The Darrell McClain show
Independent media that won't reinforce tribalism. We have one Planet; nobody's leaving so let’s reason together!! Darrell, McClain is a Military veteran with an abnormal interest in politics, economics, religion, philosophy, science, and literature. He was born and raised in Jacksonville FL, and went to Edward H white High School where he wrestled Under Coach Jermy Smith and The Late Brian Gilbert. He was a team wrestling captain, District champion, and an NHSCA All-American in freestyle Wrestling. He received a wrestling scholarship from Waldorf University in Forest City, Iowa. After a short period, he decided he no longer wanted to cut weight which effectively ended his college wrestling journey. Darrell Mcclain is an Ordained Pastor under The Universal Life Church and is still in good standing, he's a Believer in The Doctrines of Grace Also Known as Calvinism. He joined the United States Navy in 2008 and was A Master At Arms (military police officer) He was awarded several awards while on active duty including an expeditionary combat medal, a Global War on Terror medal, a National Defense Medal, a Korean defense medal, and multiple Navy achievement medals. While In the Navy he was also the assistant wrestling coach at Robert E Lee High School. He's a Brown Belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu under six six-degree black belt Gustavo Machado, Darrell Trains At Gustavo Machado Norfolk under the 3rd-degree black belt, and Former Marine Professor Mark Sausser. He went to school for psychology at American Military University and for criminal justice at ECPI University.
The Darrell McClain show
Trump's Victory and the Democrats' Next Steps
What if the Democratic Party's post-2024 strategy could spark a political renaissance? Join us as we unravel the heated aftermath of Donald Trump's victorious showdown against Kamala Harris. With Bernard Sanders casting a spotlight on the disconnect with the working class and Barack Obama facing criticism for sticking to outdated tactics, we scrutinize the blame game unraveling within the party. From Joe Biden's debated candidacy timeline to Kamala Harris's campaign hurdles, including Trump's potent anti-trans narrative, we cover the angles fueling this political drama.
Listen in as we dissect the Democratic Party's strategic blunders and what they mean for its future. While Rashida Tlaib's progressive win in Michigan hints at a shift to more left-leaning candidates, we explore how economic inequality overshadows all political discourse. Our discussion highlights the contrast between Bernie Sanders's focus on economic issues and Hillary Clinton's past identitarian politics, raising crucial questions about voter preferences. Together, we tackle the critical challenge of bridging the economic divide, pondering whether a focus on economic justice could redefine the political landscape.
Welcome to the Darrell McClain Show. I'm your host, Darrell McClain. Independent media that won't reinforce tribalism. We have one planet, nobody is leaving, and let us reason together. The blame game, the post-mortem, whatever you want to call it. The Democratic Party is trying to come to terms to how they lost the election again to President Donald John Trump.
Speaker 2:To the young people who are watching. It is okay to feel sad and disappointed, but please know it's going to be okay. On the campaign, I would often say when we fight, we win. But here's the thing. Here's the thing. Sometimes the fight takes a while. That doesn't mean we won't win. That doesn't mean we won't win. That doesn't mean we won't win. The important thing is don't ever give up. Don't ever give up. Don't ever stop trying to make the world a better place. We're leaving behind the strongest economy in the world. I know people are still hurting, but things are changing rapidly. Together, we've changed America for the better. Now we have 74 days to finish the term, our term. Let's make every day count. That's the responsibility we have to the American people. Everyday count, that's the responsibility we have to the American people. Look, folks, you all know it Setbacks are unavoidable, but giving up is unforgivable.
Speaker 1:So how this all starts is, of course, even though you have people in public being cordial, of course you have all the pro-Biden Democrats saying that he should have stayed in the race, that he would have won, and you have the pro-Kamala Democrats saying that Joe Biden should have got out earlier and particular in this segment. But I will say, running a campaign in 100 days in this political climate is nearly impossible and, for what it's worth, I think Harris did the best that she could do under these circumstances. There was no real policy. You can't come up with a policy in that small amount of time and the only thing that she really could do was perform decently at the debate and I think that, uniformly, most people think she performed well at the debate. Other than that, it was pretty much a crapshoot. You know, when it came to particular metrics that Joe Biden was thinks would have won and that Harris refused to respond to a lot of those trans ads, anti-trans ads that Donald Trump had blanketed on every single metric, on every football game, on every internet ad, and when you looked at those ads, it was actually pretty powerful as far as convincing them. It actually moved the needle about 2.7%, and the message of that was was practically that Kamala's for the, they, them and Donald Trump is for you, and the fact that Kamala never responded to that meant that a lot of people said that that must be true, and I'm going to get deeper into that in the other side of this analysis.
