Delaware Primary LIVE RESULTS w/ Zac & Gavin From The Vanguard

listen to all of our voices great frogs and others the best of who we are as a species as a nation as an imperial experiment as an imperial democracy and yet as my dear sister marianne says recognize that there's the best in america that has always understood that if our lives matter if black lives matter we're going to have to make sure that democratic practices and orientations and means of being in the world are reproduced and expanded if any lives matter you're going to have to have major radical democracy but can you have radical democracy in america without empire without white supremacy without male supremacy without transphobia without homophobia without losing sight of the humanity of muslims and jews and arabs that's an unanswered question we just don't know hello everyone and welcome to the radical democracy show i'm your host kamali rose i am glad to be here with you on this tuesday september 15 2020. tonight we are going to be watching the delaware senate primary particularly but we will be looking at the enti the entire delaware primary looking at watching live results of that as those results start to roll in of course the delaware senate the delaware primary uh the polls close at 8 pm eastern time so about an hour from now polls will be closing and we should start to see results shortly after polls close because of the early vote uh we when we covered the massachusetts primary of course we got results within about 10 or 15 minutes after those polls closed we started to see the first results rolling in so we can expect those to come in pretty quickly after those polls start after the polls close at 8 pm tonight we are this is going to be an exciting show so welcome to everyone welcome to folks that are new if you're here for the first time welcome welcome and to all of our regular folks welcome to you as well uh i i do want to write off of the top give a shout out to one of our patreon patrons uh for brian dew uh just a shout out to brian dew for upgrading to our five dollar a month uh patreon subscription so thank you so much to brian for increasing the support to the show we really appreciate that we deeply appreciate all of our supporters if you can afford to please support this show support our work here we are independent media and we need the support of everyday folks like yourself so please support us and by going over to our patreon at patreon.com radical democracy and there are links in the description box below you can also drop us a one-time tip on at coffee.com democracy that's ko dash fi.com radical democracy if you like what you see you like what's here or you just want to show some support to independent media please uh our super chat feature is unfortunately not enabled yet and so we will be using coffee as the replacement for that so please drop us a tip on coffee if you can afford it we really really appreciate it and we need your support so please help out there and all right so we are we have a really exciting uh show to get to tonight there's obviously whenever we have you know live election results there's always excitement around that and then what's different a little different about this shows that we're going to have on a couple of guests on this show and so we'll that'll be to be the first time having you know more than one guest on the show so you know just forgive me in advance for any any any technical uh glitches there but i do expect things to run smoothly thanks to our producer the one and only tammy shout out to tammy for all the work that she does okay so the race that we're going to be focusing on tonight is the senate primary in delaware between jessica scherring and chris coons now the intercept wrote an article a few months back you know back in november so more than a few months now time has stood still here in 2020 it feels like uh but we they they wrote an article describing this as as the most important election for medicare for all and green new deal and for all congressional elections and so this is a really important seat of course with you know we have uh it is going to be uh you know works we given the current you know we have joe biden as our the democratic nominee so the likelihood of medicare for all we can argue that later and we certainly will discuss that and talk about those you know we'll certainly get to that discussion on during the show so to anyone that hasn't already please do me a favor and right now immediately hit the like button subscribe share this out so that we can you know get folks get have a nice vibrant live stream tonight while we stream these election results our last election stream was our busiest live stream and so we're hoping for a not expecting quite as busy but hoping for something something still busier than our usual so and we're prepared for it all right so really quickly what i i'd like to just kick us off here by showing a jessica scherring ad for those who aren't familiar with jessica scarine i think i figured it would be a good way to introduce you to her and you can also check out our some of the coverage that we did here on jessica screen uh just search for on radical democracy we'll drop a link to in the description box to that video as well where you can see some of our previewing of this primary race we will do more previewing of the race today and we'll do that particularly once we once our guests join us we'll we'll we'll talk to them about the and we're going to have this is zach and gavin as you can see in the the description in the title there we're going to have zach uh polston and gavin miller broomfield on from the vanguard and they are a left-wing uh you know podcast and blog and so it will be uh should be interesting conversation will get their takes on a few things including you know their thoughts on this race this the you know jessica strains chances her their hopes their expectations also if we have some time we'll chat a little bit about third-party politics versus democratic party reform also the recent news from nina turner who has made it clear that she is considering a run for the 2024 presidential election so a lot of intrigue there as well so we will talk to them about that as well and so we're expecting a you know nice lively stream today please if you have any you know have any thoughts comments leave them in the chat if you have some any questions for our guests we will try to get to some questions some comments from our community but we'll we'll get to those after you know we have a little discussion with our guests so you know we'll we'll we'll try to get we will definitely try to get to as many comments and questions as we can though all right so all right so let's let's uh let's get to it uh let me one sec here and we will bring our guests on in just a moment and our guests today are founding editors and you'll find this information in the description box below if you want to if you want to check out their work please do please absolutely do so our guests are founding editors of the vanguard dot blog they're also host of the vanguard uh pod podcast and show on youtube they're at you can find them on twitter at uh at vanguard underscore underscore blog you can see the that in the box below here so in their twitter bio describes them as two dudes in a van chronicling the apocalypse covering politics on the ground through a leftist lens uh with no further ado we have zach polston and gavin miller broomfield who will be joining us now uh welcome to gavin awesome hey how's it going how's it going guys so glad to have you on there going great and really really appreciate you coming on and spending some time with us here uh i found your found your youtube podcast a few weeks back and just start you know started flipping through and really enjoying what i saw i checked out your blog really love your work so really excited to have you on and and hear from you hear some some of you yeah absolutely thanks man thanks so much for inviting us on kamal is uh great to be here and especially excited to talk uh about tonight's race in delaware you know jessica raine is one of zach and i's favorite candidates that we featured on our podcast uh over the vanguard podcast we're of course talking to candidates activists politicians anyone and everyone that's kind of making some noise in the political outside of the political mainstream both parties third parties and yeah jessica rayne is just absolutely you know a great candidate and regardless of her chances tonight i think uh that's something that everyone watching can probably agree is that you know we all hope she wins yeah absolutely and i think that if she doesn't win today i think that she'll definitely continue to run again whether that be for you know house in delaware slightly sooner or maybe another shot at uh chris coons down the road um if uh he's re-elected you know uh obviously it's an uphill battle taking on a you know super well-funded uh corporate uh stooge like chris coons you know who's basically a figurehead for you know big pharma and anti-medicare for all and a lot of the things that um you know jessica is running on so yeah there's a political piece about him called meet the gop's favorite democrat uh which is a great great profile and i mean the title really does say it all he's a notorious for you know compromising grounds and uh sacrificing honestly the real goals of whatever the democratic party pretends to be in favor of these days uh you know in favor of you know compromising with the republicans on just about anything and everything and yeah he's definitely no agent of progress that's for sure yeah no we we did a little bit of a preview of the of the race and we definitely that was one of the things that we really highlighted was just his his obsession with bipartisanship and we all know what that type of bipartisanship bipartisanship in congress always comes at the expense of working class people it's always a pro corporate that's where they find their you know their agreement and so whenever whenever i see uh politicians touting bipartisanship as their primary plank and having no platform otherwise then i know exactly i think we all start to detect what that what that implies and so yeah it's so great to have you on before we get we we jump into the the election uh do you guys just want to talk a little bit about just to tell folks that are you know our folks in our community that are meeting you for the first time what you know when did you start the the vanguard uh and what is it what you know what is it about what your what's your goals with it what what are you guys focused on yeah definitely so i think we officially launched the blog for the first time was at late january um and we basically had this idea that we were going to cover the election on the ground in a van driving across the country talking to people making videos uh you know just getting on the ground and and meeting people and you know we were hoping to be you know chronicling the bernie sanders uh you know historic run for presidency that was kind of the idea uh obviously you know the coronavirus pandemic happened and uh you know the bernie sanders campaign uh you know didn't go the way we had initially hoped and so we decided to keep at it and start interviewing candidates and uh you know gavin had the idea to uh reach out to people during the pandemic and uh you know start going on youtube uh from home yeah yeah so since the pandemic started that's what we've been doing on youtube you know interviewing a lot of candidates like i said activists politicians everyone that's outside of the political mainstream that we think is kind of representing these vanguard ideas but despite the pandemic and despite you know bernie not being the nominee the vanguard as it was originally envisioned is still happening just on slightly different terms uh we actually just recently did get our sprinter van so we will be um you know setting out to make our first couple you know videos we're gonna shoot like a little teaser trailer proof of concept type video for people to see what we're about uh we're probably gonna shoot that in colorado and in a little bit here but uh yeah despite the pandemic uh we're still uh going forward with the original mission like i said just on slightly different terms so now we're going to be covering uh the election hopefully we're hoping to be in dc on the night of the election even awesome i mean regardless of if trump or biden wins you know this it seems like we're uh you know going on an increasingly crazy sometimes really dark path in this country and we just want to be there to document it you know with the protests going on around the country with with anything and everything you know we want to be there to document it and that's ultimately why we envisioned the idea of having a van to travel around and you know be where we need to be on the ground uh when we need to be there talking to the right people activists uh and getting that perspective out there uh a platform for the people essentially that's right oh yeah you know i was just gonna say we have had so many you know um you know movements happening uh you know organic uprisings of the people and the way that they're represented often uh by major media sources do not reflect the reality of the situation uh the protests in portland um you know uh the autonomous zone in um seattle uh the george floyd protest as they happened you know in cities across the uh country obviously you know demanding justice for uh not just george floyd but uh you know uh countless other black lives that had been taken by uh law enforcement in this country um and i think that the way that they've been presented is uh you know obviously with the narrative and obviously with an agenda and i think that it's really important that we have people on the ground to you know put a a camera in in in front of what's happening and say this is what it looks like if you're a person standing here that's awesome that's awesome so uh do you have do do you both have backgrounds in journalism or how did you get into this how you know what were you doing before you know it's a funny story how gavin and i actually became friends uh we became friends because we were in the fifth grade we were like really really obsessed with the mccain uh obama election and it's funny in you know red state kansas i was this little you know conservative kid that was just regurgitating everything that my parents had kind of fed to me and gavin was you know telling me i was crazy and talking something how we became friends it's kind of been a rabbit hole sense yeah yeah and and we've both been doing you know writing for a while i would say somewhat independent journalism not to glorify what we do too much or anything but you know we have been uh you know we do come from a political background in that of you know writing and covering stuff talking to people i i was personally pretty and pretty i got really interested i mean i've always been interested in politics to be completely honest it's always been something that i've liked following but it was the bernie sanders campaign that truly made me feel like uh you know there was a candidate that was repping you know my ideology a vision for america that i wanted to see implemented and that's when i really got involved in uh you know talking about covering politics and also activism to some extent and doing whatever i could to you know try to make that a reality zach and i went up to iowa and the couple nights before the iowa caucus to a one of the burning rallies with nina turner and cornell west michael moore all the superstars you know yeah we've been going to these kind of political events trying to get the pulse of the community and see what people are uh feeling and yeah ultimately the van we had a project before this another you know blog that we tried to do for a while but ultimate and that was more of a kansas city-based thing we're in kansas city zach and i uh but ultimately we decided just we wanted to reach a broader audience you know we wanted to speak to people all over the united states and even beyond and that's why the vanguard ultimately um like i said is designed to cover everything anywhere and that's why we've been talking to candidates almost in all 50 states now you know we've reached out to people in all 50 states and have probably talked to candidates and people from in the you know 30 40 states at this point so yeah we're getting that full view that's awesome that is really awesome uh all right so so let's let's dive into this this race tonight uh could would you guys be able to uh preview this race for folks maybe talk about what the significance of this race is how would you feel the significance or importance of this race is and maybe a little bit about your you know what you hope to see the you know the outcomes and in what you expect sort of so would you would either of you mind previewing or both of you mind doing a little preview for folks that aren't so familiar with this race yeah definitely you know uh like evan and i mentioned earlier on in the stream uh you know we're both big fans of jessica rayne and her platform but we've had her on our show i think she's a terrific voice for uh ideas uh like you know not just universal health care uh but and you know combating climate change with things like the green new deal but also bringing in uh ideas that haven't become quite as you know uh i don't want to say mainstream in the democratic party although you know medicare for all among voters is you know wildly popular i believe it's approaching you know upper 60 percent approval rating and on most polling but also ideas like housing as a right um you know things of that nature and it stands in direct contrast with somebody like chris coons um who as gavin mentioned there was the politico piece calling him the uh you know republicans favor democrat which i can't get out of my head now uh because it is so you know and it's almost uh like he was just the natural progression of joe biden uh when joe biden gave up his senate seat in 2008 i believe there was a different senator for that two-year uh term but then chris coons uh took the seat in 2010 uh and has just continued that business as usual neo-liberal corporate order that double aware is famous for um you know being a tax haven being a credit card company haven um being a big pharma haven um yeah so would definitely love to see uh jessica rain uh take this one tonight for sure yeah ultimately to me this race like many others like uh cory bush's race against lacey clay um you know it's a race that really is emblematic of just ever it's just the civil war that's going on in the democratic party right now and that is between you know the ideas of old and the ideas of new of course and jessica rain reps all the right ideas in my opinion you know she's a candidate that has uh really embraced all of the correct issues uh the populist issues at the right time and i think that um if she would were to win tonight you know obviously that's maybe not likely but even if she does pull off it would be a huge shot across the bow in the democratic civil war as zach mentioned and i mentioned before chris coons is pretty much the pinnacle of bipartisanship on capitol hill you know agreeing with the corporate democrats to pass the corporate agenda whether it's military or police budgets whatever and not only is he a you know kind of uh pillar of neoliberal politics he also uh crosses over with the right right-wing culturally a lot he co-chaired a national prayer breakfast quite a few times in the end of the 2010 decades he's a a very in my opinion insidious force in the democratic party and like zach said a total heir to the the joe biden mantle of delaware politics you know corporatizing the state corporatizing his communities at the expense of working people while pretending to be you know progressive when it suits him on the campaign trail um obviously if jeff skerrin doesn't win tonight obviously i don't think it's going to be a crushing defeat for the left this is her first time running she's a lesser known quantity it's not like this is a real high profile race and unfortunately uh you know bernie sanders didn't end up coming in to endorse scoring which i think is a missed opportunity i i mean i have my beef with sanders for not endorsing more candidates although i understand his logic too of i i think he endorsed some candidates in the past and then he felt like he was disappointed in their ultimate performance so he ultimately decided that like he just kind of wanted to stay out of it which is understandable but a candidate like really has put herself out there especially in a state like delaware to rep these ideas to rep the you know political revolution that he ushered in that he called for and uh yeah she's just she's just been so consistent on so many issues that i've given like zach mentioned criminal justice reform uh something that really stuck out to me that she talked about on our podcast was you know indian cash bail she mentioned that especially in the time of the coronavirus uh we have people in prison that are in prison not because necessarily they even committed a crime but because they can't pay to get out but steve bannon's having calls with the judge from his yacht exactly yeah yeah and just to be clear we're one of only two countries in the entire world that have a cash bail system the only other one being the philippines run by a you know duterte a fascist deranged dictator exactly so this isn't like you know people just were sort of in a bubble here in in america where we don't even we don't even realize that this is we've normalized these practices and the majority of people that are sitting in prison on any day are there because they can't afford to get out and meanwhile somebody like a harvey weinstein can just walk in a court drop a million bucks and turn around and walk out and you know having you know raped how many women and so it's just you know it just continue though i'm sorry i just wanted to oh no that's such a great uh point to make and honestly i wasn't even aware of the fact that it was only other it was only the philippines that also had this archaic uh you know punitive system that really does just affect poor people like you said i mean if you're it one of my favorite quotes is if uh if the punishment for a crime is a fine then it's not a crime for rich people uh you know if absolutely that's what it comes down to yeah yeah uh you know i anytime people talk about like fine systems i'm always it's always you know it's just like a toll on a road it's always going to disproportionately impact if you know what's ten dollars to you know a person with a million bucks but if you know what ten dollars to somebody that's making minimum wage that's you know that can be a percentage of labor yeah exactly more than that for a lot of two hours of labor if you're making 725. absolutely absolutely so um and you know i actually when i when i checked out and when i previewed jessica's grain's race i totally missed i i looked we i sort of i went through our issues page and i didn't really i hadn't seen anything and so it wasn't until i watched her interview with her actually that i heard her speak out on the criminal justice issues and found it to be really poignant it just you know just a few things that i listen for to see is it is someone pandering to me or are they talking about substantive policy and with her when you when you're talking about ending cash bail it's like all right that's you know light bulb goes on this is somebody that's serious about what they're doing we're not talking about small little tiny play reforms around the edges put on by more body cameras and things like that and give you know increasing funding to policing i heard they're talking about divesting uh you know and how they've already divested from so many social services and so we got to do the same to to police and start to shift towards a a you know a defunded a reduced police force and in favor of mental health uh you know mental health support drugs drug addiction services uh homelessness you know combating homelessness as it is people these are just i love george carlin just says you know we shouldn't call it homelessness we should call it houselessness because you know homes are this abstract thing but it's like these people just need houses and we have more empty units of housing in this in this country than we have homeless people so this is a solvable problem so and what we're seeing is this you know the true colors shown because you'll see even uh you know uh and you know not to get into too much of it just shows how pervasive this uh problem of homelessness is in this way that we you know look down on people who we brand as homeless right you know there were uh there was a big push early on in the pandemic to get homeless people into hotels right to stunt the spread and now we're seeing you know people are less motivated now there's less uh you know i don't want to say excitement but less energy around uh surrounding the pandemic certainly and and what we're going to do to help people it's kind of been swept under the rug and now people are you know basically trying to remove those homeless people from the temporary units because they're in nice areas it's the whole nimby mentality not in my backyard and it's actually occurring uh largely in areas that we would think of as blue uh even you know progressive areas and it just shows that there's so much work to be done uh between uh you know