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We're back with another edition of The
Federalist or Radio Hour. I'm Emilijashenski,

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culture editor here at the Federalist.
As always, you can email the show

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at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at fdr LST,

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make sure to subscribe wherever you download
your podcasts, and of course to

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the premium ad free version of the
Federalist dot Com as well. I'm so

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happy to be joined today by Ryan
Grimm, who's the author of an excellent

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new book, The Squad AOC and
The Hope of a Political Revolution. Ryan

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is the DC bureau chief over at
The Intercept. He's the co host of

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Counterpoints with Me, which you can
subscribe to over on the Breaking Points Channel.

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You can watch on the Breaking Points
Channel, you can get it on

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any podcast platform. And Ryan also
has another podcast called Deconstructed, which goes

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and does amazing deep dives into all
kinds of topics. So Ryan, first

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of all, thank you so much
for joining us, and congrats on the

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book. We have an amazing show
today. Indeed we do is what I

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think I'm supposed to say. There
you go. I wore my Breaking Points

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sweater to the mall yesterday. I
was very excited. Did you get any

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comments? No? No, I
did not get any comments or was very

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disappointed. So yeah, background on
that is one of our producers over at

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Counterpoints, Griffin created a sweatshirt that's
like supposed to be an ugly Christmas sweater

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with all of our faces on.
Yeah. And Ryan and Christal Ball,

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co host of at Breaking Points,
actually did an event at Politics and Pros

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here in DC and someone came up
to them actually wearing their own faces,

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which Ryan had have been surreal.
Yeah, that was pretty weird. Okay,

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Well, let's get to the book
because I just recommend it to anybody

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who's interested in politics period, doesn't
matter if you're in the left of the

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right. There's so much interesting stuff
in here. It captures I think the

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dynamics of Capitol Hill really well.
But Ran, maybe a good place to

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start is that this is a sequel, of sorts to a book you wrote

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right before it. Can you tell
us about going from We've Got People,

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which was the book before this one, to the Squad and kind of how

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you're bridging point A and point B
together with these two books. Yeah,

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We've Got People was a fun one
because it was a way to kind of

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build off of about at that point, maybe twelve years of reporting roughly from

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two thousand and I've been covering the
progressive world and the Democratic Party and the

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fight between the two of them,
starting in two thousand and six in those

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midterms, and then in twenty eighteen
when AOC and the rest of the squad

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won their primaries. It really did
feel like an arc, al a twelve

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year arc that was identifiable, both
in terms of all of the different forces

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that were work, plus the actual
peace people from you know, the activists

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who started in their twenties and now
we're you know, in more you know,

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higher positions in their in their forties. Obviously many of them I kind

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of knew, you know, I
had gotten to know very well over that

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twelve year period. Plus the politicians
as well, who had you know,

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gone in and out of different positions
public to private life, and that that

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two thousand and six moment really felt
to me connected to the kind of two

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thousand through the nineteen eighties kind of
the very seeds of the of the pushback

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against the kind of turn towards corporate
power and corporate money in the nineteen eighties

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where you had Burlington mayor Bernie Sanders
getting behind Jesse Jackson for his presidential campaigns,

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and it, you know, from
this quixotic thing arose a real,

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a real fighting force. And so
that book has kind of a satisfying narrative

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arc to it that were very familiar
with the underdogs getting their act together and

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you know, fighting back against the
big bad death star and you know,

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triumphing. And of course they didn't
triumph though at the very end, what

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they had done is I have just
gotten themselves into a position to start to

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have a fight on somewhat more equal
terrain. So then the next book picks

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up really with Bernie Sanders first presidential
campaign kind of picks up at that moment

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where now the now the fight is
really on and they're actually contesting power at

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the highest level you know, in
the in the you know, symbolized by

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Bernie Sanders campaign, which you came, you know, days away from snatching

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the actual nomination. So the second
book is much less satisfying in terms of

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like a narrative arc, but I
think I think more interesting. Well,

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I was going to say, actually
I want to pick up on the point

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about Bernie, because the book is
called the Squad and I'm looking at the

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cover right now and has all the
squad members, but Bernie looms so large

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over this the narrative that you just
mentioned, and I wanted to ask if

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you could talk a little bit about
this is like a two prong question.

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One, as you were observing the
twenty sixteen Democratic primary and then into the

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general election as well, sort of
someone who as someone who's followed this since

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you know, two thousand and six, to your point were what were your

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impressions of what was happening with the
Bernie Sanders campaign? And then b how

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did that and people should buy the
book to get you know, a lot

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of the answers to this question,
but how did that sort of give some

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room for the squad to kind of
take off eventually? Like how did the

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Bernie campaign make it possible for the
squad to sort of come into Congress with

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some momentum too? Yeah, you
could have even had the cover with a

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little faded kind of Bernie face in
the background behind them, because you know,

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his campaign, like you said,
really did create a space for them.

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You know, the the arc is
really you know, the financial crist

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you know, you get the Iraq
War creating, you know, a huge

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schism and a break with the Democratic
Party for a lot of young people who

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were like, this party does not
represent us. That flows right into the

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financial crisis and the rise of Obama, and you had this kind of hope

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that there was going to be change, you know, that this is the

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guy. The reason he beat Hillary
Clinton was really that he had opposed the

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Iraq War like that. Other than
that, policy wise, there wasn't a

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whole lot of difference between them,
and there was a real hope that,

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you know, the kind of online
activism and the energy that had developed over

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the years would then be marshaled by
Obama to kind of really fight against the

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corporate wing of the party like that. Of course, did not happen.

