The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it resolved: Progressives are leading the Democratic party to defeat

Episode Date: November 16, 2021

Recent gubernatorial losses have left the Democratic Party shaken, concerned about how these disappointing election results will predict how the country votes in the 2022 midterms. Moderate strategists are pointing the finger at their progressive party members. By promoting unpopular policies on police, immigration, education, and gender politics, the progressive wing of the party is alienating its moderate base and pushing them towards the GOP. They argue that the left's tactics in government – holding important domestic bills hostage in a bid to pass a more progressive agenda – have weakened the party and frustrated independents. Progressives, meanwhile, believe that Democrats need to embrace bold policies in order to inspire the party base and deliver for working class voters, racial minorities and immigrants. Recent election losses are proof that the same tired playbook of centrist policies and priorities does not work. And it is moderate obstructionist Democrats, not progressives, who are standing in the way of Congress passing historic domestic legislation, frustrating voters and dividing the party. If the Democrats do not change course and embrace a bold agenda, they will lose the House and Senate in the 2022 midterms and the presidency soon after. Arguing for the motion is Jim Kessler, Vice President for Policy at Third Way, a Washington DC Democratic think tank Arguing against the motion is Jeff Weaver, campaign manager for Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign and senior advisor on Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign.  QUOTES: JIM KESSLER "Voters in the middle of the country, they just don't trust Democrats enough to really give us strong majorities, because they think we're going to go off the deep end." JEFFREY WEAVER “The Democratic party has to be a a labour-oriented party that uplifts working people of all races, that demonstrates in real ways that the future of democracy is a future that will have shared prosperity.” Sources:  PBS, Bloomberg, CNN, Ruptly The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg.   Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail].   To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ The Munk Debates podcast is produced by Antica, Canada's largest private audio production company - https://www.anticaproductions.com/ Executive Producer: Stuart Coxe, CEO Antica Productions Senior Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Editor: Reza Dahya Associate Producer: Abhi RahejaBecome a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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the listener, with enough information to make up your own mind. Today's debate, be it resolved, progressives are leading the Democratic Party to defeat. All righty, Virginia, we won this thing. CNN is projecting that Republican Glenn Yonkin has been elected governor of Virginia defeating Democrat Terry McCollum. The results of yes. Yesterday's elections have turned two states on the East Coast a lot less blue and left Democrats feeling a lot more blue. Hello, I'm your moderator, Rudyard Griffith.

Recent U.S. gubernatorial losses have left the Democratic Party shaken. Concerned about how these disappointing election results will predict how the country votes in the 2022 midterms and in 2024. Moderate strategists are pointing the finger at their progressive party members. on popular policies like defund the police or support for critical race theory are supposedly alienating moderate voters, pushing them into the arms of the GOP. They also claim that the left's tactics in government holding important domestic policy bills hostage in a bid to pass a more progressive agenda have weakened the party and frustrated independence. Here's centrist Democratic Senator Joe Manchin. We just have to work together. We can't go too far left. This is not a center-left or a left country.

We are a center, if anything, has a little center-right country, and that's being shown. And we ought to be able to recognize that. Progressives, meanwhile, believe that Democrats need to embrace bold policies in order to inspire the party base and deliver for working-class voters, racial minorities, and immigrants. Recent election losses are proof that the same tired playbook of centrist policy compromises don't work. On the election front, I actually... I think we have good news as well. I know that Virginia was a huge bummer. And honestly, if anything, I think that the results show the limits of trying to run a fully 100% super-moderated campaign

that does not excite, speak to, or energize a progressive base. If Democrats do not change course and embrace a bold agenda, progressives argue they will lose the House and Senate in the 2022 midterms and the presidency soon after. On this installment of the Monk debates, we challenge the essence of these arguments by debating the motion, be it resolved. Progressives are leading the Democratic Party to defeat. Arguing for the motion is Jim Kessler. He's the vice president for policy at Third Way, Washington, D.C. Democratic think tank. Arguing against the motion is Jeff Weaver. He's a political strategist who served as the campaign manager for Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential bid and was a senior advisor on.

on his 2020 campaign. Jim, Jeff, welcome to the Monk Debates. Hey there. Glad to be here. This is a timely and topical debate for us to be having with you today. What is happening to the Democratic Party in the United States? So much bound up in the future of the DNC in terms of the trajectory of American politics. You have midterm elections coming up.

then you have 2024, and looming over that, the threat of a return of Donald Trump to American politics and elected political life. So the opportunity to unpack with you right now what's happening inside the Democratic Party, how we should interpret the recent loss in Virginia, the governorship and the near miss in New Jersey, again, just so topical, so timely, and to have the opportunity to connect with both your big brains, a privilege indeed for, our Monk audience. So our resolution today, simple to the point, be it resolved, progressives are leading the Democratic Party to defeat. Jim, you're going to be arguing in favor of the motion, so I'm going to put a couple minutes in the clock and turn the program over to you.

