Democrats Theory of Powerlessness

here we go. Let's start from the top with the fact the biggest of the pieces of breaking news, which is that seven hours, over seven hours, four hundred and fifty seven minutes of White House phone logs are somehow missing, erased, lost on the day of the insurrection. I want you to think about this because somebody had tweeted me and I said, oh my god, what a wonderful way to think about this. Imagine being on the job, whatever job

that is. Imagine that you are a blue collar as the Republicans love to say, regular American worker, and you happen to go dark, right, for over seven hours. That's an entire workshift, right. Let's assume that we all work for roughly eight to ten hours a day and you go missing for over seven hours or people are trying to call. There's just a gap in communication during this time. And oh, by the way, you're also the manager of said building that is on fire and no one can

find you. That is essentially what the National Archives when they gave over the records up from the White House on the day of the insurrection, what the one six Commission has recognized and is being reported by the Washington Post and now ever every major news outlet Donald Trump.

We know from the over five hundred interviews that the White House that the one six Commission House Investigation has done over five hundred interviews that during that time everyone who was in the vicinity of Donald Trump said that Donald Trump is on the phone. We know that he talked to Kevin McCarthy. We've learned that he tried to call Mitch McConnell. We know that he talked to Jim Jordan.

We know that he talked to Steve Bannon. We know that there are a list of people that were in conversation, whether for sixty seconds or ten minutes plus with Donald Trump on the day of the insurrection. But there is a huge fucking gap in the White House phone locks. Now a couple of things can also be true at the same time. First of all, the only reason that a president of the United States wouldn't be using said white house phone logs is because you are trying to

cover something up. The only reason why you would be using other people's phones, as I'm probably assured that Donald Trump has more than one cell phone, is because you are trying not to be traced. That you don't want your you know, big moment, right, your big insurrection moment to be interrupted, so you just stay off White House lines. That is not the action that is taken by somebody who is innocent and somebody that doesn't know how to operate as a criminal. Here's the things that we already

know to be true about Donald Trump. Donald Trump does not use email, does not have email, doesn't use text messages, doesn't write shit down. We even know from Ama Rosa herself that one day she walked into the Oval office and Donald Trump literally put a piece of paper in his mouth. Innocent people don't do dubious shit like what

has been uncovered in Trump's White House. So here's the fucking question, the million dollar question, the billion dollar question that I've been asking since the insurrection on January six, twenty twenty one, Where the fuck is Merrick Garland. Seriously, at this stage of the game, you can no longer tell me that things take time. You can no longer tell me that the Department of Justice is actually putting

every bit of muscle necessary behind this investigation. You can't because it's been over four hundred fucking days and we have no word, not even a murmuring from inside the Department of Justice other than people who work there that are saying that they are frustrated with the inaction of this age. So here's the thing, folks. We have a case that was in New York that was supposed to be overseen right by the Manhattan District Attorney, the new

Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg. In the course of the last few months, we have had two of the leading prosecutors in that investigation quit, and they quit outright because there has been no movement with regard to interviews in front of the grand jury that his predecessor Sidance had put in place, a special grand jury to sit for longer than normal juries, because the mountain of evidence that they need to fucking go through is just that deep

and that high Alvin Bragg, however, says, oh, there's nothing to see here, folks, Merritt Garland mountains of evidence that has been put together by a House commission that has absolutely no teeth. All they can do is investigate, right, All they can do is investigate and then make recommendations.

It is up to the Department of Justice to actually offer up indictments, which, by the way, they have enough fucking evidence to do, from Steve Bannon to Mark Meadows, to fucking John Eastman to Donald Trump and to all of the minions in between, and yet we have seen absolutely nothing. But do you know what the other story is,

because there are many. Here's the other story. Thomas. Clarence Clarence Thomas, who I always refer to because you know, you can never trust a person with two first names, right, you can't. So. Clarence Thomas's wife, Jinny Jinny was at the insurrection. Genny funded buses for the insurrectionists. Clarence Thomas was the soul, the soul dissenter on the decision to provide access to Donald Trump's phone records. Clarence Thomas, let me say that again, was the soul dissenter, not wanting

to release Donald Trump's phone records. Then we find out why, Oh, because Genny Thomas had been in regular communication with Mark Meadows. And so why do I say this? Let me bring it full circle. Seven hours of White House phone logs are empty. Mark Meadows was in deep communication with everybody who was at the insurrection right as a as a participant, or we're in the chamber hiding and fearing for their lives.

