(upbeat music) - Well, this is Carter Ferris. My name is Nathan Robinson, and I'm here with Malacca Jibali. Hello, Malacca. - Hey, Nathan. How you doing? - I am doing, I'm feeling... Well, let's be honest with the people. I'm feeling a little discombobulated. I'm not at the Carter Ferris office. I'm hunkered down. It's Tropical Storm or Hurricane Francine is raging all around me. - I didn't know she had a name. I'm sorry about that. - They give all of the hurricanes very charming names so that when everything that you love is destroyed, you'll feel a little, you know. - I'm thinking about it. - Little sympathy for the hurricane. That almost sounds like the subject of what we're gonna talk about, you know, is putting nice names on things that are kind of crappy for the American people. - That's true. Gussying up things that are awful. - Yeah. - Is kind of the probably going to be the theme. We thought we'd get together and wait, no first, tell people what you do. Who I need to introduce you properly. - Hi, everybody. So, as Nathan said, I'm Malacca Jibali, and this is kind of a full circle moment because Nathan and I first became acquainted because I was working on a piece on Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I'm a journalist and an author of the book. It's not you, it's capitalism, why it's time to break up and how to move on. And when we were first talking, I cannot believe it's been what? Like seven, eight years now, like what's going on at the time? I'm so confused. - Your piece was to 2019, 2018. - It came out 2018 around the midterms, but I had started on it in 2017. - Yeah, time to go. - What a time war, but I just, I can't believe that. So, we became acquainted because I was working on this piece on the working class and basically trying to up in the narrative or just expand the narrative of what that means, especially because we were talking about, you want to say something? - I just want to remind people that what we would call the hillbilly elegy days of discussing the U.S. working class. - Yeah, I mean, it was just a cottage industry, thanks J.D. Vance for maybe help eliciting that moment in time, but everything was about the white working class. And that's important, but the problem is that there was a very narrow framing of even the white working class, which is these are Trump voters who used to vote for Obama, and now we got to win them back over with conservative policy. But you have even in a state like Wisconsin, a lot of white non-voters who didn't vote because nobody was progressive enough. A part of that, you had a lot of black people who didn't vote because they're like, we don't like any of these candidates. So even though water suppression is an issue, that became the dominating narrative when talking about black voters and not the fact that for instance in Wisconsin, Bernie Sanders won the state as a socialist. He got highest percentage of black voters. He didn't get a lot in 2016 or 2020, but the highest amount in the primaries came in Wisconsin. So I was like, there's a lot of interesting stuff going on here. No one's talking about it. I was researching it for months. Nobody was speaking it up. And then Nathan Robinson, well, first shot out Brianna Joy Gray. She was like, I know a guy. And you picked it up, thank goodness. And then it won an award and that award led to a book. - And that's the cool thing is that you did not stop with this base. Now you are living in Wisconsin. You left your job. You're now doing this full-time reporting, turning this into a book. - Yeah, we'll see how it turns out. - And the exciting thing is, I mean, people might have heard, you and I did an episode together about your delightful, your completely delightful quote-unquote side project book, which about capitalism and socialism, it's not you, it's capitalism. And we were talking about how you and I have had kind of a similar trajectory in a certain way, because we both went to fancy law school. We both became socialists. We both ended up not wanting to be lawyers. - Yeah. - And feeling like writing and getting drawn into writing. And we also got drawn into writing a very specific kind of thing, which is like popular explanations of socialism with a humorous twist directed at a mass audience. - Exactly, hence why I'm on this show right now. You know, just to shoot the shit a little bit about what's going on in politics. And, you know, that was definitely my trajectory, not per se in that order, because I felt like a socialist for a while. And I knew I didn't want to go to law school, but then I did it anyway. I was like, I know I don't want to do anything with this lottery for the most part. Like I figured I would branch off into something else. And then that didn't happen. - Yeah. I was delusional enough to think I could be useful as a lawyer. - Yeah, did you ever practice Nate? - I did one day. - Do people ever call you Nate? - Can I call you Nate? - You are the only person who does, but I like that. I was just thinking the other day, does anyone other than Malaika call me Nate? And no, the answer is I couldn't think of a single other person who's ever done it. But that doesn't mean I need to stick with it. - Is that a problem? - No. I can't imagine you calling me anything else now. - All right. So you practiced for a day. That's what we were. - Oh, well, I technically took one case ever. There was a guy who came to me. My roommate was a practicing lawyer and there was a guy who came to him and he'd been arrested for burning a flag and needed someone to represent him in his hearing in Boston Municipal Court. And I had passed the Louisiana Bar Exam. So I appeared pro-hoc-viche. I can't remember what that means in Latin, but it means admitting a Louisiana lawyer in the Boston Municipal Court to argue for the constitutional right to burn a flag. But the judge pointed out to me that you don't have a constitutional right to burn someone else's flag, which is what this man turned out to have done. - So was this like a criminal case? Like did you? - Yeah, it was a criminal case. And anyway, we made an arrangement with the prosecutor. The thing went away. And I never set foot in a courtroom as a lawyer again. - See, you were maybe more, that one day of law might've been more useful than mine. I mean, maybe not. - You practiced? Are you licensed? - License, New York City, one of the hard, Louisiana's hard, New York City or New York is considered one of the hardest along with California. So I did all of that. I passed, I practiced, but I was a public policy attorney. So