SIO233: Welp.... Joe Biden.

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only, this is episode 233, and it's a little different in that it's what it was for hundreds of episodes before Jamie came, solo pod today, Jamie is holed up with her kids, I think, on coronavirus retreat, it's the real deal, that coronavirus, and Jamie couldn't make it, she sends her regrets, but she'll be back, I'm sure, very soon, hopefully. But I had a lot of one to talk about anyway. And so I'm going to do a solo pod. I want to talk About not only Super Tuesday, but the subsequent Tuesday. I don't know what that one's called. Uber Tuesday, slightly less Super Tuesday. And then also, you know, Biden seems to be our candidate.

0:01:16 Thomas: So lots to talk about there. And I'm sure when Jamie returns, we can talk more. But I have some thoughts. And also, I have some thoughts on social media in general. I'm kind of going through personally a bit of a change in how I want to be doing things online and actually in life a little bit. So hopefully that'll be interesting. So let's talk about it. Let's talk about the results from Tuesday.

So, as everyone, I'm sure, listening knows, I was a Elizabeth Warren supporter, and then, subsequently, once she dropped out, I transitioned over to supporting Bernie Sanders, I donated, I tried to get the word out on Twitter, but, to my disappointment, and I'm sure, to even more disappointment of lots of Bernie supporters, wow, really, really seems like he has no chance, I mean, the polls told us this, actually, about a week ago, maybe a little, yeah, a little less than a week ago, I follow the polls pretty closely and 538 and all that and some really, really, really bad for Bernie state polls came out. And, you know, as as is always the case, polls can be wrong. But not usually when it's that many different polls with different methodology that are all saying the same thing. Usually they're honestly usually they're not wrong.

Side note, still so many times people take, I think, an incomplete or slightly inaccurate lesson from 2016 in saying that polls are always wrong. Or more likely, I mean, we're all human. We all tend to think the polls that say things we agree with are right and the other ones are wrong.

0:02:50 Thomas: It seems to be online a lot. But really, the polls from 2016 weren't that wrong. The national polls were right on and we didn't have good enough state-by-state polling and because we have this stupid thing called the Electoral College, within totally within reason of the polling in certain states, um, caused Clinton to lose the Electoral College, and it looked like a complete polling disaster, but I mean, when you dig down in the details, it wasn't really that wrong, everything, everything was within error. So the point is, and I'm sure I've said this before, but the point is if you took the lesson that polls are always wrong or something and they're unreliable, they're not really unreliable. I have my problems with polling and a lot of it is that I think we have too much polling maybe when we don't need it.

0:03:39 Thomas: I don't know. I'm still thinking this through. I guess, and this is my bias. I'll fully admit this is my bias, but because I supported Elizabeth Warren and I saw what happened, which is if You look at opinion polling, she was overwhelmingly the most liked candidate by everybody. So she was everybody's second choice. And so many people said in large numbers, well, I just don't really think people are going to vote for her, so I'm not going to vote for her. And I don't know, maybe I shouldn't blame polling on that. Guess, who knows, maybe polling makes that problem worse than better. But I guess the point is, I'm a little frustrated with, in this primary process, how it was all all about being a pundit. Everybody is trying to be a pundit for everybody else. And they're trying to figure out what everybody else is going to do and blah, blah, and I really kind of wish that our primary system were one, one day.

0:04:33 Thomas: Um, and it was all States on the same day and it wouldn't be a national popular vote, by the way. I think that's a lot of people have said that this somehow would favor somebody like Bloomberg who can just buy the election. I don't really fully fully get that. I think you can still rate the states. States are in the primary system. I don't know how many people know this, but different states are weighted differently, not just on population, but how they are doing like turnout wise in past elections. So there's kind of a scoring system to try to make it so that states in the Democratic primary are given, you know, slightly better, slightly more weight, depending on how much they factor into the general election, That kind of thing. So I think that part's OK.

0:05:18 Thomas: I don't, I, we can keep that. I don't want like a national popular vote determining the Democratic primary candidate. But I do think the system of having a few small states go first is bad. And if anything, the funny thing is, it's kind of against my interest because, you know, with Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, they are overwhelmingly doing better among white voters, especially, I mean, Elizabeth Warren, as much as I love her, she had no black support, really, statistically. I mean, a few people here and there, of course, but didn't do well with that demographic. Bernie did not do well with the black vote. Bernie did really well and is doing pretty well with the Latino vote, which is interesting. So that's cool. Good coalition building there. But for some reason, you know, Biden seems to have a stranglehold on the black boat nationally.

0:06:05 Thomas: And if anything, what I'm saying would probably have made Biden win sooner, which which is not having these small white states go first. Overwhelmingly white states go first true to form, not having Jamie here means more tangents, probably, so, sorry, I went off on a polling tangent, anyway, what happened was, Biden won pretty much everywhere last Tuesday, Idaho, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, and it looks like Sanders won in North Dakota, the smallest state, only 14 delegates there, and right now Washington's still a toss-up, which is just really, really bad for Bernie, I mean, he won Washington in 2016, and he's up by literally just a couple thousand votes with, right now, current results that I'm seeing on New York Times, 67% reporting.