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He ended up allying mostly with the
corporate wing of the party, which then

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produced some cynicism, but also some
kind of real kind of efforts to challenge

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the party from the left, and
you get Occupy Wall Street out of that.

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And Bernie Sanders had been using kind
of the occupied language of the ninety

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nine percent against the one percent,
you know, for decades, talking about

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the millionaires and the billionaires, and
so when he ran, he expected that

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he was going to just run the
symbolic like protest campaign where he's going to

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get left wing ideas into the conversation. But of course, you know,

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Hillary's going to walk away with the
nomination. He was. He was as

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shocked as anybody else to find himself
in a real competition, and coming in

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then to twenty eighteen, with Trump
in the White House, the entire Democratic

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Party, like the base of it, really started to think that the establishment

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wing was just not up to the
job. If you remember back in twenty

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like right after right after Trump won, like the party, like the Schumers

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and the Pelosis of the world,
were just completely on their heels, flat

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on their back, had been just
leveled by everything, and in a genuinely

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grassroots way, like Democratic voters organized
the Women's March for January if that was

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January twenty first, like the day
after Trump's nomination and Trump's inauguration, And

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at first, like most Democrats didn't
even want to have anything to do with

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it. They didn't really know what
it was. You didn't know who was

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associated with it, and they only
Democrats only kind of came around around reluctantly.

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And then you ended up having something
like five million people come into the

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streets that that January twenty first day
across the country, you know, thousands

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and you know, you know,
hundreds of thousands in DC, tens of

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thousands, hundreds of thousands in other
cities. And that really showed that there

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was like a path around the establishment
winging the party. And then this so

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the squad in twenty eighteens comes to
symbolize that. And then by the time

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of the twenty twenty presidential election,
you had all of these candidates just trip

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over themselves to talk to try to
out Bernie Bernie other than Biden, basically

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pretty much everybody said that they were
for Medicare for all. You ha had

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Kamala Harris, if you remember that
when one presidential debate, say that she

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was for banning private health insurance.
You remember a day or two later she

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says, you misheard the question,
which of course is absurd, but like

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it shows, it shows the way
that the kind of a democratic party at

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large had had just decided that actually, this, this is where the energy

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is, and we need to we
need to head over here if we're going

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to capture it. You know,
one thing you hear a lot about on

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the right is the sort of legend
of Act Blue and how you know,

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the Republicans have just never been able
to muster a competitor to Act Blue,

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and that raises all sorts of questions
about is it the software platform or is

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it you know, something on the
grassroots level. Is there something about and

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maybe yeah, can you explain to
me, like why the right can't do

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this because Act Blue we actually use
it at the Intercept for our donations.

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It's just a donation platform. It's
like a PayPal, you know. It's

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like you click a link and you
donate, and it's and it asks the

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information that you need for the FEC
unless you're a nonprofit, which we are,

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so then it asks different information.
It makes sure you're not a foreign

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citizen trying to donate, and then
it collects what information it can on you,

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you know, email, phone number, whatever, so that that you

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can then kind of be targeted by
campaigns later. But it's it's really rudimentary.

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Like I feel like if somebody gave
me a two hundred and fifty thousand

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dollars grant or something, I could
find engineers who could like build a serviceable

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version of it. And I've seen
a lot of that like like paranoia on

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the right of like look at all
this act Blue and you'll see like people

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who don't know how to read FEC
reports and they'll look and they'll see all

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these act Blue things in there,
like, oh, look at look this

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organization called act Blue that is like
funding all of these people. It's like,

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no, imagine that said visa.
It's just that's people giving thirty dollars

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and then they figure out ways to
make it easy to do monthly or whatever.

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But I don't like it's so basic. It's just a very I mean,

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the Democrats are managing to screw up
a lot of their basic infrastructure lately,

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so it's not as if anybody's got
to totally figured out. But why,

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yeah, why can't why can't the
right just build a basic you know,

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money collection bucket? Like it doesn't
make it doesn't I don't quite understand

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it. Yeah, there's wind Red, which was supposed to like initially be

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the competitor to Act Blue, the
parallel competitor, yet and it was breaking

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or something or what was the you
know, that's a great question. I

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don't know if it, like if
it's functional, has ever come to match

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my impression is that it does at
this point act very similarly to Act Blue.

