SIO434: Biden Is Failing On Israel-Palestine. So What Do We Do?

Transcript

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

0:00:16 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 434. I'm your host, Thomas Smith, and brought a pal, brought a friend, brought a plus one to this party. Yeah, it's Lydia.

0:00:25 Lydia: A buddy. Hi.

0:00:28 Thomas: How you doing?

0:00:29 Lydia: Hi, good. Thanks for having me.

0:00:31 Thomas: I wanted to do something a little different. I wanted to do kind of a commentary episode, but then I thought, eh, I miss you too much. So I just like having you around.

0:00:38 Lydia: Aww. That's nice. Yeah.

0:00:42 Thomas: So no, I always uh, think it's better to not have one person talking the whole time. Um, then again, I also am going to talk most of the time, but I have

0:00:50 Lydia: I was gonna say, you probably have a lot to say, though, so.

0:00:52 Thomas: A lot to say, but, but uh, I wanted to include you. And I, also, um, you might be helpful to have a sounding board. If anything I say doesn't make sense to you or, you Know, you disagree with it, uh, free to let me know. But, is something I wish that had been able to record earlier. Uh, obviously we've been a little busy here at the, at the company.

0:01:11 Lydia: Yeah.

0:01:12 Thomas: Um, Yeah. Uh. Been a lot of busy, but this is, this really important to me. And it's something that I don't think I I ever hear what I think is an honest discussion or at least an accurate discussion of kind of the incentives, the game theory and the frustration of the situation we're in. It's And something that, you know, I'm sure I've talked about before, but it has, I think, a new relevance and maybe a little bit of a different analysis when it comes to Biden and Israel. So going to get into it, after a short commercial break for non-patrons, if you'd like to skip that, go to patreon.com/seriouspod. That's seriously awful movies. Gosh, that was fun last time.

0:01:12 Lydia: SeriousPod headquarters. Mm -hmm.

0:01:54 Lydia: Oh, yeah. That was fun. House.

0:01:58 Thomas: House.

0:01:58 Lydia: It's... Every time.

0:02:01 Thomas: Yeah, house is the best. I can't wait to do that again. We'll have to find something equally fun for this month. But yeah, thanks so much to the patrons who make this show happen. Seriously, we can't do it without you. And I hope you enjoy the no ads and the house. It's on the house! I think we might as well start, I mean, with the title that don't I think is clickbait, really. I genuinely believe this. Biden is a failure on Israel. I mean I guess it's hard to declare someone a failure until it's done. He is actively failing us on Israel as we speak. And it's something that like, I haven't touched on this topic much since those first couple episodes I did because it's partially, it's just emotionally so difficult. Like it's just such a horrible situation with no, like almost no positives at all. You know, it is like, not only is this a horrendous injustice, not Not only is this a genocide, but also the thing that kind of started this latest war. And I say that just in the chronological sense, not in like a blamey sense per se, because

0:02:02 Lydia: Yeah... Oh, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

0:03:05 Thomas: It goes back forever. But the the events of October 7th are also fucking horrible. And like, but it's not like that's fun to talk about either. That that sucks, too. That's awful. You know, details continue to emerge. I mean, some of that is Israel trying to keep that in people's minds, sort of like how Bush had to, you was it, verb, noun, 9-11 or whatever, you have that famous thing.

0:03:10 Lydia: Oh. Yeah. Yeah.

0:03:27 Thomas: Think it's the exact same pattern. But at the same time, yeah, 9-11 fucking sucked too. Like it's it's not like 9-11 was fine, but it's just when people are responding in a disproportionate way, to say the least, it just puts you in this really frustrating, impossible, no one position of like, yeah, no, that was awful. That attack was awful, but now 30,000 people are dead and, you close to half of them are children or under 18. It's like that's you can't justify that. There's no justifying that. Like there just isn't. And been so hard because I would love, I would love Biden to just be better on this. Like I would, I Would absolutely love it. It is so frustrating and we're going into an election. I don't know if you know, breaking news and election is coming up and it puts people in a really tough position.

It puts people on the left in an incredibly tough position and it's something where I've talked about it a little bit, it, but I have in my mind sort of like the decision tree, you know, like the thing that makes sense to me, which is if you are somebody who genuinely cares about Israel-Palestine and hates what Israel is doing and hates Biden supporting it and the U.S.'s support of it, genuinely, and I will do everyone the favor of assuming they have genuine, like I'm not going to assume bad faith.

And would hope people don't assume bad faith out of me. Genuinely, I think you've heard me talk about how much I care about that how horrible it is. And yet at the same time, we cannot let Trump win this election. We can't.

0:03:52 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:05:00 Thomas: If this were the only issue, that's the thing that's so frustrating about seeing people say they're not going to vote for Biden because of this issue. If there were no other issues on the planet it or in the country except Israel-Palestine at all, like no other issues, we still couldn't let Trump win for just that issue. I think that's what's so frustrating. Like a lot of times this gets framed as like, well, you see, yeah, okay, there are these other things, like it would be bad for the country if Trump was in because of democracy and because he sucks and all that. But like this issue is too important to me. And I don't say that in a mocking way because often it's people who are, maybe they have some familial connection to people who have been killed in Palestine.

0:05:39 Thomas: But that doesn't change the fact that they're literally saying the only thing I can do about this issue is make it worse, is actively make more people die, because that is what would happen if Trump wins.

0:05:51 Lydia: He Would not be better on this issue than Biden. He'd be worse.

0:05:53 Thomas: No, he would be Far worse. And it's not close. He campaigned on being the most pro-Israel president, He mean, you can tick down the list of like things he did, you know, he moved the embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, you the peace plan bullshit and just didn't even talk to Palestinians, like they just didn't even include him in it. Um, there's another thing, the people doing the genociding want Trump to win, like polls just came out recently that show Israelis want Trump to win the election, 44% to 30.

