 And with great confidence in our caucus, I will not seek re-election to democratic leadership in the next Congress. For me, the hours come for a new generation to lead the democratic caucus that I so deeply respect. And I'm grateful that so many are ready and willing to shoulder this awesome responsibility. Well, it's official. Nancy Pelosi is no longer going to be the leader of the Democratic Party. And I'm not going to spend the majority of this video talking about her legacy. I think that there are a plethora of pretty good write-ups that will inform you about what she was and wasn't able to accomplish during her tenure as leader. I want to rather focus on the future of the Democratic Party and the direction that I think they should be headed in, but won't unfortunately be headed in that direction. But let me just say this about Nancy Pelosi. Even if, as a leftist, I obviously vehemently disagree with her on policy issues, I've got to say that I won't deny how effective she was as a leader. I don't think that she was always very effective at combating the Republican Party and pushing back against their lies and extremism. But in terms of the way that she governed her own caucus, I do believe that she was effective. And that's not necessarily a good thing for me as a leftist, because I think she was also very effective at crushing the progressive left and getting them to fall in line every single time she needed them to. She was also very effective at amassing a lot of wealth during her tenure as leader, largely due to stock purchases that members of Congress should never ever be allowed to make. But with that being said, she's stepping down and both Steny Hoyer and James Clyburn are also not seeking leadership positions. So this is effectively paving the way for Hakeem Jeffries to emerge as the new Democratic Party leader in the House with Catherine Clark and Pete Aguilar as numbers two and three, respectively. Which means that a new generation indeed will be taking over the Democratic Party, which sounds really good on its face, right? But this is a classic case of change on the outside, continuity on the inside. And that's not to say that I don't think that the old out of touch leaders of the Democratic Party needed to step aside because they did. But the problem is that the institutional factors that led to the party being a hollowed out neoliberal shell of its former self will remain intact regardless of who is the leader of the party. Meaning that significant changes will not come even as the next generation takes the reins. And I think that that's a huge problem. Now this goes without saying, obviously, compared to the Republican Party, the Democratic Party is light years ahead of them in terms of just representing the people. But they're still nowhere near where they actually need to be. And so the party needs to represent the core of their base, the base who always makes them successful. And that is their young, diverse, progressive voters who just saved their asses. And we got a taste as to why young voters, millennials and zoomers came out in droves to support Democrats. And it's because they deliver just a little bit for them. I think that the $10,000 to $20,000 worth of student debt cancellation was huge. It was a huge motivator for young people. And if Democrats move in the correct direction and embrace progressive policies, they will be in much better shape going into the future, better positioned to combat the GOP's rising fascism. This means that they need to do more of the little bit of progressivism that we saw over the course of the last couple of years. This means they need to embrace Medicare for All, single payer healthcare. They need to embrace vocally so marijuana legalization in all 50 states. We need to make sure that they get on board with free college and all student debt being canceled, all medical debt being canceled. And these progressive policy positions have been proven to motivate young voters. So they have to embrace this. And more than just embracing these policies from a rhetorical standpoint, they actually have to deliver. The problem, however, is that just having a new leader isn't going to facilitate this change because one doesn't become a leader unless they become a fundraising behemoth. And one doesn't become a fundraising behemoth in the first place unless they take lots and lots of money from large multinational corporations whose priorities, by the way, are directly at odds with the Democratic Party's young, diverse and progressive base. And this is the base who the Democratic Party must be aggressively courting every single year. Now the Democratic Party in 2018 had the chance to elect leadership that would take the party in a better direction. Again, if the institutions aren't changing, then a leader can't necessarily change that. But a leader can facilitate that change, just kind of steer the ship in a different direction. And if you'll recall, lefties like myself were very excited about the prospect of Barbara Lee becoming the next House Speaker. She wasn't running to be House Speaker. She was running to be Caucus Chair. But if she were to be the Caucus Chair, then that would put her in a position that Hakeem Jeffries is in right now to be the next Speaker of the House. The problem is that the House Democratic Party Caucus rejected Barbara Lee and Hakeem Jeffries leapfrogged her. And the problem is that he's not a changemaker that Barbara Lee would have potentially been. He's just more of the same. In the last election cycle, his top donors include the securities and investment industry, pro-apartheid, pro-Israeli