What’s Next for the Populists? (with Josh Green)

Hello, and welcome to the Bullworks next level Sunday interview. I’m your host, Tim Miller. This week, I got an old pal, Josh Green. He’s got a new book out This week on Tuesday called the rebels, Elizabeth Warren Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Acasio Cortez, and the struggle for a new American politics. He also wrote Devil’s Bargain, Steve Van and Donald Trump, and the storming of the presidency back in twenty seventeen.

And I gotta tell you it was probably the best of the early phase. Books examining how the populist right came to power. The interview, I think, is super interesting. I I feel like we spend a lot of time talking about the populist here at the Bulwark and a little less talking about the populous Left, so I wanted to dig into that. I also just, want a flag here.

First Sunday show at twenty twenty four. It’s an election year. I’m gonna be doing my best to give you guys, you know, some fun breaks, some fun interviews, you know, do do a little some Jane Lynch throwbacks. You know, you can go through the archives and see all the uninteresting people that we’ve had. You know, we had a little Stephen over the holidays and he was awesome if you’ve missed that.

But here, we’re gonna have to do some politics sometimes. So just, you know, stick with me. I’m gonna keep these interviews fun. And we’re not gonna do the same shit we’re doing all the Secret Podcast with the news of the day, but, you know, we’re gonna have to talk some politics. We’re gonna talk some policy.

And, I’m looking forward to a good fun year of the Sunday show, make sure and go to, subscribe to our feed, like, and comment on the next level feed. And and we’ve got all the Sunday shows in an archive. On the Bulwark YouTube. So check that out if you wanna go back if you’re new to the pod and and wanna go back and and hear some of the ad absolutely awesome interviews last year. Maybe my favorite might have been the one with Amanda Shires.

So if you don’t know who she is, maybe go back and find that one and and just treat yourself. It Will Saletan you. But up next, we’ve got Josh Green. It’s a good convo. You’re gonna enjoy it.

We’ll be back here with just a ton of content over the next two, three weeks. With the Iowa caucuses, the New Hampshire primary. We’re gonna be going live. So make sure you subscribe to the feed, to keep up to date on all the stuff we’re pushing your way. Up next, Josh Green, but first, my friends at acid tongue.

Peace. Hello and

welcome

to the Bullorg’s next level Sunday interview. I’m your host, Tim Miller. We’re doing Populism today with my buddy, Josh Green. I’m excited about this. He has a new book out in two days on Tuesday.

So preorder called the rebels, Warren Sanders, AOC Ron DeSantis struggle for a new American politics. He also wrote, I think probably the best at least o g era book about the rise of the Donald Trump in the populist right. It was called Devil’s Bargain, Steve Bannon Donald Trump, and the storming of the president see. So we’ll talk about those guys a lot. But Josh, thanks for doing this, brother.

Great to be with you.

You know, we spend a lot of time on the material mind by your last book devil’s bargain. So, you know, maybe we’ll get to that a little bit on the back half, but, not as much blower time is spent on the populous left. You know, we live in a fragile detente with one another with our common foe. But I I think it’s good from time to time to kind of dig into it. So, and I think I might have we might have some disagreements on your on the assessment of the political power, of this faction.

But I before we get into that, I just want you to kind of make the case for yourself. What’s the elevator pitch on the rebels and and you know what was your main takeaway?

Well, you know, as you know, my last book was on on Trump and Bannon and the rise of the populist. Right? And I weirdly had kind of known those guys before they were especially Bannon before they were big political figures So I was kind of there for the whole elevator ride from like obscurity to the White House and kind of wrote that up. But, you know, I come out of the the kind lefty policy general world, Washington monthly, places like that. So I’d always been interested in the left.

And for a long time, it was a columnist for the Boston Globe. So I kinda got into Elizabeth Warren back before, you know, back when she was just the tarp cop oversight before she was really like nationally famous. And I’d always thought like in my mind that the most important political event in, like, my adult lifetime was a two thousand and eight financial crisis that it created this huge fracture in the country that, you know, I could see anytime I was out on the campaign trail. Obviously, it had this big effect, you know, giving rise like the tea party and then then the manga movement and Trump, but I’d always thought that it had an equally important effect on the left. And like that was the book I’d always wanted to write.

And that’s what the rebels is. It’s basically a kind of a modern history, with a democratic party and how it kind of turned itself over to Wall Street beginning in light nineteen eighty with catastrophic effects that led to the financial crisis, which in turn gave rise to this kind of brand of lefty, populist politician that really hadn’t existed in America for decades and decades. Like Warren was the first one like, in my adult lifetime to come out and, like, openly publicly attack a democratic president, a Democrat willing to kind of do that, you know, eventually she kind of gave rise to Bernie and people could see that this left populism, especially like economic populism. Like really had had life And, you know, you were out obviously in the in the in the twenty sixteen election. Whether it was at like Sanders rallies or Trump rallies, like This was the thing that, like, excited people.

And there was this kind of crossover. Like, you would be at a Trump rally as a reporter, you all ask, who’s your second choice? Like, for a lot of people, it was Bernie. And if I was at a Bernie rally, like in a normal town, not like a college campus or something, but like out in, you know, small town, Iowa, you ask a working class. Who’s your second choice?

Like, it usually wasn’t like Joe Biden. It was it was Donald Trump. And so really this this book is kind of the flip side of the coin, the last book I wrote. And and I think it’s important because the the interesting thing about this movement is that it it really kind of failed in twenty twenty neither Warren nor Bernie got elected president yet at the same time, it kinda succeeded because Biden has really taken up the lefty agenda and the fact that he’s even competitive like a wheezing old guy like this who, like, nobody really wants to be the democratic nominee. The fact that he’s running neck and neck with Trump and that the economy is in such great shape even though polls don’t reflect it yet.

I think really owes to the fact that he took up the agenda, you know, a plan designed by populist progressive used that to respond to the kind of COVID crash. And here we are today with, you know, record high stock market, low unemployment, crappy consumer sentiment, yes, but it’s sort of trending in the right direction. So I think if Biden gets reelected, he’s gonna owe a lot to my characters.

Okay. Well, you’re, you’re trying to drag me right into our area of disagreement. I figured I’d figure it out that way. With the platform’s strength we’ll we’ll we’ll argue about how much Biden, exceeded to the lefty agenda here in a second. But I the thing I was most intrigued about about your book kind of always the case.

