The Young Turks - Part 1: Flip Georgia Get Out the Vote Special

Episode Date: December 29, 2020

Part 1: Georgia GOTV Special: Will Georgia continue to flip BLUE? Tune in to today's special TYT event featuring hosts Benjamin Dixon and John Iadarola, along with Cenk Uygur and Aida Rodiguez, as they count down to Georgia’s runoff election and encourage viewers to GET OUT THE VOTE. Guest segments with Dr. Rashad Richey, W Mondale Robinson, and Justin Horwitz.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Hello everyone and welcome to our Georgia Get Out the Vote Special here on TYT. I'm John AdRola, joined by Ben Dixon and Jank Yugar. How's it going, fellas? Great. Going great, man. Good to be here. Glad to have you here. We've got a big special planned. It's going to be us three for this first

hour in which we're going to talk about sort of the state of the race, some of the stakes of the race, a few other things. But then we've got other guests who are going to be joining us, joining the panel, some awesome guests, including politicians who are going to be calling in and we're going to be discussing them. And really, we want to use this as an opportunity to give everyone a reminder of why these races are so important. And they are, by the way, Now, if you are living in Georgia, you can go and vote as of today. But this is not just a special for people who live in Georgia. This is for everyone, because everyone's eyes politically need to be on Georgia.

And there's ways that we can all help out. My sort of spirits were a little bit boosted heading into this, not just knowing that people are excited to early vote, but that there were a lot of mail and ballots that were requested beforehand. Certainly, like if you are taking stock of the country, it seems like there's more reason for the Democrats right now to be optimistic about these races, but it is still Georgia, and that means that it's always going to be difficult. So what's your, what's the current state of your thinking about Georgia as we start

the early vote? Yeah, for me, I'm, you know, I'm watching everything here on the ground and there's a lot of, I don't want to say excitement, but determination where there's, there are a lot of organizations, more so than just like individuals, like we know individuals go out to vote, but we have organizations on the ground that have been like, they have been preparing for this for a very long time, and they're excited to really show what they can do. And so they're down here, they're doing the day, they're doing the thing. Yeah, so for my purposes, John, first of all, I should have said I'm feeling peachy keen.

Yeah, look, mainly I feel good because But this is with a giant grain of salt. Because the polling looks pretty good right now. Both the Democratic candidates are winning. And until the polls get better or more accurate in terms of predicting likely voters, I will always say that it's with a grain or maybe even a boulder of salt. But as things stand now, remember Joe Biden did win Georgia, very famously so, after three recounts, including a hand recount. Well, there's still some court cases, but. And Stacey Abrams certainly would have won Georgia if it wasn't for the voter purchase.

Absolutely. And now it looks like both the Democrats are leading in Georgia. So a little bit of hope. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and by the way, maybe while we're talking about this, we could, I think we have a couple of the tracking polls for it. But there's obviously a lot of concerns about the utility of polling coming out of the election. We heard that in 2016 as well. I will say at least if I remember correctly, in Georgia specifically, the sort of average of polls, like the day of the election had Biden winning, I think it was by 1.2 points, and he'll have won by something like point two points. So it was off by about a point. So these races are still close, which means that

a point could theoretically matter. But it's not like this is one of the states where the pollsters just had no idea what was going on in Georgia. It doesn't seem that's really how things worked. Yeah, you know what I'm excited about is tonight. One of the guests that we have in the second hour is the first person who told me that Georgia was going to go blue, Mondale Robinson. And he told me that because of the amount of registrations that were happening, like the amount of outreach that was happening. And he was the first one to tell me that. And then, yeah, here we are. It went blue. And it went blue because of so many organizers. And that's the most compelling thing about this entire race in January coming up.

