Happy Thanksgiving! We’re so grateful for your support of the show over the last almost-four (!) years, allowing us to talk to our favorite people (Bernie Sanders, Noam Chomsky, presidential candidates, football players, comedians and so much more) over the course of two-hundred-plus episodes. Huge gratitude to our paying subscribers who, for $5 a month, keep us ad-free. To express our appreciation, this week we’re giving all of you video of our most recent interview with Rep. Ro Khanna, thinking about the future of the Democratic Party. As we sift through the wreckage and renew our fight for a pro-working class agenda, please consider supporting the show so we can continue to build populist left media.
With Ro, we’re trying to make sense of whether establishment Democrats will choose to learn from their mistakes and embrace something akin to the social democracy that polls so well among their constituents — or whether Kamala 2024 is the kind of austere, unimaginative and ultimately unsuccessful effort we can expect from the Dems going forward. Bernie’s recent choice to take the gloves off in a letter harshly critiquing the Democratic Party shows that politicians attuned to the needs of working people aren’t finding a political home in the Democrats. What kind of political home is possible?
Thanks for tuning in. You can listen to this episode as a podcast when it’s released tomorrow on major streaming platforms.
You know…I concluded a while back that Ro Khanna was a case of “no there there”, where his supposed reputation as a progressive was really a case of a cagey and careful politician who talked some of the talk, but that was about it…. It’s still all about “civility”, reaching across the aisle, and—oh yeah—making some changes in the irredeemable Democratic Party. This party has mostly become a collection of capitalists focused on projecting—in this case categorizing the Republicans as the only fascists when, in fact, the Democrats have been colluding to maintain and expand much the same basic villainy for many decades….
My other comment is that there was no mention of a huge problem for Harris—Gaza…and her utter failure to react to the public’s revulsion of US involvement in the ongoing genocide. Or the US imperialism pushing us into more and more conflicts and ever closer to a nuclear event, all the while whining about the expenditures—nominal by comparison to our military industrial complex’s budget—on the deep and deepening emergency that our society is and has been experiencing.
Also, her embrace of other war criminals—like Cheney and his daughter—was not a good look for her, although it gave substance to the burgeoning realization by that same public that she was now saying the quiet part out loud…and this is what the Democratic Party really stands for—authoritarianism…not inclusivity.
Jill Stein was the only candidate to call—unequivocally—for the actual policies the voters really want, and there was no mention of that, or the fact that the Democratic leadership went every possible route to keep the voters from exposure to her candidacy and message, or that of Claudia de la Cruz—because that would exhibit small “d” democracy in action….
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