 Back to Think Tech, I'm Jay Fidel. This is American Issues, Take One. We are joined by Louise Ng, an esteemed guest today. We're so happy to have her. And Chuck Crumpton, our regular contributor here on American, can I say that, Chuck? Our regular contributor on American Issues. And today we're gonna talk about the Democratic Party and its platform. The fact is that there just doesn't seem to be all that much energy. Trump always has the floor. If you look at the newspapers, if you look at the media in general, what are they talking about? They're talking about Trump. And there's so little that they say about the Democratic Party and the Democratic candidates. It's of concern because, in fact, people are affected when all the oxygen goes to Trump. So let me start with you, Louise, if I may. Is there enough energy in the Democratic Party to win in 2024? Well, let me just preface this by saying that thank you for inviting me onto the show. And I just wanna let you know I'm not a political commentator. I am a political watcher of events and very concerned as a voting citizen. So that's where I'm coming from. And I have, you know, I have hopes that the Democratic Party will find its voice and energy and the focus and excitement that it had back when Obama was running or even the early days of the Clinton campaign. I still feel like they're trying to find their, what is going to motivate Americans and bring us together. So I'm hoping and I'm watching and we better get something done quickly. Yeah, maybe a lot. Chuck, how do you feel about it? Is the Democratic Party giving us the kind of leadership, the kind of energy that wins elections? You know, I was gonna respond to the question to Louise the same way I responded. I don't know. I don't know what they're offering. We know what Joe Biden has reported to say about the economy and Bidenomics and stuff like that. But what we don't know is what are they bringing to the table? That offers us better choices and better consequences. And it seems to me there is so much that it should be said, can be said. What the economic revitalization package has done, the focus on just, you know, let's save democracy in America against autocracy and just rigid regional interests and the like. There's so many issues that we can be addressing. I also feel like the media is being lazy. They just take the story that sells the news. They go with Trump. It takes, as you say, the oxygen out of the air. Let's focus on what people should be, what people are concerned about and what the Democratic Party is doing has done positively to help lives. I see the great stories being told among commentators like, was it Professor, the one who does the American letters, Professor Richardson, who I think is so articulate, but we need the press to be connecting the dots too. Is it that shock? Is it connecting the dots or is it just coming up with whatever matches what's going on in the Republican side? I mean, you know, it troubles me that the Republicans don't do name calling. They do bizarre things. They don't really have a platform. And the Democrats are, you know, they're frontleroi. They're just going down the same track they've gone down before. And if you look at their platform, it's very long and there's a lot of chivalrous words in there. But, you know, there's no excitement. And if you are having a reality show, you need to match reality with reality, even if one side is not real. You know, that's a really important perception, Jay, because neither party is really giving us anything new that they haven't given us back in 2020 and 2022. Why would that change things? I think people seem to be really tired of Trump and going on in his minions and his competitors going on. The common enemy theory of the woke, the liberals, the non-whites, the other. And for Democrats, yeah, their common enemy is Trump and the rest of his group. But they need to offer us something more than that. They need to offer us a direction. They need to offer us components. They need to offer us the word that Obama emphasized, change. You're not far ready. Well, we're kind of at an inflection point. A very dangerous one. This is an emergency, okay? And I looked through the website of the state and national democratic parties, and I looked through their platforms. I had eye strain very early in the game, and I concluded that it was boring. I'm sorry, we've heard it, as you say. And the Republicans, they're interested in attacking the Democrats. So it's not boring, it's an attack. It's insults, it's whining, and it's all the things that Trump does. And so, but they have a platform that's not as long. It's probably more pithy if you read it. But by the mind though, is that this is not a time when we can make judgments on the basis of written platforms. One, because the Republicans lie, I really feel that that is synonymous with Republican these days. And two, is because Democrats just going down the old road and it's kind of boring in face of all the lying and the insults. So if you wanna look for their platforms, the written platforms aren't that helpful. You have to make your own decision about who's telling the truth and who's got the, hate to use this term, the energy to actually move the country forward at a time of inflection, at a time of emergency. I did not see any statement of emergency in either the state or the federal Democratic platforms. There's no state of urgency there. Louise, your thoughts about how we evaluate them. Well, for one thing, I'm not sure how many people actually go look at the platform. Thank you, I actually read it. I read the 2021 for the first time, Jay, when you sent it to me. And a lot of the values and principles there did resonate with me being someone who's a good Democrat. But I guess in terms of delivery and communication, we can't rely on that, right? It's kind of old school way of communicating. I do believe we have the Democrats who do have an opportunity here, though, to be giving a positive message and show how they are moving forward because the Republicans are so busy with attacks and lies and sort of straying from their principles that we have an opportunity to swoop in there. And on the one hand, in terms of Biden and not being an attractive candidate, I feel like, okay, we need to be looking at successors and building up our successors of leadership in the Democratic Party. And at the same time, if Biden feels he can do the job and he should just face that age issue head on and just say, who's 80? 