0:05:54 Lydia: Yeah. Yep. Oh.

0:06:25 Lydia: Geez, I didn't see that. That's crazy.

0:06:26 Thomas: Yeah. And one of the far right assholes doing the genociding was caught saying like wants he Trump to Win. So it's this insane thing people have twisted themselves into. And it's hard because I know some people are just doing it in bad faith, but I also don't want to, I like everybody's doing that. I've heard some of the people talking about this issue are genuinely, you know, they might be related, you know, to some people who have been killed. And I understand how emotionally horrible that is. You know, like I definitely, maybe I don't understand it, but like I have plenty of empathy for like, yeah, to sit here and tell me I have to vote for somebody who just like helped kill my family. Like I get that's awful.

0:06:27 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:07:06 Thomas: I get it. It doesn't change the fact that yes, like, actually I am telling you that because what's going to happen is if we don't, Then even on just this issue, more families like yours that might've died are going to die and it doesn't make it right. It's this weird thing that, well, such a clear calculation. When it's less clear, okay, but this is a clear population. Population. Is a person in power now who sucks on this issue.

There's a person who not only would suck and ruin our country in a million other ways, but also sucks worse on this issue. And people are saying they're not going to vote for Biden. They're on the Daily. They're interviewing these people. They are everywhere saying they are not going to vote for Biden because of this issue and it's infuriating, absolutely infuriating. I understand it and I I also recognize the bind we're in. So again, good faith person to good faith person.

I'll pretend you're like me and just tell you what I've reasoned. I'll say that to the audience, not you. We haven't really talked about it. I'll tell you What I've Reasoned. Here's what I need to happen. I want Biden to change his policy, but we cannot let Trump

0:08:02 Lydia: I'm listening.

0:08:13 Thomas: Win. What do we do about that? Well, there's a range of things that I think are bad ideas, which is people just saying, well, no, I'm just not voting for Biden. And if Trump wins, it's his fault. Like somehow that fixes it. Like that's the number one thing I It was on the fucking daily podcast. And I get it. I get, yeah, I get the emotional response, but it's, that's cheating. That doesn't actually work. Like, it just fucking cheats the argument by shifting what a vote is when it's convenient for them. So when they want their person to win, and I say they, I don't know who that is. Maybe it was Bernie. And I wanted Bernie to win as well. I would have loved a Bernie presidency in 2020 instead of Biden, 100%.

When they want you to vote for your person, it's vital that we all vote for your person. Like, I'm voting. Hey, vote, Bernie. It's vital. We got to vote this or whoever it is. Vote this person, vote this person. All of a sudden, when they're making claims like this, like, I can't support Biden, and you ask him, well, but Trump is going to be worse on this issue, like literally you're making it worse.

Then all of a sudden it's like, well, it's not, it's just, it's hey, it just my vote, like it's one vote and it doesn't even do anything, you know, and they shift, like like, the burden of what a vote even is to where all of a sudden it's just one vote. It's my vote. Doesn't matter. I, you know, I have a right to vote for who I want.

And it's like, you don't get to just shift what you think of your vote as when it's convenient to you. I think we should talk as though our vote represents not just our preference, but what we want to happen and what we want other people to do. It doesn't mean we have control over those things, but we need to be talking in the same terms at all times.

Because if you want to do a conversation of one vote doesn't matter, oh, 100%, then why are we even talking? Like, you wouldn't even be engaged in a conversation if we all were going with the premise that like, well, one vote does not matter. It would be literally meaningless. We would not be on this podcast. You would not be telling me you are going to not vote for Biden or whatever. Like, it It is shifting the conversation in ways that are convenient to you.

So, you do not get to do that to get out of moral responsibility. I see that so much, people know it's the wrong decision, they know, like, well, but that's going to help Trump go in, and so what they do is they just blame shift, well, then you ought to blame Joe Biden, it's like, well, no, we're talking about your vote.

And it's so hard, because I 100% get we're put in an impossible position where the right answer can't just be nothing, like, I actually, I grant that the right answer can't be shut up and vote Biden for, just because it's too dangerous to not. I get that. Like that's, that's too much to ask. But the right answer also isn't let the situation get worse.

There will be more Palestinians killed if Trump is put into office, by far, no short, like for many reasons, not only does he support Israel more, Trump will be such a chaos agent that our attention will be split in 700 different ways and we will forget that this war is even happening,

0:08:12 Lydia: That'll Show him, yeah.

0:11:06 Lydia: Yeah,

0:11:07 Thomas: Forget that the Ukraine war is happening, like so much has happened since then, it's like, oh shit, yeah, well that sucks, you know, it's like too much to keep track of, and so if we're going to have a conversation, about a meaningful conversation about what to do about this impossible situation, you can't shift what you're talking about. You're talking about voting, you're debating what to do, your vote has to represent apples to apples. If your vote means nothing, we're not even having a conversation. Why are we even talking? Why would we talk about a meaningless thing? If your vote is a representation of what you want to happen, what you want others to do, well, then it.

And the vote of like, yes, it's meaningful for the moral statement I wanna make, but no, it is not meaningful because I have no responsibility for it. It is actually Biden's fault. It actually just doesn't work because we're talking about the part you can control.

Ultimately it would be Biden's fault, but like, I just keep thinking, oh god, Trump was in power, it's the worst, but like, shift your mind back to that time and shift your mind back to, God, especially it's going to be worse. It was, trans people were being fired from their military jobs under Trump. And that will, that will be so much less bad than what's going to happen if Trump wins another four terms. People will genuinely die over this. Like, trans people, I am terrified for what happens to trans and LGBTQ people under another Trump administration.

