 I mean four years ago we we talked about the elections as being America's Brexit moment and you know for a lot of reasons it was not supposed to happen. It was unthinkable from the perspective of the strategist. The ruling class didn't want it to happen and it and sure enough it was a boulder of instability in the political landscape for the next four years and there's nothing they could really do about it. Well here we are at the other end of it you know we have three days officially left of the Trump administration and it's been an interesting four years. The inauguration is going to take place on Wednesday amid scenes of you know a besieged capital with 20-25,000 National Guard troops you know stationed on every corner. It's really you know I think one of the the telling conversations that sums it up recently we had a discussion on the editorial board about the need to stop using the word unprecedented because out of concern that we were going to overuse it and it was going to lose its meaning. That's the word that comes to mind with every recent event. You know there's a lot of parallels to the Civil War era and people talking about how Abraham Lincoln in 1861 had to be sort of rushed into the Capitol building secretly because of threats of assassination plots and this kind of thing. So you know yeah after 2020 I think a lot of comrades a lot of people feel like they've seen it all and within one week of the new year this was kind of a confirmation that this process is going to continue you know it's like 2021 welcome to the new year are you ready for more and that's kind of the way that this is unfolded. We weren't particularly surprised by what's happening by what we saw at the Capitol but all the same even if it's a confirmation of the process that we've been following it's still you know there have been moments where you pause and it's quite surreal to see these headlines of you know all the media talking about an insurrection. Trump's insurrection or you know just the scenes of all of this a violent breach of the Capitol has never happened before. No less during a joint session of Congress where you have basically the entire legislative branch in person in the building there's you know almost all 535 members of the Senate and the House of Representatives were there and this is going to be the second impeachment that's now underway for Trump. The first time a president has been impeached twice so and that's happened four times in history so Trump owns half of the impeachments in US history but last time the last one took place about a year ago and it took months you know they had to gather dozens I don't know hundreds of witnesses it took about three months to gather all the evidence. This time all the witnesses were there in the building I mean it's the members of Congress themselves who were screaming and hiding crawling on their bellies and ripping off their Senate pins and you know the tear gas in the Capitol Rotunda while armed militiamen are roaming the halls with zip ties ready to take hostages I mean it was really quite incredible scenes these people were chanting hang Mike Pence wears Nancy Pelosi so it was yet another moment where millions of people were glued to their screens in disbelief and it's hard to top this stuff on you know even in fiction you know I don't think there's anything in House of Cards that was as interesting as the things that are actually playing out in reality. It was striking how little police presence there was at the Capitol a lot of people made the comparison of the law enforcement response during the Black Lives Matter movement in June compared to what everyone could plainly see was a very different scene this time back in the in the George Floyd protest in the summer the Defense Secretary at the time said we need total domination of the battlefield and talked about you know setting up national guard troops on every corner there was tear gas 14,000 people were arrested countless scenes of police brutality and this time of course you know people watched the footage of Capitol Hill cops basically letting the protesters through the barricades in some cases you know almost guiding them through the halls of Congress it looked like they were just backing up or giving directions allowing them to take selfies with them and of course there were some scenes where you saw Capitol Police resisting but completely outnumbered distressed completely overtaken and so you know you have over a dozen of these Capitol Police officers under investigation to see whether they you know did something to help the mob but the point is that the whole world saw how vulnerable the US government is and it made the state look so weak and fragile and you know once the the National Guard troops were called in Congress reconvened it's reported that it was Pence who called them the troops and not Trump which is of interest and of course everyone saw Trump's video response calling for calm but also mixing it with praise for the protesters saying that we love you and your special and you know a few days later he denounced it all and you know suggested that it was Antifa who had actually broken it to the Capitol which is laughable but the fact that that conspiracy theory has gained such huge traction in a very short space of time I think is also indicative of how much confusion and and division there is among Trump's base caused by these events roughly half of his base supported Storm in the Capitol and so this is like this is our people this is our revolution the other half is very much against it and many of those people are the ones blaming Antifa for it there is also a significant segment of the Trump base that does blame Trump for it and sees this as as having gone too far but in any case I think it is here that he he didn't expect things to get out of hand to this extent and that he played overplayed his hands and got burned playing with with fire you know this game that he had been kind of pursuing but late into the night they they finally did reconvene into the next morning they ended up