RadixJournal - August 23, 2024


The Uniparty, Centrism, and Populism

Topics
populism
Hosted by
Richard Spencer
Mentioned
Donald Trump Sam Harris Bernie Sanders George W. Bush Michelle Obama Paul Songus Paula White Larry King Messiah
The Teflon Don and the Hillbilly Shapeshifter The Unnecessary Podcast

Episode Stats


Length

18 minutes

Words per minute

116.72

Word count

2,213

Sentence count

195

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

9

sentences flagged

Hate speech

13

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Kamala Harris's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention was not a "woke" speech. In fact, it struck me as a speech that could have been delivered at the 2004 Republican National Convention. She walked the tightrope between being a liberal and a conservative, and found a middle ground between them.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hi, everyone. This is Richard, and I'm going to offer a brief reaction to Kamala Harris's acceptance speech of the Democratic nomination for president, and I'm going to talk a little bit about the uniparty centrism and populism.
00:00:24.760 So let me start with the immediate reaction. Kamala Harris's speech was very good. It was a well-written speech, and I think Harris should be given some credit for her speechwriter. She can always X something out, and she's the one who has to deliver it, and she delivered it well.
00:00:48.540 There was a nice opening act discussing her life story, and the life story had the pull-yourself-up-by-the-shoestrings component to it. It also had a certain diversity component to it.
00:01:06.640 She had one line about her mother being a five-foot-two brown woman who never took no for an answer or something like that. What I did notice about it was a lack of any sort of resentment politics. 1.00
00:01:22.420 It didn't include the elements that drive conservatives crazy from a Michelle Obama speech. It wasn't white people bad, to put it simply. It was community good. 0.80
00:01:39.200 And that in itself was remarkable. She went on from there. She hit some very positive notes, and while watching it, and I was actually watching it with my Substack group, and I would encourage you to subscribe, their end of advertisement.
00:02:01.540 But it struck me as a speech that could have easily been delivered at the 2004 Republican convention, and I mean that quite seriously. I'm not sure you would actually have to take out very much, and you could just copy and paste it and do it there.
00:02:23.240 In other words, it was a Republican-sounding speech. Now, I don't say this as an endorsement of that. I'm simply observing that fact. It was not a woke speech. I don't think I could point to a single element that could fairly be described as woke.
00:02:43.600 It was a speech. It was a speech bereft of any sort of racial resentment, in fact. It was a speech that highlighted Kamala's experience as a prosecutor and included a section that was a sort of prosecution of Trump kind of opening statement or maybe closing argument in the trial of Donald Trump.
00:03:12.360 That's a Republican vibe.
00:03:42.360 That's a Republican.
00:04:12.360 That's a Republican.
00:04:42.340 I don't know what to make of it.
00:05:12.320 I've seen elsewhere that I agree with to a large extent is a uniparty. 0.99
00:05:17.320 You know, in this election, assuming that there are three candidates, I mean, RFK is going to drop out today, but assuming there are three candidates, you have a choice between three fervent Zionists who are trying to out-Zionist one another. 0.89
00:05:33.840 And you saw that again with Kamala, she addressed the Palestine question, and she did three things.
00:05:43.480 She first, and it's important, and it's important, and it's important that the Hamas attack is totally unacceptable, Jews are suffering, and we need to give them the weapons they need to fight off the terrorists.
00:05:57.480 So that was, again, so that was, again, so that was, again, something you would hear from out of 2004.
00:06:03.480 She then offered some sympathy towards the Palestinians.
00:06:10.040 Palestinians, this is outrageous, too many people are dying, aid is not getting in, bibi bad, maybe, kind of, sort of, there. 1.00
00:06:18.840 And then she said something remarkable.
00:06:21.860 She said, she used Wilsonian language.
00:06:25.840 She said that the Palestinians need self-determination.
00:06:28.840 So in a way, she walked the tightrope or threaded the needle, whatever metaphor you wanted.
00:06:35.680 She kind of was all things to all people.
00:06:38.440 She first assured Zionists that she will continue to support Israel. 0.80
00:06:46.980 That seems unwavering.
00:06:48.840 She then offered what she needed, which any reasonable or moral person would do, which is offer some sort of sympathy towards the suffering Palestinians.
00:06:58.240 And then she also offered an answer, which is a Palestinian state.
00:07:03.700 Now, this has been a long-term project of the bipartisan foreign policy consensus.
00:07:10.060 It's going nowhere.
00:07:11.460 I mean, I don't even know what to say about a Palestinian state at this point.
