Listen to the podcast using the player above or, better still, subscribe to our feed we're on most major platforms like Apple Podcasts & Spotify
This week Jeff & Keego look at the ways Trump & Biden can use the different forms of media to their advantage in the campaign, and what we as media consumers can do to get the right levels of information.
Here's the tweet referenced in today's pod :
With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???
Listen to the podcast using the player above or, better still, subscribe to our feed we're on most major platforms like Apple Podcasts & Spotify
This week the "Jeffsplainer" is all about the roles the VP has played over the years, where the current one Mike Pence fits in, and how a former one Joe Biden is going about choosing his own running mate. Then Keego has a thing or two to say about Trump's Fox News interview last weekend.
Al Gore's concession speech in full
Alexandra Ocasio Cortez' speech in response to Rep Ted Yoho's "apology"
This week we get a "Jeffsplanation" of the Democrats, focusing on the challenges faced by Joe Biden ahead of November. Then Keego looks at ways in which the two candidates need to hone their messaging.
Here's the full version of the quote played at the end of this week's pod...
Jeffsplainer transcript :
In episode 1 I covered the Electoral College and how it actually takes just 538 people to choose the US President. Then last week I looked at the Republican Party and how Donald Trump has assumed control although there is considerable resistance from within to remove him from the White House.
Now it’s time to focus on the Democrats, and again I feel it’s only important to look at them over the last 50 years or so, because although the party has made massive ideological shifts through history from a strong association with Southern racism around the time of the civil war to the progressive policies of presidents like Roosevelt and Kennedy, it’s safe enough to say that although in simplistic terms they represent the “left” to the Republicans’ right, the current Democrat leadership would see them defined as a mostly (quote/unquote) centrist party.
Since Ronald Reagan won the White House in a landslide against Jimmy Carter in 1980, there have only been two Democrat Presidents, namely Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Both got to power promising sweeping liberal reform but the reality of their administrations was that in order to get legislation through with the help of Republicans in Congress, they had to lean heavily to the right on some issues. Clinton did so with policies like “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” regarding LGBTQ soldiers and his 1994 Crime Bill which favoured harsher punishment over rehabilitation, which by the way was heavily supported by then-Senator Joe Biden. As for President Obama, he staked his presidency on fixing America’s massively privatised healthcare system, and while Republicans would have you think his “Obamacare” is somehow taken directly from the Communist Manifesto, in actual fact it still didn’t make much of a dent in the private insurance industry and was based on a model introduced in Massachusetts by Republican Mitt Romney, who was governor at the time before running for President himself in 2012 where he ironically lost to Obama.
After the massive disappointment of Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, nowadays the Democrats’ most senior politician is Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who is next in line to the top job after Mike Pence. This is her second spell as Speaker after she was returned to power in the 2018 Midterms when the Democrats took back the House of Representatives. Since then they have tried to be a thorn in President’s Trump side and this came to a head earlier this year when they impeached him for the whole Ukraine scandal, although the Republican-led Senate voted not to remove him from office.
When it comes to challenges to party leadership from within, while the Republicans have the Lincoln Project, the Democrats have the ever-growing Progressive wing of the Party. Arguably their biggest disagreement with Centrists like Biden, Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer would be in the area of political donations. The Centrists believe it is important to raise as much cash as possible from the corporate sector as they feel that is the only way to challenge the deep-pocketed Republicans. The Progressives however want this so-called dark money gone from politics altogether and their leaders like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren tend to rely for funding on large amounts of individual donations of around $25.
While Sanders’ bid for the Presidential nomination fell short yet again earlier this year, his movement is growing and laying foundations for the future, and this was probably best demonstrated by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez being elected to the House as to do so she first had to defeat a Centrist Democrat named Joe Crowley, who had been so well-entrenched in the party establishment, he was widely tipped to succeed Pelosi as House Speaker.
After starting with a field of about 25 candidates for the Democratic nomination, it looks to all intents and purposes as though Joe Biden will be named at the party convention in August as their candidate to go up against Trump. The challenge from the left was eventually snuffed out when the remaining centrists rallied around the former VP. His task will be to attract some Republican voters who are disillusioned with Trump, maintain the middle class base of the Democrat Party and possibly most importantly, avoid scaring away the Progressives. So far the polls are suggesting he is managing to keep this coalition together as he is not only leading in key swing states like Wisconsin and Michigan, but also there are some states coming into play that were considered nailed on red ones like Arizona and even Texas. Whether this lead is down to the actions of Biden or Trump is probably up for debate and especially in these crazy political times you can be sure nobody will be taking anything for granted between now and November 3.
This week I talk about how the Republicans went from being "The Party of Lincoln" to being "The Party of The Lincoln Project", then Keego picks out the bits of news from throughout the week that caught his eye like New York City mayor Bill de Blasio leaving a little message outside Trump Tower.
Here's the Lincoln Project video mentioned at the end of today's pod...
It's the pilot episode, the time when you get all the gridlines, er grenades, er gremlins, out of the system. Jeff has a go explaining how the Electoral College works, or least how it was MEANT to work, and then he & Keego have a chat about how a mixture of COVID and the economy have affected the campaign. Click play to listen to the episode or even better, go to your podcast app and subscribe we're on Apple Podcast and most major platforms.