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But that's why I mean, I
wonder if this is more of a

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red Yeah, they could have just
really gone for it. I wonder if

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this is actually a conversation about the
demographics, the donors, Democrats' ability to

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fundraise digitally, at least on a
sort of grassroots level. And that's where

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I'm curious to your thoughts, Ryan, is this about left populism versus right

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populism. Donald Trump was able to
raise a ton of money and still is

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actually able to raise a ton of
money digitally and through his brand in the

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same way that Bernie and sort of
Bernie adjacent brands are able to raise a

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lot of money. But nobody else
on the Republican side has been able to

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match that because frankly, they're not
Donald Trump, Whereas with Bernie, it

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seems to be Ryan that if you
look at AOC resheet, it to Leeb

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sort of other people in the squad
area, they actually have been able to

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like capitalize on the burning momentum,
and it seems to be like Act Blue

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is a part of that. It
seems to me like maybe there's some demographics

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that are part of that. What
are your thoughts on how that kind of

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infrastructure to the point you just raised
this sort of organic grassroots momentum around the

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Women's March. I mean, what's
what happened on the left that allowed that

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to just really bloom? I mean, for one, like there was like

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this deep psychological shock, emotional shock
going from nobody expecting Trump to be able

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to win to then seeing Trump win, and millions of Democrats went through the

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same kind of cycle of complete like
depression and misery and like how tears and

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like how could as possibly be happening? This isn't the country that I live

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in, followed by kind of denial, like it went through all the stages

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of grief and bargaining. Like you
had them furiously trying to like lobby electors.

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Remember they remember there was this whole
faithless Electors thing where they were going

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to go find, you know,
people who were elected as part of the

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electoral college and persuade them that because
of Russia they should actually vote for Hillary,

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even though it's we've all learned,
don't do that. Don't do that.

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I mean, they should have just
come up with a whole other slate.

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And these are the actual electors,
but I mean there's a similar idea

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trying to undermine the will of those
those states voters. Then they gave millions

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of dollars to Jill Stein, who
who then kind of sued for a recount

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in Michigan and I think Wisconsin too. Uh that those those failed as well.

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So once they got done with the
bargaining and the and all of that,

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they became just fiercely determined to organize
their way toward resistance to Trump.

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And they and they very much for
the first time in decades or or even

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longer, they felt like the Democratic
Party itself was useless and that they were

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going to take matters into their own
hands, and and did in a lot

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of states, Like in a lot
of states, these mostly women kind of

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took over the the state apparatus of
the state parties. They ran for a

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lot of them ran for office and
are now elected members of Congress. And

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they're like it was you heard from
a lot of them saying like I didn't

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think I was qualified enough to like
participate in this process, but if Donald

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Trump can be president, then I
am, then I am absolutely qualified.

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And you know, I think there's
probably more generally curious for your take on

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this is probably generally, you know, from Howard Dean on more skepticism of

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corporate power, or there was,
at least there was then on the left,

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and so there was an ideology to
the small donor movement too. It

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wasn't just like this is a way
to compete at at scale and beat Republicans.

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It was like, this is a
way that we're going to get better

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policies out of our politics, because
if politicians are beholden to regular people rather

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than beholden to corporate packs, then
they're going to you know, produce better

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stuff on the other side of it. So I think some of it was

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that, but you know, Trump, like you said, has really been

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able to raise enormous amounts of money
from grassroots donors. And also I'm curious

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how this fits into it, you
know, because I've been doing a newsletter

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for like ten years at this point, and a pretty big one. I've

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talked to a lot of other people
who do newsletters and run businesses off of

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newsletters, and the sense is that, like on the right, if you

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have a big newsletter, you can
make a really an enormous amount of money

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selling stuff, selling stock tips,
like selling gold, selling like commemorative of

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this or that. Basically listen to
you know, Steve Bannon's podcast and like

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whatever the ads are for that podcast. Those things are going to work extremely

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well on conservative newsletters as well,
whereas liberals have just not been able to

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crack that. Like liberal readers are
just not buying cold or or like get

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rich quick stuff. They will probably
buy some like you know, herbal stuff

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or like lifestyle stuff, but they're
not as Interestingly, it's interesting, they're

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not as trusting, even though they
trust institutions much more than the right,

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Like they're much more skeptical of stuff
that's being sold to them, whereas on

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the right they really distrust institutions.
But if Steve Bannon's like you need this

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for your You're like, you need
this gold product for your four oh one

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K people are like, oh,
yes, I definitely need that. He's

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a wealthy man, he's doing quite
well. Yes, So I don't know

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how that plays into it, but
there's something going on. The Watch Down

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00:18:30,359 --> 00:18:33,519
Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski every
day, Chris helps unpack the connection between

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00:18:33,519 --> 00:18:37,200
politics and the economy and how it
affects your wallet. Where's the fastest rising

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00:18:37,279 --> 00:18:41,799
area for commercial real estate. Train
stations. Another huge effect of COVID are

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00:18:41,839 --> 00:18:45,960
people's chim meets too and from their
office. While office buildings in major cities

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00:18:47,000 --> 00:18:49,000
are getting cleared out, the only
parts of cities that are growing are train

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00:18:49,079 --> 00:18:52,160
stations. Whether it's happening in DC
or down on Wall Street, it's affecting

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00:18:52,160 --> 00:18:56,319
you financially. Be informed. Check
out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with

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00:18:56,440 --> 00:19:02,519
Chris Markowski on Apple, Spotify or
wherever you get your podcast. Well,

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I think that's what it is though. That like when you distrust institutions,

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which is a reasonable perspective at this
point, in a reasonable worldview, then

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the people who are telling you you
should distrust all of the institutions. So

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the people who are the kind of
gateway into the correct worldview, they sort

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of have that trust built in because
they're right about probably the one biggest question,

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you know, can you trust institutions? No? Okay, I'm you

