The difference between the two groups was striking. I kinda understand the ones who are using their primary votes to send a message about their policy concerns. It's the sort of thing I might do. But when Trump is on the ballot they'll still vote against him.
The young TikTok progressives, OTOH, pretty much confirmed all my worst stereotypes of young progressives. They don't regard Trump as an existential threat because they're no more committed to constitutional democracy than MAGA is. The issues they feel most passionately about are the result of propaganda efforts from enemy nations.
The best thing Biden could do is ignore the young pro-Hamas progressives. There is nothing he could do to appease them without losing even more votes. Unfortunately, that's not who Joe Biden is. Biden is like the good shepherd, who leaves behind the 99 to go in search of the lost sheep. And, by "sheep" I mean Democrats. He won't expend much effort to retain the votes of us NeverTrumpers (goats?), but he will bend over backwards to keep every Democratic voter in his coalition.
This discussion made me nostalgic. I disagreed with John McCain about many things but he was my hero anyway; he was a great man. I voted for Obama but definitely felt that the country would be safe in McCain's hands (Palin was another story and perhaps one reason why he was not elected; she was a disaster and paved the way for Trump's populist blathering). Actually, although Romney was certainly not my hero and I did not like him much, I did not feel as though we would be in mortal peril if he won. How low we have sunk.
By the way, Biden could have repudiated Trump and Pompeo's withdrawal deal in Afghanistan; the Taliban were already breaking their word which would have been a good reason. Biden wanted out. if you want to learn about Afghanistan go listen to Will Selber; highly recommended
Wow Sarah, your boy Tommy stands almost exactly where I do on the Israel situation. Dude is really smart and well-spoken too. This was a great episode.
Regarding the new segment: The question asked is close to, but not quite what I have looked for, but haven’t quite found in the thriving anti-Trump ecosystem. I would love to have a podcast or YouTube channel that really helps me answer common challenges that I hear from my soft Trump voting friends. For example, if they say, “Biden made the border problem so much worse” or “Biden’s stimulus is the reason inflation is out of control,” what is the best response to get them to see a different perspective. These are people that are open to discussion, so I would LOVE if I had info to know what’s the best points that will encourage them to reconsider and not just push them away.
As an economist, here is my explanation of inflation:
We are now on the third round of inflation. The first round was indeed caused by the excessive stimulus enacted by the Democrats in 2021. They used Covid as an excuse, but a lot of the spending was on behalf of traditional Democratic constituencies and fetishes. The effect was completely predictable, and the spending was irresponsible. The Democrats were warned, and they pointedly ignored the warnings because they were committed to the policy as an end in itself and didn't really care about the consequences.
But that excess stimulus has worked its way through the system by now. The second round of inflation was caused by supply chain disruptions as the economy revved up after Covid. That is also past now.
The third round of inflation resulted from a serious labor shortage. There were two causes for this. First, there was the impact of long Covid, which reduced the labor force by 1 to 2 million workers. (I have not seen recent updates on long Covid, but I think some of the victims have now recovered sufficiently to rejoin the labor force.) The other cause was immigration restriction, which was instituted by Trump and largely left in place by Biden. This bipartisan policy was actually designed to raise wages! When they complain about foreign workers "stealing jobs from Americans", what they really mean is that those foreign workers are bidding down wages. The whole point of restricting immigration was to push wages up - a policy favored by Trump's working class MAGA constituency, as well as Biden's Big Labor constituency. It had the desired effect, and now the working class is experiencing buyer's remorse because the lying politicians didn't tell them about the higher prices that would accompany higher wages in the short term.
At this point, I'm not sure why inflation is remaining stubbornly high. Maybe we are still in phase three, with too few workers. Or maybe the excessive federal budget deficit is still overstimulating the economy. Both of those problems are bipartisan in origin. Or maybe it's from OPEC+'s reduction in the oil supply.
The main policy lever over inflation is wielded by the Fed. Jerome Powell was appointed chairman by Trump and reappointed by Biden. So, again, inflation looks bipartisan.
If you really want so solve America's problems in the long term, including inflation, the federal government needs more revenue. But there seems to be a bipartisan consensus against raising taxes on anyone other than "the rich" - i.e., the people who already pay most of the taxes.