people who you know would like to think of themselves as you know progressives or you know uh you know but still have so many hurdles uh about about that and we need to really address that and not just pretend that it's the republican party that's uh the problem and the barrier here but it's it's a lot of the democrats too and uh you know people like chris coons and the people who will be voting for chris coons are typically the types of people that are standing in our way absolutely and speaking of the pandemic how do you how do you guys feel the pandemic has changed this race you know in particular but also maybe just you know campaigning at large for for progressives how has it blow to the backbone of all progressive policy or i mean not policy but all progressive campaigning which is you know grassroots knocking on doors you know if you don't especially in a concentrated urban area uh people are not going to be answering their door if you knock on it people are taking for i mean uh we've spoken to candidates that are still pursuing uh you know knocking on doors however that's typically uh more suburban rural areas if you know if you were knocking in new york city it just wouldn't be a strong move it would be you know some you know um and i think that that not being able to build that face face-to-face interaction that says i'm a regular person like you know you don't like don't think if you think about these ideas the way i'm telling you not the way you saw it on the news when they'd already been demonized and you know put in a box and you know do you need help with housing do you need help with health insurance do you need help with you know buying groceries uh what are you struggling with or you know do you have a hard time getting your medicine uh these are the ways that we can talk to people about the problems that they're facing face to face whereas if you send them a pamphlet that says please support medicare for all it's a lot more uh daunting and it's also a lot easier to ignore and not understand yeah i think the pandemic has kind of been like a double-edged sword in a way for progressive uh campaigns because on one hand yeah like i mean alexandria ocasio-cortez really showed the way forward as far as uh on you know knocking on doors campaigning uh you know until your uh shoes are no longer wearable essentially that was the way forward for her and then you know now with the pandemic we can't really do that uh so luckily you know most progressive candidates are both younger or uh are staffed by younger people and those people are usually better at social media using the internet to the advantage of um you know their their candidates campaign and i think that a lot of um online campaigning has really been pioneered essentially in this in this period of time since the coronavirus hit and you know i don't know it's obviously hard to quantify to what extent it's helped certain candidates but i think that even candidates that um you know like uh jyn pearlman in florida she obviously came up short against debbie wasserman schultz but i think i thought she ran an absolutely amazing online digital campaign and if if there was just a more um balance and equal balance between young and old voters i think she would have won that won that race because her online presence was so immense and she was getting out the message so diligently however unfortunately again the another problem that we continually are running up against as the left is that the majority of people that vote are not young people uh it's the it's the senior demographic that's the most reliable demographic to have on your side which was of course what ultimately carried biden to success and the primary and will probably carry him to success in november as well you know it's this demographic of voters that are going to vote at all cost and uh largely in this election too because you know their lives really do depend on it and to some extent there no demographic has been more affected by the pandemic of course than uh senior citizens so yeah that's really the biggest hurdle we're up against in my opinion as far as these progressive campaigns is just reaching that demographic uh you know and i i i'm so proud of jessica carrane uh we were mentioning earlier about the criminal justice stuff it seemed like when the when the um protest movement really hit with the the killing of george flord the murder of george floyd george floyd and the protests that you know erupted afterwards some lefties some lefty candidates you know they kind of freaked out because of the defund the police verbiage and language they they thought it was real uh scary and too far left and they were afraid it was going to turn off all of their potential moderate uh you know more independent or non-partisan voters but jessica scaran i don't think she did that at all she she leaned into it and really made these policies these demands of these community communities the forefront of her policy and she really uh took it into consideration and i think she was already there on those issues but um i really appreciated that she didn't back down and again i think that really goes back to uh you know reaching out to the youth which is something that is so huge for this party we have a entire youth movement laid out for us with the the bernie camp essentially the movement that he started which excited so many young people who previously had no interest in uh policy i think it's foolish not to you know continue after that energy continue courting this new generation of voters who will essentially be making up the future of the party yeah that's awesome so yeah all right let me uh i want to talk about their what how you feel their the what the expectations are for the race but before we get into that i just wanted to quickly for folks that haven't heard jessica scaring's voice even yet because unfortunately you know it's it's she was running on very very limited cash and we could talk about that the the fundraising in the race um as well shortly but let me just play in her you know her her primary ad sort of i think that she uses and and just to give folks a feel of who she is and what she's fighting for and then we can come back and we'll discuss those things on the other side so uh give me one second here and let's just share this out we'll be right back okay it's about a minute and a half here my name is jessica scherring and i'm a democrat running for u.s senate because i know a better future is possible we are in the middle of a pandemic and struggling with a public health crisis when far too many of us are uninsured we're struggling with an economic crisis where people are working two and three jobs just trying to keep a roof over their heads and we're in the midst of a racial justice crisis where people are demanding change and getting brutalized by our government but these issues didn't just start with povid they aren't new [Music] i saw them as the board president of a non-profit focused on the needs of girls from under-resourced neighborhoods and i've been all over delaware and talked to people from all different types of communities and yet the stories i hear are always the same we need to address those root causes and fix those problems rather than continually treating the symptoms i grew up the oldest of three sisters and that taught me the importance of taking care of each other and looking out for the more vulnerable people in our lives and it's more important now than ever that we take care of each other so that everyone in our country can thrive it's time to guarantee healthcare is a right with medicare for all we need to raise the minimum wage to at least 15 an hour and expand social security we need to demilitarize our police and end private prisons we need real climate action now while my opponent takes money from the very industries that are responsible for the problems we need to solve my campaign is entirely funded by real people like you this is about us regular working people taking back power and as your senator i will fight for a better future it starts with your vote on september 15. [Music] okay so that was uh jessica screen's ad there and something that i always just love about watching progressives when they do ads is that you actually hear about policy you know yeah you know you get actual real substance i mean you can just you know she hits on medica for all demilitarizing police you know campaign finance issues fighting for 15 you know the fight for 15 you just you all you hear and you know is platitudes when you when you hear these corporate candidates and it's just so refreshing to hear candidates speak on issues so can you tell us uh you know how do you feel about this this upcoming election tonight you know what do you think her jessica serene's chances are i i don't know about you but i couldn't find any polling outside of uh you know polling they did back in november where it was essentially a generic female democrat against chris coons so i'm not sure if you are familiar with any other polling than that or have any other air on the ground i haven't seen any polling i know there is any other polling that's available and i think if jess wins tonight i think it's going to be an absolute you know political earthquake that no one sees coming i mean i love her campaign i do think it's a little bit of a long shot still like i said it sucked that uh bernie or aoc didn't come in to endorse i think that would have been huge i think it would have been huge for a lot of these progressives andrew romanov was another one that was kind of abandoned um i think jess you know obviously like i said the preferable candidate here i think she would have benefited from those endorsements uh but uh regardless like you said um that campaign ad just really spells the difference between her and chris coons who is a democrat that likes to you know say as little as he can well in as many words as possible uh you know uh the corporate speak of trying to dress up your shitty policies with grandiose verbiage to make it sound great and to make it sound like you're in favor of all the right things and to make it sound like you're also a lefty on all the right issues but in reality it's really just a mask and you're absolutely right jessica scarin you know named the policies by name uh this is what i want to do this is who i want to help and this is who i'm against uh and ultimately i think that's what we need to see more of so yeah chris coons is the kind of guy his videos are painfully similar to the kind of videos that they have you watch if you're they're like trying to recruit you at goldman and sacks where it's like build a better tomorrow and now i'm just like you know yeah no absolutely i uh no that's it's great what do you think what do you think the chances are for jessica tonight i mean like i said i i i think it's a quite a long shot i think it's i think it's a tough tough uphill battle but what do you think yeah i i i think that you know i'm i'm in the same camp as you where i feel like the pandemic you know really damaged all you know all progressive campaigns because they have i think that this this pandemic in this sort of situation that we're in with the you know lockdown measures and social distancing measures i think that it favors incumbency it's if you you know and it also favors uh you know corporatism where if you can just run ads all day that are going to be if you can flood the airwaves which you know i we looked at the fundraising for chris coons versus jessica scaring and you know chris coons raised six million dollars from primarily corporate pacs and large dollar donations about 90 you know some odd percent of it was from corporate packs and large dollar donations and meanwhile you know jessica's grain was only able to raise about you know almost 20 times less than that about 300 000 and so i think that that it's this situation definitely favors the person with the money and that's going to be the corporate back candidate here and so i think that like you it's probably an uphill battle that she's facing here it's probably a long shot but we have seen some wild upsets this election season i think that the one that really stands out to me is marquita bradshaw in town yeah in tennessee that was nuts like she said literally no one saw that coming i don't think she was endorsed by like i mean maybe a few groups dsa maybe but literally no one no i don't even know no one's radar i didn't i don't know anyone who had heard of her nobody she raised eight thousand dollars for a senate race in tennessee which is a millionaire yeah against two million dollars outraged 250 to one and how i it just it breaks my brain every time it's like you know what if she can do that with eight thousand dollars in the middle of a pandemic like i don't know it just shows how desperate the american people are for something different she was able to ride the momentum of people saying [ __ ] it we're pissed we're ready for change you know i mean the momentum that was created by we'll call them the george floyd protest but they encompass the you know tragic deaths of many others that i don't you know want to be excluded from the memory uh i i think that people at that moment you know obviously there was the disheartening race in kentucky and what happened uh at the peak of all all of that with um charles booker and the booker yeah but um i think that the the uh marquita bradshaw people in her community saw somebody that they trusted that that they thought would you know really fulfill on this um you know very critical issue um yeah and and i think that i think that you know it shows that when you're uh you know saying the right things and speaking to people about something that they're you know desperate for uh that they will come out for you and and i think that that was a real lesson that we should all learn from yeah i actually recently spoke to marquita on the show and she mentioned uh that you know she's a climate activist right and uh you know the green new deal is usually not considered a policy that's particularly popular with the more appalachian you know people that have had communities have had jobs in the coal or gas industries and obviously kentucky fits that bill to some extent and marquis marquita told me tennessee sorry but kentucky as well you know yeah but uh yeah she told me that she put it in terms these policies that the working people would understand you know she said that uh you know a lot of people that aren't necessarily democrats that aren't necessarily leftists that don't even necessarily believe in climate change they do recognize pollution as an issue you know they see it in their communities uh marquita grew up down the street from like a military uh waste facility and essentially which was leaking toxic material into her community which was killing the dogs and cats and animals like insane stuff uh so you know people experience this stuff especially uh disenfranchised lower income black and brown communities in this country they experience the effects of pollution of climate change of all of these things and but they just might not necessarily realize uh you know the right policies the right candidates uh that are going to you know further their own happiness their own lives and uh get these things removed from their you know life marquita bradshaw was able to put it in those terms that the voters understood and she was able to connect with those voters she also pushed back when i you know called tennessee a red state and said no it's actually not a red state because look how many people in the state don't vote have been disenfranchised and can't uh you know really have their voice heard this is a state that is so voter uh suppressed that you know the actual working people the working-class communities which have been so um disenfranchised their voice isn't even being heard and she was able to tap into that hopefully she's able to do in the general as well yeah i saw her message out or email out something i think because i donate to her campaign i think she you know i'm on her mailing list and i saw her you know send out an email recently that mentioned the the voter turnout rate in the election was something like 27 or something like that and so it's like and i think i i forget if she was talking about last time in a general or if it was in the primary race that she had that she had won but that is you know abysmally low voter turnout and so that means that there's a large segment of the population that could potentially be reached if you are speaking to issues that you know these standard establishment politicians haven't been speaking to for the last you know decades where we've just seen a stagnation of wages and the you know the destruction of our planet and so i think that somebody like marquita standing up and you know being a climate activist and having that background and focusing on those issues i think it says a lot to the fact that people are paying closer attention more than ever now and are actually i you know oftentimes i think there's a you know definitely an age gap with this but i think that the younger generation certainly is is very uh intensely policy focused and if you're if you're speaking to those issues then they are not only willing to vote for you but they are excited uh you know enough to go out there and to volunteer to make phone calls to text uh to knock on doors even when it's possible and so i think that that a race like that shows us that there's hope there's certainly hope if you can do that in a you know tennessee has a lot more ground to cover that you know it's a lot you know larger area than you know uh delaware and so it's delaware's a small state they have i think only one district in i believe yeah i think that's right i think it's one or two okay yeah i think i think there might be two uh okay yeah yeah so it's you know it's a smaller state it's definitely the kind of thing where it's almost like running a congressional race where it's you're having less money isn't as impactful it's not like you have to cover the amount of ground of like a california uh you know uh allison hartson tried to run against diane find uh feinstein i remember and it was she got she ended up with like one percent of the vote because i remember yeah it was heartbreaking and she ran an amazing campaign but it's just you have too much problem that the greens are having right uh the greens consistently there's a lot of you know good effort from people good ideas from people yet they consistently get about one percent two percent of the national vote uh come election season you know because it is such a large surface area to cover yeah and because the media doesn't you know cover them that's another thing and the democratic party actively tries to get them off and everything yeah it's crazy to the extent uh the democrats you know go out of their way to suppress democracy the you know the thing they're named after so it's hilarious also because they love to celebrate like i don't know um it like it's it's just like i don't know it's like they love to be the bastard of like oh we're the you know party of freedom and democracy and donald trump's just like fascist who's like yeah you know working with russia and it's just like that oh yeah after him for you know trying to uh you know keep people from voting and and while they're actively working in places like montana and uh with wisconsin to you know keep their greens off about as soon as their own rigged primaries conclude they love to start calling everyone else a you know traitor to democracy or all this stuff you know as soon as their primary concludes it's donald trump is a threat to our democracy but forget the iowa caucus and all of 2016 and everything we've ever done to you know screw over democracy and prevent people from actually having a voice in this country yeah i mean is there anything more anti-democratic than super delegates you know yeah you know even the republican party doesn't have the nonsense like that they're actually more and the republicans the republicans you know they didn't they don't shame like libertarian candidates for example like a lot more people voted for gary johnson than uh jill stein and i mean i guess the reason we hear more blame him to jill stein is because hillary clinton lost but it's not like if trump had lost that election you'd hear republicans go around blaming gary johnson for spoiling the election that just wouldn't be uh something you would hear on the democrat side though their first reaction is to blame third parties and anyone to the left of their actual leadership because in 1992 the republicans actually lost an election to the uh uh as a result of ross perot running for he took 20 million votes which is more than any you know party to the left or independent to the left of the democratic party i mean ralph nader didn't even get five percent of the uh popular vote he didn't even get close yeah yeah yeah absolutely and i you know i they to your point about the corporate media as well i think that they do a a massive disservice to the people where folks are it's we already have everyone's working you know like 10 12-hour days at this point you know some a lot of folks working folks are doing working two jobs just to just to scrape by 78 of americans are living paycheck to paychecks which means you've just got all this stress and burden weighing you down and so the idea that the american people are somehow going to have the time and energy to put in to become informed i mean they do enough flipping on you know cnn or msnbc at the end of the day and they think that that's enough and that should be enough in a in a true democracy that would be enough you turn on the media and you would be getting informed but instead they're very focused on sort of the entertainment factor uh you know just doing these sensationalized stories instead of focusing on actually you know informing people they do the playing the fake objectivity game where they they you know they say they're objective but they're really just neutral and if you're neutral between you know fascism and and you know centrism then you're you know you're halfway to fascism there and that's what they're neutral between essentially and it's also because they i feel like they've they've really you know as much as they love to you know pay lip service and and you know do all the theatrics of being above the whole uh you know reality tv presidency of donald trump i mean msnbc and cnn uh have you know made boatloads of money off of continually you know dangling things like russiagate and any other salacious you know ukraine the impeachment you know uh let's talk about uh briefly the fact that you know they impeached donald trump on you know probably the most ridiculous thing that you could have there are plenty of very valid things to impeach donald trump on uh but you put they went with the most confusing uh least concrete uh you know uh topic that no regular americans really give a [ __ ] about and that's uh evidenced by the fact that they're not bringing it up at all uh you know 50 days out from the fact that he's up for re-election they're like it was such a bad decision and the political calculus was so off and it hurt the party so badly that this man is 50 days from another general election and they're not even bringing up the fact that he was impeached from office yeah yeah no sorry man no no go please gavin yep yeah it's pretty funny that their their impeachment strategy ended up kind of throwing under the bus their eventual nominee you know because it exposed his corruption yeah that was the point i was going to make is just that you know well yeah that's why they talk about it because it's so obvious that biden's whole career he was giving handouts not just to his uh son but his brother uh you know his whole family was writing uh his success i mean why i mean it's why else would uh uh his son be sitting on the board of like uh what was it mbna uh the bank before the crash you know just breaking in massive uh checks every month i mean it's ridiculous of course it was because his father was the senator yeah and it's the kind of corruption that american people they they they know it as soon as they see it and they're they're sick of it people are fed up with that and it just that sort of stuff makes people cynical and i know because i was one of those folks that honestly five years ago i was one of those cynical folks that just i paid very little attention to politics and it was it was just i was detached from it because it was like you know you just got the feeling that no matter which politicians were in power it was more the same you your life still sucked everything was getting worse all the time and if you're a millennial you know i'm i'm 33 and i've lived you know through each decade we've had some massive economic crash in our lifetimes and it's been the 2001.com bubble the 2008 2009 housing crisis and then while we're still you know in recovery we just hit what is likely to be the greatest depression in us history that we're still undergoing right now and so i think that these are things that people you know can see and sense and when they when they hear politicians not speaking to those issues it's very easy to just sort of tune them out and also oh you're good no no please i was gonna say and also on the media like you mentioned so many people uh like you said yourself five years ago like turning on msnbc or whatever is the most you really uh you know a lot of people do to keep themselves informed and obviously a lot of people