Don't Believe the Polls

Coming up in the show, I have a conversation with our friend Kurt Bardella about all the ways in which Democrats need to be capitalizing on this moment, this win that they have around Joe Mansion's reversal and actually wanting to give the power that apparently, you know, we in the United States did not give him, but the five people that live in West Virginia did, to be able to fight against climate change and inflation and all of

the things. Um, So we'll get into that conversation. I want to start today, however, with um, just my feelings recently around Republicans. And I know you're just gonna say, oh, Danielle, I already know where you're going to talk about, and yes, like there are a range of things to talk about, but I get into it a little bit with Kurt,

but I want to say it here too. Republicans are a hateful, vengeful white supremacist group and I don't know why it is taken so long and so many offensive things that they have either supported ignored championed for us to be able to articulate this truth and just say who they are. Part of being able to solve a problem is the ability to recognize that there is a problem.

And where I see how our democracy began to falter way back, and probably I would say, you know, when we allowed for the Supreme Court to decide the two thousand presidential election as opposed to the people who actually voted for al Gore. Nonetheless, let me not go off into the tangent of the early of the two thousands,

but let's say this. Let's go to Obama right, and the birth of the Tea Party and birth Rism, and how the media as well as the Democratic establishment viewed those people as just the fringe, not the catalyst to the insurrection that we would then witness some twelve plus years later. What aggravates me so much is that the writing has been on the wall for the longest time about who the Republican Party is and what it is that they want. Now. Before Donald Trump, they may have

had better articulated people, you know, more articulate. I wouldn't say better articulated, because that was totally not a fucking sentence, but they may have had compassionate conservatives, as George W. Bush referred to himself, so compassionate in fact, that he flew over Katrina, the site of you know, major hurricane devastation and death, and didn't provide government aid, and Black people were left to be on top of buildings or being shot by police for having to get their basic

needs met. Because when white people took things from grocery stores, they were in survival mode. When black people did it, they needed to be shot dead because they were looters. I digress. There were other people who wore different masks, but we're a part of the same spectrum of Trumpism. George W. Bush didn't come out and say that he didn't give a fuck about black people. Kanye West said that when he still had a functioning part of his frontal lobe. But he didn't. And we knew that right.

We knew that Reagan hated the LGBTQ community, hated the black community, which is why crack was dumped into it and LGBTQ people were left to die of HIV and eight, and it wasn't until it would begin infecting the hetero population that then the government would move and take any type of action or even recognize that it was happening

in the first place. So there have been Republicans that maybe we're better liked, maybe we're more articulate, more charismatic in a way that didn't make you want to throw up in your mouth the way that Donald Trump does. But their ideologies we're all aligned. Some were just more subtle than others. Donald Trump prefers to use a bluntonous weapon, whereas Republicans that came before him were a lot more surgical in terms of what they were doing to upend

and remove rights or marginalized already marginalized people. So what I'm saying is that none of what is transpiring right now came out of thin air. It didn't come from nowhere. Right what we are experiencing now with Trumpism is just a more hyped up, you know, steroid dose, coped up dose of Republicanism. But it's the same principles. We don't give a fuck about people of color. They are criminals, they are subservient, They are undeserving of democracy, rights or

any economic mobility, any of those things. We hate women. Women are just incubators for the production of more white men. Kurt Bardella will say this later. So they have always told us what they believe in and what they're willing to do to get those things. So why do we still find ourselves like a deer in headlights stuck with regard to this country backsliding into fascism? Why are we so in shock that we're unable to mobilize in any real consistent way for people to get angry and stay angry.

You know, On my other show Democracy Ish, which you should check out, this week, I had a really great conversation with my co host and our guest, State Senator

Malorie mcmarrow. Malle MALORYE mcmarrow is this state senator from Michigan who went toe to toe and had a viral speech that I think has now been viewed twelve million plus times, taking on her white woman Republican colleague who called her a pedophile and a groomer, and instead of her ignoring it in the way that Democrats love to ignore attacks by these rapid fucking bullies, she decided to go toe to toe with her and talk about the fact that she is a white woman, suburban mom, a Christian,

you know, a Christian whose faith like guides and leads her, and how dare she believe that because she stands for equity and justice for all people, including trans gender children, that somehow she is a groomer or a pedophile. Her actions, her words were brilliant, and she shut that Republican hypocrite the fuck up. I say all this to say that ignoring bullies does not make them go away. It just shows how weak you are. Now you all can say