0:11:15 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, when they've had time to figure things out, you know, lean on Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 and all of those things to build in the leadership this time around. Yeah.

0:12:32 Thomas: Yeah. Absolutely. And they've demagogued the issue harder and harder and louder since then. And when we get to the point where trans people are dying, or when people on the border are being shot, or whatever it is, like, it it won't do any good to tell those people, yeah, well, it was Biden's fault that it happened. It doesn't even matter at that point. Like, all I care about, it's not a comfort to able to say it was someone else's fault, ultimately, that this happened. Not a comforting thought when it's happening. It doesn't do anything.

0:12:43 Lydia: Yeah? Yeah. Yeah.

0:13:12 Lydia: I mean, honestly, like, that's what kids do. Like, an immature response to a situation that you're in to try and, you know, blame shift. Yeah,

0:13:14 Thomas: Yeah, And so, at the same time, again, what do we do? What can we do? And, well, like, gotta say, from a game theory perspective, trying to, and I think some people, people are genuinely doing this. And I think some people, some leftists, do this in elections past. And I, I kind of get it. They, may be some people who in good faith are making a calculation, or maybe this is nobody, because nobody thinks like I do, I don't know.

But, like, there may be people who make a good faith calculation of, I am going to make it sound like I'm not going to vote for Biden to put as much pressure on him as possible before ultimately voting for him, cause, you know, we ultimately don't have a chance, because that's the only way to get anything done or to make my policy preferences known is to make a fuss like that.

Now, I think honestly, most people who do this, I think they just don't care about it and would rather just not vote, like, don't cares about the consequences, and then just do the blame shift thing. But like, even if we set that aside and it's in good faith, I actually see how that makes sense. Like, it would make sense to be able to say, what's the most, sort, don't know about if damage is the right word, but, but what's the most alarming thing?

Like, what can we, people who want Israel to be stopped, who want this genocide to stop, what can we do right now? And if you're just looking from a logical standpoint, making as big a noise and impact as possible without costing Biden the election is the thing I want to do. So, cut to what some folks did that you've probably heard about that I had Lydia take a look at to give us a good little breakdown of. Oh,

0:14:54 Lydia: So this movement stemmed out of Michigan, and Michigan in particular has a huge population of Arab Americans. The population of Michigan, 2% are Arab, and that's you significantly more than the percentage of population for any other state, any other voting district. It represents about 211,000 Arab Americans, which is approximately 10% of the entire population in the United States. This is something that has been understood for a long, long time, that there is concentrated political power in Michigan in particular with Arab Americans. And it's something that the GOP leaned on a lot for a very long time, until Donald Trump, when essentially they lost the Arab American voting bloc at that point in time. What we're seeing here now is a group called Listen to Michigan, which is an attempt to organize more, more seriously, movement here. And what the organization is looking to do is they are calling upon people to cast an uncommitted vote on their ballot. Now, this is a state where you have to have a Democratic, you know, the Democrat ticket in front of you, like, you are are voting for, um,

0:16:14 Thomas: You only get to vote in the primary if you're a Democrat, is that what you're saying?

0:16:16 Lydia: Only get to vote in the primary for one set of, you, parties or whatever, so if you're an independent, you have to request a Democrat ticket or a Republican, ticket. Republican, you're registered Republican. I think technically in Michigan you can request a Democrat ballot, um, register, vote there, but you are only voting within the primary of that main political party.

0:16:22 Thomas: Oh, Okay, Okay, I Yeah, I Gotcha, Right, Why?

0:16:36 Lydia: Voting uncommitted and basically trying to organize that voice. I sent you a clip of some of the conversations that have been happening in particular in Dearborn, Michigan. That's about a third of the Arab American population in Michigan is in Dearborn. And so if you want to pull that up, we can hear from that individual. Yeah,

0:16:58 Clip: We find it so strange that our president would veto since our dying. What More? We are angry. We are definitely betrayed. And definitely we should vote. The meerkat

0:17:32 Lydia: A very moving, you reflection on what this means to this individual. And it's shared by a lot of folks in this movement. Are videos that Listen to Michigan put out themselves. It has not gotten a lotof traction in terms of views, but I found it on their website. And I thought it was really interesting. Yeah. The uncommitted movement, as I said, is really, and it goes on in the video to explain this too. If you want to hear from someone who is doing some of the grassroots, you know, like cold calls and things like that, they talk about what it means to them. So this is from an individual who, again, is calling registered voters in trying to explain what movement is, you know, asking them if, if they can count on their support to vote uncommitted in this election for the primary. Mary, and she speaks to her experience why she is participating in this movement. Yeah.

0:17:53 Thomas: I

0:18:31 Clip: أنا صاحبة عامة كنت عالية وهي عاليمة أحيانا على دياليسيس إذا فقدت القوة لا يمكنك القيام بديالياسيس فهم يموتون حتى شيء أكثر من ذلك هو الدياباتيكس إذا لم تفرغ الإنسلين إذا لا يعمل الإن السلون فهم يعيشون كل شيء يحدث كل يوم في غازة وغير ذلك يجب أن أفعل ونحن سنقوم بعمل التصوير بدون أنستيجية بدون أي شيء يمكن أن يكون مسترل ونساعدة الأموال بدون المساهمة ولا تقوم بالتعليم نحن جميعاً الحكومة المتحدة في الولايات المتحركة وأنا سأفعل كل ما أستطيع لكي أقوم بتحقيقها وهذه الحكاية هي طريقة طبيعية في إرسال رسالة لبايدن في المنطقة مرحباً

0:19:23 Thomas: Yeah,

0:19:24 Lydia: I don't want to say that her view speaks for everybody. I think that, they're your point, there are probably a percentage of folks that are participating in that fully intend to not vote for Joe Biden in the general election. But I think that there are a lot of people where this is their opportunity to send a message to Joe Biden that we are not happy with how things are being handled with the Israel -Palestine war and how Palestinians are being impacted by these actions overseas. And it has been so successful that it is the first time that voting uncommitted has, from my understanding, from my research, that it has resulted in delegate awards.

