I didn't ever, in like a bar, I didn't ever think he would be the vice president-elect of the United States. - Biden is, I try to remove myself from it and I try not to give like hit big history takes while you're in the moment.
the 2024 election is is that the central premise I mean I shouldn't say central premise but one of the premise of the Biden administration or at least campaign was that Donald Trump could be an aberration that was just confined to that period of time. uh uh this the uh the last couple years have blown that up.
I do not. I think that that everything associated with the Biden administration needs to be put to the side and moved on. I mean, Hillary Clinton came out saying that everything that happened was a disaster.
And the Democratic Party could certainly do much more to celebrate the dignity of workers and to give them recognition. Biden tries to do that, like with the United Automobile Workers strike. He went to the strike, and he called them, you, middle class people, instead of affirming them
John Edwards would call. Biden was already out. I always tell Biden, I got more votes than you do, Iowa, New Hampshire.
asking at the end of the email if he can leave at 4:45 and um she contacted Biden's uh uh uh basically a spokesman and and the spokesman came back with a a long and detailed quote about um the nature of parody and that and how parody must needs be based on like something
So yeah, I think the evolution from treating Toys R Us as the widget, and maybe we bankrupt Toys R Us and that's fine, Joe Biden wanted to do that.
and think, You know what? If Biden had been the candidate, he would've beaten Trump, and we would live in a different reality." And then Biden chose Harris as an effort to shore up his own, at least assumed weaknesses, right?
you tend to have elections swinging back and forth. Joe Biden a 4.5 point popular vote victory.
you tend to have elections swinging back and forth. Joe Biden was an intentional void, be it his age, be it their strategy, they agreed that the topic of the nation
you tend to have elections swinging back and forth. Joe Biden didn't do the Super Bowl interview, right?
And, you know, Donald Trump, even during the Biden administration, he was the figure. Joe Biden defined his entire candidacy and his legacy around defeating this man and obviously, he's failed. We should talk a lot about Joe Biden as well for his own failed theories of the presidency.
The Biden administration just like really screwed up our immigration policy in a profoundly dangerous way. But even if you agree that immigration is a problem, it seems division is the most compelling narrative for politicians. I remember this particular
advocate of of of whipping votes and like punishing naysayers. I mean, I This was a big point that I brought up during the Biden administration about like punishing Kyrsten Sinema, punishing Joe Manchin. Like, I don't think that I don't think Democrats do that all the time and I I I don't think that Democrats are also as invested Establishment Democrats are as invested in the vote blue no matter who paradigm
that front. But couldn't the lesson, and this is to link it back to our conversation about Democrats own credibility and I think people's lessons from Biden administration. Couldn't a lesson be of of uh uh anti-war protests that were not heard during the Biden administration be can a ripple effect be kind of people's own sense of
So, how do you So, you're saying your only your concern is really to your constituents, period. that Biden with his rescue plan, this infrastructure bill, What lessons did you take from the Biden
people look at Michigan, you look at 2016, it went from for Bernie in the primary, then Trump in the general, Mhm. then Biden in 2020, then Trump in 2024. Anybody who knows Michiganders knows that we're pretty steady Eddie. It's not that we keep whiplashing back and forth from different extremes of the party.
Like at the beginning, people were calling grocery store clerks essential, and supporting the low-wage workers. And Biden even texted or tweeted at one point, like oh, they don't even have a sick day. And it was just like we suddenly realized that there was this huge population of people who were living paycheck to paycheck.
a summit on on working fathers and just two weeks later President Obama Vice President Biden and all the major leaders in government were going to be at a conference that was sponsored also by the White House on working families and I I asked when we were preparing for this why are you having a conference on working dads two weeks before the main
resonance the to to the notion of Biden being an employee now and leaving at 4:45 even though nobody actually thinks that Biden is like that um but that was all fortunately left out of the article um do you guys have any questions for us we have another um um sort of uh um
historians but the Roosevelt of all our great presidents was the one who had the widest range of interests and experiences he was a bide intellectual who apart from his political gifts which were extraordinary was a professional
you will write to bide your time and not
and Joe Biden, which which mattered a lot to Trump at the time. Um but now he
Compare that to the Biden Inflation Reduction Act.
was when Joe Biden actually said, like, "Oh, we wouldn't allow that and we would militarily intervene if they went into China."
