Jim Clyburn And The "Wipe The Slate Clean" Party Of Appeasers And Obeisance
01:07:58 Share

Welcome to The Politocrat. I'm Omar Moore. It is Thursday, December the 19th, 2024. On this edition of The Politocrat, wiping the slate clean. Comments made by Jim Clyburn saying that President Biden should pardon Donald Trump? Are we talking about that? And what wiping the slate clean really means? And much more, coming up next.

Congressman Clyburn, let me get you to clear something up because I'm a little confused. On Tuesday, you were asked on CNN whether you thought President Biden should pardon Donald Trump. And I'm just going to ask you the question directly. Do you think that President Biden should pardon Donald Trump? And if so, why?

Yes, I do think so. And I think he should pardon all of those people that have been abused and have been targeted so that we can clean the slate. We can have an air of possibilities for the future. If we keep digging at things of the past, I'm not too sure the country would not lose its way. Now, remember, President Trump has been indicted, has been convicted,

on state crime. Also, please remember that the United States Supreme Court has given him immunity. And so I'm asking people who question my thought on this to explain to me how he would be any more insulated by this pardon

than he seems to already be by the United States Supreme Court with his immunity. Well, Congressman, then that would beg the question, why even bother to give him a pardon if he already has immunity from the Supreme Court? Because I think Joe Biden will be demonstrating what he's always demonstrated to me, that he loves this country more than anything else other than maybe his family. That was less than two weeks ago.

Jim Clyburn, the congressman out of South Carolina, talking to Jonathan Capehart. That's a clip from the Saturday show with Jonathan Capehart, December the 7th of this year. That was, again, less than two weeks ago. And I came across that clip on social media. I couldn't believe my ears or my eyes. In fact, I first came across this clip when Clay Kane, who, of course, is the great historian and

author and host of his show, The Clay Kane Show on Sirius XM channel 126, The Urban View, said that Jim Clyburn had said that Donald Trump should be pardoned by President Biden. I'm saying to myself, what? And then he played the clip and I still couldn't believe it, even though his voice was speaking the words, as in, do you hear the words that are coming out of my mouth?

You know that line from Rush Hour where Chris Tucker is talking right up next to Jackie Chan in the film and he's saying, do you? Literally, and that's how I felt, except in reverse. Did I hear the words coming out of Jim Clyburn's mouth? And I didn't. And so that's why I had to play it again and again. When I went on social media, saw the clip on social media and played it again. And then I played it to you.

And this is an example of obeying in advance. Timothy Snyder wrote in his book on tyranny, 20 lessons for the 20th century. Do not obey in advance. That's one of the 20 lessons that he enumerates. And this is exactly what the Democrats are choosing to do. Obey in advance. They really are contravening that edict.

It's still more than a month, just over a month until we have another orange nightmare in the White House. And weeks and weeks in advance, months in advance, indeed years in advance, the corporate news media, which of course is absolutely...

using Trump as its cash cow, are obeying in advance. And you've got Democratic politicians doing the same. You've got the newspapers doing the same. And you see that this sets up the breeding ground and absolutely cements what will be a dictatorship once it takes place on the 20th of next month. And Jim Clyburn should be ashamed of himself, but he isn't. He's very comfortable. He knows exactly how this game of power works.

His face is on the television every week, at least. And he is someone who's had a distinguished political career. Although, again, there's things that I disagree with him on from time to time. And this is one of them.

And he's in his 80s. All of these people who are over the age of 80, who are still in the higher echelons of the Democratic Party, need to turn the reins over to younger people. That's not being ageist. That's not being anything. That's just telling it like it is. And it is recognizing the fact and the truth that every great boxer has his or her day and must hang up those gloves regularly.

And move along. Make room for people who are in a position to propel people forward in a positive way. Because what you are hearing out of the mouth of Jim Clyburn there, what you've heard from a number of Democratic politicians over the last few weeks, is this regressive, apologistic, or apologist, and mealy-mouthed kiss-up to this president.

insurrectionist and traitor. And that really is not the way that you want to say that you're fighting back in this country. Jim Clyburn's not fighting back against anything when he makes comments like that. And he's not the only Democrat that's done it. There was more outrage among Democrats around President Biden pardoning his son after he said he would not than there is amongst a lot of Democrats around

When comments like the ones Jim Clyburn, a Democrat, makes declaring that Biden should pardon Trump. I mean, there's less outrage about what Clyburn is saying in a lot of Democratic circles than there is about President Biden pardoning his own son. I have to say that twice so that it makes sense even to me because it doesn't make sense even to me. Does it make sense to you?