00:07:15.740 But regardless, she said it.
00:07:18.840 And we should remember, back in 2004, this is something you would hear from Republicans.
00:07:24.840 I mean, George W. Bush, I mean, for all his many failures, catastrophic failures,
00:07:32.400 he was the one who actually allowed Hamas to be elected because he supported democracy in Palestine, a first step in Gaza.
00:07:41.240 That is a first step towards self-determination, that Wilsonian hundred-year project.
00:07:47.820 So, what she's saying is not terribly unusual.
00:07:51.880 I mean, you can't listen to her speech and say, oh, she's a Palestinian, but a weak Palestinian. 1.00
00:07:58.800 No, she came out hard as a Zionist.
00:08:01.820 Now, again, I don't say this as an endorsement.
00:08:04.000 I would not have delivered those words in that way, but I'm also willing to recognize reality.
00:08:11.860 So, there is a uniparty, three choices, all of which are the same, on Middle Eastern questions.
00:08:19.000 And that is interesting.
00:08:21.020 It's also, you know, from my perspective, a bit depressing.
00:08:26.400 So, you could say that we have this uniparty.
00:08:29.800 They put the woke away. 0.70
00:08:32.680 They take a reasonable position on abortion.
00:08:37.640 They talk about reproductive rights and the, you know, Florida and the religious right and Trump's Supreme Court.
00:08:45.620 They've gone too far.
00:08:46.680 They're the extremists.
00:08:47.700 We're the reasonable ones.
00:08:48.960 The feminist tones are muted.
00:08:56.660 The pro-transsexual tones are absent.
00:09:02.760 And you have a sort of uniparty centrism.
00:09:06.900 Now, where did this come from?
00:09:08.380 I do think that this becoming the Republican Party comes directly out of the Republican Party's devil's bargain with Trump, as well as Trump's own devil's bargain with the religious right. 0.63
00:09:25.760 So, when the Republican Party becomes pure Trumpism, it's about a man.
00:09:33.280 It's a personality cult without really an ideology.
00:09:36.720 It is actually in opposition to all ideologies.
00:09:41.920 It's in opposition to conservatism.
00:09:43.980 It's in opposition to standard Republicanism.
00:09:47.700 It's in opposition to neoconservatism.
00:09:49.780 It's in opposition to liberalism.
00:09:51.560 It's in opposition to leftism because it's Trumpism.
00:09:54.440 It's a pure personality cult that can be wielded like a weapon at any sort of enemy.
00:10:02.800 That is, you know, again, it's not my cup of tea, but it is a remarkable thing.
00:10:08.100 But when the entire Republican Party becomes that way, you just leave this huge open space that the Democrats can enter.
00:10:22.740 So, if it's just about Trump and how the FBI is out to get him and the justice system is completely unfair and then you can kind of keep going down from there, you know, the vaccines are evil.
00:10:37.200 I mean, Trump created the vaccine, of course, but the vaccines are evil. 0.92
00:10:40.680 They want to kill you.
00:10:43.200 The border crisis is actually done on purpose as some evil scheme to bring Hamas to America. 0.91
00:10:52.340 Once you start going down that line, you're leaving up, you're leaving this open space that the Democrats can enter.
00:11:02.460 And they have.
00:11:03.300 They did not become the Marxist that Trump and the Republicans are claiming they are.
00:11:11.220 They might have some semi or quasi Marxist policy like price gouging laws or something.
00:11:19.000 And I would probably oppose those.
00:11:22.320 But that's not the tenor of the speech.
00:11:26.620 That's not the tenor of the current Democratic Party.
00:11:28.980 It is a centrist party.
00:11:31.220 It's a hegemonic party.
00:11:32.980 It is the uniparty.
00:11:35.740 And Republicans are the opposition party.
00:11:38.420 They are the Trump party. 0.95
00:11:39.580 They are the deranged conspiratorial party. 0.96
00:11:43.140 And so on.
00:11:44.940 And I do think that overall that is a winner for the Democrats.
00:11:50.640 And, you know, what is populism?
00:11:56.560 What is it?
00:11:58.420 Is there any sort of policy that we could connect with populism in the United States?
00:12:04.080 I don't think there is outside of an attack on any sort of elite, whether it be the FBI, the NATO alliance, the Disney company, the Capitol police.
00:12:20.940 I mean, any sort of elite established structure is viewed as evil and you hate it and you want to tear it down.
00:12:28.680 That seems to be the sort of populism that has succeeded.
00:12:34.280 And centrism itself becomes a sort of populism for the Democrats as they become a hegemonic party.
00:12:43.020 So they can say, look, we are totally reasonable on the abortion question.
00:12:49.840 We are going to help you out at the grocery store.
00:12:53.100 We're going to give you 20K to buy a new home.
00:12:55.620 We're going to, if you play, if you become the hegemon and the uniparty, then you can engage in your own sort of centrism.
00:13:06.560 Or, excuse me, you can engage in your own sort of populism.
00:13:09.580 Centrism becomes populism.
