>> So earlier today the results came in from Kentucky, and they're final now. Amy McGrath
won against Charles Booker in the Democratic Primary in that state, by about two points.
And so it's very, very close. Amy McGrath raised $41 million. Charles Booker, who is
a black legislator in Kentucky, and who is progressive, did not raise $41 million, he
raised substantially less than that.
And so part of the reason McGrath raised $41 million against Charles Booker is that Chuck
Schumer said she was the anointed one and directed all the donors towards McGrath. Second
part of the reason is until the very last month of the election everybody in Kentucky
media treated this race as a fait accompli and presented McGrath as really the only democrat
running when that was never true.
So, but I wanna focus one more time here on Chuck Schumer and the Democratic leadership.
Ben, when they, anoint someone, and give them an overwhelming amount of money, and the press
attention that comes along with it, and they shut out new voices. And sometimes those voices
are blacks, sometimes they're white, Asian, it could be anything.
They're almost always progressive of course, the voices that are shut out. How much does
that protect the the already powerful, the institutions that are in place and honestly
the racial infrastructure of the country which favors white Americans?
>> Yeah, that's their firewall. That's their last line of defense.
The best way to protect the institutions of this government, the institutions of power,
is to make sure that no one who is a genuine threat actually gets some time to be heard.
Because the reality is, is when progressives are heard, their message resonates. Because
they're talking that stuff that people really need, they're talking about the material conditions
that people are living in.
And that's a threat. That's a threat not only because it really awakens that popular spirit
amongst leftists amongst Democrats, people consider themselves liberal. They forget and
then they hear progressive remind them that this is who they are supposed to have been
this whole time. But then it also is a threat because I think that is the way that you pick
off Republicans.
You pick off Republicans by talking about their material conditions, and not by trying
to pretend like you are a Republican. >> Yeah, obviously I agree with that. But
given the current people in power are disproportionately white and I don't mean that as a judgement
on anyone. I just mean it as a demographic fact.
This fortunately white male, I forget the exact numbers down but we covered on the show
earlier. I think about, at least two thirds of the people in Congress are white males.
And in the country, they are actually just 30%. So it is wildly disproportionate. And
so when they say hey, we're just protecting incumbents, okay, that's I get the logic of
it.
I totally disagree for political reasons and ideological reasons and issues of fairness.
But I also disagree because that maintains the disproportionate power of white males.
And it's not just based on skin color, or ethnicity, or gender does not allow other
points of view or perspectives in. So Ilhan Omar is a completely different perspective
that they didn't have before.
And I think she's added into the conversation in a great way. And so but if all he did was
incumbent protection, it's a little different because she wasn't running against an incumbent.
But Ayanna Presley was, AOC was, and you wouldn't have had those voices. Democratic leadership,
including Nancy Pelosi, the House, 100%, wanted AOC and Ayanna Presley to lose and the incumbents
to win.
And we wouldn't have had those strong women of color. So Emma, they say no, you have to
bow your head and you can't criticize Pelosi on these grounds cuz she's a woman. But doesn't
what she do, like doesn't it actually prevent or at least give an opportunity, prevent an
opportunity, for more women to break through and get in?
>> Yeah, that's what's so insidious about it. We saw it in 2016 on a macro level with
Hillary Clinton, which was the weaponization of her gender in order to deflect from any
criticism or shield her. And it got a lot of people to be cynical about those kinds
of arguments when representation is important.
Specifically representation of different perspectives. Ilhan Omar is a great example, a refugee,
a black woman, a Muslim woman. She has so many things that she brings to the conversation.
And additionally as a progressive that you wouldn't get from just a standard politician.
And they're completely hypocritical about saying, we want Joe Biden is now going out,
I'm gonna nominate a black female judge and he has this whole list of them.
But would Joe Biden have been supportive of Jamaal Bowman or Mondaire Jones, or AOC, or
Rashida Tlaib? By the way he could endorse Rashida Talib who's in the middle of the contentious
primary, and he's choosing not to. No, they use it cynically, the Democratic establishment,
in order to push forward candidates that they're gonna play nice or to deflect themselves from
criticism.
And I think to average people who are witnessing that kind of discourse it turns them off because
it doesn't seem genuine because it's not. And it's just another frustrating element
of Democrats using representation in a way that I think is false.
>> Yeah, so I guess one more thing on that, look, I think even I'm hesitating on calling
it racist and sexist.
And I think partly because the establishment uses those words so much as a shield to for
corporate candidates that are of the right hue or the right gender. But is it fair to
say that more minority voices are gonna get kept out of power if the current Democratic
leadership strategy of blindly supporting incumbents continues?
