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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.
Arjun Singh: Hey everyone, it’s senior podcast producer Arjun Singh. It’s been about a month since Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance, and what a month it’s been.
Here on Lever Time, we’ve worked hard to keep you informed by providing insights and perspectives you don’t normally hear.
Today, we’re going to continue our election coverage by sharing David Sirota’s appearance on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show.
In this wide ranging interview, David looks at the state of the Democratic Party Vice President Kamala Harris’ ascension to presumptive nominee, and discusses why the Democrats would be wise to pivot to campaigning on the Biden administration’s economic record.
It’s a great interview, and I hope you enjoy it.
Ok, here’s the show.
[MUSIC]
Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. You've probably heard that Vice President Kamala Harris has already gotten the public endorsement of a majority of the approximately 4,700 Democratic convention delegates. That train has left the station, and she will be the nominee. Before President Biden ended his campaign and this all happened, one of the things people had been projecting in the event that Harris became the nominee, was that she would contrast her background as a prosecutor to Donald Trump's increasingly long rap sheet as a criminal or evildoer as found by civil courts.
In her first campaign speech yesterday, the vice president wasted no time in pursuing that path. Now, since we have the luxury of time on this show compared to the newscast, we can play longer sound bites than the few seconds you usually get. We sometimes take that opportunity. Here is a minute and a half of Vice President Harris speaking yesterday and citing that contrast with a list of specifics.
Vice President Kamala Harris: As a young prosecutor, when I was in the Alameda County District Attorney's Office in California, I specialized in cases involving sexual abuse. Donald Trump was found liable by a jury for committing sexual abuse. As Attorney General of California, I took on one of our country's largest for-profit colleges and put it out of business. Donald Trump ran a for-profit college, Trump University, that was forced to pay $25 million to the students it scammed. As District Attorney, to go after polluters, I created one of the first environmental justice units in our nation.
Donald Trump stood in Mar-a-Lago and told big oil lobbyists he would do their bidding for a $1 billion campaign contribution. During the foreclosure crisis, I took on the Big Wall Street banks and won $20 billion for California families. Holding those banks accountable for fraud. Donald Trump was just found guilty of 34 counts of fraud.
Brian Lehrer: Vice president, and now presumed Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris. We'll hear another clip from that first campaign speech coming up. In order to actually win the election, Harris will have to put together a winning coalition and enough swing states. There's no guarantee the coalition will be big enough, and we shouldn't assume it will be the exact same center and left coalition that got Biden elected in 2020, or for that matter, got Obama elected in 2008 and 2012. If Biden seemed safe to certain, let's say, white suburban swing voters, Harris may have to reassure them in a different way than the Joe from Scranton identity that Biden embraced and sold.
Voters on the left, sometimes, but not always in love with Biden, have also not always been Harris's biggest fans because she was a prosecutor and for some other reasons. We'll focus for today, mostly on those progressive voters and also how Harris might campaign her way to victory compared to the way Biden did four years ago. Our guest for this is David Sirota. He was speechwriter and senior advisor for the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign. Sirota is also a longtime progressive investigative journalist and opinion writer these days at the website that he founded and is editor-in-chief of called The Lever, as well as being a contributor to Jacobin and The Guardian.
He's won many journalism awards, and as his website reminds us, he was nominated for an Academy Award for his work helping Adam McKay create the story for the Blockbuster film, Don't Look Up, the Climate Change Allegory movie, which became one of the most widely viewed feature films in Netflix's history. David's website boasts two of David's recent articles on The Lever are about the opportunity created by Biden's withdrawal, and one arguing that the Democrat should be more pugilistic. We'll explain why that. David, thanks for coming on. Welcome back to WNYC.
David Sirota: Thanks so much for having me.
Brian Lehrer: Your website, The Lever, first of all, does that refer to the lever in the old-fashioned voting booze, or leverage in a broader sense, or why'd you call your website that?
