So much of what Senator John Fetterman does is against his better judgment.
Among those things was going on the Jon Stewart show.And here's why.So for you, you could agree with them 90 percent.But Israel is the red line.
Absolutely.Israel for me, like I can't ever turn my back to Israel after after where it's at.
So and I mean no disrespect on this, but that is not our country.You're saying that these candidates may have great ideas for our economy.They may want to do the exact same thing you want to do in terms of getting money out of politics.They may want to increase the social safety net.They may want to change the balance of power from capital back to labor.But if they don't agree with you on Israel, you don't want them in your party.
Well, I don't know who you're referencing to specifically.No, I'm referencing what you just said.
So in other words, Syed or AOC or Bernie Sanders, I assume you agree with a lot of what they say economically.
What I'm saying is like, if you are a DSA member, if you are a member of a specific political party, run under your own banner.
Mamdani in New York is DSA, but there are things in the DSA platform that he disagrees with.And I'm assuming there's probably things in the Democratic platform that you might disagree with, but you don't disavow the entire thing.You're literally saying it's all, we can all have discussions except when it comes to Israel, which is not America.It seems like a weird line to draw.
Well, I don't think that's weird.I think what history demonstrates is that when people or a government or people turn their back to the Jewish community, things end really badly.
Jewish community and Israel are not the same thing, brother man.
And so, Sagar, I think one of the problemshere is that Fetterman has, well, one, he had a stroke and has difficulty with kind of auditory processing.And so oftentimes you're like, wait, I don't think you really understood the question.
I think that's Cope.I think he was like this before the stroke.
You think so?
As an original Fetterman hater.
So the other problem is that he spends all his time getting glazed on Fox News.Right.or Bill Maher, or on Twitter, and getting gassed up in whatever group chats he's in with these pro -Israel folks, and he cannot articulate in a reasonable way what his actual policy is, because it's not reasonable.He straight up says to Jon Stewart, before that clip, it's even clearer, if I agree with my party on everything except for Israel, I will leave the party.That's the line he's drawing.
Which means that it's his most important issue.As in, I could disagree with you on childcare.I could disagree with you on X number of domestic, but if you depart on Israel, that's my red line.He said it himself.He said, it's a red line.I do think it's crazy.
There's a lot of reasons to wonder as to how exactly one got here.We can leave the psychoanalysis to other people.But I do think at a baseline point, you know, that you're pointing out, his inability to articulate it well, just is the problem with the entire pro -Israel position at this point, which is basically, if you disagree with us, you hate Jews.I mean, I get it constantly.Whenever I, you know, find my own Israel critics out in the wild, they're like, why do you hate Jews so much?I'm like, first of all, dare you you know second of all it's one of those where why do you conflate Israel with the Jewish people and he's in America he just does it in such a straightforward way it's just constant and it's like it's one of those things where no matter how much you genuflect about
like, I don't have a problem with Jews.I have, you know, what did Syed say?He said, you know, I'm gonna look out for my, for Jewish citizens the way I would look out for my own daughters.You know, even that I see the pro -Israel community be like, oh, well, you know, Muslims rape girls.I'm like, oh my God, like, what is wrong with you?You know, it's like nothing is enough because the conflation, I think, is the last thing that they have to protect, you know, any criticism of Israel.
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Get started freewhich we don't care if it's a Jew.We would say all the same things no matter what kind of state that it is, but that's the ultimate problem.They need that special protection kind of, you know, halo around them to protect themselves from any criticism, which John very expertly points, John Stewart points out, but Fetterman, he can't process it at all.Like he has to come back to that over and over and over again.
Yeah, and one of the people, one of the types of people gassing him up is Van Jones.Van Jones has been on a bit of a spiral.Let's roll, this is some of his response to Abdul El -Sayed's win.
People are looking at people and they're saying, you've been telling us the same thing for a long time and our lives are not any better.We got Donald Trump twice.There's also an innovation gap.Why can you spend $60 million and get whooped like this?Because the old model was you get the donors, to get the consultants to buy a bunch of ads and you win.That's how you get attention.
