In, a failure on the part of the media to report accurately and honestly as proceeded the Biden administration although you're perfectly right. That the reporting has been appalling. Biden was one of the primary architects of that democratic decision led by Clinton to transform the Democratic Party into the Republican Party, and essentially push the Republican Party so far to the right, it became insane. That was all Biden Omnibus Crime Bill he was a major author of the Patriot Act, you know, Omnibus Crime Bill vastly expanded our prison population militarized our police Biden bragged about it at the time that I think increased the number of federal crimes that murder the death penalty from a handful one or two to 50 to go I think 51 He used to walk around, bragging about it. He under Clinton you know they were responsible for doubling and tripling sentences so you have 40% We have 25% of the world's prison population were 4.4% of the world's population, 40% of the people in our prison population have never been charged with physically harming another person. We have people serving life sentences for drugs that was all Biden, and of course the militarization of the police was all by. And I think that's part of the problem with the liberal class is that they don't have any real con tact or they don't have relationships with people who have suffered from these kinds of policies I teach in a prison, half of my students wouldn't be in that classroom but for Biden and Clinton. And I don't know how, and you know not only have they suffered horrendous injustice, but so has their families, their children. I don't know how you could walk out of a prison classroom and then turn around and vote for Biden, or support but. But I think that there's, you know for so much of the liberal elite, the suffering and the suffering in this country is very real, not only among communities of color about among the white working class and much of my family comes from the white working class in Maine, that's all real, and to write these people off, either as super predators if they're black or as deplorables if they're white, just shows how bankrupt liberal elite itself is. And of course that is, I think, portrayed in the kind of echo chamber that has built up around Biden, as you correctly point out lotting What are very meager. You know crumbs really tossed to working men and women, while once again, Wall Street and large corporations swallow staggering sums of money. You know this is, this is just a playbook that we've seen going back to 2008. And that's what Biden's continued but it's a very dangerous route, and it's one that's going to, I think it has potential political consequences that are very grave for the country.
We completely agree. Because the pandemic. It appears has been used by elites by corporations by both parties to accelerate the decline of the country to accelerate massive levels of wealth inequality. I mean, the billionaires have taken more than a trillion dollars now from the working class at the same time, that as you described earlier there are 10s of millions of people who will literally lose their homes in the United States, the minute that these moratoriums are stopped being rolled over, that's literally that they're never going to be able to pay that debt. I mean in the United States and other countries, it's amazing. In other countries, they are providing either basic incomes, they're provided there, they kept their employees on payroll, the government subsidized companies to keep their employees on payroll, so they understood the basic equation, that if you want people to survive and to continue being able to purchase in the economy, to be able to buy food, housing, basic needs, you need to keep, you need to maintain some kind of income, if you're going to have, if you're going to lock down the economy, and you're going to prevent them from going to their jobs, then you have to continue to provide for them in some way. And here in the United States we're at a point where these two parties are so unbelievably corrupt and so unbelievably determined, just to destroy kind of whatever remains of a middle class in this country that they instead. Didn't square that basic equation thinking somehow 80% of people before the pandemic are living paycheck to paycheck, half the country can't afford a $500 emergency. And so what are we going to do what's going to happen, we're going to cut off everybody's you know, jobs 50 million unemployment claims in the wake of the pandemic, which we've never recovered from of course all of this debt that people have picked up, not just from housing but medical debt, also student debt, more than a trillion dollars in student debt, and that's never going to be paid, and that is just like a reinvention of a form of bondage against people. And so one of the things though that that was hopeful kind of following this, this election, maybe a glimmer of hope was that. And something else I wanted to ask you