many people are hard working they don't have time and it's hopeless and depressing to pay attention to this cruel stupid game of politics but another thing i just wanted to bring attention to and point out is that if you do just watch the mainstream media depending on which side of that you're on if you're watching the left version or left version on msnbc or the conservative fox way fox news um you know they're basically brainwashing you into into thinking that the other team the opposition is the problem with america if you're a republican then it's the democrats that are the problem with this country and they're ruining it from the inside out completely bankrupting it socially politically economically et cetera and the reverse the inverse goes for if you're a democrat you know the msnbc leads you to believe that donald trump is a unique democracy and that he's single-handedly taking this kind of killing this country and the republicans are going to destroy us all this stuff they both of course completely ignore and obfuscate from the corporate ruling donor class which controls both parties and which is actually affecting most of this uh negative change in our country so it increases the division in our country it increases the polarization among the working and lower classes while distracting everyone from the real culprit and so i think that's really uh unfortunate that our media has not only devolved to a place where half the time they're just you know talking about stupid stuff like russiagate um and not only is that uh problematic for a number of reasons but in my opinion most importantly like i said it just it brainwashes their audience into thinking that you know the uh we're basically in a civil war a culture elite well yeah but i feel like that's not a bug that's a feature that's what they're exactly what they're trying to do it keeps the goal post very specific right because uh you know that's been a common tactic throughout all of american history right how can we sow the seeds of divide right since the civil rights movement it became uh uh socially unacceptable to you know directly uh so the racial seats of uh divide so the republican party and to a lesser extent the democratic party embrace dog whistle politics and continue to sow the divide that way and and you know they're still continuing to do this way obviously donald trump with his you know direct obvious bigoted language um but also uh through other mechanisms as well and i think that one of those mechanisms is by you know oh it's the republicans oh it's the democrats you know keeping that game of ping ping-pong going back and forth and keeping everybody's heads turning this way so that they can't see what's directly in front of them which is the oligarchs pulling the strings and [ __ ] everybody over yeah yeah i know i always i like to say like you know they they have us focus on left first right so we don't focus on top first bottom you know and that's the top one percent versus the bottom 99 and as long as they we sit around fighting you know over these these issues that they've demagogued us into fighting over you know they divide us there's this great clip of like bernie sanders talking to a bunch of high school students on like c-span like 10 or 15 years back it might be 20 you know 15 years back 20 years back and he's just explaining just breaking down politics to them and he just says you know this is what this is what you do if you're the republican party or you know and you're the democrats and all you want to do is you know just maintain power hold power and you have a terrible platform that nobody is interested in in what do you do you know you start to divide people up on along arbitrary lines you know divide the men from women the uh cis from trans uh straight from gay black first white you know islam verse christian and you just divide people up on as along as many lines as you can you know democrat verse republican even and then they're not paying attention to what's really going on and they're not focused on the class war that we're all in and so they'd rather us fight a race war than to ever fight a class war you know they're much more that that serves the the ruling class interest still they're fine with a bunch of poor black and white people shooting each other in the streets and they're fine with all of what's going on right now and they they're this status quo is what they're what even a joe biden is okay with maintaining and so it's just i mean that's the best offer that they have right now in the for the for the presidency is is either you know they tell you it's either the the danger of donald trump or you get the status quo that led to donald trump so you know pick your poison there i mean it's just like kendrick said right you know ain't nothing new but a flow of new democrats and robloticans versus a blue state which one you govern in yo it's still uh that's dope like it's real it's just real stuff i like i like you know i i quote a lot of lupe as well and i will have to drop some of that in here too so yeah i thought that you had that uh bernie public enemy uh yeah we've all three got one in our rooms the best yeah yeah hip-hop that's for sure so i always appreciate it um so yeah so we're the results it's you know we're we're a few minutes out yeah closing right now third eight right so that's yeah i'm like pulling anymore at 8 p.m so we're about or you know a few minutes out from that so hopefully once these polls close we'll start to see some results rolling in i i covered the massachusetts primary live and it was within like 15 minutes we started to see results from yeah i remember i remember that it was like at first it looked uh pretty close and then all of a sudden it was a it was a blowout remark yeah hopefully hopefully we get some instant results tonight too although hopefully it's not a blowout hopefully it's either a close racer i mean hopefully it's a blowout for jessica that would be awesome exactly yeah yeah something like that would just be amazing i wanna i wanna have some positive vibes yeah yeah something better yeah yeah yeah and even if jessica doesn't win her race tonight i think that she definitely has a really strong future ahead of her um i i love her energy i i thought she almost had like a marianne williamson vibe kind of that really like nice almost like i like like almost like motherly in a way i'm not trying to be like demeaning or any anything but like she's she's just a really nice warm uh type of person that you want to like have a conversation with that you genuinely believe is in it for the right reason she's not in it for herself to you know sell a book or whatever she wants to improve people's lives and i think that's evident her policy in her the way she communicates with voters and her campaign strategy up to this point and yeah i think when you couple that sort of you know demeanor and that sort of personality with the program and policy that she has that is a you know a an incredible combination exactly that is a that is a political winner and so i agree i feel like there are a few folks that i saw run this cycle that i think i really hope to see them run again i think alex morris is another one of those who he was unfortunately smeared you know right as the the early voting began and here in the state and so that was unfortunate to see but i think that like justice like jessica scherring he's a really solid astute politician and someone that i want to see come back and and run again and so i do hope that we see jessica and just like cory bush you know who has always been a tremendous voice tremendous leader uh you know uh yeah obviously gavin and i are big fans of hers uh you know it took her uh you know multiple campaigns as well and she's been a known leader in her community uh for a while since ferguson so uh even even a person who has plan sewed those seeds of work for a while it it does it takes a while to build a a platform that's you know people are familiar with you with so i'd like to see a lot of those candidates running again yeah absolutely it's all about name recogni recognition that that plays such a crucial role in these in these elections and so uh i i absolutely think that you you this is a multiple cycle sort of process where you really have to you know it's a longer battle than what than what people like you know we we like instant gratification nowadays with all you know our video games and our social media we get used to our instant gratification but some of these fights are long fights and you know we do need to fight along all these fronts and i think that having folks like jessica sterain in there are it's going to be critical if we ever want to see any sort of real electoral reform uh without forcing a you know bloody revolution then we're going to need to be able to operate within electoral politics and turn the tide in our favor there so we need these progressives in in office and people that are that are just unwavering on these issues and i and when she uses the language of defund the police and you know fight for the 15 demilitarizing police medicare yeah she's taking like ending imperialism you know she calls out the policy failings of the neoliberal democrats in in explicit terms in terms that you know no one in the in the senate probably would have the balls to including bernie even i think you know she's she's taken some really some really daring and uh far left stances that uh you have to applaud her for taking you know if you look through her policy on like her website or whatever it's it's just a laundry list everything you want to see from a candidate so yeah yeah absolutely we did that and i mean you can you compare to chris coons and it's it's just night and day really i mean the the you know just the the flowery the pandering the language that he uses we even looked at his you know chris coon's criminal justice plank on his platform is just like stand with the police support the police like that's his criminal justice plank i'm just like dude what are you read the room buddy he really is the heir apparent of joe biden i mean he's out here talking about how we're gonna you know give more money to the police more money to the military it's like oh my it really drives home in my opinion the the need for a third party but that's another discussion yeah and hopefully we'll have some time to get into that discussion today uh you know i definitely want to talk to you all about you know your your thoughts on third-party politics the movement for a people's party i've seen a lot of stuff i've seen a lot of your coverage and really appreciate the work that you're doing there so you know great work i watched the interview that you did with i think it's is it is it jerry perez i believe yes that dude is no joke like i was like standing at attention like yeah yeah yeah so i i love his energy and i mean i watched that whole five-hour you know people's party convention and it was just i mean one hour it just filled my heart with so just you know real belief for the first time it was redeeming it was a redeeming because it really was it was really redeeming it was like a window into an alternate you know reality where everything was cool and you know we had conventions of politicians that actually cared about us and you know what i'm saying like it was yeah it was just people like us it was people like us speaking it was as if they gave you know one of us a platform i swear if we were around longer either you know if the vanguard had been around another year or two you would have been they would have they would have had you in there you know yeah they would have it was a party absolutely yeah and i think that it was and i think that it was really uh reflected in the fact that it was a zoom call everybody got on and uh you know said what they had to say there was no pageantry there wasn't you know it wasn't a gala where they you know spent five hundred thousand dollars to you know socially distant maybe rent out veda a ballroom and you know make a big show of it uh which is the exact opposite of what you get from something like the rnc or the dnc where you know there are millions of americans who you know can't afford to buy groceries or keep a roof over their head yet they have no problem you know just like you know displaying their opulence at the expense of the taxpayer no less so uh yeah yeah it was a lot of just like pomp and circumstance and just spectacle as cornell west put it he said it was just spectacle and that's all it was it was spectacle and no substance all spectacle no substance and so it's i mean the just the intro out alone to the convention i was just like the things they're saying and calling out and you know centering the poverty and homelessness in a way that you just don't see uh i watched i don't know about y'all but i couldn't watch more than 30 minutes of the dnc like i watched 30 minutes of it i sat down only i never watched the whole thing when it comes to democrats giving speeches i'm like i'll get the reader's digest version later on using the like floyd family as props while like i said joe biden is promising to you know put more money into the police it's it's it's a spit in the [ __ ] face honestly yeah absolutely it was just like when donald trump had that nfl ad right or the ad for the super bowl where he i was like yeah alex yeah um and you know paraded her out and said look at me like i'm reforming the justice system because i pardon one individual you know what i mean so it's just like yeah no i hate this when they when they do that to people and just like it was joe biden did it with that that elevator worker like yeah that black woman it was just so insult and i've covered joe biden he's had a few like racist ads like he dropped this really racist ad that was like talking about like we like he compared a vote for joe biden he tried to equip you know equivocate that to the fighting you know putting your body and life on the line in the civil rights movement he tried to equate a vote for james lying about being arrested in south africa or i mean you know countless other things i mean he's a gaff machine when he was talking to charlemagne the god i mean i'm sure you saw that clip yeah i mean and i can only imagine you know as a you know as a you know person of color yourself how that you know would feel as somebody and when you're making the decision between donald trump and somebody uh like joe biden who's supposed to be this lesser evil and then you know he continuously you know uh you know makes comments like that no absolutely i it was i played not just the clip that is the sort of you know the the the one that went around where he was you ain't black if you don't vote for me essentially you ain't black cliff but not just that but if you watch that whole interview it is just hostility towards you know charlemagne and i don't like charlemagne that much he's like your typical sort of yeah he's very hyper focused on sort of a bit of like almost race reductionist in a way of just focusing solely on he thinks you know black issues are only like criminal justice and not focused on things like medicare for all green new deal those things in fact disproportionately affect black people uh you know fight for 15 the economic issues um and so and and but but even then so this is like a a neo-liberal you know black guy that he's talking to and even somebody that's generally gonna like willing to like yeah like you're talking to me who's like hostile towards yeah someone who endorsed his vp in the prime exactly like you're gonna you you can't go on there and just have a conversation and so uh it was i mean he showed so much hostility when he talked about you know he he talked about you know look at my record and then you go and we showed his record and and what he and what he actually did it was just he lied to charlemagne there talking about you know he didn't support like the 1984 crime commission bill that created uh taken to the right in the 80s exactly so people you know people have a short memory unfortunately and a lot of younger folks and so when we did that that that coverage i think we had a lot of younger folks in our audience that were like you know i i did not know this i i didn't really know the ice cream memes yeah exactly so yeah and just so everybody knows i'm keeping an eye on the results right now there's still no results coming in yet so i have an eye on them there's probably still some people in line yeah they said exactly they say polls have closed but as gavin just pointed out i believe uh it was you know you if you're standing in line when polls close and i think in any state i believe it is is you know federal law if you're in line when the polls close you still get to vote so uh you know folks should know that if you're standing in line right now in delaware watching this you you stick around you stay in line and you vote um that was one of those and one of those things and we mentioned it earlier you know you were talking about the kentucky race the there was the kentucky senate race uh to face off against mitch mcconnell and it was amy mcgrath against charles booker and we saw uh you know uh voter suppression that the democrats were okay with you know there where they closed down in louisville kentucky they closed down 99 of the polling locations there in the middle of a pandemic claiming that it was you know well you you don't feel uh you you know the workers didn't feel safe well how can the voters feel safe when they're now funneled you know you funneled uh you know i forget how many hundreds of thousands of people it was but it's like you know louisville is as big a city and as populist city as like boston massachusetts where i am and that i could not imagine one right location and it was happening before the pandemic too i remember uh you know even when it was in the like the democratic primary they were doing that i guess the pandemic had started but it wasn't like when it was the super tuesday they were eliminating you know polling places in some of the biggest cities some of the most bernie populated cities which i think is another reason that bernie should never have dropped out as early as he did and should have kept fighting is because you know they were screwing him even in ways that were technically allowed they were still pressing their thumbs on the scale and allowing and that's what the dnc does you know they their their war against the left is so obvious that yeah it literally comes down to republican style voter suppression you know closing off inner city voting places to prevent people from having their vote casts i mean we don't even have to get into the iowa caucus with the pete budaje app and the you know misreporting and the fudge numbers and the uh immigrant communities uh the what was it the i believe they were it was a meatpacking special election for workers who were in a specific meat packing industry in iowa uh they cast their votes and uh there was a lot of issues tallying exactly who they voted for because they all voted for bernie sanders obviously um all those mistakes went against bernie sanders 2016 and 20 20 election it's just just coincidence you know all of them happen to go against bernie sanders of course and i love that when they said there were people that like reviewed the results of those and they reviewed like like the the the tabulated results and they counted it all up with all the caucus results that came in that were displayed publicly and they found you know discrepancies that they pointed out and they identified and they identified descriptions we were like listen you literally did math wrong on the sheets but they didn't they said they would not change it they used to change it so that like this is not democracy folks this is no way we literally we don't have a democracy in this country and we never have really i mean if you think about it we've always had to push to fight for more democracy which is why you know uh gavin and i are big fans of ideas like you know obviously getting rid of the electoral college but even you know reevaluating how and you know i guess i'll speak for myself but even evaluating the way that we structure the senate because of how hello you know give two uh people in wyoming or give two senators in wyoming but only have two in california like how ridiculous and absurd is that and it goes back to earlier in america how we've always had to fight for more democracy i mean state legislatures used to choose our senators and obviously we would find that completely unacceptable today but those were the arguments that were presented at the time and obviously there was you know massive corruption and uh things of that nature and so as we fight for things like you know the getting rid of the electoral college and you know restructuring the senate that's not without precedence in this country and i think it's important to remember that as we like push the scale in that direction because they've always tried to undercut democracy absolutely and i think there was a republican senator or congress person who just recently came out with a bill trying to repeal i think it's the 17th amendment wouldn't it be crazy yeah i would you know put that law back in place that would allow the senators to be chosen earlier today it's astronomical i can't remember the name of the guy who put it forward um but yeah yes and the amount of democratic voters too that would even like openly and you know shamelessly defend something like the the super delegates or what the democrats were threatening to do um to bernie if he did all of them they would undermine the will of the people this was the basically the common you know train of thought among the democrats was that you know if bernie doesn't get a majority we're gonna [ __ ] him and we're gonna give the people someone they didn't elect which is going to be done by the second round of super delegates and the amount of democrats that actually not only argued that that was acceptable but argued for that to happen was you know something that a lot of people are easy quick to move on from but i will not be forgetting every single one of them raised their hand yeah okay i don't want to hear ever again that elizabeth warren is part of the left yeah like boy yeah that's my that's one that's my senator here too and so i got a special oh one of the least popular senators in the entire country by the way uh and potentially uh gonna get primaried and uh who's their spot yeah the worst thing is i have friends who just give her a pass and i'm like how does she work after voting for trump's inflated military budget for uh for refusing to for stabbing bernie in the back for refusing to drop out when it was clear you had no chance and instead eating third or not even taking first in your home state didn't she take third in massachusetts yes yeah yeah she was she was as much of an asset of the biden campaign as pete or amy in my opinion you know as far as her staying in as long as she did like come on she knew what she was doing she knew what was gonna happen she knew that she was gonna take bernie voters and give it to biden let's like apparently bernie was shocked that she did that too he was like you know flabbergasted that she didn't drop out and endorse him but don't you think that if the if the roles were reversed there okay and i'm sorry sorry not hillary c freudian slip right there right yeah there you go and elizabeth was you know elizabeth warren was in the lead at that time yeah and and bernie had you know was risking taking both because if you look at the states in in super tuesday it would have been a totally different outcome when you put in if if if elizabeth warren had done what pete buddha judge and amy klobuchar did and dropped out and endorsed bernie right there if she actually believed in these policies that she claims that she believes in then that is the only move that she could make and i said it at the time you know i was in just furious at the time uh so that you know i just couldn't believe that that that you know she had all the power and all the opportunity and we saw it and happening in real time that listen she has to drop out here uh you know after that bloody monday as some folks refer to it yeah when you know when klobuchar and p buddha judge coalesce behind texas if you look at the numbers in texas uh you know of course massachusetts like you know like she could have dropped out a long time ago and she because she clearly was not she was just peeling off votes from the only other you know viable progressive in the race bernie sanders at the time and it really it would have at the very least it would have made the uh you know he would have won there were certain states where it almost certainly would have tipped him even in uh minnesota it could have it could have tipped him at least got him garnered him enough electoral votes that he would have still been viable through you know through super tuesday which i think would have completely altered the course of the election if he wasn't especially pandemic and people decided oh [ __ ] we really do need medicare for all because it had basically gone off the table that bernie sanders was gonna be you know continuing in the election there was all this like uh by the time that people were really taking the coronavirus seriously i think it would have really really changed um the game i i think they would have probably come up with a different way to screw him out of the uh nomination or at least try to in a different way um but yeah yeah i agree ad alfrey jr said the same