[UNLOCKED] Episode 424 - Democratic Alternative (w/ Michael Eric Dyson)

Bye. It is my enormous pleasure to be here with you on Bad Faith Podcast today with Dr. Michael Eric Dyson. He is an American academic. He probably needs no introduction. a Baptist minister, professor at the College of Arts and Science in the Divinity School at Vanderbilt University. One of the most steady, consistent presences in American political life.

for my entire adult life at the very least. Welcome to Bad Faith. Thank you so much. It's an honor to be here. I have deep and profound admiration for your brilliance and your skills. I'm just glad, as Jay-Z would say, to be the next victim on that Summer Jam screen. So it's great to be here.

I think it's so funny that you say that. Can you tell me a little bit more about why you feel like this is going to be antagonistic or that you're going to be my next victim in quotation marks? No, that's why you're effective. It's not antagonistic. You empathize. You understand. Look, I have great admiration for you, your verbal skills, your intellectual skills. You should have still been on that hill and all that. I mean, your ability. I'm serious, because even when I disagreed with you.

I learned so much from you. You're thoughtful, you're balanced, you're incisive, you go for what your particular point is, but you're willing to listen to other people. So it's a great honor to be on here and to chat with you and learn from you.

Well, that's why I was so excited to talk to you because I feel the same way. And I don't want to be in my own echo chamber. And I am really excited when I get people who... are so brilliant and who are so learned but who disagree with me on some substantial issues about

the future of the left and the Democratic Party and the United States of America to come on so we can sort of moot these things through. So I want to start big. I want to start broad. And I want to get your assessment of what you think happened on Election Day and why. It was a revelation in some senses. Look, on the just straightforward, the dead level, as Malcolm would say, you think you got a guy who's, you know, a convicted felon, a guy who's bad faith.

no disrespect, mauvaise foi in the Sartian sense, in American society, undercutting American democracy, not deeply invested in the institutions. that help govern us or reforming them in such a fashion or revolutionarily attacking them in a fashion that would be productive for the very people who have to deal with the aftermath. So you think you got that guy on one side.

And on the other side, you have a woman, at least character and integrity, even if people disagree with her, committed to trying to do some of those things and trying to represent the interests of a broader coalition, though obviously not perfectly. So when you come to that epic battle on Election Day, for him to so soundly defeat Vice President Harris was a revelation to some, but a reinforcement of some ideas to others. Some of the stuff he was talking about.

That in the aftermath now, as we do the postmortems and the deconstructions and all that, your former guy Bernie Sanders is right. We got to figure out a way to speak to the working class more effectively. I don't think Donald Trump. has any idea about what working people do, but he speaks a kind of language, some of it nativist, some of it xenophobic, some of it America first with an isolationist impulse, but at the same time.

speaking so plainly and directly, not being filtered through discursive practices that sound like I'm going to try to moderate and modulate my language so that you want to understand what I really think. And you have to sift through the verbal aftermath to figure it out. No, I'm just going to be direct. I'm going to tell you what I think. And even though I think a lot of that is gibberish and he's his decomposing incoherence.

He's everywhere. But what we can't deny is that a lot of people felt, yes, you know, they could have agreed with his racism or his sexism and his homophobia and his transphobia and all the like. But at the end of the day. There is something to be said for trying to address the issues that people on the ground are thinking about, whether it's immigration. And we can say he's thinking about it in all the wrong way. He's talking about it directly.

He's speaking to people who are on lines, business, in an industrial ethic, trying to get their paycheck. On the one hand, we're speaking to construction people on the other. And these people, you know, you might have some Mexicans, you might have some black people, you might have some white guys from the South up there. He's trying to discern what's going on there and taking.

the new media landscape seriously. Whether it's Joe Rogan or some manosphere and trying to figure out what's going on. So I think that big picture for me is that it's not merely the triumph. of a certain kind of recrudescent white bigotry, though that's real, that the real interests in America have been driven by a kind of conscious or unconscious white supremacy, by which I mean.

the conscious or unconscious belief in the inherent inferiority of one and the superiority of the other, which metastasizes across the body politic in interesting ways, because it touches on class, it touches on gender, and obviously it touches on race. But also... These are the economic interests that are at stake. And for our side, the inability to have an even more balanced perspective about what's going on in the Middle East. We speak about the horrible slaughter of Jews as we should.

We did not necessarily or convincingly or cogently talk about the genocide going on in Gaza and the dismantling of an entire people and civilization that is locally concentrated there. and the ways in which we have to say something and speak about it. So big picture, that's what I would say at the beginning. Besides my own disappointment, I preached yesterday at Howard University, the alma mater of Vice President Harris.

And I must say it was grief. It was sad. And among, you know, students and professors alike, I felt it was my opportunity to weigh in on some of the stuff I believe. but also to try to bring some healing to hearts that were broken, crestfallen. And where do we go from here? I'm curious, Dr. Dyson, whether or not there was... Any anger mixed in with the sadness as you spoke to people at Howard yesterday? There was some commentary about Kamala Harris not coming out the night of the election.

to make a speech. So many young people were waiting and hopeful that she would confront them directly in that moment of disappointment, whether or not some of the analysis that you just offered that I agree with about. The failures of the campaign also expressed itself in resentment among people at Howard who feel very much like the consequences of her loss are going to be significant. Yeah, that's a great point.

I was there the night that she did not come out, and I was there the next day when she did. So I'm an old Baptist preacher. I've been, you know, ordained for 45 years. So I'm thinking of it in terms of ritual, performance, timing, and what you're going to say.

And then let's be real. If you feel that you are vulnerable to rebuff or that you may lose, you're not going to make two concession speeches. Right. You come out that night, keep going, troops. You know, we're going to hang in there and then come out the next day so quickly.

to have to reverse course. So I was there. Would I have wanted to hear from her? Of course, but I understood strategically what was going on, but I can understand also young people being disappointed that I'm here, be here with me. in the midst of feeling an emotion, a response, an anger that was real. The anger I felt yesterday was more or less directed at the perceived direction of the country.

and not about Kamala's failure, Vice President Harris's failure to show up on that night. And this is at her alma mater. They were having, which was interesting to me, they talked about having sessions. that would set up group chats, group talks, the official policy of the school, psychiatrists, therapists, and so on, who were there, which I thought was great. I must say, being an old man at 66 years old.

you know, with the new language of self-care and so on. I never clowned it, but I never completely understood it until I began to reflect upon some of the deficits and some of the vices to which we were easily given in an earlier generation. vulnerabilities to sicknesses, illnesses, psychological consequences, spiritual malaise, that had we began to talk about it to somebody, spoken in groups and tried to support each other, it might have been different.

I did appreciate that fact, but I can't honestly say that I heard much anger directed toward her. Now, outside of that, and we might consider that an echo chamber that we were in, outside of that, I'm sure there were... There's Monday morning quarterbacking, there's second thoughts, there's helpful elucidation of points that should have been taken up but that weren't. But honestly, yesterday, mostly grief, mostly relief of that grief, mostly anger directed at the...

direction of a society that seemed to neglect some of the important things they wanted to be considered in politics. I feel an obligation to articulate what I know some listeners are going to be thinking right now, which is that As much as on a human level, we can all appreciate why folks would be disappointed in Kamala Harris's loss. The expression of grief, the outpouring of grief from.

People at Howard's campus, liberals all over the country, montages of white women crying on TikTok seems disproportionate. To the grief that so many people on the left and more broadly in America have been feeling over the genocide unfolding in Gaza. And something that the left has been saying throughout this process is they were very eager for Kamala Harris to break from Biden on backing Israel in an unqualified way.

When there is a liberal in charge, when there is a liberal responsible for a harm that is being done, including. the genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. It is very difficult to get a certain class of liberals on board because the critique is framed as being harmful to the electoral interest of that Democrat. And I would argue that something very similar has happened over many generations of politics. But most recently, in 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement was so enormous.

and had an enormous degree of support right up until the point at which Biden became the nominee. And the issue became framed as, well, if Biden... is going to win and defeat trump he can't run on being soft on crime defunding the police etc he has to run and fund the police harder and the movement got abandoned and so many people who are part of the

organizing apparatus, the young folks that were out there in the street are now being silenced in the interest of an electoral goal that's coming at a direct cost of their values, ethics, and morals. Now we're seeing how depressed the youth vote. was for the Democratic Party, how many more young voters, a historical number, decided to either stay at home or vote for Donald Trump. And I do wonder what you make of this kind of core.

left criticism, which is that the Democratic Party often functions to push the party to the right, not the left. Yeah. Your analysis is quite insightful. I would respond. Let me start at the end and then work back. There's also, given what you said, parallel to the brilliant analysis you just offered, are other dimensions of political response, the kind of political emotion that is evoked.

For instance, when we talked about defunding the police and the way in which Black Lives Matter, of course, put that on the docket. It had to be litigated. It had to be adjudicated. You got to respond. You can't ignore it. Right. From when Bernie and Hillary. were unable or incapable and were forced to talk about or save the phrase Black Lives Matter. And it wasn't a mantra like Candyman. It was an attempt to really procure from these people.

an open investment in the lives of people whose existence was being threatened. So working through all that, which was necessary. I think about... Raz Baraka, the mayor of Newark, who said, that's some bourgeois Negro stuff to talk about defunding the police when I'm living in a city.

where Black people are being disproportionately slaughtered, some by their own, right? And we can deconstruct this Black-on-Black crime. People kill where they live. If you want people to have integrated killing, have integrated communities. So we understand that it's... neighbor savagery, if we talk about the evils that are visited upon neighborhoods, or neighbor slaughter, neighbor to neighbor, as opposed to black-on-black crime trying to demonize particular interests of black people.

Because when the first wave of immigration, Jews, Poles, Italian, Irish, they were occupying the ghetto. And then the same thing was happening. So we didn't call that Irish on Irish crime. We didn't call that Jewish on Jewish crime. So having said that, his argument was. that these people need

intervention of police, but they need fair policing. Now, we can argue about what that might mean. We've had all of these implicit bias studies and what they can do, and can we speak to the police? And they're still killing us. They're still murdering us. We're still being slaughtered. But his argument was...

That these people are the people who would disproportionately call the police, want the police to intervene. They just want them to make a difference and a distinction between me, the person calling the police, and the other person who might be harming. Having said that. My simple point is whether we agree with that or not, the point is that there were vast numbers of, in this case, the black populace who were suspicious of and skeptical about what claims might be made in their behalf.

by even black lives matter and i was deeply empathetic to the claims let me say that of black lives matter but being out there on the streets as you are being in these communities as you are i knew that there was a more complicated conversations being had and we have to take full acknowledgement of that. Your larger point about what Democrats do, not simply the kind of strategy of, you know, when you're running in the primaries, you're all progressive, but then when you get into the...