David Sirota: I think it's all of that. There's an old quote that says, from Archimedes, give me a lever long enough and I can change the world. It's all about doing the reporting that empowers people to hold their own elected officials and government accountable.
Brian Lehrer: To your notion of which party is more pugilistic, you may have to define the word for some people, but your article is called Fight or Die, so that's a hint. What's the premise?
David Sirota: The premise is that the Republicans have done a good job optically of portraying their corporate agenda as populism as a way to help the little guy. Now, to be clear, I think if you look at policy by policy, the Republican agenda, it still is a fairly standard, a corporate Republican, country club Republican agenda. As we saw at the Republican convention, it's being cast as a new form of populism. The pick of JD Vance, I think, Donald Trump's pick of JD Vance is an attempt to lean into that because Vance has at times worked in the Senate in his brief senate career with Democrats on some issues like rail safety, like bringing down the price of insulin to cast himself as more of a corporate critic, more of a populace.
The Republicans have been able to recast themselves, again, as a brand, as a party ready to fight for the working class. I think the problem has been for Democrats is kind of there's a paradox here, is that the Democrats that Joe Biden has actually pushed forward and enacted one of the most populist progressive set of economic policies of any president in the last 50 years. If you look at the American Rescue plan, if you look at what's being done at the Federal Trade Commission, you look at what's being done at the CFPB financial regulation and the like. Empirically, objectively, a populist economic agenda taking on corporate power.
The paradox has been, is that the party has effectively not branded itself off of those policies. It has oftentimes, the Biden campaign has focused on "Saving democracy." A lot of idealistic rhetoric about democracy and the soul of the country but not necessarily portraying itself in a fighting posture. I think part of that has to do with Joe Biden's age. I think he hasn't been a good communicator, a strong communicator and I think that that's been a liability for the Democrats, and I think a new nominee can certainly fix some of that. I think it is about how the Democrats see how they're going to win this election.
I don't think there's a lot of evidence to suggest that portraying this campaign as simply a "Fight for democracy" is the most effective way to win this race at a time when many of the swing voters are working-class voters who are struggling to survive, who don't necessarily care about that high-minded rhetoric. They want to know what these candidates are going to do for them when it comes to surviving in this economy.
Brian Lehrer: We'll get to some of Kamala Harris's economic positions. We have another clip that will allude to some of those that will play in a little while. You're right that Trump's fighting posture became so intrinsic that he instinctively turned an assassination attempt into a photo op screaming fight as if he was once again, headlining a pro wrestling match you put it. I'm curious how you relate to that moment, David. Some have called it an act of courage to poke his head up like that when he may have still been under attack, but I get the sense you also see something not to like in that image.
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but did you see it as a call to civil war rather than, let's say, merely accountability for the shooter, a civil war, if there was more than a lone gunman as it turned out to be?
David Sirota: I think it was a remarkable moment in that Donald Trump's almost in his reptilian brain is able to turn everything into a photo op. Just as a political force, it is remarkable that that happened in that moment, that he had that instinct to try to turn that moment into a photo op for his brand that he's clearly trying to burn into people's minds. As we just discussed, a populist fighter. Again, I want to be clear, I don't think Donald Trump is actually pushing what you would call a populist agenda, but he's trying to create that brand. I also think the danger for the Republicans in- -that brand, is that I do think that that brand carries along with it a bit of a sense of chaos, that it is a constant state of conflict and chaos. I think the question is, when Donald Trump says, when he said, "Fight, fight, fight," the question is, fight who, fight what? I think what we've learned in a country that has its elections, oftentimes it feels like based on vibes rather than policy, it doesn't seem to matter what the fight is against, just that you're willing to fight.
I think that the danger there is that if it's just fighting for fighting's sake and it's able to cast a dangerous corporate and anti-democratic agenda as a populist fight, and Americans are in a fighting spirit, that can go in directions that I think are dangerous or directions that I personally don't like, and I think a lot of the people in the country won't like.
