This week’s podcast looks ahead to the opening of the public impeachment inquiry, the entry of Michael Bloomberg into the Democratic primary race, the new education plans proposed by Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris, and what the “OK boomer” culture war is really about.
This episode talks about how Democrats can use Trump’s documented pathology of lying to their electoral advantage, the latest from the primary campaigns, and what the outcomes of this week’s statewide elections can portend for the 2020 race.
On this week’s podcast, the MPU hosts discuss the sad sagas of Katie Hill, Harvey Weinstein, Trump versus Pelosi, and the GOP candidate who’s shoplifting America’s heart.
This episode covers Trump’s sellout of the Kurds, John Bolton’s sellout of Rudy Giuliani, Mitch McConnell’s sellout of Thanksgiving, DJ’s sellout of Christmas music, and Kevin’s attempt to sell Medicare For All.
by Kevin Kelton
The good news is that Elizabeth Warren has pledged to explain in detail how she would pay for her Medicare For All plan. The bad news is that Warren has pledged to explain how she will pay for her plan.
The truth is, there is no good way to explain single-payer Medicare For All without acknowledging it will require some form of tax increases and abolishing popular employer-sponsored private plans. But there are ways to make it more palatable to a larger swath of its skeptics and make it a winning issue in the general election.
Done this way, you can still sunset private insurance but over a seven year window instead of four, which would be less jarring for the economy, and gradually bring reluctant consumers into the Medicare For All fold on their own timetable.
Kevin Kelton is the founder of the Open Fire community of Facebook discussion groups and a cohost of The More Perfect Union Podcast.
by Kevin Kelton
I just watched a segment on Morning Joe in which the hosts were saying that the Democratic Party insiders they know are nervous because as much as they disdain President Trump, they simply cannot bring themselves to vote for Elizabeth Warren. But, they countered, there are just as many Democrats who are worried Joe Biden is too shaky and may not be up to the task of taking Trump down. They lamented that the country needs that “just right” moderate Democrat who could excite base voters in a way that Biden cannot, and could appeal to moderates and independent voters in a way that Warren cannot. Where, oh where, is that perfect Democratic candidate?
The discussion reminded me of all those single friends I’ve known through the years who date and date, never couple up, and blame it on the self-comforting rationale that there’s no good men/women left out there. At a certain point, you have to sit these friends down and gently tell them, “It’s not the dating pool; it’s you. You are the common denominator in this equation. You are the problem.”
That’s where the Democratic party is today. We’ve had 24 fine people offer themselves up to run against Trump. Senators… governors… congresspersons… captains of industry…. all with a wealth of experience, proven competence and liberal ideologies across the Democratic party spectrum. Yet none of them have caught the imagination of a wide swath of the the Never Trump universe.
Why is that? Why is no one “just right”? We really need to ask ourselves, out of two dozen worthy suitors, why couldn’t we give our hearts and souls to any of them?
It’s the same thinking as my single friends: one is too old and plain, one too young and risky, a few are daring badboys/girls who make our hearts flutter but our heads tell us aren’t long-term prospects, and several had interesting profiles but something felt naggingly missing.
And nice-guy John Delany might’ve been “the one” if he wasn’t so darn bland and bald!
I know that many of you want to fall in love and believe that Buttigieg, or Harris, or Castro-Beto-Booker-Bennet would be just perfect – if only everyone else thought exactly like you do. But they don’t. To this point, the majority of the Democratic Party has resoundingly rejected all of them, and that’s not likely to change. By mid-October, after several televised debates, if you haven’t climbed beyond 5%, the chances of you exploding by Iowa are slim to none.
So far, only Biden and Warren have shown any real capacity to draw enough votes from enough demographics to compete for the nomination. And yet neither of them is considered electable by a wide swath the party that is poised to nominate them.
Why is that? Why, after three years and 24 proposals, are we still searching for that elusive, perfect match who’s not too hot, not too cold, not too young, not too old?
The fault, dear Democrats, is not in our candidates, and not in our stars.
It’s in ourselves.
Kevin Kelton is a co-host of The More Perfect Union podcast.
This episode covers developments in the Trump impeachment imbroglio and the latest from the Democratic primary campaign trail.