Yeah. And so we have a lot that we're gonna be talking about through the course of this hour. I wanted to give people just an idea of a couple of things that I noticed today on this first day of voting, little bits of news floating around about that, that race. The first one this morning was, and I'm assuming both of you have probably seen this by now, it was some staffer for the NRC that had unearthed a video of Warnock in 2017, in responding to the passage of the Trump tax cuts and saw it as like something that was going to sink his campaign where he was calling the GOP senators thugs and gangsters for sort of selling out the poor and the middle class. And I thought, I don't think you're tapped in well with

American politics these days. I don't think that's really gonna hurt him. Yeah, John, let me say two things about that. Number one, please have them run that as an ad. Since I'm writing my book Justice is coming. I actually went back and rewatch the Joe Donnelly ad from Indiana from two years ago. And he, in four different instances, told you to vote for the Republican campaign. He's like, oh, I voted for Trump's border wall. I voted for Bush's tax cuts. I split with my party. I hate the new left and liberals and everything, right? And so he just kept saying vote for them, vote for them, vote for them. And they did. And he lost my six. So I hope the Republicans make the same mistake. Can you believe Warnock was against

tax cuts for the rich? Outrageous. Obviously, we should give everything to the rich. Those Trump tax cuts worked out great. We just run that ad. So in fact, guys, I think we've got an ad that Rebellion Pack has talking about how we can turn things around on an issues that are beneficial to us. It's about minimum wage. So this is a stunning fact. So like, that's why I keep saying it over and over again. In Georgia, the minimum wage is $5.5. Okay, that's unreal. So the federal minimum wage actually applies because it's their statement of wage is so low. So it supersedes that at $7.25. But in terms of what the Democrats would do, if they win the Senate, they say they're in favor of $15 minimum wage. they pass in the House. If they could pass it in the Senate, Biden says he's in favor of it.

So you win these two seats and tons of people all across the country, but specifically in Georgia, will literally have their wages doubled overnight. Now, why wouldn't you run on that? So that's what Rebellion Pack did the ad on, RebellionPact.com slash join if you want to support that. Asher, do we have that one? Yeah, so let's show you that ad right now. about the taxes on their yacht, while the working man keeps on shoveling it. I work hard in Georgia. My family works hard,

but we never get anywhere because the minimum wage is barely five bucks per hour. Rich people like Kelly Leffler don't get it. She doesn't know what it's like to work when you're sick. The dread checking the mail because you know there's another pile of bills you can't pay. If she gets into the Senate, it's going to be more of the same.

Kickbacks for the rich, while they screw the rest of us. That's why I'm voting for Reverend Warnett. He's one of us. Vote for working people. Vote Reverend Warnett on January 5th. Yeah, it's that bad. All right. Yeah, I like that. Look, Democrats, look, last thing on that, in Florida, Joe Biden lost by three points. Minimum wage was on the ballot, and it won by 22 points. As a 25 points, swing. All we're asking for out of Democrats is please just run on the issues you actually believe in. And they're incredibly popular. Believe in your own issues and you'll win these elections. If Warnock and Asov listen to that advice, they'd win handily. So I hope they do.

Exactly, exactly. And by the way, I want to mention this now. This is something we were to go to multiple times. Obviously, if you are in Georgia, hopefully you've already requested your mail and ballot or already gone and voted today. But if not, you can of course do that, do that. But if you are anywhere else in the country, there are a lot of different organizations. I'm sure some of which Ben is gonna talk about through the course of the special that you can either help out with or donate to. You can also go to t.t.com slash GA and get information on how you can volunteer to help out the candidates. If you're in the area, you can do door to door canvassing and things like that, you can call voters. If you're like me and you're a massive

introvert, you can text voters. You can do postcards and letter writing. There's a lot of different ways that people can help out. And I'm sure the help is going to be very appreciated. And what is going to be a very close race, no matter what, your help could be instrumental. So normally we tell you to go to t.com slash go and you can feel free to do that as well. This time go to t.com slash GA and you can find out how you can help out. The other quick little update on the news for the races that I saw is, and this is just such a perfect example of what the Republican Party is when election time comes around, is Kelly Luffler and David Perdue have demanded a list of the registered voters in the state,

which I assume is just a step one for whining about how they were robbed when they lose, if they lose. And we should assume, based on the experience with Donald Trump in that state, If they lose by a point or if they lose by 10 points, why would they concede? Why not just fight and hope that maybe they'll be more lucky than Donald Trump was? Since Republicans these days apparently can't actually lose an honest race. I'm sorry, John, I don't mean to laugh because they're really playing with the fundamentals of our democracy and they're so cavalier with it. Like I mean, we're really talking about the whole ball part, the ball game here.

