Speaker 1: The David Pakman Show is, of course, made possible by viewers like you through our
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subscription to someone on our waiting list. Currently, 600 people waiting for membership,
so it's a beautiful number. Let's hear from some people in the audience. We do these calls now via
Discord. You can find our discord at David Pakman dot com slash discord. Why don't we start today?
This is interesting. Let's start with Alicia from the Pharoh Islands. We've
never had a Pharaoh Islands caller before. Aliya, you're on the air. What's going on?
No, boy. Aliya, don't let us down.
Aliya from the Faroe Islands, please unmute and will be able to chat.
Well, that's a shame. That would have been interesting. Let's go instead to Brian from
Phenix, Brian from Phenix. You're on the air. Hi, David. Hey, how are you?
Speaker 2: I am doing amazing. I wanted to first appreciate you flouting the pushback and sticking
with the an historic pronunciation. I think it's Oh boy, I appreciate you're going going your own
way on that. All right, fair. I'm wondering if you believe in the long term, it would be a
more beneficial, more progressive outcome to remove the filibuster altogether
and sort of have the Senate answer to the voters for whatever legislation is able to be passed
in a in a 50 50 Senate? Or if you think that that would lead us in the opposite direction
in a in a less progressive direction. Speaker 1: Good question. So I here's
my view on this. If I don't think about this strategically, the filibuster doesn't make a lot
of sense to me. The filibuster fundamentally seems anti-democratic, so if there were no
political considerations, I would say let's get rid of the filibuster altogether.
In practical terms, I'm aware that if Democrats completely nuke the filibuster, at some point
it'll come back to haunt Democrats. And part of the reason why is that the Senate is fundamentally
anti-democratic. And what I mean by that is we have 100 senators, no matter how many people live
in any particular state. That's the state has two senators. And so there are senators that represent
millions and millions and millions of people and their senators that represent, I mean,
I don't know what the Wyoming population is now. I think it's like 700000. So like each
Wyoming senator in a sense, represents 350000 people, which gives disproportionate power
to low population states, which are typically conservative. So I don't love the filibuster.
I think it doesn't make sense, and I would be fine getting rid of it if we were to somehow fix
the anti-democratic nature of the Senate, which doesn't seem like it's going to happen anytime
soon, because that's the way the system works. Speaker 2: One semi follow up question very quick,
would you support adding states for that in the form of like
splitting California or adding Puerto Rico? Speaker 1: I am open to adding states, but it
would not be specifically for that reason. I think that sometimes it would make sense. There's a lot
of people. I mean, I think Puerto Rico should be a state if it wants to be. I think there are
a number of different arguments for splitting up California, but for me, it's more about does
it make sense for economic reasons as it makes sense for other reasons, not just as a political
strategy, although as a political strategy, it would almost certainly help Democrats.
Awesome, thanks, David. My pleasure. That's a that's a meaty phone call, I like it.