Those are supposed to like live these normal politics. Like, I like the flashbacks stuff, the stuff I didn’t like know as well. And and so you go but you take us all the way back to Jimmy Carter. Yeah. And I kind of know nothing.

I mean, nothing is overstated, but as, you know, I don’t know a political expert’s worth a about the Jimmy Carter presidency. Right? This is sort of the defining line before my time. And, you know, not a ton of books have been written about the old Jimmy Carter and see either. So he’s kind of in a doughnut hole for me a little bit of my knowledge.

And, and it was interesting to read, you know, kind of where you sort of set the germs of this, you know, populist left movement is that Carter having much more sympathies towards that side of things, at least on the economic side, and getting basically bullied by more of a pro corporate Democratic lobby and democratic house. So anyway, tell that story and kind of draw the line there up to the financial crisis.

To me, so I’m gonna start my answer in two thousand and nine because this is where the kind of germ of the book came from. I was working at the Atlantic at the time and I did the kind of long flowery magazine profiles. And Tim Geitner, who was the treasury secretary at the time, like, allowed me to kind of embed with him for six months. Like, nobody does that anymore. Like, they’re all afraid of Right.

Reporters now. But back then, it was just I’m worried

that they get the Tim Albert to Chris Lick treatment where, like, he’s, like, doing, he’s he’s doing push ups or something. Wow. He’s ruining

it for everybody. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But back then, you know, so it was kind of embedded with Geitner, and like these guys thought they were crushing it.

You know, they were responding to the financial crisis and they bailed out the banks and we didn’t have a second great depression. And yet, in the time I spent with them, it was clear that like people were fucking furious. Just like normal people, like the fact that like Goldman Sachs survived and grew, like, didn’t count for shit. And, you know, the fact that, like, people were losing their houses and, like, we had seven years of, like, austerity and job growth hadn’t returned. Like, the entire middle class is kind of being ignored.

And, you know, there’s a scene in the book where sitting with Geitner and like, this was right in like February. I think of twenty ten when, you know, Ted Kennedy had died and and in his, seat had been won by a Republican Scott Brown. It looked like there’s a blow up Obama’s whole agenda. And like Geitner was just like, I don’t understand what’s happening. Like, we did great.

Like, why isn’t the American pop you know, like kind of rallying behind us in in me, that that it all has been, like, if you look at if you look at what happened over the next ten years of politics, on the right, but on the left, you know, it all kinda goes back to that, to that crisis. And so To answer that question, like, I kind of, like, went back and looked at. Well, how how did it become the case that that the Democratic Party, you know, historically the party of like workers and unions and all that had gotten so in bed with Wall Street that, you know, a, guys like Geitner were were kind of running democratic administration and, you know, Goldman Sachs CEO could could serve in a democratic administration. Same way they always couldn’t Republican administration. Like, how do they wind up that ignorant to like the political costs of of like governing it this way.

And and the answer to that question took me all the way back to the late nineteen seventies in the Carter White House. And did a bunch of archival research and geeked out on this, but I do think it’s kinda like the coolest chapter. And the way the answer was Carter, you know, the late seventies was beset by you know, high inflation, like rising unemployment, like, you know, oil crisis, all that mess. And Democrats really just didn’t have an answer to get out of it. And he wasn’t a very good politician, and he was kinda stuck.

And, you know, the Fed back then was kinda stuck. They couldn’t bail him out. And so what ended up happening was, the business groups had kind of, you know, newly organized and opposition to Ralph Nader and come up with this idea of capital formation. Is basically supply side economics. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, it it is sort of an interest group for for kind of Wall Street, but they sold Democrats a lot of them at the grassroots level, a lot of congressional members on the idea that, hey, the thing to get us out of this economy is to, like, wildly cut tax cut to capital gains tax, like hand the farm over to Wall Street, you know, and Carter and Democrats like lacking any better ideas kind of got rolled and wound up going along with it. And after Carter lost, that kind of gave rise to these neo liberal Democrats, people like Tony Cuedello, who I write about the d triple c chairman, in the early nineteen eighties who first turned to Wall Street and start raising tons of money, in order for Democrats to be able compete in this new televised era of politics and running against Ronald Reagan. You know, that eventually gave rise to Bob Rubin and not just raising money for Democrats, but like being the prime economic official in the Clinton White House and we all saw where that ended in two thousand and eight.

So to me, like the story of what’s going on in politics today can trace all the way back to that. And, you know, that was kind of the original sin that led to the crisis. That led to kind of my characters. And now Biden, you know, who’s been around for Washington for like four hundred years, you know, and it was around for for like the first iteration of this kind of Wall Street inflation stuff, has worked his way all the way back around and like, ironically enough taken up at least the economic agenda of a lot of these new folks on the left, these populates.

Yeah. In being so hostile to Elizabeth Warren initially in her ideas on the bank and the Vanco Tierbourn is a good line to go from the book. Yeah. He’s got a dick to her. Actually,

I was I was gonna not use that word, but since you’ve used it. Yes. Absolutely. And the thing is, like, I’ve been around washing long enough to remember when, like, Biden used to be talked about. I think Bob Dole called him, like, the senator from corporate America because, like, he represented Delaware and the whole economy is just like, giveaways to large corporations a lot.

It’s like he hated Elizabeth Warren back when she was a finance professor and it was like super and, you know, trolling and hearings and all of that. And so, you know, there’s there’s there’s a certain irony in serendipity. The fact is kinda come around and taking up large parts of our economic agenda. And like whether or not he gets reelected, I think is gonna depend in part, like, on whether that agenda works. So I think, you know, for all the liberal doomerism we see on, you know, Twitter and Blue Sky and like god knows what other social media networks here on Tim.

Like I really do think that that that liberals have a lot. It’s, you know, as much as anybody at stake in this election and they should kind of quit whining and and get behind Biden as as unappealing as he is in many in many facets.

Yeah. My other throwback from your thing and then and then we’ll we’ll take it to Monday that I really enjoy. It’s just a little fact that I I guess I kind of remember this from what it takes, but I didn’t I didn’t you framed it in such a way of, like, just how neo liberal pro capitalism dick Catpart was. So it’s growing up as a Missouri Republican. I was born in Missouri.

