 This is the Humanist Report with Mike Figueredo. The Humanist Report podcast is funded by viewers like you through Patreon and PayPal. To support the show, visit patreon.com forward slash humanist report or become a member at humanistreport.com. Now enjoy the show. Welcome to the Humanist Report podcast. My name is Mike Figueredo and this is episode 232 of the program. Headed double check to make sure I got the right number. Today is Friday, March 13th and before we get started I want to take some time to thank all of our newest Patreon, PayPal, and YouTube members all of which signed up for the very first time to support us within the last two weeks. And that includes Akbash Akita, Black Black Canary, Black Reaper X-17, Bee Quinn, Marina Teknuk, Chris Ciarella, Chris Thomas, Claire Suan, Daly Chen, David Brown, David Knapp, Debra Cece, Dylan, Gary Peck, too, Jaden White, Joseph and the Booze family, Joshua Berry, Cat Baloo, Ken Nardone, Laura McPhail, Laura Estrada, Michael Compton, Ming Tiang, Moritz Willinger, Omar H. Atik, Peter Willett, Petros Corricas, Preston No Middle Name, Robert Porter with a message saying tax legal weed to pay for Medicare for all, Terry Burgess, Veronica Fox and Zulfol. So thank you so much to all of these kind individuals. If you'd also like to support the show, enjoy the independent progressive media revolution you could do. We've got a great show for you all this week. We will talk about the strategy Bernie Sanders needs to implement going forward. His town hall on Fox News, the DNC's plan to hide Biden away from the public in order to protect him, Elizabeth Warren's betrayal of the progressive left, along with her reasoning for not endorsing Bernie Sanders. Hillary Clinton's attacks on Bernie Sanders. Joe Biden talks about whether or not he vetoed Medicare for all as president. Spoiler alert, he would. And we'll talk about the disappointing election results on Minisuper Tuesday, followed by a look at the aftermath, including Van Jones' warning to Democrats about Joe Biden, Jake Tapper's assessment of the situation, James Carville's suggestion that we should just end the primary now, Crystal Ball's thoughts on Vote Blue no matter who, and finally, we will talk about how Trump's administration has botched their response to coronavirus. That's what we've got on the agenda for today's episode. Hopefully you all will enjoy the program. So let's go ahead and get right to it. So as many of you know, tomorrow is a very important day. Six more states will be voting. This includes Michigan, which is crucial, Washington state, Mississippi. But regardless of what happens tomorrow, Bernie Sanders will continue on in this primary. He has enough resources, funds, and grassroots organizers to stay in all the way until the convention. And we are going to be fighting to make sure that Joe Biden is not the nominee because in the event he wins, Donald Trump is going to get a second term. That is almost a guarantee because Joe Biden is such a weak candidate. However, since we are in this for the long haul, since Bernie isn't going anywhere, I don't believe that we kind of just sit back and tell ourselves that we did everything right. It's really important that we be introspective and we try to figure out as it happens what's going wrong for us, what's going right for us, and how we can adjust our strategy going forward. And one thing that I must say is that Bernie Sanders, he has phenomenal policies. He is someone who I agree with on almost everything, not every single policy, but almost everything. And in terms of just policy itself, we haven't had a candidate this left wing in American history that's been this close to actually becoming the Democratic Party nominee. So he's great when it comes to policy. However, when it comes to strategy, that's where we've really got to take a hard look in the mirror and understand what we can do differently. And when it comes to Bernie Sanders, he has got to really make a decision here. He is going to continue to play nice with the Democratic Party establishment and specifically Joe Biden and lose, or he's actually going to toughen up and go at them really hard and give them hell and win. Because going forward, I can't see a path to victory for us if we continue carrying about the same way that we've been carrying on throughout the course of this primary. And I'll give you a couple of examples. So Bernie Sanders was talking to basically everyone on the Sunday shows, which is great. You've got to promote your agenda. You've got to contrast differences between yourself and Joe Biden. But he's too nice to Joe Biden. Here's an example. You know, if you're talking about taking on Trump and defeating Trump, and Joe understands and I understand that we have got to do everything possible to defeat Trump. And I'll support Joe if he wins, he'll support me if I win. But going into states like Michigan, going into Pennsylvania, going into Wisconsin, key battleground states, these are all states that have been devastated by these terrible trade agreements. And I fear very much, you know, if Joe is the candidate, believe me, Trump will and has already talked about Joe's record on trade. I believe that we are the strongest campaign to defeat Donald Trump, A, because we have a grassroots movement that is unparalleled, B, because we have a voting record that speaks to the needs of working families. I believe that the United States has got to join every other major country on earth, guarantee health care to all people as a human right. Help lead the effort on that. Help lead the effort to raise the minimum wage to 15 bucks an hour. Help lead the effort to demand that at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, the rich and the billionaire class stop paying their fair share of taxes. Senator, are you saying that Joe Biden will lose Michigan and other industrial Midwest states to President Trump if he's the nominee? No, I'm not saying that. I've been asked that a million times and I believe Joe can beat Trump. And if Joe is the candidate, I'll do everything I can to make sure that he does. But I think just looking at the facts, if you're going into the industrial base of the United States of America, the hot land of America, and you voted for agreements that have devastated communities like Flint, Detroit, it is going to be hard to make the case when Trump has made trade such an important part of his agenda. Now, Trump lies all of the time. I mean, he is a pathological liar is running a corrupted administration. But it will be hard. I believe not to say that he can't do it, but it will be hard for Joe to defend a record on trade when it has had such a negative impact on the Midwest. I love you to death, Bernie. I think you're a fantastic person, but you're being too nice. And you can hear it in his voice. Like when he talks about Joe Biden, he always has to qualify every statement with some compliment about Joe Biden. Oh, he's my friend. He's a nice person. And then when he actually gets to the criticism of Joe Biden, you can tell that he's walking on eggshells like he's tiptoeing around the criticism instead of just directly saying it. When that's not effective, like this is a fight for our lives, literally. And we are counting on you, Bernie, to win this. So if you are going to be nice to Joe Biden like that, it's just you're not helping any of us. So he said, look, I believe Joe Biden can beat Donald Trump. And if Joe's the candidate, I'll do everything I can to make sure that he does except Joe Biden cannot beat Donald Trump. If he's the nominee, Donald Trump is going to easily beat him. He's already, you know, previewing some of these general election attacks on Joe Biden and they're going to be effective. There's they're going to resonate. And here's the thing. Hillary Clinton was a weak candidate. Joe Biden is exponentially weaker than Hillary Clinton, exponentially more vulnerable, less charismatic than Hillary Clinton. So everything that we thought about Hillary Clinton. We all kind of thought, well, there's nobody that the Democratic Party can run that would be worse than Hillary Clinton. Actually, it's Joe Biden because there's nothing that will excite voters. You can't really even cite a single policy that he supports. At least with Hillary Clinton, there was that excitement about the fact that, you know, she'd be the first woman president. But with Joe Biden, there's zero excitement. So you've got to sound the alarm, Bernie. You've got to make it very clear for people who are watching that if we nominate Joe Biden, we're handing down from the presidency for another four years. Now, part of what I think is happening is that Bernie Sanders is genuinely worried that the Democratic Party is going to blame him for President Trump's electoral victory, right? They did this in 2016 and he doesn't want that to happen again, except what's going to happen is a foregone conclusion. You will be blamed. We will be blamed. What's going to happen is the Democratic Party, if they nominate Joe Biden, they're going to lose and blame the left. And then, you know, in 2024, 2028, they're going to expect to win with the same strategy and say how much, you know, we've got to have a moderate and that's important. We can't run too far to the left. So they're not going to learn anything and they're not going to welcome you with open arms if you play, you know, their game and you hold hands and sing kumbaya with them. That's just never going to happen. So you can't play their game. Now, I want to play another clip for you where I think Bernie Sanders has got a course correct here because what he says in his criticism of Joe Biden, it's too soft and he just he struggles to just come out and be mean. And I get that he's a really nice person, but this is an election and Joe Biden is a disaster. He is a disaster. So listen to what Bernie Sanders says in his criticism of Joe Biden. Senator, since Super Tuesday, you've been going after Joe Biden pretty hard on a number of issues. Take a look. One of us in this race led the opposition to the war in Iraq. One of us led the opposition to disastrous trade agreements. One of us has spent his entire life fighting against cuts in social security. Senator, now that this is a two man race and you're going to have a two man debate next Sunday, how hard do you go after Joe Biden without carving each other up and helping Donald Trump win reelection? Well, Chris, that's the right question. Joe Biden is a friend of mine. Joe Biden is a decent guy. What Joe has said is if I win the nomination, he'll be there for me and when I have said if he wins the nomination, I'll be there for him because we both recognize that we have a president who is a pathological liar and I say that without any joy in my heart. Somebody who's running a corrupt administration and somebody apparently who has never read the Constitution of the United States and thinks he's above the law. So Biden and I, no matter who wins this thing, will be together in defeating Trump. But now that it is a two way race, it is important for the voters of this country to ask themselves two questions. Number one, which candidate is stronger in terms of being able to defeat Trump? And number two, what are the differences in a record? Joe has been in Washington for a long time, as have I. And my point is when people see the records, Joe, voted for the war in Iraq, I opposed the war in Iraq. Joe voted for the Wall Street bailout. I vigorously opposed the Wall Street bailout. When you go to the Midwest, we're in Michigan right now, you go to Wisconsin, you go to Pennsylvania. People want to know about your views on trade because disastrous trade agreements like NAFTA and PNTR with China cost this country over 4 million good paying jobs, decimated communities here in Michigan. I helped lead the opposition to those trade agreements. Joe voted for them. You have to stop saying that Joe Biden is your friend. Whenever Joe Biden criticizes you, he's very smug, he's very arrogant, and it's effective. He never says, you know what, Bernie Sanders is my friend, but here's X, Y, and Z reasons why you should vote for me over him. He never says that. And then, you know, we've heard the same song and dance from Bernie Sanders over and over again. He prefaces his criticism of Joe Biden by saying, look, I really like Joe Biden. He's such a nice person. But, you know, when it comes to the Iraq war and his trade deals, he'd be a disaster. Except first and foremost, you can't be nice to Joe Biden like that. You've got to hit him and let people know what's at stake here. We are going to lose to Trump if he's the nominee. And second of all, this is a very different race. And what I want Bernie Sanders to acknowledge is that he's got to change up the strategy because he's one on the policy. And when I say he's one on the policy, I mean, he's convinced Democratic Party primary voters that his ideas are the best ideas. I mean, look at some of these exit polls and just take a look at this article from Common Dreams. It says, in every Super Tuesday State with exit polls, majority of Democratic voters support eliminating private insurance. And when you look at these exit polls here, even states where Joe Biden demolished Bernie Sanders, Medicare for all still won with large margins. It's still got at least 50%. So we've won on the policy. We've won on the policy. So now what people are clearly voting based on is who they think can beat Donald Trump. So by you simply drawing policy differences between you and Joe Biden, that's not enough. You have to connect that connected to his weakness in a general election because the entire time the Democratic Party establishment and media apparatus to be fair has made this a race about electability and Bernie Sanders started to really get the messaging right there, but never was sharp enough. He has to make it very clear that this is about electability. If you want to play by electability, fine. We just ran Hillary Clinton a moderate and lost. Moderates lose all the time. Look at John Kerry in 2004, Hillary Clinton in 2016. Do you want to roll the dice again? It is progressives who win. Barack Obama won by campaigning as a strong progressive. Now you can argue that he didn't live up to those progressive ideals, but regardless, he ran a progressive campaign and won. So if you want to excite the base, you have to be progressive and Joe Biden isn't offering voters anything and they're going to stay home because they don't really perceive there to be any real difference. That's meaningful between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. You've got to stress this and for Bernie Sanders to still say the same thing that he said a couple of months ago, it's not going to work. Now going forward, Bernie has to change that and here's what I really want to stress. Bernie has got to understand that he has to play hardball with the establishment. Nothing that he can ever, there's nothing he can say or do that's going to win them over and get them to appreciate his contribution to electoral politics. There's no way that he can win them over. You have to defeat them. You have to crush them because that's what they're trying to do to you, Bernie Sanders. That's what they're trying to do to you and they're being successful because they have a lot of institutional advantages. So you've got to take back the messaging and part of the reason why I want Bernie Sanders to harden up is because anything that he grants, any concession he makes to the establishment, they're never going to make that same concession to him. So just, you know, a week ago, before Super Tuesday, when it seemed very clear that Bernie Sanders, you know, if he didn't win an outright majority, he was the front runner to get a plurality of pledged delegates going into the convention. Well, what did Joe Biden say about that? As this headline from Vox points out, Biden says he'll contest the Democratic nomination if no one gets a majority of delegates. If Sanders leads in delegates but doesn't have a majority, Biden said he'll fight for the nomination. Now contrast that with this headline from Newsweek where Bernie Sanders says he'll drop out if Biden gets a plurality coming into the Democratic convention. Now, I'm not saying that Bernie Sanders plays dirty to the extent that he is going to try to convince superdelegates to steal the nomination away from Biden. Biden, if he gets more votes, because I think that's just undemocratic. But what I want to point to here is the problem that Bernie Sanders has in giving up his leverage, right? You have so much leverage right now. You have so much leverage and you're giving it up when you don't have to. Like what you can do, even if it is going to lead to nothing, you can say, I'm not going anywhere. I will contest this convention unless we have a Democratic nominee who believes in Medicare for All because in every single state Medicare for All won. So if I'm not at the top of the ticket, we need someone who supports Medicare for All. So I'm not dropping out unless Joe Biden unequivocally is on tape saying I will fight for Medicare for All and introduce a bill on day one. Now, we don't have to believe him. We don't have to believe that he's going to fight for it at all because I don't think that he will. Health stock shot up after Super Tuesday when he was victorious. But what you have to do is understand the immense amount of leverage that you have and use it to your advantage. Like part of the reason why the Republican establishment in 2016 couldn't fuck over Donald Trump was because Donald Trump was willing to play hardball. I mean, think about this. When there was talk of a contested convention to try to steal the nomination away from Donald Trump, what did Donald Trump do back in 2016 or 2015 more specifically? He said, I'm going to run third party. I'm going to run third party, right? That's what you have to do. And even if you don't believe that, don't give away your leverage. And I want to say this to voters as well, because everyone is so quick to say, you know what, sure, I'll support Joe Biden. I hate him. Here's all the criticisms, but I'll support him if he's the nominee, even if that's true, you can't give away your leverage. You have to make the Democratic Party establishment fearful. You have to make them realize that if they don't vote for the person who's the strongest against Donald Trump, they're going to lose. They can't just, you know, expect to keep doing the same thing and getting our support. I want to let them know that your power will be exercised in a way that isn't going to help them. But I see so many people like so willing to fall in line and say, well, of course, you know, I'm saying all this about Biden now, but I'll vote for him. Don't say that yet, even if you're going to do that. And the same is true for Bernie Sanders. Like here's a problem with electoral politics and why the left loses since so much is at stake, you know, and I think that a lot of the left rightfully believes in the reduction, we want to make sure that we make it clear we're compassionate. Like we're not going to do anything that hurts people more so than they're already being hurt. But at the same time, you need leverage. You have to use the power that you have, the minimal amount of power that you have in electoral politics to make it very clear that the establishment cannot continue to steamroll you and you're not just going to get up and fall in line and support them. Like even if you plan on voting for Joe Biden, and if you're going to be a Democratic nominee, don't say that right now. Don't say that right now. You're in a primary and the Democratic Party is going to put up someone that overall is going to lose to Donald Trump. I mean, look, all of us who follow politics, it doesn't matter what we do. What matters is what the average person, the disaffected non-voter does. And if they see that it's between Joe Biden and Donald Trump and they don't really think there's a true difference between these two people, those are going to change and it's not worth standing in line for five to six hours. They're just going to stay home, right? And nothing you say or do will be able to convince them. Voter apathy is a real problem. It's a real problem that we have to deal with. So what I want people to understand on the left is that we have leverage. We just have to know how to use it and stop giving it away and play hardball. Stop trying to get the Democratic Party to like us. Stop trying to court them. We need to be in a position to where they're courting us. They're trying to win us over and it's not the other way around. And, you know, the media plays us like fiddles sometimes. I've got to admit that. I mean, with this whole Elizabeth Warren thing and, you know, the snake emojis, the way that they set this up was that we are the ones who are supposed to be courting Elizabeth Warren for an endorsement. When think about this, this is someone who wants to run for president in 2024. She's a multi-millionaire white woman. She's going to be perfectly fine. But we're supposed to be really nice right now to Elizabeth Warren and we're supposed to court her and send her positive messages in this time of grieving. We are the ones who have leverage. Without us, the Democratic Party can never win another election again. Now, if you don't want to play hardball like that, if you don't want to be dirty, that's fine. But understand, if you give away your leverage, then the Democratic Party is essentially going to realize they can crush you and it's not going to hurt their chances, electorally speaking. Right? You're telling them you know what, it's okay if you rig it. It's okay if you crush me. At the end of the day, I'm going to fall in line like a good little soldier and support the Democratic nominee, regardless of who it is. I mean, if you put up a clone of Donald Trump with a D next to his name, I'll support that individual because I believe