Ryan Grim on "The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution"

Today’s guest is Ryan Grim, author of the new book “The Squad – AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution”. 

Ryan Grim is the Intercept’s Washington bureau chief and cohost of the show Counter Points. He was previously the DC bureau chief for HuffPost, where we led a team that won a Pulitzer Prize. Grim has been a staff reporter for Politico and the Washington City Paper as well as a contributor to MSNBC and The Young Turks. He’s the author of the books We’ve Got People: From Jesse Jackson to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the End of Big Money and The Rise of a Movement, and This is Your Country on Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America. He is the host of the podcast Deconstructed and lives in Washington, DC.

In the book, Ryan recounts the rise of progressive forces in the Democratic Party since the 2016 Sanders campaign and how they have helped reveal tension points within the left, including on identity vs class, establishment vs insurgent and grassroots vs big money politics. We talk about all those themes and more. 

If you enjoy the show, please remember to hit like and subscribe. Happy holidays to all and enjoy.

Book:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250869081/thesquad

Twitter:
@ryangrim

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Transcript

#24 Ryan Grim on his new book The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution

[00:00:00] 

Kevin Maley: All right. Well just to kick things off, so there's a lot of different themes in the book. Themes of money and politics and class politics versus identity politics, activists versus establishment. But one thing I wanted to just kind of kick off with is something that you've written about outside this book as well.

Kevin Maley: Which is the less tendency to kind of eat its own talks. You gave some examples through the book of, in the Sanders presidential campaign, his staff at one point they had unionized and they wanted to go potentially on strike and make demands before, I think it was before Iowa.

Kevin Maley: Right.

Kevin Maley: You talk about the Sunrise movement they had sort of an internal racial reckoning and all sorts of internal turmoil that caused them to be distracted as the, the build back better.

Kevin Maley: Bill, later the IRA was being formulated, so sort of pulled them from having influence on that. You talked about women's rights organizations. . [00:01:00] Some of the staff wanting to take the day off and process trauma after Dobbs was decided. So I'm wondering if you can just kind of start off with that and talking about what do you think

Kevin Maley: causes that kind of dysfunction and is that part of the general progressive wave that we've seen that helped bring the squad to the forefront?

Kevin Maley: And where does it actually come from?

Ryan Grim: I mean, some of it comes from in general when momentum is slowing and when movements are in retreat you start to see more infighting. Like that's just a general kind of phenomenon that wouldn't quite explain. The Bernie Sanders situation in 2020. 'cause he was kind of surging at that point. But in that case it was, in some ways it was a success story in the sense that you had this entire kind of push by a bunch of field organizers out in Iowa who [00:02:00] were saying that they were going to, know, go, you know, go on strike for more time off.

Ryan Grim: Leading up to the Iowa caucuses, which is kind of a weird and contradictory argument. Because your job kind of ends when the caucuses are over anyway. So like what's Even if you won the right to have days off, you wouldn't have a job at that, you know, after Iowa in order to like enjoy those days off. But because the Sanders campaign had been unionized and therefore had like processes in place where those grievances could be aired they were aired. Among all of the workers, and, and they kind of took a vote and decided that we're not gonna do this. And the, the workers kind of felt like there had been a democratic process and so felt like they were heard.

Ryan Grim: So some, some of it in these organizations comes from people just feeling like they are not, they're not heard. They don't have a way to you know, make their grievances hard make, to make their [00:03:00] grievances hard in a way that they feel is, is, is kind of respectful enough. And so then it, it winds up kind of being channeled into more, into more destructive paths. Some of it is also just failures of leadership at organizations. thE case I wrote about with the Dobbs decision was one of the rare ones where leadership kind of pushed back. You had this situation where like, you know, do we know when Dobbs is coming down? They wanted, you know, grief counselors and, and you know, time to process and reduced workloads and, and other things to respond to the, the trauma of that, of that ruling coming and the leadership pushed back and said, no, and, and that's rare.

Ryan Grim: Like too often you've had, know, managers who are, who operate out of fear of. Of saying no, that they will then be accused of some type of aggression against somebody and and that they'll wind up then paying a price. So they, they allow kind [00:04:00] of the, the institution to pay the price rather than, rather than absorbing it to hit themselves.