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know, with him, or I'm
not trust right right? So I do

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wonder if that's part of it.
One fun story on that I was at

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the I was at the Huffington Post
back when AOL bought AOL owned the news

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organization and Rush Limbaugh. He got
into this big controversy because he called some

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random like student or something at Georgetown
Sandra Fluck. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

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because like and he started like it
was he was like upset with her

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because she was talking about birth control
pills or something. It was really weird

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thing. And then there was like
this everybody should cancel their advertising with Rush

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Limbaugh campaign. And for some bizarre
reason, I wound up on a conference

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call with AOL executives where they were
telling us that they were going to like

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withdraw there their sponsorship of Rush Limbaugh. And I was like, you know,

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okay, that's interesting, we'll report
on that. But I was like,

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also, I'm curious, why why
were you actually, you know,

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running a sponsorship. Why are you
advertising on Rush Limbaugh? Like your AOL,

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What's what's going on? And they
were like, oh my god,

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it was. It was our most
lucrative advertising campaign, Like we were selling

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PC cleaner to his audience, which
I don't even know if they still if,

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like PC cleaner still exists, but
it's like it was this product for

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old people basically who would have problems
with their computer. And for nine to

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ninety nine a month, AOL would
run a software program and then quote unquote

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clean their computer like basically did nothing. And then once they once they still

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had problems, then they would call
AOL and then AOL would upsell them on

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other products like just basically just robbing
old people of money. And they're like,

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yeah, there's They're like, there's
no program in the country where we

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can We're more able to like just
siphon money out of the listenership than rush

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limbaws. You know, sorry,
sorry that you're walking away from that old

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mind. That's actually kind of interesting
because that it has been the case and

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it still is. Really that could
right of center audiences tend to be older

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and wealthier and that doesn't mean like
ultra rich obviously, but have disposable income

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and does kind of make a gold
mine, like it just really easy to

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target ads to people who are older
with disposable income. And I wonder,

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actually, this is a bigger question
about the story that you tell in the

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Squad. A lot of people on
the right think about how, you know,

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white women are creating like this.
I'm trying to think of the best

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distillation of the argument are creating or
driving the Democratic Party away from you know,

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it's prior base of the white working
class voters. You have like educated

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white women who are making Democrats do
things like say we need to abolish the

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police or ice or whatever it is. And those movements have come and gone.

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But that also is it does seem
true that, you know, you

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look at positions on salt and all
of that, Democrats are really cleaning up

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in certain areas of the country with
educated suburban voters in a way that probably

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does make it easier to sell products
or to fundraise on different Can you just

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talk to us a little bit about
that, like the the realignment but not

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the white working class realignments of the
educated white realignment that has reshaped the way

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that the party leaders actually think about
this whole thing. And I write about

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this in the book with regard specifically
to Chuck Schumer, who was, you

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know, one of the most kind
of deft, like fingers on the pulse

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politicians that you've got out there,
just just very good at like the blocking

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and tackling nuts and bolts of just
actual just politics and campaigning and just agnostic

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about you know, how Democrats are
going to get it done. You know,

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they're just going to beat Republicans one
way or another, like that's that's

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his mission. Kind of like a
McConnell who's like started out with a plan,

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you know, as endorsed by Planned
parenthood, and then the party changes,

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he's like, yeah, all right, I'll fill the Supreme Court with

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people that will overturn abortion. Like
he's not in it for a cause,

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he's in it to just in it
to like win. And so Schumer in

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twenty eighteen in particular, saw the
just incredible amount of money that just basic

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democratic donors activists were kicking in.
I mean they gave that Amy McGrath in

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running against was a McConnell. I
think in Kentucky they gave her like twenty

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five million dollars just for fun,
like just to like just because it felt

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good to give money against Mitch McConnelly. Like some of them were fooled into

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thinking that she had a chance.
Others were like, I don't care if

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she has a chance or not.
It makes me feel good to give twenty

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five dollars against Mitch McConnell. In
every Senate campaign around the country, they

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basically had more money than they needed. Like the woman who ran against Susan

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Collins in Maine finished the and I
think still actually has it in her account.

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She finished that race with like fifteen
million dollars in her bank account,

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because you know, you can only
spend so much money on TV and Maine

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like there's only there's literally only so
much ad space that you can buy,

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and so they couldn't stop it all
up. Now. Fascinatingly, the one

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race they did underspent on later was
Mandela Barnes of Wisconsin and then ended up

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losing by what twenty thousand votes for
something. So it didn't quite you know,

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it hasn't it didn't totally last at
the high level. It was when

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Trump was in the White House in
the twenty eighteen midterms. But so Schumer

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saw this. Now they lost most
of these races like Iowa, North Carolina,

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Ducky, Maine, but they didn't
lose because they were underfunded, and

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you know, but then then they're
able to expand the map and like spend

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enormously in these places and also in
like Arizona and Georgia and places where they

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end up do winning where they do
end up winning later. And so then

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Schumer surveying this landscape changed his kind
of politics. He's like all right,

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So this is a better way of
raising money than going to fundraisers. I

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mean, he's going to continue to
go to fundraisers, but when it comes

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to priorities in emphasis, you can
scale these the math on these small donations

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to a much higher degree than you
can these going to these party dinners.