80 is the new 60 or 70. I can do it. So I feel like there's an element of positivity and energy that needs to be injected into the message that the Democrats are sending. You know, we had to get to this truck. The question is whether Biden has the energy to win an election. He's fighting with people who are, you know, he's fighting with Trump, who is a very nasty man, who has got psychological problems we all know about, but who is an entertainer, you know, it's the reality show and he's still doing it. Joe Biden is a nice guy, but nice guys don't win horse races. And the conversation seems to be getting louder and louder that maybe he should throw his hat out of the ring. Maybe he should give it up to a younger ticket. And, you know, I feel that he should really consider that, but I also feel that time is going by and we are almost in 2024. If he's gonna do that, he's gotta do it right away, put his arm around the shoulder of a younger candidate and pass the baton. Your thoughts? You know, that's a great question, Jay. And one of the things that we can see in history is charisma is a really, really important element. And it's been make a break for the best of the Democratic presidential candidates. Clinton had elements of it that worked really well for him and probably helped make the difference for him. Obama certainly has. Right now, unfortunately, neither party has anyone with the kind of charisma that really reaches out to people and says, you know, I think I can sort of trust this person in leadership. We have no one that really inspires that level of confidence and polls are close to worthless. But if there's anything that they do indicate, that level of dissatisfaction in leadership is very high for both parties. Well, yes, but Trump is popular. He's popular in the base. And to the extent that Joe Biden is sort of soft so, he's relatively popular. So I worry about that. The comparison seems to be growing more and more stark. Trump's special recipe seems to be working. And I, for one, am worried about all these indictments and whether he can somehow escape them. He's an old pro on escaping court process and escaping even judgments. But Louise, you know, what worries me is that we have 330 million people in this country. Is it so that we can't find anybody? How about Handsome Newsome in California? Yeah, I was gonna ask you, okay, who are the exciting candidates that we could be mining? As I was doing some just looking around on relevant topics, I did see that Gavin Newsome's name has been thrown out there and he claims he's not running this time. Who else is there? But Buttigieg, I mean, he's very appealing. I suppose he could be polarizing the sense that there are people who are very strongly still. Against LGBT rights. I was intrigued to read an article today on Washington Post about Kamala Harris and Nikki Haley attacking her. And I just thought, how ridiculous is that? Well, first of all, I mean, it's just really sad that an Indian American Republican candidate feels that her best way of making an impact is to attack another Indian American person on the other side. I mean, what's the ultimate of self-hate in terms of gender and race than that? And what advantage can the Democrats take of that? You know, just again, send the positive message, hone Kamala's message and image. I think she does suffer from the lack of, seems like public popularity and having that charisma. So I think we're still searching. I'm hoping that she can rise to the occasion. Well, I wonder about that. You know, Joe Biden really didn't give her much of the spotlight, hasn't given her much of the spotlight. At first I thought that was really unfair and that you have to treat your vice president better. But then I concluded that he hasn't given her much of the spotlight for a reason. And I don't think she's actually a winner by herself. And I think she's a kind of impediment somehow. She's a necessary candidate on that ticket, but she's an impediment to his winning. So, you know, what happens is you talked about the media, Louise, and I watched the media. I'm magnetized on the media. I want to hear what they have to say. But here's the thing. When Trump or his acolytes criticize Biden and do bananas things, I want a candidate, a Democratic candidate, to stand up there and let him have it. He doesn't do that. He doesn't let him have it. He doesn't, you know, evoke your passion. And who does evoke your passion? MSNBC to a lesser extent, CNN. And I say, well, is this the right role for the media to be standing where Biden should be standing? It's simply not as effective. They're not in office. They weren't elected. They don't, you know, they're not in the center of the ring. He is. Somebody should be letting him have it, but nobody does. Do you think that's missing here? Or maybe it's the more gentlemanly thing not to let him have it. That's an interesting question. I agree with you. Part of me wants to just say it like it is. And on the other hand, if you react that way, are you just giving voice to ridiculous attacks? And are you giving them more airtime than they deserve? Yeah, you know, I'm not a communications expert, so I don't know. But part of me just wants the Democrats to tell them off and just point out how just misled the Republicans are and how much let's just, you know, focus on what the Democratic Party has done for America. And I'm not hearing that message come across very clearly. Yeah. Well, Chuck, you know, here's a question for you. Suppose Joe Biden or someone else in his stead were to take the floor on this and respond to Trump and respond to all the outrageous things the Republicans have been doing and will continue