 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 humanistreport 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 214 of the program. Today is Friday, October 18th 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 either signed up for the very first time to support us this week or increased their monthly pledge. And that includes Aaron Beaus, Deborah Kennedy, D-Control, Ferre Tajón, Francisco Antonio Medina-Saldana, Gasso Goba, Martin D. Rollins, Nicole Primo, Susie Simmons and T-Story. So thank you so much to all of these kind individuals. If you would also like to support the show and join the independent progressive media revolution, you can do so by going to humanistreport.com slash support, patreon.com slash humanist report or by clicking join underneath any one of our YouTube videos. So this week on The Humanist Report podcast, we'll discuss the 2020 primary and why Bernie Sanders is better than Elizabeth Warren when it comes to a number of issues, but mainly Medicare for All. We'll talk about Bernie Sanders' Corporate Accountability Act, Bill Maher's interview with boring Sandras Amy Klobuchar. I'll give you my pre and post-debate analyses, followed by some specific highlights that I want to share with you from the debate. On top of that, we'll talk about the squawgs endorsement of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren's reaction to said endorsement. The media's reaction to the same endorsement. And we'll look at a childish letter that Donald Trump sent to the president of Turkey. On top of that, we'll talk about why Pete Buttigieg is suddenly against Medicare for All. And we'll also make the case for reparations for American descendants of slavery on this episode and a lengthy discussion with Actified Press' Michael Graham. And finally, we'll close out the week by talking with 2020 congressional candidate from Portland, Oregon, Albert Lee. So that's what we've got on the agenda for today's show, hopefully you guys will enjoy the episode. Let's go ahead and get right into it. Week after week, Bernie Sanders continues to propose new, sweeping, bold proposals that would fundamentally change the country for the better. And he's proposing so many policies that I can't keep up with him. So we know that last week he proposed a plan to publicly finance elections and get corporate money out of politics. But prior to that, he promised to pursue criminal charges against fossil fuel CEOs that knowingly destroyed the planet. And this week he proposed the plan to remake corporate America and essentially introduce democracy into the workplace, which would change the lives of millions upon millions of American workers. So what he's proposing is called the Corporate Accountability Act. And first and foremost, this would undo Donald Trump's corporate tax cuts, which would raise the corporate tax rate back to 35%. And just by doing this, he's going to raise $3 trillion in revenue over the next 10 years. And he's going to put $2 trillion of that towards the Green New Deal. And on top of that, he has a plan that would mandate fair contracts between employers and employees, which means a ban on mandatory arbitration clauses and non-compete clauses. He'd crack down on corporate consolidation and review all of the mergers that took place during Donald Trump's tenure as president. He would reinvigorate the FTC. Additionally, he'd use antitrust laws to break up monopolies. He'd ban stock buybacks. He'd require corporations that outsource or automate away jobs to convey shares to the employees they lay off, give workers the right to buy companies when they go up for sale and offer them assistance to do so with the establishment of a US employee ownership bank. And on top of that, this plan will share corporate wealth with workers, meaning corporations with at least $100 million in annual revenue, corporations with at least $100 million in balance sheet total, and all publicly traded companies will be required to provide at least 2% of stock to their workers every year until the company is at least 20% owned by employees. This will be done through the issuing of new shares and the establishment of democratic employee ownership funds. Also, democratized corporate boards will be a goal. Under this plan, 45% of the board of directors in any large corporation with at least $100 million in annual revenue, corporations with at least $100 million in balance sheet total, and all publicly traded companies will be directly elected by the firm's workers similar to what happens under employee co-determination in Germany, which long has had one of the most productive and successful economies in the world. Additionally, he would require federal stakeholder charters for large companies. Under this plan, the same types of corporations, those with more than $100 million in annual revenue, with $100 million in balance sheet total, and all publicly traded companies must obtain a federal charter from a newly established Bureau of Corporate Governance at the Department of Commerce. This new federal charter will require corporate boards to consider the interests of all of the stakeholders in a company, including workers, customers, shareholders, and the communities in which the corporation operates. So understand why this is important and what it's trying to accomplish. Currently, there is an imbalance of power. If you work for a large multinational corporation, the decisions that your bosses are going to make, they're not going to consider whether or not they affect you positively or negatively. Their behavior is driven by the desire to maximize wealth, to increase profits, to increase shareholder value. But what Bernie Sanders is doing is he's trying to tip the balance of power more in favor of workers. So that way, a large multinational corporation doesn't just automate away their jobs, send jobs overseas. What's going to happen is there's less incentive for that now and Bernie is trying to really actively disincentivize this type of behavior. So overall, Bernie Sanders, he just keeps proposing policy after policy after policy. But if he's going to continue coming up with new policy proposals, I want to make some suggestions because there are things that Bernie Sanders can do that would be fantastic that I think would help him in this primary. First of all, commit to not using unmanaged drones for warfare because these drone wars are illegal, they kill civilians, they're just bad. Second of all, if he were to decriminalize and preferably legalize sex work, I don't think he realizes how transformative this would be for thousands of people. I think this would win him praise from a lot of people and he's open to this idea. So it's not necessarily off the table. So there are things that Bernie Sanders can still propose that I think will boost him. But the fact that he is just constantly coming up with new policies every single week, this is really important. This is how you run a campaign. You have to be dynamic. You have to keep coming up with new ideas. And you have to show voters that you aren't just thinking about this 10 or so policies that you've been talking about. You're constantly trying to move the goal further towards people, right? You're not just saying, I want to do Medicare for all, Green New Deal. And that's that. You're saying, I'm always thinking of new ways to improve the lives of Americans. And that's what's really important. I think he's demonstrating that. So I want to preface this discussion by saying that we are in the middle of a heated Democratic Party primary. And I'm saying that we are in the middle of a primary because there are some individuals that want us to think that it's over. That the winner has already been selected. We've chosen the nominee collectively and now it's time to move on and defeat Donald Trump. But I am here to say that's not going to happen. Nobody has cast a vote yet. Not a single voter has caucused for or voted for a candidate. But yet, pundits are patronizingly telling Bernie Sanders supporters at least that it's over. And if we want to win, then we should just settle for Elizabeth Warren already and accept that she's the best that we're going to be able to get. Well, I say to hell with that because nobody's telling Pete Buttigieg's supporters to get behind Joe Biden if they want a centrist to win. Nobody is telling Amy Klobuchar's five supporters that they should back Kamala Harris if they truly want a centrist woman to win. But Bernie Sanders supporters for whatever reason were always the ones who are told even before anyone has voted that we've lost and we need to just accept that reality and support what we get. But we're not going to do that because this is a primary. Making the case for our candidate is not an attack inherently. It's all part of the process. And guess what? When we have a candidate like Bernie Sanders who is better than every other candidate, including Elizabeth Warren in almost every conceivable way, then we will be idiots to concede this early. Not only is Bernie Sanders more progressive than Elizabeth Warren when it comes to numerous policies like student loan and medical debt cancellation and foreign policy, but strategically he actually has a plan to galvanize Americans to actually get the policies that he wants implemented codified into law by being the organizer in chief. And that matters if you actually want to pressure lawmakers to pass very bold progressive policies. So Bernie Sanders is the best candidate for the left. If you want social democracy, if you want Medicare for all, I'm sorry, but Bernie Sanders is better than Elizabeth Warren. In fact, he's such a good candidate that I don't know that we're ever going to get a candidate with his record again in our lifetimes. So I'm going to take the time now to advocate for Bernie Sanders. He is better than Elizabeth Warren. But the minute polls start to go south for Bernie Sanders, when we start to see some trends change, then we're told that we should just fall in line and take what we get. But when polls don't look good for us, we do the opposite. We don't surrender. That means we fight harder. And the reason why I say that we fight harder is because we have reasons who, as Bernie Sanders supporters, fight harder because we can still win this. In fact, Bernie Sanders is in the top three. It's not over. So consider this poll from Monmouth University. Interestingly enough, when it comes to the issue of Medicare for all single payer, quote, among voters who want a single payer plan, 40% back Warren, 24% back Sanders, 17% back Biden, and 2% back Buttigieg. Now, I don't know how high voters rank Medicare for all, assuming that it's one of their main issues, if not their main issue. Well, first of all, 59% of Democratic Party primary voters who support Medicare for all, that's their number one option when it comes to health care reform, they don't support Bernie Sanders. Only 24%, one in four support Bernie Sanders. 40% support Warren, which tells us that a lot of Democratic Party primary voters are incredibly misinformed. They think that Elizabeth Warren just citing her support for Medicare for all is enough. And 17% and another 2% think that Biden and Buttigieg actually support single payer. So what this tells us is that we haven't been doing enough to effectively make the case for Bernie Sanders, because health care is the number one issue for a lot of voters. And if they truly know that he's the strongest when it comes to Medicare for all single payer, that is how we eat into Elizabeth Warren's lead here. That's how we get voters from Biden and Warren to jump ship and go towards Bernie Sanders. It's because they just don't know that Bernie is the best when it comes to Medicare for all. Bernie has been fighting for this issue for decades. Biden does not support Medicare for all. Buttigieg does not support Medicare for all. Elizabeth Warren says she supports Medicare for all, but there's been enough red flags to where we can still make that case effectively and get people who support single payer to back Bernie. Now the reason why I say this is because for months now I have been sounding the alarm. If you look at my YouTube videos on this issue, I've talked about how Elizabeth Warren has been showing signs that she's getting cold feet about Medicare for all. How I have a plan for that message conspicuously excluded to health care up until recently. And last week I went over statements that she's made recently that contradict her supposed support for Medicare for all. And these are things that we need to bring up as Bernie Sanders supporters. And I will link you to all of those videos that I did down below. Because if that many people who are voting in this Democratic Party primary support single payer and they're not backing Bernie Sanders assuming it's one of their main issues, then they are literally voting against their own interest if they're not supporting Bernie Sanders. So that tells me that we haven't been effective enough at communicating this to voters. And Bernie Sanders obviously hasn't as well because a lot of people just assume, well, you know what I support single payer, Elizabeth Warren is the candidate because she also says she backs it. But in actuality, Elizabeth Warren has been wishy-washy on this issue, not just in 2019, but she's always been fairly wishy-washy when it comes to single payer Medicare for all. And voters just don't know about that. But I'm here to help you and educate you and let you know that if you support Medicare for all, Elizabeth Warren isn't the candidate that you wanna be backing. It's Bernie Sanders. Now, unlike other candidates to her credit actually, Elizabeth Warren has supported single payer before other Democrats. But she's always been fairly wishy-washy on this issue. And this is pointed out by Holly Otterbeen in an article for Politico, where she writes, seven years before Elizabeth Warren said, I'm with Bernie on Medicare for all, she was campaigning for the Senate and didn't want to talk about single payer healthcare. Running a tough race against Republican incumbent Scott Brown, the first time candidate repeatedly distanced herself from the idea. In one interview, she was grilled by New England cable news host Jim Broad. He wanted to know if she'd support single payer if she were the Zarina. In other words, if politics weren't an obstacle. I think right now, what we have to do, I'm serious about this. I think you've got to stay with what's possible. Warren said nodding to the recently passed Affordable Care Act. And I think what we're doing, and look at the dust up around this, we really need to consolidate our gains around what we've got on the table. Warren's refusal to embrace single payer during that campaign came four years after she co-wrote an essay that called it the most obvious solution to the nation's healthcare woes, though perhaps politically unacceptable. Warren's record on Medicare for All has drawn scrutiny from some single payer advocates. Many activists trust that she is fully on board with the policy and would push for it in the White House as strongly as Sanders, according to a survey of nearly 20 people and organizations that support Medicare for All. But some, including even Warren's allies are less certain. We know that if Elizabeth Warren is elected president, we're going to have to work hard to make sure she prioritizes it appropriately, since Sal Roselli, president of the National Union of Healthcare Workers, which has endorsed both Sanders and Warren. We know that Bernie Sanders will because of history. Now let me just say to that last point there, at the dual endorsement, if you support Medicare for All and you know that you're going to have to push Elizabeth Warren to prioritize it, why wouldn't you just support Bernie Sanders? I mean, things like this, it doesn't make sense to me. But what does, this tells me deep down is that Elizabeth Warren, she knows that single-payer Medicare for All is the correct policy. It's just a matter of whether or not she thinks it's politically expedient to pursue that policy. So let's look at her history and contrast that with Bernie Sanders. Bernie has had one position consistently, single-payer Medicare for All. Elizabeth Warren, she supported single-payer before a lot of other Democrats to her credit, but then she ran for the Senate and then flipped. But then in 2017, she supported Bernie Sanders Medicare for All bill and then in 2019, she announced that she's running for president and she kind of started to waver on it. Then she endorsed it again at a debate and then she endorsed it again at the following debate and now she's starting to waver on it. And by the time she gets to the White House, who knows what her position will be. But what we do know is that if Elizabeth Warren is elected, there will be uncertainty with regard to the healthcare reform that she pushes. So we could get Medicare for All if Elizabeth Warren is president, but let's be honest, I don't think that's gonna happen. And if it does, it will be with us pushing her. So if you support Medicare for All, if you're one of the 40% of Democrats who support single-payer healthcare, but you're opting for Elizabeth Warren as your number one choice, this is what you need to know about. This is what Sanders supporters should be educating people about because Elizabeth Warren, there's just so many red flags that there's not as much trust there when it comes to Medicare for All to where if this is your number one issue, then there's no question about it. There's no doubts. If you support Bernie, we know that winner lose, he'll at least fight for Medicare for All. And the reason why Elizabeth Warren, I think has won over a lot of, you know, elites, establishment Democrats is because they know that if Bernie Sanders is elected, you know, he's saying Medicare for All and he's gonna crack skulls to make sure that happens. Whereas Elizabeth Warren is saying, you know what, I'm gonna bring everyone together, we're all gonna hash it out and I'm gonna advocate for Medicare for All, but this isn't a contest. And if somebody else proposes a bill that can be passed more easily, that's more politically expedient, we're gonna go with that instead. So the reason why I say this, it's not just due to speculation because people who know Elizabeth Warren, people who worked with her, Harry Reid, for example, is also saying, yeah, I don't really believe that she supports Medicare for All either. She's not really in love with it. This is what he said in an interview on CNN with David Axelrod. There is a concern as well that's expressed by some establishment Democrats that she is too far left. I think that that's, let's just wait. For example, Medicare for All, I asked me, how do you feel about that? I said, I think what we need to do first is let's make sure Obamacare is strengthened again. Republicans have done everything they can to hurt it. Let's strengthen it. We almost got the public option the first time. That's as good as Medicare for All anyway. And so that's not what she's saying. Well, but I think you give her some time. I think that she's not in love with that. I think she you'll wait and see how that all turns out. So you think she's more pragmatic than me? Oh, I know she's pragmatic is wait. So what that should tell you is that Harry Reid is an idiot. First of all, he is so corrupt. He's basically like a mafia boss in Nevada. And if you want to run for Congress in Nevada, then you have to kiss Harry Reid's ring. So let's just let's point that out. And on top of that, he's saying, you know, in his view, strengthening Obamacare should be a priority. That doesn't even make sense. That's just the distraction. He also says, we almost got a public option the first time. No, you didn't. Obama didn't even push forward. And he said that a public option is as good as Medicare for All. No, because it's not free at the point of service. Meaning if you don't have money, you don't get healthcare, which means you could die in this country. If you're homeless, you have to enroll in a public option, right? If you're poor, you still have to enroll in a public option. And what these private insurance companies will do is push everyone who's sick onto the public plan and they will only offer insurance to the healthy. But if you have a single payer, then everyone is in one risk pool, which overall reduces the costs of the overall system. It cuts down on bureaucracy, right? So what Harry Reid is saying there, completely idiotic, but there is a grain of truth to what he says about Elizabeth Warren, I think. When it comes to Medicare for All and Elizabeth Warren, he says, quote, give her some time. I think that she's not in love with it. Exactly. The writing's on the wall. There's a lot of red flags with Elizabeth Warren. If you support Medicare for All, single payer, Elizabeth Warren is not your candidate. It's Bernie Sanders. And during a primary, I shouldn't be fearful that I'm going to be smeared as a sexist Bernie bro for pointing that out. This is a primary, right? This is the time when we make our case and I tell you why the candidate I support is better than your candidate. And you know, Bernie Sanders has a record that is unlike any other candidate. He has a record that goes back decades where he is fighting for his civil rights, LGBTQ rights, Medicare for All single payer. He's been consistent here. And if we elect him, we'll know where he stands. Whereas with Elizabeth Warren, there's enough red flags to where that's going to be an open question. Who knows what we'll get if she's in office. Even if Bernie Sanders is elected, we don't necessarily know that Medicare for All will become the law of the land because he's going to have to fight for it. And I know he's going to fight for it, which matters. But when it comes to Elizabeth Warren, if there's any doubts that she's going to fight for it really hard, then that means we're probably not going to get Medicare for All. If she's already showing signs that she's willing to concede and waiver, we're probably not going to get Medicare for All, right? So we need to communicate this to voters. Lots of people who are voting in this primary support Medicare for All. And the way that we and the way that Bernie Sanders team differentiates himself from Elizabeth Warren is by stressing that he's the one candidate who has remained committed to Medicare for All and only Medicare for All for decades. So Amy Klobuchar has what? Five, six, maybe seven supporters in total if we're being charitable. And we definitely know that one of them is Bill Maher, which is strange considering in 2016 he claimed that he supported Bernie Sanders even if he kind of downplayed Bernie's chances. But after the 2016 election, I think in early 2017 he said he wanted Bernie Sanders to run again. And Bernie Sanders is now running again and he is supporting Amy Klobuchar. A person polling a little over 1% overall who once ate a salad the entire thing with a comb who threw a binder at her staffers who is incredibly boring, is not energizing the base, wouldn't energize the base, that's who he's backing. And look, we knew that this was probably going to be the case because a couple of weeks ago, actually about a month ago, he said, I'm looking closely at Amy Klobuchar and he brought her on the show and essentially tried to make the case for her and have her make the case for herself. But as you're going to see his audience wasn't really feeling it. And if you look at the like to dislike ratio on that video, nobody else was feeling it online either. So, you know, as if we needed more evidence that Bill Maher was out of touch, watch this interview because essentially he's going to shit on progressives with Amy Klobuchar. And it's just, it's embarrassing, it's pathetic. Obviously this is a fight between two wings of the party which is almost every election. There is a center in the Democrat, a center left wing, you're plenty liberal, you're plenty progressive. And then there's a far left which I think would be represented by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Okay, yeah, okay, we all like them too. They too left. Is Elizabeth Warren too far left to get elected in a general election? Again, I want to win big. And if someone is looking to kick 149 million Americans off their current health insurance in four years, then I'm not your candidate. If you want to use a bunch of hardworking people's money to send rich people's kids to college for free, then I'm not your candidate. And just because people say ideas are bold doesn't mean they're bold, they may be bad. And so my bold ideas are this, make it easier for kids to afford to go to college, but don't forget that there are many paths to success. And that right now we have a huge need in our country for jobs that require one and two year degrees and we should not leave those people behind. Remembering that we need to take on farmer prices, public option, take on climate change in a big way, something that this president has just gone backwards on, work with the rest of the world, not leave our allies behind, don't coddle dictators. And when I was listening to the panel before, I was not in Washington, but I was not for the Iraq war, but I would never leave those Kurds left for slaughter like this guy has done. That is not what America does. That's not what you do. You honor your commitment, you make your promises and your threats and you keep them. And the whole world is watching right now. So I think to get back to the center left argument, I think you're probably more in the, again, center left, not far left, and that's gonna come down to one candidate from each. Now, right now it's Joe Biden, who is the leader of the center left part. One applaud. And I've always said, I like Joe, he's never my favorite, but if he's the guy to beat Trump, I was like, let's not kill him because if he's the one, but I must say, my confidence that he can beat Trump is waning. He looks like a depreciating stock to me. And I've always said to all citizens, we're talking about age with Howard, I've always fought against ageism because it's a judgmental thing that, you know, very few, we can do that about very few other things in America anymore. It's a case by case basis. Elizabeth Warren is 70, she looks 50 and acts 20. She took selfies with 4,000 people. I don't even know if I trust someone who wants to be president that much. Joe, I don't know. And Bernie, you know, just had a heart attack. I think that, you know, I'm not trying to get Joe out, but we do need someone in the center who's say younger and female or, I honestly, you know, I- Right. So my case is this. I have won every single race, every single time, all the way back to elementary school where I have, these guys always say they've won everything. So when my slogan I've discarded was all the way with Amy K. Yeah, that's not good. Is that true? So, and I've done that- When was the upshot of that? By going- Not just- What happened? By going not just where it's comfortable, but where it's uncomfortable. Right. By bringing people with me, by reaching out to people, by unifying them and seeing that common ground. And that's how I've gotten things down in Washington as well. I think you could be the dark horse because, you know, it is gonna come down to that battle. I swear to God, neoliberal elites, they are incapable of learning. It doesn't matter that 2016 just happened. That was the last presidential election cycle. They pretend as if it happened 100 years ago and there was nothing to be learned about that election cycle. Nothing to try differently. Try the same thing again. So let's just try to go through some of the idiotic things he said. He described Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren as far left. That's inaccurate. Bernie Sanders is center left. He's a social Democrat. Now he describes Amy Klobuchar, Bill Maher does as center left, but she would be centrist to center right in actuality because it's easy to like view everyone who is just center left in America as far left when the Overton window is shifted so far to the right and we kind of just view everything through that lens. But in actuality, if you look at the average leftist and right-leaning politician throughout the world, Amy Klobuchar is a right-winger. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, they are center left. Bernie Sanders is slightly to the left of Elizabeth Warren. He's more reliable on left-wing issues, but I mean, these are center left candidates. They're not far left at all. And he says here, is Elizabeth Warren too far left to get elected in a general election? No, I would worry about her electability just because I don't know that strategically she would have what it takes to go up against Donald Trump. Certainly I would hope she beats him, but is she too far left? No, I would be worried that she's not going far left enough to be Donald Trump because here's the thing, whenever we see elections, this is about who can energize their base the most. And Republicans love them or hate them. They do a good job at throwing red meat to their base and energizing the base. They never try to win over moderate Democrats. They never try to pander to the center. They go as far right as they feel as if they need to to energize their base and it helps them. They win. Donald Trump is president. So it's just astounding that neoliberal elites, political pundits who talk about this for a living can't grasp that what Democrats need to do to win is energize the base. So by going too far to the left, you're not making your electoral chances less likely. You're likely to be more successful if you energize the base by going to the left. He doesn't get that. Klobuchar responded to that by lying about progressive policies. She says, if someone is looking to kick 149 million Americans off their current health insurance in four years, then I'm not your candidate. If you want to use a bunch of hardworking people's money to send rich people's kids to college for free, then I'm not your candidate. Either she is so uninformed that she doesn't know anything about policy or she's lying. Now we all know that this is a smart human being. This woman knows her stuff. She knows about policy specifics. So that tells me she's lying. This is how she framed Medicare for All, kicking 149 million Americans off of their health insurance. Well, let's reframe that to what's accurate, Amy. If you don't support Medicare for All, you support people dying if they don't have health insurance. That's what you support. So you support a public option. Okay, well, if you don't have money to pay for the public option, then you still don't get health insurance. So you support people dying because if you want to try to disingenuously frame Bernie's plan as kicking people off of their plan, then let's frame your proposal for what it is. It's a pro-death proposal. You just want less people to die by making it easier for them to get healthcare with a public option, but people will still die under your plan. So your plan is pro-death, Bernie's is pro-life, for lack of a better word. So if you want to be disingenuous, you don't have the moral high ground here, so I would advise you to not lie about this really important policy that the Democratic Party base supports. On top of that, think of how stupid you have to be to believe her line about sending rich people's kids to school for free. How many rich people are going to go to a public college? I mean, maybe a couple of them, but if you are rich, you're probably gonna go to a private school. This is what Hillary Clinton said in 2016. Well, I don't want to pay for Trump's kids to go to public colleges. That's crazy, except Donald Trump's kids did not go to public schools, you liar. They went to private schools as all elites do. So they're lying in order to make themselves seem as if they're more progressive, but really they're just hiding. They're trying to distract you and make it seem as if they have the moral high ground, make it seem as if they're more progressive, but they're not. And Bill Maher called Amy Klobuchar center left. No, she is not center left. At best, she is a centrist. At worst, she's right wing because I'm sorry, if you as a democratic politician are to the right of Tories in the UK, then that doesn't make you center left. That makes you a right-winger because you can ask any conservative parliament member in the UK, do you support your national health system, meaning you think healthcare should be free at the point of service? And they're gonna say yes. In fact, they can't go against it. Otherwise they know that they're going to get their asses handed to them in the next election. Now, certainly they try to undermine it. They try to chip away at it, but publicly they are going to say they support it. Amy Klobuchar isn't even where the average Tory is. So for you to say she's center left, it just communicates to me that you think politics in America occurs in a vacuum, Bill, and you can't see what other countries are doing. But in actuality, if you look at other countries and where their right-wing parties are, they're already on board with single payer. I mean, the conservative party in Canada, they support Canada's single payer system. So the fact that Democrats don't even support that, it shows you that they're not center left. They're centrist to right-wing. I would argue that they're right-wing. Now, Bill Maher also, at least he kind of started to realize that Joe Biden can't be Donald Trump. I was shocked when he actually said this, but he says we need someone in the center who is younger and a female or dot, dot, dot. So I mean, if you put two and two together, we're really looking for someone who is a little bit more pragmatic, who can win over independence and possibly Republican voters, dot, dot, dot. And what is he opting for? Someone like Hillary Clinton? Because the characteristics he is looking for in a candidate, they're applicable to someone like Hillary Clinton. We all know how she fared against Donald Trump. We have Donald Trump as president. Now, Amy Klobuchar said that she wants to bring people together after he said that. So I mean, at this point, why doesn't she just make stronger together her slogan and choose Tim Kaine as her running mate? I mean, this is why I say neoliberals, they're incapable of learning their lesson because we just got a pragmatic female candidate that wasn't enough, right? That wasn't enough to beat Donald Trump. Sure, you can say Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and maybe she just had a failed campaign strategy. If you want to win, you have to energize your fucking base. They're never gonna learn. They are never going to learn. They're just going to continue to impose whatever strategy on all of us that they say is the best. And they're never going to listen to people outside of their bubble. Hence why they're gonna keep losing because people in the Democratic establishment, if they're gonna watch any shows, do you think they're gonna watch me or secular talk in the rational national? No, they're gonna watch Bill Maher. So they're going to listen to what he says and take his advice when this is disastrous advice. If you want to beat Donald Trump, you go left and excite the base. This shouldn't be rocket science, right? But for some reason they just can't grasp it. So I mean, Amy Klobuchar is garbage. I gave her credit before for just being a boring centrist who didn't lie about policies like Medicare for All, but now she's doing that. Now she's getting desperate. Now she's lying about Medicare for All. So this is where you become my direct enemy and I start attacking you because you're attacking policies that would literally save lives. Shame on Amy Klobuchar. You're not gonna win, so just drop out. And Bill Maher should be ashamed of himself. I mean, I don't think there's been a bigger fall from grace with anyone in the mainstream media. Perhaps the only person who fell further from grace than Bill Maher is Rachel Maddow. But I mean, these people, they are clearly in a bubble. They don't know what will make a candidate successful. They don't know what voters want because they're rich, they're out of touch. They don't realize how important issues like Medicare for All are. So if Democrats take their advice, Democrats will lose. It's as simple as that. Tonight, the fourth Democratic primary debate takes place in Ohio and it will feature 12, count some, 12 Democratic candidates. So rest assured that this is going to be more chaotic and more insufferable than any other debate. Now, why they didn't break this into two nights? I don't get it, but nonetheless, 12 candidates will participate and it's going to feature Julian Castro, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O'Rourke, Andrew Yang, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Corey Booker, billionaire Tom Steyer and Tulsi Gabbard. Now, first and foremost, let me just say that the fact that we have a billionaire participating is a disgrace. If you are a billionaire, you should not be allowed to run for president, period. And I know that people will say, well, Mike, isn't that kind of antithetical to democracy? Well, no, because in the same way that you shouldn't have to tolerate intolerance in order to protect democracy, you do have to impose some restrictions on democracy. So not allowing someone with net worth that exceeds a billion dollars to participate in a Democratic primary, that is a way that you protect democracy. You stop the country from devolving further into oligarchy. So the fact that he is here is absolutely a disgrace. And I hope that every single candidate takes the time to point out that his presence there is proof that we are devolving into an oligarchy and they better take the time to shame him because he should not be included. He should have been excluded. Swap in anyone else. I don't care who. Bill de Blasio, I don't give a shit. He shouldn't be here. Tom Steyer should not have been invited. But with that being said, I still want to give you my take on what we can expect and look for. But let's look at polls to kind of assess where we are. So the good news is that Bernie Sanders is finally starting to regain momentum after his heart attack. But the bad news is that Joe Biden is also regaining momentum. Elizabeth Warren is starting to slide. Now we've kind of consolidated the middle tier down to about two candidates, Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris, each sitting at 5.2% with O'Rourke and Yang kind of teetering between the mid and low tiers. But the thing about Joe Biden is his polling, it's kind of zigzagging, right? It's going up, it's going down, it's going up, it's going down. It's overall seemingly inconsistent. But if you look at the overall trend, since he entered the race, the trajectory is down, right? So this is the number one goal. Again, I say this every time, but this should be a pylon in this debate. Every single person on that stage should be slamming Joe Biden, attacking him at every chance that they get. Because if he is the nominee, Trump will likely win. Trump will become the president. And finally, people are starting to realize, including people who are out of touch like Bill Maher, that Joe Biden is not the best bet to go against Donald Trump. Because first and foremost, not only is he getting hit by Donald Trump for being corrupt, he doesn't know how to respond. He's flailing, right? He can't even win over his own base of support. And now Donald Trump is hitting him while he's down. It's gonna be a disaster. So if you care about defeating Donald Trump, these candidates have gotta hit him and hit him hard. Joe Biden cannot have a good performance. He has to be attacked. Now on top of this, my stance when it comes to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren is that, usually at these debates, they have to maintain. They were doing good enough in the polls to where they can kind of wait out the storm, right? I'm not gonna say that now. If you're Elizabeth Warren, you have to have a good performance. You're starting to dip a little bit. You're still overall probably tied with Joe Biden statistically, but she has to solidify her lead as front-reader. So if I'm Elizabeth Warren, I'm taking the gloves off. I'm going in on Joe Biden. He's my number one target. If she doesn't do that, then it's gonna be a missed opportunity. Because if she truly wants to be the front-runner, she has to take down Joe Biden and polls indicate that anything that Joe Biden loses in terms of voters, in terms of support, it's Elizabeth Warren's game. So she'd be a fool to not take on Joe Biden. I don't necessarily know that she is going to do that. But now, if she shows how weak Joe Biden is and how strong she can be against Joe Biden, this will really renew people's strength that maybe she can take on Donald Trump in the general after the debacle that was the Native American fiasco. That's still kind of playing out. But I mean, she needs to demonstrate strength. She does that by taking off the gloves and attacking Joe Biden. Now, when it comes to Bernie Sanders, let me be very, very clear. Bernie Sanders has got to win this debate. He's got to win it. It doesn't mean that he's out if he loses. It doesn't mean that he's out if he has a mediocre performance. But if he wants to remain a top-tier candidate, one of the top three, and really be far and away and not fall into mid-tier, at least temporarily, he's got to have a phenomenal performance. So I will be on edge throughout the entirety of this debate, and it's going to be tough, right? There's 12 people on the stage, so he's competing with 11 other candidates for airtime. It's going to be really tough, but he's got to find a way to elbow through and fight hard to show people why he's the best candidate. Now, before, I have maintained that him and Elizabeth Warren need to have a ceasefire. No direct attacks on one another. Now is where Bernie Sanders starts to really differentiate himself. This is what he needs to do, and I think he's starting to realize that. So what do I mean by that strategically? Well, I don't believe he should just directly attack Elizabeth Warren, but what you do on that stage is you make statements about your candidacy and you throw everyone else under a bus, but included in that push under the bus is also Elizabeth Warren. So think about this, a new Monmouth University poll found that 40% of Democratic Party primary voters who support single-payer back Elizabeth Warren, 17% back Joe Biden. So what you do is you say, I am the candidate who will fight for Medicare for All. There's no questions. There's no red flags. I've never wavered on it once. Every other candidate on this stage either does not support Medicare for All, once supported it and wavered or no longer supports it. Every other candidate on this stage either does not support Medicare for All or once supported it and wavered or they say they support it, but you can't really trust that they're going to fight as hard as me. He needs to make it clear. Nobody's fighting harder than I am on Medicare for All. Additionally, what he needs to do is differentiate himself by saying, I'm the anti-war candidate on this stage. Joe Biden voted for the Iraq war, right? I'm the only senator on this stage without naming Elizabeth Warren who voted against Donald Trump's military budgets. Every other senator voted for Donald Trump's military budget. Not me, I did not do that. Now he's not naming Elizabeth Warren, but it's still an indirect attack. That's what he needs to do because if he just flat out calls out Elizabeth Warren by name at this point, we know what's going to happen. There's going to be the headlines. He's going to be deemed a misogynistic pig. He's too aggressive, he's toxic. So he's got to go after her, but he has to do it indirectly at this point, right? On top of that, he's got to stress electability. This is an argument that resonates with voters. If I'm Bernie, I'm saying, look, these districts that flipped and went from Obama to Trump in 2016, I'm getting a lot of support in these counties. I can win these areas of the country back. I've built up support in the rust belt over the course of the last three years. I am polling very well in the states that Hillary Clinton lost. If you want someone who's going to win, we need to energize the base. That's me, I'm the most electable candidate. Everyone else has a good shot at beating Donald Trump, but nobody has a shot like me. I'm the one who can win. He needs to say this and understand I'm being careful with my strategy here, if I'm Bernie, and not necessarily directly going after Elizabeth Warren, but throwing everyone under the bus and not excluding her from that conversation. So he will be walking a fine line if he's able to successfully carry out this strategy, but this is what he has to do. He has to demonstrate strength. He has to show that he's capable of taking on Donald Trump after just having a heart attack. He does that by being energetic and being seemingly enthusiastic about running and being in the race. He's got to go hard. So this is going to be really, really, this is going to be a stressful night for me as a Bernie Sanders supporter. He has to win this. He's got to do it. So I really hope that he does that strategy that I'm recommending. He has to start taking the gloves off, right? If I'm Elizabeth Warren, I'm directly attacking Joe Biden. If I'm Bernie Sanders, I'm indirectly attacking Elizabeth Warren. Now other things to look out for. If I had to guess, we're going to see a sparring battle between Beto O'Rourke and Pete Buttigieg. These two have kind of been trading blows. They both are garbage, but I would like for them to kind of go after each other to drive down each other's support. I mean, both of them, they're such non-antities in this race. Buttigieg is arguably a mid-tier, or Buttigieg is a mid-tier candidate. O'Rourke is arguably mid-tier, but it's just, it's going to distract from the main event, which is Biden, Warren, and Sanders. But one thing I'm really looking closely at is Tulsi Gavir. We know that Kamala Harris was her target last time and she effectively single-handedly killed Kamala's campaign. There's evidence that she's setting her sights on Elizabeth Warren. She kind of criticized Elizabeth Warren on an episode of The Hill TV's Rising, saying she's not qualified. If I had to guess, I'd say there's about a 50% chance that Tulsi Gavir lays into Elizabeth Warren, which will be good for Bernie Sanders supporters, because maybe, you know, he wins. But the thing about that is, who knows, maybe that just helps Joe Biden. So if I'm Tulsi Gavir, I'm really, I'm going after both Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden. On top of that, it's very likely that we see billionaire Tom Steyer go after Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, but that should be great. That should be entertaining, because he's going to try to present himself as the anti-establishment candidate. But the problem with that is you're a billionaire. So by definition, you are the establishment, right? You're part of the oligarchy. So it will be a nice moment if he does go after them, because I think they're going to easily be able to swat away his attacks. When it comes to people like Andrew Yang, Julian Castro, Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, if I'm them, I'm not necessarily trying to win this. I'm just trying to do what I can in a 12-person debate to have that standout moment, to really shine, to make headlines. That's what they need to do. And I think to this extent, Andrew Yang and Kamala Harris, and to a lesser extent, Cory Booker, have been able to do that. But if they really want to solidify their spot in that mid-tier and be strong competitors, they do have to have a standout moment. So this is really make or break for I think a lot of the candidates. It's a crucial moment for Bernie Sanders and also Elizabeth Warren, because this could shake up the dynamic of the race. If Bernie has a good performance, he could reclaim his spot at the top as number two. Elizabeth Warren, if she doesn't perform well enough, if she doesn't demonstrate strength, she could continue to slide. I suspect that Joe Biden will continue to slide regardless of his performance, but it's just a matter of how fast he slides. Everyone's got a dog pile on him. So this is really, it's an important debate, which is why it's so disappointing to see 12 people all on one stage. Like they should have separated this into two nights. Six candidates on each stage, then there would have been at least more time to really dive into the policy specifics, to be more nuanced. But at this rate, I mean, how much time is anyone going to have? So there is a likelihood that everything that I said doesn't matter because it's all kind of a wash. Like nobody speaks enough to stand out. There's really no winners or losers. That's how I kind of felt with the last debate where it was difficult to pin down who won and who lost because so much was happening. However, we'll see what happens. All I know is I'm gonna be rooting for Bernie Sanders and I truly, truly hope that he comes prepared. I hope his voice is well rested. I hope that he has energy. I hope that he goes hard because this is important. This could determine whether or not he surges and continues to surge or if he kind of just remains as that far third and it's crucial that he doesn't. So this is going to be fascinating if it's moderated well. It's not gonna be moderated well. I'll just tell you that probably. So we'll just watch it and cross our fingers into those guys because this is really important. So about that Democratic Party primary debate that took place last night in Ohio. Man, that is what I would like to call an unmitigated disaster. It was bad. Not only was CNN completely incompetent, but it was evident that they had horses in this race. They weren't just neutral arbiters, right? They weren't trying to moderate a debate with impartiality. They were biased. They had preferred candidates and they wore that bias on their sleeve. So first of all, Aaron Burnett is someone who has previously attacked Bernie Sanders. She literally called him hypocritical because he rails against millionaires and billionaires, but yet he's a millionaire. The problem is when you're Bernie Sanders and you rail against people putting their fair share and you don't have the huge charitable donations and you're not donating money to the IRS, you are a hypocrite. Why should we trust that she's going to be objective during this debate? The answer is we can't trust her. She's not objective. Furthermore, when you see that they are obviously going out of their way to protect certain candidates and they're cutting off candidates, whereas some other candidates get to speak at length. Joe Biden, for example, he was never cut off or if he was, it was rare, but Bernie Sanders, whenever he talked, they cut him off. Furthermore, when you have someone like Amy Klobuchar pulling at 1.6% but yet getting double the talk time almost as someone who's pulling ahead of her like Andrew Yang, this doesn't make sense, right? You would expect to see the amount of talk time of the candidates be relatively comparable to their standing in the polls, but we didn't get that. For example, let's look at the talk time here. Expectedly, Elizabeth Warren as the front runner got 22 minutes and 47 seconds. A lot of this, mind you, was due to other candidates attacking her. So of course, they gave her the chance to respond. But then we had Joe Biden getting called on pretty frequently and for whatever reason, the moderators loved Amy Klobuchar. She got 13 minutes, 18 seconds, makes no sense. Beto O'Rourke, who you can argue isn't even a mid-tier candidate, got slightly more time than Bernie Sanders almost as much as Amy Klobuchar. And then you have Pete Buttigieg, who someone is a mid-tier candidate getting 13 minutes and one second. And you know, that's almost as much time as Bernie Sanders, but you would expect him being higher in the polls to get more time than someone like Amy Klobuchar. You have Kamala Harris and Cory Booker getting 12 minutes and 23 seconds and 11 minutes and 40 seconds respectively. Andrew Yang, who was a mid-tier candidate getting eight minutes, 32 seconds. Now, the fact that Amy Klobuchar got nearly double the amount of speaking time compared to Andrew Yang, that really is embarrassing. You have Julian Castro with eight minutes, 26 seconds. Tulsi Gabbard with eight minutes, 24 seconds. And then you have Tom Steyer, who literally bought his way onto that debate stage, shouldn't even be there getting seven minutes and 13 seconds. Now, when you look at this second chart here, I mean, Amy Klobuchar sitting at 1.6%, she should not have been allowed to speak that much. Of course, you call on her, you don't ignore her, but the fact that she was getting called on more so than Bernie Sanders, it speaks to the bias and incompetence of the CNN moderators. Now, when it comes to additional instances of bias, it was clear that Tulsi Gabbard wanted to call out Elizabeth Warren, but conveniently Aaron Burnett cut to commercial break. Now, I get that you can say, well, you know what, Mike, maybe that we're just planning a commercial break at that time. However, let's keep in mind that these debates are centered around really big sensationalist moments. It's about the headline grabbing moments. This is what CNN tries to do. They try to get the candidates to pick at one another. They pit them against each other intentionally, so they will butt heads. But when someone says, I wanna go after this person and you cut to commercial break, I don't think it's conspiratorial or irrational for us to think maybe that was because they wanted to protect Elizabeth Warren. Maybe I'm wrong here, but I mean, it just seems weird that if you want candidates to attack each other, one candidate is trying to do something that would facilitate ratings and you cut to commercial break, it's a little suspicious, right? I mean, they could have at a minimum just said, look, we'll resume that conversation when we come back, but they didn't. Getting to what the audience thought and how viewers felt about the candidates, if we base that on Twitter follows and Google Trends, well, according to Dan Diamond, when it comes to which candidates gained the most Twitter followers, we have Andrew Yang coming in first place with 4,441, Elizabeth Warren in second place with 3,774, Gabbard in third with 3,000, Sanders in fourth with almost 3,000, Buddha judge in fifth with 2,000, Klobuchar with 1,700, Kamala Harris with 1,400, Booker with 1,300, Castro with 1,200, Biden with 1,200, Steyer with 800, and O'Rourke with 680. Now, when you look at the percentage of new followers gain, Gabbard