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Unknown A
Former Biden White House press secretary Corne Jean Pierre out of that job for only about what, a month now, was at the Harvard Institute of Politics last week and made some comments about the Democratic Party's push to oust Joe Biden from the ticket that have gone viral and are well worth getting crrital's reaction to and diving into some of the problems or how they speak to some of the broader problems that a Democratic Party is facing right now. So let's take a listen to Kan Je Pierre again. This is from last Wednesday at the Harvard Institute of Politics.
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Unknown B
It was a firing squad and I had never seen anything like it before. I'd never seen a party do that in the way that they did. And it was hurtful and sad to see that happening. A firing squad around a person who I believe was a true patriot, a person who I believe did everything that he can for this country, a person who I believe, as I mentioned before, has done more his in one term than most president had done in two term historical things. And I was shocked by what I was seeing.
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Unknown A
And Ken, just to clarify, these other Democrats and coming out against Biden.
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Unknown B
Yep. I had never seen anything like that. That was, if you're asking me, the thing that I saw in those three weeks that was shocking, shocking. And instead of coming together to really be unified and trying to figure out how do we save our democracy, how do we fight back? That's what I was seeing.
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Unknown A
Crystal, I know you have a lot to say about that. I'm going to toss it to you with just the response to Karian Jean Pierre is that, ma'am, do you know what I've never seen is a president who is basically dead, continuing to try and run for president again. So to her saying, I've never seen anything like the firing squad, it was like he fell asleep during a debate practically.
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Unknown C
He beat medigate.
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Unknown A
He beat medigated. I'm sorry, but nobody has ever seen what precipitated what you say you've never seen. So maybe it's not so crazy that we had never seen that level of firing squad before.
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Unknown C
I mean, I just, I don't even know what to say. Like, I don't know, you were part of a historic scandal and cover up of this man's decline. If you care so much. And I don't think that she really does. I mean, that's part of it. If you actually cared about defeating Donald Trump and riding the ship, you should have been blowing the whistle and letting us in on the fact that this man could not function, that he was unable to put sentences together that. I mean, the things that are starting, that have been coming out after the fact, about how oblivious he was to the political reality as well, about how many donors who would just see him at one event and you were with him day in and day out. Donors would see him at one event and be like, holy hell, this is worse than I thought.
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Unknown C
And so for you to sit here and play the victim and act like the people who were in the wrong were the ones that finally at long last acknowledged reality and were like, Jesus Christ, this cannot go on is just insane to me. It's also insane to me, like, I'm sorry to treat her with such kid gloves, like to host her and let her. Oh, my God, my feelings. And it was so shocking and it was so terrible, blah, blah, blah, like she needs to be treated as someone who was part of a conspiracy against the American people.
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Unknown A
She's being touted out at Harvard.
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Unknown C
That's right.
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Unknown A
Yeah.
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Unknown C
She was part of a conspiracy against the American people. They helped to block any sort of a democratic primary process from playing out. They hid. They went to great lengths that we are only beginning to scratch the surface of, to hide the nature of his true condition. And that you feel no remorse or regret about that. Your only concern, your only criticism is for again, the people who very belatedly were like, Jesus Christ, we cannot hide from this reality anymore. That is so insane to me. And I do think it speaks to just a deep lack of seriousness and a deep narcissism within some of these people where it was more important about how her boss felt and the way he was treated and his own ambitions than addressing what she probably would describe and what I certainly describe as a fascist threat to the country.
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Unknown C
So it's incredible to me that this is still the way that she's sort positioning herself. Oh, it was so heart hurtful. It was so shocking. Also, the whitewashing of Biden's record should not be unnoted as well. She says he accomplished historical things. Yeah. Like facilitating a genocide in Gaza as one example of those historical things that he was up to. And I supported very much parts of that domestic agenda, especially in the early days of the Biden administration. But you also have to grapple with the reality that the economy took a turn. People were not happy, people were not satisfied with what you were able to accomplish. Even on the domestic front. Putting aside foreign affairs and Biden's core promise that he ran on in 2020 and was planning on running again. In 2024 was defeating Donald Trump. And on that measure you failed. You handed the White House back to him on a silver platter.