about was that there was the potential of possibly doing something about this now, that hadn't existed before, because, as a result of the Democrats utter corruption and incompetence, they actually lost seats in the House of Representatives, and came down to a margin of about only four votes. And so as, Ilhan, Omar. Omar pointed out, back in December. It only takes five courageous progressives, of which they're supposed to be 100 in the CPC, there's the squad is supposed to be six, they're supposed at plus many, many others like famila Jaya Paul ro Khanna. And so, and yet. And so, that that margin is supposed to allow them to act as a block and exercise power as you're supposed to do with so just like Joe Manchin has his one vote and he can deny the 50 votes in the Senate, Bernie Sanders has one vote in the Senate. The squad has enough votes to deny a majority for the Democrats in the House, and yet it seems like opportunity after opportunity comes along where they have the ability to exercise power in a way to win substantive meaningful structural changes to the conditions that the working class has in this country, the $15 minimum wage. Medicare for all, with the forced vote, push, and yet they don't seem to be taking any of these opportunities. In fact, I even took note of the fact that
privilege iPhone the progressive, move to the introduction of Medicare for all, in the house, which was just recently introduced, they moved the introduction from February over to March, after the introduction of the American rescue plan after the stimulus package, why would you do that as a progressive, I just, it's, it's incomprehensible, if you could gain so much leverage you have the moderates on one hand, demanding things like Joe Manchin say we want unemployment to go from 400 to 300. We don't want the $15 minimum wage cut that we don't want to public option, cut that which Biden ran on, we don't want to include student debt forgiveness, cut that. And so, if the moderates in the party are allowed to make all this demands, and yet the progressives have enough of a foothold because of such razor thin margins right now, that they could on the other hand, make other demands, you know, rather than accepting that rather than say accepting 400 to 300 for unemployment benefits which is a lifeline for millions of people in this country, they could come out and demand instead know it's going to go to 600, or in fact we're going to get a $2,000 a month, basic income, and it's going to be retroactive to the beginning of the pandemic, when you gave literally trillions of dollars to Wall Street, within two weeks of the beginnings of lockdown, showing your priorities. And so what I wanted to ask you, Chris is what is holding them back from acting on that power.
They don't want to lose their political position, same thing that holds Bernie Sanders back and this is long characterize Bernie's relationship with the Democratic Party. Remember, Sanders was campaigning for Clinton in 96 after the after, after the Omnibus Crime Bill. And the same with AOC and the squad they, and they're not wrong, I mean Pelosi and Schumer and the Democratic Party establishment, crush them if they actually defied them. And so they're not going to defy them they'll tweet, garbage out and you know make, you know appropriate kind of noises, but they're not going to do anything of substance because they, they are well aware that their political career would be over, and then I'm going to risk it so their careers and I guess they assume that it knows better than than someone else, but it's made them utterly ineffectual as a political force as you correctly pointed out, so you're right, they do have a certain amount of power. At the moment, but they won't use it because they realize that the Democratic Party machine would destroy them. That's why That's why Bernie. That's why Bernie never takes on the Democrats. It's why Bernie, I mean I was in Philadelphia. Cornel West and I were with several 1000 homeless people outside the appropriately named Wells Fargo Center on the night that Bernie endorsed Clinton and the hundreds of people walked out his supporters walked out, and he should have walked out with him. He didn't even he missed his historical moment, and he didn't walk out. Well, in fact, you know, Bernie left the Clinton campaign takeover his Twitter account to essentially send out messages to all his delegates and supporters to support Glenn. And because he knew that he loses Senate seat need because he'd be tossed in the political wilderness like Ralph Nader or go although go back to George McGovern who also defied the Democratic Party establishment. After the Democratic Party elite allied itself with the Republican Party elite to destroy him in the presidential race they took away ascendancy. They, and he was, he was gone, so they know they know, you know, very very well the, the price they would pay for that kind of defiance, they don't want to pay it and that's the problem.