>> Yeah, yeah, I think that's fair to say. And especially, but we see it coming from
the establishment in general, then we see it coming from the Congressional Black Caucus
pack endorsing white candidates over the black candidates and incumbents. And that's their
excuse, they're saying these are incumbents, we have to protect them.
The thing is that, the trend is that people of color are overwhelmingly progressive in
this country. Because of our material conditions in this country, right? We're not just progressive
because we like the name progressive. We're progressive because the policies disproportionately
help our communities, right? And these are policies that every single one of us would
benefit from.
And so on the issue of the lack of representation, the Democratic party has gotten really good
at giving us full representation. It's not representation in terms of what we're really
dealing with in our different communities. It's representation in just terms of skin
color. And I'm not interested in having someone else go up there and be the black face of
neoliberalism, cuz that doesn't help the majority of the black community.
>> Well, Ben, just a quick point because I think it's under discussed. Representation
I think is or just how Jewish Americans are some of the most progressive blocks in the
country as well. But then you have Democrats saying that they're representing the right
way interests of Israel. Which is completely counter to how most Jewish Americans feel.
That's just another example of Democrats cynically using that and then turning around or cynically
using it to shield themselves from white right wing positions.
>> I just wanna double down on what almost said because if you're not used to listening
to a progressive show, you probably don't know any of these facts.
Cuz TV assiduously keeps you away from them. So does the New York Times and The Washington
Post. So the overwhelming majority of Jewish Americans vote Democrat and are progressive.
They vote more loyally Democratic than almost any other constituency in the country. African
Americans are over 90%. But Jewish Americans are at about 70% voting Democratic, and they
are among the more progressive groups in the country.
But in Democratic leadership, you have people who are generally more right wing on foreign
policy than the average Jewish voter in this country. But, and they make it seem like no,
no, we're covered. Cornel West had that great line about black faces in high places and
not to get taken in by that, right.
But you could make that of almost any minority situation. And so I think it applies to Jewish
Americans just as well. I got Chuck Schumer and he'd like to start a war and I got Eliot
Angle and he'd like to start a war. So that's what Jews in America want.
No, they don't want that. I've seen the polling. So just because you're in that category doesn't
mean that you represent everybody in that category. And that's why I say they're using
it as a shield. And but, Ben, one more thing on that I wanna ask you. So you're a die hard
progressive and you say, hey, either you agree with Cornel West and we've talked about this
before, and you just said it.
Do you get push back at all from an African American community? Say, hey, wait, wait,
wait when you criticize Obama, that's a bridge too far. Or what's your sense of the current
state of that? >> It's a delicate situation in the black
community, in your parent's houses, in your grandparents' houses.
They have two people on their mantle, they have Jesus and they have Barrack Obama. Right,
so when you have this conversation with them, you have to be delicate. But if you get past
the initial aggrievance, right, they're really offended initially. If you get past that and
you actually go point, by point, by point, by point, they always reluctantly agree with
you that there was so much more that should have been done.
And could have been done for America in general black people specifically in terms of Barack
Obama. And especially if you capture it, in terms of America in general, because black
people have a general suspicion of America. Right I wonder why. And and if you put it
in terms of America and the American government, and then you remind them that Barack Obama
was just the next in line in terms of this imperialist government.
That really kind of shakes them up. But you can't go in with like a lot of haymakers and
just try to shame them. Because like I said, they got Jesus on the mantle and they have
Obama on the mantle and you really gotta be delicate with it.
>> Well, Ben, just quickly I remember your tweet when Bloomberg was in his hayday in
the Democratic primary about, I think was it your mom who was reacting?
>> Yeah. >> To Mike Bloomberg because she thought Bloomberg
had been endorsed by Obama or something like that? And so she was gonna support Bloomberg.
>> Yeah, yeah she was gonna support Bloomberg because of the deceptive advertising by Bloomberg
saying that Barack Obama endorsed him. But that actually backfired because as soon as
we got the word out that that's not what happened they were pissed off with him for using Barack
Obama's name in vain.
That's a call back. >> For some reason, I've sited that in conversations
with people cuz you posted that screenshot and it made me laugh so hard.
>> Yeah. >> Yeah, but look again, that's the media,
even in New York. How often did they tell you how racist stop and frisk was in the press?
Not that often when Bloomberg was in charge. And there's an enormous efforts to Bloomberg,
there was no difference to de Blasio. And so a lot of people that had no idea what Bloomberg
stood for, that's the tape that been on Earth and broke that story. And in the tape, he
says flat out but we all, I think what was it, 96% of the people that they stopped were
black and Latino?
And he said we did not stop black people enough and we stopped white people too much. Yeah.
>> Holy cow, right. If people knew that if African Americans knew that what percentage
would support Bloomberg? Nearly 0%, they don't know it whose fault is that? The medias fault.