SIO265: Did The System Work?

Transcript

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

0:00:04 Clip: You're listening to Serious Inquiries Only.

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 265. I'm Thomas and folks, it has been far too long since I have done a listener questions episode. I got emails, I got voicemails, you know, from actually dating back from like August to now. I'm gonna try to do some catching up. You guys are so good with your questions, your feedback and everything that I feel bad that I have not brought it on the show lately. Lately it's been far too long.

I just, so caught up with everything, the election, all that. So I'm going to answer some amazing listener questions today, so let's, let's get to it. I'm going back, I'm not going to do everything, obviously I would never do everything, it's too many things, but I'm going to go back a bit.

It's little, it's kind of nice now that we know more or less what's happening with the election, although again, Georgia, we got to win Georgia, that's a huge, huge, um, part of it, that's a huge key, but it is, um, it is nice reading back and uh, remembering just how, like, it's, it's a nice feeling to feel a lot more settled, at least that Trump is leaving now. Uh, I know he's trying not to and I know that some Republicans are helping him, most Republicans are, you know, in with this myth that he can steal the election or not leave. Uh, if you listen to Opening Arguments, you can be pretty confident that this coup is not going to work. Probably, you know, high 90s level percent confident. And, you know.

That being said, there's always a tiny chance. I don't blame people for being scared of what Trump might do. And for, and by the way, for in the past four years, feeling like maybe there aren't any rules. I absolutely do not blame anybody for worrying. I worry myself. Sometimes I, right up until like this election, I was just worried.

0:02:17 Thomas: Like, are there rules? Do things matter? Or can't, will they be able to pull off something? And I had, you know, I had Andrew over on Opening Arguments telling me, yes, there are rules. Here's why, blah, blah. And, you Know, I get it. It's well-reasoned. It comes from a place of knowledge, but I also, you know, we're all a little afraid because in some ways things don't matter. But I guess before I get to the first question here, one thought I've had is that we do have a system.

0:02:43 Thomas: And I know that sounds, okay, that sounds like a dumb statement. I think it's a little more deep than maybe it sounds like. Because on one hand, a lot of people, maybe this is Andrew, I teased him about this, you know, in a good nature, good natured way on OA the other day, because some people, you know, I'm not going to name names besides maybe teasing Andrew a little bit are like, see the system works. See, it works folks, the election system, it worked. And I, I would not at all go that far. I know a lot people listening wouldn't go that that far. It's, it's really hard to make the nuanced statement that is required, you know, because the system did not work. The system did Not work when this and I guess nor should we expect it to, you know, one of the major lessons of these last four years is like, whoa, actually, the government doesn't run itself.

0:03:34 Thomas: Rules don't enforce themselves. You know, norms, especially norms. Norms don't enforce themselves. And it turns out nobody enforces norms. That actually doesn't matter. And what happened was norms, because the only penalty for violating a norm would be some electoral penalty, you know, opinion polls or whatever, you know, or in the next election you face that you'd lose to blah, blah, well, we're so polarized now that doesn't matter. There just aren't, there's no room anymore for things like electoral consequences in a major way. And it's weird to say, I know I've, I've been weirded out by all of this. Like, I don't know what to say anymore about what to do to win votes to whatever.

0:04:21 Thomas: I mean, we all have our theories and what people love to do is take their pet theory and just say, that's why we didn't win enough votes or blah, blah, bla. We're so polarized now. It's, it, The only things that'll work will be tiny things on the margin, or as the point I tried to make in my, I think my last episode, the idea that we just need to try to motivate people to go vote, you know, do things like Stacey Abrams did in Georgia.

But anyway, I'm getting to a point. So norms don't enforce themselves, and there's almost no enforcement of norms. Laws don't reinforce themselves, but there can be select enforcement of those. It depends on how they're written. You know, certain things don't matter. We always joke about Clearers Kushner, that Kushner should not be able to be where he is.

We have a very clear law about that, an anti-nepotism law, and yet there he is, and it turns out that when laws are written a certain way that can allow something like the Justice Department to just say, nah, like the enforcement mechanism is bad, well then actually those laws pretty much don't measure, unfortunately, and so we're learning a lot here. So the system doesn't work, but we do have a system.

Like I, it's, it's been really weird, you know, like I, and maybe you guys are like me, like I went into this election just white knuckling it, like fearful that, you know, some, especially with the court, my God, the court, I'm just thinking who knows, who knows what level of terrible argument that this Supreme Court is willing to put a rubber stamp on.

Because, I mean, things, legal opinions that have come out in the past, you know, with certain justices signing on to them have been so embarrassingly, appallingly, I would say laughably, but it's not really usually funny.

0:06:07 Thomas: They're terrible, terrible arguments that once the court says, no, we're good with that, then it's like, okay, I guess that's the law. It doesn't matter that it was complete nonsense. And so I was worried, but as, as I've watched things unfold, you know, and, and you're seeing this process of like, yeah, part of it is that Biden did win by a lot. Um, electorally again, not, not a ton, you know? Same exact electoral college numbers as, uh, 2016. So I didn't think that was a landslide victory for Trump then. And I don't think this was a landslide victory for Biden. Now, I understand. Before everybody emails me, I get it. Of course, when it comes to the popular vote, it's absolutely astonishing.

0:06:53 Thomas: I am just in sheer disbelief of the number of votes Biden got. It's encouraging. Again, we got to get rid of the electoral college system. There's no way to do it, really. Short of maybe that interstate compact, that's maybe a way we can do it. But again, these things all take constitutional amendments, which take more support than anything else that we could do first to fix it. But anyway, so yes, I know Biden won the popular vote by a landslide. Massive. Last I saw, 10 million more votes than the next highest person to win the presidency. And the margin over Trump is obviously huge. I mean, we're looking at about 6 million, almost 6 million votes more, which is larger than many countries, 6 million.

