RevolutionZ
RevolutionZ
Ep 303 - Election 2024 and Beyond with Max Elbaum
Episode 303 of RevolutionZ again addresses the complex web of issues, and contending responses that have arisen regarding this coming presidential election in the U.S. How do we understand emerging views of various constituencies? What priorities in dealing with voting and organizing options until November and then after November make most sense or even any sense at all for those seeking a better society and world?
Hello, my name is Michael Albert and I'm the host of the podcast that's titled Revolution Z. This is our 302nd consecutive episode and our guest is Max Elbaum, here for a second time to talk about election 2024 and beyond and, I guess, whatever else comes up. Max has been involved in peace, anti-racist and radical movements since joining Students for a Democratic Society, sds, in Madison, wisconsin, in the 1960s.
Speaker 1:Through the 1970s and 1980s, he was active in then widespread efforts to build a new US Revolutionary Party and in the 1990s, he was the editor of Crossroads, which was a magazine that featured dialogue and debate among socialists from different radical political traditions. In 2001, he was among the founders of Wartimes, a free bilingual imprint tabloid that was distributed nationwide and, until 2011, an online information and analysis project. Max is currently a member of the Convergence Magazine editorial board. He is also a co-editor with Linda Burnham and Maria Poblet. I'm not sure you pronounce her name of. Power Concedes Nothing. How Grassroots Organizing.
Speaker 2:Wins.
Speaker 1:Elections. So, Max, welcome back to Revolution Z.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Michael. It's always stimulating to talk to you.
Speaker 1:I'm a virtual drug. It was only a few weeks ago that we talked last on an episode, and yet quite a bit has happened. I guess when to start this time. Perhaps have you had any new feelings about the coming election or how to relate to it.
Speaker 2:Well, I think, since we talked last time, what's interesting to me, the Kamala bump plateaued and then, after the debate, seems to have picked up again. But at the same time, kamala is shifting a little bit in her what seemed to be her initial political motion not in the good direction from our point of view. From our point of view and I think that it's not a done deal yet there's still a lot of time and a lot of cross pressures will be brought to bear and should be brought to bear from our end on the campaign. But the interesting thing is that Biden being replaced by Kamala has given a big boost to the anti-MAGA front. It's definitely increased the chances of beating Trump, but at the same time it strengthened the more centrist wing of the anti-MAGA front. Biden was very weak and susceptible to a lot of pressures, and Kamala is not feeling that kind of weakness right now. So that makes for a complicated set of things for the left to navigate.
Speaker 1:I think that's true. After the convention she was up I don't know three, four, even five points. Then, a few weeks later, let's say the day before the debate, she was tied and down. And the thing that I found weird was okay, how did that happen? In other words, how did she lose those points in that intermediate time when he was doing nothing I mean, Trump wasn't really doing anything, at least I wasn't discerning anything and yet she was losing those points. And then the debate she's bounced back up again. But if that gap could be closed between the convention and the debate, it can also be closed between the debate and the election. So it's not over, I agree with you. So it's not over, I agree with you. And in some moments I try to interpret her words to give us the best chance, while keeping my eyes open. So when you do that around, the sort of military stuff you know and the sort of patriotism stuff, do you have any way of interpreting that other than horribly? I'm not sure I'm getting across, yeah you're getting across.
Speaker 2:I mean this is the biggest problem we've faced and it's a reflection of a problem we've faced since the resistance to Trump. The side of peace and internationalism, up until the uprising of anti-genocide again around Palestine, has been the weakest part by the ruling class in the executive branch and is even protected from a lot of congressional oversight. So foreign policy is a very tough nut to crack, even under better circumstances than we have. And I think for people our age they can't help but feel some echoes with the 1960s and the Lyndon Johnson era on this, which is in the first years of the Johnson administration. 63, 64, 65, really, really breakthroughs on certain issues, domestic issues, I mean that was when the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the end of racist immigration quotas, the beginning of Medicare I mean these were Second Reconstruction, finally breaking the white monopoly on political power.
Speaker 2:But in terms of foreign policy, we had the steady escalation of Vietnam, which undermined so much of that in terms of building a progressive movement that was durable and that could, you know, move towards some kind of in the direction of political power and, of course, was a disaster for the Vietnamese and, you know, for all the carnage that it called in the United States as well as around the world.
