Making Sense - Sam Harris - #470 — Democrats at a Crossroads

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00:00:22.960 i'm here with ram emanuel ram thanks for coming back on the podcast thanks for having me i didn't

00:00:28.860 have to travel this far this time. There's no jet lag, or maybe you've got some jet lag.

00:00:33.560 Justin, just kick me underneath if I start the dose.

00:00:37.160 Yeah, we were just talking off mic about you wrapping up life in Japan, and my expectation

00:00:43.140 that things are going to get pretty interesting there from a foreign policy perspective pretty

00:00:47.500 soon. We're going to jump into all of it, the war in Iran and everything else, but what's your

00:00:52.200 sense of that?

00:00:52.880 In about six weeks from now, the president's going to sit down with Xi, president of China.

00:00:58.860 The second is he's going to go in in a weakened position, which is what everybody knows that because of Iran and a series of things.

00:01:05.680 If you just take kind of let's take a landscape, you've irritated a 30 year project for the United States, which is bringing India closer to our bosom, both of what you've done with Pakistan, what you did degrading Modi.

00:01:19.040 Second, you removed our THAAD and our aircraft carrier from both THAAD from South Korea and

00:01:26.500 our aircraft carrier out of Okinawa and other assets that have come out of the region that

00:01:31.760 are a deterrent and add credibility to our deterrent.

00:01:35.000 While you have been focused all on Iran, China, after five years of not building another island 0.55

00:01:40.460 in the South China Sea off the Philippines coast, they finally built another one, which

00:01:43.760 is dangerous because they're claiming that as their water is not an international waterway.

00:01:47.320 40% of the GDP, maritime GDP, goes through that water.

00:01:50.740 Lastly, the biggest economic crush on China was deflation.

00:01:54.480 People were talking about entering a possible lost Japanese-like generation. 0.94

00:01:59.520 And now they finally, for the first time, you gave them inflation, which is what they

00:02:03.200 wanted, which is higher energy prices.

00:02:05.360 And prices are up now for their products.

00:02:07.380 So I can go on and on.

00:02:09.500 And I think our allies, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, India,

00:02:15.120 are holding their breath because they don't believe the president knows how to stand up

00:02:19.700 to Xi and is desperate for Xi's affirmation and therefore will give away the store to the region.

00:02:26.100 Remember, our goal is to communicate. We are a permanent Pacific power and presence.

00:02:30.640 You can bet long on America. And the one thing you know about our president is he punches down,

00:02:36.520 kisses up. He is always seeking Xi and Putin's affirmation. And I think he's going in weakened.

00:02:42.680 He knows he's going in a weekend and he's desperate for Xi's affirmation.

00:02:46.620 And Xi has another card on him, which is, I helped get your chestnuts out of the fire

00:02:51.660 in Iran and you owe me.

00:02:54.060 So at every level, I think this is a very bad situation for the United States and the 0.54

00:02:59.000 Indo-Pacific and a very bad situation for our allies who not only rely on us, we rely

00:03:03.860 on them. 1.00

00:03:05.420 Maybe we'll come back to that.

00:03:06.980 That'll be a sidebar for the moment.

00:03:08.380 Remind people, I want to start with the domestic picture and American politics.

00:03:13.760 Remind people of all the roles you have served for our government, because there are many levels.

00:03:20.860 For President Clinton, I was his senior advisor for policy and politics and replaced Stephanopoulos in that position.

00:03:27.320 First term, I was director of special projects, doing the crime bill, the assault weapon ban, welfare reform, immigration policy, to name a couple.

00:03:36.120 I was a congressman from the 5th District in Chicago.

00:03:39.640 Second term was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to help not only take the House back for the Democrats, but make Nancy Pelosi the first woman speaker.

00:03:47.320 And then I was fourth, I was caucus chair.

00:03:49.080 I served, get elected four terms, serve only three, become President Obama's first chief of staff and help him pass the ACA health care bill and the financial reform, the Recovery Act and the auto industry bailout and saving.