that, you know, harm reduction is the best strategy and you may be right about that. But there's a time and place for all of that. If you are going to fall in line, there's a time and place for that. Now is not the time. Now is the time to absolutely be disruptive and loud and make it very clear that the Democratic Party establishment doesn't control you. You are a free agent and you're going to make a decision that's best for you and voting for Joe Biden is not an option and you will not vote for Joe Biden. Even if you are, say you won't right now. Do you understand what I'm talking about? We have to acknowledge that if we're going to really focus on electoral politics and be hyper focused on it, like we have been on the left, then we can't play nice with the Democratic Party establishment. And this, you know, going back to Bernie Sanders, this is true for him as well. You have to make it very clear that you're going to play hardball with them and they're going to hate you. But that's fine because they're never going to love you. It doesn't matter what you say or do, you will never win them over. They will always hate you. The media will always hate Bernie Sanders and they'll use him in, you know, a few years to their advantage for ratings and whatnot but they're never going to love him because capital at the end of the day will always do what's best for capital. It's not going to roll over and die. You can't be nice enough to the capitalists and win them over. You've got to fight as hard as you possibly can and even if we fight really hard it still might not be enough. But know that we did it by being as fierce and ferocious and relentless as we possibly can be. And we didn't give them permission to fuck us over essentially. We didn't give up our leverage when it was too early. So this is just, you know, to kind of summarize this and wrap this entire message in a bow. Bernie really, as much as I love him, we've got to show him tough love and let him know playing nice with Joe Biden is unacceptable at this point in time. If you want to win, you can't be nice. You can't say Joe Biden can beat Donald Trump. Maybe Bernie believes that but he's not going to beat Donald Trump, right? And you've got to make it very clear what's at stake. If voters care about electability you have to make it clear that Joe Biden is unelectable. He's unelectable. Use whatever you can. The Hunter Biden controversy and that conflict of interest. Joe Biden's cognitive decline because these are things that aren't just going to go away if we don't talk about them, right? There are some things that you can't touch that the Democratic Party establishment will screech at the top of their lungs if you talk about. But guess what? Trump's going to talk about it. And that's regardless if we talk about it or not. Like if we don't say it, it's not like Donald Trump will just say, oh, well since Democrats didn't talk about Hunter Biden scandal, I can't talk about that. They're going to talk about it. Now I get that Bernie doesn't want to be blamed for basically giving this attack to Republicans as he was blamed for attacks against Hillary Clinton with corruption. But you've got to understand the Republican Party will do whatever they can to win. They are ruthless. And if we just adopt a fraction of their ruthlessness our odds will improve drastically. So all that I'm saying is we can't be nice. Nice guys finish last Bernie and we've got to play hard ball with the establishment and we've got to absolutely give them hell, be loud, be disruptive because if we don't, we just can't win. That's our only chance is being fighters and not backing down not giving away our leverage if we have a shot, that's our only shot is being tough. And I really hope that going forward Bernie Sanders acknowledges the importance of this and you know he tries to step out of his comfort zone and actually be really fierce in his criticisms of Joe Biden because reiterating time and again that he's your friend is not convincing voters. You know you're making the case for him by saying why you disagree with Biden on policy. But he's such a nice guy you're not helping yourself. You've got to be tough if we want a chance. So as many of you know Bernie Sanders just had another town hall with Fox News and this really couldn't have come at a better time because when he is on Fox News I think he's at his best right. He performs really well under pressure knowing that they're going to be extra biased against him and every question will have this right word tilt. He knows that he has to come prepared and that he did and really watching this town hall it shows that like he really is unique, he really is special and we were lucky enough to have a second opportunity to elect Bernie Sanders to make this person this once in a lifetime candidate president and if we pass up this opportunity twice in a row then I can't imagine any scenario in the United States where we are able to get real change because you have this opportunity and people are just so fearful of what could happen or what you know would happen if we run someone who's too far left because the media propaganda it's just it's so overwhelming that it makes voters doubt themselves even but with that being said this town hall is great. I'm going to link to it in the description box so you can watch the full thing but I do have a couple of clips and I think that these clips show why Bernie Sanders is such a phenomenal candidate. So when it comes to coronavirus for example he is saying something that nobody else in media is saying and it's so important which is why it makes the United States like uniquely unprepared to deal with coronavirus not because we have Donald Trump as president but because of our political system and what we offer to working class Americans. We will talk I'm sure about Medicare for all but when I talk about healthcare being a human right and all people having healthcare the coronavirus crisis makes that abundantly clear as to why it should be you got millions of people in this country today who may feel that they have a symptom but you know what they cannot afford to go to a doctor and then they are going to go to work. We have a president of the United States you know it doesn't matter go to work we have a president who says absurd things so what we need to do is right now make it clear that all Americans if you are feeling sick go to a doctor it will be paid for. Don't hesitate to go to the doctor I'll give you another example as all of you know or should know we are the only major country on earth that does not have paid family and medical leave so what does that mean in practical terms when half of the people in this country are living paycheck to paycheck today you're feeling sick maybe a coffee maybe have a fever but you know what you got to get to work you got to go to your job in McDonald's or Burger King or Walmart because you don't go to work you don't get a paycheck you don't get a paycheck you don't feed your family what happens if you have that virus and you're going to work you're spreading it to other people so right now while we move to make paid family and medical leave national policy at this moment at least we say to every worker if you are sick stay home and we will figure out a way to make sure that you are compensated and get your salary so your family doesn't suffer and this should be said every single time the virus is talked about because look when it comes to these types of pandemics and what not we're not prepared to deal with it because Americans don't have a choice they can't just choose to stay home if they have symptoms they can't just choose to go see a doctor the situation that we are in currently the situation that working class people are in specifically makes them incapable of dealing with this appropriately so you can have all these protocols if you're feeling sick but we have an economic system that makes that impossible currently so in the event we have these types of highly contagious things spread like coronavirus or the flu and what not it's going to be worse in systems where one we don't have universal healthcare and two where we're not allowed to take time off of work because if we do then we can't feed ourselves so Bernie Sanders is the only person who's talking about it that way and on the subject of Medicare for all and why it's so important as it relates to coronavirus he explained how the benefits for Medicare for all they're obvious I mean yes we need a payroll tax to fund Medicare for all but when we eliminate copays, premiums, deductibles the average person is going to save more money now the fox host here tried to follow up with a hacky point and was booed but towards the end of this clip you're going to see that he got her conceding to some of his points and agreeing with him if right now you're the average worker okay you're paying $12,000 a year for healthcare and if I said to that worker that I can provide better healthcare for substantially less but you'll have to pay more in taxes, I admit it okay so let's say you pay $1200 more in taxes for comprehensive healthcare but you're not paying $12,000 in premiums copayments and out-of-pocket expenses who has the better deal well that may be true for the $12,000 a year person for the 30 or 40 $12,000 a year person who likes the health plan they have from their employer there's 180 million Americans who have coverage that they like but you're going to take that away from that no, first of all it's $150 million and this is what we're doing every year, do you know how many people lose their health insurance every year because they lose their job or they transfer or whatever may happen they quit about 50 million people a year that's not true what we are doing is what every other country on earth does why do you think I'm pointing I don't need to be I don't need to be argumentative I'm looking at you I could be many of my Democratic components the same thing why do you think that it's a wonderful idea that employers in this country are burdened with the cost of healthcare they would probably agree with you they'd probably not want to have that burden they covered a lot of people look, you're a small business person you're a decent person you got 10 people working for you you want to provide healthcare it is enormously expensive so every other country has said you're a small business do your damn business, don't worry about healthcare we will cover all healthcare for you as a human right I just want to end on this note and the coronavirus makes this point we lose about 30,000 people every year that's conservative who die because they don't get to a doctor when they should that's a tragedy but you can see the absurdity of the current system today when people cannot afford to go to the doctor who may be struggling with the coronavirus I don't know how anybody can defend the system where we spend twice as much per person and yet you got 87 million uninsured or underinsured unless we worry about the healthcare industry which made 100 billion in profits last year one thing that we have to acknowledge is that we've won this battle we have won the message in war and the Democratic Party by and large is with Bernie Sanders here but they're not necessarily voting for Bernie Sanders even if they're with him on the policy because they're too afraid they think that Bernie Sanders is too radical too extreme and that's largely because of what they've been told not just by the media but by the Democratic Party establishment they've been pushing this that you need a moderate and saying we can't run someone like Bernie because look at what happened in 1972 look at what happened in 2004 with John Kerry in 2016 with Hillary Clinton don't look to 1972 with George McGovern look to the recent history moderate Democrats lose and to even suggest that Bernie Sanders is radical it really is it's a disservice to Americans these are mainstream populist ideas and he made this point at the town hall and I think it's something that he needs to say over and over again to $15 an hour a living wage a radical idea is making public colleges and universities tuition free so that all of our people have the opportunity to get a higher education in a competitive global economy is that a radical idea is doing what every other major country on earth does guaranteeing health care all as a right I live 50 miles away from the Canadian border this is not a communist society up there Montreal they guarantee health care to all they spend 50% of what we spend is passing a Medicare for all single-payer system a radical idea and last point Donald Trump I know he's on the network a whole lot Donald you're probably watching how are you alright I know wanted to say hello to the president he seems to be giving a news conference I'm sure he's watching fox at the side there he's kind of addicted to your station Trump thinks that climate change is a hoax and that's because he doesn't understand or respect science I believe that climate change is an existential threat to this planet I will listen to the scientists who tell us that we have got to move aggressively to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy and through a green new deal by the way we can create up to 20 million good paying jobs so my point is I reject I appreciate Allison raising the question I just don't think any of those ideas are radical that is what he should be saying but I think that he needs to sharpen his message so don't just say that your ideas aren't radical because you're correct there and he said this at a town hall at CNN recently and it's something he should hammer away at but you also have to explain how not only are your ideas not radical but Joe Biden is the one who's actually out of lockstep with the Democratic Party and Americans because it doesn't really matter if you are a Republican or a Democrat voters aren't as ideological and partisan as people in DC so when you look at public opinion polls they support Medicare for all they support legalizing marijuana and raising the minimum wage against most of those things then you are the one who's truly out of step therefore you are radical and Kyle Kalinsky made this point about strategy and how Bernie needs to hammer away how Joe Biden is actually the one that's extreme and I think that that is a strategy that Bernie has to implement going forward it's not too late but he's got to really try to normalize his policy positions and not allow the mainstream media to monopolize discourse when it comes to issues like Medicare for all or legalizing marijuana because these aren't radical ideas if every other country in the world has them then it's not radical but shifting gears the subject of Hillary Clinton came up and his response was great because it showed that you know he's not like these other rehearsed focus group driven politicians he has a set of talking points but he knows how to turn on the charm he can just be personable and relatable and his response to Hillary Clinton's attacks I thought were just fantastic Bernie just drove me crazy he was in congress for years years he had one senator support him nobody likes him nobody wants to work with him he got nothing done he was a career politician he did not work till he was like 41 and then he got elected to something it was all just baloney and I feel so bad that you know people got sucked into it wow that's a strong stop what's your reaction unlike secretary Clinton I don't want to relive 2016 we're in 2020 but what I would say on a good day my wife likes me but also if you guys look at some of the polling that they do for United States senators you know they do polls how popular you are in most cases I turn out to be the most popular United States senator in the whole country one or two people most likely that was great he said the same thing already when this was brought up before but you do have to be personable you do have to show people that you're a human being and I think it's important that he brags that he is the most popular politician in America he has the highest favorability out of everyone in the senate so even though you know he's a humble individual he's a nice guy and he doesn't want to brag about that this is an election you've got a brag you've got to you know make sure that people know you're the best person to take on Donald Trump you've got to be confident and I think he's getting better he's gotten better at this certainly since 2016 but he's got to turn that up and I think that bragging about what he's been able to accomplish is important and he does do that in a specific portion where he talks about how he's not ineffective he is actually effective and he took some time to actually boast about his record because his record is great like he hasn't just had good votes he's actually managed to reach across the aisle and get things accomplished to where he's not compromising on his core beliefs he's getting them to meet him in an area where they agree and he's not compromising this was a really important clip I should tell you I know that there's another mythology going out around me that everybody hates me we heard that from Secretary Clinton that I can't work with anybody check the record and you'll find that in the 1990s when I was in the house I passed more roll call amendments on the floor of the house bipartisan than any other member of the house year after year after year so in other words when we see people who have common interest I don't care what party they're in for example there were and have been today a number of Republicans who are outraged that we are spending 10 times more for prescription drugs same prescription drugs than people in other countries that were getting ripped off by the day and night by the collusion and price fixing in the pharmaceutical industry there are Republicans who want to address that I will work with them on that issue there are Republicans who know that our infrastructure roads bridges water systems are collapsing I will certainly work with them on that I worked with Mike Lee you know Mike Lee of Utah Mike and I was a very conservative Republican from Utah Mike and I worked together to pass for the first time under the war powers act a Senate resolution getting the United States out of the horrific war in Yemen Mike Lee a conservative Republican and I worked together on that I worked with the late John McCain who was a friend of mine we had different points of view but I respected John immensely John and I worked together when I was chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs on perhaps the most comprehensive veterans bill passed in modern history so the idea that I cannot work with Republicans on issues where we can come together is just not accurate so that was important and what Bernie Sanders has got to do is hammer away on the fact that he's the most effective person running for president he was able to work with a tea party Republican Mike Lee to pass a resolution under the war powers act to stop giving weapons to Saudi Arabia who else in the Democratic Party can say that they were able to accomplish this right nobody else can Bernie Sanders has got to start saying I'm effective Joe Biden is not effective Joe Biden cannot get things done because he's out of touch with his own party I can get things done Joe Biden cannot get things done now on the subject of Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders hammering him I talked about in a different segment that Bernie Sanders has got to play hard ball he can't be nice he's got to actually hit Joe Biden I was asked about Joe Biden's presumable cognitive decline and the answer here was incredibly weak so this wasn't a perfect town hall but I want to play this clip because there's an area for opportunity here that Bernie needs to capitalize on some of Joe Biden's answers don't make sense do you think it's acceptable for a presidential candidate to respond to questions like Joe Biden does well let me just let me just say this Joe Biden is a friend of mine for many many years when we do our events and our rallies we respect people in a sense and we give really substantive these guys will think maybe too long winded answers but we take people there are real crises facing this country when I give a speech often it's 45 minutes or an hour because there are a lot of challenges that the country faces and I got to talk about them I think Joe was somewhere in Michigan or someplace else the other day and he spoke for seven minutes I don't know how you say anything other than you know minimal discussion in seven minutes so all that I have always believed is that if we leave in democracy a candidate has got to be honest with the people about what he or she believes given the many many challenges facing our country and when you do that when you're honest with the issues so you're going to take on the fossil fuel industry or Wall Street or the drug companies it brings forth opposition I know that I get beaten up every day that's fine that's what I do but all I would say is not going to criticize Joe but to say that I think the American people in this incredibly complicated and difficult moment in our history are entitled to thoughtful answers to the crises we face he says Joe Biden is a friend of mine you have to stop Bernie you have to stop saying this it's getting on my nerves that's one thing but on top of it like you don't have to preface every criticism of Joe Biden with this qualification that oh he's a great person he's one of my best friends nobody cares this is an election Joe Biden is not a good person he is running to get elected and do nothing and that's if he's lucky enough to be Trump don't think he's going to be able to do that but Bernie like he tap-danced around this but he alluded to the fact that maybe Joe Biden's team is trying to hide him away from the public so he referenced Joe Biden's seven minute speech but he referenced it and then ran away from it but what do