Democrats At Fault

and experiencing and living through just feels heavy. And I know that you will feel the tone that Jonathan and I have on the show as we unpack the latest decision coming from a federal judge another their Trump appointee, and there will be many, right because here's the thing, what I say in conversation with Jonathan is the fact that we cannot just have conversations about how horrible Republicans are,

how disgusting, distrustful, immoral Republicans are. We are in this predicament where we are seeing the power of the bench, the power of the courts, the power of federal judges who have no courtroom experience, no trial experience, but just by virtue of being in the right place at the right time with the right fucking president, and the mindset of power over everything else being appointed into positions to up end, up end rules, up end regulations that are

meant to keep us all safe. Thing that I keep thinking to myself is Democrats are at fault. Never, not one time during any election, whether it is mid term elections or presidential have I ever heard a candidate discuss the importance of the courts unless it is a question that is posed in the midst of a debate. Do I ever see even the strategy around what it means to own the courts, Because it's where all of our

fucking rights have come from. When you think about school integration, when you think about abortion, marriage equality, these are just things that have happened in recent years. All of those decisions came from the courts. They didn't come from compromise or collaboration with Republicans to create policy that then the president would pass. No, if you think about the major ways in which we have increased and expanded equity in this country, it has come solely solely from the courts.

So why is it then that Mitch McConnell knew that he knew that through the entirety of the Obama administration, I'm going to ensure that this black man, the nation's first black president doesn't get a Supreme Court justice and doesn't have the ability to fill as many seats as possible because he's going to remake this country in the image of the Democratic Party, and I don't want that.

And instead, instead of Democrats being able to use Mitch McConnell's aggression against progress, to use his embrace of white supremacy and patriarchy as a rallying cry and an opportunity to talk about the importance of the courts and why it matters who you are voting for right in your

congressional districts. For president, it matters because these are the people that are sitting on the bench that are going to be deciding whether or not Republicans are able to jerrymander the fuck out of a district, whether or not a woman and a person with a uterus is going to be able to access an abortion, whether or not your child is going to be able to participate in a sport that matches their gender identity, whether or not they're going to be able to go to school and

learn about the diversity of this country and what truly makes us great without the fear of persecution of their teachers, their administration. All of these decisions are coming down to the courts. Mitch McConnell knew this, Donald Trump knew this. Why didn't Democrats? So it's not enough for me to sit here on this show day in and day out and admonish right and try to shame a shameless group of people. The reality is is that Democrats drop the

fucking ball. That's why we're here because we always believe there is another election to be had, and I'm here to tell you there isn't. The clock has run out on our democracy and it isn't just about midterms coming up in seven months. It's about what is happening in two months in June when the Supreme Court makes their final decisions on some of the most important cases to

be in front of the Supreme Court. A six to three Supreme Court thanks to Democrats' inability to fight for the seat that Merritt Garland should have right now because he's sure it's function be in anybody's Department of Justice. But that's a story for another day. He needed to be on the bench because at least then we would have a five four with the possibility of a swing. Now we know where things are going, these decisions that are coming down in June our formality, do we really

think that we're going to continue with Roe v. Wade. No, and all of the red states that are putting in place their precursor to Roe v. Wade being rolled back. They know they've been chomping at the bid for forty years for the moment to be able to put women and people with uterus is chained in the house, locked in a life that they can't find a way out of, because we sure less fucking I'm not going to have a government that is going to be run by Republicans

that's going to give a shit about your kids. They care about control. And what Jonathan and I will talk about today isn't just about power. It's also about the power to punish. This is a thing that has come up for me as of late. It isn't power just for the sake of power. It is power so that you can punish, punish marginalized people for even believing for a moment that they are deserving for equity and for justice.

