Krystal and Rachel: Nancy Pelosi’s Inequality Commission Is A Joke

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[Music]
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speaker pelosi with a big announcement
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about her major commitment to fighting
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inequality because that’s something she
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definitely really really cares about
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rachel
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um here’s the announcement she’s
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creating a committee
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a select committee in fact on economic
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inequality
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you see there her official press release
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on the website and this was actually
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something that really jumped down as you
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at you as like part of a normal
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system that is employed here in
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washington to make people
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feel like things are happening and make
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activists feel like they’re really
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engaged in the process but really it’s a
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way of sort of stiff-arming their
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demands and concerns
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yeah it’s all theater here in washington
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but this one in particular is something
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i call the hamster wheel
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right it’s designed to put her most
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activist members the members most likely
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to cause her problems on this issue
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she’s gonna put them on this commission
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they are going to run on this hamster
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wheel and feel like they’re doing
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something really important
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when in reality they’re just being kept
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uh busy away from the house floor the
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only place that actually matters for
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actual change on anything
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they’re gonna be running on the hamster
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wheel of this commission which will
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eventually put out a report that no one
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will read and it will accomplish nothing
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avoid these things like the plague if
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you are someone who cares about change
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and i say this to conservative activists
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i say it out let me say here to
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progressive activists
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don’t do this yeah well i mean it
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reminds me very much
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of the biden sanders task forces
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that you know was the only thing
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that bernie managed to extract from joe
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biden before exiting the race that you
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knew from the jump like
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it didn’t matter who you put on those
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committees it didn’t matter how good the
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recommendations were that were coming
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out of them
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like here we are days away from the
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biden administration and i’m not hearing
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anything about the recommendations that
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came out of the task forces
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whatsoever what pelosi says in this
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press release she says we’re creating
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the select committee
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to be a resource to the congress to make
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policy related
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to economic fairness access to education
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workforce development
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working with the committees of
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jurisdiction the select committee will
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study and recommend
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proposals to make our economy work for
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everyone powering american economic
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growth
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while ensuring that no one is left out
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or left behind in the 21st century
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economy
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all fancy way of saying like like you
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said
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they’re gonna study it they’re gonna put
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on a report and that’ll be the end of
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that so basically your point is here
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when you see these committees purporting
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to be about
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fighting inequality or fighting into
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whatever it is left or right
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what they’re really doing is putting up
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a roadblock putting up like
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a sort of obstacle course to jump
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through rather than actually taking
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issue on that issue
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this commission has two goals the first
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is to make pelosi look like she’s doing
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something and the second
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is to distract you know the act the
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members who actually want to do
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something
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from taking any meaningful action and
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this goes back to something we talked
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about earlier in the week which is
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look the only thing that matters in the
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house is action on the house floor
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progressive activists can learn a lot
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from the freedom caucus who presented
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themselves as a political power block
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by really only focusing on action on the
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house floor they could deliver a block
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of votes or they could withhold them
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and that is where their power came from
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was hanging together on these issues
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they didn’t get distracted
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by commissions they didn’t get
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distracted by other promises because
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this is just one
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tool political leaderships have to
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distract you know their problem members
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my favorite one is the and we’ll vote on
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that at some point or hey
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this bureaucrat will call you or hey can
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we just talk about it on the house floor
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the only thing that matters at the end
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of the day is voting
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and the more you can pressure and push
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action on that front
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the more effective you’re going to be
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because as we’ve learned from this whole
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2000 check
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2 000 check debacle the thing that they
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hate most is going on the record for
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anything because it’s a very
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very powerful tool and can be used
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against them or for them
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uh in any number of ways and your point
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is so well taken
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that progressives really fall prey to
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these types of tactics like they really
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feel like when they get put on the task
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force they
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because there’s this like idealism there
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of like they’re really listening to my
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concerns and they really mean it and
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these are my friends how many times we
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hear bernie sanders they’re like joe my
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friend joe biden you’re like
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ugh um so it reminds me of
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you know the forced to vote debate
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that’s have it happening on the left
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right now because on the one hand you
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have a faction of people who are saying
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we need a vote on this key issue that is
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important to us that’s important to the
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country in the middle of pandemic
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medicare for all like let’s take a vote
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and put everybody on their record
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and what you’re hearing from at least
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some in the progressive wing of the
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party here in dc is like
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let’s not do the voting that voting
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doesn’t really matter that much any
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we’re working behind the scenes to get
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on key
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leadership posts and committees etc etc
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and all of that is ultimately just a way
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to sort of
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make them feel like they’re being heard
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make them feel like they have some
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sway and influence and power within the
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system but ultimately to
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crush them and keep them quiet and keep
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them from causing trouble
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everyone wants to feel like they’re a
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cool kid right that’s how this town runs
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and these positions you know these
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acceptance on these commissions
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everything always feels like oh i’m
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getting invited to the table
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you have to be comfortable not being
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invited to the table because it’s the
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only way you’re actually going to be
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able to force
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you know that kind of political action
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on the floor which is the
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again i’m going to be a broken record on
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this but the only thing that matters at
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the end of the day
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is what you do on the floor it’s voting
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so so true rachel
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rachel thank you so much for being with
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us all week it’s been phenomenal having
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you here
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um always you have such incredible
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insight so thank you so much for that
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and happy new year to you my friend
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happy new year to you as well
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and to all of you risers thanks for
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having me sagar will be back next week
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to talk about aliens i know there’s a
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lot to say
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yeah there’s an alien update we missed
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an epstein update this week as well
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without sauger here so we have been
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falling down on the job a little bit
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but don’t worry friends because sagar
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will be back next week with all of those
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important stories and more
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we’re going to kick off the new year
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with friends of the show chuck rocha
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kyle kalinski brown and joy gray and so
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many more ben smith is going to join us
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to talk about what biden can expect from
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the media versus what trump got from the
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media
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don’t forget to like and share as well
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happy new years guys appreciate you all
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so much
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you made it you survived 2020 on to
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what’s next
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enjoy everybody

