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From LeverNews.com — Lever Time is the flagship podcast from the investigative news outlet The Lever. Hosted by award-winning journalist, Oscar-nominated writer, and Bernie Sanders' 2020 speechwriter David Sirota, Lever Time features exclusive reporting from The Lever’s newsroom, high-profile guest interviews, and expert analysis from the sharpest minds in media and politics.
David Sirota
From the levers reader supported newsroom, this is lever time. I'm David Sirota. The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. These are the words that were published 75 years ago in George Orwell's novel 1984. And they seem to describe this political moment that we're now living through. After Joe Biden's severe decline was exposed to the nation on the presidential debate stage. Democratic Party officials have spent the last few days telling America to not believe their eyes and ears. And to think that Biden is up to the job of not only running for reelection, but serving another term in office. Concerns are now spreading like wildfire throughout the country, amid revelations that Biden's health has been declining for some time, and that his aides may have hid the situation. In response, Biden's campaigns sent out a scathing email slamming the majority of American voters who polls show believe he should step down. And the email also insisted that there are no other Democrats who could possibly compete with Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the Biden family responded by holding a photoshoot with faux magazine after Biden's visit to The Hamptons, capping off this disaster with a let them eat cake moment for the ages. All of this appears to be a huge boost for Donald Trump. Polling analyst Nate Silver's new report says the former president is now on track for a potential landslide victory in November. How in God's name did we arrive at this moment of peril. On this special episode of lever time, we talk to one of the people who tried to blow the whistle to avert this disaster and who was punished for doing so.
Joe Biden
I shall not see. And I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president. In
David Sirota
March of 1968, incumbent Democratic President Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not run for another term. Though his approval ratings were better than President Joe Biden's are right now. Johnson seemed to understand that he'd lost the confidence of voters and probably couldn't win. Even though he'd enacted the most robust legislative agenda in a generation, the Vietnam War had politically destroyed him. So he bowed out and had Robert F. Kennedy not been assassinated. There's a good chance Democrats would have prevented a Nixon presidency. 46 years later, we seem to be at a similar pivot point right now. Through the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau the American rescue plan, Joe Biden has enacted some of the best economic policies America has seen since LBJ. And unlike LBJ, Biden got America out of a war. But polls show that Biden too has lost the confidence of the country because of his age and his health issues that everyone saw on live television last week. For those who don't want to see a Donald Trump presidency. The question now is what should be done. Right now Democratic Party power brokers are offering their answer to that question. They insist that nothing should be done, and the disasters should just unfold. Former President Barack Obama, for instance, was one of the first to weigh in declaring the quote, bad debate nights happen, and that the debate didn't change the dynamics of the race. Silicon Valley mega donor Reed Hoffman soon after declared the quote, Joe is our nominee any decision to step aside is up to him and his family period, Biden's former White House Chief of Staff doubled down against some donors who said they felt gaslighted by DNC officials. He told the New York Times that quote, big money donors don't get to dictate the nominee of the Democratic Party and attempt to pretend that Biden staying in the race is somehow a selfless and brave act of populism. If you feel like you're being gaslighted it's because you are being gaslighted. But it's now getting worse. This same Cabal has gone on the attack against the rest of the Democratic Party. Delaware Senator Chris Coons, for instance, appeared on ABC News this week to insinuate that all the governors and senators throughout the Democratic Party are weak and pathetic, and that somehow only the declining Joe Biden can win this election. The
Chris Coons
stakes of this race couldn't be higher. And the only Democrat who's ever beaten Donald Trump in Joe Biden is our candidate for November, and he has the best shot to beat him.
