The pendulum is swinging to the right in America. At least, that's what Andrew Prokop argues in a new piece for Vox. But so does Dave Weigel in a piece that he wrote for Semafor. And I think that they actually do have a point. So the Vox piece that I'm talking about is titled The Big Political Shift [00:00:18] that explains the 2024 election. Progressives felt they were gaining. Now they're on the defensive. So he's careful to note that there have been some gains by progressives in recent years that remain. They have not been reversed. [00:00:33] Not it's not as if progressives gains over the past 20 years or so have been entirely wiped away. The Democratic Party remains significantly further to the left than it was a decade ago, and certainly two decades ago. And he does provide good examples for what he's talking about here. [00:00:51] You know, he talks about the fact that, you know, we have legalized gay marriage, for instance, some of the at least lip service that you'll hear from Democratic politicians in regard to what we need to do about the environment, is certainly more left than what we had ten years ago. [00:01:07] But he also provides examples for why he believes that progressives have lost influence in American politics. He talks about the members of the progressive squad who have either acquiesced to the mainstream Democratic Party or they lost in the primaries. [00:01:25] So Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman are two examples. He also mentions the progressive prosecutors who have either been recalled or voted out of office. Pamela Price, for instance, in Oakland, is currently facing a recall. San Francisco's former Da Chesa Boudin was recalled. [00:01:41] Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon is poised to lose his reelection bid to a tough on crime district attorney by the name of Nathan Hochman, and in a piece written by Dave Weigel for Semafor, he notes some really interesting polling data that I actually hadn't come across. [00:02:00] So he writes that in the summer of 2020, for instance, Gallup had found that 34% of Americans actually wanted an increase to immigration. So think about it. It's the summer of 2020. This is like right in the beginning of Covid, really. [00:02:16] And you have 34% of Americans wanting an increase in immigration, which, believe it or not, that was the highest recorded percentage of Americans wanting that. And only 28% wanted a decrease in immigration. But let's fast forward to June of this year. [00:02:33] Gallup found that only 16% of Americans wanted higher immigration levels, while a whopping 55% wanted a decrease, which is the highest share for that position since the weeks after nine over 11. And in June of 2020, 47% of Americans said that they were satisfied [00:02:52] with federal anti-crime policies. But this summer only 28% of people agreed with that sentiment. 69% of participants in this survey said that they were dissatisfied. And so you see it in the polling. You also see it in the way the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, [00:03:11] is basically running her campaign. Politicians who studiously cultivated left activists are now increasingly tacking to the center, most notably Vice President Kamala Harris, who has abandoned many of the positions she took while running in [00:03:27] the Democrats 2020 presidential primary. And further, Weigel writes that the Democratic Party, after two decades of leftward post-clinton drift, has jerked abruptly right facing Donald Trump for the third consecutive election. Democrats are making rhetorical and policy concessions they didn't want to [00:03:47] or think they needed to. In 2016 and 2020, they've adjusted to an electorate that shifted to the right toward the Trump led GOP on issues that progressives once hoped were non-negotiable. Immigrant rights, LGBTQ rights, climate change policies, [00:04:04] and criminal justice reform. So there's more details to share with you all on this, but I think you get the general point about the thesis here. And I actually think that it's correct. I mean, you see it, the proof is in the pudding and how it tastes. [00:04:21] And Kamala Harris certainly is running as a moderate, whereas in 2020 that was not the case. Yeah. So it's definitely correct. And it shows you a really important view in American politics. But it also has two giant caveats that I want to put on it. So first how it's correct. So guys look at look at politics, right. [00:04:40] So you know that Kamala Harris said that she was not going to take corporate PAC money in 2019 and 2020. Now she's bragging about raising $1 billion mainly off of corporate PAC money. You know that she was, for all of these positions that are now seem enormously extreme, [00:04:56] like free gender change surgery for undocumented immigrants who are detained. And look, even if you're in favor of that, you've got to recognize that is really [00:05:11] far out there on the political spectrum. Okay. If you don't recognize that you're in a bubble, you're about max, 5% of the country agrees with that policy. Okay. So now all of a sudden she doesn't care about any of that stuff. [00:05:27] Oh, she said that she was for Medicare for all. Now she's not for anything in relation to health care other than, oh, we'll continue, you know, negotiating one drug price per year for the rest of time, leaving tens of thousands, etc.. But no, Medicare for all is gone. Universal healthcare is gone. [00:05:43] Public option is gone. Everything is gone. Right? So it's the same person and she had this massive shift in opinion and ideology. No. They're politicians. So before she thought that was hot. [00:05:59] Now she thinks this is hot. And so. And why do they think this is hot now? Because they tried half of that. And that's going to get to the caveats. They tried half of those policies the absolute worst half. And it didn't work. And the American people didn't like it. [00:06:15] So then they were like, okay, panic, we're switching now and we're going to be right wingers and that we're going to take the Democratic Party to the right. Okay. But what do we mean by right and left? - So that's the first caveat. - So it's always on social issues always. [00:06:30] And so this brother here on Vox writes a good interesting article. But like almost every other smart pundit that's writing interesting articles, they still miss the big picture on those two giant caveats. So the first one is which part of progressivism are you talking about, [00:06:47] the social stuff or the economic stuff? Because if you're talking about the social stuff, I get what you're saying. You're totally right. Look at the polling, whether we agree or disagree. And actually, I've agreed that that we shouldn't be doing those policies from day one. That's part of why the left, some portions of the extreme left hate us because we [00:07:04] were never on board for that stuff. Like, I remember when the extreme left said, let's decriminalize border crossings. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm an immigrant. I want I'm a first generation immigrant. I want to protect immigrants. I don't want any of these demagoguing and I want a fair system, etc. But you can't decriminalize border crossings that will have 3 billion people [00:07:22] in the country by the end of the week. That means you don't have a border. That means you don't have a border. That's nuts. You can't do that. It's not practical. It just doesn't make any sense. Have you ever thought that issue through at all? Have you given it like one second of thought? So we at the Young Turks, we were never for that. [00:07:38] And we drove the left crazy on that stuff. Why? Because we're like. It doesn't make sense. It's not. That's not progressive to go. Oh, are no borders, no prisons, no cops, no reform the police because they're beating people up, etc., etc. So on the social issues, they go, okay, that's progressive, but how about that? [00:07:56] And that's unpopular. Fair. How about the economic issues? - Yeah. - How about the economic issues? Enormously popular. The progressive policies on the on economic issues. All poll above two thirds Medicare for all, higher wages, paid family leave. [00:08:12] You can't name an economic issue where progressives don't pull through the roof. But even smart pundits are like no progressive bad. They're all in the same group. Lump them together. I hate them all. That's why corporations should win. You should live under corporate rule, and you should never do any of [00:08:29] the economic suggestions of progressives. I want to go. I disagree. There's a second giant caveat. So I want to give you an excerpt from the piece. Let's go to graphic six because he fleshes it out even more, saying that Democrats in cities disavowed police cuts as they struggled [00:08:46] with rising crime and complained they couldn't handle a migrant influx. Let's just pause. Come back to me because a lot of people get upset at the messenger, but all you have to do is just live in real life to understand that when people start getting victimized [00:09:02] by some of the I'll just be generous and say unintended consequences of these poorly implemented policies, like what I've seen from the Democratic Party is a denial that those negative consequences are even happening. You can deny it all you want, and you can gaslight about it all you want, [00:09:19] but the people who are impacted by it know it's happening, so you can't brush it under the rug because people are actually experiencing it. And when they experience it and get gaslit about it, on top of that, they get real mad. Okay. Go talk to Democrats. I'm not talking about Republicans. [00:09:37] Go talk to Democrats in L.A., San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, New York. Okay. And what you will get is wall to wall people going, why did we decriminalize sexual assault? What the what? Who? Who said yes to that? And the answer is no one said yes to that except some weirdo extreme leftists [00:09:54] who hijacked the agenda. And instead of giving everybody health care and paid family leave, they're like, we got a great idea. Let's decriminalize a whole bunch of things that people absolutely hate, and it'll scare the living crap out of them. So they'll never vote for a progressive again. And so, look, my frustration is like when an election happens, [00:10:15] the candidate who wins has political capital in the beginning. Right. And at some point, progressives certainly had some political capital. We had some sway and some influence over the Democratic Party. And I'm upset that I feel like [00:10:31] that opportunity was squandered because that opportunity could have been utilized to implement universal economic policies or real reforms to our health care system. If we had just actually focused on those things, avoided infighting about garbage nonsense, [00:10:49] and ensured that that was the focus, that's what we would accomplish and that would have improved so many people's lives. And now it's over. Guys like no one in this election, no one is talking about improving health care. You're right Jake. Every time anything related to health care comes up, Kamala Harris will be like, [00:11:06] oh, we did some wonderful things. We capped the price of insulin. Okay, great. I'm glad you did that. But that doesn't fix our health care system. Our health care system is broken. There's still tens of millions of Americans who have no health insurance whatsoever, no coverage whatsoever. These are real problems that impact a lot of people, including, if not more [00:11:26] marginalized people in this country. Yeah. So I want to correct something I said because I just said it as I was talking. Pass. Decriminalize sexual assault. No one did that. But what they did do, for example, in California. And there's a ballot measure now to reverse it is that they moved [00:11:41] some serious felonies, like sexual assault to misdemeanors, depending on the kind of sexual assault. Right. And so and you read that list of stuff that they moved down to misdemeanors and you're like. - Why did they do that? - Why why did we do that? How does that have anything to do with police beating up [00:11:59] and shooting black guys like that? Why would a guy abusing his wife have anything to do with the police reform that we wanted? And in fact, in that ballot measure in California, they