0:07:47 Thomas: So many countries worth of people difference vote for Joe Biden. But because of our stupid system that some slaveholders thought was a good idea, that means it's still a nail biter. Couple of states flip the other way, folks. And, you know, it's a different story. What, three states, I think? It's, it's, should not be that close, but it's encouraging that we have a system. Like, there, there is something of a system. It doesn't mean the system is working, the system is not working, the, the fact that, you know, uh, Trump was able to sabotage vote by mail, that there's all these ways that voter suppression, long lines, all this stuff, the system is not working. And I take it as a bit of an insult when people are like, yep, system works, see, yeah, yeah, system worked.

0:08:35 Thomas: We got rid of Trump. System worked. Nah, not really. I mean, on a macro level, you know, it's just simplistic thinking to say like, oh, because of this macro level outcome that might turn out, therefore everything worked fine. That's just not how anything works. You know, the system just barely, you know. With the gears exposed and belts snapping and smoke coming out of it and just pile of bolts, you know, just shooting off everything, all directions, different pieces falling off. The system just barely like fell. I don't know. I'm mixing a lot of metaphors here in a race. It just like the system kind of is, it just fell over and rolled over the finish line. Just like barely. And you're like, Oh, see that weird system works in this tortured analogy works fine.

0:09:22 Thomas: No, it doesn't. We have, but we have a system. We We have more than no system. We absolutely have more than no systems. And I never knew just how important that was. Honestly, like it really does make me, it doesn't excuse it. Obviously, we always should shoot for doing way better. But it does make me appreciate what we have more to see this happen. You know, we are not a just an absolute authoritarian state with no system, you know, the strongman leader says he won 99.8% of the vote. There's nothing. We're not that. Things aren't that bad. And I never thought that would be comfort. I'd be like, yeah, of course things aren't that bad back before Trump. But now it's like, oh, things aren't that bad. They're not as bad as when, you know, Kim Jong-un says he won a hundred percent of the vote and shot at 18 on a golf court, whatever.

0:10:11 Thomas: We're not that bad, fortunately. And it's, it is nice. You know, you see these state, there it turns out, there is a system. Turns out, by the way, You have to have some level of legal argument to steal an election. I actually didn't know that, I swear, because Amy Coney Barrett and the other just absolutely lost conservative howler monkeys on the court are willing to do such atrocities when it comes to other decisions, I truly did not think you'd need anything. I thought they'd be able to make something up, Supreme Court takes it, bam, it's election stolen. I was very nervous about that. Turns out you have to have something.

0:10:56 Thomas: And it's, I guess, just why? I don't know. What's holding this thing together? Does anybody know? I guess because in the lower courts, you know, it has got to do something. I still feel like if they really wanted to, the Supreme Court could just be like, we're taking this. We'll just grant cert, skip all that other process. I know that happens in some other cases. Why not here? I don't know.

But I guess you have to have, you know, if it were close, they could probably steal it. If we're all being honest with ourselves, if we're not, closer, if It were within a few thousand votes, maybe tens of thousands, they could probably do it. But no, guess not. All right. I've answered zero listener questions so far. Not a good start in terms of that, but sorry, just wanted to get that off my chest.

So here's an older email that's still relevant because I brought it up again, sort of last week or the week before. Or who knows what time is. Anyway, Ben writes me to say, this is back when I originally talked about that other political dimension that's not left or right. It's sort of the lizard people dimension. And I already, you know, I regret that a little bit. I know I make jokes about the lizard people, DNC being lizard people.

It is hard because, you now, I should not be poisoning the well that hard on that theory because I do agree to some extent that establishment, establishment Democrats are a problem. It's just the level. That's the hard part. All right, as I'm reading this, I'm realizing it's too long and it's kind of dated, so I'm not going to read it. Anyway, I'll take it as a prompt. Sorry. Listener Ben emailed about that lizard people spectrum and talked about trust in institutions.

0:12:33 Thomas: And I don't know if that's entirely the same. I think there's some overlap there. Ben talks about working within the system and without, without the system, I guess, from outside of the system, and, you know, that we need both voices. Totally agree there. I guess I want to talk about this. I, I, um, I've been reflecting again on that last episode and I want to make very clear that, you know, establishment Democrats to some degree I can be a problem. Uh, I think the finger pointing is is not productive. I think there are some things I didn't, I think I didn't exactly get to, which is I found it pretty pathetic to point fingers at someone like AOC when it comes to, um, you know, the, the finger-pointing on, oh, progressive issue, defund the police and socialism, you know, are costing us too much, uh, in that Representative Spanberger who said that.

0:13:26 Thomas: I, I think that's pathetic, uh. Excuse making. Again, what I meant to say that I didn't get to, which is obvious, is look at this from the other side. On the other slide, you have Trump, who is the biggest fucking train wreck ever in the presidency. And you get, you know, again, it's hard to even summarize. How does one quickly summarize how fucking awful this administration has been? And just how many illegal and norm-breaking things they're doing. You know, you got Bill Barr acting as his personal attorney. You know they're suppressing vote. They're doing all this stuff and yet somehow Republicans are able to compete. You know Republicans down ballot are able to deal with that. Whereas all of a sudden if you're, you know, Representative Spanberger in some sort of maybe purple district because someone somewhere said defund the police, you're fucked.

0:14:20 Thomas: You can't. That's costing me my election potentially. I think she narrowly won hers or whatever, but still was so mad, was mad about the fact that it even existed. It's, that's crap. That's garbage. You know, I mean, that's just pathetic excuse making, in my opinion. Nobody ran, find me a single politician running, or at least, you know, I guess there's a lot of levels of government, that that's too broad a net, find me a notable at all, notable Democratic politician who ran on defund the police and socialism, didn't happen. Yeah, there are, and this is, I'm noticing this, you know, well, this has been the story of the last four years as so many things today are. The idea that we get to be judged, Democrats, the left, it's the simplest fucking tactic that they've utilized for four straight years.

