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So one of the responses from liberals post Trump reelection that has been kind of interesting is some number of them have been leaving Twitter and fleeing to blue Sky, the Twitter alternative.
We can put this up on the screen.
In terms of the numbers, blue Sky apparently as of several days ago had added a million new members as users flee X after the US election. Now they are up to fifteen million, So adding a million more is significant given the comparatively small scale of blue Sky at this point, And in this article they point out this isn't the first serve that blue Sky has seen based
on like various indicators. So after rebranding to X, apparently there was a big shift to blue Sky, and then they also picked up three million new users after X was suspended in Brazil back in September, and then a further this one was interesting to me, one point two million in the two days after X announced that they would allow users to view posts from people who had blocked them. So those were some of the big triggers.
I checked on the app store yesterday and blue Sky is still the number one like downloaded app right now. So there is something very real here. But it's also worth keeping in perspective, like fifteen million users does not even come close to comparing to Twitter, let alone Facebook or TikTok or any of the other large social media giants.
I do think it's kind of an important indicator of how liberals are processing and dealing with the fact that, you know, a lot of these social media brands previously coded as more liberal, you know, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, certainly Twitter under Jack Dorsey, there was a sense that, you know, it was more on the democratic side, and now that has totally reversed, not just on Twitter with Elon Musk's ownership, which there was a research showing that he did in
fact use the algorithm to juice Republican or pro Trump accounts, and obviously including his own account, but also kind of across the board with a bunch of these social media apps. So liberals are taking a page on what conservatives were doing previously with parlor and Gab and truth Social and whatever, and saying, hey, we need our own space now to post Trump election.
Yeah, it's it's I think, you know, the only reason with the major reason we're doing the story. Not only is it interesting, but it's part of the liberal response, which is to shut off MSNBC and to kind of retreat. And I think it was a big mistake that a lot of Trump people made, and right wingers made in the Twitter era twenty eighteen and honestly made people way crazier right the truth Social, Parlor, Gab and all of these other people's We talk a lot about echo chamber.
It's easy enough on a large enough platform we gay yourself in an echo chamber. But I think it's a mistake because psychologically, what they're trying to do is to recreate their own like world. And I think I sympathize with that on a certain level, but I also don't think it can promote like, quote unquote understanding, because if you're the type of person who have watched MSNBC or be on bluing on Twitter or whatever, Like the truth is like you don't understand the world. And this isn't
even in a denigrating way. In twenty sixteen, when Donald Trump won the presidency, I'm telling you, I was shocked, shocked to my core. It is the reason why I really am today. I sat down and I just said, all these people I read are wrong. Was it everything I've consumed polling, you know, ideology, how the world works, what Americans thing.
Like, Oh is it bullshit?
It's totally wrong, and I have to completely reevaluate all of my new inputs. So twenty twenty I wasn't shocked by what happened. Twenties twenty four, I wasn't shocked by what happen. I can be a little bit surprised, but like to we have literally never consumed enough information that you're not truly surprised by an outcome. That was the
biggest change I made from twenty sixteen onwards. I encourage people to respond to elections that shock you in a similar way and be like, Okay, let's seek some stuff out, because clearly I don't know what the.
Hell is happening here.
I don't know this blue Sky thing is going to help that is a way. And I don't think it helped Republicans either. I mean, they overcame to stop to steal insanity of twenty twenty.
They got lucky frankly that people just like have moved.
On from it, but they paid a real price for it in twenty twenty two as well. And I will not yet say that the fight is over. Like post Trump, what does it look like to have Trump endorsed style candidates Without Donald Trump on the ballot? He overperformed every Republican in the country except for Larry Hogan. So are the incentives that you know, it's like Obama, are the incentives that worked for him? Are they the same for whoever comes next?
I'm not so sure. I don't think so.
Yeah.
I think the retreat of conservatives to their own social media platforms, I don't think that that helped.
Like gab parlors with social whatever didn't help them. It didn't really work.
I mean, none of those platforms really gained massive influence in terms of the culture. I think buying Twitter definitely, that did help them exactly. And I don't think that so you know, these social media networks in some ways, they're sort of like natural monopolies, you would call them, because the whole value of the network is its size, you know, the value is the number of connections that are there, the number of news outlets that are there.
I mean, for us in terms of the job that we do, like Blue Sky would not be that valuable because I just can't do the news gathering on there that I can do on Twitter, even under Elon's ownership. And so that's why these spinoffs have never really worked.
And even Threads, which was the Facebook attempt to kind of like recreate a Twitter like thing, first of all, they completely suppressed They don't really want political content there, so they suppressed political content, so it's not a real alternative. But also it just doesn't have the juice that Twitter
does in terms of the culture. So I don't think liberals are wrong to look at what happened and say, oh my god, Twitter ended up being very important in this election, and we're in this sort of post truth environment and it is no longer the case that what happens online is not real life. Actually, what happens online kind of is real life, and that's the era that we live in, there needs to be some sort of
response to it. But I am skeptical that you know, we're treating into this more sort of niche ideological space is really going to be the answer.
What is the answer?
I don't really know, because Elan on Twitter now like that Genie is out of the bottle, that Pandora box has been open.
There's no going back from that.
And I think the other social media outlets like a Facebook is an important way. I mean, Facebook used to be more you know, feel like it had at least somewhat of a democratic inclination, although right wing content has always done extraordinarily well on Facebook. But Zuckerberg himself obviously
used to be more liberal, more pro Democrat. He's one of the people who, before Trump was elected, was making phone calls and trying to make nice and really trying to overcome this sense from conservatives that he and other tech oligarchs were you know, in the bag for Democrats.
I mean, Zuckerberg came under a lot of it was part of.
