Cenk Uygur

So while I fight for the ideal, I'm very practical. So for example, she wins, and then one cycle later, after 2020, There's these guys who want to quote unquote force the vote. And it was on the speakership of Nancy Pelosi and they wanted to use it to get Medicare for all. I'm like, guys, forcing a vote is a terrific idea. On the speakership, okay, who's your alternative?

Oh, we don't have an alternative.

Okay. What's the issue you're looking to have them vote on? Medicare for all. Oh, you don't know politics. So I love Medicare for all. We have to get Medicare for all. But if you... If that's the first one you put up without gaining any leverage, you're going to get slaughtered. Put up something easy. Force a vote on $15 minimum wage or pick another one that's easy. Paid family leave.

These are all polling great because if you force a vote on that, you could actually win. And if you win, you gain leverage and then you do the next one and the next one, and then you do Medicare for all, not bullshit gradualism that the corporate Democrats do, but actually strategically, practically building up power and leverage and using it at the right times.

So if I thought that's what AOC was doing, I would love it. Right? So I don't need her to force a vote on Medicare for all. I don't need her to go on some wild tangents that don't make any sense and is only going to diminish your power. But when they eviscerated all the progressive proposals and Build Back Better, how did that happen? Manchin and Sinema used every ounce of leverage they had.

They said, I'm just not going to vote for it. I don't care, okay? You know, the status quo is perfect for my donors, so I don't need you. I vote no, okay? Now take out everything I want. And Biden did, right? Progressives had to push back and say, here is... two to three proposals, right? Not everything, not everything, two to three proposals. They all poll over 70%.

They're all no-brainers, and they're all things that Joe Biden promised. We want those in the bill, otherwise we're voting no. At that point, what would have happened is the media would have exploded, and they would have said AOC and the rest are the scum of the earth, they're ruining the Democratic Party, we're not gonna get the bill, they're the worst. You have to withstand that.

If you cannot withstand a nuclear blast for mainstream media, you're not the person, because you have to run that obstacle course to get to change. If they had stood their ground, they definitely would have won on one to two of those issues. Instead, they went with a strategy that was called, it was literally called, trust Biden.

Yeah, so there's not enough information yet. So since I make a lot of predictions on air and then brag about it unbearably, people are always, they'll stop me in the streets and they'll be like, predict this, like predict my marriage. Brother, I don't know anything about your marriage. How could I possibly predict something without having any information? Yeah.

So in the case of the, uh, this campaign, uh, right now I got Kamala Harris at 55% chance of winning. Okay. Which is not bad. It doesn't mean she's going to win by 55 because then that wouldn't be a 10 point margin. That's not going to happen. Right. But I say around 51 to 55, but it's nowhere near over because of a lot of things.

One, uh, the Democrats are still seen as more establishment and, and people hate the establishment, uh, to, uh, If war breaks out in the Middle East, which is now unfortunately bordering on likely, right? Uh, if that war breaks out, all bets are off. Do you mean a regional war? Yeah.

Like Iran, Israel gets to be a real thing, not just a pinprick and a little bombing here and an assassination there, but no, we're going to war, right? If that happens, then all bets are off and no one has any idea who's going to win. Okay. And if they're pretending that they know that's ridiculous because it's so unpredictable. Uh, and then, uh,

The third bogey for her is if she goes back to word sounds so that, so there's three phases of Kamala Harris's career. she's not necessarily any different in terms of policy. You can frame it in a bad way, you can frame it in a good way.

You can say, oh, she's just seeing which way the wind is blowing, and then, oh, she's a tough cop prosecutor, oh, and then she's doing justice reform when you need, people want justice reform, oh, she's a waffler, right? Or you could paint it as, she's pretty balanced, right? She prosecuted serious criminals very harshly, but then on marijuana possession, got them into rehab. And you know what?

That's actually what you should do, right? So I'm not talking about policy. So there you could have one of those views about Kamala Harris, and I get it. I'm talking about stylistically. So Kamala Harris, until the second debate in the primaries in 2020, is a very competent politician who's in line to be the next Obama, right? right? She's killing it.

District attorney, attorney general, uh, Senator. Um, and then the first debate, if you remember, she won, she had that great line about the, you know, uh, there was a little girl on that bus that was integrating the schools. And that girl was me and Biden being the knucklehead that he is. He's caught on tape going, I don't have that reaction, brother.

Because she's criticizing his segregation policy on buses back in the 70s, right? So anyways, so she's doing terrific. And then after that debate, until Biden drops out, is a disaster area for Kamala Harris's career. In the primary, she starts falling apart. She can't strategize, right? She's for Medicare for all. No, she's not. She's for Medicare for some. What's Medicare for some?

I don't know, right? And she goes in the next debate and Tulsi Gabbard kicks her ass and then goes in the third debate, gets her ass kicked again, and she's starting to drift away. At this point, and this is funny, I have more votes for president than Kamala Harris does.

Because Kamala Harris dropped out before Iowa, because that's how much of a disaster her campaign turned into when she was leading. She was leading, right? So then she becomes vice president and Biden, probably because of that bus line, Jill Biden caught tremendous feelings over that line. Okay. So Biden's like, here, have this albatross around your neck. It's called immigration. Good luck.

I'm not going to do anything about it. I'm not going to change policy, but I'm putting you in charge of it to get your ass handed to you. Okay. And she does. So that's a disaster. And then she starts doing interviews where she's like, We have to become the being but not the thing we were and the unbecoming. And you're like, what is going on? Why can neither one of them speak?