Would Bernie Have Won?

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.6 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 26 November 2024

⏱️ 76 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There are a lot of different opinions about how the Democratic Party should rebuild after the blow of Donald Trump’s victory. And for the next two episodes, we’re going to showcase two very different ones. Faiz Shakir was Bernie Sanders’s 2020 campaign manager, and he believes that Democrats need to embrace a Sanders-style class-first populism. This question of whether Sanders or a candidate like him could have beaten Trump loomed over Democratic post-mortems of the 2016 election, and they’ve reared up again this year, as Democrats have continued to lose working-class voters. As Sanders put it in a blistering statement: “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.” But some Democrats have been frustrated with this criticism. President Biden has been arguably the most economically populist president of the modern era. And the Democrats who have been winning in redder parts of the country aren’t democratic socialists. So I wanted to have Shakir on for a lively debate. Shakir worked not just for Sanders; he was also a senior adviser to the Senate majority leader Harry Reid and to Nancy Pelosi. And he’s currently the founder and executive director of More Perfect Union, a media outlet focused on issues affecting America’s working class. This episode contains strong language. Book Recommendations: The Tyranny of Merit by Michael J. Sandel Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek Don’t Get above Your Raisin’ by Bill C. Malone Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Aman Sahota and Efim Shapiro. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Elias Isquith, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Switch and Board Podcast Studio.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From New York Times opinion, this is the Ezra Klein Show. As the Democratic Party debates where to go after its 2024 drubbing,
0:35.6	we're going to spend the next two episodes of the show
0:38.2	featuring two very different perspectives on the way forward.
0:42.2	After Trump won the election,
0:44.0	Bernie Sanders released a blistering statement,
0:46.6	saying that, quote,
0:48.0	it should come as no great surprise
0:49.7	that a Democratic Party, which has abandoned working class people,
0:53.3	would find that the working
0:54.2	class has abandoned them. And Bernie's advisors and allies have been making their own versions of
1:00.1	this argument, and jockeying for the positions it would help them rebuild the Democratic Party
1:04.4	around this vision. Some have floated Bernie's 2020 campaign manager,as Shakir, to be the next chair of the Democratic
1:11.8	National Committee. And Fas sent me an email after the episode with Patrick Grafini, the Republican
1:17.4	poll who's been tracking the movement of working class voters to the GOP, saying there was a friendly
1:22.5	debate he wanted to have here, that Bernie, or at least Bernieism, is the obvious answer, and Democrats simply
1:29.2	refuse to see it. And the fact that they refuse to see it says something very telling about
1:34.4	the party. At the same time, I've heard from a lot of Democrats who are annoyed, to say the least,
1:40.4	about this attack from Sanders' world. Democrats abandoned the working class.
1:46.0	Bidenin has been the most economically populous president of the modern era. He has been the most
1:51.0	pro-labor president of the modern era. And what did it get him or Harris? And if Democratic
1:57.1	socialism, if Bernieism, is he answer to winning back these voters, why don't
2:01.2	you see Democratic Socialists winning in red districts?
	...

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