The whole you know theory, the sort of like high minded stop this deal theory. And so I think by working the rafts, Republicans really were successful and getting the type of content moderation that favored their content that they
were looking for. And under a Trump administration, like Zuckerberg's going to want to stay in good with you know, the guy, the big guy who's in charge, who's capable of using the federal government, weaponizing it against him and his interest, et cetera, and once again being like facing the ire of an agitated conservative base. So you know, I, like I said, I'm sympathetic to why people are moving
to Blue Sky. I understand it, but I don't really think it's a response to the social media landscape being kind of overwhelmingly right wing at this point.
Yeah, they just don't get it.
And uh, you know, I mean it's it's complicated because when people are like, oh, right wing content's popular on Facebook, it's like, yeah, but that's because it's independent and user generated and the mainstream media is already liberal. So like when the vast majority of the culture is liberal, then used and institutional stuff is quote unquote liberal, then yeah, user generated content is going to be predominantly right wing.
That's another reason why YouTube and others, because it's literally a dissonance space. It's one that doesn't exist for institutional like elite capture. If you want that, it already exists. There's an entire machine for it. So I wouldn't say that they worked the refs or whatever. I mean, there was an overwhelming yeah, but there's an overwhelming amount of right wing censorship that also happened under Facebook Mark Zuckerberg.
The Hunter Biden laptop is.
The most famous example, but there was a lot of you know, algorithmic preference and stuff that they put their own thumb on the scales. Twitter obviously, you know, probably the most in stories platform prior to Elon Musk, And I think what happened ultimately is that you know, when you say online is right wing, I think that's because America is a lot more right wing than people want
to believe. I think that America, especially with the Trump victory and the popular vote and the massive shift for a lot of these places, it's not the platform's fault. I think people themselves were responding to social, political, and economic incentives and have fundamentally changed. They're not right wing
in the way that most people think like. They're not right in the way that you may think of the nineteen nineties about gay marriage or abortion, even but you know, are they right wing on the trans question?
Yeah?
On immigration? Yeah?
Are they right wing in a sense that they hate institutions absolutely? In terms of backlash against me too, That's something we talked a little bit about yesterday, Like that is a sense in which being online is right wing. But there's also a tremendous amount of quote unquote left wing content and a lot of left wing social movements which then in of themselves have their roots in online. So all online has done is it's niched, you know, most of American society. That's how really what I would
say that overall net effect of it is. And I think that's actually bad because outside of the whole echo chamber thing, again, exposure to different stuff that you must do actually in an algorithmic world, I find it you must do it more so and more intentionally than ever before. You must intentionally seek out things that you'd not only disagree with, things that will rock your worldview so that
you're never surprised by anything. And I have to read so much and talk to you and do a lot of other stuff just to be able to like still check my biases.
And I don't think most people do that. Intentionally at all.
That's the real danger. That's why you shouldn't do this blue sky retreat. That's what the mistake is.
Yeah, but I mean, I guess from the liberal perspective, they're like, yeah, but Republicans like tout them solve into a bubble and it worked out okay for them.
Okay.
I think that's I think that's a sense.
You win sometimes and you also lose.
Like the other thing I would say is in some senses, yes, like I think the country uncertain. It's just certainly an immigration has moved right. But Trump still didn't even win fifty percent of the vote. Okay, so you don't also don't want to like, oh, the country like seventy five percent they didn't vote, you know, seventy five percent didn't vote for Trump. It was forty nine points eight or whatever it's going to end up being. So it's still is very much a fifty to fifty kind of a country.
And when you look at a bunch of the more liberal ballot initiatives across the country, certainly the country's not right wing on abortion rights, countries not right wing on you know, minimum wage, not right wing on not having paid sick leave, or things like that of that nature. So it's you know, to me, it's not as clear cut.
I think more to the point saga that you made, the piece that resonated more with me was that liberals have always felt like they had their own spaces already, like they felt comfortable, comfy with the New York Times and the Washington Post and they do CNN and whatever.
I do think some of that has shifted, Like it's not as much antipathy towards those organizations as Republicans have, certainly, but there is a real shift among the liberal base that started even you know, before Joe Biden got out of the race. And again some of their critiques I
agree with, some of them I don't agree with. But there has been a real breaking of the faith with liberal and the institutions where they have always felt like they totally comfortable and like they were you know, their perspective was being held up and you know, they could see themselves in the coverage there. And so it does create an interesting moment for you know, different social media experience experiments, for different you know, podcasts and media, et
cetera that didn't exist before. So in any case, I kind of view this in the light of that new liberal experimentation and that new liberal break with some of the institutions that they previously felt so confident and comfortable in during the last iteration. The one one last piece that we can show you here just to see this
graphically of what it has looked like. We can put this D two up on the screen so you can see a Surgeon Blue Sky daily visits right after the election, and then you can also see a huge search in X account D activations. So there has just definitely been you know, for people who are not like necessarily as into politics as we are, where they're just kind of like, you know, this space is just not really where I
want to be anymore. I think some of it is that too, where it's just like, you know, I'm just kind of done here in the elon Twitter Musk Twitter and Twitter Musk elon Twitter era, I'm just.
Kind of done with this.
And so there is there is definitely something happening here, and like I said to me, it's just emblematic of this new landscape of like, okay, well, the things we did to respond to Trump last time didn't work. The institutions we relied on to help guide us through this time utterly failed us. So let's try some other things to see what's going well.
That actually can be very healthy.
So I remember I would meet like predominantly old ladies who really hated Trump, and they were like, I fought him on social media, and like they believed that they believed they were engaged in a war by retweeting Muller she wrote, and Seth Abramson and all these other you know, Eric Garland and all these social media stars from last time around. And I think it made me healthy this
time that they're like, wait, no, that doesn't work. You know, there are a lot of people who live entire lives via proxy, and that's the one thing I would beg you don't do that.