Last week I read something that I thought I would never read, and it was after the desultory results in Virginia and almost tanking it in New Jersey. And the New York Times wrote this, their lead editorial, and I'm quoting here, what is badly needed is for Democrats to return to the moderate policies and values that fueled the blue wave victories in 2018 and won Joe Biden, the presidency, and then the Times goes on to say, Democrats are at risk of becoming a marginal party appealing only to the left. That's the New York Times.

And that is the progressive bastion in this nation in the mainstream media. To me, it feels like a man bites dog moment multiplied by a thousand. So why did the New York Times write such a thing? And it's not because they don't believe progressivism doesn't belong in the Democratic Party. Of course it does. It brings energy, ideas, and passion. But also what is going on is a lot of the ideas on the far left, it's simply repelling too many people, too many people who could vote Democratic. and in the places we absolutely need to win,

there are places where it flirts just enough with socialism that Republicans can beat us over the head with a shovel on it. And on some of the cultural issues, there's this kind of arrogant, elitist coastal feel that is seeping through, that is turning folks off. So Joe Biden is president because he ran as moderate. The House is Democratic because moderates won in a lot of tough places

where progressives really didn't win anywhere there. And the Senate is 50-50 because moderates competed in purple places. But we underperformed in 2020 because enough voters were as afraid of Democrats going too far left than they were of the insane, far-right, crazy authoritarian Republican Party of going too far right. And to me, we're on the knife's edge of turning this all back to the Republican Party, very soon. So like the New York Times says, better get back to the center if we want to win. Thank you, Jim. Concise to the point opening statement. I appreciate that. Framing this debate nicely from the pro side. Our motion today, be it resolved, progressives are leading the Democratic Party to defeat.

Jeff, you're arguing against our resolution. Let's have your opening remarks, please. Absolutely. And thank you for having me. I want to sort of start by clarifying what we mean by progressive and what I am here to defend. You know, Terry McAuliffe in Virginia, the failed Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Virginia, faced a Republican who was using a straw man of critical race theory in his election. Of course, critical race theory is not taught in Virginia schools, but nonetheless became an issue in the campaign. I think it's always terrible when you allow yourself to be defined by a non-existent straw man. And so I want to make clear about what I am defending here, which is the progressive politics articulated by people like Bernie

Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, other elected members of the Democratic Party. I'm certainly not here to defend every activist, every sign that has appeared at every protest, every slogan that has been used in the streets. And so I am adding this admonition to prevent myself from being ridden into the box canyon during this debate, Jim. So I just want to be clear what I am defending. You know, the Democratic Party is in a period of transition. There's no doubt about that, as is the country. In the elections of 2016 and 2020, what was exposed to many people in the Democratic establishment. It was a deep unrest among voters, particularly working class voters. It ultimately led to the election of Donald Trump, but also was expressed in support for progressive candidates like Bernie Sanders, who almost secured the Democratic

nomination. The party has been running to catch up. And in my view, there is not a big difference. The crisis in the Democratic Party is not really one between quote-unquote moderates and progresses, but really is a contest between those who want to take the Democratic Party in a new direction to uplift and support working people of all races who want to change a rigged economic system that benefits people at the very top. And those who really now have become a rump part of the party. And I hope we can talk about this more in terms of the reconciliation bill, the build back better bill that has been moving through the Congress. And Joe Biden and his very progressive agenda, frankly, upon which he was elected. And how this rump group

backed by a lot of big money from pharmaceutical companies and other wealthy special interests are really sabotaging the president, sabotaging his agenda, sabotaging the party, and ultimately, given the danger that Trump and Trumpism still poses to America, really endangering the American Republic itself. And so that is, to me, what is at the core of this debate. Will the Democratic Party be a party of working people, of young people, of middle class people, including suburbanites, whom this rump group in Congress has also betrayed, frankly, or will it be a party that is dominated by big money interests like the pharmaceutical industry, the oil companies, and others?

And so I look forward to this debate. I think it is incredibly timely. And I also think it is a desperately needed debate if we are going to save the American Republic. Thank you, Jeff. Okay, let's move on to rebuttals now. So, Jim, your opportunity to react to what you've just heard from Jeff. what are the key points that you want to begin to start underlining pro and con as we unpack this debate together?

