Throughout the election, we heard one warning, repeated ad infinitum: A Donald Trump victory would precipitate a fascist dictatorship, and the United States would soon resemble Nazi Germany.
In many ways, Trump is promising to take us back to a time very similar to the 1920s: isolationism and a recovering U.S. economy in the wake of a global pandemic. It sounds good until you go back to 1924 and think about how the next twenty years unfolded. If you don't know what happened between 1924 and 1944, maybe you should have looked into some of those Hitler references before you voted for Trump.
If I was a Republican, I'd feel pretty good about my chances of staying in power for a long time. Rui made sense sporadically, Freddy, not so much.
One of the many puzzles is their failure to acknowledge the reasons the Democrats are unable to offer a coherent program is there is not a model which supports their programs. These programs, "pay your fair share" in regards to taxes and the "transition to clean energy" being obvious examples, fail under the weight of their own contradictions, so they have to fall back on empty slogans. Voters have recognized this and the message only appeals to the true believers who are delegates at the convention or have appear on MSNBC.
It also seems with Alex Soros taking over the political arm of dad's empire, the funding won't dry up, which would be the usual impetus for change. Could be a long red wave.
PS- I loved the part where Freddy said we need to get elected saying A, then when we get in office we get do our Christmas list of what we really want to get done. Isn't that what we just lived through the last four years? God forbid we'd tell those pesky voters what we really are going to do.
This article was more compelling before actual vote counts across the entire nation have been tallied. What do we find? Both Trump and Harris within a percentage point of total votes just below 50%. I am not seeing a Republican mandate, which is the thrust of nearly every article on this platform. It would good if you had less of a bro-dum on this platform. Someone needs to talk about the rightward shift of men of all ethnicities being tied more to a hyper masculine, no rules, all knuckles (often dragging) return to dominance vs some philosophical arguments about the economy, borders, blah blah blah. There is no smash and burn mandate on the right, just one man’s narcissistic personality breeding division and misogyny, and a government ruled like a wrestling empire.
Who is Trump and his ilk? I guess independents and minorities are not the ilk of Trump. Every time someone on the left uses such denigrating, whether you mean it that way or not, pharases, it just reinforces to independent, the left looks down on you.
Let me help distill it down, the agenda of the Democrats is not the agenda of the vast majority of Americans. Change what you stand for and mean it, or just fade away.
Hopefully the Trump administration is already talking to Mexico saying, Starting today, not Jan 20, 2025, no more come across our border. We will be charge soon, we won't forget and there will be a penalty to pay.
I have been listening to Honestly for about 9 months now. I am very impressed with the pragmatic journalism The Free Press practices and delivers. I have found my thinking influenced and informed by what I have heard and learned.
Yesterday, while listening to Eli Lake moderate another informative podcast, I realized that I had not yet heard an Honestly podcast that featured a discussion of common, every day citizens, "non-experts" if you please, talking about how they see things. What do they expect from their politics and institutions to get the country back on the right track? It got me wondering if Honestly, and its guests to date, despite best efforts, exists in the same technocratic political and cultural echo chamber that is preventing our leaders from listening to and understanding what a majority of the Americans are really experiencing, thinking and expect.
I would really like to see Honestly widen its lens of journalism and opinion to include more common sense views and opinions of working class Americans, in addition to the current coverage and discussion you are providing. Thanks for listening.
I think part of the big swing with the male vote is the feminization of men over the last few years. Add to that - an increasing number of women don't like the direction of the culture. Calling masculinity "toxic". Won't take a stance on the definition of a woman. Elevating the victim mentality. Craziness in bathrooms, school libraries and school board meetings. And even if the dems pivoted on this stuff - I'm done with them. Why wouldn't I just go with republicans who had the correct instinct on this stuff and were verbal about it when it wasn't popular.
Boring. DeBoer is a terrible guest. He disregards the question and redirects the answer back to his pet issue, which is economics and the answer to that (of course) is Marxism because that’s his whole schtick.
Anyone who says that the U.S. has to admit it's in decline and the real question is how to manage it does not understand why Trump won and should take their loser attitude to Europe.
Please, no more Freddie deBoer. He has nothing interesting to say, doesn't understand economics, and seems to think living near New Haven is some sort of credential.