0:15:13 Thomas: The left gets to be judging on the worst possible examples you can find. Many of whom, you know, I don't think are actually that bad, but it's also as facts are distorted, that kind of thing. So if you can find edited footage of a protester hitting somebody. Well, that's the whole left, everybody. That's the whole left. It's so pathetic. It's so boring. It is so boring, but it works. Because you got a bunch of old people watching Fox News are like, yeah, that is the land. That is all of them. You know, a bunch ignorant people who are very prone to hating people like that. And also it's been built up over decades. So, you know, each time they see something like this, It increases their, uh, sort of prior belief or, or at least it coincides with it a little bit.

0:16:01 Thomas: You know, each time they see it, it's like, yeah, that confirms my prior belief from when Rush Limbaugh started yelling about this in the nineties that, yeah. It's just all about these people, horrible, you know, leftists who want to blah, blah, blah, socialist, blah. But they're able to just take, you know, for, I, there was a, someone shared a video, some Republican shared a video of a protester hitting somebody. And then I saw it on Reddit because the Reddit thing was like, Hey, check out this whole video where this belligerent Trump supporter was attacking multiple people. And then at the end, he got hit by somebody very much deserving it. But no, the edited footage is, oh, black protester knocks out innocent Trump supporter. And then that gets shared.

0:16:46 Thomas: And then that's the whole thing. We need to be done playing their game, Spanberger, whoever you are, we need to be down with that, go and talk to, you it's all about your constituents, you know, it's about, apparently that's all, if that's your theory that your constituents are so moderate, cool, go and talk to your constituents and get them out to vote and tell them what you stand for, and we'll let the chips fall where they may, but we're not going to play the, the game where everybody gets judged by whatever the right's biggest wet dream socialist boogeyman thing is. Probably not as often a boogeyman as it is a boogie woman, you know, because that's another part of it. Conservatives are so afraid of women having power, and especially women of color, too.

0:17:32 Thomas: So that's probably the boogie person. I'll say boogie personal. Anyway, I'm tired of that game. Stop playing their game. It's not progressives' fault. It's progressive activists' fault, by the way. You know, someone also I I've lost this comment, but somewhere someone mentioned because I talked about Georgia being so key and what Stacey Abrams did there being amazing. And someone mentioned like, oh, but maybe Black Lives Matter defund the police also motivated those people both registering to vote and getting people registered. And that's another. So a pushback to like my point about Stacey Abrams being really moderate and look what she was able to accomplish. Yeah, that could be possible. I don't I would suspect, though, that you would see that in like when that similarly happened in every state or at least some similarly situated states.

0:18:20 Thomas: Georgia seems to be pretty unique. And therefore, I, I think that, you know, we can give some amount of credit to what Stacey Abraham specifically is doing and what she did there. I'm sure it would take a lot of research to dig into the independent variables. But yeah, I mean, I think it is entirely possible that those movements inspired a lot people to get engaged and to get registered to vote and all that. So yeah, again, I don't know that those movement or those policy positions, which was my point, progressive policy positions do not seem to be a magic bullet to winning elections. In fact, I've seen now in the wake of that episode last week, someone posted a regression analysis or whatever that made the case that Medicare for All was actually responsible when you control for all the variables as a policy position was responsible for a slight dip.

0:19:18 Thomas: That may or may not be true. I don't know. I can't verify. I don't know that level of research. I'm sure that we will see something in the coming months or whatever. At any rate, I mean, it's pretty close. Like even if it did cost someone a net few points, it is also just the right policy thing to do. So we should fight for it. But I just wanted to make that point because, you know, and this is something I wanted to, again, sorry, I keep having all these thoughts I realized I wanted to get to. I've done two episodes in a row, at least, where I just talk for a straight hour and still get nowhere in the thoughts, you know, that I wanted to get out. One thing I meant to say was this is why I was so, as much as I'm, you know, I want to be careful in not papering over the fact that there is a problem with, you know, centrists or establishment Democrats.

0:20:13 Thomas: There are problems there. I do not want to pretend that isn't the case, but I wanted to fight back against a particular line of thinking, and I'll tell you why it is. Because there is, I've noticed in a particular corner of progressivism of the burning left, that there's a circle of thinking. There is kind of a theory of politics that goes like this. It usually starts with Democrats haven't done anything for anybody sort of thing. And that's why people don't vote for Democrats. And I try to say, well, no, I mean, we just haven't had power that much. I always bring up the example, the only times we've controlled all three branches of government, or at least both chambers of Congress and the presidency, which would do a lot, maybe not in today's world with this court, but that would do a lot.

0:21:09 Thomas: We've done that twice in the last 30 years, only two times for a brief period of time. All the rest of that is Republicans controlling at least something. And in this day and age, that makes it impossible. They have the advantage. Republicans want nothing to happen. They want status quo. And in our stupid system with all these checks and balances, too many checks and balances, some checks and balance is good. Too many checks in balances that allow a minoritarian tyranny. That means that a tie goes to them. Tie goes to Republicans. We have to control everything or basically nothing gets done. And so I make that point and they say, yeah, but yeah, look at the, you know, maybe they might make an argument and these aren't terrible arguments.

0:21:56 Thomas: I'm not trying to straw man. They might make an argument. Well, you know, in 2009 to 2011, when Obama had that power, they didn't go far enough with the with the Health Care Act and some other things. And, you know, we could quibble about that. There are valid points there. I think, again, I think a lot of that lays at the feet of the marginal senators whose approval we needed to pass anything. Thing. And so then it goes to, well, why are we dependent on those marginal senators? And it's like, well we haven't elected enough Democrats or we haven't moved the country left. And then the argument goes back to, and that's because, so when these arguments with a certain segment of the progressive left goes, yeah, the reason we haven't convinced all those people is because we haven't adopted these policies that everybody secretly loves.

