Hello the Internet, and welcome to this episode of podcast where we cover the race for People's Sexiest man uh and what What's gonna What's coming from the grammy noms? Uh? Now this is uh, this is the first episode we're recording after the election result. My name is Jack O'Brien. That over there is Miles Gray.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
A bad result for the Democrats last night in the election. A bad result I would say for the future of America because we are going to get a new version of fascism that reaches new depths that I don't think we've seen or like we've never imagined yet. But so I think there's a lot of pain and anguish. Certainly I'm feeling a lot of that.
Uh.
I the the polling that I was using as copium heading into the election, the cells Are poll that I think a lot of.
I sniffed too much of that cells Are.
Yeah, I mean yeah, I mean I think for anyone listening, it's it's too early to begin really like parsing through the why of it in terms from like the how who voted how. I think the bigger picture has been clear just about how liberals then liberalism have this is
like it's like policing. It's like a failed project that's not rendering the results, and in fact is only you know, I think, rather than being like they fumbled with the messaging or these other things, they're just larger material life issues that have gone that went completely unaddressed, especially during the Biden administration. That I think opens people up to being like, well, definitely not this while not considering what the alternative is. And some people absolutely did consider the
alternative and fully embrace it. I mean, I look at the results, just even in California with some of the Ballait propositions that went through, like being like, yeah, let's keep like incarcerated people in a form of slavery, like let's uphold that norm. Let's also add some more severe
punishments to very small crimes. So I mean, broadly, there was a yeah, there's a lot is changing demographically, but yeah, all that to say, I mean, I think I'm just completely, like partially just like yeah, but I almost like fucking I'm like pissed that I even allowed myself to me too. Here's the thing we always, at least for me personally, right, like elections and things that happen in politics.
I'm always kind of like, all.
Right, America, like, let's see how fucked up we are and how much we're not seeing the bigger picture. And watching those results I think was just a grim reminder of the fact that this country like has and always will be this sort of same thing, which is foundationally like the sort of the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
And despite the.
Vibrations that abound, at the end of the day, fundamentally that's kind of like where we sort of end up sliding back to without any especially when we're.
Not offering people something truly truly different.
Because that's so allergic to offering something that is actually substantive and progressive in a fundamental way.
If capital isn't centered, then it's that's absolute anathema to these people.
Yeah, I mean there were like Rashida Tali one reelection with seventy seven percent of the vote, Ilhan Omar one reelection with seventy five percent of the vote. Because they have convictions, and their convictions don't align with sort of the liberal order that's represented by the mainstream media, and so they're treated as unpopular those convictions, but they're not
unpopular with people, They're unpopular with the media. Some progressive policies did okay on ballot measures in places that you wouldn't expect them to, protecting abortion rights, raising the minimum wage, like in Missouri, where people voted for Trump like hard and went hard for Trump, they voted for abortion rights and increasing the minimum wage paid sickly, and then they also voted for Donald Trump by a landslide. It really feels like the thing that didn't do well well is
the mainstream Democratic Party. And then I would say also the mainstream media is sort of narrative around the election, just didn't didn't resonate with people, but really like the strategy of changing convictions based on what they thought was going to be the most convenient for them electorally. Yeah, like they continue to treat politics as a game that they act like we don't know they're playing.
Right, you know, And it's so clear, right like the pandering from from like Democrats, this like sort of neoliberal set and courting people on the right shows already that values are negotiable, you know, if you're if you're suddenly.
Like, yeah, you know what I'm actually I'm actually.
For something more like a severe form of immigration control, and you waiver on those things, then we can't reasonably expect them to deliver on those things if those values are not set and they're not pore value like the values.
Are just interchangeable.
They're they're transactional, and they haven't really delivered. So as they move to the right to court those people on the right, you get you get the base of people who've been supporting Democrats who feel cheated and they're like.
What the fuck, why are they going on? What the fuck is what's over there? I thought this ship was about what we're doing over here.
