The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: Democrats point fingers and Iran threats another strike on Israel

Episode Date: November 8, 2024

Friday Focus provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving the news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths, Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates. The following is a sample of the Munk Debates’ weekly current affairs podcast, Friday Focus. On this week's edition of the Friday Focus podcast, Rudyard and Janice try to make sense of the events of this week as Democrats begin pointing fingers and blaming each other for their stunning defeat. How did they fail to recognize that people vote for issues like the economy and immigration, and not for democracy? This election was about the working class telling the bicoastal, white collar educated elites to take a hike. In the second half of the show, Rudyard and Janice turn their attention to the Middle East, where the Iranian government has threatened to attack Israel for a third time in twelve months, marking a serious escalation between the two countries. How will the Iranians exploit the lame duck period before Donald Trump takes over on January 20th? To access full-length editions of the Friday Focus podcast consider becoming a donor to the Munk Debates for as little as $25 annually, or $.50 per episode. Canadian donors receive a charitable tax receipt. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue. More information at www.munkdebates.com.Become 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.

The following is a complimentary excerpt of this week's edition of the Friday Focus podcast by the Monk Debates. To access full-length editions of each and every episode, along with all kinds of great additional benefits and perks, become a donor to the Monk debates. You can do that for as little as $25 a year, and you'll receive each and every year 50 Friday Focus episodes at full length. It's all available right now on our website. in just a few simple clicks. Triple W. The Monk Debates.com. Look for the Friday Focus option in our navigation bar, the top right of the website.

Make your donation, and we will send you each and every Friday a link to listen to the full-length edition of this program. Thanks in advance for your generous contribution. Welcome to the Friday Focus podcast for the 8th of November. I'm Roger Griffiths, the executive director of the Monk Debates. I'm joined by Janice Gronis Groner, Stein, the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs.

Janice, a tumultuous week, one for the history books. What's some interesting chatter, data points, little kind of flickers of insight that you've seen either across the Pundit class, at the Monk School, amongst friends. Give us some words of wisdom as we try to make sense of this. week. Well, just a couple of thoughts off the top. Rudyard, you then react. One, the blame game is on.

This is, frankly, a massive defeat for the Democrats. It is massive. It is stunning in its scope. And so the knives are out. And among the chattering classes that on the networks, the blame is being spread like peanut butter into every corner of the Democratic Party there is

they are going to tear each other apart for the next little while in large part because they're powerless they have nothing to lose now they've lost which is stunning for the next two years from January of 2025 to January of 2012

27, the Democrats will have no levers in Washington. They will have them in state houses. They will have them no levers in Washington, it looks like. One interesting argument that I picked up about the Democrats is the extent to which, not only this election cycle, but maybe going back even to Obama, the Democrats, which used to be the party of protest, the party that was, let's say, skeptical often of big government and vested interests had, for a variety of reasons, but one that struck me as interesting this week argued that they were pushed into the role of being the defenders of institutions by a Republican Party that became more and more

conspiratorial, more and more outside of the mainstream. And that the result was that the Democrats, in the minds of many Americans, and in their own words and actions, became the party that was defending the CIA, that was defending, you know, the courts, which are not always perfect, especially if you're a minority in America and have suffered under the American, you know, penal and justice system. and in effect became defenders of the status quo. The party kind of lost its radical chic, for lack of a better expression, that was so much part of its identity through the 1960s into the 1970s.

And you could even, you could say, with Bill Clinton, there was a kind of sense of championing interests that were something other than just the powerful vested interests. Boy, Janice, does the Democratic Party today ever have a problem? Because isn't it fair to say that, you know, one of the casualties of being an institutionalist party, a party that favors the existing order is precisely that. You're defending the status quo, and the status quo has a lot of things in it that aren't nice, that aren't pretty, that are kind of ugly in America right now. You know, let's just tease out here about your three things in what you just said.

One, and this was a huge problem for her or Kamala Harris, and she needed to break away from Biden. She needed to break away from the status quo. She was trapped because she was his vice president. And she really was trapped. If she'd broken away, she would have devoid. the Democratic Party because there are still lots of Biden supporters in that party. And she would have, it would not have been wholly credible. People would have come after her and said, well, you were there.