certifying Biden's election with blood and bloke broken glass on the floor and a homicide investigation taking place right outside the Senate chamber so it really topped off what was already a very unusual election we were already planning to draft an article about January 6th before any of the storming of the Capitol events just because there were so many members of Congress that were playing into this stop the steel rhetoric and you know supporting Trump's conspiracy that there had been massive fraud and in the end over half of the Republicans in Congress ended up opposing the election certification that's normally a formality you know there's there's never been this kind of a of a split or a or a dispute and of course in each of these swing states that Trump is disputing it's quite remarkable how how that conspiracy has spread to to a majority of the Republican lawmakers it was 147 congressional Republicans who ended up voting to oppose the election certification the stop the steel campaign has raised hundreds of millions of dollars since November 3rd so that in itself already represented a crisis of of the legitimacy for for this for the state and for its institutions Mitch McConnell is a senator from Kentucky he's the the senate majority leader has been up until now seen as the you know one of the most important powerful men in Congress has so far avoided an open confrontation with Trump but that changed on January 6th before the storming of the Capitol he you know he said that in his 36 years in the Senate this is the most important vote of his life to certify the elections and to prevent the the election result from being overturned and in his speech you know it also gives you a flavor of how serious how seriously they were taking this this threat he said that overturned election would damage our republic forever he says that our democracy would enter a death spiral we'd never see the whole nation except an election again every four years there'd be a scramble for power at any cost the electoral college would cease to exist i mean that's that's basically the the terms that he was using to describe this and of course January 6th was also the culmination of all of the you know i mean hundreds of lawsuits that the the Trump camp was pushing through courts across the country at all levels none of them went anywhere there was no legal basis found for any of the claims of fraud and so it was largely treated as a publicity stunt but a very dangerous one that was making all the strategists very worried because the result is that tens of millions of people were becoming convinced that this this election was fraudulent and the kind of the the gap between the two parallel versions of reality started to really grow quite incredibly to where you know you have literally tens of millions who who think that Trump won by a landslide and the democrats have stolen the election you still have members of congress that say that there's a chance that Trump will actually be inaugurated on January 20th i mean it's it's quite it's quite incredible and we've discussed this as kind of a political ploy um it's a it's clearly a delusion whether Trump believes it or not he is surrounded himself by cabinet members and lawmakers who support the that who feed into the delusion um because yeah i mean whether whatever he believes in his head this kind of line of argument has been the precondition for him to say face with his base but also to to prepare to position himself um for the next four years to have influence and you know we've pointed out that Trump can do more damage in um outside of the oval office than than what he can do when he's constrained by all the pressures of the most powerful state apparatus in in the world just imagine what it would mean for him to have nearly the same spotlight but none of the constraints of of the presidency now he may have overplayed that you know he was going to be the the kind of voice on the sideline uh very high profile very visibly attacking this administration while the country descends into a depression um and now it's it's really been tarred so we'll see exactly what it will mean for the next four years how how it'll play out um there's also been you know this is also coming in the context of growing violence generally that you know back to april if comrades remember there was a whole series of right wing rallies and demonstrations outside of the state capitals uh in opposition to the lockdowns and trump very openly supported those tweeting liberate michigan liberate uh virginia and this sort of thing but there's also you know it's this kind of thing is really escalated since the election there's been um death threats to lawmakers and election officials there have been bomb threats on on january 6 there was also a bomb found inside the headquarters of the republican national committee um in dc in october there was the fbi uncovered a plot to kidnap the governor of michigan um you know mike pence's house is now surrounded by concrete barricades and chain link fencing um and of course the halls of congress themselves are being patrolled 24 seven there's you know thousands of troops sleeping on every corner and piling their rifles and their helmets on the floors of the the capital yesterday a man was arrested in in dc for trying to enter the the militarized downtown area with a false security um pass and a truck full of ammunition and weapons so you know in the context of this that the left as you would expect has been sounding the alarm of fascism in a very typical way um talking about the the threat of a coup they've been calling this a coup attempt and we've responded by talking about the the balance of forces in society explaining that january 6 first of all was not a coup that the country is not moving towards um a military military dictatorship the bonapartism means ruled by the sword you have to have a section of the state a section of the military um on board behind a an attempt to seize power and and that is not the the case with trump at all in fact um in uh in in recent weeks