" I do think we should remember that there's really two biggest things that contributed to inflation, which really dominated the campaign, which was number one, covid introduced serious supply shocks.
"So the supply chain was bottled up all over the world because they couldn't move things in and out of ports because of Covid. But also number two is that like the United States undertook a really aggressive fiscal and monetary response to Covid to try to prevent what legitimately could have become a worldwide depression. I mean there was a real chance of that happening. And for the record, the person who started that stuff was Donald Trump, right? Donald Trump when Covid broke out was not preaching austerity. He was not saying what about inflation? He was participating in this. There's a world where he wins in 2020 and it's the Republicans who are getting all this blow back because of the inflation of the past few years."
How about:
Three: halting some existing and restricting some new US and North American energy production projects
and
Four: the so-called Inflation Reduction Act which (once passed and signed into law) was extolled as the most significant piece of climate legislation ever, and which merely added more government spending to the inflation fire
These two inflationary influences are Democrat-owned, an unlikely to have happened if Trump had been reelected.
Besides all of the reasons mentioned, the Democrats lost due to their arrogance.I live in red America and have for the past twenty years although I have lived in two areas which vote blue. When educated elites only live in communities of similar education levels and incomes, they lose touch with the concerns of everyone else. While I am a registered Democrat mainly so I can vote in primary elections, I have really become an independent. The Demoratic party has been hijacked and has sold its traditional base down the river.
"No one cares about terrorism anymore". That may have been the most inane statement of all of the inane statements on this podcast. October 7th (um, a clear act of terrorism), is in the minds of many Americans every day until the terrorists release the (some American) hostages at a minimum.
It's always good to hear that the left continues to be out of touch and is not likely to win a presidential election in the next 20 years or more.
DeBoer continues to be the poster child for why most people distrust or cannot stand Marxism/Socialism. When you have an open mind and truly listen to both the left and the right, the answer as to why the Democrats lost is clear as can be:
1. Economy - it's not about assets, it's about wages and prices. Asset improvement obviously impacts the wealthy more than the average person and wages/prices impact the average person more than the wealthy. More average people than wealthy people = more votes.
2. Immigration. for the millionth time, the issue is illegal immigration and the impact it has on people's lives...from sex and drug trafficking to crime to economic impact (see #1). While some people on the right stupidly push back on legal immigration, most conservatives want a better approach to immigration.
3. Identity politics/wokeness. The left doesn't think it's an issue, but it absolutely was. The transgender overplay was dumb politics with little benefit and a ton of issues. It's why "Tampon Tim" and They/Them not You resonated so strongly. Anti-racism was clearly understood to be a form of racism. DEI continued to flush world-renowned universities down the drain and those idiots pushed their ideology up to business and down to school systems. People are sick of this crap and it's another key reason why minorities, in particular, started to realize that the white liberal elite was truly just using them.
4. The trigger: Jew-hating captured the left. Many Jews and common sense non-Jews understood the canary in the coal mine comparison. Once radical Islam is done with the Jews, they are coming for you next. So, let's put a stop to that now.
Lastly, while the Democratic campaign was constructed of cardboard with an incredibly bad candidate and as fake as could be (joy! yay!), the Republican campaign, if you got into it, was simply a ton of fun. The Trump dance, the podcasts, the rallies, Elon, the Democratic converts - all made it feel like the right side was the side that could really make things fun again.
For what it's worth, I'm excited again about the future of America.
The entire DNC, and it's out-of-touch ideology, needs to be purged for starters. Without that, nothing will change.
Beyond that, until the Dems can show a real, honest capacity for self-criticism and introspection, and are willing to ask themselves the hard question - "how did WE eff this up?" rather than blaming voters and various "isms" for their losses, they are doomed to continued failure and irrelevancy. And in that case, they will deserve it.
Do I have much confidence that will happen in the near future? Not really.
When will you share transcripts? I don’t have an hour to listen to these things. Such a waste of time when I can read a transcript in 10 minutes. I love FP but you need to have more respect for our time, podcasts are a waste of it.
In general I sure would appreciate a transcription of most podcasts. I don't have the time to listen to a whole hour and could skim it probably in 15 minutes..