In this podcast the MPU gang looks back at the third Democratic primary debate, the Iran attack on the Saudi oil fields, Trump’s continued parade of corruption, and how the Felicity Huffman, Brett Kavanaugh and Shane Gillis controversies are redefining justice in America.
by Kevin Kelton
A lot of Democrats are getting downright hysterical about 2020 – but not in the hysterically funny sense. Democrats seem to be losing their collective minds with angst over the upcoming presidential election, none more so than filmmaker Michael Moore.
I’m not a Moore basher; I love his work and agree with him on many policy positions. But his appearance on “Real Time with Bill Maher” this past week rang the looney bell several times.
First, the director of “Capitalism: A Love Story” claimed that even though Elizabeth Warren has called herself a capitalist on many occasions, Moore believes he knows better. “I’m not so sure she believes that,” Moore told Maher.
Excuse me, Mr. Moore, but I think the former Harvard Law professor and two-term United States senator knows what “capitalism” means and knows what she stands for. You may not want her to be known as a capitalist. But let’s allow the esteemed senator from Massachusetts to define her political and economic philosophies without your help.
Then Moore proclaimed that people who have immigrated to the United States from European Socialist nations only came here “because they want to go to Disneyland.” Moore may have been trying to be funny, but he seems seriously incapable of acknowledging any of the many weaknesses of modern-day Democratic Socialism that have driven millions of people away from its home nations.
However, his biggest faux pas was his analysis of the 2020 electorate. Moore said – with zero evidence to back it up – that “if the election were held tonight, Trump would win.” And Moore made this baseless claim just moments after he said, “with all the polls that we’ve seen, there’s at least four or five of the candidates (who) would beat Trump” and then went on to emphatically state, “Bill, we’re going to beat Trump. We’re going to beat Trump.”
Does anyone else see a slight disconnect in Moore’s thinking on this point?
But let’s look at his dire warning and see how it compares to reality. I cannot tell you what will happen in November 2020. No one has a crystal ball. But I know this: if there had been a national presidential election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden this past Friday, September 13, 2019, Biden would have won easily, and probably in a landslide.
Oh, I can hear the Biden Bashers now: “That’s what you said about Hillary!”
What the skeptics don’t get is that today is a very different world than November 2016. First off, the November 2016 polls were much closer than they are today, and the trend was toward Trump.
Today, Biden and the other top-tier Democratic candidates are solidly ahead both nationally and in swing state polls, including even Texas!, and the electorate is trending away from Trump. Let me repeat, I am not saying what would or could happen 13 months from now. I’m talking about if the election were held today. You don’t run 12-16 points ahead in national polls and then lose the election that same day. I don’t care how skeptical you are about the science of polling. A 12-16 point lead doesn’t dissipate in 24 hours.
But the greater point is, there is an hysteria setting into Democrats’ mindset that is destructive to the task at hand. Moore’s “Chicken Little” performance on Real Time is emblematic of that.
Let’s all calm down, take a few breaths and refocus, keeping these salient points in mind:
Lastly, if you listen to nothing else in this article, take this one piece of advice. No one can predict with any certainty what will happen in November 2020, but we all have lives to lead until then, and going bonkers on a daily basis for the next 13 months will not help you or our cause. Turn off the news (and even “Real Time”), enjoy your life, vote in your state primary, and then work passionately and positively to elect whoever becomes the Democratic nominee. That is all you need to do to defeat Trump. Everything else is aggravation and excess. Enjoy life. Politics will work themselves out.
I cannot promise Trump will lose his bid for re-election. But I can promise that if you don’t calm down and approach this election rationally, you will lose your mind before a single vote is cast.
Kevin Kelton is a former SNL writer and a cohost of The More Perfect Union podcast.
This episode covers the fallout from the burned U.S. spy who had to be extracted from Russia, how the Trump administration is dangerously rewriting the norms of federal agency independence, and what to look for (and not look for) in the upcoming Democratic primary debate.
On the heels of yet another mass shooting in Texas, the More Perfect Union hosts discuss the second amendment, the rationale for hunting as a sport, and how to take on the out-of-control gun culture in this country. Then they turn their sights to the 2020 primaries and the rest of the week in Trumplandia, then finish with a look at Dave Chappell’s new Netflix special and the state of standup comedy in the #metoo era.
In this episode the gang talks about the aftermath of Robert Mueller’s congressional testimony, Trump’s racist attacks on Elijah Cummings and Baltimore, what they expect in the new round of Democratic debates, and the secret ingredient in Greg’s world-famous debate nachos.