I like, I just sat in an office and wrote laws a bunch. I also like, we had to organize public hearings, which is not a traditional law. You don't need to go to law school for any of that. It's like, you're a project manager, basically. You're managing policy people, you're managing city council members in the New York City Council. You are like writing their opening statements, closing statements. It's a bunch of like logistical things that I did not need a lottery for, but it's required for the job. So I did that for several years, wrote policy. And that's, I ended up writing, you know, sort of commentary, political commentary. - Right, so why are you not that anymore? I know why I'm not that. Why are you not that? - It wasn't as fun. Like, I wanted to be able to, I wanted to go outside. I wanted to talk to people. I don't want to be stuck in an office. Law can be very isolating. See, at least with you, you went to court. When people think of lawyers, they think like trials. Like, they're like, okay, like you can represent me. I got a divorce. I'm like, I just graduated. I can help you with your divorce. Like, I don't know if you got that, but I got that. - I will say, my one appearance, I did learn, one of the reasons I'm not a lawyer is 'cause I learned that it's not like the TV show Boston Legal, which I watched a lot of at the time, and it was all like grand courtroom speeches about our principles as Americans, and it's not what it consists of at all, except my one day in court was exactly like the TV show Boston Legal, because I was literally in the Boston Municipal Court making a grand argument about our constitutional rights. - Yeah, so you are archetypical lawyer. I was not, so it was very isolating. It wasn't, it was fun in some ways, you know, I think better than some of my friends were working like a hundred hours a week, make a book or money, but at least I was able to do interesting work, meet great people, but I felt like I needed to explore something more creative and writing, you know, when I can write sort of non-fiction narratives or even commentary, I can flex that muscle more. You know, I've got like, we haven't talked about this, but like a little background in performing arts, and so I needed something to keep those juices going. I cannot do that just writing about like, tax credit. - Yeah, okay. I don't have a background in performing arts, but people often assume that I did theater or something and don't believe that I didn't. - Yeah. - And I was in fact voted most dramatic in our high school superlatives, but I insist that I am not in fact, especially dramatic. - I could see it, yep. - I could see it. Everyone I tell that to goes, yeah, that made sense. All right, well, listen, the reason we're here to talk is because we have to analyze the world. The world has to be analyzed. We have to help people understand it. - We gotta do it. Who's gonna do it if we don't do it, Nate? - No one will do it well. Well, I just wrote an article for current affairs today that debunked a whole bunch of nonsense that I saw on social media in the last week. And it was like, but there comes a point where there's so much nonsense that you have to decide, you have to go, I'm just not gonna touch that. There was like, I was dealing with someone saying, the usual thing about Palestinians have rejected a state, a bunch of times over. And then I was dealing with one who said the Lebanese civil war started because Palestinians decided to kill everyone. So it's dealing with that sort of stuff. And then the next thing I saw was Michael Jackson was the victim of a Jewish conspiracy to brand him a pedophile. And I was like, okay, that one, I'm just, I'm done not gonna debunk that one. That's, leave that one, Nate. - Yeah, close the laptop on that one. It's time for a break at that point. You got, you wanted to a deep dive. I don't know what part of social media you got one. - Do you have the instinct that I do to argue with everything that's wrong on the internet or does the, have you escaped this instinct? - I relatively recently have. So back in the day, I know we gotta get some more serious stuff, but I would say my first entree into the internet was arguing with people on the internet. And so I think that helped in my earlier days of Twitter. Lately, just for my mental health, I'm trying to take a step back. You know, I've got some, you know, on the serious side, like I've got serious reporting that I'm working on and working on a second book and dealing with communities that have been abandoned for a while in Wisconsin and elsewhere, but I'm here. So that's the community that I'm covering. And so I need to also kind of be at peace and get it on Twitter, knowing that I'm going to argue. So the first step for me is just barely getting on. So I don't really follow. - Yeah. - I'm not looking at the feeds where I know a lot of that's gonna be. I'm looking at like the things that have gone viral with like cats. - You've done a fantastic job of pulling yourself back from this stuff. I get sucked in quite a lot. I've set myself a few rules, which is, I don't read mentions or replies because if I read replies, I spend all day arguing. And I've seen plenty of very smart people who have gotten sucked in to people I respect and people I like who have ended up becoming full-time Twitter arguers because they couldn't resist the urge to look at the mentions and replies. - Right, yeah. If you know that that is your instinct, like it is mine, I avoid it. Like I just try, I've been limiting my time. I'm not gonna give, because then if I fall back on it, they're gonna be like, "Why did I see you?" But I set a certain time for myself when I would even log on. So the first few hours of the day, I'm not even looking at social media. But I'm not gonna say the exact time 'cause then if y'all catch me on there, then you're gonna be like, "Girl," but-- - As a result, your book is actually going to get written. - I hope so, that's the idea. - Yeah, this is what happens. Well, listen, I wanted to talk to you about, I thought we could discuss what happened in the Harris Trump debate, their first meeting. I thought we could just, and the first, I proposed this topic to you so we could discuss it 'cause we could go through a number of the issues that did and did not come up. But your first reaction when I told you I wanted to discuss this or the thing you said to me was that your main feeling has been one of profound and deep lack of interest and lack of ability to care about these candidates and the things they