And they just so casually disregard the will of the voter at such a high level that I'm not that I'm really wondering, is there anyone, is there anyone awake over there on the Republican side of the country? Because we really do need you all to put these people in check. Yeah. Yeah, and another side note about Georgia here. So I believe there were four Republican congressmen from Georgia who joined the 126 that submitted a brief to the Supreme Court saying that our election was fraudulent and you should throw out all of the votes of Georgia. Okay, so firstly, what an insult to your own voters to say, you should disregard my voters, and you should just say that Trump won Georgia, even though we're telling you we know that he

didn't. We don't have any evidence that anything went wrong, but we're telling you throw out their votes anyway. But remember, if there's four Republican congressmen from Georgia, who signed the letter, they just said their own election was fraudulent. So why are we seating them? Nancy Pelosi's Speaker of the House should definitely not seat. Overall, there's 18 Republicans in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Georgia that signed on to that Supreme Court brief, saying our own elections were fraudulent. Okay, then you don't get to be a congressman. So you want to pull that stuff after the election to the point that you guys were making, After the election, after if they lose Leffler and Purdue will say, oh, we would have won,

we're not sitting in any of your congressman from your election. That's it, you're all gone, you're fired, go home, go home. You keep saying all the elections in Georgia are fraudulent, then go home. I'm not going to sit someone who says, I actively participated in a fraudulent election, not going to happen. But of course, Democrats don't have 1% of that strength. Yeah. You know, I am curious. This, this obviously, this is just a thought experiment. Don't even put too much thought into it because the important thing is actually getting out there

voting and making sure that there's as much assistance as possible to people on the ground who are trying to flip these seats. But you know, I'm curious, any, Ben, like, there's been talk ever since the election of with this narrative that it doesn't, it's all rigged and it doesn't matter. And you know, Lynn Wood and Cindy Powell go down there. And they say that this thing doesn't matter. And apparently there's been chance in Georgia at these Trump rallies that Purdue and Lufler are rhinos and all of that. Do we believe that they're going to turn out? Because Trump, he does say that he wants them to be elected, but it doesn't seem like he's making it that much of a priority. He's sort of distracted with other things.

Yeah, so that's one of the other interviews we have in the second hour. Justin Horwitz has been running a campaign there that has been a truth-telling campaign. And They are discussing the divides in the Republican Party that are simply there. And I'm really surprised that the divides run as deep as they run. But I do believe that that is going to be something that Democrats can capitalize on if they play their cards right. If they play their cards right. Yeah. And I want to say one other thing, we're the second part of this first hour, we're gonna be talking about sort of why it matters, the different things that are sort of at stake here.

But I would say that one thing, it's not even symbolic, it's 100% substantive, but it feels sort of symbolic is that there has been so much injustice this year. It's not like injustice is new to America, it's sort of been baked into this thing from the very beginning, but it's been really obvious and it's just been punching you in the face so many things that are so fundamentally unjust. And I think that it's amazing that the two Republicans that are up for these runoffs on the same day are like the face of the most obvious corruption. Like when people are dying and the government had an opportunity to do something, and we would find out later on basically doesn't, that they