Speaker 2:So there's an echo of that, which is that the Kamala foreign policy looks terrible right now. I mean there's a few issues on which it's not as bad as Trump on which it's not as bad as Trump, but it's a definitely imperial hegemony project that she's buying into and it's going to be very complicated to navigate that. The domestic stuff that is in her program is nowhere near as much to the left as those early years of the Johnson administration, although there are some good things there and there's some things about voting rights, reproductive rights, defense of the LGBTQ community, even a few economic issues on which it's going to make a difference. Probably the biggest thing on that is the support for the trade union movement and hopefully that will continue in a way that will allow the momentum of the last few years toward revitalizing labor to continue, which is of great strategic importance for the left.
Speaker 1:But on foreign policy we're going to have a hell of a time, and it's dividing people going into the election.
Speaker 2:It's going to be difficult to keep that fight going during the electoral season, to keep hammering them on US complicity with Israeli genocide. Look what just happened. We're on the verge of once again threatening a regional war in the Middle East.
Speaker 1:And then, of course, after the election, whoever wins- there's one interpretation let's call it of what was done at the convention around patriotism and all the flags and all the whatnot, and then subsequently talking about the American military. That I'd almost like to think was the explanation, but I think it's probably giving them too much strategic credit for themselves. That is, you know, the Democrats. And that is on November 10th, where the military's feelings are. May matter, Might not, but it may matter greatly.
Speaker 1:I'm assuming, if Trump loses and I for one would be okay with some rhetoric like that for the purpose of defusing military anger over Trump's loss I doubt that's what's going on, but I sort of like to think that's what's going on, because it would mean that that rhetoric wasn't in fact a very intentional defense of existing policies, but was rather a sort of a strategic step. The funny thing is that you sort of feel like you don't know what anything means, right? In other words, is what they're saying reflective of some weird thing, or is it reflective of some strange strategy, or is it just opportunism, or is it really a commitment to imperial success? I don't feel like I know. I mean, I know what we know because we understand the system, but not because we understand the particular people. I'm not sure it matters what the particular people think at some level.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, it matters on some level. I mean individuals make certain decisions within the limits of the structural constraints. I mean individuals make certain decisions within the limits of the structural constraints. I mean the fact, for example, that Biden somehow typical of many politicians of his generation, even who were Jewish, I mean Biden is a Zionist in a way that Kamala is not, or in a way that Obama wasn't in a way that Kamala is not, or in a way that Obama wasn't.
Speaker 2:There's a certain and that certainly has made a difference in how the US, the degree of US complicity it's probably I mean the US-Israel alliance. It's going to take a few more steps it may have. Yeah, it's going to take more steps to break it up?
Speaker 1:It may have, but we don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there is no way to know for sure. I think there are elements of it that Biden made a difference who he was, but we'll have to see what happens under Kamala. I think what you're pointing. I think Kamala is trying to make nice with the generals and the military, so I do think that's one element of what's going on, but I don't think it's the only element of what's going on.
Speaker 1:I also don't think that the election has been won. I mean, it could still be won by Trump, as hard as that is to grok, and yet I do. I have sort of shifted a little bit in one sense the day after the election. If it's still roughly 50-50 and both sides are aroused, that's not a very auspicious situation for the next four years or for the future or whatever you want to say. There has to be an effort to reduce support for Trumpism, not just to beat it or to stop it, but to reduce support for it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And it seems to me that that needs to become a part of a priority. Yeah, yeah, absolutely Instead of sort of and that's not fully understood on the left. I don't think.
Speaker 2:No, it's not, and you're right about how important it is. I mean, first of all, the election is a long ways from being won Voter suppression, political threats of political violence which could influence the vote, as well as the effort to protect the vote. Afterwards, the twists and turns of surprises. You know you've got many international actors and US actors who are invested in a Trump victory and they haven't used everything in their arsenal yet.
Speaker 2:It's October, surprise kind of things, crises in various places, so this is going to be an extremely tough election. Even to win, it's still going to come down to six or seven swing states. And you know, as Michael Pod who, writes about the election.
Speaker 2:it's the margin of effort, not the margin of error in the polls, and it's been written about since then, both on the especially Ellie Mistel in the Nation wrote a piece about it the degree to which the Supreme Court is partisan and absolutely ignore the majority, ignores originalism, conservatism. It's all bullshit. You know what they. They're in the partisan camp right now. You know. So Trump's efforts to throw the election to the Supreme Court or into the House of Representatives these things are going to be very complicated after November. These things are going to be very complicated after November. What?