you mean like why did you bring up the seven minute speech that Joe Biden just made like why is that important you have to connect the dots for voters because voters aren't going to do that themselves so you have to be the person that connects it for them say it just say what you're thinking Joe Biden's team is hiding him away from the public because they believe that he is a detriment to himself if they hear him speak because he does stumble over his own words and we're not talking about a stutter we are talking about cognitive decline that we can all see I mean it happens to people when you get older I'm not diagnosing him with anything I'm saying that he does not he's not as sharp as he used to be that's obvious there's not a conspiracy theory to say this and regardless of how loud the media screeches about this I mean Trump's going to bring it up we have to grapple with this you can't hide away from the public forever so for Bernie Sanders to reference that seven minute speech and then run away from it what a missed opportunity now later on one of the hosts actually brought it up again asking him what do you mean by this and Bernie basically said well look there's so much policies to talk about why you know how could I possibly say it all in seven minutes tie it together Bernie tie it all together make it very clear that Joe Biden and his team strategy is to hide him away from the public and that in a general election between him and Trump you can't hide if you hide you will lose Trump will capitalize on that call him out for hiding now after this he was shown clips of Julian Castro, Cory Booker and Joe Scarborough of Morning Joe making the very obvious point that you know Joe Biden is very much in cognitive decline I don't know what's going on there but what we do know is that put him on a stage against Donald Trump he will get crushed he will get crushed because he struggles to articulate himself you can see it's very difficult for him to collect his thoughts and I totally sympathize with the stutter right that's something that we can all give him a pass for but we're not just talking about a simple stutter so you know this was brought up they tried to really get Bernie Sanders to answer more directly and not beat around the bush and it was just a missed opportunity I'm not going to go at that level in attacking Joe Joe and I have you know that's for people to decide all I can say is Joe and I have very significant political differences and I'm not going to be making you know personal attacks on Joe that's not what I do that is incredibly heartwarming and I'm sure that the Democratic Party establishment really admires this respectable stance that he's taking but this is exactly how you lose an election exactly how you lose an election you can't not point this out it's irresponsible to not talk about this and Bernie over the next couple of days is going to have to make a decision his team members are going to have to make a decision are we going to be serious going forward and are we going to stop worrying about what the media and Democratic Party establishment says and are we going to play to win or are we going to try to play fairly and nicely with Democrats in hopes that they don't attack him time's ticking time is ticking and this is the most important election of our lives like we always hear that but this really is we have less than 12 years to act on climate change and if Biden's nominee Trump gets four more years and Bernie is the only person who is qualified to run for president who wants to run for president really like the only other who else is left after Bernie like who else AOC is not old enough to run for president we don't know if she wants it we don't know if Rashida Tlaib wants it we don't know if Nina Turner wants it Elizabeth Warren is not going to cut it she showed that she doesn't know how to run a campaign because she surrounds herself with Hillary and Kamala people and she doesn't have the political instincts to win so Bernie is the only one that we got right now so this is serious stop playing nice with Joe Biden or you're going to lose and I don't want you to lose we really really really need you to win the planet depends on you winning but if you keep this up it's going to be very difficult for you to win Joe Biden is a very bad person stop treating him with kid gloves you have to stop this Bernie he's a horrible person who had a lot of policies passed that have fucked people over stop being nice to him he doesn't grant you that same courtesy so don't do it to him now moving on getting back on track to where Bernie Sanders was having a good night he talked about why Donald Trump is rightfully afraid to run against him when it comes to him versus Biden and the point is something that I think people need to hear he has some very smart political consultants around him and a couple of weeks he had a political consultant somebody asked him well who would you rather run against Sanders or Trump or whatever and what the guy said I forgot his name he said you know what running against a movement makes me nervous because they understand that our campaign is more than just the campaign we are creating a multiracial multi-generational political movement of young people of working people of people who believe in justice all across this country and in his heart of hearts I think that is what makes Trump very nervous let's talk about the economy so there you have it Trump doesn't want to run against a movement because a movement is what Obama had and Obama won you know that movement kind of fell apart when he was in office but he still managed to hold it together long enough to get reelected so you know if the Democratic party was serious about wanting to beat Donald Trump then anyone who claims to care about progressive policies would rally around Bernie Sanders right now not tomorrow not Thursday not next week but right now and anyone who is not rallying around Bernie Sanders right now cannot with a straight face look voters in the eye and say I care about progressive policies because if you did then you would be backing the person the only person who stands a chance against Donald Trump in November idly by and not speak out for Bernie Sanders while Joe Biden coasts to the nomination and then flames out in the general you have yourself to blame you can't blame voters for this you have to blame yourself if you have any sort of power or influence currently in DC so overall I really would encourage you to watch the full town hall I think that it was great I think that Bernie did his best he always you know turns on the charm when he's at Fox News but I want him to keep the same energy when he talks to CNN I want him to keep the same level of energy when he talks to MSNBC because he kind of has it in his head that CNN and MSNBC are better than Fox News but in actuality these are all private companies they're corporations who they just want to make money they don't care about the delivery of news the other is the propaganda arm of the Republican Party the other is the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party and the ultimate goal of the Democratic Party is to serve the interests of their corporate donors so Bernie needs to understand that he has no allies in DC it's him and his movement and that's it nobody else is going to fight for us nobody else is going to have his back so he's got to make sure that he is more cognizant of the realities of the political situation I think that he doesn't want to be seen as someone who's too divisive but just keep the same energy on MSNBC and CNN and I think you'll be doing better because there's a lot of distrust with mainstream corporate media because they're not news it's entertainment it's infotainment at best so you can't only bring this level of snark and energy to Fox News Town Hall when you're talking to Jake Tapper on CNN who will have the same types of corporate talking points you've got to have it when you're talking to MSNBC who also is looking to stop your movement and stop all the momentum that we've built up for Medicare for All so great town hall overall I just really hope that Bernie Sanders takes all of the criticism that he's receiving from individuals in indie media to heart and acknowledges that if he is going to win this he's not going to do it by being nice he's got to be aggressive he may not necessarily feel comfortable really attacking Joe Biden hard but that's the only way that you're going to win this because playing nice hasn't worked and you're not going to win over the establishment so the best that you can do is expose them for the frauds that they are so on Sunday March 15th there will be a one on one debate between Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden because this is now a two person race one of them will win and the other will lose and now that Joe Biden has no one else to hide behind at these debates this team knows that this could be a disaster like we saw how disastrous one debate was for Mike Bloomberg and also knowing just how volatile this race is I mean we've seen momentum shift time and again this could hurt Joe Biden it could be a fatal blow to his campaign even if currently he does have all the momentum even if he is the frontrunner because we've seen Bernie Sanders at one point go from being unstoppable to being someone who is no longer the frontrunner we've seen Joe Biden on the cusp of death where he came in what fourth or fifth in early states and there was talk of him dropping out if he didn't win South Carolina and that all changed so the race isn't over it's still dynamic right no matter what happens on many Super Tuesday it's not over and in the event Joe Biden has a terrible debate against Bernie Sanders he could still have all the momentum reversed if voters see that he's not going to be competent enough to take on Donald Trump so up until this point his campaign has been pretty strategic and rightfully so in trying to hide him away from the public so voters don't see how much of a gaffe machine and a disaster quite frankly he really is so anticipating the potential scenario where Bernie Sanders pummeled Joe Biden they're changing the format the DNC and CNN are changing the format to accommodate Joe Biden because of what will likely be a very terrible performance look Bernie Sanders is a very nice person but even if Bernie Sanders is polite just having Joe Biden talk for 50% of the time at a two hour debate would be a nightmare situation because voters are going to see oh that's not the Joe Biden I remember you know I've seen him at these debates and he talks once in a while and he seems okay but hearing him speak for an extended period of time that has me kind of reassessing who can be the person to take on Donald Trump and actually win maybe it's Bernie Sanders after all so you know they change the format because they don't want to hurt Joe Biden so what are they doing they're doing a more informal town hall type format in order to make sure that Joe Biden is protected man they are brazen so as Holly Otterby and Mark Caputo of Politico report quote why does Joe Biden not want to stand toe to toe with Senator Sanders on the debate stage March 15th and have an opportunity to defend his record and articulate his vision for the future asked Jeff Weaver Sanders senior advisor Biden's campaign of the DNC said the format for the debate was decided by the party and CNN the news network declined to comment and referred questions to the DNC quote we will participate in whatever debate CNN chooses to stage standing, sitting, at podiums or in a town hall Biden's deputy field manager Kate Beningfield said quote the problem for the Sanders campaign is not the staging of the debate but rather the weakness of Senator Sanders record and ideas not really but okay the Sanders campaign's accusations unfold just as his supporters and some Republicans have stepped up their criticisms of the 77 year old Biden's physical fitness and mental acuity after lapses on the campaign trail and multiple poor debate performances for his part the 78 year old Sanders has weathered questions about his health ever since suffering a heart attack late last year including from some of Biden's backers Weaver said he's not questioning Biden's health and Biden's campaign said the same about Sanders but sought to portray him as too inflexible quote we want to have an exchange of ideas next week in Phoenix we look forward to taking voter questions in a town hall style setting said Beningfield it is odd to see a campaign that says it is based on revolution arguing for the status quo because this is how every other debate has gone that's a stupid argument why is Senator Sanders opposed to a little change the new format would be a town hall style production featuring audience questions but in a more intimate setting with the candidates in chairs behind desks similar to the way Brock Obama and Hillary Clinton receded in a few 2008 debates so it's funny because Joe Biden's team is outright denying that this change was made at the behest of Joe Biden but it was the DNC who is very clearly in the tank for Joe Biden Tom Perez came from that administration and CNN they both hate Bernie Sanders do you think that this was just a coincidence do you think it was a coincidence that the DNC chose to limit the number of debates back in 2015 and 2016 no all of these things are done for a reason and that reason is to protect the status quo and that's Joe Biden they know that Joe Biden even if Bernie Sanders was very very nice to him which he probably would be would still trip and fall over himself and look like an incompetent clown on a debate stage that lasts for three hours so they're trying to make it seem a little bit better for Biden by having the audience ask questions take time away from Biden so he doesn't have to speak the whole time this is shameless this is brazen and this is done to protect Joe Biden we don't have to speculate about their intentions because it's been clear from day one they want to stop Bernie Sanders at all costs and this is part of that effort this is part of that effort so the arguments that they're using is saying oh well I thought you wanted a revolution so you can't handle a town hall setting this bluffing is embarrassing because it's just bluffing it's obvious that you're talking smack because you're trying to hide away your candidate look if this is the case and you're truly confident in Joe Biden's ability to speak then why don't you have him do a one hour press conference why don't you have him speak at a rally press conference why don't you have him do more events see you won't do that because you've got the right strategy you know that you've got to hide Biden away from the public because if you know Americans see him for what he really is an incompetent individual he might lose it doesn't matter how much momentum you have this is an election about electability you guys are the ones who made it this way the media the Democratic Party establishment so they realize that that electability goes away it dissipates like that if voters see Biden for what he really is and they've done a great job at keeping him away from the public Joe Biden didn't even campaign in states that he was able to win so I mean credit to them for knowing at least what they were working with and how to work with him but still what this is doing now is a huge gift to Joe Biden and it's just shameless and on top of that they didn't just change the rules to protect Biden they changed the rules to screw over other candidates much like they did before because as J. Edward Moreno of the Hill reports the Democratic National Committee on Friday announced new qualifying standards for the upcoming Arizona debate that will leave only the top two contenders on stage Representative Tulsi Gabbard did not meet the single qualifying factor earning at least 20% of the delegates awarded as of March 15th Senator Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden are the only candidates who have qualified for the debate which will be hosted by CNN and Univision on March 15th in Phoenix so the rules previously were that you just needed a delegate a single delegate and you'd qualify but now that Tulsi Gabbard qualifies almost immediately the DNC spokesperson says well we're gonna change that like the night of the night Tulsi Gabbard won a delegate the DNC said we're probably gonna change those rules so don't get too excited how brazen and shameless is that and look all to say Tulsi Gabbard is not going to win and truly I have no idea what she's doing the fact that she hasn't dropped out and endorsed Bernie Sanders yet it just makes no sense to me because she's a couple years older than me so she has a long career ahead of her she can run again in 2024 or 2028 but right now this is not her time she's not gonna win she's not gonna win and she claims to be anti-war and the best chance we get at getting an anti-war candidate even if she thinks she's better is to drop out and endorse Bernie Sanders however with that being said that's not what she's choosing to do and the fact that the rules are being changed specifically to fuck her over is unethical it doesn't matter that I disagree with Tulsi Gabbard staying in the race that's irrelevant what matters is that the DNC follow their own rules going forward because look even if you don't support Tulsi Gabbard and you disagree that you know they shouldn't have changed the rules in the future a candidate that you're supporting can just as easily be fucked over I mean it happened to Lawrence LeSig in 2016 it happened to Mike Ravel where he qualified for the debate after there was this huge push and Mary Ann Williamson tried to help with that as well and then they just didn't let him get on the stage and then Mike Bloomberg all of a sudden they changed the rules to benefit him to get him on the debate which was a disaster I mean he bought the DNC he gave them $300,000 and now Tulsi Gabbard qualifies but all of a sudden they say you know what we're changing the rules so honestly just saying Tulsi Gabbard isn't going to win I think that's common sense I think she knows she's not going to win but that doesn't matter the fact remains that she's in the race and she qualified and they changed the rules that's so brazen and shamelessly unethical that it doesn't matter who you support now the Republicans doing this to a candidate I would think that that was unethical so it doesn't matter that they're doing this to a candidate that I'm not currently supporting and who I think should probably drop out and endorse Bernie Sanders but what matters is that they're before our very eyes just changing the rules on a whim they're just making up the rules as they go along and that should bother everyone that should be disturbing to people that should make people understand what we're up against a corrupt organization using all their institutional advantages to fuck over candidates that they don't like and using their advantages to boost candidates that they would like to help so the DNC is just rotten to the core and this organization isn't concerned with winning this organization is specifically functioning now to protect the status quo and if people don't see that by now they're never going to see it so if you are of the belief and I don't know how many people believe this isn't a horrible institution and they're not corrupt and rotten to the core then you will see that one day it's inevitable because there's going to be a time where you're supporting a candidate and the DNC fucks them over and then you're going to see but then it's going to be too late so what we've got to do is be consistent and we have to hold the DNC accountable if they create rules they need to follow those rules this isn't a difficult decision it's just a matter of fairness if they have five debates then he needs to make sure that there are five debates if Tom Press says this is the criteria that you need to meet in order to qualify and you meet that criteria they don't get to change it after a candidate that they don't like meets those rules it's just a matter of being fair and consistent and the fact that we can't even get the bare minimum from this disgusting organization it just shows that the Democratic party the establishment it's too far gone there's no redemption, they're not going to have a change of heart the only way to make them change is to beat them and change the makeup the people who are in charge currently and that can't happen unless we get a nomination of Bernie Sanders because he can take control of the party apparatus and actually change the makeup so if we're concerned with fairness we need to fight like hell to make sure that Bernie Sanders is the nominee because this will continue to happen because these goals like Tom Perez are in charge of the DNC alright folks, so I'm no expert in marketing but I do want to talk a little bit about brand association because I think it's relevant it's really relevant now that we have a Democratic party primary and a general election coming up so ask yourself this why is the sales for Corona beer declining currently I mean that's obvious right it's because people associate Corona virus and that's really really bad for the brand okay that's a non political example but moving on to a political example think back to 2015-2016 why did none of the Republicans who were running for president back then ever bring up George W. Bush never mentioned the fact that they were from the Bush wing of the Republican Party even Jeb Bush wouldn't really bring up the fact that George W. Bush was his brother like why was that a thing that happened it's because George W. Bush was politically toxic so now fast forward to present day why are Democrats still associating with a brand that is politically toxic Republicans knew that they had to shake the image of Bush and Republican right if they wanted to shot it beating Democrats so why are Democrats not