say. Is that, but you stand in your own words. - That is basically it. So just sort of step back a little bit. I've gotten into more of my reporting work. And as a journalist, I've tried to steer clear of being partisan about things and just being frank about where people are standing on the issues without necessarily giving prescriptions about their character and things like that. I'm also a human and I'm supposed to be reporting on this stuff and I care more about working class communities. I care more about what their day-to-day lives are and I'm feeling less and less inclined to pay attention to sort of the back and forths really political circus that we've seen both of these parties go through, I don't know, the past seven, eight years, really since Trump has been in office. Like we've, a lot of people have been disengaged. When I remember first, even approaching politics when I had the opportunity to vote and the immediate narrative was, we got a vote for the lesser of two evils. This is when John Kerry was running and I guess Dean Howard was one of the candidates as well. And so since then, I've always known that, you know, at least on a federal level, electoral politics is only gonna do so much. And so let's look at where we can actually make some changes. But I think with Trump being in here, it's just so much about entertainment and a circus. And then the overton window has shifted so far to the right. Just like, I've just kind of wiped my hands clean of it a little bit. - One of the problems though, I feel like is that on the one hand, one of the reasons that I can't help but write about, think about, discuss electoral politics is that I feel very much the thing that you've said. And then also, it's like a trap because it does matter and it does make, it makes too much of a difference to completely ignore it. - Yeah. - But I mean, the things that they're discussing in this debate, like a lot of the commentary is about, ah, well, she successfully baited him over his crowd sizes and look, he took the bait and you go, well, but none of this means anything and this is how God sequits to anyone. Then also, the president is the most powerful person, I guess in the world, they decide whether wars happen. They decide whether drone strikes happen and whether, you know, the war in Gaza continues. They decide on a number of things that where the difference is, you sort of have to discuss. You can't check out from politics completely. - No, you can't check, you can't check out from it, I think, on a maybe personal level. But in terms of how much I'm willing to engage in talking about it publicly, when I know like people are in their camps and not only are people in their camps, I think I was talking to an organizer out here today in Milwaukee who just talked about it being demoralizing. So folks are in their camps, but also folks who consider themselves progressives or even leftists are now like getting wooed into this like Republican camp because that's what Kamala Harris is running as. Like, let's be honest, you've got an unhinged, you know, totalitarian on one hand and a Republican. Those are our candidates. So, oh, you know. - There are people who would vigorously deny what you've just said, of course. So let's, we need to, I mean, you have made the argument that she's running as a Republican. I think a lot of her Democratic defenders would say, that's outrageous. She supports raising the minimum wage and she supports, I forget some tax credit for small businesses. - Okay, can we get into that a little bit? And like, why did I say that? - Yes. - And I wanna hear your thoughts about, 'cause I know you're talking about like people in general, but I wanna hear your thoughts about, you know, how she's running. And so I think it's a strange hybrid because she does have some of these, maybe, you know, liberal talking points, but also a lot of really, I want someone extreme, but definitely like traditional Republican ideas. And so she's sort of blending these two worlds together. Like the child tax credit, that's not a Democratic idea. That came from Republicans in the 1990s. You know, when she's talking about having the most lethal fighting force, those are words that Republicans use. You know what I mean? - And that in her speech at the convention she also said that in the debate again last night in her closing argument, she said America was gonna have the most lethal, like, you know, murderous fighting force. - It's not like this is a gaff. Like she's double down on this, you know? - Clearly it's crazy. She's like got on her list of points she wants to make. Yeah. - Yeah, she's making it clear, you know, when she talks about the funding the police and letting people know that she raised the resources for police officers, letting people know that she's a gun owner. Of course she's not trying to take your guns away 'cause she is, she might be a certified member of the NRA. Like we don't know, but that's probably what she's trying to imply. The opportunity economy, how is that much different from the opportunity zone? Republicans proposed a $4,500 child tax credit. She went up a little bit more, $8,000. - What's the opportunity zone? I can't even remember that. - Yeah, this whole thing was the opportunity zone. - Okay. - Yeah, that's a Donald Trump right there. - Right. - And just to bolster what you're saying a bit, when you said she's trying to mix these two things, it was notable that in the debate last night she touted the support of Dick Cheney. She also touted, however, the support of Sean Fane and the United Auto Workers. I mean, as she mentioned, she had a big thing about how John McCain, I think, supported the Affordable Care Act or something. And Donald Trump, look, you are a disgrace because the great John McCain, who was a really quite nasty Conservative Republican who came to look more like a moderate because the Republicans went off the deep end into far-right quasi-fascism, but you know, who was singing bomb Iran back in his heyday. You know, so touted John McCain, Dick Cheney, and she also invoked a lot of military leaders who opposed Trump, you know, and Trump's own, she would say things like your own defense secretary, these generals who served under you and it was all like the military establishment. - Yeah, I mean, that's kind of this sort of triangulation that we saw from a lot of Third Way Democrats. And so, you know, she is propping herself up as a new generation of leadership, but she's new in the sense that, you know, she's a different race, a somewhat different