Look, there is a problem here where we have a Republican Party that is frankly dangerous. Okay. It is dangerous for this country. It is dangerous for the future of democracy. And it is dangerous for the world. And one thing I would say where Democrats are far superior than Republicans on this is this argument that Jeff and I are having is an argument that has been going on the Democratic Party for decades. And frankly, we know how to have this argument and we basically know how to come together

and come to some sort of agreement. But if you look at what is happening in Virginia and what happened down ballot in 2020 is Democrats got saddled with policies that they did not support because they came from the farthest left wing of the Democratic Party, and to their credit, that farthest left wing of the Democratic Party is much more organized and much louder and is much more adept at social media than the middle of the party is. I will never call sign on funding a police department that continues to brutalize us,

and I will never stop saying, not only do we need to disinvest in police, But we need to completely dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department. So things like defund the police or abolish ICE, which is the immigration system here at the board in this country, were policies that essentially made it into the mainstream dialogue of politics that were carried by the furthest left and were among several of the particular policies that basically weighed. like an anvil on moderates and dragged them under. And we had an election where Biden won because he was not seen as part of that wing of the Democratic Party, but other Democrats who couldn't define themselves enough as being different got dragged under. And what is sad is as bad as the Republican Party is right now. A lot of the voters, particularly voters in the middle of the country,

they just don't trust Democrats enough to really give us strong majorities because they think we're going to go off the deep end. Okay, Jim, thank you for that rebuttal. Now, Jeff, your opportunity to come back on what you've just heard from Jim, you can include his opening statement in your survey of the arguments for why progressives are not leading the Democratic Party to defeat. Yeah, well, let me say I do agree with Jim about the danger of the Republican Party in this country. And I, as he well knows, after the primary in 2020, I formed and led a super PAC and was subject to a lot of criticism for that that spent, you know, $8 million reaching out to particularly Latino voters and young voters who had been core constituencies of Senator Sanders in an effort to rally them to vote for Joe Biden. And as he knows, Senator Sanders himself was perhaps the most active surrogate on behalf of the president during that election. So I think we're all agreed on the danger of Trump and the report. Republicans. But, you know, Jim is being a little bit squishy about Biden running as a quote-unquote moderate.

Biden is, I think, by disposition moderate, certainly. But if you look at the agenda that Joe Biden ran on, it was hardly moderate. He promised a firm protection of voting rights. He promised to deal with the issue of expensive child care. He promised to raise the minimum wage. He promised to tackle, aggressively tackle climate change. These are all the issues that have been proposed and supported by the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, issues that, you know, during the era of Bill Clinton, you know, would have been completely laughed out of the room as too far to the left. Joe Biden ran on all those issues and won, including overwhelmingly in Virginia.

And what voters object to is when they elect people, they expect them to deliver. And the Democratic Party has majorities, albeit small, majorities in both houses of Congress, and they have the presidency. And now voters are seeing in the Congress that a small group of conservative Democrats and corporate Democrats, more to the point, a couple in the Senate, and really a handful in the House of Representatives are managing to force the president to repudiate every promise he made to voters, including to suburban voters. And I think this issue really played in the Virginia suburbs. So this is about keeping promises. Joe Biden ran on a progressive platform. He is not from the progressive wing of the party, but he understands the changing nature of the Democratic electorate and the country as a whole.

There's great unrest in this country. 4.3 million Americans walked off the job in August in disgust over a failing economic system where your real wages for most people have been stagnant and, you know, for hourly employees, peak wages the United States were reached 40 or 50 years ago. So there are deep problems in this country. Joe Biden was responding to those with an aggressive, progressive platform, not as far as Bernie Sanders by any stretch of the imagination. But he understands the reality. And there is a group of folks and the news media has been full of reports about millions, literally millions of dollars flowing into the campaign coffers of this handful of Democrats right at the moment they are taking

key steps to oppose the president's agenda. So that is the problem with the Democratic Party. It is people do not have faith that it will do what it says it's going to do even when it's running up on a progressive agenda. Okay, my opportunity to join this fascinating debate and think of some questions that are top of mind for our audience to put to you both. And Jim, let me come to you and build on what Jeff was just talking about there, which is that the issue here isn't about energy in the Democratic Party, and let's face it, a lot of that energy is being driven by progressives, their issues, and ideas. It's about execution.