David Sirota
The Biden campaign blasted out an email to 1000s of voters saying much the same thing as coons. Quote, The bedwetting brigade is calling for Joe Biden to drop out. That is the best possible way for Donald Trump to win and us to lose. That same email included a poll that showed other prominent Democratic governors and cabinet officials and senators aren't necessarily polling better than Biden against Trump. So when it comes to the question of what happens now, the Democratic Party machines answer seems to be a reprise of George Orwell's 1984. They're telling you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. In a sense, they're doing that very familiar thing that we've seen autocratic regimes do throughout the world, the move where the apparatchiks cling to power by pretending the incapacitated dear leader is still functional. And then the media tells the population everything is fine. Of course, these are not objective observers, every Democratic Party politician and powerbroker saying nothing to see here stands to lose money, status and employment. If Biden does do the right thing and steps aside. They epitomize the dynamic Upton Sinclair described when he wrote that, quote, it's difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. Perhaps worse, these democratic power brokers and operatives don't really seem to care. If Donald Trump wins the presidency. After all, in a new Trump era, they'll still be in control of the Democratic Party, they'll still be able to raise tons of money. The stakes in this election are low for them. So they seem fine with staying the course. But here's the thing, risking another Trump presidency with an obviously incapacitated nominee is not fine. For millions of women who want their reproductive rights protected. It's not fine. For millions of people who don't want the livable climate incinerated. It's not fine for millions of people who don't want whatever's left of democracy to be shredded under an authoritarian conservative Trump regime. In light of that, when it comes to the question of what should be done, a more legitimate answer is what a new poll shows nearly two thirds of Americans say that Biden should step down. And the Democratic Party should allow its own democratic processes to operate processes like an open convention that haven't been allowed to operate for a very long time. So what would it take to turn that popular desire for a change into reality right now? The first answer is, stop being sad. Instead, get angry, get angry, because what's been perpetrated is a cover up and a crime against you and against the entire country. Let's remember, Joe Biden and his aides did everything they could to prevent a serious contested Democratic primary. And according to reporting and Axios, they did this as White House aides were well aware of Biden's declining health but said nothing. Even worse. Biden refused to engage his longshot primary challengers in a debate that might have let Democratic voters see his frailties early enough for more established candidates to jump in. Instead, Biden and his aides defrauded the country. They tried to hide it all, so they could get into a general election. And now blackmail us with an impossible choice. Vote for an incapacitated Biden, or get Trump and the end of democracy. But being angry alone about all this won't fix the situation. Anger channeled into relentless pressure might Joe Biden insisting on running for reelection is selfish, but it's also the iron law of politics. Most politicians are narcissists with God complexes and therefore will not give up power out of any sense of altruism or any sense of duty to country or anything else you've seen on a West Wing episode. As the old saying goes, power concedes nothing without demand. In this case, Biden will step down only if there is sustained public demand, demand by you listening to this podcast by all of your friends and neighbors by everyone. So you're thinking, sure Serota, that that all sounds great, but it's impossible. And look, that may end up being true. Biden and his family may be willing to sacrifice all of our futures for their venal attempt to cling to power, but then again, insisting that nothing can be done. That's a cheap cop out. One designed to tell yourself that nobody has to do anything, because it's already impossible. I reject that. I Believe Nelson Mandela was right, when he said, it's always impossible until it is done. If your elected Democratic Party official is pretending things are fine, call them up and tell them that they are not fine. If your social media feed is full of liberals who've been brainwashed by MSNBC, and they're telling you that Biden is the nominee and just shut up, tell them no, it doesn't have to be this way. If your friends and family have given up trying to speak out and are simply resigned to this disaster, yell at them, tell them that the whole world is on the line here. Now, let's be honest, Biden stepping down is risky. But knowing what we know now about his frailties and his poll numbers. Sticking with Joe Biden is just as risky, and maybe even more risky. You may be worried, of course, that an open convention, when Biden drops out might be unpredictable and messy and a bit chaotic. And I'm here to tell you that yeah, it will be because guess what? Democracy is risky, and unpredictable, and messy. And that's okay. In fact, that's a feature not a bug of a functioning healthy democracy. And that would be a beautiful thing. Let Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg. And all those rising star Democratic governors compete for the support of the delegates who were elected to represent their communities at the Democratic Convention. That's democracy. This stakes here could not be higher. We live in an age of the so called Polly crisis, multiple emergencies unfolding all at the same time. But this crisis right here, right now, is the biggest of all, because it's about not even just preventing another Trump presidency. It's about whether we can ever actually envision any positive change at all. Think about it. Since Barack Obama transformed his rhetoric of hope and change into a policy of more of the same and then we got Maga and mayhem. The Democratic Party and its media machine have wrung any sense of hope for a better world. Out of its voters minds. Where rank and file voters could once envision steady progress towards a better society. Those dreams have been replaced by cold bloodless calculation, and resignation. In interviews and tweets and Facebook posts and conversations at the bar. Democratic voters today often sound like dime a dozen political strategists obsessed only with what some pundit on television told them is supposedly politically realistic, but not obsessed with what might actually improve the country. Party leaders propping up Joe Biden are now relying on that demoralization to try to stay the course they want voters to believe the die is cast the fix is in, and that we can't ever deviate from a worst case scenario. They want you to believe that there's no alternative to the nomination of a declining 81 year old man poised to lose to a cartoonish fascist who threatens to ruin your future and your children's future. They want you to believe that there's no possible way to turn the page and nominate any of the number of talented potential candidates across the country. They want you to believe that the Democratic Party that once passed the New Deal and civil rights laws and Medicare and Medicaid and voting rights laws, that this party can do absolutely nothing other than be a hollowed out vessel for a declining shell of a president, even though there's still time to make a change. So let me ask you, is that really where we are? I sure hope not. Because right now, we're facing the very real threat of fascism and authoritarianism in the form of Donald Trump. He and his movement have laid it all out in their so called Project 2025 documents that outline a fascist takeover of this country. Are we going to simply allow this kind of fascism to take over America? Just because Joe Biden's family likes the perks of the White House, or just because Democratic politicians are too polite, or too afraid to say the obvious to the elderly President withering away before our eyes. Of course, one elected official in the Democratic Party tried to do something about this way back when it would have been a more orderly, less chaotic situation. You may remember that after not a single statewide elected official in the entire Democratic Party mustered the guts to run a primary challenge against Biden, despite his plummeting polls, even after that Democratic Congressman Dean Phillips stepped up and tried to run a primary against Biden for the alleged crime of trying to run that primary and sound that present alarm. Dean Phillips was roundly ridiculed, berated and drugged out of the party. He recently announced he wouldn't run for reelection to his US House seat. Everybody
Dean Phillips
in America can see what's going on. I do I think it's healthy for the United States to have men in their 80s as president. No, I don't. And by the way, it's not just me, it's about 75% of the country. So it is not my job to opine. What I'm saying is that Americans have made it clear they do not want either of these candidates as President. I'm glad to see the GOP having a healthy debate many of the candidates right here in New Hampshire. And I wish President Biden would be here too. I wish he would debate.