came in first with 0.56%, Yang with 0.48%, Steyer with 0.33%, Castro with 0.31%, Klobuchar with 0.22%, Buddha judge with 0.14%, Warren with 0.11%, and we have Harris O'Rourke with 0.04%, and Biden, Booker and Sanders all with 0.03% gains. Now, when you look at Google Trends, it's evident that the viewers were really interested in Tulsi Gabbard because she got the biggest boost, and since Tom Steyer lacks name recognition, he also got a boost, because whenever you see someone who you don't recognize, then you want to look them up. But once again, Tulsi Gabbard, she came in first with Google Trends, so you can't argue that there's no there there in spite of her performance. People are clearly interested in finding out more about Tulsi Gabbard. But let's go ahead and get into my rankings. Now, usually if you've watched these debates before, you know that I prefer one candidate and I wear that on my sleeve. However, what I try to do is I try to remove myself from my own subjective point of view and I try to judge the candidates based on their performance alone, irrespective of whether or not I support them. So I usually categorize their performances in four different ways. I have my loser category, candidates who sucked. I have my meh category, candidates who I don't really think did particularly well and didn't move the needle, and then I have my good category where I think that the candidates performed well. However, they didn't really do enough to move the needle in the positive direction, and then I have my winners. Now, because the stakes were so high, because the threshold to qualify for the November debate has increased, well, a lot of candidates needed to have a great performance. They needed to turn it out. And I don't think a lot of candidates did that. However, I think that the overall rankings here, it's entirely subjective. And like the last debate, I think you can probably persuasively argue that I'm wrong here, right? And maybe, because my thoughts on this are fresh, maybe a day from now, I rethink some of my rankings, but this is just based off of my impression, having just watched the debate. So in the loser category, I have quite a bit of people. Of course, the biggest loser naturally is CNN. We should not allow corporate media to host these debates. They profit off of it. They run advertisements that are contrary to the messages that some of the candidates are talking about, namely healthcare. CNN is bad, right? CNN did a terrible job. Corporate media should not be hosting these debates, period. But getting to the candidates who I believe were losers, now again, this is arguable, but based on performance, these are the candidates that I would put in the loser category. Tom Steyer, Tulsi Gabbard, Beto O'Rourke, Kamala Harris, and Corey Booker. Now let me explain my reasoning here. So Tom Steyer, first and foremost, the fact that he's a billionaire and he managed to buy his way onto that debate stage. One, by spending millions on advertisements to get his name out there. And two, by creating this need to impeach campaign where he essentially just farmed emails that he would eventually use for his presidential run, it's a disgrace. The fact that he is participating is embarrassing. It's disgraceful. So he shouldn't be there. And on top of that, in terms of his message, he's a bullshitter. And I think that it's pretty clear to voters that he's not the real deal. He talks about corporate greed, but he's a billionaire. You are, you know, the embodiment of corporate greed. You're a former hedge fund manager. So if you were serious about these corrupt capitalist forces in democracy, you drop out and endorse Bernie Sanders. The fact that you're not doing that shows me that you're an opportunist and you're just like Donald Trump, except on the left. I don't think that people are going to like what he has to say. People are maybe going to be interested in just finding out who he is. But I don't think he had a good performance. He was a non entity. And anything he said was just, you know, a diet version of Bernie Sanders and even Elizabeth Warren. I wasn't feeling it. When it comes to Tulsi Gabbard, I think that she really needed to step up and have at least one big moment. Now, going into this debate, I expected her to pounce on Elizabeth Warren in the way that she pounced on Kamala Harris. And I think that that made her a winner. And at each debate, Tulsi Gabbard, even if she is often, you know, disenfranchised within these debates and marginalized and doesn't get called on, she still manages to have at least one good moment. And unfortunately for her, I don't believe she had that good moment. That's not to say that she didn't try to call out Elizabeth Warren. But if I were her, I would have approached it differently. Like rather than trying to pose a question to Elizabeth Warren in the sense of, how should we believe that you're qualified to be commander in chief or whatever, I would just invoke Elizabeth Warren, name drop her. And then they're going to allow her the chance to respond because you criticized her. And that's how you can kind of catalyze an exchange. But I think that Tulsi went about it in the wrong way, which is why she wasn't able to. Now again, CNN shut that down, cut to commercial break, so I get it. But on top of that, when she was, you know, going through these different exchanges with Pete Buttigieg, I don't know that she got the better of that exchange like she did with Tim Ryan, where it was very clear she owned him. Now, Pete Buttigieg was disgusting and disingenuous. He lied numerous times throughout the debate. But just trying to judge this from the standpoint of an average viewer, like if I'm seeing these two argue, I don't necessarily know who to believe in this instance. So it's just, I don't know that she did enough to really have a sea chip here, change the momentum so she actually gets a boost in the polls, get some momentum, because there's certainly interest in her, hence why people are googling her after all of these debates, but it's just a matter of, is this enough to, I think, get the ball rolling and get her out of that 1% category? And I don't know that she did enough. I'd say no, she didn't do enough. She didn't have that big moment. She didn't have a breakout moment at all, arguably. But there were some good moments, right? I think that it was good on her to call out the media bias against her. I'm glad that she addressed that smear piece in the New York Times. And I have my criticisms of Tulsi Gabbard as well, right? But the New York Times recently penned an article about her where they basically just say she's a Russian asset, completely idiotic, intellectually lazy, I'm glad that she called that out. But I think that we really needed a solid moment where she demonstrated to everyone that she's a leader here and she's better than everyone else on that stage. And I don't think she was able to do that effectively. When it comes to Beto O'Rourke, I honestly don't know how to feel about his performance. Overall, he had his exchange with Pete Buttigieg, but like the Tulsi Gabbard exchange with Pete, I don't know that it was enough to demonstrate why he's better than Buttigieg or would move the needle at all. And Beto O'Rourke overall, he needed something to really give him a boost to qualify for that next debate because he's not really mid-tier, arguably. And I don't know that this was enough. And for the most part, he didn't really say anything like he did at that last debate. Like, hell yeah, we're gonna take your assault rifles that got the audience to cheer, that made the headlines. And because of that, because he also didn't have a really strong breakout moment like Tulsi Gabbard, I don't think he pulled it off. When it comes to Kamala Harris, it's crazy to think that in that first Democratic Party primary debate, she seemed unstoppable. But now when I look at her, she is flailing. She doesn't know what to do to regain momentum. And this debate showed me that I gave her too much credit. Like, she's not as politically savvy as I thought because what she chose to go after Elizabeth Warren IV was cringe-worthy. She essentially attacked Elizabeth Warren because Elizabeth Warren wouldn't agree that we should suspend Donald Trump's Twitter account. I mean, who cares? What a pointless conversation to even be having. If you wanna demonstrate to the American people that you're serious, that you're gonna fight for them, I don't care about whether or not Twitter suspends Donald Trump or not. In fact, you can make the case that as a lefty, we should not want him suspended because a lot of the things that he tweets, they're self-incriminating, right? Like, obviously, we're all worried about the saber-rattling via Twitter. We're worried about him escalating tensions with foreign powers on Twitter. But to say that he should be suspended from Twitter and to really make that a big thing that you're trying to make happen, it's not gonna catch on. Nobody cares about that, Kamala. So the fact that that's what she focused on embarrassing. So she did not have a good night. I mean, she had a couple of okay moments. But overall, just this wasn't enough to turn it around for her. And when it comes to Cory Booker, Cory Booker, he has had his moments in prior debates where he went after Joe Biden. This wasn't one of those nights. He tried to position himself as the candidate who's just above the fray, who's better than everyone else. And hey, guys, we shouldn't fight. We should unify because Donald Trump is the one who's watching us bicker and he loves that. This is a Democratic Party primary and you're literally saying that in the middle of a debate, you're not convincing anyone. This is the time to battle when you're in the actual fucking arena. What are you talking about? So he said nothing of substance, nothing of value. And what's interesting to me is that he chose to take an opportunity to boost himself to the detriment of Biden and squander it. So at the beginning of the debate, when Biden was asked about his son Hunter Biden and the nepotism and conflict of interest, Cory Booker chimed in to try to defend Joe Biden. Now, if you don't see that Joe Biden's response to that was not very persuasive, if you don't see how that is going to be a huge weakness for him and the general going up against Donald Trump, who is going to beat Biden over the head with that, then you're an idiot. Use that to your advantage to demonstrate why Joe Biden is a liability and you're more electable. The fact that he chose to defend Joe Biden in that instance when he shouldn't be defended. It just shows that Cory Booker is a bullshitter. Moving on, we have the Mac category. Now, this is arguable. I think this is very subjective. You can make the case that some of these people are in the good category. You can make the case that most of them should be placed in the loser category. But let me explain my reasoning after I tell you who I've placed in this Mac category. So in this category I have Amy Klobuchar, Julian Castro, Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden. Now, let me tell you something about politics. What's really interesting is that some candidates, the more they speak, the more that their favorability goes down. This was evident with Hillary Clinton. This is something that Joe Biden's own team knows. They know that the more he speaks, the more voters dislike him, which is why they're trying to hide him away a little bit more from the public, not have him attend every single campaign event. So even if it's the case that Amy Klobuchar was propped up by the moderators at this debate, you know, it showed why we shouldn't take her seriously. It showed how unlikeable she is. And the same is true with Pete Buttigieg. Amy Klobuchar, she doesn't ever get called on and she usually, this debate was an exception. But the reason why is because she doesn't really have much to add to the conversation. And it's evident that she ran out of things to say. So towards the end of the debate, like the last third, she just started repeating the same shit over and over. Like she tried to attack Elizabeth Warren multiple times. None of it landed. Elizabeth Warren effectively swattered away all of her criticisms. On top of that, Amy Klobuchar, she kept saying, well, you know, just because your ideas are different doesn't mean that they're less bold or that I'm less bold. And it doesn't necessarily mean that because we disagree, I'm using Republican talking points. No, you're literally using Republican talking points and lying about progressive policy proposals. If you don't like that we call you out on that, then don't use those talking points. So she just was insufferable, but not as insufferable as Pete Buttigieg. He might as well just show up to the debates wearing a monocle and a fucking top hat. This individual is the most smug, elitist, arrogant person in this race by a mile and a half. I can't stand him. Like this debate seeing him speak more demonstrated to me that if he is the nominee, which he won't be, but if you were to win somehow, he would lose to Donald Trump because voters will see that elitism that he wears on his sleeve. But like Amy Klobuchar, the only reason why I feel inclined to kind of place them in the Mac category as opposed to the loser category is because they got so much talk time. So that could lead voters to believe that these two individuals are front runners, right? But maybe they don't know about the polling. Maybe they don't know that Amy Klobuchar is polling at 1%, maybe they don't know that Pete Buttigieg has been consistently staying at like 4% to 5%. But just by seeing them talk, that could give individuals who watch this, who are casual observers, the impression that these are front runners when they're not serious people. And I hope that this debate showed people why they're not serious. Although, if I had to keep someone in this category, possibly move them to the good category, it would be people to judge over Amy Klobuchar specifically because of one exchange she had with Elizabeth Warren, where he essentially called her out for not just saying clearly that she is willing to raise taxes in order to fund Medicare for All. He lied in calling out Elizabeth Warren and Medicare for All. But I think he did seize on a moment of weakness for Elizabeth Warren successfully, where he did demonstrate how she's really not being upfront. She's not answering the question directly because maybe she doesn't wanna answer it. Again, his talking points about Medicare for All are factually incorrect. Like at this point, he is lying and literally using the talking points that are fed to Republicans by the health insurance industry. He's a liar. But strategically on a debate stage, I think he did a good job at kind of putting Elizabeth Warren in a corner. But that was just one moment for the rest of it. I don't think the attacks that he lobbed against Warren landed. Now, on top of that Julian Castro, you can easily say, Mike, what are you doing? Put him in the loser category. The reason why I'm not putting him in the loser categories, because he had his moments like, do I think he did enough to move the needle? No. And I don't know that he's going to be able to qualify for that November debate. However, he's one of the only one percenters that didn't say something that came off as embarrassing or wasn't questionable. Like there was no exchange where him and another candidate argued. And I think that maybe you can see them getting the better over him. There was no moment like that. So we just kind of made a couple of points that I think likely resonated with viewers and then moved on. It's not enough. So he's kind of in the meh category. Didn't move the needle anyway. Joe Biden, he's in the meh category. And yes, I am biased against Joe Biden. And I'm putting him in the meh category in spite of the statement that I'm about to make. This was Joe Biden's best performance yet. But the bar is very low. So to put things into perspective, Joe Biden did better. He had less brain farts. He still had brain farts. There were less awkward moments with him, less aggression because Elizabeth Warren is perceived to be the new front runner. So people are kind of directing their rage at Warren as opposed to Joe Biden, which allows him to kind of skate by a little bit more easily with a few exceptions, of course, of Bernie going after him. But you know, on top of that, he also demonstrated strength and was loud. And I think that voters will see that and like that because voters like someone who is strong and appears strong and confident. However, what Joe Biden needed to save his failing campaign is a really big night. Like there needed to be no question that he was the winner. He needed to steal the show. It needed to be a big victory. And even if he had a better performance than the last couple of times, it's still not enough. Like what we're looking for is for him to turn this around dramatically. And I don't think that he did that. And if anything, he said the same things that he said at the last debate. So he didn't move the needle at all. He just used the same talking points, but he said it while tripping over his words a little bit less. I mean, there was still a moment where he said that he's going to repeal the estate tax, I think, or increase, and then he said, no, I'm gonna increase it, something to that effect I'm paraphrasing. So he still had his brain melty moments, but I mean, overall, it was a better performance for him, not enough. He's still gonna be in the Mac category. Okay, moving on, I only have one person in the did good category. And I think that person is Elizabeth Warren. So I believe that when she was attacked, she did a really good job at swallowing away those attacks. So when Amy Klobuchar, Andrew Yang, responded criticizing her stance when it comes to the wealth tax and Medicare for all. For the most part, I think she did well. The only thing that's keeping me from moving her into the winner category is that exchange with Pete Buttigieg. She is doing really bad when it comes to explaining the tax increase with regard to Medicare for all. Now, I'll grant you that question is stupid, it's idiotic, mainstream media needs to not ask it. You're basically framing the question about healthcare in a very right-wing way. We don't care about tax increases, we care about the delivery of healthcare, but there's the added bonus of saving people money. So she does have to be more direct. She needs to say, look, yes, Medicare for all leads to an increase in taxes, but we'll net save people money because we eliminate co-pays, deductibles, and monthly premiums. Bernie sharpened his message. He was concise, he was quick, and Amy Klobuchar even gave him credit for saying, you know what, at least Bernie Sanders is honest, whereas Elizabeth Warren is not being honest. And I think she is being honest, but it doesn't seem like she's being honest because she's not saying it directly. And this is something she needs to improve on. Even Colbert asked her about this when she appeared on his program. And the fact that she hasn't figured out a more concise persuasive way to respond shows that this is a really huge blind spot for her. But that was just one moment. I think it made her look weak. I think it made it seem like she didn't really know how to respond to them, but in any other moment, whenever she spoke, she spoke with confidence and authority. And I think that she did a good job. She came off as wonky, but still likable and personable. So I think that she did a good job. But what we really were looking for when it comes to Elizabeth Warren at this debate was for her to solidify her performance as the front runner. I think that maybe she did that, but she kind of needed a runaway performance like Joe Biden to really move into that spot. Because if you check the polls lately, Biden kind of got a little bit of a boost and she is declining a tad bit, right? But that's just, you know, overall polling, certainly some polls are saying she's still the front runner. But regardless, I digress. She needed a good performance and I don't think she did as good as she needed to do. Now, with that being said, moving into the winners category, I placed two individuals in this category, Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang. Bernie Sanders is a winner because what I was looking for was energy, confidence, and I wanted him to concisely convey complex policy ideas in a way that would resonate. I think he did that. I wanted him to sharpen his rhetoric, attack his opponents more forcefully and directly. I do think he did that. However, do I think that even if he's a winner, this was a runaway performance? No, I think Bernie won, but there's a little bit of an asterisk there. He could have done better. I think that attack on Joe Biden was great, but he needs to dial that up to about a 100 and go after him more forcefully. You don't have to qualify your criticism of Joe Biden with a statement about how he's your friend. Rather than wasting your breath saying that, you could have added in an extra criticism because there's no shortage of things to attack Biden for. So Bernie's got to sharpen that message. Go after Biden. Biden is not afraid to go after Bernie Sanders. So Bernie shouldn't be afraid to go after Biden. Biden doesn't qualify his statements with Bernie Sanders as my friend. So I mean, the thing about Bernie is he's such a nice guy. He cares so much for people that he doesn't want to be mean to people. Like in 2016, he prided himself on never running a negative campaign. But I mean, times have changed, Bernie. It's 2020 and we want you to take the gloves off and fight like your life depends on it because your life in this race does depend on it. So he had a good solid performance. So I want to be too down on him, but he needs to turn this around and you do that. You switch it up by attacking your opponents. He also needed to indirectly go after Elizabeth Warren and other opponents and really anything that he said should have been laced and coded with an attack, a tacit criticism even of his opponents. He inched closer in that direction. He had a solid performance, but what I wanted was a runaway evening where even the pundits can't deny that he did a phenomenal job and it was the winner. But aside from him having a good performance, something that kind of limited him and held him back was the moderators basically ignoring him. So next time if I'm Bernie, I'm not gonna let that happen again. I'm going to elbow my way into these conversations. I'm going to interrupt. I'm going to speak up if they don't give me the chance to talk because this is too important. I'm one of three front runners. Like if I'm in that top three, you're not going to ignore me for an hour to talk to fucking Amy Klobuchar for the 10th time. I'm getting in there and I'm making my voice heard and I really hope that he goes out of his comfort zone and really hits them hard. Okay, so when it comes to Andrew Yang, this was Andrew Yang's best performance yet. And I think that he improved in every area that he needed to improve. So here's what I said previously about Andrew Yang. I think that he needs to be more assertive and actually call out some of the other candidates. Go after them, play offense. I think he did that. He criticized Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders for their wealth tax, albeit tepidly, but nonetheless, I think that you do need to draw these distinctions if you want to get a boost in the polls to show people that you're serious, that you're strong enough to take on Donald Trump. He did that. On top of that, I've said that he needed to diversify his platform, not just focused exclusively on UBI, but venture out a little bit. He did that as well. He talked about drug decriminalization and he's the best on this. So he should have really boasted if I were Andrew Yang, I'd be saying I'm the only person who wants to decriminalize opioids in this cycle. That would have been powerful, but he still did great. He talked about how our data should be characterized as personal property and companies are mining it. So I mean, he did a good job. The only thing that he needs to work on is he needs to have a more persuasive rebuttal to the criticisms that people like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders lob against him when he attacks them. So let me explain what I mean by that. So when you basically say that Elizabeth Warren's approach is not as good as your approach, you want UBI, her and Bernie want a federal jobs guarantee, he needs to be able to anticipate their criticisms and respond in a persuasive way. So Elizabeth Warren responds by saying, well, you know, we need to strengthen unions rather than just allow these companies to automate away jobs. You know, we need fair trade agreements, not like the TPP, where we incentivize outsourcing. These are really strong criticisms of UBI that I would like to hear Andrew Yang answer because I am a supporter of UBI, but I support a different implementation in comparison with Andrew Yang. And on top of that, I would opt for structural change before implementing UBI. So that way UBI actually has a stronger impact. So that way you don't, you know, pass UBI and then landlord suddenly up rent by $999. Now, that's just something I'm throwing out there as a potential consequence that doesn't necessarily mean that it would come to fruition, but it's a fear that a lot of people have with UBI. And I think that Andrew Yang should go a little bit deeper in explaining, you know, why his approach is superior. But the fact that he was able to get a discussion about UBI versus federal jobs guarantee in and of itself shows that he is able to monopolize political discourse in this primary and it's a win for Andrew Yang. So if I had to choose between who was probably better off after this debate, even though I put both of them in the winner category, I think that Andrew Yang probably outperformed Bernie Sanders. And this is really impressive considering he had one of the least amount of times to talk. I mean, Amy Klobuchar was called out more than him when he's polling higher than her, which is ridiculous. But I mean, he just did a phenomenal job. So overall, to kind of wrap this up, I think that this debate was, I don't know that it's going to be that impactful or really have a meaningful effect on the overall primary because it was really all over the place. There were too many candidates. Like imagine if you broke this up into two nights and we had six candidates on each stage, imagine the difference that that could have made. People would have been able to talk more thoroughly about Medicare for all healthcare, would be able to dive a little bit deeper into foreign policy issues. And imagine if they didn't waste their time, like the last 15 to 20 minutes on dumb questions about how, well, Elizabeth or Ellen DeGeneres is being criticized for hanging out with Bush. What's a shitty friend that you hang out with? Like, first of all, what a way to miss the point. We're not criticizing her because she's friends with a conservative. We're criticizing her because she's friends with a mass murderer. So thank you for oversimplifying that entire complex conversation that we're trying to have. Second of all, I don't care. Like why would I care? How does that help me make a decision as a voter, going into the voting