there there's been a joint letter by every living uh former defense secretary all 10 of them um basically denouncing trump's attempt to undermine the integrity of the elections warning that it represents a threat to the republic a couple days ago military the the highest body of the military the joint chiefs of staff addressed a letter to the whole military like the every branch all 1.3 million uh members of the armed forces reminding them of their oath uh reminding them that joe biden is going to be the the uh chief the the uh military the the commander of the military um in a few days saying that any attempt to intervene in the constitutional process or interfere is against is against our traditions against our oath against the law um i mean this this kind of stuff is really unusual there was also a statement uh another a letter by or it was a it was a statement by the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff in august warning that the military was going to play no role in resolving any kind of election dispute i mean this it's quite exceptional for the military which is which always tries to remain very apolitical to be making these kinds of statements and i think it shows um the extent of the the crisis of the institutions but also it uh you know it shows that trump has no backing uh among the military aside from the absence of backing i mean today it's still it's uh it's 815 on the east coast in the morning we'll see what happens i mean this is a big day that they've been predicting uh you know trump mobilizations on all the state capitals we'll see what kind of forces they can turn out um but what we saw in in dc i mean there was tens of thousands there you could see that it wasn't just a couple hundred that rallied around the capital but that wasn't exactly a cross-section of the trump base you know it's true that 74 million people voted for trump but the ones that were willing to travel from rural parts of the country all over into dc there were like 68 arrests that night and all but one of them were from out of state um this is like the most fervent types the most you know reactionary segments of the trump base um militia people far right you know including fascist individuals but also the q and on conspiracy people proud boy types i mean this is that's kind of more the the elements that ended up kind of coming to to dc but the trump base itself is quite a huge segment of society and it has different layers to it and it's now been thrown into a lot of confusion so we'll see we'll see also the way that this plays out as for the capitalist class you know as i said they they never saw trump as a representative they never wanted him in power but these event you know january 6 was really the last straw and now they're coming down they're intervening more directly than ever before you know this election was in that november 3rd saw you know the democrats receiving double the the investment so to speak of the the republicans had i mean the the bourgeoisie in a very blatant way you know the democrats were the wall street candidate but now um you have very direct statements from the u.s chamber of commerce which is like the you know the organization the voice piece of of the bourgeoisie the national association of manufacturers which represents 14 000 corporations um basically you know the the organs the political the the public relations organs of the forture 500 companies very directly calling on on pence to to uh to seriously consider moving in and uh moving trump out of the way with the 25th amendment it's too late for that it's not going to happen uh pence didn't go for it but now you know they're they're pushing for this this impeachment thing um in a very direct way which is you know now they're also saying that they're going to withhold donations which as you can imagine is very important uh by the millions for each of these congressional uh republicans that voted to decertify the voted against the certification of the election so very very direct um you know pressure being applied um by by the bourgeoisie mcconnell for his part um you know he's the still the leader of the senate that the impeachment is now going to go to the senate so the fact that the house of representatives has voted for it the impeachment is a fact he's been impeached that means he will be tried that's that you know impeachment doesn't necessarily mean removal it's often used that way but now it's in the hands of the senate to to to carry out the trial and either to convict him or or make its uh sentence and it needs two thirds of the senate in order to impeach him obviously it's not about removing him he will be tried as a former president because you know time is up but what they're interested in is that you know if he's impeached if he's convicted then a simple majority can bar him from ever running again from ever holding office again and that's that's the uh the interesting prospect from from the perspective of the democrats and the republicans i mean you have a full-scale civil war in the republican party mcconnell wants to purge the party of trumpism if he can um and so that's that's kind of the the meaning of the of the impeachment trial at this point our position has been to explain that this is this this is a conflict on the other side of the barricades and to make sure that comments don't fall into supporting the impeachment acts because it's not going to do anything to help the working class it's not going to do anything to defeat trumpism it's like every other attempt that they've made to push trumpism into a corner to to cut it off you know to deplatform it all of this stuff really doesn't change the the balance of forces and it doesn't take the fire out of trumpism it actually you know it riles up that base even more there are plenty of other candidates that will step into to fill trump's shoes you can have trumpism without trump and it doesn't change the fact that you have this discontent this kind of uh loss of legitimacy for the for the election for the state for the institutions so you know