Hillary Clinton is catching a little bit of heat from the General left after she
critiqued democrats in an interview with The Financial Times.
She was speaking with Edward Luce.
And in that interview,
she talked about the consequences of democrats losing the upcoming elections.
>> Of course there was a lot of fearmongering about the right wing and
what they wanna do in dismantling our democracy.
>> This is the reporter Edward Luce.
>> I say the democrats seem to be going out of their way to lose elections by
elevating activist causes, notably the transgender debate,
which are relevant only to a small minority.
What sense does it make to depict JK Rowling as a fascist?
To my surprise, Clinton shares the premise of my question.
And Hillary agrees by saying, quote,
we are standing on the precipice of losing our democracy and
everything that everybody else cares about then goes out the window.
The most important thing to do, is to win the next election.
The alternative is so
frightening that whatever does not help you win should not be a priority.
And okay, let's stop there.
Because, there's one tweak I wanna make right off the bat,
which is, I don't see the Democratic Party really going out of its
way to initiate this process of elevating transgender issues.
What I have seen is an effort to respond to the right wing turning the transgender
community into its latest boogie men and
women in an attempt essentially to distract, as they always do,
from the bread and butter issues in which they have absolutely no solutions, and
wanna offer absolutely nothing to the American people.
And so what I see happening is, they attack the transgender community,
and democrats try to intervene and in some sense,
virtue signal that they're different from republicans in that regard.
But also use that kind of messaging to campaign against republicans and
the hatred they put out there.
But what are your thoughts on that statement?
>> Emma?
>> One, I mean, the premise of the question that was asked of her by that
reporter, I couldn't agree with you more.
I do not really even see Biden being vocal about trans people.
Have we seen anything in that area?
I mean, we don't really see him at all.
That's part of the issue with his selection of Kamala Harris as VP,
she's not a very charismatic speaker, nor
does she connect with anybody outside of democratic donor circles.
She was created in a lab to appeal to democratic donors, but
does not have broad appeal to regular folks.
So, she's really not good on the stump.
And then Biden is just struggling to communicate at this point in his life.
And he's also just cowering in fear of the right.
He is of, and so is Hillary Clinton, of an era of politician and
of a philosophy that is constantly afraid of being called a socialist by Fox News.
And they don't know any other avenue.
And they're gonna call you a socialist anyway, so
you might as well do what's right.
But it's not surprising to hear this from Hillary Clinton who came way,
way, way too late to supporting marriage equality in this country,
who has always taken the position that you have to concede bigotry to the right.
Look at her rhetoric on superpredators, etc.
There's not really a fundamental understanding that you can
find bigotry by actually communicating issues to people.
So, the concept that it's trans issues,
democrats act like battered victims of republicans all the time.
They hit them in the mouth, and then they go, well, it's your fault,
look what you made me do.
That's what republicans say.
And so, you're never gonna win elections that way.
You have to be aggressive in your messaging, and throwing the most
vulnerable people in this country to the wolves in order to win elections for
electoralism is actually a pathetic concept, in my opinion.
>> Yeah, I mean, I agree with you there.
But the other thing that I don't think Hillary Clinton has really thought about,
and James Carville made a very similar point in regard to wokeism
infecting the Democratic Party, and how it's leading democrats off a cliff.
They really need to get off of it.
And it really overall, like the general point that I'm seeing them make is,
get off the identity politics.
Get off the identity politics.
Which, look, I do think electorally speaking,
there is some truth to what they're saying, right?
Because if you're just hyper focused, if you're campaigning
is hyper focused on politics, that tend to divide people, right?
If your message is, well, we're gonna be fighters for a very small group of
people in the country, but you ignore general issues that impact all Americans,
well, you're gonna lose people and and their support for your party, right?
Because at the end of the day, people might want equality for
various disenfranchised groups of people, but
they also wanna know, well, what is your party gonna do to better my life?
Because there are plenty of people struggling in the country,
plenty of people who are still underpaid, dealing with insane inflation,
not being able to put food on the table for themselves and their children,
not being able to afford rent or housing.
When you think about those issues that are at the top of your priority list
as an American, everything else just kind of dims in comparison.
So I kind of get the point that she's trying to make, but
here's the other side of it.
Okay, well then, what do you propose democrats campaign on?
Do you propose that they campaign on their economic reforms,
because there really haven't been any.
All you see from democrats at this point is the promotion of the same,
neoliberal policies that have led to widespread resentment toward them and
has allowed the extreme right wing to gain power in this country.
They couldn't pass, build back better the social spending bill.