And then the people on the right see the Democrats coming towards them, and they're like, oh, these people are just they fucking say whatever. Man, Like, yeah, I'm not, I'm not, I'm sure, but at like the Republicans have been saying the same shit forever, basically, just at louder volumes from time to time, and yeah, I again, I'm just like, I'm very this is again. This is the first time I'm taught like we're talking about this, so forgive me, because my thoughts are like all over the place.
I'm very concerned about the future for younger people I'm very concerned about trans people.
I'm very concerned about immigrants.
I'm very I'm just generally a lot of things become very very existential, like very.
Quickly just thinking about this presidency.
Yeah, and I think I think immediately what people are probably going to experience first is more.
Just like the neglect of the government.
Like it's not so much as like people are going to be coming for people, more so that no one gives a fuck about you is probably I feel like, probably like the first phase of what this is all going to feel like, Yeah.
And then the coming for you I think will yeah.
At a certain point, because I think the lack of social safety nets, the just destruction of public education, public health, and things like that are going to manifest in these other sort of chaotic ways that we're all going to.
Have to deal with.
The one thing that I am thinking of is that what is clear is we have to now, first of all, motherfuckers, Brunch is canceled forever.
Forever is over.
Brunch is dyed h and we have to really think about too. I think one thing is that it was easy to just be like, oh, yeah, you know what, maybe calm won and it just like kind of just slow down the rot and won't have to really really have to take radical action to help other people. But I think now with Trump in the White House is
that that's becoming very real. And that's how I'm kind of trying to figure out what how I'm going to feel good is that people are going to need help because it's not going to come from the places that it usually does. And this hopefully can reinforce our sense of community and connection to each other to one And that's such a fucking three million foot altitude take right now. But that's about as much as I can articulate at the moment, just given how fucking just wild this whole situation is.
Yeah, I do, Yeah, I mean, I mean, like some of the early electoral data suggests that like the places that Harris gained was like only with people who earned
over one hundred thousand dollars, but then she lost. It really feels like when you have two neoliberal like options, and you know, I think the Republican Party and the first Trump administration kind of fits into that category where like it feels like there's this establishment system that is consistently resisting any sort of political or institutional action that
would benefit people. You know, in any consistent way, you're going to consistently have a situation where whoever the party is that's in power is going to have a massive disadvantage, and especially if they like it's just all the shit that we were saying all along with like that that seemed wild about like Harris being like, I can't think of a single thing I would have done differently, and not like running away from the Biden administration in any way,
you know, radical centrism, trying to like make friends with the Republicans, you know, by like being friends with Liz and Dick Cheney. Like the consistency or lack thereof really feels important to voters now. And they did, like they did the exact opposite that they did. They like there there were New York Times articles like written approvingly about this, like social media strategy on the Democratic parties.
Well yeah, they they turned up every lever except the one that was going to bring meaningful, material change to people's everyday lives.
It's like, well, we're not gonna I mean, we're not going to try and figure out how to like you know, give people better financial support or augment like a child tax credit or those kinds of things, or really implement an affordable housing plan.
It just became like, what.
If we got the Avengers on a zoom call on GOOTV Monday and that maybe, well, that's how we can
just squeak out a victory. What if we completely ignore the fact that we had so much polling around disarming Israel or not at least continuingly to continuing to happily arm Israel while they're in the midst of a genocide, when the polling clearly indicated you would gain more people by adopting that policy, but they said, well, we only lose five percent if we don't, you know, and they're looking at numbers like that and expecting they just wanted
they just they were like, let's just put our fucking head down and just get through this thing and maybe scaring the shit out of people enough about trumpet work, and that clearly spectacularly failed. And there's like, and you just look at how much of a vote vanished for Democrats. I mean, I see people who are like, what happened all these votes? Like something's not right. I think people were clearly been like, what the status quo is fucking bullshit.
And and right now, unfortunately the Biden administration, along with Kamala Harris is they are in the driver's seat for the status quo.