0:22:42 Thomas: And again, these aren't terrible arguments. There's some polling to suggest that in a vacuum, universal health care of some kind pulls pretty well, higher minimum wage pulls pretty well, in a vacuum. And that's, that's why I was so I was So interested in looking into this, and pushing back on that narrative, because it, it makes it this impossible to a sale thing where I'm trying to say, like, look, we have in order to get things to, to more progressive outcomes, we Have to elect Democrats in numbers that give give them control of things before we can even criticize them for not doing something. And then, but, but this, this logic not always is able to blame Democrats because actually secretly, if they just held these policy positions, they would win everything.

0:23:29 Thomas: And I don't think that's true. That's the part that I think fails, but it's important to push back on because if not, then it's convenient. It's so easy. Then you could just be like, yeah, I'm a progressive and Democrats are to blame. They don't take these policy positions that would win them every election, and that's why they don't have power, so I can both be mad at them for not having power, and I cannot actively work to give them that power because they suck and I don't like them. And that's a foregone conclusion, then. Nothing will ever change with that attitude. And I don't even think it's correct is more importantly. I mean, if it were correct, you know, I wouldn't blame people so much, but I do not think it is correct. And by the way, we can't always be evaluating the party based on these old things that happened anyway. Way. Like, yeah, sure.

0:24:14 Thomas: In 1992 to 94, that time we had control, I'm sure some progressive things for the era happened at that relative to that time. But, you know, like Bill Clinton and that Democratic Congress. Yeah. Maybe they weren't progressive enough by today's standards. I'm sure they weren't. I'm absolutely sure they weren't. But like, we can't keep holding people holding the party to these old standards. I mean, if you want Bernie Sanders or AOC's bills that that they've sponsored to go anywhere, we have to give the democratic party power to even have a chance. And we can't keep blaming them for the power for not utilizing the power. We never give them forever. Eventually we have To give them power. And then, you know, then we can go from there.

0:25:00 Thomas: All right. Sorry. I've this time. I'm sure I'll think of other things I meant to say, but this time I'm actually going to read a question. This is from Jimmy. It's about Uyghur Muslims. Hi, Thomas. I want to make this as brief as possible. I'm on Twitter a lot, but I just wondered if you have noticed the recent interest in the plight of Uyghur Muslims, I think mostly brought on by Majid Nawaz's recent focus. Okay, pausing here. I don't follow Majid anymore for good reason. He went full QAnon. I reposted some of his stuff. Majid is a POS. He sucks. Sorry to break that to you. He was posting stuff about how, you know, there's no way Biden could have gotten so many votes. He didn't even complain, blah, blah. All the stuff about how there's actually really there is they are Democrats are stealing the election.

0:25:49 Thomas: Look, he's more often he's been an awful centrist, in my opinion, and he's, you know, tries to find every way to bash the left as he can and then some token ways to to bash the right, but going full QAnon in terms of your election fraud theories about Biden or whatever, I mean, it's just so bad. And there's other examples too. So I'm not a big fan of Majid, but anyway, back to the email. Although I commend Majid's efforts, there seems to be this undercurrent of the left ignoring this issue, also promoted by him in a few tweets, hashtag silence is violence. Even this has been happening for many years and all left-leaning podcasts I listen to, crooked media, et cetera, have been constantly discussing it. Yeah, that's true. I've heard Uyghurs discussed multiple times on those podcasts. Not to mention mainstream media, too.

0:26:35 Thomas: Nothing annoys me more than Rubin-like grift of false concern just to take a dig at the left, particularly when it's not true. I feel like the right are going to continue to really push this narrative and try to link Biden somehow to China in the coming months. Yeah. Let's see. Did that happen? Not in this way, I don't think. Anyway, I couldn't think of anyone better to research and delve into timelines. Uh, yeah, no, sorry, I'm not doing that. Apologies. But, um, yeah, either way, I love the show. Thank you, Jimmy. Okay. Jimmy, thanks for the email. Yeah, I brought this up. I read this one cause, you know, I am very concerned about Uyghur Muslims, and I wish we had better options other than the nothing that are our options. Um, it's incredibly frustrating. It's something that I think under normal circumstances, it would be a little easier to be like, hey, everybody, stop what you're doing.

0:27:25 Thomas: There's like a literal genocide happening and China's perpetrating it. But since so many things are going on, including a global pandemic that's killing hundreds of thousands of Americans and a presidency that was a threat to our actual democracy, like it, honestly, we just do not have the bandwidth apparently as a country. Now, this is something I will be keenly watching the Biden administration about. I don't know what you do. I'm not a foreign policy expert. And I also know that like when you're talking about China, when youre talking about a global superpower, you know, that's that's if not now, soon, maybe the the world's biggest superpower eventually. I don't know what you do about that.

0:28:11 Thomas: I think more than the nothing that Trump is doing, obviously. I mean, there were reports that Trump approved of the camps, by the way. More reason that I cannot believe how good it is that we're getting rid of this fucking disaster of a person. It is so good. As much as, again, as much as I'm disappointed in the Senate and that, you know, it's still so good. It is so good that we're getting rid of Trump. It is massively great. I know you don't need me to tell you that. But again, as I always say, you can't keep it all in your mind. And sometimes I go through these different issues and I'm like, oh, God, thank God I forgot about that. Oh, yeah, I wasn't thinking about that particular issue. We'll see what Biden does on China. I will be very curious to keep an eye on that. I think we all should keep an eye on it because it is a huge issue, something that I want want something done about.