These abortion bills that are rolling out across the country, they are about punishing women and people with uterses because you see It's not enough to just say abortion can only happen in the case of this, this, and this. No, it is now about criminalizing, about throwing people in jail for having the audacity to control the outcomes of their lives. It isn't just enough to say that, oh, we don't

want to teach critical race theory. No, it is about completely whitewashing and returning us back to pre nineteen fifties America, where our schools are not integrated, where our curriculums are completely whitewashed, where we're going to go back to a place where we have prayer in school. Now you can bring that case and say, oh, we're supposed to have separation between church and state, And how you think that's

gonna land. With the other Trump appointed federal judges that are sitting in lifetime fucking appointments at thirty something years old. We're waiting on mid terms to tell us that democracy is done. And I'm telling you it's been done, just like in my conversation a couple of weeks ago with Danielle Campamore and her saying we're talking about the fall of rov Wade, as if that hasn't happened in places like Mississippi, Texas, Alabama, and now more recently Florida, Utah.

You have a handful of Democratic governors who are going to be overrun. But that's only overrun with people that can afford to make it to those states. Because for those that are in poverty, that are in low wage jobs, that are hourly wage workers, what are their options going to be? Folks? We are in a terrible place. And for years I've been saying on this show, since it began, that I believe that things in this country are going

to get bloodier before they get better. You can take that anyway that you want, but what I recognize is that we are not members of a party that are willing to do the hard work. They want to wave a finger, they want to try and shame the shameless. They want to talk about morality for people that have

long since given up their values. How are you going to talk to people about morality when they have turned Donald Trump, a man that has been married multiple times, has multiple sexual assault and harassment cases against him, that bragged about grabbing a woman by a pussy, that is a racist, and has talked about shiitthold countries. How are you going to appeal to their moral fiber. You're not. So why are we pretending? Why are we pretending that

our democracy is still intact when it's not. The Trumps know it, the mcconnells know it, the McCarthy's know it. I think that change is really hard, right, That's what we know to be true. That's what we've seen over the last two years. As nimble as we would like to think of ourselves, we're really not. We're creatures of habit and so it's really hard and jarring to say to the American public, you've lost your democracy. That's not

what we're living in now. We're living in some form of a kleptocracy, a loose democracy, or, as was stated for the first time, a regressive democracy. We all wanted to believe that a democratic win in twenty twenty was somehow going to save us. And what we have all realized and known to be true now is that I feel worse. I got to tell you. At least with Trump, every day was a nightmare. But I knew why, and I knew it was because Republicans were in control of everything.

So I had worked up in my mind that once Democrats took the gavel and took back the Oval office that sanity would return. I had no idea, honestly, how fucking deep the Trump disease would be, and that it has spread just as fast, just as voracious as COVID. You got people now like cheering and throwing up their mass on airplanes because they think that somehow this is

a fucking win. When all you have to do is look at what is happening in the UK, what is happening around the world with these latest strains, and know that we are careening towards disaster in so many fucking ways. It's hard to keep your head straight. It's on a swivel. I pose this question yesterday on Twitter, and I'm going to pose it to all of you right now, and again, I encourage you in the comments section, even if you've

never commented before, please consider answering this question. What do you think is wrong with America right now? And can it be fixed? Because that's the thing is that we all realize that something is incredibly wrong. We have this feeling that sits with us right it's become this residue that you're just trying to scrub away. I feel like Macbeth and I'm just out, damn spot out, Get rid me, Rid me of this residue, rid me of this continued perpetual fear and anxiety and stress. So here are some

of the responses that people have posted. First person Wayne Glapion tweeted, the majority is unwilling to fight, minority unwilling to relinquish benefits based on racist policies. Solution will be decided by who is more determined to educate, organize, and implement a proactive effort to obtain their vision of America. The Honorable Arliss Green tweeted, in my opinion, the problems that we're facing today are rooted in the absolute moral

corruption of religious leaders in the US. The MAGA crowd genuinely leaves that their hatefulness is righteousness. Many religious leaders teach politics on Sundays. Now the Bible warned us. Jennifer Coleman says, extremism on the right and the left politically and culturally, Americans are moving farther away from each other culturally. I do not know how we can fix that. Any ideas selfishness, ignorance, says cynical army wife, and hate masquerading

as patriotism, sophistication, and values. I'm afraid our system will have to collapse before we wake up and build a decent society. And here's another one. I really thought that things would be so much markedly better under this administration. I'm so disillusioned. It's really hard right now for us to imagine things getting worse. But my fear is that we haven't even hit the tip of the iceberg yet. America is the Titanic. Is it impossible to turn things

around that we see coming literally a mile away? No, but it's going to take a lot of collective action in order to turn things around. And I don't know if there is the will. I don't know if it is. If they're right, will we need to experience collapse and complete in total devastation for people to realize what it was that we had. But at that point, how many democracies that collapse are able to rebuild within our lifetimes?