Will Urban Uprisings Help Trump? Actually, They Could Be His Undoing.

My career as a historian of white backlash might have begun the day that, as a teenager precociously obsessed with people like Abbie Hoffman, Tom Hayden, and Eldridge Cleaver, I asked my parents if they had any interesting stories to tell me about the 1960s. The only one my mom could come up with was the day in 1967, two years before I was born, when there were riots in the inner city of Milwaukee. My parents invited all of their friends in our suburban neighborhood, who couldn’t go to work at the businesses they owned in the city, over for a pool party.

That was probably when I first became aware that there were two sides to the 1960s: the movements for social justice and the anti-authoritarian rage on one side, and on the other the people for whom such disorder spurred confusion and fear for their white-picket-fenced safety.

I later learned researching my book Nixonland that Milwaukee’s authoritarian mayor, Henry Maier, eventually declared a version of martial law so strict and fierce that mothers could not go out to buy milk for their children. Klansmen, however, weren’t hassled for defying the lockdown; they rolled around town with shotguns poking out car windows. The Milwaukee police burned down a house with a mentally disabled man inside. They claimed it was a nest for a sniper. The next year Mayor Maier was up for reelection. He won with 80 percent of the vote.

People are thinking of stories like that now, during a week that school kids might study some day. President Trump, after all, responded to the uprising in Minneapolis by tweeting something Miami’s racist police chief said during riots in 1968: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Conservative Republicans (and right-wing Democrats) have a long and sordid history of exploiting riots for political gain. Richard Nixon knew what to do when, during a wave of urban uprisings in 1966, Vice President Hubert Humphrey said that “the National Guard is no answer to the problems of the slums.” Humphrey predicted “open violence in every major city and county in America” if conditions didn’t improve—then added, exuberantly but injudiciously, that if he lived in a slum, “I think you’d have more trouble than you have had already because I’ve got enough spark left in me to lead a mighty good revolt.”

Nixon took to the pages of a newsweekly for a guest editorial asking: “Who is responsible for the breaking of law and order in this country?” Hubert Humphrey for one, he answered. And Robert F. Kennedy, who had said—responding to a comment by former president Dwight D. Eisenhower that the 1965 Watts uprising stemmed from a “policy of lawlessness”—that “there is no point in telling Negroes to obey the law. To many Negroes the law is the enemy.”

Nixon was laying the groundwork for his 1968 presidential run. When he originally began doing so, it seemed likely his main appeal to the electorate would resemble that from his last presidential campaign in 1960: He was a statesman with deep foreign policy experience. That he chose a different approach this time was attributable to the tutelary example of a political neophyte: Ronald Reagan, who had just won a shocking upset in the California Republican gubernatorial primary with a law-and-order, white-backlash campaign.

So it was that in 1968, after two more summers of fire and blood, running against none other than Hubert “Mighty Good Revolt” Humphrey, Nixon aimed straight for the amygdala of those frightened white suburbanites. His most famous campaign commercial was a montage of riot scenes over a jittery, shrieking electronic soundtrack, the camera lingering on the naked white torso of a mannequin. Then came Nixon’s voice: “So I pledge to you, we will have order in the United States.”

It worked, and the lesson appeared plain enough: A politics of empathy of the sort that Humphrey and Kennedy had attempted—and Joe Biden is attempting now—is a political nonstarter.

It’s simply incorrect to argue that mass political violence inevitably spurs a backlash that benefits conservatives. By 1970, Nixon sought to nationalize that year’s congressional elections as a referendum on law and order—even intentionally spurring crowd violence against himself for the cameras to capture. A columnist reported, “Nixon’s advance men this fall have carefully organized with local police to allow enough dissenters into the staging areas so the president will have his theme well illustrated.”