It's about this president. And it's about what he's run into, as Jeff's just described, a minority within the Democratic Party who is holding back what should have been a naturally progressive impulse to achieve a large-scale physical and human infrastructure program. And if that had happened, we wouldn't even be having this conversation today, Jim. We would be maybe looking at very different results in Virginia if the Democrats had delivered. So this is a problem with execution. It's not a problem with ideology. Let's hear you on that. Well, I think there's a little bit of both in there. So first of all, we need to pass the build-back better agenda. There's no alternative, okay? And

look, let's be honest, some of the delays, there were some members on each wing of the party that had slowed things down. The infrastructure bill, the bipartisan infrastructure bill, like, that should have moved earlier. But there was enough progressives who felt that the centrist would not keep their word on passing build back better. I understand that. I understand the progressive impulse to say, like, I don't want to have this leap of faith there. But there was a point where Joe Biden said, we have a deal, we have a framework where they should have passed that infrastructure bill right away, and they balked at it, and we didn't do it. And I think if we had passed it before the Virginia election, I think Terry McCullough would have won there.

I run a think tank. The biggest part of our think tank is our climate initiative. It's where we're putting so much of our work there. It's on issues like Medicare for All or defund the police or abolishing ice or a guaranteed federal job or canceling all student debt or modern monetary theory. And these are the places where, you know, the progressive wing has some very, very strong views that I believe on most of those leave a lot of voters concerned and wondering how big government is going to be and how expensive it's going to be. And we're not going to lose a race because we support voting rights or raising the minimum. wage. But we couldn't lose a race because we say that we want to abolish ICE or we want to defund the police or we want to eliminate private health insurance, which admittedly has its share of problems for a government-run health insurance, which also admittedly has a lot of problems.

Thank you, Jim. So let's go to Jeff now and have you comment on this idea that there are a lot of things the Democrats agree on. The problem with progressives is, as Jim outlined in as the earlier portion of this debate, it's their fixation on these hot button issues that are being weaponized in social media and that are painting the party as extreme, as out of touch with mainstream American political values and inclinations. And who's the originators of these ideas? Who's the the author of defund the police, of ending private health care, it's the progressive wing of the party. They are poisoning the chalice for the larger democratic movement. As you said, Jeff, at this critical moment when Trump and a Republican resurgence is sitting there in the background as potentially an existential risk to your democracy.

No, look, I would say this. I mean, first of all, Jim is right. You're not going to lose, well, you may lose an election someplace if you champion voting rights. That's for sure. I mean, the Republican Party's whole narrative these days is that expanding voting rights is, in fact, undermining the integrity of the ballot box. But what you will be punished for in an election is not delivering on voting rights when you have promised to do that. And at a time when the voting rights, particularly of African-Americans, but also Latinos, poor people and other people of color, is under active assault in state after state across the country. And Democrats in the Congress, and even Joe Manchin was on board this, insist that it is more important to adhere to some antiquated procedural device in the Senate than it is to protect the voting rights of tens and tens of millions of people that will lose you an election because those people will say, what does it matter? Why do I need to come out? Why don't the Democrats deliver? You know, the same was on the minimum wage.

One of the most unifying shoes in the 2020 presidential. election among Democrats, progressives of moderates, was Joe Biden's longstanding commitment to raise the federal minimum wage in the United States to $15 an hour. I've long said that we need to reward work, not just wealth in this country. People in both parties now recognize it's time to raise the minimum wage. So hardworking people earn at least $15 an hour minimum. No one should work 40 hours a week at a job and still live below the poverty line. This is a wildly popular idea. It is passing by ballot initiative in very, very conservative places like Florida. At the same time, Democrats are losing at the ballot box, the $15 minimum wage is passing. The Democrats allowed an unelected bureaucrat and the office of the Senate parliamentarian who serves at the pleasure of the Democratic majority in the Senate to issue a non-binding decision that this raising the minimum wage was.

procedurally out of order at a given time on a given bill, and they did nothing. That is how you break faith with not only the different wings of your own party, but with the working class base, or what should be the working class base of the Democratic Party. So when Glenn Yonkin wants to run around talking about critical race theory, which again is not taught anywhere, and Democrats say, no, no, no, no, no, we will take care of the kitchen table issues of your family. That should be a very powerful issue that should. should move voters to vote for Democrats, but they don't believe it because we haven't delivered. And we have allowed a handful of conservative Democrats in the Congress to really backstab,

undermine the president and to betray really what was a quite exceptional electoral coalition that Joe Biden was able to build in 2020. And that is why we're going to pay viciously, while we paid viciously in Virginia, and why this midterm could be very, very devastating for Democrats. So, Jim, what do you think about that? You know, this isn't about progressives, beating the drum on issues that are unpopular with Americans.

It's about a Democratic Party that is still captive to some very powerful interests. I mean, I think a number of people were struck at the extent to which, in the context of funding these infrastructure bills, the Democratic Party,

avowedly, you know, a supporter of working-class Americans, struggled and seemingly failed to raise taxes on America's, you know, richest, highest income wage earners, with the exception possibly of this billionaire tax. But they arguably abysmally failed to more equitably distribute the tax burden to allow for these progressive policies to be funded and be sustainable and to ensure that economic, inequality isn't something that begins to tear your society apart along the political lines that you've witnessed over the last decade or more.