So, the reason your soft Trump friends have to focus on something Biden did three years ago, which is no longer operative, is because all the rest of his policies are identical to Trump's policies, and they have to avert their eyes to all of Trump's shortcomings and ignore the fact that Trump is, essentially, a Democrat on economic issues.
I’m disappointed in Tommy V’s lack of understanding of the war with Hamas. Although he’s right that the most success Israel had in getting hostages back was through a negotiated cease fire, he forgot what brought Hamas to the table: weeks of hardcore bombing. Hamas needed a chance to regroup and thus ok’d a deal. Also, that cease-fire would have continued except Hamas ended it, just like they ended the cease-fire that had been in place on October 6. To say Israel just needs to give up more to make a deal with Hamas is facile and insulting. Hamas doesn’t want a deal. It’s perfectly happy with dead Israelis and dead Gazans, especially because the world prefers to blame Israel.
Trump lost 65 Americans in Afghanistan in four years. In Biden's three-plus years in office, he has lost 13 Americans: a smaller number, mainly, because he got U.S. forces out in 2021. Of course zero would have been the best number, but getting out was the way to stop the bleeding. If people think President Trump could have managed the exit more cleanly, ask why he didn't do it.
The kids in this focus group represent a pretty small sliver of the Democratic electorate, don't you think? I mean, Sarah says they expected to get some Arab-Americans but didn't come up with any. What they got were "uncommitted" voters who weren't Arabs. I'm thinking the "uncommitteds" probably were actually largely Arab-Americans, so they got an unrepresentative sample from an already small minority of Democratic voters ("uncommitted" only pulled 13% of the primary vote).
I didn't think it was possible to get me even more pissed off than listening to a focus group of two-time Trump voters who will vote for him again. I was wrong.
This isn't really a new thing, and it might be mostly young people who are doing this, but I know people who aren't young and who say things similar to what these voters are saying. I remember seeing a post somewhere that compared voting to taking a bus; it might not take you exactly where you want to go, but it'll get you closer than where you were before you got on the bus. But I think that some people don't see things that way. It's a similar argument for right-of-center people who can see that Trump would be worse than Biden but have reservations about voting for Biden. I voted for Nader in 2000 (although, even then, I didn't agree with Gore and Bush were similar and probably would have voted for Gore if I'd lived in a swing state). I'm not as far left as I used to be, maybe because I'm older and see things with more nuance than I did then, but, looking back, I feel that voting for third parties has hurt the left. If Nader's voters had all got behind Gore, then the Iraq war might not have happened. If all of Jill Stein's voters had got behind Clinton, then Trump wouldn't have been there to appoint his judges who went on to overturn Roe.
How about Biden responding to the progressives' anger about Gaza by leveling with them? To start, that would mean pointing out how what is happening in Gaza is inconsistent with genocide. It would would supplemented by demonstrating that Hamas actually intends to commit genocide and is only prevented from doing so by the IDF. There's more that could ne said, such as Hamas' defense strategy consisting exclusively of making it as difficult as possible for Israel to act against it without killing innocent Gazans thereby stoking international outrage whenever Israel does act, but that case might require too much bandwidth.
I felt dirty after listening to this episode. What these Progressives proposed is exactly the moral equivalent of Trump's peace plan for Ukraine: cut off American aid, and encourage the savages to proceed with their announced plan of genocide - the real thing, not something falsely given an intentionally inflammatory label. I'm sure they agree with Titania McGrath that you do have to say one thing in HAMAS' favor, they certainly aren't Islamophobic.
Yes, but not Muslims as such but as humans. Sadly, HAMAS has achieved its goal, making it utterly impossible to imagine "two states, Palestine and Israel, living side by side in peace and security", as the ironbound formula runs, if not permanently then until every Israeli or Palestinian whether Muslim or Christian now alive is dead. And even then, not easily achieved. Children and grandchildren born long after October 7 will hear of it repeatedly. We can hope the grandchildren won't absorb the grievance too deeply to be overcome, but that's far from certain. The October 7 berserkers are grandchildren or further removed from anyone who lived through the events of 1948.