thing like and noam chomsky even said it too like do you really you know do you really believe that they're just gonna let him take this like he he is an existential threat to these people like they you know we're facing the the american people are facing real existential threats of you know climate change nuclear catastrophe you know economic disaster great depression uh you know we're facing existential threats but the you know the ruling class the democratic party elites and and and those in power and the democratic party they do are not concerned about those existential threats they have their gated communities and their their salaries are fine and they have they have the cadillac plan of health insurance and so they're all doing fine but their existential threat was bernie sanders that's their real existential threat and so for us to believe that they were gonna just let i mean they literally said it right in front of our face like we are not going to you know we will take this thing all the way to the convention and potentially there was all this talk and it was totally acceptable talk about oh or are they gonna you know band together and combine their votes and overthrow you know bernie sanders and then we can get him as long as we get to the second round because of course the democratic party set the rules so that super delegates get to come in in the second round and i swear that's why they they had so many people run that's the reason yeah because they just want to vote so that they couldn't get one person couldn't get uh you know a majority going in which would have would have you know kind of come around to hurt them until then i think that's why eventually obama had to intervene and and give the call and say hey guys you know like if you want to have a future in politics in this country and you don't want me on your [ __ ] or you you don't want to be on my [ __ ] list rather um you know you better get the [ __ ] out of this race and i think that's exactly what happened because it was beneficial for them uh at the beginning to have a crowded race right uh to make sure that nobody got the majority however if they spread it too thin uh then they were allowing bernie to kind of get the trump benefit right so when uh yeah we would drop out in 2016 you know um john kasich and cruz uh wouldn't get out of the race that's what allowed trump uh to kind of build momentum throughout the primary and i think that bernie was everything from the crowded field in that capacity also having that hugely crowded field benefited the establishment and that every time there was a debate it made it look like bernie was the odd man out it made it look like his policies were the unpopular position that one out of ten people supported rather than reality which is that over half of the population supports all of his policies but just that visual of having him as the single person on stage defending his policies from everyone around him you know it created this it created this illusion in a lot of voters mind that like bernie was repping these radical far right or far left ideas that weren't uh you know mainstream in the leftist uh you know ideology or the philosophy so having all of these basically attack dogs to take to try to take down bernie to try to straw man his positions and and as we saw with elizabeth warren ultimately just resort to baseless smears and complete [ __ ] yeah it created this real false um you know illusion on the stage i think that hurt bernie too and and i think you should have pushed back more i think he should have taken kind of the trump approach and been like i'm the only one up here that is acceptable essentially yeah yeah i think i think bernie his greatest weakness was that he has a genuine like soft spot for particularly joe biden i think yeah i know warren also absolutely absolutely really wants to be blind yeah yeah he wanted to be accepted and i think chris hedges made that point excellent has made that point uh multiple times where he says that you know bernie sanders lived in in perpetual fear of becoming ralph nader um you know he needed to be accepted he couldn't stand to have the whole party blame him for donald trump's election and that's why i think he's really you know he bought into it he kind of i think in a way he he believed the fact that he was in some way responsible for the election of donald trump he deeply internalized it and i think that really impacted the way that he ran his 2020 campaign and he was much less uh he was much more i i don't want to say um he he cowered too easily he didn't stand up for his ideas in the strong assertive way that i think that he was famous for doing on the senate floor being this like guy who's gonna really get in your face and passionately you know deliver uh these uh you know demands uh i think that in a he he was he bought into a lot of rhetoric that he shouldn't have and he you know it's kind of like the old trick of if you can get a politician to say something uh even if you know i'm not a crook right well bernie sanders said like oh i'm not a sexist like so many times of people are you a sexist like it just stuck you know this the bbs smears stuck um and i think that hurt him for sure yeah absolutely uh absolutely uh so just another heads up let everyone know still have an eye on the results we still have no results in yet so just a heads up no worries there as soon as we see results come in we will uh you know i'll jump in and we'll cut to the first you know initial results and everything so i apologize in advance if i cut you off it'll just be for the you know just to give the initial results because uh sometimes when the early vote comes in you get a you know you get a significant portion of the vote right out of the gate oh yeah oh you kind of get an idea of what i wonder how many people did mail in too it's going to be kind of weird because like to see how soon they're able to count those mail-in ballots versus the on-site location yeah and that's you know something that you you mentioned earlier you sort of touched on earlier that you know if we have some time here i'd like to discuss is uh is that the we have sort of recent breaking you know news breaking about the democratic party who is the same democratic party that has been you know pulling their hair out saying you know we have to resist donald trump because trump is a danger to democracy he's a threat to democracy he's he's threatening the mail-in vote they said he's going to delay the mail-in vote and he's going to you know he's the postmaster general what they were calling the friday night massacre uh you know where he did the shake up at the po you know at the post office they started removing counting you know or sorting machines and things of that nature and the democrats were all up in arms and you know saying okay we you know donald trump is a unique threat to democracy here but then that same democratic party it turns out uh you know in recent news that that is broken is that they have been fighting it uh to have the green party removed from the ballot in multiple states and in one state i believe it's pennsylvania off the top of my head right now i can check on that but in one state they've actually caused a delay in the mail-in vote now now all mail-in balloting is being held up because of this court ruling that they need to have and so everybody in the state is now you know the the mail-in vote has been delayed for everybody in pennsylvania i believe at this stage and we're we're eight weeks out from the from the election at this point and they're they're playing games in swing states to try to get uh the the green party removed which i would say what which i would argue is isn't an unbelievable montana and in wisconsin right and i think it's specifically in wisconsin because uh if i'm not mistaken angela walker uh you know a shout out to angela walker a great politician formerly ran as a socialist and is now uh the uh vp nominee for the howie hawkins uh presidential campaign and uh just a note to democrats that's what a real unit unity ticket looks like by the way democrats you know that's what a unity ticket looks like we could have had a turner you know that would have been a unity ticket oh yeah for sure so absolutely that would have been a that would have been a joe biden ticket i would have heavily gotten behind uh alas here we are um yeah i think that um essentially what occurred is that angela walker moved oh and she changed address and so they were trying to basically say that any of the signatures they got to get on the ballot uh before she moved or while it was listed as a different address were basically no good and this kind of echoes the trouble that gavin and i uh heard from lisa savage who's an independent green uh running for senate in maine who also had a terrible time getting the signatures required uh to actually get on the ballot as a regular green and which is why she was running independent uh just a bunch of barriers that are put in of candidates far less signatures to run as an independent than a green or as any third party which is hilarious and which shows you just how terrified the democrats and republicans are of another you know massive third party infrastructure and and that kind of goes to my point which is where people say that you know building up a third party is a waste of time and that it's not a good way to push the party left but i would just point to this and be like well this is pretty obvious evidence that the democrats are scared shitless of an actual left flank opposing them and presenting a real agenda for the people that's not their shitty corporate neoliberal agenda and you know when i saw this news uh you know i've been waffling on what to do in november part of me has wanted to write in bernie or you know jesse ventura or something but but now my mind is made up i'm voting for howie hawkins without a doubt here in uh are you both in kansas okay well yeah i'm in missouri yeah i agree i live in the pity missouri but i'm still registered to vote in kansas so uh yeah i'll be voting for howie who will be on the ballot there my mind is made up joe biden's not getting my vote after the democrats are pulling this uh shenanigans you know i'm someone who's a heavily in in favor of third parties and if i was ever gonna vote for the democrats it would only be because they uh you know we're actually courting my vote and this is just the opposite of that once again for the 100th time they're spitting in my face and the face of the left the people that are actually trying to do anything to uh push people to the left and you know it's just crazy to think that that's going to happen with the you know round rejectment of the the progressive base that we've seen and we'll continue to see from this party yeah i actually have a little bit of a different position on that uh i'm also voting in a different state than gavin so for people who aren't familiar with the geography in kansas city the kansas city is split up into two states and it's a lot of people do a lot of crossing back and forth between kansas city missouri and the missouri side but uh i do a hundred percent uh have so many uh criticisms of the joe biden campaign uh i just don't feel like there's a lot of opportunity this time around to get the green party to five percent so uh it you know and i do think that there are some marginal differences between you know obviously joe biden and donald trump so you know i'll likely vote for uh joe but i certainly share all of the concerns and frustrations i think that gavin just mentioned which come to a slightly different conclusion yeah and i i respect both of those positions honestly i think that when you what the people that bother me are the ones that are you know trying to to turn joe biden into something that he's not in in in propping him up and trying to pretend as if he's you know he's he's the best thing since sliced bread i i i respect a lot more someone that can be critical of joe biden and say listen it's still even with all that critique i still feel like cornell west says uh you know or noam chomsky says that yes joe biden is is is not you know cornell says i'm gonna vote for him but i'm not gonna endorse him you know well yeah go for him and not just pretending that he is good but what pisses me off is when people even pretend or suggest that the man can be moved left or that the democrats can be moved left at this point it's a fantasy and it's what they want you to believe to keep casting your vote for them and blindly in allegiance you know can thinking that the democrats are going to move left on anything from health care to foreign policy is an absolute farce if anything joe biden's to the right of the republicans and many instances especially foreign policy in my opinion now like i said biden is threatening to increase the military budget just like trump there's no difference and especially when it comes to foreign policy you know i think joe biden may well make some domestic situations better i don't think he'll be pouring gasoline on the fire the protests in the same way that that donald trump is i don't think he would be openly gutting the post office right before an election sure there's some stuff like that that are undeniable differences but when it comes to anything beyond those uh you know things those you know kind of rhetorical aesthetic things i think the joe biden is equally as much of a disaster going forward i think that on a foreign policy level he's going to continue our imperialism i think you uh want to stay in afghanistan for his entire presidency and woods you know and and and this whole thing in with the green party it's coming from the the democrats same with in new york andrew cuomo is basically stomping out the working families party making it so that they can't run candidates or be viable unless they reach a certain amount of signatures it's the democrats intentionally stomping out these left movements to make room for their uh you know corporate donors and their corporate agenda because ultimately that's what they're you know doing and if you're running as a democrat because that's the only way to electoral success i get that but at this point i think it's downright gross to even like identify as a democrat or even proudly say you're going to vote for them yeah yeah i agree i've i exited from the democratic party back i think it was 2017. i reentered shortly only because i was thinking about running for public office myself looked into that tried that out it was yeah that what level was that were you thinking city council or something no i was thinking about congress i was like i was going right for it like let's skip right past all the [ __ ] and i mean i have a whole platform that i wrote up and i wrote up my entire policy platform uh into this huge dragon i i did real research opposition i was thinking about running against ed markey um at one point um and i still you know i don't i don't rule that out because i i you know i don't know oh yeah we talked about it on our show i definitely think he was hell of a lot better of a candidate than joe kennedy who i have yeah but as far as you know is he you know a hero of mine or do i you know what am i going to model my politics off of ed markeys no i just thought that you know in that case gavin and i were both i you know thought it was pretty clear that he was like kennedy oh absolutely yeah no i was i was hard in the marquee camp as far as like like even though i can criticize them i still you know yeah in the in the research that i did on my own you know exactly but he's still just someone he's your typical sort of standard fare uh democrat he's not he's not the worst of the bunch he's just sort of nobody knew him and and i didn't even know he was my own senator until i wanted to ask you about i was listening to um gosh uh that one of the i was reading an intercept piece i believe and they were talking about i think it was ryan grimm's piece actually he was talking about how non-trivial number of people who ed markey had represented for decades before he became a senator had no idea who he was yeah yeah he's just sort of an unknown entity i only honestly i you know i've been learning about politics over the course of the last like five years probably i didn't know how the senate worked i thought we had one senator per state um until you know because all we all i heard about for you know years before was elizabeth warren uh and i think who did we have i forget scott brown or somebody like that um and so yeah it was just like he's he was he flew under the radar a lot by and large i also looked at running against steven lynch uh but then we had a good person that entered the race and so i backed off because muhammad dar entered the race but then he eventually months later had to drop out unfortunately but he was running a really solid campaign uh that i believe he would have ended up getting the justice democrats endorsement eventually it was a you know no corporate cash sort of uh campaign and he was he was running a really solid campaign a doctor here in the state and so i just backed out of that but i would i would honestly you know i was looking at whatever office i have a friend who who helped a local like a house representative win their election here and so tried to you know they tried to convince me of that but uh you know i think that for you know for as far as the joe biden uh is is sort of concerned and and we could talk about you know marky joe kennedy um for sure like we can get into that some and just like some of the the uh you know the i because i think that that was honestly like i'm i'm hoping that that would be the end of joe kennedy uh although i don't know he's in general yeah a republican ended up winning his date yeah this rejection of nepotism and of this you know uh family name in american politics yeah the dynasty the family dynasty and politics and i think that if anything 2016 served as a direct reputation of that you know obviously you had the clinton dynasty but you also had uh the pathetic performance from jeb bush you know uh who whoever was assumed would be the republican nominee everyone thought it was clinton in 2015 when that was the first rumblings began he was getting so much money so much press from the republican party uh it was going to be like reclaiming the uh you know uh conservative family values with jeb bush this like moderate reasonable republican of course all that went out the window when donald uh trump rolled down the escalator but um yeah yeah and joe kennedy uh who they've tried on multiple occasions to push ever i don't know if you remember a few years back he gave the response to the first state of the union address uh i believe yeah and he uh and they pushed him and you know he went on like you know he did the like whole fox media circuit where you know and he went on all of those like you know uh yeah pod save the p all that stuff and they were you know oh he's gonna be the the next guy the next guy and he's just like the josh hawley of the left you know he's like this like figure that's like so like just there's something wrong about him but they wanted to be the guy josh molly won his senatorial election yeah yeah better politician than joe kennedy i think not that i like josh holly or want to celebrate him he's a savvier politician and he more relatable but i just he gives me that kind of vibe when i look at him that's all i was saying yeah yeah and he didn't even oh you're good man yeah no no he's just he's just you know the the the same you know corporate neoliberal uh you know candidate wrapped in this new young uh package is all and he was literally running on his whole platform i swear to you i kid you not the i got mailers from him all the time and i would save them up to just stack them up to see how they changed and he ran on two things it was i'm young and i'm a kennedy and that was literally it and he would say like you know he had mailers that were like you know uh joe kennedy knows that a a a a a legacy needs to be earned and then on the other side of it it was literally like pictures of of jfk and like it was like her legacy yeah when jfk originally ran his his dad's ultimate like scheme to get him elected was basically just to say like a new generation's leader like this the most vague possible platitudes just assign him to the youth generation and call him a leader and that's enough to pacify that's the same strategy they're still using all these years later and it's only now finally been rejected by the american people where i mean of course in the past it was mostly because of money and clout that they were able to win in the first place but i mean this is just such a beautiful rejection because yeah kennedy i mean he wasn't even in favor of like legalized cannabis until very recently until he until it was becoming obvious that he was going to have to be in favor of the issue to you know be a viable democratic candidate in massachusetts but he was just outflanked on the left from ed markey in so many um so many ways i don't think he was expecting at all when he initially entered the ring you know you look at ed mark he's a septuagenarian senator that you know not even you uh knew it he seemed like an easy target of course this guy was voted for the iraq war we wouldn't assume that the left would rally behind him and you know just absolutely make him the celebrity you know his it was in a unique turn of turn of events that his association with aoc in the green new deal ended up yeah i think real quick and it proves that you know if you're a progressive candidate that like the youth the the youth generations the progressive movement will make you an absolute hero a celebrity all you have to do is be in favor of the right policies what we said about jessica rain you know that's ultimately why we're supporting her tonight is because she's in favor of the right policies that's all that matters and what mattered was that ed uh was that ed markey was in the right place at the right time absolutely and i think it really does it proves that you know folks are paying attention it's not about for the especially for the younger generation but for progressives that they're focused on the policy and not the personality and so you had someone that is you know identity wise you would think oh joe kennedy and the thing that really bugs me the most about joe kennedy is that he he uses the language of progressivism and he'll put it in his platform he will talk about medicare for all as if he will sign on as if he you know even though he signs on late to these things and he's always late to the party on these things he will sign on he will use the link raising her hand on the debate stage and being like i support you know medicare for all when she obviously doesn't yeah no it reminds me of the the the clip from uh what is it american gangster and it's like the is denzel you know uh uh you know denzel's in there and he's talking to uh uh you know another like lower drug dealer and he's talking about like hey you know this is this this is my brand it's blue magic you know if you know you you don't know me any better than you know these people that buy my product they don't know me any better than they know the ceo of of general mills or general electric uh but you know but it's the brand you know and this is my brand and he's telling them like listen you can't don't cut up my brand you know don't cut it up and call it blue magic if you're going to cut it up call it something else because you're going to ruin my brand right this is what they're doing they cut it up they cut up medicare for all and turn it into medicare for all who want it yeah i was about to remember judge he was doing the exact same shtick you know pretending to be a progressive it's one of my favorite jokes from the 2020 primary was like uh p buddhist is who like older people think a young person should be or is in reality he's like the exact like so you know weird and awkward to anyone who actually is of course yang got away from medicare for all and went from oh i support it went from oh yeah we need to get healthcare off the people's backs and okay well you got a little deeper into the race and now you support the spirit of medicare for all you know one of those kind of bait which uh techniques is also really common yeah no i love that meme that was like you know like people to judge is what boomers believe that millennials are and you know bernie is what millennials wish boomers were yeah exactly and that's what's so funny is so i feel like so many of the older generation they they believe in their hearts that like the young people that they they have a problem with the democrats and with nancy pelosi and joe biden because they're old and they're the old guard and they just like whoopi goldberg said she's like these people you know they've been fighting their whole lives for their it's not because these people are old you know we all got behind bernie sanders who's literally the was the oldest man running we got behind the oldest man running not because of who he was or his age but because of his policy his consistency like yeah we do actually value experience and wisdom and age and all that stuff like the youth generations have more value for consistency than any other generations yeah absolutely uh so uh just a heads up you know for anyone that's just joining us first off please hit the like button immediately subscribe to the channel if you haven't already please share out the you know share this far and wide social media whatever you use share this