0:29:01 Thomas: And the fact that the crooked people, for those who aren't familiar, that's like some people, some Obama staffers, their podcast, Crooked Media. I mean, it's a huge thing. I'm sure you know it, but I listened to them. The fact that they're onto it would signal to me that, you know, Obama alum types are onto this issue. And I'm sure there will be a lot of them in the Biden administration. So, hopefully, you know, progress could be made here. All right. Here's another quick comment. Comment uh Diddling Quokka said, "Hey, Thomas, on the last episode you briefly said something like, can you imagine a Roberts siding with the liberal side? It got me thinking, when do we have to start using far right versus conservative instead of conservative versus liberal scale? When we start getting five four decisions where Kagan and Sotomayor are joined by Roberts, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh, calling it the liberal sides seems like polishing a turd. Sorry if it's not relevant, just couldn't help think how utterly fucked I would be to be happy about any decision from the 2021 SCOTUS."

0:30:00 Thomas: Yeah, no, good call. I mean, words as you've heard have sometimes failed me when talking about this court. There is Sotomayor, who is the best justice in my opinion, bar none. I mean, even some of these decisions, recent opening arguments, I know, sorry, I reference my other show all the time, but we talked about a potential upcoming case that, you know, when it comes to things like separation of church and state, often Sotomayor is the lone voice on these things, which is shocking and surprising. It'll be like an eight-one decision, you know, kind of thing, where Sotomayor is the only one who's like, hey, remember separation of church and state? No, no, no. None of the other justices. And there are other, you you know, dynamics.

0:30:45 Thomas: I think there are some areas where Sotomayor, you know, maybe she would be considered more to the, I don't want to say to the right again because the right has gone off such a deep end, but more, you know, a little bit conservative on certain issues, but far and away Sotomayor is my favorite, but yeah, like Kagan and Breyer are, you know, left-ish. They're not progressive, they're not, you know, they're not super far leftist justices, um, so yeah, no, I agree.

It's like a far right rubber stamp for fascism versus, you know, sort of the centrists. I, I think you're totally right on there. It's hard, you know, and that's, that's one of the ways that language kind of messes with us, and it normalizes what's really a terrible situation. You start saying, yeah, the left and the right, and the left has stayed roughly, roughly the same, in the court at least, at the very least in the court, and then the right has gone off the fucking deep end of fascism, and by the way, Christian nationalism when it comes to some of these decisions. So just labeling it left and right, yeah, that smuggles in a lot of stuff. All right, very long email from Zach from Minneapolis.

0:31:59 Thomas: I appreciate the email, can't read all of it. Essentially, the gist is, you know, while I've been skeptical of a revolution, Zach shares my, my skepticism, but what about a constitutional convention? And, you know, as a way to bring about change, Zach mentions overturning Citizens United, that kind of thing, and wonders why I'm skeptical. And then I got to say, Zach, then you proceed to describe a hypothetical that seems so outlandish about how, you know, we would, it would be good to like have representation from different races and groups and ethnicities and all that in this constitutional convention and not allow elected officials. How are you doing all that? I got to say. So the point Zach was making was like, yeah, this could really work.

0:32:47 Thomas: And then, in my opinion, proposed a very, very pie in the sky level thinking, no offense, about how this would go. And I just cannot, I don't see it. You know, I think what people often think about when they think of these convention of of states like this constitutional convention, they think of what might be added or modified, like, oh, yeah, we could get rid of Citizens United. We could, you know, do this. But I don't think maybe they're thinking enough about what could possibly go wrong. You know, and for one, when you're talking about states, the states already is a super Republican lean. I mean, there's a reason that when you do the typical electoral college map, it looks overwhelmingly Overwhelmingly red. And all these people think like, wow, what a red country we are.

0:33:35 Thomas: And then, you know, you do the one based on population. It's like, oh, no, actually, we're pretty, pretty blue. But it's just that there's red people and are further apart from each other. And therefore they get their vote to count for more. Stupid, stupid. So when you're talking about a convention of states ratified by state conventions or state legislatures, those are, it's, it makes the problem even worse when it comes to representation. You know, white men will be overwhelmingly overrepresented in something like that, in state. You know, we don't control, like, control of states is almost so Republican that it was one of the ways people talked about they could steal this election. And yet we think it's going to work out to change some. I just don't see it. I mean, maybe I'm, yeah, I am not an expert on this, but I, but, you know, Andrew is also skeptical of this kind of thing.

0:34:27 Thomas: And I think with good reason. And it's like, what do you think we would get a First Amendment out of this? Like if they're going to rewrite the Constitution, do you Think we'll get separation of church and state or the establishment clause? Do you think there's any chance of that happening? We would get a far more broad Second Amendment that would, well, it's already been ruined by the court, but would be even more lax in terms of regulating weapons. I just, I don't trust it. The problem is anything that requires states like the Senate, you know, that gives power based on these arbitrary fucking lines that were drawn on this stupid map, two Dakotas and all this crap that gives red America disproportionate power.

0:35:14 Thomas: I mean, this, I don't know. I don't know how this will be fixed. I do not know. I genuinely, this is something I' struggled with for years, especially in the wake of 2016 when, you know, Hillary won the popular vote by 3 million votes, which, boy, that seemed like a lot at the time. It was a lot of votes. Now it's like 5, 6 million votes that we're going to win by and squeak through the Electoral College. When does it end? And where does it go? I mean, I guess in terms of presidential politics, if we flip Texas blue, which seems seems inevitable, then OK, in terms of presidential elections, then the Electoral College, you know, which is the only thing it's for, not a big deal. But there will always be that that Senate advantage, you know, or I guess I won't say always there for a much longer time.

0:36:07 Thomas: I mean, maybe if you turn Texas blue and you get one or two more Democrats, Democratic senators out of it, that helps, but it doesn't, it, we won't have near the numbers that we should in the Senate based on population. If you, if we abolish the Senate and it was just based on the house. And by the way, if we did something about gerrymandering, so it's actually proportional, then, or proportionate, I can't, I'm not sure which form of that word. Then we're talking. Then it's like, okay, convince the most people, convince hearts and minds about your policy idea. And then it becomes policy. And it's a, I am just a bill on Capitol Hill. That would be great. But anything that prioritizes or gives veto power to these stupid states in the form of the Senate, or sometimes the electoral college, depending on how that goes.