I found out about The Bulwark when Tim was on PSA, so it's great to see Tommy here. I love him and Dan, but rarely watch PSA any more b/c I find Favreau and Lovett immature and annoying even tho I'm a Dem. Sarah, JVL, and Tim, on the other hand, I never get enough of!
I don't watch The Focus Group a lot b/c it makes me want to "throw my computer out the window and then follow it" as Sarah said recently; but I still say she's a saint for doing this research.
Listening to these progressive young voters is more depressing than listening to 2 time Trump voters. I view 2 time Trump voters as lost: full of real and imagined grievances and devoid of critical thinking skills. But these voters do have critical thinking skills (for the most part), which makes their willingness to risk a return of Trump even more horrifying.
The problem lies with these voters not knowing their history. Trump was the most anti-Palestinian President of our lifetimes. The combined militia groups who perpetrated the Oct 7 attacks were first organized in response to Trump's unilateral declaration of Jerusalem as Israel's Capital and relocation of the American Embassy.
One girl said "at least he never funded a genocide" which shows her ignorance regarding recent history. Trump kicked the PLO out of DC and cut US aide to Palestine to nearly nothing.
It's frustrating that these people who claim to be so engaged with the issues aren't in possession of even this superficial information. If they truly care, why aren't they investing their time to learn about it. Ugh.
I don't entirely agree with the article or the generalization that the relocation of the US Embassy to Jerusalem was necessarily in and of itself a major contributor to the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, but it seems clear Hamas saw its influence waning in the Arab world because the Saudis and others had put the Palestinian issue on the back burner. But irrespective of that , you are correct that these young progressive voters seem ignorant of anything beyond the thrill of putting on a kaffiyeh, chanting "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," screaming "genocide Joe" and disrupting traffic (with a touch of antisemitism thrown in for good measure). They could very well cause Biden to lose in a couple of swing states and reinstate Trump. They don't seem to care, and they won't get any sympathy from me if Trump is reinstalled. They, like Jill Green and RFK Jr., are willing to indulge in political suicide and ignore what's best for the country as a whole.
At least the young progressives aren't sending death threats or carrying AR15's around to intimidate those who oppose them.....you know, those kinds of behaviors that come from a lack of critical thinking skills.
Idiot move on her part, but no AR15, and no anonymous threats. Right out there for all to see and hear. She earned herself a million dollar bond from her remarks, while Trump can post Biden bound and gagged in the bed of pick up and he gets..... crickets. I wonder where she got the idea she could get away with what she said?
Admittedly a lot of the focus group participants sound indoctrinated, although some of that is no doubt their youth which tends to permit oversimplification of issues. But the depressing part is that whatever they think about a particular issue, they seem mostly ok with letting Trump win. Hard to square that circle with their purported values.
It's an example of the sort thinking that leads me to favor raising the voting age to 35 or possibly allowing voting at younger age for those having a house mortgage and at least one child in school.
Honestly, I think that Israel's best approach is to assume that all the hostages are dead, because they probably are, or soon will be. There should then be a unilateral cease fire on the Israeli side with them only shooting back if shot at, and using that time to build safe spaces for Gaza civilians in North Gaza with massive aid on the ground, invitations for people to come north, and screening them for Hamas fighters as they do. Then, when a lot of Gazans are being fed, clothed, and cared for and out of harm's way, start the final attack on Rafah, leaving humanitarian corridors for the escape of non-combatants as the Sri Lankan Army did in the final attack on the Tamil Tigers, and then close in and kill everybody carrying a gun who doesn't immediately lay down his weapon and surrender.
Netanyahu has zero interest in peace. His platform has been anti-peace since his stochastic terrorism got Rabin assassinated in 1995. In addition to his own personal hatred of Palestine, he needs the war to continue for more practical reasons. His abject failure on Oct 7 will be punished by removal from office, just as soon as this war is over.
The difference between the two groups was striking. I kinda understand the ones who are using their primary votes to send a message about their policy concerns. It's the sort of thing I might do. But when Trump is on the ballot they'll still vote against him.
The young TikTok progressives, OTOH, pretty much confirmed all my worst stereotypes of young progressives. They don't regard Trump as an existential threat because they're no more committed to constitutional democracy than MAGA is. The issues they feel most passionately about are the result of propaganda efforts from enemy nations.