booth, knowing that these candidates have shitty friends? Like how does Tulsi Gabbard being friends with Trey Gowdy and everyone praising John McCain help me as a voter make a more informed decision? The answer is it doesn't. And they could have dedicated that time to climate change but instead they chose to talk about Ellen. Look, if I'm DNC, I am not allowing CNN to host any more debates. The fact that climate change wasn't discussed at length shows that this debate was a failure. And there were a plethora of policies that were left out that should have been discussed. And it's just all the more reason why we need to limit these debates. If you're gonna have 12 people on a stage, first of all, make it 11, exclude Tom Steyer. But second of all, most importantly, break this up into two nights so we can either A, talk about more policies or B, talk at length about the policies that we're talking about. Not just like have everyone comment for like 30 seconds on healthcare and then we move on. So overall it was biased, it was insufferable, it was probably the worst debate yet. And I don't necessarily know that there was any clear winner, although when it comes to my candidate who I support, Bernie Sanders, I am satisfied in his performance overall. He just needs to be more aggressive. And I don't know why everyone kind of let off the gas when it comes to Joe Biden. But if they don't pile on to Joe Biden harder, he could still win. Like I know that everyone is thinking that he's out of the running yet. Don't be too confident in that. He's still pulling very well, way higher than he should be. Joe Biden, with how bad of a candidate he is, he should be pulling in last place. So I'll leave that there. I may follow up this video with additional segments about specific moments from the debate that I wanna dive a little bit deeper into, but that's my take. Lots of losers, a little bit of winners overall. Did most of them do enough to move the needle? Probably not. Is this debate really going to have a substantial impact on the overall election? Probably not, but nonetheless, that's my thoughts. I think that Bernie Sanders did a really great job at the Democratic debate in Ohio. It was extremely disappointing that Amy Klobuchar was literally called on more than Bernie Sanders. She got more speaking time than Bernie Sanders, and that is so frustrating when Bernie Sanders is one of the three front runners. However, with the time that Bernie Sanders had, I think he used it really effectively. Now, what was frustrating to me is that after ignoring Bernie Sanders for, it seemed like 30 to 40 minutes, Aaron Burnett, who has previously attacked Bernie Sanders, I think arbitrarily, so she decided to ask him a question about his health. And Bernie, I think, handled that extremely well, and his response was actually not only reassuring, but even charming. Senator, we are all very glad you're feeling well, as you just said, but there is a question on a lot of people's minds, and I wanna address it tonight. You're 78 years old, and you just had a heart attack. How do you reassure Democratic voters that you're up to the stress of the presidency? Well, let me invite you all to a major rally we're having in Queens, New York, berniestanders.com. We're gonna have a special guest at that event, and we are gonna be mounting a vigorous campaign all over this country. That is how I think I can reassure the American people, but let me take this moment, if I might, to thank so many people from all over this country, including many of my colleagues up here for their love, for their prayers, for their well wishes. And I just wanna thank you from the bottom of my heart, and I'm so happy to be back here with you this evening. So that was great. I feel like what Bernie Sanders did there, it was probably enough to quell fears about his health. I mean, who knows, because the media is going to drum up whatever narrative they think will help them defeat Bernie Sanders. However, if you're an average voter, and you're watching this, and you realize that this man who's talking, who has this much energy, just had a heart attack, it's almost unbelievable. Like he doesn't seem like someone who, you know, a week and a half ago or so, he was in the hospital because he had a heart attack. Like it doesn't seem like that, right? So I think that voters, they saw what they needed from Bernie Sanders in terms of health. So I truly feel like we can close that chapter and move on, hopefully, again, you know, there's no guarantees with the mainstream media and what they wanna use to attack Bernie. But if I had to guess, they're gonna move on to the next line of attack if they do believe that he is, in fact, a threat again. But what I really wanna talk about in this video with regard to Bernie Sanders' performance is where I think he improved. Going into this debate in my pre-debate analysis, I did say I wanted him to start going on the offensive, right? Him and Elizabeth Warren have a non-aggression pact. They literally agreed to this, and we found out about it, I think, in June or July. So they have agreed to not attack each other. I wanted him to start indirectly attacking Elizabeth Warren. Don't mention her by name, but just kind of throw everyone under the bus and explain why you're better, why you're the only senator who hasn't voted for Donald Trump's military budgets, and obviously you're including Elizabeth Warren in that group of people. So criticize her indirectly so you don't be viewed as someone who's overly aggressive. But when it comes to Joe Biden, I don't think there's any reason for him to not attack Joe Biden by name, take the gloves off, because Joe Biden attacks Bernie Sanders, right? And Bernie Sanders should be able to defend himself and also be more ruthless in his criticism. So Bernie Sanders, I wanted him to attack Joe Biden, and he did. So this is the clip of a little bit of his criticism of Joe Biden. Take a look and then I'll tell you my thoughts on that afterwards. You know what you also got done, and I say this as a good friend. You got the disastrous war in Iraq done. You got a bankruptcy bill which is hurting middle-class families all over this country. You got trade agreements like Napter and PNTR with China done, which of course does four million jobs. So as I said in my full debate analysis, you can watch that, it's up on the channel now. I think that Bernie Sanders was very strong here. He was assertive. He needs to demonstrate strength to communicate to voters that he is a leader. He's strong enough to take on Trump because he's willing to take on his opponents in this primary. So even though that was good, I will say this. Bernie has got to take that and amp it up exponentially. Like that attack needs to be louder, more aggressive. Like I'm not necessarily as concerned with the tone as I am about the content. First of all, you can literally list all the things that Joe Biden has done in his career that are egregious and you would have at least 10 minutes of content if you weren't interrupted. Now, he would be interrupted by the moderators because he was interrupted pretty frequently. Joe Biden wasn't, but that's a different story. But what you wanna do is you want to front load your criticism with the most important criticisms that you have of Joe Biden that will be the most punchy, most effective and most persuasive. And I think Bernie Sanders did that, but he's gotta get more aggressive. He's gotta be more aggressive and don't qualify your criticism of Joe Biden with Joe Biden as my friend. But so this is what I have to say about your views on healthcare and the Iraq war. You're wasting time. Just cut straight to the chase. We know that Joe Biden is your friend. You've told us a million times, Bernie. What we need you to do is attack Joe Biden and take the gloves off. Bernie Sanders doesn't like to do this. Like he's a good natured person. He doesn't like to criticize people who he views as friends. You know, he's not overly confrontational if he doesn't need to be. But Bernie, you need to be. You need to change with the times. And this isn't an era where, you know, you should be prideful at the fact that you've never run a negative campaign ad in your life. That's fine. But in 2020, if you wanna win, when you are a distant third place, you have to take the gloves off. You've gotta hit them hard. And I don't want to, you know, harp on Bernie too hard because I think that he's been doing a phenomenal job lately. You have to draw contrasts and you have to directly criticize someone like Joe Biden. He did that here. He gave me what I wanted. So I don't wanna act like I'm not grateful for his performance because I think his performance was great. I think that he was probably one of the winners. But to really make it so, he is a clear winner, not just one of the winners. We want him to be the winner, right? We want it to be undeniable. So any pundit who says he lost looks disingenuous. The way he does that is he is constantly on the offensive. And what he needs to do is get very specific in his criticisms and tie his policy disagreements to his opponent's corruption. So what I mean by that is when Pete Buttigieg says that Bernie Sanders wants to throw millions of people off of their health insurance plan or maybe Klobuchar says that too, he needs to say, listen, understand why they're repeating these talking points straight from the health insurance industry. It is because they don't support Medicare for all and that they're taking their money to adopt this position. It's the result of corruption. These people are corrupt. So you're not hearing from a politician with the policy disagreement that was different from mine. You're hearing a stooge of corporate America. Like that's what he needs to say. Call out Joe Biden, call out the money that he has taken from defense contractors. Call out their corruption, right? Make them seem like the elitists that they are because they are elitists. But Bernie Sanders needs to do a good job at communicating this to voters because I don't think they know it. Like we shouldn't have to watch these people attack Medicare for all as if they're good faith actors who just so happened to disagree with that policy position. No, they're attacking it because they are bankrolled by special interests. They're taking money from big farmer, from the health insurance industry and that's why they're saying what they're saying. You've gotta call that out, Bernie. You've gotta call that out. And also be a little bit more forceful when you talk about corruption just generally speaking. In almost every statement he makes, he should acknowledge that his position is based on the fact that he's not bought off unlike his opponents. He's not taking money from billionaires. He doesn't have a single billionaire donor and he hasn't taken a single dime from a health insurance company. They don't like me and I'm glad they don't like me. In fact, I welcome their hatred. That's what I wanna see. So I like what he did. Again, I just wanna see some improvement and for him to kind of sharpen his craft a little bit. I'll leave that there. Great performance just needs to work on his criticism of his opponents a little bit. I wanna talk about the debate section where healthcare came up, but specifically the question was posed to Elizabeth Warren. Do you support increasing taxes as a means of funding Medicare for All? Now, one of the most basic components of any single payer system is you increase taxes, but in return, voters, working Americans, they're getting something great in exchange. They're getting comprehensive healthcare that is free at the point of service and we're eliminating co-pays, eliminating deductibles, premiums and overall people will be better off. They'll not save money, but the way that the media treats this issue is as if any and all tax increases are bad inherently and forget about the nuance. It doesn't matter that we're going to be saving Americans money and giving them better healthcare that's universal and comprehensive. It doesn't matter. If you're gonna raise their taxes, you're bad so you better defend yourself. So the right-wing framing is just, it's incredibly frustrating. It irks me to my core. So we have to point that out. Regardless, if you are an advocate of Medicare for All, you have to be able to explain this in a way where you kind of get yourself out of the trap that the moderator tries to kind of put you in, right? So this happened to Bernie Sanders back in 2016. He was at a CNN town hall with Chris Cuomo and he was asked, will you raise taxes to pay for Medicare for All? The way that Bernie Sanders said it allowed him to be attacked. He said, we will raise taxes. Yes, we will. The media then removed the context from that quote and just had that as the headline. Bernie Sanders, we will raise taxes. So they're dishonest and they're not really demonstrating to voters or educating voters really what's in their best interest. So I hate this question to begin with but you have to be able to answer it. Elizabeth Warren was not able to answer this and unfortunately Pete Buttigieg was able to kind of pounce but it wasn't just destruction. He didn't own her for lack of a better word. She was able to kind of rebut his talking points which were right-wing talking points and kind of get the upper hand. But overall, I don't think she's being clear. It seems like she is trying to mislead people because she's being evasive. She's not saying the word tax. She's using the word cost in lieu of taxes and she's got to figure out a better way to explain the fundamentals of Medicare for all. Yes, taxes go up but overall even if you have a tax increase and you're a working class American, you save money because I'm gonna eliminate your monthly health insurance premium. As Collins would say, we're eliminating that private tax in favor of a public tax and the public tax is less than the private tax. So this is the exchange between Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg. I'll share my thoughts when we come back. Senator Warren, to be clear, Senator Sanders acknowledges he's going to raise taxes on the middle class to pay for Medicare for all. You've endorsed his plan. Should you acknowledge it too? So the way I see this, it is about what kinds of costs middle class families are going to face. So let me be clear on this. Costs will go up for the wealthy. They will go up for big corporations and for middle class families. They will go down. I will not sign a bill into law that does not lower costs for middle class families. Mayor Buttigieg, you say Senator Warren has been quote, evasive about how she's gonna pay for Medicare for all. What's your response? Well, we heard it tonight. A yes or no question that didn't get a yes or no answer. Look, this is why people here in the Midwest are so frustrated with Washington in general and Capitol Hill in particular. Your signature, Senator, is to have a plan for everything, except this. No plan has been laid out to explain how a multi-trillion dollar hole in this Medicare for all plan that Senator Warren is putting forward is supposed to get filled in. And the thing is, we really can deliver healthcare for every American and move forward with the boldest, biggest transformation since the inception of Medicare itself. But the way to do it without a giant multi-trillion dollar hole and without having to avoid a yes or no question is Medicare for all who want it. We take a version of Medicare, we let you access it if you want to, and if you prefer to stay on your private plan, you can do that too. That is what most Americans want. Medicare for all who want it, trusting you to make the right decision for your healthcare and for your family, and it can be delivered without an increase in medical prices. So let's be clear, whenever someone hears the term, Medicare for all who want it, understand what that really means. It's Medicare for all who can afford it. And that's the problem we've got. Medicare for all is the gold standard. It is the way we get healthcare coverage for every single American, including the family whose child's been diagnosed with cancer, including the person who's just gotten an MS diagnosis. That's how we make sure that everyone gets healthcare. We can pay for this. I've laid out the basic principles. Costs are gonna go up for the wealthy. They're gonna go up for big corporations. They will not go up for middle-class families, and I will not sign a bill into law that raises their costs, because costs are what people care about. I've been studying this for the biggest part of my life. Thank you, Senator. Can the mayor respond? Sure. I don't think the American people are wrong when they say that what they want is a choice. And the choice of Medicare for all who want it, which is affordable for everyone, because we make sure that the subsidies are in place, allows you to get that healthcare. It's just better than Medicare for all whether you want it or not. And I don't understand why you believe the only way to deliver affordable coverage to everybody is to obliterate private plans, kicking 150 million Americans off of their insurance in four short years when we could achieve that same big, bold goal. And once again, we're competing to be president for the day after Trump. Our country will be horrifyingly polarized even more than now. After everything we've been through, after everything we were about to go through, this country will be even more divided why unnecessarily divide this country over healthcare when there's a better way to deliver coverage for all. So now for additional context before that clip, the way that the moderator tried to frame that question disingenuously so and expectedly so was in a yes or no question. Like he didn't want her to explain that even if we're raising taxes on normal Americans they're still gonna save money. So she tried to explain it and Pete Buttigieg pounced. He made it seem like she's lying. And look, I understand what she's saying but the average American isn't really going to understand that they don't know about single payer. They don't know really what she's talking about. So if I'm just an average viewer and I don't really know about healthcare and the way it's funded through a tax, I'm not really going to know what to think of that. However, Elizabeth Warren did do a good job at kind of giving Pete Buttigieg a taste of his own medicine because she said, you know, what he's saying when he talks about Medicare for all who wants it is really it's Medicare for all who can't afford it. And as you saw, he had no way to respond to that because he tried to suggest that it's actually going to be affordable in spite of what Elizabeth Warren says because we're gonna subsidize it. The only problem with that Pete is the affordable care act wasn't so affordable. We offered a subsidy, right? Obama had the individual mandate to make sure that it was cheap so that way everyone buys into it and it's not just the system that is paid for by the sick so that way healthy people are involved as well. But Pete, it's not affordable. It is not affordable. So I mean, for you to try to reassure us that your version of healthcare reform will be affordable after we just got the affordable care act which turned out to not be so affordable after all even if it was an improvement you've gotta understand that Republicans are gonna have a field day with this view. So he's a liar and he also lied when he talked about choice. Oh, well you wanna eliminate choice. You wanna blow up the private market. Spoken like a true corporate shill because this is an individual who has taken money from dozens of billionaires I believe at this point. He's funded by the industry. He's taking money from special interests and like a good little stooge he's reciting all of their talking points. So I think that overall in that exchange I don't know that there was a clear victor. I think Elizabeth Warren certainly got some great shots in at Pete Buttigieg. However, he was able to persuasively argue that she was being evasive and she wasn't really being upfront because it's clear that she doesn't really wanna explain that yes, there will be a tax increase when it comes to Medicare for all. And I get it. It's so hard to explain this policy in a thorough way and a detailed way when you know that they're going to take you out of context the next day and smear you. I get it, because it happened to Bernie Sanders but you've gotta work on that. Like this is a weakness of Elizabeth Warren and for her to still not really be able to directly answer that question in a way that is persuasive, you know, it's a missed opportunity. Now, thankfully Bernie Sanders was brought into this conversation and he answered this perfectly, perfectly. He said it in a way where you can't really take him out of context as easily as you could have in 2016. And Elizabeth Warren will chime in again and Amy Klobuchar will actually give Bernie Sanders credit for being honest. Take a look. Well, as somebody who wrote the damn bill, as I said, let's be clear, under the Medicare for all bill that I wrote, premiums are gone, copayments are gone, deductibles are gone, all out of pocket expenses are gone. We're gonna do better than the Canadians do and that is what they have managed to do. At the end of the day, the overwhelming majority of people will save money on their healthcare bills. But I do think it is appropriate to acknowledge that taxes will go up. They're gonna go up significantly for the wealthy and for virtually everybody, the tax increase they pay will be substantially less, substantially less than what they were paying for premiums and out-of-pocket expenses. Senator Warren, will you acknowledge what the senator just said about taxes going up? So my view on this and what I have committed to is costs will go down for hardworking middle-class families. I will not embrace a plan like Medicare for all who can afford it that will leave behind millions of people who cannot. And I will not embrace a plan that says people have great insurance right up until you get the diagnosis and the insurance company says, sorry, we're not covering your expensive cancer treatments. We're not covering your expensive treatments for MS. Thank you, Senator. Senator Klobuchar, what do you need? At least Bernie's being honest here and saying how he's gonna pay for this and that taxes are gonna go up. And I'm sorry, Elizabeth, but you have not said that. And I think we owe it to the American people to tell them where we're gonna send the invoice. I believe the best and boldest idea here is to not trash Obamacare, but to do exactly what Barack Obama wanted to do from the beginning. And that's have a public option that would bring down the cost of the premium and expand the number of people covered and take on the pharmaceutical companies. That is what we should be doing instead of kicking 149 million people off their insurance in four years. And I'm tired of hearing, whenever I say these things, oh, it's Republican talking points. You are making Republican talking points right now in this room by coming out for a plan that's gonna do that. I think there is a better way that is bold that will cover more people and it's the one we should get behind. Senator Warren. I didn't spend most of my time in Washington. I spent most of my time studying one basic question. And that is why hardworking people go broke. And one of the principal reasons for that is the cost of healthcare. And back when I was studying it, two out of every three families that ended up in bankruptcy after a serious medical problem had health insurance. The problem we've got right now is the overall cost of healthcare. And look, you can try to spend this any way you want. I've spent my entire life on working on how America's middle class has been hollowed out and how we fight back. I put out nearly 50 plans on how we can fight back and how we can rebuild an America that works. And a part of that is we have got to stop Americans from going bankrupt over health. Senator Klobuchar. So at that point, Amy Klobuchar, she was brought back into the conversation and she just started repeating the same shit. And Elizabeth Warren kept talking about, I didn't study this for so long, Liz, you have to be upfront. Look, as an advocate of Medicare for All, I'm glad that you are supporting it on a national debate stage, but you need to explain it for what it is. Because if you are an advocate of Medicare for All and you're representing it nationally, then we need to be confident, we need to be strong and assure people that our policy is the best. And you can't do that if you are seemingly evasive. What Bernie Sanders said was straight to the point, was concise, we're eliminating co-pays, premiums, deductibles, but there will be a tax, but overall you will save money. That's the way that you deal with it. That's it. Overall, under my plan, you will have more money in your pocket and universal comprehensive coverage that is free at the point of service. No more co-pays, no more deductibles, not to mention the time I'll save you because you won't have to fill out the paperwork every single year and worry about which network you're in. That's all gone. It's easier under Medicare for All. So she's gotta get better at this if she truly supports Medicare for All. Now I have my doubts that she'd actually fight for it, but nonetheless, on a debate stage, I'm glad she's advocating for it because that is doing a lot to shift the overturn window to the left on this issue, but if you're gonna fight for it, then you do need to be more confident and just explain it for what it is. If they take you out of context, at least voters will know that you're being honest, right? So Amy Klobuchar, let's talk a little bit about her. She didn't like the fact that she was accused of using Republican talking points, and she kind of tried to get ahead of herself, right? Because last time when John Delaney sparred with Elizabeth Warren, well, she ended up calling him out for the Republican talking points that he did, and that was a really effective argument against him. It kind of shut him up. So what she tried to do is get ahead of that allegation and basically say, no, you, with your plan, you're creating Republican talking points, but make no mistake about it. Listen to what Amy Klobuchar says about Medicare for All and compare that to any average Republican. They sound identical because guess what? Amy Klobuchar has the same donors as Republicans. She takes money from the health industry, as does Donald Trump, as does any other Republican who's against Medicare for All. The difference is that she doesn't actually want to kick people off of coverage, whereas Republicans do, but yet, you know, I'm being too fair to her because she thinks that it's okay for her to lie about Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and say, they want to take people off of coverage. No, you're lying. You're literally lying now. And that's bad. That makes you a bad person because under all of these candidates' plans, if you are not opting for Medicare for All single pair, where it's free at the point of service, you need to acknowledge a fact that's really hard for these candidates probably to digest, well, probably not. They probably don't care, but their supporters at least should acknowledge it. If you don't support Medicare for All single pair, you are okay with the fact