Speaker 1:you said is important, weakening Trump.
Speaker 2:That's reasons why you need to win a landslide, you need to take the House and the Senate and you need to start passing some legislation that neutralizes or wins over some of the MAGA people, or at least some of the Republicans who are going along with MAGA.
Speaker 1:I mean this is, or even some of the MAGA people.
Speaker 2:I think it's not going to be done by argument. At a certain point you need to have enough political power to give enough goodies to elements of their coalition that they decide it's not worth it to keep playing the degree of opposition, that they can get something out of it by at least becoming neutral, if not moving to your side. So otherwise we're in trench warfare.
Speaker 1:Yeah but I'm inclined to think maybe this is again wishful thinking, but I'm inclined to think that a lot of Trump's support is thin. That is, it's support for my team, it's a support for the game that's being played, it's a support for not violating what I'm supposed to be, for you know what my neighborhoods are for, and so on, and I see it cracking somewhat. It's hard to tell whether the polls are real. I mean, I find myself, like them, suspicious of everything. But the polls that are being done, for instance in Iowa, where there's this big shift, it can only have happened by a loss of votes for Trump. So you do see that happening in various places not enough, but happening, and one wonders where it will go.
Speaker 2:Well, I think we're radicals that we have to believe that people can change their minds. Otherwise there's no point in doing politics if you think people can't change. And that includes changing the coalitions that are on the other side. I mean, when I was in SDS by 1969, there were people in my SDS chapter who were Wallace supporters in 1964, and they changed their mind over the course of a few years. So we have to be able to change the minds of some of those people who are voting Republican. I think you're right.
Speaker 2:It's very difficult to assess how much that's happening now, to assess how much that's happening now and it's not related directly to people's stances on certain issues like defense of Social Security or what do you think about health care or whatever. Maga has built up a certain kind of sense of community and belonging among many of its supporters which goes beyond the question of its political program. I mean those white evangelical churches. It's not held together exactly by a political program in the sense of a platform, of a set of policies. There's a certain sense of those. Other people are other and we're the real.
Speaker 1:Americans and breaking that up is tricky. It's even more, I think, because it's not necessarily material. I mean there's a strange dynamic. I mean, consider the immigration issue, which is a big part of what's going on. It's not like a sidebar, it's a serious part of all of what's going on. And look at the way Trump addresses it.
Speaker 1:He doesn't spend much time on what are the material implications for your pocketbook of immigration. What are the material implications for your pocketbook of immigration? What he really is saying is what's happening to your community by the influx of people who have a different culture. That's ultimately what he's saying. Right, they eat cats and dogs. Okay, so that's over the top, but that's what he's communicating that our communities are at risk of losing their identity. It isn't even necessarily. You don't have to feel like and I watch these interviews of these folks you don't have to feel like they're scum, they're bad. All the stuff he says you don't have to feel all that, and a lot of them don't there. All the stuff he says you don't have to feel all that and a lot of them don't. But you can feel like a large influx of people is going to change the character of our community to something that's really unfamiliar to me and I don't want that Yep.
Speaker 1:And you know the left doesn't address this stuff and doesn't even try to address this stuff. I don't think, and it's a mistake.
Speaker 2:It is a mistake and it's a global mistake it's throughout the global north. This is what's happening in England. This is what's happening in France. This is the structural underpinnings of the exploitation climate change and war, forcing people out of their homes in the global south, fleeing to the global north. And people in the global north then saying, oh, these people are coming. Just what you said, even ones who aren't haters, think well, they're different and it's just going to cause problems. I don't like it.
Speaker 1:And the left hasn't figured out and you can't dismiss that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can't put everybody in the box. Yeah, because you can't, it's not trivial, you can't just dismiss it.
Speaker 1:If you just argue over whether immigration is going to increase or decrease the well-being of the economy, as if that itself says anything to anybody, you're not really addressing what may well be driving the hostility and the anger and the forming of a wall around people. It's a hard nut to crack, but you can't crack it at all if you don't even aim at it. It's a real issue.