to me, well, Daniel, you're not a parent. So if my kid is getting picked on and I don't think that they can win, I'm going to tell them to go run and hide. Well, I'll tell you that the bully will always suss you out. Right, And what people need to start recognizing is that, oh no, we will fight back. Doesn't mean that we're going to win, but it means that I'm not going to lay down and get my ass kicked right without trying to stand up

for myself. Republicans have been kicking this country's ass for generations. They've been picking apart our rights, our democracy, and all of the things that actually make America America. Our ability to vote, our ability to have voice in our government, our ability to be able to provide for our families, our ability to make choices about our own bodies right, our ability to send our children to public school and think that they're going to get an education and not

be riddled with bullets. Republicans have ticked away at all of those things, and we have allowed them to do so and continue to refer to them as like our colleagues, our friends. Oh, it's just an ideological opposition, it isn't. They have been a direct threat to our democracy for generations.

We just lulled ourselves into believing that there were things that we could come to the table on, but not recognizing or maybe not caring so much, that that table was the marginalized communities back that Democrats and Republicans would decide to negotiate on top of. So what I'm saying is that it is time, it is past fucking time to tell the truth about who these people are. And it isn't hyperbolic, and it isn't oh, playing politics, What the fuck you think we do in government? What do

you think happens on Capitol Hill? It's politics. So you play in it, right, whether you're devising up strategies, whether you are playing with poll numbers, whether you are attacking your political opponent, whatever it is that you're doing for those people that are in it. It is a game. The sad part is is that the results of that

game really have impact on average people's lives. But let's not pretend that it's something that it isn't that all of these people went to Capitol Hill because they believe in the same tenets of our democracy and the constitution, because they do not. So if you are needing to set yourself apart and saying this is why you should vote for me, then you need to make it clear why the fuck you shouldn't be voting for the other guy. And it shouldn't just be because oh, we have we're

ideologically opposed. No, it's because the other guy is a fucking threat to your life and livelihood. And if I'm not making that clear and you to say to yourself, well, there's no difference between me and them, then whose fault is that? Not the voter's fault, it's your fault for

not telling the better story. Now, Democrats have the fucking truth on their side, and they need to wield the truth like a goddamn weapon, the way that Trump wielded that crowd towards his vice President of the United States. It's past time that we continue to give these people pass and think that all of this, all of the fucking shit that we are living in right now, came out of nowhere or came from Donald Trump, because it did not. They've been plucking the democracy chicken all along,

and that bitch is almost bald. So it's about time that people start waking up and recognizing these people for who they are. Coming up next, my Friends, my conversation with our friend Kurt Bardella, get a behind the scenes look at Comedy Central's The Daily Show on Beyond the Scenes, an original podcast from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Every week, host Roy Wood Junior goes deeper with the

notable guests and experts from the Emmy Award winning series. Together, they use comedy to tackle current topics from gentrification to gun laws and take a closer look at how and why these topics matter. Listen to Beyond the Scenes from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. New episodes

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If you like what you hear, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Folks, you know that whenever I have the opportunity to sit down with our friend Kurt Bardella. You know him as a writer for USA Today, The La Times, as a spokesperson and a strategist for the d n C, The D Triple C, All the Seas and All the D's. Kurt Della, welcome

back for the first time. I think I would like to start with a bit of good news, which is that instead of me, you know, screaming and going blue in the face over the fact that Joe Mansion is just a Republican in Democrats clothing major reversal this week on climate change, on the inflation tax climate package, and I want to get your thoughts because you would you would tweeted and you were just like, this is Democrats

doing work, this is what this should look like. Tell us about why this reversal is important and why we should be celebrating. Well, I think Democrats are finally kind of hitting their stride here because it's really this trifecta of policies, victories, really Probiden in the Democrats that we're seeing. I've always believed, like in sports, winning the God's winning, you know, you just got to get the first one

through and then everything becomes easier after that. The combination of you know, we've got some semblance of a gun reform bill passed, We've gotten now the chips built through the Senate, something that will help deal with inflation, and just American competitiveness in the economy. All the while Republicans have decided to make their stand voting against things like funding veterans and siding with China over this American Competitiveness bill.