Why wouldn't Clarence Thomas want that information release? Oh, because it would show that his wife's phone number would come up on Mark meadows phone more than a couple of times. And then you have yesterday, Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader for the Senate, say just casually that Clarence Thomas should recuse himself or should have recused himself, and maybe there should be some type of ethics with the Supreme Court. Folks,

let me tell you something. My ability to have patience anymore for accountability, for responsibility for an attempted coup to overthrow our democracy is done. I am going to call out every single fucking person until I no longer have breath in my body for their ineptitude. Folks will say to me, well, Danielle, What do you want Chuck Schumer to do. It's not like he can remove Clarence Thomas from the bench, No he can't. But do you know

what Democrats can fucking do? Wage a full on media onslought on Clarence Thomas, applying the fucking pressure so that Republicans are forced every time that there is a camera in their fucking faces to be able right to state to the American people why there should be no trouble with the fact that literally Clarence Thomas is literally in bed with the fucking enemy, the enemy, the trees in his enemy. Who was on the phone with Mark Meadows

saying this is how Donald Trump stays in office. You're telling me that a woman who is the wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice doesn't know how the fucking constitution works, doesn't know electoral politics. Oh you want to tell me that they're they're a Switzerland that is in their house and she Clarence Thomas is completely neutral to the fact that his wife was at the rally. Because here's the thing, folks, they don't even give a fuck

about perception. You know why, because Democrats never lean into how things look, and that all you need to do is what Donald Trump did with his accusations of fraud in the twenty twenty election, which is planned to fucking seed. Oh seems like there was fraud. Remember Donald Trump said, right on the phone with Secretary of State in Georgia, Brad rath Nsberger, find me eleven thousand, seven hundred and thirty some odd votes. I'll handle the rest. I got

my folks in place, I got this covered. What the fuck do you think that Donald Trump was doing for four hundred and fifty seven minutes, right, Donald Trump was sitting in the White House orchestrating the coup that was playing out on national television. But Republicans want to turn around and even a sitting here's my other story, sitting federal judge appointed by Donald Trump, Judge McFadden, said this about insurrectionist that, oh, if they were a non violent

they shouldn't see any fucking jail time. And equating what we saw on January six, twenty twenty one, to the protest against the killing of George Floyd and consistent and unrelenting police brutality, how can you look at these two fucking situations and say these two things are the same bitch, what are you looking at? But this is who Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump put on over three hundred federal

courts around the country. But again, no media pushed by Democrats to bring the world's attention to what the fuck is happening in the United States Supreme Court, in the United States Congress, and what was happening on the day of January sixth. It's oh, nothing to see here, folks. And I gotta tell you this. You know, there is just so much that is happening. There is just so much that is at stake, and I want to say this.

So in New York magazine, Alexandriocstio Cortez was interviewed, and I want to read you what she said in this article, right, and the article is entitled AOC's warning for Democrats, We're in trouble. My other big story. What she says here, I want it on a billboard, I want it on

every TikTok, I want it on every fucking reel. But it won't happen because, you know what, it's not a slap that took place at the Oscars that we can all talk about for two and three and four days but not the fact that we literally have active sitting justices and active members of Congress that are bitch slapping our democracy up and down, and no one gives a shit. This is what Alexandrio Cassio Cortez said about Democrats and said about the midterms that are coming up in a

few months. Quote a younger member of Congress, the first vote I ever cast was for Barack Obama, who was called a socialist, and all of this stuff, all of this rhetoric that we see today, has been the political reality my entire life, and so I never felt a nostalgia for something that never existed in my lifetime. I feel like our politics has fundamentally changed, whether it's for the better or for the worst. It's for people's determination. But I was never under the illusion that we can

bring mansion along. And this is what she is referring to, because Ocasio Cortez, according to this article and facts, was one of only six Democrats that voted against Biden's one point two trillion dollar infrastructure bill last November, and the reason was because the larger bill, right, the bill back better the people's the human infrastructure component was going to be split off right and they said, oh, let us pass the actual infrastructure that then we can tout as

bipartisan as if people give a fuck, and then we'll come back for the BBB portion later on. And then what happened. Joe Mansion and Kursten Cinema right renamed as they always do, they smile to your face and stab you in your back, and oh, Cassio Cortez is just like, do we not understand the same person? And what she says in this article so very plainly is that she's like, I want to trust that the President of the United States knew what he was doing, but this doesn't feel right,

and it didn't feel right. Here's her quote quote. I have the utmost respect and confidence in the president, but I just felt like we called two different plays on this one. I think that there is a sense among more senior members of Congress who have been around in different political times that we can get back to this time of buddy buddy and backslapping and we'll cut a deal and go into a room with some bourbon and some smoke, and you'll come out and work something out.