I was like, you know, my family had grandparents, or at least all, like, really old line Republicans hated Dick Gephart. He was a big lip to them, but reading your book, I was kinda like, man, I think I kinda like Dick Gephart in retrospect.

Yeah. Yeah.

You know, we need a little bit of capitalism

in crazy how in, like, let’s say, like, nineteen eighty two, nineteen eighty three, Democrats with presidential ambitions were so frightened and terrified of being tarred with a Jimmy Carter brush that they, like, freaked out and, like, raced to the business side of the account. I can’t remember where the dep get part quote. I think it was like, you know, We ought to be letting banks run the economy. You know what you sound like they’re doing.

Sounds like Gordon Gekko in a couple of quotes.

Totally. Like like all these guys did at Gary Hart, And, you know, it’s it’s like knowing what we know now, it shouldn’t be that surprising, you know, what came down the pike later on. But, yeah. The the fun part for me really was like delving into that history that like the stuff that you and I didn’t live through in politics. But Yeah.

So I wanted to get all that out there because that takes it to the fundamental question I have that I want to kind of work through with you about this kind of populist way. Because if you take the premise of your book, right? Which is that, this This era of left populism emerged from the Wall Street crisis and was pretty focused on financial issues. One way to look at that is that the populace left had a tangible concern that was in line with a lot of, you know, a lot of voters. They got results.

Maybe not everything that they wanted. They got results. The wave has and the wave has kind of subsided and the sort of establishment center left neo liberal, whatever you want to call them have have reasserted kind of dominance within the party. That’s one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is that that was like the tangent concern that kicked off this like long term, you know, political movement that is like akin to kind of the right wing populism and that, you know, maybe they aren’t in power now, but they have they’ve taken over certain corners of the party and slowly but surely when it comes to two thousand and thirty two, we’ll have, you know, a fully formed lefty populist running the Democratic party?

Like, which which one of those trajectories do you do you feel like more aptly?

Is trajectory a? That’s the Tim trajectory that that, like, they’ve kind of had their moment and, like because I’m I’m mostly on board.

They’re both characters. They’re both characters. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

I’m more on the farmer side. Yeah.

Okay. Good. I’m more on the latter side, except the bit about, like, one of these lefties is gonna run for president in twenty twenty eight and win because I I don’t think that’s the case. My kind of thesis and and it’s just unassailable, Tim. You’re gonna have to come around to it.

Is it economic populism is the unifying thread in democratic politics? This is what brings moderates and progressives together while also pulling in, like, you know, Indies and even some Republicans. Like, it’s the thing that attracts majoritarian support. You know, if you take it out of the sort of carapace of like a radical like Bernie Sanders or or even Elizabeth worn certainly AOC, you know, when you put stuff like minimum wage in the ballot or a wealth tax or, you know, poll people, whatever, These are very popular ideas. And my twenty five years or whatever reporting on democratic politics, like Washington, but especially kind of out of the campaign trail and out in the states is the closer democrats hue to kind of that version of what progressive liberal politics look like the more successful they are.

But the fatal flaw that these lefty progressives have, and I write about this in in in the rebels is that you know, by the time they got to twenty twenty, like, Trump poisoned a lot of liberal brains. Like, I saw this up close, you know, and for much of the left,

poison some moderate Republican libertarian military.

Definitely. Definitely. It’s it’s it’s a major career. Yeah. But for much of the left, I mean, definitely Warren Ron DeSantis.

Like, early on in in their lives. And this is sort of the story I tell about each of them in the book. Like, their main focus was economic popular Like Bernie used to get whacked, right, when he when he ran for president because every answer went back to economic injustice and this and that. And, you know, Bulwark activists were in Bulwark lives matter. Folks were attacking him for not being woke and racist.

You know, what happened with what once Trump came on the scene. I sort of submit in the book. Is it like it created there was a moral imperative for progressives not just to take a kind of maximalist position on economic populism, you know, raising taxes on the wealthy, but on every position against Trump, like, and that that, you know, whether it was like opening borders or doing away with private health insurance in like putting in a thirty trillion dollar medic, you know, Medicare for all plans would triple everybody’s taxes. And that kind of superseded basic electoral concerns. And I think that’s why you saw, you know, I I was I was sort of embedded with Warren in like the fall of twenty nineteen kind of for the book.

And from for a brief moment there, she was like leading all polls. If you remember this fall of twenty nineteen.

Of course, me and Bill Crystal were on a conference call at that. I have a I have a very vivid memory of a conference call between me and Bill Crystal like, around around this time fall of twenty nineteen, what we’re saying to each other. So can we support Warren? We can support Warren. Yeah.

We can support Warren. He’s like, can support warrant. Right? I’m like, yeah, I think we can. And then he’s like, and it’s kinda like, maybe it actually will be needed more if it’s warrant.

And I was like, yeah, we probably will be needed more if it’s warrant. Okay. Whatever. It’ll it’s warrant warrant’ll be fine.

And the reason you guys never actually had to make that choice was because, you know, rather than the race just being about like, Hey, let’s do a wealth tax like let’s get kind of shit on your control in the economy and get rid of trump. You know, all of the lefties sort of pushed each other into like, you know, no opponent to my left. And so next thing you know, we’re like debating these absurd plans about, like, passing Medicare for all and who would pay for it? All these little kind of, you know, policy riders and so on for for a plan that has no hope of ever being enacted. And I think I think it scared people.

I mean, you had, you know, early on in that fall. You had Warren leading the polls. You know, she she kind of declined a little bit, partly because people realized the woman who has a plan for everything doesn’t have a realistic plan to pay for Medicare for all and like, do I really wanna risk this? You know, then for a while, kind of Bernie took off, but he ran into the same problem. It like at the end of the day in twenty twenty, what Democrats wanted was who is the safest pair of hands to pry Donald Trump out of the White House, and that wound up being Joe Biden.

I think it was always gonna be kind of Joe Biden. And the lesson in that for Democrats is that like people don’t want radicals running the government. Like, they like your economic populism, but they don’t want radicals running the government. And so to answer your kind of question about it, we’re gonna have this kind of wild lefty progressive populace running in the future. I don’t think we ever Will Saletan think that Joe Biden was the best thing that could have happened to progressive populace because a president Joe Biden, you know, managed to, like, instantiate a lot of, like, big lefty policies that I don’t think a president Warren or a president Sanders, like, ever could have managed because they would have seemed too scary.