So I want to hear more from you in terms of a defense of the mainstream Democratic Party and why it isn't captive to these powerful interests that may be anything but progressive, let alone Democratic. So first, the reason why we didn't pass an infrastructure bill. was not because of conservative Democrats or moderate Democrats. It was because of the squad and several other very, very progressive House Democrats who didn't want to bring the bill up when it could have been brought up and we had the votes. We are in a situation in part because of how poorly we performed down-ballot,

how Joe Biden over-performed other Democrats because people were fearful of what Democrats we're going to do, that we have the narrowest majority possible. We are 50-50 in the Senate, and we can lose, depending on special elections, three or four votes in a 435 member house. So, as Joe Biden said, that makes a lot of people president. If we're up to me, and I run the think tank that is the leading think tank for the moderate movement of the Democratic Party, the top rate would be 39.6, the corporate rate would be 25, capital gains would be 28, we would eliminate carried interest, et cetera, et cetera. We're in a situation where,

because we're at 50, it can take one member to make it so that that's not possible. So we're going to have to work around and figure out some ways to get all this thing done and to do important things that are reforming the tax code and making the tax code better. And I think that Biden and House and Senate Democrats have done a pretty good job, considering that some of those things that certainly I would have had in a bill if I were emperor, did not make it into the bill. And yes, some of those things that did not make it into the bill on the tax side were because of a handful of centrist legislators. I don't like that either. But, you know, that's what happens when you're winning elections by such a small margin, and people don't really trust you.

They don't really trust Democrats on the economy. They think that we're going to spend too much and tax too much and have giveaways to people and encourage people not to work. I think that's mostly BS, but that is the reputation that we've developed over time. And I think the progressive wing of the party has helped create that impression out there that has hurt us. Hi, Rudyard Griffiths here, your host and moderator. I have a favor to ask you, please consider becoming a monk member.

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Well, Jeff, how do you respond to this idea that, you know, there's a world as we want it, and then the world as it is. And as Jim describes it, it's, this is a world of percentage points. Yes, so the world we live in, the one we're trying to create. That's what I always say. Okay. And we can't confuse the two. But I would say this, Joe Biden ran on a very specific agenda.

He ran on an agenda of raising substantially taxes on upper income people and large corporations. But he was very clear. And his boundaries have been observed by progressives in Congress that he was not going to raise taxes on anybody making less than $400,000 a year, which is a very, very small number of Americans. And he promised to do that. And look, I'm not here to talk down the whatever the final. final build back better proposal would be. But people have to stay in the genesis of this, Bernie Sanders, who was the Senate Budget Committee chair for the Democrats, initially came up with a $6 trillion top line number that would have funded all of Joe Biden's priorities and also

some other priorities that progressus wanted. Anyway, that number was too big for some more moderate members of the Democratic caucus in the Senate. I mean, we started this process in the Senate Budget Committee, which our chair, at a $6 trillion amount, which, by the way, is the least of what we need if we are, in fact, going to transform our energy system and deal with the existential threat of climate. All right. We came down from $6 to $3.5 trillion. Okay.

That is a huge, huge compromise. That number was embraced by the White House. But even at that number, some of Joe Biden's initiatives were going to have to be time-limited. They're not going to go on it in perpetuity. there were going to be time limited. The White House embraced that number. The party largely embraced that number. And then it all started to fall apart when a handful, and these are not moderates, they're corporatists, Democrats, clearly acting at the behest of their corporate patrons, decided to start ripping this bill apart and forcing the party to repudiate the agenda on which

Joe Biden had just been elected. So now we're going to have a much smaller bill. that's now, quote, unquote, means tested, which means to suburban Virginia voters, to them, it means there's nothing in it for them, because they're going to be means tested out of almost everything. The president's initiative to have two years of free community college, which would have benefited young people, the immigrant community, stripped out and thrown away, a wildly popular provision. And on some of these other issues, you know, I do take a little bit of exception with Jim. I don't think that addressing really the epidemic of violence against black people in America by police and other institutions is something that should be ignored.

Now, he may disagree with certain slogans that came out of street protests in the United States. That's fine. I'm a campaign professional. We work all the time, massaging language, so you get the right message out in the right way. That's the most appealing to the most voters. I get it. But on substance, the Democratic Party has to be the party that stands with marginalized communities.