race, different gender, but this is pretty much like the old Third Way Democratic playbook. She's like Bill Clinton, but without the jazz, you know, she is just playing a different tune, but it's the same song. - And for people who don't remember, I did a book about Bill Clinton called "Superpreneur" that people should look, I don't know if they want to learn more about this horrific strategy that Democrats essentially embarked upon in the '90s, which was after the Reagan era, they said, well, Clinton and the Third Way Democrats essentially said, well, what if, in order to win, clearly, liberalism is very unpopular. What if we just parroted Republican talking points and then all of the progressives would have to vote for us because they have nowhere else to go 'cause what, are you gonna vote third party? And we-- - And then you all. (laughing) - So, and so they did. And I think in 1996, Bob Dole said, you know, oh, they stole my platform, I have nothing to run on. - Yeah, that's where we are, that's where we are. And I think people forget that because, you know, we had this like wave of progressive politics and people tried to just sort of put her in that, but she never claimed to be progressive. She had always said, you know, that she wasn't gonna, that she was a capitalist, she's not gonna change anything. So I think we just have to remember, you know, who she is as a person, even though she's under a party with a wide tent where people might believe that they can push her towards those things. Maybe they can, maybe they can't. I don't know, but that's how she's running. - Well, you say she never came to be a progressive, but she did sign on to a number of big, popular, progressive things at a time when it was fashionable to do so, right? So she signed on to many of you all and the Green New Deal. - Oh, but she raised her hand when I think the debate moderator asked her. - Yeah, she's had, she had a number of, I mean, she in 2019, she actually said she was committed to a number of the things. And one of the things that was quite interesting is that the Republicans are now accusing her secretly believing all of those things and selectively moderating herself just so she can sneak her radical agenda in. I think you and I would probably agree that that brief blip came about precisely because there was a moment where it seemed like politically wise to be progressive. - Yeah, I mean, I do, I'm actually trying to remember now, Nate, because I know that obviously Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders were the most prominent with it. I think in order to get some sort of head away in that electorate, some of the other candidates started to say that they agreed with things. But I guess she dropped out so early, I kind of forgot. - That's right. - But she's doing on some of the other things that I knew that she promoted. - Well, she and Pete Buttigieg too, I think, said, you know, free college, they were all, because when that race began, Bernie Sanders was not the presumptive nominee, but since he had nearly beat Hillary Clinton, he was definitely considered to be probably the favorite of all of the candidates running. And so you saw people like Kamala and Pete Buttigieg sounding a lot more like Bernie Sanders than they ever had before or ever would again. - Yeah, I mean, that's a problem because, you know, speaking of we are federal politics matter, yes, I mean, 'cause they're gonna be checks and balances. I think there's only so much that can get done because you also have Congress. But I think a big, a big benefit is the national narrative and like what people think is possible. You know, because what I was talking about earlier is that you have progressives and even maybe some people who consider themselves radicals who are just like, I suppose Kamala is my only option here if, you know, especially if I live in a swing state. So this is what I have to vote for. And so people are just like silently kind of either grimacing or nodding their heads when she's talking about making sure that we've got more police and making sure that immigrants can't come across the border and all these things people are just sort of accepting it. - Mm-hmm, well, you know, she did pick Tim Walz as her running mate who was the favorite of kind of left-leaning Democrats that was considered kind of a surprise choice and Tim Walz did a number of progressive things in Minnesota. But what's interesting is the idea that it almost seems like they're saying, well, you know, look at Tim Walz, we must be progressive because we picked Tim Walz, but we're not making real promises, right? So when when she actually talks, when you actually look at what she says she's going to do, and that was one of the things that kind of disturbed me in the watching the debate is I was like, okay, but well, supposedly you and Tim Walz are people who we could expect to take the climate crisis seriously, for instance. But then she was doing precisely the thing that you identified where it's like running as a mixture of kind of a moderate Republican who's saying, we, you know, bragging about the massive increase in oil and gas production under Biden. And even the New York Times said it's a little unusual for a Democrat to be bragging about an increase in oil and gas production. But then also saying she was said in her answer on climate, we've invested a trillion dollars in a clean energy economy while we've increased domestic gas production to historic levels. Okay, so we've both saved the climate and destroyed it. - Yeah, I mean, and I think that's going to be a defining feature, at least a per campaign. You know, I don't, again, I don't know what she's going to be like as a candidate, but, or not a candidate, but as a, if she does become president, but as a candidate, there's like a lot of sort of two steps, one step forward, two steps back, where we won't really know where she stands because a lot of the details are sort of muddled for most of this. As you know, she finally has an issues page which understandable, I don't think she knew that she was going to be in this position, you know. - People scrambled like to go, what did she stand for? What did she stand for? Let's come up with some things, minimum wage, all right. Let's say that. - That sounds good, you know, affordable housing, affordable healthcare, all great stuff, you know. So the issues page is still pretty generic. Some of the things have some details, some of them don't, but that gives her leeway to sort of, to be able to muddle it a little bit. - Well, and you