Major election, you pivot to the right. That aside, there is no question that your analysis is right in the sense that the core values. of progressives, left liberals, left-leaning liberals, and leftists are constantly being marginalized, being put on layaway. You're too young to know what layaway is, but you know. Of course I know what layaway is. Your mama, you go downtown Detroit. Yeah, I want that suit.

You got to, you know, for 20 weeks, pay on it until you can get it. So liberals are always putting progressives and left-leaning people on the layaway plan. Yeah, when we get this, then you can get that. When we get paid, then we can share the wealth.

So there's no question that there's great and profound disappointment, aggrievement by progressives who say we continually play the game your way. We try to do it strategically. And when you get in office, you forget. When you get in office, you are hamstrung because. When you're running, you want to get elected. And then when you get there, you want to stay there. So we know that the vastly troubled rubrics under which we operate in American politics are a disservice to the base versus the...

elites of both parties, but especially telling when it comes to the Democratic Party. Am I sympathetic to that? Absolutely. But I also believe this. There's no question.

that there was a great deal of resentment and deep anger at the inability of the Democrats en masse to say anything about what's going on in Gaza, and particularly given the vice president's that I think many people understood behind the scenes, behind the curtains, that she was far more empathetic to what's going on in the region, was more empathetic to Palestinians who were being slaughtered.

but strategically made an argument about whether or not that could be said, the separation from Joe Biden and how that would play out. The point you made. I do think that there is something to be said for trying to figure out the appropriate. approach to how we talk about it, figure it out, and then do something about it, what resources we have at our disposal to do something about it. Because we know that Netanyahu, she had tremendous dissension with him.

profound disagreement, didn't show up at a critical moment, and so on. That's not enough for a lot of people who think, yeah, all right, that's symbolic, that's emotional. What are you doing on the ground? What's the empirical payoff for those of us who simply want you to say, As one person told me, just talk about humanitarian aid getting through without being stopped. Can you at least say that Democrats didn't show up? So, yes, I do understand the anger.

The resentment and the political calculation, as you said, I ain't going to vote for you because we've been doing that all along. And I might vote for the other side. Now, my argument always was, I understand you up to that point, but voting for the other side. My argument would be, do you think actually that Donald Trump is going to be any more empathetic? In fact, he's going to give the whole kit and caboodle, all the machinery, all the weaponry, all the money to Israel?

There's a lot in there, and I just want to make sure that I don't lose track of it. So for one, I just want to pause at this use of the word empathetic. Because on one hand, I'm curious to know what... Your basis is for believing that Kamala Harris feels more deeply

For the Palestinians than Joe Biden. But on the other hand, I actually don't want to ask that question because I don't think it matters. Kamala Harris's subjective individual feelings about Palestinians being softer or warmer in her chest cavity do absolutely nothing for the ability.

for Palestinians to survive. And if at the end of the day, she makes, I think what you described as a political calculation not to come out and not just support humanitarian aid being let into Gaza, but a ceasefire and an arms embargo. Because what sense does it make for Americans to be paying for bombs to be dropped on Palestinians on one hand and then paying for food to be sent to them on the other? I think that inconsistency is precisely why so many voters are.

We can describe them as isolationists, but I think that's a stigmatized term. I think they are rightly frustrated at the expensive and inconsistent foreign policy of our government at the same time that they're feeling financial immiseration at home. So my question then is, if you believe that Kamala Harris made these political calculations, is forced perhaps to make these political calculations as a condition of being president, of being in that position.

What does that mean about the integrity of the Democratic Party and the future of the Democratic Party and its ability to actually represent the interests of the people that it needs to win? This is not to be clear an argument about voting for Donald Trump.

argument about voting for alternative left third parties and having a realignment the likes of which we saw around slavery because neither of the two major parties at the time were willing to take on an abolitionist perspective. And so the Republican Party was born.

Right, right. That's absolutely right and great. With this caveat, however, in this particular time, if we do a kind of comparative analysis of what happens in Reconstruction, post-Reconstruction, in fact, at the end of slavery and the arguments that were being made. And to what degree the likelihood would prevail that an argument made by an abolitionist would gain traction in the Republican Party, as you say, born at the tail end of that struggle versus what's going on.

With the Democratic Party, I would argue that in our own day and age, the availability of a third party to leverage any kind of critical political influence to make a difference, I won't say it's nil. But it virtually has no impact. We're talking about impact versus empathy. And you're right. Let me address that, too. Yes. Having known Kamala Harris, having known Vice President Harris and what.

Her feelings and beliefs and sentiments are, and you're right, it was kind of funny with the chest cavity, right? It's more than that, but I would say that it translates at least into an awareness of the need to limit. What's going on vis-a-vis Israel and Netanyahu transfer payments, every third dollar going to Israel of foreign policy support and so on and so forth. That's more than an existential anxiety produced by recognition that I don't agree with.

say what's happening already under the Biden administration. And once I get free and loose, I can do a different thing. It's also about what we can say are the practices, the policies that would make a difference. I happen to believe a policy difference would have. would have come to fruition and to bear not simply an existential empathy with people who are devastated. What kind of policy difference? I'm curious. Because she...

was very firm about not supporting an arms embargo. It was the first thing that was clarified in terms of her independent policy positions when she became the nominee after about...

three weeks of not sitting down for interviews, her people definitely put out statements to be very, very clear that she would not be supporting an arms embargo. Yeah, I think that might have been different if she had become president of the United States. What I mean is... that it would have been a far more aggressive resistance and refusal to give a blank check to Netanyahu, to give a blank check to Israeli support in regard to...

Now, far beyond October 7th and far beyond an initial response to defend yourself is to metastasize into something more monstrous, more egregious that cannot be signed on to by American interests.

So whatever that looks like, that maybe is a little hazy and nebulous. But I'm saying what it looks like in terms of policy is we ain't signed no bank checks. We ain't just sending no weaponry over there to support you. And there's got to be a limit and a date certain about when you're going to either end the war, pull out.

or we're going to stop doing business. So that might be pie in the sky. Maybe I have no justification in terms of empirical proof. No, absolutely. I'm vulnerable on that. But that's the issue, right, Dr. Dyson? Like, that's the issue.

From a leftist perspective, how dangerous is it that one would want to believe, hope to believe, but ultimately be wrong to believe in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that Kamala Harris, because she seems... nicer because her niece will tweet out a pro-Palestine button for whatever superficial reason is going to be better when in fact what is the adage believe what I do not what I say her administration her team was hollering Affirming.

that we were going to have the most lethal military in the world, that under no circumstances should any of our statements that were, yes, more empathetic, be construed as supporting an arms embargo. Moreover, I would add to that that there is a structural critique. of the deep state of the military industrial complex, which demands that whoever is in that chair in the Oval Office maintains the position that this country has had toward Israel since Israel's inception.

And so what then does that mean about actually having progress? Doesn't that require breaking a corporate duopoly? And to your point about the Green Party, for instance, or any other kind of left third party. Of course there's overwhelming. obstacles to it being successful. The question I would ask you, though, is if you believe there is merit to a left challenge, the Democratic Party that actually stands up for the interest of broadly working people across the political.

spectrum, people who overwhelmingly, as we saw with these ballot measures, want things like a $15 minimum wage. Isn't there an obligation to be fighting for those alternative left? parties to make the likelihood of their success less long, more likely? Look, there is an obligation morally, ethically, and I think even politically.

to make those arguments in a context where the possibility of the payoff, hate to use that capitalized phrase, the possibility of its productivity, the possibility of its fruition, the possibility of its success.

that it has some ability to make a difference in the lives of the very people we're talking about. Because if we're going to talk about pipe dreams, if we're going to talk about fantasies and collective delusions, we can say it that way, but let's just take it to that extent, then my God.

The left has an obligation to put forth those arguments. But I think Angela Davis and Noam Chomsky, their bona fides as leftists are unchallenged, but they saw the necessity of tossing in with, and we can have an argument about what that means, tossing in with. democratic politics at a certain level, because you've got to have a chance to make the application of the ideas that you adopt. So yes, I agree with you.

that we have a moral obligation to put forth those arguments, not only about the minimum wage, not only about living wage, not only about the shift from industry to manufacturing and manufacturing to now artificial intelligence, because all this stuff we're talking right now.

The reason why Peter Thiel and all these people and Elon Musk making all this dough. The question is, what are we going to do about artificial intelligence, which displaces workers? We used to be concerned about automated technology, the steel collar displacing the pink collar and the blue collar. Well, this darn AI is a whole different ball of wax. And we're talking about a living wage, minimum wage, and the ability of peoples who are not educated or certified to be able to work.

That's a bigger and huger issue that we're not dealing with. But back to the point. The point is that, yes, I agree with everything you said. But at the end of the day, dadgummit, the possibility of making that stuff work in a practical application to a political. party, outfit, or whatever we might want to imagine it to be has no possibility of making an argument if you ain't in the game.

And I'm saying at certain levels, you got to be in the game. How do you get in the game if even our lefty heroes like Chomsky and Angela Davis completely capitulate to the idea that the Democratic Party is, in fact, the only game in town? I did take on Noam Chomsky. I did challenge Noam Chomsky on this very issue in 2020. And I asked him, I said, hypothetically, let's concede for the sake of argument that Donald Trump presents a unique threat.

We were recording maybe a month before the election in 2020. This podcast was brand spanking new. And I asked him, let us concede for the sake of argument that Trump is a unique threat. Do you agree, given all of your politics, that there has to be at some point at which leftist Democrats have a litmus test, have some red line beyond which they would go, where they were willing to withhold their vote in exchange for something.

Something from a Democratic Party that is increasingly neoliberal and unwilling to even feed the public the scraps to maintain a deeply unequal capitalist system. And he. He said he was basically unwilling to engage with anything other than the election right before him. But I would argue that as a consequence of that thinking, of course, we got a return of Trump. That Joe Biden was able to eke one out in 2020 as a consequence of people's.

legitimate fears over the COVID crisis. But then Joe Biden declared that crisis over in order to appease the business interests that wanted the doors back open on the American economy. He... terminated his COVID-era economic policies that were enormously popular that gave him high popularity ratings in the first half of his term, ratings which plummeted as soon as those policies.

