So we have to have a conversation today.
That might be difficult for some in our audience, but it must be done because the stakes are
really high at this point.
Think back to 2016 before the November of 2016 election.
You had people on the left who were saying things like, you know, if it's Trump versus
Hillary, I'd rather it be Trump, really.
I'd rather it be Bernie or Jill Stein or some other so-called real leftist.
But if it's Trump versus Hillary, Hillary will just reinforce the status quo. Trump
will be so different, maybe wacky, that he will totally shake up the system and set the
stage for a real progressive in 2020.
We have almost four years now of a Trump presidency and it hasn't happened.
And it's another data point that these ideas of acceleration ism haven't worked.
Now, I know you might be thinking, David, you're wrong.
It's you know, we need eight years of Trump instead of four for this to work or.
David, you're wrong.
Trump has shaken things up such that we now will become super progressive or something.
The answer to those rebuttals is no.
And I'll go through them one by one in a moment.
But first, we need to sort of understand what we're talking about when we talk about acceleration
ism.
There's narrow acceleration ism and then there's like the broader colloquial use of the term
acceleration ism.
So narrow acceleration ism.
If you if you look at the origins or origins of these ideas generally refers to capitalism
and socialism.
And the idea is in order to get rid of capitalism, you accelerate it.
Right.
You go to like uber super ultimate, extreme free market capitalism that will more quickly
break and then it will come radical change, socialism, some other completely different
system.
So in other words, feed capitalism so that it collapses.
Now, if we say acceleration ism more broadly, it's not so much about capitalism versus socialism
necessarily.
It's the idea of accelerate the destruction of the current system by putting in place
crazier and crazier leaders so that we speed up the system, failing and then being able
to replace it with something better.
Some other people characterize it as burn it down to rebuild it properly.
So when some on the left said back in 2016, I'm a Bernie person, so I'm like 98 percent
on board with Bernie's ideas.
You know, maybe I'm 60 percent on board with Hillary and I'm 10 percent on board with Trump.
But I still want Trump because Trump will violate norms and violate conventions and
do things that will accelerate the total downfall of the system.
And then we will usher in a real era of true progressivism in 2020.
So, listen, we've got four years of Trump, three and a half years.
So far, it has done very little for the progressive movement in any real way.
We got Trump, the most lethal, incompetent president we've had in the modern political
era.
He's failed on everything, right.
The bogus tax reform plan, the trade war disaster with China.
He failed on Corona virus.
He's failed on, you know, of immigration.
He tried but failed to get rid of the Affordable Care Act.
But certainly we've not made progress when it comes to health care.
He has failed, failed, failed while making the United States a laughingstock.
And what it led to is a center left Democratic nominee of Joe Biden, who may win or may not
win.
So despite those who in 2016 said Trump will accelerate, you know, some kind of progressive
revolution and it's better that he become president than Hillary because she will essentially
maintain the status quo.
It didn't happen.
So what do we have to do to hold those folks accountable?
People saying if it can't be a progressive that meets my standards, then I'd rather it
be Trump because his failures will usher in progressivism.
Well, they haven't.
They've ushered in being out of the Paris climate accords and falling further and further
behind on taking care of the environment and the planet.
They've ushered in a corona virus response that has completely failed and led to unnecessary
death.
They've ushered in tax cuts that have completely failed to actually improve circumstances.
And now we just find ourselves with more damage to undo.
If Joe Biden does win in November and takes over in January, he simply has more damage
to undo than what we would have had Donald Trump lost in November of 2016.
So let's now deal with some of the inevitable talking points.
Here's one.
You know what, David?
Four years of Trump would have ushered in progressive change if the DNC hadn't stolen
the 20 20 Democratic nomination from Bernie and given it to Joe Biden.
Come on, guy.
Come on, guys.
Bernie lost by a lot before he dropped out.
Bernie was already losing the Democratic primary by a couple million votes.
Bernie lost Super Tuesday and then he lost Super Tuesday number two, and then he lost
Super Tuesday number three.
At that point, we already were starting to deal with coronavirus stay at home.
So, yes, centrist candidates like P and Amy got out of Biden's way.
But this doesn't change that.
Bernie never had more than mid to high 30s support period, no matter how many other candidates
there were.
The acceleration, honest arguments about that inevitability were simply wrong.
And to be perfectly frank, how weak is your argument that if four years of Trump was going
to bring in progressive change, inevitably it simply failed because Pete and Amy got
out.
And that's why Bernie lost.
I think that it's a very weak argument.
If it could so easily be interfered with by Pete and Amy ending their campaigns to help
Joe Biden.
Now, there's going to be another argument, which is Trump's presidency will be acceleration
EST, but we need eight years of Trump instead of four.