Speaker 1:The third option that I have heard is that it's not Biden's fault and it's not Harris's fault. It's actually Barack Obama's fault and Barack Obama staff's fault, and this is coming out of Politico, where a anonymous staffer for the Biden administration says something like this there is no singular reason why we lost, but a big reason is that Obama staffers and advisors publicly encouraged Democratic Party infighting, which then pushed Joe Biden out. They then publicly proclaimed anonymously that they did not want Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party's nominee, and then they signed up as the saviors of the campaign to only then run outdated Obama playbook strategy that was run by a person who was not in fact Barack Obama, who was not in fact Barack Obama. Let me address this Obama point, and I want to address it in a certain way, and I'll just say this Ronald Reagan was a pivotal one-of-a-lifetime figure and the Reagan coalition literally lasted his two terms and then one term after him. The coalition could not stand when Ronald Reagan was not on the ballot, and I think this is to be said and to be seen as something that is the same when it comes to one Barack Obama. Barack Obama coalition lasted exactly the two years I'm sorry, his two terms. He could not transfer his coalition to Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 1:Barack Obama was lucky because of the people he ran against and I'm going to explain that in this way. And when he ran against Mitt Romney he had a great foil because, even though Barack Obama was the incumbent, he was running against a fair, rich person who was seen by all, even people in the Republican Party, as a plutocrat. I remember when Newt Gingrich ran that documentary about Romney's company Bain Capital when Bain came to town Mitt Romney's company Bain Capital, when Bain came to town and he wrote he had this whole thing about how Bain Capital had destroyed lives, et cetera, et cetera, and that was coming from Republicans. So Barack Obama had a great foil in Mitt Romney and so he was able to one beat John McCain and then turn around and beat Mitt Romney. But the question was, what was the policies that were transferable after this particular loss, somebody who is very popular amongst the part of the Democratic coalition, the part of the Democratic Party, that has come to be despised, and I'm going to talk about that. After this won his re-election on Tuesday and he penned, after he won, a scathing, scathing statement, and that is one Senator Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont, and he released the following statement in response to the outcome of the 2024 presidential election. And he goes on to say, and I quote it should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. First it was the white working class and now it is the Latino and black workers as well.
Speaker 1:While the Democratic leaderships defend the status quo, the American people are angry and want change, and they are right. Today, while the very rich are doing phenomenally well, 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and we have more income and wealth inequality than ever before. Unbelievably real inflation accounted for. Weekly wages for the average American worker are actually lower now than they were 50 years ago. Today, despite an explosion in technology and worker productivity, many young people will have a worse standard of living than their parents, and many of them worry that artificial intelligence and robotics will make a bad situation even worse. Today, despite far more per capita than other, despite far more spending far more per capita than other countries, we remain the only wealthy nation not to guarantee health care to all as a human right, and we pay by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. We alone, among major countries, cannot even guarantee paid family leave. Today, despite strong opposition from a majority of Americans, we continue to spend billions funding the extremist Netanyahu government all-out war against the Palestinian people, which has led to horrific humanitarian disasters of mass malnutrition and the starvation of thousands of children.
Speaker 1:Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful oligarchy which has so much economic and political power? Probably not. In the coming weeks and months, those of us who are concerned about grassroots democracy and economic justice need to have some very, very serious political discussions. Stay tuned.
Speaker 1:So that was the statement from Bernie Sanders, who had to run for re-election at the same time and he won his re-election campaign. So let me just point out some facts here. So let me just point out some facts here. There were $100 million of TV ads spent just in Pennsylvania by the Trump administration on anti-trans ads. When Harris went on the View and was asked, how are you different than the Biden administration? She could not come up with anything. Biden refused to believe the polls and he refused to believe inflation was actually important. When Joe Biden decided to run for president, that was a mistake and it was disastrous. And when the Kamala Harris campaign actually took over the Biden administration, they found out that the Biden administration had been actually secretly telling a lot of reporters that Kamala Harris could not win. So he was sniping his own vice president and the internal polling from the Biden administration had showed that Joe Biden was going to lose to Donald Trump by 400 electoral votes 400 electoral votes.