So for most people, I think, without even thinking too, I'd be.
Like, well, I'm not voting for this, and I'm not sure what this will bring, because I'm I'm sure most people don't know what this will bring. And that's the other part that really is just the freaky and sad. And yeah again, we're truly we are in the midst of a very interesting period for American history for sure, like this, yes, this is this is something we've never this is something we've never seen, and yeah, well we will have to figure out how to how to manage it.
There was this New York Times article about their social media strategy where they were just like test out a bunch of things, see what works. I think I remember things like that in the twenty twelve Obama re election campaign. I know I remember that being specifically a strategy with
the Clinton administration where it was weather. They would call it weather ballooning messaging and seeing, how you know, focus group testing and you just like release this cloud of political nanobots trying to win this imaginary game they still think they're playing, and I'm sure they're like there will be examples where they did like talk about, you know, economically helping people, but it was like one of a thousand messages that they were putting out and there was
no conviction. And also we saw that the Biden administration, you know, at several kind of high leverage moments where like Biden threw up his hands, I was like, guys, I'm trying over here. I just like can't do anything. I'm only the president of the United States. Like those are moments that I think stuck with people, and it really feels like the exact opposite, Like consistency of message and of values and being able to stick to a
central message is incredibly important. Now It's what drove like the nobody saw coming Sanders campaign. Like we talked about how like Trump when he came to power, there was like all this, you know, the people who saw him coming were like, there's just appetite for an anti establishment pick and being the establishment and just frantically trying to say whatever it is you think people want to hear from you. Is like the exact opposite of what is
going to resonate with people. Yeah. So yeah, that's kind of where I'm at with like how we got here, Let's take a quick break and we'll come back and we're back. Yeah. I retweeted this video from David Graeber, like, you know, he died in twenty twenty, but just talking about, oh.
Like the failings of liberalism.
Yeah, just like the radical centrism. Yeah, of like you know, he talked about how Obama, and I think this extends to Clinton, they were basically people who became popular because they were charismatic enough to make it seem like they
believed in something. You just had all the gestures and the aesthetics of a movement, you know, like we had the Obama poster, we had you know, there was just but then they ultimately don't deliver on that, and you ultimately end up like making I don't know, like that that has to be damaging to the overall brand of the Democratic Party when they keep appropriating the images of the ideals of progressive politics and then you know, not
not delivering on it. So yeah, I mean this is all like long term problems that I think a lot of people have been identifying for a long time. But I do think all of these different strands are coming back and taking a giant shit on their faces totally.
It's yeah, like it's just yeah, I don't know, man, I really don't. I mean I I historically we've just we see the pattern play out over and over and over again, and we just absolutely, you know, unfortunately, because all of the power is concentrated at the top, just are learning zero lessons.
And that's really frustrating from just.
The way that the way this campaign happened, the lack of a primary.
There's just I think that's the thing.
It's like so right now being in this moment, because it's just like right after like just being in a car accident and like you're just kind of peeling your face off the air bag. For anybody who's unfortunately been in an air like a car accident like that, it's fucking disorienting, you know, you're like, fuck, and right now all these things are like rushing through in my head of all the different ways that these little blunders were
adding up to something like this. I just hope that, you know, like in a just world, this would be the end of the Democratic Party in this current incarnation. But I think we have to also be really real about the fact that the current that this party will not really change in terms of being able to move beyond the worship of capital and making line go up.
And you know, but it's a massive, extremely well funded, extremely sophisticated machine designed to convert you know, our impulses for change and progressive ideals and progressive movement into like you know, market based Yeah, yeah, political movement, and that that's what it does. That's that is kind of its whole, Like if you look back on it over the past, you know, twenty years, that is really what it is designed to do.