00:04:01.220 I then run for mayor of the city of Chicago, served two terms, most probably left with Sean Ritter at Stanford calling it the single best education system of the top 100 in America, when it was once called by William Bennett the worst in America.

00:04:16.200 And then I served as our ambassador to Japan for the United States, and in that process brought a historic meeting together between Japan and Korea and the United States that culminated at Camp David.

00:04:27.060 So the goal is not titles, but results.

00:04:32.760 Yeah, yeah.

00:04:33.000 I'm a results-driven.

00:04:34.600 I don't need titles.

00:04:36.280 I want results.

00:04:37.340 But obviously, you have an unusually clear perspective of how the machine works.

00:04:42.120 Are you running for president in 2028?

00:04:44.740 I'm seriously evaluating it.

00:04:46.920 I think we're at a crossroads as a country.

00:04:50.760 What I'm most interested in getting across if I decide to do this, I think we've had two presidents back-to-back,

00:04:55.900 both Trump and Biden, who are focused, were focused on restoring a past that's not coming

00:05:01.420 back. 2028, I'm going to make a bit about the future and who has a plan to make that future.

00:05:05.800 And then, as I always say, tough times require a tough leader. Have the, have the khunas to get 1.00

00:05:11.100 it done. 10 million kids got healthcare because of it. The country got an assault weapon ban 1.00

00:05:15.400 because of it. Nancy Pelosi became speaker because of it. Passed a minimum wage because of it. And

00:05:19.980 kids got free community college because of it in the city of Chicago. So will I do it? I think

00:05:25.100 there's real challenges about restoring faith in America by the American people that it's broken

00:05:31.060 and having an election where we start taking care of the future. I think we have spent 12 plus years

00:05:37.520 in some nostalgic, dreamlike way of trying to restore a past that's not coming back and was

00:05:43.120 not good to all Americans. It was good to you and I, not all Americans. Well, there are parts of

00:05:48.300 the past that I think we are rather desperate to restore, like normal institutions that can be

00:05:54.580 trusted. I actually think, yeah, I don't mean to cut you off, but there's parts of the past,

00:06:00.060 I agree, but not in some kind of nostalgic sense, but in a sense that it's updated as a guiding

00:06:06.720 post and a guiding principle for the future. I'm talking about what I should have probably been

00:06:11.620 clear, but some element of some kind of black and white Ozzie and Harriet life that didn't

00:06:16.480 really truly exist when we think it did. And it's not about the future. We need something that is

00:06:22.320 It's not about you and me, but about your kids and my kids.

00:06:24.540 Sazi and Harriet plus robots.

00:06:28.040 So what is the state in your view of the Democratic Party and are we past?

00:06:33.380 So when you were ambassador to Japan and rather tongue tied in your role there, I was twisting your arm around.

00:06:40.360 I thought it was pretty diplomatic.

00:06:41.640 You were.

00:06:42.040 You were very diplomatic.

00:06:43.000 In a rare moment.

00:06:44.060 In the manual.

00:06:45.080 Diplomatic.

00:06:45.600 Think of that.

00:06:46.080 You had the seal of the executive branch behind your desk, if memory serves.

00:06:51.020 but uh are we past this this social justice hysteria and um identity politics or or is the

00:06:58.960 party ready to double down on it and lose again emphatically in 2028 well um so the answer is

00:07:06.400 an ambivalent yes and no in this sense i'm a for i mean i said it when i came back i'm i don't

00:07:12.280 want to but this point was stop talking about bathroom access and start talking about classroom

00:07:17.640 excellence. 50% of our kids cannot read at grade level. And you are arguing about a bathroom and

00:07:23.840 a locker room access when you should be focused on how do we improve reading scores? And that's

00:07:30.420 why I went to, I don't know if you know this, but I went to Mississippi because they have this

00:07:33.420 miracle, the first national leader to go down. I said, okay, the science of reading and all the

00:07:37.420 other type of parts of that should be the national model. The answer is right there. You just got to

00:07:42.340 have the courage to take it. Yeah. What is the miracle there? They turn their education system

00:07:46.140 around? So let me finish the first question. So do I think as somebody also that said, you know,

00:07:51.840 we weren't really good in 2024 when we talked about the kitchen table, the family room,

00:07:56.960 the only room we did well was the bathroom and it's the smallest room in the house.