government packs, the parasitic health insurance industry, commercial banks, corrupt telecoms, among others. And it's not just that he is beholden to large multinational corporations, but he's perhaps more openly antagonistic towards progressives than even Steny Hoyer was, who was next in line to take over as Speaker for Nancy Pelosi had he not decided to step down. And again, let me remind you that young people are progressive and progressives are who this party should be aggressively courting. But Hakeem Jeffries is not in favor of progressives. In fact, when you look at elected Democrats and you see this sort of clash between moderate Democrats and progressive Democrats, you can argue that Hakeem Jeffries has led the charge against the progressive wing of the party. Now he made this clear in a 2021 interview in The Atlantic with Edward Isaac Dovir, where he said this, quote, there's a difference between progressive Democrats and hard left Democratic socialists, he told me. It's not a distinction that I'm drawing. They draw that distinction. And so clearly, I'm a black progressive Democrat concerned with addressing racial and social and economic injustice with the fierce urgency of now. That's been my career. That's been my journey. And it will continue to be as I move forward for however long I have an opportunity to serve. There will never be a moment where I bend the knee to hard left Democratic socialism. Now understand that when he talks about the hard left and Democratic socialism, he's using that as a synonym for individuals within the squad. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, individuals who have been very, very progressive. And I don't agree with AOC and Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Presley on everything. But by far they are the best of what the Democratic Party has to offer. And if the entire party looked like the squad, then they would be in a much, much better predicament than they currently are in. That's not to say that they're in terrible shape for most people. I would argue that they're in bad shape, but just compared to the Republicans, like all they have to do is behave like functioning adults. And I think that there's going to be a large portion of the electorate that will still continue to vote for them, i.e. independence. But again, what Democrats need is they need to embrace the policies that young people want them to embrace. And with Hakeem Jeffries, that's not going to happen. And in response to organizations like Justice Democrats who primary corporate Democrats to get them out in order to pave the way for new, more progressive leaders, Hakeem Jeffries launched his own PAC to counter that, to protect incumbents from primary challenges, which is a direct effort to block grassroots activists from ousting out-of-touch corporate Democrats. So he hasn't just clashed with progressives, he hasn't just disagreed with them on policies and come out against the Green New Deal, for example, because he doesn't like to be pressured or whatever he said. This is somebody who is directly antagonistic towards progressives. And that is a huge problem. So I don't blame people for celebrating Nancy Pelosi for being the first female speaker of the House and all that she had to do, the misogyny that she had to combat to get to that place. I don't blame people for celebrating Hakeem Jeffries as the first black speaker of the House. I think that these are all things that are good. It's an indicator of progress. However, young people are truly the future of the party and they can't just be represented descriptively. They have to be represented substantively as well. That means they need leaders who do not take corporate money, who actually fight aggressively for their policy priorities. The problem is that you can't really rise to a leadership position unless you raise a lot of money. And that means you've got to cozy up with large multinational corporations. So do you see the problem here? We need a leader who's going to be progressive, but we can basically never have a truly progressive leader because to be progressive means that you swerve off that corporate money. But to swerve off that corporate money means you're not going to be able to raise as much money as your pro-corporate peers. Now, some individuals like AOC have been pretty successful at raising lots of money, sometimes more so than corporate colleagues of hers. But still, what Democrats view as their key to success is anyone who could raise lots of money, meaning you can pick up your phone, call up some billionaire donor and get $100 million to one of your super PACs. That's what a lot of elected Democrats view as their key to success. And until they change this mindset, until the institutions change, the rules change to reflect anti-corporate Democrat party politics, then things aren't going to change unfortunately. So, you know, I don't want to ran on your parade. I think that the Democratic Party, they need to do better. They need to embrace the youth. But I don't want you to get your hopes up and think that all of a sudden because there's this change and younger people are taking control, things are going to be better. No, things will remain largely the same. Again, as I stated at the beginning of this video, it's change on the outside continuity on the inside. So the real change that the Democratic Party needs to embrace is getting off of the corporate teats. But until they do that, then we won't actually see real change. We won't see real significant movement towards progressivism within the Democratic Party. And I'll leave that there.