They might try to focus on the stimulus that Biden passed in the beginning
of his presidency, but people are gonna forget about that,
and it's just too far away from when the elections take place.
Are they gonna talk about canceling student loan debt,
they can't really do that.
Biden promised to cancel $10,000, [LAUGH] He didn't even do that.
I mean, I just don't really know what they would campaign on.
And I think part of the reason why they lean into these issues is because
they've got nothing else.
And I know this sounds super cynical, but
I don't even really think they care about these issues at the end of the day.
I mean, they'll kneel down in a kente cloth after George Floyd gets murdered,
but they haven't passed any police reform.
So I just wish both James Carville, Hillary Clinton,
and anyone in their line of thinking really take a step back and
think about how they kind of created the mess that they're now complaining about.
The endless engagement in what they now refer to as distractions.
Well, they've been engaging in that for a long time now in lieu of the very real
bread and butter issues that Americans care about.
>> You can't see the culture war to the right, because they have
a much more aggressive apparatus and a much more hateful apparatus there.
It's easy to to play into reactionary instincts.
Right now, look at what they're doing with trans people,.
They are using trans people as a conduit into more a larger rollback of rights for
gay people, right, which is also a conduit into attacking teachers in this country.
Trans people, it's newer for some people, they don't quite understand.
And so they're exploiting that fear into,
this is gonna be a broader don't say gay bill here.
And so, we're gonna attack gay people as well.
And if you're a gay teacher, you're a groomer.
They are so intersectional, ironically,
in the way that they target specific groups in this country.
And frankly, the democrats could, if they chose, do many things at once,
be aggressive in combating the culture war, and
also having an aggressive economic agenda for the rest of the country.
But Biden is completely out of his depth in that area,
because he chose to split infrastructure.
That's what democratic leadership decided to do, build back better from the roads
and other infrastructure that actually did pass, he chose to do that.
And then he also chose to bring republicans into the process because for
some reason, he believes that there's a mythical voter out there that's gonna vote
for him because he negotiated with republicans over social spending policy
for a few months as if like that matters to anybody.
It's just Washington brain.
No, and then his entire agenda has been tacked.
Because he was not aggressive in that area, that's why democrats are hurting and
are going to lose the House, I'm gonna be real with you,
they're going to lose the House.
And if he, I mean the Senate is something that we need to hold onto for
federal judgeships.
But in terms of his broader agenda, it's over, it's over, and that's his fault.
And if he had done that, there should be,
I don't wanna hear anything about the democrats need to be
in the position to protect the most vulnerable people in this country,
because the right is coming after trans people with everything that they have.
Democrats should be able to do that.
And the reason they are not able to do that is the direct result of Biden's
incompetence, and the exact kind of politics that Hillary Clinton is At.
And trying to make sure that it remains the policy of the Democratic Party as she
kicks the left, which is trying to embrace a broader agenda for that party.
>> Yeah, and look, the point that I'm trying to make is not like,
ignore these issues, ignore what the right wing is doing to the LGBTQ community.
Actually it's quite frankly the opposite of what I'm saying here.
My point is, if the Republican Party attacking groups of people like
this unfortunately galvanizes their voters, it gets them to the polls, right?
And so, you need, as a democrat,
as the Democratic Party needs something to galvanize their own voters.
And if the only messaging we get is tut tut, republicans are so hateful,
look at how awful they are, it doesn't galvanize voters to vote for
them and put them in positions of power,
which then could lead to them protecting various disenfranchised groups of people.
The way you galvanize voters on the left is to offer them something.
And I genuinely don't know what the Democratic Party,
the mainstream Democratic Party, is offering the American people right now.
And that's the part of the conversation that was completely missing in
this interview with Hillary Clinton.
>> You get what I'm saying?
>> I totally agree with you.
And the point that you made about the kente cloth kneeling is actually like very
true, and it's also I think true for gun control.
They love to fundraise off these issues.
They love it.
That's why they're so nervous about trans people, and
they're so nervous about defund the police,
those two issues, cuz they think those don't pull well with suburban voters.
But you know what Daz, what suburban types of voters,
white older suburban voters who are disaffected from Trump,
what they do care about is gun control, they do like that.
And they wanna be anti-racist, right?
But the democrats don't want to do anything policy wise with that because
they have to get rid of the filibuster, anything substantive.
And so, they just choose to fundraise off of it.
>> And that is a rotten, rotten philosophy, but
people like Hillary Clinton [LAUGH] Or trying to keep in place.
>> Exactly, exactly.