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Unknown C
So you should be hanging your head in shame. And I know it's cliche to say, but with her, I really do feel what happened to you because I knew her back at msm, she came out of the move on activist anti war world. Every day when I would see her up there justifying these atrocities in Gaza was just like how does this occur? Like what is the path that you walked that led you to feel that this was not only justified, she thinks she has the moral high ground. She still thinks that she is like the more virtuous, morally correct one. And I just can't wrap my head around it honestly.
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Unknown A
And it's first and foremost a rebuke of the crowd that she came out of. And that's a really interesting point actually.
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Unknown C
Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. Because she came out of the activist community.
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Unknown A
Right.
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Unknown C
And I think once you start to justify, well this is just what I have to do for my career and if it wasn't me, it'd be somewhere 1 el blah blah blah then you end up at the podium justifying war crimes and atrocities and you end up here after the fact being upset that people pointed out the reality that the president was too old to be functional at this point.
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Unknown D
Right.
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Unknown A
So it, it's how the, it's very common. It's not just on the left but you see that the ends justify the means meaning to a certain extent you start believing in the means. Right. So it's one thing to be like, but there was never any cracks in the foundation when it came to herare. Well, we didn't see anything leaked. She didn't indicate there was any daylight between herself and the present. She was a real loyal foot soldier to the point where it seems like she was in the camp of now agreeing with the means. Not just that the means justified to end. But we have to talk about this sort of glimmer of hope I think for Democrats governor, Minnesota governor Tim Waltts, who is a slightly more compelling politician than he was allowed to be on.
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Unknown C
The campaign trail, significantly more so he.
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Unknown A
Goes on molyjongfasts podcast and starts to talk about man, I'm really eager to talk about this because it reminds me a lot of what Republicans have dealt with over the last 10 years. Crystal about single payer healthcare. Let's roll this clip of Tim Walz on Moij Fast podcast. It's a full recollection of Sort of went. Went wrong or reconsideration of what went wrong in 2024. But here's what he had to say, particularly about healthcare.
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Unknown D
I hear the thing out there is that when we get back, which we will, we'll fight, I'll tell you what people are going to expect is they're not going to expect us to tinkle around the edge with the aca. They're going to expect universal health care. And if there's a lesson here, I always said this, we had a one vote majority in Minnesota when we moved clean energy, we moved reproductive rights moved, we moved a whole slew of progressive, very popular, including things around guns and gun safety, very popular things. We moved it with a one vote majority. And people ask, well, what do you call a one vote majority? A majority.
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Unknown A
Exactly what happened with the Tea Party Crystal, except in reverse. They did not expect Republicans to just tinker around the edges of the aca. They wanted a full repeal, but when Republicans had nothing to replace it with, they lost the permission structure from, as people have pointed out, a lot of, like, populists, conservatives who rely on the government for some of their health insurance, veterans, et cetera. And so when you have these populist movements spring up for good reason, your response can't be crony capitalism and corporate bullshit. And I think that's the point that Waltz is making here.
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Unknown C
I think he has better instincts, political instincts, than the vast majority of Democratic politicians. And you're absolutely right that he was really sot of stifled on the campaign. I think there was a fear maybe of him overshadowing Kamala. He did very poorly also in the JD Vans debate. Like we have to say, he was way too accommodating. I mean, it just was not the way to go. In fairness, he did say going and debating is not my thing. So that's apparently a weakness for him. But he auditioned for the campaign on cable news where he was fantastic. He had a real instinct of how to characterize the Trump administration as abnormal versus reaching for the high moralistic language of their fascists, et cetera, which obviously I agree that they are. But I do think that politically, his way of just saying, these people are strange, they're outside of the mainstream.
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Unknown C
This is not the direction we should be going in, I think was probably the better direction. And he just was a very effective and relatable messenger when he was allowed to do so. And I think his instinct here is precisely correct and speaks to what you were saying, Emily, which is like Democrats have always supported, if you ask Democrats overwhelming majority support single payer. This has always been what Democratic base voters have wanted in that 2020 primary, whether it was Mississippi or Nevada. When you ask Democratic primary voters, do you prefer to a public option or some other variation of healthcare reform versus single payer? They backed Bernie Sanders, Medicare for all. And at this point it's like, okay, well, we tried it your way. We did the Joe Biden thing, we did the Kamala Harris thing. And you were wrong that this was the way to defeat Donald Trump.