You know, I noticed this with Ukraine.
People literally believe that they're fighting on the front you know, on the democracy front line or whatever by tweeting against people who disagree with their position on Ukraine, or by like retweeting and reposting Ukrainian propaganda, Like is that beneficial to their cause? Like maybe, you know, are you the same as a frontline soldier? No, absolutely not. There's a big thing like that in political you know, in political
commentary and even just political stats and all that. I notice on Twitter, like there's an entire army of people who are on Twitter who like believe that they're really impacting things for Donald Trump and his victory. Maybe zero point zero five percent of them are the rest it's like, you're just chaff right, You're just like retweeting and doing nothing mostly with your life. So I think that is also perhaps a healthy response because I noticed a lot of that.
You know, I've actually kind of shifted my view on that because I think that the posting was really important for Trump's victor.
But that's a selection bias or this. It's the people who are good at it, that work the fast that you need.
But you need the reply guys, you need the retweeters.
Like that's part of what makes the ecosystem work. And so when you think of the story of this election, you know, one of the big divides that came out is that people who were hyper engaged in political news, who were reading the New York Times or even engaged in you know, MSBC or whatever Fox News hyper engaged political news media consumers, they voted for Kamala, and people who were not hyper engaged, who were consuming this selection more through like just like memes.
And culture and vibes. They voted for Donald Trump.
So I don't think I can say at this point that the posting doesn't matter.
I think the posting was important.
I think that the you know, the memes that came out of Trump at McDonald's and the image that came out after the assassination attempt with his fists in the air and the garbage truck, like all this stuff, which was just about all line fodder and meme content. I don't know, I think posting actually ended up being important. I do think online is kind of the real world now, and you know, liberals do have to to gropple with that, and people on the left have to grapple with that
as well. So I don't think it used to be though. I think this is like kind of a new era we've entered into, with the whole podcast election, in the downfall of media ecosystems, in the purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk. But yeah, I actually think they're right that they are engaged in a real social movement that had real world impacts because so much of our life does exist online now and there isn't that separation there.
Used to be.
Yeah, I guess that's a good counter. I hadn't thought about it. I guess I think it's more existed and worked on the right because people are already not on mainstream media. And this comes to our MSNBC question, will they stay on mainstream media or not that I really don't know.
I think they'll go back. I think they will.
Online is the culture now, that's the thing.
And so you know, culture obviously feeds politics. So if you aren't compete in the online culture, like you're gonna get DRASKI.
Yeah, well, uh, maybe we'll see.
At the same time, there's some very troubling news out of Ukraine. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. The Biden administration, with less than two months left in office, has dramatically changed US policy in Ukraine, allowing Ukraine to use long range US missiles to strike inside of Russia. The president for the first time authorized the Ukrainian military to use the atacms the at cams to help defend its forces in the Kerse region. Now,
this is particularly insane for a number of reasons. One is that this was considered a red line for Russian Vladimir Putin, which he has said repeatedly and said, if you do so, then NATO will be considered an active military target and participant in this war. Second is, if you actually look crystal at the military operation where this is happening, this is to support a Ukrainian invasion of Russia.
So this is Ukraine's invasion of Kursk, where they crossed an internationally recognized border with a military operation and are now facing a Russian offensive of Russian troops and some fifty thousand North Korean elite special forces. We are using out these long range missiles for Ukraine to strike inside of internationally recognized sovereign Russian territory. Now, two wrongs don't
make a right, correct. You know, if your entire case is they legally invaded us, they took our territory in all this, and you're like, oh, well, we're gonna invade you to show you whose boss, It's like, okay, philosophically, you know, I can understand that. But if your entire case is around having the entire world support your democratization project and all that.
It's like, well then it gets a little bit complicated.
And so already we can confirm as of this morning that the first long range missile was used inside of Russia. But second, if you read inside of it, they say they do not expect this to change the course of the war. They do not expect this to change the course of this defensive. At best, you know, you can kill a few more North Koreans or Russia, so it's
not even strategically going to really change the outcome. And then finally, I think this is a really disgusting move because what I think is happening is that they are trying Number one, Anthony Blincoln said they're going to push every dollar out to Ukraine that they possibly illegally can
while they're in office. And two, I think that they're trying to set the standard for Donald Trump and his administration in office so that they are then forced to try and get headlines in the media being like Donald Trump reverses the policy of missiles, you know, long range missiles that are being used inside of Russia and allowed for the Ukrainian forces.
It's a deep state, tried and true thing.
They did it to Obama as well whenever he was coming into office, and so there the entire policy is nuts.
The entire policy is crazy.
I think the idea is that Ukraine feels like if Trump is coming into office, there is a decent chance we don't know for sure if it's going to happen or not, but there's a decent chance that he's going to force some kind of a peace settlement. Yes, and they want to be able to have something they can trade for their own territory in that settlement. And so the idea is if they can be successful in this,
I'm not valid a, I'm just explaining the logic. If they can be successful in this, you know, Russian attack and invasion, and have some territory in Russia that they hold, that they can use that as a bargaining chip to come out in a better position after these negotiations. So I think that's ultimately what it's you know, what's going on here, And that doesn't undercut what you said Zagera
of the level of danger of allowing this sunfold. I do think it's unlikely that putin because he also is seeing the same landscape of like, let's wait and see what Trump does when he comes in. I think it's unlikely that he reacts in the most aggressive and hostile way of like actively attacked a NATO country or you know, using nukes or something like that. But you know you're running a risk and that's kind of a wild thing to do.
Look at already what they're doing.