Ryan Grim: And in this case, like no, like we are an organization that is here to defend the rights of tens of millions of people whose rights are like under direct assault right now. We need to, you know, come to work and we need to fight harder on that day than we fight on any other day. So, no, we're not gonna do that. But in a lot of cases it doesn't work out. Like in the, in the case of sunrise like that, you mentioned, I write about how the White House was, you know, it was like the peak moment of access for the, for sunrise with the White House. That, that, that everything, that all the power that they had built on the outside. Was now being exploited as the legislative process was underway. But the people who were supposed to be meeting with the White House instead were like meeting often internally trying to resolve whatever internal, you know struggle sessions were underway.[00:05:00] 

Kevin Maley: Where do you think that comes from?

Ryan Grim: I Mean, so like I said earlier, like some of it comes from just. People feeling like crap, like people feeling like there's no point in anything. That there's no hope. That, that the, the ability to collectively institutions that can fight and win, change is gone or never was there. And so the, the institutions need to be upended from the inside and reformed or destroyed, and then re, and then on the ashes of that you'll build. Build something better, like, I think, so some of it comes from like just deep pessimism and deep, deep deep fear.

Kevin Maley: But it's not something that we've seen in years past. Right. Part of what I was wondering was

Ryan Grim: Well, you saw it in you, you saw it a lot in the seventies. Which you could argue as a, [00:06:00] something of, you know, time doesn't never, never repeats itself, but sixties were a real surging time. For left movements and the seventies were a period of retrenchment, and that's when you, you saw the advent of, of what they called in feminist circles trashing which is the same thing as cancel canceling.

Ryan Grim: Like that's, it's the same phenomenon pile, you know, a giant, giant pile on. And the use and deployment of, of fancy words to, you know, to browbeat people and discipline them kinda within, within retrenching movements.

Kevin Maley: Yeah. Part of what I was wondering was if it was connected to this rise in identity, . Politics, especially in Sunrise specifically, you had talked about that there were people who were arguing that the organization needed to root out white supremacy at the top of the organization which I think had been led at that point by a woman of color.

Kevin Maley: And I know at the beginning [00:07:00] of the book you talk about the . The 20, I think it was the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, right? It wasn't, or no, I'm sorry, it was 2016. But you were talking about the Clinton campaign's desire to sort of neutralize the Sanders campaign, which was really rising up on a progressive class based I.

Kevin Maley: Platform and she decides at one point or her campaign decides to focus on issues of identity over class fo they start accusing the Sanders campaign of being . Racist and misogynist, not outright accusing him, but accusing his supporters derisively, calling them Bernie Bros. And you say at one point the Clinton campaign's def deployment of identity politics to detonate the Sanders campaign set off a chain reaction that will blow the lid off the Democratic coalition for years to come.

Kevin Maley: W was this really the,

Kevin Maley: the

Kevin Maley: beginning of that [00:08:00] kind of weaponization of identity politics, which I would agree with you, has . Reverberated in the, the, certainly the left straight through today.

Ryan Grim: It, it, you're always in trouble when you talk about beginnings because you can always trace it back just, you know. A week before and the year before that, and the year before that. But this definitely, I think, was a huge moment in it that it, it elevated it to the the very top of the priority and the conversation like, this is a, this is a presidential campaign. And it in a way that so many people understood to be cynical in real time. That It really colored how people saw those conversations in the future. And so people know once, once you start, once you start to believe that your opponents are cynically, weaponizing something, you then are very comfortable, [00:09:00] cynically, weaponizing it in response. And so it also then hurt kind of the ability of those issues to be taken on their own and to be taken seriously. 'cause when you When you weaponize something and you turn it into a cynical product it's then it's impossible to get people seriously to get behind a coalition, to take it seriously. So that, that, that decision I think did hyper charge a, a trend that was, I think, already underway.

Kevin Maley: Do you think educational polarization has played any part of that? This idea that the left, since the year 2000 at least, has become more sort of the managerial class, the college educated class. thEy go in to fill the, the, you know, the rank and file the party structures, the DNC, the nonprofits the different advocacy organizations.

Kevin Maley: [00:10:00] And there's become this real divide, not just in the United States and the western world of the left parties being sort of the more educated parties. And you start to see this sort of cultural divide between the, the left parties and the right parties, to the point where the working class . Is becoming more aligned with, you know, the Republican party in this country.