0:06:59 Thomas: Washington has a lot of mail-in votes. And so that meant that there was a lot of votes for Elizabeth Warren, you know, kind of unfortunately, because she's now obviously out of the race, but you know people mailed in their ballots before then. So, so that cost Bernie, but, but even still, I mean, even if you give him a little bit of a lead in Washington, the way the delegates are going to be chopped up is not, you know, he's not going to gain much even, even even if he wins a small victory there. And it's pretty much, he's dead in the water, honestly. It's really disappointing. For people who haven't been following it that closely, he's going to lose likely. I mean, again, who knows? Maybe something crazy happens. I'm not saying that there's zero chance, but if nothing crazy happens, Bernie is set to lose by a lot more than he did in 16, which is, I just did not, personally, I didn't really see this coming.

0:07:51 Thomas: Now, in retrospect, it's kind of making sense and I'm going to talk about that. But I certainly, you know, a month ago, I didn't really see that coming. I don't really think anybody did. So it's certainly surprising. It's certainly frustrating for me. So, let me go through my thoughts here. First off, this is why it was kind of dumb, you know, a few weeks back, or whatever it was, after South Carolina, everybody was taunting Biden, like, oh, look, 30 years and two or three presidential runs, and he finally won one primary, and it's like, all right, I mean, sure, factually accurate, I suppose, but like, look at the numbers, he was set to win a lot of them, it didn't really, especially in retrospect, now he's gonna mop the floor with, with Bernie, that was kind of a, I don't know, it's kind of a dumb attack.

0:08:37 Thomas: But anyway, that's just a quick thought. And you know, a lot of people are still resisting. And by the way, I encourage you, if you still get to cast your vote in the primary, vote for the candidate you want. I've said that. I said that in 2016 after we had the whole Bernie or Bust thing. I said the primary is when you get to vote for the candidate of your heart. And then the general is when we have a binary choice and you just need to vote for whoever is the less bad Candidat because that's the binary choice we're all given. And I've stuck to that and I will stick to that now. I don't, you know, by all means, Sanders supporters keep fighting and you never know what will happen. You never know if something crazy happens. You ever know if Biden's health is going to fail. There are all kinds of reasons why, you know. Bernie has every right to stay in this battle for a little while longer, at least, until things go absolutely mathematically impossible, then maybe talk about an exit.

0:09:30 Thomas: But I think it's totally reasonable for Bernie to want to stick. There's a debate on Sunday to stick through that and give the voters at least one chance to see the final two candidates, um, but the way, the another side note, the way the Democratic primary works, because we don't have any like winner take all states like the Republicans did, which was one of the reasons that gave us Trump, um, Biden has already built a lead that, honestly, the math was just pretty impossible. The amount that Bernie has to win, by the way, the states that have happened so far have actually been the states that are most favorable to Bernie. You know, I mean, there's going to be a few exceptions, but like, it's not as though the states that have happen up till now have been in any way favorable to Biden. It's actually the opposite.

0:10:15 Thomas: They're Bernie's best states, a lot of Bernie's best state, so the math is just not good, I mean he'd have to win by so much, but anyway, you know, by all means stay in there, uh, fight a little longer, give, give people a chance to see just you and Biden on stage, I, I think that's fine that Bernie's doing that, people may disagree with me, but I also think that if you're a, you know, if you're a primary voter, you haven't had yet gotten to cast your vote yet, vote for the candidate of your heart, and I hope that's Bernie because I think people should have health insurance, I think universal health care is a major, major issue. And And it's one that Bernie is just way better than Biden on. I don't think Biden has a plan. Furthermore, I don't really even think Biden has articulated any reason to vote for him. I think that it's kind of been just like, hey, I'm the guy that can beat Trump.

0:11:00 Thomas: And that's been it, you know? I mean, there's been some stuff here and there, but he's really running on just carrying on some sort of Obama presidency, like a third Obama term, which I just don't, after all we've seen, doesn't really make sense to me anymore. I mean, it's times are different. So much damage has been done. And furthermore, you know, I want someone who's going to go really, really hard in the paint for things that I value, like social programs, student loan forgiveness, universal health care. So anyway, the point is, continue to vote your heart. That's that's my personal view. And you see some people still making the argument that, you know, and, and this is, this has been the argument for Bernie against Biden, which is, oh, Bernie has a way better chance against Trump, you now, we're not gonna, what are you talking about, Biden's out there, he can't finish his sentence, he's gonna lose against Trump.

0:11:52 Thomas: Yeah, I mean, you could be right, like, I honestly, you, you-you know, Biden could be a disaster in the general, it's, it-it's totally true. It's a lot harder to make that argument if Bernie's voters aren't showing up in the primary. I mean, how do you make the argument that, oh, he's not going to be able to gin up the support in the in the general if Biden is just mopping the floor with Bernie in the primary? I don't, I don't really see a coherent way to make that argument. Yeah, unfortunately. I mean, I would, I would love to be sitting here with Bernie mopping the floor with Biden and be able to say, look at that, you know, Bernie's got more support, but I guess it's kind of a redundant argument. The candidate that is winning in the primary, what better indication is there that they're going to win in the general than that they get millions more votes in the primary? It seems like a tough argument to make, in my opinion.

0:12:43 Thomas: Why Bernie's doing worse this year than in 2016, it's, uh, again, it's, it's puzzling, now, uh, Amanda Marcotte has written an article talking about the fact that this pretty much says that sexism is the role, that Bernie is not running against a woman, so he's doing worse this time, and uh, Kate Mann is also on Twitter, uh, talking about that kind of thing, there's a New York Times article, there's also a great graphic from that New York Times article that did a polling on gauging sexism. So, you know, it's always hard to do, but one way that they do it is they ask questions, for example, like, most women interpret innocent remarks or acts as being sexist. And then you say, do you agree, disagree, strongly disagree, all that kind of that scale, that normal one, neutral, that kind of, and other questions like, women are too easily offended, or most women fail to fully appreciate all that men do for them, or women seek to gain power by gaining control over men, stuff like that.