0:20:03 Thomas: I wasn't sure if you were gonna say that. Yeah. Yeah. It's won delegates. It won 20 delegates so far.

0:20:05 Lydia: Yeah. Yep. Yep, so 13% of the vote in Michigan resulted in two delegates, 19% of the vote in Minnesota. So there are 11 delegates and in Hawaii, 29% of the vote and the Democrats.

0:20:21 Thomas: Yeah, that was a that was a caucus. So it's a little bit weird. But yeah, stupid

0:20:24 Lydia: Okay. That's fair. But that resulted in seven delegates being awarded to the uncommitted position.

0:20:29 Thomas: Fucking caucuses. Stop doing caucuses, everyone. They're so dumb because it was like four hundred and fifty five votes out of like fifteen hundred. It's like, what is that?

0:20:33 Lydia: Another episode. Yeah.

0:20:38 Thomas: OK, whatever.

0:20:39 Lydia: But Washington, we're are expecting to hear results probably in the next day or two, but they're not in yet, and pretty big.

0:20:46 Thomas: Wow. And that's pretty. I've seen of like seven and a half percent or so, um, so far. Wow.

0:20:51 Lydia: So Uncommitted has already received over 48 ,000 votes. This is from Waleed Shahid, who worked for Justice for Democrats, and he's involved in the Listen to Michigan Uncommited movement as well. He said that the campaign spent only $20,000, and they have a goal of 12,000 uncommitted votes. They have received four times as many already, and we're waiting for final results. So A lot of movement here. There's a whole, I think, I was looking at some of the history related to Arab American, you now, political participation over the years, obviously, there, there is a pre-9-11 and a post-9-11 situation because I was curious, you know, like, what did this look like when there were other, you of, Middle East tension and war and conflict and concern?

And you do see Arab Americans express major concerns with how politicians are responding to, you know, the war in Iraq when that was continuing on, and they voted as a result of that. The Center held a panel in 2006 called the Arab American Political Participation Panel. And George H.W. Bush's former chief of staff, John Sununu, spoke about the power of the lobby. He said that the American political system is receptive to pressure. It's designed that way.

And so Arab Americans, in order to get the political movement that they're wanting to see, they primary road to that is going to be lobbying. The system is designed to be lobbied, and

0:21:15 Thomas: Yeah.

0:22:33 Lydia: Exactly.

0:22:33 Thomas: Like APEC, yeah, yeah.

0:22:35 Lydia: And so we see this mismatch here of the lobbying forces behind Israel versus the the lobbying forces behind Palestine and the greater.

0:22:42 Thomas: Oh. You're telling me the people who are living in an apartheid state aren't able to marshal enough resources for an overseas lobbying effort to compete with you? Yeah, it's So frustrating. It's such a, it's a, it, it's, it's so frustrating that they're not able to, such a position of disadvantage, you know, sorry.

0:22:48 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And his position was even, you know, about coalescing with other groups, if it's going to dilute that message and the attention to Palestine in particular, and that overarching concern of Palestine and Israel. And so I thought that was interesting, too, because there are a lot of concerns like the view. There was a lot of discussion about how the uncommitted vote in the primary is, everybody on the view felt this way. Whoopi definitely felt this way, where it was, well, it was part of my research.

I was listening to their takes too about, but Their position was, you know, like, oh, now you're a single issue voter. Now you're a single issues voter. And, you, first of all, it's a primary. And second of all, to the point of John Sununu here, and I don't know that this is 100% what you would want anyway, his position is like, terms of lobbying, in terms of applying political pressure, it is important to be single issue. Otherwise, then you have like a bevy of things and it becomes, the pressure becomes spread out, right? And so I think that there's, that's an interesting factor to kind of keep in mind

0:23:28 Thomas: Why are we talking about The View? OK, new company policy. No, I'm just kidding.

0:24:08 Thomas: Yeah,

0:24:08 Lydia: Here too. Yeah.

0:24:09 Thomas: So I want to talk about that because I'm actually glad you brought up and was looking for takes on the other side, but I ran out of time because one thing I think is a frustrating dynamic. I know I have some leftists who listen, probably frustrated at my, you unwavering support of putting the best person in office that you can given at any time, which is obviously the right thing to do. But anyway, I there is like understandable frustration with constantly being told like, oh, you just got to vote Biden. You just got vote Biden, I get that.

Like, honestly, you do just got a vote, But you do, in fact, got to hand it to him. You do have to just vote Biden. But what I think this offers, one thing I wanted to add, is I think this particular thing, this uncommitted movement, think it offers a real litmus test. So if you see anyone who is trashing the uncommited movement, that's a good sign that actually you don't have to listen to them. Because I think there are times when you get to say, hey, yeah, sorry, you got to vote for Biden.

You just, we're longer have any other options, but Trump would be worse. Yes, you have to do it. But there are other times where, I know, just when people criticize Biden from a left point of view, where they'll get shouted down by a bunch of people saying, hey, you can't criticize Biden because then that's going to feed into Trump. And there I'm like, no, that's too far. Like, you do need to be able to criticize your leaders.

Now, obviously, I think there are better and worse ways to do that. Um, and often there's a bid of a, like, Lucy football thing that I think they pull where it's like, hey, look, next primary, you get to, you know, whatever, you get to voice your kids or there, there'll always be some other time later when you get to voice your criticism for Biden. But right now we need to all unite behind Biden.