doing the same with Hillary Clinton because just having her associated with the Democratic Party brings down the aggregate Democratic Party because she is deeply disliked deeply unpopular and for very good reasons so you think if they want to win and I'm not sure that they do not sure that they're serious about winning they would do everything in their power to stay away from Hillary Clinton but yet Democrats haven't learned from that mistake and this isn't like some new thing to the 2020 election in 2018 Andrew Gillum was campaigning with Hillary Clinton and Debbie Wasserman Schultz like some of the most politically toxic figures in American politics so Democrats for whatever reason they haven't learned about brand association and how it hurts them to be associated with a toxic brand so now Hillary Clinton like she can make her own decisions right she has a documentary and people are interviewing her again for whatever reason and it's on Hulu I haven't watched it yet because I don't hate myself that much she also has a podcast coming out before the general election so that'll be interesting and you know it's fine if she wants to do her own thing nobody can control her she can do whatever she wants I would prefer that she goes away but she's not gonna go away she's made that very clear but what matters is how Democrats and the media respond and we know a lot of people in mainstream media they are Democrats right they're Democratic Party establishment loyalists and they tend to be objective and neutral and they won't say that but in actuality they are so if they cared about Democrats if Democrats cared about Democrats why are we still taking anything that Hillary Clinton says seriously and I'm gonna give you an example so Hillary Clinton was talking to Fareed Zakaria on CNN and she was giving him advice on who can beat Donald Trump I don't know what to say but look because this is a real thing that happened Bernie Sanders is the Democratic nominee will you campaign for him I will support the nominee of the Democratic Party but will you campaign for him I don't know if he would ask me to campaign for him Fareed because I have no idea what he is thinking about for a general election campaign as I've said many times I do not think he's our strongest nominee against Donald Trump is that an endorsement of Joe Biden I'm not endorsing there's nobody left well I guess that's true there isn't anybody left but I think what Joe's victories on Super Tuesday showed is that he is building the kind of coalition that I had basically it's a broad based coalition I finished most of the work I needed to do for the nomination on Super Tuesday and then it kind of lingered on and I think Joe is on track to doing exactly the same thing putting together a coalition of voters who are energized okay so some of you might have missed this and I can forgive you if you forgot because it's been a couple of years now but back in 2016 Hillary Clinton was the Democratic Party's nominee and she lost to Donald Trump yeah many of you might not know this but yet we're bringing her on mainstream media and she's telling us who she thinks is the strongest against Donald Trump and we're not just laughing in her face, Fareed Zakaria didn't like burst out into tears laughing hysterically at what she had to say she literally said Joe Biden is building the kind of coalition that I had basically putting together a coalition of people who are energized am I like alone here am I in the twilight zone she lost to Donald Trump anything she says with regard to electoral politics and strategy is to not be taken seriously is to be disregarded at a minimum but what's more important is that Democrats disassociate from Hillary Clinton because again politically toxic if Donald Trump gets to run against Joe Biden on a field day because Joe Biden is weak but imagine how successful Donald Trump's strategy will be if he can tie the 2020 Democratic Party to Hillary Clinton still I mean we saw how effective he was with Krug and Hillary so if he can tie Joe Biden to Hillary Clinton who people very much still associate with the Democratic Party which is a problem I mean Trump cruises to reelection and the Democrats still are marginalized so it's just honestly like I watch these interviews and I'm shocked why is anyone listening to what Hillary Clinton has to say you can ask for her opinion about fucking television and video games maybe she's playing Fortnite I don't know but if you're gonna ask for her opinion on strategy what do you say to that what do you say to that I do want to show you a clip from her on ABC because she this was on Super Tuesday she attacked Bernie Sanders again she usually does this before a very important election she did this before Iowa she attacked him before Super Tuesday kind of pile on and listen to what she had to say here because it honestly is astonishing that she is this bold to say something like this after she lost to Donald Trump she had to talk about his campaign from 2016 and you call it quote just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it do you still feel that way now sure yeah I mean that was my authentic opinion then it's my authentic opinion now you know here's one of the saddest things happening right now the House of Representatives under Democratic leadership has passed 400 bills on really important issues everything from health care to economic security it just goes on and on does anybody know that Lindsay? of course not nobody knows that change is hard it's not glamorous it doesn't fit into a sound bite and yet the people who were elected in 2018 are down there doing the people's work and I just think we ought to be more understanding and realistic about what it takes to get change in this big complicated pluralistic democracy of ours and it's not easy but boy is it ever worth it and I just want to make sure that voters know what can be done if they give the White House back to the Democrats I mean I don't know what to say anymore I don't know what to say anymore she said I just want voters to know what can be done if they give the White House back to the Democrats you don't tell them what can be done you didn't tell them what can be done Joe Biden is not telling them what can be done. And even your wording there is problematic. I just want voters to know what can be done. The fact that you're not citing specific policies shows how out of touch you are. Listen, voters, if you vote for Democrats, I promise you so many good things will be done. We're not going to talk about anything that we can do. We will repeatedly tell you that we can't have Medicare for all we can't have free college. But just know this can be such awesome things that will be done. But you've got to elect us first. Maybe we'll tell you some of it. Maybe we won't. But we're going to do such awesome things. It's going to be so fucking cool. They're so out of touch. She also says the House of Representatives passed 400 bills. Does anybody know that? No. But whose fault is that? The Democratic Party. Just like Republicans, the Democratic Party has their own corporate media propaganda wing. When Republicans want something to be known by voters, they say it and Fox News says it. Now we know that MSNBC and the Democratic Party establishment, they use the same talking points. I don't believe they're coordinating. I think that a lot of this is just they exist in that same DC bubble, but they use the same talking points. If Democrats wanted voters to know that they passed 400 bills, they would fucking know that. But because people don't know, it's a failure on you. It's a failure on you. So Hillary Clinton is so painfully out of touch. And it's just astonishing to me that mainstream media continues to bring her on. And Hillary Clinton, she's not self aware, right? She's not aware of the fact that voters dislike her a lot. So much so that they opted for Trump over her. But still, she's not aware. But Nancy Pelosi's got to be aware. Chuck Schumer has got to be aware. People in the Democratic Party have got to know we're going to lose if voters still think that Hillary Clinton is associated with the Democratic Party. She's that toxic of a figure. So just the fact that we are parading her around on television and asking her what she thinks it's going to take to beat Donald Trump should make everyone's head explode. She doesn't know what it's going to take to beat Donald Trump because she lost to Donald Trump. And now it's going to be harder to beat Donald Trump because he is the incumbent. Incumbents always have that advantage. So now because of her incompetence, it's going to be harder to beat Donald Trump. And we're potentially nominating someone who is more out of touch than her. At least she was a woman. So you can say, well, I'm excited about electing the first woman president. At least she had charisma. She can at least say what she was thinking, right? She was articulate. She has a degree of charisma. And now we're putting up Joe Biden possibly. The Democratic Party is just a lost cause. It's a lost cause. And it's just, it's really, I don't even know what the right word is. Like we need a new adjective to describe what's happening because nothing really does it justice. It's not disappointing. It's not shocking. It's just something new, right? That they never will learn their lesson. And hypothetically speaking, if Biden's the nominee and he loses to Trump, do you honestly think that they're going to do any soul searching in 2024, 2028? No, they're never going to change the same people who got us to this point with Donald Trump as president, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden. They're still going to be saying the same things. The media will still parrot what they say. And we will be in this predicament where we are getting steamrolled by Republicans because at least they know how to win. They're disgusting. They're ruthless. But they win. Democrats don't know how to do that. They don't know how to do that. And anytime Hillary Clinton talks about electoral politics and gives us her advice, she's hurting the party because she's not very liked. The only person more disliked than her in politics was Donald Trump. And she couldn't even beat him. So forgive me for not caring what Hillary Clinton has to say about Bernie Sanders or the Democratic Party. As far as I'm concerned, she is permanently discredited. And I don't care about what she has to say about politics. She can talk about whatever she wants to on her podcast, but it's really our responsibility. It's incumbent on us to ignore her and make fun of her whenever she talks about politics because she is discredited. You can't beat Trump. Don't want to hear what you have to say in 2020 about beating Trump. It's as simple as that. The fact that I even have to say this shows what a bad state of affairs we're in currently. So even though I absolutely hate to admit this, Joe Biden is the frontrunner. That is just a fact of reality. He has more pledged delegates currently. He is projected to do very well in upcoming states. And there's nothing I can do to change that reality except continue to advocate for Bernie Sanders in hopes that something major happens. And Joe Biden has a terrible debate performance and Bernie can somehow rebound and I'm going to vote for him in Oregon. But I mean, currently as it stands now, at the time I record this video, Joe Biden's the frontrunner and that sucks. But it is what it is. So you think that being the frontrunner, Joe Biden would now start to turn his focus onto uniting both warring wings of the party because he says, you know, we're going to unite and we're going to win, right? So now he has a really important mission, something that Hillary Clinton had and she botched. Now he has to turn to Sanders supporters and say, I welcome you with open arms. Here's XYZ policy concessions that I am willing to offer you because you represent 40 to 50% of the party. Except rather than doing that, he's looking to Bernie Sanders supporters and giving them the finger. Why? Because he just said in an interview with Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC that in the event a democratic controlled house and Senate passed Medicare for all, something that would be a historic legislative achievement, he would veto it. He said that. Take a look. Candidates this kind of question veto question. Let's flash forward your president, Bernie Sanders is still active in the Senate. He manages to get Medicare for all through the Senate in some compromised version, the Elizabeth Warren version or other version. Nancy Pelosi gets a version of it through the House representatives. It comes to your desk. Do you veto it? I would veto anything that delays providing the security and the certainty of healthcare being available now. If they got that through and by some miracle, there was an epiphany that occurred and some miracle occurred that said, okay, it's passed, then you got to look at the cost. I want to know how did they find the $35 trillion? What is that doing? Is it going to significantly raise taxes on the middle class, which it will? What's going to happen? My opposition isn't to the principle that there should be, you should have Medicare. Healthcare should be right in America. My opposition relates to whether or not, A, it's doable to what the cost is and what the consequences for the rest of the budget are. How are you going to find $35 trillion or the next 10 years without having profound impacts on everything from taxes for middle class and working class people, as well as the impact on the rest of the budget? Yeah, that's something. Because throughout the course of this primary, Joe Biden has said a lot of things that made all of us scratch our heads at some point in time, but that's not what you're supposed to say right now. Like you're supposed to pay lip service to the idea of Medicare for all and say, look, I think it's a great idea. I don't support it currently. But I mean, if it passes, well, think about it. What you're supposed to say now is everything in your power to win over Bernie Sanders supporters. We won't believe you, but you still should say it. Maybe some will believe you. But I mean like to say this, to just say, I'm going to veto Medicare for all. That's telling you what a terrible human being Joe Biden is. And I want you to understand why he's saying it. It's not because he has any underlying, you know, political principles or he truly believes in neoliberalism and a market based approach to health care reform. This is all about its corporate donors. Like when he entered the race, there were articles that explained why the health industry was betting on Joe Biden to save their asses from all of the momentum that we see from Medicare for all. And after he had his super Tuesday blowout, health stocks jumped. So you've got to understand this is bad politics, but he doesn't care. He's made it very clear he is going to represent the donor class. And there's nothing that voters can say or do to get him to truly care about them. So a Yale study just showed that 68,000 people per year die due to a lack of health insurance. And that's actually a conservative estimate because it doesn't take into account people who die because they're under insured, meaning that they have insurance, but they can't use it because it's too expensive and they can't afford the deductible or they have insurance and, you know, it doesn't cover a particular procedure that they need. Joe Biden is basically admitting here, I know that that bill would save 68,000 lives, but I'd still veto it. Fuck all of those lives. They don't mean anything to me. Healthcare profits are what I am concerned with. And like we're talking about a hypothetical situation, right? You don't even need to agitate and further demoralize the base who in every state supports Medicare for all, but still voted for you against their own self interest because they think you're more electable. Like you don't even have to say this, but he's still saying it regardless because he's just a bad person and he can't help himself. He can't help himself. How many times throughout the course of his career has he done things to hurt people? He opposed busing. He was functionally a segregationist. He passed the crime bill and boasted about it all the way up until the selection cycle. How many black and brown people were locked in jail because of Joe Biden? How many of us can't refinance our student debt because of Joe Biden? And if he's president, how many people will die if the Democratic Party in some major victory comes together and passes Medicare for all, but then he vetoes it? I mean, this is a horrible, horrible human being. And I don't know what to say about this. The Democratic Party is so lost and I don't think they could ever realize just how much damage they're doing long-term to their brand. These last two election cycles have been a disaster and we all laughed at Hillary Clinton's attempt to reach out to millennials, right? Pokemon go to the polls. She kind of adopted Bernie Sanders free college plan, although it was means tested and, you know, she never talked about it, but there was at least a little bit of an attempt. She tried. Joe Biden is now just saying, don't want you in my coalition. Okay. Okay. So the elections tonight were a disaster. Now, before I tell you the results, I just want you to take a moment and breathe. There's a lot of people across the country and even around the world who are watching these results and they're just as frustrated and disappointed as you feel. So as you watch the numbers come in, know that you're not alone in feeling hopeless and, you know, really, really frustrated. Understand that we're kind of all dealing with this together and hopefully you can take some comfort knowing that. With that being said, I can't sugarcoat this for you. It was a disaster and it's not over yet, but tonight did not go the way we wanted it to go. So getting to the results when it comes to the Idaho primary with 42% of precincts reporting, Joe Biden is winning 47 to 39. When it comes to Michigan, a state where I hoped Bernie Sanders could pull off an upset in the same way that he did back in 2016, Joe Biden is winning with 85% of precincts reporting. That may change by the time you see this video, but currently he's winning 53 to 38. When it comes to Mississippi, Joe Biden is winning 81 to 15% with 87% of precincts reporting. Currently, Bernie Sanders is fighting to remain viable in Mississippi. When it comes to Missouri, Joe Biden is winning 60 to 35% with 95% of precincts reporting. In North Dakota, with only 10% of precincts reporting, Bernie Sanders actually is winning 40 to 26%. Although I will say this state only has 14 pledge delegates up for grabs. So it's not going to change much in the overall state of the race. When it comes to Washington state, it is a dead heat with 68% of precincts reporting. Both are at 33%. Joe Biden trailing Bernie Sanders, but they've been going back and forth all night, so that could change. And overall, what I really was hoping for was an upset in Michigan. I was hoping for Bernie Sanders to win Washington state handily and then to hopefully knock off another state. I don't know, North Dakota, Idaho, but it's not good. It's not good. Michigan was really the state that we were eyeing, the state that can really turn things around and hopefully shift the narrative, right? Because that is the state with the largest amount of delegates up for grabs. And if there was another upset, then that could potentially have made a really big difference. But we just, we didn't get that. And now it's admittedly looking very, very bad. And then next week on Tuesday, we have, I believe, four more states going. And if we don't pull out a victory, it may be over. Now, before we talk more about the implications of tonight's results, I do want to look to some of the exit polls, at least from Michigan, because it really shows you what's happening. This isn't just an ideological battle. This is a generational fight because look at this here. Joe Biden is getting support from almost all of the older voters and Bernie Sanders is getting support from almost all of the younger voters. But the problem here, as you can see, is that older voters make up a higher percentage than younger voters. 18 to 24-year-olds only account for 7% of voters, 25 to 29-year-olds only account for 8% of voters. Meanwhile, Joe Biden's strongest demographic, 65 or over, accounts for almost a quarter of the entire electorate. And he gets 73% of them. You have 32% of overall voters being between ages 50 and 64. So this is generational. Now, what's interesting is that when you look at this exit poll from Michigan that was posted by CBS News, it asks, should the U.S. economic system be completely overhauled? 