that people in this country will die or go bankrupt because they still have to be able to afford it because if you make healthcare a commodity, if you make it so you have to buy in, and it's not just automatically something that is offered to all citizens and is paid for through taxes, it's not Medicare for All. Now, I don't care how you fund it, right? It doesn't necessarily have to be taxes, but you can do MMT and deficit spend. I don't care, but the fact is that if you don't opt for Medicare for All single pair, people will die, and that's what Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren need to point out, and they're not stressing enough the corruption here, that it's inherent in all of these arguments. The reason why Pete Luda Judge and Amy Klobuchar are saying the things about Medicare for All, the reason why they're brazenly lying about it is because they are bankrolled by the health insurance industry. They are liars, so call them out, call out the corruption, call out the talking points that come from the industry, and call out the fact that under their plan, Americans will die, and they're complicit if they don't do Medicare for All single pair, because if they're going to get more aggressive and accuse you of wanting to take insurance away or eliminate choice, get equally aggressive, and say, okay, well, you want people to die, you must want them to die if you're actively choosing to support the policy that wouldn't cover everyone, which means more Americans die. Is that what you want? Are you pro-death? So you've got to play hardball, and Elizabeth Warren has got to sharpen her rhetoric when it comes to Medicare for All, be more concise and explain it for what it actually is, and take a few cues from Bernie Sanders, a few more cues from Bernie Sanders, because he's managed to nail the rhetoric for the most part when it comes to Medicare for All. These are liars, and you've got to call them out. I think Elizabeth Warren did a fairly good job at holding Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg's feet to the fire, but she could have been better and more effective in explaining what Medicare for All is, and I think overall her unwillingness to just directly say, yes, I support a tax increase, but, and then explain what will happen and how Americans will save money. I think that is just not a good look overall. So I'll leave that there. The fourth Democratic Party primary debate just concluded, and I know you're all expecting me to vocalize my thoughts about that debate. Trust me, I have quite a bit to say about that. Rest assured that that video will follow this video, but I actually wanted to talk about something that's potentially more impactful than the debate. This is something that is so important. It could literally change the entire dynamic of the 2020 Democratic Party primary. I'm talking about an endorsement or rather endorsements that Bernie Sanders will reportedly receive this weekend. So as reporter Rebecca Falconer of Axios reports, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will endorse Senator Bernie Sanders for president as she appears alongside him at a rally in New York City on Saturday, the Washington Post reports. CNN is reporting that representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib will also endorse him at the rally. So think about the impact that this could have. Three out of the four members of the squad known as the most vocally progressive members of Congress will be endorsing Bernie Sanders. Think about how this could change the game because a lot of people who are not necessarily as politically savvy, they're just kind of the average consumers of news. They might just see Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren as the same when it comes to policy and think that they're both equally progressive. So if you're just a casual viewer of CNN or MSNBC and you don't really follow this as closely as you or me, they might just think, well, you know what, I'm gonna opt for Bernie. If the ideas and the policies are the same, why not go for someone who is a little bit younger who is a woman? But what's going to happen is by AOC, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib endorsing Bernie Sanders, it's going to force people to really grapple with the differences between him and Elizabeth Warren and think through, wait, why would people who are progressive opt for Bernie over Elizabeth Warren? And what's also going to be interesting is for whatever reason, there's a lot of people who are establishment minded democratic party loyalists who love AOC, love everything that she talks about, thinks she is great, who hate Bernie Sanders. Now I don't understand these people ideologically. There's really no coherency there seemingly, but this is going to force those people to reckon with their political beliefs and think, wait a second, someone who I love is endorsing someone who I hate. What's happening here? This is going to cause some cognitive dissonance. AOC may lose support from some establishment minded figures because of this endorsement, but make no mistake about it, this is really important. This could be the jolt of energy that Bernie Sanders campaign needs right now because think about what the narrative has been since he had his heart attack. Is Bernie out of this? Is he in this still? I mean, is he even going to be okay? We saw him at the debate. He looked fantastic, he looked radiant, he was energetic and now he's changing the narrative by announcing an endorsement with AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, three people who are incredibly important progressives. Wow, this is huge. Now look, I was a little bit cynical and I wasn't even sure that we'd see very many endorsements for Bernie Sanders. You know, prior to him announcing that he'd run again, I just assumed, you know what, if AOC is going to endorse Bernie Sanders, then she's probably going to wait until the last minute, wait until, you know, the New York primary. But you know, I thought that that made sense. However, there was one caveat. In the event Bernie Sanders started to lose momentum, this is what you kind of do to give a little bit of a jolt of energy to his campaign and it's coming at the perfect timing. We need this right now. Bernie Sanders, there's a little bit of hope that he's going to get a boost in the polls. Now is the time to go hard and endorse him and it comes at a perfect time. I can't stress that enough. This is so exciting. This is phenomenal news and the minute that I found out about this, I didn't even care about the debate. I just thought, this is what we need. Bernie Sanders' debate performance was fantastic, but this news is much more important in terms of influencing the outcome of the 2020 Democratic Party primary. And I'm just so thankful that all three of the squad members, the most important ones anyway, who know better are going to be endorsing him. Look, it makes sense. They're ideologically aligned with Bernie Sanders on more things than Elizabeth Warren. They are ideologically aligned with him on a lot of things. They're teamed up with him. AOC has teamed up with Bernie Sanders as did Ilhan Omar to introduce a house version of the student loan debt cancellation plan. This is important, it makes sense. The only thing that maybe could have prevented them from endorsing or influenced them to not endorse was any types of political limitations. The thought that, well, you know what? If Bernie Sanders doesn't seem like he's going to win, then maybe I should back the winning horse in this race, Elizabeth Warren, in order to maybe have a little bit more influence. That was what I thought they were probably thinking, but I'm glad to know I'm wrong. I'm glad to see them really stand up for what they believe in and endorse the candidate who they are ideologically aligned with more and not just wait and sit this out like Elizabeth Warren did in 2016 and back whoever it seems like is going to win. They're doing such a great thing. This proves to me that these women are so awesome. They are the real deal. I already knew that they were great, but this just beyond a shadow of a doubt for them to endorse Bernie Sanders and not leave us and abandon us as Warren did in 2016. These are fantastic progressives. This is such good news. I'm glowing from this news. Like I'm so excited. Like I feel like a kid on Christmas and I'm more excited about this than the debate. That's all I could think about. This is fantastic. I will be excited to see how this affects Bernie Sanders in the polls. But if I had to guess, I'd say this is going to give him a burst of energy and it's going to reassure people that he's not out of this, he's just getting started and now he has three of the most prominent progressives on his side. That's going to say a lot. It's going to give him a lot of credibility among hopefully establishment minded Democrats. We'll see, but this is fantastic news and morally speaking, it's the right decision. So if this is true and I hope it's true, I would guess it's true. Shout out to Alexandria Ocasio-Gortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib because they are making a bold morally right decision here in endorsing Bernie Sanders. And since they're fighting for him, I'm going to be that much more inclined to fight for them. I want to donate to their campaigns and help them get reelected. This is a national movement and the fact that they are jumping on board to help Bernie Sanders when now is kind of an easy time for people to jump ship because his polls went down after the heart attack, it really shows that they are committed and they're principled and they're not going to abandon us when the going gets tough. And it means so much to me. So as many of you know by now, Bernie Sanders has officially received the endorsements of Alexandria Ocasio-Gortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. Now I did a segment about how Elizabeth Warren has been aggressively courting the endorsements of at least AOC, but I'd assume that she's also courting the endorsements of other members of the squad as well. I believe I talked about this, I want to say six months or so ago. So we know that she was vying for this endorsement. However, Bernie got that endorsement and she found out about this in real time on national television and it was evident that she was gutted. Senator, your staff is telling us that we have to let you go. You've been very generous with your time, but before you go, I do want to get your reaction. Senator Bernie Sanders on the stage alluded to the fact that he was having this big rallies in Queens and he was going to have special guests. We have found out CNN has been told by sources that Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Gortez from New York, Ilhan Omar from Minnesota, and Rashida Tlaib from Michigan are going to be endorsing Senator Sanders. You're in the progressive lane with him as well. I know that those are three allies of yours as well. What do you make of that? Are you disappointed that they're not endorsing you? Look, I have great respect for all three of those women. I think they are terrific. And here's what I know for sure. When this primary is over, we're all going to be on the same side. All right, Senator was with Warren Democratic Massachusetts, thank you. Man, you can tell that she was very, very disappointed. Now, before I say anything further, let me just say admittedly, I still haven't gotten over the fact that Elizabeth Warren didn't endorse Bernie Sanders in 2016. Like I truly felt abandoned. She was someone who I looked up to and I really felt like she was a reliable ally in the Senate and for her to abandon Bernie Sanders and not endorse him when that was make or break, essentially in Massachusetts, it hurt me deeply and I still haven't gotten over it. So because those feelings are still there, I kind of feel torn on this, right? Seeing her feel gutted, it kind of makes me feel bad for her because she's a human being and I care about human beings to see her that disappointed. You know, it's kind of hard to see anyone like that. And I still like Elizabeth Warren. It's just that in a race between her and Bernie, it's Bernie 110%, right? However, that's one side of me, right? That's the nice version of Mike who is responding. The dickhead version of Mike is thinking, this is the taste of your own medicine. This is what you did to us in 2016 and this is how we felt. That feeling of you being abandoned that you feel now Liz, this is exactly what we felt in 2016. So I'm torn, right? Like I don't wanna see anyone feel disappointed but I hope that she understands now why having political allies is really important. And if you don't back progressives, if you abandon them, then later on the same could happen to you. If you're gonna be aligned with progressives, then you've gotta be there for us at times when we really need you. Elizabeth Warren wasn't. And yeah, now progressives aren't supporting her. We're still supporting Bernie and she is not getting the endorsement of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other members of the squad, perhaps Iona Presley will endorse her but out of all the squad members, she's probably the one with the least amount of name recognition and Iona Presley was a Hillary Clinton supporter, maybe even a surrogate, I'm not sure. Back in 2016, who was critical of Bernie Sanders. So Elizabeth Warren could get that endorsement but Bernie got the main three of the most important prominent progressives. So I understand why she feels disappointed but hopefully if I can kind of blend my two disputing feelings together, blend both mics, evil mic and nice mic together, what I would say and leave you all with is hopefully Elizabeth Warren will understand the reasoning for this endorsement and acknowledge the importance of allies and really being there for allies in times of great need. And I'll leave that there because I feel like if I keep talking about this, I'm just gonna say something mean and then I'm gonna regret it. So yeah, that's Elizabeth Warren's reaction. I feel a little bit bad but also I don't. In 2016, one of the most common criticisms of Bernie Sanders was that his base of support was not diverse enough, it was mostly male. Of course, you know that I am referring to the Bernie Bro myth. Now, I posited back in 2016 that the reason why his base of support was likely male and likely predominantly white was because he came from a mostly white small state of Vermont. So he had almost no national name recognition. Nobody really knew who he was. Now, younger people did in fact support Bernie Sanders of all demographics, right? But older generations did in fact flock to Hillary Clinton. Now, the reason why we're talking about this is because the narrative is starting to shift a little bit. In 2019, the Bernie Bro myth absolutely holds no weight whatsoever because that was proven correct. Now that he has more name recognition, people are flocking to Bernie Sanders campaign because surprise, surprise, when you have an all-inclusive message that's bold, that's authentic, people admire that. They want someone who they know will fight for them. And now that people know about Bernie Sanders, well, his base of support has changed dramatically. So not only is his base now comprised mostly of women, it's also incredibly diverse racially and it's comprised disproportionately of younger voters which is incredibly important for winning general elections. Now, if you thought that the Bernie Bro myth's death would be the end of Bernie Sanders' criticisms with regard to his base of support, you'd be wrong. But now that I've got you caught up about the Bernie Bro myth, you know, circa 2015 to 2019, we'll stick a pin in that conversation and come back to it later. But now I wanna talk about the endorsements that Bernie Sanders received from Ilhan Omar, Ocasio Cortez, which will be made official on Saturday and the endorsement from Rashida Tlaib, which it seems as if she'll be making on October 27th. Now, when it comes to the endorsement that AOC is giving to Bernie Sanders, what's really remarkable about this is that Bernie Sanders found out about this endorsement after he had his heart attack when he was still in the hospital. So I need you to just take a moment to think about how meaningful that really is. If you're a strategist in DC and you're an advisor to someone like AOC, you're probably gonna tell her, look, long-term, you need to think about your career and to endorse someone who just had a heart attack. Well, that doesn't seem like their campaign is gonna go anywhere. So wouldn't you wanna back the winning candidate? Why would you endorse him now? But AOC was principled and she decided to endorse him anyway because she believes in his message. And her existence as a politician was catalyzed in part due to Bernie Sanders' revolution, right? So for her to go out of her way to endorse him and let him know about that while he's in the hospital, that is so meaningful. That's so important. It makes it that much more special. And when you combine that with the fact that Ilhan Omar put out such a beautiful video explaining why she prefers Bernie Sanders over everyone else, it really shows us that there's finally people in power who are bold enough to rally behind a candidate with a truly universal progressive agenda who wants bold structural change, who's trying to get us on that trajectory of social democracy, which we desperately need. Bernie's not gonna be able to solve all of our problems. I'm aware of that. But if he could just shift the Overton window enough, have an FDR slash Reagan type of political revolution where he gets us on that trajectory and changes the status quo and political discourse for the better, we will all be better off, right? It's about laying the groundwork for political change. But of course, since he was endorsed by some of the most progressive vocal members of Congress, you know, the establishment elites in the media, they're trying to downplay this endorsement. Of course, because why wouldn't they? So for example, Marcos Molitsa's founder of the Daily Coast who creepily sent Nancy Pelosi thousands of flowers downplayed these endorsements, wondering if they'll actually register at all since we've all, quote, evolved past endorsements and quote, no one cares, but wonders if AOC will be the exception. Now he was saying something a little bit different a year ago when he enthusiastically wrote a glowing endorsement for better awork. But I mean, just remember, endorsements only matter to media elites if someone that they like is endorsing someone that they like. But if someone that they like is endorsing someone who they don't like or someone who they don't like is endorsing someone who they don't like, they don't matter at all. So, you know, it just, see how they move the goalpost like in real time? It's embarrassing, right? The lack of consistency here should permanently delegitimize these types of people, their hacks, their frauds. But nonetheless, they keep coming up with reasons to downplay Bernie Sanders. And as Nina Turner recently said, they're never gonna give him credit because he is a threat to the status quo. But that's just one person. That's Marcos of the Daily Coast. We already know that he's a hack, but what's really interesting is bringing the Bernie Roe narrative back into play. Again, the common criticism of Bernie was, his campaign was too white, it was too male. Now, the opposite criticism is what at least one CNN anchor is choosing to lob against Bernie Sanders. Rather than saying, you know, Bernie's base of support, maybe it's too white. Now he's questioning whether or not it's too urban. A CNN anchor literally said this. Not kidding. See for yourself. The source is that special guest is gonna be Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She's the fresh woman, a phenomenon from that part of the country, that part of New York. She's gonna be endorsing Bernie Sanders. And I'm also told sources say that Ilhan Omar and Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, Congresswoman Omar, Congresswoman Tlaib from Minnesota and Michigan, respectively also gonna be endorsing Bernie Sanders. So even if he's not a headline out of this evening, he has some headlines coming. It's an extension of what we see tonight, a debate about not only who is going to lead the party, but where is the party going to go? Which part of the party is going to lead the party into the 2020 election? They are more of the younger, fresher face, more aggressive, more liberal, less compromising, less talk about working with Republicans. And one of the questions for Bernie Sanders has been in a very different race this time. Can he find a lane to victory? There is no doubting his fundraising. There is no doubting the depth of his support across the country. But is it in the teens? Can he get into 20s? How do you win? That will certainly help him. But it will also, I think, Senator Klobuchar is coming in to join us now, have some of the other candidates say, wait a minute, is this too far left? Is this too uncompromising? Is it too urban? Is it too internet? Does the Democratic Party need to find a broader audience? It is going to stoke the very debate we saw play out on the stage tonight. Yeah, that's a big yikes from me. That is a big yikes from me. I'll read you the quote. Is this too far left? Is this too uncompromising? Is this too urban? Is it too internet? Does the Democratic Party need to find a broader audience? It is going to stoke the very debate we saw play out on the stage tonight. So we said this after the debate when news broke that Bernie Sanders would, in fact, be receiving the endorsements of members of the squad. Is it too urban? What a strange, interesting thing to say. Let me ask you, what exactly do you mean by that? What do you mean by that? Do you mean that maybe Bernie Sanders' base of support is now too diverse? Maybe his surrogates are too diverse, too female? Maybe that'll scare away some of the Trump voters that you think we have to win over? I mean, what an idiotic thing to say. And you can kind of tell that once he said it, he regretted it because he tried to quickly move on, right? Is this too internet? What do you mean too internet? Obama was too internet. You can argue and he landed in the White House. So this criticism is idiotic, but this is what happens when you are scrambling to find ways to downplay something that is actually really significant. The AOC and squad endorsements, these are the most important endorsements of this cycle, the most important. It's why Elizabeth Warren was aggressively courting AOC's endorsement because she knows that if you want to get credibility among progressives, you've gotta get that endorsement of the most vocal progressive. She didn't get it because she's not the most progressive. Bernie is. So now Bernie Sanders is back up to being a threat again. I don't necessarily know that this will affect him in the polls in a really substantial way. I am assuming it will, but the fact that this could help him, that's more than enough for them to start going back on the offensive and attacking Bernie Sanders. They kind of laid off a little bit because he had a heart attack, so we'll give them a break. And in their view, hopefully the heart attack would be disqualifying enough, but it's not. He's already starting to rise again in the polls. So look, it honestly does not matter. As much as the establishment fawns over Obama, if Obama came out to endorse Bernie Sanders, they would suddenly turn on Obama. You have to understand, they will never stop moving the goalpost because this isn't about impartiality and objective commentary. This is about individuals who are pushing for specific candidates, and if they don't have a particular horse that they're backing, they certainly know who they don't like. And almost all of these media elites, Marcos Molitzas, that CNN anchor, I don't know what his name is, you know, these are very wealthy people. A lot of them live in D.C., a lot of them are one percenters. They have a lot of money, so they don't like that Bernie Sanders is going to tax them at a higher rate, the highest rate out of anyone in the race. So they put class solidarity above all else. And that's what we're seeing. They're scrambling to rationalize reasons for why anything that happens that's a positive for Bernie is actually bad because they want you to feel discouraged. They want you to feel as if the situation is hopeless. So just stop trying. But whenever they say things like that, whenever they try to convince you that it's pointless and we have no shot, that's all nothing more than gaslighting. We just work extra hard when we see them smear Bernie Sanders because that means that what we're doing is enough to scare them. And so long as they're scared, we have a shot. When they start not even talking about Bernie Sanders as a real threat, that's when we know we have to work extra hard, but we already have to work extra hard, but understand we're doing something right if we have members of the elite class and the establishment scared. And they are. So keep up the good work. As you saw at the last Democratic primary debate, Pete Buttigieg didn't just vociferously argue against Medicare for All, but what was interesting is he used the exact same talking points that materialize from within the health insurance industry. Now, not too long ago, he sounded really different when it comes to the issue of Medicare for All. In fact, he was a supporter of Medicare for All. So back in February of 2018, the People's Summit had called him out for not supporting Medicare for All, but he pushed back on Twitter, saying, when slash where have you ever heard me oppose Medicare for All? Now understand that the reason why they called him out was because he didn't explicitly vocalize support for it, but he pushed back right there and responded saying, I, Pete Buttigieg, politician, do henceforth and forthwith declare, most affirmatively and indubitably, unto the ages that I do favor Medicare for All as I do favor any measure that would help get all Americans covered. So that's what he said back in February of 2018, but you actually don't have to go back that far to see Pete Buttigieg supporting Medicare for All because this year he posted a picture of a receipt that said Medicare for All and he responded saying, I'm on it. Now on top of that, in an interview with Morning Joe on MSNBC, he described Medicare for All in a way that I thought was brilliant. He said, this isn't really a radical idea. This is the real compromise if you consider the ACA being right wing reform and a national health system like we see in the UK being the true left wing reform. But really, Medicare for All, it's not as extreme as Republicans want us to believe. This is what he said specifically. ACA, which was a conservative proposal, came to be caricatured as left wing by a very disciplined right wing message machine. What is Medicare for All? It's a compromise. In the UK, you got national health care. That would be the left wing, the true left wing position. The true right wing position is free for all, all corporate. And the compromise position is a single payer system where you have private doctors but a public payer. We've got to stop allowing the right to move the goalposts. So that's what he was saying about Medicare for All as