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Party dinner might raise half a million
dollars, but it takes weeks of planning,

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00:26:38,039 --> 00:26:41,680
a lot of time on the part
of the politicians and their staff.

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Then you got to hire all the
donors' kids to be interns in different places.

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Like it's just just a huge hassle. Whereas the regular people who are

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00:26:52,640 --> 00:26:57,559
kicking in and now portly to your
point, have more money than Bernie's people

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who are giving him twenty seven dollars
on average. Like these women just they're

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they're older and they had just have
more disposable income. So they're not just

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00:27:07,359 --> 00:27:11,400
giving twenty seven dollars so Bernie senters. They're giving fifty dollars, and they're

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00:27:11,400 --> 00:27:18,039
giving it to like ten different a
Senate candidates. Every single time, you

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00:27:18,039 --> 00:27:22,480
know, Trump says something obnoxious and
that and that amount of money is really

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00:27:22,640 --> 00:27:26,119
really adding up so trumor so so
Schumer says like, Okay, what do

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00:27:26,160 --> 00:27:32,880
we need to do to make sure
that this base, you know, stays

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00:27:32,920 --> 00:27:37,799
happy and feels like they're involvement in
democratic politics was worth it. And he

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00:27:37,880 --> 00:27:42,000
really felt like he was putting together
a coalition that was going to be a

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00:27:42,000 --> 00:27:45,920
majoritaryan coalition for a generation, and
he was going to do that through basically

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00:27:45,920 --> 00:27:52,079
a lot of what you saw and
build back better plus plus voting rights,

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00:27:52,960 --> 00:27:56,880
plus legalizing weed he wanted to do, and canceling he always wanted to do,

348
00:27:56,920 --> 00:28:00,960
like fifty thousand students did a lot
more than Biden. He felt like

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that combination would keep you young people, upper middle class, college educated women,

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and black voters together in a coalition
that would increasingly become just kind of

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unbeatable nationally. Something that was occurring
to me as you were talking. I

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wanted to ask you, you know, if people want to see Ryan's thoughts

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or some of the way that he's
thinking about the dynamic between economic issues and

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cultural issues to the extent that those
can be disentangled. He wrote, probably

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a lot of you remember the elephant
in the zoom, a really really good

356
00:28:37,759 --> 00:28:41,440
deep dive into this in the intercept. I was curious Ryan how how you

357
00:28:41,440 --> 00:28:47,119
would say the Squad is thinking through
those issues. And also, just with

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I want to preface that by saying, from the perspective of somebody on the

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00:28:49,200 --> 00:28:55,119
right, the Democratic Party of twenty
twenty three, twenty twenty four almost now

360
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is so is unrecognizable from the party
of twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen when it

361
00:29:02,000 --> 00:29:04,960
was Hillary Clinton is the standard bearer
before she lost. These are two,

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00:29:06,279 --> 00:29:11,119
i mean almost completely different parties.
And on those cultural and economic issues,

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00:29:11,680 --> 00:29:17,880
the Democratic parties platform consensus on consensus
on some of these big issues, from

364
00:29:17,920 --> 00:29:21,680
the perspective of somebody on the left, is kind of better all around.

365
00:29:21,799 --> 00:29:23,960
You know, from a progressive It's
not perfect, There's there's no way it's

366
00:29:25,000 --> 00:29:29,359
perfect, but the kind of consensus
positions on these things. You know,

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00:29:29,400 --> 00:29:33,960
you have Biden canceling student debt,
as you said, you build back better,

368
00:29:33,000 --> 00:29:37,759
a lot of priorities in there.
How, how has the squad kind

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00:29:37,799 --> 00:29:44,480
of thought through strategy and thought through
the difference between culture and economics. Thought

370
00:29:44,519 --> 00:29:47,960
through this is a huge question obviously, but thought through you know, the

371
00:29:48,759 --> 00:29:52,359
sort of I don't want to call
it superficial because that trivializes it, but

372
00:29:52,400 --> 00:30:00,200
that sort of cultural signaling versus you
know, the pragmatism and all that.

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What I've what I've found in kind
of re reporting a lot of this is

374
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that so much of it just happens
kind of day by day and week by

375
00:30:11,000 --> 00:30:18,000
week in kind of organic response and
interaction with various kind of forces that are

376
00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:23,039
coursing through politics, rather than kind
of sitting down and kind of strategizing it.

377
00:30:23,079 --> 00:30:30,200
But you're right that the parties upside
down from where it was and upside

378
00:30:30,240 --> 00:30:33,359
down and shaken up from where it
was back in twenty fifteen twenty sixteen,

379
00:30:33,400 --> 00:30:37,559
and a lot of the book focuses
on this, on how that happened,

380
00:30:37,400 --> 00:30:44,400
and it's this really fascinating kind of
interaction where you have Occupy Wall Street,

381
00:30:45,400 --> 00:30:52,359
followed by Black Lives Matter, joined
by this huge kind of climate mobilization,

382
00:30:52,160 --> 00:30:57,799
all of that then flowing into the
Bernie Sanders campaign and mixing with the occupy

383
00:30:57,920 --> 00:31:06,920
language, which then the Hillary Clinton
campaign tried to absorb and refract back in

384
00:31:07,039 --> 00:31:15,079
terms of kind of cultural and kind
of social justice questions. And she kind

385
00:31:15,079 --> 00:31:19,240
of I highlight her stump speech where
she would say, you know, Bernie

386
00:31:19,279 --> 00:31:22,160
Sanders is the one issue candidate.
All he cares about is the economy,

387
00:31:23,000 --> 00:31:26,839
but does breaking up the big banks? Is that going to end racism?