David Sirota
The man who ran Dean Phillips race was Jeff Weaver, who also helped run Bernie Sanders two presidential campaigns. Right now Arjun Singh and I are going to talk to Jeff, about how the Biden machine and the Democratic Party's hostility to democracy created this disaster we're now living through. And we also talk about what the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Party as a whole can do right now, to create a contingency plan if Biden does do the right thing, and drops out.
Arjun Singh
Jeff, awesome to have you here. I'm excited to talk to you. I think like David, and probably most of America, I have no idea what is going on right now. Let's just do a quick recap. Since the debate, Biden, his allies, they've tried to promote this video of him at a rally in North Carolina, where he acknowledges his own bad performance. But then they say, look how energetic he is. He can read off a teleprompter, you guys should be happy about that.
Joe Biden
I don't do bad debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth.
Arjun Singh
His family means to Camp David, they tell him to stick with the campaign. They start attacking the press saying this is all overblown, medium narrative. Then they say that his critics are the quote the bedwetting brigade. I guess, Jeff, just you've been in politics a long time, you've had bad moments, I'm sure. Just as a tactic to calm the nerves. Do you think that smart? And how do you feel after the debate and after this weekend? Well, look, I
Jeff Weaver
think they're basically in a waiting posture. And what they're waiting for is to see if over the course of three or four or five days with a lot of surrogates out there, you know, putting out their talking points if the polls will stabilize, and they'll limit the damage that was done by the really, I mean, I was gonna say poor debate performance, but that's really understating what went what went on there. And so you know, the ultimate decision about whether he stays in or not, is going to be made in a few days, not you know, this whole news about the family meeting and what have you, they were never going to come out of that meeting and say, he's not running. They're gonna wait and see what the polls say. And if the polls continue to plummet, then you know, they may he may get out, if they stabilize, then he's likely to stay in I think, let's
David Sirota
talk about like, if he gets if he gets out, you have worked with sometimes, you know, hostile setting with the DNC, the Democratic Party machine, the common retort when one says that the party clamped down on primary challengers, for example, is that state parties made their own decisions on that. And there isn't really a central power there. In your experience, is the Democratic Party, top down where the party is, and the power is concentrated, and and how do they exert their influence over the rest of the party machinery when it comes to something like this?
Jeff Weaver
Well, when you have a Democratic president, the president is the Democratic Party. Let's be clear, the party and the President are one. So there is no independent democratic party. The DNC is essentially a fundraising operation for the reelect for the incumbent president and chair of the DNC does whatever the President's people tell that person to do. And so they also can call state chairs and tell those people what to do they control because the President is the party, the party controls the purse strings, and things like presidential appearances, and so on and so forth. They call PARTY CHAIRS, and they tell PARTY CHAIRS what to do, and PARTY CHAIRS, do it whether it's in Florida, where they canceled the primary altogether, in North Carolina, where they kept people off the ballot that they had put on four years earlier, when they were doing worse in the polls, you know, to Wisconsin when you had a relatively progressive, a state party chair who was complicit in trying to keep people off the ballot until the Supreme Court intervened. So that's how they that's how they, they I mean, it's not like they can force anybody to do anything, frankly, but they may get very unpleasant. So
Arjun Singh
Jeff, do you know the man in the moment and probably right now is arguably Dean Phillips, like the guy who sounded the alarm a long time ago, I went to New Hampshire like I interviewed him. And the thing I was most surprised by is not that he was charismatic. He was young, it was that this felt kind of like going back to a normal campaign where you have a candidate going out and speaking to voters. And it really underscored just how closed off Biden had been. And, you know, one thing Dean had said, a lot of people had said is, are they trying to protect the president, from people really seeing how bad he might be on the campaign trail? You know, I will just say, I had a Biden advisor one time text me, I get worried when he goes out by himself. And you know, you were an advisor to Dean Phillips. Last week, we re aired our episode about the 2024 efforts that you had just talked about, from your perspective, when Dean Phillips tried to challenge him. Did it feel like there were consequences for those challenges, personally, professionally, did that elicit anger from the party? And you know, what was there a pressure campaign? And what kinds of pressure did you guys feel coming from parts of the Democratic Party?