0:36:54 Thomas: I mean, I don't know what we do about that. I really, truly don't. Because every single solution is like, well, an amendment, yeah, cool, runs the same problem, same problem. You know, again, we may solve this on a presidential level with demographic shifts in Florida or Texas eventually, and then it won't be so big of a deal.

But never in terms, you know, unless we get rid of the Senate or combine some some states, you know, or maybe add a few states, it still is going to be it's going to either way, it's gonna fall quite a bit short of where the people actually are.

And I could see some dire scenarios where, you Know, if Republicans do some shifting in terms of, they've seemed to be able to generate generate a little more appeal in the Latino community now than we would have thought, like, if they're able to claw back more support than we're thinking, I could see this problem California and New York and other really blue states have overwhelming populations, you know, tens, hundreds of millions of people. You could create hypotheticals where, okay, what if 300 million people all live in California? Should they still be subject to whatever the stupid fucking Senate says because of the four people out in the Dakotas and Montana and, you know, Nebraska and all these? I mean, it's just stupid. It's not a good system. Anyway, I don't think a constitutional convention would work. I also think it could produce way more harm than people are accounting for. That's my current opinion.

I'm not an expert. That's, you know, again, based on other people who are experts. But, you Know, if you see other evidence there that it could go another way, feel free to try to change my mind. I'm open to it, but I don't know. I would be very scared as to the outcome of that.

Well, I had a couple ones that were briefly recognizing like, oh, yeah, I didn't realize realize the Senate rules were the way they were and that maybe in retrospect, RBG should have retired.

0:38:47 Thomas: You know, again, it's totally moot point now, but I appreciate the feedback there and people seemed willing to change their mind on that, which was a contentious subject. So I appreciate it. Here's another one. Someone, I'm not going to, I have disdain for this comment, so I'm going to say it was said, you know, even if you win the presidency and the Senate, Biden just won't do any of the stuff you want. Yeah, sure. Yeah. That's that kind of mindset that is really productive. That's just not true. It's just absolutely not true in an absolute sense. You know, the idea that Biden wouldn't close the camps or Biden wouldn'T. By the way, something he just announced, allow 150,000 refugees in versus the fucking none that Trump is letting in. That's a huge, that's major difference in people's lives. That's letting the most desperate people in the world come in to our country and not be killed by, you know, husbands sometimes.

0:39:41 Thomas: There's that, remember that domestic violence one where that was, they got rid of that exception. I mean, those are real lives. Those have an impact. I get so tired of the absolutist thinking. I know I harp on it a lot, but it is cognitively easier to just say, ah, both sides the same, both side's the same. That's lazy. It's lazy and easy. It's also lazy and to say, no, the left is always great. That is also lazy and easy. You know, I'll both sides you.

I don't like both sides-ism when it comes to the left and the right, but I think it's not terrible when it come to the left and progressive left. I think there are, that's a place where it's like, well, let's find some compromise here. Let's both sides, the left, and the center left. I think that's, that a good thing. You know, because it's, I think the hardest, Cognitively the most difficult place to sit, in my opinion, because it's just hard, it's just reality is, well, here's the side that's every chance of making things, that only has the only chance of making things better in all these ways, and keeping in your head all the different things, the camps, the the refugees, foreign policy, trade deal, like, just so much policy, it's such a big world, it's such a big government full of so many different decisions, that there are plenty of ways, there are lots of ways that a Democratic president makes things better for people's lives, real people's lives, giving healthcare to millions more people, or by the way, not taking it away, at the very least, at the bare minimum.

0:41:09 Thomas: It is true that Biden will at the very least—even if we don't get the Senate and so he can't do much—he won't be actively trying to undermine Obamacare and take healthcare away, health coverage, away from 20 million people that Trump was trying to get rid of. Those are 20 million humans. Those are real lives. Those actually matter. Their lives aren't meaningless just because we don't get the ideal thing that could have happened. That doesn't make it meaningless. So it's hard.

It's hard to keep that all in your head. I struggle with it, but that's just the truth. I'm just noticing back in my log here. I'm into October 20th, everybody. Lots of people wrote in, I think I mentioned this. I had lots of people write in talking about how the Hunter Biden and laptop repair story was not as crazy as I made it out to be, and uh, yeah, I hear you. You know, a lot of people, like, well, you know, you can actually, it's easy to hack into that kind of thing, uh, especially if a hard drive's not, um, if it's not encrypted, you know, which Windows ones aren't by default, then it's, you know, easy to get these files.

And I hear ya, so it's, it, you know, maybe I made it out to be a little more far-fetched than it would be, specifically with those tech issues. Now, specifically, by the way, I thought it had to be an iMac laptop because of the iMessage thing. People said that that's how they got the text, was from iMessage sync. I don't think, can you do that with a Windows laptop? Okay, all the techies who emailed me, that was my assumption. So I was going based on an Apple computer, which I think is a little bit harder to hack by default.

0:42:44 Thomas: Now, Now, I, I don't know if it's encrypted by default or if you have to, um, if you have to select that option, but I'm more just in disbelief. I do not believe that Hunter Biden would have done this. It's, it's one thing to say like, yeah, okay. A random person might've done this, someone who didn't have any money. It was like, oh, how much to repair this? Ah, whatever, who cares? And then just leaves it in there and forgets about it. But somebody who's engaged in, uh, apparently like international corruption and insider dealing with using his name, all this stuff. I just find it hard to believe that all these things can be true. And furthermore, there were like other laptops allegedly to the point where everybody had a Hunter laptop. I found the whole thing ridiculous, but noted that, okay, perhaps that story wasn't as ridiculous as I made it out to be.