49% said yes, but yet voters still went for Biden. So really what I think we're seeing is that older voters who mostly watch MSNBC and Cable News, they agree with us when it comes to Medicare for all, right? We've won the messaging battle, but all of this talk about electability has been beaten into their brains and they just don't want to take a risk with Bernie Sanders, even if they feel like maybe he's better, maybe young people like them and all the energy is with Bernie Sanders. They just, they're opting for Joe Biden. Now I am not going to declare the race over because here's the thing, Joe Biden is such a weak candidate and the race so far has been so volatile that anything can happen. So if Bernie Sanders has a blowout performance at Sunday's debate, there's the potential there. If voters really see just how weak Joe Biden is, that maybe things can change. Is that likely? No, I don't want to get your hopes up because first of all, Bernie Sanders, let's face it, he's just too nice. He just won't hammer Biden in the way that he needs to. He's too nice. And even if it's the case that Bernie Sanders has some type of blowout performance and, you know, Biden face plants, the media is still very much in control here. Older voters by and large watch cable news, MSNBC and CNN, and they have a monopoly on the political narrative. So even if it's the case that Joe Biden fumbles, is it going to change much? I'm not sure. And the reason why it doesn't look good is because when you look at polling for states coming up next week, I believe Arizona, Florida, Joe Biden is poised to do very, very well in those states. So our last hope really is that Bernie Sanders can have a great debate performance and Joe Biden can have a really terrible debate performance. However, holding on to that hope, it may not mean much because the Democratic Party is already talking about possibly canceling the debate because they're willing to wrap it up. They want to wrap it up and they're willing to cancel it just to kind of hide Joe Biden away until November. In fact, on NPR, Clyburn said just that. I think we will be at a point where Joe Biden will be the prohibitive nominee of the party. And I think the DNC, the Democratic National Committee, should then step in, make an assessment and determine whether or not they'll have any more debates. And if you think that the DNC wouldn't do something like that, they absolutely will do anything in their power to protect power. They've got all the institutional advantages that we lack and they will use them to make sure that we are thoroughly defeated every single time. And you see individuals going on MSNBC like James Carville saying, hey, let's wrap this puppy up. You see Andrew Yang endorsing Joe Biden saying, look, I said I'd support the nominee and it's going to be Biden. So I'm falling in line. And basically, it's not looking very good. Now, my philosophy is we fight until the very end. Bernie should stay in until the convention because guess what? He has a lot of money and resources. We've been donating. We've been phone banking and text banking and canvassing for him. And we put a lot of time and resources and our own money into this election. With that being said, it just doesn't look good. And at this point in time, it seems as if Joe Biden will very soon emerge as the presumptive nominee, which sucks because just like a week and a half ago, it seemed as if Super Tuesday could have been the opposite result with Bernie Sanders emerging. But the establishment came out for Joe Biden. All these endorsements helped, right? It helped. So what I want us to keep in mind is that Bernie Sanders built up a movement and it's not just going to go away when this election is over, if we do in fact lose, which seems like that's going to be the case, not to sugarcoat it, not to be too down, but I'm just trying to be realistic here. And rather than just remaining hyper focused on electoral politics, even though that's important because we need power, we also have to make sure that we continue organizing when the election is over, right? In the way that Occupy did, Bernie Sanders took the energy that existed during the Occupy movement and he harnessed that into this huge mass movement. And you know, a lot of people will be talking about who's going to be the new standard bear because I think there's no chance Bernie runs again. In fact, I don't think he should run again because running these types of presidential campaigns where you travel, you're you're going to different states, you know, in the same day, that's just that's exhausting and Bernie has done enough. It's on us to make sure that this movement is alive. And in a way, we've won in the sense that we have basically convinced everyone in spite of all the propaganda, astonishingly, that Medicare for all is the way to go. It's just that that propaganda didn't work. At least, you know, not as much as the electability myth did. And voters at the end of the day who are older just trusted MSNBC and CNN, and they're going with the safe bet. In their minds, which is Joe Biden, and they're going to find out in November that that wasn't the safest bet, because I think that Joe Biden will most likely lose to Donald Trump. So if that's, you know, that's not the case, then great, I guess that, you know, Donald Trump's out and defeated. But then we have four years of no change with Joe Biden, four years of stalling on climate change. So, you know, regardless, this is a really bad situation currently. And I don't want anyone to get blackpilled. I just want you to take some time to realize that this energy that was created by Bernie's movement, it needs to be harnessed now. It can't just dissipate, right? And look, I don't want to talk as if it's over, because again, I really believe that Bernie should stay in until the convention. Will he do that? Probably not. He didn't stay in until the convention last time he endorsed Hillary Clinton and what like May or June. So look, we just we keep on going, we keep on fighting because we can't afford not to the election results tonight. Absolutely just we're devastating and I feel genuinely depressed. And I'm sure that a lot of you feel the same way, but just know that you're not alone. We all are kind of grappling with this defeat. And we're just going to keep going. Because if we quit, then all of the haters are going to be enjoying that. But one thing I find interesting is that you're going to slightly see the narrative shift from corporate Democrats and MSNBC. You're seeing individuals like James Carville kind of, you know, tacitly suggest, hey, you know, Bernie Sanders coming back us by saying that, you know, Bernie Sanders did a lot. You see senators like Brian Schatz say we need everyone in this fight, everyone when just like a couple of weeks ago, they were telling the progressive left to fuck off. So they turned a blind eye to a large portion of the party. And they're going to see once again, what happens when you run someone who is just not very popular, who is disliked, who won't excite the base, who doesn't speak to young people. I mean, I saw a tweet and I wish I can, you know, reference this person and give them credit. But you know, the trajectory that Joe Biden is on, he is on pace to do worse than Hillary Clinton with young people, which is a very, very bad sign for November. It's a very bad sign. So it is what it is. We just keep moving. We keep going forward because we have no choice. These crises that exist aren't going to correct themselves. These people who are marginalized and vulnerable, they don't have the voices to fight for themselves. So we have to do what we can to empower those people and just keep, keep going. I don't know what else to say. So as the results rolled in and Joe Biden had another blowout performance, Van Jones on CNN made a really solid point. He basically told the Democratic Party establishment that they need to be cognizant of the fact that they've got to do something to reach out to disaffected voters, primarily Bernie Sanders supporters, because young people overwhelmingly favor Bernie and young people don't like Biden. So you've got to do something. Take a look. Let me just say, say, I think this is a very dangerous moment for the Democratic Party. You have now an insurgency that's about to be defeated. What do you do with the people that you defeat? There was a hope on the part of a lot of young people. They had a champion. You got young people who are graduating with a quarter million dollars in debt. You got young people with a lot of pain and they had a champion. And they thought that they were going to be able to surround the divided establishment with their movement, crush that divided establishment and move forward. Instead, the establishment united and stopped them. Now what do you do? Last time Bernie Sanders got beaten, there was an assumption that all his people were just going to fall in line and vote against Trump. And there was not enough care for the concern and the pain of his base. I think tonight there's going to be a lot of crowing, a lot of relief on the part of the establishment, but keep it temperate and turn, turn to those people and say, we want to be your champion. If you don't do that, you're going to have a pure victory. There were a lot of Sanders supporters in key states who did not end up voting for Hillary Clinton. It's exactly my point. I agree. Biden should pivot to the general and reach out to young people in particular who supported Bernie and let them let them know I'm going to be your candidate and that he understands the fact that we have left the next generation a real house of cards. Now, two things. Van Jones was actually attacked for making that very common sense point. And to Anderson Cooper's point, more Bernie Sanders supporters voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 than Hillary Clinton supporters voted for Barack Obama back in 2008. Now, I don't know what the number is going to be in 2020, but what I will say to Van Jones point is that it's probably too late for the Democratic Party. And what I mean by that is they can pay lip service to our ideals. They can maybe tacitly endorse some watered down version of Medicare for all or a means tested version of free college. But here's the problem. You haven't delivered our generation any results. And now you have another generation, zoomers who are old enough to vote. And as long as they've been eligible to vote, you've basically been slapping them across the face and spitting in their eyes. So it may be too late. Like there may be nothing that you can say or do to win back these people. You may have created a generation of blackpilled non-voters or at best third party voters who might support Democrats down the ticket, but vote Green Party. This is the reality of the situation. And people are going to blame me and other indie media hosts for saying, well, look, this is all because of you guys. No, the problem is the millions and millions of people who don't show up to vote and Democrats, they really have an energy deficit. People don't come out to vote because they don't feel like either party is going to do anything for them. And sure, maybe they think that Democrats are a little bit better than Republicans, but they don't believe that the difference is big enough for a perceived payoff, right? Because you've got to stand in line for hours. In Michigan, there were college students standing in line for over three hours. You can't have this happen. Like when you have so many obstacles up to voting, closed primary states, voter suppression, voter ID laws in red states, you've got to understand that voting is a chore. Voting is a chore. So if Democrats ever want to have a shot at winning back millennials and zoomers, what they need to do is actually deliver a policy. And no, don't just say you support Medicare for all. You've got to pass it. Like you have to pass it, sign it into law, and then give us healthcare. Like you can't just say, you know, well, maybe, you know, that's something we can do down the line, but first we got to pass the public, pass the public option. You know, our goal is universal. No, you have to deliver. That's the only way you can win us back. And the problem is that in order for that to be the case, in order to deliver, you need us to vote for you in the first place, right? You need to excite young voters and get them to come out and vote because voter apathy is a huge thing. But because you're so shitty because Democrats have failed people, failed these two generations so badly, they might not ever be able to get a chance to prove themselves because they fucked up so bad. I mean, in 2016, they ran Hillary Clinton and that was a disaster. And then in 2020, they're putting up someone possibly who's worse than Hillary Clinton has all the same neoliberal, milk toast, right wing policies as Hillary Clinton, albeit, you know, the person who's championing them is less coherence and there's nothing exciting about Joe Biden. At least Hillary Clinton would have been the first woman president, which I think in and of itself would have been really cool to see. But with Joe Biden, it's just another old white dude who is saying that, you know, if he gets elected, we're not going to do shit about climate change at best. We rejoin the Paris Climate Accord. People are going to continue to die because of Medicare for all. I'm not going to do anything about your student loan debt. We're not going to legalize marijuana. I mean, how could you possibly expect people to pay the cost associated with voting when that requires them to take time off of work, when that requires them to actually take the time to come out and stand in line for hours? Like, this situation is such a huge problem. And Democrats just will never know, or maybe they do know, and just don't care how much they messed up. And after nominating Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden possibly in 2020, I mean, who's next? Mike Bloomberg in 2024, Henry Cuellar in 2028, Dan Lipinski in 2032. I mean, we're getting to the point where we'll be nominating Republicans. They just, they don't get it because everyone in that bubble is center right and centrist. And then, regardless of what happens, like if they lose, we will be blamed for it as we were in 2016, even though, again, more Bernie supporters supported Hillary than Hillary supporters supported Obama. Nonetheless, regardless, if you, you know, fall in line like a good little soldier and vote blue, no matter who, you're still going to be blamed, right? And if you, if they somehow win, which I think is unlikely, you won't be credited for that victory. The Democratic Party has made it very clear that they want nothing to do with young people. They just, they don't want that support because they don't want to have to actually pass policies that will upset their donors, donors in the health industry, military industrial complex, like there's a lot of, you know, money to be made in these industries and a lot of campaign contributions to be given out and they don't, they don't want to change that. Actually, you know, tailoring your policies to the desires of young people would require them to betray the trust of their donors and they're just not willing to do that. So here we are, we're in a situation where we've got less than, or a little over a decade to act on climate change. We have tens of thousands dying every year because they don't have health insurance and the situation just looks so grim and hopeless for young people. And that is, you know, the fault of our leaders, not just Democrats, but Republicans as well. But I mean, like what I think a lot of people are realizing, and I saw a tweet from Glenn Greenwald that kind of said this, is that, you know, if we want true change in this country, we have to defeat the Democratic Party. Like if we can beat them in the primaries, then we'll win in the general. Progressives win big. Obama beat two Republicans. The moderates lose, right? John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, probably Joe Biden, and you know, as I saw the results roll in, it was honestly astonishing. And I thought, look, all the Democrats were just talking about how they're totally cool. It's just like stealing the election. You had one representative, I think, from South Carolina talk about how, you know, it's not really the voters who choose. It's actually the party officials who choose the nominee. So I was thinking, oh, well, I wonder, because Joe Biden is such a terrible candidate, is there a chance that they'd replace him at the convention? But then I reminded myself, well, that presupposes that they actually want to win. And I genuinely don't think many Democrats want to win. I mean, if you're Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, if you've got another four years of Donald Trump, then you can fundraise off of Donald Trump. He's great for fundraising. You can, you know, sit back, not pass any policies or pass policies, and then say, well, look, we tried to pass them, but the Republicans won't allow a vote in the Senate. Like they want an excuse. They don't actually want to give us policies. I mean, when they had a supermajority, they could have done so much to change our lives. And we got a right wing healthcare reform plan, not even a public option. So I mean, the Democratic Party is just, I don't know what to say about them. It may be too late for them. They may never be able to win over millennials and Zoomers because they're not adopting any of the policies that we want. And even if they pay lip service to these policy ideas, that still probably isn't going to be enough with how bad they've, you know, hurt their credibility. They actually have to deliver. That's the only way I can ever see myself being enthusiastic to support another Democrat. If they actually like pass Medicare for all, that would change my entire outlook. Like I would still disagree with them on other issues, but at least they pass something that really transforms our lives. But I just can't see a situation where they do that because they're too stubborn and self-interested. So here we are. Van Jones has a very important message for them. Will they listen? Probably not. And if you look at the response in Centrist, Donut, Twitter, they were very much not okay with what he was saying. All right. You read what you saw. You know, they're definitely excited about the fact that the Brony Brows are crying now, but you're going to cry in November if you continue to do this because voters aren't excited to vote for Joe Biden. You know, Donald Trump is going to mop the floor with him. And this is something that we tried to warn you about. Donald Trump is a fascist. He's a disaster. And you rolled the dice with the worst possible candidate. I mean, actually Bloomberg is probably the worst, but I mean, out of all the people in the field, what, 20 plus candidates, you chose one of the worst. So I mean, all right, that's where we're at. This is your fault. You can't blame voters. You can't blame anyone else but yourselves. This is what the Democrats wanted. This is what the establishment wanted. And this is what they're getting. So if you are not worried about Joe Biden's electability, then you have not been paying attention because he's not electable. Like I don't want to say that it's a foregone conclusion that he loses to Donald Trump in the likely event that he's the Democratic Party's nominee, but like there has to be some sort of miracle that's out of his control that would lead to him winning. And miracle probably isn't the best word because when I say miracle, I mean something horrible happening like coronavirus really turning into a global pandemic and leading to some type of global economic crash, the economy going downhill, something like that would have to happen, which means that a lot of people would be hurt. So miracle is in the right word. I don't know what the right word is in this situation, but what I'm trying to say is that Joe Biden winning against Donald Trump is a really difficult thing to imagine, especially considering that Donald Trump is now emboldened, right? He survived the Russia-gate scandal. He wasn't impeached. He's very popular among Republicans. He's an incumbent. So he's harder to beat now than he was in 2016, but in 2020 we have a weaker candidate going up against Donald Trump. So I mean a lot of us on the left have been saying this about Joe Biden, brace for impact. There's an iceberg dead ahead and Bernie was going to be the one that would take hold of the ship and steer it away from that iceberg, but with Joe Biden it looks like we are headed for collision course. Now the mainstream media kept talking about electability, but now that it seems likely that Joe Biden is going to be the nominee, all of a sudden they're realizing what did we just do? At least Jake Tapper on CNN seems to realize we've maybe made a huge mistake in propping up Joe Biden. I'm getting real 2004 vibes tonight, which is Democrats want to defeat an incumbent Republican so badly, Democratic voters I mean, that they decide which one is electable and they decide which one is electable and they decide, okay it's John Kerry or in this case it's Joe Biden. There's a huge coalescing around that person. They want to end the primary process as soon as possible and then basically they coordinate this person. Now what did we learn in the last few weeks? Mark McKinnon, former George W. Bush advisor told me that actually they feared Howard Dean more because Howard Dean, even though he was less predictable, there was a starker difference between Howard Dean and George W. Bush and he was drawing much bigger crowds than John Kerry was able to and Howard Dean, we had him on the Sunday show and Howard Dean said, now you tell me, but the point is that when you have the Democratic electorate deciding that they are all a bunch of Rachel Maddows and Chris Hayses and the like, that they're just, you know, progressive pundits and they're going to pick out who is the best one, maybe they don't necessarily always know what they're doing. So I found that really, really interesting and my first thought was where were you like months ago when we needed you to say this on national TV? Like it doesn't help that the media kept on like reinforcing this narrative that Joe Biden's electable, Joe Biden's the most electable, Joe Biden's the most electable, you know, vote for Joe Biden to be Donald Trump. Like this is all you talked about and you brought people on to your network who screeched about how Bernie Sanders was an electable and this comes after you did the same thing in 2016. Like we were told time and again, we had to fall in line and support Hillary Clinton because she was more electable against the Republican and she lost. And you didn't even take a moment to reflect on the mistakes that you made in this industry, mainstream corporate media, and you did it again. And now that Joe Biden is almost going to wrap up the nomination, now you're saying maybe voters aren't the best to gauge a candidate's electability. I mean, you