Jeff Weaver
Wow, there was incredible pressure, obviously, not just on the candidate. But you know, they started running a primary challenger against him. For one thing, that that's always a good, that's always a good way to motivate incumbents until he said he wasn't going to run. And so that lever of power was taken away from talking about his house race. Yeah, in his house race. Yes, exactly.
Arjun Singh
They decided to challenge him and they thought that was okay. Because he was challenging. Exactly,
Jeff Weaver
exactly. And then obviously, the pressure on, you know, political professionals is intense. You know, the punishment that can be meted out there is severe financially to people who work in Democratic Party politics. And that was certainly the case in the Dean Phillips campaign. I can't tell you, dozens and dozens and dozens of people, I talked to both campaign staffers and political consultants who wouldn't touch that campaign with a 10 foot pole, even though they were sympathetic to the message that Dean Phillips had around the issue of Joe Biden's electability.
Arjun Singh
What What drew you to the Phillips campaign, actually, Jeff? Well,
Jeff Weaver
he approached me, frankly, we had quite a few discussions. You know, he was open to Medicare for All which he eventually came out in favor of he was for free tuition at public colleges and universities. And the truth is, is that the goal this fall has to be to defeat Trump and Trump. More importantly, Trump ism, because, you know, despite what you hear from a lot of democratic Talking Heads, Trump is not personally an existential, existential threat alone. It's his ideology, which is now being immersed in the in the Republican Party and will be, you know, implanted in the federal government if he gets reelected. So we have got to defeat Trump because not because of Trump, but because of Trump ism, as an ideology. And you know, this is a global phenomenon, what's going on, we saw in France, what's happening. You saw in Germany, you see it all over the world, this sort of move to the right, this article today about South South Korean men becoming more conservative. You know, the Israeli government is conservative. I mean, you have conservative governments rising all over the world are hungry. And so this is part of that, obviously. And we have got to do our part here in the US to stem that that tide of authoritarian right wing politics.
David Sirota
So I want to ask about what we're going through now. And through the prism of what happened in the primary or really lack of a primary. It seems to me that one way to look at this moment where you have a general election nominee, who has lost the confidence of most of the country in his ability to govern. And it seems to me that a primary, contested primary is supposed to test general election candidates before they get to this point in the political process. And I think my question about that is the hostility to a primary challenge against Joe Biden, from Dean Phillips or anyone else, that hostility? There's always going to be a hostility from incumbents to facing a primary. But I just wonder, is that is the is the intensity of the hostility that a candidate like Dean Phillips faced, is that something newer in Democratic Party politics? Because it seems to me the there's a complete intolerance almost across the board up and down the ballot? There's a complete intolerance to the idea of democratic contests inside of the Democratic Party. And now here we are, I just wonder you have been in politics for as long as you have, do you sense that that hostility has intensified and if it has, why? Well, I you
Jeff Weaver
know, he comes and says You mentioned incumbents always hate a primary challengers. But but let's talk about primaries. Primaries aren't just a way to pick a nominee. Primaries are important feedback loop between the rank and file of the party and elected officials. If you run in a primary and you get 85% of the Democratic Party Vote, well, probably voters think a lot of you, if you get 52%, and sneak over the line, well, then maybe you're getting a message sent to you by voters that there's something there's a problem. And, you know, made that problem may be personified by the messaging of your opponent, and maybe you need to take a look at, you know, where you are visa vie your constituents. So, you know, in addition to seeing how well candidates do in debates, and whether they, you know, obviously we saw, you know, with some candidates, it exposes other problems. But, you know, this feedback loop is incredibly important. And there's this real sense in the Democratic Party in Washington, DC, and it is pervasive that somehow the Democratic Party star chamber is a wiser than the collective 100 million Democrats across the country. And every time they try to substitute their judgment for the judgment of rank and file Democrats, it ends in disaster. You know, obviously, in 2016, we ended up with the star chamber chosen candidate Hillary Clinton losing to Donald Trump and a surprise, you know, 2020, the process was relatively open, frankly, the party came out of it, Joe Biden won, and the party United because people felt invested in a fair process and in 2024, comes around, you have the complete rearranging of the schedule in order to protect Joe Biden, let's be clear, I mean, even Jim Clyburn said in an article that the reason the schedule was changed was to protect Joe Biden, you canceled all the debates, which then drove RFK and Cornel West out of the Democratic Party contest. So now you create third party challengers, because you are not allowing open debates, then you you smash, you know, Dean Phillips, and anybody else who thought they were even, you know, many who wanted to run but didn't run, so that you've covered up, you know, what is clear now that Joe Biden is having difficulties. So you've covered that up. So every time they substitute their judgment for the collective judgment of rank and file voters, it turns out to be a disaster, because the truth of the matter is, that the start the democratic star chamber in Washington, DC, is really very out of touch with America, and as incapable, frankly, of winning. So