Speaker 2:It is. Also. There have been different ways to try to crack that nut and one of them which I think is true, it's not the only one it's when people are feeling more secure economically. The arguments around immigration like you know, when Trump was first dividing families at the border, there was a wave of humanitarian outrage about that treatment from people who felt all different things about immigration as an issue. When you're feeling in a situation where you can empathize and you're not feeling displeased and like your own situation is totally precarious, it's easier to appeal to people's better angels.
Speaker 2:And I think that's going to be an important part of if there is a democratic administration and if the left is able to put enough pressure on it that it at least begins to move a little bit on some of these issues, begins to move a little bit on some of these issues and tilts more in the direction of a working class-oriented populism than just trying to recreate the coalition of middle upper class professionals.
Speaker 2:You know, in our conversation last time when you brought up the coordinator class and so on, if it goes in that direction and actually produces some benefits, and particularly if it strengthens the labor movement, then you have a chance to move people. You have a chance to move people on economic grounds, humanitarian grounds, and you begin to get a solidarity kind of injury to one, injury to all, which ultimately you have to be able to do. That immigrants and the role that immigrants played in revitalizing some of the unions that were dead in the water, then, you know, made a difference and I think that is going to be a key element If we make it through the election and the election protection. We have to be thinking in those terms.
Speaker 1:I had been hoping that the vice presidential nominee would be Sean Fain. I thought that would have made a difference in the election and would have made a difference in the aftermath, and at least wasn't inconceivable. Of course it didn't happen. Tim Walz isn't that bad. I've heard him now watching things on YouTube and stuff. He is very effective.
Speaker 2:So that's, you can just see him getting across to people Well, you know I'm a big Sean fan too, Although I think we're better off with him as the president of the UAW for the next four years.
Speaker 1:His point.
Speaker 2:This is a very interesting point for 2028. If we make it through 2024, you know he's got this program of trying to get all the unions to build contract expiration dates on May Day 2028. 2028 is also a presidential election. It's going to be very complicated. That Bernie Sanders did in 2016 and 2020, and somehow tried to synergize their campaign with what the UAW is trying to do for May Day of 2028, and identify with that motion and identify with that May Day event. You could see a certain kind of coalition coming together. That might be very powerful if the union movement again continues its motion the way it's going. So, bringing Sean Fain into the conversation, I don't have any trouble seeing that.
Speaker 1:You know it's the worst of times and it's the best of times. There's a lot going on now that is actually very good and very hopeful. I think that being one part of it obviously is a very significant part of it, but not alone. I mean what the anti-Israeli, you know, the pro-Palestinian resistance has been, to my eyes at least, quite remarkable. I was actually surprised by the extent of I don't know what to call it empathy, emotional empathy for people across the planet all of a sudden exploding into a really heartfelt sentiment among young people. We hadn't seen that for a long time and it was there. I just hope it's coming back right now. I don't know that it is, but I hope it is.
Speaker 2:Well it is. I think it's a sea change in terms of what you said, in terms of sympathy and identification. I don't think we're going to go back to the level of demonization of Palestinians that existed before, of demonization of Palestinians that existed before. The hard part there, of course, is what is going to institutionalize it politically and how is it going to move Sure, which, you know. That is the tricky thing in terms of US peace and international solidarity movements is they rise and fall, not so much in terms of people's sentiments but in terms of the ability to make a political program and focus the energy in a way and that's up for grabs right now that different forces in the movement of solidarity with Palestine have different agendas about how they think that can be institutionalized.
Speaker 1:And of course you's call it. The extent to which being aroused and angry about injustice and so on can morph into a sustainable pattern, via having some institutions, et cetera, depends in large part on having a vision that isn't 20 minutes down the road, having a real vision for transformation of society. I mean, what we did in the 60s was impressive along many axes, but along the axis of building a sustained opposition that was institutionally, you know, had an institutional basis and could persist, we were pretty terrible. Ultimately, we didn't do that and I think that it had a lot to do with the fact that we just didn't have shared vision, shared strategy, a degree of mutual trust and a belief that you could actually win, not just a short-run gain, which everybody believes who tries but a long-run transformation who tries, but a long-run transformation. And I think the same situation prevails now, but maybe it will be more successful this time.