You know, again, Ukraine is losing They have been losing territory consistently for months. We've been focused on the election, so we haven't been able to cover it. But put this up there on the screen. I mean, the largest missile attack on Ukrainian infrastructure literally just happened a couple of days ago. It's a disaster over there for them, I mean their population. Already, the latest poll that has come out shows that fifty two percent of Ukrainians want
to pursue a negotiated settlement. That's up almost thirty percent over the last couple of years.
Also, let's put this on the screen.
From the Wall Street Journal Trump's pushed for the Ukraine piece finds quote growing acceptance in Europe.
Germany arguably the.
Country with the most to lose, and you know, the balance of power and all that their chancellor has said, no way, we're not sending more long range missiles or escalating the war in Ukraine. Will provide them with basic military assistance. But they're red lines they're sticking to because they have real stakes. They also know they don't have the money to continue this war without the colossal amount of funds the United States has been pushing into this conflict.
So all the signs point to what is obviously best for everybody, Ukraine, Russia, and for the entire world.
Let's end the war.
Now.
Nobody is going to win, the Russians or the Ukrainians, although and I will at least give the countercase. John Meersheimer doesn't believe the negotiated settlement will happen because he goes, look, Russia's already winning the war, why would they do it? Russia and the Putin regime, specifically the Putin regime has very little respect for human life. They don't care, right a couple hundred thousand people are dead whatever. For some reason, in Russia they seem to be okay with that, especially
the government. Well, now you've got these elite, you know, North Korean.
Forces who are with you.
You've got North Korea giving you ammunition, You've got Iran producing these suicide drones. You're actually rolling back the territory. You've got the sunk cost fallacy of a couple hundred thousand people maybe we don't nobody knows the number, but have died on the front line. The Ukrainians are failing. Why would I negotiate now? Like in a certain sense, you know, they have the least amount of incentive right
now to negotiate. So I'm hoping that Donald Trump can actually change that and bring this to some sort of bigger settlement and convince Putin that it's not in his best interest. But all the deck is arrayed against them, it has been for years. Nobody wants to listen. Today is the one thousandth day apparently of the Ukraine War, which is crazy. And if you consider, like all of the macro strategic and economic picture points in one direction,
more Ukrainian territory lost. The more that they push this, the longer that it prolongeds, you will see the age will continue to tick up with the Ukrainian military, the population will continue to suffer, you know, food, energy costs, all of this already, I mean a huge percent of the country is left.
You know, they're best in the brightest of left long ago.
So they have massive problems and worse, you know, really is the escalation trying to tie the Trump administration's hands, and like you said, you know, pray and hope that this doesn't backfire.
Do I think Putin is going to attack us over it?
No?
But you know, do I think that it still crossed as certain red lines and gives a lot of incentives inside of the Russian military for how they should think very differently about approaching the West and even any hope of a rap prochmodel with them that lasts longer than Donald Trump, which is what I think everybody should like to see.
So I don't know, you know, in the North Korea thing, just final point.
Yeah, we've talked about, you know, the fact that some thousands of troops that are in Russia is a failure of Biden foreign policy. Donald Trump had a policy of engagement with North Korea that was great because we actually had good relations, there were no missiles flying around. Whatever Biden came in, we immediately reverted to maximum pressure and sanctions. And what do they do. Of course they go to China and Russia right back to where they were and
now there's troops on the Ukraine front line. This could easily have been prevented if we have diplomatic relations. Then we're fine. You know, they're a nuclear program. By the way, nothing has happened to it plot twist over the last four years of maximum pressure on their thing. It's the same story with you Ron the Venezuela. After you reach a certain critical mass, it's not sanctions on all this, it will do nothing.
Yeah.
Too, how many years have we had sanctions on Cuba?
What is that sixty actually made more?
Yeah, it's just insane.
One last point on the European leaders and the call with the last Schultz and all of that, because I think that's very significant is not only do they see the writing on the wall in terms of this war which has gone on for far too long, where you know, the US and the UK banded together to block any
sort of potential piece deal at the beginning. I mean that really was the failure, because that was the time when Russia was in the most precarious position where it was unclear how people would respond politically, or it was unclear how much the sanctions would bite, or it's unclear how much the loss of life would create instability. You know within the country itself. They've weathered all those storms, so that continues to have been the real failing in
this opportunity, in this war. But I think also a lot of these leaders are looking at the fact that you know, I did a monologue yesterday about how Democrats commitment to genocide and Gaza, and also a number of voters mentioned the war in Ukraine was part of what turned them off from voting for Democrats again, because you know, even as you see, you still see pretty decent levels of support for Ukraine, Like Americans are sympathetic.
To the cause.
But they also got the accurate sense from Joe Biden in particular, but by extension Kamala Harris, that this is what he actually cared about. He didn't really care that much that you couldn't afford groceries, that you couldn't that your budget was stretched tight, that you couldn't imagine ever
even being able to become a homeowner. Like the only thing he could really talk about was NATO and Aucus and like this, you know, visions of grandeur with regard to this imagined fight between democracy and autocracy, where were the good guys when manifestly, with regard to our actions
in Gaza, we are not the good guys. So I think they also are reading the political t leaves, not just here of how this had an impact on the election and helped to bring Trump back to the White House, but you see parties throughout Europe that are both on the right and on the left who are critics of the European and the American policy visa the Ukraine who are on the rise. And you know, there's a number of factors that go into that, but Ukraine is certainly
one of them. And so I think that's the other piece, is not only reading the tea leaves and the writing on the wall with regard to the status of the war and how things are likely to go in the future, but also looking out for their own political survival and realizing that there is you know, there's a real political backlash to this endless support for Ukraine and what is at this point a helpless cost.