I think there's a real nostalgia and believe that the time this time still exists, or that we can get back to it. Folks, how many times have you heard me say the very same thing on woke af that Joe Biden went into the presidency with this sense of nostalgia. He went into the presidency and clearly let go of the eight years in which he was vice president and watch the hostility right play out against Barack Obama then

President Barack Obama. And I believe that Joe Biden thought to himself, well, you know, it really isn't about race, you know, and they're calling him a Muslim, but it really isn't about xenophobia or or Islamophobia. It really is the fact that you know, he was an outsider, right, and I know these guys. I've you know, played games with these guys and attended dinners and birthday parties, and

so I'm one of the good old boys. And so when they see my old ass, white face, that they will see some comfort and they'll come to the table because we're cut from the same cloth. And you see, folks, it's that kind of thinking that made Joe Biden my

fifth choice for president. My fifth choice for president because I knew, I knew and felt exactly what Ocasio Cortez stated in this article, It was the belief that I'm one of the good old white boys, and all we need is a couple of bourbons and a cigar, and we'll get this country back on track like we always have, not at all recognizing that our body politic had been forever changed, that it was already changing when he was vice president, and that Donald Trump and the Trump administration

wiped out any ever possibility, any little strand of hope that the Republicans of yesteryear were gonna fucking return. So when he saw the very same people that he used to sit bourbon with decide that they were going to vote against the certification of his election win, and then he saw the same onslaught of lies right, and then he saw the Capitol Building in a plum of smoke, you would think that Joe Biden would have shook off his desire for yesteryear and had his ass blasted into

the present fucking moment. But alas, here we are. Here, we are with nada, nothing, zilch, zero to offer the American people as to why Democrats need to remain in power. Because here's the thing, Democrats are not making any type of push to hold Donald Trump accountable. They want to move on to issues that quote unquote the American people

care about. Do you know what the fuck the American people care about having a government that isn't corrupt Because the questions that I keep asking about Marrick Garland, about the Alvin Braggs of the world right, is that they all take money from the same fucking people, both Republican and Democratic donors. And I'm saying to myself, self, why isn't their rigorous investigation because I believe that these motherfuckers

are bought and sold. But instead of anybody doing any deep dive investigation into whether or not, oh, I don't know that a sitting Supreme Court justice members partner decided to fund insurrectionists instead of going into see like who exactly was funding Alvin Bragg's campaign and what decisions did

he make about slow walking the Trump investigation. And after literally years of work that has been done to build a criminal case, an airtight criminal case against the man who has been on a thirty plus year fucking crime spree in this state, let alone the four year crime spree that he did nationally. So you look at this, folks, you look at this and I think to myself, like, where is the energy? Why is there such a lack of focus? Why is there such a lack of grit

and pursuit of justice above all else right now? And the only thing that I can think of, the only thing that makes sense is that money is entangled in this because there's no other and you can't you shit like, Oh, the country's been through enough, right because this is the type of talking points that both sides want to offer up. Oh the country has been through enough. The American people want to turn the page, turn the page on to

what authoritarianism? American fascism? What are we turning the page too, We're turning the page to the focus on preserving democracy overseas while ours is under attack. Why would people decide to vote for Democrats when Joe Biden stands up and refers to the people that want that believe that he's an illegitimate president as his friend. So if you're not making it very clear who the fuck the enemy is, then how are you getting people to vote for you?

