love America and they want to see it do well. Well, here's the thing. I feel like what happens is they start off really early on and say, we're going to spend all this money, but then it comes with demands and strings attached. And then when a candidate gets nominated that they don't like, just Donald Trump, they say, Oh, well, we're not, we're not spending that money anymore.

Well he didn't need any money though. It didn't matter. Self-made. Neither would, uh, Michael Bloomberg, uh, Daniela, beloved Dandiella writes, we've heard this before, but the question of whether the 76 year old will actually run this time around is far less important than the question of what Democrats would do if he or someone like him does. The answer to that question, of course, is that there are no, there is no the Democrats

right now. There is the party's left fringe and then it's more centrist counterpart. On Tuesday, 28 year old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dethroned Representative Joseph Crowley, a power, powerful Democrat who had been a 10 term incumbent. Ocasio-Cortez self describes as a democratic socialist and espouses many views that differentiate her from other members of the Democratic party. Some of those differing views are plainly contrary to those traditionally held by Democrats. Others are simply more extreme fringe variations on the usual themes.

She advocates for gun control and criminal justice reform, but she is also called for Medicare for all and a federal jobs guarantee without advocating a concrete way of paying for these extreme measures. Gotta pay for it. Gotta pay for it. The taxes. Her solution to these sorts of issues. Here, check this out.

She goes, without a concrete way of paying for these extreme measures, her next sentence, her solution to these sorts of issues, tax Wall Street. That would seem to be answering the question of how to... She hasn't said anything concrete about how to pay for any of this. What's your stance on a black Harry Potter? Is she for that? Like, important democratic issues, like, representations, stuff, she... What about that?

That's her word about it. What does she stand on the... What's her plan? That's the rich, and then 10 minutes of sputtering. That's not concrete. That kind of rich oppressor versus poor oppressed framework might work in New York's working congressional district, but it is sure to fail on a national level. In states like South Carolina, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, where

Louisiana and Mississippi, where Hillary Clinton significantly outperformed Bernie Sanders in the primaries, a more centrist approach like that of Bloomberg's would still garner much more support. I can't stop nodding. Are you fucking kidding me? To win primaries. I'm a bobblehead. Wait, wait.

Is the goal to win primaries and lose those states by historic marches? Yeah. Well, the argument seems to be that Democrats in the South voted for Hillary because she was more centrist than Bernie, and I honestly don't think that there's any evidence for that. No, there's no evidence for that. Those electorates are usually ideologically further to the left than I would think median Democratic primary voters.

But they tend to reflect sort of local leadership preferences, and those people all were long time connected to the Clintons. I mean, what he's really suggesting is that Michael Bloomberg, the stop and frisk mayor, would sweep these Southern Democratic primaries that are like 80, 90 percent African American voters. Yeah, sure. Daniela says there's an added benefit to supporting a candidacy like Bloomberg's. There would be cross aisle support.

A national candidate who runs on the same platform on which Ocasio-Cortez and New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon are running will not garner meaningful Republican support even in the age of Trump. But a Bloomberg type could attract all those Republicans and former Republicans who, as a result of Trump's ascension, have found themselves politically homeless. None of them voted for Hillary. We're going to pick up all of those Republicans in the suburbs. For Hillary.

Hillary Clinton. None of them voted for Hillary. None of them. Why would they vote for Michael fucking Bloomberg? It's worth noting that Michael Bloomberg ran three races for mayor, and in only one of them did he win by more than three, four percent. And he spent a zillion of dollars. The last time he ran for mayor, he almost lost to Bill Thompson, I think.

It was very, very close, much closer than it should have been. It's like one or two points. All the Democrats can do is run candidates that are further and further right in hopes of, as Democrats, in hopes of getting those orphaned Republicans. Getting those 12, honestly, those 12 moms in the suburbs. What's most amazing about them is they can't only not learn from decades ago, but they can't even learn from just last year. Like that whole Pepe speech that Hillary did, and she had this whole segment of it dedicated

to this mythical West Wing Republican, like this Sorcanite Republican, who was just going to go crazy when they were reminded about how we care about this country above everything and this good Republicans. And they were going to just drop whatever they were doing when they heard the speech and spit in Donald Trump's face and be like, Mr. Trump, this is not the American knot. I grew up knowing, you know, like that didn't work. It fell on its face and it was only 2016 that happened. This is genuine psychosis.

I do want to go back to one point, though, and I remember this now. Last year, Jackson, Mississippi, elected Lumumba, a our revolution working families party candidate who ran promising to make Jackson the most radical city on the planet, Bloomberg country right there. Bloomberg is going to do stop, frisk and hug. He's modifying it. That's going to win over all the black people in those similar Tammy Duckworth. Senator Tammy Duckworth said today, again, sort of, you know, just being like, now let's not get you carried away saying a vocasio Cortez, you know, that can her message can

win in the Bronx. It can't win in the Midwest. Then nothing can. Yeah. Because they just fucking lost the Midwest. And like you might as well say, it can't win in the Midwest. Nothing can win in the Midwest. We should burn it to the ground and just frolic in the ashes or just forfeit it to Republicans

for a generation, which is a debate I want to have. It's kind of gasoline because like you just lost there. No, we didn't. Yes, very weird, like acting like they won. You got your candidate. You got your message. You got your chance to triangulate a way to peel off every moderate Republican soccer mom and and and World War two dad.

Young evangelical. You got every. You got your perfect chance to do it. A buffoon Oaf with racist ties, who's just destroys every concept of what a statesman is supposed to be versus an incredibly competent, incredibly moderate candidate. And none of them fucking voted for at all that the test has been done, that's the data is in. There is no question.

This isn't a thing. This is not like a difference of opinion. This is literally a thing happening and millions of people deciding it didn't fucking happen. Have you ever? It is a group psychosis. Have you ever encountered those people and I still see them online where they see you talking about somebody like a Casio Cortez or someone else and they say, oh, fringe. Well, I guess you don't like winning elections.

You just fucking lost. Like how do you just say that? Keep talking about that. They're like, God, talk to me when you win an election. You get your ass kicked nonstop everywhere. And then I guess you don't like winning elections. She just won an election. She just won.

She beat a guy who's been there for 19 years, who's one of the biggest guys in the Democratic Party. And she just waxed him by double digits. Oh, but how about that one that said that was because of Hillary? You see that one? Oh, that was a really good take. She was the message from that one was Hillary opened the door and now we're seeing candidates like a Casio Cortez walk through it.

You watch this guy, I'll watch the Bronx. She loosened the lid on the pickle jar of electoral possibilities. You brought up the Bronx. Here's another good one. Virgil, I know you saw this one today. This Newsmax TV host, who's a former NYPD officer from Queens, who retired to Florida and is also a Rebel TV host. Drink in that bio for just like who did he turn away in conservative media is what I

wonder. He was going off of a Daily Mail hit on Ocasio Cortez, which basically amounted to she claims to be socialist, but grew up in a house. They found the photo of the house she grew up in in Westchester County, which is not the Bronx. It's only the county literally next door to the Bronx. It was this very small house in Westchester, which is not monolithically rich, obviously. Yeah, not at all.

There's a very large minority population there and a very large bore population there. It was this very small house. It looked like a servant's quarter on the menaker estate in Westchester. They were like, gotcha, gotcha right there. I think at her school run, and she went to prestigious Brown University, she actually went to Boston University. I'm like, what kind of fact check is that you have? It's like a very basic.

