The Democratic Party’s Identity Crisis and Its Working-Class Disconnect

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning. What the heck is going on in the world? With us today is Hank Shankoff. I’ll tell you, one of the smartest guys I know, and he really has the pulse of the situation. Well, Hank, Sunday morning, what are you going to tell all our listeners?

0:18 Speaker 2 What am I going to tell them? Yes.

0:20 Speaker 3 Pay attention to what’s around you. Pay attention to what’s around you. Don’t believe what the politicians are saying. Listen to your own internal sense about what the country needs, where the country should go, and how much time do we have in order to fix it before something terrible can happen.

0:36 Speaker 1 I’ve been telling a lot of my friends that whatever’s happening right now is it’s an attack on Washington, on President Trump himself, that... The foreigners that don’t want him, Washington, don’t want the president to have as much power as.

0:55 Speaker 3 He has.

0:57 Speaker 1 To limit his power. And they want him to lose.

1:03 Speaker 3 Well, look, there’s always been a battle, John, as you know, in American history between the executive and the legislative branches and the courts and online. And, yeah, it is an attempt to blunt Trump’s power, unquestionably so. Does it work?

1:16 It’s also an attack on the basic system. This is a moment where America’s true enemies, those who hate the democratic system, are using the democratic system to destroy the democratic system using Trump as an excuse.

1:28 Speaker 2 Let’s be very clear about this.

1:30 Speaker 3 There is no good outcome when people who call themselves VSA, Shmi-SA, tell you they’re going to rip apart the system if given the power. They are very smart. They’re very calculating. They’re very funded. You know, this is a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party funded by outside interests. Anybody who thinks differently is just plain foolish, very foolish.

1:51 Speaker 1 Understood. And the Democratic Party, you know, I interviewed a lot of Democrats. I interviewed Fetterman. I even interviewed President Clinton last week. The common sense Democratic Party is in danger of being taken over by the socialists.

2:19 Speaker 2 Well, it’s not just that. John, you’re onto something.

2:22 Speaker 3 I mean, Bill Clinton, who I had the honor of working for in the interest of disclosure, took the Democratic Party, put it back in the center. He increased taxes to cut the deficit. He was very right about it. The end result is the country was a non-debtor country. OK, we’re absent from war in significant fashion. The economy boomed.

2:45 People are working. When you walked in, you had double digit inflation. You had chaos.

2:50 Speaker 2 It didn’t work out that way.

2:51 Speaker 3 I mean, health care reform battle, which which has been going on, frankly, since the late 40s in this country. I’m going back to Harry Truman. is something that kind of sunk his second term, but he bounced back, and he has.

3:04 Speaker 2 A clear legacy of what was accomplished.

3:06 Speaker 3 This battle to try to get to the center is one the Democrats keep fighting about. The problem here is that the labor unions were a large part of keeping in the center, and those industrial unions, who were the enforcers of democratic ideas and thinking, ideas and thinking just don’t have the juice they used to within the Democrat Party,

3:23 and their members on the non-public sector side of labor have walked away from Democrats in many cases.

3:30 Speaker 1 And the Democratic Party, over those years, that moved all the automobile companies to Mexico, to Canada, the pharmaceutical companies to China and India. I mean, the Democratic Party didn’t do any favors to the working people of America.

3:51 Speaker 2 No. No. There’s two ways to look at that.

3:54 Speaker 3 I mean, the fact that we forget sometimes that weekends are an invention of the labor movement, that the kind of pensions we enjoy were really a function of the labor movement, which don’t exist much anymore because labor has been so decimated. I mean, you can’t have the tax system you presently have and expect not to have significant

4:15 problems within the country. It just doesn’t work that way. Why?

4:18 Speaker 3 You’re printing money at a outrageous rate. with no funds coming in, with a social welfare system that is significant because the older people in this country are growing.

4:29 Speaker 2 In numbers and not declining. I mean, it’s just, this can’t go on this way.

4:33 Speaker 3 And as long as it does, you’re going to continue to have problems within the system itself and an opening for the democratic socialists of America and people like that who are neither democrats but certainly socialists and not for America to take over the place.

4:45 Speaker 2 Just that simple.

4:46 Speaker 3 This can’t go on this way. You need structural changes to stop them. Well, you need centrists. You need a new Bill Clinton.

4:54 Speaker 1 The Democratic Party needs a new Bill Clinton. You’re absolutely correct. Is there anybody you see out there with that kind of leadership abilities?

5:04 Speaker 3 Were I in charge of all this, which I’m not, but I am still working, and I’m going to continue until I drop dead, I hope.

5:10 Speaker 1 Me and you are going to do the same thing. We’re both going to continue.

5:13 Speaker 3 Until we drop dead.

5:14 Speaker 2 I’m not stopping because I think people are going to get into trouble.

5:16 Speaker 1 I’ll meet you at 100.

5:18 Speaker 2 No, I don’t know if I’ll make it there, John, but I’m sure you will. Is there anybody like that?

5:22 Speaker 3 If I were in charge, I would create a ticket very much akin to what Bill Clinton did when he took Al Gore. It’d probably be Bashir and or the senator from Georgia. I’d put them together on that ticket.

5:38 I’d make it a South-South ticket, run across America. That would make it impossible. for them to be attacked by the Northern liberals in ways that don’t make sense. It’d make it easier for them to cut down the dissonance in the South. And it’d be a value argument that the Democrats could win. Absent that, putting a liberal in

5:56 that ticket would be a disaster for the Democrats. But the Republicans’ bench is not that deep either. When you think about it, they’re just not. But following the Bill Clinton model, two Southerners on the ticket. It was Clinton and Gore, worked, won, and won a second term. And by the way, it was stolen. The presidential campaign of

6:15 2020 was stolen and changed the Bush versus Gore thing. It was stolen and changed American politics forever because it made it less likely to trust the system.

6:32 Speaker 1 Well, Hank Shankoff, let’s continue to talk. Let’s continue to pray for America. Let’s continue to talk about common sense. And let’s make sure the American people, you know what I tell all the American people? I don’t care if you’re a Democrat. I don’t care if you’re a Republican or an Independent. But I want you to vote for America,

6:51 not necessarily for your party. Thank you so much.

6:56 Speaker 3 Thank you, John.