I, I agree. It is, is the party structure, I believe that that holds them back and keeps them from insisting on any kind of change that, that they run on it. It certainly seems like they are more afraid of the party and the party's ability to, to deny them reelection, then they are accountable to the movement. And that's a big problem and I think it's a big problem as well. When it comes to the organizations that have kind of sprung up to support progressive Democrats, particularly in the wake of 2016. And so I was the national political outreach coordinator on the Bernie 2016 campaign. I helped start our revolution after that as a dealer tour manager, and I saw after the Bernie 2016 campaign, the way the way that Bernie inspired millions of people to try to go into the Democratic Party to try to change it inspired the kind of rise of a new generation of progressive organizations. Our revolution, brand new Congress justice Democrats DSA which grew tremendously in the wake of 2016, but it seems that these organizations have are having a fundamental problem of attempting when it comes to actually keeping these progressives that they've elected, even the people I mean, to begin with the Democratic Party has just blocked the vast majority of people that those organizations have attempted to run, and so there's still only kind of a small couple of handful of progressives in Congress, you know that's probably a generous interpretation, but of the ones that are of the ones that are there, I think there's an even deeper problem that has become apparent that some of these organizations don't want to deal with, and that some of some progressive Democrats don't want to deal with and that is the question of accountability, how do you actually hold the members of Congress who have elected the politicians who have elected to the Democratic Party accountable because it's become clear that once they get there, there is a machinery within the Democratic Party that begins to act on them. There are all kinds of different forms that the party has levers of control whether it's threats of primaries, massive pressure to support Blue Dog Democratic incumbents and help you know protect their seats to protect majorities in the legislature, we recently saw AOC. For example, She recently gave 1000s of dollars to establishment Democrats who were actually fighting against Medicare for all, only two years after being there and saying that these are the exact same people who were going to primary in mass, she's now contributing to their campaigns to help shore up their positions. Committee assignments which we've seen Pelosi and the corporate Democrats actually take away from AOC, and take away from other progressives as a way of punishing them and disciplining them. And so, you know, I kind of want to ask you about that dynamic that when it comes to these organizations, it doesn't seem to be a problem that they had anticipated, but I want to see what you think about that.
Well, it's it really comes down to whether the Democratic Party is a reformable organization, number one, or whether it's even at its core democratic, and it's neither. And this has just been a mystery, on the part of progressives, but of course that mystery is perpetrated by the Democratic Party establishment, you know whether they allow cousine edge to run or Bernie or anyone else, the ideas to give expression to those kinds of issues, but then in the end, once the presidential nominee is selected or anointed as Biden was to corral the progressive wing of the Democratic Party or progressives back into the Democratic Party, fold, and of course it works every time because as the political situation devolves the monstrosities that are coughed up, you know, whether it's bush or Trump become worse and worse and believe me, this next time around is going to be much worse than Trump. So, it's diminishing returns. And, you know these these figures are careerists in the end they AOC and Bernie and all the rest of them. They're not temperamentally or morally fit to lead this fight, which is a fight against the ruling elites, which includes the Democratic Party establishment itself. And that is not going to come from within.
Right. One of the points that we've made Chris that I want to get your take on is that you know it's, it's, um, you know, there's the questions about the progressives who were in the Democratic Party particularly AOC with some of the recent things she's done, like for example she the first interview that she gave with DSA their publication Democratic Left. She, she was asked about a critic critics of Biden, the left critics of Biden, you know, Bernie supporting critical Biden. And her answer was that those individuals are privileged and that they're making their commentary in bad faith. And that was, that was kind of astonishing. Um, and so I wonder that the analysis that we've had is not so much on the individual level, but rather on the systemic level that it doesn't matter who you send into the Democratic Party and this seems to be something that's missing from the progressive movement and the left it's still less than that we need to learn, to a large degree, it's not a question of sending individuals with more integrity, into the Democratic Party, it is just kind of a basic acceptance of the sociology of what happens to an individual, when they're sent into that party and the systemic forces that act on them. And so the way that we view it is less kind of on an individual level, stating that you know oh we just sent the wrong people in. If we send another batch of people and, you know they'll be better, and they'll they'll have more integrity and you know it's gonna be there, they're gonna make all the right decisions are gonna challenge challenge Pelosi, they're gonna stick up for the $15 minimum wage you know they're gonna demand even more. That's not the view that we have and, and I wonder if you if you think that's correct to see to see the party and through that systemic lens.