David Sirota
my question early on throughout the whole, primary or really lack thereof, is and no disrespect to Dean Phillips, I'm glad Dean Phillips, the one elected official in the Democratic Party who actually stepped up and tried to run a primary challenge. This is no disrespect to him. But the question I kept coming back to is, where are the governors? Where are the senators? Where are the traditional, bigger named bigger platformed candidates that when you look back in history, tend to have for at least floated a potential primary campaign if not run a potential primary campaign against such a weak incumbent. We've seen that in the past. So my question is, where were all the bigger name candidates? And what how do we explain the lack of those primary candidates? Especially knowing that those kinds of primary candidates have run in the past? What has changed? Yeah, well, that's
Jeff Weaver
a good question, too. And as you know, Dean Phillips has said many times, he tried to recruit some of these people to run before he got it.
Dean Phillips
I've been trying this I hope you guys know since I called on the president to pass the torch he didn't. I spent months literally calling other candidates who are much better known than I because I know in this game, you have to be well known. It helps the it helps the cause. Irritation, Poppy is still Gretchen Whitmer. JB Pritzker Gavin Newsom, Vice President Harris, where are you?
Jeff Weaver
He wanted, he wanted them to run. He wasn't looking to run himself. And as you know, he got in very late. And, you know, there's a million reasons why he didn't do well. But that being one of them, you know, David, I don't know what the answer is, obviously, people's political consultants, and candidate candidates themselves made judgments that they'd be better off waiting until 2028. That maybe, you know, with a no incumbent president, they could have a better chance of defeating Kamala Harris than they do Joe Biden this time around. You know, I think it was a terrible miscalculation on people's parts, both, because everybody now sees that Joe Biden is, is having physical problems. his poll numbers are still in the in the in the basement. You know, obviously, there are large segments of Democratic Party, particularly around the war in Palestine who were disenfranchised, disenchanted with the President. So there was a base there to grab on to. But you know, it takes courage. It takes political courage to do that. Yeah,
David Sirota
I mean, I guess I guess what I'm trying to get at is, is there a sharper, harsher culture of fear like I can't believe it's just that, that the culture are in the Democratic Party is just people are too polite.
Jeff Weaver
I feel like it's definitely not it's definitely not polite.
David Sirota
It's not polite. I mean, tell me if you think I'm wrong, my theory is, is that the Democratic Party and its media machine has sold the rank and file democratic voter on the idea that intra party competition, intra party squabbling fighting amongst the party is actually not democracy, which is what I think it is. But it's actually something bad that, that and so that the politicians, the governors are the senators who might have thought of running in looking at the incumbents, poor poll numbers. They like in a past era, that now that that now that there is this culture of Oh, fighting amongst Democrats is bad. And now that that idea has seeped into the grassroots of the Democratic Party that No, statewide elected official, no major Democrat with a big platform wants to wants to contend with that. Is that a fair way to look at it? No,
Jeff Weaver
that is an absolutely fair way to look at it. And you mean us here in some of the commentators who are on TV now, you know, providing commentators who are out there, you know, we can't we can't the president can't step aside. It will be pandemonium. You'll have chaos at the convention. There'll be multiple votes. And this is demonic people arguing it. Right. Right. Right. Right. If you don't see the democratic Democratic Party operators, Republicans are much more likely to as you saw in the House races for the speaker over and over again, they're much more likely to bludgeon each other in public. The Democratic Party, the way you handle opponents is a, you know, a quiet throat slit. That's the way you handled it. It's very quiet. It's very neat, very mad, probably they put plastic on the floor, overt action and the catch all the blood. But that's how they do it. And no one sees anything bad happening. It looks very calm on the surface. But that's that's how I like to project. Well,
Arjun Singh
you know, I see another side of the equation, which is that Democrats love to talk about in this era of Trump that we're not the cult of personality party, we don't do what they do. And I'll just say personally, I don't really know how else to read some of the fervent defenses of Biden, I mean, it was uniform. Everyone saw what they saw, he did not do a good job, we can pick apart what the reasons were, how bad it was. But this fervent defense of Biden feels very cult of personality. And to be honest, like I'm someone who I was 16 and 2008. So that's probably the first election that I really came in on. And maybe since 2008, maybe a little bit earlier, it does feel like Democrats do have cult of personality politics in 2016. It was just a given that Hillary Clinton was supposed to be the nominee, even though you had a really powerful challenge from Bernie Sanders. You know, I guess looking at all of this, I just wonder, like, why are Democrats like this? Is this something new? And over your time in politics? Has that changed? And, you know, why do they just rapidly coalesce around people in this cult like way, despite what are very real deficiencies, despite the fact that they could have just had a big fair process? And if Biden comes out at the top? I think a lot of people would have said, hey, you know what, we gave it our best bet. That's all right. Now we're gonna go with the nominee, but instead they did it and it feels very cold. Like, what do you think about that?