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Unknown C
You were wrong that this was the way to stop the country from sliding into oligarchy and authoritarianism. So we're not goingna listen to you anymore. Like this time we have our own ideas about how we want to approach things. And I think his instinct that a more sort of passionate and someone who is more of a fighter and who is more willing to embrace those kind of universalist programs that are really popular, things that are popular among the Democratic base are going to be in a much better position next time around.
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Unknown A
This is where it gets even more interesting because I think this Third Way selectively leaked this document to Politico. But Politico got its hands on a document from a Third Way retreat that happened out in Loudoun County. Obviously, if you're not familiar with Third Way, they're openly center left. They're not trying to be theist, the representation of like the Democratic activist grassroots. In fact, they're openly sort of rejecting the direction of the party of the activist grassroots. But we can put the next element up on the screen. This is a document that was leaked to Politico from that retreat about how Democrats can regain working class trust, quote, and reconnect with voters culturally. They laid out 20 solutions and Kystal. It's so fascinating because some of this is right, was right on the target, like the quote, faculty lounge program. But some of it is so incoherent.
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Unknown A
Like their prescriptions on the faculty lounge problem are incoherent with their point about economic concerns. Because you'll have much better thoughts on this than I do. But just as I'm thinking about some of these prescriptions, it's very heavily about the problems with identity politics, which is again funny from the center left, which completely encouraged all of the corporate sponsorships of identity politics. You go back over the last 10 years, it's amusing right now. Now, on the other hand, though, they are talking about how Democrats need to reemhasize the economy, tone down the volume on the cultural issues, turn up the volume on the economy. But they're also talking about isolating the far left and this is a problem as I see for Democrats, the far left economics are more appealing than the center left'economics so if you alienate the quote unquote far left, which actually does represent where the public is on a lot of economic issues.
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Unknown A
Social Security is one really good example we were talking about earlier. Healthare another good example. If you alienate the quote far left because of the cultural messaging, you are left with what, like Obamaomics which is also not popular. So what in this document says reduce far left influence and infrastructure. That's one of the bullet points.
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Unknown C
Yeah.
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Unknown A
So you're going to be screwed on your economics if you do that because youre center left economics are not popular.
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Unknown C
Yeah, well I think those are good points. I mean they really give away the game here when they say that the goal should be to move away from the dominance of small dollar donors whose preferences may not align with the broader electorate. You think the big donors preferences are aligned with the broader electorate? Like tax cuts for the rich and cutting Social Security and union busting. Those are the priorities of the big dollar donors or backing Israel's war crimes from here until eternity. You think that's what's aligned with the broader electorate? I mean that's what really gives up the game here because it's all well and good. O we should focus on economic solutions. What economic solutions like salt tax type of bullshit?
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Unknown A
Exactly.
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Unknown C
Because I promise you they don't mean expanding Social Security and single payer health care and union jobs and living wages. They don't mean that. So the other piece of this that is just maddening to me is again it pretends like the Bernie Sanders left has been in control of this party. They're not. They have very limited power, very limited power in this party. And that is precisely the problem. Like there was a populist left answer to Trumpism that made sense to people that appealed to the very bros who have now drifted to the right, that appealed even to Joe Rogan that appealed massively. I mean Bernie Sanders was king among working class Latinos. Again, the same groups that have drifted to the right that had a narrative that the Sanders left populist movement had a narrative and a class focus that made sense to people because it was true and it was real and it offered actual solutions.
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Unknown C
And your efforts over these years, this group in particular efforts over the years to crush and sideline that movement is one of the key reasons why Democrats find themselves in the place that they are now. So to act like you haven't been in control of this party while you're running Joe Biden. Kamala Harris is, to me, so utterly insane and dishonest that it's crazy. But like I said, even if you might agree with their sort of vague generalities about, like, oh, they need to get out into real communities, which is funny to me that those real communities include gunshots.