Right.
In other words, we were right in 2016 that Trump, instead of Hillary, would usher in
progressive change through a burn it down and in order to rebuild that sort of perspective.
But four years isn't enough.
We need a full eight years of Donald Trump to fall.
It's a completely post hoc rationalization.
None of these folks were saying back in 2016, Trump will reinvigorate the progressive movement,
but it will take eight years instead of four.
They are having to say that now because they were just wrong in 2016.
So we need another framework.
Hillary Clinton was no progressive.
But if Hillary Clinton were president or corona virus, death toll would be lower.
It wouldn't be zero.
But we have studies from Columbia University and others.
If we had a coordinated stay at home one week earlier, we could have avoided thirty thousand
of the hundred thousand deaths.
If it had been two weeks earlier, we might have avoided fifty to sixty five thousand
of the hundred thousand deaths that would've been different.
If Hillary were president, Hillary were president, we would still be in the Paris climate agreement
and we would not have softened fuel emission standards.
We would not have a ridiculous trade war going on with China.
So let's really understand that when people say now, if it's not Bernie, I'd rather another
four years of Trump.
Why four years of Trump messed up so many of our systems.
But those systems aren't really any closer to going away.
They're just messed up.
Four years of Trump damaged our planet more than it had to.
And we can't get those four years back.
Four years of Trump didn't get us a progressive nominee.
History tells us that progress comes in modern political systems like the one we have in
the United States.
Progress comes in steps.
Now, I've given these examples before, but they're important to repeat.
You've got the progressive era of the eighteen nineties to the 1920s.
You've got the New Deal era.
Officially, it's 1933 to 1939.
Some people consider it to be a little bit bigger than that.
You've got the civil rights era from the end of the 1950s until, you know, into the 60s.
It's easy to look back now and say, wow, look at that insane list of accomplishments.
Now, with the benefit of hindsight, we see it.
But if you were in the middle of the progressive era of the late 80s, 90s and into early 1920s.
Thirty years is a long time.
If you're in the middle of it, it probably doesn't feel like such significant change.
But when you look back and you see, wow, the community activism slowly eking out a better
Supreme Court, a lot of the Progressive Era reforms were upheld because we had the right
Supreme Court right.
Supreme Court Justice Charles Evan Hughes, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Herbert Hoover
nominating Charles, Evan Hughes, Teddy Roosevelt nominating Oliver Wendell Holmes.
It didn't seem like big progressive change at the time, but some of the biggest advancements
now that we now take for granted during that era came from exactly this type of incrementalism.
It's boring.
I know it, but it's what worked.
When you look at would Trump get to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg or would Biden get to
replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg if she retires?
That may not seem like that big of a deal to some people.
But history tells us that it is.
Look then at the New Deal era of the 30s under Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
This came out of the Great Depression.
It included changes that now are considered to be just fundamental parts of the fabric
of the country.
But they weren't burnt down revolution things.
That was regulate the banking industry programs to support farmers, the unemployed, young
people, elderly folks creating Social Security, which is huge.
Of course, you didn't get that by burning down the system.
You didn't get it by saying, hey, you know what?
Instead of FDR, because it can't be a super progressive, let's elect some right wing nut.
No, it didn't happen that way.
History tells us.
Lastly, the civil rights era, right, of the 50s into the 60s, filled with protests and
sit ins and rallies and a ton of the day to day elements that we often see today and and
say today really would need to be scaled up.
But a lot of the progress was.
1954, Brown vs. the Board of Education.
That was an early movement, an early moment in the civil rights era.
And it was a decision made by the Supreme Court reinforcing the importance of who gets
to pick the justices.
Is it Trump or is it Biden?
1956 and double ACP works within the judiciary to win desegregation of the bus system.
Fifty seven.
Martin Luther King creates the SDLC to support local protest movements.
You've got the new North Carolina drugstore sitting in 1960, which sparks more sit ins.
These were not burn it down acceleration ist events.
These were really important areas of progress that took a while that were incremental.
And we've wasted four years with Donald Trump.
We've wasted four years where some progress could have been made.
And you now would have to redirect the ship, so to speak, less so than it will have to
be redirected when Donald Trump eventually leaves.
We have a choice.
There is no reason to make the same mistake again in November.
People's lives are riding on it.
And we need to understand the same argument that's being made now about, listen, if it's
Biden, give Trump another four years.
People made that argument in 2015, 2016.
It failed.
Look at what happened.
There is no empirical case for saying, well, another four years will finally fix it.
It's not how the system is designed.
It's not what's going to happen.
If you disagree, let me know.
I'm on Twitter at David Pakman and I welcome your comments.
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Quick break.
Right back after this.