we'll see how far this goes that the changing nature of the republican party which you know trumpism is now claiming to be its own parties it's pushed out the the bourgeois elements because they now see only one of the two parties as as a as a reliable instrument for their class interest now it's yet to be seen what comes of this uh you know how this this civil war plays out and whether McConnell can actually purge trumpism from this party if he does so you know you have the likelihood of a split and something new emerging which will be very also you know a very unusual developments in in the political landscape in the US all in all I found recently a New York Times analysis of these events you know the New York Times is kind of the the main bourgeois press the the mouthpiece of the the United States bourgeoisie um trying to make sense of these events and I just wanted to to read a little bit what of some of these lines it says with less than a week to go president trump's term is climaxing in violence and incrimination at a time when the country has fractured deeply and lost a sense of itself notions of truth and reality have been atomized faith in the system has eroded anger is the one common ground historians have struggled to define this moment they compare it with other periods of enormous challenge like the great depression world war two the civil war the mccarthy era and watergate they recall the caning of charles sumner on the floor of the senate and the operation to sneak abraham lincoln into washington for his inauguration for fear of an attack all of which leaves the united states reputation on the world's stage at a low ebb the shining city upon a hill all scuffed up the historical moment when we were a model is basically over so i thought that was quite a dramatic statement of the attitude of the bourgeoisie to what they're watching it's a you know this is not everyone can understand that this represents the the decline of of the global strength of imperialism in the world can can see these scenes and say wow look at how look where we've where we've arrived you know it's internally and externally people understand that we have we have entered into a phase of decline and you know for us it's all in the in the context of discussing the the epoch of revolution people look at this stuff and it's easy to understand now that there are historical forces that are pushing millions of people in the direction of revolution and this is a you know a process that had been kind of building beneath the surface for a long time last year in many ways came out into the surface the the unprecedented mass movement that we saw with insurrectionary features of its own with massive support you know still more people supported the burning of the police precinct and supported either of these candidates more eligible voters did not vote than supported either of these candidates even with record turnout and record votes for for each of them because trump got more votes than any of them any presidential candidate before and biden got even more than that and you still had more people choose not to vote the the economic collapse of course this shift of the global economy back into a much deeper slump than that 2008 has been prepared for quite a while crisis the regime in terms of the growing polarization of the violence there was a 2018 poll that showed that a third of the population predicted civil war by 2023 and that was you know that's a couple three years ago now it's it'd be interesting to see what what the polling indicates on on that on that score now and this is not of course not to mention the the pandemic the climate crisis which had a an incredible year last year with you know the western region and flames in terms of the you know i won't go into the the pandemic a lot and you know we've all had enough of that topic but it's still raging out of control the the death the death toll reached a new daily record recently of 4400 people which the the new york times reported is higher than the casualties of any of any u.s. events you know baton more than the the battle of antedom which was the bloodiest day of the civil war and that's kind of the the reality every day now the hospitals are all you know over overfilling and so on in terms of the the the economic dislocation you know the the number of people who've had their livelihoods pulled out from underneath them it's it's definitely every bit as in absolute numbers we're talking about suffering on the scale of the great depression and and beyond it it's enough to recall that before this happened there were four fifths of the population were living paycheck to paycheck in the u.s. um you know so you could take that into account when there's all of this you know celebration of biden's plans to pass this new stimulus and give everyone you know 1400 checks um it's it's it's really it's really quite meaningless it doesn't it doesn't even begin to address the the uh the impact you know 60 of the population has had some kind of a financial impact they say at least one in three workers has had their their pay cut um but real unemployment in april hit 23 percent which is basically the the level that we saw in the great depression it's also you know it's very the the the unemployment figures that they give they stop counting people that that are not actively looking so you know it's it's it's it's often quite assorted but if you count you know there's there's other ways to look at the uh the the unemployment there's an employment population ratio and in april that hit 51 percent which is the lowest um level since record keeping began in 1948 so in in terms of people who have stopped looking and are maybe starting to be removed from the workforce you have like half of the population that's actually working that's more I think an accurate picture of of the scale of the crisis 100 000 um businesses have permanently closed and there are currently 100 uh that's our 10 million fewer jobs than there were in in march those are some of the latest figures that I've seen 1.4 million