And that brings us now to really this new iteration of Build Back Better, which is also really a package that's designed to help people. It on inflation to help address the climate crisis. And all of a sudden, Democrats are just racking up victory after victory after victory, where Republicans are left looking around deciding to put themselves once

again on the opposite side of public opinion. There's only so many times you can take extreme position and alienate yourself from voters, whether it's women, whether it's people of color, whether it's senior citizens, whether it's the veterans. Like, at some point, you're just going to run out of voters because I can tell you, Daniel, there just aren't enough members of the KKK to put Republicans in Congress. I ain't going to cut it. You need more votes than that.

And they're really doing their best to put themselves in a situation where they're going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. You know, I want to go back to the Veterans Bill for a Second Right. Because the Republican Party has always fancied themselves the party of quote unquote law and order right, the party of police, the

party of military. So here you have this bill that would you take care of those veterans that are out putting their lives, their mental health, their physical well being at risk for the democracy that this party, the Republican Party, is working overtime to try and overthrow. I mean, how do you think that Democrats use right the fact that you have this party that is voting again, it's our veterans and their ability to take care of themselves, to take care of their families, to get the aid that

they need after putting their lives on the line. So how should the messaging work here about that? Because I mean, I don't know why I was stunned. I feel like we went We've been in the sewer with Republicans, So I don't know why I was stunned by this, but

I was actually taken aback. You know. I think that if I were in charge of the democratic messaging for every Democrat and every group in America, I would say you need to put together an ad that tossed together the leader of the Republican Party, Donald Trump, insulting John

Mking for being captured and tortured. You need to put together a montage of Donald Trump referring to our service members as suckers and losers, and then you need to juxtapose that with this decision by the Republican Party in Congress to not support funding our veterans. The story tells itself. The Republican Party is not on the side of veterans any more than they're on the side of any other constituency in America that actually needs government helping, government service.

They just aren't. You cannot be the pro military party and refuse to actually fund our veteran services. You know, Republicans have gotten away with this facade that they have this monopoly on patriotism and liberty and freedom ever since nine eleven. They've gotten away with this. When you see an American flag flank somewhere, you just now as sub up, that's a Maga voter. How we got to this point where they've been able to hijack what it means to

be an American is just uttered nonsense to me. And this is an opportunity for Democrats to start taking that back. Why don't you think that that is top of mind for Democrats, like every time that we have major legislation that comes through where we get these folks on the record to know exactly what it is that they stand for. And they don't stand with the American people, They don't stand with democracy. They are standing with China, they are

standing with Putin. What is it that stops Democrats from being able to air out the truth to the American people? I mean, you know, Kurt, we have but a handful of weeks right, a handful of weeks left until we have midterm elections, I know, which is hard to think about as the earth is on fire with their summertime temperatures, you know, skyrocketing. But it's in a handful of weeks. What stops them from being able to just tell the truth to use Republicans own votes and their own words

against them. Yeah, it's almost a DNA thing, Daniel. There's this impulse that Democrats have that the right policies, doing the right thing should should win the day. And I wish we lived in that world. That would be nat I very much year in for the day where we live in that kind of a world. But we don't. And I think that's why, in part there's people like me now who have joined the Democratic Party to try

to show them that. Listen, I'm not going to pretend like I have all the answers, like I'm infallible or the greatest strategist in the world. There are a billion people that are a lot smarter than I am. But I can tell you, having been a form of Republican, having worked in republic campaign to Republican politics, I know how these people think and how they fight, and we have got to start fighting fire with fire. And oh, by the way, unlike the Republicans, we don't have to lie,

we don't have to make shit up. We just need to tell the truth and provide that context, that historical context. And I think that's missing so much from our politics and from the media, frankly, as the historical context of how Republicans have claimed to be one thing, but time and again, with their actions and their behavior and the rhetoric, have shown to be something else. You cannot claim to be pro military when on the other hand, the leader of your party thinks that they are much of suckers

and losers. You know, when Joe Biden last week when he finally, you know, kind of went a little bit toe to toe with Donald Trump when talking about the insurrection, which he has tried to steer away from. But he said, you cannot be pro cop You cannot be pro military and support and insurrection, like you cannot be pro democracy right and not want to get to the bottom of

how our country is being overthrown. And so I wonder here, you know, Kurt, should Joe Biden be doing more of that, of that rhetoric that he gave, or is it the responsibility of let's say, a Nancy Pelosi and a Chuck Schumer to anoint right those spokespeople in the way that Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell have with their rabid right wing folks like a Marjorie Taylor Green who says, by the way, we can deal with climate change because we