I don't know. But coming up next my conversation with our good friend doctor Jonathan Metzel to unpack where we are with the latest COVID numbers, mass mandates thrown out the window, and just genuinely with our democracy. But in the comments section of this episode. My question stands, what do you think is wrong with America? And can it

be fixed? Friends? You know that when it is Wednesday, we have our in house doctor, which apparently we are all going to need soon, doctor Jonathan Metzel joining us on Woke f Jonathan this week. Judge out of Florida, Judge Mizzelle, a Trump appointee who the American Bar Association said was unqualified to be a federal judge, who has never tried a case, just overturned the federal government and the CDC's ability to institute mass mandates on public transportation.

So this includes railways, this includes planes. When the news broke, I saw it, I saw it on Twitter. I saw a video as well that I wasn't sure if the video was real, and it was people aboard a plane apparently an announcement from the flight deck that said that the mass mandate was over, and the people on board

ripped off their masks and started cheering. You would have thought that they said, COVID is finished, and you know, it's no longer a pandemic, it's not killing two thousand people a day, and you know, life as we once knew it, can resume, but that's not what happened. Jonathan, what was your reaction from the decision by trumper Judge Mizzelle And if you did see that video, what was

your reaction from that. I think the whole science of public health depends on kind of getting people to work collectively to do things that may or may not be what they would choose to do individually. Right. I mean, it's pleasant to smoke. It's probably pleasant to smoke in a restaurant if you're a smoker, but you don't smoke because second hand smoke can be bad for other people. And so it's not just about your freedom, it's about

other people's health implications. People probably in the beginning, as we know, didn't want to wear seatbelts. It's kind of a pain in the butt to have to strap something around yourself. I'd rather just drive down the road free and easy in that kind of thing. Bike helmet, you know,

motorcycle helmets, all this kind of thing. So, in a way, the whole idea of public health is we define what we have as a society or a civilization, and then we make rules that collectively not just protect communal health, but they also lessen the load on this system, right the financial system, the cost the healthcare system, and that's kind of what is underneath a lot of the pandemic era stuff that basically, it's like, you know, we're going

to make some decisions that some people like and some people don't like, but we're looking at kind of the system itself. You have, so you have to be able to imagine the system, and certainly that's been the case

with the transit decision. People can take off their mask wherever they want at home and daily pretty much everywhere in daily life right now, but when you're locked on a plane with people, and especially right now because this shiite is getting pretty bad again right now, and it's going to get a lot worse, you know, the timing, you know, So there's a balance here, right, There's always a balance. And for anybody who flies on a plane.

I fly every week, there are a lot of people on the flight who don't want to have to wear a mask, and there are a lot of people who feel like they're safe wearing a mask and stuff like that. I always thought like, I don't want to force anybody to do anything that want to do, but also I don't want a bunch of COVID in the air when I'm on the plane. So I wish we could just have pro code COVID fights and anti COVID flights and you could just kind of decide which airplane you want

to get on. But that's not the system we're in. So part of the story I thought was just kind of the death of the idea that we can kind of work collectively, not just about it's not about individual liberty. It's like, if everybody gets COVID now, our healthcare system is going to collapse. And so is that something you want or not? So that's part of it. That's point

number one. Point number two again is the timing is horrible because if you look what's happening in the UK right now, for example, they're they're almost at bed maximum. They've been they've been doing kind of the same. You know, everybody you don't have to wear pants if you don't want to or whatever, and their system is falling apart. You're at risk of it because the new variants are you know, it's not just infections that are going up,

hospitalizations are going up. And so I think there's some pretty serious COVID coming down the Pike here, So it's not a great time for this kind of thing. And I guess the third point is something we've talked about all year here, which is about the power of the judiciary.