should have said this earlier, Jake. You should have said this earlier, because now it may be too late. Come on, you're killing me. And when he said that he's getting 2004 vibes that actually really did resonate with me because I kind of see that too. Like I see Joe Biden as a John Kerry type of figure where you have the Democratic Party's base just horrified with the prospect of another four years of the Republican incumbent. So they just fall in line and support the individual with no enthusiasm, no energy behind him because they think that's the individual who's going to be the Republican. And that's kind of what we see happening now. They're coalescing around Joe Biden because they just want to defeat Donald Trump. But the problem is that, you know, as Michael Moore put it, when Democrats play it safe, Democrats lose. Now for all this talk of George McGovern back in 1972 and how he was a far leftist and, you know, he got wiped out, what they never tell you is that public opinion polls showed that McGovern never had a chance against Nixon. Like it wasn't as if he was leading in the polls and then it was a surprise victory. Nobody was surprised that he lost the general election. But the thing that's most important and to keep in mind is that that was 50 years ago. You don't have to go back that long to figure out what can happen now. You just have to go back to 2004, 2000, 2016. Like the fact that we keep pushing the selectability myth about moderates shows that these pundits, they're not able to adapt with changes. Like that's part of being a political analyst. Like you always are supposed to take into account new information. It's what I try to do. I always try to be introspective and figure out what we're doing right, what we're doing wrong. But for them, it's like they're stuck in the 1990s or 1980s and they are incapable of thinking outside of this dichotomy between winning over right-leaning independents and, you know, Republican voters outright. Like that's all that they think you do to win. But things have changed. Now the Democratic Party's key to success is to make sure that they have an energized base. Turnout is high, which means you're going to have to get young people involved who overwhelmingly support the Democratic Party over the Republican Party, which means that if you want young people to get involved, you've got to run someone who's progressive, not someone who's basically admitting that he's conservative and he likes Republicans and he vetoed Medicare for all. Like it's a recipe for disaster. It is a recipe for disaster and barring some type of huge external factor like a global recession. It just seems really unlikely that Joe Biden can pull off a victory given what we know about the modern American electorate. The issue that Democrats need to face is not winning over, you know, suburban, never Trump Republican voters. It's getting people to vote in the first place. So this means that they should be doing a continuous get out the vote effort registering thousands of new voters every single month because this is what is needed because if they don't get back power, they can't beat back voter suppression efforts. But the problem is that they're suppressing their own base because they know that larger turnout ends up helping Bernie Sanders and progressive insurgent campaigns. So it's just like they just don't get it. And I don't know if they're just genuinely stupid or they're being intentionally obtuse. But if you want to win, you have to adapt with new information. You can't keep just using the same playbook, you know, the same rules don't apply today throughout the old rulebook. This is 2020 things have changed. This isn't 1972. This is 2020. And if you want to win, you've got to change, you've got to adapt. Two new generations of voters are now eligible to vote. Millennials are the largest young voters just generally speaking are the largest percentage of the population. Now we overpass boomers, right? So you've got to figure out some way to bring them in. I don't know if it's compulsory voting. I don't know if it is really just doing these types of continuous get out the vote campaign efforts, but you've got to try everything because you can't afford not to. We're facing, you know, climate catastrophe and fascism in this country. So I mean, that's all I'll say, you know, these pundits in mainstream media, they've got to change. But you know, part of the reason why they won't change is because they're there because they won't actually, you know, offend the status quo, right? You're not going to get hired at CNN or MSNBC if you are going to be a rabble rouser and disrupt the interests of corporate America and capitalism. So since that won't change, then we'll continue to be stuck in this predicament where we run these corporate Democrats because we're promised that they're the most electable and then they go on to lose and we're stuck with a horrible Republican. It's sad, but I just, I don't know that they'll wake up and maybe they never will, but we've got to make sure that our MSNBC-brained family members stop watching CNN and MSNBC and corporate media and actually try to find outside sources that don't just confirm their bias, but actually teach them new things about the electorate and give them an alternative perspective that they're not getting from MSNBC. Look, I'll admit that the path forward for Bernie Sanders, it's difficult. If he's going to be the nominee, we have a huge, huge amount of obstacles that we have to overcome. Maybe things can turn around at Sunday's debate. I don't know what's going to happen, but I will say that it's not over yet and I'm going to be here fighting for Bernie Sanders until the end, until he decides to call it quits. With that being said, you know, predictably people on MSNBC, the usual suspects, the ghouls that we have to listen to, they're already willing to call it quits. And James Carville said on MSNBC that he's ready to just wrap this puppy up and end the primary. But we now have a party because James Carville is available to talk to us. James, good evening. What are the voters saying tonight? What needs to happen right now? They're saying something very clearly in my tip of a hat to Guy Fawkes. Remember, remember, this is all about November. These voters want to shut this thing down. I mean, you can just look all across the spectrum of the Democratic Party and people are saying, we made our decision. This is who we're going with. And Sanders may not break threshold in Mississippi. It's at 15.3 right now. And we got acknowledged that he created a movement, that he did some truly remarkable things in American politics, and certainly Vice President Biden, we've got to talk to him and discuss this. But we also, we can't diss these Democratic voters who are just coming out in every corner of this country saying, let's get on with this thing. Now, our mission as a party is to defeat Donald Trump. According to 538, there's a 99 to one chance that Vice President Biden is going to be the nominee. Let's shut this puppy down and let's move on and worry about November. This thing is decided. If you've ever watched The Righteous Gemstones on HBO, he sounds exactly like Baby Billy. Exactly like Baby Billy. I hate James Carpenter. This individual, he's just insufferable and it irritates me how Brian Williams was kissing his ass at the beginning. And MSNBC, like they are obsessed with him. He's been coming on like once a week. Stop bringing him on. Like, do you want to actually have any younger viewers watch MSNBC? You can't bring on people like this, who are just insufferable and wrong about everything. But he says, quote, voters want to shut this thing down. I haven't voted yet. Like my state doesn't vote until I think May, Oregon. So not everyone has spoken yet. And to say that voters want to shut this thing down, maybe some voters want to shut this thing down. Maybe they don't want to prolong to primary because they think that that will hurt the nominee going up against Donald Trump. But I mean, like to just say unequivocally, voters want to shut this thing down. I mean, you could have said that after Nevada when you were throwing a temper tantrum on MSNBC, saying, hi, Putin. Remember that? You were acting like a fucking buffoon. So I mean, we could say the same exact thing. And he's saying, look, according to 538, there's a 99 to one chance that Vice President Biden is going to be the nominee. Let's shut this puppy down and let's move on and worry about November. This thing is decided. Well, look, when 538 projected that Bernie Sanders was the favorite to win a plurality of delegates, if we said that, would you have been okay? More importantly, like if the roles were reversed and what we thought was going to happen before all the establishment candidates dropped out and endorsed Joe Biden, like if Bernie Sanders was in this predicament, would you be saying the same thing? No, you wouldn't, because when it did seem like Bernie Sanders was the one who was going to be the nominee, we were thinking that we'd have to fight in Milwaukee because you all were openly talking about stealing it from Bernie Sanders. Everyone, including Elizabeth Warren, was talking about stealing the nomination from Bernie Sanders if he didn't get a majority. So the thought that you would now say that, oh, voters want to wrap this thing up, well, what if they selected Bernie Sanders? Would you still be saying that? Of course you wouldn't because you are a political hack. And you will always side with the Democratic Party establishment and have a different set of standards that you apply to us that will never be applicable to you and your side. So spare me. I hope Bernie Sanders stays in all the way until the convention because guess what? He has a lot of money. We've donated. We have poured hours and hours into this campaign, not to mention emotional energy. So for you to just dismiss I find that just deeply, deeply offensive. Now you can kind of hear that he is pivoting a little bit, right? Because when you become the favorite, you've got to reach out and try to win over the other side. And Bernie Sanders has a very large movement and Joe Biden knows he needs them to win. James Carville knows that too. So he said this, we got to acknowledge that Bernie created a movement. He did some truly remarkable things in American politics. And certainly Vice President Biden is going to have to talk to him and discuss this. Ah, see what he's doing now? This is incredibly patronizing. Now we're getting that pat on the head that we got in 2016. Remember when Obama endorsed Hillary Clinton and in that same video he said, and I also want to send a special message to Bernie Sanders and his supporters. Like I'm paraphrasing. I don't remember what he said, but it felt very patronizing and condescending in a way because we know that you all fought us at every step of the way. So what you're saying now, telling us everything that we've achieved, like it's meaningless because we know if the roles were reversed, you would absolutely be throwing a temper tantrum right now. So you're trying to win us over after you all showed your asses when Bernie Sanders was the presumptive nominee. Fuck out of here. Like this is the problem with these types of people, these types of elites, democratic strategists, like they don't actually listen to normal voters. Like he doesn't realize like it's not as easy as just trying to dangle some policy concession in front of Bernie Sanders supporters. Voter apathy is a bigger issue than anyone in mainstream media realizes. Like people that I talked to, if Bernie is in the nominee, they're not voting, they're not voting. So for me as an individual, my next step is to convince them to come out and vote because they can support Democrats down the ticket. So I mean, they don't realize like they're so misguided and they fundamentally misunderstand what normal voters deal with because they don't talk to normal voters. They don't talk to normal people. This dude, have you seen the mansion that he lives in? It looks like a disgusting Victorian dollhouse. It looks like the ugliest dollhouse I have ever seen. It's gratuitous. So I mean, like these people, they live in, you know, their bubbles, they look down at us, you know, from their ivory towers and judges and scoff at us. And they expect us to be happy with the crumbs that they're offering us. But now when it's time to reach out to us, you know, you see the little half-assed attempts that they make and them just being, you know, patronizing. It's just I'm so sick of it. So if Joe Biden actually wants to win over Bernie Sanders supporters, you're going to have to pick a very, very left-wing VP, still won't win over all of them. And you're going to have to actually make real policy concessions, not just say, well, I support, you know, a means test and version of Medicare for all or whatever. Like, there's a chance that you just can't win them over because they're going to stay home. But if you actually want to win and really win back the Democratic Party voters who, you know, elites drove away, we need policy concessions in the form of policies being passed and codified into law, like we're talking not just policy concessions in the sense that you agree to support Medicare for all if you're elected, like we need you to pass it and give us the healthcare. That's where we're at now. Because anyone who is younger than 45 years old, they've been turned off by the Democratic Party establishment, by the Obamas, by the Hillary Clinton's, by the Joe Biden's, by the Mike Bloomberg's now of the world. And James Carville can never understand that because he lives in a mansion. He's rich. So, you know, he's never going to have to really worry about, you know, the consequences of a Republican administration because he's protected. He's finding his money. He'll never have to worry about a medical bankruptcy. He'll never have to worry about dying because he doesn't have health insurance. He'll never have to worry about getting his student loans paid for or putting food on the table because he's rich. And, you know, rather than rich explaining if Democratic Party strategists actually wanted to win, I'm not convinced that they do, you would talk to normal people and not just talk at us and talk amongst yourselves on MSNBC. That's where you start. So, as it becomes more and more likely that Joe Biden will be the Democratic Party's nominee, it's not over yet, but it's not looking good. You know, we're all kind of asking ourselves going forward, what are we going to do? And I'm so upset that we even have to have this conversation again because we never stopped really having this conversation. And I don't want to talk about this again, but here we are. So, the question is, what do Bernie Sanders supporters do? Do they fall in line and support the Democratic Party nominee? Or do they refuse them that vote, refuse them power because they continue to take Bernie Sanders and his movement and younger voters, you know, more broadly speaking for granted? What do you do? So, there's a lot of people with varying opinions. And I saw a really interesting conversation on TYT when they were covering the election. Cenk Yuger was talking to Crystal Ball of the Hill Rising and they had a disagreement about this. Crystal Ball was very much on the side of, look, vote, no matter who is a con, whereas Cenk Yuger was talking about the necessity of harm reduction. And her comments here kind of blew up online and she got a little bit of hate. And this is really frustrating because I'm a new fan of Crystal Ball. I heard of her before when she was on MSNBC, but I really started to get to know and love her watching Rising. And I also, I picked up her book, haven't got a chance to read it yet. Notice Me Queen. No, but in all seriousness, I really respect her opinion here. And I think that she makes a nuanced point. And I want to play what she said and then I'll tell you a little bit of the response from the usual suspects who wants Bernie Sanders supporters to fall in line. And then I will tell you where I fall. But if Joe Biden is the nominee, I think we've also got to realize that this whole vote, blue, no matter who thing is a complete con, because what do we see? Biden's already on TV with Lawrence O'Donnell saying he vetoed Medicare for all. I mean, they spit in the faces of this movement of young people and working class people who believe in these principles. They call them brown shirts. They say they're toxic Bernie bros. And then demand that they just all turn around and pledge to vote for Joe, no matter what. Well, I don't think that we should be so easy in giving up our votes like that. Look, these young people have organized around the Green New Deal, were organized around Medicare for all. The moment that they say, you know what, Joe, it's fine. You can spit in our faces. You can promise to veto Medicare for all, but we're still going to turn out and vote for you is the moment that you lose any kind of power in this situation. And look, it is a grim situation if Joe Biden is the nominee. But the least that this movement can do is hold on to some modicum of power to say, no, you don't just get our vote. You have to at least try to earn it. And I think that's a really important message moving forward. But Chris, I gotta ask, what's our alternative? I mean, I don't think it's tenable for progressives to threaten to vote for Trump. I think that's nuts. I would never do that. I would never vote for Donald Trump either. But you can leave it blank. As of today, I'm an undecided voter because here's the thing, Jake, Donald Trump is awful. The next Republican will be awful. And if they always can say, look, you've got to vote for us no matter what you've got no other choice, then they're always going to treat us like this because you have no power in that situation if you're just going to show up and vote for them anyway. So I know people aren't going to want to hear that. But I think that is the reality of the situation that we face right now. So regardless if you agree or disagree with her, the point that she's making is absolutely valid. If you continue to fall in line and vote for Democrats every single election, they will continue to take you for granted. It's like if you're in this relationship with an abusive spouse and you let him or her know that you're never going to leave, they're going to continue to abuse you and cheat on you and hit you. Like it's just this never ending cycle. So at some point, you have to be strong enough to draw a line in the sand and say enough is enough. I'm leaving. That's the point that Crystal Ball is making. Now, again, you don't have to agree with what she's saying. But the point that she's making is absolutely valid. Now, some people on Twitter freaked out about what she said. And I just want to show you one response that stood out to me. This is from Bakari Sellers, who responded to someone who called her a hack. And he states, this is a sad commentary by Crystal Ball. It comes from a place of privilege that one can afford to leave it blank. Okay. So I mean, that's his opinion. And that's fine. But what I expect is consistency. So knowing that that's his view, I'm assuming that he took issue with this Biden delegate saying she would never vote for Bernie Sanders. Linda, you said in an interview last month because you because of the experiences you've had online in particular with some Bernie supporters, you say you said that he if he would become the Democratic nominee, you said you would not vote absolutely not. So that means you would be sitting on voting Trump sitting at home. I'm going to vote blue all the way down except for president. So you're okay with the second Trump term. I'm absolutely not okay with it. But I'm also almost probably equally terrified and traumatized by the prospect of a standards presidency right now. So it's to the point where you would be okay with the Trump second term. I'm not okay with it. Well, by definition, you would be like hell to make sure that Biden is a nominee. So I'm asking the hypothetical, which I will also ask Linda, if it is Bernie Sanders, the nominee, you will not vote for it. No, I'm not going to Trump second term. I wonder what Bakari Sellers had to say about that. Oh, that's right. He said nothing about that because this standard of, you know, fall in line vote blue no matter who, it's only applied to the left. It's never applied to centrists. They're never held to that same standard. Like how often do you hear on MSNBC the Puma movement back in 2008 where Hillary Clinton supporters vowed to support John McCain over Barack Obama? Like that's worse than people voting green, you know, in their view supposedly, right? But I mean, they vowed to support John McCain and more Hillary Clinton voters voted for John McCain in 2008 than Bernie Sanders supporters voted green in 2016. That's just the fact, but nobody ever brings that up because it's always the left. This is a standard that's only applied to the left. And the reason why this standard is only applied to the left is because if we start to wake up and realize the amount of power that we have with our votes, the amount of leverage we actually have, then that's really bad news for the Democratic Party. In fact, Lawrence O'Donnell of CNN once said this very same thing. If you want to pull the party, the major party that is closest to the way you're thinking to what you're thinking, you must show them that you're capable of not voting for them. If you don't show them you're capable of not voting for them, they don't have to listen to you. I promise you that. I worked within the Democratic Party. I didn't listen or have to listen to anything on the left while I was working in the Democratic Party because the left had nowhere to go. The left had nowhere to go. Now ask yourself this, when Bernie Sanders landslided in Nevada and it looked like he was going to emerge as the