out let folks know uh so we can grow this platform and if you can afford to do it please uh support us on patreon at patreon.com radical democracy please support the show support what we're doing here we're trying to build a democratic workplace we believe that that is the way that we will overthrow capitalism is one worker cooperative at a time and so we are building an anti-capitalist uh you know entity here an organization and so we would like you to be a part of that please support us join our patreon community 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can see it uh you know the the the website there uh and it's also a link to the website in the in the description box below you can find them on twitter at vanguard underscore underscore blog so please check them out subscribe you know we want to we got to be building a a you know a unified left and the only way we do that is that we support each other so and we thank you so much of course too uh for having us on tonight we really are enjoying it and we hope to you know continue collaborating again in the future absolutely absolutely we will definitely be doing this again so uh yeah i've it's been a blast and listen i i i never stopped talking i never shut up so if you have to jump out at any point let me know if you all have to go no worries at all i'll try not to keep you here too late i'm hoping to to have you around for when some results start rolling in but if you have to take off yeah don't worry about it no offense taken cut me off if i'm you know i no no worries at all so yeah no problem awesome so and i and as just so that folks know i am constantly keeping an eye out when you see me looking a little bit away from the screen i just have one eye on these videos i still zero percent no no results in yet so the polls have closed um you know we're about 40 minutes out so this is really slow like i've watched a lot of primaries and this is a slower than normal um watching the results just one yeah so definitely uh you know uh we we're watching new york times the decision desk uh and even vox up there just in case so uh you know keeping an eye out on all the sort of best outlets for for getting these results as they come in and we are certainly looking forward to seeing how those results roll in for folks that are just joining us our main focus tonight is going is really on the senate primary race i don't know about y'all but i really haven't been paying much attention to the other races going on in uh i think there's like a gubernatorial race there and i i look i checked out the candidates and i just couldn't see any difference in who they were nothing stood out to me whatsoever yeah yeah so it just seemed like you know two of the same folks running against each other so nothing nothing interesting there so yeah absolutely so all right while we wait on that i think that you know something that something interesting that came up recently and i watched your video on it and really liked your take on it in fact if you watch my live stream from yesterday you'll see that i stole some of your uh you know opinion and i credited you yeah of course i credited you um because i you made a great point so i wanted to discuss this with you and that's the recent news it was nina turner was recently interviewed on tyt and she made she said in no uncertain terms that uh she is seriously considering a run for 2024 now she didn't specify which party she intends to run in i think that that's a very interesting facet of this and so i would like to get your thoughts on that you know how do you feel about nina turner and where would you like to see her running how would you like to see her run in 2024. yeah kevin you have a good take on this yeah and and it goes back to what we were talking about earlier too about how you know some candidates uh i think we're talking about charlemagne the god when you mention that he almost sometimes talks about you know racial issues as if uh you know medicare for all or these policies are not issues that encompass um you know the criminal justice conversation the racial justice conversation i think nina turner is the exact antithesis of that and that you know she forefronts this message she uh you know puts that economic populism at the forefront of her uh message and that makes her um you know message that much more absorbable to the general public and you know unfortunately we still don't live in a country that's totally on board with all of our ideas and i think she makes them so uniquely like palatable regardless of even what she's saying just the way she says it and i mean i'm not someone that likes to play up you know the performance side of politics i generally don't think the more performative type politicians are uh you know really desirable at all that's why i like bernie so much he was you know so to the point but nina turner is someone that can literally rile up you know any room and we're just so lucky to have her on our team you know when it comes to that because i think she can make such a great moving spirited case similar to dr cornell west and some other people in the movement but i think she's just uniquely suited uh my take on this which you i think alluded to earlier is that i think she should run as a democrat you know garner as much media coverage as she can try to get as much you know try to become the number one most googled candidate of every debate kind of like how tulsi was and then you know use that use that base she's um accumulated to take elsewhere if the democrats end up screwing her over i i mean screw her over yeah yeah exactly and uh i mean if it were a fair election in a totally fair way i don't necessarily think that would be the right strategy i mean it would have pissed me off if someone had done that had bernie won you know if if all of a sudden pete buddha judge decided to run as a third party that would have you know that would have been infuriating and i would have called him out for not respecting the process but i'm of the opinion that the democratic primary processes are not democratic processes so i think it's fair for her to do that she's been on the inside of the bernie campaign twice she saw it happen to him twice and i i think she's you know uniquely suited to the fact that she she could win a democratic primary i think it's possible but like we were also talking about uh you know would they even have really let bernie actually win the primary let's be honest here so if nina turner really is representing the same sort of you know threat to the very the existential kind of threat to the dnc and to what they have going there i think they'll absolutely you know try to tip the scales in the favor of either kamala harris or even uh arguably just his worst andrew cuomo um who's a lot of people have their eye on so yeah i think if if if they [ __ ] her over and if they are unfair to nina turner if she does decide to grace their primary with her presence then i absolutely think that it would be uh the perfect time the absolute best of times for her to break free declare herself a people as party candidate um and you know break the tradition of leftist candidates like bernie sanders of sheep herding their voters into the democratic party post being [ __ ] over by the democratic party yeah yeah i think that's a great take and honestly my initial initially uh i had just sort of taken the stance of honestly i'm super salty still about just these you know the coalescing of of those you know the bloody monday and what happened on super tuesday and my initial take was just essentially you know one i will support nina turner wherever she runs because whatever nina turner decides i'm behind her 100 i just think i don't idolize any politician or anything like that but i think that like you said she is uniquely poised for this moment i think that she had not only has the values and the credibility and the will to do this um but she has a a presence that allows her to navigate even spaces like cnn and msnbc where she's still invited onto these places but she's still a you know just a ruthless troop teller and she she she doesn't hold back and she manages to do that in a way that's really just it's i think she's just a unique politician and uniquely poised for this moment and somebody that really represents our values in our program and the strategy that we that we you know believe is a winning strategy and i i was salty enough to say honestly i just felt like she could run if she wanted to run in the democratic party and then if she just didn't win i would just i was like you know what she should just run as a people's party candidate and just accept the people's party nomination just because she didn't win but that was just me being salty and honestly not uh not approaching it with a with a measure you know in a measured reasonable way to be re to be to be honest and i think that what you said here is very reasonable in saying listen you you play their game i i do believe that she will get garner much more attention running in a democratic primary than she would ever get running his third party like you know especially i think we also have to see kind of where the the people's party is at that time because just we have to be realistic about building a people's party and i don't want to uh you know get our hopes up and and assume that we can run a a candidate 2024 maybe a girl when they came on our conversation talking about how they would love to run as a people's party candidate but obviously you have to weigh the movement as opposed to you know yeah yeah that was another i i agree that um you know it it's always you always do have to make that calculation but i also think it's true and that there's um something to be said for uh someone like bernie sanders or anina turner making that uh very courageous uh but necessary leap and saying like i am gonna separate myself off from these two these two parties i'm not gonna um waste my time if that's how they see it and i am gonna spearhead this new party because you know the movement for a people's party obviously has come a long way in the last four years i remember when it was a lot smaller of a movement than it is now and uh you know it's because of people like nina turner that made it into what it even is now them giving it their you know endorsement essentially their cred so i think that if someone i mean obviously it would have been great if someone like bernie sanders would have done it but i do think you know someone of the magnitude of nina turner could uh you know get it off the ground in a serious way obviously nina turner's not you know she's a superstar on the left i don't think you're average joe necessarily is familiar i wanted to ask you both about that do you think that there would be any uh efficacy to having nina turner run for perhaps like a office at the congressional level in the in the meantime even even if her goal is the presidency i mean we have four years we have the entire term of whoever the next president will be whether that's joe biden or um uh yeah or donald trump obviously it's so if she ran for like uh this person says for governor in 2022 or for a congressional seat i think she would really you know it would bolster her national platform uh or not national but just awareness that people have for you like you said on the left she's a superstar but in most conventional uh circles people aren't as familiar with her and i think that going for uh you know either a gubernatorial race or a uh you know a house seat or something like that in the meantime over the course of these next four years one will immediately dissuade the you know oh well she's only been a state senator like she's not qualified you know all of the other uh you know like low-key racist things that are gonna be uh lobbed at her to like challenge her credibility or her you know uh you know uh ability to govern and and lead effectively uh you know and just to get ahead of that uh not to indulge them but just to you know uh have an answer to it i think would perhaps be a reasonable um path i think that's a great point in in in i seriously right now i want to just like i don't want to hear anyone talking about nina turner not being qualified enough no no no totally no no no i know i know exactly what you were saying and like no totally and you know it's coming you know it's coming but i have no bandwidth for those people that are going to try that game because it's like look at donald trump right like that dude had zero experience whatsoever pretty well for this job it's not just going to be thrown at her from the right at all it's also going to be thrown in here from the democrats namely andrew cuomo who's going to say well you're just a state senator i've been handling the biggest state in the middle of the corona virus meanwhile meanwhile he's only in that position because of nepotism in the first place and because of his uh daddy so it's it's outrageous from that extent but yeah that is definitely going to be thrown anina turner and it's going to be uh you know i i don't think that i hope people don't care as much uh you know as the democrats and the establishment will try to make that it seem like she's an experience i i really don't think people are going to care as much you know she she has held elected office she's she was bernie's she had ran our revolution i mean she's she's definitely been a leader so i don't i don't see what the problem is but you know if she were to run for a governor or something it definitely i see the biggest um the biggest pro to that just being the name recognition boost similarly to you know just running the democratic primary it's gonna get people it's gonna you know you're gonna be on people's radar and especially with uh just how great of a speaker and how eloquent and passionate nina turner is you know if she can get on a debate stage with literally anyone she's going to make headlines she's going to come away the winner of that debate so i don't think she has that obama right we've talked about it a lot on our show one of the things that made obama you know uh transcend uh his policy which was neoliberal and you know become a hero to so many people was the fact that he was a tremendous orator i mean his voice you know transcended you believed him because the way that he said it to you you could look at him and and feel inspired by the words that were coming out of his mouth because he was a tremendous speaker however nina turner possesses that quality of being a tremendous speaker uh she has the eyes of an individual that you can trust um but she's walking the walk she believes this [ __ ] and she is not going to change her mind uh when goldman sachs and you know citigroup come knocking and uh should she get in office try and you know pick her cabinet she's gonna tell them to go [ __ ] themselves and she's gonna you know do what she uh wants to do i also don't think that she'll fall into the same trap as bernie did with the like she's not going to play the game of like you know criticizing her own supporters and turning around and like she will not play that game and she will not play the these establishment games that we know they play in order to you know denounce your supporters in wasting that time in in in in in depressing your own you know your own voters and your own supporters and so yeah and i think that another thing about obama is that not only was he a great order but he campaigned as a progressive he campaigned very progressively if you look back at his his campaign i mean it was it had all the innovation yeah absolutely yeah he runs he campaigns as a progressive but governs as a neoliberal as we saw and so i i agree and i think that's a great point yeah great point from zach that just yeah that nina turner actually believes in this stuff and she will not turn her back on us and i and i believe that i wholeheartedly believe that so uh yeah i think just another heads up to everyone still keeping an eye out uh on the results we are watching i saw a few folks asking about results and any updates we i have an eye on them uh you know i might just pull up the results and show and have them on screen soon just so that folks aren't you know getting uh nervous that they're missing anything here uh so i'll pull those up and have those on screen shortly but yeah we're keeping an eye out no no results still we're 56 minutes in and still no results a little unusual i would say but uh you know uh mail-in uh ballots i would imagine uh but still for such a small state that's i mean we had the results for massachusetts by now but yeah stuff was getting called almost you know you you sort of had a had an idea of where things were uh you know about an hour and i would say we kind of you know marky first kennedy started out up and then marky had closed the gap and was was was pushing it was sort of stretching the lead for the la for about you know about an hour into about two or three hours and it was just slowly stretching out the lead for marky after that but uh so yeah so we're keeping an eye out no results yet in the delaware senate primary for you know watching the race between jessica scherring and chris coons for anyone that's just joining us if you're just joining us please immediately hit the like button subscribe share this out always appreciate that and you can always support us at patreon.com links in 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just i i personally i think this is absolutely the path forward for the party and you know we touched on the fact that gavin and i we have a slightly different viewpoint on the current election you know whether or not to go green or whether or not to go democrat but what we both full-heartedly believe at the vanguard is the fact that both parties both major parties in this uh country are unsalvageable they're corrupt arms of the corporate class and the uh oligarchic aristocracy and we just uh we desperately need a uh a party that is going to represent the people um you know and and and i don't want to undermine or uh you know diminish the work that has been done by uh you know a lot of green activists when we interviewed jerry perez he was you know quick to mention this as well and say there's been so much hard work uh impassioned effort that's been given by people who really worked to bring the green party message and uh i think that that should never be you know glossed over and there was a lot of really hard-fought years uh however the green party just hasn't taken off and it hasn't really uh been the the movement that people were hoping for maybe you know 20 years ago in the 90s when it was getting off the ground and i think that a movement for the people's party is where the country is right now and it's uh gonna uh you know cross any party lines uh you know where the greens might be you know considered socialist or you know uh tree huggers or whatever the movement for a people's party doesn't have any of those labels any of those stereotypes where like a libertarian would be just as comfortable as somebody like you know me and gavin who you know would fall you know dramatically to the left of that um so yeah i absolutely definitely think that the movement for a people's party uh it's the future for um politics that for the grassroots in the in the co in this country awesome and so before you leave zach i just want to say thank you so much for for coming on and for speaking with us i really appreciate that um and i hope to have you on again you know yeah i we we were happy to come on and i'm super grateful that you you've reached out to us and uh we had a blast uh coming on and it was a great time yeah absolutely so uh yeah feel free to pop out any time that you have to totally understand okay so you know thank you so much for for being here this is zach polston everyone from the vanguard uh gavin are you gonna stick around for a little bit or do you have to take on a little bit longer yeah i'm trying to wait for some results yeah gavin i'll chat with you later see you guys all right awesome see you later thanks zach awesome all right so yeah and you finally have a real conversation [Music] yeah as zach alluded to it's not it's nothing against the green party and i feel like there's still a little bit of uh you know it's a little bit awkward between the greens and the mpp people because the greens rightly feel like they've been working their asses off for the last 20 years against all odds to build this thing and you know i like i said i'm voting green this time i support the greens i've been talking to lisa savage independent green running in maine i'm 100 down with the green party i think they are if there's one party that aligns with my personal politics um to almost to a t almost just the green party you know if their their platform this time as you alluded to with the amazing hawkins walker unity ticket is uh you know excuse my language but a wet dream for me it's a it's it's everything you would want to see it's like the bernie sanders platform on steroids it's insane so you can't no it's it's medicare for all green new deal 15 minimum wage legalize cannabis i mean housing is human right like just federal jobs guarantee just name anything that you think of that you care about that you like it's on that platform i promise you it's on that platform yeah and not even and not just greener deal medicare for all but it's actually the the fullest extent of those uh you know policies because jill stein and ajamu baraka actually ran on a green new deal in 2016 but it was not necessarily the green new deal that aoc and the likes of the squad have been repping it was a more socialist green new deal which really transformed us into a more like a national health system you know more nationalized industry and less capitalism essentially so they're running on an even less watered-down version of uh you know green new deal medicare for all these policies which have taken over the left thanks to bernie and the squad and everything so i think jill stein is the one who popularized cancellation for student loan debt when jill yeah 2016 and said it i thought it was a joke back then i was seriously like a centrist at that point i called myself things like like fiscally i'm fiscally conservative but socially liberal i would say things like that not having no clue what it meant you know until somebody actually started asking about policy and now it's pretty mainstream yeah and i i heard that cancellation cancel student loan debt and me sitting with a hundred thousand dollars of student loan debt that only keeps going up and up every year even though i pay pay down on it just goes up um and still i was sitting there saying oh come on you're what a joke you know that's a you know and then when you know when you actually look at it and and look at the details and the data it's like no wait we just literally gave away six trillion dollars in the that republican tax plan you know the tax cut to the rich we gave away six trillion dollars and then offset it with four and a half trillion dollars of spending cut so they talk about it being a one and a half trillion dollar giveaway to the wealthy but it was actually a six trillion dollar giveaway to the wealthy with four and a half trillion dollars more coming off the backs of the poorest most marginalized people in our society and so we clear we have the money the money's there we could have that that same money i mean we at the beginning of the pandemic they the fed just started uh injecting a trillion dollars per day into the markets and so if they can do that then they can certainly just you know snap their fingers uh you know rashida talii proposed minting a coin for a one and a half you know a one trillion dollar coin you meant two of them because the yeah they have you know control over the mint even though that government doesn't have control over the federal reserve and then you pay down the student loan debt with that and you just you just cancel the student loan debt that way and it's totally possible and not only that it would be a stimulating it would have a stimulating effect on the economy and it was jill stein that brought that forward you know through the green party and these are uh marianne williamson made this point in her speech at the people's convention she said she pointed out that a lot of the the gains that we've that we've attained in the last you know century have come you know in centuries have come not it's not from the major party necessarily but from you know third party the abolitionist party the women's party the socialist party for social security and so we really do i i i i think that you know what you're saying it holds a lot of value and and jill stein and the green party are definitely uh you know i could see i didn't realize that there was a rift there and it makes perfect sense that that that would cause a rift and and cause some some tension there from the green party you know seeing the you know the movie party and and ultimately and and i kind of understand that to be honest and i think that uh ultimately the people's party is going to have to you know do a serious effort um to you know alliance themselves into a coalition with the greens because obviously if we have an mpp and a green candidate that i mean it's going to be split to all hell in this yeah ultimately though uh you know why i do support mpp even more than the green party at this point is as zack said before he left you know the greens have unfortunately they haven't uh failed to achieve success on an electoral level not even close not even five percent not even once um