were talking about the way that, ever since John Kerry, we've been told, you need to vote for the lesser evil. And it's a very compelling thing in a way, especially the more evil the opposition is, right? I mean, in 2004, George Bush had started the horrendous Iraq war that was killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. I mean, Kerry had supported the start of the war, but it seemed like he would probably be more likely to not start other wars. And it seemed like, I mean, one of the reasons why the lesser evil argument has such force is because usually there is a pretty bad alternative. And when you saw, I mean, when Trump was asked about climate change, what he said was, he went on a rant about Joe Biden and Ukraine, right? Because Donald Trump doesn't even, he believes climate change is a hoax. Drill baby drill is his platform, terrible the environmental regulation. So it's like, well, it is better than that. So it makes it very hard to resist 'cause it's true. Like, he is much worse. - No, but it was interesting hearing them both talk. And so like on a performance level, like obviously, she outclassed him because like you said, she baited him into going down all these rants. And I wonder, does he even have a media team? Like, I don't think he has people who prepare him. He just goes off on absolutely whatever stream of consciousness he has in mind. And so I think when people see that, they just see someone who is unhinged, who probably is suffering somewhat mentally and a woman who's composed. And she's composed against someone who's considered a bully. And so in the realm of American politics, unfortunately, a lot of those details get lost because you're distracted by the performance. And it's been like that for a really long time, you know? I think a lot of people got distracted with Barack Obama because he was attractive, he was a great orator. I think when I went to a Democratic convention, back when I would go to Democratic conventions, you know? He was heralded mostly because he could speak. And that's, you know, Kamala Harris is good at that, especially when you compare it to somebody like Donald Trump. You're listening to Current Affairs. Current Affairs is a nonprofit left media organization supported entirely by its readers and listeners with no corporate backers or advertising. We depend on your subscriptions and donations. If you're enjoying this program and you're not a monthly subscriber already, please consider becoming one at patreon.com/kurtafairs. And if you are a podcast subscriber, check out everything else Current Affairs offers, including our flagship print magazine, which comes out six times a year and is loaded with beautiful art and insightful essays. We also offer a twice weekly news briefing service that will keep you up to date on everything happening in the world and the stories you won't find in your morning newspaper. You can sign up for those at currentaffairs.org/subscribe. And if you just want to help us, keep building independent progressive media because you understand how vital that project is, go to currentaffairs.org/donate, where you can read more about our work and make a monthly or one-off contribution. Current Affairs is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and donations are tax deductible to the extent allowable by law. Now, back to the program. Well, what you're saying there suggests something that might seem a little counterintuitive, which is like the more impressed by someone's character and presentation we are, the more suspicious or careful we need to be because that isn't substance. That doesn't actually mean anything, right? The fact that Kamala Harris is, you know, she had all her talking points. She came back to her points. She knew what she wanted to get. She was very composed. Her facial expressions in the face of Donald Trump were delightful, right? They're all memes now. Yeah, she was on point. She seemed to know her stuff, but none of that actually, not a single, the fact that Barack Obama gives good speeches and has a nice smile, doesn't tell you anything about what he's going to do for people. And I think the Democrats were delighted by Kamala Harris last night and understandably so, which is why then you miss. Okay, but what did she actually promise? And then I started going through all the different issues. I was like foreign policy, immigration, wait, she didn't mention the minimum wage at all. She didn't defend immigrants at all, even when Donald Trump said they ate pets. And I was quite disturbed when I actually analyzed the substance. Yeah, and going back to the climate change issue, like it's wild because that was such a big part of, I mean, this has been such a big part of our conversation with the Green New Deal and even thinking about how to expand the workforce. Like there are ways to still make it feel, you know, like I'm a proud American, like she can still do that and talk about climate change. And I'm not exactly sure why she hasn't gone that tack, like why she was so timid about it. I don't know if you have any ideas on it, but I don't get it when there are narratives. You can sort of weave to make people feel proud of like American manufacturing because there's opportunities for that. The Green New Deal includes a lot of that. Well, she did, in her climate answer, what she kind of did was she said, climate change, I unlike Donald Trump, I don't believe that climate change is a hoax. And she said, and, you know, we've been, we had the inflation reduction act, we've been bolstering American manufacturing. And then she got away from climate change entirely and just started talking about American manufacturing, generally, she said that Donald Trump lost American manufacturing jobs. She said she has the endorsement of the UAW, but she missed the opportunity. So she kind of did this. She's like, okay, well, can we frame climate change as an issue of factually we're building factories and giving Americans jobs? And that might be politically, strategically smart, but you missed the opportunity to explain like, there is a very serious crisis. And that we are being warned about. And if we don't take action soon, the consequences are going to be devastating. In fact, they're already devastating. Look at the wildfires, look at the droughts, look at the heat records being shattered, look at the worsening storms. We need, you know, global cooperation to tackle the most dangerous crisis of our time. And then that's totally absent, because again, there's this kind of acceptance of this, well, the