Hello and welcome the crosstown for all things are considered im Peter Lavelle as expected ballots are still being counted but what we do know about this election that its close in 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 goes this and more im joined by my guest Christopher Metzler in washington he is a legal scholar in monterrey we have spencers ridgeley he is the author of patriots of 2 nations and is the former Communications Advisor for obama or america in los angeles we have ram elwood he is a free guest on that your show and the podcast the political vigilante and. You tube or angelic 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 ballots 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 it that i think was the man line range of expectations there was a hopeful version for democrats where florida would go for biden and it would basically be over and everybody could 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 vote and 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 am 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. Oh are 2 democrats and they spent a whole lot of time taxes 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 ill lead 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 know 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 criticisms to be made of some of his supporters and dirt you know doris by white nationalists and stuff 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 and their 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 write it with a 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 if theyre pretty united least and i know you pretty well i mean joe bidens assist a liberal republican and thats the problem for the democrats. Its into thinking about the issues here spencer what were the issues here because again it was just 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 where were. The issues here i didnt see an affirmative case mate during this election i had spent you know i actually disagree with 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 for me the 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 issues 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 it 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 2 of level i me on leader cares about me Christy Barrett 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 tolleson here 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 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 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 but 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 not 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 of a 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 thats so deep 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 as you you know have figured any going to diminish it before we go to the rakish chris or was that was are too much voter shaming in the selection go ahead yet there was and in fact it seems to me that the Democratic Party learned nothing from Hillary Clintons basket of the portables its like the basket of the corals on 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 the shooting themselves in the proverbial. Ok and then i know they were going to go to a short break and after that short break and you know discussion on the election state. If you can say someone if you have a small and direct means same thing that you can then say there are thousands of other lives well my response is that the way we should think about that is just is that just as theres a child in a store experiment right there in front of you in this burning building you can say well also just thousands of children around the world millions of children and the world you could potentially state it way its lightweight in the situation of being facing a burning building just all the time. Sputnik 5 has the world. Just like its namesake the original. The forest cruft to leave. Orbit the world. Many questions remain unanswered. The authorities are confident enough to go forward with mass production. Very. Pleased. To. Receive. Interest early in their requests. But see. All right this is happening all the way go on the reaction has been exactly the same as it was way back. The world reaction is made of green cheese. But. Its. Plus a list for the future if. Welcome back to crossfire where all things are considered on Peter Lavelle to remind you were talking about the ongoing counting of ballots in the election. Ok lets go back to cram in los angeles ok lets talk about this face off here i mean why would you want to. A trial 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 up here i can see how a moderate democrat can win against a populist on the right ok its a its a mismatch here it and it doesnt create a real choice again if the the the democrats got a little bit more aggressive and id say you know early you know per se here but then if you get much more of a of a choice youre saying that nothing fundamentally will change in the middle of the pandemic in the worst economic turndown since the Great Depression how is it a winning message go ahead where 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 bracket 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 bracketing and you have people with contaminated water who would gladly go get a job working in the green industry and i guess what i do not agree that joe biden one disappearance where when you have people to judge a shadow where its 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 populist policies people can relate to medicare for all i need Free Health Care i need 15. 00 an hour i needs an unmitigated fan to write. 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 running 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 and prisons and on down the line dont represent them at all and you watch the debates and theres only blake these handful of issues that theyre different and had you ran an actual populous progressive they would have crushed trump and you could have gone after his actual selling out of his own campaign as one point i trillion dollar try to play a prank or and he did get a touch of that when biden announced his. America 1st you know Economic Policy and even they tried to be an inspiration was they were a bit upset about it to say that were stealing one of our arms well i mean that heart is in play for anyone that wants to use it ok unfortunately even trump didnt do it here spencer to 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 biting ministration will have republicans in the cabinet ok i mean when its when its absolutely saying i mean it and nothing will fundamentally change