In other words, if you can I mean, this judge is a thirty three year old appointee, a lifetime appointment to a federal judge ship who, as you say, not only has never had never heard a case and therefore was deemed unacceptable by the ABA, but also in this case didn't hear the case right. There was no hearing in front of the judge. There was a hearing that was supposed to be next week, but the judge said, I don't even need to hear it. I know what

my opinion is, and I'm ripping this up. And so the power of the judiciary, I mean, this is kind of what the Republicans figured out ten years ago, and the Democrats were too busy fighting about random crap. The Republicans realized and the Federal Society and all these guys that you can circumvent the will of the people if

you control the judiciary and the Democrats. I mean, you and I talked about it from I mean, we talked about it every single week, but the past three years that the Democrats are fighting about stuff that is much more flash in the pan kind of stuff. But if you don't, if you don't control the judiciary, you're it doesn't matter, right. And this is the first of many such examples that are about to come down the pike of the ways in which if you control the judiciary,

it doesn't really matter what your local laws are. And that's probably even more terrifying, I think, one of the things. And and I want to stay with the point that you just made with regard to you can circumvent the will of the people if you own the courts, right. And I want to also lift up what don Trump Junior said in his text messages to Mark Meadows, which was we own all the paths to power, right, so just make it happen my father's second term starts now.

They are a party that does not believe in democracy. And I think that we as Democrats, and particularly the Democrats that are part of the establishment, the ones that are making, you know, the policy sees, and the ones that have the ability to take Republicans head on and not just in the twitter sphere right like you know, or on television like you and I do, but like have the ability to take them on. Are complicit, Jonathan

in what is happening? We can't you know? And this is this is what really frustrates me, is that I can't just look at what Democrat, at what Republicans have done to undermine our judiciary, to undermine our democracy, and hold them solely to blame, because you needed a week and naive Democratic party in order for this to happen, and a fractured one and a fractured one right in order for this to happen, because if Democrats had been as united and remained as united during the Trump years

and now right recognizing what it is to be true that these people right no longer hold our democracy as a shared value, They no longer hold our Constitution as a shared doctrine that is a living, breathing document that is about the expansion of what the Framers believed, right, And so if you understand that to be true, then the moves that you would make right would match what

you know. But what we see and what we've seen over the last you know, a couple of years, particularly since Biden, you know, came into office, is this desire for a political nostalgia that no longer exists, right, this camaraderie, this collaboration for the betterment of the country. And so it's that naivete that is really going to be is the death of the Republic. Because yesterday, when I'm watching as these people are ripping off their masks and cheering

on this enclosed germ flying germ machine. Which is what I've always said about planes, Right, there has never been a time that I have traveled until COVID while wearing a mask that I didn't end up getting sick. Right, That's just virtue of being on a plane in my immune system doesn't love it, right, and I would always

get sick. And so you see these people, and I'm just like, I don't even believe, Jonathan, to be honest that if we had this all to do over again, and Donald Trump hadn't been president and it had been hilary, like, if all of these things had been true, I honestly don't believe that two plus years in people wouldn't be where they are right now. I gotta I gotta be honest.

I think that the American people have not only a very small memory, but a very short memory but I also believe that they have a very small appetite for being dictated to right. And so it's not that I believe that we wouldn't be in this place of just exhaustion as it pertains to the pandemic. But it's just like I want Democrats to have taken responsibility for the fact that we wouldn't be in this situation with the

courts if they had paid attention for the last ten years. Well, and not only that, I'm going to give you a very counterintuitive take, right, which is if you study how the Republicans like got this power, they had to make a lot of very uncomfortable deals. I mean, it wasn't like getting in bed with the NRA or the Federalist Society or things like that in the beginning. Was you know,

their goal was power. Their goal was not ideology. The ideology was power, and so people had to make they had to make a lot of uncomfortable deals in in the aim of power. I mean they literally sacrificed a lot of their base for it. Um But and so it's not like it was. It mean, it took four decades, right, but but the idea was we're gonna We're gonna under our umbrella, um, bring in the proud boys and the three percenters and the NRA and the whatever whatever whatever,

