The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Dialogue with Jeff Weaver: a sober wake-up call for the Democrats

Episode Date: November 11, 2024

As Democrats are left wondering how their candidate could lose so badly, so decisively, to a man who is not only loathed by half the country but denounced by many of his former aides and cabinet members, there is one democratic strategist who predicted this long before Kamala was anointed as the party's nominee. Jeff Weaver was Bernie Sanders’s campaign manager in 2016 and a senior advisor to Senator Dean Phillips’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nominee just earlier this year. Jeff argues that the Harris campaign’s rallying cry - the idea Democracy itself was on the ballot this election - was a losing strategy, and they ignored the bread and butter issues that would have spoken to the electorate and helped propel Kamala Harris to victory. If Democrats don’t make serious changes to their policies and their messaging, they will face similar outcomes in the future. The host of this Munk Dialogue is Rudyard Griffiths To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue https://munkdebates.com/ Executive Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Editor: Kieran LynchBecome 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.

We've tried socialism all through the 20th century, and it failed every time. We should restore dignity to the working class and stop saying you need a credential in order to achieve the most basic, modest version of the American dream. Netanyahu is the worst leader the Jewish people ever had. He should be impeached. Genocide is the latest modern blood liable that anti-Semites use to justify their anti-Zionism. We should prioritize making sure that no more Ukrainians do. die that this war is brought to an end. All parents want to help children with their feelings, but I argue that not every feeling is worth paying attention to.

Why are these students covering their faces? I think it says something about their movement, about their ideology, and also simply the fact that they're also cowards. Hello, Monk listeners, Rudyard Griffiths here, your host and moderator. Welcome to this. Our continuing conversations called the Monk Dialogs. These are in-depth questions and answers with some of the world's sharpest minds and brightest thinkers.

On each monk dialogue, we go. deep into the big issues and ideas that are driving the public conversation. It happened, is this crazy? But it's a political victory that our country has never seen before, nothing like this. I want to thank the American people for the extraordinary honor of being elected your 47th president and your 45th president. As Democrats are left wondering how their candidate could lose so badly, so decisively, to a man who is not only loathed by half the country, but denounced by his former aides and cabinet members, there is one Democratic strategist who predicted this long before Kamala Harris was anointed as the Democratic nominee for president.

Jeff Weaver was Bernie Sanders campaign manager in 2016 and a senior advisor to Senator Dean Phillips' campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination just earlier this year. Jeff speaks with me today about why the Harris' campaign's rallying cry, the idea that democracy itself was on the ballot this election was a losing strategy and how the Democratic Party ignored to their peril many of the bread and butter issues that were top of mind to Americans and could have propelled Kamala Harris to a victory. Jeff Weaver thinks that if Democrats don't make serious and substantial changes to their policies and messaging, more defeats could be in their future. Jeff, welcome back to the Monk.

dialogues. Happy to be here. Well, we've been catching up with you over the last year as we went into this week's historic vote. And Jeff, I think you are due a big, I told you so. What did you see coming into this election that suggested to you the result that we ended up getting? Because you were one of the, I think, the few people that I spoke to in the last 12 months that had some real concerns about the electorate, about what happened with Joe Biden, about the handoff to Kamala Harris. And ultimately, Jeff, I'll give you the credit. Connecting the dots of our conversations, you kind of come to the conclusion that the likelihood of a Trump victory was high. And sure enough, here we have it. It's looking pretty close to a sweep right now.

Yeah, it is a sweep. But I'll tell you, vindication is not really consolation because I would certainly have preferred a different outcome on election day on Tuesday. Listen, you know, there are problems at all kinds of levels. And, you know, one of the, there are process problems, there are substantive problems. You know, I don't really put this at Kamala Harris' his feet. I mean, she was built a very bad hand, very late in the process. If you look at the trends, I mean, Joe Biden did less well with many of the demographics that Ben Kamala Harris did less well with it than he did.

So there's been a trend that's been going on that's not really her to blame for her. But I will say this about the Democratic Party itself. You know, they, as you know, short-circuited the primary process. They changed the schedule to make sure that states that supported Joe Biden were up front. They canceled all the debates, which drove RFK and Cornell West out of the Democratic primary into independent positions and ultimately RFK into the arms of Donald Trump, for that matter. They concealed the president's infirmities, which we all now know were true. and they, look, they actively concealed them.