literally hid it. They did not say in the ballot measure what they were doing at all in moving them, which crimes they were moving, etc. [00:12:16] It was the most deceptive ballot measure, maybe in American history. And that makes me go, wait, what is this? Is this some sort of weirdo false flag operation? I don't think it is. But if I was a right winger who wanted to destroy the idea of economically populist [00:12:32] progressive proposals, I would take the crappiest progressive Proposal and make it even crappier and hide it from people and then have it pass and then go. You see, progressives stand for out of control crime and sexual assault. You see that? I mean, you know, if they weren't, if they weren't a right wing plant, [00:12:51] they were so horrifically incompetent that they could have been that it's plausible that they were a right wing plant. We don't even know. We don't even need to go to the right wing. Okay. Because what what did neoliberal Gavin Newsom actually accomplish? [00:13:07] What did he fight against the hardest in this state? Two things. He fought against increasing the minimum wage for all workers. And he fought against Medicare for all system in the state. Those are the two things he fought aggressively against. But that neoliberal was very happy to implement the other policies [00:13:27] that we're talking about. - That's a great point. - Okay. - Because that disempowered progressivism. - So what? So first of all, vote for prop 32 in California. If you live in California, that's the increase, the minimum wage and 36. You know why it's a ballot measure? Because Gavin Newsom said, hell no, I'm not going to raise wages. [00:13:43] You're going to have to put that on the ballot and go around me because all my donors say, don't raise wages, don't do anything about health care. By the way, another thing is don't bury the the phone lines that cause all the fires, because that would cost one of my top. In fact, my top donor, that's Gavin Newsom gave him PG and E gave him $10 million. [00:14:01] That would cost them money. So I'd rather have your towns burn down. Exactly. But but the one progressive thing I'll do is release all the criminals. Yeah. Shut down four prisons. Okay? With no plan, no investments in rehabilitation whatsoever. [00:14:16] County prisons end up getting overcrowded. I mean, it's just a complete nightmare. And so can you understand why voters would be upset and why voters would go from being open minded to progressivism to now being distrustful toward progressivism? Yeah. Of course. [00:14:32] And so that one Now the second caveat for me which to this article otherwise good articles, both of them write, making a good point about how this giant shift back to the right for the Democratic Party. But is it right and left? We talked about the policies and broke that down for you. [00:14:49] But remember, I'm sorry if I keep repeating it, but it's not that simple. It's populist versus establishment. So when you look at it from that lens, the Democratic Party hasn't moved to the right as much as they've moved back to the establishment. And so when you jettison the economically populist plans of the progressives [00:15:09] in that lurch to the right, you become less populist and hence less popular, and so that it's the inability to discern between economic and and social issues when it comes to progressives. [00:15:27] It shows, unfortunately, a massive Ignorance in how politics is analyzed in this country. I've got to give you these stats because they're so amazing. Mike Lux, has a group that did this polling. He's a good progressive. [00:15:43] Sometimes I get frustrated because these days he's so rah rah and Kamala Harris and, and and that's because he's an old school Democrat, etc.. But he did a poll that shows you exactly what is correct. Okay. So when they asked Americans, 67% of voters agree that, quote, [00:16:00] one of the biggest problems facing America today is that a handful of corporations have too much power and government is doing too little to hold them accountable. Let's not do anything about that. So two thirds of Americans say go left, go populist on economic issues [00:16:17] and fighting corporate rule. Half of them, 49% of them say that strongly, usually, strongly is a tiny category. But half the country is going where you regulate corporations already. And Democrats are like, we're going further towards corporations. Kamala Harris released a letter of 90 CEOs saying she's the best of the best. [00:16:35] Today, there's a story out about how Jamie Dimon might become the treasury secretary for Kamala Harris. What are you doing? Look at the numbers. What is wrong with you? Don't you have eyes? Here, let me read you two more. 71% of voters. That's a monster number. [00:16:51] Agree that today, quote, today, a handful of enormous, economically powerful corporations wield a massive amount of influence over the quality of our lives, with almost no accountability or transparency to the public. Look at the phrasing. It's the phrasing sounds extreme and still 71% go, that's right. [00:17:11] They have no accountability. They should be totally regulated. Last one, 76% of voters over three quarters of Americans agree that, quote, today, a handful of enormous monopoly corporations wield a massive amount of [00:17:28] influence over the quality of our lives, with almost no accountability or transparency to the public. The country is massively economically populist. And on those issues, on economic issues, massively progressive [00:17:45] three quarters of the country. But not one reporter in America can figure out, oh, progressive social issues, culture war nonsense versus progressive economic issues that the country loves. [00:18:00] Thanks for watching The Young Turks really appreciate it. Another way to show support is through YouTube memberships. You'll get to interact with us more. There's live chat emojis, badges. You've got emojis of me Anna John Jr. So those are super fun. But you also get playback of our exclusive member only shows [00:18:20] and specials right after they air. So all of that, all you got to do is click that join button right underneath the video. Thank you.