Speaker 2:I think the tricky thing about that, the hardest nut to crack maybe I'm overgeneralizing from my experience, but the hardest nut to crack is to link that vision with some kind of realistic assessment of the balance of forces and where you are in that direction. I mean, one of the big problems that came out that our 60s movements in terms of institutionalizing was at least one section and a pretty large section of the people who were radicalized. We really overestimated our strength and we overestimated how close we were to revolutionary change. So we built forms that were inaccessible for ordinary people, people who had to go to work every day, and we used rhetoric that implied that, you know, revolution was around the corner. We didn't mesh our utopian vision. There were flaws in that and I think you've done some work around trying to make our vision more concrete. But even that aside, we didn't mesh the vision with something that was sustainable in the conditions of the 70s and so on and sensible, yeah, not sensible and sensible, suited to reality.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there is the same problem today, because, I mean, there's not that many people who think the revolution is around the corner in ways that some 60s radicals did. That's changed for the better. People realize that's not around the corner, but the level of anger and outrage is at least as great in certain sectors as it was then and the feeling of just how screwed up everything is. Obscene gap between wealth and poverty in the world and in the country today way beyond what we faced in the 1960s way, way beyond.
Speaker 1:It should be looking at those things. It should be sort of an organizer's paradise, right? Not a paradise for daily life, living of the population, but an organizes paradise, because everybody knows everything is broken, everybody knows the whole system is messed up, corrupt, et cetera, et cetera, and you want to be able to talk to people and, you know, galvanize a unified activity, but the belief that that activity is going to lead somewhere and the belief that that activity is, uh, you know that's missing largely, at least on our side. I don't know about the right Right, I mean the, the, the, the worst part of the right, that is, the most fundamentalist right wingers. They actually think they're going someplace Right. So they do have in mind, I think, or in their hearts, I mean, in other words, they think they're contributing to something that's going somewhere and going to win. I'm not talking about all those voters, I'm talking about, you know, I hope, a small subset. But on the left, I don't think that's as present, you know.
Speaker 2:You know, it depends what we measure it against. I think that there are sections of the left that have learned something from the Bernie's campaign, learned something from the resistance in 2020. And there's an increasing discussion of what the next stage of progressive politics might look like.
Speaker 1:It's getting better. I agree with you.
Speaker 2:What would it look like Something realistic? I mean, what would it look like to pass the PRO Act, voting rights, reproductive rights, chip away at US foreign policy, something that emphasizes diplomacy and peace as opposed to militarism? I think there are some programs out there. I like to use the term Third Reconstruction Reverend Barber from the Poor People's Campaign uses that. It's sort of coming from Du Bois and so on is what some people would call an intermediate goal on the road toward overcoming capitalism A multiracial democracy that phrase is out there multiracial, gender-inclusive, working-class democracy, things like that. So I think there's some headway compared to pre-2016, where people, you know, there were various visions of what a very long range, something we might want, ideal or, you know, ideal, but the mid range was very, very difficult. I think we're a little better shape on that. I like the work. That yeah, no.
Speaker 1:I don't disagree. I agree, things are like I said. It's the worst of times, it's the best of times, that's part of the best of times, but it does need to go a good deal further, and I'm not sure. I mean I don't know. I would find it interesting to be able to talk with not just Sean Fain but the people who really support him across labor, not just in the UAW, and to have a feeling for whether they see a path to better and whether they're susceptible to cynicism or they are instead excited and feeling that there's a path and that they can envision organization in their communities, they can envision organization in their workplaces. That I'm not sure is there yet, but it could be. It's certainly not out of the question by any means. I mean, it's remarkable, that's not out of the question, and neither is fascism, which is very strange.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know how strange it is.
Speaker 2:You know, when the existing system, the cracks are there and the existing order starts to break down, you can get, I think, what's different in the left, which is implicit in what you're saying, michael, is that the right feels that it's pretty close to political power and that it could implement its program of repression and all wealth to the wealthy, all energy to the fossil fuel industry. They feel if they can get full control of the government, they can make pretty much the country look like how they want it to look within a few years.
Speaker 1:Now they may be wrong about that, but I think they feel that way and I think that most savvy people on the left recognize that we could get a start.
Speaker 2:We could get a good start toward a new progressive cycle, but it's going to take quite a lot of steps that have to go on. We don't have the news. We don't have 400 people writing Project 2025 and immediately billions of dollars getting invested. We don't have the size of the congressional delegation.