Yeah, that's a good point, and you know, ultimately this just feeds more into the Biden failure. His legacy was NATO and now a guy is getting elected explicitly at least with a pledge.
We'll see what he does.
And the war that he said was so vital and critical to US policy and security. I will say I am an August fan too, so love August here. That's outside an August voter.
I'm not an Aucust voter.
I appreciate the Anglo sphere, and I think that is how we should have relations, rather than some bullshit treaty from eighty years ago about why I'm supposed to go and die for North Montenegro or.
Whatever I think we should have.
Just as a final closest, I think we should and I think we both do have some skepticism of what Trump will actually do here because he has said a bunch of different things. Obviously you've got Mark or Rubio and a bunch of neocons that he's put into key positions. There is you know, there's a reason why even though he made overtures to withdraw from Afghanistan, why he didn't do it because look at the political cost that Joe Biden paid for actually doing what voters have claimed they
wanted and withdrawing from Afghanistan. Because guess what, anytime you try to disentangle yourself from one of these conflicts, it can be really ugly and the press almost uniformly turns against you, and the leaks from the generals about you know, like it could genuinely be damaging to his presidency. And he's no fool, so you know, ultimately he doesn't care
outside of his own like self preservation. So if he looks at the landscape and is like, this isn't good for me politically, I don't think you know, it's not crazy to imagine that he takes a very different approach than what he at times signaled on the campaign trail, and he wasn't even consistent in what he signaled on the campaign trail.
That's right, Crystal, what are you taking a look at?
Well, the war is on in the Democratic Party to assign blame for Kamwa Harris's loss and to help set the narrative for what will come next. To boil it down, you basically got a maintain the status quo faction going up against a burn it all down faction on one side. You've effectively got all the people who were most directly
implicated in this loss. You get the donors, consultants, operatives, and establishment Democrats who by and large authored this campaign, and the media figures who helped to construct and enforce this iteration of the Democratic Party. They're complicit in destroying Bertie's movement, elevating Biden, blocking a twenty twenty four primary, and setting the messaging direction of the dem Party in
general and the Kamala Harris campaign specifically. They believed that an anti Trump coalition heavily reliant on suburban Liz Cheney voters could be assembled and activated and win. Harris campaign strategy was buy and larnch design to appeal to this imagined affluent coalition. This group is interested in any and all arguments that can effectively maintain the current Democratic Party
status quo. That includes punching left, which again is no different from the longtime Democratic Party status quo, and denying that there's really any problem whatsoever. At war with this camp are those who believe that the Democratic Party lost the working class and with it, the election because they
failed that working class AOC Bernie Rocanna. Those are some of the proponents, but there have been a few surprising mainstream allies in the fight, people like Senator Chris Murphy and even to my absolute shock.
David Brooks.
These folks have correctly suggested that Democrats take a lesson from Bernie Sanders, embrace real economic populism, piss off their high income base, and donor class and lean into the politics of class war. This camp, in which I am included, is the most correct, but also has the biggest obstacles in front of it, since big Bunny interest are not
likely to just abandon their interest in the Democratic Party. Well, folks, we got a new salvo in this war between the status quo and burnt down factions in the form of The New York Times op ed by John Fetterman's former chief of staff. In an obed titled when will Democrats Learn to Say No? Adam Gentilsen argues that Democrats are losing because they cater too much to the world of
left interest groups. In making the argument, he named checks ACLU, Sunrise Justice, Democrats, and Working Families Party for pushing Kamala back in twenty twenty, to support the current law and surgeries for transgender prisoners, to decriminalize border crossings, and for generally attempting to push Democrats left on criminal justice reform. This op postures as an argument for Democratic Party reform, but in actuality it already reflects the twenty twenty four
reality of the Democratic Party. This analysis might have held more weight back in twenty twenty when those groups helped to shape the debate that happen inside of that Democratic Party primary, not in twenty twenty four, when they hold basically no sway, Kama abandoned all of the positions mentioned in their piece to the extent she ever really supported them at all. She ran on being a cop, adopted Republican immigration positions, embracelets Cheney, and literally never talked about
trans issues at all. In other words, not only does this argument fail to threaten the status quo, it just reinforces it. The argument also may have had made more sense if, rather than including a bunch of basically powerless groups that, contrary to the title, Democrats have no trouble constantly saying no to the OpEd, looked at groups like APAK and the Democratic Majority for Israel who have actually been insanely influential in the twenty twenty four world of politics.
AOC made this point on Twitter and is now predictably being smeared as an anti semi She wrote quote, if people were to talk about members of Congress being overly influenced by a special interest group pushing a wildly unpopular agenda that pushes voters away from Democrats, then they should
be discussing Apak, she is obviously correct. Their money has shaped everything from the crackdown on campus protest to the defeat of even mild critics of Israel to the Kamala Harris's own refusal to break from Biden on one of his worst issues. And it wasn't just these lefty groups that came in for scrutiny, though in the pages of The New York Times, Gentlesen also takes a shot at the anti trust movement.
Here's the quote.
By wishing away these complexities, a coalition first mindset produces many candidates who are the inverse of what voters want, people with the cultural sensibilities of Yale Law school graduates who cause play as populous by over relying on niche issues like Federal Trade Commission antitrust actions.
To start with, the structure of corporate power is far from a niche issue.