0:13:43 Thomas: And they, uh, they did interviews and re-interviews with the same respondents and they found that, um, the, the people who are most likely to agree with these sexist statements are the least likely to vote for Elizabeth Warren and they're more likely to both vote for Biden or Sanders. Um, now I want to, I want To say this because I tweeted this article or sorry, I Facebook shared it. There's kind of a difference. I find Facebook to be, that's what I'm going to talk about later. Facebook is way better for discussion than Twitter. But anyway, I Facebooked this article and I just said, yeah, it seems valid to me that sexism explains why. For example, in Michigan, a state that Bernie won in 16, you know, the numbers are staggering. He got trounced by Biden. He lost, Bernie lost every single county in Michigan.

0:14:30 Thomas: Look at the map. Now, 100% of counties, Bernie lost to Biden, a state that he won against Hillary. What's the big difference there? We can talk about the possible hypotheses. I find bias to be plausible for some part of it. Now, whenever you share anything like this, you get a lot of knee-jerk reactions. And I just want to call attention to that and show, you know, how many people responded, this is BS, BS, people who are Bernie people. And they think that this, what frustrates me about it is I'm not sure that they've thought this through because I don't think this reflects badly on Bernie other than the fact that Bernie's losing. But that's a fact.

0:15:15 Thomas: There's no denying the fact that Bernie is losing and he's losing worse than 16. That's not in dispute. I mean, there's just, just look at the numbers. So the question is why? And the, I think a lot of people have been giving a knee-jerk reaction to this hypothesis put forward by people like Amanda Marcotte and some, you know, Kate Mann and others, and people who are writing this article, they have a knee-jerk to that that thinks, like, they're being called sexist or Bernie is being called a sexist, or something like that, and that's not, that's actually what it's saying. I think if, if Bernie people who were reacting badly to this would stop and pause, they might be willing to sign on to this, because this isn't reflecting badly on you for supporting Bernie. I mean, other things, you know, other people, other evidence might say maybe you have some bias and that you support Bernie over Warren.

0:16:06 Thomas: That's a separate argument. Put that aside. This argument is reflecting poorly on people who supported Bernie in 16, but aren't supporting him in 20. And I don't know why Bernie supporters would be rushing to their defense. If anything, I would think you'd be mad at those people. The fact that they supported Bernie and 2016 against Hillary. But then when there's another man they can vote for, then they vote for Biden. I don't see why there's a rush to defend those people. And again, I don't think that reflects badly on Bernie. That doesn't say Bernie is a sexist. That DOESN'T even say Biden is a Sexist or anything. None of those claims are made in the article. These are all kind of knee-jerk defensive reactions. And I just would, I don't know, I would encourage people to take a second and think it through and And maybe not have that knee-jerk reaction.

0:16:54 Thomas: Now, it's fine to still disagree. You know, the only valid disagreement I saw, everything else was just poor logic and bad argument. The only good argument that I saw in my opinion was, you know, maybe this is more about how afraid people are of Trump. And in 2016, when, you know, in the primary process, you didn't quite have the frontrunner in Trump yet, or maybe there wasn't as much fear. And I think that's plausible. People really didn't imagine that Trump was going to be president. They didn't. I didn't, I'll be the first to admit. A lot of people do that thing where they like to rewrite history. Oh, I was worried. I knew, I knew that Trump wasn't, yeah, sure. Okay, you knew, nobody else knew, you know, but anyway, I think that, so that's at least a hypothesis, a coherent hypothesis that fits this data to say, well, Bernie's support went and down because for whatever reason, people are perceiving Biden to be a safer choice against Trump and they're mortally afraid of Trump.

0:17:53 Thomas: That's all, that all is, you know, plausible on its face. It's a, it's another hypothesis that fits the data. And so, you know, that's perfectly fine. If you find that more believable that, you know, I can't really argue with you. At least you're finding a hypothesis that's more believable and, or that you find believable rather, and that, that fits The Data. But I just think that consistent with this graphic that I told you about, the polling about the people who are more sexist are not supporting Warren, are more likely to support Joe Biden. I think there's a segment of the Democratic primary electorate that has these biases, a segment. I don't even know how much it is, you know, or how much It factors in. And one thing that's been frustrating in this discourse is people always turn this into an all or nothing.

0:18:41 Thomas: They say, oh, you're like, these are word for word responses. Like you're saying the only reason Warren doesn't do this or Hillary, blah, blah. It's all sexism. No, nobody said that. Nobody said the only person, nobody's made a hundred percent claim that it's all a sexism, it's that there's some portion by this polling. You know, kind of significant that it gives, it gives an edge to Biden or Bernie over Warren, for example, and it It may account for some amount of the giant bump Biden is seeing against Bernie, when Bernie is the same, and here, you know what, it, it's hard to quantify this, but to my mind, it is even worse, because if you ask me on paper, just, just forget everything right now, folks, forget everything, we've got 2016, okay, remember that, I'll tell you selectively what to remember, okay?