Speaker 1:We certainly can't mimic, that's for sure. They're bigger than us. As to how long it'll take, we might disagree and is always if it's going to happen, right. If you're in a phase or a process that's going to succeed, it's not going to take that long. It's not going to take forever. It may fail, it may not get started, but one that is going to work, a process that's going to lead to change comparable to that right-wing change, that is, a pretty fundamental set of changes throughout society and then continuing on to totally new institutions.
Speaker 1:I don't think it would take that long. I think these things do move relatively quickly, but not without people being able to participate, wanting to participate, desiring to participate and knowing enough. You know that is sharing enough understanding and and vision to participate. But if all that was there, I do think it can move relatively quickly. Maybe that's just my, you know, I'm still mired at the age of 20 in the sixties, but I mean I was not too too, too hot on. We want the world and we want it now as an organizing principle, and it's still not a good organizing principle. So when the movement against ecological collapse says, well, we have to replace capitalism, If we don't do that, we can't stop global warming and we're all doomed. They'd better be wrong, because I agree with you that we're not going to replace capitalism fast enough to deal with global warming and ecological collapse. Changes in the meantime and I think we certainly can which mitigate and slow and even prevent that kind of ecological collapse, even though we haven't replaced the basic underlying system yet.
Speaker 2:The scale of both institutional change and attitudinal change that has to happen is large.
Speaker 2:Attitudinal change that has to happen is large. We need a revamp of the political system toward a different way of practicing democracy, different economic institutions and, referring back to our earlier conversation, we need a whole bunch of people who right now are voting Republican to be at least supportive, in a passive sense, if not of an active sense, of moving in a very different direction. How long those things would take to happen? I agree with you that they can happen pretty quickly under certain circumstances, but we need to resist the temptation to skip some of those steps.
Speaker 2:If we do get a share of political power, the temptation to use that in shortcut ways and not have your base understand what's happening and move with it, and shortcut democracy. That's been a real problem in countries where the left has taken power. So you're right, it's not really a question of how long or how short, but it is a question of not skipping over essential steps that have to be taken if you're going to have something on a firm foundation. You probably agree on that, yeah.
Speaker 1:You can't succeed at what you don't even try to do. The example that comes to mind for me is not only the United States, but, say, Venezuela, where, during the Chavez period, there was a mood and when I encountered it I was astounded by it that you don't go into the neighborhoods where you're not liked to organize. You go where you have support. So, in other words, I mean they had all these tremendous desires to create assemblies at the base and to replace the government with a federation of assemblies and so on, but they were averse to talking to people who disagreed with them, even on campuses, which is sort of incredible, or at least it seems to me it's incredible. It bypasses one of the key steps that you're talking about.
Speaker 1:And you do see the same thing in the US left often. That's the you know, the dismissal of all Trump voters. As you know, unreachable scum or whatever it is that people have in their minds to describe half the population that is. That is suicide for the left, I think. Um, at least for the left that is really trying to change things fundamentally, Um, so that has to be overcome.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, I find it sort of amusing for people to talk about the need to have the working class fighting for a new world and then dismissing working people as unreachable. This is quite a combination and it does exist, that combination that has to be gotten beyond. But if these things are gotten beyond, I do think that it doesn't take 100 years or 50 years. Yeah, look at people moving, for first of all, look at Obama getting elected. Did you anticipate that? No, no. Yet it happened, and it happened pretty quickly.
Speaker 1:And then look at the people who voted for Obama, voting for Trump. In no time, flat right. Is it because they're racist? Did they forget that they voted for this black guy to be president? I mean, what's going on? It's more subtle, all this stuff that's happening and now, all of a sudden, you know, a black woman may well become president. These are real changes that are happening quickly, almost without coherent program and effort. In some ways, imagine coherent program and effort at work. I'm still optimistic, even though I'm scared shitless of what's going to happen in November. It's a schizoid state of mind, I guess. What's going?
Speaker 2:to happen in November. It's a schizoid state of mind, I guess. Well, it's a good state of mind. I mean you can't build a radical movement on fear. You have to build a radical movement on hope. I mean that's not an original idea or anything like that, but you have to have a sense that you can prevail and that you can change things.