00:08:00.220 Do I think that's dead? I think people know that there was a consequence getting caught

00:08:06.100 in what I call a cultural cul-de-sac. We declared and wanted to bring the cultural wars to our

00:08:11.600 schools and we lost that. Do I think people are conscious of that? I think they were aware. And

00:08:17.160 I, and I, somebody that in 2016 as mayor of Chicago assigned bathroom access, but I never

00:08:21.880 lost my focus on graduation rate, 3D scores and math scores. So we can be a culture and we are

00:08:26.620 as a party, rightfully, a culture of acceptance. We became a culture of advocacy and that's where

00:08:31.900 we crossed the line. As I like take the issue, I've said this before on boys playing in girls 0.75

00:08:37.720 sport, I'm not undermining Title IX. The reason we're winning in soccer worldwide, the reason

00:08:42.320 we're winning in hockey worldwide, the reason we're winning in swimming worldwide is Title IX.

00:08:46.560 I don't think the party should be in the business of undermining one of our great accomplishments,

00:08:50.380 as an example. So I do think there's been some sense that that was a mistake. Does it mean that

00:08:55.960 everybody buys it? No. Now, what Mississippi did, and I want to also repeat, they did this 20 years

00:09:03.140 ago. In Mississippi, they don't call it a miracle. They call it the marathon. Alabama, Louisiana,

00:09:07.620 Tennessee replicated it and all seeing massive increases in reading scores. One, it was a mandate

00:09:13.460 statewide. You couldn't opt in or out. This was required. Every teacher got retaught on the phonics

00:09:20.500 or science of reading. They got coaches for each school to keep the teachers and the principal

00:09:25.540 focused and trained constantly. Third, kids going all the way back to kindergarten and first grade

00:09:34.100 were prepped for their third grade reading test. They got three times to pass at the kids. If they

00:09:40.760 didn't, they were held back. So there were standards, there was accountability, there was

00:09:44.420 support. If kids were showing challenges, they got extra tutoring time. Each child got, I think

00:09:49.600 i'm doing this by memory an hour and 15 minutes minimum every day on reading they went from 49th

00:09:56.840 in mississippi on reading scores across the country to ninth if you account for demographics

00:10:01.720 they're beating massachusetts now so with a result like that what's controversial about this project

00:10:06.820 well there's a professor called 25 years ago out of columbia university who taught people got a lot

00:10:14.180 school districts to go into what the art of reading, not the science. If you like the letter

00:10:20.220 of A, you can use it. If you don't like the letter A, don't use the letter of A. And

00:10:23.840 rune degeneration. And when I find that, professor, you don't have to do any forensics for what the

00:10:30.060 physical body harm. I did it. It's unbelievable what they did at runing. So what got controversial,

00:10:35.840 and this is, one is some people don't like the accountability part, the testing,

00:10:40.560 As one principal in Hattiesburg told me, you need those tests to help improve what you're going to do, not only for that student, but for the next class, the second grade's coming into third grade. You can't be scared of accountability and standards. I want to come back to that in a second.

00:10:55.760 On the other side, which is Mississippi did not abandon their public schools with some other fancy thing called vouchers.

00:11:03.240 They invested in their public schools.

00:11:04.940 It was all started, by the way, by Mr. Barksdale from Netscape.

00:11:09.960 And he came from Mississippi, put his money into it, put the first $200 million.

00:11:13.800 So public schools were supported with public resources and accountability came with those resources.