I mean, it's the Daily Mail. This house saw BU and thought that must mean Brown University, even though it's never referred to by that ever. Well, like the idea is like she claims to be from the Bronx, but actually spent part of her childhood in neighboring Westchester County, like, got her, got her, done. All right. Here's a good one. This is the next piece by Lloyd Green, opinion contributor to The Hill.

Ooh. So, you know, The Hill is always good. It's really a website that won't run anyone. Lloyd Green used to be opposition research counsel to the George H.W. Bush campaign in 1988 and later served in the Department of Justice. Okay. So, this guy begins with by saying, he goes, let us be clear that Ocasio-Cortez is an unvarnished leftist.

Think of Jeremy Corbin and Bernie Sanders, just younger and ungrisled. What's a varnished leftist? That's a good point. Who's a varnished leftist? Yeah. Can you do anything? No, fuck off, I'm not varnished. Not varnished.

Socialism is her badge of honor. When she claims that Hamas is simply a Palestinian analog to the Ferguson protests, take her conviction as a given. You can also place a good bet that come 2020, Ocasio-Cortez will be the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention. What do you think about that last one? Do you think that's a safe bet? I don't think at all.

No, not at all. Safe bet. If they were smart, it would be, but I mean, that's sort of where we're going in this episode. And again, this is another example of how someone who is essentially on the right actually does a better job of describing Ocasio-Cortez's politics than, for instance, Nancy Pelosi or Tammy Duckworth does. Like Sean Hannity's graphics team. Yeah.

Excuse me, this is not someone on the right. This is a respectable conservative from George H.W. Bush, who was an honorable man. I love his socks. So he goes, the pupil is about to become the teacher. And that should not... All right, Bane, settle down. The pupil is about to become the teacher, and that should come as no surprise. While Democratic leadership in Congress is predominantly old and white, their core voters

are anything but. In 2016, minorities made up nearly 45% of the votes for Hillary Clinton. Yet, the Democrats were slow to react to this reality. Now they have little choice as they stand on the brink of becoming a majority minority party. Redistributive policies and identity of politics loom as fast approaching storm clouds on a nearby horizon. Clintonia neoliberalism and the triangulation just got belted with a left hook to the jaw,

and the party's poo-bas are looking dazed and confused. Wait, wait, you think the... Good, good, yes. Let it rain down. This is the Friedman level of mixed metaphors here. Wait, the Democratic Party has failed to reckon with minorities? They've failed to reckon with the fact that they're about to become a majority minority party and that most of their support, or nearly half of it, comes from minority voters.

I think he's just saying that the leadership is disconnected from that reality because they're all white people. Which, again, is not wrong. Show me the lie. It's actually a better, let's say, better analyzed article than the previous ones, sadly. Because Greenbaum is obviously operating under this enormous delusion that there's some huge swath. I mean, this guy's article says Democrats can kiss swing voters goodbye.

I think swing voters is like a boogeyman term at this point. Yeah. That doesn't really exist. It's whoever you want it to be in any given argument. But he means white voters. He means white, suburban voters who won't vote for a party that's dominated by non-whites. Yeah, exactly. So white racist voters is the unicorn that he's saying that...

Yeah, pretty much. I just want to jump to the end here. He says here, wealthy swing voters will not buy what Ocasio-Cortez is selling. Yeah, just for wealthy. Just like Democratic moms in Skarsdale generally roll their eyes at Cynthia Nixon if the polls are believed to be believed. Nixon trails Andrew Cuomo by more than 30 points in New York, and the primary is less than three months away.

Yes, some saw their younger selves in Miranda Hobbes, then they grew up. Going back in time, it was fun to be hip, watch your folks hate on Richard Nixon, hang out at the saloon on Broadway, or all of the above. Wait, wait. Who's he up to the bar at the saloon? Or her whiskey had just spit into the spittoon, like a loud clanging noise. Then get into a bar fight while someone starts to play your piano. A giant tumble we've going down Broadway.

But to burn Wall Street down to the ground is a whole other story. Who does not secretly want to be related to a hedge fund god? Or a bond trader? This is where this article gets really interesting, because up until then, he was like, I think giving an okay, a pretty honest assessment of what that guy's view of politics must be, looking at someone like Cortez. But up and now, when he's projecting all this other stuff on who he thinks his audience is, it's very strange.

He's telling out himself. Who does not secretly want to be related to a hedge fund god? So I can go to fucking parties and say, yeah, my brother works in Wall Street. Yeah, I want to go to the Hamptons and get red tide poisoning. My idiot cousin, after he brings in a bunch of fucking oysters, we just pulled himself. The follow-up is even better. He says, let us face it, the big short was mesmerizing. I think he missed the point of that movie.

The point of the big short was not that these guys are very cool. The point of the big short is how cool everyone is. Well, it was mesmerizing and who wouldn't want to be married or related to one of those people. Well, there were hot girls walking around defining finance, sir. Is he confusing the big short with the wolf of Wall Street? Because that would make sense with the wolf of Wall Street. The big short followed the nerd guy.

Yeah. It's like, who wouldn't want to be like Christian Bale just banging on drums by himself for 40 hours a week. They made a shit ton of money, though. He did. But even wolf of Wall Street, I mean, I think the lesson was ostensibly not to look at him as the hero. No.

Yeah. This guy looks like he shares. No. I disagree. You disagree? Yeah. I want to be like George Belchart. The lesson was drugs are cool.

I agree it is good. Like all the Scorsese movies, it's like alluring you into this incredibly flashy indulging existence and then slowly teasing out how morally bankrupt it is. But the whole point, like you don't get to be a fucking guy who does opo for George H.W. Bush and then write for the Hill and have an intact conscience. So you're not going to get the twinge that a regular person gets watching that and thinking, ooh, maybe that's not right. You're just like, cool, cool, cool, Lambo, cool, cocaine, cool.

Because none of it registers as anything weird. He finishes by saying, Trump is working hard to trash the First Amendment, shred the rule of law, and gut reproductive freedoms. But when the smoke clears, Ocasio-Cortez, Maxine Waters, and Democratic progressives may well leave greater and more lasting cultural and economic resentments. So the theme of these first two, beginning with Daniella and now with Lloyd at the Hill, is the idea that like the Democrats are really playing with fire when they are advancing an agenda that really appeals to the people who vote for them.

When they should be advancing an agenda of the people who watched the big short and was like, wow, I wish I was related to Steve Carell. That last paragraph is incredibly important because he says explicitly, he says, Trump is doing all this awful stuff and swing suburban voters are horrified by it. But if you suggest that anyone's going to come for their fucking money, they're going to not give a shit about First Amendment or child prisons or the getting rid of Roe. The choice is all of that stuff or you raise their taxes, you do any kind of redistribution, they're going to fucking switch.

The thing is, he's probably right about that, and that really would doom any kind of left movement electorally in this country because the people who vote generally are a collection of relatively well-off middle and upper class people, and they have economic interests that align with that, and a left wing Democratic party is going to alienate them. And the only argument against that is that maybe, just maybe, people who aren't middle and upper class, aren't comfortable in this fucking meat-thresher hell world we're living in might be attracted to that and think for the first time in a while it might be worth it to vote for this person.