He reneged on his promises with respect to student debt and wasn't even perceived to be fighting hard for baseline concessions like fighting for a $15 minimum wage, which Bernie emphasized when he dropped out of the race and endorsed Joe Biden. back in 2020 and instead we got this problem about how well we got to be against a fracking ban in order for Kamala Harris to win Pennsylvania well there's 17,000 fracking jobs in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania is a blue state ostensibly that has a $7.25 minimum wage. There are over 50,000 minimum wage workers in Pennsylvania who are not being messaged to. in the least, by the Democratic Party. They're supposed to ostensibly come out because, what, Kamala Harris has more integrity than Donald Trump? As though that does something to address the enormous food inflation prices?

or housing costs or gas costs, which again are driven in part by... our commitment to extending, not just protecting the interest of Ukrainians against an invasion, but extending the conflict by derailing peace talks that could have happened within months of the conflict starting.

All of these things, I would argue, are connected and are fundamental to the goals, the deeply entrenched goals and raison d'etre of the Democratic Party. So then how do you break that if at every point you're willing to say like Chomsky was? And apparently Angela Davis was that you have to vote for the lesser of two evils. At what point are you able to break away? First of all, that's a brilliant summary and a searing indictment of those of us who bear complicity.

with systems, structures, and approaches, methodologies even, that end up not achieving ideally what we would like. And even in the interim of the ideal, not the practical payoff that... promises working class or poor people working poor and then poor the ability to have a decent life. But when you think about what you just said, both parties, neither party.

Like when they tell you about you don't use but what percentage of your intelligence you'll bring, that the rest of it is vastly underexplored and not employed. This is the same with political reality. Each party, any party, a third party, a second party, a first party. First World Party, international, global, however you constitute it, it touches barely upon the vast universe of issues, possibilities, imaginings, and desires.

that people have to live a decent life. So there's no question that even after your analysis, which is compelling, cogent in many ways, That at the end of the day, you still got to ask the question, what can I do to make a difference to the very people on whose behalf I fight? And you're saying that, well, because with Joe Biden. the analysis you made in terms of a post-pandemic versus pandemic culture, what converged to allow him to get into office. It was also Jim Clyburn talking about what

Black people are up against. It was also about the vote that we could give to Joe Biden that would then result in the ability to embolden and politically support, to buttress a person. who at least had the right interests of working class people, Scranton, trying to join them to working class Black people and make a difference. So you're right about, say, the student loan, but dadgum.

What does he do? He takes executive action, at least to try to give a bunch of relief to people that otherwise would never have happened. And I'm saying this, too. Let me push back a little bit on. The third party, you're absolutely right in terms of if we had an ideal situation or even a tenable one where it was possible for a third party.

should be able to do what you say it should do, what we believe in common that it should do. And your response is, well, if we never leverage what we have to form that party, we'll never be able to tell. We'll never be able to determine what will happen if we don't ever actually make the effort. Are we actually believing that those efforts have not been made? Are we actually contending that others haven't thought? And as brilliant as you are, one of the smartest human beings I know.

But there might have been somebody, maybe almost as smart as Breonna Gray, who've been thinking about this before. And I'm not being condescending. I mean that. I got bad love for you. I love your brain. I love how you think. I love your politics. But I'm saying. that there are other people who have been trying to grapple with this for a while. And I think a Noam Chomsky or an Angela Davis.

whose bona fides are unquestioned, whose commitment to working people is undeniable, who were willing to be stridently opposed in the name of an American politics that they now... seem to be spokespeople for, and I think that would be unfair, what they're spokespeople for is a practical politics that has the best possibility of payoff.

I know you said Noam Shansky was concerned about that election. And if we go every four years and we're only concerned about that, yes, that's a problem. So the interregnum has to be considered and addressed. So what do we do? Like we're doing now, the day after, the two days after, the week after. How do we begin to build a progressive coalition that has the ability to make the kind of changes we're talking about? I don't think the showing of the independents and the third parties.

have anything to recommend to us in terms of their ideas about what will happen to working class people. Now, I'm going to say this. I'm not saying that because working class people didn't feel. that Jill Stein or whoever had their interests at heart because they've been brainwashed or the distortions of their perception in a public media owned by corporate elites who have no interests, who don't want to.

Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post or my man at the L.A. Times, right? All that's true. But dadgummit, at the end of the day, this is the life we have chosen. Hate to go on the mafia tip. This is the politics we've chosen. And at the end of the day, do we not have an equally compelling obligation to make the best possible reality for the people that we claim to love and serve until we're able to reach?

an ideal or at least a better, more proximate situation where we can deliver the things that they need, that we are committed to, and that together we can make a different world by. Here's what I would like to respond to. I was thinking while you were talking, here's maybe the best way to do this. Eddie Glaude, back in 2016, went on, I believe, MSNBC, and he offered a very moderate recommendation.

He said that you were in a deep red or deep blue state where there was no risk of your vote for a third party, Jill Stein at the time, causing Donald Trump to win. You should. I don't know how strongly he put it, but I would argue it is your moral obligation to register your discontent for the two-party system, the corporate duopoly. And they ate him up. People were furious. Nothing he said imperiled the possibility of Hillary Clinton winning. But the Democratic media establishment is...

as committed, more committed, I would argue, to crushing third parties and left sentiment than it is the right. And you can see that in how it constitutes its panels on television, where there is always a never Trump Republican in never. Never someone that anyone on the actual left would consider a leftist. There are people who call themselves progressives, all due respect to Van Jones. There are people who occupy that sort of a place that hold themselves out as speaking for the left.

That doesn't happen. And very rarely, and I have enormous respect for you.

For being here today, very rarely do people who are even allowed in those spaces come onto left media so that there might be a dialogue. So that when you do go back to MSNBC, you might be able to better represent what the thoughts and feelings of the left are. Fair enough. When I look at... how Dr. Glaude was treated, when I look at the Democratic Party spending millions of dollars to keep the Green Party off the ballot, when I look even at how the Democratic Party treated RFK Jr., who I have...

very little politically in common with, but who was originally running as a Democrat. But the Democratic Party said there will be no primaries. Obviously, Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson were running as well. They will get no press coverage. There will be no discussion as to the fact of there being a primary. And now we have Nancy Pelosi in this recent New York Times interview and elsewhere saying, well, maybe things would have been different if Joe...

Joe Biden dropped out earlier and it was his fault for not doing so. That strikes me as deeply inconsistent. It strikes me as trying to cover up your tracks after the fact. But more importantly, it's evidence of the ways in which the Democratic Party would rather conserve power. for itself, then risk a left candidate getting through. And I think I would include Bernie Sanders' 2016 and 2020 runs in that. So I want to ask you then, I see how Bernie was treated as evidence of how...

hostile Democrats are to left interests. When I look at the... ways that the Green Party and other left parties have struggled to get political attention, ballot access, actual votes. It is very difficult for me to see that as a reflection of the people's interest, especially when ballot measures that have these progressive policies are doing so well across the country.

And I see it as evidence that the Democratic Party is the beast that needs to be slain before progressive interests can actually be represented in our political scape. What do you make of how Eddie Glaude was treated for the recommendation that he made back then and how Bernie was treated? Were you supportive of Bernie back in 2016 when I would argue if he had won, we would not have had a first or second Trump term?

Look, I've been a fan and supporter of Bernie Sanders for a while. And the ideas that he articulated, absolutely. But see, this is what people are going to ask you, Ms. Gray. Right? They're going to ask you, what's Eddie Glaude doing now? And what's Bernie Sanders doing now? Now, the easy answer would be, well, they were disciplined in a Foucaultian sense. They were punished.

Right. The brutal limits that were imposed are there. And now, therefore, they have acquiesced, capitulated, modulated or moderated their particular viewpoints and now have adapted a different modus vivendi. All right. Well, OK. That's that maybe. But I debated Eddie Glaude, by the way, in 2016, because as you can imagine, I was supporting Hillary Clinton. So and we were on Democracy Now!

Did I appear with my man, Glenn, I think on Democracy Now as well? But here's the point, that when Eddie was making that argument and the professor at Columbia University, Professor Harris, they had put out an argument. eloquently stated, talking about what it might mean to strategically vote in a way that you could register your conscience without compromising the overall project or agenda of an ostensibly progressive politics or even a liberal one.

that had the possibility of winning. So you're right. But I think that, first of all, the argument that... it is interesting that the liberals or the democrats have a greater interest in quashing progressive politics is interesting because what you most like you end up

battling with, right? You know, I'm thinking I'm a Baptist preacher, Jesus and the Sadducees and Pharisees. The reason they hate him so much is because they're so much alike on some issues, but he's a revolutionary on another. So we could say, to take that opaque metaphor and analogy and bring it here. Maybe because Bernie Sanders or any other progressive, but Bernie probably singularly in the last 10, 15, 20 years, Bernie Sanders and before him, Jesse Jackson.

Right. Who was articulating a far more progressive politic that demanded a certain kind of concession and moved within the Democratic Party to make sure that that could happen. I would argue that Jesse Jackson is more of a compelling. argument and example of what can happen, and you may disagree and we can talk, that concessions were being made in terms of how even primaries were conducted, how the votes were counted, and what...

critical empirical difference it made to working class people of every race in terms of representation. So I'm not against, for instance, when I think about Eddie Glaude and I think about... Bernie Sanders, I think both of them have changed. Both of them have said that the way in which the stakes are so high that we have to be morally lucid and clear about politically what we are committed to. on the ground so that we create enough space for our arguments to be heard

See, I think that the left often doesn't believe it has to adopt strategy. It believes it has to preach its moral concerns. What are you basing that on, Dr. Dyson? I'm saying, well, OK, strategy in terms of do you want the do you want the problem? or do you want the commercial? And the commercial would be, we are standing here, we are articulating our ideals, we are explicitly expressing our beliefs about what we think should happen.

versus the negotiation. And I guess what I mean by there, maybe I should have said negotiating with the inevitable. opposition that you would face in a democratic, small d society where you got to make arguments that win the day, that you have to convince people to win the day. This is what's so frustrating.

We've won on the issues. What I'm talking about is the fact that we live in an oligarchy. What I'm talking about is a 2014 Princeton study, which demonstrated there was no relationship between what the masses of American people want. overwhelming majorities of Americans want and what politicians are willing to stand for. You referenced Jim Clyburn early today.

Jim Clyburn, from the perspective of the left, has been one of the most toxic people in American politics to left interest. And I don't care again what's in his chest cavity. He may or may not be a good person. But there does seem to be a direct relationship with him taking more money from the farm.

pharmaceutical industry than anybody else in the house and his violent opposition to Bernie Sanders, who of course is the champion of Medicare for all, a policy, which by the way, something like 88% of democratic voters support and about 40. nine percent of Republican support along with a majority of independents. So you have to reckon at some point with the fact that these.

Gatekeepers within the Democratic Party are leveraging financial interests or benefiting from financial interests and leveraging that into their political. ability to derail candidates that are actually winning the game in terms of public support and public policy. Back in 2020, when Bernie Sanders won Nevada with 70% of the Latino vote, someone like... With all due respect, Soledad O'Brien, who is herself Latina, tweeted out, I'll wait to see what happens when minorities vote.