And that includes addressing issues like immigration reform, frankly, immigration. reform is a popular issue when properly presented to the American people. So, you know, what is the difficult problem is, is that the Democratic Party is, runs always victim to these straw men, like critical race theory, because they do not have the confidence of many Americans that the Democratic Party will stand with them. And the evidence of that writ large for everybody is this build back better plan. Democrats have to stand with a constituency. They have to stand with the president. And this $1.75 trillion billed back better while it should be passed is not the cure for what's ailing the Democrats. In fact, it is going to reinforce in many people's minds why they

don't vote for them. Thanks, Jeff. So, Jim, the problem here is triangulation. You know, the problem for the Democratic Party isn't the progressives. It's picking a lane and sticking in it and creating, in a sense, a coherent political message and a coherent set of political objectives that are executed on so that voters understand that this party, your party, the Democratic Party, has their back, so to speak, as the president constantly likes to reiterate. So why isn't that the issue, not progressives? Look, we've already had a whole series of successes this year under Joe Biden. We've created 5 million jobs, 194 million people have gotten vaccines in arms.

the economy is growing at the greatest clip since the early 1980s. If you care about the stock market and you have a 401k, the stock market has hit 55 all-time highs this year. And if you look at people's credit card balances, the middle class, their credit card balances are lower and their saving rates are higher. So we've done a lot of good things, and I think we need to continue to do good things.

Look, when Jeff said Bernie Sanders had a $6 trillion plan, and, you know, he's chairman of the budget committee, I mean, that was just not in line with where the American people were. And then there was an agreement that was made to get through that first hurdle, the budget resolution. It was paired back to $3.5 trillion. But everybody knew that number was coming down. I would talk to progressive offices in the House and the Senate, and I'd ask them, where do you think the number's ultimately going to be?

And they'd say like 2-1 or 2-2. And so we were in this situation where we all, knew what it was coming down. We waited for such a long time that the way the bill is described in the mainstream media is Democrats' massive social spending plan. That is not the language and that is not the message that you want out there. It just sounds like this amorphous thing. And I believe that what's happened is when you start in an area where things look so big and so large, or you start with a slogan that is so off-putting. And I agree with Jeff. There needs to be major police reform. And I think Democrats are close to unanimous on the need for that. And the base of the moderate movement

in the Democratic Party is African-American voters. That's who elected Joe Biden as the presidential nominee for Democrats, and that's who elected them there. But these lines, it's not just they came out of street protests, they were used by congressional leaders and other leaders, and it made it so it's just harder to tell people, no, you don't have to worry about these five things that Democrats are saying. You don't have to worry about $6 trillion or $3.5 trillion, which looks like we just are out to spend as much money as possible. But here are the five or six really important things that we are going to do that's going to improve your life, improve the economy, make it easier for you to make ends meet, have you get a better job, how have you afford health care and child care, and make it so that you have justice when you vote and when you earn the legal system.

Jeff, let's get your rebuttal to that. Look, you know, Jim and I operate in a world of inside the Beltway world where, you know, you count votes and framing matters, the framing of issues for voters matters. You know, as I said before, it does matter. Jim's like, well, virtually all the Democratic Party is on board police reform. Well, it happens to be, it's not everybody. It is virtually everybody. And because, again, of the arcane Senate rules that certainly a corporate interest want to maintain because it prohibits almost anything from being on the United States Senate other than in most cases lowering their taxes, you know, we are going to sacrifice police reform to maintain this thing called the filibuster. For folks who don't know what that is, I assume most people do. But for folks who don't is a procedural device in the Senate, which requires 60 votes in order to end debate and get to a vote on a. a bill or to even bring up a bill. So we're going to sacrifice voting rights, minimum wage, police reform, and a whole host of other issues because one or two people in the Democratic Party want to hold these things up at the behest in many cases of their corporate patrons. Many of

us in the Progressive Movement Democratic Party look back to the 1930s and 40s under Franklin Roosevelt, you know, who really was a transformational president. and whose policies led to 40 years of democratic dominance and national politics. There came a point, although he was not as successful at that time, for other reasons, but in which he actively supported primary challengers to some of his leading congressional opponents in the South. And, you know, there has got to become a time. And, you know, Joe Biden is a moderate person by disposition and not a terribly personally confrontational person. But there has got to become a time in which the Democratic Party says it is,

unacceptable that Curtis in cinema can announce her opposition to a decades-long democratic policy to allow Medicare to negotiate with drug companies the day after they put up over a million dollars worth of ads in her district supporting her. Was that timing coincidental? Probably not. Not a lot of things in Washington, D.C. are coincidental in that kind of realm. So there has got to come in which the leadership of the Democratic Party in order to reflect the views, desires, and needs of the constituents of the Democratic Party to say to Joe Manchin, Kirsten Sinema, Josh Godheimer, Stephanie Murphy, Lou Correa. I mean, can you imagine that there were three Democratic House members who got up to torpedo the president's effort to tax the hidden wealth of large corporations