In addition, it's truly funny that this line, including the Yale part, could just as easily describe the now victorious Jadie Vance as anyone inside of the Democratic coalition, something that our friend and anti trust advocate in Matt Stoller pointed out. But most importantly, this line is actually the key to unlocking and understanding of what is really going on inside of this article, the Biden anti trust agenda was hated by the Democratic donor class who went to
war with Lena Khan in every way they knew. How so, it is quite convenient that in this piece, attempting to blame the left for an election manifestly lost by the Centrists, Gentlessen also seeks to throw overboard the parts of the Biden agenda which actually did threaten the class interests of
those in the status quo camp. In fact, as Jet here points out, a much larger problem for Kamala was the fact that she let donors talk her out of highlighting the most potent parts of her economic platform, including backing away from the Biden administration's terrific trustbusting record. Jet highlights this New York Times reporting that Kamala's corporate allies and donors hated the price gouging ban and pressured her
to limit its reach. The Times reports quote the price gouging touched on a broader anxiety among Miss Harris's corporate allies, who were worried that her economic policies might cater to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. The article also notes the Kamma backed off a hike in the capital gains tax to appease these donors and remained studiously ambiguous their words on a tax for the ultra rich. Now these are the freakin people the Democrats actually need to
learn how to say no to. Another New York Times report includes details about how Kamala's superPAC found that an ad on price gouging tested through the roof in terms of effectiveness, yet it barely saw the light of day.
Quote.
Another memo issue days later, pointed out very high performing ads that have yet to get a big spent. One ad Future Forward said had ranked in the one hundredth percentile, meaning it was the most effective, yet it had virtually never been aired. So here, everybody, is the ad that Kamala's donors did not want you to see.
I get it.
The cost of rent, groceries and utilities is too high.
So here's what we're going to do about it.
We will lower.
Housing costs by building more homes and crack down on landlords we're charging too much. We will lower your food and grocery bills by going after price gougers or keeping the cost of everyday goods too high. I'm Kamala Harris and I approve this message. Because you work hard for your paycheck, you should get to keep more of it. As president, I'll make that my top priority.
The donors, the billionaires, the consultants, the corrupt establishment itself, those are the interests that need to be told no, that need to be purged wholesale. Any analysis that fails to make this case is nothing more than a defense of the Democratic Party status quo and Sager one of the things that got a lot of note in.
And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com.
So as we have of course been discussing, there is a big battle on for the future of the Democratic Party and also to understand how they just such as shillacking. And we're lucky to be joined this morning by Maurice Mitchell, who is the national director for the Working Families Party, who has many thoughts on all of these topics.
Great to see you, Maurice, it's good to be here. Good to see you, of course, So.
Just your top line thoughts, what happened and what should happen now.
Well, I want to caution everybody there's literally votes still being counted in certain places not to sort of just jump into the hot takes. What we're doing is we're attempting to be reflective and humble. But what we know is that incumbent parties all across the world right, a
lot of them lost, including the Democratic Party. And to us, what that means is that working people in this country and elsewhere are not happy with the political establishment and the economic establishment, and we need to listen to what people are saying. So I knocked on hundreds of doors in North Philly, Atlanta, and what I heard.
Yeah, what did you hear at those doors?
I heard a lot of things, but I heard deep skep deicism about whether or not politics actually mattered in people's lives, and certainly whether or not the two parties, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party would do anything to make a dent on the crisis of affordability that people are experiencing, the crisis of gun violence that a lot of people are experiencing, and what I believe folks
need to do. And you know, I'm building the Working Families Party, But if I was to give free advice to anybody or the Democratic Party, it would be not necessarily to try to find easy solutions. I don't think the solution is in a one or two page memo that's been written over the past weeks or days. The solutions are in the people listening, right. So I think we need to put our hot take sort of impulses on the backseat and make sure that our listening game is really strong.
So that's my advice, you know.
And then there's a lot of talk that I think is obsessed with this left right binary that I think kind of obscures what I'm hearing. Right, there is a top down feeling that permeates throughout politics or political identity, and a lot of people don't have a political identity, but they feel like somebody somewhere is taking from them, that somewhere, somehow the system is rigged against them. A lot of people that feel that way and they're looking
for solutions. I think that there are some people that voted for Donald Trump for all the horrible reasons that people might think they would vote for Donald Trump, and there's some people that just wanted change, and he was able to articulate that he might be a anti institutional figure.
I think a lot of those folks.
Even now as they see some of his picks, are realizing that may or may not be true. I think certainly when he governs, people will see that again. For the Working Families Party, the thing that we're going to do is we're going to to obsess And this is something that we said, not just like after the loss, we said this in the months before the loss, in
years before the loss. Obsess with the concerns of everyday working people and tell a story that is both true in our work and also rhetorically true about who the villains are.
Right.
So, when people are experiencing this crisis of affordability that is real in people's lives right, especially around housing, right, we name names and say who the villains are. And as political parties and organizations and politicians, it's your job to say who the heroes are the working people, and who you're willing to fight for and willing to fight against.
Yeah, it's interesting, as I understand, Working Families parties especially big in New York. New York is also the single largest state that swung to Donald Trump in this election. I think some eleven percent swing from twenty twenty towards the Republican So if you're thinking about what that looks like, what does a response to the shifts in Long Island and all across New York including actually even in Manhattan and the Bronx everywhere, urban, rural, etc. There was a
major increase for Donald Trump. How can you win those people back? I mean, eleven percent in a single four year period in a blue state is shocking. It's absolutely shocking. And New Jersey was number two, which is even crazier.
So I think in our analysis what's required is a lot of nuance, and it also requires us to actually look at each state.
So I'm from New York.
I actually grew up in one of the working class suburbs that you're referring to that swung last election, swung from red to blue, and in this election actually swung back right.
So you talk about New York.
But like when we kind of look at the data, the Working Families Party worked with folks in labor unions and folks in different organizations over the past two years in New York, specifically on a project called Battleground New York that was successful despite those swings. Success in a number of rational districts to swing from red to blue.
So the thing that I'm curious about in New York, where that's the top line story in the nation, where we unfortunately became together but didn't get the outcome.
That we wanted.