Brian Lehrer: You're right, that the parties switched outlooks on political pugilism or flipped their zeitgeists, as you also put it. Were the Democrats once the bigger warriors in the way that you used that word?
David Sirota: Look, I think when you think back to the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama's campaign, first of all, the primary in that campaign between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton was extremely nasty and extremely contested, which I frankly think is good. I think that contested primaries battle test general election nominees. It does not weaken candidates for a general election. It actually tests them out. I think Barack Obama's overwhelming win in 2008 proves that. I think the way he won was by running a real populist campaign. I think if you remember back to that campaign him versus John McCain, Barack Obama was the populist candidate in that race and won. I think if you think back to Bill Clinton's race in 1992 when he won, it was the same thing.
I think that what happened in 2020 was that-- The pandemic made it a bit of a weird campaign, but I certainly think that Biden was able to cast himself as a popular front against Donald Trump's chaos. I think trying to rerun simply that as the incumbent or the incumbent party as it were, if it's Harris, I think misses the opportunity and creates a danger in not positioning the party as in a fighting spirit. Now, Brian, I know the argument, how can you be in a fighting posture if you're defending the incumbent administration? If you have to try to go out and say, "Hey, everything's great."
We've seen that from some democratic message organizations, that, "Hey, the public should be happier about the economy, and we have to just tell everyone the economy is great." I think it should be the opposite. Look back at FDRs reelection campaign where he cast himself as under attack by the wealthy. He welcomes their hatred, and casts his campaign for reelection as, "We haven't yet done enough." He cast his own reelection campaign as a fight, which I think is the model to actually defeat Donald Trump.
Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you are more of a progressive or more of a moderate Democrat, however you consider yourselves, what are your first reactions to Kamala Harris as presidential candidate? Are you more inspired, more wary today than you were two days ago when Joe Biden was still the candidate? Anything else compared to Biden or any questions or comments on this notion of the stature of a fight, the posture of fighting that journalist, David Sirota, is talking to us about from his article on his website, The Lever. 212-433-WNYC, or any questions for David, 212-433-9692.
David Sirota, who, if you're just joining us, was also a Bernie Sanders speech writer in Bernie's 2020 campaign, and a mover of the premise for the film Don't Look Up. Just pursuing where you just were, David, the other side of the fight is that you see the Democrats as too wedded to an ethic of civility and cooperation while the Republicans fight to win. As a matter of principle, do you want progressives to embrace Republican style, fight, fight, fight attitudes, when many would say what they're really after is respect for human rights and equality, and a world of respect for every person that actually has a more civil, more cooperative and less war-like world as a genuine goal?
David Sirota: I think that's certainly true, but I think if you look back in the last 50, 60 years that the gains that were made on those issues that you discussed were made through a posture of fighting. I think the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, the women's movement, these were all essentially a huge grassroots battles. I think the Democratic Party trying to brand itself as merely the party of the status quo, the party of defending norms, the party of defending a concept called democracy, which can mean lots of things to lots of different people. I think the party, it's not to say that on a values judgment that's bad. It's to talk about the political efficacy of it.
We know that in America, that it tends to be the populist or the candidates and the parties portrayed, depicted, branded as populist that tend to win. Americans like to vote for candidates who portray themselves as defending the little guy. I think the danger for the Democrats is to allow themselves to be portrayed as the party of the status quo. Again, I want to go back to this paradox here, which is that I really do think that the Biden administration, or Biden-Harris administration as it were, have a compelling story to tell when it comes especially to economic policy.
You look just at the Federal Trade Commission as an example, taking on major corporations that are ripping off people on a daily basis. This has been the most aggressive federal trade commission in the last 50 plus years. That's part of a story that the Democrats can tell. I hope and expect that Kamala Harris will be telling that story in a much more assertive way than Joe Biden was able to tell it.