And why would they show up? Here's what else Okasi or Cortez offers in this interview in New York magazine quote. If the president does pursue and start to govern decisively using executive action and other tools at his disposal, at his disposal, I think we're in the game. But she says, if we decide to just kind of sit back for the rest of the year and not change people's lives, yeah, I do think we're in trouble. So I don't think that it's set in stone. I think that we can

determine our destiny. Here. Here's the thing I do disagree with Ocasio Cortez here, I do believe that it's set in stone. I don't think that Democrats in charge, in power in this administration are going to do or offer a fucking thing. They're not going to offer a rebuke of the Republican Party turned into white nationalist party. They're not going to offer right to the use of executive action because they have this fifty fifty split that ain't shit can get done. So they're not going to cancel

student loan debt. They're not going to do shit on climate change, they're not going to do anything on police or form. But get this, even though we know that executive orders can be rolled back, Joe Biden has until twenty twenty four, so he could be providing clear relief and leadership in this moment, even if it is just to use as a campaign motivator to get people to want to go to the polls in November and then

again in twenty twenty four. And this is why my upcoming conversation with our friend doctor Jonathan Metzel today is so important because Jonathan and I get into a conversation that really got me, and it is this, the Democratic Party does not understand power. They don't understand how to

get power, they don't understand how to hold power. And when Jonathan begins to unpack what he believes are the reasons why, and I want to say this, we can't just say and rest on our laurels that, oh well, it's easier to sell hate, like, oh well, it's easier, And Jonathan will say this to be united when you were a monolith. Because here's the thing, and my pushback is that if saving our democracy is not the unifying message,

then what the fuck are Democrats running on? That's really the question, because you don't have to be focused on all of these other issues because the reality is is that if we don't preserve our democracy. Then it doesn't matter what is happening with climate change, It doesn't matter what is going on with police reform. It doesn't matter that women and people with uterusis are about to lose abortion access when the final decision is made in June

about Rovie Wade and the Mississippi case. None of that matters. If we don't have free and fair elections, None of that matters if we have lost faith and the integrity within our governmental agencies. So we can talk about all of these other issues until we're blue in the face, But if the fundamental, the foundation of it all, which is our democracy, government formed by the people, is not protected,

then nothing else matters. And what is sad but so very evident, is that Democrats are looking up in the sky hoping for a miracle and one ain't coming. Because the miracle right now would be them developing a spine, would be them developing some type of warrior spirit that has been absent, which leaves me wondering why I'm still a Democrat. Do you know why you are still a Democrat? Tell me in the comments section today, why we continue to be a part of an activated in this party

that clearly has no path forward. We have a handful of months, folks, a handful of months. We'll be here in the blink of an eye, and so will American fascism. And I'm wondering which gets here first. Coming up next my conversation with our friend doctor Jonathan Metzel. Folks, I am back from vak as you know, and super excited to be rejoined by my favorite Wednesday guest, doctor Jonathan metzol.

You know him and you love him as the author of Dying of Whiteness, which apparently we are in fact going to all die of in the next several months. I mean, I don't know how much more information we need to see in front of us, Jonathan about the direction that this country is headed in about its love

affair with white supremacy. So talk to us about what you have been seeing and noticing, because I'm telling you again, I don't know what your thoughts were when you wrote Dying of Whiteness, Where where your mind was in terms of how you were going to see the evolution of essentially your thesis, the evolution of your book over the last couple of years. So hello everybody. I'm in Ithaca, New York today. I'm obviously wearing a turtleneck because it's

a blizzard out. It's literally snowing like crazy out my window, and it's nineteen degrees and so it's end of days. And if it's if I'm realizing, if it's end of days, you want a comfortable turtleneck. So that's that's kind of my strategy now. But I'm here actually giving I'm giving the Krieger lecture that later this afternoon on the topic of dying of whiteness, and they asked me to talk about, you know, what's the lesson of my book you know

now a couple of years on. And it's pretty interesting, right,

because I wrote that book as a as a warning. Right. Initially, I was doing research in I was doing research in Kentucky and Tennessee and Missouri and Kansas, and I was seeing people make decisions that were terrible for their own health, like literally ending their own life, but they were leading to a lot of power for the issue that they care about, namely, keeping conservative white America on top, playing a card of being a victim in order to a

sure power. And I tell a lot of stories in that book about people who basically say, I realize I could benefit by, you know, getting my own health insurance or sending my kid to a better school. But to do that would mean to participate in pluralistic democracy, and instead I'm not going to do that, so that my party basically people laying their lives down on the line. And so obviously those issues now are almost on steroids.