Speaker 1:Biden kept pitching to everyone that his policies were working, even though everybody was saying that they did not feel that the policies were working. He had said in the very beginning of his last campaign that he was going to run for one term and that he was going to be passing the buck to people like a Pete Buttigieg, and I do believe that if he would have ran his term to completion and came out and said you know, I made, I did my promise. I made my promise to to make Donald Trump a one term president I have to pass torture on to somebody else and giving them a full chance to run we would be dealing with another situation. I want to flashback all the way back to the year of 2016. And this was when Hillary Clinton was running for president and she was running in the primaries against the Democratic Socialists.
Speaker 1:The longest serving independent and the longest serving socialist in American politics Bernie Sanders, only serving socialist in American politics, bernie Sanders. And every answer that they had, or every question that they had for Bernie Sanders, his answer was economics. And it became a major part of Hillary Clinton's stump speech to say if I break up the banks, it won't end sexism. Economics won't end racism, economics won't end misogyny, etc. And that was the example of the way that the Democratic Party was now going to run politics in the United States of America. There was no longer going to be an economic answer for questions that people had. It was going to be an identitarian answer, and I think it was proven when Hillary ran under the mantle of I'm with her that that didn't work. And I think, when we have to look at people like even though he lost people like Andrew Yang, who recognizes and says things like millions of Trump voters aren't hardcore Trump supporters, they're just out on the economy, inflation, the border, identity politics and that's pretty much all the Democratic messaging talks about, and if you don't recognize that, you have to recognize that you have set yourself up to lose.
Speaker 1:Kamala Harris ran a right-wing, pro-war, pro-israel campaign, so much that she was proudly sitting alongside long-standing neoconservatives like Liz Cheney, and lost by a very huge margin, while doing so, including in Michigan, a place that was supposed to be a Democratic stronghold and that was supposed to provide a blue wall. Now, listen to this. Now listen to this. On the other side of that, the Palestinian-American Rashida Tlaib ran a left-wing, anti-war, anti-genocide campaign and won on the exact same night that Kamala Harris won by a massive margin in the state of Michigan. She won after not endorsing Harris. Rashida Tlaib secured her win in Michigan after fighting against one of the most powerful lobbies, aipac, and saying Israel was guilty of genocide, and being censored by her own party in Congress. Rashida Tlaib won in Michigan, while Kamala Harris lost in Michigan.
Speaker 1:Who should be listening to who? Who should be listening to who? I say this often and, um, it's not that witty, but it just needs to be said. If, uh, people either want to drink coke or they want to drink pepsi, they're not. They're not interested in diet coke and they're not interested in diet pepsi, because it does not provide people enough difference to actually come out excited and vote for it. You have to give them an argument, you have to give them a message, you have to give them a plan and you have to give them hope. The more that they ran on Orange man Bad, the more that they ran on Nazi, the more that they ran on fascism, the more it normalized a lot of that rhetoric. It blunted the stigma around those things and the polls show that Trump actually went up in the polls, not down in the polls. The more police and the Justice Department intervened and what was seen on the Democrats' behalf, the more people started to say maybe the establishment is, after you know, a political opponent and Donald Trump shot up in the polls. It actually seems like the groups most rapidly fleeing the Democratic coalitions are the exact same ones where Bernie Sanders was the strongest, the working class and the Latinos and what people would call bros. Maybe you have to realize that. Maybe that Democratic Socialist from Vermont was actually on to something.
Speaker 1:And what was his biggest critique of not just the Democratic Party, not just the Republican Party? His biggest critique was that the system is rigged. His biggest critique was that the political process has been bought by a donor class, by the oligarchy and the plutocracy. That was his biggest critique. The plutocracy. That was his biggest critique. And then you have on the reactionary right, our reactionary conservatism, or even populist conservatism.
Speaker 1:You have a Donald Trumpian figure who comes in and he says the exact same thing, while offering a different villain. I would say Donald Trump says it's all rigged. Every now and then he talks about donors, but then he talks about immigration, you know, and he points to the treaties, he talks about NATO and he talks about tariffs and you know, so on and so forth, and he talks about the deep state and he points to them and he says those people have rigged the system. And now you have the people who are the elites in both parties, the people who are technocrats, the people who are over the admin state. They're sitting there looking at the American people and they're saying everything is fine. Meanwhile you have that same number that I point out I normally say 62%, now it's down to 60% of people who can't live and who are literally living from paycheck to paycheck and they are saying, I am sorry, everything is not fine.