Yeah, I mean they're powerless within the organization and they can either play the game, which they're doing, and retain their political their elected position. And if they don't play the game they're finished like Cynthia McKinney and a few others. You know Ralph back in 2000, and nobody understands corporate power, and, and how it has seized all the mechanisms of control, better than Ralph Nader nor is in my mind anyone been fighting corporate power with more integrity and success, and Ralph Nader, and Ralph said, at this point the only mechanism we have left is to pull 510 15 million people out of the Democratic Party, into a third party movement to create pressure on the Democratic Party to respond. Politics is a game of fear and and you know the the public relations apparatus is quite sophisticated, all sorts of progressives, say all the right things and then every election cycle get completely weak kneed and fall down and tell you to vote for Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden or whoever. And, and so you know the swamp just gets bigger and wider and deeper. You know we have to step out and of course, that initial effort is very lonely I mean Ralph never thought he would win he knew he wouldn't win that was never the purpose, the purpose was to begin to create a voting bloc that would frighten the Democratic Party and and the ruling elites into responding, and of course that's why they turned Ralph into a pariah.
I'm glad you bring that up because, of course, that you know you, you point out that success of building an independent party comes in multiple different fashions that there's multiple different forms of success of, for example what we're doing is building the People's Party that by doing that, we can either frighten the Democrats and the elite into making concessions, or we can outright replace them if they won't change, you know, or we can, I would say, add, I would add to that, discovered that, that in this country electoral politics is so incredibly manipulated and controlled, that it isn't even an avenue for change. And I think that that is a large part of the importance of the work that we're doing at the movement for People's Party in building the People's Party, we're now we've registered in five different states in California in Maine and Colorado in Ohio, in Oregon, and we are building. We're building that right now, and we're preparing to run candidates about a dozen candidates for Congress, perhaps a candidate or two for Senate and challenge these establishment Democrats and Republicans, and actually get I think it's no coincidence in the now that we have begun to talk more publicly about, you know, we're not just a you know we're not just doing this for a show we are actually planning challenges now and logistically beginning to lay that out. I think that the Democrats, I think it's no coincidence that we've seen a reaction from the Democratic Party that is beginning to attempt to attack our efforts to get ballot access. And so that is in Nevada, for example, just a week ago, Senator, state senator Roberta Lang, introduced a measure that would double the number of signatures required to get ballot access in Nevada, there's efforts like this happening in about four or five different states nationally within HR one, the Democrats who are of course the champions of that have stuck in measures have slipped in measures that would create put even more money into politics and empower the DNC and the RNC, with for example, lift the cap, that the DNC and the RNC can give to a presidential candidate from 5000 to $100 million, and other measures to try to centralize power in their national committees, and also to try to block independent parties. And so I think it's no coincidence that that's happened in fact the top ballot access expert in the country Richard winger has contacted us and he's advised us on ballot access and said that yes I believe that you are responsible for initiating this latest spate of voter suppression, and that's really what it is. And that's what I find most incredible and most revealing about the Democratic Party that at the same time that the Democratic Party has been throwing its hands up and righteous indignation over Republican voter suppression bills in Georgia and Texas, restricting the voting rights of people of color, the poor, they have been engaging in their own voter suppression campaign against us, the same party that claims to believe in enfranchisement for people of color and the poor, and they find that so revealing about the Democratic Party's principles at a core, that in fact they are no more guided and led by principle. When it comes to voter enfranchisement, then the Republicans, is just a pure calculation of what is in the benefit of their party. That's it.