And mind, I, you, I think there, there is a time when that's absolutely right, but there's also a time when that's wrong. And I think people on the left get really frustrated with constantly being told that now's not the time. Now's not the time, now's not the time, and

0:24:11 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:26:03 Lydia: No.

0:26:03 Thomas: I think this offers a good litmus test of whether someone was just lying and just wanted you to shut up, or whether they are like, "I, I am personally genuinely concerned with the same issues you are, but have just come to the conclusion that it doesn't mean you can let Trump win." And from that perspective, I am absolutely cheering on this uncommitted effort. I think it is a brilliant idea. Sad that we didn't get on to talk about it earlier because Super Tuesday already happened. However, I'm looking at the schedule. There's still a lot of primaries left, left. It might be, it might be almost half of them. I'm just eyeballing, but it's quite a, yeah, it might almost be half of them. We still got New York's a huge one. And so what I'm seeing is now it's even more certain that this is what you should do, because he's already clinched the fucking nomination.

0:26:55 Lydia: Who?

0:26:55 Thomas: So literally everyone, in my view, should vote uncommitted in the Democratic primary. Again, I'm sad we didn't do this soon enough to encourage Super Tuesday. That's on us. But there's still time. You know, Arizona, New York, Pennsylvania, that's a big one. That's an important state. Are states that are very important. Arizona and Pennsylvania are the two I'm seeing that are the most like crucial states that, you are swing states and we need them. So that's the place where the leverage would be the highest.

And so what I really wanted to do is come on and say, this is a great way to do the thing that is the only thing we can do. We are stuck in a stupid hostage situation, an insanely horrible hostage situation. We are struck. And there are people who are willing to compromise cognitive dissonance to just get out of that conundrum by just blame shifting, like I highlighted earlier. There are people, I think it's sadly most people, who are willing to just do that.

Nope, can't vote for Biden. Sorry, can't do it. This issue is too tough. Yeah, well, blame him if I don't vote for him. It's his fault. That's just taking the easy way out. And what I love about this is it offers us the opportunity to both recognize that we're still stuck in this fucking situation of, yes, we have to make sure Biden wins. We just have to makes sure he wins.

There's so much more at stake, not only on this issue, which will get worse, but countless other issues, including, by the way, maybe not getting to vote in the future. Like, there isn't a more dire issue than, yeah, maybe there won't be elections. Like, I don't, I mean, there will always be elections, but like maybe democracy will be so compromised that there won't be meaningful elections. Maybe Trump will run for a third term and

0:28:34 Thomas: Get away with it. I, I, yeah, I like, I do not have the confidence to say that is impossible. You do you? I do have the competence. And so that makes the argument of, well, I'm going to not vote for him and then it's his fault. And then, you know, next time when there's like a more progressive candidate, maybe I'll vote for them. Okay. What if you don't even get to do that? Like makes it even more pointless.

Like is just truly all downside for the sake of being able to hold on to your moral, what is a very good moral cause, and hold on your moral purity, but in a way that just ends up with a bunch of more people dead on the other side of the train tracks because you wouldn't pull the lever that kills fewer people. Like it just, it doesn't, there is no way around that.

Like you, you don't get to just nope out of that issue without, you know, like that doesn't free you of accountability. Just being able to say it's someone else's fault. Well, who put this train track here? Why am I the one at the level? Yeah, I know that all sucks, but you have a choice. You have a thing you can do. And the thing that you can doing is help Biden win. But this campaign, this uncommitted campaign gave people another thing they could do.

Is there some risk that maybe this leads to Biden losing to Trump? I actually can't really see why that would be. I think there's risks in how you talk about it. Like if people who are talking like, oh, I'm not voting for Biden, don't vote Biden in November, then yeah, that's bad. I don't support that. I think that's too risky. That's just too risky, but if

0:28:34 Lydia: Freaking Knows, yeah. I Yeah.

0:30:00 Thomas: Question of taking something on a ballot in this primary election, which, by the way, is already over, then really see what the risk of that would be. And I think even if you could say there's some risk of THAT undermining Biden support, I think that amount of risk is marginal enough that it's absolutely outweighed by the benefit of sending this message. Message and your vote actually normally isn't a message. What happens is they total up the votes and if he loses, they don't know why you didn't vote for him or why somebody didn't come out. And honestly, what it ends up being is never what you want it to be. The message of 2016 will never be that that Hillary isn't left enough.

That won't, that isn't actually what happened. Like if you look at the numbers, numbers, it's some bullshit that happened in three states, you know, that are like rust belt states, and what changed those voters' minds actually wasn't leftist stuff, like actually probably would have voted the other way for some different set of issues, and so as much as you might think that your vote sent a message or something, or your non-vote sent a message, it all gets collapsed into a bottom line number, and that bottom line number is looked at as, what would have been the easiest way that we could have won in 2016?" For example, and it would have been Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, a difference of 77,000 votes if I remember right, almost nothing.

The issues that drove those particular swing voters, meaning people who just stayed home, probably is like the easiest route, the shortest route if you're looking for what could have been done to win the election for Hillary. I guarantee you it wasn't because of some super lefty issue. It just isn't. And so your vote is not a message. It isn't, except in limited circumstances. And this primary vote is one of those circumstances where, okay, actually your vote can be a message.

And part of the reason for that is because of this viral campaign. Like, normal circumstances, I think you would look at uncommitted voters and you wouldn't know. No, OK, there is always some amount of them, like, you know, it's a lot lower, but there's always some amount. And in a situation where every vote counts because the margins are so razor thin, they really are razor thin. As much as we win the popular vote by fucking 10 million every

0:30:24 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:30:53 Lydia: I Know.