It's typically been liberals, for example, who've been trying to expand health coverage, while conservatives have tried to cut it back, just in the last few years, it was Biden who tried to add a bunch of programs, whether it was infrastructure, the Chips and Science Act, the IRA, and then Trump comes into office, and is unwinding it.
This isn't gonna work." And my view, and that was really what that set of pieces was about, was about the argument that even though Biden was clearly gonna win the primary, that there was still time for democrats to do something the parties had done in the past, and have an open convention.
to these sort of lunch pail, you know, blue collar democrats, Joe from Scranton was a big part of the Joe Biden appeal, but also Biden never has a chance if he's not Barack Obama's Vice President. And so you have this sort of weird set of historical factors, like operating at the same time.
There's a desire for stability and experience amidst the chaos of Donald Trump in the pandemic. There is Biden as Obama's Vice President, who nevertheless did not run in the election after Obama, I think a lot of people look back at 2016, and think, You know what?
That's the Obama Coalition. And so Biden picks Harris, you know, for different reasons. My view at that time was I was sort of a Tammy Duckworth person, and thought he'd have picked Tammy Duckworth, but there were different people out there,
Like they're weeks from the DNC, they don't have time anymore for an open convention. You now have the Biden Administration is very unpopular for a number of reasons, but particularly inflation, and cost of living. So now you have Kamala Harris running with a sort of anvil of being associated, I mean, it's a Biden-Harris Administration.
So, you know, they picked the candidate in 2020 who won. Whether you think Biden's inspiring or not, he was probably, he was a reasonable pick for that moment. He should have never run for a second term, and he sort of implied to a lot of people that he wouldn't.
I didn't ever, in like a bar, I didn't ever think he would be the vice president-elect of the United States. of the Biden administration, some of the payback for the great awokening.
I didn't ever, in like a bar, I didn't ever think he would be the vice president-elect of the United States. What happened with Biden?
I didn't ever, in like a bar, I didn't ever think he would be the vice president-elect of the United States. So Joe Biden has been the same person for his entire political career.
Yeah, the consolidation was swift and it was complete. I mean, you're comparing it to 2020 in which the establishment uh lined up behind Joe Biden and kind of mixed that Bernie Sanders campaign in a blink of an eye. I guess for you, I just want to start with the emotion like I imagine you were surprised at the result.
uh behaved as he did with Joe Biden and basically worked to undermine Joe Biden, let's ignore Joe Biden, help get Trump elected after his treatment of Barack Obama has made a lot of normal Democrats think that Netanyahu himself is an arm and extension of like Trump and
Mhm. And it was right there in the sink. you're saying with Biden it wasn't known if that was an isolated event or something larger. The last question I would ask on this though, just to close the loop, is do you think that advocating for him and re-election did the Democratic Party brand any damage in
Only just because before she, you know, ran for president and then also was the vice president with Joe Biden, she did a lot of stuff that was not, I don't know how to say it. I guess beneficial to the black community really. And a lot of times I feel like us black people when we see someone that
have been a brief aggressive primary to let the best person win. And I think that what Joe Biden did is he was pissed off. It was an FU to Nancy Pelosi. And in a fit of anger and maybe in a fit of,
prioritizing climate during the Biden years, but in fact, at the level of individual people, how they feel about their lives, the lives of their
cost of the Biden White House's policy on Gaza. But Piker's glow up has angered a section of Democrats who are growing
only invaded on Joe Biden's watch because they knew that they can get away with it. But for someone like taking place now, this is I'm sorry to
Much like a bidet.
And then you think Biden.
And Joe Biden in April just announced this goal for the United States, to bring us down by 2030 to well below where we were in 1990.
So he bided his time.
And Vice President Biden.
And Vice President Biden said, yeah, that'll look nice in your presidential library.
I heard Vice President Biden talking about the cancer moon-shot, et cetera, and what we can do to accelerate advances in cancer research,