overseas because they said it would make Americans companies noncompetitive at a time when the world was coming together around a global corporate tax initiative? These are Democrats. How the Democratic Party go to working class voters and say, we're with you and they're going to say, what about these three jokers who are over here trying to allow America's largest corporations to hide wealth overseas and not let it be taxed? Or how can we have a U.S. Senator who essentially, I mean, the level of obvious graft, political contribution graft, it's so blatant that there's no way people will have faith in us. Okay, I'm going to start moving you guys towards closing statements. Before I do that, though, Jim, what's the way forward here?

Both you and Jeff agree that there are some potentially existential risks gathering on the horizon of U.S. politics beyond 2022 into 2024, most notably. So what happens? Is there a deal to be had between progressives and moderates? Is this a question of Biden as a president somehow leaning in more? Is it a more nuclear option like Jeff mentioned? of doing a way with the filibuster. What happens here? Or maybe you're pretty sanguine

about the ability of much of anything in the way of a compromise or some significant change that's going to write this party before it's too late. Look, I'm optimistic, but let me just say a few things in response to what Jeff said.

And I think this is part of, there's, I think, an arrogance that comes from the far left, which is if you don't agree with me, it's because you're a corporate prostitute. And, you know, there's all sorts of reasons why people may be in favor or pose to something. And, you know, look, I don't like where Joe Manchin is on coal either, but he's the center from West Virginia.

It's the second biggest coal producing state in the country. Like, he's going to defend that industry the way if you're in New York, you defend lawyers and hospitals, you know, like that's what happens locally there. Look, one of the things that progressives and the more moderate wing of the Democratic Party has generally found a way to do over the years is to come to an agreement and to pass things. Now, occasionally that doesn't happen, but ultimately we have a tiny, tiny majority, and we're going to have to accommodate these differences. and we have so far to pass the American Rescue Plan and the bipartisan infrastructure bill, and I believe we will be able to do it on Build Back Better.

As for the filibuster, I don't even know if Joe Biden is in favor of getting rid of the filibuster. I don't like the filibuster either, but believe me, in a couple years, we might be awfully glad that it's there when, God forbid, Donald Trump is president and Mitch McConnell is running the Senate or whoever is running the Senate.

and we'll be holding on to that for dear life. But we have to land all of these planes, and I believe that we will. Okay. Let's go to closing statements. We've been debating today, be it resolved progressives, or leading the Democratic Party to defeat Jeff Weaver. You've been arguing against our motion. What are the key arguments or ideas that you want to leave our audience with,

and maybe just to build on my last question to Jim there. What happens next? is this resolved? Do these frissures and fractures within the party continue? Where are you on the scale of optimism to pessimism with regards to the future of the DNC? Well, I'm always optimistic about the future because I'm a firm believer in democracy and the ability of people working together at the grassroots to bring about fundamental change to address the problems that face us. So I'm a great believer in democracy and the power of people. I do want to address one thing. The term corporate prostitute is not a term I used or. ever use, frankly, Jim. And I do not think it is arrogance to point out that key members in opposition to the president's agenda in the Democratic Party made public statements that benefited corporate America and were immediately rewarded in the aggregate with millions of dollars in campaign donations within days of making those public pronouncements. That's not arrogance. That's pointing out

the truth. And if we're not willing to do that, I'm going to tell you a lot of American people believe what I just said is true because it is true. And if we're not willing to be honest about that, I think we really suffer a lot of credibility gap with average Americans. That being said, look, our country is in a transitional phase. The Democratic Party is part of that transition. It is a very dangerous time in American politics. We teetered on the edge during the Trump administration. Trump has not gone. Joe Biden did put together a historic coalition that included many progressives, including myself and Senator Sanders and others, actively campaigning for him. But if you look at the electoral math in the United States, the election was in some ways very close.

You know, a movement of a few tens of thousands of votes in this state and that state could have sent the election in a very, very different direction. I am a firm believer in democracy, but I think the lessons of the 20th century, particularly in Europe, have a lot of parallels here. We cannot abandon the working class. The Democratic Party has to be a labor oriented. I don't just mean organized labor. I mean, a labor-oriented party that uplifts working people of all races that demonstrates in real ways that the future of democracy is a future that will have shared prosperity. Wages have not kept up in this country. As I said, 4.3 million people walked off the job in America in August. There is labor unrest in the film industry, in the food industry, in the health care industry, in the manufacturing sector.