00:13:11.460 We're going to let you off of 50 grand on your student loans.
00:13:14.460 We're going to give you 20 grand to buy a new home.
00:13:17.020 We're going to force grocery stores and providers to lower the cost of eggs and bacon and cheese, et cetera, et cetera. 1.00
00:13:24.520 It can become a sort of populism that directly affects people.
00:13:30.560 Now, the other devil's bargain that I mentioned was Donald Trump's devil's bargain with the religious right. 0.71
00:13:38.380 And this is something that I have stressed many times but is often forgotten.
00:13:43.020 And that is that in 2015, up until the summer of 2016, Donald Trump was a remarkably secular, remarkably centrist, sort of Democrat from the 1990s.
00:14:04.160 He was against globalization.
00:14:05.960 He wanted to protect American jobs.
00:14:07.600 Yeah, that sounds like, I don't know, Paul Songus or Bernie Sanders.
00:14:11.360 He wanted to protect Americans from too much immigration.
00:14:15.560 Yeah, that sounds also like 90s Democrats and Bernie Sanders up to 2014 or something, whatever he kind of turned on that issue.
00:14:27.220 He didn't mention the gay question.
00:14:29.480 He accepted gay marriage, in fact, didn't want to talk about it.
00:14:33.280 If anything, he'd brag about having, you know, the first transsexual beauty queen at his pageant or whatever.
00:14:38.820 He also didn't talk about abortion.
00:14:43.800 And this was in line with Donald Trump's adult life, which was a lot like that.
00:14:50.740 And you can go and look back at Larry King interviews or his discussions around the Reform Party in the early 2000s.
00:14:58.700 He, his natural instinct is towards centrism.
00:15:03.880 I could also mention his natural instinct for the past 25 years, if not longer, has been towards national healthcare system, socialized medicine.
00:15:13.640 We're not going to leave people out in the streets is the line.
00:15:16.320 He actually included an endorsement of a national healthcare system in his, I think it was like a 2000 book, The Country We Deserve, or something like that.
00:15:26.740 But that's what he was in 2015.
00:15:33.120 By the summer of 2016, he had more or less, maybe a little bit less than more, secured the Republican nomination.
00:15:44.800 And he engaged in an outreach to the religious right.
00:15:48.000 So you have that notorious interview where he says, well, we might have to punish some women. 1.00
00:15:52.560 They get an abortion.
00:15:53.840 He would never have said that before, before he needed the Republican vote.
00:15:59.320 He went to Liberty University and is like, you know, you might not like me very much, but you got to vote for me for the judges, for the judges.
00:16:06.880 You know, he did all this just transactional offers to the religious right.
00:16:13.260 And it worked.
00:16:14.720 And four years later, you have evangelical preachers declaring that he's sent by God.
00:16:19.220 He might be the Messiah himself.
00:16:21.000 And they're, you know, doing, speaking in tongues and, you know, they're coming from Alaska.
00:16:26.580 They're coming from Mexico. 0.99
00:16:27.700 They're coming from Africa for Trump to win. 1.00
00:16:30.100 You know, that crazy lady, I believe her name is Paula White. 1.00
00:16:32.800 So he made a devil's bargain, and I think at this point ultimately has to pay for it. 0.72
00:16:43.880 So there's no coherent ideology or policy program to populism or Trumpism.
00:16:52.780 And so these things that have existed for some time, like the religious right or libertarianism, et cetera, they go in and fill in the gaps.
00:17:07.140 So they say, what is the meaning of Trumpism?
00:17:10.920 What is the meaning of this man who has dominated our headspaces for the last decade?
00:17:15.460 What is the meaning of it?
00:17:16.860 Anti-abortion.
00:17:19.700 That's the meaning of it.
00:17:20.720 This is something that has defined the religious right entirely and defined the Republican Party largely, became a shibboleth, for some 40 years.
00:17:35.500 And so being that there is a lacuna, a vacuum in Trumpism, they fill up that hole with their stuff, with what they've been fighting for.
00:17:49.100 Since anyone can remember.
00:17:53.720 So Trump did it.
00:17:56.840 He made the devil's bargain with the religious right when he needed it most, when his nomination was precarious. 0.76
00:18:04.880 And now he has to pay for it.
00:18:06.800 Because now he is being brought down by these people. 0.97
00:18:11.640 And he doesn't even believe in their nonsense.
00:18:17.100 Do you honestly think that Donald Trump has really ever read the Bible?
00:18:22.400 Do you honestly think that Donald Trump is even a believing Christian?
00:18:26.340 Do you honestly think in his heart of hearts that Donald Trump is a pro-lifer who thinks that life begins at conception and that abortion is murder?
00:18:34.980 The answer is, of course, no.
00:18:38.040 He doesn't even believe in this stuff.
00:18:40.300 And yet, he's allowing himself to be taken down by it.
00:18:45.020 Remarkable.
00:18:45.540 Remarkable.
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