Democratic hardy but for the country. I had been a democrat and my College Years and surely thereafter and i became more conservative over time before becoming republican during breitbart and so forth but even then i had an empathy for a kind of utopian thinking that the left does but im not a utopian myself but i do think that Many Democrats might disagree on policy issues in an ideological issues are coming from a very good place. They want to make a world better and what struck me about the direction the Democratic Party is taking, that party in such an extreme direction better risks falling over the cliff and essentially pulling the rest of the country with it one of the most important things to change my mind about politics was my experience for seven years in south africa seeing that leftwing government mismanaged the country after apartheid and i came back to the United States with the lessons of that experience very prominent in my mind and it really guided my thinking about american politics and i see the american left thinking making many of the same mistakes whether its identity politics or state driven economic aziz, radical restructuring of our energy policy, the emphasis on race. All of those things at my mind are not just bad policies policy is that they can actually be extremely destructive of democracy as we have known it. I wanted to get into the democratic hardy primary to document this and to examine the candidates and examine the issues and it possible not just document whats going on but also to warn people about how dangerous this was both to the political democrats into the country itself. Host in those primaries the person who won was not the person making the most old kind of progressive claims on Economic Management or on race. Its the moderate wind so how does that as you say provocatively in your book if joe biden wins in november will be the first socialist presidency and i think one of the immediate reactions by lots who dont follow politics as closely as you and i do on a daily basis are like joe biden, socialist . The hes been around forever and he hasnt been a socialist so how do you explain how the thesis matches up to biden actually winning in the primary . Guest so lets look at what joe biden has done since securing the nomination. I talk about this in the book, the moment where he came out to a National Audience on super tuesday having one of these victories and at that moment he was the nominee of the party. It was really remarkable right up until the South Carolina primary on deree 29th Bernie Sanders had completely dominated the early primary states won the first three popular votes in the first three primary caucus states. No candidate from any party ever done that before and on the morning of super tuesday win or times and others were saying that Bernie Sanders was the likeliest to come out the winner that night and overall. Joe biden rallied the establishment of the Democratic Party behind him and in an extraordinary 48 hours many of his rivals dropped out and endorsed him and the party swung behind him. After winning South Carolina with the help of James Clyburn and that endorsement he then one of super tuesday win not just in the south where the predominance of africanamerican voters gave joe biden and bit of an advantage because he was so closely associate with barack obama but he also won in minnesota and massachusetts and i think that was partly because democratic voters was saying this is the candidate you want. Joe biden doesnt call himself a martyr. He was asked in april 2019 to 40 got into this campaign whether he was a moderate and he said words be said words the effective i wish id been called a moderate for most of my political repair career. Would have been easier to get elected and reelected in delaware. Hes just been a party man and should jill biden does swing moderate but since the primary sense of super tuesday win instead of following the usual pattern and moving back toward the center and trying to wring his pitch for a general election joe biden has been moving further and further to the left. Hes been paying saying things that are the rather extraordinary. He calls for quote revolutionary institutional changes in a may may 11 podcast with andrew yang in the same podcast he talks about a revolution which interestingly was a word we also saw the third night of the Democratic National convention and one of the prepaid video someone talking about a revolution. If you are going to send a moderate signal he wouldnt send a term like that. It has spoken several times about fundamentally transforming america over and over again. We hear the coronavirus he said was an opportunity to fundamentally transform america. Joe biden has been using that rhetoric and moving further and further to the left. The only difference with alexandria causey of cortez and joe biden as he gives the country until 2035 and she gives until 2030 and so on and so on. Theres almost no difference anymore between the platform of joe biden in the platform of Bernie Sanders. They are calling it the it in sanders unity platform. The extraordinary move best we get closer to a general election that not only joe biden is moving left at his party is moving left. You dont have to take my word for it. There are several articles about it and 538. Com the independent polling analysis web site says that joe biden if elected would be the most liberal president the history of the country and biden himself has said things like that. Bernie sanders of the most progressive since Franklin Delano roosevelt and the outer boundary a reassuring example that will go too far but Eleanor Roosevelt began with public safety. Then barack obama let the cat out of the bag