I mean, I wrote the book. It came out in twenty nineteen, twenty twenty as a warning like, let's not do what Kansas and Missouri are doing. But instead what used to be called the Southern strategy whip up white racial resentment, is now a national strategy. And so the talk I'm going to be give today is basically, what's the lesson? Like how did these crazy politics, who seemingly self defeating, fascist politics, how did they get to the position they are now, which is that they take over

the you know, the country. They've taken over the Supreme Court. Poor Justice Thomas has his wife sneaking around behind his back when he doesn't even know it or he would ruse himself. So the politics have taken over the entire country, and the question is how did we get here? And on one hand, I think it's easy to say and I think it's right that right racial resentment is so deep in this country that any moment that there's the promise of any kind of equality is going to take over.

But I would also say that the other lesson of the book that I'm going to talk about is how Republicans, you know, during the Obama presidency, were worried that they were literally getting wiped off the map, and so they didn't just play to white racial resentment. What they also did is they mobilized at local levels. They took over school boards, they took over county commissioner's office, election offices.

They really they became a very formidable voting block as a result of people who really cared almost more than their own well being. And what they did is they basically took over They used local power to take over courthouses and judges and work their way up. And so the other part of this isn't just about condemning whiteness.

It's also to recognize that we got here because, to be frank, Republicans were better than us at playing the political game in terms of seating the power of you know, they noticed they basically realized that the power was in judges, and they did what it took in a way to get there. And so I'm saying that because the other part of my talk today is a challenge for Democrats,

which is we better get mobilized. You know, even though everything is it gets us, and we mobilized like crazy, but I think for us it's kind of like a lot of us feel like we mobilized for the presidential election and where did it get us? But the Republicans would say, we mobilized for the school board and the election and the county commissioner, and we built our way from the ground. App we didn't think, oh, because we won a presidential election and we didn't get what we wanted,

we were going to stop mobilizing. You know, Jonathan, so many things that you bring up, and I want to go to the beginning where you said that the Southern strategy has now turned into a national strategy, and I want to dig into that a bit because as we continue to get news right, and you brought up Jinny Thomas, which should be front page news, but instead we continue to focus on, you know, the flap that happened at the Oscars, and you know, and the entertainment value thereof

and the debate thereof with regard to, you know, acts of violence, but we don't actually continue to talk about the act of violence that proceeded the the desire to halt an election and then bring down our country, the act of violence being the insurrection, right, and the enablers of that being a spouse of a sitting Supreme Court justice who was the sole person to vote no on Trump being able to Trump needing to release his phone records.

And now we understand why, right, because they were back and forth text messages between his wife and Mark Meadows, chief of staff to Donald Trump. And so the question that I have about white resentment is that for a party that value who, for a party whose value right, whose value base is logic, how is it that we are supposed to battle against something that isn't steeped in logic, which is white resentment? Because for me, when I think about it, I'm like, what the fuck do white people

have to be resentful about? Right? Like, that's that's what that's where my energy goes. And you know, forgive me, because I have lost all ability to like be gracious anymore, given like where we are and the fact that there is no fire under the ass of Democrats. There is no strategy that you continue to bring to light things that I'm wondering, is there a war room in the White House anymore that isn't just focused on what's happening abroad?

And so how do you how do you profess that we battle this growing cancer of white resentment that has moved from a southern strategy to a national one when we base as Democrats, our fight it with logic and racism, isn't logical? Well, look at look at what's happening now. I mean, I think it's a perfect, perfect example. The Republicans lost the election, right, they clearly lost election, and

they knew they lost. Selection Trump knows he lost the election, but instead of saying like, oh gosh, we tried really hardly lost or something like that, he came up with this all encompassing, totally bullshit narrative. And the narrative he knows. I mean, he's been told a million times and he damn well knows he lost the election. But that wasn't

the point. The point was how can I mobilize my base and keep them engaged and keep them enraged to the point where losing an election comes at a cost, so at a moment of weakness the Republicans, at least in their own party base. And I'm not saying this because I agree with it. I completely don't agree with it,

but I don't just want to note what happened. They use that as a way to mobilize, right, They use that as a way to say, we were wronged, we were ripped off, and they created i mean, Trump for all of his you know, horribleness is he's an evil genius about like coming up with that narrative that will whip everybody up, you know, critical race theory or this

kind of thing. He's you know, And so the issue is, the minute he started saying, oh, we were ripped off, it became you know, obviously it played into white greevents, It played into victimization, it played into lost wages of whiteness, all these you know, historical narratives. But what happened was what did they do when that when that happened, Well, they turned around and it became a rallying cry to run for every position that was a lever of power.