and i mean obviously i'm not you know deluding myself that mpp necessarily has some inherent better chance but i did notice a massive amount of energy and enthusiasm uh based around mpp the likes of which i haven't seen for the greens with this convention in in my entire lifetime you know i voted for jill stein i'm probably i'm gonna vote for howie hawkins but i'm not seeing a huge enthusiasm around these candidates unfortunately i was urging the greens to uh you know pick to embrace with open arms jesse ventura because you know despite some of his uh you know past statements and weird stuff he would have at least given the party visibility he would have at very least got the party to five percent and and in my opinion you know jill stein this is something i said a few times but jill stein's uh you know her slogan was vote green like your life depends on it because in fact it does which is another thing by the way that's now been co-opted by the democrats they're now using that michelle obama said it dnc anyway that was jill stein slogan and something that i wholeheartedly agree with i think that the policies being pushed by the likes of the green party are literally existential policies you know climate change this kind of stuff isn't something that we can afford to wait around our entire lives and wait for the democratic party to catch up on and it's also for that reason that we have to unfortunately say goodbye to the green party if they're not going to deliver that because if our lives do depend on these policies then we can't depend on a vehicle that's failed to deliver them or even gain any traction over the last 20 years now obviously they're up against massive systemic disadvantages but if mpp even offers uh you know 10 chance of delivering on what the green party has failed uh by you know looking at their successes their failures and learning from that and moving forward with a serious populist energy then i think it's worth investing on and not just because of how bad the democrats are getting but yes because of how bad the republicans are getting it is not it isn't it is there is a lot of truth to the fact that the democrats or the republicans sorry are getting increasingly unacceptable increasingly fascistic and not that they always they've always been fascistic but they're getting increasingly blatantly fascist you know the way that trump has responded to the protest for is uh it's so insidious so disgusting that it does drive home the fact that this is no longer a viable governing body in my opinion the gop and it for anyone that agrees with me on that if you're a democrat or not if you think that the gop is not a viable governing body then do you want to risk every four to eight years giving the presidency to them to another uh donald trump or donald trump jr or tucker carlson or whatever scum they throw at us uh next election cycle do you want to take the chance of there being a 50 shot of that person uh you know running the country into the ground like donald trump has i don't think that's an acceptable uh option i don't think people should have to be forced to choose between literal fascism and the republicans and just some watered-down neo-liberals [ __ ] uh you know sure you can uh you know lesser of two evils whatever it's not acceptable to vote for evil and the republicans and democrats are increasingly embodying evil um there needs to be a third party for if no other reason than to block the republicans from getting into power because if if the republicans continue getting into power we aren't going to have i mean it is true that our our country is going down the [ __ ] toilet in my opinion and do you feel like if the with the movement for a people sorry with the people's party um once they're once they do form an official party do you feel that it would uh create a situation where it would peel off enough from the from the republican party as well to to ensure that that republicans or do you do believe sort of the what we know we're gonna hear and from the democratic party which is that oh you're gonna you're gonna take votes you're gonna pull votes from the left because these are these are democratic sort of uh you know policies that you're that you're espousing that's what they claim at least well i mean it's definitely going to be an interesting electoral calculus and it's really going to depend on who the democrats end up nominating you know if because if they end up nominating an andrew cuomo or another like joe biden like character uh i i think that ultimately it's just we're just talking about different demographics at that point i don't think that you know it's the same pool of people that are ultimately going to be interested in these policies which is why i think that the mpp has been so smart to not even necessarily nominally associate themselves with the quote-unquote left you know they really have defined themselves as a people's movement they've tried to appeal to all you know factions of the working class not just you know coastal liberals and stuff it's it's really been this unique effort to try to get people involved that are truly disaffected by both parties not just they don't just hate the republicans and want uh you know a non-republican entity in the in in control and i think that ultimately uh and obviously bernie tried to do this to uh not as successful an extent as he could as he as it would have been nice but you know reaching out to that percentage of the country which doesn't vote there's more non-voters in this country than there are democrats and uh you know if we can introduce some policies like ranked choice voting if we could get something like that or an expanded democracy in any form obviously voting online is a sounds like a fantasy but anything like that um if we can open up the process in a serious way i think that there's so much untapped potential for non-voters because i mean ultimately non-voters are people that are have looked at the system have decided it's not worth participating in have decided they don't feel represented by either the two parties or their candidates and they don't think it's you know worth their time if a party can really court that demographic i think that'll be really smart if they could successfully pull that off yeah and i think that that's all great points uh all great points and i also think that what you said about ranked choice voting there i think that that's another front that i hope to see the movement for our people's party fighting on is to try to expand democracy in that way we here in massachusetts we're lucky enough that it's a ballot question coming up uh in this election so we get to vote for rank choice voting uh statewide ranked choice voting so if you're here in massachusetts i saw a few people in the comments saying they are they're they're in massachusetts i'm here in massachusetts as well please vote yes on question two so that we can expand our democracy get ranchos voting and i do think i would like to see the movement for a people's party put some energy and some sweat equity as nina turner would say behind uh you know trying to expand democracy because i think that that's going to be the sort of the some of the impediments to to the mpp and of course there's always the five percent threshold is a massive one that we have to clear um but i do think that it is a unique opportunity like you said uh where the green party has fought a damn good fight you know over the over the decades and they they they've won in some local places and they've had some local wins but nationally uh they just haven't been able to garner enough uh you know as jerry perez was saying in your interview with him they haven't built up the infrastructure nationally in order to do so and i think that it's something that the movement for our people's party may be uniquely poised to do and i think that honestly like you said it's kind of just like people have a certain association when they associate with the green party we mentioned that earlier sort of zach also mentioned the environmentalist thing yeah tree hugger sort of mentality that gets associated with it and so i do i think that it's a unique um opportunity and and i really do and and again like i'm not i'm not a crazy person who's in my own world over here thinking that the mpp is going to exceed succeed in 2024 without something serious happening and and what i think is that thing that needs to happen is getting on the debate stage i'm in no illusion that you know whatever third party will fail miserably unless they get on the debate stage which is why i was pushing and so infuriated that the green party didn't accept uh ventura's interest because he could have gotten on the debate stage and that alone would have uh provided such a massive you know shift in the dynamics if nina turner can get on the debate stage as a people's party candidate then i don't think that any rules that are pre-existing apply anymore because that's never happened before there's never been a serious third party on the debate stage the likes of nina turner the likes of someone who's by far in my opinion gonna be better than whoever the [ __ ] the democrats and republicans do end up putting up there uh that's gonna be a serious game changer and yeah like i said i'm under no illusions that this party has a a chance of winning in 2024 unless that were to happen but if that could happen then we have a different game on our hands yeah i i totally agree and i think that as far as the debate stage is concerned i also think that something that could happen is if nina turner does end up running in the democratic primary i think that she should do what donald trump did when they asked donald trump during the the 2016 primary they said you know do you agree to support the democratic you know the republican nominee no matter who it is if you lose and he was like nope not if you don't give me a fair shot i'm not you know and i think that she should do the exact same thing and show that she's willing to hold out and say no listen and threaten them with that yeah i think that they respond to that and they they they are afraid of a third-party challenge that that that takes them out of power because they want to maintain power they don't want to do anything with the power but they just want to have it and so i i do believe that if she threatens that power if she says listen if you if you you know [ __ ] around and find out essentially like you know like it's like if you mess around nice yes it's like you will you will see what happens if you mess around uh i will you know i will accept the third party nominee i will accept the people's party nomination if the democratic party so i hope she does that if she manages to get on those stages in the democratic primary you know to to give one to just give lend credence to the to the people's party i'll also be supportive if she chooses to run as a people's party candidate from the outset like i'll be supportive i'm in the same boat as you yeah i'm not naive i do not believe that this is you're gonna go from you know a party not existing to get you know running in succeeding in a presidential election within four years i think that that is that is a massive hurdle to to overcome but i do think that there is a chance to at least build enough power so that in 2028 maybe yeah you are on those debate stages we all we do have we do cross that five percent threshold because it takes time to build these things up and i feel like every time they always tell us like you know this you can't do with this election you got you got to yes this election is the most dangerous election in our in our lifetimes and it's always the most dangerous election it's always existential always for the democratic party even though they don't treat it like it's existential after they get in power and so i i would love to see a a you know nina turner up on those debate stages in any capacity uh particularly if she could if she could be there as a people's party candidate i i i agree that that would be because it's unprecedented it's like all bets are off at that point and anything could happen and so i it would be a a sight to a sight to see i think so and i'm also i i'm in the same boat as well i'll just say for anyone asking it's um you know i'm voting for howie hawkins and angela walker in this upcoming election i live in massachusetts it's a safe blue state i suppose that if i were in a swing state i might consider otherwise like i might because i but i don't know but the version of me right now as i'm thinking like no even this version of me if i lived in a swing state right now as i think about it no i would be voting for i'm on the same page uh yeah for howie hawkins and angela walker because even if they can't hit the five percent threshold maybe they get two point two percent maybe they get three four percent maybe they get more than usual and it's enough to inspire people that oh maybe you know if they get can get four percent then maybe you can convince people like because i think in the last election um uh uh jill stein only got like one or two percent yeah it was pretty pathetic unfortunately but i still blamed her of course yeah of course but no matter what you know even if it's the one like uh you know silver lining to the the destruction of democracy you know taking place right now from the democratic party trying to push out the green party out of these elections and off the ballot i think the one silver lining to that dark cloud there is that if they you know because in wisconsin just to be clear they've successfully removed them from the ballot at this point they are now removed from the ballot in wisconsin and i think that it it at least it it they cannot blame the green party when they lose if if they lose those states they will not be able to blame them and i look forward to at least being able to say well you can't blame the greens now so what's the excuse exactly you know if they don't win this so and i think that is still sadly a big if if joe biden wins this so yeah let me hey man i'll be right back one sec okay okay all right and i think okay nice oh oh shoot not good okay all right so we got some results and uh let's bring you these results here all right so gavin will be back in a second i will pull up results so we do have some results in from uh election desk has some results here so as you can see unfortunately uh we already have about sixty three sixty 000 votes in right now and as you can see on the screen here chris coons is currently winning 78 of the vote almost 79 of the vote to 21 that is a significant portion of the vote that is probably the early vote that just came in and uh unfortunately that does uh that does it looks it doesn't look great for uh for jessica scaring at this point unfortunately uh so so gavin um while you while you stepped away we got some results in the first results started to to come in unfortunately as you can probably see up on the screen there uh chris coons with about 64 000 votes in so far uh chris coons is winning almost 80 20 right now 80 of the vote to 20 of the vote so it does it it's not looking great for jessica scaring unfortunately right out of the gate uh this could be the early vote there could be some demographic you know differences in early voting if it's like the most wealthy area so let me see if there okay so i think they're actually election desk may have already called this election yeah yeah let me see okay yeah it's already yep all right so i'll pull it up for folks so that they can see that it's been called here they've already bumped it off of this page so i'll just gotta pull up another here you go so as you can see here this is now they're calling it uh for chris coons right out of the gate he you know he bounced out with 80 of the vote here so this is this is the primary election we were focused on uh this is chris coons versus jessica's grain of course the the vote totals you know the votes could the the percentages can shift at this point but it looks like it's a significant enough lead right out of the gate and a significant enough portion of the vote that they're able to call it decision desk now you know has been wrong once in recent history of course with the corey bush race they did get it wrong and then it had to be changed the next day it does not look like that will be the case for uh jessica scherring unfortunately tonight this is a this is a very significant lead that chris coons has taken very early on so yeah unfortunately it looks like we won't be getting the good news that we hope for from this uh do you have any thoughts immediately gavin anything yeah my one thought would just be that um yeah coons hasn't necessarily been the highest profile senator for your average person your average voter your average democrat probably just associates him with you know the party they don't necessarily view him as a as a threat to any any sense they probably just kind of think he's your average democrat um there also hasn't really been any like scandals associated with him recently you know we saw in in new york of course elliot ingle was under fire because he i was at a blm march where he basically said like i'm only here because of my primary certain things like this that uh tend to really you know at the last minute really helped jamal bowman uh coons has has been pretty low profile you know he's pretty milk toast and hasn't really done anything and that i've that i'm aware of at least to offend his constituency and uh you know double that with the lack of name recognition um that skerrain of course has to battle and the lack of establishment support and fundraising she has to battle um of course it's not a necessarily the most surprising result but still unfortunate you know i i thought she was a great candidate i really enjoyed interviewing her when zach and i did so and i hope she runs again if not for the senate for house i think she's a a great candidate a unique uh communicator and a someone that has a future in the left so you know i'm not too shocked but it does suck yeah yeah i i agree i think that it's that she does have a i hope that this does not discourage her in any way what she was facing was a you know an uphill battle she fought a good fight she ran a good race for what she was given it's it's very you know we're under you know very unique circumstances here with the pandemic i think that it it it favors incumbency very heavily when you have a an incumbent that just sort of has to do nothing and people will just check that box i'm a i'm a voter that i used to do that i used to just you know vote for whoever had that that incumbent tag next to their name on the on the ballot you know something i wish they would remove from ballots you know to even say who the incumbent is i wish that they would take that away uh but i i you know i used to do it so i know that folks do that when you don't hear anything when there's no big controversy unfortunately and we're in the middle of a pandemic where the the door knocking just cannot happen the way that it that it that it usually would and i think that's where the power for the grassroots movements are and so i just think that this this pandemic is uniquely you know suited for yeah delaware is also a pretty small state i don't really think there's a big like city in delaware so she didn't really have as much of a you know activist left base to support her and kind of you know fundraise for her obviously corey bush was in st louis and she had already um you know established herself as an activist in the community of course some of the other victories we saw in new york and other places in you know more urban centers with a lot of activist energy uh that definitely helps as well as the protest energy um skarin of course didn't really have that going for her in this race so yeah it definitely was an uphill battle yeah absolutely so i think that i hope that this does not discourage her in any way from running again i think that it will be different circumstances next time around if she runs again uh this would be i think that their last uh senate election was in uh was two years ago carrie harris facing off against tom carper so uh yeah as brian do says here below uh we have uh shout out to brian du one of our patreon supporters says for context delaware senate 2018 primary kerry evelyn harris amazing candidate for a centrist carper carper had 56 000 votes 65 and harris had 29 000 votes 35 so you know two years ago kerry harris ran also a good campaign against tom carper similar situation where tom copper sort of doesn't really rile you know or you know cause any sort of stir or anything like that and uh and there's this there's this idea in delaware it's called like i forget what that what they call it but it's this idea that you don't challenge incumbency it's just like a the delaware way they call it so there's even a name for it called the delaware way and uh they and they don't they so that's that's typical sort of in delaware to not challenge the incumbent because there was some weird race that happened where uh you know some something happened and the republican ended up getting challenged and whoever beat the republican the primary ended up losing in the uh general and so they try to use that to say that you shouldn't challenge incumbency yeah so i think that what jessica scherringer did was courageous you know already and and and and so you know 20 this time around i think that she could she could do she would fare far better when she can get some grassroot support people knocking on doors and i just think that a lot of folks sort of have tuned out in a way from from their usual activism because you know you're just stuck inside and so they're you don't feel an outlet you don't feel like there's any outlets i know that i have to admit i've i've done less sort of volunteer work than i than i would do normally which is odd um just because i i enjoy the door knocking and the getting out there and talking to people and i think that that is sort of where the power lies for grassroots movement so not not as you said not surprised by the result of it but disappointed for sure wish that she uh could have just honestly just had a better sewing so that she it wouldn't discourage her in any way from from running again yeah i hope she's not taking the news uh too hard you know i always think about the candidates and moments like these and i hope that they're they're doing well and know that uh their their supporters are they're we're not disappointed in them in any way you know it's not like they let us down in any sort in any sense this was a as you said absolutely a courageous thing to do i wasn't even aware of the the delaware way [ __ ] but uh you know that makes it even more courageous the fact that she uh you know stuck it to that state philosophy that is you know not really meaningful obviously incumbents joe biden was in the senate for like 30 years and he definitely was not the most productive democratic senator he was working with segregationists and stuff so that's proof that you know primaries are very important and the work that people like jessica scaring are doing is so important because even if they don't win it still you know pressures their um opponent to the left a little bit and makes them think twice about engaging in some of the gross corruption that they might have not thought twice about you know four years ago prior to a challenge yeah absolutely and i saw that like chris coons shifted like at least one little like half inch to the left because of the jessica scherring primary where at least you know adopted the idea of like getting rid of the filibuster because that's like a big thing where he always wants the filibuster because of his bipartisanship you know bsd you know he fights for the filibuster whenever the democrats are in power they want the they want the you know philadelphia there so that the republicans can oppose them effectively and then when the republicans come in they tear all that stuff up destroy it you know democracy everybody know how and then just tear through you know put however many federal judges on so yeah this is unfortunate but i i you know i i do hope that she runs again and i think that she ran a good campaign um you know you've you've been with us now for a while uh gavin and we so greatly appreciate all it was so fun yeah thank you so much for doing this with us and for and for sticking around this long and waiting for these you know results to come in uh i i you know again i hope that we can continue to do this and have some more crossover and have you back on the show again uh you know did you do we have any comments or questions i'm going to do did you want to stick around for a few more minutes just to maybe take a couple questions from the audience and thanks so much for uh you know inviting zach and i on tonight we had a we had a great time we've never actually done a live stream on youtube before so this was a bit of a first for us and we thought it was you know a great a great time you're a a great conversationalist we really enjoyed your perspective on everything and can't wait to continue engaging so yeah that's awesome yeah everything you said awesome that's awesome so thank you so much i really appreciate that and this is like you know we're all learning we're you know we're we're we're new independent media left media and we're we're building this sort of airplane mid flight as they say or whatever and so like you know it's i i really do appreciate y'all taking the time to come on and just give us all of your great you have