Well, here's the other thing, we live in a two-party system and necessarily until our means of electing a legislature were to change radically, it's always going to be a two-party system, and right now, some 60% of the country is irrespective of their class interest, alienated by Donald Trump and alienated by the Republican Party because they can see how bad shit insane these people are. So they have no choice except to stay home. I think you can, in this moment, and just in this moment, use these resentments against the Trump administration to augment this kind of hypothetical Ocasio-Cortez coalition.

And I think that would be a workable majority, but only in the short term. I think you're right that ultimately any kind of actual redistributive policies would shuffle the deck again. I have a question. Is there any proof, I honestly don't know, is there any proof for research that shows people actually vote this way as in, I live in this part of the country, but a thousand miles away, this person won. This is going to change how I'm going to treat my home election based on what's happening

in New York. Is there any proof that people actually think this way? Because I mean, there's always been fringe candidates in, not agreeing that she's fringe, but just to accept the hypothesis that they're putting forth, there's always been candidates that they elect in different states or different cities where you're like, oh, that's kind of a weird one. But then you go about your business when it's time to vote in your local election. I'm wondering if people really think this way.

It's probably just going to reinforce your original perception of the parties and not change it that much. I mean, you saw one of the insane Tea Party candidates of 2010, they did not do that much of a disservice to the Republican Party overall. I think what Matt said is correct. I think this basic conception of this moderate voter that's out there that is discussed by Donald Trump, but is afraid of anything too left-wing, is probably accurate. But I think it shows that any election strategy relying on these people is absolute fool's

gold. No, because those people were either cultural Democrats, like they lived in one-party Democrat states like Massachusetts or California, where if you are in any way kind of conservative, you would still probably run on the Democratic ballot line. And they're not going to go to the Republican Party. Those states aren't going to realign, not rapidly anyway. So for the time being, they don't have a home. And if you want to talk about these supposed moderate Republicans, as Matt pointed out,

they're not voting for the Democrats anyway. They didn't do it. We did that test. We didn't vote. They wrote in John Kasich, or they voted for Gary Johnson. And that's it. But I think this underscores the point of why Ocasio-Cortez won is because she went after people who aren't normal Democratic voters, who probably never voted before or have stopped

voting. I don't... Honestly, people say that she says that. I'm not sure if the evidence backs that up, because there wasn't like... It wasn't a big boost in turnout. Right. And there are other competitive races in New York. It's a similar amount of votes.

So I mean, I think she just had a message that resonated with those people who turned out. And I think that's a strong takeaway. Her ads were great. I think people kind of underestimate how... I know a lot of people were talking about her ads. People who aren't normally politically engaged were sharing them on YouTube. And I think people think differently now, like YouTube is such a big deal.

And I still get wowed by the type of things that get tons of views and hits on YouTube. And I think that really helped. She had a good narrative. Yes. Yeah. She wasn't inspiring. She was running against a rotten out-of-touch incumbent. And I think that goes to show how strong messaging and strong campaigning and having very talented

hardworking leaders, candidates, volunteers can win primaries over with a far left platform. And compared to Hillary's ads, like she has way more presence in those ads and way more empathy building in those ads and any Hillary ad, like I've spent years seeing Hillary ads for different things and she doesn't have a fraction of that relatability. So I think it's tough to compare how Hillary does in certain states or in certain areas compared to how... They're two different people. You know?

Well, I mean, in the home stretch of that election in 2016, her ads didn't feature her. Her ads feature Donald Trump. Yeah. She did one ad, the long one, where it was just that slow close-up of her face. The closer. And it was just her talking about her resume and why she was qualified. It was awesome. Well, she was the most qualified candidate of all time.

She was. And also, I'm sorry, that he also seems to be arguing that weaponizing economic resentment is a bad thing when the other side has had no problem weaponizing racial animus for not just in the last election, but for decades. Well, yeah. But that's fine with him. It's not going to hurt him if you whip up racial resentment, but it might end up hurting his pocketbook.

And try it. If you're doing too good a job whipping up economic resentment. And Trump was more willing to talk labor than Hillary, sadly enough. Like in those debates, I mean, he didn't have any good solutions for them, but he at least was willing to admit something was broken, whereas Hillary was just like, it's really it was really pathetic because a lot of those flip votes, the Obama to Trump flip votes can often be described, explained just by the fact that he was the literally the only candidate saying the word jobs.

He showed up. The only one. The rest. She didn't talk about jobs at all. She talked about a resume and she talked about how vulgar and misogynistic and racist Donald Trump is, which are true, of course, but and Pepe's and Pepe's, but that wasn't enough. I mean, here's the real takeaway.

It's something that I've argued for a long time now. The Democratic Party absolutely does not and should not be, does not need to be and absolutely should not be a big tent party. And whenever anyone says, like, oh, we need to have a big tent, you're being too much of a purist about this, I mean, you should spit in their face because they're wrong. They don't know what the fuck they're talking about a big tent party with no means it has no ideological moorings means it cannot lead. It cannot legislate.

It means it's going to be inertial and it's just going to rot and lead time and time again to any movement, no matter how repugnant a movement such as, oh, I don't know, fascism that does have some kind of potency that's not as innervated as a big tent party. That's just, oh, hey, come on in. You can just park your ass here and just hang out. We're just the party of principle. We're the party opposed to this unaccountable well, but people get to feel warm and fuzzy about forging temporary alliances with moderate Republicans who will stab them in the back

the first second. We're not even talking about forging alliances because when you talk about a big tent party, you're not you're not you're not saying we're going to do transactional politics. You're saying we need to water down any, our platform, our speech, anything we believe in order to accrue these free radical voters. We saw in 2016, it can't happen. It's not the case. These moderate Republicans, they believe repugnant things.

They could never, ever in a thousand years build an electorally popular movement of their own. They just they have to kind of like a like a bacteria float around looking for a host where they can spread their shitty fucking ideas. There was a tweet you put up that I think perfectly describes this. I don't know who this guy is. So it's about this mouse and you read it out. Well, who's Kevin feeling?

I don't know who he is, but you put up a tweet. He's some I don't know. I see a lie. Some guy online with an archer avatar. He's got an archer avatar, which is all you fucking need to know. Yeah, so I need to know. Fuck off. Like this kind of shows that for a lot of these people, what you describe is a feature,

not a bug. Like this idea that there's no ideological mooring and not just that, but it's a type of like they almost like being put upon for the nobility. Like, you know, like this is the price we pay for being noble. Like we're kind of in a deadlock, but we have our principles and I think the impotence is actually a feature and not a bug, but you put up this tweet and he said, in liberals ideal world, they still don't they still don't win. And this guy's tweet is something I was kicking around last night.

What about a perpetually balanced court? Something like 10 justices, five lib, five con. So what? Every major decision deadlocks every time. Yes, he's aspiring, even as wild as dreams, his imagination is to just be impotent. You know what? Beautiful. I blame the introduction of the World Cup and soccer culture in America for that wretched

kind of thinking. Where ties are okay. Yeah. And it's not even done. The rest of it says would replacements coming from party regardless of who is in the White House. So basically, whoever you need to balance it, no matter who's in the White House, you get from that.

And it would be like the Lebanese Constitution, where the president has to be Sunni and the prime minister or the prime minister is Sunni, the president is is a is a Maronite and like the speaker of parliament is a sheer somebody pointed. That's what it would be. Somebody pointed out. And so it's like there's five spots for the Dems, five for that. And if one of the five Dems dies in a hang gliding accident or something, they get replaced by the Dems and somebody pointed out that this was the plot of a West Wing episode.