Speaker 1:And that was the rub, that was the straw that broke the camel's back that they have seen their productivity go up at work and they have seen the wages go to the top and not to them. They have seen the depletion of their pension program. They have seen manufacturing leave the country. They and at the same time, whether right or wrong, they see the demographic changes around them and it seems to a lot of them that these people are getting something and they are not, and then they react viscerally to that. If you do not have an economic policy reply to that, then you cannot blame these people for reacting. The other part of that is as follows it looks like they have been left behind because for the most part, they have been left behind.
Speaker 1:When a plant closes and leaves the country, that is a policy decision that somebody made, whether it's a company decision by the board of directors, etc. That had to be approved somewhere. Somebody made that decision, somebody saw it going and then there was no response to shore up those people that were left on the back side of that decision. It just wasn't, and that has been happening for a very long time. There was an analysis, a financial report that I looked at yesterday that showed that most people were better off when Richard Nixon was president. That is a shocking and damning piece of economic report. Just for the trajectory of how this thing has been, and if you imagine that somebody has had faith in the system from Nixon on to now, you could see why they are furious and fuming and they are not interested in somebody standing before them and saying don't believe your lying eyes, everything is great.
Speaker 1:When people used to run 2016, 2020, and it didn't happen so much in 2024, and they would talk about, nobody was voting for Donald Trump and people like him because they were racist. They used to say words like economic anxiety, economic insecurity they were almost laughed out of the room. Insecurity they were almost laughed out of the room. But it turns out that if you actually want to take a deep breath and get a clear picture of why people did the things that they were. You're going to have to deal with the fact that it was economic insecurity, that it is the lack of them feeling like that, their vote that matters. It is them feeling like that they don't have any spending power anymore, that the dollar doesn't stretch as much as it used to be. It is that they feel like they can't afford to get a decent house, that the mortgage rates are too high, that the interest rates have skyrocketed. It is that they feel like the rent is too damn high. It is that they feel like the eggs are too expensive. All those things are absolutely true. That used cars went through the roof, that rental cars went through the roof. They sat and they weathered all those things.
Speaker 1:And you expect them to vote for an establishment that says everything is fine, that it's not raining outside, but not only is it raining, the rain has acid in it. You go to places like flint, michigan, where people can't even drink their tap water, and that is a policy that was put in place by a government, a government that says you are okay and those people are not stupid. They know they are not okay. They know that. So why would the people in Michigan vote for people that either put them in that situation or, when they knew the situation existed, did nothing to fix the situation. I'm old enough to remember when Barack Obama went to Flint, michigan, and tried to take a swig of the water and say everything was fine, even though that water was brown. That is your government who has turned their back on you, and I am not surprised that these people are a large swath of people turn their backs on their government. At least what the government is asking them to do. You're telling these people to ignore their own economic needs because somebody somewhere may have a problem in a group that they don't know about.
Speaker 1:I got a message from one of my patrons and it said I will tell you why Democrats are unpopular with white people, latinos. Democrats, rightfully, are inclusive and support groups, lgbtq, etc. Transgender, social safety nets, to list a few. Democrats alienate people through their arrogant messaging. Telling people how to think and interact labels with the world around them is a big turn off, even when the ideas are correct. Telling someone they are more than two genders seems like nonsense to so many people, just as one example, and that's why they fail to get the votes. They come off across as foolish, and people are more concerned about paying rent and the prospect of a tattered democracy, and I think that we have to kind of understand that.
Speaker 1:I've said this several times before and I'll say it until I turn blue in the face. It may be a, it may be old and it may be somewhat simplistic it's about the economy stupid. That's what it's always been about. That's what it always will be about. I don't care what people think about me, I don't care what people call me. You give me enough money to take care of myself and take care of my family.
Speaker 1:I am uninterested in the conversations that are taking place in rooms that I am not in. That's just a fact. Taking places in rooms that I am not in that's just a fact. The other part of it is, I think, that people cling to identities because they don't have anything else, because they don't have the money and they don't have the status and they don't have the luxury and they don't have the will and the means. And I think this is going to be a conversation that happens year after year after year, as long as that 60% stays the same, and that cuts across the grain of both Republicans, democrats, independents, libertarians, green Party people. As long as 60% of people have paycheck to paycheck, that is a large portion of the American electorate and to that issue is taken care of. Everything else is nothing more than us trying to deal with the parsley on the plate instead of tackling that large steak sitting there, um. Thank you for tuning in and I'll see you on the next episode.