0:32:13 Thomas: Time, doesn't matter. It comes down to three goddamn states and margin. I don't know if people remember this, but Joe Biden won 2020 by less than that margin that Trump won in 2016 in terms of actual votes that would have flipped it. It's less, it's something like 66,000. That's how close that was.

0:32:33 Lydia: And Crazy. Yeah.

0:32:33 Thomas: And another thing I meant to rant about briefly is that that as much as I get that the system is rigged, and I get, and I agree that the electoral college is the stupidest fucking thing that I wish we got got rid of, when people tell me that voting doesn't work, it drives me insane. Because if you look at those elections, we literally lost Roe v. Wade, something that has a major impact on real people's lives daily, real impact on people's wives.

We lost that by losing by 77-ish thousand votes. Is an absolute fact that had half those people voted the other way, or I guess that number showed up to vote for Hillary, you know, to compensate. That's a tangible number that we can point to mathematically and say, no, voting does actually work. If we had had 80,000 more votes for Hillary across three states, none of that happens. You could argue maybe it would happen down the line or something, maybe, but I don't know.

I don't know that that's true. I think the Merrick Garland Supreme Court bullshit that McConnell pulled, that's not likely to happen again. That was a very weird thing and he wouldn't have gotten away with it if it weren't for the kids or

0:33:48 Lydia: Those. Damn kids.

0:33:48 Thomas: Whatever. Yeah, That wouldn't have happened. We would have had that seat. We would have been able to retire RBG and Breyer and replace them with liberals, and Roe v. v Wade might have been safe. And And it's so hard because when things get terrible and people rally and try to make them better, often you can look at it retrospect actively and be like, "Well, maybe it was good that this happened because that rallied us." And it's like, no, sorry, it wasn't. Like, so many lives were lost, so so much bullshit happened. I think, I think also the, the effects of losing the court and losing so many federal court appointments are Just not seen immediately. Like, it's not immediately obvious how bad it's gotten. Wasn't worth it.

0:33:48 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:34:30 Lydia: Well. I mean, like with, like even Roe v. Wade, right, that was a huge monumental thing, and then then you see other things start to trickle across, right? And you have Texas, and and um, they're limiting abortion there. Then you have the decision now to include IVF, that that is something that is, um, at risk, you know, obviously in Alabama already, but in other states as well that could be considering similar things. So it's, it's like the tip of the iceberg, right? And then everything else you start to feel over time, in more incremental, um, yeah.

0:35:05 Thomas: And the kind of thing where I hate to say it, despite the rigged system, voting does work. Again, we have the numbers, 77-ish thousand people in 2016. And it also goes the other way. We only got rid of Trump by 60-something thousand votes. That's a tangible number of votes that had they gone the other way, or half of them gone the other way again, very tangible amount of votes, that very tangible number, it's not a nebulous thing. It's not like some broader sense that voting doesn't work. No, it does work. Here's the numbers of what mattered in that particular election.

That imagine, imagine if Trump had won 2020. God, I don't even, I mean, I think that him winning in 2024 will be worse than that, but that would have been very bad. And it's going to happen again. We're going to have that decision again. And I guess I started this by saying it's razor thin margins. So what reason I started This Tangent was normally if you see some number of uncommitted votes, it's not very easy to tell like, okay, what matters to them? Would it be because of like inflation or is there some other issue? But because it's tied to this very tangible campaign, this obvious

0:35:22 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:36:13 Thomas: Campaign, it is nice because now everyone in Joe Biden's team can look at that vote, that number and know what that means.

0:36:23 Lydia: And And beyond that too, right? Because when you look at sort of the breakdown of where the uncommitted votes are coming, and you know, it's obviously not all of the voters are this way, but there is a huge proportion that are young folks that are showing up for this uncommited vote. And so now you have the opportunity for the broader political system to reflect on that and be like, "Okay, now these voters that are coming in," some of them, are, it is their first election, and they are coming in and they're voting uncommitted. This a voice that I need to be able to represent, and clearly we are not representing them well right now, um, because of their position to vote uncommited here. Oh.

0:37:02 Thomas: Yeah. The age thing is crazy. Like the age divide is absolutely crazy. I actually have that pulling up as well. And that's another thing you can do, by the way, is be loud, express your view. And if I guess if a pollster calls you, you can express your views. But that's That's a, that's obviously a pretty tiny number. But like trying to affect the national attitudes, Biden will be responsive to polls, like he will be responsive to polling. I think this is an issue where he's particularly failed. And sucks because what I had hoped, what I'd hoped was happening, was early on, the pressure was really high and was really in favor of Israel, was my perception of it early on.

Honestly, it still still feels like that, but not, I know the numbers show it's not exactly that way. But early on, there was massive, massive pressure, and what felt like very harsh penalties, and what were very harsh penalties in different ways for anyone going against the grain and speaking against Israel early on. And I had hoped that it was kind of that immediate pressure that Biden was more responding to, and that he was trying to to take away an issue from the right.

Because the right, of course, while they are very pro -Israel, they're also anti-Semitic. It's a weird thing. They're like both things. So it was pretty rich for them to go on this ridiculous fake campaign of like holier than thou regarding anti-Semitism and trying to like accuse a bunch of people on the left of anti-Semitism. It was obviously bullshit, but it was pretty effective. And I had hoped that that was a driver of what Biden was was doing.

And idea of, "Oh, if he's in the room, if he's closer to Netanyahu, he can control it a little bit more and mitigate damage a little more." I think it's time to recognize that that isn't

0:37:11 Lydia: Cool. Yeah. Yeah. That.

0:38:50 Lydia: Did.

0:38:50 Thomas: What was happening. I mean, it may have done something. It's hard to know the counterfactual.

0:38:51 Lydia: Not work, who Knows.