in july when he spoke at the john lewis funeral and he said when democrats when they will eliminate the filibuster and they are going to favor puerto rico and asking amnesty for illegal aliens right away according to Chuck Schumer so theres plans to roll ahead with massive changes. Joe biden is signed on to that agenda and he seeking that rhetoric. Doesnt seem that he is quite in control of that agenda. Its probably being pushed in that direction certainly a lot of people are pulling levers behind the scene but joe biden it turns out is the most leftwing major nominee we have ever seen in this country despite a 50 year career almost of being a guy who gets along with everybody and shakes hands and appears at Public Events of that sort of thing is really become the candidate of the most leftwing democratic hardy that be seen since 1972 and maybe since well before then. Lets go you reference the Democratic Convention i recall in 2016 Democratic Convention where you and i were both that which is a dramatic affair at the time. Bernie sanders spent a whole lot of time working on the platform and the struggles over things to make it a much more bernie platform particular down economics more so than on leftist foreign policies or criminal justice. A lot of bernienomics got into that platform so there was discussion that in among conservatives of saying sure Hillary Clinton might have seemed like a moderate at the time but that she has signed on to the most radical left form in history and she in fact is going to be, we have a flight 93 election as they say the claremont institute. So we have to stop this from taking over. My question is given as history if thats a fair rendering of it do to conservatives run the risk and you run the risk of capacitor side kirkpatrick from catastrophe lies in this for democrats. Do we run the risk of having people tended out and even precisely at the moment when the actual platform is more leftleaning on economics. Guest i think every election since 2008 has been an existential election for conservatives and for the country in general because since 2008 democrats have offered nominees whose agenda is not to run the country better but to change the country and this is very different from the elections of 1986 in 2,002,004. Those were contentious elections in both parties like to point to the extreme wings of the other side and say this is what youre getting if you vote for this candidate. Its very nice to have a strong guy like joe biden running but you really need a Bernie Sanders. There are couple of differences now that make the flight 93 election even more reflective of the election this time around. First of all this carnage in the cities. If theres one thing to tell america that democrats believe in tearing down the entire institution in the history of the country now we can see it. Its happening. They are tearing down not just confederate statues and confederate flags which they have done in 2016 but they are tearing down george washington, Abraham Lincoln ulysses s. Grant abolitionist statues are being vandalized. The black civil war soldiers and the 54th regiment that gomorrah was vandalized. We are seeing an assault on history itself and the other thing thats different is Bernie Sanders was an outlier in 2015. Now he has established a new norm for the party. The major candidates of the democratic primary and i talk about this all adopted sanders positions with one exception when it didnt go all in for medicare all. He wanted medicare is a choice effectively and ive seen this argued quite convincingly biden policy is the same because if you lower the medicare eligibility age to 60 were effectively going to take the insurance out of business anyway the biden people arent giving up on medicare for all. Their plan quite openly this week was once biden wins we will push medicare for all regardless but all the major contenders in some of the for runners include people who adopted these positions all of them signed onto the free new deal and medicare for all policy that warrant and the new deal and propose to wealth tasks on americans three Kamala Harris who is now the running mate for joe biden not only cosponsored the Green New Deal and medicare for all but also said she would do away with the filibuster so all of these radical positions are being staked out openly and now you have a supporting task by members of congress who are openly conferring social is for the most dominant ideological character in the Democratic Party today Alexandra Ocasio cortez is a democratic socialist and she has built had expanded a group of candidates a cadre of the will of candidates that are open to socialism and believed in tearing down the old system and putting up their new system. You can see the results of these policies in places like california. This is what ultimately made me more conservative to see the results of policies but take the Green New Deal for example of an early version of an in california but the state has mandated a move to Renewable Energy sources like solar and wind. What happens during a heatwave in august . Do we have high demand of the system and solar cells and cloud cover over the deserts. When power was unavailable because it was very calm. There wasnt enough wind to keep the turbines going and so northern and Central California had to have rolling blackouts and the threat of rolling blackouts for several days for gavin newsom who is as leftwing as they come in one of the early pioneers of marriage and so forth came out and said its time for us to quote sober up about clean energy. Hes basically admitted it just doesnt work he wants to get there eventually and called it a transition to renewables but its just not working for