Like

Yeah.

Joe mansion was not gonna be hopping on board with Bernie’s plan for anything. But he but he was for Joe Biden. And, you know, progresses wound up with a, you know, three hundred million dollar climate bill, even though it was pitched as inflation reduction. And so from a policy standpoint, like, I think that Biden has actually, like, been a great, victory for a lot of these people on the progressive left. And the fact that Bernie is not running against him, Warren is not running against him.

AOC is not running against him. I think it’s a recognition on their part of the same thing that that he’s really, like, not the guy they love, but getting the job done on a lot of their policy concerns.

So I wanna poke a little bit of hole in the Biden thing next, but, I wanna go back just really quick about the electoral prowess part of this. Because, it sounds like we have an agreement on this that they don’t have electoral that much long term electoral process. And I think the part of the reason is, and this is where where I do agree with one of your statements is that, you know, you can get a united front within the Democratic Party on some populist economic issues, like you’re talking about the wealth tax, the minimum wage increase. I mean, I don’t know if you can get, you know, the the Bulwark former moderate Republican types of our coalition on with the wealth tax. But, like, you could surely get us on board with, tax increase for people making over four hundred grand a year, whatever what I mean?

If you wanna you wanna give me an, throw a couple extra points on the death tax. You know, to punish the nepo babies, like you’re gonna get most of us on board of. So even the more conservative side of the coalition will get on board first for much of this stuff. Maybe not everything. But the problem is once you get beyond that in the pop est element to it, into foreign policy and cultural issues.

And and I think one weakness of left populism compared to right populism is that on the right, you have a mostly a homogeneous group. Right? It’s like mostly working class whites and, like, kind of bitter pro professional class whites. Right? Like who all hate.

Another type.

Yeah. Who all hate institutional elites. Right? Like, and so and so there gonna be mostly united. Maybe not on every single thing, but like, like broadly on the agenda.

Like, the left is this kind of motley crew of like union guys and economic populace and intersectional high- you know, Harvard neo Marxists and like Bulwark Lives Matter, you know, identity politics types. Like, is it possible to to cobble together that coalition in order to create the kind of power that we’ve seen from the right populace. Like, I really just don’t think so.

I I think, I mean, we we we have proof that it is. Right? Because Joe Biden basically embraced that agenda in twenty twenty. And then, like, to everybody’s surprise, kind of instituted even more of it than I think most people including like Warren and Sanders would have imagined a couple of years ago once he became president. So you don’t nest necessarily need, like, a populist agenda to unify Democrats.

Like, the big unifier Democrats right now is Donald Trump. And, you know, maybe in twenty twenty eight, it’ll be like, I was gonna say Ron DeSantis, but like, no. Donald Trump Junior. No. Donald Trump Junior.

There you go. Okay. Or something like that. But I think that, you know, if if you’re looking to like Bernie or Warren to run-in twenty twenty eight, no, I totally agree with you. But I think the future of this, like, strain of progressive politics.

Biden showed that like it has to be carried forward by a normie politician. So I could totally see like a Ralph warnock or a Gretchen Whitmer, like running on these same economic policies, and yet because they are coded as kind of normal mainstream Democrats who actually have more appeal than probably Joe Biden does. To, you know, minorities, women, etcetera, etcetera. They really do have the capacity to unify the democratic party around this kind of agenda like in a way that would have seemed unrealistic ten years ago.

But part of the reason why they’re coded as normie Democrats is because they act normal. They don’t act, you know what I mean? Like Ralphail warnock, if he runs at twenty eight, is not gonna have like his hehim pronouns in in his in his Twitter bio. And he’s got

But neither but neither did Joe bind in twenty twenty. Right? That’s that’s that’s the key, and that’s the sort of like life lesson for all populace is that look at what happened to Bernie Sanders in twenty twenty and the democratic primaries, look what happened to Elizabeth Warren, And, like, the entire crowd, you know, Kamala Harris too was, like, all for Medicare for all. And, like, awkwardly tried to back away from it as she awkwardly, you know, does everything. But, like, The lesson is is if you’re kind of fronting pronouns and fighting about, you know, Hamas and Israel and all that, probably not gonna unify the party in an electoral majority in November.

And so there has to be a certain discipline in like, hey, like, let’s focus on a set of ideas and target a set of voters who are gonna get us like elected. And if you look at like the median voter in the country today, think it’s like a fifty year old white guy without a college degree. And so, you know, you can’t just appeal to the people who follow you on social media. Like, there has to be Democrats have to find a way to have a a broader tent movement than that. And they were able to do it in twenty twenty, partly because Trump unified them and Biden seemed like the safest guy to get the job done.

It’s gonna be harder in twenty twenty four because people just aren’t real happy with Biden. There’s been a little bit of inflation. There’s the war in Israel going on. Like, people are cranky. And and trump, as you guys subbed in the podcast with people, Chris, like, he’s kind of receded into the background for a while.

And, you know, other issues have been at the forefront and that’s made people really grumpy and unhappy about Biden, but Trump is about to come storming back. Like, in two weeks, you know, And once he does, I think that will make it sort of more of an even race. So maybe Democrats can still unite around even a kind of weekend aging Biden in a way that will allow this kind of populist agenda to carry forward because if buying loses, I think politically a lot of what’s happened is gonna be discredited. Like everybody, is gonna chalk it up to inflation and, oh, we can’t dare stimulate the economy, and we can’t ever get, you know, extend unemployment benefits during a recession and let’s cut cut cut. Let’s go right back to the kind of austerity that was so popular, like, in the nineteen nineties.

And, like, that’s not a winning recipe for Democrats. Or for working people.

Okay. So I need to defend my, centrist dignity and and liking Joe Biden after you’ve just I’m tearing up you just pitched him as a Trojan horse for the Elizabeth Warren populist agenda. Because I don’t think that that’s really true I think he has done some things. You’re right. I think that on, narrowly, again, on the, on the theme of the book, on, on the anti Wall Street stuff, on the on the more keynesian, whatever you wanna say, the, you know, more spending, injecting stimulus into the economy in a way that Obama even didn’t grant you that.