Brian Lehrer: Into this environment steps, presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, how much is she your kind of fighter, or is it just too early to say?
David Sirota: I think it's too early to say, and I think there are some cross currents here. I think Kamala Harris not only has been a prosecutor, she's run for office, she's run for president. When she ran for those offices, she did at times position herself as a populist candidate, as a candidate who at least understood the populist zeitgeist of politics. I do think that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, they both have one skill that I think is important as many successful democratic politicians do.
They understand where the center of the Democratic Party is, and they are pretty good at reflecting where that center is. I think the center of the Democratic Party, certainly since 2016, has moved to embrace in a much more aggressive fashion, a populist economic agenda. Rhetorically, Kamala Harris, I think at times has reflected that.
Now, I also think that if you remember back to the presidential primary, that Kamala Harris has also at times seemed a bit uncomfortable with that agenda. There was that moment where she came out in full support of Medicare for All, actually made one of the most articulate cases for Medicare for All against health insurance giants. It was excellent. It was on CNN. She was terrific. Then over the course of a week, two weeks, she walked it back. I guess she faced some pressure internally, et cetera, et cetera, and she looked weak, frankly.
I think the question for her candidacy now is she has ties to Wall Street, she has ties to big tech. The question is, will she portray herself and really embrace the Biden agenda that took on some of that corporate power? Will she fully embrace that, or will she be the candidate back in 2019 who walked back her support of Medicare for all under pressure from donors? That's the big question.
Brian Lehrer: Susan in Manhattan, you're on WNYC with David Sirota. Hello, Susan.
Susan: Hi, good morning. Let me just turn off the radio. Hello.
Brian Lehrer: That's always a good way to start.
Susan: Okay, hold on.
Brian Lehrer: In fact, it's better if you do it before you get on the air. Susan, you there? How far from your phone is your radio?
Susan: Hi. I'm so excited that your guest is saying what he's saying. I literally wrote a long thing to Kamala Harris via the White House contact sheet saying exactly the same thing, that the Democrats have to admit that people are suffering, that they don't have money. They're squeezed to pay rent, to pay their mortgage, to get food, to deal with medical expenses. What are the Democrats going to- -do vis-à-vis, in contrast to Trump, to alleviate this? What steps are they going to take, given the fact that they need Congress to back them? That's also promoting representatives and senators in Congress. What can they pass to alleviate the pain that people are feeling now? I also think that they need to confront the immigration issue and show leadership in that as well. Thank you for--
Brian Lehrer: Susan, do you have your own top-priority economic policy agenda items, I'm curious?
Susan: That's a really good question. I would say helping people with housing and medical expenses. These would be the two.
Brian Lehrer: Susan, thank you very much. David, your reaction to any of that?
David Sirota: Look, I certainly agree that the Democrats have to put forward and articulate a forward-looking agenda about how their election will materially help the working class. I think if you look at the swing states in this race, if you look at the swing voters in this race, it is a working class set of swing voters that I think will decide this election. Brian, I want to add that I think the Democrats have proven to have the wrong outlook on who necessarily are the swing voters.
Back in 2016, Chuck Schumer, and I'm paraphrasing here, made a comment about that election where he said, "Listen, for every working class voter we lose in a place like Western Pennsylvania, we will gain two Republican voters in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and that will be repeated in states across the country." That wasn't because I think the Democrats had an old 1990s, 2000s outlook on who the key swing voters were.
They imagined that the key swing voters were effectively affluent suburbanites and not working class voters. I think Donald Trump fundamentally understood that working class voters were a key swing electorate. By the way, we've seen Donald Trump, I'm not just talking about the white working class, Donald Trump in polls has been doing much better than other Republicans among the Latino working class, the African-American working class. My point is that the Democrats, I think, have to understand that the economic agenda they put forward is both good policy, but also an attempt at good politics to swing that particular electorate.