The same excuses after every election loss. These Democrats, under the leadership of Pelosi, the leadership of Clyburn, Steny Hoyer, all of the usual suspects, keep losing elections. And they get to get out there in the corporate news media sphere and keep spinning their losses as if they're in a perpetual spin room.

Oh, well, in 2022, well, you know, we didn't have as bad a loss as it could have been. You know, we were supposed to be losing lots of seats and it was supposed to be this great red wave, but we only lost a few seats. Hey, but you lost the house, mate. You lost the house. Oh, but it wasn't as bad as everyone was going to say. Actually, you know what? It kind of was because you guys lost seats in New York.

New freaking York. Tell me about how bad it was supposed to be. You shouldn't be losing seats in New York. I understand there's gerrymandering, but that's just pathetic. There's a spin job on every loss that Democrats have. There's always a spin job and it's usually from someone high up in the party. And then that gets passed on to all these other people in the party who sit there and spin away.

and rationalized the losses that they should never have had. Same thing in 2024. Oh, well, you know, even though Vice President Harris lost, you know, well, it was only one and a half percentage points. She came within one and a half percentage points. She had 75, 76 million votes. There's only two million vote difference. Da da da, two and a half million votes.

Same thing in 2016. Oh, well, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. About 3 million more people voted for her. Well, guess what? The popular vote is not the means in a presidential election by which somebody takes the White House. It's called the Electoral College, and we know how despicable the Electoral College is. And so, talking about Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote, quite frankly, is meaningless. And by the way...

Talking about this orange fool winning the popular vote is pretty much meaningless as well. Although, yes, it's jarring to know, but not surprising to know that more people actually did vote for this orange clown and insurrectionist than they did vote for Vice President Harris. But what you really look at here is this Electoral College, which has to be scrapped, got to be gotten rid of. That would take a constitutional amendment. The Electoral College wasn't close,

The electoral college in this presidential election last month was not close. So the bottom line is, whether it was close or whether it wasn't, there's always a spin job being done by Democrats. When they keep losing elections, they should be winning. And enough is enough of all of this. Whether it's Clyburn, whether it's Pelosi in the New York Times, of course, last month when she said, oh,

oh, Biden should have dropped out earlier. Oh, because that's the reason. And, you know, had Biden dropped out earlier, maybe Vice President Harris would have had a better chance to win. Maybe we should have had an open primary and, you know, Vice President Harris could have gotten to show the country then who would get to know her more. Oh, please. You know, Speaker Pelosi, please, it's time for you to leave the stage and leave it to someone who...

is in a position to galvanize the party and galvanize the voters. You didn't see Speaker Pelosi out there banging the drum for Vice President Harris, you know? And Vice President Harris, you know, is the leader of that party now, even though she's going to be leaving office in a month, just over a month. But she is the leader. She and Biden are the leaders of the party now. But they're both leaving. Biden's not going to be running again. He's going to leave.

Now whether or not Vice President Harris runs again is another story we will see about that. A lot of people are talking about the gubernatorial race in California and that's probably an analysis that's not too far off. I would like to see her run again in 2028. I really would. While the iron is hot, this is an opportunity to build now and to stay visible. I would urge after she's taken her holiday

if she hasn't already done so, I would urge Vice President Harris to stay visible. And I would urge all of us, including you and me, dear listener, to stay engaged. As I've said over and over again, once this holiday season passes and we get to the new year, which we shall do in just about two weeks from now, just under two weeks from now, once that happens, we need to get back on the horse, if you will, and stay active. Get active. Get involved locally.

understand and what local politics is and the role it plays in our lives and who does what in what area because the president has no control over whether your trash gets picked up in your neighborhood the president of the united states has no control whatsoever of how many library books are on the shelves of a library how many books are there they don't have control over whether or not the police in your city are doing certain things

They don't have any direct control over any of that. And so people need to be educated on what roles do people play in local government and how does local government affect yours and my everyday life. Enough of the excuses from the Democrats. I'm fed up of it. It's tiresome.

We need new leadership and we are getting people who are running in areas. David Hogg is running for vice chair of the Democratic Party, the DNC, and I wish him the best of luck with that. We need to be getting behind people like David Hogg, who is a young white male progressive who, of course, was instrumental to March 11th.

for our lives was a founder of that organization has founded other organizations of course was one of the survivors of the parkland high school shooting in florida several years ago i think back in 2018 you know david hogg has become you know you know seems like a decent person and he's he is a decent person i think and he's become a pretty good leader out there and he's a younger guy

It's time to get behind people like this. Maxwell Frost, who is a congressman, 25 years old, 26 years old, the youngest congressperson in the House of Representatives right now, the youngest person. It's time to get behind people like that if they choose to run for higher offices. And if you're in Florida, you need to be continuing to vote for Maxwell Frost every two years.

