>> Michigan lawmaker Rashida Tlaib isn't about to stay quiet as moderate Democrats attack
the progressive wing of the party.
After several congressional losses, these moderates decided that it would be a great
idea to blame the progressive members of their party.
Who all won reelection easily by running on progressive values.
And so, Rashida Tlaid has decided, no I'm gonna say something this is disgusting.
She didn't say this is discussing that was my added emphasis.
So she says the following, we're not going to be successful if we're silencing districts
like mine, said Tlaib, who told her colleagues something similar during a contentious call
last week.
Me not being able to speak on behalf of many of my neighbors right now, many of which are
Black neighbors, means me being silenced.
I can't be silent.
And which is referring to there was the meltdown that representative Abigail Span Burger had
during the call.
Where she spoke out against defund the police she felt that that was a losing message.
She was angry about it, she was angry about what she referred to as this push for socialism.
What she was really angry about, was that Republicans and her political opponents campaigned
the exact way that you would expect them to campaign.
They're gonna call you names, they're gonna accused you of being a socialist, whether
you're a socialist or not, they don't care about the truth.
They don't care about the facts, they don't care about what you actually campaigned on.
They're going to call you names the question is, are you playing offensive politics?
Do you have a message that resonates with your constituents?
And if you've lost your reelection bid or if you came close to losing, maybe re calibrate
your own flaws are, rather than finding some other scapegoat within your party.
That's my take, but Rashida Tlaib seems to say something similar, John.
>> Yeah, the problem isn't the Republican attacks because those are always going to
be there, if there hadn't been defund the police, there would have been something else.
There would have been a caravan of people coming, there would have been, I mean they
were doing all of that anyway, they're going to attack you that's not the problem.
The problem is an AOC tried to point this out when she tried to help them in the last
weeks of their race to actually put out ads, to engage online all of that.
They don't really do that, they can't actually control the message, they often don't try,
and when they try, it's not effective.
And that isn't even the problem.
The problem is they can't be effective with their messaging because they don't really
stand for much.
>> Right.
>> And they're not really pushing for much.
So yes, it's gonna be a little bit harder to get people behind you.
AOC and others like her, including Rashida Tlaib by the way, who are awesome at generating
attention and interest in all of this stuff.
It's not just random and it's not just because they're handler, nickname, it's fundamentally
about what they represent.
If you don't represent anything, it's gonna be hard to do that, and that's why people
like Span Burger.
The problem isn't just that they're being attacked, and it's not just that they don't
have the ads.
Is that there's really nothing to work with if you're not going to push for anything.
>> Now, it's exactly right, and as I've made this point before.
Corporate Democrats because of the organizations, corporations, and corporate donors that help
fund their campaigns, have shied away from an economic populist message.
So instead, they typically like to focus on social justice related topics in order to
do their campaigning.
If they're gonna go ahead and attack the messaging coming from Black Lives Matter, I don't really
know what they plan on campaigning on.
What are you providing to your constituents?
What are you willing to do for them?
What is your message?
As John mentioned, what do you stand for?
Rashida Tlaib also told politico, we're not interested in unity that asks people to sacrifice
their freedoms and their rights any longer.
And if we truly want to unify our country, we have to really respect every single voice.
We say that so willingly when we talk about Trump supporters, but we don't say that willingly
for my Black and brown neighbors and from LGBTQ neighbors or marginalized people.
I totally agree with her and she had more to say, one more quote from her cuz I think
her statements were strong.
She says, if voters can walk past blighted homes and school closures and pollution to
vote for Biden-Harris, this is the best point I think.
When they feel like they don't have anything else, they deserve to be heard, Tlaib said,
choking up as she expressed frustration near the end of an interview this week.
I can't believe that people are asking them to be quiet.
And among people who seem to be asking to be quiet is Centris representative Hakeem
Jeffries, who said this.
Do we wanna win, do we wanna govern, or do we want to be internet celebrities?
I think it's a useful conversation for us because the socialism message wasn't helpful.
But it's fascinating that the candidates who ran on that kind of messaging, right?
On economic equality, easily won.
So why not ask yourselves, why it is that these Centrist Democrats are having such a
difficult time getting elected, because again, it's a given.
This is something that will not change, Republicans are always gonna attack them, they're always
gonna lie about them.
The fact that they're not prepared to respond to those lives with a message that resonates
with their constituents, is the problem.
>> Yeah, and look, we can try to push back against them.
We can do that, but the most effective way both in theory also demonstrated in the past
few election cycles is two primary.
I know, some people are going to these next few years saying, okay, we're gonna be watching
to accrue a list of people to primary.
I don't think it should function that way, I think everybody should be on that list and
you get off that list by doing the right thing.
The assumptions shouldn't be that they're going to because the vast majority aren't.
And it's gonna be difficult to find all those candidates, we're gonna lose a lot of those
races, especially in the Senate, but we just have to keep doing it.
Because these people fundamentally, there obviously better than Republicans, and we're
going to support them in the general election, if that's so, we have, but let's make it so
that we don't.
And let's not wait to find candidates for the midterms, a lot of these represent as
we should be finding people to replace them right now.
>> I'm gonna end this with two poll results that I think are important.
Fox News exit poll asks, what should happen to illegal immigrants?
72% of American citizens or American who responded to this poll said, pathway to citizenship
only, 28% want deportation.
The same poll asked change to a government run health care plan like Medicare for all,
72% favor it, only 29% oppose.
Just some relevant stats and responses that Hakeem Jeffries might wannna look into.