Where was your voice if you are a critic? So Emma said she was in a no-in situation. Let's look at the other side of this. There is a squad in the Democratic Party that moved that party to the left. And there's an irony, if you think about this. And they are not defenders of the status quo, but there's a real irony here that Bernie Sanders, who was reelected as a senator, you know, is saying the Democrats abandoned their working class roots. But those working class roots are appalled.

by some of the issues that are important to the squad. That is not where they are. And I think that is to me, more than the defensive institutions, the mistake was the defense of democracy, not because democracy is not worth defending, but because they were pushed by a radical Republican Party, which is what it is now, it is a radical party into defending democratic institutions.

People, and I think you and I knew this two weeks ago when we said the issue set, that's what we were talking about, you and I when we said he would win, people don't vote for democracy. They vote on the economy. They vote on prices. They vote on what their family need. They vote on schools. They don't vote for democracy.

And so the Democrats, were trapped. They were trapped by the radicalism, as you just said, of the Republicans, but they were trapped by their inability to use language that spoke to the concerns. It's really fascinating because how did I get my intuition that this would gone? Because I know some people who were canvassing door to door. And I was in touch with them and I said, what are you hearing of the door. And they said, nobody wants to talk about democracy.

They just want to talk about how expensive things are, how worried they are about the future, how worried they are about their kids, how they feel, even though they're not employed, they feel insecure. And you actually put your finger on it in a conversation you and I had

when you talked about the corrosive effects, of inflation. It is corrosive. It creates this widespread shared insecurity among lower middle class and working class voters who live paycheck to paycheck

in ways that the chattering class that just frankly will never get. That was the huge, huge mess for this Democratic Party. They have to find a way back. They have to find a way back

to connecting and to listening really to the people whose doors they're knocking on. And it remains the party of the chattering glasses. It does. It means the party also of the mega donors. Yeah. And a lot of them in Silicon Valley, Wall Street, I mean, in L.A. and Hollywood, these are not people, for reasons of their own wealth and privilege who are really that interested in radicalism, right? So I wonder, I think the contest in the next election could be the midterms in two years or the next presidential election and four will be about who can articulate, you know, an edgier vision, both on from the perspective of the Democrats, a more progressive vision, from the perspective of the Republicans, a more nationalist vision. And I just, I think the Democrats need to divorce themselves.

from their donor class, which has really been a big part of the party since the Clintons, especially onwards. The Clintons were masters of many things. One of them was fundraising. And I think the donor class in the Democratic Party is just fundamentally unaligned with the interests of working class people in America. Now, I'm sure there are altruistic donors there. of the mega wealthy and the mega rich who are willing to pay higher taxes that are willing to forego additional gains in their hundreds of millions and billions of dollars. But they're few and far between. And I go back to what I said on our previous podcast. I don't think it's going to be Trump, but somebody has to break out of the kind of circle of plutocracy in America that's

part of its politics, as part of its economics. It's part of increasingly of its social hierarchy, rich versus poor. Democrats today are very uncomfortable talking about class. And I think this win that Trump achieved is an awful lot about class, about working class people, fed up and angry, and basically telling the bicostal white-collar, college-educated elites to go screw themselves. Yeah. Let's just talk. Let's take your argument and I'm moving over the Republican Party because I think there are two really important points to make here. The Republican Party under Trump has mega donors. So there is the same issue. I don't deny that for a moment because I think any promises or pretensions that Trump has to help these working class people. No way.

Meaningful way. I mean, this is this is Vodville that we're seeing here. He is, he is going to reward Wall Street and Silicon Valley and the crypto bros and everybody with hundreds and trillions possibly of dollars in tax cuts. His tax cuts were set to expire. He's going to make them permanence supposedly. We'll see how the U.S. debt and deficit and bond markets react to that, Janus.