When minorities vote. And then when South Carolina results came through with 60 percent of South Carolina voters saying that they voted under the recommendation of what Jim Clyburn said, which was, of course, to vote for Joe Biden. That was considered to be conclusive of what people of color.

POC, think in America, completely ignoring the importance of actually galvanizing Latino vote. We are living with the consequence of that negligence today. We are living with the consequences of that myopia today. Are you saying that when you said, all right, I took you to the top where you said we've already won the argument. All right. We can concede that on certain things. All right. Let's say, yes, that's true. Are you telling me.

that the candidates who were there, given the percentages you talk about both in left and right, Democrats and Republicans, that they supported a particular kind of politic, that it's being because of the leveraging of the authority of those elites that they are suppressing.

the ability of these candidates to emerge? Are you saying that they've got that kind of power to suppress what the majority of the people in either party believe? Yes, Dr. Dyson. Wait a minute. The election we just saw with Donald Trump. Triumphing suggests, so you could say that, well, the majority of people in the Republican Party feel the way Donald Trump did. I don't know if that's true. I don't know if that's true or not. Versus.

The majority of people don't feel in the Democratic Party the way people at the top may have felt. I'm saying that do they have the kind of power? I want to see an analysis that they have the kind of power to suppress the possibility of a mass. the folk, the Heron folk democracy, the masses of people out here feeling a particular way that they're being contained because of Nancy Pelosi and Jim Clyburn.

A hundred percent, Dr. Dyson, the way it works. And this is where I think people should be listening to Chomsky as opposed to when he pops up every four years and tells people to vote for Democrats. The analysis is that. We have two corporate parties, neither of which is reflecting the interest of what majority of voters want. And they maintain the perception that they are different from each other by both parties emphasizing various cultural phenomena that ultimately...

don't in any way impact the interest of the donor class. So there's an enormous willingness to talk about something like abortion rights, which, of course, there are some economic implications on the individual level for someone being forced to carry a child to term. But in terms of...

our broader, big economic outlook have no bearing on what happens to Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or any of that on the financial level. They're willing to argue about trans rights. They're willing to argue about DEI. They're willing to argue about... about voter suppression on the Democrat side. They're willing to argue about gay rights. Right. But both parties, and you see this in terms of- That's a whole bunch you done named now. That's a whole bunch you done named. Are you discounting that?

It's not about discounting it. It's about realizing that these parties are creating a fiction of division in this country on issues which most people rank very low in terms of their political priorities. What did we learn coming out of this election? What have people been hollering? That it's the economy, stupid.

But neither party really wants to offer anything prescriptive about the economy because their donors very much don't want them to. The number one small business expense is health care. But while you'll see both Democrats and Republicans talking.

How they have some plan for small businesses or Kamala Harris is talking about crypto for black men. Neither will talk about how much freedom people would have to leave their jobs, to start a business, to hire people if they weren't responsible for paying. absurd amounts in health care for the people that come to their businesses. So why is it if it is not the influence of corporate actors?

Why wouldn't the Democratic Party be loudly talking about an enormously popular policy like Medicare for a policy that catapulted Bernie Sanders in 2016? to winning 44 states, despite all of the backlash that he got from the corporate media and the, I would argue, straight up rigging that happened within the Democratic Party that defended that rigging, by the way, in court, arguing that it had no...

obligation to be fair as an independent corporate entity. Look, I agree with all that. I ain't got no argument with that, right? I don't have no argument with a kind of analytical prism through which we view the contesting and competing interests of oligarchies, of corporate elites in both parties who leverage their authority to suppress certain sections and segments of the community. But I'm talking about a populist ethic, right? Bernie Sanders.

is tapping into and maybe Ralph Nader in an earlier time, right? But in a different fashion, not nearly as effectively to me on Mas, on Toto as Bernie Sanders, right? But Bernie Sanders... is caucusing with the democrats because he's not going to caucus with the republicans he's an independent he understands the issues you've just raised maybe not as brilliantly as you and not as eloquently as you but as compellingly in terms of an actually existing politician

who's committed to the interests of the very people that you and I would claim to be interested in, Bernie Sanders, to me, represents an understanding that within the walls of these particular... political echelons, Democrats and Republicans, that there has to be a negotiation for the interests of those people until such time. as a revolutionary third party, a concrete third party, a third party with the ability to translate the epical...

philosophical commitment to democratic small, deep principles that the vast majority of people believe in. In other words, what is the appropriate political vehicle for a populist sensibility that has the chance? to win the day, even with the analysis you make. Because after all, we can make the analysis of who's standing in the way. So what's the answer? Vote Nancy Pelosi out of office. Get, you know, elite Democrats out of the way. All right.

But before Nancy Pelosi is in office and I'm not here, trust me, to do an apology for Nancy Pelosi. My argument is when Nancy Pelosi is out the way, then what? When the figures that you speak about are out. the way, then what? Because it seems to me that could be a contradictory argument. Either it's a systemic issue that has to be eliminated by rejiggering the entire process itself, or we're just putting a happy or smiling face.

on a plutocratic impulse that has no ability to resolve the issues that working peoples confront. So I hear that. On one level, I would argue that yes. I don't think the Democratic Party can be reformed. That's why I think we have to have an outside oppositional force. I will say, though, with respect to the Nancy Pelosi argument, it took me time to get there.

And part of how I came to this, what I would admit is a kind of extreme conclusion, is because I've seen the unwillingness of even the best and most progressive people within the Democratic caucus to do something like oust Nancy Pelosi. I'm sure you were.

aware of the fact earlier this year that a very small number of Republicans in the House held up the vote for McCarthy as Speaker of the House until they were able to get concessions. They went for over a dozen rounds and they ultimately ousted him.

That exact same opportunity, you may not be aware, was available to the basically squad members, a small number of progressives, due to the similarly small margins that Democrats had won in the House in 2020. And in the January of 2021, there was a campaign. campaign from the left for them to withhold their votes for Nancy Pelosi similarly in exchange for concessions, including having a floor vote on the issue of Medicare for all to expose the extent to which the Democratic Party's

attitude toward that policy was widely out of step with what the American public's policy was toward it. Mind you, this was at a time when 15 million Americans had just lost their health insurance because we were in the middle of a pandemic in which they lost their jobs. And then this. kafakta country our employment is tied to our ability to have health care

Now, they were unwilling to do that fundamentally. And over the course of the first two years of the Biden administration, when he had a trifecta, all we heard was that Joe Biden couldn't do X, Y and Z because his power was limited, because Manchin and Sinema, because Republicans. And then they flipped.

looked around and said, well, we have to oppose Trump because if Donald Trump's in office, especially if he has a trifecta, that he will be all powerful and ruin life in America as we know it. To the voter, that is inconsistent. As inconsistent as saying, Donald Trump is basically Hitler, but also bragging about a peaceful transition of power to him. So I want to come back to this core issue. You keep asking, I think, understandably, the Green Party has no chance. Why should I even care?

It's a chicken and the egg situation, Dr. Dyson. Somebody has to start fighting. And I would argue, I want to put this on the table because I don't know, this hasn't been put out there yet, that it is not just symbolic to vote for the Green Party in this election or any election. If they get 5% of the vote, they can...

millions of dollars in federal funding that helps them to get automatic ballot access and also some money to start to try to assert themselves against a Democratic Party that is able to... Fundraise $1 billion in the 100-odd days of Kamala Harris' campaign. And by the way, squander it all so that Kamala Harris is now sending out emails begging people to give her money so that she can forgive her debt. Well, what about the $44 million?

million Americans who Joe Biden promised debt forgiveness to. Sorry, if we use the same logic here, it's not fair for us to have to pay for your debt when other people have paid off of theirs. That's what the Democratic Party talking heads have been telling the 44 million Americans. including a disproportionate number of Black Americans who have been suffering under the yoke of student debt, not to mention medical debt, not to mention trade school debt, not to mention...

Housing debt, not to mention the cost of living crisis, all of these things, which you never hear the Democrats talking passionately about. What they talk passionately about is how Donald Trump is a fascist. Yeah. How he's an unethical person. And how, I guess, representation matters. So wait a minute. I want to go back to what you just said then. First of all, I believe all that's true. I mean, sure, but it's not motivating voters. Well, wait a minute. Hold on.

To me, racism is a dry run for fascism. Everything that people are worried about in fascist politics have been practiced on Black people first, in terms of not being able to vote, not having the ability to govern the institutions that govern you to be able to control them. All the stuff we're... about the kind of teleological analysis of what the ultimate end of fascism eventuates in and how that corrupts the possibility of democratic politics and the ability of people to actually exist without.

the interference of a top-down hierarchical imposition on their lives of values that are essentially foreign to them. Okay, good. But I want to go back to what you said. Look, it's like what I used to say. when i was teaching early hip-hop stuff and they were like well you know it's the independents you know out here i'm selling my cds out my car versus sony bro The moment you are selling your CD out the back of your car, I don't know, too short, whoever, you're in the game. The question is...

To what degree do you find yourself implicated in some of the transactions that are able to yield the thing you desire? So when I hear Ms. Gray talking about if we... get up to 5%, and that will automatically trip the mechanisms that will get you in the game. What you're doing is making an analysis about when and where you enter, that you get in, and if we do it...

that this particular amount, this will happen, this will result. You doing the same thing that others of us who have made calculations about where we enter, what we can do, how we can use a system, because that's what you're talking about. We're talking about using an X. system to fund the ultimately revolutionary or at least subversive impulses of a progressive politic in order to achieve your goal. Amen.

But that's what other people are doing as well. How are they doing that, Dr. Dyson? They're not doing that. What we're hearing when we turn on MSNBC and CNN every day is why we can't have... Look, I want to come to some of the...

optimistic takes that have come out of this election where people who have really defended the Democratic Party up until this point are now saying actually Bernie was right about a lot of stuff. Before I get there, I want to say there are a lot of people who are still...

manufacturing consent for the Democratic Party's choices in an election that they lost. With all due respect, Joanne Reid hopped on her show and said that Kamala Harris had run a flawless and unimpeachable campaign because Queen Latifah endorsed her and Queen Latifah never endorses anybody.

and nothing that was true yesterday about how flawlessly this campaign was run is not true now i mean this really was an historic flawlessly run campaign she had queen latifah never endorses anyone she came out and you know i mean she had every prominent celebrity voice. She had the Taylor Swifties. She had the beehive. You could not have run a better campaign in that short period of time. And I think that's still true.