recently as February. He supported it. But fast forward a couple of months later and he's putting out attack ads against Medicare for All. He actually has run two to date. On top of that, at the debate, we saw him take on Elizabeth Warren for her position of Medicare for All, accusing her of wanting to eliminate choice and blowing up the private insurance market. But it wasn't just at the debate where he attacked Medicare for All and was relentless because the day after the debate, he wasn't finished attacking Medicare for All and spreading misinformation about Medicare for All. Because this is what he said. Here's some new criticisms that he raised about Medicare for All. It sounds very familiar if you listen closely. Talk about that moment that we just played in our intro where you went at it with Senator Elizabeth Warren about her Medicare for All plan and you wanted a simple yes or no answer of will she raise taxes? And what she ended up saying time and again was Americans household costs will come down with her plan. What does it matter to you? What bucket it comes out of? Well, not only is it important to have yes or no answers to yes or no questions at a time when people are so frustrated with Washington speak, but also there's still been no explanation for a multi-trillion dollar hole in this plan. I have a lot of respect for Senator Warren, but last night she was more specific and forthcoming about the number of selfies she's taken than about how this plan is going to be funded. And that's a real problem, especially when there's a better way to deliver healthcare coverage to everybody. Look, what most Americans want is to have an opportunity to walk away from their private plan, to have that what I call Medicare for All Who Wanted alternative, but also to be able to keep their private plan if they would prefer. And I think that's the right answer, especially when you do the math and realize it's also an answer that is paid for, unlike the Medicare for All Whether You Wanted or Not plans that still have this giant question mark over how it's supposed to work. So now he's asking, how are we gonna pay for Medicare for All? On top of that, he is implying that we're not really even sure how Medicare for All will work in practice. And let me explain something to you. These aren't just Republican talking points. These are health industry talking points. Even industry insiders see that that's the case because as Wendell Potter tweeted out, I can't tell if Pete Buttigieg is campaigning for president or my old job at Cigna. Mayor Pete DM me if you want to know how insurance companies really operate. So the question is what changed? What got Pete Buttigieg to change his position on Medicare for All that quickly? Because just months after proudly and boldly declaring support for it time and again, all of a sudden now he seems like he's using the same talking points that the industry uses, he sounds like a Republican, quite frankly. So what changed? Well, if you follow the money, you'll know exactly what has changed. He started taking money from the health insurance industry. And no, he's not just taking, you know, a few dollars here and there. When it comes to total donations, total health industry campaign contributions out of the entire Democratic Party 2020 primary field, do you want to know who's number one? It's Pete Buttigieg. Pete Buttigieg has gotten more money from the health insurance industry than every other Democratic candidate. In fact, the only individual running in 2020 to outspend Mayor Pete is Donald Trump, the sitting president. So looking at this chart here, as you can see, he took $548,000 in total from the health insurance industry. Now to be clear, this does include small and large campaign contributions. So, you know, there is a percentage of Mayor Pete's health sector donations that probably came from people who just, you know, work at hospitals or who are nurses. And that's why you see Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren on this list as well. But what's different about Pete Buttigieg is he hasn't sworn off fundraisers. He hasn't sworn off big money. In fact, he's actually taking quite a lot of big money and more than 50% of his total individual contributions came from large campaign donations, likely bundled by rich donors in fundraisers that he held in the Hamptons. So if you're wondering why he sounds so different, you know, when it comes to Medicare for all, there's a clear reason why he sounds like a health industry stooge. It's because he is one. He sold out. He took their money and it corrupted him that quickly in a matter of months, going from supporting Medicare for all to using the same lines of attack as Trump uses against Medicare for all. How sad is that? How pathetic is that? That he sold out and aligned with the health insurance industry to actively deceive voters and join their disinformation campaign to drive down support for single-payer Medicare for all. It doesn't matter to Pete that without single-payer, Americans will continue to die every single year. What matters to him is these for-profit insurance vultures are helping him get elected. So he's willing to turn a blind eye and sell the American people out if it means advancing his own career. And he says all of this about Medicare for all while denouncing the duplicity and doublespeak that politicians use in Washington, DC. No, Pete, you're no different than any of these insiders in DC. You're part of the problem. And in fact, you're one of the worst offenders because more people in DC when they take money, when they get bought off, they try to hide it better, but you're not even trying to hide it. You're wearing your corruption on your sleeve just this February. You were talking about why we should do Medicare for all and all of a sudden you sound like a health industry executive. That's disgusting, that's embarrassing. It doesn't matter to you that passing Medicare for all would literally save lives. You are perfectly satisfied with the pro-death status quo if it means that these for-profit insurance industry vultures will help you get elected. Well, that's disgusting and you really demonstrated what a horrible human being you are. You shouldn't just lose this race, but your career and politics should be finished permanently because you showed all of us your true colors that you're willing to sell out if the price is right. And that's incredibly disgusting. It says a lot about you. It says that you're not in this to help normal Americans. You're in this for self-aggrandizement. Shame on you, you're absolutely disgusting. I can't wait until he drops out and I would tell him to stay in South Bend but it doesn't really seem like his constituents there are very happy with him either. So maybe you should just do what we all know you're going to do and become a lobbyist for the health industry or some lobbying firm in DC because that's what you're gonna do. You were a consultant for McKinsey and we all know at the end of the day you're gonna be another one of these multimillionaires who makes a ton of money getting the government to not do policies that the American people want that a majority of Democratic Party primary voters support. So shame on you for spreading misinformation. That's just, that's disgusting. That is, there's a different kind of evil to that, right? Just not supporting a policy in and of itself being apathetic, that's a problem but to actively try to drive down support for a policy that the grassroots has been fighting for that shows how loathsome you are not just as a politician, Pete but as a human being. So the situation in Northeastern Syria continues to get worse. We're looking at hundreds of thousands of Kurds that have since been displaced since Donald Trump announced that he'd be withdrawing troops from Northeastern Syria. Now it's to the point where we can I think accurately characterize this as an attempt at ethnic cleansing by Turkey. This could potentially devolve into full out genocide. It's just a really sad situation. And what really makes matters worse is that this wasn't thought through. This could have been avoided but because Donald Trump is a buffoon because he's easily influenced because he has no coherent foreign policy ideology or knowledge of geopolitics in the region just a single phone call with Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan got him to move troops out of Northern Syria and essentially green light the chaos that has been caused. So let's be clear though, of course we shouldn't stay in Syria forever and withdrawing should still be a priority but you don't just leave and allow the Kurds who helped us defeat ISIS to remain vulnerable to Turkish aggression but that's what Donald Trump did rather than trying to formulate a plan some type of contingency plan rather than working with European allies rather than trying to get UN peacekeeping forces to go there and just act as a peacekeeping force rather than just the mere thousand troops that we had there if you truly wanted to withdraw I mean that would have been preferable but because Donald Trump doesn't know what he's doing he has blood on his hands. So he's a bad person but he knows that he's gonna be attacked because of this idiotic decision that he made presumably on a whim and now he's trying to scramble to right the wrong and what we have is a leaked letter to Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan and he penned this on October 9th and let me just say when I first saw this letter I did not think this was real I thought it was fake like I thought this was satirical this is literally a letter that Donald Trump wrote to the Turkish president to solve the crisis that he caused, right because of course Turkey is at fault for choosing to invade and displace the Kurds and do this ethnic cleansing but Donald Trump is complicit he greenlit this whole debacle so he's trying to right that wrong but this letter gives us a little bit of a snapshot of how he chooses to conduct diplomacy and I think honestly and I truly mean this earnestly a 10 year old would do a better job would probably construct a more coherent and mature response so I'm gonna read this this is the letter that president Donald Trump sent to another president of another country he actually sent this dear Mr. President let's work out a good deal, exclamation you don't want to be responsible for slaughtering thousands of people and I don't want to be responsible for destroying the Turkish economy and I will I've already given you a little sample with respect to pastor Brunson I have worked hard to solve some of your problems don't let the world down you can make a great deal general Mazloum is willing to negotiate with you and he is willing to make concessions that they would never have made in the past I am confidentially in closing a copy of his letter to me just received history will look upon you favorably if you get this done the right and humane way it will look upon you forever as the devil if good things don't happen don't be a tough guy don't be a fool I will call you later ladies and gentlemen president of the united states he literally sent that letter to another president this is how he conducts diplomacy by trying to persuade foreign leaders you know you don't want to be viewed as the devil so don't be a fool don't be a tough guy let's work out a good deal this is embarrassing this is genuinely embarrassing this is our president who seriously wrote this letter we need to end our forever wars but what he did here was try to make it seem as if he's being anti-war he's taking the you know the non interventionist stance but his actions facilitated more war and we're just getting started now we are imposing sanctions on a NATO ally turkey this was all started because of Donald Trump because he couldn't come up with some type of plan to withdraw the troops in a responsible way rather than trying to get UN peacekeeping forces there we're just gonna leave them even though we know the consequences of this I've got nothing else to say about this the issue of reparations has finally penetrated national discourse in part thanks to the presidential election uh... some democratic party primary contenders are saying that they support reparations um... but the conversation it's not very nuanced in mainstream media there's kind of a mention of it and then we move away but we don't really know what reparations entails because a lot of people are just learning about it for the first time and here with me now to talk about reparations is michael graham otherwise known as mg from actify press and we tried really hard to get this video out prior to the ados conference unfortunately the last version that we recorded had a little bit of audio issues so we are redoing it now because we really want you all to hear about this so michael thank you so much for coming back on the program uh... thanks thanks for giving me another shot there michael sorry about the sound of the last one you know things happen i have messed up so many uh... interviews before with tech issues and whatnot it's just you know it's part of the process but you know what matters is that we're still able to do this and get this out and i hope you know kind of intrigue people to not just listen to this and then and the conversation there but really dive a little bit deeper do some more research and if you look in the description box we have a plethora of resources for you if you want to learn more about reparations learn more about the exploitation of black americans the history there's so many resources i have some articles from michael grand that he wrote um but hopefully this will be a conversation that kind of sparked your interest so what i want to really do michael is i think the most important thing is for us to define what reparations means uh... materially speaking because everyone kind of seems to impose their own view of reparations for purposes of political expediency you know there's some candidates who they say they support it and maybe they do but it's meager maybe they don't actually support it if you read a little bit closer between the lines so in your view what is reparations what does that mean um in terms of cash payment does that mean investments in the community can you break it down for us in a material sense mm-hmm okay well let me let me go back a little bit i one thing i want to make clear is that reparations has been part of um human interaction since the beginning of time if you harm me there's some sort of recompense some sort of uh making things right between those two parties right so this that's all reparations is we were harmed and the country never made recompense of in any serious manner and they gained uh demonstratively gained trillions of dollars and power and wealth from what from our labor from our intellectual toil and we have gained the least from all those all those efforts so what reparations is just like it was for Jewish people in the country that were in concentration camps or the Japanese concentration camps and all these other groups it's just making making right what was done wrong what was done wrong to a group of people in this case so it could be it can come in several forms right there's of course there's cash there is land there is apology there's so many things that can be done to make things right but in this case one of the biggest sticking point for a lot of Americans is the cash reparations and I don't understand well I understand race is a big part of that why the cash is is is an issue for a lot of people because money's power and a lot of people don't want to see us with power but that's basically what reparations are making making good on on what what was what was what was done wrong and trying to try to make up these and right now the biggest issue is the wealth gap not the income gap which is different the wealth gap is the biggest issue because that's where families or an individual stability comes from and right now and I wrote it in my last article on nativism is that we're facing we're truly facing genocide in this country so we have to be honest about that and approach that from that standpoint and when you talk about genocide something that we prior discussed was if you look at the un definition of what constitutes genocide your argument is that black americans beat three out of the five at a minimum can you explain that a little bit okay i read directly from the convention on the prevention of punishment of the crime of genocide this is article two from the from the un commission so here here are the the five things killing members of the group causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group deliberately inflicting the on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction in whole or in part imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group forcibly transferring children of the group to to another group now b uh a of course killing members of the group we we see that every day we see it with um yes black on black crime does exist but that goes back to c which is deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction which is what happens when you push a bunch of people together in a small space concentrate upon and and take all the resources out of that space concentrate the poverty people will get violent happens all over the world happens in the tower blocks of london it happens in the favelas of rio it happens in the on the streets of of hong kong wherever you have a concentrated group of people and uh and concentrated poverty you're going to have violence the more concentrated the poverty and the more concentrate and the larger the um inequality is the the stronger the the violence is going to be that is of course because it's contained you people harm people who were in their group forcibly transferring children of the group to another group now um that's that's one that people probably don't even notice but our foster care program children are pushed in the foster care because um finances is the biggest reason why people give up their kids finances is the biggest reason why people don't have enough money to take care of their children right so we're going back to deliberately inflicting the group on the group conditions the light of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of holer and park it's a vicious cycle and we're facing that right now and if we don't as american descendants of slavery we don't have any money therefore we don't have any power uh or we have our vote but um the powers that be spend a lot of time and money to misguide our vote in the directions that they want in order to help whatever they want as opposed to helping us yeah right so that's that's that's my that's my that's a view of genocide based on international law this is not what michael graham says this is not what the ad us community says this is not what anybody this is what the law says what i think you you kind of touch on in your articles that i think is really important is well we live in a capitalist system in a capitalist system wealth directly translates into power by 2050 what's going to happen if we do not change income inequality and the disparities in wealth between whites and blacks 2053 we we're facing um the will be black america will be at zero wealth right now we average $1,700 for a family if you take out the the durable goods um so um like cars and cars and uh clothing and furniture and stuff like that we're down to $1,700 in in the united states and of course there's places that are a lot worse like in boston we're down to $8 of wealth um in uh in la i believe it's 200 or 300 dollars um in wealth which in la is like having nothing you know so in places this issues like that and it's not and it's not based on our color it's based on our the fact that we are descendants of slaves because they are afghan people people who are who were born and raised first second generation from the afghan continent who also live in in or around these these communities but they have much more wealth because they brought wealth in or the and or they've been allowed to access wealth more than us based on our history based on people trying to hold us down based on our history and i wanted you to kind of touch on the different types of arguments for reparations because i think that really there's a a multitude of ways that you can approach this there's the moral argument that this is a wrong that has never been written um you know ronald reagan is actually the president surprisingly enough that signed reparations into law for victims of japanese internment during world war two so this is something that we've we've never righted a wrong for so there's that moral argument there's also the legal argument and really acknowledging that this dates back to slavery but it doesn't stop after slavery we're talking about jim crowe we're talking about segregation redlining so the legal argument is what i think can persuade people who don't buy into the moral argument and i feel like the moral argument in and of itself is persuasive but if you want to get like the wonks and the centrists on board then i think that the legal argument is incredibly important and i i feel like it's foolproof now in terms of this being a debt owed how do you make that case how do you say legally speaking this is sound and this is something that is long overdue well as you said there's a there is a nearly unbroken chain of horrible policy in practice from the united states from 1696 but in this case we'll start from 1776 because there was no america prior to 1776 so there was slavery then then there was a civil war and there is a tiny sliver of time where he had reconstruction and then white terrorism erased that the right white terrorism and the assassination of martin the assassination of of abraham lincoln erased the all those gains and pulled the rug out from the southern blacks and whites who were who were rebuilding uh the south after after the civil war and then falling right back into that puts us right into the gem crow era which is a which is a hundred and a hundred plus years i forget what the number is a hundred plus years and that drives us into the 60s and during that time period we there there were there were over 4 000 lynchings which is which is how which is part of the violence and terrorism that they use to keep gem crow in place there were over 4 000 lynchings that have never ever ever been uh been prosecuted 4 000 black people were killed in violent violent terrorist actions from from the white community and none of that has ever been prosecuted all right so we have that where we couldn't we couldn't own property or if we did have property it could be taken away from us we had sharecropping during that time uh if those who those who managed to get their 40 acres in a mule that was taken back uh communities that built they built up built their own communities and and white folks came and tore that down and took it away it was just it was just horrible absolutely horrible so now we hit gem at the end of gem crow quote unquote the end of gem crow which puts us at the civil the end of the civil rights movement um puts us in the 65 and 67 in that time period we had civil rights act the voting rights act we also have um linda b johnson signing um using a a um executive action to institute affirmative action which is great uh for and it was affirmative action was specifically specifically for the descendants of slaves all right so within a year they found a way to dilute it they added women to it not to say the women aren't downtrodden but white women this was a this was a funnel to to take the resources out of these programs in front of them right back into the white community through white women okay so so we're talking about since other than that those that slivered time of reconstruction and from the time that uh linda b johnson puts um put affirmative action into in place so we're talking about reconstruction and like a 10 month window where we had affirmative action to ourselves right beyond that that is the absolute closest we've we've had to full citizenship since we've been here since we've been on this continent and when you see it like that when you see when you see that framing of where we are in the united states it's case closed there's really no way to back away from that i think that part of the issue is that people aren't really conceptualizing this in the correct way like one of the biggest things that i see against reparations is that well there's no slaves alive today and of course you just explained how it's not just about slavery but the way that i see it is when a debt is owed that doesn't go away when you know the individuals who um are owed something die right so for example like i have a lot of student loan debt if i die that's not going to go away it's just going to be transferred to my husband debts carry on after somebody passes away i mean my dad he has an uncle that he never met i don't think maybe once or twice who had land in hawaii it was like a meager five acres or something like that but he found out about it after he died and then when that property was sold him and his siblings split that so you know a debt it doesn't just go away with time it's something that carries on does not and people need to acknowledge that and if they see it that way i think that legally speaking it makes more sense if they don't you know understand the moral argument which i feel like the moral argument it's it's basically a no-brainer it's just a matter of people kind of use legal rationale to kind of explain away the need for reparations when that's not really a way to dismiss it easily because you're still wrong but i wanted to talk about because the thing about reparations is that as i kind of alluded to we don't really get these complex conversations about it and it's really nice to see presidential candidates like you know mary and williamson talking about it although i will say it's disappointing that you know a white woman is the phase of reparations when we have black leaders like event carnell and antonio more who founded this movement and they don't really get credit but really what they've kind of helped to demonstrate to people is that this is important to view it in terms of a black agenda right like we can't just lump in black people and people of color because there are different needs for different communities so what they try to do is bring to the forefront of black agenda saying these are the things specifically that we need that will help our community that will save our community but it is important that the way that you know the the organization and the momentum grassroots behind this has kind of just sprung up seemingly out of nowhere that's actually a mischaracterization because it's been there there's been a need for this there's been an urgency for it it's just that finally it is coming to the forefront but i want to ask you because since mary on williamson is kind of the face of reparations and i do view her as an ally she spoke at the ados conference but in my view i feel as if her approach to reparations while it's correct legally and you know in the way that she's framing the argument i feel like it's a bit too meager but i kind of want to talk through like is she is she hitting all the marks is she doing a good job what is your take on mary on williamson yeah well let me i'm sorry mike let me