Hello and welcome to cross talk where all things are considered on Peter Lavelle as expected ballots are still being counted but what we do know about this election that its close and the country is deeply divided what are some of the lessons to be learned was it enough to frame this election as a referendum on donald trump. There is because this and more im joined by my guest Christopher Metzler in washington he is a legal scholar in monterrey we have Spencer Critchley he is the author of patriots of 2 nations and is the former Communications Advisor for obama for america and in los angeles we have rahm elwood he is a pretty good guest on that your show and the podcast the political vigilante and you tube dust up rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate it ok lets go to spencer in monterey whats whats happening in the selection because for days and weeks before i kept hearing all of these polls this is going to trump is going to be. This is going to be essentially a blowout and now its not its much much closer than we thought and a lot of ballot still need to be counted and it can go either way here did you expect it to be this close go ahead yes i think its. More or less in the middle of the range that i expected that that i think was the man line range of expectations there was a whole hopeful version for democrats where for i would go for biden and it would basically be over and everybody. Stop worrying after 4 years of intense anxiety thats obviously not happening it does look like there is some polling or i dont think we can claim there is none even if you account for the fact that there is always a margin of error it looks skewed in trumps favor so far although even there we need to remember that weve all been told this is early days when it comes to voting vote counting for many of these states which are barely Getting Started on counting their votes and there was what was called a red mirage predicted and all that said i would say from a democrats point of view of the fact that its even plausible that trump would be reelected i think means were still in the same crisis of division that we were before no matter how this comes out ok were going to pressure i mean isnt it a crisis of the Democratic Party as well i think you know theres a lot of blame to be shared around here go ahead chris yeah i indeed i believe that there is i mean from our perspective you know from the very beginning this whole idea of the low out just didnt make all mosques sense and i think democrats ban on lot of time i think in my dreams out of florida was never going to go out to democrats and they spent a whole lot of time texas seriously i mean it was just and i think they couldve spent better time in class bases that actually mattered and that thats where we find ourselves at this stop land our. Grammy and it wasnt supposed to be this way here i mean one of the interesting things i find particularly in the liberal media is that not only do they demonize donald trump i mean hes a politician thats fair game but it seems to me they demonized his supporters and i think that has a boomerang effect graham wow i mean you know theres theres some fair criticism be made of some of his supporters and there you know theres indorsed by a white nationalist. I like that but the problem here the Democratic Party in 2016 they you know cheated in their own primary and then ran a centrist and they lost and so what did they do in 2020 oh they cheated again in a primary and ran centrist and theyve had no platform no policy their whole campaign has been trumps bad were better than him so youve got people who were in the middle of a pandemic if someone was saying i have medicare for all i have student Debt Forgiveness which is something the president could do by executive order 85 percent of all student debt is federal the president just right with the pad i watched the debates and i felt like i was watching a republican primary i mean it was like well im not im not going to ban fracking will need to remind america im not for a Green New Deal there was no difference it was simply united least and i know you pretty well i mean joe bidens assist a liberal republican and thats the problem for the democrats you know its its thinking about the issues here spencer what were the issues here because again it was this very emotional you know i think you know an anxiety and all that and it didnt say and im going to blame the republicans on this one too but where are the issues here i didnt see an affirmative case may during this election i have spent you know i actually disagree with that without analysis and i write about this in my book and i want to emphasize again weve got to be careful not to read too much into where we are now its still quite likely its still very likely that biden is going to win this election or may have a the story is that its even close as i say you know the the story that this is about policy i just dont think is supported by the data and my view of the issue is that the Democratic Party faces and those issues will remain whether biden wins or not and i think that there are serious issues because and in important ways i think the Democratic Party created the opening for trump to exploit a group that actually has more to do with culture than economics most. Voters dont actually know very much about policy and they dont very care of very much about policy and yet democrats are always arguing about policies they care about the ones that affect them directly if theyre working in the fracking industry of course they care about that if theyre in agriculture they care about firm issues etc etc but they really are not voting primarily on policy theyre always voting on is this a strong leader who cares about people like me and i actually think thats one of joe bidens greatest strengths is unlike Hillary Clinton who i feel as a classic example of a very highly qualified democratic candidate but not an effective campaigner joe biden is highly qualified and is also an effective campaigner because hes capable of connecting with people on that in a way to it of level i mean on leader cares about me christopher and those words strong doesnt come to mind when i look at joe biden ok i see a lot of weakness i see a lot of frailty and i dont and i didnt see him as being on tala see i mean what it would for me is 2016 and this election and spencer is right its far from over here but there seems to be a realignment going on here its working people going to the Republican Party not to the Democratic Party just. Well and thats that thats absolutely correct and you know