Speaker 2:Otherwise, I mean, another way of saying what you just said pretty well is, if the left has a permanent opposition mentality, we'll never get anywhere. Obviously, we have to be opposed to certain things, but if your mentality is we're a permanent opposition, we're always going to govern the country in the interests of everybody in the long term, then you can have a little bit different attitude toward people who don't agree with you along the way, and you know, you can see why. Having a permanent opposition mentality is the natural state of a marginal group and too many people on the left. It's not people's fault. We have been marginal for quite some time. You and I are old enough that we came out of a period where we weren't marginal, Whatever. Plenty of things we did wrong. I wrote an old book about a bunch of things we did wrong, or at least the part of the left.
Speaker 2:I was in that I did wrong, but we had a taste of being part of a movement that was not marginal, that was majoritarian, that had that kind of experience of seeing people change and come our way.
Speaker 2:So that imprinted many of us and without some feeling like that, even if you haven't had the benefit of directly experiencing it. But it's harder if you came up since the Reagan years where, although there have been gains for gay rights and, like you said, the first black president, these are very important things, but in terms of the relative power of the left relative to the right, we've been sliding downhill for quite some time. So it's very difficult for people to break out of an opposition mentality.
Speaker 1:You can imagine, with that oppositional mindset, the existence of the thing to be opposedy the possibility that change is happening, almost to retain their identity as hating this thing. It seems that way to me. At times it's almost a vested interest in being weak, or if not a vested interest, at least an expectation of it. At any rate there is hope now. There is serious hope, it seems to me. I mean even in the Democratic Party, which to me is anathema and has been for my whole life. But at the convention it seemed to me pretty obvious that the bulk of the people at that convention were well to the left of the people on the stage, absolutely.
Speaker 1:It certainly seemed that way to me.
Speaker 2:That's true on everything. I mean. 60% of the Democratic voting base thinks Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and a Democratic president is financing it Exactly. That's huge to build on for the future.
Speaker 1:But these people were inside that building right. These people were selected to come to the convention to not be annoying, to fit nicely, and they did. They raised their USA signs and they did those. But you can see, or at least I felt it, that they were a little more moved toward progressive notions, uh, than than anybody on the stage would have liked. Um, or so it seemed to me. Anyway, I'm not saying there that's our future, that's not our future. The only reason that's the case is because of activity outside of that. But it does reflect the fact that there is an impact happening.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. I think that the base of the Democratic Party and by that I also mean the people who are active at the club level, at the state level, people who get elected to delegates, people who were Bernie delegates or Warren delegates in 2020, 2016. That layer of people I mean indivisible didn't come out of the left, of the left. The indivisible thing came out of people who had been Democratic Party operatives, staffers, congressional staffers, lower level and mid-level campaign consultants. I mean, we saw a bunch of people resign from not a bunch, but at least a few resigned from the Biden administration in protest of Gaza, and every one of them said there's plenty of other people in there who feel this way. They just haven't yet been willing to resign. So I do think we have a lot of people on our side. But institutionalizing that power, focusing on, you know, winning some demands that then create momentum so you can win more these are going to be big challenges for us immediately assuming we make it through 2020 for election and protecting it.
Speaker 2:What we focus on, what key wins can we get early on? Wins that might neutralize some elements of the opposition as well as get excitement in the more progressive forces. These are kinds of things we have to be thinking about, and you're absolutely right, you can't be thinking about them if you're just in an oppositional mood. You have to be thinking in that kind of forward-looking way, or those kinds of questions aren't even questions for you. We should form the optimist caucus, michael. Yeah, that's why Jesse's slogan is Keep Hope Alive. It's a really good political slogan.
Speaker 1:He was right.
Speaker 2:He was absolutely right about that. He was very smart.
Speaker 1:Well, we're closing on an hour. Do you have something in particular that you want to bring up to cover before we end?
Speaker 2:I think we touched on a lot of pretty interesting things. I think we touched on a lot of pretty interesting things. I think at the end, we should just reinforce the point that there's going to be a lot of surprises between now and November on foreign policy and not drop it, not ignore what's going on or underplay what's going on in Israel-Palestine, even as we fight to win the election, and we need to try to avoid burning any bridges with people who we're going to disagree with, both people on the other side of the election and people within the left or within the anti-mega front that we disagree with. We have to keep our bridges open and not get ourselves in a bunker, which you know. You've emphasized that throughout this discussion and I think it's a really important point.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, thanks for coming on again second time and thanks for the stuff you've been writing. I have been a fan of it, I guess you could say, and tried to spread it around a little bit because I think it's good stuff. Spread it around a little bit because I think it's good stuff. No-transcript.