presumptive nominee after Super Tuesday at that point in the race, were we hearing the pundits on CNN and MSNBC talk about the importance of falling in line and supporting Bernie Sanders and voting blue no matter who? No. In fact, if you tuned into MSNBC, I did segments on this. You saw them having a complete meltdown. James Carville saying Putin got what he wanted. This is great. Advocating that they're probably not going to fall in line to support Bernie Sanders. So why is it that whenever the centrist is winning, that's when we have to talk about vote blue no matter who, but when a progressive is winning, not that big of a deal. I mean, do you remember in 2018 when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she won the nomination, she won the Democratic Party primary against Joe Crowley and then he was still on the ballot for the Working Families Party and he refused to take himself off the ballot? Like, where was this talk of unity then? In fact, everyone scolded AOC for calling out Joe Crowley's refusal to remove himself from the ballot. So you have to understand that this only goes one way. Vote blue no matter who party unity is something that only applies to the left. Nobody else. So that's why when it comes to me and where I stand, I am in total agreement with Crystal Ball. Vote blue no matter who is a scam. It's one big con to bully the left into compliance and I refuse to fall for it. I didn't fall for it in 2016 and I won't fall for it in 2020. Now as someone who was not vote blue no matter who, if you disagree with me, that's fine, but I want you to at least understand my position and where I'm coming from. You can disagree with that, but at least try to understand it. So for me, I had, you know, nieces and nephews who were voting for the first time in 2016 and the same is true again. I've got a lot of nieces and nephews and they were very demoralized after Bernie Sanders had lost and the same is going to be true this time. I haven't talked to them yet, but getting them to vote in and of itself was a really huge obstacle. It was very difficult for me to do, but the way that I convinced some of them to get out and vote was by telling them about Jill Stein as an option because they liked Jill Stein's policies and I voted for Jill Stein knowing that she didn't have a chance, but this is why it's really important to not discourage people who come out to vote, even if they're not voting for the person who you like because when I voted for Jill Stein, I still voted Democrat and, you know, down the ticket as did my nieces who came out and voted. Right. I convinced my mom to still vote after she wanted to stay home and that helped Democrats down the ballot. Now look, I know that Jill Stein wasn't going to win, but I was voting because I wanted the Green Party's agenda to be adopted by the Democratic Party and in ways I think that what I did possibly made an impact. I mean, we're talking about student loan debt cancellation and a Green New Deal and I think that's largely because Jill Stein is the individual who introduced those policies. So I mean, that is what I was thinking, right? I voted for Jill Stein because I wanted to help shape the agenda for progressives going forward and I came out to vote because I still wanted to make sure that Democrats were able to win in-house in Senate races and when voter apathy is such a huge issue, a huge issue, you can't yell at people for not voting who you want them to vote for. Like, I think that if they're voting for Donald Trump, then you can genuinely, you know, tell them that they're causing harm to themselves and the planet. But if they're not supporting the Democratic Party nominee and they're on the left, but they're still voting for Green, just the fact that they're voting in and of itself is really, really important because you can't have a democracy if people don't participate and with widespread voter apathy and people just staying home, the fact that they're coming out to vote helps Democrats. The fact that Jill Stein was an option for people that helped down-ticket Democrats because if, you know, there was no option, it was just Hillary or Trump, like a lot of people, a lot more people I think would have just stayed home and not helped Democrats down the ballot. So I mean, you've got to understand that we have to overcome a lot of obstacles. Voter apathy is one of them. And I'll add a caveat that I am in a safe state. I am in the deep blue state of Oregon. Most of us reside in either safe blue states or safe red states. So in 2016, even though I voted for Jill Stein, 100% of my state's electoral votes went to Hillary Clinton. In 2020, 100% of my state's electoral votes will again go to the Democratic Party's nominee. So my vote is a message that I'm sending to the Democratic Party that they have to win me back. If you want my vote, fight for it. Fight for me and you'll win me back. But I also take into account the importance of harm reduction, right? Because if I were in a swing state, if I were in the state of Florida, me personally, I would vote for Joe Biden. I would have voted for Hillary Clinton because it's like we're fighting two different battles, right? Between Democrats and Republicans. Both are extremely evil, but Democrats, they're poisoning us. Republicans have a gun to our heads. So the poison is going to take a little bit of time to kick in. But there is a really present and immediate danger with Republicans and a Trump presidency. There is a Supreme Court seat that will likely be vacant within the next four years. So I would vote for Joe Biden if I were in a swing state because even though he's a terrible candidate, I do believe that we should do everything in our power to reduce harm. But this is my decision. Every single person who's making this vote, who's a lefty, this is their decision to make. And I think it's really important that you acknowledge the necessity of showing the Democratic Party that you have leverage and not just supporting every single shitty neoliberal corporatist every time, and also weighing the need to reduce harm. Is Joe Biden better than Donald Trump? Yes, of course, that's the case, right? So rather than us hemorrhaging, maybe we stop the bleeding a little bit. But that doesn't mean that the Democratic Party is good. It's still, we have to acknowledge that even if we're opting for this strategy of voting for the lesser two evils for purposes of harm reduction, we are still giving up leverage as lefties. We're telling the Democratic Party that they can use us and abuse us and we'll be there for them every single time like good little soldiers. So what I want people to know is that this really is a lose-lose situation either way. I mean, it sucks, right? Because if we're able to defeat Donald Trump, then we get Joe Biden. Still get no progress when it comes to climate change. He said he'd rejoin the Paris Climate Accord and that's it. He just said on MSNBC in an interview with Lawrence O'Donnell that he'd veto Medicare for all. So even in the situation where we defeat Donald Trump and hopefully kind of put the lid on fascism, that's still a really bad predicament and having Joe Biden as the president will create even more desperation and more radicalization probably on the left and the right as people's lives don't improve and the next Donald Trump comes along. So people are weighing the odds here and it's important that we all understand that this election, people are making a big decision, right? It's not just about the next four years. This is about the future of our country and it's a very tough decision. Like I told you my view and I'm sure that you have your own opinion. Like I am not vote blue no matter who. My opinion on that would change if I lived in a swing state. But even if I sucked it up and voted for Biden in a swing state, I acknowledge that that's still harmful even if we beat Donald Trump because, you know, I'm relinquishing my power in a way to the Democratic Party and I am giving them permission essentially to use and abuse me. So the situation is basically the worst case scenario. Like it's not even as if we're getting someone who is marginally better than Joe Biden. Like Kamala Harris. Like at least she paid lip service to the idea of Medicare for all. Nobody believed her. But just in terms of like moving the Overton window that would have been a little bit better. She would have been the first female president. I mean, Democrats just, they picked the worst. They picked the worst. The only person who's worse is Bloomberg, right? And in that instance, I mean, you're really having a real conversation about who is worse, Mike Bloomberg or Donald Trump. That's how bad the situation is. And in giving Democrats permission to keep nominating these harmful individuals who aren't going to do anything, we're going to get to a point where we get a nominee like Bloomberg, if not Bloomberg himself, where you are genuinely asking yourself, who's worse, Mike Bloomberg or Donald Trump? So the situation itself is scary. And I just, regardless of how you feel about vote, blue, no matter who, this is your decision. And I respect everybody's decision. If you're voting for Donald Trump, I don't respect that because that's causing direct harm. But if you're voting for, you know, either Joe Biden or Green Party or you're staying home, but you are choosing to support Democrats down the ticket so that way we can reign in the Republicans control. I mean, you've got to understand that there's so much at stake. And this really is a terrible predicament that we find ourselves in for the second election in a row. And it's not the fault of voters. Like you can, you can voter shame people, all you want, that's not going to change anything. And what I wish people on Twitter would realize and on YouTube would realize is that everything that happens here, this is just, this is, I don't want to say it occurs in a vacuum, but voters aren't paying attention to what's happening on YouTube and Twitter. So by and large, if we all got together and said, we are not voting for Joe Biden, no matter what, on Twitter and on YouTube, that wouldn't really make that big of a difference in the grand scheme of things. Because at the end of the day, the individuals who are ultimately going to decide this election are the voters who stood home in 2016, the voters who flipped from Obama to Trump in 2016. They're going to be the deciders, not us ultimately. So this is a very personal decision. And it's just, there's no right answer. It's, it's, it's awful. We're stuck in a predicament where we have another Democratic Party nominee that's terrible. But this time, Joe Biden is worse than Hillary Clinton in a number of ways. I think that ideologically, he may be better, but he's less competent than Hillary Clinton. He has less charisma than Hillary Clinton. There's no, no exciting aspect. We're not making history by electing the first female president. There's nothing about Joe Biden. So I really worry that in November, even less people will be excited for Joe Biden than they were for Hillary Clinton. And that means we get another four years of Donald Trump, which is devastating, absolutely devastating. So if it truly is between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, no matter who wins, we all lose in a number of ways. If Donald Trump wins, then we try again in four years, but put up with four years of immense damage with an emboldened Trump. If Biden wins, that's great. We defeated Donald Trump. Hopefully this fascist threat will go away for a little bit. But then we can't really put forward another progressive challenger until eight years down the line. And Joe Biden does nothing and people get more radicalized. And the Democratic party doesn't change anything. They don't have to be introspective because they were electorally successful. So it sucks. Either way, the situation sucks, but I told you where I stand. I agree with crystal ball. I am not, no matter who, but I respect the position that Cenk has that, you know, this is about harm reduction. So not to both sides it, I see where both people are coming from. And I kind of, like I see the value in both strategies, but either way, we all objectively have to realize that this vote blew no matter who strategy, even if you're using this strategy at the ballot box, it is giving Democrats permission to fuck you over. So we're damned if we do, damned if we don't. Regardless, if we support Joe Biden, we will still be blamed for his loss and not rewarded or given credit if he wins. So we just, we have to be nuanced in making our decision. And I told you where I stand and we'll just, we'll go forward. We'll keep fighting because we don't have a choice. Elizabeth Warren is not going to endorse Bernie Sanders. Nobody is surprised about this. And this was confirmed by the New York Times who just published an article saying she is unlikely to endorse Bernie Sanders, but I'm still fascinated by this story because even if I knew Elizabeth Warren was a disappointment coming into 2020, like it truly is astonishing how little she cares about a progressive agenda. Like she genuinely couldn't care less. She, you know, wants to be a progressive according to her, but when push comes to shove, she lets us down. She doesn't stand up for progressive policies. And this goes beyond 2020. Like we're talking back in 2016, when the Standing Rock Sioux tribe was being brutalized by militarized police, she said nothing. When Bernie was running a very competitive primary against Hillary Clinton and he did it begrudgingly because she refused to challenge the Clinton machine, she sat idly by and didn't endorse until after the primary was over. So this really like if you're new to politics and you're a new Bernie supporter, you know, disappointment with Elizabeth Warren, it goes further back than 2020. But we get a little bit of insight into the reasoning as to why she's not endorsing and it's not surprising, but it's still very, very pathetic. So as the New York Times reports, Ms. Warren is expected to withhold her endorsement from Mr. Sanders, as well as Mr. Biden at this point, choosing to let the primary play out rather than seek to change its course according to several people familiar with Ms. Warren's thinking who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss her considerations. Even before Mr. Sanders lost four states in Tuesday's primaries, dealing a huge blow to his presidential hopes, Ms. Warren was reluctant to support him. These people said the spirited presidential campaign caused some rifts between the two liberals, including their clash in January, over whether Mr. Sanders once told her that a woman couldn't be elected president in 2020, an episode that deeply troubled her. Her camp also viewed Mr. Sanders' electoral standing as fading in recent weeks, raising doubts about whether an endorsement would be a lost cause. Ms. Warren has spoke to Mr. Biden once since Super Tuesday, but multiple times to Mr. Sanders as she and her team have fielded overtures from Sanders supporters seeking to coax her to his aid. Randy Weingarden, who is Warren Surrogate, just FYI, said she looked back at the January episode between Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders as a crucial juncture in their relationship. Quote, There were a lot of really nasty emojis and tweets and other vituperative and misogynistic comments directed toward Elizabeth, and that was a moment Bernie could have stood really clearly enough. Ms. Weingarden said, I'm a pretty tough broad and it affected me, and I don't get affected by this much anymore. The candidates have a role at that moment to step up and provide moral authority, she added. People took note. There was a sense of PTSD, Ms. Weingarden said, harking back to the 2016 primary campaign against Mrs. Clinton. Did it affect Ms. Warren? You can't discount what happened over the last few months, Ms. Weingarden said, let me just leave it at that. In other words, it actually was the snake emojis. And people were getting offended for Elizabeth Warren, such as Randy Weingarden, because of the snake emojis. And that's one of the reasons to be fair why she is not going to endorse Bernie Sanders. They also state that it looks like he doesn't have a path to the nomination in their view and their estimation. So they're going to sit this one out because it doesn't really make a difference. And if you endorse a losing candidate, then you kind of lose leverage and power. Except, like, what's the point of endorsing then? Like, if you dropped out and endorsed Bernie Sanders before Super Tuesday, would that have made a difference? I genuinely don't know, maybe a little bit. But what I do know is that it would have at least communicated to progressives that you cared about progressive policies, even if that would have been the hardest thing that you'd ever had, you know, to do in your life, it still would have shown a real dedication and self-sacrifice for the movement. So it doesn't matter. Like, are you saying that you'd only endorse someone who's going to win? Because that's absolutely just, that's, that's a coward position to take. Like, embarrassing. Now, when it comes to the snake emojis, I just want to remind everyone that the snake emojis, they didn't just materialize out of nowhere. What were the snake emojis? Why were people posting snake emojis underneath Elizabeth Warren's tweets? It was because she lied about Bernie Sanders. She lied very obviously about Bernie Sanders at a time when he was surging. She decided to have her team leak this story right before Iowa. Why wasn't this leaked back when Bernie Sanders announced? Why wasn't this leaked in the middle of 2019? This was leaked right before Iowa and it's not believable because this is very uncharacteristic of Bernie Sanders. He tried to get Elizabeth Warren to run back in 2016. She said no. So the fact that he thinks a woman couldn't win, nobody believes that. Not a single person believes that. So the snake emojis were a direct response to what was a very obvious lie and desperate attempt to smear Bernie Sanders in hopes that you could bring down his momentum before Iowa and capitalize on his demise potentially. And on top of that, the continuation of snake emojis were the result of Elizabeth Warren just attacking Bernie Sanders non-stop. She lied about him having a super pack. She said, well, it's only the two women who don't have a super pack and then she went on to have one of the largest super packs in the race after lying about Bernie Sanders because apparently our revolution and sunrise movement, those are super packs according to Elizabeth Warren. If we're using her logic, but she saw the endorsement of the sunrise movement. So did Pete Buttigieg. But then after he was rejected, he qualified them as a dark money group. I mean, do you not understand like cause and effect is a very real thing if you hurt people, if you are perceived to be against our movement and what we're fighting for, saving lives, helping people, then be lucky that we only decided to send you snake emojis, right? And not campaign against you more in your home state, right? Not try to mount some type of progressive primary challenger to you in 2024. Not that that's out of, you know, the possibility, but I'm just saying like, if snake emojis is the worst case scenario that you'll face when you betray an entire movement by lying about its leader, then I think that's pretty good. No. And I'm sorry, but primary campaigns are incredibly divisive. I mean, they get heated sometimes. Look at the primary campaign between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton back in 2008. That got ugly. And most of the ugliness came from Hillary Clinton who leaked a photo of Barack Obama in a turbine so she can fearmonger about him, which was racist. And on top of that, she stayed in the race after she was literally mathematically eliminated because she said, well, you know, um, what if he gets assassinated? I'm paraphrasing, but that was the sentiment in case he died, she could become the nominee. That's why she wanted to stay in. So primaries get ugly, but at the end of the day, she was his secretary of state. Like you put all of that aside because you've got to care more about the issues than, you know, your own pettiness. Now I'm not saying that Hillary Clinton cares about the issues, but they put that aside. That's the point. So the fact that Elizabeth Warren was genuinely that angry over snake emojis, I think it really gives us some insight into just how privileged she is. This is a multimillionaire, right? She is a member of the United States Senate and she's white. So if snake emojis is the worst thing that she's had to deal with, wow, what a, what an amazing life you must have. What an amazing life you must have. There are people in this country who are fighting with everything that they have for Bernie Sanders because they desperately need Medicare for all. I saw an article that brought tears to my eyes that a Bernie volunteer made 200 calls for him the day before he died of cancer. We're fighting for our lives here and for Elizabeth Warren to not understand where we're coming from, not understand the pain and suffering and the fear among young people of just the collapse of our environment. And it's just embarrassing. The fact that they're truly talking about snake emojis this much is embarrassing. And we knew that this was irritating her because in an interview with Rachel Maddow, once again, she brought up that Bernie Sanders should have spoke out more about the snake emojis. It's a particular problem with Sanders. It is. I mean, and it just is. It's just a factual question. And it is. And that's something I think that that- Could you ever talk to Sanders about that? I have. What was that conversation about? It was short. But yeah, we've talked about it. But I think it's a real problem. Does he not share your view that he's responsible for the behavior of Sanders? You