This is a guy who's going to be a leader. He is a leader. He's going to be running for president in 20 years. We need to get behind people like this, younger people.

AOC in her mid-30s now. We need to be getting behind AOC. And AOC ran for a position in the DNC, I believe, or actually on a House committee. And Speaker Pelosi, Speaker Emerita, threw her weight behind this 77-year-old Jeremy Connolly, who has some health issues. And I do wish him all the very best with those. And I hope he's able to overcome those.

I am just fed up of all of this thumb on the scale stuff from these elitist Democrats, the Democratic elite. Speaker Pelosi is one of those people. And she's there lobbying all her members to vote for a 77-year-old man over a 35-year-old woman.

You know, this is not how this works, but it is how power works. And it is how power is concentrated and consecrated in these older white men and women. And as I have said on a number of occasions here, it is a very on brand thing for Democrats as they are more concerned about who is controlling the party than who is controlling the country.

That's where the Democrats fall down all the time with these elections that they keep losing. It's all about power for both of these parties. And when you're talking about the Democrats, they're more concerned keeping power in their party and having control of their party than they are often, in my view, concerned about who wins and loses the election. I really think that's true.

Because the kinds of mistakes, in quotes, I put that word mistakes in quotes, that the Democrats keep making are too easy and obvious for me to believe that somehow, oops-a-daisy, I just tripped on a banana peel and I didn't see that coming right in front of me. That big banana peel that's been there for 10 years, 4 years, 6 years, 8 years, 12 years, 16 years, but, you know, oops-a-daisy.

And every time there's a spin, every time there's an excuse, every time there's a, oh, she came so close moment. Oh, but you know, there wasn't a red wave. But you know what? You're lost. You're lost. Oh, we're going to take back the House. We're going to take back the Senate. I'm so confident Chuck Schumer said, oh, we're going to have all three branches of government. Well, what happened to that, Chuckie?

You didn't get the House. You didn't get the Senate. You didn't get the White House. A trifecta of losses. That's three L's. Take those L's and leave. That's a fourth L. Leave. You failed. Chuck, Chucky, you failed. And you're not going to be the majority leader in a few weeks' time. You're going to be. Back to Senator Schumer. And should we not have a different minority leader in the Senate for the Democrats?

Schumer's been there long enough. Should we not have someone new? It's a new generation. And I'm an older person saying that. And I think it's past time that the Democrats started to look at people who are under the age of 80, under the age of 70, to start leading them. There's a lot of young people out here and a lot of them are not voting. And you might want to engage them in a different way.

Vice President Harris said it over and over and over again during the campaign. This is the time for new leadership, for a new generation of leadership. She said that over and over and over and over again. How many times does she keep referencing young people in her speeches? Every speech she made. I love the young people and I love you, what you're doing. You're impatient for change. How many times did we hear Vice President Harris say that?

for those three months that she was campaigning. How many times did we hear her say it over and over and over? This is a time for a new generation of leadership. How many times? And she wasn't just talking to those young people who were attending her rallies. She was talking to the elitists in the Democratic Party. And they know that. They never liked Vice President Harris. I've told you this story over and over and over and over and over.

You've heard me say this before. It is time for a new generation of leadership. And the Democratic Party has got to wake up to that reality. Or they're through. They are through. Because if the country sees that one party is fighting amongst itself...

and continues to parade around these crypt keepers as leaders of the Democratic Party, and that the other party is all on board, all in line, doing horrible things, but they've got their crap in order, you know what's going to happen? The country is going to start choosing the party who has its crap in order, but is doing horrible, heinous things. Because in their minds...

At least they are seeing some structure and some discipline versus the people who are focused on doing the right thing, but very unfocused about how to go about it and are all over the place in fighting. That never wins elections. How many times did I tell you that? How many times did I point to?

What happened in 1980 at Madison Square Garden? Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter. How many times?

Did I tell you about this? The primary battle between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton in 2016. How many times did I tell you about what happened to the Republicans in 1976? That bitter, bitter fight at the Republican National Convention in Kansas City, Missouri. Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford. That was a fierce fight.

How many times did I tell you? 1968, the infighting amongst Democrats and the turmoil at the Chicago Convention for the Democratic National Convention there in Chicago. How many times? All of those instances I've mentioned, those parties all lost.

The infighting this year, when you've got people like Speaker Pelosi and Nancy Pelosi, you know, Speaker Pelosi and Chuck Schumer costing us this election by battering Joe Biden for a month with help from their media friends, of course, and weakened him and weakened the chances of Democrats, it turns out, in retrospect, of winning anything.