The best thing Biden could do is ignore the young pro-Hamas progressives. There is nothing he could do to appease them without losing even more votes. Unfortunately, that's not who Joe Biden is. Biden is like the good shepherd, who leaves behind the 99 to go in search of the lost sheep. And, by "sheep" I mean Democrats. He won't expend much effort to retain the votes of us NeverTrumpers (goats?), but he will bend over backwards to keep every Democratic voter in his coalition.
Always informative and often unsettling. Great episode.
This discussion made me nostalgic. I disagreed with John McCain about many things but he was my hero anyway; he was a great man. I voted for Obama but definitely felt that the country would be safe in McCain's hands (Palin was another story and perhaps one reason why he was not elected; she was a disaster and paved the way for Trump's populist blathering). Actually, although Romney was certainly not my hero and I did not like him much, I did not feel as though we would be in mortal peril if he won. How low we have sunk.
By the way, Biden could have repudiated Trump and Pompeo's withdrawal deal in Afghanistan; the Taliban were already breaking their word which would have been a good reason. Biden wanted out. if you want to learn about Afghanistan go listen to Will Selber; highly recommended
Wow Sarah, your boy Tommy stands almost exactly where I do on the Israel situation. Dude is really smart and well-spoken too. This was a great episode.
Regarding the new segment: The question asked is close to, but not quite what I have looked for, but haven’t quite found in the thriving anti-Trump ecosystem. I would love to have a podcast or YouTube channel that really helps me answer common challenges that I hear from my soft Trump voting friends. For example, if they say, “Biden made the border problem so much worse” or “Biden’s stimulus is the reason inflation is out of control,” what is the best response to get them to see a different perspective. These are people that are open to discussion, so I would LOVE if I had info to know what’s the best points that will encourage them to reconsider and not just push them away.
As an economist, here is my explanation of inflation:
We are now on the third round of inflation. The first round was indeed caused by the excessive stimulus enacted by the Democrats in 2021. They used Covid as an excuse, but a lot of the spending was on behalf of traditional Democratic constituencies and fetishes. The effect was completely predictable, and the spending was irresponsible. The Democrats were warned, and they pointedly ignored the warnings because they were committed to the policy as an end in itself and didn't really care about the consequences.
But that excess stimulus has worked its way through the system by now. The second round of inflation was caused by supply chain disruptions as the economy revved up after Covid. That is also past now.
The third round of inflation resulted from a serious labor shortage. There were two causes for this. First, there was the impact of long Covid, which reduced the labor force by 1 to 2 million workers. (I have not seen recent updates on long Covid, but I think some of the victims have now recovered sufficiently to rejoin the labor force.) The other cause was immigration restriction, which was instituted by Trump and largely left in place by Biden. This bipartisan policy was actually designed to raise wages! When they complain about foreign workers "stealing jobs from Americans", what they really mean is that those foreign workers are bidding down wages. The whole point of restricting immigration was to push wages up - a policy favored by Trump's working class MAGA constituency, as well as Biden's Big Labor constituency. It had the desired effect, and now the working class is experiencing buyer's remorse because the lying politicians didn't tell them about the higher prices that would accompany higher wages in the short term.
At this point, I'm not sure why inflation is remaining stubbornly high. Maybe we are still in phase three, with too few workers. Or maybe the excessive federal budget deficit is still overstimulating the economy. Both of those problems are bipartisan in origin. Or maybe it's from OPEC+'s reduction in the oil supply.
The main policy lever over inflation is wielded by the Fed. Jerome Powell was appointed chairman by Trump and reappointed by Biden. So, again, inflation looks bipartisan.
If you really want so solve America's problems in the long term, including inflation, the federal government needs more revenue. But there seems to be a bipartisan consensus against raising taxes on anyone other than "the rich" - i.e., the people who already pay most of the taxes.
So, the reason your soft Trump friends have to focus on something Biden did three years ago, which is no longer operative, is because all the rest of his policies are identical to Trump's policies, and they have to avert their eyes to all of Trump's shortcomings and ignore the fact that Trump is, essentially, a Democrat on economic issues.