Brian Lehrer: To Susan's point and the point you were just amplifying, I already thought that that was one of the failures of the Biden campaign, the way he was waging it. I don't mean on his ability to communicate. I think he was trying to sell, "Look, things are really good. I've created more jobs than any president..." In terms of pure job creation, that's true, but that's disconnected from what a lot of people are experiencing day to day in their lives. I think he was trying to sell, "The state of the economy is better than you think," rather than, "The state of the economy is going to be much better if you give me four more years rather than Donald Trump." Did you hear it that way?
David Sirota: Look, I heard it as, "I'm trying to defend my macroeconomic record." It is true. The economy, macroeconomically, has been going in the right direction, but it's also true that even when the macroeconomy is doing well, if your macroeconomy over 40 or 50 years has been rigged to transfer wealth upwards, it's going to take longer than 4 years to fix that problem of how the economy actually functions. You have to be cognizant of the fact that the macroeconomy can be doing well and people's microeconomic lived experience can be harder and harder.
Everyone listening to this, think about the economic challenges you face in your lives. Health care costs have gone up, housing costs have gone up, the basic cost of living has gone up. That's not to blame Joe Biden for that. It's only to say that the Democrats run the risk of when they say, "Hey, everyone, look, the macroeconomy is doing well." The Democrats run the risk of sounding like they're saying, "Let them eat cake." They run the risk of looking like they can't hear and they don't care about the lived microeconomic experience of the working class. Instead of saying, "Hey, reelect us so that we can continue waging a battle against the corporate powers that are harming your lives."
Brian Lehrer: Steve in the Bronx. You're on WNYC with journalist and former Bernie Sanders presidential campaign speechwriter, David Sirota. Hi, Steve.
Steve: Hi. Thank you for taking my call. I think Kamala came out swinging, which is great. What she and Joe should do together is borrow from Harry Truman's playbook. Remember, he was an incumbent, and he pitched himself as a fighter and called a special session of the Do-Nothing Republican Congress. They can do it, and she can then preside as the President of the Senate and put forward the unfinished economic, voting rights, immigration, abortion protection, gerrymandering, maybe Supreme Court reform, a whole wishlist, and then throw it back onto the chaotic Do-Nothing MAGA Congress.
Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Besides running the presidential campaign and in support of the Democrats for Congress, try to throw all these pieces of progressive legislation that the Biden administration has had but can't get through Senate into their faces and making them campaign issues in that way. That's interesting, David. What do you think about that?
David Sirota: Look, I think the more there is an attempt and an effort to make the Republicans show who they really are, the better. I think back to before the midterm elections, and there were votes where the Republicans in the Senate, in Congress, were trying to having to oppose, for instance, the reauthorization of the child tax credit. We could go down the line. My point is that, yes, any way to draw out the Republicans to show that their corporate agenda is not populism, their corporate agenda is oligarchy and corruption, the better.
I should say, credit to the Democrats of late for finally raising the profile of Project 2025. Project 2025, for those who don't know what it is, Project 2025 is the Republican right wing apparatus creating a very large document of an agenda that they expect and hope that Donald Trump would push and adopt in his first 100 days or his first few months in office. It's a radical agenda. It's a radical corporate agenda.
Now, Trump has responded to the raising of the profile of this by saying, "Hey, that's not my agenda," but of course, it is the Republican apparatus that will push him to do this. It really is the Republican agenda. I think Project 2025, the Democrats being able to raise the profile of that, which recent polls have shown they have, I think that's another way to bring out the contrast about what this election is really all about because it's not really about these candidates. It is, but it's not really about these brands. It's about what these policies will actually do in people's daily lives.
Brian Lehrer: We'll continue in a minute with David Sirota, founder of The Lever, and a former Bernie Sanders presidential campaign speechwriter. Another clip from Kamala Harris's first presidential campaign speech from yesterday coming up as well. More from you, 212-433-WNYC, call or text.