Oh, well, if he doesn't get out of the race, harm is going to happen to these Democratic seats in the House and in the Senate. So we've got internal polling that shows this. And where was it? What was the internal polling? And so Biden drops out because you forced him out. And the Democrats lost anyway in the House and in the Senate. And that's on you. That's not on Biden. That's not on Harris. That's on you, Speaker Pelosi, on you, Chuck Schumer.

And just because President Obama campaigned for Vice President Harris doesn't mean that he didn't want an open primary because he did. He was the last one to endorse her in the Democratic Party. And why would you do that? Why would you be the last person to endorse her inside the Democratic Party if you claim to be such a good friend of hers?

And Bill Clinton talking about identity politics. Ooh, identity politics is the issue. And everything is identity politics. But you're signaling that somehow that means black folk. Identity politics could be anyone. It could be a black person, a white person, a trans person, a gay person, a straight person, a person who's got a religious affiliation, a person who's male or female, or transgender, as I mentioned.

It's just absolutely insane. And this is the very 1950s way of looking at things. And the Democratic Party is running things as if it's still the 1950s. Forget the 1990s and these Clintonistas. They're running that party like it's still 1950. Like it's a Dixie crap thing. It's just absolutely absurd. It's absolutely absurd. It's absurd what's going on.

So we need to liberate this party, this political party, from these people who are in the sunset of their lives and in the twilight of their careers and start to infuse the party with a younger, more forward-thinking and far less regressive leadership. And then we have to strategize to engage young people.

And we need to be doing that year round, not just on the federal level, but more importantly on the local level and the state level. A lot of that is done with education. A lot of that is done with speaking to young people. A lot of that even more so is done as well with listening to young people. It's critical. And you're not going to get young people to listen to you when you are two or three generations ahead of them.

You're just not. Most young people are not going to be looking at you. Now, there's some exceptions, some people who are older, who young people have really liked. There's a certain group of people who liked Bernie Sanders when he was running, who were all under the age of 30. They were fans of his. But that's few and far between. He didn't win, did he?

So the bottom line is, is that you've got the machinery of this party that continues to stifle the party and stifle its voters. Show all this contempt for the Democratic Party voter, you know, throwing out Biden, throwing out 14 million primary votes and then making excuses when you lose.

to the New York Times and say, oh, you know, well, she would have done better if Biden had dropped out earlier. Well, maybe Biden should never have dropped out then, Speaker Pelosi. And Jim Clyburn, you're sitting there saying that President Biden should pardon Trump. Are you out of your mind? See, that's the kind of thing that tells you that maybe senility has crept in to some of this with some of these folks.

It's really time to start looking at what sanity looks like. And sanity ain't this. So I did that rant and rave there for the last half hour or so because I did promise you, by the way, let me just say this, that I would talk about Jim Clyburn on his comments earlier this month. I promised that I would do that and I've finally done that. And this is just a cycle of all of the things that you get

with the Democrats when they lose elections that they should be winning. There's no excuse, no reason whatsoever that the Democrats could not have and should not have won this presidential election last month. It was a very, very easy choice. And obviously, as I've talked about numerous times on this podcast,

The American public chose whiteness. It chose a dictator, etc., etc. And it hates women, hates black women especially. So in a nutshell, that's most the very bulk of what it is, the heart of what it is. And of course, the other additional things are that Democratic strategists use the same playbook that they used for 40 years. It doesn't work anymore in 2024.

and doesn't do the proper outreach to black voters, doesn't go to different black communities, panders to one aspect of what they think that black communities at large want. Celebrities are not alone going to cut this. Black people, like every other person, have lives that they are living. And those aren't based on what a celebrity says to them or performs for them or does.

writes for them or sings to them. That's not what our lives are based on. We have to put food on the table. We have to keep a roof over our heads. We've got children. We've got all of these considerations, just like any other group of people does. And when the white strategists in the Democratic Party stop treating black people like a monolith and stop pandering to really, really base our

or I should say basic things that they somehow think that all black people are going to tie into. And when white strategists in the Democratic Party stop taking black people at large for granted in the base, you will start to see Democrats winning these elections. When Democratic white strategists, when white strategists in the Democratic Party stop chasing after white women in the suburbs,

because they somehow think that they need this group of people who make up a certain smaller percentage of the electorate than the base that votes for the Democrats, you're going to start to see regular Democratic wins in these big elections. That's what you'll start to see when these white strategists either see the light or when you have black people in these strategist positions who actually are about it and who will vote.

strategize in a different way that puts black people in the best position to come out to vote and of course ultimately to win this election for Democrats. And it's not just about Democrats, it's about the country. And there needs to be education

in varying parts of all communities, including the black community, about the importance of your vote. And there needs to be engagement, not just during an election year, but every day and every year, which is what I alluded to earlier in this episode. When this holiday season is over, as I have said over and over again, we must recharge, refocus, and get involved. And it all starts locally. All politics.

are local. I have to say two other things about Jim Clyburn and what he said. Jim Clyburn may be in his 80s, but he lacks a historical perspective on the very thing that he was talking about in the clip I played earlier in this episode. You do not and you cannot wipe the slate clean by pardoning an insurrectionist, by pardoning somebody who has been impeached twice, by pardoning somebody

who shared classified secrets in the White House with the Russians. You do not wipe the slate clean by pardoning somebody who wants to destroy and get rid of the U.S. Constitution. You do not wipe the slate clean by doing that. You don't pardon somebody who wants to destroy the country that you live in.