go back for a second you were talking about the the debt well i'll come back to mary wilson sure we're talking about you were talking about the debt and how debt is that debt transfers just just just the way wealth transfers just like poverty is just is passed on down passed down through generations um or the lack of wealth is passed down through generations right so something we have to keep in mind right recently there was a study 60 the largest transfer of personal wealth is about to happen over the next 25 years in the united states from boomers to millennials we're talking 68 trillion dollars are going to be transferred um and 45 million 45 million households there's going to be 68 trillion dollars transferred to um from from millennials i mean from boomers to millennials and the vast majority of those families are white families because that's where all the wealth is right so that we have to keep that in mind a lot of people are saying well um are saying that that well well black folks they had their chance whatever you know would they had welfare and whatever whatever x y z we did not have a chance to pass on that kind of wealth like white folks get ready pass pass on to their kids even though we did the work we always have done the work and here we are we're looking at 68 trillion dollars over the next 25 years going from boomers to millennials that we're looking at moving on mary wabes mary wabes and she is a she's an outstanding ally she is courageous um she i i like the fact that she is full-throated about her her uh position about fighting for for reparations although her numbers are small because she's concentrating i guess what she said in the in the conference was that she's concentrating on what is what she believes is politically politically viable um i believe what's politically viable is what you fight for right um just like um was three four years ago medicare for all wasn't politically viable now everybody's scrambling to try to find a medicare for all plan or medicare medicare for all light plan yeah that's a great plan and what's politically viable doesn't matter it's where and and uh thing harvard did the study you know stanford did the study that what people in the street think about what have what policy goes through means nothing yeah like 60 a policy goes through and the people in the street don't even want it yeah that's a princeton study actually dr billens and page yeah yeah yeah yeah so the argument that um well most americans don't want that that's not an argument at all right this is about what people with money won't want which doesn't which doesn't really help us but the argument of the people don't want it shouldn't it's not going to happen that's that doesn't fly either right because this is a day okay so her problem for what's again back to mary wimson the biggest issue is she wants to concentrate on the 40 acres in the promise of a 40 acres in the mule which is a very concentrated promise of four million people didn't get their 40 acres in the mule four million former slaves in the united states didn't get their 40 acres in the mule and that was what they could have as we've talked about before that's what they could have could have they could have received and if they had the opportunity to they could they would have been able to protect it and grow that wealth just like white families did okay and then of course pass that on to to further generations now here we are nearly 40 million um african-americans or of american descendants of slavery and we're dirt poor for the most part yeah some some black folks have some money yay but the vast majority of us are struggling paycheck to paycheck if they're lucky enough to be getting a paycheck so i think mary wimson is on the right track as far as that portion of the reparation i mean is concerned or reparations case is concerned but there is a vast majority of things um like peonage um kind of policing uh and even even now we have even in the modern modern times we have the drug war which which clearly was targeting black communities we and after the drugs were flooded into the communities we have mass incarceration which is which piggybacked off the drug war it seems that every step of the way our bodies are used for white folks to make money and we never get and folks want that to continue for some odd reason because white supremacy is just so ingrained in every single component of society and institutions and it's it's so like it's really difficult to undo a system that was built on that so it's like i really you know i found the ados argument like i've always been a supporter of reparations just as you know a good ally but i never really took the time to fully understand what that means and what that entails and even if i was already kind of open minded towards the idea when you really see it put in very point of blank like statistical terms it really is eye-opening like i i read the ados website ados101.com and i kind of had this like yeah i said go ahead the website is i wrote i also wrote that in my recent article on nativism it was it was a it was so sobering you know i thought i was knowledgeable but when you look at those numbers and the way they pull out the data it's not and it's not intended to uh as some folks were saying is that not attended to fire people up and make them feel bad about our situation it was about telling the truth right and that's what the left is supposed to be about right the left is supposed to be about okay let's here's the facts let's say an argument let's let's try to get it fixed right and that's what well that's what left used to be about back in the day anyway we uh that's only when it comes to the american descent of slavery is the left not like that and that's that's a big issue for me that's why i've shifted most of my energy to fighting for ads because you know it's my family that's where my my sons my sons no matter what my um what my parents have done no matter what what i have done no matter what my wife family has done um my sons have a 75 percent chance of falling into poverty and one of them right now is headed that way my eldest right no matter what we did no matter what no matter how many resources i have they as individuals are are more likely to fall into poverty simply because they descend from slaves nothing else it's not race it's not um ethnicity it's not you know the color of their their car when they have one right it's none of that garbage right it is that it is that they descend from slaves because this country has a hard on for harming us and it's really that simple yeah and the situation shouldn't be bleak and i think that really what what was very persuasive to me is the sense of urgency that i felt when i read it you know about black wealth disappearing by 2053 about how the situation is getting exponentially worse um so i think that it does a really good job at you know one educating people on two spreading awareness and i feel like if you're not necessarily uh on board yet but you're open minded then doing the research in and of itself will do wonders because it really is empowering to learn about this and really realize the full history and get the context of what has happened to descendants of slaves in this country and it's really sad so we kind of got our feet wet a little bit but this is such a gigantic issue it's complex so aside from recommending that people go through and read the resources that we have in the description box what i want to ask you is as white allies as non-white allies what can we do to promote this issue rather than just saying i support it i mean what else can how do we go further and be good allies i think one of the biggest things is um be prepared to do some work right um there's boots on the ground uh do your homework obviously like we just said yeah definitely in be fearless in your circles if you don't take anything else from what i say uh in this this particular um interview or anything i've written if you the biggest thing for me is be fearless in your circles go back and tell these folks that are that are on the right left or center um whoever they are tell them that reparations is the right thing to do and here are the reasons why bam bam bam bam these are fellow americans are going through x y and z and our policy and practice caused it and at no point in time in this in our history have we had enough power to cause this to ourselves so this is this was something that was inflicted upon uh the uh the american descendants of slavery and as the the uh the the entity that inflicted that on these on on the american descendants of slaves we have the duty and responsibility to fix it because they we do not there are no policies in place for us to fix it ourselves um uh the uh dr sandy darity from duke and antonia more and several other um economists did a study and all these things that we were told would get us out of poverty um you know buying home saving not spending on rims and sneakers as they say that bullshit um and um all those things that we we've heard that would get get us out of poverty none of them work none of them work um i i forget the name of the study i think mike uh put it in the um in the show notes yeah yeah it'll definitely be there yeah and and all none of those things work because they do not show their data right that they don't that doesn't show up in the data families that that stay together um that you know nuclear families that stay together and everybody gets at least a high school education and they're working wealth levels are still massively below white people who do the same thing so all these things uh that we're told that would fix this um where and they were put in like nixon put in place uh black capitalism that was his big thing um we're gonna do give them you know give them black capitalism and so so they think they're getting somewhere and and we didn't get anywhere um you know and and all these other fixes that they're supposed to be um gyms of of of wisdom in order to build wealth they're all bullshit at the end of the day another thing that i kind of wanted to touch on real quick before we um close up here is um one thing that i think makes this issue especially more difficult to sell to people is that it's not like other policies like medicare for all like if i'm promoting that i tell somebody how that impacts them from a really concrete individual standpoint but with this issue when it comes to reparations i think that people incorrectly view this as a zero-sum game where descendants of slavery they get something but i don't get something as someone who's white when in actuality that just shows me that we haven't been doing a good enough job at pitching this because in actuality this is not a zero-sum game this is a win for everyone and this is truly um trickle up economics because if we increase purchasing power of black americans then that benefits the aggregate economy so i feel as if you know giving up in saying well this doesn't have public support i don't think that that is persuasive enough because we always start from somewhere medicare for all was not as popular as it is the death penalty is still uh not uh there's most americans don't support a repeal of it it's getting closer right but that doesn't necessarily mean yeah that doesn't mean that we give up that doesn't mean that we just say well you know what we we don't have the public support that we need so we stop that just means that we have our work cut out for us and that means that we need to go further in educating people and really like what i would say is educating yourself is the first step because you can't persuasively argue for reparations if you don't know the statistics if you don't know how grim the situation is for american descendants of slavery and that in and of itself is a huge first step that uh you can take i think i i mean i don't know if you want to add to that yeah i agree that the first step is is education but but the the moral argument you can do without the education right that's true that's right i don't want you to i don't want anybody to wait until i you know they're a scholar on right right they're applied to black people in the united states the moral argument is clear yeah it could be as concise as you want it to be and it could be all right we had slavery we had jim pro we had for a split second we had civil rights movement that got us closer to um to to parity with with our our white brethren in the country but then we had the drug war we had mass incarceration so we have never is never american descendants of slavery have never seen full citizenship they've never had a full opportunity to gain wealth in this country point blank period there's really no way there's no other way to view this and the moral argument is we need to make that right and that includes cash payments because you can't make up a wealth gap without cash you just cannot yeah and um raising people's income that sounds good on paper but you're raising everybody you know the minimum wage argument you're raising but you're raising everybody's income that means okay if there's a gap and everybody's wages go up guess what that gap is goes unchanged right slightly or changes slightly right so um and that's you know and that's one of my many frustrations with the left when it comes to this this discussion uh as like you were saying before that people tend to give up looks too hard let's leave it alone right i think that's bullshit for a lot for a lot of folks i totally know a lot of folks know better i think a lot of folks know better but they're choosing not to you know i don't mind what i i'm gonna call some of them are racist i mean it is what it is the left has has their share of races and like you said before white supremacy is ingrained deeply in the united states and it's really it's good right but it's deep in the united states and and and a lot of people think that um to and it's true to a degree that money insulates them from us and our problems right and it does insulate them you know we our problems are elsewhere i mean that's what pushing us into separate communities was all about our problems are there is no um shared uplift right those the whole um the rising tide lift all boats argument but no water's going to our in our spaces right all the water's going to other spaces how are we gonna lift all boats right because you know we're living you know we're living in a space where we're not getting anything and matter of fact most of the resources are being pulled out through um through um over policing you know driving up that's driving up costs through um incarcerating people um tickets all kinds of stuff and all this stuff is going on the black communities that that are pulling resources even now pulling resources out of out of um black communities that's happening right now at this moment we we just had the um the crash in 0809 suggest i'm getting old just in 0809 and nobody went to jail for targeting black and in this case black and latino um um uh people wanted to wanted to buy a house nobody went to jail for targeting for targeting us right and that none of this goes punished and that's part of the problem is that um government has lost its taste for even a little bit for fighting force not nobody fights for us not nobody in power fights for us if you look around there is nobody fighting for the specific needs of the american dismissal slavery community not a single person of power not a single group in power is fighting is fighting for us none and we are the most important voting block voting block in democratic politics and then on a national state level how does that happen how does that happen it's got it's i know how it happens this is specifically it's specifically targeting us for the end right you you don't you don't want us to make your own decisions you don't want us to have any wealth you don't want us to uh grow you don't want us to have our own businesses what's left what's left and and for people to quote unquote left us to to look at this situation and ignore it or even worse um attack us for wanting more for our for for wanting a future for our children is absolutely vile absolutely vile and um i don't you know i don't know how this country plans are going forward without fixing this problem and and it's the sad thing is it most people don't want to fix the problem yeah you know we've um a lot of it is like we said said early is that people don't understand the problem but for a lot of folks that's not an excuse especially for those of us on the left it's not an excuse well and the reason why i've kind of like really started to be more passionate about it and not just you know be a passive white ally because that's what i feel like i should do is because you know it's hypocritical to not support this issue if you think big in all other areas and i get that there's this sense that okay well we're gonna be accused of being too far left the minute like reparations even came up in 2020 there was already the fox news segments about how far left we're going and how how crazy about everything yeah exactly about having fire departments say exactly exactly and like the whole the whole like i and i do understand like right trying to be sympathetic um i get it like we finally move the needle on medicare for all we move the needle on the green new deal we have public support so now it seems like okay well what if we go too far and ask too much will we delegitimize ourselves but what people need to realize is that we are at a really crucial point in history where we've got 11 years left to act when it comes to climate change um we are facing rising fascism in the united states of america white supremacy um violence against blacks and people of color it is it's really terrifying to see so now is not the time to limit our thinking and limit you know what's possible now is the time to think big and accept things radical changes that would actually uh help people in this country and it doesn't matter if we have these universal programs that are phenomenal but if you truly care about targeting that wealth gap that disparity between descendants of slaves and everyone else you have to address that specifically and i think that ados has done a fantastic job at saying that look it's great all these you know universal policies uh targeting you know people of color generally speaking that's all fantastic but if we want to stop this issue and um stop what's been happening the exploitation of black americans uh disproportionately you know descendants of slaves this is what we have to do um so i think it's really persuasive and i really i i'm thankful that people like you are speaking up so vocally because you have to really yell to get people's attention sometimes and i think that ados movement has been very effective and i really commend them for it yeah there's there's been a lot of guerrilla journalism and guerrilla politics uh coming from um the um from the ad os community and and for people with no resources and no power this is what people have to do you know it's we don't have um we don't have a bunch of folks that we can send journalists with with tv vans to go to everything we get you know where we got cell phones and and our voices that's all we got and and that goes back to allies being courageous in their circles right uh if you if you're in a a space where people are poo-poo and reparations you've got to stand up and say something you know uh it can't be well maybe they have a maybe they have a point it is kind of hard no no everything is hard until you freaking do it yeah right um and that's the biggest issue for me people gonna have to be courageous and even if you um there were a lot of voices saying that um that ados was a was a fascist plot to bring down bernie and all this other madness if you don't see that that was wrong if you don't see that by now with cornell west um standing standing by um the most one of the most courageous people in for for the rights of poor people in this country is standing with ados if you can't see that i i don't know what to tell you well a lot of folks are just using it we're using it as an excuse yeah they're gonna say they're gonna say to cornell west of all people got paid off whatever bullshit excuse they're gonna oh yeah cornell west is like the most uh you know he has the most integrity out of any one yeah absolutely absolutely he was shredding obama for eight straight years and based on his policy and and you know there are all kinds of people that are standing um with this um with the ados uh community um and are and and the uh and i must say i just just released a a podcast um just me talking more or less of um of about leadership about black leadership and praising antonia more and and and uh you've been at carnell for their forthright and fearless leadership because too often um and there's a clip in there of malkin max talking about the leadership during the civil rights movement about how it was it was the leadership was stood up because black folks were were uh uh choosing other paths will say of making their voices heard uh folks were getting hurt buildings were burning down and black folks were not playing so powers that be uh put some more um quiet voices out in front all right but even those voices got radicalized after a while like marlo vikin he got radicalized after a while so oh wait a minute we got to talk about economics of course that was the end of of the good doctor but in any event again that go i had to say again you have to be courageous in your circles yeah you don't have to you don't have to like event you don't have to like antonio you don't have to like their tone none of that you don't have to like me but if you are for justice and you're in this activism space and you're not behind reparations there is a problem not enough groups are helping us nobody's no no groups are on our side the um just recently um trump signed a a um a bill for um pacific under and asian-american inclusion in the in the economy not a word was said nobody said anything about about specific policy to help people you know what i mean yeah that's that's the thing those are the types of things that bother me so we can't do the same thing for for black people for the census flavor we can't do the same thing for us but when it comes to us we are quote-unquote political poison unless you want our votes but that's going to change now no black agenda no vote it is what it is you know and and shutting us out and well trying to shut us out and try to shut down these arguments it's not going to work especially as bad as you need these black these black ads votes for to win the win the presidency and to win at the state level in many states it's going to change and it slowly is changing as we speak well the overtune window just in this election cycle i think has shifted dramatically on not i mean not just reparations but a ton of issues and it this is the first time i really feel optimistic well i shouldn't say i feel optimistic because overall i'm cynical i've got a cold heart but i mean i see like there's a little bit of a light like a glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel so it's nice to see you know a little bit of maybe goodness to come you know it's just a matter of putting in the work and that's why i really appreciate people like you and that carnell and tenio more raising this issue because you know without this type of in your face like hey pay attention finally tangibles 2020 like i wouldn't have really felt the need to do research i would have just felt like i i support it that's probably enough i'm comfortable right but really forcing myself to go out of my comfort zone and really research it on it's eye opening you know it's this coming to jesus moment that i want everyone to have and that's why i will say one more time please do not leave this video until you check out those resources in the description michael took the time to go through and carefully select a ton of different things that you will want to check out he's like to read great job great opportunity just reading there you go harder there you go check out the resources nerds so i didn't want to say that so anyways if you if you didn't have anything else to add michael we uh we can leave that there no i'm good michael i want to thank you for being an ally it's very very important that we have allies um and it's great that the guys in independent media especially on the video side because you guys get the most the most attention um and tim black also he has sandy darity on his show recently um and giving ados a fair shot because that that smear campaign that happened early on was painful but um glad we got it out of the way it's gonna happen eventually glad we got it out of the way and people are and people like yourself were being courageous and and being true allies in fighting this fight and offering your platform for this i truly truly truly appreciate it and please thank talk to your fellow your fellow youtubers slash podcasters and everybody else again be courageous in your circles well thank you thank you for saying that i'm certainly trying but uh it's really you know thanks to you for really um taking the time to explain this so articulately and eloquently and just and just making it known what's at stake right it's it's easy to sit by and be complacent but for the people who speak out they kind of put themselves on the line and you're doing a public service so thank you for that it's been a pleasure michael the people of the third district from sandy digression estacada to portland deserve true representation from a leader who knows our lived experience to know what it is to make the rent to be sensitive to the price of milk and dependable childcare to want to fix the endless war endless traffic homelessness and the destruction of our planet if we want folks who will fight for us they gotta know who it is they're fighting for my name is albert lee i know the struggle i know it's beyond blue and red i'm standing up as one of us to represent all of us join us now for a stronger smarter and more beautiful america help us bring a new generation of leadership from the third district to congress representing the people it's our time forward together my name is albert lee and i approve this message hello everyone i am here with a fantastic candidate from my home state he's from portland oregon his name is albert lee and he is running in the third congressional district of oregon against an incumbent that has been there since 1996 albert thank you so much for coming on the program hey thanks mike happy to be here i'm happy to have you here you're the first candidate from portland that i'm talking to so it feels really nice to uh you know to know someone who's familiar with my area where i grew up and this is fantastic let's let's go through some of the really exciting things about your campaign you were just endorsed by brand new congress you were endorsed by portland dsa and you just made a really exciting endorsement you endorsed bernie sanders for president so for those who missed it on twitter we're gonna play you the clip of albert lee's my bernie story so in 2015 bernie sanders activated me and he did so simply by speaking the truth and having a vision for a better america for all of us now before 2015 i didn't contribute to campaigns i didn't canvas and i didn't phone bang by 2016 i had done all three multiple times now