You had the Women of the View. That's great. That's a direct. But you know, Joy, we got more substantive arguments. OK, that's what was said. That was said. The Women of the View said something very similar. Nancy Pelosi. is willing to sort of throw Joe Biden under the bus a little bit, but take no responsibility for a Democratic establishment that insisted for years that Joe Biden was cogent and able to lead when it is quite obvious that he...

was not. And that is why he had to drop out of the presidential race and hand it over to his vice president. There has still not been an accounting for that. enormous campaign of misinformation against the American public litigated by the Democratic Party that pretends to care so much about misinformation in the media.

resist the idea that what I am arguing for, what the left is arguing for, and what the Democratic Party is doing is the same. They are persuading voters that they are wrong. They are saying the economy is good, actually. That because the macro economy is good, you shouldn't care about the fact that your groceries are 40 percent higher than they were when Donald Trump was president. Whether or not it was Donald Trump's fault. Commonly admitted that part.

Right about the gross reason. In other words, you're making this abstract argument about inflation, the increase in inflation where. Wages had risen. Black unemployment was down. She did concede the point you're making now about, yes, it makes a difference about what people are paying for groceries at the marketplace. And then she pivots, though, Dr. Dyson, too. But the Biden economy was strong, but we made improvements.

And she refused to make a break with Joe Biden. And look, she only had 100 days and maybe it was too late. pivot from joe biden's multiple years of insistence that things were good actually but the fact of the matter is that she fundamentally was unwilling to break from the democratic party she had this moment on the view which now people are reflecting upon as perhaps the death knell of her

campaign where she was asked directly by setting hostin whether or not there was anything she would do differently from biden and she said nothing i can think of well if anything would you have done something differently than president biden during the past four years? There is not a thing that comes to mind in terms of, and I've been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact.

So at that point, what is she against? She's up against the perception that because these things make a difference to political emotions, along with empirical verification of a particular viewpoint or an investment made. Right. It's also about style, substance and disposition.

She's going to crap on Joe Biden. You've been in that camp. You've been with him as you're trying to figure out what to do. So all of a sudden you're disloyal for the purposes of political advance. You're not loyal. I'm saying disloyal to the practices and.

policies that you all have generated is what I'm saying. Just loyal. She acts like, oh, the guy I've been rolling with and riding with and the guy I've been governing with, him mostly, that now all of a sudden I find him reprehensible and what he did now, now. I agree with you in the sense of, but let me distinguish myself from what those particular policies are. If we had enough time, she had 107 days. I do think what she did in that time was pretty phenomenal.

Can we concede that? Even given the limits of the- I think she did better than Biden would have. But the problem is, Dr. Dyson, Joe Biden's internal polling, we now know, showed Trump winning 400 electoral votes and had been showing that- for much longer than the 100 days before the election, right? So at a certain point, you have to acknowledge that Joe Biden is unpopular. And that is why you are being tagged in, in this moment.

So the idea that even the language that you're using, Dr. Dyson, like disloyalty and used a series of words that I'm not forgetting, but basically the relational harm. Right, right, right. That is not what this is about. It's not about decorum or...

Common practice or those seem to be things that Democrats are overwhelmingly concerned with. It's her relationship to him particularly, not the consequence for the larger American. I understand. You have to be clear. Nobody. Do you want to win or do you want not to win? Right. Nobody cares. It's not about Joe Biden. It is not about anybody's personalities. And sometimes I think with all due respect, the people who are.

enabled to talk about these things to most of the American public, care too much about the interpersonal relationship between Biden and Harris and the optics. Nobody hungry, nobody with credit card debt gives a fig. They want, throw them under the bus.

Look what you just said, because we're in this fight here where you were you TKOing me up in here. So if I'm going, did Dyson realize that Miss Gray was pummeling him? Yes, I'm conscious of it right now. But here's my point. Here's my point. But you but arise. I got I got a point here. You said, do you want to win, Miss Gray?

That is the kind of logic. That is the particular element. That is the adjudicative factor between rival claims about who can make it better, who can make it worse, who's going to do the best. Your very question. It's what some people deploy when they say,

Hey, Ms. Breonna Gray is one of the smartest human beings out here on Earth. Wish she could even run for office. But at the end of the day, what is the practical application to my existential and political situation that would allow the relief from the suffering?

hurt and pain that I am enduring in order to endorse her political stance. And people are going to say what the left is going to have to confront, too, is that y'all out here talking about when I say y'all, I'm talking about the left. And sometimes they include.

me, and sometimes they don't. I know a lot of leftists say, you done left the party a long time ago. I get it, and I ain't mad. My point is, I'm down here on the ground with these people that the left is concerned about. I'm out here preaching in these churches. I'm out of these political organizations.

trying to organize as much as I can, but also give some inspiration. So I'm out here with the folk as well. And the thing is, they want practical solutions. And what's the Democratic Party offering in terms of practical solutions? To harm. He's not offering.

Dr. Tyson, I'm afraid that you're organizing people into a burning house because the Democratic Party has demonstrated that it would rather have Republicans win than to disappoint its donor class and actually embrace the policies that would make the material improvements to those people's lives that you're talking about.

a reason why kamala harris would not support an arms embargo she took more money from raytheon than even donald trump did she's a part of an administration where the secretary of defense was a raytheon board member these are material realities that are constraining the

politics of the Democratic Party and no nice lady coming along or nice man coming along who loves his grandkids and eats an ice cream cone and puts sunshades on and hangs out with Barack Obama can change that reality. So we have to stop focusing on who these people are and what they quote unquote represent in terms of their physical appearance and more about who they represent because of who's paid them and filled their campaign coffers. I'm with you on that.

I'm with you on that, but here's my point. When you said, let me turn this around. It ain't my podcast, but I want to ask you since I got a smart person like you here. What is the alternative? What is the practicable? allowable, permissible politics that can be exercised in order for to yield a benefit to the people that you and I are both concerned about. What is that? Okay, so there's two things. Even if a Green Party doesn't win.

I think you have to look to the historical precedence here and recognize that when there is a strong outside party, like we had with the... communist and socialist parties in the new deal era that it was the labor organizing and outside political agitation from those groups that forced an fdr type figure to adopt the new society programs that continue to be the bedrock of our social safety net so even if you don't believe the democratic party

will or should fall. Everybody who wants the Democratic Party to be better and not just give it lip service, like, oh, I agree with the left, but no, genuinely wants the Democratic Party to serve its people. to root for a third party, to push it to where it needs to go. Secondly, I would say I personally don't think the Democratic Party is going to be moved. I think...

Post-Citizens United, the full-on embrace of money and politics by both parties is a very difficult thing to untangle. They're never going to vote to unwind those interests. You have people like Nancy Pelosi who are multi-millionaires who have earned an enormous amount.

they were in office somehow, who oppose bills to preclude her from insider training every time those bills threaten to come to the floor. They're never going to vote against their own interests. And I think that we have to support third parties. It's going to be a long road. It's going to be hard, but it has to start.

by at least getting them ballot access and federal funding so the Democratic Party can't keep railroading them off the ballot and they have to keep spending the few dollars that they're able to recruit from the people to defend themselves in court against the Democratic Party.

And the third thing I would say, just to round this out, is that there is a world where we could have, and I believed, I worked for Bernie Sanders, I was this national press secretary in 2020, that there was a path within the Democratic Party. If we had supported Bernie Sanders back in 2016 and 2020, that could have been an off ramp for this fascism. He was someone who. capitalized on, engaged with, understood the economic anxiety, yes, and the angst and the frustration of working people.

of all races across the aisle and channeled that energy into a left populist campaign. And when the Democratic Party killed that. The only other option remaining was right populism. And you said that you liked Bernie Sanders, you supported Bernie Sanders. But I'm curious, did you actually support him in the 2016 primary? Did you actually support and endorse him and speak out in favor of him in the context of the 2020 primary?

No, because there are a lot of people whose ideas I dig, but who I was committed to and who I wanted to see when. But in terms of 2016, when I made the ultimate decision, I think that was, what is that, Hillary? I'm trying to think. 2016? Yes.

As he did, as Bernie Sanders ultimately did, I made that decision for the same reason Bernie Sanders made that decision. No, no, no. But we're talking about the primary. The primary. No, no, no. In the primary, no, I was not a Bernie Sanders delegate or supporter at that particular point. I was nobody's. I was nobody's at that point.

I think that Hillary Clinton is not only the smartest person, the most prepared person, but the person who has given the most credible empirical analysis of race in the last 20 years by a major American politician. I'll stand by it. At the end of the day, I'm rolling with HRC to the end because I think she gives a serious indication of what's happening in this country racially.

I wrote a piece, I think that's when I wrote a piece on Hillary Clinton, right? So I was not technically, with wearing my journalist hat, doing an analysis of who went and where. I'm not using that as an excuse to say, I would say straight up, I supported Hillary. I wanted Hillary. to win the primaries. Well, because she offered the best opportunity for us to prevail in a culture where a fascist, a demagogue, a racist, was going to deploy.

political public policy and politics that would undermine everything you and I are talking about. Because look, if we don't have any space to exist in a culture where we can have rigorous, vigorous conversation about what the political outcome is of our rival viewpoints. If you ain't got no possibility of doing that, it's all whistling Dixie in the face of the Titanic going down. But Dr. Dyson, this is what is so painful for us on the left. Every poll in 2016.

That assessed electability demonstrated that Bernie Sanders was infinitely more electable over Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton. Every poll. showed that Bernie had like a 10 point margin over Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, except for the week or two around the Access Hollywood tape scandal, was in the margin of error of Donald Trump, of losing to Donald Trump, within the margin of error.

And yet we had our best and brightest pundits like yourself on television making the opposite case, convincing the American public that Bernie was unelectable because socialism in Cuba or something.

or Cubans in Florida or some reason Chris Matthews is talking about I'm going to get beheaded in Central Park if Bernie Sanders... All of this stuff is happening and deluding the American people to thinking that this historically unpopular candidate, Hillary Clinton, a historically unpopular candidate... was somehow going to do better against Donald Trump than the most popular senator in Congress. Wait a minute. So are you saying then, so why didn't Bernie Sanders, two things.

Bernie Sanders' prevalence there, I guess your argument would be that Hillary Clinton galvanized the elites and the political chatter class to persuade the American public to disinvest in a Bernie Sanders campaign because that... would lead to, as they said in the 18th century, that way lies tears. So that would be a disaster, right? That happened. There was a DNC rigging. There was all of the delegate shenanigans. There was states like New York moving their primary dates. There was...

A whole lot of shenanigans that happened, not to mention the media blackout, obviously, and this pervasive narrative that Bernie simply couldn't win. Yes, all of that was happening. All right, let's talk about all that. We'll concede most of that. Let me ask you this question. Yeah.