This movement says, I don't need donors, ads, I don't need consultants.I'm going right to the people with TikTok and grassroots.And they've disintermediated the entire donor class, disintermediated the entire consultant class.And this is a revolution.And so this is going to happen again and again.The Democratic Party is now Blockbuster.
These kids are Netflix.Look, I mean, look at these numbers.If you are an Arab kid in America right now, if you're a Muslim kid in America right now, and you're looking at this, this is one of the biggest nights of your life.This is Barack Obama.This is Hillary Clinton.So whenever there's a first, you have real hopes and you have real fears.
There's real fears in some Jewish homes tonight.But this is a big deal.And I think no Muslim has gotten this far in American politics.He should speak to that and not any of the divisions in our party, to be a healing force and put those kids first.
And to the extent...Even in that patronizing way, trying to praise, he's like, there's still real fear in Jewish homes tonight.I'm like, come on.
Yeah, and to the extent that there's any truth to that statement, that there's real genuine fear in some Jewish homes about Abdul El -Sayed, I feel like a deep sense of pity.I agree.If that's true, like you really, in the United States, should not be afraid of Abdul El -Sayed.no matter who you are.There's nobody in the United States that you...You want to disagree with him about his tax policy?
I'll take it even further.You shouldn't be afraid period like you have equal protection under the law We don't have a huge anti -semitism problem in this country.No matter what, you know You want to say Europe is far time, you know, ten times more actually anti -semitic has been for years.There's no historical basis of like mass Anti -semitism in the United States it most anti -semitism in the US did not come from the lower classes It all came from the elites who were upset about Jews competing for their spots at Harvard.I mean, it's just it's preposterous Ultimately, people are upset about Israel.Okay, that's true.
If you go through the Anti -Defamation League's list of thousands of anti -Semitic events over the last year, almost all of them are Israel -related.
All, we played many of them.Emily did a great job, I remember, of going through and just finding the random ones, every single one.And then Crystal's made this point many times, and I do think it's true, to the extent that there is rising, and not again, I don't think there's mass antisemitism, but to the extent that there's quote, rising antisemitism, it is because of peoplewho are constantly telling them, if you conflate criticism of Israel with Jews, then some people are gonna be like, okay, fine, you know, fine.They're gonna go in that direction.That's obviously an abhorrent and a bad direction, but that's ultimately where that's gonna go, if that's what you're going to perpetuate in mass culture, like what Van Jones and all of that are saying.
And I know this is where, like with Jones, I do think it's important to bring it back to what you were saying earlier, because I've always been mystified by this.like the Congressional Black Caucus, super pro -Israel.Like there's this very strange alliance between these old school black Democrats, especially people like Jim Clyburn, the Congressional Black Caucus, even on the Republican side, people like the anti -Semitism czar or whatever in the Trump administration is Leo Terrell, like one of those, classic Fox News black talking heads, and he is the one who's most virulently pro -Israel.And there seems to have been some like bargain struck back, you know, a long time ago, I guess, between like, you guys pro -Israel and we'll back you on, you know, certain things.I don't know, it could be a woke industrial complex, the ADL, something, you know, like that.But there's that alliance.
I think it might be a problem in Michigan, you know?Not with younger voters, again, not with younger voters, You know, the numbers speak for themselves in Detroit and elsewhere.
And the irony is that AIPAC and its allies very much exploit the legacy of Jewish civil rights, Jewish activist participation in the civil rights movement in order to say, like, remember, like, we were there for you.You got to be here.for us now, and then enormous amounts of money and funding for trips to Israel.And the irony, just real quickly, in that conflation there, is that kind of post -World War II, you probably know this history, within the Jewish community, post -Holocaust, there were those who said, never again means never again for anyone.And we need to put our bodies on the line to createa world of Social justice so that nobody like 1990s liberalism, but also 1960s.