Kevin Maley: Is that something that you think, was that woven into the Sanders sort of identity politics dynamics? 

Ryan Grim: Yeah. I, I, I think so. The, the Democrats are a party that always one through line. Well, you know, it's a complicated party history, but a through line is standing up for the underdog the little guy. And so, yeah, if you're, if you're going to polarize around education and some of your coalition is gonna be materially more well off, then You know, what you understand to be the little guy. [00:11:00] Then sometimes people need other, other costumes to put on so that they can still play the role of, of the little guy. So in that sense, you could see, I think you could see it. Plus the language itself becomes, a signifier of, kind of in-group status and in order to learn that language. You need to attend the institutions that are so conversant in it. So I think you're right. I think you, I think you don't get it without the education polarization. Yeah.

Ryan Grim: So you 

Kevin Maley: also talked a lot about the impact of money in politics post Citizens United, and I know you've talked in a lot of interviews for this book about . APAC and Democratic majority for Israel and a few other groups. Can you talk about the impact that they've had on Democratic polity PO Democratic party politics in the last few years, and the impact that they're having on them right now?

Ryan Grim: I mean the most [00:12:00] vivid impact, well, I mean the most obvious impact would be Turning members of Congress into non-members of Congress like you would have in Congress now, if not for apex or, or D MFIs spending against them. You, Nina Turner would be a member of Congress NTA alum. I think wind, you know, would've won her race.

Ryan Grim: A progressive woman running in North Carolina, Donna Edwards a progressive woman running in a suburban mar, a suburban DC and in Maryland would've won. You, there are probably a handful of others, know, that win without, you know, that amount of spending. And then across the board, for the most part, you had candidates. Moderating their positions when it came, when it came to Israel Palestine, to be sure, but also just being a little quieter about some of their Bernie adjacent politics. Like in [00:13:00] 2018, every challenger out there was competing to be the most Bernie. You know, type of candidate because that, they felt like that was the path toward getting small donors and toward getting the kind of infrastructure of left groups that would put together, you know, fundraisers and, and maybe even an independent expenditure on their, on their behalf.

Ryan Grim: And, and it would be a signal to voters like, I'm the, I'm the most progressive candidate in the race. You know, vote for me by 2022. That Putting your hand up and saying, I'm the most I'm gonna be a member of the squad. I'm, I, I, I supported Bernie. I'm gonna be a Bernie like member of Congress. That was attracting the attention of DMFI and APAC before you said anything about Israel. thEre's a really interesting article about about John Fetterman in the Jewish Insider, which covered all of these primaries very closely, which leads off by saying. John Fetterman has [00:14:00] been heavily associated with the squad and, and with Bernie Sanders which has led a lot of people in the pro-Israel community to worry that he shares their politics on on Israel Palestine. In fact, in an interview, a Jewish insider, he said nothing could be further from the truth, but, so, you know, that that showed you a bunch of different things at once. But one of the things that showed is that just the idea that you Were aligned with Sanders and the squad was enough to raise extreme suspicions among APAC and Democratic majority for Israel, that you were also then going to be supportive of Palestinian rights and so therefore needed to be targeted. And so one response to that was, well, we'll just put out a statement that says, I, I stand with Israel. But the other was that, you know, do we really need to brag about how we previously said we were supportive of the Green New Deal in Medicare for all? Like. know, people get it. Like, let's, let's be a little quieter about that. And that has a, you know, [00:15:00] that has an effect on the, the politics of the party then. Yeah.

Kevin Maley: so that's what I was gonna ask about. So AIPAC DMFI, in a sense, they're influencing the party, not just on foreign policy, but on domestic policy as well. And so I was wondering, do you get a sense outside of the squad and outside of . The hardcore progressives that this bothers anyone that for someone like Nancy Pelosi, who's obviously very establishment and one of the biggest fundraisers in the party, but she's also been, you know, a liberal democrat for most of her life, and arguably you know, one of the most liberal leaders that we've had, at least since the Great Society.

Kevin Maley: Do you think. I mean, does this bother any of them that it's impacting their domestic policy as well as their foreign policy?