again look at as it really late screw the Democratic Party for my perspective joe biden should have run when Hillary Clinton rat i mean its simply too late at this point in my view and so biden runs then he gets how will i have to back a muck and the whole thing is just a side show and from the perspective of strong i dont see him as a strong decisive leader i simply dont see that what i do see is the Democratic Party frailing all over the place its like oh it cme that and all of this discussion for example the progressives and i get all of this kind of something psychologists you know well what about the person who has to go to work every day it seems like youre forgotten about that person and i think thats a major part of what we have here and i think now that we find ourselves so close it you chris or youre absolutely right and who would have thought that that the default position for somebody else people would be donald trump ok thats what i find really extraordinary and you know if graham i mean i know you well enough here is that you know whatever the outcome is yours are going to be a reckoning within the Democratic Party because you know it seems to me that in this election there was a lot of voter shaming ok and they did it and then the lot of voting shaming was inside the Democratic Party against progressive i mean you know nancy pelosi and Chuck Schumer have more venom for the progressive wing of the party than they do for the g. O. P. Go ahead thats absolutely true i mean look the Democratic Party would rather lose to republicans than what progressives take it over because a progressive take it over their donor class leaves so thats what the Democratic Party is all about and these you know the neo liberals that shame progressives if they spent as my. After holding the Democratic Party accountable as they do shaming people that are there would be real change i think you say you have a bond and is likely a chance of reforming the Democratic Party from within as you do joining a drug cartel and getting them to stop selling drugs and still be good smoothies. Ok so spenser to be in the way what is the positives that you think that white people want to vote for joe biden is it as i said in my introduction is this and i think that the Democratic Party is running a referendum on donald trump was any good it was or was that a mistake i actually think they ran a Good Campaign and lets remember again lets look at what the data actually says not what we you know believe it should say depending on where we sit on the ideological spectrum biden was never even close to being below donald trump in a Approval Rating and he won the primary fair and square you know if you look at they. Actual numbers about where americans sit ideologically 75 percent if im remembering right of americans identify themselves as either conservative or moderate and that includes among democrats if you look at democrats you find i think its im reaching back a little ways here so forgive me if these numbers are a little wrong but i think its Something Like 12 percent of the population identifies as progressive and when you get down to very progressive youre down to Something Like 7 percent so you know the claim that if the Democratic Party would stop making all these compromises and supposedly selling out to big donors theyd start winning elections with progressive policies i dont think so i think that the strongest case that somebody like a Bernie Sanders made was more as i say this sense that with bernie you got the feeling like it was authentic and that he would fight for you that he actually cared about you if it was progressive policies why would these people be running to this you know darling of billionaire. Hes essentially a puppet of billionaires and hes does has these incredibly regressive policies i maintain its because democrats tend to be strong on economics their economic policies are usually right and theyre usually right for everybody by the way. At the bottom top and middle but theyre really bad at culture and i believe that what theyve done since the sixtys has chased away much of their working class base and not just White Working Class they have a problem with people of color as well because they do tend to come across as technocratic and in their heads and frankly kind of arrogant sometimes because they are they are arrogant they feel the people should vote a certain way i mean oh my goodness you might vote differently thats not putting thats sewed demeaning i theres a theres a i got i believe this actually goes back to our roots in the enlightenment and again this is in my book its kind of the enlightenment versus the counter in like men and people of the enlightenment you know theres a lot to be said for it of course reason has brought us democracy and science and medicine and all kinds of wonderful things but the fundamental mistake is thinking that reason explains everything and you become hyper rational and you tend to think that people who disagree with you are at best mistaken you know and they need either reeducation her punishment because theres no theres no chance they have a valid point of view right if you you know have figured any going to diminish it before we go to the rakish chris or less which are too much voter shaming in the selection go ahead yet there was and in fact it seems to me that the Democratic Party would learn nothing from hillary steroids and in fact if as spencer said these are the things that the Democratic Party are for they havent articulated i mean it just has been a bunch of blah blah blah a bunch of quote a shame its been all of those strings and as a result of that this shooting themselves in the proverbial thought ok on that note they were going to go to a short break and after that short break and you know discussion on the elections. R. T. For all the. Dares things. We dare to ask. Welcome back to crossfire where all things are considered im Peter Lavelle to remind you were talking about the ongoing counting of ballots in the election. Lets go back to cram in los angeles ok lets talk about this face off here i mean why would you want to. A trump in my opinion. In 2016 ran as a populist but he governed as a jet jeb bush ok or mitt romney essentially thats what he did ok now on the campaign trail he reverts to his populist. Rhetoric here why he wants to face off here i cant see how a moderate democrat can win against a populist on the right ok if its a mismatch year and it doesnt create a real choice again if the. Democrats have got a little bit more aggressive and id say you know bernie you know per se here