00:11:19.760 Around the country, Republicans are advocating a way to abandon public schools, and Democrats

00:11:24.320 advocated and succeeded in abandoning standards, and our kids are falling through the cracks.

00:11:28.800 We're at a 30-year low.

00:11:30.240 50% of our kids can't read at grade level.

00:11:31.840 I don't know what makes you think fourth and fifth grade are going to be okay if they're

00:11:34.800 third grade, they're failing.

00:11:36.040 And nobody seems to think this is worth worrying about.

00:11:39.420 Now, there are other reforms along the way.

00:11:42.140 Every place that has adopted the whole program, it's not just science reading, the support

00:11:46.720 for teachers and the support for students with standards attached to it. As I said, Mississippi, 0.84

00:11:51.020 Louisiana, and Tennessee being the most kind of comprehensive in adopting the Mississippi model,

00:11:55.720 all seeing rapid increases in reading scores. Democrats, getting back to the science of reading

00:12:01.640 or the accountability, thought that leave no child behind under President Bush, they were teaching

00:12:06.660 to the test rather than using the test as a measure of success or failure or improvement.

00:12:12.780 Not wrong, but the answer wasn't to abandon it, which is what we all did as a country.

00:12:17.740 The answer is how to find that sweet spot where, yes, you have a test.

00:12:23.340 Yes, you have a measure.

00:12:24.300 It's a reflection of whether we're making progress, but it doesn't become the only thing

00:12:29.700 you're doing from an academic standpoint.

00:12:32.360 And we, meaning the country, led by Democrats, walked away from standards and accountability.

00:12:38.680 And that is a mistake.

00:12:39.920 Now, this is going to get me in trouble, but I'm for it.

00:12:42.780 I'm not only for it as a parent, but I'm for it as a former mayor that had responsibility

00:12:46.640 for the schools, which is why we saw our reading and math scores each year successfully.

00:12:51.040 This gets you in trouble because standards and accountability are perceived at some levels

00:12:55.120 being not some level racist or no.

00:12:57.800 I mean, I don't know about racist, but that the criticism is not wrong.

00:13:02.740 We had gotten to a point we overshot where the test was supposed to measure.

00:13:07.500 It became not the means.

00:13:09.360 It became the ends, which was we're going to teach to the test.

00:13:12.780 Yeah.

00:13:13.280 The remedy, throw it all out, was the mistake.

00:13:16.860 Don't measure anything, yeah.

00:13:17.800 So, and what's happened, it's a contributor, it's not the only thing.

00:13:21.360 What has happened is we abandoned measurements, and I get you back to the principal in Hattiesburg, who took a school of the nine in Hattiesburg last to first.

00:13:32.320 Accountabilities and standards are our friend.

00:13:34.380 we have to be open to him, receptive to him, know how to find that sweet spot between measurement

00:13:40.060 and using it to improve our teaching. All right. Well, I'm going to ask you about

00:13:45.300 a standard of moral sanity here. I don't know how we test for it, but

00:13:48.780 we've seen an explosion of anti-Semitism on both the left and the right. We can come back to the

00:13:54.040 right if you want, but on the left... Yeah, we're going to come back to it because it's a

00:13:58.060 generational thing. Yeah, but it's a, I mean, this is sort of confirmed horseshoe theory,

00:14:02.800 at least for the Jews, because the far right and the far left seem to agree that they are the

00:14:07.000 problem. 77% of Democrats think that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. Only 11% don't

00:14:14.820 think that, right? And then they're the undecided. This seems to me is going to be an issue in the

00:14:20.460 Democratic primary. How would you navigate this question? So let's, you did it, you started up,

00:14:26.240 so I don't mean to do the Talmudic version of the question around the question, but I'm going to do

00:14:31.420 that to you. That's all right. I'll get back to the question. No, I know the question. I'm gonna

00:14:34.900 get to the question too. There's three questions that are out there, not one. Okay. Okay. First,

00:14:40.320 you start about antisemitism and then you went to Israel. So as somebody that had been a target

