Speaker unverified: evaluation

Transcript context

…All right. So, to descend down from the platonic ideals of the left and the right, well, who’s actually running the show on the right and the left? Who are the dominant forces? Maybe you could describe and you mentioned democratic socialists, the progressives, maybe liberals, maybe more sort of mainstream left, and the same on the right with Trump and Trumpism. So, on the right, it’s pretty straightforward at the moment. And the right is composed differently than it was 10 years ago. But the right is run by Donald Trump and the people who have been given the nod of power by Donald Trump. So, that is right now Elon Musk, but Elon Musk’s power is coming from Donald Trump. That is maybe in some degrees JD Vance, maybe in some degrees, Russ Vought, maybe sometimes Homan’s over at DHS. The right beneath that, the Republicans in Congress are extraordinarily disempowered compared to in other administrations. They are sort of being told what to do and they are doing what they are told. Republicans in Congress, Senate Republicans, they didn’t want Pete Hegseth. They didn’t want Kash Patel. They didn’t want Tulsi Gabbard. They didn’t want RFK Jr. Nobody got elected to be a Republican in the Senate hoping that they would confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr, a member of the Kennedys, a Democrat who is pro-choice and running as a Democrat two years ago for HHS. But Donald Trump told him to do it and they did. So, the right has developed a very, very top-down structure. And one of Trump’s talents, one of the things that makes him a disruptive force in politics is his ability to upend the sort of coalitional structure, the interest group structure that used to prevail. The Koch brothers were the big enemy of the left 10, 15 years ago. The view was in many ways they set the agenda of the right. The Koch brother network is much less powerful Donald Trump because he just disagrees with them and has disempowered them. Not to say none of their people or none of their groups are meaningful at all. They are, but you wouldn’t put them at the forefront in the way that you might’ve had another time. Right this second, we’re using the left, but Democrats are in fundamental disarray. There is no leader. Democrats, Senate Democrats decided to vote for the containing resolution, avoiding a shutdown or a critical mass of them. Then Hakeem Jeffries is the leader of the House Democrats and Chuck Schumer, the leader of Senate Democrats are in bitter disagreement over whether or not they should have done that. Democratic leadership isn’t even united on the single biggest point of leverage they might’ve had. They disagree over whether or not it was even a point of leverage. Outside of them, the party has no leader, which is fairly normal after a pretty crushing defeat. But there isn’t the next in line. d. They disagree over whether or not it was even a point of leverage. Outside of them, the party has no leader, which is fairly normal after a pretty crushing defeat. But there isn’t the next in line. So, you go back and it was pretty clear that after Barack Obama, it was going to be Hillary Clinton. After Hillary Clinton, it was either going to be Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders had come in second in the primary. Joe Biden had been the vice president. You often have a presumptive next nominee who the party can look to for kind of leadership. Even after 2000, Al Gore was still giving big speeches. There was a question about Al Gore running again. There is no presumptive in the Democratic Party right now. You can’t turn around and say, “Oh, it’s going to be Pete Buttigieg. It’s going to be Josh Shapiro. It’s going to be Gretchen Whitmer.” Parties are given force, modern parties, which are quite weak by historical standards. Modern parties tend to be given force by a centralizing personality. Donald Trump being a very strong example of that on the right, but Barack Obama was the person who held together the Democratic Party for a long time. In my lifetime, the Democratic Party has never been as internally fragmented and weak, leaderless, rudderless as it is right now. Now, it won’t stay that way. There’s a rhythm to these things. There’ll be a midterm, they’re probably going to pick up a bunch of seats in the midterm. If that means Hakeem Jeffries becomes speaker after the midterm, he’s going to have a much louder voice because he’s going to have power. It’s going to be a harder road for Schumer to get back to the majority because of the Senate map, and then we’ll start having a primary on the left. And you’ll begin to see voices emerge out of that. But right now, the Democratic Party, it doesn’t have points of power. There’s simply outside of at the national level, there is no Democrat who wields control over a branch of government. They don’t have the Supreme Court, they don’t have the House, they don’t have the Senate, they don’t have the presidency and they don’t have a next in line. So, you’re looking at an organization without any of the people in the position to structure it, and the head of the DNC, the new head, Ken Martin, doesn’t have power in that way. So, they’re pretty fractured.…

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