but then you get much more of a of a choice youre saying that nothing fundamentally will change. Change in the middle of the pentagon made in the worst economic turndown since the Great Depression how is it a winning message oh hey there its not i mean thats just the very its not a winning message i mean this is just you know weve got fracking with science or fracking without science and not taking into account you know spencer brought up the fracking jobs while you know oklahoma and texas have record earthquakes as a result the fracking and you have people with contaminated water who would gladly go get a job working in the green industry and i just wow do not agree that joe biden won this fair and square when you have people to judge your shadow apts youve got double digit exit poll wins for Bernie Sanders and then somehow joe biden wins all in in precincts that use the touch screen voting which has been proven since 2006 to be hackable the un itself said the its not it doesnt it reeks of a rigged election so youve got all of these populous policies people can relate to medicare brawny Free Health Care i need 15. 00 an hour i needs an unmitigated fan to write and. A lot of people do of course those are those are populist issues truck ran on a populist platform and in 2016 hes backed off the populism a little in this campaign but real populism especially when you have people in food lines waiting for food because of this pandemic you have people going how my going to pay for anything you have all industries wiped out and joe biden says now is not the time for a revolution thats right revolutions always happen where everybodys bad never things taken care of bats what revolutions happen so this writing in their whole campaign hey they had republicans in the Democratic Convention joe biden has said that hes probably going to have republicans they went after suburban republicans rather than all of the people that have been abandoned the 100000000 people that dont vote because they feel like nice to utterly corrupt parties that are both for war and banking and for Profit Health care in prisons and on down the line dont represent them at all and you why. The debates and theres only like these handful of issues that theyre different in had you ran an actual populous progressive they would have crushed straw you could have gone after his actual selling out of his own campaign is 1. 00 trillion 1. 34 and it did get a touch of that when biden announced his. America 1st you know Economic Policy and even they trumpet ministration was they were a bit upset about that to say that were stealing one of our cards well i mean that card is played for anyone that wants to use it ok unfortunately even trump didnt do it here spencer answer some of those things that we just heard from graham because again you know in this nothing will fundamentally change and then you read in the wall street journal that a potential biking ministration will have republicans in the cabinet ok i mean when its when its absolutely saying i mean it and nothing will fundamentally change when half the country is looking for what kind of message is that and why would anyone think it would be a winning message go ahead well you know one of the tests of an argument is could you make exactly the opposite assertions with equal passion and you could but in both cases you have to be able to actually back it up with information and link that with logic to connect a valid argument i just disagree with that whole analysis biden did run on a pandemic platform for example he said he is going to Pay Attention to the science and the Obama Administration left that science in a detailed plan for the Trump Administration and the reason weve had among the very worst deaths per capita rates in the world out of 168 nations tracked by Johns Hopkins is because trump ignored the science thats a pretty clear message on it and it in trying to be a fact of sending in the accomplice and hospitals in new york is that trumps all these are anecdotes that come out but again you have to look at what the actual data says and you just cant argue with the data our performance on. The pandemic is terrible and its and its obvious why its terrible this is when biden was going to be awesome and pretty clear distinction is this campaign about coded that was certainly one of them because when you have a life or death issue you know youve got a pretty much addressed the question of how are you going to protect americans thats the president s responsibility number one closely related to that is the economy which is usually up there its usually its basically security and the economy are the top 2 issues and thats what we see with covais down the economy so i think biden has had a strong message and again let me remind everybody its still much more likely that bidens going to win this election and the middle is. Now that said i agree it should not be close in terms of this story about throwing the primaries in favor biden that also is in my book and. This is a case in point i would say of people on the left not actually exercising empathy towards the people theyre trying to talk to and instead telling them what they should believe or what they should think biden one largely because of the black people of South Carolina not because of some shadowy d. N. C. Conspiracy its a tremendous act of disrespect to the stalwarts of the Democratic Party and the Africanamerican Community led by jim cliburn to say that this was some conspiracy when its just clearly that is not what happened how do you explain all of it hurricane allen well you know all these leaders you can always find a Conspiracy Theory that will explain anything or you can look at a preponderance of the data and it kind of how do you explain it not even if i am telling black people that they had any role in this its not a conspiracy to make that claim or supposition that barack obama made a few call phone calls and. Theres no evidence that he heard percent i mean i tell you how imminent already did and look i mean i know some of the people involved they dont act. They dont do that stuff and again you have to dismiss the the Africanamerican Community of South Carolina and many other states and when the evidence is staring you in the face that they may have a different skin so youre saying hold on spencer youre saying that the u. N. Discounted africanamerican votes when they said this had all the earmarks of a regular action they did not and you have to you have to actually have evidence again you can come up with a conspiracy that will explain anything but you have to have