Yeah, well that's not new. I mean voter suppression has dogged the Green Party and Ralph, since 2000 and probably before the two parties collaborated to take control of the Debate Commission because they didn't want to put it, ralpha initially and we'll have a Ralph on the, on the debate stage who and I understand who would want to have to debate Ralph Nader, they challenged all of the most I think all of Ralph's voter lists, even though they were legitimate just to run up his legal costs. I think by the end he had over a million dollars in legal costs, because money determines access, Ralph could pull 10,000 People in Madison Square Garden which he did. People actually he didn't know if you're going to be able to afford the rent. He just charged people at the door and it was $5 or something. But he filled it and he and they paid for it. But $10,000 is nothing when you have no access to national media, and the potential to reach billions of people so there are all sorts of mechanisms that both parties, use to thwart third party candidates, or even progressives within the Democratic Party, so for instance with Dennis cousineau, if you go back and look at that campaign during the primary, they kept changing the rules to make sure Dennis wouldn't be part of the debates in the Democratic primaries, and most of those debates were actually sponsored, because the debates are sponsored by corporations were sponsored by the for profit, health care industry. And Dennis was for single payer and they just, and they succeeded, he was never gonna have a voice, I mean, even in New Hampshire when he qualified under their own rules because people dropped out they locked him out of the building. So there are a series of mechanisms that the, the both parties, and including the Democratic Party have set up to make it impossible to hear the voices, especially on for instance, on universal health care single payer, because the system we have is utterly irrational it's the most expensive least efficient system, although it makes you know staggering profits, I mean one of the things about the AARP is that you know we're gonna hand. A billions of dollars to the insurance and pharmaceutical corporations 10s of billions and they're already making record profits. You know again it's this consider the whole pandemic I think is a window into how our misery is is accompanied by the excesses of the 1% I mean 84% of stocks in America held by just 10% of the population, and they you know they're borrowing, all sorts of money at virtually 0% interest. They're not investing it they're giving themselves lavish bonuses and the stock prices by raising the stock of course compensation is tied to stock. So, you know, the the system now at this point, politically, legally the media of course is controlled by corporate entities. The whole system is just geared towards this kleptocracy on the part of the billionaire class. And this is just one piece of it, the, the, the electoral system is just one piece of it.
Right. And Chris, you talk often about what you believe could happen, Or will happen as a reaction to fold Democratic Party rule. And I completely agree with you that the kind of reaction is going to be a kind of backlash the kind of backlash that we saw in 2016 Except far more intense. Because what I see in this country is a people who are running around, seeking some kind of like in a burning building trapped in a burning building by these two corporate parties by this corporate elite, and they are running. Trying door after door after door to get out of this. And the more they exhaust the doors that appear to be in the mainstream, or that appear to be somewhat in the mainstream, you know, try Obama, okay, Obama said a lot of the right things, but what happened, you know he did they let the bankers off he did, you know, he governed as a conservative. And so then, Trump is this counter reaction to that. Well Biden, the person that you know who we have now our president now is, was, was, was picked by Obama, as is running me as a signal to Wall Street of the administration's allegiance and he's governing at a time in which working people are far worse off than they were when Obama took office, even as a result of the this recession, following the pandemic and have years of stagnant wages, right through Obama's term. And so it seems like the backlash is going to be even worse than it's going to make Obama to Trump look tame.
Yeah, I think that's right. I think that will, we're gonna get instead of goofy, you know, narcissistic megalomaniac, you know who has the attention span of a three year old, we're gonna get somebody who's, who's competent, so when they attempt to orchestrate a coup d'etat which Trump, clearly wanted to do, he just didn't have the organizational ability to do it, it's going to work. And we're already seeing that in Georgia, by the way. So I don't know who it's going to be Mike Pompeo wants to run Tom Cotton and maybe somebody we don't know. But, but, that's where we're headed. And it is of course the failure on the part of the ruling elites, and the AARP and the infrastructure bill are just, you know one more example of that, the failure to address the systemic issues that have thrown half the country into poverty or near poverty and misery and extinguished all hope, and devastated communities and you know there's going to be a terrible, terrible price to pay for this. A Biden was picked, look, I mean the ruling elites, made it very clear Lloyd Blankfein, former CEO of Goldman Sachs said that if Bernie Sanders was the nominee, he was going to vote for Trump. That was never going to happen. But the hierarchy or the donor class the Democratic Party was quite public about the fact that they would vote for Trump, if Sanders, or even Warren but in particularly Sanders was the nominee. And so this whole mantra of the least worst, that's only for you and me and not for them. They didn't like Trump, he was an embarrassment to the Empire, and they wanted Biden because it would bring back the kind of decorum and gravitas and change nothing. In essence, which is, of course, what has happened but that doesn't address the deep, malaise and Anomie and dislocation and rage legitimate rage I would argue that is enveloped, most of the country. And by not addressing that, especially at a time of such economic distress, then the blowback is, I think it's going to be very frightening, it's probably going to come wrapped in a kind of Christian fascism. Remember Trump had no ideology. But the Christian right filled that ideological void that was pens Pompeyo, Betsy DeVos Ben Carson, and others. And I think we're going to see the Christian Right. Which I look at it as heretical I graduated from seminary I come out of the church. My father was a minister, I'm not unchurched I look at this as a heretical movement that as sacralized the worst elements of white supremacy and corporate capitalism and American imperialism. Much in the same way the so called German Christian Church did under the Nazis. And so you have a kind of ideological formation and someone will probably rise out of that idiot logical crypto fascist movement, I mean that's what I suspect.