[MUSIC]
Brian Lehrer on WNYC with David Sirota, founder of the website The Lever, and a former Bernie Sanders presidential campaign speechwriter as we talk about the new Harris-Trump campaign. Another clip from Kamala Harris's first presidential campaign speech. Now, she made this comparison between herself and the former President.
Vice President Kamala Harris: Two different visions for the future of our country. One focused on the future, the other focused on the past. Donald Trump wants to take our country backward to a time before many of our fellow Americans had full freedoms and rights, but we believe in a brighter future that makes room for all Americans. We believe in a future where every person has the opportunity not just to get by, but to get ahead.
Speaker 6: That's right.
Vice President Kamala Harris: We believe in a future where no child has to grow up in poverty.
Brian Lehrer: Again, another longer clip than you can usually get on the newscast with the luxury of time that we have on this show, Kamala Harris from her first presumptively campaign speech yesterday, as we continue with David Sirota. David, I heard that line as important yesterday or that line of argument because she's not just making a contrast with Trump as a candidate who looks back to the past- -but she was also turning the page from Biden running on his record, like I was mentioning before, and focusing more on the next four years. How did you hear it?
David Sirota: I totally agree. When I heard that rhetoric, I thought back to the 1996 Clinton campaign. That's how old I am. [chuckles] The '96 Clinton campaign made a point of-- They made an opportunity out of Bob Dole saying he was going to be a bridge to the past.
Brian Lehrer: [chuckles]
David Sirota: Bill Clinton incessantly said, "Our party is a bridge to the future."
Brian Lehrer: Wait, did Bob Dole actually say that?
David Sirota: I think he did, yes. I think that was the big opportunity for Bill Clinton. Bob Dole, he was running as a veteran, a military veteran, et cetera, et cetera. He's going to be a bridge to the past. Bill Clinton said, 'We're going to be a bridge to the future," and it was a very effective message. I think the underlying point is that looking forward, saying the current status quo is not enough, and our campaign is not designed to just defend the past or the past four years, our campaign is forward-looking, is a way to say to voters, here are the real stakes of this election.
Do you want to live in a country that is a country of our agenda or a country of their agenda? My point is putting the voter two, three years into the future to imagine two different futures, I do think is a good political decision to cast the Democrats as a better, more responsible, more forward-looking choice than Donald Trump essentially saying he wants to revive the past.
Brian Lehrer: It's also a different way to respond to Trump's slogan, Make America Great Again, which by definition is looking to the past, but not just by saying America is already great, which I think maybe was a mistake of Hillary Clinton in 2016, and maybe of Biden recently.
David Sirota: I do think that the power of Donald Trump's Make America Great Again slogan, first of all, it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. I also think the power of that is what the insinuation is, is that we were great, we have the capacity to be great. The obstacle to us being great is my, Donald Trump's, opponent. That's the power of that slogan I think. It's also a nostalgia appeal. To be clear, I think the idea of resurrecting there were a lot of things in the past that were not great, really not great.
I don't think Donald Trump's first term was great. I think it's been reimagined as better in some voters' minds, but I think part of the task for the Democrats is to also, as they look forward, is to remind folks that, "Hey, things were not that great in Donald Trump's first term."
Brian Lehrer: One listener writes in our text message thread, "How about a national conversation on what is a living wage?" Another one writes, "Hopefully, we don't repeat Hillary's horrible, I'm with her, and instead maybe choose, she's with us this time around as a slogan," writes one listener. Jim in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jim.
Jim: Hi. How are you? Thanks for taking my call.
Brian Lehrer: Sure.
Jim: I wanted to say I'm a Democrat and I was a Biden supporter, and I was very impressed by the-- I did watch the Republican Convention, that's a sense of unity. Very much looking forward to see how the Biden story played out. I was a little bit shocked by the treatment of Joe Biden in the sense that the party establishment almost took a mafia-like approach to try to get him to leave. He said no many times repeatedly, and they did not take no for an answer.