What can we learn from the swings that happened in the neighborhood that I grew up in that I returned to during COVID that the block that I live on, right, so there's data points. Or in Connecticut where the Working Families Party had a great election day, right, interesting.
Right, where many of.
Our working class candidates in purple districts in this election flip those districts from red to blue.
What can we learn about our describe what kind of races?
So yeah, I mean these are races where our candidates are, our teachers are, our labor unions are regular working people.
Right.
We believe that there's a formula. It's not like it's
not one plus one equals three. But people who are from the district who are are people that you could identify as folks in your community, People like Kendrick Brooks, who is a by the way, in Philadelphia, is a WFP only city council person who lives in nice Town, North Philly, who governs the entire city of Philadelphia, or Nicholas or Rourke, who have long stories of being advocates and connected to their communities, could swing people in their
communities on the ground based on their story, based on their relationships, and based on issues that actually matter in their lives, not abstractions or you know, at a certain level on the air. With with presidential candidates and presidential politics, a lot that could get lost, which is why our
bread and butter is the local local politics. Like we we endure in this cycle in this election, seven hundred and fifty candidates, so I know a lot of politics is especially in a presidential year as the top of the ticket. In California, we have one hundred WFP aligned candidate dates I think close to seventy of them won this cycle. On the municipal level, the thing that that connects all these candidates are the fact that they're like regular people.
They're not talking like DC wonks.
They're in the lives of their communities, and on that level, on the city council level, on the county level, you're able to like swing people based on the issues that matter to them, Like, I'll just give an example housing, which is something I'd come back to over and over again. So in Philadelphia, for example, we were able to the Working Families Party, through Kendra Brooks pass eviction diversion, permanent eviction diversion piece of legislation.
That started in COVID.
We made it permanent and in Philadelphia there's a forty decrease in evictions, right, that's keeping real families in their homes. Recently, we also pass through the Working Families Party, a bill that prevents realtors from using AI and algorithms in order to artificially increase people's rentals. This is groundbreaking legislation, and
you know, the lobbies are very upset. But because these are folks that we recruited and are not part of the political establishment, they're willing to take the fight to the lobbyist.
Right.
So if I were to give the Democratic Party any notes, it's like politics are about fights. Who's the Democratic Party willing to take the fight to? And so I could tell you who the Working Families Party is willing to take the fight to. And we have results even in this election where we came together and we joined the United Front and we lost at the top of the ticket. We have a lot of notes about how we might be able to rebuild on the grassroots level.
So you all are taking stories.
In the pages of the New York Times, Adam John Wilson, who was a chief of staff to John Feder I think previously worked for Harry Reid, is blaming interist groups such as the Working Families Party for pushing Kamala Harris too far left.
They write in that article.
The same year, coalition of groups including the Sunrise Movement and the Working Families Party demanded all Democrats are running for president embraced decriminalizing border crossings.
This is with regard to back in twenty twenty.
You know, what's your response to that, The idea that Working Families Party and other sort of left aligned groups have polled candidates like Kamala Harris too far left and put them out of step with the working class.
Well, this was a presidential election where VP Harris's campaign raised and spent one point five billion dollars. The super packs associated with her raised and spent much more than that billions of dollars. Democratic Party operatives, very senior Democratic Party operatives, led these vehicles and now some of them,
not all of them. Some of them are using to in the hours and days and weeks after this electoral loss that they participated in, because we were all part of it, they're choosing to attack relatively small interest groups. I think that this might be an opportunity for reflection. I know that that's what we're doing at the Working Families Party. We're asking questions, We're curious, We're doing a lot of listening, especially to working people.
We're in the field right now.
We're having both big calls, like we had over one hundred thousand person mass call that we did fourty eight hours after the election. We're also doing deep briefs in community and we're getting a lot of people coming in person in those depbriefs. Look, when I was at the doors and like I got the shoe lever to prove it right, I not.
Once I heard a lot of things.
Not once did I hear at anybody suggests that what they were concerned with were some of these some of the issues in the breathless sort of think pieces. And it's kind of ironic we're talking about working people, but the way that some folks are trying to pure trying to prosecute that argument is in opas in the New York Times, Right.
But yeah, but we do kind of have a point, right, I mean at the end of the day, I mean, I'm not sure what the specifics are, but if that's a position, then you're pushing That was a huge reason why she lost. I mean, I was in Pennsylvania. I saw that they and then add play all day long. I saw immigration play all day long. Maybe in North
Philly it's not the same. Although there were a lot of what urban communities in Philadelphia, as I understand it, that moved to the right Puerto Ricans, namely the most than immigration probably has something to do with that. So, I mean, I don't think Adam is one hundred percent wrong. So I think your point is correct. These super packs and all these people are full of playing. But I know if you're pushing candidates to embrace these positions, that's a problem.
I would never say.
I would never say anybody that is attempting to fixure out the wreckage of this election is one hundred percent wrong and that there aren't many factors that might lead to it. And I would never argue that a particular ad or a particular ad wouldn't be effective or not. But I think in some ways that the level of analysis is too low. Right Again, like I mentioned at the top of this conversation, this is a moment where incumbent parties around the world are being rejected by.
Yeah, immigration is a big part of that story too, lot of.
A lot of factors are a big party. You mentioned New York.
Yeah, I think you can't talk about New York without talking about the fact that Eric Adams basically ran and governed every single day based on the premise that New York was a hell hole and that immigrants were somehow in a very binary way, taking dollar for dollar from everyday people in New York.
Well, a lot of state re at that point.
To that point, Kama Harris and the Democratic Party, they basically adopted the Republican frame on immigration. She ran How many times did she talk about prosecuting transnational gangs blah blah blah.
Now you could say, oh, there was an.