cared so much more about increasing their already obscene wealth. Like David Purdue is only like kind of wealthy, but like Luffler is one of like the richest people in the world. And she was only thinking of herself, not even the people of Georgia, let alone Americans at large. For them to be rejected, it would be like Trump being rejected is a political rejection of Trumpism. Them being rejected to me would be a rejection of the sort of culture of voter suppression and the anti-democracy in Georgia, but also the profiteering that's gone on throughout this pandemic. I think that would be delicious. Well, it's funny you say that, John, because that's the other rebellion packet. And that one, I'm not sure that TV stations are going to let it run, but that could be an interesting controversy because we talk about the, remember Kelly Leffler never won an election. She was appointed. And she was appointed because she gave $2 million in legalized bribes to Republican politicians. So. And then she went and rip people. Her husband owns the New York Stock Exchange. That's how wealthy they are. I'm not kidding.

Okay, he bought her a basketball team for a birthday, right? It's wow. Amazing. Where do I get a wife like that? I want my spouse to buy me a basketball team for my birthday. I'm good. Amazing. But do we have that ad? Okay, all right, let's see if this is it. Let's run. The money grubbing David Perdue secretly bought stock in drug companies while he told you that coronavirus was no big deal. The risk of this virus still remains love.

If he really believed that, why did he make millions in trades after he got secret information in a hearing in the Senate? I guess Purdue learned how to rip people off when he was a big business executive, but where did he learn how to run? Because when he was called out in the last debate, it's not just that you're a crook, Senator. You're attacking the health of the people that you represent. He ran like a weakling and wouldn't show up to the next debate. It is the height of cowardice. Doesn't Georgia deserve better than a sniveling, conniving coward?

Let's try the Ossoff kid. At least he's not a crook. We deserve better than this. Did you script that, Jank? Yeah. Got that voice. Okay. Just stuff.

Thank you. There's one just like that for Kelly Loughlin. That obviously was a Purdue one. They both did insider training based on the information they had from the Senate. And they both did the same exact thing. And they're both obscenely rich and added to their wealth by getting that secret information as senators. And in fact, the Leffler one talks about how maybe she's just trying to make her money back for the $2 million she gave to Republican politicians to get that scene in the first place. She made $18 million in trades after she got that secret

information. Yeah, and she, you know, it's been in the ads that they've been showing it, but she and her husband have over $800 million. Like they, for all intends of purposes, they have all of the money you could ever, you could buy anything you want. You could buy literally anything. The extra money doesn't do anything for you. But this is, it's an addiction. It's a mental illness. It's like these people have an issue. And that's fine. You know, we have empathy for people. if they get out of the way, if they get out of the seats of power, then we'll, you know, help them get help or whatever. But for her to hold that position and like, can you name one thing that she's done other than insider trading? What is she done? I was going to say that.

I was going to say $18 million is a pretty big accomplishment in the pandemic, right? That's, that's a good, nice return on investment there. But we're really dealing with the ruling elite coming down from their pantheon of the oligarchs and ruling us, right? This is who this is who they are. to get rid of them. We do. We do. Okay, well, we're going to take our first break. We come back, we're gonna talk a little bit more about sort of looking ahead. What are the the different political futures that we could have depending on the way that these runoff elections go? So we're gonna take a short break, but stick around. There's more after this. Welcome back to the Georgia get out the vote special. I'm John Adrola joined by Ben Dixon and

Jank Yugar. And we've a lot that we're gonna accomplish in this section, but one of the focuses I want to have is sort of getting an idea of what are we looking forward to when we finally get past all these challenges and hopefully what passes for democracy in America is still here, then what sort of government is Joe Biden going to be leading and how much can actually get accomplished? And there's a lot of different areas that we can talk about. Hypothetically, one thing that I want to start off with though is the big legislative battle that's going on right now is its aid for having to do with COVID in the pandemic. And, you know, one of the questions that I asked Senator Sanders when he was on the Young Turks

last week was, is this basically make or break? Whatever we get, is that it? And I expected him to agree with that. I assumed we've waited a year. This bill is going to be it. But he believes that there will be fall-up legislation, which means that by that point, we're definitely going to have these new senators in. And we've seen how these negotiations have been going. It seems like getting a couple more Democrats could be pretty important for having any substantive aid for people as this dark winter continues. Yeah, and look, if the Democrats of the House, the aid you'll get will literally be larger. And if the Republicans of the House, it'll be smaller. It's not political grandstanding, it's just a fact.