388
00:31:26,200 --> 00:31:32,480
It was breaking up the big banks
and sexism. And even the first time

389
00:31:32,480 --> 00:31:34,000
she gave that some speech she's paused
and she's like, now, of course,

390
00:31:34,079 --> 00:31:37,119
let me be clear, I will
break up the big banks if I

391
00:31:37,119 --> 00:31:41,079
feel like I have to. Because
she could she could even hear I think

392
00:31:41,279 --> 00:31:45,279
in her own mind, how clearly
it seemed like she was trying to distract

393
00:31:45,880 --> 00:31:53,799
and like pivot away from actually addressing
some of these material questions and substituting the

394
00:31:55,200 --> 00:31:57,519
cultural questions instead. So she said, well, I'm going to do both.

395
00:31:57,519 --> 00:32:01,359
He's just a one issue just a
one issue candidate, and a lot

396
00:32:01,359 --> 00:32:07,680
of that, a lot of that
kind of attack landed. But also in

397
00:32:07,720 --> 00:32:14,680
particular it's stung like for somebody like
Bernie Sanders or for his supporters, you

398
00:32:14,680 --> 00:32:17,079
know, who have been on the
left wing of the political spectrum of their

399
00:32:17,079 --> 00:32:22,359
whole lives, to be told that
they are kind of racists or sexists or

400
00:32:22,400 --> 00:32:31,279
reactionaries was like infuriating and painful at
the same time. And so when the

401
00:32:31,319 --> 00:32:36,160
Squad rose in twenty eighteen, there
were a lot of people who loved the

402
00:32:36,200 --> 00:32:40,400
Squad for their just generally for their
politics, but also they liked being able

403
00:32:40,480 --> 00:32:44,440
to win an online argument and say, see, I told you, like

404
00:32:44,519 --> 00:32:50,440
you're the racist and sexist one,
like why aren't you supporting AOC or Presley

405
00:32:50,960 --> 00:32:54,599
or Rashida tu leeber ilan Omar islamophobe? What's wrong with you? And so

406
00:32:54,839 --> 00:33:01,480
it played into those those debates,
and what the members of the squad and

407
00:33:01,839 --> 00:33:08,720
kind of adjacent politicians found is that
when they would push material questions and issues

408
00:33:08,759 --> 00:33:15,039
forward, they'd run up against resistance
against the from the center left, the

409
00:33:15,039 --> 00:33:19,519
corporate wing of the party. When
they would push on cultural issues, they'd

410
00:33:19,519 --> 00:33:22,920
have the support of the left,
and they'd also have the support of the

411
00:33:22,039 --> 00:33:30,799
entire kind of resistance democratic base,
which hits a patheosis with the George Floyd

412
00:33:31,000 --> 00:33:36,400
moment in the summer of twenty twenty. And so in some ways, like

413
00:33:37,160 --> 00:33:44,160
through no, through nothing that they
personally did, those issues of theirs become

414
00:33:44,200 --> 00:33:51,319
more dominant because they're pushing through the
institutions in a faster way than the material

415
00:33:51,359 --> 00:33:54,240
ones are. Like you see a
lot of like the Chris Ruffo book,

416
00:33:54,279 --> 00:33:57,759
for instance, that we talked about
on our show when we had him on,

417
00:33:58,119 --> 00:34:00,880
We're just going to ask you about
that. That's per yeah, he

418
00:34:00,119 --> 00:34:04,920
he like focuses a lot on,
you know, who first came up with

419
00:34:05,000 --> 00:34:13,360
these ideas that then became dominant in
a lot of liberal and mainstream institutions,

420
00:34:14,159 --> 00:34:17,519
which is an interesting academic question of
like who for who wrote the first paper

421
00:34:17,880 --> 00:34:22,639
and what their influences are. But
to me, the real question is not

422
00:34:22,760 --> 00:34:25,440
who came up with the ideas or
necessarily even why they came up with the

423
00:34:25,480 --> 00:34:30,320
ideas. The real question is why
did why did the ideas march through the

424
00:34:30,360 --> 00:34:34,239
institutions in the way that they did, because they didn't do it. They

425
00:34:34,280 --> 00:34:42,440
didn't they weren't forced through by these
like faculty lounge people. The institutions themselves

426
00:34:43,039 --> 00:34:46,800
found those ideas to be helpful to
their own, you know, internal and

427
00:34:46,840 --> 00:34:52,000
external missions. In other words,
if like a company is, you know,

428
00:34:52,079 --> 00:34:58,159
facing charges of sexism or racism,
it's nice to have language from a

429
00:34:58,159 --> 00:35:05,039
consultant h to to explain why this
is just endemic to like all of society

430
00:35:05,079 --> 00:35:08,519
and we need to you know,
set aside a Friday afternoon or a whole

431
00:35:08,519 --> 00:35:13,880
friday to like talk about this and
interrogate, you know, why people are

432
00:35:13,920 --> 00:35:17,079
this way and then people are like, wait a minute, didn't this whole

433
00:35:17,079 --> 00:35:24,039
thing start because like this big this
vice president was like actively racist to somebody

434
00:35:24,119 --> 00:35:28,639
like yeah, but you know it's
systemic, so don't worry about it.