And I wonder if you could talk more about what you think that would look like and what kinds of changes, such a person would usher in into the country and into the Empire.
Well, any pretense of democracy would be gone. I mean one of the things I find frightening is that Biden is just ruling by decree. This was tried by the way, and the dysfunctional Weimar government lead up to the Nazis so he burned the Social Democrats when they had a kind of negative majority in the Reichstag between the communists and the fascists, so they just ruled by decree, but it sent a kind of precedent. And it means that if you get a figure like Trump or pump a or someone else in the office just instantly everything is overturned because the legislative system doesn't work, that's a very dangerous way to govern. And so all of these executive orders which are really in a meet the misuse of executive power, everything can be instantly reversed, and will be. So I expect, You know all of the kinds of assaults against democratic institutions, to be ratcheted up. Certainly we have seen, Silicon Valley, work as a censor on behalf of the Democratic Party they've removed, of course, Trump from social media they locked the New York Post out of its own Twitter account when it published the information that was found on Hunter Biden's discarded laptop, but you'll get a raw kind of censorship or raw kind of abuse of military power, a complete bypassing of the judiciary, and a real war against all forms of dissent, but let's be clear The Democratic Party is also making a war against people like myself who are critics of imperialism and critics of neoliberalism because neoliberalism as an ideology has no credibility on across the political spectrum and so critics are more dangerous and therefore, pushed further and further to sideline so we see, you know people like Matt Taibbi or Glenn Greenwald, who write on substack, you know, we hear calls now for substack to be shut down. I've already been hit with all sorts of algorithms that steer people away from my content that's not conjecture. When I was at Truthdig before were shut down. We all demanded a union went on strike and we were all fired. But the impression so if you had gone into Google and typed in imperialism and I'd written a column on imperialism recently would come up with anything else that was recent about that topic. So the referrals by impressions over a 12 month period dropped from over 700,000 to below 200,000 And they're probably less than that now. So there's a really active campaign on the Democratic Party right as we speak, to essentially silence, its critics, particularly on the left. Remember WikiLeaks was the first real victim of this, it wasn't Trump who was removed from social media first it was Julian Assange his paypal account is all his credit cards were frozen you couldn't donate they, you got electronic interference when you tried to attend a WikiLeaks event. So, I see all of these dystopian measures, which are already with us just becoming more and more pronounced. And the state becoming essentially more nakedly authoritarian.
There was a comment recently that struck me just as that. Kamala Harris recently made a comment about how we, we fought wars for oil we fought wars for oil and now in the future we'll be fighting wars for water, and it struck me because it's that wait a minute, you know, so now we're openly admitting that we fought those wars for oil, you know, for decades ago I remember Trump did that, and you know and he was chastised by the liberal media for doing that when you do that you're not supposed to say that, you know, that's the quiet parties but I'm not supposed to say it out loud, and, and now it's just, it was, it was accepted.