know, I shouldn't speak for him. It's something he should speak for himself on. But I do think it's something that we need to reckon with in our political discourse in particular, because this is what politics about, is to get out and put your ideas out there. People choose sides. People vote. People say, I'm holding a sign for her. I'm holding a sign for him. That is part of what we do. But what underlies that as a fundamental human decency and respect for each other. An understanding that nobody tries to put somebody's family at risk or somebody personally at risk because they disagree with you on the politics of it, because they see the policy different because they don't support your candidate and they support some other candidate. No. And if we follow that same kind of politics of division that Donald Trump follows, that notion of he draws strength from tearing people apart, from demonizing people, from saying, oh, those are bad people. And that's kind of how they draw their strength. It's not who I want to be as a Democrat. It's not who I want to be as an American. And to the extent I have any power to control that, I do what I can and I call on others to do the same. And I think we have to have some accountability around that. So, I mean, we're all responsible for our supporters, except she hasn't taken responsibility for any of her supporters' actions. No other candidate has taken responsibility for the actions of their supporters. And a new article by I think a salon showed that from a data standpoint, the Bernie Bro narrative is nothing more than a myth. There's no evidence suggesting that Bernie supporters are more hostile than any other candidate supporters. This was true back in 2016 as well, where Hillary Clinton supporters were way more aggressive than Bernie Sanders supporters, but yet we were labeled as the hostile Bernie Bros. Now, the fact that Elizabeth Warren decided to not only buy into that narrative, but further perpetuated, it just shows you everything you need to know about Elizabeth Warren. She's not serious about progressive policies, because if she was serious about progressive policies, it wouldn't be difficult to make an endorsement. Like if the shoe were on the other foot and Bernie Sanders had lost Iowa and New Hampshire, do you honestly believe that he would have stayed in the race? He would have dropped out and campaigned hard for Elizabeth Warren. And after all of this, if she chooses to run in 2024, he might still campaign hard for her. But guess what? We're not going to be there for Elizabeth Warren in 2024. If you repeatedly slap this movement in the face and you abandon us, then when you really need us the most, maybe then we'll be the ones abandoning you for once, Elizabeth Warren. So you're pathetic, shame on you, you privileged, rich person. You should be ashamed of yourself. You should absolutely be ashamed of yourself. You are going to go down in history as the progressive who was too much of a coward to actually fight for what she believed in, and you became what you hated. You became what you hated. You stood around long enough to be what everyone dislikes about electoral politics. Someone who's just jockeying for power positions, who's a careerist more than anything. All right, not surprising, but don't expect my support. So I haven't really had the chance to speak at length about the coronavirus shed, because as you all know, we've just been focused almost exclusively on the Democratic Party primary, but you know, as it kind of winds down, I want to make sure that we talk about this and not brush it off or push it to the side, because this really is an important story. And this is going to continue to be a story for the foreseeable future. In fact, former CDC director Tom Frieden is saying that the outlook is actually really grim. In fact, a lot more grim than many of us expected, because if things continue on the path that they're on now, then approximately half of the United States population could be affected by coronavirus and a million people could die. Like, think about that. This really is a horrifying situation. We are looking at the prospect of a global pandemic. And the United States is just not ready to deal with that. Donald Trump is in over his head. He's not capable of dealing with that. And we live in a capitalist system to where workers aren't able to deal with that. We don't have the resources needed to take ourselves to the doctor if we're experiencing symptoms. We don't have paid sick leave mandated by law. It's really horrifying. And, you know, to say that the Republican party isn't taking this seriously would be an understatement, because as many of you know, a Chud member of Congress literally wore a gas mask on the house floor to poke fun at all of the quote, unquote hysteria over coronavirus. And this came at a time when one of his constituents literally died from it. But then he was forced to self quarantine after being exposed to coronavirus himself. And he's not alone because other Republicans, namely ones that attended CPAC, they're now in self quarantine. Ted Cruz was exposed to coronavirus. Even Donald Trump exposed to coronavirus. So I mean, it's all fun and games until it starts getting serious, right? So I want to talk to you about Donald Trump's botched response because he managed to mangle anything, anything related to coronavirus in a multitude of ways. But before we do that, I want to share this clip from ABC News because in order to understand what should be done and what Trump could have done better, we have to at least understand coronavirus, you know, where it originated, how it's spread, what are the symptoms just a general overview. So take a look at this short clip. The first case of novel coronavirus was reported in Wuhan, China in December 2019. Early cases were believed to be linked to a live animal market in Wuhan and have since been spreading from person to person. Shortly after, cases of the virus began to appear outside of China. And on January 20, 2020, the first case of novel coronavirus was reported in the United States. On January 30, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern. More cases should be expected in other parts of China and possibly other countries. Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses named for their shape, protruding spikes that look like a crown or a corona. SARS and MERS are part of the coronavirus family, as well as viruses that cause the common cold. The 2019 novel coronavirus was officially named COVID-19 on February 11 by the World Health Organization. Suspected community spread was first reported in the United States on February 26, with no known links to people who've traveled to Wuhan, China. WHO said on February 27 that COVID-19 has pandemic potential. This virus does not respect borders. COVID-19 can cause flu-like symptoms that range from mild to severe, including cough, fever, and shortness of breath. Since the infection can include symptoms similar to pneumonia, influenza, and the common cold, only a diagnostic test can confirm whether or not an individual is positive for the virus. Thousands of people have died around the world. The first deaths in the United States occurred on February 26. There are trials underway for treatments, but vaccines are still in the development phase and likely more than a year away. CDC officials say that Americans should prepare for major disruptions to their daily routines. Recommendations to reduce the risk of infection include regular hand washing, covering mouth and nose when coughing and sneezing, avoiding close contact with anyone showing signs of respiratory illness such as coughing and sneezing, avoiding touching your face, disinfecting frequently touched objects and surfaces, using an alcohol-based hand sanitizer if soap and water aren't available. If you're sick, stay home. If you're experiencing severe symptoms or worried that you've contracted the virus, call your doctor before going in. I mean, if only it were that easy to just stay home. Most of us don't have paid sick leave. So even if, you know, we stayed home, then that's less money, less food on the table, right? And I think that this is also really getting people to think about the need for policies like Medicare for all. And it is exposing the flaws in global capitalism. I mean, you see what's happening, right? Capitalist systems only function properly when we work workers to death. But when, you know, schools start shutting down and businesses start shutting down, events get canceled. Well, then what happens? Then, you know, markets start to hurt, stocks fall, global capitalism takes a hit. Like, there's got to be a better way to set up an economic system than global capitalism. But that's besides the point. I want to talk about Donald Trump's response because it genuinely is, I would say, like, hilarious because it's so embarrassing. But this is disturbing because this is something that you have to take seriously. But he hasn't taken it seriously at all. He's incompetent. He's a buffoon. He doesn't know what he's doing. He's in over his head. He's your reality television show star. So of course, this isn't necessarily his forte, but I mean, like you have people in your administration to advise you and he's still managing to botch the response. So I want to share an article from Mother Jones that was written by Will Pascal and Jessica Washington. And they lay out 17 ways to be exact that Donald Trump botched the response to coronavirus. First, Trump picked Vice President Mike Pence well known for allowing an outbreak of HIV to rapidly spread in Indiana during his time as governor to head the government's coronavirus task force. As governor, Pence initially refused to allow clean needle exchange programs, which experts argued were necessary to prevent further outbreaks of HIV. He also spearheaded funding cuts to Planned Parenthood, which led to the closing of the last HIV testing facility in a county at the center of the outbreak. Last month, in its 2021 budget, the Trump administration announced proposed cuts that would reduce CDC funding by 16% and slash three billion for global health programs. Three, in 2018, the National Security Council's Global Pandemic Director left his post abruptly, then his entire team was disbanded by former National Security Advisor John Bolton. The Trump administration has yet to refill any of those positions, leaving huge vulnerabilities in our global pandemic preparedness. Four, in a press conference and tweets, Trump has been downplaying the severity of the coronavirus. In remarks he made on February 26, he claimed that the number of cases was declining in the United States. The CDC says it's highly likely it will continue to spread. He claimed that the fatality rate for coronavirus was lower than the flu it isn't and a vaccine was coming quickly. The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases says it will take at least a year. Fewer than 500 people have been tested for the coronavirus in the United States compared with 13,911 in the UK and 1,126 in the Ontario province of Canada alone as of March 2. Experts blame delays in rolling out the test on account of a faulty component in the original test, which has led to an inadequate supply of tests nationwide. As of Sunday, an unnamed HHS official told Politico that the defects had been resolved that hasn't been enough to prevent an HHS investigation into the delayed national response. The CDC failed to update testing guidelines to include more people as the disease has spread globally. The first instance of coronavirus contracted within the United States took four days to confirm after a delayed response for requests for disease testing from the CDC, according to medical staff at UC Davis Medical Center in California. They blamed the center's narrow specifications for distributing coronavirus testing kits. The organization allegedly took days to approve the medical center's request. Trump isn't the only member of his administration spreading misinformation about the coronavirus. Last Tuesday, Trump's National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow told CNBC, we have contained the virus. Despite CDC officials warning that the virus is likely to continue to spread. In a Meet the Press interview Sunday, Vice President and coronavirus head Mike Pence refused to refute Donald Trump Jr's claim that Democrats wanted the virus to spread and kill Americans. In 2018, the Trump administration cut 80% of CDC funding used to fight global pandemics. The funding support which went to training local health professionals and bolstering emergency responses across 49 countries was reduced to just 10 nations. China wasn't included in the revised list. Last October, the Trump administration opted to discontinue a Bush-era program expanded under Obama called Predict that monitored the threat of animal-borne diseases to humans, the possible origin point of the novel coronavirus. The program was behind the discovery of more than 1,000 viruses, including an Ebola strain. During a standoff last week on a tarmac in Japan, the state department pushed to allow 14 coronavirus infected Americans to board a pair of flights back to the United States. The CDC fought back, arguing that bringing them back, especially considering the planes carried 300 other passengers who tested negative for the disease, would pose an unnecessary risk and more than double the number of infected in the country. In the end, the state department got its way. According to a federal government whistleblower, Department of Health and Human Services personnel have been improperly tending to potentially infected Americans who were in Asia during the outbreak. The whistleblower alleged that the HHS workers without proper training or protective equipment operated alongside CDC personnel donned in hazmat suits when seeing patients and potentially exposed themselves to infection. The whistleblower later indicated that they were unjustly reassigned as retribution for speaking out. Without clearance from local health centers, federal health officials plan to fly coronavirus patients from a California airbase to a FEMA facility on a decommissioned army base in Aniston, Alabama. The mayor of Aniston, shocked by the lack of planning, told HHS officials that the FEMA buildings lacked the medical capability to operate as a quarantine zone. On February 23rd, the administration dropped the plans. Costa Mesa, California is also fighting federal plans to transport patients to the city. As the crisis unfolded last week, one-third of the coronavirus task force took time off to speak at the Conservative Political Action Convention. The list of CPAC attendees also on the task force included White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli, Larry Kudlow, Director of the White House National Economic Council, HHS Secretary Alex Azar, and National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien, Vice President Mike Pence, who heads the task force told CNBC attendees that the risk of infection remains low. Despite reassurances from Trump officials at CPAC and beyond that rumors of the coronavirus have been greatly exaggerated, Cuccinelli indicated during his CPAC speech that the U.S. might tie in borders as a preventative public health measure, despite far fewer cases in Mexico and Canada, where two and 27 cases have been reported respectively. Pence and his office have taken control of all public government statements on the coronavirus, which now go through his press secretary, Katie Miller. Because of this move, the CDC and the National Institutes of Health can no longer share their own research and the Pence office stamp of approval is required to broadcast independent information. When a CDC-distributed coronavirus test kit incorrectly gave a negative result, an infected patient was allowed to leave a San Diego hospital. The patient, who was flown back to the U.S. from China, rejoined the quarantine tank of repatriated citizens for an entire day before being brought back to the hospital. Wow, that's a lot! And it is by no means a comprehensive list. This article is from March 3rd, so since then, more has happened, we've learned more, and the situation really is, it's terrifying. It's absolutely terrifying. I mean, when you have it spreading so rapidly and a vaccine not likely out for another year, and we have Donald Trump doing this, responding in this dim-witted way, I mean, this is just the perfect storm of things that are leading to an outright disaster, and I see all of this, and I have this like sick feeling in my stomach because this is horrifying. This is absolutely horrifying. Think if the worst-case scenario actually came to fruition, like former CDC director Frieden says, excuse me, like if half of Americans were infected with coronavirus, we have 30 million people in this country who don't have health insurance. We have more people, a total of about 80 million, who are underinsured, meaning they have health insurance, but they might not be able to use it because it's inadequate and doesn't really offer much benefits. Now, Trump is trying to do everything in his power to seem more competent. He floated the idea of providing healthcare to people who have been infected with coronavirus. On top of that, his campaign is announcing paid sick leave for coronavirus victims, but I mean, this is something that we have to build into the system. Coronavirus is something that shouldn't have to happen to get us to think about the necessity of healthcare and paid leave. It shouldn't have to come to a literal global pandemic, possibly, to get us to think differently about our economic system and our healthcare system in the way that we are absolutely crushing poor people. It shouldn't have had to come to this. And the fact that it is really sad. It tells you a lot about the state of affairs in America. And we have the biggest idiot in the world now in charge of trying to contain this and he keeps spreading misinformation. He put Mike Pence in charge who doesn't even believe in science. I mean, we just need a break. We need a break. We need to stop worrying about global war and climate catastrophe or a global pandemic for just a month. Can something happen that's good to the human race? Anything. It seemed like we were going to be hopeful because of a Bernie Sanders presidency, but even in that best case scenario, we'd still have to fight like hell to get changed. But I mean like you just keep getting hit over and over and over and over again that I just I feel so bad for young people and old people, anyone who's suffering and marginalized and disadvantaged and is an underdog because think about this. I mean, if you're like an 18 year old and you're just graduating this year, what future do you have to look forward to? Like you're looking at climate catastrophe, global pandemics, I'm sure coronavirus won't be the last, incompetence in government and corruption, a Democratic Party that isn't capable of responding or unwilling to respond to the threat of fascism. I just I feel so bad and I don't know what to tell people who are, you know, just starting out in life like my niece who's 19. I don't know what to tell her. Like what do you say to give young people hope? What do you say? When I was their age, I felt hopeful, right? I got to vote for Obama. I felt like, you know, climate change was something we can take care of later on down the road. I mean, I knew it was something that needed to be addressed. But that was when we were looking at that 2050 timeline. But now we're looking at, you know, a 10 11 year deadline to where we need to act to stop climate catastrophe. And it's just, I'm at a loss. Like what do you say? My job is to do political commentary, but I'm running out of things to say. I don't know what to say in these types of situations. The outlook is grim, not just for Americans, but the human race. And, you know, I really hope that we get our act together. No more voting for dipshits like Donald Trump, no more voting for dipshits like Joe Biden, who are just self serving career politicians, who don't care about people like let's get it together. And not just in the United States everywhere. I mean, fascism is on the rise around the globe. Look at Brazil with Jair Bolsonaro. Look at India with Narendra Modi. It's just a really horrifying situation that we find ourselves in. And, you know, that's not to say that older generations have never had to deal with these types of pressing issues. Of course, that's been the case. And in a way, we have an advantage when it comes to the technology now in 2020. But our human, like the human race, like all of us, our species has never been this close to extinction, right? So I don't know what else to say. We'll just take a deep breath. Understand that, you know, there is, there's a correct course of action for everything. It's just a matter of urging lawmakers to go in the right direction and do the right thing. Exercising our voices, finding, you know, the power where we can find it using the leverage that we have to push for change. But as you can tell, you know, it's getting increasingly difficult to be optimistic because I'm just kind of deflated. And maybe it's just me because I've been dealing with a lot lately, but I mean, everyone's dealing with a lot lately. We're all deflated and demoralized. And this doesn't help. Or even if you don't support us monetarily, just watching and sharing and liking the videos, that does help because it boosts our engagement. And it lets the YouTube algorithm know that we have people really excited about our content. So that's just one way that you can support us if you can donate. So thank you all so much. Our supporters are the lifeblood of the show. Thank you. I don't have anything left to say. We've got some more elections to cover next week. We'll talk about the upcoming debates. And we'll leave that there. I'll see you all later. Take care, everyone.