0:19:31 Thomas: First, remember 2016, that, and just, and, just take a state like Michigan, and the fact that Bernie beat Hillary. It was an upset, but Bernie beat Hillary. And then, just forget everything else, just say okay, in 2020, there's going to be a primary process where Bernie, who already has all this support from 16, gets to build on that. Has near universal name ID. So, Bernie should be starting from way ahead of where he was in 16. You know, in 16, he had to kind of come from nowhere. You know, not a lot of people knew Bernie in 16. He had to build a massive grassroots campaign. It was, it was super cool what he did in 16 is amazing. Actually. It's really impressive. It's still impressive.

0:20:17 Thomas: He had to do all that from, from not very much name ID in 2020. He has the benefit of all that name ID. He has the benefit of being thought of as like, well, you know, now Bernie's kind of the favorite in this race. Cause he did so, on 2020 has all that and take all that.

And then a field across from him that, uh, put aside Warren for a sec, a field of, I don't know, five or six people vying for the, in some ways, the moderate lane. Now, you know, there's, there're some, some interesting quirks in that. And there's times where the candidates tried to appear progressive, but for the most part, the field was kind of a mess.

And the biggest competition was only about a week ago, or sorry, let's see now, two weeks ago, that the field consolidated to Biden and the candidate, it In Biden, think about Clinton in 16, think about, um, how she was as a candidate, now I know a lot of people don't like Hillary Clinton, I personally was a fan of Hillary Clinton and how she campaigned, and you know, while she certainly, you can always find flaws in every candidate, and there are flaws in Hillary, she had every grasp of the issue, she had plans, maybe you didn't agree with all her plans. She had plans. She had, she had statements. She had speeches.

She had just killed it in debates. And so think about that versus Biden. What is he even said that would remotely make anyone want to vote for him? I mean, he's done. If you just put all those things aside and you look at how Biden is now, you look at all those variables I just talked to you about.

0:21:51 Thomas: Wouldn't you think that if anything, Bernie should be doing far better in 2020 than 2016? Wouldn't you think he should be mopping the floor with Biden, you know? So what accounts for that difference? And so the point I'm trying to make here is it's not just the difference in how Bernie's doing. There's that. It's also the difference in what Bernie should be doing, given that he started from a leg up of where he was in 16, and that the field was a mess across from him. He should have been able to consolidate a little faster, you would think, and still he's doing worse. So I think there's a lot of room in there for bias to be a part. Now, the, the other explanation you hear, yeah, I've gotten a lot of knee-jerk responses. Maybe, you know, maybe you'll, you'll agree with them. Some of them, I don't agree with pretty much any of them.

0:22:38 Thomas: But a lot of what you hear is, well, you know, Hillary Clinton was just hated, you know, so the, so, difference is Hillary was terrible. Everybody hated her and, you know, Biden, not so much. Well, let's dig into that. First off, why did they hate her so much? I mean, it's kind of, honestly, it's kind of redundant if the thing is like, oh, if I'm saying, well, Bernie did better in 16 because, you know, there's some bias there and people don't want to vote for a woman, and you say, yeah, but people just hated Hillary, like, yeah, maybe because in part she was a woman, like, maybe that's part of it, you know. And then I got a lot of other answers. Well, Hillary had all these scandals and, uh, you know, Republicans going after, well, certainly true. Why do the attacks stick when it's a woman and not when it is a Biden, who by the way can't even finish a sentence and is a far worse candidate?

0:23:27 Thomas: He's so much worse at campaigning than Hillary was in 2016. You can't deny that, can you? Can you really make the straight-faced argument that Biden's performance in this primary has been better than Hillary's performance? In 16. So why is it that attacks against Biden, which by the way, the president of the United States has thrown all this stuff at Biden, Burisma, you know, Hunter Biden, all this, all these scandals. Why did they stick when it was Hillary and not so much when it's Biden, at least among Democratic primary voters? I think gender plays a part in that. You know, I just, I think it does. I think a decently significant part.

0:24:13 Thomas: All right, I want to, I'll stop hammering on that because I think I'm pretty sure I've made all the points I wanted to, to make on that, um, so, I, let's talk about some other things about this. Fact, first off, again, I cannot believe I have to vote for Joe Biden in the general. I mean, I'm going to, don't get me wrong, I am even going to entertain the notion that in a two-person race between Biden and Trump that I would do anything other than, you know, vociferously and enthusiastically support Joe Biden. I mean, that's going to be the case because when you're given a choice between Joe Biden and some great other candidates like Bernie and Warren and some even anybody else, basically, then it's one thing. When then the facts change and you're giving the choice between Biden and Donald Trump, you're, it's just different, like it's, and Biden is far and away a better choice than Donald Trump.

0:25:09 Thomas: So don't let me, I'm not even, do not for a second interpret any of my words against Biden as anything other than I don't like him compared to other Democrats. But when you compare him to Donald Trump, it's not even close. It's easy for me to keep that in mind. Maybe it's Not so easy for some people. I bet people get really afraid of saying anything negative about, I don't know, about Biden because it's going to hurt him against, whatever. I can can keep two things in my mind. And that's how I'm going to operate. I can keep two things on my mind at once. One, that Biden was one of the worst of all these Democratic candidates. And two, that he's so much better than Trump, it's not even close. So that's where I'm coming from on that. But anyway, I'm incredibly disappointed with what's happening.

0:25:56 Thomas: So what's what's going on? You know, the biggest story seems to be that young people aren't showing up.