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Unknown A
Hell, yeah. Also, good luck. I mean, seriously, good luck, right?
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Unknown C
Yeah. I don't think you're gonna be winning a lot of voters at the gun show, but whatever. Go to the gun show. That's fine if you want to. But even if you agree with these sort of, like, vague generalities, when they're talking about getting in touch with economic issues, they are not talking about the actual economics that would deliver for people that the quote, unquote, far left has been offering for years and years. They're talking about an elite agenda backed by big money politics, which is precisely why Democrats had no trust with the voters when they claimed to be the party of the working class.
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Unknown A
It's really disgusting to see how elite Dems and massive corporations that were funding elite Dems got behind the identity politics agenda when it was convenient for them and are now taking these issues and just completely discarding them. It's a great example of how people are like toys. Right? It's like, we're in the Truman show and they're running everything. It's a big experiment on us, and they're just, like, pulling the puppet strings. From my perspective as a conservative, I'm like, okay, so you guys did all this bullshit to girls sports, and now you're taking a step back and being like, hey, hey, no, no, no. We got to get our power back. It's like, give me a break. Were all players in your fun little game, and you'll give all this money and you'll call people bigots, and you will. It's like when there's that famous moment at a Bernie Sanders rally in 2016 where a BLM group overtook the stage and started protesting him.
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Unknown A
And what we saw after that was the Hillary Clinton campaign start weaponizing this as a wedge issue and going after the Bernie burros and saying people were bigoted for backing Bernie, they were just sexists and just completely weaponizing it, and it became the dominant ideology of Democratic Party, and now they just want to get rid of it. Thanks for throwing us all.
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Unknown C
You were not the ones who originated this as a way to pretend like Bernie Sanders was a racist and a sexist imposture. Like, you were the real processtion and.
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Unknown A
His supporters were racists and sexist.
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Unknown C
That's right.
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Unknown A
And the same thing with Trump supporters. We'necessarily all racists and sexists. They played this game with the country where they poured gasoline on the fire of the culture war and now they're acting like as it burns, they're like, oh man, guys bad. Can you guys deal with putting those flames out? It's such bullshit.
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Unknown C
Yeah. And I mean, you can also see the nakedness of it with the way that all these corporations, whether it's Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg know, they adopted the liberal identity framing when that was the power that they thought was ascendant. And now that they feel like the right wing is ascendant, they'll just ditch that and they'll adopt the right wing cultural totems to also cover for what is fundamentally a pro oligarch agenda. I mean, that's Mark Andreessen going on with Joe Rogan being like, the CFPB is canceling conservatives, blah, blah, blah, and just making stuff up to try to use a Trojan horse of these cultural issues to usher in a pro oligarch agenda. And it was groups like Third Way and the Hillary Clinton neoliberals who originated that in the Democratic parties. So yeah, but just coming out and saying we got to get rid of these small dollar donors is so insane.
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Unknown C
I mean, when Bernie ran and he is the most successful, and this is the other thing that gives away the game, he is the most successful small dollar donor candidate probably in history.
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Unknown A
And Trump is really successful too.
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Unknown C
But not as successful as Bernie.
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Unknown A
No.
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Unknown C
And this time around, actually, Trump didn't do all that well with grassroots Joers. But you're right, but with Bernie you would go and look at the top professions and it was like Walmart workers and Amazon workers and Starbucks workers. And you think those are the people that are out of touch with the priorities of the broader electorate. But you're like LA, Silicon Valley, Wall street donors. Those are the ones that are going to get us back in touch with the working class of America. They can't believe that. They can't actually believe that. It's so dishonest and so insane.
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Unknown A
I don't know if they believe it. I mean, some of them probably do and some of them are probably like, we know this is insane and stupid.
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Unknown C
But yeah, you're right, they're in such a bubble that perhaps they do actually think, because that's all viewpoint that surrounds the bubble, they're like, oh, these rich donors in Silicon Valley they're the ones that really get the pulse of the country.
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Unknown E
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Unknown C
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Unknown E
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