after 2016 and a little bit of morning i continued forward to engaging and working within my community by the inspiration of bernie i started working on housing issues transit police accountability and social justice i became an active member of the democratic party both at the local level and at the state level i became an active member of the portland chapter of the democratic socials of america and i was happy to know that i was contributing to changing the status quo now in 2016 i supported bernie and in 2020 i endorsed bernie because bernie has vision bernie has integrity and bernie was the one who came up with very big ideas like medicare for all free college tuition you know helping people and planet over profits uh and just being playing decent human beings so i look forward to seeing bernie sanders in the white house i look forward to celebrating go bernie all right so getting to your campaign i wanted to ask you a question about why you decided to run for congress because Earl blumenauer a lot of people don't really know him nationally but those who are familiar they kind of just view him as someone who's progressive right he advocates for legalization of cannabis and you know he just he usually takes the right side so what made you want to run against him well first of all it's not about Earl it's our it's about our future and the way i see it is we've faced a series of crises here in this district across the country and around the world that really require bold action now and not just inspirational and aspirational words which is typically what i've heard out of Earl's mouth i mean typically what we've seen is a lot of oh yes resist oh yes protest but not a whole lot of bold action and when i first moved here in 2005 the first thing that i noticed was the homelessness crisis and back then it was a crisis and today it is blown up exponentially and it's been a whole lot of silence over this last two decades recently he has put out a paper on homelessness or something but i think of it as being too little too late yeah i totally agree with that and it's weird because you know i i went to school you know university in downtown portland and when i first started i noticed that homelessness was particularly an issue down there but by the time i graduated it was a huge issue to the point where it almost seemed as if this is this is a crisis this is an emergency why isn't there action that's being taken why is the issue getting worse so it's nice to see someone a fresh voice step up and i want to go over your platform because when you look at everything that you're supporting um anyone who is in portland who's progressive the choice is crystal clear so you support medicare for all single-payer uh housing for all you want to decriminalize sex work not enough people talk about this so credit to you for that um free palestine so important free public transit if you live in portland everyone knows how crucial this is um also abolish ice green new deal taxing the rich free college you're putting out a bunch of tweets saying should we tax the rich and you you pull people with one of the options being hell yes you're speaking to my heart so let me ask you this in the event you're elected what do you think you'd focus on because you check all the boxes politically if you're progressive if you're a democratic socialist such as myself but what do you think if best case scenario we get a bernie sanders president and a blue house and senate what do you think we could achieve and what would you push for yeah so there's two big things first of all number one is the climate emergency we've got to do something about that we've got seven eight to eleven years to do something to stop before we have irreversible climate change that's something that the united nations has talked about that's something that scientists all around the world have talked about and simply we've got to do something and right now we are in a situation where there's so much inaction with our federal government uh you know our state governments are stepping up california or again washington alike are trying to step up but we need something on the federal level because if we don't save this planet for or it's not the planet so that's going to go away it's us that are going to go away uh if we don't take care of that issue then really none of the other issues are going to matter um so that's number one but behind that underlying that is the money in politics i mean we've got to get the money out of politics that's how come we have so many perverse things going on like having federal fossil fuel subsidies when we should be doing everything we can to curtail the use of fossil fuels now when you have exxon mobile and rail cells and british petroleum and all of those folks giving money not only to the right side of the aisle but also to the left side of the aisle uh you're not going to get the change that's desperately needed in order to save our only home now when it comes to url um you've you've said it uh he's a corporate neoliberal centrist he has been branded as a progressive he has developed a brand as being a progressive over these last 23 years because number one he's never faced any legitimate challenge in fact we've raised over uh more money than all of the challengers that he's ever faced combined in the primary and that's not a whole lot of money uh to to tell you last cycle there were three primary challengers and i think that they raised in total 200 dollars wow that's not that's not a challenge um and we are in a heavily democratic district i think the cook partisan voting index puts us at a d plus 24 so that indicates that you cannot have a republican challenger or a third party challenger that has anywhere near a chance to defeat a sitting democrat so that means you have to have primary challengers but the thing about primary challenger is it's political suicide if you are a career politician career politicians are not going to stand up because they don't have a backbone much like i'm going to have to say most of the democratic party um you you're going to have to have somebody that's going to be a fighter that's going to stand up and say hey there's a different way there is an alternative uh we have to get this money out of politics because if we don't then these folks aren't going to work for us they're going to work for the people that are paying them yeah yeah and that's perfectly put and it's interesting speaking of you know earl blooming hour i always was kind of misguided in my my stance towards earl because i always did kind of perceive him to be someone who is more progressive maybe not the most vocal but nevertheless you know i felt like he was a good representative um although personal story he actually came to speak at portland state university i attended one of his talks and i i met with him afterwards this was in 2016 early like it was january and i asked him hey um why haven't you endorsed bernie sanders um you know it's it's odd to me that ideologically speaking you are seemingly more aligned with bernie sanders but you haven't made an endorsement so it just seems like it would make sense bernie doesn't have much support in congress back then we were really worried about you know super delegates so i thought hey you know you could help tip the scales and as my representative you know he represents everything that i would want you to represent so why not endorse him and his answer was incredibly discouraging to me basically he said look i have worked with both of them but hillary clinton i just think she'd be more effective i think that she's going to be the one to win um turns out he was wrong and at that point i kind of realized look there is a really fundamental difference with these career politicians and just normal americans they are afraid to challenge power you don't want to go against the grain and upset someone who may be the president because who knows how that's going to affect you maybe you know hillary clinton had a great relationship with nancy polosi and then she doesn't give you as many committee assignments as you had it's just they're afraid to challenge power so it's nice to see a lot of progressives such as yourself kind of like speak up and say you know what you're not doing good enough and you aren't as progressive as you've been leading us to believe because when we expected you to fight for us you haven't been um so it's it's nice to see you really bring attention to these issues that i don't feel as if earl has addressed at all like he has this pet set of issues but bicycle and weeds bikes exactly exactly he has this bicycle pin and he has his bows and you know i get it we all care about different things but he's not addressing real needs in the community and one of the things that i think is so important especially with regard to your district is housing for all so um i grew up in st john's in portland oregon this is a north portland and going back there it's unrecognizable it's gentrified um so many people that i know people of color have been priced out of that community they can't find housing there it's a crisis at this point and it's only getting worse and you know that's just a microcosm of a national issue so talk about housing and your platform specifically and what you would do to address this crisis because this is certainly something that i think people in portland are going to care deeply about yeah sure uh first of all we we've got to talk about the history of this you know we start off with the brownout of cities where white flight meant that there was the development of the suburbs and the x-serves um and then people got tired of the commute they got tired of the traffic and they started coming back into the city we had the gentrification and then all of a sudden the folks that were left in those blighted areas were getting forced out now this is not just in portland but this is all over the country uh and it's sort of following i guess the model in europe uh you know when you talk about a city like paris all of the the the more expensive areas are down in the city center of the errandes monts on the outsider where the ghettos are so we're pushing folks back out to gresham to trout dale to camis washington to vancouver and the like uh and we're creating these areas where not no one can live except for the one percent really um now you've got a whole bunch of real estate developers that are looking you know buy let's buy houses for cash there have been a lot of folks that i've talked to throughout the district in in st john's in inner north and northeast and southeast who said they constantly have people knocking on their doors asking them to buy their houses and uh really taking a look at them not as the residents and the owners that they are there but as you know someone to make a buck off of now when it comes to developing these new apartments and everything we've got what 16 000 vacant luxury apartments uh one and two bedroom apartments we're not developing and building for families we need to be building some high density inner urban core um and rezone the whole area so that we can have the housing necessary for for families um you know when you're when you're constantly building one and two bedroom and studio uh apartments what you're doing uh our condos is what you're doing is you're building investment properties for the wealthy we've got to get out of that mindset we've got to do something that's going to make our city more compact take a look at the single family housing zoning and make it so that you can build multi units on in those neighborhoods and and i understand that some people don't like that idea you know some people are saying we want to preserve the neighborhood as it was or as it is and you know for the efficiency of the of the land for taking care of the people for reducing our waste and and the and the use of of our resources we need to do things differently um so i'm definitely proponent in trying to take care of all those things and reducing the uh the expense uh of housing because it's killing folks the combination of the stagnation of living wages or minimum wage not even a living wage and the ever uh increasing cost of housing is putting too many of us in the stride of the class yeah absolutely and i think that just your concern for like specific needs very specific needs of people is really what separates you from someone like Earl Blumenauer who is in a convent who again who's he's been there since 1996 so you know maybe you wait you gotta you gotta say it the right way i mean he's been in office in the federal office for 23 years but he's been a career politician for 45 years man has only held one uh a job one w2 job and that was straight out of college he was the assistant to the president of portland state university aside from that he's been an elected official all of his life i don't understand how uh he understands the struggles of everyday people when he's never uh actually had to uh live like the rest of us yeah and how often is he down in portland holding town halls talking to all of us i mean the problem with dc is that it's very far away and there's this bubble so you kind of get insulated you get comfortable you feel as if incumbency you know makes you unstoppable so you don't really feel the need to be as responsive and maybe just with time you become more complacent and we're seeing that with Earl Blumenauer i think it's time for some new blood um and i feel like you're just the perfect candidate to challenge him because you're speaking to all of these really important issues one thing that i want to touch on um is foreign policy so you talk a little bit about this in your ad you have a very robust foreign policy platform and what's so important is that you say things that you know will get you attacked if you will become elected but it's so bold and important that it matters so free palestine is part of your platform talk overall about your foreign policy ideals and how you would help shift the democratic party back to the left because i you know i think it's easy to see they're moving further and further to the right and we don't really have a true anti-war party at this point and that's really terrifying so what would you do differently if you're elected well first of all we've got to address the elephant in the room and that is that our foreign policy has been a white supremacist foreign policy forever and it has been focused on providing benefits to a very small privileged few one of the examples that i always like to bring up is because donald trump likes to talk about the Guatemalans and the Hondurans that are on our border seeking asylum and he says you know go back to your country and you go fix your country what he neglects to talk about is why their countries are in disarray okay so back in the 50s we had a american company that was trying to take care of their you know harvesting bananas and they didn't like the idea of their laborers coming up and and protesting and wanting to have better wages living wages and and and decent conditions of work decent working conditions so they petitioned the government and said hey we've we've got an issue down here can you fix this and so our government through the cia through i think it was operation pb success uh sent us the cia down to destabilize the country a democratically elected country install right wing dictator okay then we had a series of right wing dictators over the course of years uh culminating in a civil war and the code complete the stability the stabilization of the country and then those folks flee and they go to where the place that they think they're going to get the most uh comfort consolation uh care and they're at the border and they're being turned away and this was all so that some company could make a bigger profit on bananas and that's typically the way our foreign policy has been held when we look at iran the british and the americans went in and destabilized that country for oil the story repeats over and over again we're supporting a undemocratic country in israel right now that is basically in a park tide state and it is to the detriment of an entire people i don't see how we can stand for any of these things and i think that we have to have if not a vocal majority at least a vocal minority that's going to stand up and say this is not right yeah and take positions that um aren't necessarily politically expedient like if we truly are going to live by this philosophy that we care about human rights which i don't believe the u.s government does you know based on our actions but i mean if we are going to be attentive to the needs of humans then we have to speak out on israel palestine we have to stand up for palestinians who are being oppressed stand up for you know Kashmiris stand up for you know individuals in the western sahara who are being oppressed by the moroccan government i mean there's all of these atrocities around the world and we just kind of turn a blind eye because either the government there is doing our bidding or we have further interests and we never talk about human rights and there's no moral leadership in congress or it's few you know so when it comes to foreign policy we need to just put morality back into the equation and actually follow through and i just don't see that well and and there's another there's another part to that and that is the amount of wasted money that we spend on our military i mean our military is the number one blooter in the world we have it around the world and that money could be better used in reinvesting in america it could be better used in reinvesting in our education reinvesting in our crumbling infrastructure and taking care of the people with Medicare for all for instance for instance uh you know i hear on the debate how are you gonna pay for it how are you gonna pay for it there's a really easy way to pay for it and that's to tackle that the military industrial complex and our and our incredibly bizarre foreign policy yeah absolutely i don't think people realize how much money we're spending what is it like 59 give or take of our discretionary budget that's a lot yes i mean it's the combination of i guess the next eight countries combined military expenditures uh some of which are our allies yeah it's ridiculous completely wasteful completely unnecessary and on top of that tax the rich and we can already reinvest so much back into our economy so i know the people are enthusiastic about your campaign tell us what we can do to help you help us and get you elected no absolutely so it takes money number one uh and the reason why it takes money is because mainstream media is not reaching out they're not going to talk about us in fact uh you know they're going to do as much as they can to ignore us as is the incumbent uh quite frankly i think the incumbent is chicken uh you know he has not been he talks about being the guy that's going to stand up against trump he can't even stand up against me how is he going to stand up against trump uh you know he will not come to an open debate so i would say call call center or your representative representative blumenauer call and say hey you know you should debate this guy i want to hear where you stand versus where he stands that's number one number two we are not taking any corporate contributions we're only taking money from the people 100% of our contributions have come from the people so uh we can't we need that to continue forward um you know i had to step down from my day job as the dean over at the portland community college it's a state government control of uh state government employment so uh basically it was either be the dean or be the candidate uh and i think that is very important that we have someone who knows the struggle someone who's going to be a citizen representative representing us instead of someone that's part of the one percent and that's the thing that people don't realize is that our representative is one of the one percent you know when he first got into office i think he had a net worth of about five hundred thousand dollars today's net worth is somewhere in the neighborhood ten to sixteen million dollars depending on who you talk to and i don't know how you add that up with a salary of a hundred seventy four thousand dollars a year um without having uh yeah i i don't know how i i'm not i guess i'm not that good at math but uh at any rate uh i think that when you are so far removed from the people you cannot represent the people and i don't want to attack our entire federal delegation but the simple fact of the matter is they're all over the age of 62 they're all multimillionaires they're all landlords and most of them come from elite privileged backgrounds and that is not the makeup of the state you know less than one point four percent of the state are millionaires let alone multimillionaires um and i don't think that if you have all of your representatives come from cut from the same cloth from the same background you're not going to have the diversity of ideas opinions uh to get to the workable solutions that are necessary to get us to where we need to go um you really need people from different perspectives from other lived experiences to really represent us here uh especially in the most diverse district of our state absolutely and look i would be more than happy to host a debate between you and representative blumenauer he could do it from his cushy you know uh place in dc if he wants to uh via skype i'd be more than happy because this you know this is my city i i'm very interested in you know making sure we get a representative that's fantastic but i'll be fair and objective yeah well we're we're we're doing this from a working man's living room slash office slash uh my kids play area and see the dog my dog's bed you know this is not a mansion this is a little two bedroom house um you know i know the struggle uh quite frankly um you know i am a first generation college grad first generation law school grad uh my family faced homelessness when i was in high school um due to domestic violence we bounced around in a couple different shelters until a kind family took us in and so i understand and appreciate what it feels like to be homeless i know that side of the story i know that people don't want to be there uh you know too many times we hear all the homeless they're lazy or they're mentally ill or they're drug addicted and that's not how folks get started it's one car accident one medical bill one eviction one bout of domestic violence in my case and do you find yourself in a situation that is very hard to get out of unless you get some help from someone out from other folks um and i think that um you know for us we were lucky that though we we had we had some kind strangers that came in and helped us but uh you know the federal government and the government in general should be the ones that are helping out providing that housing first so that you can stabilize folks so they can get back onto their feet yeah and thank you for saying that because i i've made this point before that it seems like nobody really cares about homelessness who are elected because they're not like considered a real constituency like they don't have addresses so you can't send them campaign mailers right you can't it's difficult to canvas when somebody doesn't have a home so they just tend to get brushed aside and ignored but it's gotten to this point in portland where you just you see it everywhere and it's so heartbreaking and somebody's got to do something and the fact that earl is not stepping up to propose some type of nationwide rent control plan at a minimum it's just we need change um so i i'm absolutely going to be following this campaign i'm going to be rooting for you abert because i think you're doing everything right and your campaign is so inspiring thank you i appreciate that um you gotta go ahead i was going to say the website is albertlea2020.com and let me make an additional pitch for albert if you don't live in our home state albert is still going to benefit you it doesn't matter if you're in texas ohio the policies that he passes will have a national impact and i use this example now about 552 times but ilhan omore isn't in my state but if she passes her bill which would cancel student debt that has a very direct concrete impact on my life probably your life as well i'm assuming so we we need to make sure that we recognize that this is a national movement and even if you can chip in a buck that's one extra dollar that will help albert lee anything else you want to add to that yeah no i'm glad you brought it ilhan omore um you know in all of the squad they're in their first term their first two years and i think that they've done so much more than our representative has done in 23 years um so one of the questions that i asked those folks that say you know i like girl i'm you know i kind of like him i asked what has he done for this district what has he done for this country um for me i've looked through the records and i really haven't seen much of anything um that you know i understand he's a proponent for weed weed's great yeah bicycles are great but we have some really serious problems that need to be addressed besides bicycles and weed yeah yeah it's not enough to just have a few pet issues we need you to talk to people find out what their concerns are what their needs are and respond accordingly with policy he's not doing that so i'm sorry url you've got to go so you know for us we we talked to everybody i spend four hours a day on the phone talking to constituents here we have people coming into our campaign office we had folks coming to our campaign because we had regular middle middle class homeowners come into our office we talked to some wealthy folks on the phone that have given money as well look we are looking to try to represent the entirety of this district it's not just the people in the mac club it's not just the small subsection of the super wealthy we've got to take care of this an entire district and one of the things is if we don't take care of everyone in this district on the front end you end up paying so much more on the back end because either way you pay yeah that's a great point so we'll leave that there albert lee 2020 he's running in oregon's third congressional district oregon is a closed primary state so if you want to vote for albert you do have to be a registered democrat get that done on the website i see that you have provided a link to assist people very important yeah i mean without a doubt i mean here it is we're in the most heavily democratic one of the most heavily democratic districts the decision is not made in november the decision is made in the democratic primary may 19th 2020 yeah absolutely well thank you so much albert thank you well that's it i don't have anything else left to say so we'll go ahead and leave that there thank you all so much for watching if you've made it this far as usual i'm gonna thank all of our patreon paypal and youtube members for helping the show to not just survive but to thrive as well you all mean so much um thank you all so much and shout out to all of our itunes and soundcloud listeners who catch the audio version very loyally every single week kind of a niche audience but nonetheless you're still important to us so um that's it i'm done so i'll see you all next week i'm mike figurado this is the humanist report take care everyone