0:26:05 Thomas: That seems to to be right now from the exit polling that we're seeing, that seems to be the thing. But Bernie, you know, and there's, so there's two things, Berny. Hypothetically, there were maybe two routes Bernie could have taken. He could have taken the base that he had, you know, whatever it is, maybe it's 30% or so, going into this, looking at 538, somewhere around there, maybe less, actually, I think he was more in the 20s, and Biden was at like 32, but that's a crowded field, within a crowded. He could take that support and he could say, well, I'm going to supercharge the people who support me, as in young people and all that. And I'm gonna have them get out the vote so hard that it overcomes the fact that a lot of older voters, and frankly, a lot, pretty much a vast majority of African American voters, don't support him, or he could have broadened his support base.

0:26:55 Thomas: You know, there's kind of, I mean, and you probably try to do both, but those are two sort of different ways that Bernie could have won this thing. And he didn't either really. And I don't know how to account for that. I don'T really know what went into that. I've been thinking a lot about that. Why? And I don't really think it's about agenda. I think that people aren't really voting based on policy as much as it's annoying to me because if you look at – honestly, I'm trying to – it's hard because frankly I'm having some negative thoughts about the fact that Bernie couldn't at all win this.

0:27:41 Thomas: And I don't, I don't want to say anything to piss off Bernie supporters, of whom, by the way, I'm one right now. Like I said, I support him now in this field against Biden. I donated to him after my candidate was out. I support Bernie, but it's frustrating to me that when you look at the polling and stuff, like universal healthcare, Medicare for All, polls really well, um, that Bernie couldn't turn that into a victory over Joe Biden. Joe freaking Biden. And, and I guess, you know, I guess part of that is, again, it could be that people are really afraid of Trump, it could, I guess it could b, you know, that could be a lot of Biden support, maybe it's, maybe it's most of B-, Biden's support, but Berni was still campaigning against the Democratic establishment, like, as of last I saw, you know, he hasn't, been since these latest results, he doesn't put out much.

0:28:38 Thomas: But, but in the past week, I've still seen him in a two person race where he needs to get 51 percent or more of the delegates, certainly, and needs to win more of the vote. He was still campaigning as though he could stick with his 30, 32 percent and win. And that would have only worked if all the other candidates stayed in the election forever. But that doesn't happen. I mean, a lot of Bernie people cried foul over, you know, these endorsements, by the way, from such noted DNC insiders as Chex Notes, Andrew Yang. Like, I don't really think this is anything like untoward. This is how primaries work, if anything, candidates were staying in too long in this primary, and the idea that Bernie was just going to stay at 30 or 32 or whatever, maybe a maximum of 35 or something, and win, that wasn't ever going to work, that.

0:29:36 Thomas: That strategy worked for the first like month or two or something when there are a bunch of candidates, and so if you have a plurality because there's a bunch of other candidates splitting the vote, cool, but he needed to reach out, he needed to somehow, and us as Bernie supporters, by the way, as progressives, needed to somehow get more people to vote for Bernie over Biden, Klobuchar, Buttigieg. And unfortunately, we didn't. And I, you know, like that's on us, that's on Bernie, that is on everybody involved. And I think we are going to have to do a lot of soul searching about why that didn't happen. I don't really think you you can cry DNC conspiracy in this one. You know, that was, you know, there were some small reasons that you could say, well, the DNC helped in 16.

0:30:27 Thomas: I still don't really think it made the difference of the millions of votes that Hillary won over Bernie. But I mean, you can point to some things. What can you point to this year? I mean, Bloomberg, if anything, Bloomberg was spoiling the crap out of this race. He did far more damage to Biden than Warren did to Bernie, if you look at the the numbers. That's just true. And he's the billionaire. He's the one where you're supposed to think like, oh, he's in on the conspiracy against my candidate. But he was like, the honest truth is Bloomberg was helping Bernie far more than he was helping anybody else. And then he finally did drop out, you know, and, and what, so why, why are we stuck? Why is Bernie stuck at this number? It's just, it's really frustrating. And I think we're, as, if you're a progressive like me going forward, we're gonna have to figure this out, we're going to have to figure out how to break that threshold.

0:31:17 Thomas: And that involves getting young people to vote, by the way, I don't, gosh, I, I'm just, it's sad that more young people didn't vote. Here's one more thing I have to say: this primary also completely demolishes this idea that the way to get a more progressive candidate was to stay home in 2016. And I, this was never a good plan, I've, I made many points against this, but apologies, I gotta make one final nail in this coffin.

If your idea was, was, well, I was a Bernier buster, and so therefore, since we went with Hillary in 16, I was staying home because it, you know, it's it's, I'm, I'm not gonna vote, we need to, we can't be voting for these candidates that the DNC is shoving down our throats, so therefore I'm gonna stay home. If your plan was stay home, let Trump win, and then in the future you get like a perfect, better candidate, the, the final nail is in that coffin, it doesn't work. If anything, not only was that, that always a stupid plan because the way you get more left candidates is by having more left candidates. It's not the states where you, you hand control over to Republicans, that then there's some boomerang, like, backlash effect, and then you get like, you know, socialists and all, that's just not how anything works.

The most left states are states like California where, you know, there's Democrats primarying Democrats. It's not when you hand patrol over to Republicans, that you get this huge, like, that never leads to a more leftward candidate in the way that people, I guess, Bernie or bust people were hoping for in 2016.