really great insight and and i really appreciate and respect uh and value your opinions there and just really appreciate you coming on and sharing that with with with me and the audience here and the community so thank you so much for doing that um you want to get to tammy if you want to grab a couple comments um we will uh take a few comments steve says sadly jessica scherran is virtually invisible online except in interviews it seems like she probably planned for a rigorous ground game and kovitz screwed her up uh she only has 73 followers on youtube yeah yeah yeah it's a tough thing john uh says how is this correct when she has 20 000 uh or plus followers on twitter uh yeah delaware unfortunately yeah exactly steve alvarez says chris coons has 167 000 followers on twitter normally younger primary candidates challenging older incumbents have larger followings on twitter and social media so yeah usually um you know the younger folks do um uh you know have larger following i think that it was really i just think it's really tough when you have 323 000 versus 6 million dollars to have the kind of infrastructure and to be able to effectively run with all the other new challenges that come along with running under you know covid uh you know during covet i think that that's a really really tough uh tough hurdle to clear so we have to be cognizant of that and be appreciative of these folks that stick their necks out trying to fight for working-class people and just show them our support and recognize the challenge that they face so steve says i worried that her reach wasn't broad enough not that she wasn't trying just that for whatever reason it wasn't tracking uh and for a senate race even a small one she'd have to be running more like shahid batar or beto a national style race that she could get massive turnouts and smaller dollar donations and volunteers for calling i agree with that i totally agree with that that i didn't i didn't see her enough based on you know just what you expect from a candidate that has her platform i i would i was i don't think she got a justice democrats endorsement i wish that justice democrats would have been able to do that i know that they are running on a limited infrastructure as well and they sort of drew pull back a little bit so i wish that she could have gotten bigger endorsements aoc bernie sanders really you know they they should have put their thumb on look at how nancy pelosi they talk about like not you know this is the the bs that happens with the democrats uh is that they they they claim oh no you can't go and endorse one candidate or another when there's an incumbent running you know against challenger but then nancy pelosi just comes in and and puts her thumb on scale and i wish that when she did that that they would have turned around and done the same for a candidate that needs it like i remember when aoc was running and nobody knew who she was and it's like imagine and you know she got the endorsement like do like the dual endorsement from uh rokhana who had first endorsed joe crowley but then he came back and he then duel endorsed and endorsed aoc in that primary but it was like uh you know every little you know bit of uh you know exposure matters when you're when you're a primary challenger running you know against a powerful incumbent and so i just uh you know that was you know something that i wish that i had seen was those those endorsements and uh yeah any thoughts there yeah i just totally second that it's a bummer when you know that the cavalry doesn't really show up for these candidates despite them you know putting themselves out there and supporting these these issues anyway it's kind of you know it's like uh bernie you know called for a political revolution and it's people like jessica rain that are trying to make that happen but then if he doesn't if he doesn't help her out then it's like it doesn't really encourage people to want to run and put themselves out there and challenge the establishment so obviously it's not bernie's fault that she won but it is a little discouraging and disappointing and i imagine it especially for her yeah he uses the language of like we're facing existential threats but he doesn't run and campaign like he means that because if he does it's like you got to criticize joe biden you can't do the joe biden's my friend thing you got to be critical of these people you can't just like if you really believe it like what he says and i do believe that he believes that in his heart of hearts and so it's just like why why don't you act like like you do and act like this is this situation as is existential as you say it is and and stick your neck out there especially when he's like you know he doesn't have to worry about re-election you know ernie's getting re-elected like there's no doubt about that um uh steve just mentioned shahid batar um i was wondering actually one thing i wanted to ask you was are there any races for the general election that you sort of have your eyes set on or are focused on is there anything that stands out to you for the general election you mean like as far as elections it'll be in like november like uh yeah yeah yeah there are a few the one that i've been most into lately and really tracking is the main senate race to replace susan collins um and most people probably are familiar with sarah gideon who's the establishment democrat running in that race most people think she's the opposition to susan collins but what a lot of people don't know is that maine is actually the only state in the entire nation to have ranked choice voting actually implemented so um sergei people don't have to vote for sergey in the establishment democrat if they want to get rid of susan collins they can vote for lisa savage who's the independent maine or the independent green candidate running in maine lisa savage is absolutely incredible she has one of the best platforms i've ever seen like we were talking about she supports all the right issues and compared to her corporate counterparts and sarah gideon and susan collins the difference could not be more overstated she's a normal person she's a grandmother a retired teacher she's in my opinion one of the best you know candidates running on any level but the uh the fact that her race actually is proving the viability of ranked choice voting you know people um can vote for her in maine without having to fear of spoiling the election or handing it to susan collins of re-election because they can rank um sarah gideon as their number two choice and completely avoid having to even think about such a scenario you know people can vote their conscience without having to worry about these um undemocratic notions of spoiling the vote and all this ridiculousness so that's that's the one race i've been you know really looking at also speaking of independence um i don't know if you've heard of her but christine olivo is running in florida's 24th district against an established democrat she's running as an independent and is actually championing medicare for all in addition to universal basic income uh i'm gonna be straight with you she's a pretty unknown candidate she probably doesn't have much of a chance of beating that incumbent but in my opinion she's running one of the best most enthusiastic energetic youthful campaigns in this country and and she interestingly enough decided that it was not worth it to uh primary the incumbent she wanted to run as an independent that way she could stay in until november uh and then also in california because they have the the runoff voting where it can be two democrats um there's a couple races there to look out for as well um david kim and i believe the 26th district i want to say is a is a great candidate who's running against um an established democrat in los angeles county who's just a complete corporate shill and uh david kim is a great politician once again one of the most youthful energetic campaigns and platforms i've seen he's also a universal basic income advocate and also in california in the neighboring district of the san fran san fernando area is angelica duenas who's running an amazing candidate endorsed by our revolution la and some other great organizations she's uh an amazing candidate who's running against their names escape me but another um completely unmemorable corporate democrat shill so yeah angelica doing us david kim christine olivia olivo and lisa savage are the four that i really really like right now that's awesome in in in my car you you recently interviewed christina levo right on yes on your show all right awesome so please if you if you'd like to hear from christina livo directly please check out that interview on at the vanguard if you haven't already for everyone watching please uh do me a favor and head over to the vanguard on youtube links in the description box below and also at the vanguard blog check out their blog and please support support uh fellow left independent media and so check out their interview with with christina libo i i've watched a ton of interviews that that y'all have done and i really enjoy them um i i don't have the courage yet to even ask like folks to like to come on the show or do anything like that so it's really cool that you're doing that without like having this whole like background and you know journalism school and nothing like that really doing that with just like you know this is what independent media is and it's really awesome to see what i've noticed is that especially because of the pandemic most of these candidates they they're actually you know it's not it's never an issue because they're as we've talked about with the scaring race you know they're looking for any way possible to get their message out there to to fundraise because they're at such an uh insurmountable disadvantage to these corporate funded establishment candidates that you know they'll go on my random ass podcast because it means that someone might donate to them so uh you know it's not it's as simple as that and i've been more zach and i've been more than happy to provide these great candidates a platform uh even if just you know 50 or 100 people watch a video it's still 50 or 100 people that now have heard those that message that might donate and that's what it's ultimately about for us in the vanguard what we've been doing lately is just in any way we can trying to amplify the message of these amazing progressive candidates yeah and i think that's it's really important work that you're doing over there at the vanguard on seriously it's like it's the kind of thing that i you know i'm i'm watching you guys and i'm in and i i keep on having to constantly remind myself like don't get too caught up in the you know the mainstream stories and get in and lose too much focus in there and try to actually do what i you know because i don't yet really recognize myself as like media in that way or yet and so but it's i want to sort of like what you're doing be the media that i wish i saw you know that i wish i had and and try to highlight these folks and and highlight the stories and the you know the the elections and the different stories it doesn't always have to be just electoral it can be other you know other you know facets of activism and try to highlight those things and highlight those those progressives and folks that don't get the attack the attention normally the stories that the mainstream media sort of ignores you can see it happening with like the julian assange edward snowden stuff and you know anything that the mainstream sort of is is ignoring sometimes it's i i have to always keep constantly reminding myself not to get caught up in that and to and to keep the focus uh on these sort of lesser-seen lesser-known candidates so that they they can get the the um attention that they deserve and that their that their races deserve until we can grow our platforms to be a real platform that can benefit them immensely where it's like you know when you have you know and you'll i really do believe that we'll be seeing the vanguard five you know ten years from now uh you know building up a massive following so i think that you'll have a real chance to appreciate that that's the same for your show i i think whenever you do decide to start interviewing people or if you decide to make that jump i think people love it man i mean i mean i i'm a i'm someone who always is considered myself socially awkward introverted you seem like you'll you'd be way uh you know more suited for this kind of thing like a very dynamic and extroverted kind of guy so i think i don't know what's holding you back at all i appreciate that thank you so much it's honestly just nerves to be honest i was nervous even before i did this this show here i was just like everything's gotta be right i feel you i'm the same way yeah once the stream gets going it all just like melts away yeah yeah i'm super nervous so anybody watching and thinking like oh you know i you know i might i'd like to do something but um trust me we're we're all nervous about this don't feel bad about that at all you know do whatever you have to do uh whatever makes you feel good and it makes you feel like you're you're fighting on the right side of history i i support it so yeah that's um and i hadn't heard about lisa savage or david kim so i'm going to check them out and yeah you said angelica what's the last name dwayne yes d-u-e okay awesome so we'll yeah definitely check them out uh and try to keep an eye out i saw somebody mentioned paula jean swearingen in the comments yeah that's one that i'm definitely i forgot about her yeah amanda rolison says paula jean swearingen in west virginia amanda rosen i agree 100 uh and also i love uh les mis two four six so one said huh oh les mis okay i'm so stupid oh my gosh okay i love les mis um thank you tammy for the correction uh paula gene running for senate in west virginia phone bank for her yeah i i've done phone banking for polisseni in her last uh election when she ran against joe manchin i think paula jean is a a an amazing candidate i think that she was featured in that in that documentary uh knocked down the house alongside aoc and amy valencia and corey bush and amy valayla was another amazing person that i just wish uh she was amazing um and so yes i'm definitely looking out for paula jean swearinger and that is a that is a very important race i think that paula jean has a rail chance uh to ended to win as well there's also uh um in west virginia someone named hillary turner who's running for congress she's really cool we've had her on the podcast also in texas there's um mike siegel and adrian bell both the first one of adrian i saw your interview with adrian bell and i was like oh these guys are dangerous um uh jank yuger uh nicknamed her liberty bell oh that's rough yeah and he so i found out about her i was you know i was i joined the justice democrats when they started justice democrats and was donating sorry so i you know she was endorsed by the justice democrats in the first race and i mean i was endorsed by them this time around i i thought that it wasn't yeah i think they they really scaled back their their effort because they they felt like they spread themselves too thin in in 2018 and so they were trying a new strategy of sort of honing in on specific elections and they had a different parameter for which elections they were going to be focused in on it's like because they they looked at what which races they won and they sort of used that to inform which races they were going to support this time around yeah they they sort of scale back their operations in a way um even though they they grew and they gained more money they honed in on on specific elections and i i i don't know if i totally agree with the strategy i wish they would have enforced more at least gave their endorsements yeah that are running on the same platform right like adrian or jessica because even if they don't give them money even having that endorsement is meaningful absolutely i mean i pay i sadly you know shame on me but i do pay attention more when i see folks get all sorts of endorsements or like um you know dsa or sunrise movement i definitely pay attention to like those groups endorsing folks for sure so that's how i found out about mike siegel i mentioned him too in texas he was endorsed by bernie sanders i never heard of the guy until uh bernie released his endorsement list but then as soon as i checked out mike i you know quickly realized he was by far the best candidate in that congressional district so yeah he's another uh one to check out he made it through his primary and is repping some real uh you know a great platform in texas that's awesome yeah so i i think that there are some you know i'm i'm also interested in the shahid bhutan race i think that i would love to see nancy pelosi oh my god be removed from power but i know that's another uphill battle he's had to deal with his his own set of like yep you know unfortunate yeah it's really it's just these messy allegations i came up with the video in support of shahid bhutar i will say you know i i i think that the issues that were stated i think by and large were you know particularly the stuff from the campaign staff first was just what you're sort of it's what i believe to be typical and what's sort of expected in a in a when you're running a massive campaign and i think that bhutara was certainly concerned in in in had sincere and genuine concern for those issues and did his his honest best to try to uh you know avoid anything like that and i think that was really unfortunate that before going to him they went to the you know to the media immediately yeah and i also there's a clip from michael brooks um who used to do the you know michael brook show before he passed away unfortunately and he talks about the difference between program and rhetoric and i just think and he talks in there about how if you're if you're in some small like niche local group that the rules of etiquette can be much tighter you know the smaller the group the tighter the rules of etiquette like you can you have very tight rules of etiquette in like personal relationships you can set boundaries and it can be really really particular but the bigger the the the the movement that you're a part of the looser those the those the the rules of etiquette have to be in order for us to be able to build effective movements that aren't you know unwelcoming and and just distractions and so we really have to focus on the program and versus their rhetoric necessarily and and i think that you know some what happened here with which bhutan was mostly just folks feeling sort of personally offended by certain behaviors maybe and putting that ahead of the actual movement to fight for working-class people and recognize that like you know nancy pelosi is a is a is a is a serious threat to you know masses of people and you know she think against predicate for all and and just that alone is like there are 50 nearly 50 000 americans that die every year from a lack of health insurance and 500 000 more that go bankrupt that is substantive you know material difference in impact of having her removed from power and so i think that i'm you know that should be where the focus is on the left and unfortunately i just i i it's unfortunate what happened yeah it's truly unfortunate obviously of course alex morse too who he touched on his you know the allegations against him or even even more cooked up even worse [ __ ] i think that the shaheed accusations the the kindest interpretation you can give it is that like you said there were some genuinely um hurt or offended staffers that felt like they you know were on the receiving end of bhutar's anger which maybe was true but the morse allegations the the allegation was literally just that he was a gay man having intercourse sexual intercourse with other gay men like that was as far as it went uh so that was even more unfortunate in my opinion and and again it's just like it's one of these things too where it's like it uh you know the establishment is gonna come for you if you decide to challenge them and they will um you know release the most damning possible cooked up thing they possibly can and uh yeah and i think that if we want to build a strong left and we as the the the the you know the grass roots of the left we have to be the ones that have this responsibility to not allow things like this to distract us from the goals that we have because this is all they have to do if all they ever have to do is just you know the thing is if you're running on the left odds are you're an imperfect person you know you need imperfect people because those are the people that have faced challenges in life they faced adversity i want someone that's faced diversity there was michaela wilkes was somebody who had been arrested she was you know went to jail she went to juvenile you know like i i want somebody that's been closed you know close to the the pain and and understands the struggle of working-class people and so if we if that's what we want then and we want that class representation then we need to recognize that that means that inherently you know just those people are going to be flawed individuals and we have to recognize that and also just recognize that you know people are human and there's going to be sort of the human issues that happen microaggressions things like that and we can't let that deter us from the the movement and the larger goals and and allow that to to deter the movement because otherwise then we're just like you know bickering and infighting instead of actually achieving real gains for for working-class people that's 100 true and i think you put it really well earlier when you said to just like it can't be understated what nancy pelosi has presided over been responsible for the kind of policy which she honestly represents in washington and i mean we just need to re we'd redefine what we consider to be criminal behavior right i mean jeff lorraine who uh of course unfortunately came up short tonight something that she said that i really liked was just that we need to you know less things need to be considered crimes in this country obviously when it comes to the poor and working class you know everything from uh drug use to you know minor um tax evasion it can throw it can end you up in jail but if you're nancy pelosi and you're committing all kinds of crazy corruption and you know taking bribes essentially all that's totally acceptable and none of it would ever be considered criminal let alone punished as criminal so um when it comes to people assessing the the validity of the shaheed bhutar allegations which um never really even strayed into the criminal to be honest it's not like anyone accused him of anything like sexual assault or anything of that nature so um yeah even if the allegations against bhutan are accurate if we redefine uh criminality then i think nancy pelosi is 10 times the criminal absolutely absolutely just great points i i and and i saw in your interview with jessica raine where she said that and that that resonated with me for sure where it's like i i mean just on the you know with drug addiction in portugal they had one of the highest overdose rates in all in all of the other criminalized and they decriminalized and destigmatized it as well and and treated it like a health you know condition drug addiction which it is it's just a health condition um you know somebody's putting a chemical into their body it's totally it's it's totally legal for fossil fuel companies to burn fossil fuels and put their toxic chemicals into our body and into our water like in flint michigan lead it's totally okay for them to put chemicals into our body you know without our consent but if we put chemicals into our own body to alter our mind in some way or even chemicals but ethan ethenogens or cannabis you know totally naturally occurring points that have been used in human culture and parts of human society going back to literally the beginning of time the tribes of people that used to occupy these lands i mean literally would take peyote as a spiritual experience this is a piece of human uh activity behavior community that has been not just you know excised from our society but also criminalized and like you said uh you know it's it now has this stigma where like i said it's been a part of our behavior as long as human beings has existed it's been something that we've used to connect with each other connect spiritually um heal and and now just you know luckily we're seeing some uh sorry i got off topic on drugs but yeah no don't hey that's not that's always on topic for me i mean i am a strong proponent of psychedelics i think that everybody should experience uh psychedelic mushrooms is what i would recommend personally i think that every person should experience that it is a mind-opening experience i honestly feel like it may i've never felt more connected to my you know fellow human beings than when i was you know tripping on shrooms and so i absolutely advocate for it there's a lot of truth to that and i mean yeah psychedelic therapy is it's a whole new uh you know window that people are realizing is a an alternative to you know pharmaceutical addictive drugs that have been pill pushed on them by you know corrupt doctors and people that are just trying to make a profit at the expense of your addiction which is insane to think about absolutely and i mean i was raised rastafarian i grew up with like five foot long dreads i cut my hair when i was like 15 years old unfortunately i wish i still had my my dreads for