evidence to back it up and if youve got you know clear documented evidence that gives you a perfect explanation for what happened versus putting dots together that dont really connect that dont actually have solid evidence of ill take the farmer ok well you know did the one of the explain we was brought up in the 1st part of the program here is identity politics and woke ism in all of that. Premise that were working here because again it seems to me that there is such a realignment i mean im going to say the forbidden words are in this election that nobody likes to use and its about class its about class and the democrats dont like that they used to and these 2 women on it ok and they have left that lane wide open and the trying to send a terrible job with it but didnt lift it to him and i think if he wins it could be because of that ahead graham yeah well americans are in class warfare but were divided distracted and afraid thanks to you know the oligarchy that run the the media on these 2 utterly corrupt parties and does just any time someone says here is evidence that youre automatically called a conspiracy theorist as part of the class warfare that worry and and its its theyre realizing through all the george boyd protest there had people of all ethnicities in the streets protesting together and then they had to kind of keep it divided and the woke him isnt working they just m. S. N. B. C. Last week interviewed 3 black women at the end of it lana and all 3 of them were like im not voting for biden and they just assume we were going to vote for a problem or not. Because you know she put 100000 black men behind bars as attorney general joe biden wrote in 1994 crime bill these are actual facts that people are like hey we want real Justice Reform and people that get money from the private prison industry in the democratic and Republican Party they dont they dont speak to us. You know spencer when it was asked both of you i mean there is there is fear. That there could be violence if trump is to prevail here and again its where early hours into this this could be a couple days i mean it depending on what goes on in pennsylvania but theres been talk of that are you worried about that spencer that theres going to be violence in the streets and looting i mean its been the year of of mostly peaceful protests what do you what are you concerned about. I am somewhat worried and just before i get into that i would like to point to i think its 93 percent africanamerican support for democrats again you just run into numbers here. So i think that theres not going to be the total breakdown of society like we can see in other countries where you have mass scale rioting in the streets or a military coup or anything like that however a great deal of damage can be done by a relatively small number of people as terrorists have shown all over the world and one of the under covered stories i mean there are journalists covering up at the administration is doing everything it can to downplay it and develop a much more sexy counter narrative is that by far domestic terrorism is committed by right wing White Supremacists in this country and any other form of domestic terrorism is dwarfed by comparison to the ones that did all of the looting during the summer because these are small group of so even there we run into numbers i would study it was recently done i think again it was the number was Something Like 93 percent of those protests were peaceful and where there were violent incidents they were often initiated by other people counter protesters or in some cases Law Enforcement this is also a case where this theres this pervasive problem on the left of thinking you know whats good for people whether thats people on the left talking to Trump Supporters and i agree that is a problem it comes down even to word choice and not realizing that you come across as kind of severe even when you dont. Intent to just a word choice also with the with the protests in black neighborhoods very often what happens is you have the people who live in the neighborhood and what they want is better policing but then you have people from outside the Community Coming in saying we want no police or we want to tear down society and how the anarchist revolution or whatever it is and theyre just parachuting in and they can get to go home at night but they leave a black eye police are you have to live in that point we agree a little when youre running out of us and im in a glass spencer that youre willing to criticize the. Professional class ok because i think thats whats not into the democrats last 20 seconds go to you graham. Well you know theres no Real Opposition Party in this country and we need one you know in other countries theres 45 driving parties an opposition we have 2 parties that are pretty well in line with wall street with Big Pharmaceutical Companies with the military Industrial Complex and de de there dare separate on a couple issues so we really need an Opposition Party to get us out a great he more choice or i want to thank spencer and graham we want to thank our viewers for watching us here are easy next time remember. When else so seemed wrong all right all roll just dont call me well it is yet to see how it does they become advocates and endangered because of the trail. When someone find themselves worlds apart. Just on the common ground. Sputnik 5 has the world. Just like its namesake the original sport. The farce cruft of a to leave. On orbit the worlds sun while many questions remain unanswered about russias new vaccine the authorities are confident enough to go forward with mass production especially puzzle for. Whats going on in the family states please we may say you may save a life in the because no one from the. Real radio received. Interest in preliminary requests. William those of us all fresh from her seat. All right this is happening. A window on the reaction has been exactly the same as it was waved by. Journalists from the us. The world reaction is made of green cheese. Little a little boy would. Do much good for. You. Its an Election Night for the u. S. Where the final result depends on several case wing states and the they dont. Have any plans of can say to. Her turn to night we believe were on track to win this election frankly we did win this but this is. In the american public. But with everything still to play for theres the potential this could drag on for days or even longer especially with trump threatening to take matters to the Supreme Court with a divisive election having already spurred a wave of protests when several states phase still remain