But, like, let’s look at what he didn’t do. And you’ve already mentioned Medicare for all. It didn’t do that. He’s not a green new deal. Democrat We are we’re drilling more than ever.

He’s not trying to re engineer our capitalist system to look more like a nordic country’s capitalist doesn’t

have a new pronoun. Right?

We are we don’t have open borders. No matter what Fox tells you. He’s not arguing that Palestine should be free from the river to the sea. Know, he did some student loan forgiveness, I guess, more than I would have wanted by executive order, but has did not, like, really go the whole way. We don’t we don’t have Skotis reform.

We don’t have an added states. I would even be for adding States, but, you know, like, there’s a lot that he hasn’t given them.

Well, right. He’s also had a fifty fifty Senate with, you know, two, like, are they even Democrats anymore? They’re not. Right? This crew a cinema man mansion or I can’t keep track of

all four of us. Ranch is still a democrat cinemas not. And, Angus King, I guess, technically, is not either though he’s voted with the Democrats. Okay.

Yeah. I mean, look, I I hear what you’re saying. Look, I think if Democrats had, you know, fifty nine or six senators, the way they do it when I was hanging out with Tim Geitner after the last crisis in two thousand and nine, you would see Supreme Court reform. You would see pushes for these new states. You would see like a much more robust, like stimulus and kind of care economy stuff than we wound up getting because Democrats would have the political wear with all to do that.

Now maybe that would have liked blown inflation even higher and we’ve been a disaster today, but I don’t think that the fact that Biden hasn’t put into play like the kind of full spectrum crazy lefty agenda doesn’t mean that he hasn’t been like a valuable, like, ally, the most valuable ally for, like, the populous left strain of Democrats. I mean, the way I frame it in the book is all you have to do is look at our last two financial crises, right? And after the two thousand and eight crash, you know, I was hanging out with Warren. I was Boston Globe guy, and she her job at the time, she was like the the the bailout policeman, the tarp oversight chairman. And, you know, she went to the Obama people and had this whole laundry list of like middle class focused things you should do to help recover from this giant economic crash.

We just had stuff like a big stimulus and beefed up unemployment, eviction freeze, small business loans, student debt relief, like, all of that stuff. She got none of it. And, you know, the economy was miserable and it led to, you know, the rise of these kind of populist movements and ultimately Donald Trump. So you flash forward to the COVID crash and, you know, not only has Biden instituted like every single one of these things. But he’s populated his administration with, like, most of the important Elizabeth Warren, like allies and policy thinkers, And in fact, like, the ideas have been so strong on their own.

Like, Trump was the first guy that put a lot of these things into practice. Right? He was president when COVID hit, I don’t know about you. I got a big check-in the mail. You know, there were enhanced unemployment benefits.

I mean, Trump went full economic populist in a way that, like, he hadn’t to the frustration of people like Steve Ben, and he hadn’t been willing to do at any point up to then in his presidency. And like He almost won reelection.

Yeah. He really kind of went half economic populist. Maybe had he gone full economic populist?

Had he gone even three quarters economic populist. I think he would have won reelection, but like he he didn’t do it, but it just goes to show you the power of these piles. Like when you strip away all the kind of washing ten, you and me pointy headed Bulwark. At the end of the day, any winning coalition, Republican or Democrat, has to appeal to like ordinary working people who are like living their lives and trying to get their kids into college and trying to pay their bills and like trying to retire and just doing all the boring stuff that nobody wants to write or tweet about it doesn’t get any engagement. But, like, at the end of the day, like, that’s what you gotta be able to do.

You have to make a convincing case that, like, people’s lives are gonna get better, not gonna get worse. And, like, to me, the this kind of economic populist agenda, economic populist agenda, not like pronouns and immigration.

Yeah.

Is like the secret sauce that that can let either party do that. And one of the things it’s interesting to watch when Trump comes back is like, is he just gonna be full on election denier, let’s deport everybody? Or, you know, Will Saletan and some of these other guys kind of lure him, like, back onto the path of, like, Hey, talk to the union worker who, like, got laid off and wants a bigger paycheck and go back to some of the anti Wall Street, economic populism stuff that got him elected in the first place in twenty sixteen.

I’m working through all this live in my brain. So, you know, we’ll see if this makes sense when it comes out. And one way that the right populism not, obviously, I don’t wanna create a false equivalence. Like, Nazis are scarred. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But just as a as a formulation, One reason the right economic populism is a little scarier to me is that it kind of works in concert with cultural populism. In a way, at least right now, like, in the country that can make it a political force. Maybe not quite as much of political forces, Bannon wishes. Me and Bannon have gone back and forth on few times. There’s some elements of conservative cultural pop deals in the turn off a lot of normies too.

Yeah. But it’s it’s particularly at odds, I think, on the right where the economic populism, like, gets so overshat, like, if it is in, if it’s united with the kind of campus left identitarian. Yeah. Restructuring our, you know, the social compact kind of leftists

Find for hard presidents to plagiarize kind of leftist.

It just doesn’t work. Like, it just, like, they’re just, I just don’t maybe it’ll work twenty years. Maybe that’s something to be scared about in twenty years after, you know, with countries demographic changes in the country, but like, right now, I just think that is so unpopular And so how do you like, when you talk to people on the on the populist economic left, do they see these other folks as baggage for them?

Totally. Look. Huge concern about this. And and also like fear of speaking out. I mean, I think that like the fundamental flaw of the left today is to like they hypnotize themselves, like, into thinking that there aren’t electoral trade offs for for that kind of behavior, that they can just sort of like extracted away through an argument or something like that, and like there isn’t.

And like there there have been people who I think have like very bravely, you know, spoken out and written about this Ryan Grim at the intercept did like a great series of pieces about, like, the crisis in a lot of lefty nonprofit organizations that have essentially abandon their missions in order to just have these kind of fights over identity that are like not only killing the organizations, but like, you know, grinding kind of the progressive advancement to a halt. So no question. Like, this is a huge problem for the left. I think a lot of people on the left realize that. I, like, I tend to look at it less as, oh god, these guys are kind of sinking the left.