Jeff Weaver
Yeah, well, I don't you know, I don't know if it's a culture on Biden, because, you know, obviously, there are divisions of the party. You know, the Obama people hate the Biden, people hate the Obama people. And some of the Clinton people hate the Biden people. And so there are the you know, there are centers of power in the party, the party has increasingly become a presidential party. It is very focused on presidential politics. And I think you don't see the type of leaders independent, sort of power base leaders in the furnace of the legislative branch anymore. You know, there's no Harry Reid, who, you know, we all know, is a adept political operator for good or ill, and sometimes for good, sometimes frail. But you know, he would he would intervene in a way with presidents and presidential aspirants. And I just don't think you see that kind of power in the legislative branch. There's no Tip O'Neill, there's no, you know, there's no people like that who have independent power outside of the president. And so when we don't have a president, you know, the party sort of is aimless and floats around. And then when you do have a president, it's all totally focused around the presidency. And I think that's, that's a big problem. Yeah.
Arjun Singh
We talked to you on the show, Mark longball. I don't think you guys might have worked together on the Bernie Sanders 16 campaign. Mark had a really interesting point because I had asked him about the Ted Kennedy Jimmy Carter primary, you know, in the same question, how come someone didn't come up at Ted Kennedy? And his point was, look, there isn't a TED Kennedy at this moment, you know that Ted Kennedy was such a unique rock star in the party. Do you look at the Democratic bench and think that's true that, you know, even if take Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer, if they really wanted to mount that they might not have been able to marshal that kind of star power. Was that an issue?
Jeff Weaver
Well, so certainly it's an issue. And look, you saw what they did, in terms of keeping Dean Phillips off the ballot, would they have kept tried to keep keep Gretchen Whitmer off the ballot? Of course, they would have, they would have tried to, you know, there might still not have been a contest in Florida, and they might have given all the delegates to Joe Biden, or North Carolina. So it would have been, you know, very, very messy, you know, obviously, that the need to amass massive quantities of money, particularly outside your campaign, not necessarily inside, you can but outside your campaign, in order to successfully prosecute a campaign for president, you really have to be certain that you have those kinds of resources lined up I you know, Bernie Sanders a little bit souI generous, as we say, lawyers say, thing unto himself, you know, he was able to finance the campaign with small dollar contributions over two campaigns, he raised, you know, half a trillion dollars. But I mean, half a billion dollars. But that's but that's, that's not everybody, they can't You can't raise that type of?
David Sirota
Well, and that's actually an important segue to the question of, of, of the donor class, how much does the lack of a vigorous primary process of vigorous process that could have tested Joe Biden could have challenged Joe Biden, how much of that is not just the culture in the Democratic Party, that that sort of presumes that intra party fighting is bad, but how much of it is also that a handful of donors controls a disproportionate amount of the resources needed to run a well resourced primary, and therefore, even if you are a governor of a state or a senator, that if you don't have access to those donors, and those donors are locked down, there's really kind of no point in trying to run a primary because it can't be resourced
Jeff Weaver
can't be resource. Yeah, if you can't resource it, I mean, look, let's be clear. There's a world we live in, in the world we're trying to create. And we have to know which one we're in. And right now the world we live in, you cannot run for president without 10s or hundreds of millions of dollars outside of your campaign to help you because the other people will have it. And money doesn't always when you don't have to have as much money as the next person. But you got to have a lot, you got to have enough. And, you know, when these people call around, and if the donors shut you down, you know, the relatively small circle of donors shut you down. There's no point in running, you can't run, it isn't possible to run. And we say, you know, you saw that in 2020, you saw candidates who were, you know, tremendously under resourced. I mean, it's more important to look at their the resources in their affiliated Super PACs than it is to look at their resources in the campaign and you saw, you know, candidates like Amy Klobuchar, but everyone thinks that Amy Klobuchar, her outside resources very, you know, very little. And so it was difficult for her to prosecute the campaign much beyond New Hampshire. And this is, this is true across the board. The
Arjun Singh
thing about the donors are, it's interesting, because now it seems like at least some donors are starting to speak up and starting to show their concern that these fundraisers I think he was with Phil Murphy, the governor of New Jersey at a fundraiser where some donors were asking what happened to the debate, is this sustainable? Let's move forward to a little bit of a hypothetical scenario. So let's say we get to the convention, there seems to be enough energy to say that the Biden needs to step aside, I think there's a few different ways that can happen. So in the event that Biden comes out and says, Look, I'm gonna step aside, what does that actually mean for the nomination? He has all these delegates he won in primaries. So do his delegates just get freed up? Like, can he tell them? I'm going to step down, but you have to vote for Kamala Harris or a different candidate? Or are they just unshackled and they can do whatever they want?