to do, you know, trying to impeach Biden. I mean, really, give me a break. Suppose the Democrats do that. Joe Biden or his successor does that and they answer a point for point. They let him have it. How is that going to work with the base, with the people who are at the fringe of the base and with the Democrats? Is it a successful, you know, strategy? I think that's a great question and it really depends on the way you do it. Maybe the coalescing point for Democrats really standing up for something that matters is to make accountability a principal part of their platform, that we're the party that is going to hold people accountable. And that includes transgressions even on their own side. There have been Democrats that have been, Hunter Biden and others, but if accountability is made a major point, you don't have to go through the point by point rebuttal because it just gives their talking points more time, more emphasis. If you focus on accountability, say, look, here's the issue. An attack upon the US Capitol, we all saw it. We all heard it. We all know that it was intended to stop the process to confirm the presidential election results, that the people of this country voted for. Our administration, our party stands for accountability. If you break the law, if you attack democracy in ways that do that, we're going to hold you accountable. You know, the reason one thing I think people do not understand is what life would be like in a country led by Republicans of this ilk. I think that they believe that they can go on with their lives just as before. And they don't see how all of these threats we've been watching, evaluating, including trying to change the result of an election, how that will affect the country and our daily lives. I'm talking about civil liberties. I'm talking about freedom of expression. I'm talking about fairness in the courts and fairness in the agencies, not using the FBI as a weapon or using the IRS as a weapon. That's in the cards. You know, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that the Republicans will change your life. And I don't think that Joe Biden has made that clear. Do you think that would be helpful? I think it would be. I think somebody should make a movie. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. They should make a TV series. That's the way, you know, that's how people are getting their news and information. I also think it's important to sort of work behind the scenes, quietly work behind the scenes. And I think that's being done, you know, making sure we do get out the vote and we do get out the youth vote and all. Of course, with that comes the necessity of having a message. But I think that, you know, we need to be able to pull together the, if they're not already seeing it, the fact that we, you know, in a year or two, we've already seen how civil liberties have eroded because of the Supreme Court decisions on choice and the like. Yeah, I think that that's a good point to focus on. The other point that I really was brought home to me about the danger of Trump is that I was just in Berlin this summer and going to a lot of the museums and they have, you know, the Germans have been very reflective on how, where they went wrong and how Nazism took hold. But very interesting to me was the fact that they talked about how one of Hitler's strategies or his cohort was to concentrate power in the executive branch and in the executive. And right at that time, there was a news item that came out about Trump and his cronies plotting to, you know, put all the power in the president's office. And I just thought, geez, we can't let that happen. And people, you know, we need to keep telling that story. You know, NPR and other news outlets do tell stories about what has happened because of the state restrictions on abortion to, you know, how that has resulted in real harm to women. And yeah, I think we need more stories on that. And as I said, maybe a movie. That's a great idea. You know, Chuck, you know, we, I think we've identified something is that you can't do it the way we were doing it before. You can't write a long, boring platform. You can't be a fontleroy and expressing it, you know, that you have to have passion and you have to offer people, you know, a better life. The things that they really care about at home. And one of the things that has come up in the past 10 years, maybe five, is that social media really has a huge effect on public opinion and a huge effect on voting results. And we know that Vladimir Putin through his internet research agency in Moscow, which was run by Pro Goshen, by the way, years past, you know, is on our shores. And it's very easy for him to send disruptive social media all over the country, which he has done in two elections and which he will do again. And so social media is really everything. Are the Democrats using social media in the same way, in sufficient ways to counteract what Trump and Putin are doing for this election? And no, not at all. Give me a couple of examples. There are really important, true, valuable stories that Democrats are not sharing on either print or video or social media. For example, there are thousands of people who are assigned the jobs of dealing with our hardest and most damaging and harmful problems. The environment, climate change, drugs, opioids, gun violence, others. And the Republicans are talking about dismantling those groups who are and have been for decades, our only protection, maybe not the most effective, but our only protection against the perversion of those problems. And we can look at the source of those problems from the people that it profits the most. Tell the story like it is. Yeah. There are power and wealth villains out there and there are groups and organizations and agencies that are poorly equipped, but that at least the Democratic Party has tried to equip and support to try and deal with, mitigate, and improve those problem areas. Whereas on the other side of it, the Republicans are talking about coming in. No, we don't want any of those controls out there. If you just leave