us because we need in his words back up what that we need insurance for the Green New Deal policies would take californias failed Energy Policies and apply them nationwide but for the left the goal was never to produce better results. Whats immoral is important is to build the right incentive. We have people in the party openly claiming the radical sentiment. He wanted to fundamentally transform america five days before the election. Its almost a throwing lamprey joe biden is running on that and hes saying it over he wants to fundamentally transform american he talks about systemic racism breeds condemning the society and these doing so openly. You can see we have made the same complaint before. I think would have happened if the left has only become firmer in its convictions that only radical transformation is appropriate for the country and i think this is a Long Distance away from where the democrats went in the right direction in 1990 were bill clinton Triangular League move back toward the center to win elections and when he lost congress in 1994 he won reelection to 96 by moving to the center and part of a decades long project moved the party in a more pro market direction so democrats were offering americans a better run free market a better run system and that was the winning offer and could have continued to win had it not been for the impeachment of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. I think the democrats who are in control now took the opposite lesson that they were dissatisfied with welfare reform for example may were dissatisfied with the going back to work they wanted the opportunity to tryout the radical policies. They are going to be denied until they do what democrats headed in the 80s which is to consider a series of i think democrats could wind this november in the polls certainly say that any of they put into place radical policies that are just a shift in policy but again the question of the filibuster adding new state. When you add puerto Rico Washington d. C. Youre getting for new democratic senators. That makes it almost impossible for republicans to win a majority in the senate so you are permanent putting democrats in the jordie and republicans in the opposition. Where looking to change the system itself even before we get to policies. This is a flight 93 election and much bigger when we will have a series of elections until democrats decide this is actually not where they want to lead the country and what works for the country so it has worked in the past. There are some democrats who know it but the ones in control are not on the same page. Host there have been a number of studies that looked at the ideological composition of sections of twitter for example and they are usually authoritatively the that democratic policies or progressive twitter is way the more progressive than actual democrats and progressives themselves are. Twitter is a microcosm and a magnifying glass. Makes things seem more left than during the primary which you covered which is the subject of your book but it seems that various times that people like it or working, Harrison Julian castro and gillibrand to have moderates in their past. Cory booker i would also add in that who is was a Charter School enthusiasts and Different Things that during the primary season they all seem to be running to win on twitter. They were running super hitting the cultural notes that seemed like what democrats were clamoring for if you took clamor from twitter seriously. They all tanked. That strategy objectively i think failed for all of them. They sat on their moderate as an wit totally in that direction and they all got squashed like uggs. Could it be when we are thinking about and characterizing the Democratic Party we are doubtful by aoc who is very adjusting as you write and your book pray shes compelling and shes got game for sure but we are overrating that because thats not the general characteristics of the democrats who tipped the house and democratic favor and 2018. They didnt run on aocs campaign to take back the house. And they didnt talk about russia. They didnt hit a lot of things in the people who flip toward all for aoc. The possible we are making a twitter mistake when we characterized the Democratic Party now imagining it it before radical progressives . Guest i dont think so because i think the institutions of the democratic already have also moved left and thats for a number of reasons. Theres another situation outside of the party that creates a leftwing environment and you are right that social media can amplify that. Those on the right as well that the Mainstream Media the offline media also plays a role in moving the Democratic Party to the left. Msnbc does so although the differences with msnbc were getting leftwing agenda but its not changing the agenda of the party. Cnn has played a crucial role in moving democrats to the left and thats because cnns brand is a standard that represents the center of the conversation. 2016 are chronically they did a fairly good job of that as they had powerful protrump voices on the platform. The White House Press secretary Kayleigh Mcenany was a regular in cnn and gave her arguments and she was the only person or one of two people dumped for making a joke on twitter. Cnn was rebranding of brady of respect is even if they were leaning left in their coverage but since trump one cnn has basically been a cheerleader not just for that party but for the left and they move the Democratic Party in that direction. I talk about this in the book but for cnn it would be a good idea to stage town hall events not just for the candidates but they had town halls around issues and the town halls around issues our problem because