In many ways, Trump is promising to take us back to a time very similar to the 1920s: isolationism and a recovering U.S. economy in the wake of a global pandemic. It sounds good until you go back to 1924 and think about how the next twenty years unfolded. If you don't know what happened between 1924 and 1944, maybe you should have looked into some of those Hitler references before you voted for Trump.
If I was a Republican, I'd feel pretty good about my chances of staying in power for a long time. Rui made sense sporadically, Freddy, not so much.
One of the many puzzles is their failure to acknowledge the reasons the Democrats are unable to offer a coherent program is there is not a model which supports their programs. These programs, "pay your fair share" in regards to taxes and the "transition to clean energy" being obvious examples, fail under the weight of their own contradictions, so they have to fall back on empty slogans. Voters have recognized this and the message only appeals to the true believers who are delegates at the convention or have appear on MSNBC.
It also seems with Alex Soros taking over the political arm of dad's empire, the funding won't dry up, which would be the usual impetus for change. Could be a long red wave.
PS- I loved the part where Freddy said we need to get elected saying A, then when we get in office we get do our Christmas list of what we really want to get done. Isn't that what we just lived through the last four years? God forbid we'd tell those pesky voters what we really are going to do.
This article was more compelling before actual vote counts across the entire nation have been tallied. What do we find? Both Trump and Harris within a percentage point of total votes just below 50%. I am not seeing a Republican mandate, which is the thrust of nearly every article on this platform. It would good if you had less of a bro-dum on this platform. Someone needs to talk about the rightward shift of men of all ethnicities being tied more to a hyper masculine, no rules, all knuckles (often dragging) return to dominance vs some philosophical arguments about the economy, borders, blah blah blah. There is no smash and burn mandate on the right, just one man’s narcissistic personality breeding division and misogyny, and a government ruled like a wrestling empire.
Who is Trump and his ilk? I guess independents and minorities are not the ilk of Trump. Every time someone on the left uses such denigrating, whether you mean it that way or not, pharases, it just reinforces to independent, the left looks down on you.
Let me help distill it down, the agenda of the Democrats is not the agenda of the vast majority of Americans. Change what you stand for and mean it, or just fade away.
Hopefully the Trump administration is already talking to Mexico saying, Starting today, not Jan 20, 2025, no more come across our border. We will be charge soon, we won't forget and there will be a penalty to pay.
I have been listening to Honestly for about 9 months now. I am very impressed with the pragmatic journalism The Free Press practices and delivers. I have found my thinking influenced and informed by what I have heard and learned.
Yesterday, while listening to Eli Lake moderate another informative podcast, I realized that I had not yet heard an Honestly podcast that featured a discussion of common, every day citizens, "non-experts" if you please, talking about how they see things. What do they expect from their politics and institutions to get the country back on the right track? It got me wondering if Honestly, and its guests to date, despite best efforts, exists in the same technocratic political and cultural echo chamber that is preventing our leaders from listening to and understanding what a majority of the Americans are really experiencing, thinking and expect.
I would really like to see Honestly widen its lens of journalism and opinion to include more common sense views and opinions of working class Americans, in addition to the current coverage and discussion you are providing. Thanks for listening.
I think part of the big swing with the male vote is the feminization of men over the last few years. Add to that - an increasing number of women don't like the direction of the culture. Calling masculinity "toxic". Won't take a stance on the definition of a woman. Elevating the victim mentality. Craziness in bathrooms, school libraries and school board meetings. And even if the dems pivoted on this stuff - I'm done with them. Why wouldn't I just go with republicans who had the correct instinct on this stuff and were verbal about it when it wasn't popular.
Boring. DeBoer is a terrible guest. He disregards the question and redirects the answer back to his pet issue, which is economics and the answer to that (of course) is Marxism because that’s his whole schtick.
Anyone who says that the U.S. has to admit it's in decline and the real question is how to manage it does not understand why Trump won and should take their loser attitude to Europe.
Please, no more Freddie deBoer. He has nothing interesting to say, doesn't understand economics, and seems to think living near New Haven is some sort of credential.
" I do think we should remember that there's really two biggest things that contributed to inflation, which really dominated the campaign, which was number one, covid introduced serious supply shocks.