I’m disappointed in Tommy V’s lack of understanding of the war with Hamas. Although he’s right that the most success Israel had in getting hostages back was through a negotiated cease fire, he forgot what brought Hamas to the table: weeks of hardcore bombing. Hamas needed a chance to regroup and thus ok’d a deal. Also, that cease-fire would have continued except Hamas ended it, just like they ended the cease-fire that had been in place on October 6. To say Israel just needs to give up more to make a deal with Hamas is facile and insulting. Hamas doesn’t want a deal. It’s perfectly happy with dead Israelis and dead Gazans, especially because the world prefers to blame Israel.
Since the Afghanistan withdrawal came up here:
Trump lost 65 Americans in Afghanistan in four years. In Biden's three-plus years in office, he has lost 13 Americans: a smaller number, mainly, because he got U.S. forces out in 2021. Of course zero would have been the best number, but getting out was the way to stop the bleeding. If people think President Trump could have managed the exit more cleanly, ask why he didn't do it.
The kids in this focus group represent a pretty small sliver of the Democratic electorate, don't you think? I mean, Sarah says they expected to get some Arab-Americans but didn't come up with any. What they got were "uncommitted" voters who weren't Arabs. I'm thinking the "uncommitteds" probably were actually largely Arab-Americans, so they got an unrepresentative sample from an already small minority of Democratic voters ("uncommitted" only pulled 13% of the primary vote).
I didn't think it was possible to get me even more pissed off than listening to a focus group of two-time Trump voters who will vote for him again. I was wrong.
This isn't really a new thing, and it might be mostly young people who are doing this, but I know people who aren't young and who say things similar to what these voters are saying. I remember seeing a post somewhere that compared voting to taking a bus; it might not take you exactly where you want to go, but it'll get you closer than where you were before you got on the bus. But I think that some people don't see things that way. It's a similar argument for right-of-center people who can see that Trump would be worse than Biden but have reservations about voting for Biden. I voted for Nader in 2000 (although, even then, I didn't agree with Gore and Bush were similar and probably would have voted for Gore if I'd lived in a swing state). I'm not as far left as I used to be, maybe because I'm older and see things with more nuance than I did then, but, looking back, I feel that voting for third parties has hurt the left. If Nader's voters had all got behind Gore, then the Iraq war might not have happened. If all of Jill Stein's voters had got behind Clinton, then Trump wouldn't have been there to appoint his judges who went on to overturn Roe.
I’ve wondered the same thing.
How about Biden responding to the progressives' anger about Gaza by leveling with them? To start, that would mean pointing out how what is happening in Gaza is inconsistent with genocide. It would would supplemented by demonstrating that Hamas actually intends to commit genocide and is only prevented from doing so by the IDF. There's more that could ne said, such as Hamas' defense strategy consisting exclusively of making it as difficult as possible for Israel to act against it without killing innocent Gazans thereby stoking international outrage whenever Israel does act, but that case might require too much bandwidth.
Whew. Talk about changing the narrative.
I felt dirty after listening to this episode. What these Progressives proposed is exactly the moral equivalent of Trump's peace plan for Ukraine: cut off American aid, and encourage the savages to proceed with their announced plan of genocide - the real thing, not something falsely given an intentionally inflammatory label. I'm sure they agree with Titania McGrath that you do have to say one thing in HAMAS' favor, they certainly aren't Islamophobic.
It's a funny line from McGrath, but Hamas is currently using Muslims as human shields.
Yes, but not Muslims as such but as humans. Sadly, HAMAS has achieved its goal, making it utterly impossible to imagine "two states, Palestine and Israel, living side by side in peace and security", as the ironbound formula runs, if not permanently then until every Israeli or Palestinian whether Muslim or Christian now alive is dead. And even then, not easily achieved. Children and grandchildren born long after October 7 will hear of it repeatedly. We can hope the grandchildren won't absorb the grievance too deeply to be overcome, but that's far from certain. The October 7 berserkers are grandchildren or further removed from anyone who lived through the events of 1948.
I found out about The Bulwark when Tim was on PSA, so it's great to see Tommy here. I love him and Dan, but rarely watch PSA any more b/c I find Favreau and Lovett immature and annoying even tho I'm a Dem. Sarah, JVL, and Tim, on the other hand, I never get enough of!