Yes. He had two spots to fill and he could have gotten two mediocre Liberals or he could have gotten one brilliant liberal legal mind if he put her up there with an equally brilliant concern. It's like one of those memes about build the perfect boyfriend got $50 and the thing is is that guess what? It doesn't matter if they're fucking morons. It doesn't matter if they need to help her monkeys to feed them.

If they vote the right way and and vote for the left position on an issue. It literally doesn't matter if they're writing their concurrences with crayons. Their brilliance means nothing. That's the fetish that they have is ooh, but they're so smart who gives a fuck how fucking smart they are. What matters is how they're going to vote and I remember there were a lot of people when the Gorsuch thing was happening when Gorsuch got nominated and a lot. I saw this a couple of people insisting you can't go.

You can't try to stop Gorsuch. You should take Gorsuch because he's a good scholar. He's a good judge. Oh, my God. You might not agree with him, but he's smart. Think of who Trump Trump Trump Trump could pick if you don't pick him. He could pick someone unqualified. It's like it would matter.

He could dig up Hitler and attach him to a fucking car battery. If you put him on the Supreme Court, it's still just one vote. It's still just the five for one way or the other. All that matters is how they're going to vote. They would rather be impotent with good optics than be like powerful and winning, but in civil. And I think it's because they have no skin in the game. Like they actually don't really care.

The revealing they have no skin in the game is just academic and spectator sport. Like it doesn't matter who loses a particular court case because either way we're taking care of. But centrism is more of an ideology than left versus right with these people. And to a degree, they have more aligned with the centrist of the supposed opposite end than they do with because even some of those articles, they're more cool with a so-called centrist person, the other party in the fringe on both. Yes, because they want they're vested in the American, the fucking economic status quo

that they and all of those like with the Democrats. You have the process fetish that we're talking about. And then you have the fetish for swing voters. And those basically just act as covers for the real truth, which is that it is a party controlled and directed and structured around the interests of wealth. And that is a reality that would make a lot of their actual voters sort of uncomfortable or unhappy because a lot of base Democrat voters are actually, you know, in some dim way, maybe, if maybe not well articulated, but in some dim way hostile to capitalism

as it exists now in America. And if you if you're like, sorry, but like when Nancy Pelosi says we're capitalists and that's just the way things are, she's really telling you what all of this is hiding all the stuff about fetish, all the stuff about process, all the stuff about worrying about swing voters and Peoria. It's all a cover for the fact that they don't want to change the status quo. And they are invested in it, they would be up by a hundred and they just want to hold down to the ball for the fourth quarter.

Like they don't really want to pass it. They don't want to do anything. We just let the clock run out because they're winning. Yeah. Winning in the capital. Yeah. But they're acting like they're down by 25. But it doesn't matter.

It's even worse. They're still in power regardless. They're in power positions of power and influence regardless of whether their party is in power or not. And in many ways, it's better to be out of power because if you're in party in power, your base might expect you to do something. And they and they this has to be fucking emphasized. The Democratic Party as it presently exists is structurally and in the personnel at its

top invested in not doing any of the things that people at the base, the people who've been alienated since the Wall Street crisis and by Trump and all the people who've been steadily getting radicalized, people who are deeply alienated from an economic order that does not work for the vast majority of Americans. They do not want to change anything about it. Period and a sentence. They can't, they wouldn't be a party if they did because they wouldn't get the money that keeps the lights on.

They wouldn't keep that that remora class of consultants and scumbags who circulate in and out of government and lobbyists. That is the actual architecture of the party and all this stuff is just window dressing for that. And like that's why it's going to be interesting to see to what degree you can actually force them to change. And I'm kind of frankly skeptical that you will because you have to create alternative structures that can, that can, that can compete with these just monolithic.

Well, here's what you need to do. Control of the ballot access and money, the things that make politics possible, they have a stranglehold on. Well, I mean, I think campaigns like Alexandria or Ocasio Cortez show us, show us a blueprint for starting this long process that you're describing. But you're absolutely correct because what needs to happen really is somebody needs to come in and kick out the money lenders in the party. And that, I mean, that goes back to what I'm saying about a big 10 party because whenever

anyone talks to a big 10 party, you should know like one, you don't know what you're talking about. You don't know how elections work or how blocks function in politics. And two, it means that you are afraid of alienating anyone. It means you don't have any actual political enemies. It means you want those Wall Street guys. You want the rich hedge fund guys. You want these suburban shithead Republicans.

You're even really thinking, and all these people are thinking deep down inside, you know this 25% of the country that's baying for children to be locked in cages and would absolutely, without question, support worse things happening to those people, we need to get them back on our side too. Their ultimate fantasy is a 100% party because that's what that logic leads you to. What really needs to happen is the Democratic Party has to become smaller. It has to excise like, you know, like malignant tumors, many sectors of the party, starting with the entire Wall Street donor base of the party.

And campaigns like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's and Bernie Sanders show you that you don't need that money to run a populist party. We're one to emerge. OK, next media reaction. This is a good one. This is by a headline from CNN. Democrats are in danger of going too far left for 2018. This is by Joe Cunningham.

Editors note, Joe Cunningham is an editor at the conservative news and opinion site RedState.com and a contributor to TheHayride.com. I want this guy's advice. We're going on a hayride. This is RedState.com, which is genuinely concerned that the Democrats, if they go too far left, will lose to Donald Trump in 2020. They want that to happen. They're just giving you some friendly advice.

Sometimes you can take advice on how you should run your campaign and organize your beliefs if that advice is given to you by your literal mortal enemy. I mean, we don't know he's acting in bad faith. I think we should hear him out. That's the thing, because they're impartial. They're the best person to ask. I just want to read. By the way, the fucking hayride thing, these fucking assholes trying to act like they're

fucking hillbillies. There's the sons of the soil. Come on to the hayride. And here's 15 articles that are all made by some fucking guck. I want to beg. The industry is Dracula. We need a big hayride party. That's what we need.

First of all, Catherine, can you describe what Joe Cunningham looks like? He's the roundest boy I've ever seen. He looks like that guy in Game of Thrones that is honestly or is that who he is? Honestly, I thought that was a suspect pay. I thought it was like this is the bomber. He was found in the woods. He's a big round boy with a big old beard. Wow.

So like this. This is his read of our recent politics. He was just sitting around the hooten jug and decided to lay some country wisdom down for you city slickers. He says President Barack Obama led the party in a leftward direction, huh, further, further than his modern democratic predecessors in the White House, which is like kind of true. But then he says one guy more in terms of rhetoric on issues such as immigration and LGBT rights than in terms of policy.

Well, I mean, that is what matters. Yeah. So in rhetorically, he moved the party slightly to the left in terms of immigration and LGBT words are the most important thing. However, his health care overhaul alone invigorated the right wing. And by the end of Obama's tenure, we saw a hollowing out of democratic office holders across the board. Obama never embraced socialism, but pushing the country as far left as he did, invited

backlash once. If the Democrats go further left in 2018 and 2020, the pushback is going to be even worse. Can somebody, so this guy's been a ryer for a while. Can somebody look up the shit he was writing about Obama during the Obama administration? I was just thinking that. I guess this motherfucker called him a socialist on multiple occasions. There's no fucking way that redstate.com did not call Obama fucking so they were not making those distinctions.