Have you split from Bernie Sanders? Are you still with Bernie Sanders? Do you agree with, and I don't mean in terms of job, I'm talking about in terms of ideologically, in terms of political savvy, in terms of methodology and policy. Where is Bernie Sanders now? Because he's still here. Bernie Sanders is still around. What's your relationship to what he's doing right now? AOC? Bernie Sanders? I mean, I'm just asking. Yeah, let's talk about Bernie Sanders. So I don't expect...

Obviously, you're like a busy man and not online, terminally Twitter-pilled like some of us. But after Bernie dropped out in 2020, I unexpectedly, frankly, made a lot of hay by tweeting that with all due respect to Bernie Sanders, I do not endorse. Joe Biden, which is not something that

People who work on political campaigns usually do because they're usually looking for their next job within the political establishment and not speaking their truth. And I think that's an enormous detriment to the American public. But I, out of naivete, foolishness, or willingness to fall back on my law degree. was willing to say what I needed to say. Okay. I ideologically agree with Bernie Sanders on policy, and I would love it if...

I could snap my fingers and make Bernie Sanders president right now. But in terms of political strategy, I deeply disagree with him. I disagree with his choice to drop out and endorse Joe Biden earlier than he did Hillary Clinton and earlier than Hillary Clinton did with Barack Obama back in 2008.

There was so much on the table and there was so much leverage to be had in terms of what Joe Biden's policy was going to look like if he had held out a little bit longer, again, in the middle of this global pandemic, where so many of the crises that typically only affect the bottom tier of American society were touching. so many more people and there was a lot more potential for buy-in. As concerns their behavior now, I think that what Bernie Sanders has been saying post-election is true.

And right and valuable. He wrote this statement, and I think followed up with an article in the Boston Globe recently, about how the Democratic Party has abandoned the American people, the working people. And he's gotten backlash from all of the corporate talking heads in the world, but he's fundamentally right about it. My concern is that a month ago, a week and a day ago or whatever was right before the election.

He was saying a very different story, talking about how Joe Biden is the most progressive candidate since FDR. We all have to rally behind him. Now, look, Bernie Sanders didn't just say, well, look, this is what it is. We got to defeat Trump. a month before the election, six months before the election. Before the primary even started, he and people like AOC endorsed Joe Biden, knowing, as we now know, that he was a feeble.

physically or mentally compromised in the ways that ultimately caused him to drop out and precluding the possibility of a primary where one, we could germinate, talk about popularized left solutions. progressive solutions, even liberal solutions to the problems in the world and the way that the Republican Party had a forum in which to bandy about different approaches to Republican politics and popularize those ideas.

We never got an opportunity to hear what a non-fascistic immigration plan would be because Democrats just ran to the right and there was no primary to popularize the idea that American sanctions. on the global South are part of a huge part of what's driving the economic crises in those countries and causing people to flee to the United States of America. That's never even on the table again.

Democrats don't persuade. They don't take opportunities to persuade to the left. They run to the right and they are part and parcel of the onslaught of fascism in this country. They are chasing the Republicans to the right. And it's called the ratchet effect. Nothing ever brings it back to the left. OK. That being said, I disagree with Bernie Sanders approach there because they created the sense of inevitability in a Biden.

slash Harris matchup with Donald Trump again. They created that inevitability. And as much as I appreciate what they're saying now and agree with it, I think that they fundamentally had a strategic mishap. Because they're doing all of that analysis, compelling.

Perhaps even cogent. Here's the question. When you say they created the inevitability, they're going to say what? That they recognize the inevitability of what existed in terms of extant political relationships and made a calculated choice. to leverage their political authority in defense of the very people who would never otherwise be heard. Political relationships, Dr. Dyson? Political relationships are the priority here? No, it's not political. I said in service of.

a particular ideal that you and I would agree with, that you and they would agree with, that is that how do the masses of people who are poor, suffering, and starving, those who are marginalized, those who are not counted, within the context of American Democratic or Republican politics can make a difference and be heard. And all I'm saying to you is that if we assume...

in good faith that they were making a choice, whether or not you think it was right or not. But in good faith, they made choices that they thought had the greatest potential to win. back to your point earlier, that had the greatest potential to make a difference in there. Because according to you, maybe, that had Bernie Sanders stayed the course.

Bernie Sanders might have been able to make a difference, get elected, and then prevent or at least preclude the right of this neo-fascist or outright fascist prospect that we have in a Donald Trump. The problem is... that Bernie Sanders is facing the math. Bernie Sanders is facing what the likely response of the very people that he's speaking on behalf of. Wait, wait, wait. What are you talking about, Dr. Dyson? What are you talking about, Bernie Sanders? When it's 2022.

Right. Or beginning of 2023. And we're a year and a half ahead of Election Day. And Bernie Sanders and AOC and all of these progressives come out and endorse Joe Biden. when there's plenty of chatter at the time that Joe Biden, oldest president in the history of presidents, is not doing very well. But the mainstream media is insisting right up until the day he drops out that he's peachy king and everything else is a right-wing conspiracy theory.

What are the numbers? The internal numbers we know were that Joe Biden was facing a 400 electoral college defeat. So what are these numbers? What is this game that progressives are ostensibly playing that makes it a smart move for them to want to shut down a primary and shut down any conversation about having a better matchup? Look, there's been some darn prognostications about what these political Nostradamus is, about how many electoral votes one might win. And we know.

that that math has been off. Even in this election we just had, there were very few predictions. There were very few. 400? There were very few predictions that Donald Trump was even going to land at the level he did, except among. That's not true. That's not true.

The polls were not wrong this time around. It was a close race. Every poll leading up to the election showed that it was a close race. This was not a polling era election. There was that one weird seltzer poll where that one woman said that they thought that Kamala's... going to clean up in Iowa. People were rightly skeptical of that poll at the time, and it ended up to be enormously wrong. But every other poll leading up to this election showed that it was going to be close.

Right, close. But I'm saying, do you think the outcome was close? I don't think it was close. Not the actual margin of loss, but that the likelihood of Donald Trump winning was basically 50-50. Yeah. OK, so you're saying that the 411 ain't no close race that that Biden would have been landslided, right? Yes. I'm saying 400 electoral votes is an entirely red country with California, New York and Massachusetts. Of course. And I'm. saying despite the prognostication about the

approximate, the distance between the two was going to be very narrow. It turned out not to be as narrow as predicted. That's all I'm saying. And I'm saying that Trump won more than was anticipated. And so what do you take from that? My point is that I was trying to make is that we can prognosticate that Biden was going to that 411 electoral votes were going to go in the opposite direction. This would be a completely red state. I'm saying that.

Just to give credence to the fact that the numbers don't always pan out the way we predicted. Dr. Dyson. Some people, I'm saying that to conclude that, and he made his whole political hay on, come back here, able to overcome what people thought because we know.

pose or a snapshot in time. There ain't no predictor. It's no accurate barometer of what possibly will occur. It is either more likely to occur or less likely to occur, but it's not ironclad. And I'm saying that little wiggle room has given people the prospect of being able to move forward. Because otherwise, the logic of what you're arguing would be decimated, right? Because if we look at the math of what you're speaking about and the likelihood of people who have a third-party organization

globalization to prevail, that thing is real small. If we base it upon the very empirical proof you're looking for to predict an outcome, then you ain't got no chance. Wait a minute. I just want to be really clear. The argument is that because polls are not strictly predictive and that some polls sometimes are wrong, that Democrats... were right to ignore, as long as they did, Joe Biden's historic unpopularity. And polls... No, no.

And polls that showed it's not Monday morning quarterbacking. No, it's not Monday morning quarterbacking because some of us. On the left, who get ignored, who aren't invited on MSNBC, have been screaming loudly that, of course, this is the reality for years. That it's not Monday morning. You can go back. Were y'all saying that? Were y'all saying that before?

Wait a minute. Hold on. No, this is what I'm saying. Were you actually saying before the debate that Joe Biden's cognitive capacity? Of course. Of course. He was wandering off. The stage of the G7 summit, he was incomprehensible. This has been a question since years ago. I had a conversation with someone who I will remain anonymous.

who I ran into here in D.C., who was a lobbyist, I want to say two summers ago, who said that he was in a meeting with Joe Biden. This is a liberal who supports, he's not a leftist, he's some corporate lobbyist, who said, yeah. Deeply disturbed by his mental state. I have another person who made me an anonymous who they shouldn't have been talking about this, but who said that.

They had had a conversation with a physician close to the president who articulated concerns about his mental state again years ago. This is an open secret and it's bizarre and crazy, by the way. Kamala Harris, yes, she won the debate with Joe Biden, sorry, with Donald Trump, but it is only. I think, because no one ever asked her to defend representing that Joe Biden was fit to run when he quite obviously wasn't. You think that he just popped up one day and did badly at a debate?

I mean, some people even argue within the Democratic Party that the reason why they wanted the debate to come as early as it was was to give them some runway to launch a new candidate if, in fact, he failed the way that many people predicted that he would.

it was going to be quite as bad as it was not necessarily because sometimes they inject him with a little something something and he seems to be this is conjecture obviously sorry but he seems to be oh better i'll give you i'll give you one even better dr dyson back in 2020

When I was working for Bernie Sanders, it was the last day I was in Bernie's headquarters because it was March 15th, if I recall correctly, and the day that we all were sent home because of the COVID pandemic. But I was late in the office. watching that last debate between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, and frankly, hoping that the public would recognize that Joe Biden was not as cogent.

as Bernie Sanders because he had had these moments where he had lost his place and forgot what he was talking about. I'm sure you recall when Julian Castro, during the debates in 2019, called out Joe Biden for seemingly not remembering what he was talking about. The Democratic Party gaslit Julian Castro and Cory Booker, who followed up in the spin room, corroborating what Julian Castro had said. And we haven't heard from any of those brothers since then.