The Republican position is lower in terms of helping average Americans than the Democratic position is. Maybe the Democrats are full of it, but they've actually been pretty decent until this last round of negotiations and actually fighting pretty hard for the average American. And Mitch McConnell has been fighting super hard to not help you. And so if the Republicans win either one of these seats, you will get less money in your pocket. Fact. Right, right. Right. And if you, even if we like extrapolate from just the like the workers here in Georgia, right, if we talk about the broader progressive movement across this country, like just beyond the material benefit that you'll get on a local level from this package. If we want to progress a future, we've got to stop Mitch McConnell. This is like this is nothing we can do. There's no hopeful future for any of our plans, Medicare for all, none of it, unless we first stop Mitch McConnell. And then we start there. That's our starting point. He can't win.

Yeah, look, I- On July 18th, get excited. This is big! For the summer's biggest adventure. I think I just smurf my pants. That's a little too excited. Sorry. Smurfs.

Only did it is July 18th. I personally think it would have been one of the best things that could have possibly happened in the last election would be for him to have lost, but with the way that the primary went, that was not going to happen probably. And indeed it didn't. But the next best thing would be making him a minority leader. I think it also increases that like that that increases the chance that in a couple of years, he also retires and we don't have to literally see his face on TV, the prospect that he's not

going to be in charge again at any point. That would be great. But I agree, we have got to take the power out of his hands because there's a lot of really reprehensible Republicans who have basically taken all of politics and reduced it down to, you know, sort of a numeric analysis analysis of what can we get away with and still squeak by, you know, elections and continue minority rule, thanks to voter suppression, all that. And he's doing that. And with, if he's, if he has the majority, going to the Biden presidency, like, like a hold over the future of COVID aid is just the beginning of our issues. I don't think we're effectively going to have a functioning government for multiple years. And that's barely a hypothetical considering

how the second term of Barack Obama went. Right. Yeah, so one more thing about Mitch McConnell. Unfortunately, if the Republicans hold the Senate, it also gives into the worst instincts of the Democrats. They'll immediately self-flagellate and they'll say, oh, we knew it, it's a center right country. Even though they just won the presidency and they have the House, there's nothing we could do. But most importantly, look, progressives, will push them to fight. And that's a guarantee, okay. If they don't, then we're, you know, then they're going to have their own issues. So what the hell did we send you to Congress for if you're not going to fight for our policy issues? So they will. But Democrats left to their

own device, if the Republicans win either one of these seats will immediately go to their favorite excuse of all time. There was nothing we could do. Oh, we passed it in the House, but they killed it in the Senate. There's nothing we can do. So you got to vote for, ironically, for these two Democrats. So you not only take away Republican obstruction, but Democratic excuses. Well, the only thing I would add to that is reduce the likelihood and severity of the excuses. I mean, look, obviously, like there's no comparison between these two, but let's also keep it real. Getting them in is not, well, then that's great, we've got this. You're still going to have an automatic filibuster that doesn't actually have to be a filibuster on virtually every piece of

legislation. You're still going to have some really conservative Democrats that are going to be looking for any opportunity to work with the Republicans. We're still going to have tons of problems in a daily fight, but at least we have the possibility of some of these things passing. And I would say, you know, we can go back and we can look at the history of Wernick and Asaf. And certainly there are things that we're going to disagree with, you know, either or both on. But I would say at least this last year, they've been trying to demonstrate that, you know, they're a little bit more open to progressive ideas, the way that they're communicating about their policies. That gives me at least a little bit of hope. Of course, we have to see after

the election is over, but I think that they seem to at least be reading the room and getting what people want out of their elected representatives these days. Well, not us off so much, but I'm not going to talk about it on this episode. We need him to to get elected. I do have every belief that we're going to have to push him with everything that we possibly have. And we're going to have to push every single Democrat. I don't, honestly, I think we're going to have the primary more people, right? I think the outside, inside approach is what has to continue to happen. Like, I don't think anyone needs to go to sleep if we win Georgia. I think we just need to figure out what our next race is and make that happen.