That this was a wrong, and overly simplistic, conclusion is suggested by another of that year’s election results—Bobby Kennedy’s. Campaigning in a Black neighborhood in Indianapolis for the Democratic primary in Indiana, a racially diverse bellwether state, he received word of Martin Luther King’s assassination before it had become public—before his audience knew. So he broke the news to them in a tender, improvised rhetorical masterpiece in which, for the first time publicly, he reflected on the assassination of his brother and the pain of losing someone you love to violence. The fact that Indianapolis was one of few big cities not to face rioting that day is often attributed to Kennedy’s speech. And though the reasons are many and complex, and still debated today, he won the primary.

Once, in San Jose, disappointed that no one heckled Nixon during a speech, his chief of staff, Bob Haldeman, gave protesters time to mass outside afterward, then had the president leap up on the hood of his limousine in their midst. He was obliged with the expected  hail of rocks while jutting out his chin and making his trademark two-handed V-salute, providing footage that made all the evening newscasts. “That’s what they hate to see!” he exulted.

But Republicans that year underperformed expectations. When disorder is all around them, voters tend to blame the person in charge for the disorder—and, sometimes, punish those who exploit it for political gain.

It’s also not correct to argue that such disorder harms prospects for progressive change. Sometimes, in fact, it has spurred it. Political scientist David Srketny credits the urban disorders of the 1960s with moving corporations to commit to affirmative action. Riots following the Rodney King beating are credited with spurring Congress to pass legislation granting federal oversight over police departments—a power that lasted until Jeff Sessions, as Trump’s attorney general, rolled it back. And the event that we now honor with Pride parades was not only a riot, but a particularly ugly one: the folks who set it off trapped cops raiding their bar, and then tried to burn it down. But no one would deny Stonewall led to progressive change.

The politics of riots are complex, ambiguous—and especially, in our present circumstances, unpredictable. Though it’s become commonplace to place Trump in a long lineage of right-wing racism-exploiters that runs through Nixon and Reagan, it’s also important to grasp the real discontinuities. Unlike any Republican president before him, Trump is risking the consequences of being openly racist. Nixon—and even, in his 1968 and 1972 presidential runs, George Wallace—at least paid lip service to the goal of racial justice. That’s because even white people who regularly said and did things harmful to Black Americans didn’t want to believe that association with a particular candidate marked them as racist.

So they made it a priority to have Reagan campaign before Black audiences—for instance before the Urban League at its annual convention in New York, even though they knew they would only win a tiny fraction of Black voters. “We weren’t expecting to pick up any Black votes in New York,” one adviser noted. “We just want to show moderates and liberals”—if it were 2020 he would say “suburban voters”—“that Reagan wasn’t anti-Black.”

The day before his Urban League appearance, as it happens, Reagan gave his infamous speech in Mississippi at the Neshoba County Fair, in which he championed “states’ rights” with Confederate flags behind him. He stood just a few miles from the site of the most infamous lynching of the 1960s, and in a place where barnstorming politicians had for decades deployed states’ rights rhetoric as a synonym for racial dominance.

That speech is widely credited with setting the tenor for Reagan’s campaign, especially in the South. But my research suggests things were more complicated. The backlash to Reagan’s most explicit foray into race-baiting was so immediate and so intense, it was widely judged by Republican strategists as a mistake. One Mississippi GOP official, in fact, worried that Reagan’s rhetoric was so embarrassing to moderate white Mississippians that it might throw the state to Jimmy Carter.

It didn’t—but where Barry Goldwater got 87 percent of the vote in Mississippi in 1964, in 1980 Reagan only edged Carter by one percent. White Southerners, by 1980, dearly wished to see themselves as “colorblind.” A racist dogwhistle that was too easily audible wasn’t useful.

So in Reagan’s homestretch swing through Texas, the campaign put a Black state legislator up front at their rallies, including one broadcast on statewide TV, for maximal prominence in reaction shots of the crowd. I’ve seen that trick pulled off at every Republican convention since—until, that is, 2016.

It’s often said that Donald Trump takes the dogwhistle and turns it into a train whistleLooting, shooting: Sure, he, too, apes Reagan in attempting public appeals to African Americans, the better to soothe those suburban whites. But MAGA loves the black people” does not appear to be doing the trick.

As Greg Sargent has noted in the Washington Post, Trump in 2018 turned up the volume on the train whistle—“relentlessly painting nonwhite immigrants as criminals and murderers.” What happened? The fallout of support among educated white suburbanites handed Republicans defeat after defeat.

Will the awful events in Minneapolis and Louisville and Atlanta and New York (and who knows how long the list will be by weekend’s end?), and the president’s racist grunts in response, beat out compassion, context, and empathy? Predictions are perilous. But history suggests that, even among voters bunkered behind their picket fences, they might not.

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