have air conditioners and refrigerators. She is an idiot like Matt Gates who decided to troll and body shame a teenage girl, which by the way, he should probably stop talking about teenage girls, being as how he traffics that. But but so I'm wondering, do you is it Biden that needs to be to have the microphone, or does Pelosi and Schumer need to pass that around to the folks that actually have the platform and the audience that

it will get across to. You know, in politics, I've always told candidates politicians, you know, be true to who you are. Joe Biden's a lot of things. A knife fighter isn't exactly one of them. So I actually don't think that he should be the one leading that because that's just not who he is. That's not you can people can always tell when you're trying to be something you're not. Um, it's inherently uncomfortable and it therefore becomes

off as less believable. You know. I think that Joe Biden ran as a guy who said that he would conduct himself with dignity, that he would return truth and morality to the office of the presidency. I think he has done that, by the way. Um. But I do think that when you when I think about bare knuckle brawlers and baltic on the Nancy Pelosi doesn't get she's as tough as they come, and that that is much more her brand. I think back to her tearing enough.

Donald Trump stated a Union address. Um, you know, you know, she she is someone who does not show away from a fight, and so I think that it needs to come from from from her. And in some ways I think it's starting too. I think that again you're seeing a subtle shift in posture from Democrats. I think that they're finally kind of got their mojio back a little bit. It's it was a brutal summer, There's no doubt about that. Uh. You know, everything that kind of could go wrong, things

completely out of all of our control, did go wrong. Um. But now I think that we're starting to kind of find our straight I think Republicans, you know, they're the dog that caught the bus, Like, now what do you do? It's like you said you're going to do all these things, these horrible things, and guess what. You started to do them. And as it turns out, everybody hates you for it, and and and your answer for it is to continue

alienating and offending people at an unthinkable level. Things that Matt Gates is doing, um, you know, is reprehensible, disgusting. You know, he's just a walking piece of shit. Uh, you know, And and I think that we're seeing you know, when I look at people like Ruben and Gayego from Arizona, Eric Swallow from California. You know, people who are are

not afraid to start taking the fight directly to these Republicans. Um. I think that's a direction that we need to start going in, and I think that it's a coming upon every single person who's in the Democratic Party. I don't care whether you're an office or not an office at this point, if you have a platform, if you have a microphone of any kind, start calling them out on their ship and just do it in the most straightforward and feel honest way possible. Because Republicans are showing us

who they are every day. You know, one of the things that has been troubling me, Kurt, are all the polls right? Every day there's a new poll that comes out. A pole that says the Republicans will take back the House in the Senate, a poll that says that Biden's too old to be president, A pole, A pole, A pole. Seventy percent of the country supports abortion, seventy percent of

the country supports LGBTQ rights in same sex marriage. Do a poles actually matter when we are living at a time of minority rule when Republicans are going state by state by state, local office by local office in order to roll back rights, like, what does polling at a time like this? What? What? What is the message? What is the from it? If in fact, majority rule is not actually how America is governed. Yeah, I've always said that there's only one poll that matters, and that's the

one that's conducted on election day. The rest is just complete bullshit. It's just something to give the chatter or class of Washington something to talk about, right about pontificate about No one in America gives a crap. People respond to I think force, I think people respond to leadership. I think people respond to boldness. Polls are such an imperfect science, as we've seen time and time again, how

on big scale they've gotten big things wrong. And I always I'm always critical of media who tends to hang their hat on polling because the amount of oxygen they give polls does not compare at all to the oxygen they give it when it's wrong, you know, and it's so misleading, and they're doing such a great disservice. You know, the reality is we live in a country now that Joe Biden can do everything right for everybody, and there's still half a country who just wouldn't like him when

there are any snoprat like that's where we're at. Doesn't matter what he does, doesn't matter what he says. These people have just made a conscious decision to withdraw from reality and they're never going to be satisfied. So I don't really give a crap what his approval rating is.