And more, like, I don’t know. Maybe I’m an optimist or maybe I’m just kind of arguing on behalf of, like, these political idea, that’s political history that I’ve written about in the book, but To me, like, to me, one of the most I can’t remember if I put the scene in the book or not. God, it’s gonna kill me if I didn’t do it, but you will appreciate it. You know, when Bannon When Steve Bannon was in the White House that brief, like six months span when he was in the White House, you know, I’d written the book about Populism and I was very much in touch with him because I was, you know, And, like, he was so busy that the only time I could actually get his attention was, like, early on Saturday morning. I would not making this up.

I would get up at six in the morning. I would go to dunkin donuts and buy like a box if it doesn’t donuts. I would drive to the BrightBard Embassy where Bannon lived. I’d get there at like seven in the morning. He would sit down and it was like pulling the string on a wind up that he would just sit there like eating doughnut and coffee for like three hours and kind of discorcing on the event he did.

Can we do an AI photo of banded like donut crumbs on him for the for the image for this podcast.

I’ll leave that to you. But his big thing at the time was like, Trumpism has like two elements. It’s the anti immigrant stuff, whatever. But like, Trump also ran is like the wall anti Wall Street populace helped the little guy. And for a brief while, like, Brandon in the White House was trying to talk Trump into doing a tax plan where he would raise income taxes, just a tiny bit on people who made over five million dollars.

It would be like this signal that would disarm all the lefty attacks about Republicans of the party, the rich, and everybody told him to go to hell, and I think somebody I don’t know. It was like scaramucci or somebody, like, leaked on him to axios. And, you know, the idea just sort of crashed right away. But when we were sitting there, like, stuff in our face What a great idea,

by the way. Scary great idea.

Totally. But while we were sitting there, stuff in our face with donuts every Saturday morning, like, Bannon’s big fear at that time was Elizabeth Warren. Like he had this idea that the big threat to Trump was what he called Democratic nationalism that that essentially she would mix like lefty progressive politics. Yes. But with a kind of patriotic Democratic Jonathan Last that you, you know, built around infrastructure and, like, helping out union workers and all this kind of stuff Like, that was his big fear at the time that that she would run again in twenty twenty and and kind of forefront that in her campaign.

And, like, I I believe to my core that there is something to that that like that is that is the path forward for Democrats. Now Warren started out on that path and and didn’t adhere to it. Saw what happened, you know, write about it in the book in case you’ve forgotten. But but but to me, like, that is that is the reason, I think that populism can be a positive force. But look, I don’t think that you and I are really in disagreement that if what we’re fighting about is, hey, it’s okay for the Harvard president to plagiarize, and we really need to have a fight about intersectionality.

And, you know, we really need to kind of like open up borders for social job or reasons or whatever, then Democrats are gonna get clobbered and we’re gonna be back to, you know, Trump presidency part two.

Yeah. That’s a intriguing answer because I think it’s the first time a Bulwark podcast guest has praised both Ryan Graham and Steve Bannon. Either one, actually, but but both of them at one answer,

Keterer Docs have thicker right here. I should go work for Barri Weis.

Yeah. Grim, Graham, you’re welcome on here. We can hash things out. We have some areas of agreement, here, maybe not a hundred, but we have some. The, immigration thing is interesting.

It’s another thing I wanted to ask you about. Because that’s like the closest Sarah Longwell. When I think about know, there’s this discussion about, like, have as left populism succeeded or are they all a bunch of failures? And like, and I think both these things are true. Right?

You’re arguing as kind of it is see it succeeded because the established democratic order has embraced some of their ideas, you know, some of the essential ideas predict on the economic side. I think that my argument others would be like it’s failed because they lose every fucking primary. You know, there’s alyssa slotkin pull out today, and she’s winning she’s crushing some some Rashida to lead now. No, too. I saw I saw you I saw you tweet

that, but look we’re I think we’re talking past each other in a certain you’re talking about, like, actual politicians winning elections, and I’m talking about, like, the advancement of, like, a set of policy ideas. I mean, I think one of the reasons that like my thesis doesn’t get more respect, not just from like center Secret Podcast guys, like you, but from, like, people.

I might

be center left now. I don’t know. But, like, alright. But, like, from from people on the left is, like, in American politics we’re so used to, like, rooting for characters and rooting for jerseys that, like, if Bernie isn’t president, then, you know, the whole progressive movement has, like, failed and it’s the like centrist evil Wall Street, Biden, whatever, whatever. I don’t know.

Like, I I be maybe because I came up through these, like, dull policy magazines, like, I’ve always looked at is a kind of a policy first thing. Like, we’re in the game because we’re trying to accomplish a certain set of things. And you can measure pretty clearly, like, you know, how many of those things you managed to get enacted into law? And if so if you look at it through my lens, I think that that Biden and the Left have both been very successful. But if you look at it through the lens of, hey, is AOC gonna be the Democratic nominee in twenty twenty eight?

I think she’s gonna run, but No. Like, in in that case, you haven’t been. And in all, but like the deepest blue Brooklyn hipster precincts, like those kinds of politicians are not gonna be able to get elected. So I don’t I don’t disagree with you, but I look at it from a policy standpoint more than like a politician’s standpoint. Yeah.

I think that’s fair. I think that we mostly agree. I should I just kind of I get and this goes to what I wanna compare it to on the right. I I think that The question, really, our disagreement is we’re having we’re judging how much did the left get? How much did they want?

Right? And I think you’re looking at through the frame of, like, they got more than many of them expect I’m kind of looking through the frame of like, well, Fox News and everybody that I read like told me that we were like headed towards the socialist telescope and and like damn and gotten anywhere close to that. So, like, to me, it’s been kind incremental. And that’s fine. So they’ve had some incremental victories.

I wanna compare that to a populist right. So, like, in some ways, like, immigration would be the Wall Street issue of the right, I would say. Right? Where like the where the populist right has kind of won the policy battle. Now, for me in a bad way, obviously, since I was part of the Jeb Bush compassionate conservative, right, that has gotten decimated.

But they’ve won that And similarly to the left, they’ve won some incremental battles. I mean, the wall is partially built and, you know, no republicans. Some of it’s falling down. Some of it’s falling down, but it’s not. It hasn’t been a super successful policy implementation, but they’ve gotten some of the things that they wanted.

Just like the left did. Like, you know, the Wall Wall Street’s still doing okay. The Capitol Game tax rate still where it was in seventy nine, you know? Cherry interest loophole?

Like, you have the taxes there.