I don't watch The Focus Group a lot b/c it makes me want to "throw my computer out the window and then follow it" as Sarah said recently; but I still say she's a saint for doing this research.
Listening to these progressive young voters is more depressing than listening to 2 time Trump voters. I view 2 time Trump voters as lost: full of real and imagined grievances and devoid of critical thinking skills. But these voters do have critical thinking skills (for the most part), which makes their willingness to risk a return of Trump even more horrifying.
The problem lies with these voters not knowing their history. Trump was the most anti-Palestinian President of our lifetimes. The combined militia groups who perpetrated the Oct 7 attacks were first organized in response to Trump's unilateral declaration of Jerusalem as Israel's Capital and relocation of the American Embassy.
One girl said "at least he never funded a genocide" which shows her ignorance regarding recent history. Trump kicked the PLO out of DC and cut US aide to Palestine to nearly nothing.
His Abraham Accords sealed the deal.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/abraham-accords-peace-middle-east/
It's frustrating that these people who claim to be so engaged with the issues aren't in possession of even this superficial information. If they truly care, why aren't they investing their time to learn about it. Ugh.
I don't entirely agree with the article or the generalization that the relocation of the US Embassy to Jerusalem was necessarily in and of itself a major contributor to the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, but it seems clear Hamas saw its influence waning in the Arab world because the Saudis and others had put the Palestinian issue on the back burner. But irrespective of that , you are correct that these young progressive voters seem ignorant of anything beyond the thrill of putting on a kaffiyeh, chanting "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," screaming "genocide Joe" and disrupting traffic (with a touch of antisemitism thrown in for good measure). They could very well cause Biden to lose in a couple of swing states and reinstate Trump. They don't seem to care, and they won't get any sympathy from me if Trump is reinstalled. They, like Jill Green and RFK Jr., are willing to indulge in political suicide and ignore what's best for the country as a whole.
At least the young progressives aren't sending death threats or carrying AR15's around to intimidate those who oppose them.....you know, those kinds of behaviors that come from a lack of critical thinking skills.
Unfortunately, that's not exactly true. At least my newsfeed has blown up over the whole Riddhi Patel mess.
Idiot move on her part, but no AR15, and no anonymous threats. Right out there for all to see and hear. She earned herself a million dollar bond from her remarks, while Trump can post Biden bound and gagged in the bed of pick up and he gets..... crickets. I wonder where she got the idea she could get away with what she said?
Probably from the "I'm a young progressive and I know everything" university
Maybe from watching Trump get away with it. There were also a couple of the moms for liberty who got pretty far out there as well.
Was that before or after the Moms for Liberty threesome?
"Critical thinking skills"? More like Critical Theory dogma absorbed in their Grievance Studies courses.
Admittedly a lot of the focus group participants sound indoctrinated, although some of that is no doubt their youth which tends to permit oversimplification of issues. But the depressing part is that whatever they think about a particular issue, they seem mostly ok with letting Trump win. Hard to square that circle with their purported values.
It's an example of the sort thinking that leads me to favor raising the voting age to 35 or possibly allowing voting at younger age for those having a house mortgage and at least one child in school.
Honestly, I think that Israel's best approach is to assume that all the hostages are dead, because they probably are, or soon will be. There should then be a unilateral cease fire on the Israeli side with them only shooting back if shot at, and using that time to build safe spaces for Gaza civilians in North Gaza with massive aid on the ground, invitations for people to come north, and screening them for Hamas fighters as they do. Then, when a lot of Gazans are being fed, clothed, and cared for and out of harm's way, start the final attack on Rafah, leaving humanitarian corridors for the escape of non-combatants as the Sri Lankan Army did in the final attack on the Tamil Tigers, and then close in and kill everybody carrying a gun who doesn't immediately lay down his weapon and surrender.
Netanyahu has zero interest in peace. His platform has been anti-peace since his stochastic terrorism got Rabin assassinated in 1995. In addition to his own personal hatred of Palestine, he needs the war to continue for more practical reasons. His abject failure on Oct 7 will be punished by removal from office, just as soon as this war is over.
And the sooner the better.