They've been basically incommunicado. It seems like the Democratic Party was not very happy with them saying the obvious, which was even back in 2019, there were questions about Joe Biden's mental fitness. Well, of course, questions about it. But look, we can flip the script. Look at the questions.

about Donald Trump. Are we not raising the same kind of cognitively inefficient questions or incoherence about him? Yeah. I'm not a Republican. But I'm saying we're saying it in a cultural sphere. We're saying it in a obviously an amateur because we're not doctors. But the point is. is that having a concern By Castro and by Booker about what it might mean doesn't mean that that we now are determined that Joe Biden is so significantly cognitively compromised that he's incapable of as opposed to.

had a bad night, you messed up the year, but pretty much you're in stable territory. That's a different thing. That's what I meant by Monday morning quarterbacking. I heard a year ago talking about the severity, apart from ideological and political commitments, where it's a kind of

of Hobbesian war of all against all. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about actual concern about a particular manifestation of cognitive decline that has everything to do with a medical diagnosis, not a political one. But here's my point. Can I make this larger point too? I'm saying that at the end of the day, Miss Breonna Gray wants to win because the whole point is if we don't win, we don't have the possibility of representing our viewpoints tied to.

political resources, economic resources, and governmental support that allows the policies that best enable poor and working class people to survive and thrive. And at that level, I'm saying if we're all trying to make an argument about when and where we enter, how we get in, what we do with the resources we have, I think. that bernie sanders is not merely capitulating or chomsky or or angela davis or aoc for that matter they made a calculation about the costs to maintaining an investment in

a possibility of what might be versus what's here on the ground and what we have available to us to make a difference in the lives of poor people. And that calculation to them is morally compelling. They could have an intellectual fidelity to ideals and principles that would be worked out in abstraction.

versus what they think on the ground, concrete manifestations of policies that have the best chance to win. And I think that's a moral response that can be defensible. And how's that going? Compared to what? What did my man say in 1969? Make it real compared to what? How's it going? I can say versus what a third party representation could be is going pretty damn better than that could be. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Then that is. Wait a minute, wait a minute.

The criticism of the third party is that they have trouble succeeding because the Democratic Party is a vicious right-wing enemy to left interests. Therefore, they have no data about what they could do. Wait a minute.

We know what they could do because they're not corporate bought. If they were in office, they would do what they said they were going to do. Unlike the Democratic Party that fundamentally cannot because it is paid not to. But it's great. But we got to have some evidence. No, women and women. Everything you said about the Democratic Party. Let's take this.

true. What is the data? What's the evidence? What's the empirical proof that the third party could do something better than what we see going on? Where's the proof? Michael Eric Dyson. Yes, ma'am. She's like, my mama calling my whole name. Do you concede? Or would you like, I can bring up the numbers right now if you would like, but will you?

Trust for the sake of this argument that Medicare for all pulls at 88% among Democratic voters. Oh, I'm down with it too. Right. Yes, of course. But not that you personally are down with it. I'm asking if you can see the popularity of the program. Of course.

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about popularity. I'm talking about actual existence of policies that have worked because they've been tested by a political commitment to a particular practice in an elected place where people have the right to make a choice. Your argument is that if Democrats ran on Medicare for all, it would be unpopular. No, no, no, no, no. This is what I'm saying. Let me let me be more clear. I'm saying to you.

First of all, I support that, number one. Let's just be real. But that's kind of immaterial to me. I want to know. We're talking about strategy, not within your hearts and feelings. We've got to get away from this. I ain't mad if you. I ain't mad if you. That's what I say, but I'm not. That's reductive to say that it's only about a chest cavity.

though I like that phrase. It's also about an investment in a possibility that I both emotionally support because of a public policy. What I'm trying to ask you is that can you give me proof? This is what I'm trying to get to. Can you give me any evidence that the ideals that are perpetuated or promulgated and preached within the context of a progressive third-party organization have the ability to work in actual time. Why wouldn't they? Literally, why?

wouldn't they, Dr. Dyson? But we got evidence of what happens with the Democrats. We ain't got no evidence of the third party. But Dr. Dyson, I feel like you're not hearing me. I'm trying to explain to you that there are structural financial reasons why the Democratic Party does not act on popular policies. Yes. And this is why I keep saying.

Who cares what's in somebody's heart? Kamala Harris ran on Medicare for All, a stupid, fake corporate version of it in 2019 that was an obvious lie that was laundered by people like the Pod Save America crew. But she pretended to like Medicare for All in 2019. the VP. Then she became the VP. And Stephen Colbert asked her,

Well, how do you negotiate? How do you make sense of all of these policies that you ran on that Joe Biden doesn't support? Joe Biden said he would veto Medicare for all if it passed the House and Senate and came as a bill on his desk. And she cackled and said, it was a debate. Her principles, values, beliefs was in her heart irrelevant.

She said what she thought she needed to say in a debate and she'll believe what she has to say to be vice president of the United States of America. That's the political, that's what happened. You can interpret it how you want, but that's the facts of the matter. She ran on one thing.

said it was a debate and pivoted to another thing and didn't say a mumbling word about it afterward, and then did not return to those policies when she became the nominee for president. So the question is, the reason that I have faith... In a independent, non-corporate third party, not the Libertarian Party, not RFK Jr., whatever he's doing.

But an independent, financially independent third party is because I believe the lack of financial independence is why the Democratic Party does not pursue certain policies. When you're taking. millions upon millions of dollars from the pharmaceutical industry, from the healthcare industry, from the private insurance industry, you are not going to do what every other developed country in the entire world has managed to do, which is to create universal healthcare systems.

Right. Single payer health care systems. This is not rocket science. And I do believe all due respect, Dr. Dyson, that when pundits talk about these issues as though there was a pragmatic reason why we can't have X, Y and Z. instead of a structural financial reason.

a corruption reason why we can't have X, Y, and Z. You are laundering the Democratic Party's opposition to the interests of working people by saying, sure, it's in their hearts and minds and we all want the same things. Every time I talk to a liberal, they say. time to touch some boyfriends, parents, some liberal. Oh yeah, we want the same things, but let me tell you why I'm going to align with the corporate party that is going to crush you into the dirt.

Well, look, I ain't got no argument with none of what you said, but as they say, I got to ask you this. This is what I'm going to ask you. You're talking about what's in the heart. Let me tell you what I mean by that. Sure. You ain't God. And you've given a reason why. In other words, if you suppress the potential for me to express a public and verifiable commitment to a practice and policy because you've denied me the opportunity to do so, okay. So what you're saying is, take my word.

You're using a data set that says people support this. This is what it is. It's a popular particular idea and so on. You're still asking people to, in faith, trust that your particular understanding of this. is going to work, that your third party, the progressive third party, a party that is committed to the ideals and practices and principles that we think will benefit working class people and other people's best.

You're still asking for a faith commitment. You have no empirical proof that the application of these particular ideals will work. That's all I'm saying. Aren't you a man of God? That's what I'm saying. But you've been chastising me for having heart feelings and chest cavities. And of course, I believe in God because I believe in faith. And that's what I'm saying. I said, but sounds like you do, too. And I'm just saying.

That you're asking a faith commitment to deploy the very principles that you are committed to. So, Dr. Dyson, for one, I would say I ended every episode of this podcast with the phrase, keep the faith. Right. Because I do believe that when you're up against horrible obstacles. Yes. That are being put there, I want to be really clear about the Democratic Party.

But when you're up against seemingly insurmountable odds, there has to be some kind of faith to leap and to try, even though history has shown you that your efforts to try have been thwarted in every horrible way imaginable. And it's from Adam Clayton. You do know that, right? Who's the pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church, and he keep the faith baby was his.

particular sign. That was his symbol. That was his cradle. That's what the name of his autobiography is. I'm saying that as a Democratic politician, right? So I'm just trying to get a little purchase here on these ideas. I'm just trying to simply say, yes.

We both have faith, even a secular faith, even a faith that is atheistic, for that matter, because you invest in the potential of human beings to connect with each other, because that makes a difference, the connectivity. I'm not talking about an existential reductionism. I'm talking about a... political investment that has impact upon how people

feel, think, and behave, right? We can read Martha Nussbaum's Understanding of Political Emotions later on, but I'm just saying it does make a difference. And I'm not reducing it to that. I'm simply saying that you are asking in good faith. For people to believe in the potential of an idea to have political impact were it to be adopted in a fair fight where the interests of the Democratic Party don't scuttle.

the potential for them to be introduced. I agree with that part. I agree with the forces that prevailed against it. I'm asking, however, that it's still a demand of people. And I want to answer this. The faith part was only part one of my argument. The part two is that.

It is not faith that makes me understand that when I drop this makeup brush, it's going to fall to the ground. There are rules that are... akin to the rules of physics that are operating within our political system, which is why the... Analysis of people like Noam Chomsky should be seriously considered instead of just using him. Not I'm saying this about you, but he is wielded as a talking point by liberals who have no interest in anything he's ever had to say until he's telling.

Leftists to get in line. And the analysis is about the operation of money and politics, how the media manufacturers consent for neoliberal corporate policies and the like. And the reason why. I am confident in the ability of the Green Party or any independent third party, as long as it remains independent, to actually advance its goals, unlike the Democratic Party, who pretends to say, oh, I want these things, but we can't have them. It's because the Democratic Party is being paid.

to scuttle those popular policies. And the Green Party is not being paid to do that. It is taking money empowered by the people. It's not Kamala Harris who took money from more billionaires than Donald Trump. Donald Trump earned more money from his billionaires. Kamala Harris had more billionaires. It's a shitty situation, whichever way you slice it. Right. And that is why it's about.

political independence, financial independence. Barack Obama ran on the idea that we were getting money out of politics. And then he became the nominee and said, oops, actually, I'm earning so much money. I'm winning so much, raising so much money.

from these corporate PACs. Nevermind, I'm never gonna talk about it again. And John McCain at the time was like, wait a minute, I thought this was something that we agreed on. John McCain was to the left on Barack Obama on this issue and the party has never looked back because they're fundraising giants. But they are unable to put that money to good effect that they can't even beat Donald Trump. See, you say I'm with you all the way to this point. When you say.

You know, it's not just a matter of faith, but a matter of you drop the thing. It's a matter of physics. It's a matter whether you're with Einstein or Heisenberg, whether you're with the uncertainty principle or the theory of relativity. We got physical laws that go. And all I'm saying is that when it comes, what I want you at least, Ms. Gray, as brilliant as you are, I want you to understand this point. that I'm saying it is still a matter of political faith.

that the application of the principles and priorities that leftists assign to a third party and its ability to get that stuff done, because we lack a data set. or an empirically verifiable, scientifically rigorous proof about what it might happen. You take it on faith. And I'm with the faith part. Look, you're talking to me on faith. That's completely unfair. That's a logical fallacy to say because I can't prove a negative, we can't.

fight against what we know is true? It's just that the Democratic Party isn't working? I'm not talking about the negative, I'm talking about the positive. No, no, no. I get you on the logical fallacy, but that ain't what I'm doing. I'm asking you, what's the positive proof? of the possibility of making a difference once you possess power in order to enable these policies to be real.

the argument here? That we should have a nihilistic attitude because nothing is going to make a difference? I'm saying you got to admit you out here with the rest of us. You trying to figure out the best thing to do. I'm not.

because dr dyson you're manufacturing consent for a party that we know doesn't work and that we know is oppositional to the interests of the people if you were on tv The bulk of the time, maybe right up until a month before election season, when maybe we do have an inevitability of Kamala or whomever being the nominee, saying we have to.

be adversarial to the Democratic Party and be willing to be critical of the Democratic Party if we ever wanted to change. The voters have to condition their vote like the incredibly courageous, principled Muslim and Arab voters in this country who refused to vote. for a genocidal maniac? I'm sorry. History is going to look back and see Kamala Harris say, I'm speaking to a bunch of Arab Americans whose family members are being massacred by actual fascism, an actual fascist theocratic state.

ethno-nationalist state, Jewish supremacist state, and say, oh my God, I can't believe we were expected to care more about the fact that she was a Black and Indian woman and the fact that her fingerprints are all over a genocide. Well, look, in terms of being over genocide, excuse me, I'm just trying to in terms of look, when you say voting for a genocidal maniac, I assume you're not talking about Kamala Harris. You're speaking about the way.