0:32:49 Thomas: What it does is it moves the Overton window way to the right. You know, there's that meme that goes around that is just the opposite of true. The meme was, and, and you know, you saw it a bunch after 16 and into this This primary, it was, hey, voting for the lesser of two evils just moves everything to the right. And you had this like graph where like the right stays the same. And then the left, because you vote for the like lesser of 2 evils, you're somehow always moving to the right. It's the opposite of true. What happens is, every time you fail to elect a Democrat, say, to the presidency, things shift so far to the right, and the Supreme Court is taken out of reach for a generation, like, literally a lifetime, so, therefore, gerrymandering is okay, and all these other abuses of power, that we have, we are powerless to stop because we don't have the Supreme Supreme Court that pulls everything over the right.

0:33:46 Thomas: And the only way to pull it back left is to get somebody more left in. That's, it's just the opposite of what the original meme says. Voting for the lesser of two evils does not pull things all the way to the right. Allowing super right-wing politicians into office pulls things more to the right, it just does. The president shifts the Overton window, and, and this, this primary shows it even more.

People are so scared of the fascist we have in office and how far to the right he's pulled everything that they're, they're like, okay, I guess we'll vote for Biden. I'm so scared of this guy that will vote for, like, the most moderate, milquetoast, like not, campaigning on nothing, talk about the opposite of campaigning on dreams or, you know, like big structural change or whatever. I mean, Biden is literally just up there saying, I beat Trump. There's nothing, there's no message, and he's winning more than, than, you know, Hillary did in 2016. So this puts the final nail in any idea that you are doing anything constructive if you stay home because your favorite candidate didn't win the primary. You're not doing anything constructed. And, personally, personally, I plan on wasting almost no time or emotional energy on Bernie or Busters or anybody like that this year. First off, I'll say this. I don't think there are really that many of them.

I don't think there are. There are some, but I don't think they're that many. And I think a lot of Bernie supporters, you know, and probably the vast majority of Bernie supporters, just like the vast minority of Elizabeth Warren supporters or any other candidate, who, by the way, there are a lot of, who didn't get to win.

0:35:20 Thomas: We didn't gain. We didn't get our favorite candidate. A lot of people didn't, you know, by definition, Biden started off with like 30, 35%. So that leaves 65% of people who supported other candidates or maybe didn't have a candidate yet. And we didn't get our favorite candidate. And I think the vast majority of those people are going to do the right thing and vote for Biden in the general, because it's just, it's so unequivocally the right things to do. It's not even close. And so I'm not really going to waste much energy on them. You know, they made, they really, I was, I like, I think a lot of, you were so hurt by the 2016 election of Donald Trump that I spent a lot of time raging at those people and any, and going into it, by the way, going into the election, trying to get them to change their minds and vote for Hillary.

0:36:06 Thomas: And I'm just not going to do that this time. I'm going to say that I think, you know, what you're doing is wrong. And if you don't, you're probably less reachable than a Trump voter or less reachable than some other voter that might stay at home, you know, that, that supports the Democrat that just needs to find the time to vote, like that. That's probably who I'm going to focus on, I guess. Or, or I, you know, I may, I may try to convince people to come out and vote, but I'm not going to, me, I'm just speaking personally, like I'm not going to take it as, I, I, I'm going be as emotionally invested in the fact that there are people who are just making the obvious wrong argument, because it's just not worth it. They're not worth it, you know, they're just not.

0:36:52 Thomas: Over to kind of the changes I mentioned in the beginning that I'm personally going through in my mindset. So, you know, I'm sure a lot of people, if you've followed me or if you're whatever on Twitter, you've probably seen how frustrated things can get. A lot of people got heated during this primary. And I got to a point last week, sometime, whatever it was, where I saw some takes that were just so frustrating, you know, and some, some, some things, a take to the effect of like, oh, you know, those snake emojis that people tweeted at Elizabeth Warren, they're endearing, you know, look at them, they're cute little snakes, and this was something that was getting a bunch of retweets among Bernie followers, and, uh, I realized, like, I need to not be doing this to myself anymore. I mean, this is so stupid and frustrating and makes me so mad that I, I need this, I need a change. And so it's not just that, that one tweet, you know, it's not just the anything.

0:37:48 Thomas: And, and I, and, and by the way, this is not in any way to say the only people who are frustrating on Twitter are Bernie people. Not at all. It's just, those are the people that I was following disproportionately. So, you know, and this is, this is on me, you know, I'm not trying to blame anybody else. I happen to be following a lot of Bernie people who, in my opinion, were making a lot of uncharitable arguments and it was causing me more frustration than was worth it. I think I had followed a lot of these people because I liked them, especially years ago before this primary. These are people who were entertaining. And this brings me to my broader point on Twitter now about Twitter. And I want to first preface this with saying that I'm every bit a part of the problem.

0:38:34 Thomas: So this is not to cast judgment on other people, not myself. I realized that I was was behaving negatively. Like, and I just had a bitter outlook and stance, like rhetorical stance on Twitter all the time. And I started to realize like, gosh, I just, why, why? Why is this happening? And I think it's because of who I was following and, you know, and, and it just, it's, look, taking a, this, this sardonic language, this kind of gotcha stuff, you Know, hypocrisy and sarcastic ways. It's stuff that's funny. It stuff that can be fun. And I think it used to be within discourse, like forget Twitter and all that within debates or whatever. It used to be something you'd pull out every once in a while. Maybe you'd, you know, maybe in a debate with somebody or whatever, you'd make, you make one or two sarcastic points, maybe. But on Twitter, it's become the entire language of a lot of people. And again, I'm including myself in this.