On the next race, I only have one URL to say. Oh, there is. Nina Turner.com slash hello. Hello, hello, hello. By the way, no, I'm kidding aside, there's a second race. Gary Chambers Jr. down in Louisiana for Cedric at Richmond seat. So those are two critical seats that if progressives pick up will be in great shape. Then we'd have a dozen excellent progressives in, let alone pretty good.

ones to round it out. So there's definitely the next races. But look, I looked in their records. First of all, they're talking about universal health care. It's a good start. So they're not saying Medicare for all. Yeah. And but they could, they don't have to say universal health care. The corporate Democratic line is not universal health care. It's public option, right? And that we've had to force them into talking about the public option. Last time we're talking about the public option Biden was opposed to it. So progressives have moved them in the right direction. And they're partly saying universal health care, because that's what the polling shows. The polling shows people really, really, really, really want universal health care. If you call it Medicare for

all, they still want it. It's still a majority, but it's less of a majority because of the beating it's taken from a propaganda perspective from really less Republicans are against it. But corporate Democrats put a big beating on it in the primaries and the mainstream media, the worst of it. So despite that, it's still popular, but universal health care is super popular, especially during coronavirus, and they're both in favor of it. So that's good. And they're actually excellent, a surprisingly good on money in politics. So that's what got me excited about them. Yeah, and with Purdue and Leffler, we know what we're getting in that area. So yeah, absolutely better. Now on other legislation, let's say that hypothetical,

both the Dems lose. We've got, you know, we've got a Republican majority. Like the next four years, what if anything actually gets done in Congress? Like literally, but let's say conservative between now and midterms. Does any major bill get passed in the next two years? No, no, not unless the American people actually go knock on Mitch McConnell's door. I'm not suggesting you all do that, but Mitch McConnell is not going to bend. He's not going to fold. If he has the power, he's going to wield it against every single American in this country. Every one of you is going to have to force, face the wrath of Mitch McConnell who's going to make sure you don't get a bailout. So that's what we're talking about, man. Forget about a far distant, progressive

future. We're talking about real tangible material benefit that people need right now. Mitch McConnell is going to block that. Okay, so I know exactly what's going to happen. So apparently you've asked the right person. So first of all, If the Republicans hold the Senate even by one, not only will they block every piece of legislation that Biden proposed during the campaign, but Biden likely will not try 90% of them. Right. He'll immediately preemptively surrender. He'll say, well, there's nothing we do. Mitch McConnell's running the Senate. What are we supposed to do? Fight him? Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of what you're supposed to do. Well, but if they have the votes,

You know what you do? You change the votes. Well, how would we do that? By doing a thing called politics, okay? I know that the Democrats have forgotten that's why things like Rebellion PAC and all the other wonderful organizations we're going to discuss today are trying to prod them in the right direction. Hence, John, if the Republicans have the Senate and they block everything like they're going to, I guarantee you that there will be a progressive rebellion. that says, no, we're going to fight Mitch McConnell on minimum wage, and we're going to hold our ground. And we're going to keep pounding him, pounding him, pounding him, pounding them until everyone in the country knows the Republicans are for lower wages. And we're going to break them. I'm promising you right now. So that's an extraordinary thing to say. But yes, progressives will break Mitch McConnell, and we will get the $15 minimum wage. Okay, maybe that's a silver lining if we have that dark future. I would say one other thing, before we move to some of the non-legislative consequences of them maintaining control the Senate,

when I, you know, we're not necessarily ready to start talking too much about 2024, but I think 2022 is not that far away. We know generally, historically, what ends up happening during midterm elections. They're generally not very good for the party that holds the White House. And I would say if the Republicans keep control the Senate and they stop Biden from doing literally anything, like hemming, even on pandemic response while they still can, I think it is going to be devastating in that midterm election in terms of not other Senate races, the possibility of keeping control the House. Like if they are able to flip the Senate, then there's a chance they can pass something, some good bill that actually seems to acknowledge the issues that people are facing.