only thing Americans want to hear is Republican style rhetoric about how, about the heartland and jobs and factories. Yeah, I mean, but even with that, even with talking about the heartland and jobs, you can still discuss how it matters to the climate crisis. You know, being able to transition and being able to lift people up out of poverty, because I mean, that is what happened in the heartland. You had a lot of low-income families who were able to sustain their whole household based on manufacturing. And so what does that manufacturing then do for the climate when you have, you know, solar panels and you've got, you know, wind energy and all of these things? So she didn't even make the intersection at all, because I heard that part of the conversation. And so her pivoting to manufacturing then lets a Donald Trump only talking about jobs and then saying, well, Democrats don't have enough manufacturing jobs in here. We want to make sure everything's in America. And then I think the other thing that's missing when you talk about that is also race. The only, you know, and this is partly an issue with ABC, the host network for this. The only mention of race was when they were, you know, lambasting Donald Trump for denying the fact that she's a black and Indian woman. And so with climate change, you can talk about the fact here in New Orleans right now, you know, a lot of these predominantly black cities or largely black cities here and across the globe are impacted the most by climate change. The global south is impacted most by what's happening in the industrial world with our defense being one of the largest polluters in the country, probably the world as well. So all of, like even those intersections of race, she didn't even talk about that. - No, yeah. No, what you said there, I mean, there was the New York Times article about how recently about how Kamala is, what was the phrase to, to treads lightly on the climate issue or something? And essentially means she doesn't mention it as any more than she has to. But what you pointed out there was that there's a really good way to the whole point in fact of the Green New Deal framing, which she has run away from and doesn't wanna talk about or pitch the Green New Deal, but the whole idea of the Green New Deal. And we interviewed a couple of years ago, one of the architects of the Green New Deal, Rihanna Gunn Wright, who told us about the fact that it's designed to make it so that climate policy and economic policy don't have to be at war. So you don't have to have labor and the environmentalists be antagonistic. Instead, you say, okay, well, we're going to solve the climate crisis and in doing so, we're gonna provide all these great union jobs for people. And you can explain that. And if you explain it well, people will understand it and they'll like it, but she isn't explaining that. And one has to conclude that she doesn't really believe in it. And as you mentioned, I don't think there was any mention of policing at all in the whole debate because the largest protests in American history up until that point occurred on Donald Trump's last year in office after the killing of George Floyd, massive uprising about police abuses of power all just kind of forgotten. And it's like, well, what are you gonna do to reform police abuses? Well, we're not even gonna ask anyone that. - Right, yeah, so again, I think, you know, it was a function of ABC asking the questions that they wanted to ask, but then I think that's a candidate if it's something that you genuinely care about, you can bring it up. So she could have weaved it in some kind of way. And I think she's being deliberate about that, especially if she has run as being a top cop and you run on law and order. Like, why would you bring up policing as a problem when you believe in law and order? So again, another Republican talking point. She's a law and order candidate who believes in reproductive rights. - She was asked the health care question. They asked her something like, you know, you once said you supported, they didn't say Medicare for all by name. They said Bernie Sanders plan to abolish private insurance and replace it with a government run plan. Do you believe in that today? And the first thing she did was she didn't answer that. She said, well, I want to go back to some things that Donald Trump said previously and I want to address them. And one of the things that she addressed in her health care answer was she said, I want to clarify, we're not going to take away your guns. Tim Wallace is a gun owner, I'm a gun owner. Now, so as you say, she's using up her health care answer time to emphasize her credentials as a gun owner. And at no point in the debate said, there's a crisis of gun violence in this country that needs to be addressed through sensible, in part through sensible gun control measures. No point said that. And then when she did get to health care, the answer was I'm going to strengthen the Affordable Care Act in these unspecified ways. And again, to go back to something and use any Affordable Care Act, that too came out of a Republican conservative think tag originally, right? That was built off of the kind of Romney care idea of you don't have a government plan. Instead, you just have a central government run facilitation of people getting private plans. - With marketplace, I mean, to speak a bit Romney, he was the one who had proposed I think the increase in the child tax credits to like $4,500 or something like that. So, you know, we're getting the binders full of women except we, you know, we've got an actual woman now who's proposing his plans. So we didn't get Mitt Romney before in 2012, but, you know, I guess Kamala Harris is taking up the mantle. You know, and I do want to say this too, because I think there's a lot that there are still questions about who she is, you know what I mean? I think people can look at her record as a DA. They can look at her record as a attorney general. And there have been some advances, you know, we can't deny like some of the work that she has done. She cares about care workers. She talks about reproductive rights. I think she told, it was a, you know, compelling stories about making sure that women aren't basically forced into abortions. Like all of those things matter. - Yeah, her position after was good. - Yeah, and I do think as a woman and also as a mixed race black woman, she might have felt pressure throughout her career to double down on some of this conservative tack. She probably feels that she has to be more assertive. That's