And all of these is because people intuitively understand that they are being left behind. The Democratic Party was elected in 2020 with majorities, albeit small, on a platform of addressing not only government spending, but also some structural problems in the economy, which have led to an economy that largely benefits people at the top and leaves most people behind. If we cannot deliver on those promises, we leave people with little alternative but to look elsewhere. And that elsewhere is a very dark, evil place, which will endanger our democracy in structural ways that we may not be able to come back from. So I encourage the Democratic Party, despite we may have some policy differences, to come together and address the needs of

the American people. We can no longer allow the financial patrons of the Democratic Party, or some Democrats, I should say, I don't want to paint a broad brush here because I do believe it is a rump minority of corporate Democrats who are desperately trying to cling to influence in power at a time when the Democratic Party base is moving in a much more economically and socially progressive way. So this party needs to reflect America. That's our job. And our job when we get elected on a platform is to actually deliver. People don't want to hear about Senate mechanisms. People don't want to hear about this or that senator who has some special interests or corporate interests. They want to hear about results for their families. We haven't delivered. And

that's why we suffered at the ballot box. If we don't deliver by 2022, we will suffer even worse. Thank you, Jeff. Okay, Jim, we're going to give you the last word in our debate today, be it resolved progressives or leading the Democratic Party to defeat. Same opportunity for you to set out some of the key ideas, insights that you want to leave our audience with as we conclude this terrific discussion. Well, thank you, Jeff, and thank you, Roger. Since 2018, 46 House seats were flipped from red to blue. Zero of those 46 seats that flipped was the candidate endorsed by our revolution,

the organization that Bernie Sanders founded or the Justice Democrats, which is the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-backed organization. Meanwhile, nearly 80% of them were endorsed by the moderate House New Democrats. If there is a disaster in 2020, if we lose the midterm elections, if it is like 1994 and 2010 where we lost a combined 117 house seats, the seats that we're going to lose are all moderate members.

If a red wave comes, who has the beachfront property, it's moderate members in the purple places and they get washed away, and the progressives have the high ground. So, you know, their electoral fortunes don't really matter either way. If you talk to Abigail Spanberger from Virginia, who I talked to two weeks ago, if you talk to other moderate members and they say, what is the problem, what is going on, why are we having trouble? They point to the far left wing of the Democratic Party. And they are saying things like, I am being saddled with, I am being held down with,

I'm being drowned by the positions that they are. are taking, the positions that they are assigning to the Democratic Party, the positions that they are successfully moving to the front burner that makes it seem like my party is far out of the mainstream. They're saying, I want to focus on these kitchen table issues, many of which Jeff brought up, but we are being distracted and dragged down by the wing of the party that is safe no matter what happens. They win their election no matter what. So, look, Jeff and I agree on the main point, which is if Republicans take over, we are beginning a very, very dark era in this country. We need to fulfill our promises. We need to pass all of these bills, particularly

the Build Back Better Bill. We're in agreement on that. But we're we do not agree is which wing of the party should have the laboring oar on this. Both parties need to have an oar in the boat, but if one is too dominant, this country gets scared and moves away from us. There are more conservatives in this country than there are self-identified liberals. We have the slimmest majorities we have because voters don't fully trust us not to go far left. So as the New York time said, we better go back to those moderate policies and values if we want to win. Thank you both for a fulsome debate. And more importantly, the stability and substance that you've each brought to this conversation, I think too often we find in our politics and our

political culture a tendency to talk past each other, to not reflect and engage with opposing arguments and ideas. And both of you have really excelled in this debate and showing us how we can have civil, substantive conversations on some of the most intense political beliefs and ideas that the two of you share and many of our listeners also. So on behalf of the Monk Debates community, thank you so much, Jeff, Jim, for coming on the program today. Pleasure. Happy to be here.

Thank you. Well, that wraps up today's debate. I want to thank our participants, Jim and Jeff. They certainly gave us a lot to think about. If you have feedback or reflections on what you've just heard, please send us an email to podcast at monk debates.com. Here's a note from a listener called Judy about a recent monk members-only podcast

with Janice Gross Stein and myself where we talked about COP 26, the UN Climate Change Conference that was wrapping up in Glasgow. Judy writes, Rudyard was bang on with his comments on the climate change summit as well as blaming the West for emissions. Thank you for actually saying

what many of us are really thinking. Well, Judy, I always like listeners, feedback that says I'm bang on. Please keep it coming. I appreciate you're listening to our Monk members-only podcast. Anyone can access this podcast free as part of our basic membership at the Monk Debates. That basic membership is also free at www.munkdebates.com forward slash membership. Thank you for lending your time and attention to our mission to promote civil and substantive

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