Who are you? Wait a minute. I'm 100% talking about Kamala Harris. You're calling her a genocidal maniac? What would you describe someone who refuses to stop sending the bombs that are being used to ethnically cleanse and genocide an entire population? First of all, last time I checked, she ain't the president, right? No, she said she would not support an arms embargo when she is president.

Right. She said repeatedly and consistently she would not stop sending the bombs that are being used, without which the genocide could not continue. She's not a genocide. I think that's the first thing you said to me. So let's get into it. Why is Kamala Harris not responsible? If it is true, and it is true, and has been widely reported, there was a Haaretz article where an Israeli Air Force...

general or what have you, says, if America stops sending us these bombs, we could no longer commit this siege in Gaza. In the Lebanon war, Ronald Reagan picks up the phone and says, you guys are going too far. Israel, stop. And it stops. This is too much even for Ronald Reagan. There is not a single expert that you can find across the ideological spectrum. I'm talking about the left.

Generals, whatever, across the ideological spectrum who doesn't believe that an arms embargo wouldn't end this mass murder campaign perpetrated by our closest ally, Israel. How do you separate Kamala Harris from endorsing the perpetration of this horror when she refuses to support the arms embargo that could stop it, that would stop it?

Look, it's legitimate to call her to question or to indict her across the board. But to say at this point that she's a genocidal maniac when the fact is she doesn't even have the power to make that decision. Now we're projecting again. What not now?

She is the vice president in the genocidal administration that exists right now. So she could break from it. She could break, but she has chosen not to. And she was given an opportunity to break from it, a unique opportunity, because she became the Democratic Party standard bearer in this election.

My Muslim brothers and sisters, my Palestinian brothers and sisters, and those, I grew up in Detroit, Michigan. So with Chaldeans and Palestinians and the likes. So from birth, I understand, have spoken to and been in solidarity with those brothers and sisters.

I understand the impossible choice they had to make because I argued with many of them, talked to many of them, had conversations with many of them. And I said, you know, not to vote for Kamala Harris, which I understand because your point is the devil I know versus the one I don't know. I understand that too. I can't tell somebody who's in a position of destruction and whose cultures are being eviscerated by policies that are abhorrent.

Right. I can't say to them how they should vote. I tell them why I believe that a non-vote or a vote for Donald Trump is even more, if you will, destructive for human beings who this man will. gleefully. and happily send weaponry to defend Israel and to destroy Palestinian culture, to destroy Gaza, to turn it into an oceanside view, as opposed to understanding what the geopolitics of a...

necessarily compromised administration will do. So we can have those kind of arguments, but call her a genocidal maniac. What is the difference between Kamala Harris saying... We're going to keep sending Israel the bombs to doing the genocide, which has happened entirely under the Biden-Harris administration.

And Donald Trump saying, I'm going to do the genocide and keep sending the bombs. Why is it that you do caveat? You seem to think that Donald Trump doing it gleefully and Kamala Harris doing it reluctantly, ostensibly, makes some difference to some or. orphaned Palestinian child or some Palestinian mother who's grieving the fact that she has to pick up the body parts of her children that were killed by American bombs.

which is absolutely evil. I'm saying to you that the difference it will make if Kamala Harris, as president of the United States of America, is negotiating with Netanyahu and with a date certain, if there's no cessation of war, if... there is no acknowledgement of the need for the relief of those who are most viciously assaulted. If you continue, now you're into Lebanon, where you have not only Muslims and Arabs, but Christians, where you have now galvanized, forced...

against the understanding of what Israel's position is, that now there will be a cessation. There's negotiation. There's a huge difference between doing that and a guy like a Donald Trump who's going to say anything you want, blank check, you got it. There's a huge difference. There isn't a huge difference. There's a huge difference in that. Dr. Dyson, Joe Biden gave Netanyahu a blank check.

A Republican president of the United States of America gives Israel a blank check. This is not a right-left issue. And this is what I'm talking about. I'm really just trying to make the case that you are so... caught up in the idea that Democrats mean well, mean better. That is obscuring the reality that they are doing the exact same thing. This is not a negotiate. Wait.

Kamala Harris, do I need to negotiate with Netanyahu? This is not, I need to persuade Netanyahu to stop doing something. This is like if I had a six-year-old and a baby. And the six-year-old is wailing on my baby in the crib. And I said, well, I told the six-year-old to stop. And for a year, I've been telling the six-year-old to stop. And my baby's head is busted in and spread all over the pillow. But it's not my fault. I just keep trying to...

Persuade that. No. Pick. the child up and put him in a different room i am an adult he is six he is only able to abuse the other child because i am giving him i am letting him do so even worse in this situation because i am giving him the weapons to abuse the child that I can't stop it.

Understood. But I'm saying the difference is none of us can predict the future. Neither you nor I can predict what happens with Kamala Harris there and the decisions she makes and the rules that she deploys and the limits that she imposes. So you're right in terms of... I don't have to predict the future, Dr. Dyson. She said what she was going to do. Where she draws a hard and fast line.

Whether she doesn't even know, right? When I'm saying that you don't know what the circumstances are until you're in the circumstances that you're in. And I'm not denying the hate, the horror, the evil that is being done and visited upon human beings. That's not what I'm saying.

I'm talking about at the end of the day to simply say, to conclude that Kamala Harris is a genocidal maniac when we don't at least acknowledge the potential and possibility that in a Harris administration, a different choice is made.

different limit is imposed and a different red line is drawn. That's all I'm saying. I'm saying that's what I meant by we ain't Nostradamus and we can't tell the future. The reason people keep calling, I'm supposed to have a thing at 1 o'clock. Okay, okay. I'm going to let you go. We've been going for two hours and I really appreciate your...

I would love for you to beat on me another hour, but I just got to go. Not at all. I just want to be really clear. I'm not asking anyone to predict the future. I'm looking at the reality that the Kamala Harris campaign affirmed for the first. time and did so repeatedly after that on August 8th, 2024, that it does not support an arms embargo. And I don't know why I'm supposed to ignore what the words that are coming out of her mouth. And one of the most consistent.

refrains of her entire campaign. I will not support an arms embargo. Israel has a right to defend itself. Zionist pablum. The kind of language that has been used to facilitate this genocide for over a year. Why I'm supposed to not believe that, but supposed to have some faith that she is going to do something other than what she's saying. That's all. But Dr. Dyson, I'm going to give you a chance to respond. I don't want to cut you off.

No, no, no. I mean, I've said already. See, my point is, I can agree with everything you've said. I'm saying that we don't know until we're there what ends up happening. I'm not saying that. She has not made certain statements that would be opprobrium to anybody listening because they don't believe in the perpetuation of a genocidal impulse that is unregulated and unchecked. Isn't that argument the same for Donald Trump?

Can I also make the argument that we don't know what's going to happen when Donald Trump's in office. Maybe he'll stop the genocide. Doesn't that sound a little silly? We got a data set. The thing I've been asking you. We got a data set. for Kamala Harris. No, we don't. We have a data set for Joe Biden. We do not have a data set for Kamala Harris. We got a data set for Donald Trump.

who wanted to establish Jerusalem as the head right. We know. And Joe Biden supported that for years and decades prior to becoming an office. And Kamala Harris is saying, and by the way, it didn't reverse that policy when he was president. And Kamala Harris is now saying she supports the. Biden administration genocidal policy of not backing an arms embargo. That's the data set.

I'm not trying to undermine the integrity of that region. I'm saying that at the end of the day, that Kamala Harris is not Joe Biden and Joe Biden, of course, has made certain choices given the political limits that he thinks. are available to him and then showing support for an ally. I'm saying that Kamala Harris's assent to that office.

would mean something quite different than what she's prognosticating or theorizing. And as we've seen with every president, that it's one thing to say it when you're running. It's another thing to talk about it when you're actually there. And I'm saying, can we leave at least a little humility and wiggle room?

for the fact that there is some possibility that the translation of her concern... of her investment and interest in that region not being turned into holiday resorts for people because the people that have been eviscerated at least is a palpable or at least a cogent or at least a tenable. argument to be made in her defense. That's all I'm saying. Is there a lengthy track record of candidates ruling to the left of what they ran on?

I mean, I'm not saying to the left. I'm saying that she's already indicated not even showing up to meet with Netanyahu was an indication that we're going to look for signs and wonders that indicated that this is not business as usual. That has happened already. That's all I'm suggesting. And I'm taking, as a man of faith, I'm taking that possibility will be far better.

than Palestinian brothers and sisters and those who are being utterly eviscerated in that region than a Donald Trump presidency, which promises not only more of the same, but more of the same on steroids and the complete. nihilistic wiping away of an entire people or region. Well, we're living with the consequences of the Democratic Party strategy, and that has brought us now to Donald Trump terms. So look, I appreciate you coming to talk with me.

Hope we have further opportunities to engage. Maybe you'll consider even saying to some of those bookers and hosts on MSNBC next time you're up there saying, hey, there's some perspectives that might have. helped us to avoid this Donald Trump presidency if they were invited into these spaces. And maybe we'll be able to have this conversation in front of many millions of more voters someday. I really do respect your willingness to come here and debate this with me, Dr. Dyson.

Thank you so much, Ms. Gray. Do you want to tell the audience before you go anything about where they can find you on the internet and beyond? Any recent books or other projects that they might want to tune into? Yes, I'm at Michael Eric Dyson. on instagram i guess michael edison on twitter i don't hardly go on there anymore on x and you can find me out here in your local bookstore trying to fight the fight

And I got a new book on voting for young readers, but I think everybody can read it called Undecided. And I'm working on some more stuff now. I'm going to come back on this great podcast and talk about it when I can. I would love that. Thank you again, Dr. Dyson. I really appreciate it. To all you listeners, thanks for tuning in. You can get an extra episode of Bad Faith Podcast every Monday at patreon.com slash badfaithpodcast. And as always, take care of yourself and keep the faith.

Life will come on