435
00:35:29,599 --> 00:35:32,119
We you know, we're we're interrogating
that. And what that allows them to

436
00:35:32,119 --> 00:35:37,960
do is then not actually address any
of their the actual things that they're actually

437
00:35:38,000 --> 00:35:43,039
doing. Universities, you know,
in the in the seventies. You if

438
00:35:43,079 --> 00:35:45,199
you told them, like, here's
a way to get people to stop occupying,

439
00:35:45,880 --> 00:35:50,480
you know, your administration buildings,
it's like they're great. That sounds

440
00:35:50,519 --> 00:36:00,239
wonderful. So these things like played
into the like perpetuation of the very things

441
00:36:00,239 --> 00:36:07,239
that they were claiming to undermine.
And so I think that's why if if

442
00:36:07,280 --> 00:36:10,079
the squad is pushing on everything at
the same time, some of it gets

443
00:36:10,079 --> 00:36:13,880
through and then some of it,
some of it, the more material stuff,

444
00:36:13,920 --> 00:36:17,079
ends up getting blocked. Okay,
we could keep going for a really

445
00:36:17,079 --> 00:36:19,960
long time on this, but I
know you have to run. So my

446
00:36:20,039 --> 00:36:27,880
last question is what is the squad
going to grow? Like? This is

447
00:36:28,079 --> 00:36:31,760
again I keep I'm not trying intentionally
to draw parallels to the right on everything,

448
00:36:31,800 --> 00:36:35,119
but it does remind me in some
ways. Obviously we've talked about this

449
00:36:35,159 --> 00:36:38,519
before, the Freedom Caucus, and
they have this sort of secret membership kind

450
00:36:38,559 --> 00:36:42,599
of know who's in it. Some
people never confirm whether or not they're in

451
00:36:42,639 --> 00:36:45,920
it. But it's been around now
for what like ten years. We're coming

452
00:36:46,000 --> 00:36:50,079
right up on twenty twenty four for
so yeah, just about like ten years,

453
00:36:50,239 --> 00:36:54,000
and it's still you know, it's
not been static, whereas the Squad

454
00:36:54,239 --> 00:37:00,639
it is, so it is so
attributed to this very specific set of personalities.

455
00:37:00,679 --> 00:37:02,800
So are there going to be more
people? You know, Corey Bush

456
00:37:02,840 --> 00:37:06,480
is an addition to the squad when
she was elected in Missouri. She comes

457
00:37:06,519 --> 00:37:08,880
in in a wave after AOC and
is now part of the squad. On

458
00:37:08,920 --> 00:37:13,920
the cover of the book, what
does the sort of squad look like going

459
00:37:13,960 --> 00:37:17,800
forward? We're going to we'll see
what Apak has to say about that.

460
00:37:17,880 --> 00:37:22,239
You know, there it's being floated
that they're going to spend up up to

461
00:37:22,239 --> 00:37:29,760
one hundred million dollars against incumbents who
are in the Squad and the squad adjacent

462
00:37:29,880 --> 00:37:34,719
and then also to like make sure
that they don't grow. I cover it

463
00:37:34,800 --> 00:37:37,079
in the book the twenty twenty two
campaign, where they spent something like forty

464
00:37:37,159 --> 00:37:42,199
million dollars, So that so one
hundred million is not like absurd, it's

465
00:37:42,199 --> 00:37:47,360
particularly post October seventh. And that's
aside from Democratic Majority for Israel super PAC,

466
00:37:49,159 --> 00:37:52,519
i've kind of loosely affiliated with APAC
plus some other a constellation of some

467
00:37:52,559 --> 00:37:59,960
other pro Israel groups. That really
changed what seems possible in democratic primaries.

468
00:38:00,400 --> 00:38:04,599
You know, if you are a
candidate and you you're raising and spending like

469
00:38:04,599 --> 00:38:07,760
a million or two dollars and then
a superpack comes in and spends seven,

470
00:38:07,920 --> 00:38:14,559
which happened in like multiple races,
that just completely changes the game like that,

471
00:38:15,480 --> 00:38:19,280
because and they're not spending the money
for the most part on ads saying

472
00:38:19,320 --> 00:38:23,760
that you know, so and so
is is like soft on supporting our ally

473
00:38:23,840 --> 00:38:27,960
Israel. They'll spend it saying like
so and so like Donna Edwards, for

474
00:38:27,960 --> 00:38:30,639
instance, Prince George's county is like
she was. They said she was bad

475
00:38:30,639 --> 00:38:34,840
at constituent service, Nina Turner.
They said she was like overly critical in

476
00:38:34,920 --> 00:38:40,159
a in a kind of profane way
of Joe Biden, and so whatever,

477
00:38:40,280 --> 00:38:45,599
like whatever polls, well, they'll
they'll run on that summerly. They said

478
00:38:45,599 --> 00:38:49,360
she wasn't a good enough Democrat and
then ironically, after she won the primary,

479
00:38:50,199 --> 00:38:52,679
they started spending money on behalf of
the Republican in the general election.