You don't pardon somebody who wants to eviscerate federal government and get rid of over 50,000 civil servants, a large number of whom are black. You do not wipe the slate clean, Jim Clyburn, by pardoning somebody who kisses the backside of Vladimir Putin, a dictator and war criminal. That is madness, folks.

That Jim Clyburn is insanity. That Jim Clyburn makes no sense whatsoever. The historical bearing of what Jim Clyburn said makes him out to be extremely foolish. How did Gerald Ford wipe the slate clean by pardoning Richard Nixon, who clearly committed criminal acts while in the White House? The long national nightmare was just beginning.

after Gerald Ford made the fateful decision to pardon Richard Nixon, how was the slate wiped clean, Jim Clyburn? When that happened in 1974, when that happened in September of that year, how was the slate cleaned? How was it cleaned, Jim Clyburn? Gerald Ford would go on to lose the 1976 general election to Jimmy Carter, and a significant portion of that defeat

And there were certainly other issues, don't get me wrong. The economy, things like that were definitely hurtful. And in addition to that, pardoning Richard Nixon was also a significant reason why Gerald Ford lost. How can you wipe the slate clean when it was so clear that Nixon was a blatant criminal? You don't wipe the slate clean by sweeping crime under the rug, Jim Clyburn. You wipe the slate clean by confronting crime.

the criminal acts, the evils, and by punishing those criminal acts and evils. That's how you wipe the slate clean. And you do that by holding the people who commit those criminal acts and evil acts accountable. That's how you wipe the slate clean. And you send the message to any would-be criminal or insurrectionist that this is what happens to criminals

criminals and insurrectionists around here. But because this country does not want to look itself in the mirror, because this country continues to do the same crazy thing and expect different results in another series of desperate acts of insanity, we will continue to have those apologists who keep saying that we need to wipe the slate clean after someone in the White House commits criminal acts

Now when the garden variety person in this country commits a criminal act, I don't hear any politicians, very few of them, talking about the need to wipe the slate clean. When someone is put behind bars for a crime they didn't commit and spend 40 years, 12 years, 30 years, 10 years, 5 years, 50 years of their lives, 30 years of their lives behind bars for a crime they did not commit.

I don't hear any politicians talking about the need to wipe the slate clean and pardon them. I've never heard that. When the exonerated five, some of whom spent 14 years behind bars, some spent 10, some spent seven, some spent five years behind bars for a crime they did not commit. I didn't hear very many politicians at all. There were one or two. I didn't hear very many politicians at all talking about the need to wipe the slate clean.

I didn't hear that. But in the face of such blatant criminality by this orange nightmare, you've got a black man named Jim Clyburn. He's not the only person, but a black man named Jim Clyburn from South Carolina, no less, getting on television saying that President Biden should pardon this criminal and racist, this orange menace.

I really would like to hear from Jim Clyburn and anyone else talking about the need to be pardoning brothers who have been put in prison for years and years of crimes they didn't commit. One of them I heard on Clay Kane's show yesterday, as a matter of fact. His first name's Darian. He spent 12 and a half years in prison for a crime he did not commit. And he was put there by someone who testified in a courtroom that he saw Darian commit a crime

And it turned out that there was one small hitch. The person testifying that he saw Darian commit this crime is legally blind. And only the prosecutor knew it during the trial. All kinds of problems with that. And you too should have all kinds of problems with that. But that didn't stop that brother going to prison, being convicted and going to prison for 12 and a half years for a crime he didn't commit.

Where was Jim Clyburn talking about the need for him to be pardoned? Where was Jim Clyburn and other Democrats and Republicans going out there saying that you need to pardon that brother when Albert Woodfox spent 40 odd years of his life behind bars? He wrote a book about this. I think he's since passed away. Where were all of these politicians? This is the insanity, dear listener, and it's really unhealthy.