And so twenty twenty two in the election, it's not just an election about the control of the Senate, it's it's elect It's an election about every you know, every school board across the country, every every um, you know, election official, the people who decide all, who counts the ballots, all those kinds of things. And so they turned a loss into a massive mobilization that is, I think, to be honest, acutely aware of how power works in this country. Right.

I mean, I'm not saying that because I agree with it, m but but the Democrats again and are saying, we won the federal we won, we won the presidency, and what's the president doing for us? The Republicans are turning a loss into a recognition of how power works at multiple levels in this country. So I just would go back to say, and I'm obviously a very liberal Democrat, but I do have to say studying Republicans that they understand how power works, and they're doing it from They're

doing it from the top down. And so I would say, how come there's not massive mobilization of the Democrats, not just by Biden they bide administration, but for every single local office across the country, Like, that's where we should be mobilizing, because that's that's where the that's where the you know, that's where the the afterlife of this insurrection is happening in local elections. So let's pretend we're all stupid, right, Um, No,

I mean I'm stupid. No, no, No, Let's let's pretend that we have no idea how power works, because Democrats clearly don't know. What is it that Republicans have figured out that democrats in power are currently ignoring. So what is it? What are what is their understanding of power versus the democrats understanding of power? Well, I think the Republicans have pretty I mean, let's just be honest. It's easier to have a unified theory of power if your

party is monolithic. And it's easier to have that if you're if the common common narrative that joins your party is um, you know, almost a libertarian engagement with business, hands off my privilege, that kind of stuff, and a sense that you're being done wrong by immigrants, minorities. That that that's the gift that keeps giving because you can tell one one story about your party that just keeps

getting amplified and enhanced. And the Democrats, of course, are a coalition of many different agendas, many different people, many different regions, and so the Democrats don't have that luxury. So there is something inherent about the Republican Party that makes it easier to do what it's doing. But I would also say that the Republican Party has very correctly diagnosed where the power lies in the American political system.

It's not I mean, the president of course wields a lot of power, but ultimately, if you control the courts, as we've talked about nine billion times on here, then you control many of the major decisions. And how do you gain control of the courts while you gain control of the state apparatus? And so for all that talk about states rights and all that kind of stuff, the Republicans, I mean, I see it in the South very well. The Republicans have such a stranglehold on the slates of

every kind of election. And I would just say the minute, the minute the insurrection happened, I mean, I know it's important to like get to the bottom of it and try it and bring you know, truth and light and justice into the open um. But I would also say that the Democrats the day the election was over, should have mobilized a massive national campaign of people running for local elections. The you know, I mean, where's our national coalition of you know, zillions of dollars into people running

for comptroller and attorney general. Yeah, but here's my but here. I'm just going to push back just a little bit because I think that I agree with the I agree with the your framing, but I want to push back a bit because it isn't Republicans at the national level that are running these school boards and running it's the

it's the local ones. And so why do you think that local democrats right right, are not because we can't Because here's the thing, right, everything that you're saying is right, Democrats in and of themselves are patent breaking their arms, patting themselves on the back because we have the White House, we have and we have Congress, which shows us to be completely and totally ineffectual. Right like we where where is the progress that we that we voted in in

twenty twenty and supposedly have these levers of power? And so I guess what is it that you think that the Democrats at the local levels in these you know, really battleground states and places are not getting that Republicans are. I see it in Tennessee. I mean the stuff that's happening in Tennessee is just it's just mind boggling in a way. But but they're so I mean, and I don't know how representative Tennessee is. I mean, I do

feel like it's pretty representative. But I mean, the Republicans are coming in with sponsors, slates of ideas, you know, this kind of thing. I mean, there's so much support for just local GOP level elections, and it is I think coordinated in a national way through national organizations and things like that. But there's so much mobilization to win local elections that comes from the top down and from

the bottom up. And I think that you know, I don't know, I mean, it's it's I mean, if you look on Twitter, I follow all the Democrats in the Tennessee State, for say House for example, they're just crying out for help, honestly, and partially it's like there's so many tidal waves coming at us at once in a certain kind of way. But I do feel like the Democratic Party suffers from a lack of central organization in

a certain kind of way. And the other part is kind of what's what's the narrative if the other facide is running on a politics of white grievance. How do you combat that in a certain kind of way, And so I think the Democrats need to think about who's

in their coalition. Basically, what I'm saying is local democrats need much much more help, and there needs to be much more coordination, and there needs to be much more of a kind of and I just feel like there need to be more national organizations that help people in red states run for office, because what we're seeing is is fracture. And I think the other really important point.