480
00:38:52,880 --> 00:38:59,440
It's like, I'm not so sure
that you were actually concerned about how loyal

481
00:38:59,440 --> 00:39:04,920
a Democrat Summerly was. I think
something else might have been going on here.

482
00:39:05,159 --> 00:39:08,840
Also, you like also spent and
endorsed like for one hundred and ten

483
00:39:08,960 --> 00:39:14,880
Republicans or something as well. So
I'm not sure your your your partisan democratic

484
00:39:14,880 --> 00:39:19,360
bona fides or that are that well
established here. But so it's like the

485
00:39:19,400 --> 00:39:22,239
Bachelor, like are you in it
for the right reason? Yes? Are

486
00:39:22,280 --> 00:39:23,239
you? Are you in it for
love? I don't think you're in it

487
00:39:23,280 --> 00:39:28,760
for love? Uh, And so
that changes everything, Like because that amount

488
00:39:28,760 --> 00:39:32,320
of money, just the left doesn't
have that amount of money. Your your

489
00:39:32,360 --> 00:39:37,599
listeners might be wondering where George Soro
says and why he can't just just match

490
00:39:37,679 --> 00:39:43,960
that dollar for dollar. But unfortunately, or fortunately for the Left, that's

491
00:39:44,199 --> 00:39:45,559
that's not how it works. So
they're going to be they're going to be

492
00:39:45,599 --> 00:39:50,199
outspent, you know, maybe ten
to one in some of these races.

493
00:39:50,320 --> 00:39:52,000
And uh, like I summarily put
it to me in the book, like

494
00:39:52,440 --> 00:39:55,679
it's not accurate to say that we're
losing on the politics and on the substance,

495
00:39:55,760 --> 00:40:00,440
like we're just we're just losing on
the resources, which is what happening

496
00:40:00,440 --> 00:40:05,119
to the right on abortion. It's
probably wild, wildly outspent in some of

497
00:40:05,119 --> 00:40:07,880
those races. Yeah, that's actually
really interesting. Yeah, right in that

498
00:40:08,199 --> 00:40:15,480
college educated voter base with disposable income, which which sees that as like materially

499
00:40:15,519 --> 00:40:20,599
affecting their lives, their daughters' lives. Like, yeah, they're gonna they're

500
00:40:20,599 --> 00:40:24,880
gonna kick in in a way that
I guess the right can't really match.

501
00:40:27,119 --> 00:40:30,119
M Yeah, that is super interesting. Well, people should buy the book.

502
00:40:30,119 --> 00:40:34,079
It's again it's called The Squad,
AOC and the Hope of a Political

503
00:40:34,239 --> 00:40:37,800
Revolution. You can listen to Rand's
podcast Deconstructed wherever you get your podcasts.

504
00:40:37,800 --> 00:40:42,039
You can listen to Counterpoints wherever you
get your podcasts, and you can watch

505
00:40:42,079 --> 00:40:45,920
it on YouTube. Ryan, I'm
I have already given a copy of your

506
00:40:45,960 --> 00:40:49,079
book as a Christmas present. It
makes a great Christmas present. Like Senator

507
00:40:49,079 --> 00:40:54,199
Ted Gunnie Relative, Yeah, he's
a big he's a big Bernie Bru So

508
00:40:54,239 --> 00:40:59,519
he was very excited to get a
copy of the book. But yeah,

509
00:40:59,719 --> 00:41:04,159
Ryan in a battle with Senator Cruz
on Amazon. But you won, didn't

510
00:41:04,199 --> 00:41:10,519
you. Well, we both lost. It looks like Liz Cheney came in

511
00:41:10,519 --> 00:41:15,679
for the rafters and knocked them off. You won't be surprised. I got

512
00:41:15,679 --> 00:41:20,360
off a plane in Boston on Friday, and first thing I heard was a

513
00:41:20,400 --> 00:41:24,159
guy who's scouring the Hudson News store
right outside the gate, an older white

514
00:41:24,199 --> 00:41:27,559
man. You know, why don't
they have the Liz Cheney book yet?

515
00:41:27,559 --> 00:41:30,519
And sure enough, by the time
I flew back on Sunday, they did,

516
00:41:30,599 --> 00:41:32,920
and it was everywhere. But I'm
not entirely surprised at here. She

517
00:41:32,960 --> 00:41:37,679
came from the rafters there. She's
number one, number one best selling book

518
00:41:37,679 --> 00:41:43,280
in the country. Liz Cheney gradually
sweet to her. Yeah, all right,

519
00:41:43,719 --> 00:41:45,280
well, the squad makes a great
Christmas present, right, Grim,

520
00:41:45,400 --> 00:41:49,840
thank you so much for joining us. Right, thanks for having me.

521
00:41:50,519 --> 00:41:52,679
You've been listening to another edition of
The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emil Kashinski,

522
00:41:52,719 --> 00:41:55,440
culture editor here at the Federalist.
Will be back soon more. Until

523
00:41:55,440 --> 00:42:12,519
then, be the lovers of freedom
and anxious for the fray. I