It's unhealthy for us, it's unhealthy for the country to continue to pretend as if everything is all right. We have to stop doing that because our mental health is at stake. Our souls are at stake. Our souls are at stake. If we refuse to look in the mirror, and if we refuse to look at history, and if Jim Clyburn and many others continue to talk about cleaning a slate,

When criminality is so obvious, when George W. Bush commits war crimes and President Obama sits there and says we need to look forward and not look into the past, and Speaker Pelosi says the same thing, impeachment is off the table, we're taking that off the table. If anybody should have been impeached for anything, it should have been George W. Bush. Weapons of mass destruction that never existed. War crimes.

But this is what happens when you, Gerald Ford, pardon a tricky dick, Nixon. This is what happens. And then every subsequent administration makes the time-honored, weak excuse for why they shouldn't do the right thing and hold someone accountable. And so you never learn, you never grow, and you never, ever look in the mirror.

We are truly a nation of men, not laws, dear listener. I think that's very obvious to anyone if you study the history of the United States of America. I think that's very, very clear. But we wrap ourselves in a flag of mythology, and that mythology is exported across the world through movies, through all kinds of things.

And you have people who come here seeking the quote unquote American dream and they soon quickly find out that that dream isn't as cozy and as lovely as it is exported and marketed to them to be. One of the ways to improve the United States of America is to confront the ugliness and the history of the United States of America and actually start to redress that.

And in that way, once you have gone toward that place of redressing and holding people accountable and implementing reparations as they are being done and is being done in a number of cities in this country, and it's a long process and there's particular things that need to be ironed out and it's not all a straight line. But once this country begins to

look at itself and actually redress the harms and hold people accountable. You will then have a country that actually can look itself in the mirror and actually exist in the knowledge of the history and the need to improve the place. Germans have been able to do that. Doesn't mean that everything's perfect in Germany. It's far from. But I am saying that Germany has been able to look itself in the mirror

And one of the ways it has done that is that you can't walk around in a lot of the country of Germany. In fact, you can't really walk anywhere in Germany and not see some memorial to a Jewish family that was destroyed, that was executed in Nazi Germany. You can't walk around the streets of Berlin.

and not see some placard or some statue or some monument or something that shows you that a Jewish family was executed by the Nazis right here in this spot. This is where the house was. This is where the camp was. You can't go anywhere in Germany and walk for more than five minutes and not see that.

We don't have that here in the United States. We don't have that. You know what? What we have in the United States are towns and cities and streets named after white men who enslaved black people or who owned black people as property. Colleges and universities named after people who enslaved black folk.

who invested in that, who owned black people as property. That's what we've got here in the United States. There are no every five minute excursions where you can bump into a monument of a black person or a black family or a plaque that says here is where this family was pulled out of its area and killed. You don't have that. You have to go to a museum to see that if you choose to travel to a museum.

I'll be right back.

You've got people like Chuck Grassley. He's in his 90s. He continues to serve in the United States Senate. He had Strom Thurmond, who died in the Senate basically at the age of 100. You have people who do hold on to power. Mitch McConnell is in his 80s, close to it, or in his 80s right now. And he is continuing in power. He may not be the Senate Majority Leader next month. It's John Thune who will take that mantle. But there is Mitch McConnell once again.

I really do believe in term limits for senators and House members. I do. And I also believe in that for the United States Supreme Court. I've said that before on this podcast. The point of what I'm getting to hear, though, is that we have people who hold on to power and that has actually hurt us. And in the case of the Democrats, I think it's hurt the Democrats a lot more than it has the Republicans.

I think of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was holding on and holding on and holding on after, what, 20 years or so, maybe more than that, in the United States Supreme Court as a justice. And I thought it was very interesting that despite the profound health issues that she had, and she gamely battled through those and did work from her hospital bed, all those things show a lot of courage and a lot of strength. But there was no looking at the long game.

The Democrats did not look at the long game. And what instead happened was this heroism and hagiography around RBG. There was a documentary that came out at the time while she was still in the Supreme Court, to the best of my memory. And instead of looking at the long game, it was the celerification of the Supreme Court Justice RBG.

And very few people were talking about the fact that she didn't have any black clerks in the U.S. Supreme Court and maybe had one in her clerking days elsewhere as an associate justice elsewhere. That was not the story that got told. Instead, it was RBG lifting weights, RGBBG doing arm curls, RBG doing...

speaking to a group of people are, you know, that kind of celebrity. It's not her fault, by the way. The celebrification is not her fault. What is her fault definitely is not having black clerks under her as a judge. I mean, that's to me is unforgivable for someone who's made out to be this liberal progressive, again, liberal and progressive has nothing to do with whether you're racist or not. But that was the hagiography. That was the celebrification.

and the championing of someone who actually was doing long-term harm by holding on and holding on and holding on under a piece of garbage who was in the White House. And there were people calling for RBG to retire. There were people calling for that while Obama was still in power. And she refused to do it. She was defiant about that. That's her call. That's up to her. I'd say the same thing about a man. But...