You know, he's we're probably running side by side of the shell and our neoliberal and relatively centrist horseshit. You're a lying sack of dough. So yeah, this is Joe Cunningham says here. There is evidence that the democratic leadership is trying to keep the party from deviating too far, but it seems they might be losing the fight. Democratic leaders, including fierce Trump critic Adam Schiff, have urged other Democrats not to push for impeaching the president.

Pelosi wants to keep control of the caucus and has signaled she will fight off any upstart challenges from her left, which includes refusing to support Sanders' plan for universal health care and raising taxes. But many in their party base apparently believe that they didn't go leftward enough in 2016 and the groundswell support for Sanders hints at this. Hillary Clinton was an awful candidate who survived the primary process with help from the party's establishment and Debbie Wasserman Schultz in particular. And her lack of appeal to the American public was just as much to blame for Trump's victory

as anything. Yeah. Accurate. No. That's true. I would argue she didn't go in any direction and that was the issue. Yeah. She didn't have policies.

Here's a remix. She had them on the website though. So much of the Democrats base wants to move further left and nominate avowed socialists to take on the far-right conservatives they view as the enemy. Add to that rhetoric like we heard from Maxine Waters who effectively called for protesters to target Trump administration officials and you have a recipe for more extremism and ultimately voter alienation. It's a dangerous overcorrection and it's not strategically smart.

You know, it's always Alexandria and Maxine Waters and I just wonder what those two people have in common. It's something. I put my finger on it. But all of these reactionary white writers are warning us against these two women in particular. It's also interesting to see it coming similar. Yeah.

It's also interesting to see it coming from liberal centrist because they're always online talking about like trust black women and, you know, trust non-white women of color, you know, trust all this stuff. But they're magical. Yeah. Yeah. They're single-boosting the hell out of them. Yeah.

Single-boosting the hell out of them except when they don't fit the centrist line and it's like trust black women, but not that one or listen to women, but no, no, her, uh-uh-uh-uh. And on paper, all they're talking about is this intersectionality. The more oppressed identities you have, you can, you know, it increases your likelihood or how much you deserve to have the mic, you know what I mean? And you have Hillary Clinton putting up tweets about intersectionality and there's like intersectional websites where it's like four white women and like one black woman now. Like I've seen this fundraising and it shows that nothing means anything to them.

Like this is, you know, a lot of intersectional opportunity. She's not rich. Well, unless you listen to that article, she's Puerto Rican. She's a woman. On paper, it'd be great and they're like, no, we want Michael Bloomberg. Yeah. Uh, so Joe Cunningham, uh, finishing out here, he says, it's a dangerous overcorrection and it's not strategically smart.

Again, just love the idea that the Democratic Party should be taking strategic advice from an editor at redstate.com. I mean, that's the kind of shit they would do. Yeah, yeah. He wants you, he wants what's best for you. Exactly. He really does. Well, and he's been there before, you know, he's a political stakeholder.

The American public's response to Obama and to Trump has been for someone to swing things back the other way. They want moderating voices in government. It's looking more like they're going to get the opposite, however, and they aren't going to react the way some Democrats think they will. Like it or not, the American public as a whole is going to want more civility from their politics, not less. What does that actually mean?

That's why they elected Donald Trump because they want to moderate in the White House. What does that actually mean? People want a moderate government. Like we want a neutral government. It doesn't make snow. That's the thing is that and that's the that's that's sort of the floating signifier in all of these articles is that moderation is never explained. Moderation is never defined. Yeah.

Well, it's about norms upholding. They just want a government government government and a president who will uphold and respect the norm. Everyone of every political stripe, unless you're a catatonic, you know, unless you are unless you're the mother in psycho, wants a government with a mandate, a platform, some program that actually does something. But also this goes back to not learning anything. We just tested this theory out with the most moderating, non believing, afraid to offend

everybody person. People didn't elect her. Yeah, exactly. Like it wasn't that long ago. This is so weird. They just spit out these premises that have not only been wants, but I think this guy is saying what I want is actually moderate and what he wants. And if he wrote it down and was sincere about it would be totally abhorrent to 50, 60 percent

of the country. Here's here's like the disconnect in like in in this comes from like more than that. Both the media essentially believes the conservative movements own self conception and the way they've sold themselves is that, you know, this is the David Brooks line that being a conservative is about, you know, what liking what's tried and true over over new experimental different things and spending the night means and liking, you know, things that are okay to a possible utopia and that they they want to it's about preserving the status quo. That party exists in America and it's the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party is a central right party that is mostly conservative in its outlook. And essentially, you know, yes, would they like the world to be more humane in our country to be better in certain ways? Sure. But basically they want to keep things. Yeah. And even hand at the keel and not do anything too fast or too soon. The Republican Party is a full on revanchist reactionary party that like you said, if

you went down the line of what they actually want from government, it's to turn the clock back a hundred years. And that includes every single one of the never Trump cycle. Every single one of them. Yeah. So you should you should be forced and every you talk about we want moderation. I want you to fucking have to do like AP style should require you to have to define it. What is moderation?

And you're like, well, it's a five trillion dollar defense budget, endless wars forever, a largest incarcerated population in the world, a steadily eroding standard of living for everybody who doesn't own a boat. I mean, that's and that would be it. And then people would know what you're talking about instead of it just being this floating signifier that just means basically it just means a reasonable person, because that's the thing Americans pride themselves on not they don't want to think of themselves as giving away their reason to some ideology that we think that's bad.

We think of that basically as as the loss of self is that you're you're you are a person to the degree that you maintain an independent judgment above ideology. And that idea is so powerful that you can package anything in that garb and people will be like, yes, even if it is objectively insane, reactionary gibberish that will lead to the death of everyone on the earth, it couldn't be any. It's basically like fucking Cthulhu death cult shit. But because it's it's it's draped in the mantle of moderation. And because there's no one there's no real political differences between the parties

to sharpen those distinctions and make people have to define their terms, it just gets put under. And what and this is what I was talking like, Virgil older or what you were saying about the Democratic Party shouldn't be a big tent party like right now, the Democratic Party is sort of at war with itself because its leadership and largely the people like its most committed voters are largely conservative in their outlook, not conservative in the sense that they hate gay people or like want to, you know, turn back the clock on social progress, but they want to keep things basically the way they are now, even though the other

for the other people who have nowhere else to go, but the Democratic Party, it's not fucking working for them. And that's why they didn't that's why no one was really excited about Hillary Clinton other than that diehard group of like it's about well off people whether or not you are willing to challenge entrenched capital. And the most recent incarnation of the Democratic Party is categorically unwilling to do that. I've heard glimmers or seen glimmers of I know we might go after the drug companies, we might go after the oil companies, maybe very lightly a soft touch.

I mean, you look at the ACA, which was obviously policy intending to help people intending to increase coverage. Well, this goes to what it was not a challenge to the health insurance company or the medical company. It was what goes to accommodate them. This is what Joe Cunningham was saying about Obama move the country to the left by rhetorically. And that's the thing is that they can only talk about like yes, Obama doesn't want people to go bankrupt from their health insurance or he doesn't want health insurance to bankrupt

people or for people to not seek medical care for lack of insurance, right? But he can only talk about the solutions to these problems euphemistically because he can't go any further than that. If you believe a market based expansion, modest expansion of health insurance availability in the country is a radical left proposal, you're a baby, you're a dumb baby. I don't care what you believe. I don't need your vote. I don't want to talk to you.