Right. So they’ve gotten some of what they wanted. But they haven’t gotten everything. And yet, they’re seen as more successful because, you know, they keep winning all of these political battles. Intra intro party political battles because I and my my answer to that is I mentioned your take since you ran both these worlds is that of that is just because the left populace have actually things that they want to achieve and are okay with incremental gains, and the right populace are pretty much nihilist.

And like, they’ve gotten some incremental gains, but they don’t actually care and what they really want is power and put and tearing down the elites. I don’t I don’t I don’t

I don’t think I’d buy the extinction that you’re making kind of between the right and the left. I mean, like, if if we’re looking at through my vector of like what policies that you’ve I think the populist right has been incredibly successful. I mean, I remember, like, sitting in the BrightBard Embassy with Bannon back in twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, like, he was trying to find somebody run for president and, like, before he landed on Trump, who was, like, his fifth choice. He was trying to get Jeff Jeff Sessions to do it. And his pitch to sessions.

This is from the last book. Forget me for repeating, but was like, look, dude, like, you get this race and you run. And the issues that you and I care about, like, trade and especially immigration will vault from, like, like, the the twenty ninth and thirtieth most important issues for Republicans to, like, number one and number two. Well, he didn’t get sessions, but, like, he eventually got Trump and one of the two big drivers like on the on the right today or two of the biggest drivers. You know, it’s trade and immigration and the party is trumpy and and full of manga and like Steve Bannon is still the guy sitting a lot of the policy agenda.

So, like, I think he’s kinda succeeded in that way, even though When you run a lot of these manga politicians and like house races, like they just step on a million rakes and like wind up blowing winter bowl elections, like time after time for time. So, like, if you look at it from a policy standpoint, I think they’ve sort of had some advances. I don’t think that a lot of populace on the left view things the way that I do. My argument to the populist left is you guys should take the win. Like, you’ve got a lot of these policies enacted.

Like, you know, you can keep fighting for for, you know, x, y, and z, Green New Deal or this and that, but, like, have some recognition of, like, what Biden has been able to achieve from your agenda and also realize that, like, if you want this thing to, like, continue forward, like, you have gotta get that guy reelected or, like, your world is gonna come to an end. You can have Donald Trump in there, and it’s not gonna cause this mass, radical awakening, where all of a sudden the socialists will take over the White House and, like, you know, turn us into into Norway or whatever. It’s it’s gonna set back all of your goals like to even like the pre trump era and it will be like a vast flaming hellscape. So that’s that’s that’s work.

So you’re seeing the parallel as perpetual grievance and perpetual feeling of unsuccessful, despite having these big wins.

Totally. I mean, do you do you like follow some of these lefties on social media. I mean,

like, this is part this is part of, I think, where we talk past each other because even though you spent a lot of time with Bannon, I assume that you’re not punishing yourself in the way that I am with, like, constant inputs from, like, what is happening in the Tim pool Bannon, like, you know, universal.

You’re a political guy. Like, I’m a reporter. I mean, to me, he was like this this wild carrot. I mean, he was like a dancing monkey. Like, as a writer, like, there’s nothing more exciting than like seeing this these two, you know, put trump in there too.

These two crazy kind of like in my career, I’ll never see two more people like that. So, like, I’m not, no, I’m not beating myself up. I’m sort of fascinated

and No. Yeah. My part is I just I’m not I’m not looking at the crazy lefty stuff. I just, like, I don’t I’m not consuming this material. And so maybe I’m just missing.

You know, maybe I’m just right? You know what I mean? Like, I’m not con

I I don’t I’m not

consuming lips TikTok, like, source material.

It’s look, believe me, it’s out there. And and I have a hard time. I mean, like, I’m, I’m social media, Twitter poison too. Like, I still am on that site and, like, read it despite I should know better. And, like, so, like, maybe my view of of the left and what it cares about, like, is it perfectly accurate?

There are probably a lot of people not on social media who are out there. Working hard to get you by and elected. But yeah, I mean, if you look at the big fights we’re having, on on the left, it’s not really about stuff that is gonna kinda broaden the tent and like pull in the Tim Miller’s of the world to vote for for Joe Biden in twenty twenty four. I guess not may maybe you don’t need persuaded in that front, but like, look, look, if Biden is gonna win again, you know, he’s gonna have to persuade a lot of people who, like, are kinda iffy on him that that he can kinda do something for them. And, like, a lot of these fights over Israel, Hamas, and over, you know, whatever’s going on at Harvard’s campus this week is like I don’t think the issue that’s gonna that’s gonna achieve that goal.

Any other compare and contrast for us from your time in, giving giving Dan and donuts to, you know, calling Elizabeth Warren Policy nerds. I mean, obviously, that’s another big difference. It’s just like the type of person. That is populating these worlds is quite different, I would say. Maybe you have some observations on that part.

I hadn’t thought of it in those terms. My brain is racing like what’s the equivalent of of like of like stuff my face would would ban at donuts. The closest I have in the book, I can’t remember what it’s in there. It’s like, I did wind up, like, when she was kind of at the height of her took me a pen. I went over to Warren’s condo in DC, and she fed me mango lemonade.

Like, she homemade. Let’s get some thing. But, like, we just, we just kinda talked It’s okay. Talk shop and talk policy.

I bet, like, the people around her. Like, the people in her orbit are, like, all these kind of nerdy pop to us wonky types, which is very different than the hobbits that are, like, walking through.

They’re all her former, harvard students. Yeah. Right. They actually literally all of the time. I’ll tell you what.

You make a good point. This is the big difference between like the populous left and the populous There is no Steve Bannon of the populace left. And I think that that hurts Democrats. There’s no Pied piper out there. I don’t know.

Maybe it’s me, like, once the book comes out and and Bulwark sends it, you know, soaring onto the bestseller list. But there there’s there’s no ban and equivalent out there sort of making like a compelling case for, like, why this needs to be the democratic focus and kind of marching people in this direction. And, like, it is a sort of, like, mad max, like, post apocalyptic scene on the left sometimes where, you know, some days we’re fighting over Bulwark Lives matters, and sometimes it’s green new deal, and sometimes it’s Harvard, and sometimes it’s pronoun, and like You know, there really isn’t that kind of unifying message that you would want as a democratic strategist to kind of have going into like, a really important twenty twenty four election. I don’t know if it was political yesterday. It’s something I was reading about how, like, Porter went around and talked to a bunch of Democrats in Congress.