What I do also say is that there is a long game that needs to be looked at. And if it's okay for RBG to hold on to her post in her 80s, then it was certainly okay for President Biden to hold on to his. But you see, sometimes the Democratic Party thinks it knows more about these things than you and I do when it comes to leaving the stage and allowing for somebody to

who is younger and likely has, very likely has, many more years to live than the person who is being celebrated as this grand visionary of progressivism, who doesn't have any black clerks clerking for her in the court, or maybe has one. Ooh, one black clerk. One. I can hear the count right now on Sesame Street. One. One black clerk.

The long game is what Democrats have failed at lately, meaning the last 30 plus years. The long game is all about instance and celebrification and let's build a shrine to this person.

But what about future generations? What about the long game for those generations? What about the long game for the party, for the country? Have you figured it out? Or is it just celebrification chasing and deity worshipping and cult figures? Because one thing the Republicans have definitely done is that they have not only got a cult,

But they've also got a plan for that cult that's been marinating for 40 or 50 years now. Project 2025 was going on under Ronald Reagan. Some of those policies were actually being used in the Reagan administration. But when you're so seduced by this one here and that one there and that one over the other side, and you're not looking at the long game, you're going to get the long-term hurt. And you're seeing that now. You're living in that day right now.

It was good enough for the Democrats to keep Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court with her health issues and all. But somehow when Al Franken had a photograph that he was part of where he didn't even touch the person, somehow that was one of the reasons that he had to now be gone from the Senate. And claims that were not ever put into a court against him

by two or three women who claimed that he had been a little bit too familiar with them. Somehow, with no real evidence presented in a courtroom or anything else, Al Franken now has to be gone. Gone. Get. By the time December came around, every Democratic senator in the United States Senate called for Al Franken to be gone back in 2017. And it was Al Franken himself.

if you remember, who on the floor of the Senate talked about how there are people committing actual crimes. And he was talking, of course, about the person in the White House at the time, Orange Nightmare Part One, who are escaping any kind of accountability. Al Franken, he's gone. He's out. Doesn't mean that I agree with everything Al Franken does. I've happened to have met him and spoken to him.

Doesn't mean that he's perfect. None of us is perfect. Obviously, that's obvious. Nothing that none of us is perfect. What it does mean is that the Democrats are very selective and very inconsistent about who it is they want and who it is they don't. They have no problem keeping on a Ruth Bader Ginsburg or no problem voting for a Jerry Connolly, who's 77 years of age and ailing. But they seem to have a lot of problems with a president.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who's in her mid-30s, who obviously shows leadership skill and ability, and somebody that younger people genuinely like, and older people generally like her. But you're too concerned about your position of power within the Democratic Party, and you're too afraid because you think that the party's going to turn to be more black in its leadership, and so you don't want that.

You want to keep it nice and white, don't you? Because you don't want black or brown people in the powerful positions, in the elite positions, to start running things in the party. You don't want that because you think the DNC is as good as it gets. Well, it's not just the DNC, it's the elites in the party who are really running things with the fundraising and everything else.

And they, the white elites who control the party, do not want anyone or anything that's black or brown anywhere near the money. Which explains why you have black Democratic candidates who often get far less money for their campaigns than white Democrats do for theirs. Go and ask Sherry Beasley about that. The long game is something that the Democratic Party has got to get better at. And when you have

young people with the promise and the fire and desire they show, and you choose to bypass that for some stale, old, pale, white male and some crotchety, rickety, old, white woman, you are sending a very big message to the voting base of your party and to young people. And that message is clear. You have contempt for them.

I think what you're trying to ask is why am I so insistent upon giving out to them that blackness, that black power, that black pushing them to identify with black culture. I think that's what you're asking. I have no choice over it. In the first place, to me, we are the most beautiful creatures in the whole world, black people.

I mean, and I mean that in every sense, outside and inside. And to me, we have a culture that is surpassed by no other civilization, but we don't know anything about it. So again, I think I've said this before in the same interview, I think sometime before, my job is to somehow make them curious enough or persuade them

by hook or crook, to get more aware of themselves and where they came from and what they are into and what is already there, and just to bring it out. This is what compels me to compel them. And I will do it by whatever means necessary. Thank you, Nina. Really appreciate those words from Nina Simone on blackness and the need for us as black people to

Get deeper within and get more in touch with ourselves as people, as people.