And the American media, frankly, went right along with it because they were afraid to lose access to the White House, which was very vindictive toward those media of personal persons who tried to expose it. You know, you got out very late instead of having a, you know, sort of mini-firmary or some kind of process, which would have allowed some input, even through polls by the American people. They chose to go to the coronation, which seemed less messy to them. And we are where we are. It seems every time, you know, this, you know, 16, I don't want to replay ancient history. And obviously, I have a bone to pick there with 2016 when the party actively intervened against Bernie Sanders and the Hillary Clinton race.

But every time the Democratic Party walks back from democracy, it gets kicked in the teeth. And so we need a little more democracy in the Democratic Party. They need to be a little more Democratic. So on the process side, they really, really hurt themselves in that way. Now, beyond that, look, the Democratic Party has increasingly been out of touch with working class. people in this country. You know, it used to be the party, FDR. They, you know, they had 60 years or 30 years of control of the government, basically. You know, we had Eisenhower, but he was building a massive highway project, so hardly a conservative in that respect, you know, when the Democrats were

the party of economic populism. They need to get back to becoming the party of economic populism. You know, Donald Trump, you know, it's a phony economic populism, but that's what he espouses. And people find that attractive, you know, over the last four years, you know, Joe Biden's governance style has not given people a lot of confidence. You know, they've governed kind of in quiet, not really in secret, but in quiet. And when people don't see you fighting for them every day, they don't think you're fighting for them. And you can tell them that you are, but they want to see that you're fighting for them. And, you know, Joe Biden's personal style, having been a senator in the United States Senate where, you know, things are done more behind

the scenes and people are very sensitive about offending one another and what have you. That's a very different role than being a president who has got to stand up at the bully pulpit, you know, which is one of the main weapons of the president in a policy fight and to pursue an agenda that people support. So, you know, those are a lot of problems. You know, beyond that, there's the background of, you know, average wages for working people are lower than they were 50 years ago. So there's a lot of other problems baked into the whole system. But all that came together to defeat Carmel Harris. Jeff, is it fair to see one of the key reasons here for Democrats' defeat? and maybe for everything, you know, that you just outlined, the kind of unfortunate train wreck that led to this week's results was that the Democratic Party has become the party of the college educated.

It seemed in this week's vote that there was one group that she improved her numbers on vis-a-vis Joe Biden. That was college-educated, you know, males and females. virtually every other group, her numbers were behind Biden in 2020. Is this the key problem that the Democratic Party needs to address, figuring out, and that's not no easy task, figuring out how to become something else, become something more than just the party of America's college-educated elite? Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting. A pollsters used to, in the business of politics,

used to ask people their educational level and then would ask them their income to sort of get a sense of where people fell in different groups. They don't really ask the income question anymore because college education is now viewed as a proxy for income. If you have a college education, and we all know that that's not necessarily true everywhere, there are a lot of places where people have college educations who are not making a lot of money. But in general, college educated group of people in the United States are the people who have more money, make more money than people who do not have a college education. That's just the reality. And so we've gotten in this conversation about college educated versus non-college.

educated, which then, you know, people sanctimoniously say, well, it's the, you know, the intelligent people versus the non-intelligent people. But really what it is, is that conversation allows us to avoid the real word that no one wants to talk about, which is the class divide. It's a class divide. It's not an educational divide. It's a class divide. And, you know, until we start talking about class in the Democratic Party, we're going to end up losing. And, you know, they don't want to, they don't want to talk about class because then, you know, what happens to the Mark Cubans of the world, And what happens to Reed Hoffman and other wealthy donors to the Democratic Party? They don't want to talk about class.

They would much rather talk about, quote unquote, educational level than, you know, paint the other side as trogodytes and Neanderthals who should be hated and despised. And so we're not willing to talk about what the real issue is. It's not education. It's class. Great point. So if we think about where the Democratic Party could go from here, again, no small feat to try to try to, reconnect the party to some kind of return to its working class roots to the labor movement. Like, where is the fertile ground for the Democratic Party to begin to kind of dig in again?