Um, so I don't, this isn't meant to be like calling out other people, not me. I'm including me in this. The language has become that the entire discourse is that it's just this sarcastic. I cannot believe how stupid this person is who I'm retweeting and pointing out how stupid they are with this take.

0:39:59 Thomas: And, you know, I think that some percentage of that is fine. Some percentage of that is like, ah, you're making a joke at someone's expense, but, you Maybe the view they hold is really detrimental, so they kind of deserve it or something. It's kind of punching up, that kind of thing. But when the entire discourse turns into that, it's just this toxic stew. It's terrible. And if you're fine with it, you're fine with it. That's fine. Whatever. I'm not telling anyone to do anything. If you like that and you feel good about it all day, fine. Fine. But I got to the point where it just, especially, I think being a Warren supporter and being in the middle of that, of seeing these people that I pretty much mostly agree with on progressive values, start communicating in a way that seems so offensive and dismissive to me as a Warren voter.

0:40:53 Thomas: By the way, I'm sure they got it the other way too. Again, Again, this is not meant to call out just any one people. It's a toxic stew. And I'm sure they got it about their candidate too. And I think it just really hit home, this primary, how much we're speaking in a language that's just dividing us, you know? And I am talking about progressives. And I just get so tired of this, by the way, this idea that this is somehow for healthcare. Care. You know, like somehow they know this is all about like the, the, trying to say that the mean tweets, oh, you, you're talking about mean tweets. And meanwhile, people are dying on the streets because they don't have healthcare. Okay. I also support universal healthcare. These tweets I'm talking about, aren't doing that. You Know, if you look at the numbers, the people on Twitter, especially Bernie people on Tinder and Warren people, by the way, are really privileged people.

0:41:44 Thomas: That's what the numbers show. They're there. It's a very, very privileged segment of the population. Now, maybe some small percentage of this discourse is someone who doesn't have health insurance is really mad at someone who not only has health insurance, but is advocating policies that aren't helping those without health insurance. What percentage of the, this do you think that is? That would be totally justified, by the way. I'm saying that's like the best case. Sure. That's someone punching up. That someone who has every, every right to be mad. And their, and their, their target is someone they have every right to be bad at. What percentage do you think that is of the discourse that I'm talking about, of the just vile crap that I've talked about, at 1%, you know, like how, especially given the numbers of who we know is on Twitter.

0:42:33 Thomas: It's not the underprivileged mainly that are, that are that are supporting Bernie and Warren, for example, on Twitter, it's not, it is privileged people like like me, you know, it's bunch of, bunch of people like me. And we're all out there pretending that our being assholes to each other is somehow in the service of healthcare. It's just, it'S not, I'll be honest. It'S not. Especially when it doesn't, it' not even convincing anybody, you know? Like even, even if, even If the target was like a good, just target for our ire, it's also not helping. It's not convincing anybody. That's my view. And I'll combine that with the fact that I heard an interview with the author of a book called Politics is for Power, he was on the Ezra Klein Show, and he was, he articulated a lot of things that I kind of was already thinking, like I'm already kind of, especially with how the youth didn't turn out for Bernie, I've been having a lot thoughts of, what are we doing here?

0:43:27 Thomas: What is all this arguing and tweeting and all that, what is it getting us if we're just not even showing up for Bernie? If people just aren't showing up for progressive policies, if people are, by the way, not only not showing up for Bernie or whatever, but are actively showing up for Joe Biden, you know, what are we doing? And this Politics is for Power book is really, really an eye-opening thing for me. Like I say, I really feel like I was having some of these thoughts, but obviously when someone writes a book about it, they do more research and are making more cogent points. But the book is all about how politics is actually a hobby. And I, you know, I, I'm not going to sit here and make the whole case of the book, check it out or check out the Ezra Klein interview if you want, but it's a compelling case that honestly, for a lot of us, and you look at, it's honestly my demographic too.

0:44:20 Thomas: It's white men tend to be the most informed on politics, but they also do the least, you know, some of the least, like when you look, look at who is actually on the ground organizing, you know, organizing, doing real things that matter, that help, you know, be involved in these groups, and, and canvassing, doing all those things that actually help change power, gain power. And that's point of the name of the book, by the way, Politics is for Power. It shouldn't be, the point of the book is it shouldn't be just a hobby. It's about actually gaining power so that you can help people. And when you look at the demographics of who is like me and just sits and just, try you know, learns a bunch of stuff and knows a bunch about politics, maybe, um, relatively speaking, of course.

0:45:06 Thomas: Uh, that's, that's tends to be white men. If you look, who's actually on the ground doing the organizing, it tends to be women and oftentimes women of color. They're the ones doing the things that it actually affect things. And so this is all kind of hit me at once, um, you know, and obviously, like I said, I've had thoughts of this for a long time now, but just these real tangible examples are kind of all hitting me at one time. And it's leading me to the point where I want to stop spewing vitriol on Twitter for one. Um, I had to, so what I did, by the way, so for note on the Twitter thing, I unfollowed everybody, basically. And then I just started following very, very targeted things like, I don't know, New York Times, Washington Post, the actual candidates, you know, so Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, anybody else, you know, that's actually going to be just the candidates.