00:14:46.160 of antisemitism in his public life, that's separate and distinct, but it's attached to

00:14:51.420 what's happening in and around the prime minister and Israel. I would say to you,

00:14:56.180 It was very ugly in my campaign for Congress. It was seen, if you know, Chicago as the Polish seat. Dan Rosankowski, Frank Annunzio Roman-Buchinski were all predecessors. Got very ugly. And I said then, as I said, there's only 2% in the district and they elected Rahm Israel Emanuel and I was running against a Polish woman who was a state rep. 1.00

00:15:16.000 I know the people of the city of Chicago, good people with good values. 1.00

00:15:18.680 They were going to see through this ugliness.

00:15:20.800 When Amy and I, when you came to visit, when we were ambassador in Japan, I was ambassador

00:15:24.200 and we were living, somebody sprayed Nazi insignia on our fence.

00:15:28.420 Next day, a neighbor cleaned it up.

00:15:29.900 I still don't know.

00:15:30.680 They never came forward and said who they were.

00:15:32.740 I've said this many times, hoping one day they'll introduce them so I can thank them.

00:15:36.420 So I've seen the worst.

00:15:37.560 I've seen the best.

00:15:38.800 Anti-Semitism always exists. 0.96

00:15:40.500 what happened in this country, that it allowed it to go from not being kosher to coming public.

00:15:48.880 That's something that we all have to ask about why it all of a sudden became acceptable not

00:15:54.180 only to express it, but to act on it violently from the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh

00:15:58.800 to what we saw in Colorado, to what we saw in D.C., where it's not just saying ugly things

00:16:04.020 about Jews, but then acting on it in a real violent way. And what gave that permission slip

00:16:09.720 that nobody would have done that

00:16:11.100 when I first ran for Congress in 2002.

00:16:13.520 They said some ugly things about a money changer.

00:16:16.100 He's not one of us.

00:16:17.400 The normal tropes of anti-Semitism. 0.98

00:16:19.840 But that became somewhere you could act on it

00:16:22.700 and not just act on it and say it publicly,

00:16:24.940 but then violent.

00:16:25.820 That's another topic that I hope we can get into. 1.00

00:16:28.480 Now, to Israel, somebody, and I want to say this to you,

00:16:31.820 look, I didn't need a war to know

00:16:33.200 that this prime minister was not good.

00:16:35.960 2009, I don't know if you know this,

00:16:37.840 we got in such a public fight

00:16:39.200 when I was President Obama's chief of staff.

00:16:41.560 Publicly, he called me a self-loathing Jew.

00:16:44.400 Is this when he came and addressed Congress?

00:16:46.240 No, that was 2015.

00:16:47.800 This is 2009.

00:16:49.340 My disagreement with him,

00:16:50.600 and it's gotten pretty direct,

00:16:52.840 was over housing in the West Bank

00:16:54.340 because I thought he was destroying a two-state solution.

00:16:56.540 If you destroy that,

00:16:57.720 Israel was on a course to endless wars.

00:17:00.540 A lot of other people thinking about running for national office

00:17:02.840 were lip-syncing his stuff.

00:17:04.640 I was 20 years ahead.

00:17:05.680 I knew where this was going to go.

00:17:07.220 So we got into it, he and I,

00:17:08.660 to the point that publicly he said I was a self-hating, self-loathing Jew who was attacked.