Yeah, I think that's That's just a moment for I think for a long time, you know, like we're always like demanding better. You know, it's like they can do better, they can do better, and they can, but intellectually and the way the the ideology of the party works, it's incapable of it congesture to it can do things like incrementally,
but not in the truly meaningful way. And I think the only hope, the other hope that I can hold out for is a like you know, we were talking and with crafton talking about the passing of time and finding old civil War rifles in a river. Is that things are things are always in flux. So yeah, this this era of American politics is fully shifting into something different now, or at least the more aggressive form of being like total mask off, like y'all are on your
own kind of shit. But there, but there, there is going to be an opportunity for people with actual convictions to hopefully fill in just to sort of recapture what people can believe in two. I don't think that's gonna happen now. But there's the bottom line is I think too many people feel completely cut out of a normal life, and because because of that, there's just resentment going in
so many different directions. And yeah, holding onto the message of just saying like we're gonna give you this the same thing, but maybe with a few more celebrity endorsements.
It's just not enough. It's not enough. It's not enough. Yeah, I don't know what else. I don't I really don't want to say. I'm kind of like just cooked, dude. I'm like, I'm so sorry, y'all, it's.
It's just I also just I just honestly I feel really fucking awful too, for just for for like a fleeting moment being like oh yeah, this this this maybe maybe this isn't where things are headed, when like, deep down, like I could just.
I'm like, this is so bad.
You're not giving people anything, You're not talking to people where they're at, you're not acknowledging their suffering. And yeah, absolutely it's yeah, I feel I feel terrible.
I feel like I fucked up. I got caught up in you know, pulling and bullshit like that, and just you know, hope that this would somehow like stave off the full right.
Because I think at the end because at the end of the day, like I mean, the pattern was always going to be if material conditions aren't being improved for people, they are going to begin to open up to alternative forms of governance, whatever that is good or bad, because again,
what is on offer is not doing it. So like knowing that deep down, it's just like I think it's also because you just want to you just be like, fuck, dude, I know, like what the this world is so fucking unfair, but that but again, the levees were going to have to break at some point, and I think this is
how it's doing it. I think all all of like the finger pointing I'm seeing like in certain op eds and like on online, are not really helpful at the moment because I think the larger picture, it's not like, well what if so and so did better or whatever. I mean, like, I'm sure we can we'll be able to talk about that a lot more like once you fully like dive into the data. But I think at the end of the day, what the biggest issue was is that the status quo is absolutely fucking killing people,
not just here but abroad. Yeah, And the answer to that as an electoral strategy was to just keep insisting on it was an absolute blunder. But I think for the consultants that were running Joe Biden's campaign and then took over Kama's campaign, they just felt because of their such their utter disconnection from what what actual people are feeling.
They're like, no, man, just fucking get We'll say some cool stuff, We'll get some really cool, glitzy public appearances and things like that, and and and and just we'll just gesture.
To the fact that we're not these people. And that's just not enough.
So, yeah, I'm curious to see what, you know, how the establishment Democrats reckon with this because I'm I don't know if they're gonna keep blaming other people, uh yeah, because I mean I would be I would be shocked if they were, like, we just really need to meet
people where they're at. I mean, like the thing I'm seeing from more people is like talk about like we need our own Prager University, we need our own daily Wise Like I mean, you guys think this is this kind of already exists and the form of like mainstream media.
But yeah, it rejects yeah, certain things, so like it's I do feel like the mainstream media is just the like doing kind of the same thing that the Democratic isn't, taking those ideals and then converting them into market you know, pro market capitalism, and they're like they are playing and buying into that same game of you know, politics is convincing people you're going to do what they want you to do and then like ultimately doing whatever's best for
the market. Like that that assumption is just like built in, and I just yeah, there has to be consistency and convictions and yeah, maybe a primary will it will help.