Jeff Weaver
Yeah, they are, they are in shock, then look at terms of time, you know, many European countries have full blown elections in the amount of weeks we have between now and the Democratic convention. So to say that you can't have a primary between now and then is a little bit ridiculous. But I mean, if you were to step aside, say, Tomorrow, all of his delegates would be unbound. And they could vote for whomever they wanted, you know, in a world where the Democratic Party had an interest in picking the best candidate, you know, they might have announced that they're going to hold two debates with, say, 10 top candidates between now and the convention, those candidates could campaign around the country. You know, obviously, there won't be any voting, but they'll certainly be a lot of polling. And you know, polls are one way you find out what people think. And then you go to the convention, you make presentations. And you know, you don't have to have 100 ballots, you could say we're gonna have a ballot and each time we have a ballot, the lowest person falls off. And so if you had 10 candidates you'd have at a max 10 ballots. You It doesn't have to be chaos. It doesn't have to be pandemonium, you know, deals might be cut. You know, I mean, this is a process you wouldn't want to do every time but it's much more democratic than a process where Joe Biden drops out, and the party at nine somebody and says nobody else can run. And let's be clear this process that I just described, you know, it's similar the process that Democrats used before 1972 to pick out your if k was picked for this process, FDR is picked goes process Truman was picked in this process, at least even seen was picked in this process. So, you know, it's it is, it's not like it's not been used before, it is less democratic than the normal process we use. But that was circumvented this time around. So let's do the most democratic thing we can do at the moment. And
David Sirota
let's be let's be clear, I think people forget that primaries. Even a convention, the primaries are somewhat of a democratic process. And I want to underscore somewhat in the sense that the primary is actually just electing delegates to go represent your community or your state at the convention. The point being is that that's not a perfectly democratic process where you're sort of directly voting for the candidate, you're voting for the candidates, delegates. But it seems to me that the reason a convention exists, is in part for this particular kind of situation, where a candidate potentially drops out or or becomes incapacitated, and the delegates are small d democratically elected to represent their communities in selecting another candidate now, now, again, that that's not a perfectly democratic situation. But it seems like a somewhat democratic situation. And it seems like it's the kind of thing that the Democratic Party is terrified of. And I want to get to this to this point, which is that, it seems to me whether it comes to primaries, contested primaries, or now the prospect of an open convention, right, and a not rigged, not smoke filled back room, anointed candidate, an actual open convention, where different candidates compete for the support of delegates, that that the Democratic Party or at least parts of the Democratic Party, whether it's the donor class, the politicians, the power brokers, that they actually are terrified, specifically, of that. Do you agree with that? And if you do agree with that, why are they so afraid of that?
Jeff Weaver
Yeah, they are. They're terrified of it. And that is because it can't be It can't be managed, in the way that you can, you know, if they want a, you know, a show, they want an Oscar award, you know, show that's like heavily choreographed and there's a red carpet, and everybody comes in, and they give their give their speeches. And, you know, when your speech is done, the hook comes out and pulls you off. That's what they want. It's a show that they put on for the America just like it's not just the Democrats. Let's be clear, the Republicans also put on a show. But they they there's a fundamental distrust in many corners of the party in Washington, of rank and file, Democrats and democratically aligned independents, they just don't trust them. They think they know better. They're wiser. So
David Sirota
that raises the question about let's let's talk about Kamala Harris for a second. How much before we get to her and an open convention? I think the first question about Kamala Harris, the Vice President is how much do you think some of the hesitation to push Biden to drop out has to do with a legitimate authentic fear that Kamala Harris is a week general election candidate, and the presumption is that she would automatically be the candidate and that thus and so dumping Biden for Kamala Harris doesn't really solve the problem if the problem is defeating Donald Trump.