public sector layoffs you know which the public sector accounts for about 13 percent of the of the workforce in the united states but there's huge budget crisis already budget shortfalls and I think that's also kind of a preview of the of the austerity that's going to come in the way that that this will continue to to play out trump's approval rating is at its lowest ever it's fallen even since august I mean it's it was kind of quite incredible to see that during most of the pandemic his base didn't blame him and saw him as the the one that could defend the economy and jobs and saw biden as like the one pushing for lockdown and was going to threaten the the rust belt but also threatened uh you know uh the the the economy and so that there was kind of a basic split is that people voters that were more concerned about the pandemic tended to support biden voters that were more support uh concerned about the economy tended to support trump well even since august there's been a sharp decline in his jobs um approval in his jobs rating like his uh performance with the economy um and even among republicans there were 77 percent that approved of his jobs performance in august now it's down to 60 percent which is quite uh by day a decline during most of his four years his ratings never really dipped below 36 percent it was usually between 36 45 and now it's down to 29 percent so that's basically where he where he's going to leave office um and you know as for the stimulus measures the the two I guess the third one is now um underway two have been passed last year it amounted to four trillion um and not including the latest measure which is which is you know in the works now of 1.9 trillion more um but you know in the past only a fifth of that was spent on on payments to individuals you know there was a lot again it was a lot was made in the media of people receiving these checks in the mail but four-fifths of it went to bailout corporations some of it went to plug budget um shortfalls but you know huge bailouts I mean the largest in history more more was spent than the 18-year invasion of Afghanistan in just the 2020 bailouts and the companies had no strings attached no no need to maintain their payroll um they were able to carry out massive layoffs and then also be receiving tens of millions in in bonuses I mean that's the way that this has has played out um going back to also the you know another important element that we saw this spring was you know with the rise of the pandemic and everything a a strike wave that has I think been overshadowed largely in the in the media and it was not just you know grocery store workers and fast food workers it tends to have like an image that this was a a movement of a layer of service sector workers but there really was an industrial wildcat strike wave of workers and processing plants in Georgia Minnesota meat packing plants in Nebraska Colorado fruit packing workers on the west coast uh bus drivers in in michigan in alabama uh strikes at general electric fiat Chrysler in michigan uh there was a strike among these those auto workers because it wasn't hot water uh for washing their hands I mean some of these stories that are kind of like you think of you know those moments where a strike can erupt from you know situation 60 80 years ago that's kind of the the scenes that you're seeing now sanitation workers in in new orleans louisiana also in Pittsburgh lots of strikes by healthcare workers 800 uh nurses that went on strike at chicago university hospital uh 400 nurses in connecticut not to mention the hundreds of actions in the service sector also tuition strikes uh rent strikes hasn't had a massive organization but you know the point is that we saw a genuine strike where something that we haven't seen in a long time in the united states that involved the heavy battalions of the working class and it's another example of something that could have escalated dramatically if it had been given a lead you know you're basically seeing a movement of the young layer of the working class that has you know it's replenished the ranks of of the of the workers since 2008 it's this generation that has lived through these ongoing consequences of a very the anemic recovery no improvement in the in the job market you still have you know it's these low wage the uh $15 an hour type of jobs are now you know the the main thing that's this generation can hope to find and it's changed the outlook of the working class you know having that layer is now the the largest cohort in the in society and in the working class it means that you now have these kinds of mood this discontent this growing class consciousness among uh broad layers of workers who are who are younger there's also you know indicators like in the private sector it's only six percent of the workforce that's unionized but um among 18 the 34 year old 71 percent support unions um around half uh according to a poll from a couple years ago of the of the entire workforce half said that they would like to join the union if given the opportunities so there is clearly a huge potential for an explosion in the in the labor movement in the years ahead and of course it's being held back by the conservative labor leaders who don't who don't tap into it who don't give it a lead it's just being kind of held back of course the the largest the most important events uh and the the most important learning experience from last year I think was definitely the mass movement against police terror it was the the largest that we've seen in history of the United States um you know we were we were discussing in uh in the spring uh a report that the Pentagon was reviewing its civil disturbance operations that they were in the in the context of mass movements around the world and you know the expectation that there was going to be a lot of unrest they were preparing for these kinds of things and practically we had that you know that very situation uh facing us very shortly thereafter of uh a movement that reached every single city in the the country there was 2,500 