it to private business, everything will be fine. The climate, the gun violence, the drugs, education. Clearly not true. Talk about the broken models and talk about the people that it's going to take to rebuild and enforce better models. Yeah. We are in an emergency. We're in a constitutional emergency for my money. And I would like Joe Biden or his successor to get up there and paint it that way. For example, I did look at the platform of the National Democratic Party and they didn't get to foreign policy until the last paragraph. And in the last paragraph, in the last part of the last paragraph, there was one mention, the only mention in this entire lengthy platform of Ukraine. And it was completely limp, limp. If you read it, you'll see. And I'm saying to myself, this is a critical part of Biden's platform. Why doesn't he say something? Why doesn't the Democratic Party say something? This is so critical. And they're all being so timid about it. And they feel maybe they're going to lose votes if they actually push support for Ukraine. That's crazy. They got to say what they really want. They got to say what they really think is best for the country. And this kind of timidity is a killer. They're going to lose if they do that. What do you think, Louise? You're absolutely right, Jay. And how do we get this message to the people who are focusing the message? Chris Dennis-Jung. I would really have loved to hear his thoughts and how we can move the dial locally and importantly nationally. It's a conversation we need to have continue. Well, on that note, I want to ask you about, forget who the house speaker once said that all politics is local. And I have come to question that. I think all politics are national. And I get 500 emails every day telling me to, contribute to a campaign on the mainland. And frankly, those campaigns at the end of the day are going to have a lot more to do with the future of the country and the world than me, than the campaigns here in Hawaii. Sorry, that's the way I feel about it. So now all politics is national and you can't say that all politics are local anymore. Which means that if you are a patriot, if you care about the future of the country and all of us, then you participate in the national process. And if you don't like the democratic campaign or the way of campaigning, then you here in Hawaii or anywhere, you get up there and make a stink about it. Do you agree with that? Yes. I don't know if you were asking Chuck or me. I mean, I think both. I mean, local is important because that's hitting us every day of our lives. But you are right that we can't ignore the national scene either. Maybe what made it bearable for us in, during the Trump years was the fact that Hawaii is blue, is socially liberal, but that doesn't protect the rest of the country from just the injustices that we saw during that time. So we can't ignore national and we do need to pay attention and we do need to vote and we need to make sure we get our youth to vote as well. Yeah, I know one family is very romantic. They're active in the Hawaii Democratic Party and every campaign, they go to the mainland together and they walk house to house in various states and talk to people about what the Democrats are doing and what the Republicans are doing. We can't afford to do that, but we can do other things short of that. So Chuck, we're about out of time and I wanna offer you a chance to summarize and also to say to us, what can we do about this if anything? Or are we past the inflection point now? Is Joe Biden gonna be the candidate and is it gonna be lackluster? Great question. You know what I would love to see is for the Democrats and the media to put out there, the stories of people who are fighting to preserve the values, the relationships, the institutions that mean the most to us in our daily lives, people who are out there doing things to try and protect the environment, to try and reduce gun violence, to try and protect teachers' ability to be able to conduct critical thinking and learning, to be able to get healthcare to people who have long been excluded and underserved. Those are the stories that I think to me can make the difference to real people because ultimately you're gonna have to count votes and Republicans are doing everything they can to make sure that that's going to be as difficult for the people they see as the other, the enemy as possible. Tell the stories. Yeah, and for that you have to have rhetoric. I don't know if you guys saw Vladimir Zelensky's comments to the United Nations yesterday, but he was fabulous and he told the story. He provided the narrative. He gave you the way it was on the ground. He made you care. And I thought that's true leadership. It's not just leadership of Ukraine, it's global leadership. And I'm not saying he could do better than handsome Newsom, but he and what he stands for and the way he speaks, the way he fashions the narrative is what we need here on the part of the Democratic Party. I'm not saying you should run for president though. Well, maybe I am. Anyway, Louise, what do you think? What are your final comments here? I think we need passion. I also think whether Joe Biden runs or not, we need to develop successors. That's always a mantra on with private companies and boards that you need to develop your successors to have a strong organization. We need to do that politically. I mean, we're seeing it at both parties where leadership is aging and you get the sense that they're not building up the next generation and we really need to do that. Yeah, it's part of a sort of a national fatigue, isn't it? If we hear the press drone on about this every day and you can almost predict what's gonna happen. You can almost predict what they're gonna say. It gets to suck all the oxygen out on both sides and people get tired of it. I mean, they get tired of it. They kind of make an assumption that they can't do anything about it. It's complacency come current and we can't afford to have that, can we? Thank you so much, Louise. Louise Ng, Chuck Brumpton. Great, great discussion. Aloha.