Jeff Weaver
Right? Well, that I mean, that has to be the oh, that mean, that's the, to me is the only consideration what is the path most likely to defeat Trump? And to me, it seems like it's his open process that I just described. You know, are there concerns if Kamala Harris was the candidate that you know, her polling numbers are also not fantastic, although I will say that, you know, in her, her rebuttal at the end of the debate when she went on to defend the president, you know, she was, you know, she's good on TV, she's, you know, she's good. She's, she's, you know, she's a good. She's a good candidate. She's a good politician. And you're like, Oh, she was she's not infirm. And so you know, it, could she come out and run and do better than her current poll numbers? Of course, you know, she has some upside. You know, we haven't seen a lot of her that, you know, the Biden people have sort of kept her locked away for the last few years. And when they did bring her out, they gave her impossible tasks. You couldn't, you know, I'm not saying that I support Kamala Harris, but I'm just saying. Yes. So the answer the short answer to your question is yes. That is, that is a concern. Yes. And, you know, what is really exacerbated by is the sort of abysmal campaign that she ran In 2020, you know, she had spent a lot of raise a lot of money went, went out the door very quickly. She had a minor blip up when she, you know, attacked the President for his past votes on busing or what have you supported busing or not opposition to busing, but then never could capitalize on it and sort of collapse rather quickly. And so that's I think, is the real concern about Kamala Harris is that you can't prosecute a successful campaign. So
Arjun Singh
I'm of the mindset that, you know, I'm very much like, David, that I think a primary is healthy. But I also think in immediate environment, the primary actually does a good job of stealing the oxygen from Trump. I thought with the 2020 primaries, I, I loved it. I loved how all these candidates are dropping policy proposal after policy proposal. And if you saw for months, the media was obsessed with Medicare for All tuition, free public college, how are we going to do it, and you didn't have kind of the media class pushing down, say, oh, it's unrealistic move on. Because every candidate needed to capture these votes, these actually moved into the arena of viable ideas. But to the Kamala Harris point, a big constituency for Democrats historically has been black voters, and in particular, for Joe Biden's election, black women, they were crucial to his win in Georgia and knocking doors. Is that a big problem? If Kamala Harris has passed over? Does it look like he scorning potentially the first black female president, the first black female vice president? And do black voters risk getting alienated from the party because of this? How does the party How do you think about that kind of stuff on a campaign because it feels very heavy and hard to think of groups as blocks. But you You've both been in this game before? How do you kind of disentangle and grapple with these issues? Is that something that is a scenario to be worried about that black women and black voters feel totally alienated that they don't go to the Vice President immediately?
Jeff Weaver
Well, I don't think they should go to the Vice President immediately, no matter who it is, frankly, in this type of scenario. And, uh, you know, I do think Kamala Harris, if we, you know, if we had a more open process would be an incredibly strong contender. Yeah. And probably the favorite, frankly. So it's not a process that is disadvantaging her. I mean, she, like I said, I think would probably go in with a big head of steam and might lock it up fairly quickly. So, you know, I don't think I'm never afraid of a democracy. And as long as the the playing field is level, and everybody gets a fair shot, you know, it's just what we're talking about in 2020. I mean, you know, progressives lost in 2020, and rallied around Joe Biden, because they believed it was a fair process. And that, you know, Bernie and his supporters have been treated decently and the Biden, Biden people were gracious winners in that in that time period. So I, you know, I it is a concern. But I don't think it's an overriding Well, what
David Sirota
do you say to the folks who hear about Biden may drop out, there will be a convention, and that it, therefore automatically must be inevitably impossible for it to be anyone else other than Kamala Harris. Now, I look at that theory. And I say, well, on the one hand, the way politics 10 democratic politics has tended to work is Yes, exactly. There's, there's a there's a cabal that chooses that picks and chooses and, and, and democracy is not allowed to flourish. There is no open for fight convention. It just, it just it just, there's just a succession, if you will, the other side of me says, You know what, we're in uncharted territory here. And it doesn't have to be that way. Even if it you know, if past is Prelude, it might, it might lean towards being that way. I guess my question is, is it inevitable, that if Joe Biden drops out, there will simply be no process at all? And Kamala Harris without even having to make a campaign for those delegates, that she will be anointed? Is that an inevitability? No, absolutely
Jeff Weaver
not. I mean, is it a possibility Absolutely. Isn't a likelihood problem would be that. Yeah. Well, look, I think you saw, you know, what happened when they wouldn't let Joe Biden debate in the primaries? We had this debate in, you know, when we're coming into the general and now people are like, holy smokes, we shouldn't have debates in the primary. Let's I mean, I don't think the test that we put, you know, Joe Biden to should be different than the test, we put Kamala Harris to, she should have to debate but their potential contenders for the presidency. So you people can people can compare and contrast the candidates side by side. I mean, maybe she got on the stage and she'll kill it right? Yeah. Maybe she won't. I mean,