We learn more about ourselves. We learn more about our history and our culture and our heritage and our traditions and understand what those are and how they sustain us and what they mean and start to go to ancestry to find out which parts of the African continent our ancestors came from but we are descended from. This is what Nina Simone is talking about and also being proud of who you are, being proud of your heritage, being proud of being a black person.

on this planet and being proud of the rich history of your people. That is really where Nina is going with that statement. Nina Simone was incredible. I mean, just beyond everything. She wasn't just a brilliant musician.

activist. She was a teacher. She was an educator in that sense, in that way. She was a critical thinker and we don't have enough critical thinkers in this country anymore. We just don't. I mean they are there to be sure but we need a lot more of them and that starts with you and it starts with me. We shouldn't be looking to other people. We should be looking to ourselves as the song says, as the saying goes. We are the leaders we've been waiting for but we can't afford to wait.

Because there are people out there who are making it clear about their designs. And so we have to get involved. And Nina Simone, thank you very much again for those words. She spoke those words many years ago now. And it's just good to remind ourselves of what she said there. You know, this is the thing. She also said that an artist has the duty and responsibility to reflect the times in which they live.

And I totally agree.

So we need artists out there, celebrities out there who do speak truth to power, who do reflect the times in which they live. And there are a few out there. But we've got this celebrification in this country. And this country has always had a celebrification about it, right? Whether it was Ronald Reagan in the 1950s, Clint Eastwood. He went on to run for mayor of Carmel, California. Jesse Ventura became governor of Minnesota. You can go down the list. And of course, this orange nightmare, right?

has become a dictator. So, you know, there's always been this long strain of this throughout this country.

And we have to start to organize. We really do. And again, once these holidays are over with, it's really time for us to get on the horse and get going locally. Educate ourselves. I'll be playing a role in that here on this podcast as well. But we all need to get involved. That means me. That means you. That means all of us. It means your family member. It means your spouse. It means someone that you know, who you trust, love, and respect.

have to get involved. And it's not all on the young people either. I've spoken a lot about the youth in this episode, but it's not all on them. If we're going to sit here and wait for younger people to do it, then that's a dereliction of our responsibility. Yes, it's important that young people get involved, but it's important that we get involved. We can do both. We can also get involved. And what I spoke about with age earlier,

Again, the Democratic Party really has to, the Democratic Party really has to start to look at the long game and stop being so protectorate when it comes to the inner workings of the party and the hierarchy in it and start giving younger people and people who have a dynamic approach and a different approach the kinds of space and the platform and the amplification that is needed to

And stop being so focused on holding on to power within the political party that you're in, as opposed to winning elections that benefit the whole country if you win them. Some people do claim that there is a deliberateness, if you will, for lack of a better word, of the Democrats blowing these elections. And I am inclined to agree with them.

I have no evidence of this empirically, but I am of the mind that the Democrats do take defeat from the jaws of victory. It's happened more than once. You and I have to focus locally. That's what we have to do. That is our mission statement. And to learn more about ourselves and our history and to keep reading,

One of the books I recommend to you is from someone I spoke about earlier on in this episode, Clay Kane, C-L-A-Y, last name C-A-N-E. He wrote a book called The Grift, G-R-I-F-T, The Grift, subtitled The Downward Spiral of Black Republicans from the Party of Lincoln to the Cult of Trump. I strongly recommend and highly recommend that you read that book.

Clay Kane, incidentally, as I've said earlier, has a show on SiriusXM called The Clay Kane Show. And you can find it on SiriusXM channel 126, The Urban View, from 9 to 12 Pacific Time, or, if you prefer, the East Coast, 12 to 3 p.m. Eastern Time. Clay has a new book coming out in February of 2026 entitled Burning Down Master's House.

a fictionalized story about enslavement and rebellion and more. Look out for that book in just over a year's time from Clay Kane, but I strongly recommend, highly recommend that you read The Grift, The Downward Spiral of Black Republicans from the Party of Lincoln to the Cult of Trump.

Yes, I'm on social media, which I begin to say now and have said for a while is a brain drain. And there are some good things about social media, but there's a lot of things that are very negative about it. It's a very reactionary medium, and I think it cauterizes our thinking and short circuits our thinking. We think in soundbites instead of thinking in chapters and paragraphs.

which we need to return to in this country to effectuate a better thought process and a much, much, much less propensity to just react to the pinprick of a social media comment, which often can be very ignorant. Now, people might say that about the comments that I make on social media. I'm simply saying,

But we need to start doing more thinking and contemplating instead of reacting, reacting, reacting. We need to be more proactive and engaged instead of retreating to the silo and just pinpricking ourselves with reaction, reaction, reaction. We really need to animate ourselves, especially now, especially in the new year. So I'm on social media, you know, all the platforms,

This podcast can be found on numerous platforms as well, including Spotify and Apple, Odyssey, Audible, Amazon, GoodPods, and all the rest of those that you know about. Thank you very much for listening to this edition of The Politocrat. I'm Omar Moore.