And maybe they can try to avert that historical, that historic pattern of the in-party losing seats in the midterms. But I feel like that is going to be one of the main reasons that Mitch McConnell does it if he maintains control. And I think that is incredibly likely to succeed. And by the way, it doesn't have to be that way. The Democrats, even if they don't have the Senate, could fight. They could do a version of what Jenk is saying. They can make a big issue out of all these. They could say we need to take over the Senate then. But we also know that that's generally not how the vast majority of the Democratic caucus actually acts. They generally don't push their narrative as like the big thing the nation needs to be focusing on. And so

that's one of my big fears that 2022 could very much be riding on these two Senate runoffs. I would say though, if for whatever reason these two seats aren't one and Mitch McConnell, I think that it actually does play out in 2022 for our favor. Like when lose or draw, if the Democrats do this right, they do not have to lose. the House. I know every year, every election, every midterm election since I've been old enough to count, it always swings to the opposition party, right? But they

have the cards in their hand. They can win the Senate and still maintain a all part, three parts of the government if they do it right. But again, that's a tall order this evening to want the Democratic Party to actually execute efficiently. Yeah. So if you minus progresses, but that's a giant

if I'll come back to what happens in the real world, where they actually exist and now are in Congress. But if you minus progressives, what John laid out is a guarantee. So what would happen is the McConnell would block everything, Biden would surrender, and 2022 would be a bloodbath for Democrats. Because they'd say, well, what do you mean? Biden's the president and he didn't get anything passed. We needed help with coronavirus. He didn't get us any help.

He said he was going to help with wages. He didn't get us any help on wages. And things have spiraled, continue to spiral downward. And we've got nothing. Oh, my guess, Trump and the Republicans were right, the Democrats don't deliver. And remember, in that two years, the Republicans will be doing nonstop propaganda. Dr. Joe Biden's not really a doctor. Joe Biden drank the wrong kind of coffee. It should have been drinking too strong coffee.com slash t-y-t. Okay, probably don't think the Republicans are going to say that. I love it. Probably not. But by the way, Make up every kind of you can imagine, oh hey, look at that. I'll match you that you're too strong

with my too strong. Okay, the Christmas. I have, I have coffee, but it is not sponsored. So it is blind. It's kind of strong. But it is strong. It is pushing me through is we're good. Okay. So seriously, and and Democrats have never caught onto this that the Republicans block you from taking action. And when you don't, they blame you for it. They believe you for it. They blame you for it, you morons, right? And so now, how are progressives going to change that equation? Well, we're actually going to fight. And we're not going to listen to Pelosi or Schumer or Biden when they say, oh, no, but I was trying to strike a deal with Mitch McConnell where Republicans get three quarters of what they want. And we only get a quarter of what we want. No, no, no.

Everything's a no. If we can muster up enough votes, like two dozen votes in the house that are for, if we can find two dozen actual progressives, which we're close to. Yeah, then everything's a hard no, okay? And what's a hard yes is paid family leave. We're going to get you paid family leave. We're going to get it to you. And if the Republicans are blocking it, they're against your families. And we're going to crush them. And we're going to double your wages if you're making minimum wage. And if the Republicans are on the way, we're going to crush them. And I don't care what Jake Tapper or Nancy Pelosi or Mitch McConnell say. So you are going to see ferocious progressives this time we're out. Yeah. Now, I'm curious actually how significant you think this