0:46:01 Thomas: So I can kind of hear what they're saying. And I'm just not going to, if I ever end up following people who are just kind of there to spout vitriol and own people in tweets, then I'm going to unfollow and I'm gonna try to not do that myself. What I'm going to try to do. And, and, and I wouldn't have, by the way, I wouldn't have at all blame people for unfollowing me in the last few months, you know, but what I'm going to try to do now is just, I want to just at least speak in the language of sincerity and earnestness. And if anybody wants to argue with me, by all means, argue with. As long as you're arguing as though I'm somebody you're trying to convince and I'm going to try and do the same, by the way. And I have not always done that. I've fallen short.

0:46:47 Thomas: And that's what I'm going to try to fix. I'm gonna try to, it's not about not disagreeing. That's not toxicity. That's not, you know, having disagreements is fine. It's about, you know. I want, what I want to try to do and what I wanna try to model now, as best I can, as a flawed person that I am, is say what I believe. Not a, not a sarcastic joke about the hypocrisy of this thing and why they none of that. I just want to say what I believe. And if someone disagrees and they disagree in a way that's earnest and is not a sardonic put down or whatever, and is actually contains a point. And then, you know, even a certain amount of sarcasm, whatever, it's fine.

As long as it actually contains the point, that's the thing like contains, here's the, here's the assertion you're making. Here's the argument you're taking. Here's It's based on this assumption or whatever this data. And I think that's wrong because of the following reasons. That is, you know, that's actual discourse that has any chance of convincing anybody or changing anybody's mind. And so that's what I'm going to try to do.

0:47:52 Thomas: That's where I am now. I noticed an instantaneous difference when I unfollowed everybody, because I just wasn't being exposed to all these things that I thought were bad faith, you now. And it just, it instantly makes me feel better. You know, I'm less mad all the time. So, I mean, I'd kind of recommend it, but whatever, everybody can do their thing. But I would, I don't know, maybe look at what's happening and re-examine some of the assumptions about what we're all doing, you know? And so, Politics is for Power. Yeah, that's another part of it. So that's the Twitter component. The other component is I really want to, I am kind of taking some time to really evaluate, weight, what's actually going to help the world or the country or whatever.

0:48:40 Thomas: Like, what am I going to do? Part of it sucks. I always come back to like, damn it, I'm in California. So it's already so blue. So it's probably not going to be a national thing.

0:48:49 Thomas: My first thoughts are there are some red districts around me. Maybe I can somehow find a way to start fighting for those, especially because those seats will be up in the house anyway. Those seats are up in 2020. So I'm going to start looking to what I can do locally, around me, whatever it may be, to try to change politics from a game that we're all playing, from a hobby, which it absolutely is for so many of us. And I know I know that a lot of the reactions we know these are real issues. These are kids in cages. These Are healthcare. I know they are real issue. But what we're doing about them is often not doing anything. And it becomes a hobby. You know, for some of us, maybe maybe that's not you. And that's okay. That's awesome. If you are somebody who is staying informed and also doing politics for real, that's awesome and I am, I think you deserve a pat on the back for that.

0:49:45 Thomas: That's really cool. I've been trying here and there, but I think I've been falling short. You know, I think I've not been doing enough and I want to try to get more engaged in actual politics, actual coalition building, that kind of thing. And to bring it all around, I feel like I'm one of the reasons Biden is winning is that the people who do that kind of thing, you know, women, black people, you have older people, the people who are actually doing politics for are real are turning up and the people who are played as a hobby, maybe, you know, again, statistically, not everybody, does not blanket statements, these are tendencies, these are forces that are kind of pulling a different demographic groups, the people, young people, you know, white people, the those kind of groups that tend to play politics more as a, and and maybe tend to support Bernie more, are not showing up, and it's frustrating me.

0:50:44 Thomas: And so this is kind of, I'm still processing and by all means, you know, if you think I'm wrong about any of this stuff, feel, feel free to tell me. And as long as you're treating me like a person you want to convince, I'll be happy to listen. And I'll try to do my best to show everybody the same courtesy. But it's just, I, I don't know, read the book or something or listen to the Ezra episode.

It's just a lot, a lot is coming together at once. So that's the show for today, hey, please consider supporting on Patreon, if you can, that would be awesome, support the show, we've got a really good interview that we'll be playing shortly, that I can't wait to bring you, I think these interviews have been really cool with Jamie, I thinks she's finding, she's found the last few guests, they've been awesome, and I've really enjoyed doing those, so I hope you're enjoying them, especially when we talk philosophy, you know, it's really fun, but we can branch out, try to talk some other stuff, so, lots of good stuff in the works, I look forward to having Jamie me back very soon.

0:51:41 Thomas: Thank you so much for listening and feel free to give feedback and also feel free to like, if you're following me to help keep me in line with what I'm trying to do now. By all means, I'm going to do my best to communicate in a slightly different way that I hope will maybe make some small difference. So that's the show. Thank you so mucho for listening, and I'll see you next time.

0:52:15 Clip: Thank you so much for listening to Serious Inquiries Only. If you like the show, the absolute best thing you can do is support us at patreon.com/seriouspod. The second best thing you can do is please share it on social media or by word of mouth. Speaking of social media, if you'd like to follow Jamie on Twitter, she's at Euthyphro. And follow me at SeriousPod. If you'd like to be Facebook friends, send me a request at facebook.com Thomas podcast. If you're not up for that level of intimacy, that's fine. Maybe you want to join the discussion at facebook.com/groups/SIO members. Thank you again for listening. We'll see you next time.