Yeah, that's true 1950s and 60s the the the top allies of Martin Luther King and others were Jewish activists and some of them were killed in the South, you know fight fighting for voting rights and The argument was their fight is our fight.There's no world in which, if other people aren't safe, that we're safe.Then there was a separate wing which said, no, we need to establish the state of Israel and never again means never again for us.And these were often in conflict.These ideas were clashing with each other.And so now the group that said, no, no, no, we shouldn't participate in the civil rights movement.
just go ahead and build a fortress in Israel, they are using the valor that came from Jewish participation in the civil rights movement to say, you have to support us over here now.It's like, no, you guys were in different wings and you guys did not like each other.You were in real conflict with each other.But AIPAC, there's also a real financial gap.And Jamal Bowman has talked a lot about this, that a lot of the black churches, AIPAC will come in and take people to Israel.and support a playground.
They're there supporting that community.
It's very religious too.A lot of black people are very religious as well, so there's the tie -in with evangelical Christianity.We shouldn't dispel that either.Yeah, I mean it is kind of fascinating, but that's where the breakdown in the future comes from.And let's put C3 up here on the screen.This is kind of
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Get started freeHaley Stevens is doing better in places with lower average incomes and where fewer voters have college degrees.As I have said on the show now for years, the number one predictor of how you're going to vote is whether you have a bachelor's degree or not.And as they point out, El Sayed is winning 58 .4 % of the vote in counties where at least 30 % of adults have a bachelor's degree.On the flip side, Stevens is winning 51 .4 % of the vote in counties where less than 30 % are college educated.El Sayed similarly leading Stevens in counties with higher median income so far, while Stevens leads in lower income counties.with the Republicans, you are more likely to have like a horseshoe voter who's a Republican, as in somebody who is quite poor, but working class white, or somebody who is like a black business owner, but makes like $300 ,000 a year, small business plumber, somebody like that, without a college degree.
Those two people are, you know, socially in a different class than somebody who makes $60 ,000 and is like downwardly mobile, but has a bachelor's degree in college education.But, The reason why I thought that this was interesting, and again, just to connect it to the Fetterman stuff, and even Israel to a certain extent, I have found, especially here with what Van Jones and all of that is saying, is that this has become a major battle for information.And Richard Hanania has written about this, and I do think it's a very astute observation, is that Democrats read and Republicans watch TV.If you just look at the base, the fact is, it's like Democrats, people who vote Democratic, the more they are much more likely to increase.with the news, to read the New York Times, it even comes down to like reading books, whereas a Republican mean voter is much more likely to be watching and consuming television.And so the breakdown on those two things, and this is really where the Israel stuff comes in, is if you're getting all of your news on Israel, let's say in particular, from TV, we know what's on TV.
The most moderate criticism of Israel on MSNBC is like shocking, right?press El -Sayed.That's where that reporter, she's pressing El -Sayed.You against ethnostates?She's like, why are you against ethnostates?You know, I was like, what the fuck?
I'm watching MSNBC right now?But then, you know, if you were reading the Times or any of these, whatever.I'm not some huge fan of the New York Times.You're reading Dropside, anything.Your information on environment in Israel is totally different.And that's where you can pick up, I think, some of the nuance and the other things.
That's where the class breakdown comes down to.But it also comes down to DSA.And this is why even saying class is kind of stupid, because to me, it's all about social class.It has nothing to do with earnings.When you really look at it, the DSA base appears to be people who are well -educated, but more downwardly mobile, who I have a lot of sympathy with.They have a shitload of debt.
They're, you know, were promised a dream, and they're not, that dream isn't working out.That seems to be where things are.Whereas people without the college degree are much more likely, especially in a state like Michigan, where probably disproportionately gonna have a lot more people who are, you know, elderly and black, those people are gonna be much more trusting of the party establishment.So this is where the DSA fracture is going to run into a wall with some of these primaries, where, you know, El -Sayed only being able to win That's a problem.Like I remember before the election, what we were saying, Chris was pointing out, is what would really be a sea change if some of these elder black people voted for El -Sayed.Like if they were to abandon the party establishment.
And we didn't see a lot of that.We still saw a significant part of some of these more traditional Democrats who were in favor of El -Sayed.of trusting the party establishment.So that's the big line, I think right now, which is interesting.