Maybe actually, you know, having a Democratic primary next time will help and will reveal some candidate one of the effective things I saw in the mainstream media that did stick with me was actually, I think it was John Stewart just showing people's reactions to each of the losses, like both Democrat and Republican, and like they were always
like coming up with some solution like sort of. The mainstream response was like, well, now the Republican Party will need to be like a softer, gentler Republican Party ahead of like the rise of trump Ism, and you know, now the Democratic Party will have to like move towards
the Republican Party. And it's never it's never right the message that people have in the offing, and usually the way that their conventional political strategist wisdom gets upset is by a candidate coming out of the woodwork, you know, Obama or Trump or someone like that and not being what people expected, at least on the surface. So maybe a primary will reveal somebody who is able to you know,
have consistency and convictions. But right now it just feels like really hard to imagine a version of the Democratic Party that is not because it's just so wild that after twenty sixteen, the lessons were so profoundly unlearned. Yeah, I know, I came back and did the same fucking thing twenty four and then they just lost the need it exact same way got.
Through by the fucking film on their dentures in twenty twenty and were like, yeah, fuck yeah, that worked. That worked. That worked.
And when you look at like the number of registered Republicans that got picked off, it was like six percent went Biden's way in twenty twenty, like five percent went that. All that work for fucking five percent, Yeah, and that's it.
They lost. They they won fewer, a smaller percentage of the Republican vote after focusing their entire closing message on courting Republican voters with like Dick and Liz Cheney. The Trump campaign's research, like The New York Times, wrote an article about like the closing messaging from both of the campaigns.
The Trump campaign's research found that Up for Grabs voters were about six times as likely as other battleground state voters to be motivated by their views of Israel's war in Gaza, and changed their messaging to you know, make empty gestures at that at being like anti war. Obviously they're not going to be an anti war administration, but like they at least were willing to acknowledge that and change that messaging. Yeah, but yeah, the the trying to
run right didn't work, didn't work. They lost with everybody who makes less than one hundred thousand dollars. They gained with people who make over one hundred thousand dollars a year, and lost ground with people who make less than that.
Yeah, and yeah, I guess and numerically guess who there's more of.
Yeah, yeah, I.
Just I think again, the one thing I think, I think for everybody listening like this feels.
Shitty, it is shitty.
It's perfectly okay to like grieve whatever sort of future you thought may have been coming. But I think on the other side of that for those of us who are really engaged and have empathy, but the real challenge is now going to be that, like our challenge is going to be in how we are able to protect each other, how we can really again, the things that
we're fucking this country up. We're not going to be solved in a presidential election given what was on offer, But there's a lot to be done in your immediate community and what you are in control of around you locally, and that's I think the place to really pour the energy into because people, it's the people that are around you that are going to need, like we are going to need each other the most, and I think that's what we have to open ourselves up to, truly, is
to step up that challenge to really, really really be committed to that, because that's how that's the only way we're going to kind of be able to weather whatever storm is coming our way and the only way we can really feel good about it. So I don't, I know, it feels like absolute shit right now, and that's okay because it's it totally fucking It's terrible to like watch a thing happen where you're like, I think this.
Is a car crash in slow motion.
And I'm not the greatest thinker here, but I feel like this is a misstep, and watch that happen.
It's terrible.
It's difficult, and to see people emboldened on the right, it's awful.
And it feels like the.
Country fucking hates you, especially for marginalized people. You're like, maybe, you know, maybe maybe they do give a fuck about
what these kinds of outcomes are. And I think rather than looking at it that way, we just have to understand that there are most people do want to the best for like their neighbors, and I think we have to really like pour into that because I think again, hitching our wagon to the star of electoral politics is very difficult and as we've seen and just bring utter disappointments.
So I think, yeah, yeah, definitely the process is in order, and then we need to get to work and yeah, helping each other at like a local level, and that.
Waiting for the Democratic Party to figure out things that they are designed not to figure out. It turns out, all right, We'll leave it there. We'll be back tomorrow with the whole lest episode of the show. Until then, be kind to each other, be kind to yourself. Get the vaccine, Jesus. The healthcare thing was like the fifth thing that, like RFK, is going to have a major role in the future the healthcare of this country. Get your flu shots, get your vaccines, don't do nothing about
white supremacy, and we'll talk to you all tomorrow. Bye bye.