and so um. You know it probably I have no idea, but it probably became like less of a It became less of a kind of moral dilemma, you know, because everybody understood that the goal was power, and then you know, you take over the judges, you take over the school boards, you take over the election apparatus, which is what's happening now or things like that. So if everybody's on board with like the goal being power, um, then the narrative makes sense. And I contrast that, and here's where the

unpopular take is going to be. Um, Like let's think about like managing and cinema and all that kind of stuff. Like the idea was basically, when people see that we vote for this social safety net all this kind of stuff, that everybody's going to see how good the Democrats are doing, and they're going to rally to our side. And that's probably true. But I can say, having studied the Affordable Care Act, that you can give people a social safety net and it's still not going to assume if you

don't also have a strategy for power. Then it's not like people are going to automatically say, oh, the Democrats are making our lives so much better because we have free healthcare for example, or something like that. And what people miss about like management and cinema for example, is that they've voted for every single one of the judges that Biden has put forward. Right, So, just from a power perspective, I don't know. I guess I'm not exactly.

But here's the thing here, here's the thing is that I think I agree mostly, but I have an addition. So it's not it's not even a subtract. I have an addition to what you're saying. I do believe that the Republicans goal has always been power, right, They've been on this, like you're saying, a four decade march back to total power. But also what I believe, Jonathan, and this is new, I think under Trumpism is punishment. And this is the thing that I don't believe that we're

also uplifting and paying attention to. They don't want just power for powers sake. They want power for the ability to punish those that believe that they should have access to the American dream to democracy. To anything, right. So it isn't enough to just be able to dictate, Oh we don't want abortion, No, we're going to criminalize women and people with uterus is for having the audacity to

want autonomy over their bodies. Not only are we going to dictate curriculum right and what is taught and if it moves outside of the frame of white supremacy, then we are going to criminal allies, right, our teachers and administrators and you know, and and take these schools, these public schools, to court or bleed them dry, starve them right, starve them of federal resources. Once Republicans get in power, it's not enough to just say, oh, we don't agree,

we don't like the LGBTQ community. No, we're going to punish you. Right, So you're not going to be able to play sports, You're not going to be able to participate if you are trans youth or LGBTQ youth with your peers, right, we're going to ostracize you. It is

about power and punishment for them. And so what pains me is that then when I know that to be true, and I hear Biden and other Democrats continuing again to refer to these people as their friends and think that there is a common ground to be had with people that want to see you in pain and you listen. I mean, fucking Don Junior tweeted on Easter, for the love of God an Easter bunny with an AR fifteen saying, come and get it. This is about violence, right, It's

about violence, pain and power. And I'm like an until Democrat the establishment understands that narrative, they're never going to be able to counterbalance it. Well. I mean, I of course agree. You know, in Tennessee we've just criminalized homelessness, so I think there's lots of examples of that kind of punishment happening right now. But I would also say that it's not just a question of the democratic establishment.

It's actually a question of the democratic base. I mean, part of what the Republicans did is they convinced their base to go along with this, and I don't think that the Democrats have quite done that. In other words, like, what are the what are the if the goal is getting power back, what are the are the what are the trade offs you're gonna have to make to get there? Right? I'm just being like really nuts and boltsy about it.

But I mean, I've been reading some good stuff recently that the Democrats path to winning back elections actually involves winning back um centrist Latino voters who are who are drifting toward the Republicans, and figuring out a way to win back working class wide voters in parts of the country.

And so what kind of what kind of trade offs would the Democrats have to make to bring those two voting blocks back under the Democratic tent It would probably not be um stuff that we feel is important, like the Green New Deal and me to care for all and stuff like that. And so the question is, like, um, you know, it's just it's if the framework is power. It's different than morality or righteousness or ideas. And I say don't and I say, don't sell it right, like

I'm not interested. I'm going to be honest with you when at the stage we're at. I woke up this morning, and you know, against my better judgment, I turned on the news, which I usually do not do until the afternoon. And it's, frankly because I would rather read the news than begin to ingest it right via television, And against my better judgment, I turn it on and I'm listening to Mika and Joe on Morning Joe and Mika is

going through every single headline. She's talking about an uptick in violence in schools, in public schools because the reintegration, the anxiety around COVID like has created this unpredictable, unstable kind of mental health environment for kids. And this is you know, it was a top story in New Mexico.