Because, you know, Einstein's definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again. Right. And expecting a different result. And right now, in a lot of the, you know, the pundit class, I don't know, Jeffrey, I'm not seeing a huge kind of awareness. that of these issues of class, of the issues of economic inequality, of, you know, a Democratic party that went around the last at least 18 months telling everybody how great the economy was when clearly a lot of people really felt the economy wasn't great. Where does the Democratic Party start in terms of the rebuild? Yeah, well, I think, look, I think the party needs to

become more economically populist and more socially libertarian. For all of us, to talk about freedom and what have you, that be the Democratic Party as an institution and as a group of people, have a very set point of view on a lot of social and cultural issues that they're really not that tolerant dissent on. You know, when I first came down to the Congress with Bernie Sanders back in 1990, a huge swath of Democrats in the House of Representatives were pro-life Democrats. They came from rural parts of America. They were pro-life. Party was a pro-choice party, but they had a huge representation of pro-life representatives. You know, the issues of guns, They were pro-gun control Democrats.

They were anti-gun control Democrats. They were pro-gun control Republicans. We came from suburban America. They're mostly gone and replaced with Democrats. And so, you know, what's happened is all of these cultural issues have become very partisan, right? They become a partisan filter. And I think the Democratic Party used to get back to more of a position of social libertarianism, where it's a bigger tent in terms of the acceptable number of viewpoints.

Can you imagine running as even like quasi, you know, having some sort of. some qualms about choice in a Democratic primary in America anywhere. There's no way you would get elected. And I think that has to, that has to change. In terms of economics, look, the problem is, is Trump offered a narrative about what was wrong with America. So immigrants coming in. There's free loafers, as foreigners, the Chinese are taking, you know, or eating our lunch. And the Democrats don't have it a narrative. You know, Joe Biden, oh, the workers are great. The companies are great. Everybody's great. And, you know, just bad things happen to good people. And that's no one no one buys them. So, you know, we need to offer any people like Sanders who offers an alternative

narrative, which is, you know, there's a class of very wealthy people and institutions, some of which are domestic, some of which are foreign, and they're eating everybody else's lunch. And that's something that people can get put their minds around, because it happens to be, in my view, true. And it provides a counterbalance, a balancing narrative to what Trump is offering America. Joe Biden, Palma Harris, Hillary Clinton, you know, to the extent they have a counterbalance, balancing narrative. It's somehow forces of reaction in the social or cultural arena are holding back people of color. I don't think that that's an agenda or a narrative that's going to motivate a large cross-section. It's one of the problems, Jeff, that the Democratic Party itself is pretty

penetrated by, you know, as you say, a donor class that straddles Silicon Valley, L.A., Hollywood, the entertainment world, Wall Street. Again, how do you reposition the party around these broader kind of populist themes that are going to connect with everyone else who's not part of that small minority in the Democratic Party? And, you know, in America, that seems to, in both parties, be calling a lot of the shots. Well, look, I think for a lot of these donors, there needs to be a real conversation about whether they want to be in a permanent minority position, if they want to have Trump or worse. You know, JD Vance is right behind him. I think a lot of people are talking about Trump as once in a lifetime phenomenon, what have you.

I think that that's terribly misguided. You know, he has sealed his legacy with J.D. Vance. You know, he's going to seal his informant to her on the party. It's going to be the Trump party going forward. So, you know, America can be governed by a sort of socially conservative faux economically populists. you know, peronist kind of ideology for the foreseeable future. And I, you know, I think that that will be appealing to a lot of people. They can have that or they can have something else. So maybe a bunch of them will say, well, we prefer that to something that's truly economically populist. That may be their choice. You know, their class interests may overcome their other interests. So we'll have to see. But that's a chance we have to take because right now what we're

doing, as you pointed out, doing the same thing over and over again as insanity. This is not worth. So you can tell me how much that one won't work, but I can tell you this one just not. And what would, what would Senator Sanders, Bernie Sanders? Because in some ways, you know, if you look inside the party, you know, there was somebody. You were part of that movement inside the party that, you know, flash forward to today. If you'd run a Sanders-like candidate, Jeff, is it a fair assumption to say that you would have had a different set of results than you did this week? Well, you know, I don't know if you had sort of plucked a Bernie Sanders out of the world and put him in, given the circumstance, you know, late entry and what have you, you could have overcome that problem. I do think a 16 he would have won. I do think that in 20, he would have won. You know, the particular circumstances of this election were very tough, given that Joe Biden didn't get out until so, so late.