0:38:56 Thomas: There may be something he stopped. But The point is that wasn't the problem. The problem is Biden is old and he is pro -Israel. Like he just, he at a time for 50 years where that was what you were. And maybe, I don't know if he personally feels that way a lot. I get the sense he does. I getthe sense it's just like his default software or whatever. His like firmware is, yeah, Israel, great. Got a side with Israel. That's And bad. Like there's no way around.

I'm not going to try to like pretend what he's doing isn't terrible. I wanted to bring up a couple of things, even though we've already gone on somehow the length of an episode, but like, it's bullshit. He needs to do better on this issue. One million percent. Him saying, I an interview where he was asked like, what's your red line when it comes, like, is there a red line for Netanyahu?

And Biden's like, again, I hope it was just awkward wording, but he's like well, you can't have another 15,000 people dead or whatever. 15,000 Palestinians killed. You can't have a suggesting does that mean Netanyahu gets another free 10 ,000 kills or something like what it was just the wording was so fucking terrible. And I opinion is this is just kind of a genuine belief of Biden's. I think he has a probably a genuine intuition and reaction and opinion that we ought to support Israel. And I think it just favors

0:38:56 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:40:12 Thomas: Israel more than he should. And it sucks. But I think this message will help. And I Think polling will help and I think especially the point you make about young people is good. And also again, to drive the point further home that we cannot let Trump take over. If you look at the polling, which I have up now, going to be a few months old, but that's kind of good polls to take a little while. So I don't know if there's like a better one right now. But in terms of Pew Research, not amazing on this issue. Like if you just pull them, in my opinion, if the question is, has Israel's current military operation against Hamas gone too far?

If that's the poll question, my answer is obviously fucking yes. Yes. My answer was yes. On like October 8th, you know, like, like there was some amount of military response that was, that warranted. I, I grant that. Like there was absolutely, there was some amount of military response that was warranted and think they crossed that line in like an hour. Like I think it was, you know, like it's not even close. And Democrats are around as a whole, they're around like 45% saying they're going too far, which is good. Like that's, that's good. I like that. 18% saying taking the right approach, 8% saying not going far enough. Now,

0:40:50 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:41:22 Thomas: If you look at Republicans, it's basically flipped, like 12 12% saying going too far, 34% saying taking the right approach, and 25% saying not going far enough. And that matters because it's, when Trump goes into office, when, when Biden's in office, it feels like mainstream Democratic views are kind of what, like, he's been pretty progressive, but for the most part, it's going to be pretty mainstream Democratic views being represented. When Trump gets into office, it is going to be the most conservative fucking insane ideas possible being represented. Like, he doesn't go into office and then mainstream Republican things happen. It is the most rightward conservative thing. So I

0:41:21 Lydia: I Bet. Yeah.

0:42:02 Thomas: Don't even think that is a good comparison. I think what you should look at is what does the far, far right think of this and they They are even higher in that Israel is not going far enough, you 32% and a vast majority of them take up the not going far enough or taking the right approach, meaning they would be perfectly happy with status quo for who knows how long, who Knows how long they like. If Trump gets into power, he may give Netanyahu cover, or well, I mean, I don't know if Netanyihu, how long he'll stay in office, but he will give Israel cover for who knows how long to continue to genocide, like to who knows the, the difference in how bad it's going to be for the very Palestinians that I think we all care about.

I hope we all cares about their lives, will be considerably worse if Trump is made president in 2024. And I just, just, it frustrates me to no end to see anyone at all taking the view that the right thing to do is make things worse for Palestinians, because that's better for Palestinians. Just not fucking how anything works. It's not. It's wrong. It's just incorrect. I'm sorry. It's incorrect. And so I just wanted to do this show to say, like, for once, the uncommitted movement gave Democrats the opportunity to like send a message with their vote. It's fantastic.

I highly encourage you to do it if your state hasn't voted yet. I also want to say I saw a tweet that someone said, like, "I wish we had more of a chance to do this in our democracy." And

0:42:14 Lydia: That's Scary. Yeah.

0:42:23 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:43:29 Thomas: I was like, yeah, no, that's a good point. Like, it would be nice if we had like referenda from time to time or something that was just like, you know, like I know they do that in the UK and who knows if it, you know, I'm sure there'll be some other problems with it. But it does feel nice to be able to say, hey, here's a low stakes, as in you're not going to like mess anything up by, you spoiling a whole election. Let's do a national referendum on X topic. I kind of wish we had that. Like, that'd be nice to me. And have polling, but it would be nice. Yeah.

0:43:53 Lydia: Something More Comprehensive, yeah.

0:44:00 Thomas: And something where like it feels weird to campaign for polling. It feels weird To be like, hey everyone, let's make sure that if a pollster calls you that You know, or something.

0:44:00 Lydia: Yeah. Great.

0:44:09 Thomas: Whereas if it's like, oh, we've got a referendum coming up on this date, you can organize and you can like get out the vote and you Can whatever. And don't know if this would make sense. But like, it just seemed like a cool thought to be like, yeah, it's nice that we for once have a vote in this primary that doesn't matter anymore. And probably never did because Biden was always going to win the Democratic primary to be able to send a message with our vote.

And if you see anyone on the left saying that people shouldn't have done this, I think you're free to tell them to fuck off. Like, you don't have to listen to those people. That means they just are shills for Biden and you know, like they just are going to go all in for Biden at every time. And there's never going to be a time for them when it's appropriate to critique Biden in any way. They're never goingto grant that.

And so in my opinion, that's, disagree with that. I don't think you should listen to these people. I guess the only thing I didn't get to talk about that I just want to mention is, again, like how bad it is right now. Like Biden is doing a bad job on this issue and the country is like, I think that are Yesterday, as of as there's a New York Times story. Senators urge Biden to stop arming Israel, citing violation of U.S. aid law. And again, it's good. It's Bernie Sanders. Got to love Bernie.