They're talking about Utah now taking on abortion, right, yet another red state that is now taking on abortion and saying that, you know, we're going to create law that is only abortion in the case of the risk of the health of the mother, who which, by the way, who the fuck gets to determine that, right, Like your right wing red state doctor gets to say whether or not you know, this is life threatening, whether or not you actually were raped or this was a product of insects, Like, again,

the determination is not your own, right. So they're going to ban abortion ahead of what is already going to be the national band come June, except for the few abortion asylum states. Right, So you're looking at all of

these news stories. Then it was the COVID story and all of these things that I'm saying, Jesus Christ, right like, Octavia Butler wrote Parable of the Sower back in nineteen ninety three, and it was foreshadowing to twenty twenty four, which is where the story took place, and it was talking about the confluence of climate change, a right wing evangelical Christian takeover of America that destabilized all of the

social safety nets you have. Drugs are rampant, violence is rampant, and unless you have the money to be able to hire your own police department to protect yourself or live inside of this walled off community, you know, you're basically living in the wild, right, And this is what Republicans want. So for me, it isn't about Democrats continuing to have

policy discussions. It's about them identifying who the fucking villain is of our story and us coalescing around our common villain, right and pointing out that these people are a threat, right, They are a threat to everything that you hold dear, And until we can agree that the Republicans are the villain of the American project right, don't talk to me about policy and facts and statistics when they are on

earth to creating their own alternative facts. They have not identified who the villain is, and so there is no coalescing around this common enemy. I mean, two years ago we won a national election based on a common villain. So it's not like we can't do it. We just did it literally the last election. But but the minute we won then it was like, well, you owe me because my voting block showed up for you, and it

became fractured right away. And in the meantime, the Republicans were using the twenty twenty election, as we've talked about here, to overtake the apparatus of the election itself, and the Democrats just were way too slow to see the threat that was actually happening, and so we needed to keep the focus back on what it was. I mean, we I think we badly misinterpreted the twenty twenty election. Just to be totally frank, It's not like it's not like

we loved Joe Biden, we hated Trump and so. But but I think the minute we won the election, it was like my block showed up, and this is what's to happen, or my blockshepp and this is what happened,

and we didn't see that. Really what we needed to do is keep that coalition together and defend democracy, right run for every local school board, run for every local election thing, keep the freaking Lincoln Project doing our messaging, like all the kind of things that we didn't do after that election because we thought, oh whatever, and so now we're kind of paying the price for it. And the other side was very disciplined about something that is

total horseshit, which is this idea. But I mean, wait till after they win the mid terms. They're going they're going to try to decertify the twenty twenty election. I'm worried, and so it's they're not going to try, Jonathan, They're going to do it. They're also going to begin impeachment proceedings for Joe Biden, and they are going to use Hunter Biden's laptop as this bullshit story that they're going

to pump into the press NonStop. And then all of a sudden, the media is going to start questioning things. And then Donald Trump wills have ceased to exist, and the moment that Democrats had to once again tell the story of this criminal enterprise being run outside of our run in our White House for four plus years, we'll be done. Yeah, right, And then Democrats can go back to watch waving their finger and trying to shame people

that have told you that they are shameless. And you know, you've had Jason Stanley on the show, like the fascism rises with a fractured resistance right, and so dividing the Democrats into different camps is you know, we're going to be in the resistance for quite some time. And so you know, it's it's not too late, but I mean, again, we need to massively mobilize to run for local elections. I mean, that really is the lesson here that if we run for you know, the state apparatus really has

to get a lot stronger. That should have been you know, the move for the Democrats after winning the election is we're going to we're going to be hardassies and we're going to defend democracy. It wasn't even putting Trump on trial.