and the administration had so at least mishandled the messaging around the economy. But I do think that we do, if you poll the American people, the issues where they do agree with the Democrats are on the economic populism. That's where they agree with it. It's the language checking and the virtue signaling that they are opposed to. And, you know, Trump was very effective. He flooded American sports programming with anti-transgender ads. I don't know if they made it into Canada or not, but they were everywhere. It was a busy, you know, the election coincides with very busy sports season, football season, America football.

season and baseball playoffs. So, and the start of the NBA. So, you know, people were getting insundated with these ads. And, you know, they picked the most extreme cases, obviously, to make their point. And, you know, it was very, very effective. Made the Democrat seem, it played into the caricature of Democrats as sort of a culturally added touch, kind of weird, elite. I don't know.

I don't hate to characterize it further. But I think you get the point. What do you think President Biden's legacy is going to be? be not simply having to whether the humiliation of a step down and a deferment of a second term and a run for the presidency, but now to contemplate that his preferred candidate, his advisors around him elevated someone in the form of Kamala Harris, who probably had all the right intentions and certainly made an impressive effort on many, many, many dimensions. but nonetheless came up short and not just a little bit short, Jeff.

You know, if the House does break in favor of the Republicans, you're talking about four years of unopposed Trump government, whatever that ultimately is. I mean, thankfully, although I'm an opponent of this as a rule, that, you know, this U.S. Senate, it's not purely a parliamentary system down here. The U.S. Senate requires supermajorities to do most things. Some things can be blocked by the Democrats. They do have more than 40.

They do have more than 40. But, yes, look, I think his legacy is severely tarnished by this. I think his refusal to step down when everybody around him had to have seen. I mean, I was certainly hearing it from people. And everybody, like, it was an open secret. And again, the media didn't tell to the American people. So they were quite surprised to hear about it at the debate. But those people, everybody in Washington knew that.

No one can say, oh, my God, we were shocked. You see that, you know, the decline of the president. That's just, I'll keep it, I'll keep it non-blue here on the, on your show. But so his legacy is going to be severely targeted. She's going to be, he's going to be known as the president who drove up inflation, didn't leave when he was in decline and caused the party to lose both houses of Congress and the presidency. That's a, that's his legacy at this point.

And it's sad because in truth, a lot of what he did was very, very good. A lot of it was very economically populist. they just could not get their heads out of the expert world and talk to the American people in a way that, you know, that they can understand. Talking about GDP growth, the people who are, you know, are paying $6 or $7 for eggs, that's not going to cut it. If you're enjoying the Monk Debates podcast, come over to our website at triple W monkdebates.com. That's MUNK DebateswithanS.com and check out our free monk membership. As a complimentary monk member, you get all kinds of great. perks and benefits, access to our weekly email, summarizing our best debates,

Vance ticketing privileges at our main stage debates, special news information, and offers all courtesy of the Monk Debates. You can grab your complimentary monk membership again right now at triple w monkdebates.com. Simply look to the top navigation on the website and follow the links. Thanks in advance for joining our community. What's your verdict, Jeff, on the media this cycle? You know, we've seen some big, big changes in how the actual campaign unfolded. You're an expert in campaigns.