Now, a couple of days after he withdrew, they're singing his praises, and he's saving democracy. There's something that's not sitting right with me about it. All these people that really pressured him when he said he wouldn't do it. Now they're saying he's the greatest president ever, and et cetera. It just didn't feel like the Democratic Party that I knew or would want to be a part of. Thank you.
Brian Lehrer: Jim, let me ask you a follow-up question. There are some fairly prominent Democrats who have the same discomfort that you do. Congresswoman Grace Meng of Queens put it, I think, pretty similarly to the way you just put it. Do you think realistically that Biden could have beaten Trump with his current cognitive state that is worse, arguably than months ago, when the primaries were taking place, and that it was maybe just a realistic thing for the Democratic leaders who are not Joe Biden to do?
Jim: That's a great question. Thank you. Two points on that. My first point would be that I am relieved. I feel like a weight has been lifted, like the Democrats, they've rolled out a brand new shiny car, and we're ready to go. It feels like a new day and I feel very optimistic. On the flip side of that, I think that the mistake that the Democrats made was that right after the debate, Biden, he had a bad night, and it was very disturbing. What really fueled that fire, were not the Republicans, and it wasn't Trump, it was the huge backlash within the Democratic Party.
I feel like if the moment that debate ended, if all the leadership on the Democratic side got into a room and said, "This was not good. Admittedly, this was not a good night for us, but we cannot go out and create an internal war within our party. We're going to keep our mouths shut, and we're going to move forward and support Biden." What really sent the snowball in effect was all of the endorsements for him to get out.
I feel like they dropped the ball in that sense. I think Biden could have beaten Trump, and I still think he has tremendous records run on name recognition, but it was the dissolving of his support within the party that created that narrative. Thank you.
Brian Lehrer: Jim, thank you. Thank you for your call. Aziz in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hello, Aziz.
Aziz: Hello. How are you doing, Brian? Nice to be back on again.
Brian Lehrer: Good to have you.
Aziz: I think the Democrats and people like Nancy Pelosi just might have saved this election because people like me wouldn't have to think twice to vote for Joe Biden at all. This is a man who ran in 2020 saying that he's going to bring democracy back to America. He did anything but bring democracy back to America. Just last week, where the media have not picked on when the ICC rules that Gaza and the West Bank and Israel is an apartheid state. The Biden administration, they condemned that move. Again, when the ICJ, Karim Khan, invited Benjamin Netanyahu of war against humanity, the same man, he condemned that move.
Brian Lehrer: You couldn't have voted for Biden because of the Gaza issue.
Aziz: I would've never voted for Biden.
Brian Lehrer: Do you see Kamala Harris as sufficiently different on that?
Aziz: I have to hear from what Kamala Harris has to say about that because I would have loved Biden to have run for president and lose so America will consider taking the Muslim vote not for granted, because when we have our frustration and tell the government that what y'all doing, it's not good. Thousands of civilians are dying right now. Rafah was the red line for Joe Biden, but Israel has just went in every day. Even today, 89 people are being killed. I wish Joe Biden had run for president, and he would have lose so the next election, when the Muslim vote comes in, they will have listened to us and hear our concerns.
Brian Lehrer: Aziz, thank you very much for your call. David Sirota, having heard those last two calls, particularly Aziz's, do you see a victorious Kamala Harris coalition being mostly the same as Biden's one in 2020, or different in meaningful ways?
David Sirota: I see it mostly as she's going to try to rely on mostly the same coalition. Look, I certainly think that there are parts of the Democratic coalition that are rightly upset with Joe Biden's posture when it comes to the Israel-Gaza situation. I think that Kamala Harris can make a break from that in a way that would be more reassuring to parts of the coalition that are rightly upset with that policy.