not even the word that I'm looking for, but she has to appeal to that electorate who believes that women are too weak to make decisions about these kinds of things. And I don't know if she's overcorrecting because that is a way for her to win. I mean, she made it to almost a White House at this point. Or is she is in the White House, you know? So it's worked for her. - So, but I don't know how much of that is tragic and how much is that she fundamentally believes in. - It's hard to prove, but when I always kind of suspected that had something to do with Hillary Clinton's hawkishness to this need to prove that you could be just as good as agitating for war. And there is a powerful like DC consensus. Like there are all these pressures to the way that, even the way that the media frames questions. When CNN interviewed her, they asked her, well, why did you and Joe Biden wait three and a half years to impose sweeping restrictions on asylum? Now, that is an ideologically loaded question because it implies that you should be restricting asylum and cracking down on asylum seekers and you should have done it earlier. You could ask a different question, which is why did you and Joe Biden decide to spend your time cracking down on people fleeing persecution and seeking asylum in this country? That would be a very different question. But all of the pressures are things like, well, would you be willing to press the nuclear button? That's a question that in the UK is always asked of potential prime minister candidates. They ask, would you be willing to like use a nuclear weapon? And if you don't say yes, then you're like not a serious person. You can be dismissed. - Right, yeah, I mean, we overall just live in this capitalistic, militaristic society. It affects every aspect of our social lives, including our media. And so, that's why outlets like current affairs are so important to pierce through that because I know a lot of people are like, I know I'm not going crazy. Like, why are we normalizing this? But, I mean, it's propaganda that we've gotten for, as long as we've had mass media in this country. And if this is what the norm is, it's going to take a lot, I think, to undo that. - Yeah, I think one reason why we have started current affairs and why it exists is to try and help people see through things that see through mythology and propaganda to learn critical thinking and to notice things that you're not necessarily going to notice. So like, you could watch that debate and again, you could pay attention to the way that Donald Trump was incoherent and raging and Kamala's poise. You could also pay attention to some of the particular issues that came up like abortion and you could have a conversation about that. But then there are things that it's like, well, you need to make sure you don't miss this. And so, those would be things like the fact that Kamala on immigration didn't spend a single sentence defending, she didn't have a single positive thing to say about immigrants or immigration, right? Didn't even give boilerplate like, well, immigrants come to this country, not to eat your pets, but to work and to send their kids to school and to have a life like you do. And she didn't give any real attempt to paint a different portrait of the immigrant community than the one Donald Trumpet. She said, oh, that's extreme. And then in her response, she pivoted to talking about how Dick Cheney endorsed her, right? No effort to defend immigrants. And on foreign policy, she was saying that he was too soft on China and too soft on North Korea and that he had invited the Taliban to Camp David, right? So these things where you're trying to like outflank Trump to the militaristic right by saying, well, you're coddling terrorists or you're too soft on China. Then when these things are right, these ideological, these things that, I mean, one of the things that like you, which people would like a notice in the rhetoric or the way these way particular things are discussed that kind of pass by without comment? Yeah, it's a little, so, you know, that part is disheartening because then I wonder too, like what is it going to take? And I'm trying not to lean so much into, you know, the instinct that I've had just like growing up like we got into something about it. Like we need community organizations which I do think, you know, is important. And I also know that a lot of people don't have time to get that sort of political education. And so we do need some changes in our mass media. I lived, when I was living in Brooklyn, I was living with an elder who was just so dear and she would have on CNN like 99% of the day, retired older black woman. And that's all she was playing. And this was also at the time when they were vilifying a lot of sort of progressive ideas. It's too far left. You know, and so people are getting this fed to them constantly. So, you know, I think it's up to kind of leftist analysts and commentators and whatever burgeoning media that there is to find ways to cut through it. I don't really have a whole lot of other solutions. I was trying to do that. Well, I mean, something I think about a lot that we can try and do is keep things in people's minds and in people's focus. Like if you take, for example, Medicare for All, I think the Bernie Sanders campaigns of 2016 and 2020 were very, very effective at educating a lot of Americans that the way we do healthcare in this country is not the way we need to do it. In fact, we could make it easy. We could make it affordable. The government could solve this problem. In other countries, it's not like this. And Bernie had very effective messaging to say, look, we have a program, it's called Medicare. It enrolls a lot of people. We can enroll everyone in it. And if we did that, your life would be a hell of a lot better. Now, Medicare for All is actually a pretty modest reform. It's not actually government healthcare, it's government insurance, right? So it's a pretty incremental step as far as these things go. Bernie Sanders did a good job putting that on the agenda. Now, it's disappeared, right? AOC doesn't talk about Medicare for All. Kamala Harris, who said she is supported, it doesn't talk about it. It came up in the debate. She was given the perfect opportunity set up to pitch Medicare for All, which she supposedly supports. She didn't pitch it. - Yeah, I mean, and what's so sad is that it's so divorced, I think from the average Americans experience and the kinds of constituents that she is being elected to represent. So even when you look at some