If I wanted to impress you or court you, I would dangle my keys in front of you. You're a dumb fucking baby. Here's another. Fuck off. So, okay, I want to do one more before I get to the final one in terms of a group of people who I think we need to court. How about libertarians? Let's hear what the magazine has to say from former shopper guest Robbie Suave, who says

you're a democratic socialist who think you're having a moment. It's me, a libertarian who's been through this. I've got news for you. The libertarians in this country have never had a moment anything close to this. He actually wrote it's me. Yeah, it's me. Hello. It's me.

I'm Robbie Suave and I'm very worried about iPhone colors. He writes here. Democratic socialism. The ideology which Ocasio Cortez identifies appears to be having a political moment to which I say as a libertarian who has been through the hole and idea whose time has finally come. Good luck with that, comrades. The signs are easy to misread.

Didn't happen. Yeah. Never talking about Ron Paul. Yeah. The libertarian now is like being a crackhead any time after 1994, who still who still does it? Like, like, like, like you ever see a crackhead like a 2018 and you're like, that has gotten so much bad press.

How? Who are the new crackheads? And I feel like we were libertarians. How you tried and true 2018 libertarian was the answer is they've all moved on to the harder shit like griper and yeah, they're all Nazis and a few of them I will give credit a few of because they're libertarianism basically. It's fairly alienated from the status quo. So it's harder for them to just become regular conservatives or whatever.

They end up most of them become Nazis and I will give credit to the few who are true to they take the principle of, you know, of freedom and an idea and they take it. And now I need to be a socialist and some of them do do that and I give those people credit. But most of them are just becoming Nazis. The ones that are left are in it for the fucking paycheck like Robbie Suave. Right. The rest of them are the ones getting paid by the Koch brothers, getting paid by all

of these fucking stitched up think tanks and fake fucking periodicals that no one on earth buys. And that's the big difference. And that's what's what's. Are they really? This is what he writes. This is what he writes. In the period of time between 2009 and 2015, a group of Republicans that appeared like

they wanted to shrink government stole some power from the old guard. My magazine dubbed Senator Rand Paul, the most interesting man in national politics and libertarianism was finally enjoying its political moment. Even the New York Times thought so. Finally. Oh, so OK. Wow. So you've got the biggest fucking slack jawed rubes and politics to be slightly impressed

by your fake fucking branding exercise. Congratulations. Well, yeah. But I mean, the point is it delivered for the people that funded all this. Yeah. Well, here's the thing. They did they did win because the what libertarian leads to wins. You elected what in 2010, Justin Amash and Rand Paul.

You also elected dozens of freedom caucus psychotics. And they are at work eviscerating our fucking welfare state. And just because they have recognized correctly that all of this non non aggression principle just because they've left that, you know, shit by the wayside and have abandoned any, you know, half hearted bromides about, you know, oh, we don't we believe in multiculturalism and shit like that doesn't mean they're not fundamentally libertarian. Listen to this. Listen to this smug asshole.

He says, while it's true that more and more people desire cultural freedom, specifically the kind of customization choice and control over their own lives, meaning that a libertarian worldview provides meaningless political libertarianism had much less support than it seemed. Voters didn't send the C party to Washington to constrain government and they ended up caring far less about crony capitalism than they did about illegal immigration. That's capitalism. You fucking asshole. What is not political libertarianism?

Like I don't even understand. Well, here's the thing like like Matt Brunig pointed this out to me and like the libertarian like again, the 12 people that Robbie Suave and the editors at Reason represent their vision of libertarianism is only attractive if they sell it by agreeing with things that liberals and leftists already want and believe it. That was the Ron Paul revolution. It was a bunch of dipshit college kids being like legalized and legal weed and we're excited about that because they were he was the only candidate on either party saying talking about

it. That was where the only thing and the thing is there's nothing libertarian necessarily about either of those positions. Those positions are at very much at home on the left. And that's the thing about this that makes it so funny is that this guy is so up his own ass and it's in, you know, it is fucking Georgetown happy hours with all this pud pulling fucking Cato buddies that they don't realize that libertarianism is entirely a paper tiger funded by wealthy people who give it the illusion of popular support.

Whereas socialism, if it is properly understood and it becomes something that can like actually reach out and be be persuasively appealing to people literally is the aspirations of the entire working class. That is slightly more fertile electoral ground than 12 point extors in DC, who literally all of whom went to fucking George Mason and are getting getting paychecks to believe this shit to create this fantasy that there's some cosmopolitan libertarianism that doesn't just evolve into straight Nazism as soon as as soon as pressure is applied to it. Ravi says Ocasio Cortez doesn't appear crazy.

She's an eloquent, if naive and unspecific defender of far left ideas. He's not as naive as me. The guy who literally thinks that the point of capitalism is to give me multiple places where I can get video game reviews. And he also said that on our show. Yeah, he said that a paragraph above he says MSNBC's Chris Hayes to his credit was mildly incredulous about the future congresswoman's agnostic definition of the term. And he's like he's talking about how Cortez when she's asked like what does it mean to

be a socialist says things like to me it's about the dignity of all people to have health care, education, a job, et cetera, not being like the workers control the means of production. When Ravi was on our show, I specifically asked him about the actual libertarian beliefs of Murray Rothbard and Hans Hermann Hoppe, which he disavowed explicitly and said that's not the kind of libertarian I am to me libertarianism is about, as he said, getting the widest array of video game reviews from a different variety of sources. Hey, you want that? How about a UBI idiot than every moron who games?

He can be free to post all day about their fucking video game preferences. So he goes, I do like the idea that his idea is that in a socialist government, you get you get one video review from from from from like the Kotaku Central Committee and every game gets one review, and it's the only one that you get, Matt, you you you just but we're chopper year zero to commence Chris person would be the only one allowed to do video game reviews. Well, ideally, there'd be no video game at all. So Ravi says there's no doubt socialism, there's no doubt socialism as defined in incredibly

loose terms as a vast social welfare system is gaining popularity among young Democrats. But libertarians have learned the hard way that it's all too easy to draw unwarranted conclusions and misdiagnose the moment, especially when the New York Times fawns over you think people actually like you. But Ravi's very used to the feeling of being convinced at a young and naive or moment that you were very popular only to find out later the harsh meat hook reality of life, right? You actually have no friends and everyone hates you and no one wants to play video games with you.

No one will join your clan. Nobody who's fucking struggling as a young person to make it in this world is going to think you know the solution to this is the regulation that's going to take care of it. And they know that and that's why this this idea that there's any any comparison between these two movements is absurd because libertarianism mostly got relevant for a minute there with a combination of dark money and literal trickery. Just putting like the couple of good, you know, you got like a bunch of rotten fucking vegetables and you've got two that are still good.

That's what they did. Oh, rule legal weed. Oh, the Iraq war is bad. And that's the entire and it was never anything because it's just not a thing that's going. It has no and by the way, the people who has no answer, the people who fund it like the Cokes and the Mercers, etc, the Pete Peterson's or whatever, the people who arrange the reason magazine crews or whatever.

These people are explicit about not wanting or caring about puritanical libertarianism. They want the government to be shrunk just enough to like for them to hoard even more creases like wealth to go to the moon. They don't really give a shit if like, you know, we abolish the DMV or whatever. They don't care. And those few good fruit that they had, like you don't need to be a libertarian to have legal weed, like, you know, you can have legal weed with a bunch of government regulations. California just did it and it's like the least libertarian service to support legal

weed at this point. And as far as I know, there's nothing that they talk about that's appealing that you can only get through libertarianism. Oh, the stuff you get just from libertarianism is just a nightmare realm of pure social dourism where people are fucking being picked up in the street with giant fucking like soiling. Yeah, like soiling bulldozers. Yeah. All right.