I don't really care what certain elements of this country when you take a poll, if you if you're including states like Alabama, in Oklahoma, in Arkansas, and your pole, that pole is completely illegitimate to be because it doesn't matter what those people think at this point, because there's nothing Joe Biden can do to satisfy them. The people that Alex Sarah Huckabey Sanders to be their governor, they're not going to also say, yeah, Joe Biden is doing

a good job. It's an imperfect science and imperfect metric, and I think it's up that we need to get away from. Honestly, you know, because Republicans, to your point, they don't care. Right like, there there is no quote unquote common ground, There is no place to go to where you're going to meet in the middle right where just by virtue of being a Democrat, they some of them either want you dead, which they have actually said out loud, or they just want you dismissed and not

have the ability to vote whatsoever. And so, you know, Kurt, as we're seeing this all play out, and there was a Washington Post article, I think it was late last week that was talking about the fact that more Republicans are talking about civil war, that more of them are just like just casually talking about the fact that they believe that in the next couple of years this is

where this is going. And when they say couple of years, they're talking about the presidential they're talking about twenty twenty four, which is not a couple of years. It's actually very close. What do you make of that? And the fact that Democrats again much in the same way that they dismissed the culture quote unquote conversations that got Yunn into the governorship in Virginia, what do you make of the of

the non reaction right now about this looming threat. The normalization of violence within the Republican Party is one of the most underappreciated elements um that that that has put us kind of on this what feels almost like a death march towards um. You know, again, we saw on January sixth that it's not just words, it's not just tweets. It's not just oh, we're trolling you know the liberals

on Twitter. It's real. And and these are people who did not hesitate or flinch to impose their will and their their their violence on law enforcement on members of Congress. They didn't care what party were that if they found you. You You weresprected by Josh Holly was running away and Hall and asshot the way because he knew that they were going to come for him, just like we're coming

for everybody. That's where we're at right now. There's a part of it that almost says it's like, yeah, we all want reform and guns are bad and all that, but man, every Democrat there's let's go out there and buy every gun and every moment you possibly can, because the idea that the only people left that will have guns are these lunatics is down right scary to me. And if you're not gonna be able to get rid of them, then maybe we need to be the party

that arms up to to defend ourselves. You know, we have a right to defend democracy, to defend these institutions. Um, the rebellion that we are seeing play out right now in slow motion is very real. It is very dangerous, and they're not trying to hide it. They're not masking their intentions, and you know, they're telling us what they want to do. That they want to live in a world where people like you and me are basically indentured servants, where women are there just to produce more men. Yeah,

that's that's the world that they're fighting for. And if we don't meet that with equal and more force, we're gonna lose. Like that. That's that's how this ends. At the end of the day. We have to have to say will to fight for what we believe in as that that matches there is and if we don't, the side that has the will always wins. Do you think it's inevitable? Cur Like, have we gotten to a place where where that kind that level of violence right is

just going to be inevitable. We're seeing flashpoints, right and we see these flashpoints with mass shootings and then the ones that are politically motivated. We're listening to their manifestos that read like a segment of Tucker Carlson Show, right, like we we are seeing this and it's like I

feel like every single one of them is a warning. Right, So is it inevitable if if if all were to go well, quote unquote, and we hold on to power in midterms and for the luck of the draw, Joe Biden holds onto the presidency in twenty twenty four, are we kicking this tinderbox down the road? I think that we're headed towards the edge of the cliff, and we have these very small windows to stop us from going over.

And that is what twenty two twenty twenty four really are if I actually do I'll make a prediction here. If Democrats are managed to hold on to Congress in twenty twenty two, the Republican Party will dispense themselves with Donald Trump. He'll be done. He will be done. They will abandon him so quick they will try to pretend like he never existed. Here's the thing about the quantities. Whether it's Rhonda Santis, Mike Pence, Josh Holly, Ted Cruz, etc.

None of them will ever be Donald Trump. They all were political figures that came up in the conventional and political sphere, and even though they might parrot him and pretend to be him and try to mimic him, they aren't him. Trump came from somewhere very different. Trump came from freaking ww even And I draw basically these guys all came from the halls of Congress and state legislators

and just conventional traditional political boundaries. I think that if we hold on to power in twenty twenty two, that will be the ultimate repeviiation of trumpis um. It will be the third election in a row, by the way that they will have lost twenty eighteen, twenty twenty and then twenty twenty two, And I think that they will politically understand that they are going to have to withdraw from this a little bit if they're going to have

any political future. That is it for me today, Dear friends, on Woke f as always, Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fun. Get a behind the scenes look at Comedy Central's The Daily Show on Beyond the Scenes, an original podcast from the Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Every week, host Roy Wood Junior goes deeper with the notable guests

and experts from the Emmy Award winning series. Together, they use comedy to tackle current topics from gentrification to gun laws, and take a close look at how and why these topics matter. Listen to Beyond the Scenes from The Daily Show with Trevor Noa on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. New episodes every Tuesday.