essence polling, the top issues that black women have said that they care about is affordable healthcare, affordable housing, the cost of living. And so those take really sort of nominal positions in her rhetoric. They're marginalized, even though these are the top issues that she has a black woman, you know, they're electing her in many ways to represent them. She's representing a lot of people, but including them. And so when you see how divorced our major elected officials are from what the average person says that they care about, but then folks are still sort of funneling. - So what I was thinking is that you're talking about the issues that actually matter to people. And the fact that they say cost of living, affordable housing, affordable healthcare, et cetera. It seems as if the Harris campaign has picked up on that a little bit because the sort of the proposals that she's put out have been specifically targeted at, well, I'm gonna stop corporate price gouging and try and bring down the price of groceries or whatever, or I'm gonna go after predatory landlords or what have you. But when you look into the policy details, it seems as if a lot of these things are not gonna have much of an effect. And if they don't have an effect, this is like to me the warning to give Democrats is like, and to me something that came out of the Obama era, is like if you just pretend you're solving the problem, like even if you recognize the problem accurately, if you pretend to solve it, but don't solve it, people are going to notice. And then they're going to get even more bitter and disillusioned about politics. Like Obama came in promising transformative change, people didn't experience it, and eventually they noticed. Like his smile couldn't do the job forever, like they're gonna, you can't bullshit people. And so I thought I'd ask you, you're doing all of this reporting, you're talking to people who feel your original piece for us was about people who are disengaged from politics, don't feel like it is going to bring meaningful changes to their lives. So yeah, I mean, I feel like it's only gonna, even if she succeeds in beating Donald Trump, if it turns out to be bullshit, and she was known for this one policy, this like laughable policy she put forward about like anyone who's a small business owner with a Pell Grant in a particular zone of economic, whatever can get some tax credit. Like if that's the kind of stuff that she does in office, she's gonna get real unpopular real fast. (laughs) Yeah, I mean, and I guess just really not a whole big, long-term strategy for Democrats per se in terms of their policy priorities. It's more so can we win this next phase of office and what the long, I mean, they didn't even want Barack Obama, like let's be real. He was kind of, he was an underdog. They did not expect him to surpass Hillary Clinton. And so we would have been having more of the same. So I think they're perfectly fine with Joe Biden for a while until everyone was like, what are y'all doing? So I think they're okay. They're okay with the status quo. And this is what I, I was with some friends, we're at a baby shower and as friends do who like to talk about politics, we're talking about politics before we were at like the pregame for this baby shower, we're talking about the debate. And they're just like, why are they still allowing Joe Biden up there? And from my experience working in New York politics, the Democratic party is a club. And they care about their people getting promoted in whatever highest office and position that they have in that club. And the policy kind of takes a backseat and what the ramifications are for the average American resident takes a backseat as long as their guy or a gal gets in position when they're supposed to get in a position, then it's all good. And they just keep the machine turning. - And I do think that that is confirmed by the fact that nothing ever happens without external pressure from organizing, from popular movements. Nothing ever takes place. They're not going to hand you anything, right? The only reason Kamala ever had good positions was external political pressure. Joe Biden only ever had good positions on climate because of external political pressure from the sunrise movement. Like they have to be squeezed in order to do anything. - Yeah, and I'm really, and I think we talk about the danger of the Trump presidency. I think the danger of a Kamala presidency is the fact that people would become complacent and not just complacent, but also would feel a little to maybe pressure to not confront her because it could be mistaken as racist or sexist or even as if you are a black organizer or if you are a black nonprofit executive or advocate to feel like you're betraying the race by even critiquing her. And that's upsetting. You know, the fact that's probably going to be a thing. To this day as a black woman, I can't really critique Barack Obama in certain settings the way that, you know, that I might otherwise because he's beloved. Like I was talking to a homie of mine and it's like you got Jesus Barack Obama and Martin Luther King, you know, Barack Obama replaced JFK on some of our grandmothers' mantles. Like literally going to my grandma's house, she got the cross and Barack Obama right next to it. - No, what do you say to that? - You know, and you got to choose your battles. So sometimes you can't say anything, but for advocates who do this work and they need to pressure the Harris administration, I think that's where some of the concerned lies because folks are probably going to be shunned from really trying to challenge her in certain ways. So I'm curious to see what's going to happen. - And I think there will be without pressure, without people willing to confront her, that this kind of drift, this rightward drift of Kamala where she's abandoning progressive policies one by one by one, I think, I mean, I think it's going to continue. It's going to get worse. And that deeply worries me as much as the Trump presidency so it worries me, okay. So, look at you, Molly, thank you so much. That was fun. I thought we had a good time. - Yeah, there was. Thanks for having me on. (upbeat music) - The Current Affairs Podcast is a product of Current Affairs Magazine. If you are not subscribed to Current Affairs Magazine, visit currentaffairs.org/subscribe today and get our glorious print edition. The Current Affairs Podcast is released regularly every week on patreon.com/currentaffairs. Thanks for listening. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