No, don't get me wrong. I don't, I don't, for a month. moment think the Republicans are going to deliver on this. And I think they'll pay a price probably at the midterms or maybe even the next presidential cycle because working class people will wake up and realize that they don't have a standard bearer in Donald J. Trump for the, you know, the price of chicken, the price of eggs, the price of gasoline, the affordability crisis. He is not solving this. No. And that's essentially where I was going. Inflation was the worst enemy of the Democrats. And here Trump wins as a champion of the working class who channels their anger and their frustration.

But look at his economic proposals. If you just said, Roger, they are inflationary. It is hard to see how you impose tariffs. Well, it's even worse than that. It's old school trickle down, you know, tax cuts to goose the economy and trust us. you know, if we make the billionaires into gazillionaires, you're going to get a few extra scraps on your play. I mean, this is right out of the, you know, the 80s kind of, you know, neoliberal, you know, playbook. I mean, there's nothing very populist about this.

So just think about how frustrated voters will be, I think, by the midterm elections, because there's no breaks on this for two years. Nothing. Let's talk about one other thing. often you judge election likely election results for the pros what do they look at they look at the so-called ground game and you know how good is the ground game which in english is how good is the organization to get the vote out in the weeks and the days of the election and we had two radically different models here rogerid and it's really interesting this is the first time we saw it going to effect we had an old-fashioned ground game, knock on doors by the Democratic Party.

It was really well organized. There's no question. And all, you know, from the David Plouf's on down, they rightly said the Democrats have a better round game. What were they missing in the story? They were missing the story that the Republican Party contracted out Elon Musk through a political action committee, contracted out. And digital media, principally, Twitter, principally X, the campaign to get voters out. Now, what does this tell you?

It tells you this is the first election. That was truly a social media election where the ground game migrated from knocking on real doors to social media. That's the campaign that Elon Musk ran for him. And if Donald Trump owes anybody for this election, he owes it. to the richest man in the world, Elon Musk. The largest government contractor. The largest government contractor.

In America today. Yeah, today. And who going forward, I mean, yet can't help but talk about this. Going forward, huge, huge opportunities to make money from space contracts because he's, functionally the sole provider, he has the most innovative and large, largest company now, because it is now a civilian company that is powering all space activities in the U.S. There's Neurlink and there's Tesla. And it is inconceivable to me that those companies will not profit by orders of magnitude that we, you know, of the coin, we have not

seen Richard from the role that Elon must play. It also tells us something about. politics as we move deeper and deeper into the digital age. Everybody got that wrong. Everybody looked at that ground game and reached the wrong conclusion because they didn't pay attention to what Elon Musk was doing. Let's shift, Janice, to the international scene. What are you seeing early in this week in terms of reaction to the Trump victory? I find these comments by leaders where I guess, you know, our own Prime Minister, Keith Starrmer, the labor leader, the ultra-progressive leader in Mexico.

Gloria Steinbeau. They're all kind of congratulating and genuflecting. And it's like an acid flashback to, you know, 2016, 2020. You know, I don't think they have a choice, right? It's really interesting. One of the most interesting characters in this whole cast of characters is, of course, Bibi Netanyahu, who rolled the dice on Trump winning, gambled everything on Trump winning.

This fulfills his wildest expectations. But what's a backdrop here? And Biden won in 2020, Nathan Yehoque congratulated him in fairly moderate way. He congratulated him. And Trump went after him for two years, excoriated him because he congratulated Biden. That sends a real message to every single world leader.

You get on this bandwagon now, or I will remember it for the rest of his presidential term. interesting. I haven't, I haven't seen maybe you have. Have you seen Pierre Poyer's congratulatory note? Because it's not only leaders, it's opposition leaders who are looking forward to election, know that they have to deal with him and have to tread this fine line now. They have to congratulate him. He personalized Donald Trump personalizes politics like nobody else. And there isn't a single leader in the world right now doesn't get that message.

Yeah. Let's take a break now. Say goodbye to our complimentary listeners join our much appreciated monk curators and supporters. On the other side of this short break, we're going to dip back. into the Middle East, it looks like an Iranian counter strike on Israel is brewing, big U.S. military assets headed and in the region. What's going to happen next? We'll get Janice to unpack that for us right after this short break. Thanks for listening to...