cities impacted and you know I mean again these scenes of the president cowering underground um in a bunker we all know that 10 percent of the population came out into the streets some 26 million people but it was also the the millions more the tens of millions who supported it um you know from from their homes the 54 percent that supported the burning the precinct but over 70 percent across the board that supported the movement as a whole I mean that's that's really I think a better indication of the balance of forces and where the mood of the masses is at particular the youth I mean those the millions that were out there were primarily this layer of the of the working class the young people that are that represent the future of the class struggle and of course very quickly afterwards the liberals that tried that tried to like co-op the movement have now are now acting like it never happened if they've stopped talking about it there's no force in congress or in the democratic party that that you know wants to speak to this to this mass movement or or put itself forward as a as a representative of of that layer of society the embryonic examples of these defense committees popping up spontaneously in in working class neighborhoods if that had been given a leave that had been fostered coordinated nationally I mean you very quickly that that could have led to a dual power type situation because you have people making decisions about what you know define curfew and define local law enforcement you're talking about another force rivaling the state clearly there were a lot of very very important implications that that could have developed but they didn't there's a crisis of leadership and I guess that's the that's the bottom line of what we're seeing that's kind of a theme around the world is you see this potential but it's not given a lead um in the absence of of the forces of Marxism being strong enough to do it um another indicator of the mood in society is you know it's like the the New York Times quoted anger is the common denominator and that's that's definitely confirmed in the in the polls there was one from this summer that says uh this is pure research that's it's uh it was it's it's findings were published under the title the public's mood turns grim and it says about seven and ten americans 71 percent say they feel angry about the state of the country these days nine and ten uh now say they are dissatisfied with the way things are going uh so it's you know this is a mood that we've seen since 2006 uh since 2016 but it's definitely you know it's accelerate it's intensifying you know when when with the rise of the Sanders campaign in 2016 we we could basically say people are rejecting capitalism but their sense of what socialism means is quite vague and you know for a lot of people it's still very much uh illusions in performing the system and making it giving it a nicer smiling face but there was this you know the there was a business insider headline this summer that said only 25 percent of americans think capitalism in its current form is benefiting society um you know there's there's a lot of people that think capitalism could be given a different form but there was 20 of respondents that said no form of capitalism can produce the kind of future we want for the next generation and if they're rejecting all forms of capitalism and that's 20 of the population you know that for us that's like that's very interesting developments you know that's a revolutionary stance practically so we've seen a lot of these polls that that are showing this kind of mood another one Pew's Pew research about americans changing views on why people are rich it says a growing share of respondents said the main reason people were rich was because they had more advantages than others you know rather than saying attributing it to their their efforts or their work or whatever from 2018 to 2020 the figure rose from 42 percent who responded that way to 65 percent so again there's this that's quite a dramatic shift of people that say the rich are rich because the system is their system it benefits them it says you know they don't buy into the the kind of classic story of uh you know that explains capitalist inequality and all of this is the background to what we've seen over the last four years I think that you know 2020 has has been a confirmation of the trend from 2016 where the moderate center collapsed the status quo was the main enemy and people were fed up with it and you know on the one hand that polarization was expressed with two polls with trump and with uh and with sanders and in 2020 we had the a serious possibility for that for the selection to play out the same way in the sense that sanders could have had immense momentum you know if sanders of course had broken which was would have changed everything to to take a class independent course and take those forces and put them outside of the democratic party um again the you know we can only speculate about how things could have played out but what's clear is that he had more momentum than any other democratic candidate for the the presidential nomination um and you know there were more candidates than ever there was like a dozen uh 11 candidates that were running in the democratic primaries this year everyone hoping that you know they could ride the anti trump wave but in all four of the first uh races sanders sanders won some of them were a little bit close um but sanders sanders beat uh buddha judge in Iowa in terms of votes they had they ended up having the same tying for delegates in new hampshire sanders won and um he also won among all voters under the age of 44 he beat buddha judge by 12 percentage points and uh among voters under the age of 29 he won by three to one so huge uh youth preference for for sanders next was nevada um and again sanders won by a landslide there he you know this is after uh you know there was all kinds of media and interference trying to pit the the the unions against him and so on over the healthcare bill in the end he beat biden by by