Do you think it was a watershed in terms of new sources of media, new ways of communicating? How do you think the mainstream press, you know, handled itself? Obviously, there's a debacle around, you know, what Biden's actual condition was. And in a sense, a bit of a collusion there to, as you say, continue action. access to the White House and turn for for not reporting that out. But if you step back this cycle, Jeff, do you think that the mainstream press is a big loser or do you think we're just seeing a continuation of trends, you know, that have been there for a while? Yeah, I do, look, I do think they're a big loser. You know, clearly, you know, MSNBC and Fox are largely perceived as partisan

entities in the U.S. You know, CNN used to be more of it in the middle of the road. You know, I think they have a little bit of a Dr. Frankenstein syndrome, you know, in 2016 that of all the institutions in America out of the party, probably the most responsible for Trump's election, in my view. And then once he was elected, you know, the monster they had created, they've been on a crusade to kill him for eight years. And, you know, it shows. I mean, you know, many of the hosts on CNN should be on a Kamala Harris finance report to the FEC, the Federal Election Commission, because it's not the reporting. It's like the hosts are so overtly. I mean, it's just, it's crazy. And I'm a Trump opponent. And I watch it. I'm a, I'm a Trump opponent. And I watch it.

like, oh my goodness, this is outrageous. So I think the mainstream media really took it on the chin. You know, obviously Trump berated them constantly. He appeared on a lot of podcasts, particularly at the end of the campaign. There was a lot of reporting about how he was ignoring the regular media, although he was much more available than Kamala Harris was, but he was appearing on podcasts and talking to people in that way, you know, online. And it seemed much more, much more effective than talking to people through the mainstream

media, most of whom were writing very negative things about it. I mean, many well-deserved negative things about it. What does the media do, Jeff? Because, you know, you're right. I think a lot of us were almost kind of shocked by the extent to which once the Harris nomination was completed, a kind of 180-degree turn in, you know, some important institutions, let's say, like the New York Times, that had done previously some soul searching. And it indicated that they were going to try to listen to a broader cross-section of Americans

and express a wider range of views. But when push came to shove, Jeff, it certainly looked like a lot of the mainstream media lined up behind the Harris candidacy and did so in a somewhat self-evident, unconscious, or maybe it was conscious, manner. Like, how does the media kind of recover from this? Or is that going to be mission impossible? Yeah, you know, it is,

it is a difficult situation because, you know, you have these, they're information gatekeepers in America. And, you know, we saw back back early in the primary season when I worked for Dean Phillips, a conservative, Democratic, Democratic congressman who was trying to challenge Joe Biden, even though, you know, I weren't aligned on a lot of politics, but we both knew that this, we were worried about what was going to happen, it was going to happen. You know, the media blacked him out. He was blacked out. And to the extent that he, we complained about it, we've got on a couple of shows. And then there were just, I mean, talk about,

hostile. I mean, they were incredibly hostile programs. So, you know, they did a lot to protect Joe Biden. They'd elect comrade Thomas to attack Donald Trump. How do you do that? You know, I think there needs to be a house cleaning at some of these places. And I think there needs to be a recommitment to covering the news to be chroniclers of the news as opposed to makers of the news. And I, you know, I think a lot of hosts on cable TV news view themselves as celebrities of their own right, who have a fan base, who have an image, who don't make a lot of money, obviously. I don't begrudge them any of it. But, again, they should be chroniclers of the weeks and not makers of things.

Jeff, as we wind in our conversation today, what is your spidey a sentence telling you about the next four years? Do you see this as a period of significant political turmoil? The reason I ask is that the vibe, you know, for the last 40, or 72 hours, I think understandably maybe is one of kind of resignation, that there now will be a second Trump presidency. Many people, half your electorate obviously, you know, are not happy with that outcome. But I'm not sensing right now, Jeff, the kind of the dark storm clouds that some pundits and prognosticators were saying that a Trump victory would usher in, riots on the streets. Civil war has been a word that was bantied around constantly the last 12 months.

What are your instincts telling you about how the next couple of years is going to... Well, a lot of this is going to depend on Trump. I mean, the truth of the matter is that Trump, you know, defeated himself in many ways in his first term. He is very erratic. Obviously, his conduct during COVID was really what caused him to lose. You know, we were talking earlier about to, before the show started, about whether, in fact, Biden would have won at all if it had not been for COVID. But, you know, so it will depend, you know, just Trump, you know, given that he's had assassination attempts, so he's maybe a little bit older and that he's really trying to create a legacy now because this is, really his last term, he only served once, only served eight years, you know, will he govern