Yeah.And it's, it's also, it's, it's a structural component of American politics that the lower, like without a college degree is more likely to tend towards the party, the party establishment.That's right.Like that's, that's where we've been.uh... campaign no matter how well -run how class focused uh... mom donnie i think was the first to put a huge dent in that.
But even he, Cuomo, look, he didn't win, but he got a decent number of votes.He got a lot of those elder black community, but more traditional, same system, exactly what we saw, where if you're a college educated in Manhattan or in New York, you're much more likely to vote Mamdani.If you're not, you're much more likely to vote Cuomo.And this is where the breakdown in policy, and this is where the DSA people I see are starting to adopt sometimes the old language a lot of the Democrats, like the what's the matter with Kansas, where, and what's the matter, I think it might be back here.He used to be back behind our shelves, Thomas Franks, where his entire thesis of his book is basically like, why do all of these people vote against their own economic interests?I'm like, well, if they don't see it that way.
They rank their own interests differently.They look at it culturally.It's not a psy -op that they're being, they're not being controlled to toll that way.There's some of that.But you should give people some agency.They decide how they vote.
Yes, but also, the reason AIPAC spent $30 million telling people that Obama, basically endorsed Haley Stevens, which was not true, which was not true, is because if you tell people that, it works.Like they're not just burning money.That's true.So it is structural.El -Sayed was pushing against it.Mamdani's efforts are pushing against it.
And it'll be very interesting to see four years, you know, when Mamdani runs for re -election, if his class first focus, working class focus,can actually tilt that and he can win over the working class as much as he's winning over the college educated class.But working against that is $30 million of telling people He supported Obama.Obama's with Haley Stevens.You're like, oh, okay, then I'm with Haley Stevens.No, you're absolutely right.
And I think this is where the breakdown is.We are gonna continue to see this in politics.The Republican Party is the party, generally right now, of downwardly mobile cultural, like you could just see that empirically.It's the party of like rich, upper middle class, or richer, more conservative white people who have been Republicans their whole lives.traditional base of the GOP, but also Trump won, I think for the first time ever, was one of the first Republicans to ever win households who were making less than $100 ,000.Some of that was an economic message, a lot, actually, when it comes to inflation, we'll talk about Burrito Gate in a second, but I think a huge part of it, and the data bears this out, a lot of it was immigration and a lot of it was cultural issues as well.
That seems to be where things continue to trend, although that is up for grabs in terms of the $100 ,000 coalition or so.The big question mark for the Democrats is not just can you win in the midterms, can you carry that when the stakes are high nationally?This is where the Francesca Hong Thanksgiving thing comes into play.You can think it's dumb all you want.You can think, why would anyone care about that in the age where groceries are up 43 % year over year?But how much electoral evidence do you need to say, a lot of people care about that, actually, because I have no trust with you whatsoever.
And Hasan Piker said it well.He's like, I love Fran, but the answer here is, no, I don't think we should cancel Thanksgiving.And more importantly, people can't afford Thanksgiving dinner.That's the Mamdani.pivot and she didn't do that.
And the other thing you see from Mamdani, which I think is very intelligent,is, you know, you occasionally see some transgender visibilities to whatever, okay?Which is, you know, to me, nauseating.But the thing which you see more is, here's all these new trash cans.Here is how we're doing it.And I'm like, yeah, I mean, look, there's no denying, like, this works.
And this is somebody who is trying to create a way where you look past, let's say, if you're culturally conservative, and you just say, look, at the end of the day, it doesn't smell anymore, and I'm getting my trash picked up, and cars are getting towed, I like that.
And I think it's a matter of emphasis.I think most people are cool with Trans Visibility Day if that's not the only thing that you seem to be running on.I think the problem people had with Democrats is they were like, that's all you care about.
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Get started freeRight, that's correct.
But if Mamdani's like, no, no, no, I'm picking up the trash, I'm fixing the potholes, I'm gonna get these grocery stores going, they're gonna give you cheaper grass, and we're gonna do a little...Yeah, the grocery store thing is still strange.
We'll see.We'll get to that.Eventually we'll do a segment about it.Okay, let's get to burritos.Hey, if you liked that video, hit the like button or leave a comment below.It really helps get the show to more people.
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