0:43:35 Thomas: Thank you, tech people, for those emails. You're right. Okay, here's a really excellent email from Jonathan. This is, I think, definitely challenging some things I've said. Let's read it. So Jonathan says, Enough, fuck off with this revolutionary straw man. You've been screaming at this fake leftist on and off for a while now. Uh-oh. And they've never existed. Even among hardcore leftists, a vanishingly small number of people are hoping for a violent revolution. Well, I want to clarify, I haven't said violent per se. When I say revolution, I don't mean that those people only mean violent revolution. There's a number of different ways people do. Anyway, although many are preparing to counter mass right-wing violence, which can appear similar, union agitation, strikes, mutual aid, or something like sunblock, with just a C at the end there, not CK, are all far more accurate representations of the leftist position.

0:44:29 Thomas: Whether any of that would work is open for discussion, but at least scream at the right ideas. I'm going to pause here. Yeah, no, this is a challenge. This is a struggle. I've talked about this regarding many different subjects. How do I know which population of people screaming at me is the one that's the more people? Because, Jonathan, no, this isn't a straw man. I mean, it's at least, I will grant you that I do not know how many leftists are the ones who are like not voting because we need to take down the system, that's essentially, that's this, let me clarify then, the stance that I'm railing against is the kind of people who think there is no point in working to, uh, to to elect Democrats to try to, you know, to vote, to do any of that stuff, that they actively don't do it because they say the system is broken, we have to take out the the system.

0:45:25 Thomas: We have to get rid of the system, that's who I'm talking about. I am not just merely micro-targeting people who say we need to have an armed revolution, although there are some of those people, and I have to tell you, Jonathan, I hear from these people. I hear from them, but I will absolutely grant you that I don't, one of the biggest challenges with doing a podcast or being anyone online in any way and doing commentary is you hear from certain very very loud people on anything, not just this, on anything. And you don't know how, it's so hard for the human brain to put that into context. Whatever you hear more of feels like the thing that's more around. What is it? The availability heuristic that Lindsay would tell us is.

0:46:11 Thomas: It's really hard. I don't have numbers on who this is. I agree with you. That's probably a pretty, pretty small group, but it's not nobody. Like I'm not, that's not a fake leftist. Like, I, I hear from these people, especially on social media, and maybe that's the thing. Maybe they're just louder on social medias. That's entirely true, or it's entirely possible, rather. Maybe it is true. Okay, the email goes on, though. To the actual point, you can't simultaneously assert that platforms and facts are irrelevant and that progressives can't win because their platform or facts are somehow more toxic to voters. Stepping back, pausing the email. Yeah, no, I know. I know, I agree with you. Maybe, so this is in, I think, relation to the most recent. I think we're caught up almost in real time here. Yeah, no, I do agree with you.

0:46:58 Thomas: I do, my stance is not both that facts are irrelevant and that progressives are toxic or their platform is toxic. My actual view is for the most part, facts and policy are irrelevant for the Most Part. And then, you know, we can look at margins and see like, like, okay, marginally here, maybe this policy makes a little bit of difference, but like, it's like 98% baked in. That's what I, you know, or, or we can try to mathematically assign a percentage, but that is my view. I don't think that progressive policy is toxic to voters. I don't, I didn't mean to suggest that. I think that's totally wrong. Okay. Going back to the email on issue after issue for decades and starting well before whatever the fuck is wrong with polling started, the Democratic Party positions have had overwhelming mandates until you put Democratic Party anywhere near them.

0:47:52 Thomas: I'll take that as a given. I don't know if that's entirely true, but we'll go with that. The leftist critique of mainstream liberals isn't merely a policy distinction. It's also one of moral clarity, rhetorical forcefulness, administrative decisiveness, political transactionalism, and community engagement. The brand itself is absolutely toxic. The solution is either found in the leftist critique and or the assertion that facts and policy are irrelevant is true. Sorry, I missed a word there or something. If that's the case, it would seem to leave only one critical factor, the personal charisma of the leader of the party. If that is it, then that is all it has ever been, whether it is tin pot dictators or plucky revolutionaries, and for what it is worth, the last few decades of presidential elections seem Seem to have that pattern.

0:48:40 Thomas: Reagan beats Carter. Reagan beats Mondale. Bush, Clinton over Bush. Bush over Gore. Yeah, sure. Obama over McCain. Romney, Trump over Clinton. Yeah. Okay, going back to the email. Biden will be the first presidential candidate in my lifetime to break this trend. And he did it with the entirety of his party lined up behind him to defeat a hopefully once in a generation threat. Trump is truly horrifying, electrifying candidate for the right. Literally everyone else available in the country came together to stop them and it barely worked. The simple reality is, whether we like it or not, that won't happen again. So what now? The fact is, moderates have been slowly losing ground to the right for 40 years and 2020 shows no signs of the trend reversing.

0:49:25 Thomas: We have to try something else. With that in mind, we should take note that Sanders wildly outperformed Biden in the primary in the exact groups we're relying on for any hope of hashtag demographics or destiny. Latinos and people under 35, would that have been enough in the general election? Nobody will ever know, and I don't care to guess, but whether we have evidence for it working or not, we have to try something else, and I'm not seeing any more compelling alternatives. Okay, so I really appreciate the well thought out email. I do think that it's mostly, you know, things aren't 100% to 0%. You know, I think that for the most part, facts and policy did not matter in 2020. I think for the most part in the general election and probably in the down ballot elections.

0:50:12 Thomas: I think for the most part, it was more about, you know, the just population and the fact that people showed the hell up for both candidates, it's because we're in this polarized state, weird stalemate kind of thing, but you know, that's not to say 0%. And that's not to say that maybe again, it really will depend what happens in 2024 with the Republican party. Uh, I don't think, I think I've, I can't remember if I've already said this.