0:45:15 Lydia: Yep.

0:45:15 Thomas: Bernie and seven Democrats, because I was afraid Bernie's an independent. So is Bernie Plus seven? I was confused as if he was counted or not, but I guess it'd be eight Democrats, senators on the left, are that he needs to stop doing this because we have a law that, like, OK, we've done this insane thing. I can't get into it. But one of the signs of just how terrible Biden's been and how, how much he's taken an approach of like, we're just a spectator, apparently, like it U.S. in a lot of people's minds, apparently, is just a spectacular that can be like, oh, I wish they wouldn't do this. Oh, that would be.

Meanwhile, we're just sending them masses of weapons and cash to do this, like we're not spectators, you, you and I are, because we fucking can't do much. But like, as a country, we're active participants. And so this attitude, this this attitude like, oh, I wish we had some leverage. It's like we do. And I don't know. You I think it's hard because in order to affect some this like weapons assistance and stuff, I don'T I DON'T know the structure of that. This isn't a law show. Show, I think you would probably need Congress or whatever, which means we effectively probably wouldn't be able to do anything. But at least rhetorically, I don't

0:45:15 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:46:20 Thomas: Know if there's some amount of it Biden can control. I don't know the details of that. No kidding.

0:46:22 Lydia: Send them to Ukraine. Yeah.

0:46:25 Thomas: Well, yeah, they tried. And so this whole thing that's happening where we're having to find a way, the U.S. is finding a way to bypass the fact that Israel isn't letting the aid that we are sending demanding to Palestinians get through. People are like, hey, that's a violation of something called the Humanitarian Aid Corridor Act, which is a part of the foreign law. And to quote the article, the act says that as soon as the president is made aware that a country is blocking or restricting the delivery of American humanitarian assistance, no U.S. military aid can be provided. And so, again, I don't know if there's like a good legal case or what this is going to to do.

It'll probably be one of those things where it's like, okay, good, cool. You have to impeach him to stop him or something. Who knows? I don't know. Like, I don't know how it works. This is not the law show. Like, yeah, that's a good law. I like that. And it's amazing that we're giving military aid in one hand and with the other being like, well, we'll give some humanitarian aid.

But then the people we're given military to are stopping the humanitarian aid and so we're finding a way around it. They're building like an emergency emergency port bullshit. It's just fucking bullshit. It's absolute bullshit in every

0:46:40 Lydia: Yeah.

0:47:34 Thomas: Way.

0:47:34 Lydia: Here's some numbers to kind of help bolster that, too. Prior to the conflict, there were 500 humanitarian aid lorries going into Gaza every day. The 20th of October to the 26th of September, only 11 lories a day were going in.

0:47:50 Thomas: Why are we saying lorries?

0:47:51 Lydia: They're,

0:47:51 Thomas: Are reading for a UK source? Yeah. Yeah. It is trucks. Lorries.

0:47:53 Lydia: Is BBC, Yeah, All right, trucks, um, Then February it increased, after, you know, like, global outcry, to 64 a day, um, you prior to the conflict, the United Nations has estimated that like 80% of Palestinians were already in need of humanitarian aid, prior to this. So, you happening is not enough by any stretch of the imagination. I mean, you look at pictures of how the area has just been decimated and, when you aid does come in because it's not enough, people are so desperate and It's, people are getting hurt and

0:48:13 Thomas: Yeah, yep. It Is awful.

0:48:31 Thomas: Yeah. And it has gotten to the point where If you stop the bombing tomorrow, people would still be dying every day for God knows how long, wrong. Because of starvation, disease, and all this stuff, you know, like it's, yeah.

0:48:34 Lydia: Yeah. And Not Water, like it's

0:48:45 Thomas: Yeah.

0:48:45 Lydia: Just, yeah.

0:48:45 Thomas: It's It's Absolutely Terrible.

0:48:45 Lydia: It's Very Very Bad.

0:48:47 Thomas: And there's no understating how horrible this, this is, and bottom line, vote uncommitted. I'm sorry that we're late with this podcast, but there's still a chance for, again, like quite a few states vote uncommissioned. I encourage you to, um, is bullshit, and it's good that we got one way to have to, one low stakes way to make our voice known on this. And, uh, it's amazing the campaign people did, you know, to make this happen. The viral, it was so fast. It was like a couple of weeks. It seems like, yeah.

0:48:47 Lydia: And on very little funding, so I think that's also something we can take from this too, that if we organize well, there is opportunity to have our voices heard in a meaningful way in a low budget way, which I'm sure would help everybody, because you know, we don't have those Cook Brother pockets.

0:49:18 Thomas: Mm -hmm.

0:49:31 Thomas: Yep. Coke brother pockets. I don't know why that's just a funny phrase. Like these big giant pockets they wear. Like I want to sew on some Coke brother pocket. All right. Right, well, thanks for uh hanging out, Lydia Smith, where can people find you? You want to plug anything?

0:49:39 Lydia: They'd have to be to hold all that money. Yeah. A little podcast called Where There's Woke. I'd like to plug that. We're doing a series right now, very deep series on Jordan Peterson, going a direction we did not anticipate we would go.

0:49:53 Thomas: It's The best Yeah, Deep In specific Ways, I Want to, yeah, it's Not, yeah, all

0:50:03 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. We're having a lot of fun with that. Way more to come there. Yeah, Yeah, lots things happening over at Where There's Vogue. So go check that out if you haven't already.

0:50:14 Thomas: Right, thanks so much for listening everyone, and uh, for supporting the show, patreon.com/seriouspod, and we'll see you next time.

0:50:43 Thomas: Uh,

0:50:38 Lydia: Points I agree yeah