less erratically? And I don't know the answer to that. You know, if he becomes erratic and over the top, then, you know, in the midterm elections, two years from now, you can see Republicans get swept out, certainly of the House, the Senate is the difficult situation because it's staggered. But if he governs in a sort of civil way, even though the policies are extreme, I think he could have some success. And he has picked an heir apparent in J.D. Vance, who shares his view. So, you know, for those people who think that Trump is a once-in-a-lifetime thing, an aberration, what have you, you know, you're for a big surprise because leaders don't make history, history makes leaders. And what do you think about these cast of characters that have kind of attached themselves

to this second term presidency? I think of this new thing that we're seeing this time, which is an embrace by significant parts of Silicon Valley of this particular president, Elon Musk, but there's a lot of other tech bros that have come on to support Trump. Where does that all go? What does that say about both his presidency? And I don't know, from your friends up here in Canada and elsewhere, Jeff, there's a feeling of kind of, yeah, that the Trump era signifies not necessarily an authentic populism.

Instead, maybe an intensification of these very kind of trends of oligarchy and plutocracy, corruption, self-dealing. I don't know, Jeff. Do you share a worry here that what the second Trump term could really be is the rule of the elites intensifying in ways that could be very difficult for America's working class and, you know, for the very people, ironically, who've put them into office? No, I think that's exactly the concern. And, you know, it's no secret that the crypto,

industry, which, you know, to me is built on. It's like Dutch tulips from the end of the last century. You know, put a lot of money into Trump, frankly. You know, conservative pro-Israeli lobby, very, very supportive of Trump, very, you know, opposed to the left in America. You know, those forces in the Silicon Valley types, they want to, you know, consolidate the control of him. They want to change, you know, Elon Musk wants to change the structure of how the federal executive branch looks so that in the long term, you know, they're going to pair it down. They're basically going to undo the new deal is what they're going to try to do. Not that there's not a lot of waste in the federal government, which can be excised out up for that. But, you know, this structural

change is really going to undo the new. We're going to go back to the 1930s. Wow. Final question. Does this election mark the kind of the end of woke politics? I hope so. Yeah. I said I think we need to get back to more position of social libertarian discipline. You know, I grew up in a small town in a gay household, you know, 1970s was not easy. But, you know, my father always had a very socially libertarian view. Let me do my thing. You do your thing. It's not the same thing.

We live side by side. Life goes on. You don't have to agree with me. I don't have to agree with you. We've lost that. We've lost that America. I don't know what it's like in Canada. But, you know, we need to get back there that we don't make judgments of people based on,

you know, trucks they drive or the music they listen to or, you know, movies. they watch or what have you. And how Jeff do how does that happen? Is it like is that a debate that has to happen inside the Democratic Party? Is it just facing up? Oh for sure. Facing up to the facts. Are you are is there a new standard bearer out there who's going to come and put these arguments that we've been talking about today together us, you know, support for the working class, a rejection of identitarian kind of narratives and politics. Like, I'm just not seeing that right now. Maybe it's there.

But like who, who's going to affect this change? Well, as I said, leaders make history. History makes leaders. So, you know, there will be a standard bear who will, you know, come up, hopefully through the Democratic presidential primary process is how it usually happens in the U.S. That the party itself is a, comes an organ of the president. And, you know, we need the elected president who's going to implement those changes within the party and into the country. That's what we need. Okay. Well, Jeff Weaver, thank you so much for

being available to us this last year. You know, speaking with you is always refreshing. I get a feeling we're cutting through a lot of the morass of punditry and the media to some important insights and those insights were revealed once again this week in terms of the Trump victory. And we hopefully we'll have the opportunity to connect with you in the future. Thanks so much. Glad to do you. Well, that wraps up today's dialogue. I want to thank our guest, Jeff Weaver.

He certainly gave us a lot to think about it. If you have feedback or reflections on what you've just heard on this or any of our other podcast, please send us an email to podcast at monkdebates.com. That's MUNK DebateswithanS.com. Thank you for lending your time and attention to our efforts to bring back the art of civil and substantive dialogue, one conversation at a time. I'm your host and moderator, Rudyard Griffiths. The Monk Debates are a project of the Aurea and Peter and Melanie Monk charitable foundations. Rudyard Griffiths and Ricky Gerwitz are the producers. Be sure to download and subscribe wherever

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