sure but i was raised rastafarian i was raised in a culture where it was totally destigmatized my brothers in jamaica they grow you know others who grow hundreds of pounds of weed for that's their that's just how they make a living in jamaica um i've you know my parents both you know both smoke i i smoked since i was younger cannabis content on your channel from earlier yeah yeah i this channel actually started as a cannabis like like grow journal sort of channel and i don't i don't know that might screw me up for monetization on youtube they're probably gonna deny me monetization i'm gonna have to delete all my weed videos unfortunately but i actually started the channel yeah as a grow journal and i did like an indoor grow in massachusetts as soon as they legalized it here okay yeah grow because yeah i lived in japan for like three years i grew up in canada in jamaica i went to highland yeah no no it's not sadly they i think they've recently decriminalized it since i've left they've decriminalized it but it's still not totally legalized unfortunately and i lived there for three years yeah yeah i lived there for three years and when i lived there it was like i mean people had like they would get raided but like helicopters would fly into your into what they call your bush and like people would get you know that but usually like cops would come and they would like look for a bribe if you bribed them you you could get away and like give them enough of the weed maybe yeah exactly if you don't they'll just burn your whole family like yeah so i don't need to decriminalize i mean given the his the culture of you know rastafarianism and stuff that's almost that's insane to think yeah i know the christian christians have all the political power in in jamaica and so they're the christians in jamaica are more anti-weed than like you know anyone like it's so it like people think of jamaican they'll think like oh it's like a pro-we kind of places yeah the christians who have power because like the foreigners are there they hate it and they fight against it and so politically they've held power and they've been able to keep it like criminalized and so yeah i totally agree i think that decriminalizing drugs is the move that we have to make and i really appreciated jess grain's take on that you know when she said that it's just it really resonates because i mean this is like you know why are we punishing people for these non-violent offenses i think that we should be letting all these people we crowd prisons it's you know it's legalized slavery we have slave labor they're fighting fires over in california for like a dollar a day while you know firefighters can't get uh you know get jobs in in in in they use it as a threat to the firefighters too that are unionized and stuff to say hello listen we'll just take free labor slave labor from these things if you if you don't accept whatever conditions we put forward to you so um yeah i i i totally agree as far as the legalization is concerned right um yeah and i think that's the move we need to make so i think that is a great note too marijuana yeah yeah so so yeah so thank you so much so much for being here with us i really appreciate that gavin i've held you here for way too long it's ten o'clock now i've i've held you up here for about what is it three hours now almost so it's been a great night i mean i didn't really have much going on tonight anyway so i appreciated the chance to hang out with you and let's do it again sometime maybe one of those races we were talking about i mean i guess that will be on november uh so i mean people haven't got up on their minds at that point yeah this is the last primary that we're gonna see really the next i think that louisiana technically has like a primary on november third or something and then they do like a runoff in like december oh yeah yeah yeah i think you're right about that it's like a jungle style primary or something weird like that yeah um i see a comment here from the social historian says i love to see this collaboration amazing that's awesome yes um yes we appreciate it mark mckeever one of our patreon patrons says great guests um shout out to mark mckeever who's a big supporter of the the channel here thank you so much mark and i love les mis uh says thanks for the shout out the left can do it we got to talk up importance of primaries and make sure to know that's where choices lies thanks for hosting yeah no thank you so much to uh zach and gavin for being here with us i mean i really really enjoyed this and i i really i i'm excited to have you you guys back on and just to track your progress and see where you know your channel is also extremely exciting you know i really like what you've been doing and everything i think you're a fantastic voice really uh well spoken and just i i i can't wait to see what i mean both i'm just so excited for both of us now yeah no absolutely i think that we're we're seeing uh i think that this you know i've seen a an activist that i really respect uh his name's roderick douglas he he he has a very good you know eyes on the ground sort of and he's talked about how this has been a for one we've had the most political uprisings uh in a single year since 1967 um the police approval uh is at like an all-time low right now like we have made massive gains here on the left like he's you know he framed it as like we've essentially done like decades of work in in a matter of a few months essentially and so i think that there is really this is i think that independent left media is a part of that movement and i think that we are going to now there's all kinds of challenges it is an uphill battle for left media when you're speaking out against power and you're you know you're talking truth to power then you don't get the same it's much easier if we went around and we touted the neoliberal you know establishment line like we would be on cnn and msnbc and they would love to have us on but we're not you know left media we just don't have those same advantages because we're not willing to kiss the ass of these you know corporate stooges and so we have we have to get our support from the people just like these candidates have to get support from the people and so um you know please support like subscribe share head over to to zach and gavin at the vanguard check out their blog thevanguard.blog but please i really want everyone all of my supporters please head over and mark i see you in there i know i know mark will do it i know shin will do it i know some of y'all will do it so please head over the link is in the description box below open up the description box right now and open in a new tab if you have to and subscribe to the vanguard please uh you know we got to support left media so i really really appreciate having you on is there any other comments that we need to get to before uh we let gavin go do you mind if we uh you can literally jump out any second you just run away if you have to gavin i'm gonna i'm gonna just flip through a few more comments so that we can we can get to all these comments here um dark sage says i have an interesting question for you guys oh i want to hear that yeah uh he says i live in massachusetts which is a very liberal and progressive state on the national level even in towns we have a lot of liberal and progressive democrats here i am running for town council this year in my town as a conservative democrat interesting that is i support keeping taxes low trying to balance town budgets and basically am a small government kind of person it is very hard for me to connect to the average voter here because i am more center to right of the average massachusetts democrat um my question is on a town level which is vastly different from a national or state level how can i appeal to more liberal and progressive democrats so how could somebody who considers themselves a a conservative uh democrat appeal to more uh liberal or progressive democrats at a sort of local level do you have any thoughts on that i know i have a i i i have a few just the person is a conservative like a moderate democrat essentially exactly they say they are conservative they believe in like keeping taxes low they literally like are conservative like low taxes small government they say uh low taxes and i mean in my opinion i think there's a lot of crossover when it comes to the whole small government libertarian ethos i mean i identify with a lot of that and i'm someone that advocates for socialism you know which is the opposite of small government i advocate for you know universal basic income and medicare for all and all these policies which would not be considered small government but i still do find myself uh with a lot of common ground with the libertarian minded people just because i am an anti-authoritarian minded person i don't like the concept of you know the police or the government telling me what to do what what i can and can't put in my body so i mean if you just emphasize those um you know points and really talk about that anti-authoritarianism that the small government um you know i believe in personal freedom and you should be able to do whatever you please smoke whatever you want you know be in relationship with whoever you wish uh it's those kind of issues which do affect people's personal lives massively where they i think that the whole small government thing is a is a completely effective and you know relatable um thing to stump on yeah what we were saying earlier about you know decriminalizing drugs that's about small you know that that that decreases the size of government you know you have less prisons you have less you know policing that is necessary so that absolutely reduces the size of governments and that's something that i think that uh you can fight on uh i love les mis also says conservatives usually want big money out of politics i think that's another thing that we find a lot of crossover between the left this particularly the libertarian left and the right is to say you know you want big money out of politics that's a platform that i think anybody will support and if you're fighting on those fronts i do think that you can you can garner support if that's what you're focusing on so um good luck in your in your local race there i i do wish you the best and uh and hope that if you really do you know commit to these things i personally you know if you if you really believe in small government if you really want to fight for a small government uh i would suggest personally looking into the movement for and i don't think that this is a winner for politics necessarily but if you're talking about real the real change that's going to cr bring about a smaller government then what i believe in here is what richard wolff espouses and that's democracy in the workplace and building workplace democracy and if we build that up then people don't need to have uh you know big like we don't have to have these huge like nationalized um you know enemies like i do believe in certain things being nationalized you know healthcare and things like that but still working you know operating democratically and if they do then they they can exist outside of the government no more do we have to have a it's not like the old socialism where it's all centralized and the government is controlling everything and it's centralized through the government you know i've seen we've seen some failures there um what i'm talking about is is decentralizing that power and allowing the workers to control the means of production entirely and then they can build their own democracy within their own workplaces and they can operate within democracy there i think that that's the real place that we get actual you know people once people start to get a taste of democracy in the workplace i think that they'll have a real thirst for it in their politics and so i think that that's another front that you can fight on is you know look into the workplace democracy movement check out richard wolff uh and also look into folks like wolf pack who are fighting for getting money out of politics maybe you can if you were to support getting money out of politics i think that there's a local chapter of wolf pack in massachusetts that i think would support you so look into those look into those things and as gavin said there i think that there are you know there are libertarian issues that we that folks can fight on in small government is something that i don't think if you can you don't have to talk specifically about like small government per se there's ways to to do that without saying those words to people because i don't think that that necessarily plays with liberals or and also like i i hear you when you say the taxes thing like that is a genuine point of um you know a thing that a lot of people are scared of and even people that are from like european countries where they do have you know universal health care and all of these benefits that we talk about even some people there do say like yeah i'm not a big fan of the the taxes i don't want to pay this much taxes which as you said a small government person you wouldn't want to pay a lot of taxes that's understandable i mean i get that uh and in my opinion the best way to think about these issues and to frame them through a perspective in that sense is that you know we don't necessarily have to raise people's taxes to get a lot of these redistributive policies you know bernie proposed a college for all paid for by a wall street speculation tax that's not taking any money out of any working class people's pockets at all or raising their targets taxes it's just putting a tax on a pre-existing uh you know industry basically where people are making tons of money uh anyway another thing is you know like the andrew yang's universal basic income plan it taxed um the automation you know it put a tax on that to pay for it wasn't coming out of you know your average person's payroll tax or anything like that so not all of these policies are going to raise your taxes and i think that ultimately the left bernie i don't think he should have i think he should have found you know more inventive ways to pay for these um policies like defunding the military like let's take cut the military budget in half and use that to pay for people's health care i don't see why these are why this why these things can't be talked about i think that's totally valid that's such a great point too if you're talking about small government the first thing that you should be talking about if you're trying to win over people on the on you know progressives is let's cut the military budget that's a real way if you're serious about smaller government then that's the that's the that's what i would focus on is you know we have the the the military budget is is absurd at this stage uh and it goes into uh you know fighting you know destroying you know land and people in places that we have nothing to do with that aren't aren't making us any safer if anything it's making us more danger more you know more unsafe and so i i would absolutely that's such a great point i think that the military budget is is the first place that i would look to to talk about reducing the size of government uh you know you can also fight if you're talking about smaller government another thing you can talk about is uh you know supporting and legalizing you know abortions everywhere and supporting that uh so that people you know stay out of give it give women the the rights to their own reproductive health and and keep the government out of you know from regulating like the bedroom or a woman's body and so i think or a person with a you know any person with a with with a with a um you know with the vagina i don't think that they should uh be subjected to the government's like regulations in that way of deciding what they want to do can be reframed as you know anti-anti-big government that people that claim to be in favor of small government are actually in favor of so i think i'm going to jump off for the night but it was hey great hanging with you thank you so much i appreciate it so much gavin thank you for sticking around deeply appreciate that hope to have you on again uh everyone this is gavin from the vanguard please check them out in support thank you so much gavin yeah dude it was great thanks so much for inviting me on and i hope you have a great rest of your night sucks about the results but maybe the next time we chat there'll be some even more optimistic news and like you said uh there has been plenty of wins lately it's not like we're totally beaten down you know bernie sanders was not the end of the left and uh people like jessica rain and david kim and lisa savage they're carrying the torch on and uh like you said independent uh news uh organizations like yourself like the vanguard uh you know we're doing that work we're putting in the work to get the word out and uh you know fight back so thanks so much man thank you so much gavin appreciate you coming on really appreciate that thanks thank you appreciate it all right everyone that was uh the vanguard gavin and zach uh zach polston and gavin miller broomfield from the vanguard uh that was really awesome having them on that was that it was great talking to them that was i really enjoyed that and hope to have them back again soon i wish that we had gotten some better results here tonight had had something to be a little bit happier about um i will show you just updated numbers here on the election results so if you want to see that you can see some updated numbers some more votes of about 40 000 more votes came in chris coons maintaining a lead jessica sterain did close the gap a little bit so i do i think that the more that gap closes the better just for her chances next time around she she will you know be more encouraged next time around so as you can see jessica sterain now with about 26 of the vote before she only had about 20 so she picked up about 6 more of the vote as the votes continue to roll in so maybe uh the day of voting it appears to be coming in a little bit more in her favor so hopefully they'll have a little bit better voter turnout here you know some more votes will roll in and hopefully that gap uh tightens even further i you know the race has been called and it's you know pretty clear that chris coons you know wins this this one it's what people would you know would refer to as the landslide but please don't get discouraged by this jessica scherring was fighting a nearly impossible fight but she it was a really massive uphill battle and she got name recognition this time around so we have to acknowledge that recognize that and uh hopefully with that name recognition she will uh you know she'll she'll be able to garner a lot more votes next time around similar to a cory bush so this is what it is this is what we have folks um and please to anyone who's here that hasn't done so already i need you to immediately like just hit the like button below uh if you're watching this on mobile please just close the chat hit the like button and then you can open the chat button back up subscribe to the channel if you haven't already make sure you subscribe uh support independent left media also if you can afford it you know please uh even for as low as one dollar a month you be you can become a patreon subscriber patreon.com radicaldemocracy uh there is links in the description box below so please please head over there and support us for as low as as i said one dollar a month please support uh but i and if and if you uh want to just do a one-time tip you don't have to do a monthly donation you can just do a one-time tip like similar to like our super chat uh super chat feature at coffee.com 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america i see you in there i see you in the comments shout out to what up america i do see you in there uh what up america says been moving all day uh moving is the worst uh happy to see y'all still streaming awesome yeah thank you so much what up america we had a great stream last night thank you so much to what up america for being there for that one uh you can check that out here on youtube you can check out all of our live streams and past streams and clips of the show uh had a really great stream last night we talked about jk rowling and her new disgustingly transphobic book that she released just you know transphobic propaganda and we talked about the uh edward snowden case also trump uh ordering the a hit on a u.s civilian i mean that was just unheard of um so please check that out our stream from yesterday and uh what uh you know but i appreciate i appreciate everyone thank you to what up america another one of our patreon patrons uh thank you to everyone that supports the show it really does it's it's the only way we can continue to exist and to grow uh this was a you know we did a three hour stream today here and so thank you so much for sticking around through this long stream here i appreciate all you being with us uh do we have any other questions comments that we want to get to right now okay so all right i mean this is uh you know i don't expect anything to change in this race at this stage unfortunately i think that this is how you know the race is going to stay chris [ __ ] says the election has been called for chris coons he he you know definitely you know has won this race but i don't think that we should be discouraged by this on the left i think that jessica serene ran a great race as best as she could given all of the uh you know challenges to running against an incumbent particularly in delaware where they have a culture of not running against the incumbent and so just know that you know don't get too discouraged by this please don't be too discouraged by this this is the last primary election of the of the year so there will be no more primaries this there will be well let me say there will be one more primary the louisiana primary but it will be happening on tuesday november 3rd the same day as our general election so the next election that we'll be covering will be the presidential election between joe biden obviously donald trump uh howie hawkins and angela walker uh and i'm forgetting the socialist candidate jeff mackler um and so we have i'll be voting for howie hawkins and uh i'll be voting for howie hawkins and angela walker and i but i will be interested in seeing what what unfolds between joe biden and donald trump it is not you know things are looking good for joe biden that's for sure but it is not certainly never in the bag there's always the chance for an october surprise as they say don't know what it would be but with joe biden could be some sexual assault or rape allegations we all know he's got plenty of those skeletons hiding in his closet so all right um uh [Music] yeah thank you so much to everyone i really appreciate you being here this was a really fun stream for me having some guests on and talking with uh gavin and zach from the from the vanguard that was really cool so really uh appreciate them coming on and happy for that i think we're gonna wrap things up here because there's not much else to get to here and so uh thank you to everyone that's here with us now if you haven't already please do us a favor and like subscribe and share this video i'll just hit that like button right right now hit that like button and subscribe and share we do appreciate all of the community here thank you to everyone for being here but a special thanks to tammy for always being uh a power producer out there just making stuff happen and keeping things running smoothly she helped coordinate she helps everything she helps everything so i deeply appreciate it we deeply appreciate it and so massive 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few more tonight and so thank you so much to everyone for being here we're wrapping things up we're going to be uh heading out in a second all right just checking on last results seeing if anything changed or anything like that um just taking a look the breakdown [Music] just to see how the votes came and over yeah all right so thank you thank you to all of our patreon patrons and fans all the comrades out there thank you so much for being with us and one more thank you to zach and gavin from the vanguard if we were in person i would ask for a round of applause for them because that was awesome what they did and i really appreciate that and seriously i need y'all to support them as well please uh support left independent media we need to cross pollinate and start to grow are united and build a united left and the way that we do that is with solidarity uh across the board and so we need to support fellow uh you know leftists in any way that we can mutual aid whatever the case is please support check out uh the vanguard.blog and also just links in the description box below so please check out those links in the description box you need to check out their blog but definitely check out their youtube channel and subscribe they do these great interviews with all these politicians that are you know they just they they do these really awesome interviews not just politicians but also activists it's really great work it's great stuff they're engaging it's it's it's it's it's really informative uh stuff and it's it's well done so please please please support zach and galvin zac poston gavin miller broomfield from the vanguard check out their work and support and support us as well any way you can thank you so much to everyone that was here with us tonight we are wrapping up and heading out now uh [Music] oops okay yeah like you