is going to be. But one of the other consequences of Mitch McConnell maintaining control of the Senate is that they've indicated that they're basically not going to confirm any. I know you're probably thinking I'm going to say judges, we'll get to that like anybody, like even for the cabinet effectively. Like these people that are totally milk toasts that are being floated, they're like, oh no, big problems with them. I don't know about those people that in like theoretically could be Republicans, they have big issues with. And by the way, Ted Cruz, who in advance of the 2016 election said that there's no reason to ever confirm a justice for Hillary Clinton. He's now saying as long as there are any concerns about the election voter fraud, they're not going to

hold confirmation hearings for anyone effectively. So do we care about that? Do we expect that Biden is just gonna do the Trump thing of, you know, having acting heads of all of these things for multiple years. Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry, but I definitely think that Joe Biden will operate with a lot more hubris than Barack Obama ever did. It just, I just got a sneaky suspicion that he's going to be a little more cavalier with that power. So yeah. That's interesting. Yeah, look, I think now even some of his advisors are counseling Biden to go stronger. But in my experience, having covered Biden for as long as I've covered politics, which is a quarter of a century, he will fold at every turn. And so when, I mean, right now, just like John said,

Republicans are having absurd conversations about basically vetoing his cabinet picks. We don't like that one, send it back. We know we're not going to improve that one. No. If I was Biden, And I go, well, it's kind of like your opinion, man. I couldn't care less. And I would have a giant chart of how many times Donald Trump had acting cabinet members. And it would be in the dozens. And so then I would say, good for the goose, good for the gander. They're all acting, I don't give a damn what you think you're consenting to.

And obviously the big one that I sort of alluded to there is judicial nominations, including the possibility of the Supreme Court, which I would say at least in the next couple of years is probably not a super high chance. There's like maybe Breyer. Like that's pretty much it. But in terms of judges, if we don't get control of the Senate, again, this isn't really a hypothetical. We know what Mitch McConnell believes he's obligated to do in terms of, you know, district and appeals court judicial positions. Right, we're going to be unraveling the mess that that Donald Trump left us with throughout the judiciary for our entire lives, right? For the rest of my lives, my kids are going to be dealing with this. And so the fact that

we're dealing with Mitch McConnell still, if he has the power, he will ensure that we won't make an inch of progress over the next in the next four years until we get control of the Senate. So I don't care what we plan on doing as progressives from Medicare for all to a green new deal. We've got to secure the Senate. Yeah, and guys, strategy here is important. So the very first part of that strategy is voting. And so everything that we're talking about, our hand is greatly strengthened if we pick up these two seats in Georgia. Everything becomes two times, four times, ten times harder if we don't pick up these two seats. So t.com slash GA, just please, go get involved in any way that you can. You could volunteer. Make sure if you're in Georgia,

vote definitely it's super important. We'll get into the voter turnout issues a little bit later and how they're going to decide this election. But mainly make sure that you've got the right information and get involved. Yeah. Anything I'm missing other than those things that leap out as really things that are going to be determined by what happens in just a couple of weeks? Well, look, we're always honest. So let's keep it really real on what happens if the Democrats do win those two seats. It doesn't mean that it's rainbows and unicorns, as we talked about earlier, right? But it really then the fight turns to between progressives and corporate Democrats. And so that's also why, by the way,

progressives helping to win these seats makes a big, big difference. Because then we get to say, hey listen man, we're the ones to deliver the Senate. You can make an argument that we deliver the House. And so you don't get to tell us what we can and can't do with our majority. Absolutely, absolutely. Exactly. Well, thank you gentlemen for joining me in this first hour. I'm gonna be stepping out, but both Ben and Jenk are going to be sticking around. I believe we've got Ida Rodriguez coming up in just a few, as well as a number of awesome guests. We're going to lay out some of the strategy and Ben's going to give us a rundown of some of those organizations.

So a lot more to come. But we are going to take a short break. We'll be back after this. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen ad-free, access members, only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts

at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Janke Huger, and I'll see you soon.