Yeah, um, yeah, I think that the, the one of the results of the Trump administration is that it kind of remove the mask and expose the ugliness of the American empire. And really, that's how you have to look at Biden, Biden is an attempt a desperate attempt on the part of the ruling elites to put the mask back on I don't think it's going to work. I mean Biden comes back and said, you know, we're back. You know, we're back to lead the world or sit at the head of the table I think was his exact expression. But the fact is the world in waiting for us so you know we're becoming as much of a pariah nation as Israel. I'm in all sorts of levels we can handle the COVID crisis, the pandemic I think is exposed, the, the internal rot and decay within the country the mass shootings that are at, you know, also an epidemic kind of level, um, you know, there's just so much that's so publicly wrong with this country throughout the world. And perhaps the people who see at least or the or the Americans live in the midst of it, but the rest of the world sees it.
The rest of the world is horrified. Yeah. And, and they often they pay the price of course, they pay a price just as we do for what happens in this country. Ah, well I wanted to ask you, Chris kind of as a as a closing question. What What impact do you think that a new party can have that the efforts that were, that we're working on can have, you know and and in what ways can it succeed in what ways do you think that do you think that we should proceed about it. In what ways do you think that what does a new party have to do to be successful.
Well, you know I'm was intimately involved with all of the mechanisms used to shut down, Ralph, I mean as soon as Ralph posed a legitimate threat after 2000 of the Democratic Party. The public vilification and character assassination was intense. I mean even now progressives will, you know, say to you well you know he gave us bush which is ridiculous. I mean just factually incorrect. It stopped the counting after two counties sent it to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court overturning all legal precedent appointed Bush, President by traditional Fiat and nothing to do with Ralph, you know, the campaign run by Al Gore was so deep that he couldn't even carry his home state of Tennessee. So, but, but, that, that, you know, relentless kind of mantra that is trumpeted throughout the corporate media is very effective. I just don't think there's any other route, what is our chances of success, well probably not very high, but I just don't see any other way and I think that that The tragedy is that when the working class was betrayed, as you mentioned at the beginning by the Democratic Party, those of us who care about working men and women didn't challenge the Democratic Party establishment but exposed ourselves as standing for nothing. And that really deeply destroyed the liberal and progressive wing of the Democratic Party and the liberal progressive movement because it proved that we were spineless and worthless. And that if we had stood fiercely against the Democratic Party establishment and stood with working men and women, we wouldn't be where we are today but unfortunately we didn't do that. So I think, you know, if, if the left and the liberal elites and regressives don't take a firm stance on behalf of working men and women, then those working men and women in particular why the white working class, which of course is the majority will show their displeasure with the ruling class by embracing the kind of crypto fascism. And, you know, we just have lost that kind of moral imperative that there are things you can't do and things you can say, you know, the Democratic Party can say or do anything and we follow along, like with a ring through our nose and then now we're going to pay for it. So I think it's very important that we build third party movements, and we challenge and we stand fast for these moral imperatives. But having, I was Raul speechwriter having worked with Ralph. I also know how vicious the establishment is, Especially if they perceive you as a threat.
Yeah, exactly. And I think that's only going to ramp up, as, as we are getting into running candidates and it's going to become less abstract to them, we are we're already seeing it with those challenges at the national and state levels attempt to make our ballot access more difficult. And so absolutely I think those attacks are going to ramp up when they, when there are individual Democrats or Republicans who are facing, losing their seat to a major new party that is that is corporate free or our movement to build one.
Well you can see it with what they're doing with Shama Sawant now.
Yes,
the city council woman I mean they, I mean there's a huge campaign right now against her, because she has been effective on a local level. And I'm mean, I think we've got to get out there and fight this battle. I think it's important, but I think we can't be naive about how ruthless, the ruling elites will be the moment we get some traction. Right.
Well, Chris, on that note on that positive note, uplifting note. Um, it's great to talk to you. It's, it's great to have I think your your wisdom and your guidance as a movement and your experience having seen the evolution in other countries who speak with that, and, and, and I think that's that's very valuable for our movement to, to hear that, and to know that what exactly we're facing. And so Chris I want to thank you for joining us. This episode, and for the inaugural episode, and I'll talk to you soon.
Great Neck. Thanks.
Alright everyone, Thanks for joining us. Have a great day.