But you know, really, the thing is, and I really do maintain this, they got what they ostensibly wanted from Donald Trump, they got the eviscerate. They got the tax. They got the deregulation. They got the deregulation. They got the evisceration of the social safety net. Right. They got this fucking right wing Supreme Court justice who's going to keep making decisions

like that. And they got something else they got to their opposition to the Iraq war. No more big land wars, just these techno wars where these video game wars where we're not going to die. They're going to die. So you don't have to worry about it. You could read your fucking video game reviews and something else they got, they didn't literally get the wall. And a lot of people were gloating, but they got what the wall represents, which is terrorizing

immigrants. Yeah. And people talk about, oh, I see these liberals laughing because, oh, hey, Trump, where is that wall? And the people who that wall was read meat for, they're like yanking it to pictures of these kids in cages. They're fine. Yeah.

We don't have a wall, but we have a chain link fence. That's all the wall we need. As long as the wall is separating immigrants from us, we don't care if it's a chain link fence in a cage or if it's an actual literal wall. Or if you can see through it, because it has to be transparent. The libertarian rage at Trump right now is the rage of Caliban holding up the mirror and seeing his own reflection. Well, la di da, professor.

All right. I need to, all right, we're over. We're over. I need to get to our last secret reading series that is, of course, still the theme of the day, AOC. But wouldn't you know it? One of Rod Dreher's readers, oh, it's a dip into the Rod Dreher mill bag. And what do you know?

Play the Twilight Zone music. One of his readers is from New York's 18th district. Does that seem improbable? How insane that person must be. How many times do they call the cops a week? Is it Ricky Barne? He must be walking here. It's not Ricky Vaughn.

It goes, a reader of this blog writes as a decade's long... It's Kevin James. It's the King of Queens, everyone. A reader of this blog writes as a decade-long resident of New York's congressional district just one, effectively, by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a stunning primary upset of the Democratic incumbent. Though I've eliminated some biographical information at his request, I can tell you from his past comments on this site that the reader is not a Christian.

Okay. Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it.

Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it. So I think it really tells in this guy's letter. When I think of the Rondre or Mailbag, I think of the film Split, if anyone has seen that,

with James McEvoy, and Knight Shyamalan's... Someone's being kept in the basement? Well, just he's... There's 500 versions of him, and they all write... Automatically write letters to the other, and then he wakes up, and then, oh, they're all these letters to the editor. I need to put them on my website. Okay.

So, this is his reader who, again, Rod would like to stress, is not a Christian. Joe Crowley was the congressman of my district and I was rooting for him to win, more so because he recently stood up against a protected bike lane proposal on two corridors and took the side of the community. The Department of Transportation, a bunch of crazy far-left progressive activists and the mayor were trying to force these bike lanes down our throat despite a huge outcry and we pushed back enough where Joe Crowley said no and our local councilman ended up not supporting the project.

Now with Crowley gone, the snowflakes who demanded these bike lanes might become emboldened again. So this is a splinter issue, is bike lanes. Well this is so, this is just like the crank psychopath, but like it's the same, I mean even if it isn't him, it's functionally the same person as the crank who wrote about the thing. We're going to get to that. They're just these insane people like the sight of a bicyclist, these are the people

and they exist. It's hard to imagine them. Makes a spitting mad. They see someone on a bicycle and they get mad. I don't know how you get to that point, but there are people like that in the world. That, okay, continues. That being said, I am not surprised that Ocasio-Cortez won. Her campaign posters were everywhere and I mean everywhere.

Every single grocery store or storefront in my neighborhood had her poster up. Even my local grocery store had her poster up. And when I went to the owner, who was a good friend, and asked him if her followers asked him permission to put it up, he said, yeah, they told me to put a poster on my window. And I said, yes, when I told him about her politics and that she was for bike lanes and all the progressive craziness, he immediately ripped it up and took it down. Bike lanes, just the idea that that is some sort of, it's like bikes to people, ride bikes. It's radical.

They get killed. The city is like basically a giant abattoir for people on bicycles. It's like a fucking Rube Goldberg murder machine for people on bicycles. The idea of just putting like some space for them not to get squashed. Yeah, I got to, I got to say, Matt, I think that believing that the most important issue in politics is going to mobilize the most people is bike lanes is a lot more sane to me than what all of these centrists and liberals talking about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's win believes.

This does affect people's day to day lives and people feel it viscerally. As this letter goes on, you're going to find out that bike lanes is definitely not the number one thing that this guy is concerned with. So he goes, and the funny thing is, the poster was up on his window along with an ad for Joe Crowley. Just by walking around the neighborhood, I saw how bland Crowley's campaign posters were. There were few and far between in number, and I had a sense that the last three months

that he was woefully unprepared for the tidal wave that was going to hit him. Many of these store owners who put up Cortez's posters had no idea who she was or what she stood for. So her election in large part was successful due to a very well-designed PR effort and propaganda campaign. The activists who worked for her went door to door putting up these ads, and all they had to do was ask permission from the business owners. If that wasn't enough, people were actively stopping pedestrians on the street and campaigning

for her. What? My local park every single weekend. I like that they made this sound like trickery, like she'd never hit her position. It's political stop and frisk. He goes, I don't know. This is really good. I don't know where her funding came from, but big money was definitely backing her.

From the t-shirts to the big bicycle, from the t-shirts to the well-designed posters to the glossy campaign cards. Something was definitely at work here as if there weren't a million articles about how she didn't accept. She had one. She had no money. Yeah. Compared to Crowley.

But I like it. There's no other option but big money. Like there's not a million people with $20 in their pocket. So it couldn't possibly be an actual groundswell of popular support. It's got to be money is at work here. This is also like real old person boomer mindset is that they see something that's like pleasantly graphically designed. Yeah.

They're like, this is big money. This is suspect. There's no minions or omics hands on this. Something's impossible. Something I bet too was her race and her background because you probably thought, okay, it's probably all the black and Spanish people, all the poor people voting for her. How did they have? How did that?

First of all, are they even allowed to vote? Yeah. Why did not all of this enfranchise if they're not felons? Why aren't they all felons? That's nothing we have to look into and how did they get the money to give her? So he senses that there's something off with these well designed posters and he goes, as anyone who thinks that the racial component was not at play here is fooling themselves. Her campaign poster looked like an ad for a political candidate in a Latin American

country. What the fuck is he talking about? Well, she has the name of a Latin American person. It had an upside down exclamation point. That's what he saw you about. She was wearing this hat with all this fruit on it. And epilots and like a huge military. It all covered in medals.

So he goes, her ad looked like a poster for a political candidate in a Latin American country. And I guess it worked to marvelous effect the large Hispanic population in this area. Okay, guys, this letter was hinting at the crazy, but now we're really going to dive into it. However, what was really bizarre for me was the fact that the overwhelming majority of activists who were campaigning for her like a bunch of fanatics were whites in all capital. When I see stuff like this, I can't help but think that whites, especially white liberals,

have some sort of inbuilt suicide complex where they want to give away their own country to non-whites. It's absolutely mind boggling to me, and it's going to be hilarious watching these whites eventually be pushed out of the Democratic Party. But the record, this guy lives in a congressional district that's 85% non-white. He just loves being pissed. He goes, they're going to be pushed out of the Democratic Party and straight into the hands of the alt-right.