Overhang from twenty twenty blah blah blah, but that overhang must have been much more present in twenty twenty when Joe Biden was able to win. So while I think that there you know, I've been a critic of like wokeness in the Democratic Party and like the word policing and the academic language and whatever, and I think that's fine.
But it's very convenient for.
The people who ran the multi billion dollar super packs to be like, it wasn't our fault, it was their fault.
We had nothing to do with it.
When she ran the platonic ideal of the centrist Liz Cheney, like anti immigrants campaign that they would want her to run, it's just very convenient to then be like, no, because of something she said on a questionnaire back in twenty twenty.
That's the reason that lost that.
That's my point for better or work.
She ran the campaign that she wanted to run as a as a consensus based sort of big tent Democrat that campaigned with Liz Cheney. But I also want to I want to also be clear the class de alignment that's been taking place, like working people leaving the Democratic Party, not all of them one from round going to Donald Trump, many of them dropping out. That's many of the people that I talk to every day just dropping out of politics. Yeah, that's been taking place for a long time. Kamala Harris
didn't create that phenomenon. Her campaign certainly didn't solve it. I don't think anyone campaign could solve it. But here we are, and we need to be we need to be reflective. But I think a lot of these backwards looking takes will have people fight the last battle instead of the future battle.
Maurice, let me let me ask you specifically about one of the big battles that is going on right now for the direction the Democratic Party takes is about who was going to bed and see chair sort of this you know, important proxy fight over whether there's going to be you know, hey, maybe we need to deliver for working families in the way that a Bertie Sanders imagine, or whether there's going to be more capitulation to the right and more you know, shifts to the right going forward.
One of the candidates who has been floated is rama Manuel, who was originally Clinton aide, obviously present you know, leading up to him during the Obama administration, actually pushed Obama not to do healthcare because he thought it would be you know, to upsetting to the powers that be. David Axelrod was promoting him as potential d NC chair.
Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.
Here's what I would do if I were if they said, well, what should we do? Who should lead the party? I would take Ambassador Rama Manuel and I would bring him back from Japan and I would appoint him chairman of the Democrat National Committee. Because he is the most skillful, uh political kind of infighter in the Democratic Party. He's been you know, he's been a member of Congress, he's been White House Chief of Staff, he's been the mayor
of Chicago. Now he's been ambassador of Japan, and he ran in two thousand and five and six the campaign to take back the House when Democrats were trying to take back the House of Representatives. He knows how to do this, and he would be a presence in you know, in the media and so on, fearless about taking on Trump. I think that would be a really smart little How many people in.
This room know whore I'm Manual is so in many ways the party still is ram Emmanual's party in terms of the type of candidates, the type of messaging that they promote. What do you make of this push to put ram In as DNC chair.
I mean that is so again, I'm building the Working Families Party. If I was to give the Democratic Party any advice, I mean, what do I hear there? I hear a bunch of elites talking about the concerns of their party instead of the concerns of everyday people.
If you want to come.
Out of the wreckage of this election, then every single thing your party does should reflect an obsession with being deeply in the lives of people who are experiencing the affordability crisis or experiencing just generally this crisis of legitimacy that all the institutions are experiencing, and all the conversations you have will reflect that. The choices of the head of your party will reflect that we need organizers, We need people who are listening to lead us through what
will be a very challenging four years. I know that's how we're thinking about it. And again, I just think that these really these elite conversations about.
What you're going to do for your.
Institution almost is like you're having the wrong conversation and we're on the verge of in this country experiencing something that. Look, I don't want to engage in hyperbole. It's hard to when you look at when you look at Donald Trump's cabinet picks, we could imagine what this is going to look like. We need fighting organizations that are willing to take the fight aggressively to Donald Trump and MAGA and
be in the lives of everyday working people. And so if the conversation isn't about that, if it's about some you know, you know political insider who you know? I mean, you know, I talk to people in Chicago who look at the results of what happened in Chicago and how he left that position. Be curious about what his role was in all those positions that were named, and also be more curious about what folks are like. I live on a block, right, like just a little bio, right.
I'm not a pundit, right. I grew up as a working class person. The reason why I'm here is because both of my parents got opportunities in unions. My dad was in sanitation at a school district. Eventually he was an electrician and got a union job. My mom was a union nurse. And I lived on a block that was multiracial, a lot of ethnic white folks and immigrants and black folks in the suburbs of New York that
went blue and has slowly become contested politically. There is a huge Trump flag on that block now on the corner, something I couldn't have imagined only a few years ago.
I returned back to that community during COVID. If you're not obsessed with what will make my parents, who are retired folks who put their lives on the line to make sure that the trains ran on time and that people got the care that they needed needed, If you don't put your focus on them, and you put your focus on who the chair of the Democratic Party would be or what this relatively privileged Democratic Party operative says in the New York Times, you've lost the plot and
we need fighting, a fighting movement that will be obsessed with putting at the center people like my family and people like my neighbors.
Maurice, thank you so much for coming in this morning. It's good to see you.
Thanks, Maurice, appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate you.
Just programming. Note, I'm gonna be in Japan. I'm really excited for it. Until for a while. Emily will be in for me. Delayed honeymoon. Okay, don't get mad at me. I actually put it off, which his wife was not very happy about, but certain certain sacrifices had to be made for the Breaking Points audience until after the election. I'm excited to go, but I am going to miss you guys all day.
Yeah, we're gonna miss out on you here. I'm sure when you get back there'll be all sorts.
Of I'm sure I'm gonna miss the biggest possible news event.
That's just my lock.
Emily, have you filling in of course for Asagrn. She always says, a great job to you, So enjoy your trip. Thank you, and for all of you guys. I will see you back your Thursday. Emily and Ryan will be here tomorrow, so see you again soon.