Like, what’s Biden’s message. Like, what’s Biden’s agenda for the second term? And it’s like, it, like, it’s crickets. Like, you you wouldn’t you wouldn’t have that problem on the right as long as Yeah. You know, Steve Bennett and a Donald Trump around.

That’s scary. A lefty Steve Band. I’m just trying to get a picture of what that person stands up. Look, I guess it was Michael Moore for a while.

Slovenly vegetarian. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Whatever happened to him.

I think that your avatar for Josh Greenism, if we call it that right now is really federal.

Like, you know, I mean, it totally is. If he

was a better messenger, like, he is kind of a he he looks the part, he talks the part, and he he isn’t getting bought down into the cultural stuff, on the cultural Surely.

So my my last quick little anecdote, so I was I was in, Aliquipa, Pennsylvania, like, two weeks ago, like, the iconic depressed Pennsylvania steel town. They’d had like the big mill. It got ripped down in the eighties, bombed out landscape now. Nothing’s been there. I’m I was out there because, you know, for the first time in forty years, there’s a new low carbon steel plant being built there, and they have this charismatic young Democratic mayor and like the city has just come out of financial receivership for the first time since Ronald Reagan was president.

Unemployment of the county is down to like three percent. Like, this is crazy, crazy turnaround story. So I thought, hey, Josh, put on your reporter hat. Let’s go to the swing state and see, like, how people are cheering Biden over the way things are running. And I get out there and like hanging out with the mayor is a great guy.

He’s like, yeah. Nobody has any idea that any of this has anything to do with Biden because, like, he’s not here. They’re not selling it. You know, the last guy to come out to this neck of the woods, a couple years ago was Trump because Shell opened up a new plant. It was actually Obama’s doing, but by the time it opened, Trump was president.

Trump came out and said, took credit for you. Went to the plan. Thousands are were, you know, people rallying and Trump points it and says, that wouldn’t happen without me. You know? You go out and and you see, like, on a policy level, like I said, like, a lot of things are kind of pointing in the right direction.

But, like, at the end of the day, as a campaign guy, you know this, like, you have to get out there and and campaign and like convince people that like you deserve another term that things are going right that the reason that things are going right is because of what you did and what your administration did. And and that’s the place I think. You you only have to look at a poll to see this. That’s the place where I think Biden is falling down. It needs to kinda get up and improve bigly before November twenty twenty four.

That

is the frustrating and it did. Okay. My last question for you. You began your career, I mean, you didn’t begin it early in your career, you were at the onion.

I was.

Now, do you I wanna know if you have a favorite onion story headline that you did or story or god. Yeah.

I can’t remember if this isn’t like the weird before the onion was nationally famous version of the onion. I was like living in Boulder Colorado and like a flop house. This was actually even like pre internet, and they used to kind of publish the onion and kind of like a paper version in college towns. I don’t think it was my headline, but the onion used to be kind of zany back k. And they just had this this article that was like Jesus makes triumphant return at Kegor, and there’s like a picture of Jesus and like thorny cross with a bunch of bros and a keg, like doing a keg stand or whatever.

Those are kind of like the halcyon days, the onion. The other the other thing I used to do, somehow I feel like I’m gonna wind up getting myself canceled here.

Was it pre nine eleven? When was this? What year was this?

Oh, this was like this was like ninety six ninety seven. Something like that.

Yeah. The glory days of the nineties. That’s, I mean, this is there’s no serious things to be worried about.

They used to

make bigger Jesus.

The onion used to have this thing called the onions drunk of the week and like I was the onions drunk of the week wrangler. And like you would go out to the college bars of the Polaroid. Do you remember polaroids, you know. Of course. Yeah.

And we had this big sign that said, like lord help me. I’m the onions drunk of the week and I am dumb. That was the onions slow. And you’d find just like the sloppiest most shitfaced person you could to kind of hold this up and sign a photo release and then you would like put it in the paper and like That was literally my first job in in journalism. If you can call it journalism was working for a fake news outlet, running, onion drunk of the week.

Feature. So I

think there’s a lot of parallel to that in your work covering Bright Bart, actually. Now we think about it. Okay. I lied. Last last question.

Co prime. You lived in Boulder. Where are you at? Is it? Are you concerned?

No. I was like so, okay. So the onion did not pay a living wage. So my other job back then was I was, I covered Colorado football for the alumni newspaper. It was called the Buffalo Sports News.

So I both the drunk of the week wrangler.

Oh, this is Cornell Stewart.

No. This was no. It was right after, he’d left. It was the Rick New Heisel era.

Oh, big new lines of era. Okay.

What a what a phony. But, I was like hang out with drunks at night doing onions and stuff. And during the day, I would get a football practice with, like, the see football players and, like, write about it. So I was so excited for kind of coach Prime, and I actually was about to pitch I worked for business week. I was about to pitch business week stories that could go back out and like relive my glory days and bowler and hang out with and like the prime thing happened so fast.

Somebody else did it for like business we before I could do it about, like, all the brand endorsements, like Prime was bringing in. So I think he’s a bit of a kinda trump phony. You know, like, it went three and o, like, that was when I was pitching the story. What did what do they wind up like three and nine or something like that?

Or eight or something. Yeah.

Yeah. Terrible. But I’m pretty excited about it. Like Boulder great place. CU is like a fun place to be.

And so, like, you know, despite my better judgment, like, I’m pulling for Coach Prime, in twenty twenty four.

Rick knew as well. That’s fine.

Maybe I can maybe Bulwark a business week junket to get myself out there for season two.

Yeah. We’ll figure it out or, you know, maybe a Bulwark stringer gig. We’ll figure it out. Go out and order it. There were much anecdotes we didn’t get to.

It’s good stuff. Our lefty Bulwark listeners who come to us. We brought you, somebody that writes about the left. This is, this is my gift

to you Five hundred bucks. Yes. Yes.

Twenty twenty four. We’re gonna spend plenty of time this year talking about what’s happening in Candace Owens’s world. So know, just kind of, do some do some populist left time. It’ll be good for your soul. The rebels, Warren Sanders, AOC, and the struggle for new American politics.

We’ll talk to you soon, Joshua.

Oh, it was a pleasure. Thank you, Tim.

Later, homie.