You're describing what happened to you, dude, like Ocasio-Cortez's far left politics or the future of the Democrats. And if they get their way, America will be well on the way to becoming a third world banana republic. Make no mistake, this country is in big trouble. There's a lot more I can say about why I've come to these conclusions. But in the last three years- Greed my manifesto.

I've seen enough to believe that some sort of civil war in America is inevitable. Race war. Yep. And then he says, first it'll happen along political lines, then it will morph into conflict along racial ethnic lines. I expect that we'll see classes between right-wing and left-wing groups in the streets that will be very reminiscent of the bloody left-right battles that defined Turkey in the late 70s and early 80s.

Out of this chaos, we'll see the military step in and establish martial law. And that'll be the end of the United States, falling apart like the Tower of Babel before it. I know what this guy's talking about because there's this guy who would always come in with a big boombox and play rap music really loud in his pizza place. And that's the first indication that things are going downhill. Something I really realized about conservatives over the past year or two is I used to think only the fringe really believed in Camp of Saints or what's the other one, the Turner

Diary? But they all just believe in it to different degrees. One group thinks that it's going to happen tomorrow, but these guys think it's only one election away or just one bad choice of America. And then all the masses, the Morlocks, are going to come from the Abyss and just drag everybody down. No, no, they're absolutely convinced that that's the catalyst to make it full fascism. It's just that death drive of eventually there's just all going to sign off on the idea that

America is doomed and basically needs to die in some bloody racial ragnarok. Do you think the new French renautera is going to happen at any given second? Exactly, this is so crazy to me is that Ocasio-Cortez won a nice, stunning, upset election, but this guy's literally like race war is going to happen because of it. I'm sorry, her platform wasn't that radical, you know what I mean? So Rod says, in an update, there's like 10 updates on this post, he goes, I've reconsidered whether or not to take this comment down because some of you say it's racist. When Rod Dreher's readers are calling something racist, he goes, I'm going to leave it because

I think the reader's observations are debatable. Not correct, but debatable. The fear voters like him have of the power of identity politics are realistic as much as the fear of left-wing voters have from right-wing identity politics. Identity politics? She did not run. But that's the thing. That's the thing.

For these people, those things are racially coded. Any redistribution is racial. Taking money from me, who's going to get it? Them. That's how they think of it. It's 100% the way they think of it. And anybody who's white, it has any kind of social standing racializes the concept of redistribution.

And then these white people that he's so horrified are, I bet a lot of them are ones who really don't have anything and think that they might actually benefit from redistribution. He writes at the end here, but there's no escaping the fact that to a lot of people who look like the Joe Crowley's of the world, the ambiguity of that statement, it's time for one of us, will be interpreted as otherizing those who do not have the same identity as the candidate. If Ocasio-Cortez is one of us, well, who is them? In this case, it's a guy who's been in Congress for 20 fucking years and takes fucking donations

from literally every Wall Street zombie glove. You spend the us forever. And then he finishes with another letter, the ever-readable Matt in Virginia, right? I am 35. The ever-readable in letters fucking written in his own semen and blood. I am 35 years old. And for what it's worth, I honestly feel like there is only one category of people my age or younger, and it ain't a majority who believe anymore in, I have a dream that my four little

children will one day be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. That's what he meant. Somebody should ask them if you know a second speech. Yeah. This guy is literally the only one. Do you have anything else to say? Also, by the way, guess what?

If you guys were, if you guys really want everyone to judge you on the candidate character, you're fucked because your character is awful. You're bad. Your scumbag Nazi piece is a shit, and you're lucky we don't, people don't fucking rise up and put you in camps. You want to talk about fucking content of your, your content of your character is dog shit. By the way, every fucking letter, every fucking letter from Rob to Rod Dreyer seems like it

was written on toilet paper and sent to Hannibal Lecter. Next time, Rod, I'm going to send you something wet. I just want to bring in one really quick. I saw this, I've been thinking about it all day. The funny thing about this is that millennial socialists aren't anti-materialistic or anti-bouggeois. They think socialism is their path to materialism and a bourgeois lifestyle. Avocado toast and Brooklyn lofts for all. All I could think is, every man a king, how hypocritical are you, sir?

I didn't get a chance to talk about it, but, and I hope I don't recapitulate what you said on the weekday show, Will. But I was at Alexandria's victory party and on the way over, you know, and the conversations I had with a lot of people involved in the DSA, but not necessarily her campaign, was that, you know, we think she ran a marvelous campaign, she got the word out, it's a victory in that, you know, regard, but, you know, hey, if she gets 30% of the vote, that would be a huge victory for us. And I, when we got there, I spoke to Ryan Grimm of the Intercept who told me he was

walking around the neighborhood and he talked to 10 people and every 10 voters and every single one of them was voting for Alexandria. So when those results came in, it was a shock, but I mean, it seems like it wouldn't have been a shock to anyone on the ground. And throughout that night, I kept hearing from people, people would come up to us because they, you know, they'd heard the show and said, you know, I, I just just recently or a few months ago or a year ago got politically active and I had been canvassing, knocking on doors for Alexandria for, for months now, hours every day.

And it was the competence of her campaign and the sweat of these volunteers that put her over the top. And I hope this wasn't off the record, but I spoke with someone close to her campaign who said that long before she was getting all of this media attention before she was this breakout star in the later, last couple of weeks of the primary, that the place where they got a great deal of attention online was the Chapo subreddit, which is a very politically active left subreddit. And I was also, I also learned recently that one of one of the mods was banned for posting

the ice list to which I say Semper posts. So if you were elated, as I'm sure you were by Alexandria's victory and you, and if this event kind of crystallized to you, how important electoral victories can be not just as a way to legislate, but as a way to build a movement to get the message out there, because as we've seen with her on all these TV networks evangelizing for socialism, thousands of people have joined the DSA just based on that alone and are ready to get to work. If you can appreciate the value of that, then I think you should be interested in a friend of mine.

Her name is Julia Salazar. She is running for the New York State Senate in Brooklyn. She in the get out the vote period of Alexandria's campaign. She gave her staff, her people to Alexandria to knock down doors for her. She went out and she knocked on doors for Alexandria and she's locked in a tight race of her own. And I think she is someone who deserves to be paid back for that investment. She is a DSA leader.

She's a union member. She has been a community organizer for justice in Brooklyn against police brutality against war for several years now and she has a platform that is just between you would be a fraction as radical as the person that I know and her victory would be yet another message to the Democratic Party establishment, especially one as crooked as the one here in New York. This Tuesday, if you happen to be in New York City, I am going to interview Julia Salazar live at Star Bar Tuesday, July 3rd. It is a fundraiser for her.

The starting price is $30. There will be a link in the description of this episode. Time. All right. The standard time, night time, the time will be in the description of this. It will be in the description. There are a few tickets left. Please, if you have $30 to donate to her campaign or more, please come out, buy a ticket, hear

from her directly and also hear from me. I'm told I am a very nice interviewer and also stick around, meet the candidate, drink a little, perhaps be persuaded to donate more and if you can't make it out, you can also use this link to donate money to her campaign and I hope you look into her and you just might hear more from her. Watch this space. It's about 7pm. I looked it up.

Okay. All right. Well, that does it for this week. Until next time, I want to thank Trevor and Catherine. Bye guys. Bye. Bye. Bye.