I mean, I think that was important, but it called on a kind of moral assumption about people that assumed that they would all see the threat to our republic and then turned back towards whatever we should have been, like really working hard to seize the mechanisms of power that let that thing happen in the first place. And so again, it's not too late, but we really need to really invest in these local elections that determine how elections are run and and and really unify about that.

I mean, again, you know, I got really depressed their day. I mean, I'm an upbeat person and as you know, I love puppies. But but but the Washington Post had a story about here the top ten Democratic convendors for the twenty twenty four election, and it was like the exact same ten people we've seen running forever. And I'm like, you know, right now, we need to think outside the box. We need to we need a convert We need an outsider.

We need like the Democratic Trump who comes out of nowhere, who has sway and power and authority, Like it, now's the time to think outside of our boy. We need divergence. We need a divergence, a divergent candidate from Like, you're absolutely right, I'm tired of the same players and frankly, like they're not winning, they're not They're you know, we we we said to ourselves, we swallowed this hard pill. We'll go with Biden, right, because we don't know who

else can win. We'll go We'll go with him. And I'm telling you, I honestly think it was a big mistake, but we knew that, right. I believe that it was a mistake because I don't think that he sees the world in the way that it is. I think that he sees the world in the way that it was and what he has understand as the political landscape for the last forty plus years of his life of service.

But that's not where we are. I mean, if you look at historical examples, I mean, I just say that anybody on the list is not going to win an election. I mean, Elizabeth Warren is not going to win an election. Respectfully, AOC is not going to win a national election right now, and neither is Kamala Harris or mayor Pete or any of those guys, you know, because they're all associated with this brand that is not a great brand right now.

And so what you need, I mean, history tells us the power of the convert, right that somebody who was on the other side and then came to your side and they have inside into the other side and has

sway or something like that. Like I think we should have a you know, AOC list Cheney ticket or something like that, like something that is just completely not linked to or just you know, something we need something we need George Clooney, something I don't know, we need something that's not linked to the brand right now, because the brand is not is the brand is tarnish. And honestly, I want, folks, you know, as you're listening to this,

who would be your ticket? Who do you think, in all honesty in the comments section, who would be the ticket that right now if you could run them, you believe that they would get the votes. And I don't mean the popular vote, I mean, like be the racist electoral college, Like who is going to do that? I

want to hear from you. Well, But I mean the other part of that, let me just say, is that the people who would win those elections are not going to be palatable to a lot of Democrats, right, And so that's the problem is that the Democrats like, think about all these people who hated Trump and then they love Trump. I mean jd Vance top of that list. And so the issue is the Democrats have to think change the way they think about democracy. I mean, I think that's just kind of the way it is in

this moment. And so it's it's just much more much more strategic, and I'm not saying sell out your values. I'm just saying, think about who can actually win and what they do. So's it would not be comfortable for Democrats to think, you know, it's it's not a comfortable moment for Democrats. Everybody needs to move outside of their fucking comfort zone. Everybody needs to get off of their

idealized shit right Like it doesn't fucking work, right. And at this point in where we are, we are at war with the Republican Party, and there's only one party that believes that we are at war, and it is not Democrats. And so I don't know how you continue to function when people are beating your ass up and down this country right now, from abortion to gay rights to voting rights, like it's all going and yet we own all the quote unquote mechanisms of federal power, and

we're seeing that that doesn't matter. Right, So at some point you need to have a stop, pivot and reflect on what is not working and make a dramatic move. And the thing that is true about the democratic establishment is that it is like the Titanic, right. You see the iceberg right ahead. But to stop that ship and to turn it all the way around is going to take everyone on board, moving to the other side right and recognizing that we're the only ones that can stop this.

But until then, we're just going to continue towards the iceberg. And I would also just quote mister t enclosing, when you get on a plane, wear a motherfucking mask. Yeah, even if everybody else isn't doing it. So guys, stay safe. As always, Jonathan, we appreciate your insight and you know your continued energy as we move through what is inevitable disaster. Never a dull moment, Never a dull moment. That is it for me today, dear friends on wo gay app

as always, Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.