A lot of people are worried about Trump running again in 2024. God, I, I hope I'm not wrong about this, but I'm not worried about that. America does not like a loser, especially, uh, for president, and especially in recent memory, I mean, it used to be a little different, I think, but, um, you know, no, no presidential loser has gone on to run again, or do, or, you know, oh, maybe they've run again, but they haven't, they haven't won after that in a very long time. Well, I guess it'd probably be Nixon, if I, off the top of my head, would be, you know, would be the first one I think of, but anyway, um, also it's going to be very very interesting though. I guess it's not impossible that Trump could, could come back in 2024, but I don't, I don't know that that would happen.

And I also think that Republicans in the primary would have, cause he still has to go through a primary, they would have very different incentives running against him. And I, I think that unless Trump really is able to maintain a stranglehold on Republican voters so much so that even in going forward with Biden, Biden as president, that Republicans in, you know, in positions of power and who might be running for president in 2024 still have to genuflect to him and like appease his voters.

0:51:57 Thomas: That's possible. It's possible, I find it unlikely. Anyway, why am I talking about this? Well, I'm on this because I think who we're running against in 2024 is going to shape a lot of this. If we get back to a more boring type of election, I think policy can matter a bit more. Where it doesn't feel like, ah, this is the army. This is, you know, Helm's Deep. It's like orcs against the good guys or something. You know, it doesn's, once it feels less like that, then I think there's more room for policy to matter. But I think in this election, policy very barely mattered. So let's see, what else to say about this? Statements like, for example, you said, the fact is moderates have been slowly losing ground to the right for 40 years.

0:52:43 Thomas: I don't even know how you evaluate that, being a quote-unquote moderate is a shifting position. You know, the moderates of 40, so 40 years ago is 1980, the moderates of that time are now probably, well, how do you see, how do you judge, a lot of people, okay, are you talking about moderate leftists, so people who are moderate left compared to Reagan are probably like right-wingers now. That's, but I will say this, I don't think there is a better way to pick your general election candidate than a primary. Now, our primary system sucks in a lot of ways. And by the way, those ways pretty much are to the benefit of Bernie Sanders, or were to the benefits of Bernie.

0:53:34 Thomas: Starting with small, overwhelmingly white states favored Bernie, and then when we got to South Carolina and more diverse states, then Biden just absolutely demolished the competition. So I don't know how you pick – when you say that Sanders wildly outperformed Biden in the primary and the exact groups we're relying on for any hope of demographics or destiny, Latinos and people under 35. But by definition, if I take that for granted, it wasn't enough to win the primary. So then why would it be more? Somehow it would have been better in the general. I never understand this. Somebody who cannot win a primary. And this is why it always turns to lizard people.

0:54:19 Thomas: Oh, there's cheating. There's no, I don't know. There was a primary, people were really scared. They voted for Biden. I think we need to, perhaps we, we need to try to take even less from this primary because of the massive stakes involved, because people were so scared. I think if people are less scared again, maybe they will be more open to progressive policy, and we can try to evaluate which ideas work best within the Democratic Party and which ideas then translate into general election victories. Right now, I don't know what we can even say about that because it was just too, it was too intense, it was, you, you know, I imagine that the voter turnout is going to take a dive. This will be a high mark, I think, and then it will be massively lower, hopefully for both sides and not just us.

0:55:10 Thomas: I think I worry about 2022. What I'm going to say is I support progressive policy and we should support progressive policy because it's better, like plain and simple. And then we try to win the conversation. If we win the conversion, then our candidates will be more progressive and then probably there'll be like the next issue that will be further left than them. You know, that's just kind of how this thing goes. I don't think we're going to win the argument of who to make our candidate without first winning the conversation anyway, is what I'm saying.

0:55:40 Thomas: So that's what we ought to do. I think we should, you know, enact progressive policy because it's the right thing to do. What I'm trying to say is I don't think you're going to convince somebody that for strategic reasons, they need to vote for something they don't like. Like, I just don't think that's going to happen. It's unrealistic. People will vote on the thing they like.

And by the way, people will also decide that strategically it'll make sense to do the thing they like, that's just how humans are. We're all like, no, actually, my centrist policy is better, you know, electorally, and it's also happens to be the policy I like. That's how humans are. I'm just here saying, let's primary every Democrat all the time, and then if you can't win that primary, then you didn't win that primary, and that's how it fucking goes. That's how I look at it.

The part that truly doesn't make sense to me is how many people are like, well, I, we didn't win the primary, but we should have won the primary because it would have been better for the general election, that would have been better or something, and I don't get, like, maybe you could be right, but then you didn't win the primary, like, you, you have to do the first thing, and if you don't do the third, like, if, if trying to win primaries, if you're trying to convince people by saying, again, by saying, like, oh, it'll be better strategy if you vote for my candidate. I don't, I don't know who's going to listen to that argument.

People will vote for who they want to vote for. And by the way, I do think it is mostly based on personality. I do think that's why Bernie did really well, and maybe Warren didn't. I think there's a lot of bias in that too. I think there's bias toward white people in a lot of ways. So I don't know. I'm pretty skeptical of all of that.

0:57:23 Thomas: I and it is, um, personality and all that. Um, I don't think progressive policy hurts candidates really. Um. And also even if it did, we need to just try to shape that conversation and win those arguments. I'm out of time now. Thanks so much for the questions. I have more, I'm probably going to do another one cause I got to through these. It's killing me. It's burning my conscience that I haven't gotten to all these great emails and stuff. So, and voicemails too. Shoot. Yeah. Definitely doing another one. Thanks. So much for listening over everything else. I just want to make very clear that I really, really, truly appreciate you folks listening to this. I appreciate patrons who make the show happen, patreon.com. But I do appreciate all these emails. I do read everyone eventually. Just, you know, things get a little delayed sometimes.

0:58:09 Thomas: But I really really appreciate them. I read them. Even if I don't respond or mention them on the show, I do read them. Thanks so much for the comments, challenging me, all that that stuff and I'll see you next time.

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