two to one biden came in fourth in iowa fifth in new hampshire uh without even enough votes to win a single convention delegate i mean that's the that's the picture at the beginning of the democratic primaries sanders had huge momentum biden was increasingly considered a lost cause people thought he wasn't going to go anywhere um and that's when all this you know the media was attacking sanders you know the the cnn hosts were asking can anyone stop can are we going to be able to stop coronavirus or bernie sanders like this was the two big threats um at the time and then finally biden won one race in south carolina and six other candidates immediately folded their campaigns and got in line beat to endorse biden so i mean it was really an unprecedented maneuver and it was perceived that way um but whereas sanders won 13 million votes in 2016 he folded up his campaign quite early also in the context of the pandemic and everything he still won 10 million votes this time there's no telling how many he might have won if he had kept in the in the race but he folded it up in in april and that was basically the end that that betrayal hit people very hard uh people who expected him to to uh to push through i mean they saw it as a repeat of the 2016 capitulation this was like the 2.0 and that for us that was the beginning of what we called the bernie bump in terms of a sustained influx of contacts that really has turned into a steady stream it's you know at first it was like a fire hose i mean we're getting you know hundreds of people riding us uh each week and now it's still it's kind of more of a trickle but it's been kind of this this flow so i think that's quite significant people saw that as an avenue that's been closed off and it's really pushed people to say all right well we got to try something else clearly this has not worked um uh running a bit out of time here but just to just to say that there was big turnout in the in among the youth for these elections uh 53 percent of 18 to 29 year olds voted it was 43 percent in 2016 um and it was overwhelmingly voting not for biden but against trump i think that that all that much was very clear in the in the exit polls most expensive election in history 14 billion was spent it was more than the last two election cycles combined democrats outspent republicans two to one um and it was massive donations on the whole it was you know small donations accounted for a very small portion of the finances um and trumps based in abandon him i mean that's the you know the and the reason for that i think we have to understand that social polarization is just the anger that's beneath the surface the desire to reject the status quo what has been offered is the alternative to trumpism more status quo uh the party of wall street all the the forces of the media attacking trumpism all of that is just served to push trump space more into that corner and you know our response has been to say this this polarization it's reactionary yeah the working class is split there's there are millions of workers who are supporting trumpism that should be supporting a mass working class party and if there were a class alternative that were attacking the status quo problem is that the left has really softened and adapted to to the establishment i mean the squad and aoc and the dsa self-described socialists they don't talk like socialists they don't attack the status quo they don't attack nancy pelosi they all had the opportunity to you know there was a small margin that gave nancy pelosi the position of speaker at the you know that that leadership position in the house of representatives and they required all of the votes of the squad in order for her to be be to win that that position there was there was a lot of voices on the left and among dsa saying we should withhold those votes unless she you know puts a medicare for all to the vote there was kind of this like saying we have one moment where we have a little bit of leverage and none of them did it you know the aoc's response was well that's not really realistic we have to focus on things that are realistic i mean there's been quite a lot of of disappointment i think in this whole strategy that dsa is pursued of running socialist candidates on the democratic party line only to see them capitulate one after another and be basically indistinguishable from from the rest of the of that party and that's really what has happened is that's they all they all appear and there's no distinction now the the democrats are coming to power with the trifecta they have the white house they have a majority in the senate and in the house of representatives they're going to they're going to have no excuses for not passing anything that they want to pass and they're going to preside over a horrible depression and everyone's life is going to get a lot worse and trumpism is going to be inflamed and so this is basically the uh that's basically the situation that we have in the the coming years there are divisions again in the the coalition that forms the the base of trump and our role is to say the socialist movement cannot be associated with the party of wall street you know i think now more than ever we have fertile ground for making a case for class independence um and for helping people to to to understand what it would mean for the socialist movement to run its candidates independently of the democrats to find you know uh you know races in the in the major cities for dsa to mobilize its tens of thousands of members to make a case that we need a party of the working class and i think it would end up having a huge echo but in the meantime it's it's basically a discussion of strategy of trying to appeal to people who identify a socialist to draw the lessons of this failed balance sheet that has brought us to this point explain how how to fight trumpism how not to fight trumpism and and in the meantime i think that there's very clearly a large layer that's uh that's moving in our direction there's a a layer of young people that are searching for revolutionary socialism