00:17:14.240 And the prime minister and I have always, I disagree with his approach. And I think,

00:17:18.160 in fact, this is the first year in Israel's history, there are more people have left than

00:17:22.040 came. He has led Israel in a way that the endless wars that he's doing is destroying the fabric of

00:17:28.620 the country. And I don't think it was good for Israel. I don't think it's good for the Jewish

00:17:35.000 community of israel and i for a host of reasons inside israel and i was up front about it i didn't

00:17:40.720 again as i want to say let's bracket netanyahu and his political it's hard to do problems it's

00:17:45.180 hard to do with the longest serving prime minister to say that he isn't the face of that country but

00:17:50.140 swap in the perfect prime minister how differently would he or she have navigated the october 7th

00:17:56.500 moment well as members of what should israel have done on october 8th if you go so there's three

00:18:02.160 things. I'm not saying, look, I give no pass to a country's self-defense, nor to any of the people

00:18:08.300 of the world. But even elements of the IDF, Israel Defense Force, were telling him we're just

00:18:13.220 killing for the sake of killing. The opportunities of security have to be enhanced by diplomacy and

00:18:19.280 politics. He has never seized that in the way that Yitzhak Rabin did, the way Menachem Begin did,

00:18:24.840 the way Golda Meir did, or the way that Ben-Gurion did. And as somebody that participated in both

00:18:30.000 Oslo Accords for President Clinton, the wide plantation agreement, the agreement in Aqaba

00:18:34.220 between Israel and the state of Georgia, and all those processes, he has isolated the state of

00:18:40.540 Israel. Not only has he lost world opinion for Israel, he's losing in the United States. So I

00:18:44.700 can't, what he didn't do is, you know, as Yitzhak Rabin famously said, you make peace like there's

00:18:51.200 no terror and you fight terror like there's no peace. He has never extended himself politically

00:18:55.540 on the diplomatic front. Now, there's three chapters to Israel. There's one which was Egypt,

00:19:00.940 Jordan, and the Abraham Accords making peace with stable governments and parties. Second was

00:19:07.540 unilateral decisions on Lebanon and Gaza that gave you Hamas and Hezbollah. And then third,

00:19:13.660 the divorce attempt in the West Bank. And now what they're doing, which is violence.

00:19:16.800 Even one of the leading settler voices, the violence that's being created by settlers

00:19:20.400 is destroying Israel. And the leadership of the IDF, my criticism, is no different than elements

00:19:26.720 of the IDF. So what Israel is no more secure, having gone from 40,000 Gazans dead to 70,000.

00:19:34.000 It was violence for the sake of violence with no political strategy. So difference between Oslo,

00:19:39.740 and I want to say, I understand the hardened heart that if you agree at Oslo to peace and

00:19:44.900 a two-state solution, and you have buses blowing up and dizzying off, and now parts of Tel Aviv,

00:19:49.840 in parts of Jerusalem, your heart will get hard. But the choices are more violence or what you have

00:19:56.500 now, which is Arab countries saying, okay, we're going to reform the Palestinians, give you a real 0.52

00:20:01.060 partner for real peace. Where we were in the infant days of 93, 94, 95, and even 2000 when

00:20:08.640 President Clinton with Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat try at Camp David to get a final agreement, 0.73

00:20:14.580 there will never be a river to the sea as the Palestinians advocate, and there will never be

00:20:19.540 a greater Israel as elements of this prime minister's government try to advocate. 0.79

00:20:23.520 They're heads and tails of the same coin and too extreme.

00:20:26.500 In the end of the day, you're going to have to have two people live side by side and respect

00:20:30.000 each other's needs, a sovereign nation for the Palestinian people and a secure Israel

00:20:34.340 for the Jewish people.

00:20:35.280 If you don't, it's not going to work.

00:20:49.540 done you can believe in israel security without your heart being so hard that you're not moved 0.82

00:20:54.900 by the pain of the palestinian mothers seeing their kids killed the iranians in geneva offered 1.00

00:21:00.420 you everything you wanted and you were too stupid to know and your two negotiators the strategic 0.99

00:21:05.300 mind of wickhoff and kushner didn't know what they had the american people still have and want hope 1.00

00:21:11.220 that their kids can do better they have real doubts that we're taking care of the business

00:21:16.420 My faith is not your challenge or your problem.

00:21:19.260 The faith you need to be worried about is that America and Americans have lost faith in this great country.

Making Sense - Sam Harris - April 13, 2026

#470 — Democrats at a Crossroads

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