"So the supply chain was bottled up all over the world because they couldn't move things in and out of ports because of Covid. But also number two is that like the United States undertook a really aggressive fiscal and monetary response to Covid to try to prevent what legitimately could have become a worldwide depression. I mean there was a real chance of that happening. And for the record, the person who started that stuff was Donald Trump, right? Donald Trump when Covid broke out was not preaching austerity. He was not saying what about inflation? He was participating in this. There's a world where he wins in 2020 and it's the Republicans who are getting all this blow back because of the inflation of the past few years."
How about:
Three: halting some existing and restricting some new US and North American energy production projects
and
Four: the so-called Inflation Reduction Act which (once passed and signed into law) was extolled as the most significant piece of climate legislation ever, and which merely added more government spending to the inflation fire
These two inflationary influences are Democrat-owned, an unlikely to have happened if Trump had been reelected.
Besides all of the reasons mentioned, the Democrats lost due to their arrogance.I live in red America and have for the past twenty years although I have lived in two areas which vote blue. When educated elites only live in communities of similar education levels and incomes, they lose touch with the concerns of everyone else. While I am a registered Democrat mainly so I can vote in primary elections, I have really become an independent. The Demoratic party has been hijacked and has sold its traditional base down the river.
"No one cares about terrorism anymore". That may have been the most inane statement of all of the inane statements on this podcast. October 7th (um, a clear act of terrorism), is in the minds of many Americans every day until the terrorists release the (some American) hostages at a minimum.
It's always good to hear that the left continues to be out of touch and is not likely to win a presidential election in the next 20 years or more.
DeBoer continues to be the poster child for why most people distrust or cannot stand Marxism/Socialism. When you have an open mind and truly listen to both the left and the right, the answer as to why the Democrats lost is clear as can be:
1. Economy - it's not about assets, it's about wages and prices. Asset improvement obviously impacts the wealthy more than the average person and wages/prices impact the average person more than the wealthy. More average people than wealthy people = more votes.
2. Immigration. for the millionth time, the issue is illegal immigration and the impact it has on people's lives...from sex and drug trafficking to crime to economic impact (see #1). While some people on the right stupidly push back on legal immigration, most conservatives want a better approach to immigration.
3. Identity politics/wokeness. The left doesn't think it's an issue, but it absolutely was. The transgender overplay was dumb politics with little benefit and a ton of issues. It's why "Tampon Tim" and They/Them not You resonated so strongly. Anti-racism was clearly understood to be a form of racism. DEI continued to flush world-renowned universities down the drain and those idiots pushed their ideology up to business and down to school systems. People are sick of this crap and it's another key reason why minorities, in particular, started to realize that the white liberal elite was truly just using them.
4. The trigger: Jew-hating captured the left. Many Jews and common sense non-Jews understood the canary in the coal mine comparison. Once radical Islam is done with the Jews, they are coming for you next. So, let's put a stop to that now.
Lastly, while the Democratic campaign was constructed of cardboard with an incredibly bad candidate and as fake as could be (joy! yay!), the Republican campaign, if you got into it, was simply a ton of fun. The Trump dance, the podcasts, the rallies, Elon, the Democratic converts - all made it feel like the right side was the side that could really make things fun again.
For what it's worth, I'm excited again about the future of America.
Well said. Thank you. Our neighbors whose words of advice to us in 2020 were “suck it up” are still looking like they have the flu.
The entire DNC, and it's out-of-touch ideology, needs to be purged for starters. Without that, nothing will change.
Beyond that, until the Dems can show a real, honest capacity for self-criticism and introspection, and are willing to ask themselves the hard question - "how did WE eff this up?" rather than blaming voters and various "isms" for their losses, they are doomed to continued failure and irrelevancy. And in that case, they will deserve it.
Do I have much confidence that will happen in the near future? Not really.
When will you share transcripts? I don’t have an hour to listen to these things. Such a waste of time when I can read a transcript in 10 minutes. I love FP but you need to have more respect for our time, podcasts are a waste of it.
In general I sure would appreciate a transcription of most podcasts. I don't have the time to listen to a whole hour and could skim it probably in 15 minutes..
Until common sense emerges within their ranks, nowhere.
"we'll fix that after we attain power" There it is! The basic democratic message.