We have a great congressman, Jim Cooper, his district got his district got jerrymandered, and so he's now out of office. It became three Republican districts from one Democratic district, and so again it all goes back to who controls the judges. But there is one point, and I realize I'm rambling on a little bit here, but the one point is the Democrats were very not unified. It's been the case for every election. We've got progressives and Centrists going after

each other. And in fact, before Jim Cooper got unseated by jerrymandering, the National Progressive Organization was trying to unseat him because he was an incumbent and things like that, and so Democrats also, I think we're just we're very far from unified in a way that I think leads to some bad hour comes, at least in Tennessee. I you know, I guess I'm I'm so confused, right, And

here's here's what I'm confused by. I thought that as a nation collectively watching our capital building in a plume of smoke, literally seeing a physical assault on our democracy unfold in real time, would have been the only unifying message that we needed that everything that we had hold dear, everything that we pledge allegiance to, everything that we wave a flag about on the fourth of Lie is under attack, and that the only unifying message would be we can't

have that happen. We can't have our democracy fall. Because for those people who want to tell me that this administration can't walk, skip and chew gum at the same fucking time, because we are fighting a nuclear you know, a potential nuclear attack in Europe, so we can't put eyes on the domestic terrorism that is unfolding in outside of our front doors. That we can't handle both those

things at one time. I'm confused about what they think will happen when America falls and there is no unification around democracy. Right, and we've already saw over four years of Donald Trump. What a political vacuum and leadership? What would happen? Right? And so you would think, Jonathan, wouldn't that wouldn't what we saw in January six, twenty twenty one. Wouldn't that have been our unifying message? And what is it you think that Democrats missed in that moment and

and and the proceeding and the following moments. Yeah, I mean I'm going to turn that question around, which is to say, look at what the Republicans have done with this horrible moment, right, Look at what the Republicans have done with the insurrection. Right. They've used this moment of it's a moment of profound shame. Right, but look at what they've done. They've turned it on its head and they've used it as they would They didn't say, oh

my god, look how we got here. They're using this, They're using the symbol of that insurrection to further enhance and solidify their own power in a certain kind of way. So, Um, we've said it a lot on this show. The Republicans have a theory of power and the Democrats have a theory of Maybe justice would would be a way to think about it, you know, something like we have a theory of something. Um. But I will say, okay, that was a viral moment there. I mean, I guess my

point is we don't have a theory of power. I don't know, I'm trying to I'm trying to be nice about it. We don't have a Democrat like. So basically Republicans have a theory of power which I just wrote down, and Democrats have dot dot dot. I don't know what it is. We have excellent stationary or something. We have to have something. But my point is they turn everything into power, right, I mean, think about it. And so in addition to condemning the insurrection and all these things,

look at what they've done. They've taken the insurrection and they've noticed how to get more power, and then they've done it. And so again it's it's like watching Voldemort at work. Um. It's not like I'm saying, you know, I want to be that or anything. But I would say that when we were fighting an opponent, a political opponent who has a very developed fascistic, monolithic theory of power. The answer is not going to be to just show them the moral implications of what they're what they're dot.

And so in a way, I feel like, even even with the second impeachment trial and all that kind of stuff, I think the Democrats should have been saying, how can we get more power? Yeah? And so I think the part of the helplessness on the Democratic side. Um, I'll just tell you this because nobody else knows this, but the book I'm writing now is how the Democrats lost the gun debate. Like, that's the book I'm writing now.

It's I just signed a contract for it. But it's exactly that we're talking about today, which is we had everything on our side, how did we lose? How do we lose the gun debate? And it's part of this thing that we had a theory of We had a moral imperative, we had incredibly important human tragedy, but we didn't have a theory of power, and we lost to a side that had a theory of power. Brilliant doctor Jonathan Metzel coming back at us with a bang, return to woke a f put me in a hotel any day,

and like I'll just show you guys. God one would have no idea that it's almost April. Jonathan As always, thank you so much. We appreciate you and look forward to continuing this conversation in the socials and next week on Woke a f See you in the diverse. Everybody, take care. That is it for me today, friends on this Woke f AS always, Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.