I do want to go back to the earlier caller about Joe Biden as the nominee, which I think is very important. I see it exactly the opposite way. I see it as the Democratic party was responsive to its own voters who saw with their own eyes that Joe Biden is in cognitive decline and has trouble doing the basics of the job. Let's be clear, this- -idea that there's a separate delineation between being president and communicating with the public is a lot of nonsense. Most of the job of president is actually being a communicator. If somebody cannot do that job, they can't do one of the main functions of being president.
Brian Lehrer: Or if not most of the job, at least a significant aspect of the job.
David Sirota: Significant aspect, absolutely. My point is that I was disturbed in the other way that after everybody saw what they saw on television at the debate, that a lot of democratic leaders, their first response was to enforce a cone of silence and say, "Everything's fine, let's just keep moving forward." I think they did a lot of damage to their credibility by telling Americans not to believe their lying eyes. Everyone saw it on television. I think what we're seeing now, what we've seen is a party that had to respond to its voting base.
Look, it's why I think there should actually be some modicum of a nomination process, an open convention, because I think the party should be more responsive, small democratically, that's better for democracy. It's better for the party. I don't think it's bad that Joe Biden felt pressured to step aside. I think if you want to live in a society where leaders don't have to step aside, don't have to think about popular pressure, there are plenty of totalitarian countries out there, plenty of autocratic countries out there.
I think the Democratic party in actually having to respond to this pressure had to actually act in some ways, in some modicum of a democratic fashion. That's what you should want from your political party. You should not want a political party that has a dear leader that nobody questions.
Brian Lehrer: Last question. For you as a progressive, I think you'd use that word probably former Bernie Sanders campaign speech writer. When we look at--
David Sirota: My politics are all over the place now.
Brian Lehrer: I don't want to mischaracterize you. When we look at victorious Democrats for president of the last 50 years, you could look at it through the lens of Jimmy Carter was a moderate, Bill Clinton too, Obama too. No Red America, no Blue America, though you were describing earlier how he ran as a populist. Of course, Biden beat out Bernie and then beat Trump. One could argue that the fight, fight, fight stance might feel good to one group of people on the left, but doesn't win presidential elections in the mostly white swing state suburbs where these races are decided.
I hear what you said earlier that it's not the stereotype that people may have of the 1990s relatively affluent suburban swing voters. Now, they're so economically depressed compared to the '90s, but there's still the math. There are just more of those, let's say, independent could vote Republican, could vote Democrat voters to get. Then there are disaffected progressives who don't show up at the polls because Democrats aren't to the left enough and could be brought in. I'm curious if you would argue against that narrative.
David Sirota: I don't see it as left or right. I think you mentioned independent voters. I think when you look at polling about independent voters, if you knock doors in campaigns, oftentimes independent voters are more anti-establishment than anybody. That's not that they're in the middle of the parties. It's that they're disaffected with both parties. They're energized in opposition to what they perceive to be the establishment. I don't think it's a left or right thing.
I think it's little guy, big guy, establishment, anti-establishment is the paradigm here. I should be clear, I don't think this is about disaffected progressive voters any more than it is about disaffected working-class voters at large.
The point is that if we acknowledge, if the Democratic Party is willing to acknowledge that there are a lot of working-class voters who are unhappy with the economy, even if the macroeconomy is doing well, if the Democratic Party can acknowledge that, then it should acknowledge that it needs to speak to that voting electorate in a way that says to that voting electorate, "We are serious about representing your economic grievances. We hear you. We are here to be the party that will channel that grievance."
I don't think that's a left or right issue. Is the FTC breaking up big monopolies? Is the CFPB cracking down on credit card fees? Is that left or right? I don't think the average voter thinks like that. I think the average voter, if they're able to hear that, if they get that information, the average voter says, "Yes, that's what I want from my government to take on the people who are ripping me off."
Brian Lehrer: David Sirota, now founder and editor in Chief of The Lever. Thanks a lot, David. Thanks for coming on.
David Sirota: Thank you so much, Brian.