Ryan Grim: I think not really. You know, you see Mark Pocan, for instance, former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus being extremely outspoken [00:16:00] about the, the negative role AIPAC in Democratic primaries. But in general, the incentives are pretty lined up. That that Pelosi is herself hostile to. she's she's the most liberal speaker we've had, but she's also hostile to the kind of rhetoric that comes from the Bernie side. Like she doesn't, she's not here for Medicare for all. She's not here for the Green New Deal. She know, she thought, as I write about in the book, she thought Abolish ICE came from the Russians. You know, defund the police. I'm sure she has very strong opinions of about so, and, and certainly when it comes to like the more aggressive material stuff beyond Medicare for all, she, she thinks it goes too far. So in a lot of ways, the incentives are, are, are lined up and that's, that's true also for the donors to Democratic majority for Israel and and apac, that these are, you're not giving a million dollar check. To AIPAC super Pac without having lots of [00:17:00] money to be able to spend and you didn't get lots of money without having an interest in keeping the kind of current, you know, policy structures in place that benefit people that are in the 1%. So, so it lines up.

Kevin Maley: And just an aside on the abolish ice Russia thing, so that that. Kind of stood out to me in the book when you had mentioned Pelosi said to someone that she thought it was the Russians who had injected that phrase into the body politic. I is, I know you can't read her mind, but is your sense that Pelosi and or democratic leadership actually believe that the Russians are interfering in this way?

Kevin Maley: I wasn't sure if she was just saying that because it's. Has a lot of legs politically, and sends a signal to

Kevin Maley: Democratic voters. Don't go with this. You know that as a scare tactic, which can be very influential, but it does. She actually think the Russians are putting phrases like abolish ice [00:18:00] into the political conversation.

Kevin Maley: I.

Ryan Grim: I think she does, I think that people would be surprised how little daylight there is between kind of the private views of somebody like Pelosi. And an, and an average but less, much less informed kind of M-S-N-B-C junkie. Like they're, they're, it's actually. know, she, she obviously knows a lot more.

Ryan Grim: She gets intelligence briefings. She's living this stuff rather than watching it on tv. But but yeah, I think, I think she believes it,

Kevin Maley: Circling back to apac, I assume that they are pretty professional in how they

Ryan Grim: Sheba 

Kevin Maley: get donations

Kevin Maley: and

Kevin Maley: handle things and stuff like that. But could you not make an argument that this is foreign interference in US elections? I mean, this is a lobby that

Kevin Maley: Is

Kevin Maley: it's for another country. It's heavily aligned with the Likud party in Israel.

Kevin Maley: agAin, i I, [00:19:00] I would doubt that they would be so sloppy as to be getting direct emails from Benjamin Netanyahu on what to do, but. It otherwise feels like, you know, if there was an equivalent of another country, say a Russian lobby, I think people would be pretty quick to accuse them of foreign interference in a very legal way.

Kevin Maley: I don't, I don't see anything illegal about it, but

Kevin Maley: key, 

Ryan Grim: right. the key thing is, on the one hand, the money is American in the sense that like you said, they're very careful. Like they're not gonna take money from Israelis who don't have American citizenship. Which, which you can't. Like, you can't, you can't, if you're a foreigner, you can't, you know, spend you're not supposed to spend in elections.

Ryan Grim: Now they're, they're actually you know, there are some foreign donors who've given to like major democratic organizations and Republican ones that then go and do nonprofit work that then has effects on elections. That it, it's controversial stuff, but the answer, that's the main reason why they don't [00:20:00] get busted on that front.

Ryan Grim: However, one of the things I reported in the book which to me is fascinating and could be looked at more closely mark Melman, the The head, the founder of democratic Majority for Israel and an advisor to apac, you know, told me that one of the reasons that he fights so hard against the squad and Bernie over here in the United States is that it makes it harder to accomplish what is his primary mission, which is to, which is to defeat Lako in Israel.

Ryan Grim: Like he's, he's an anti lako guy. He is a good liberal, wants to throw Netanyahu out of power. And he is a consultant, or it has been, I don't know if he is like to this day, but he may still be to yer, Lapid, you know, who was the head of the Yes. Shati party who became Prime Minister actually for six months a six months stretch in I think 2022 or 2021 or 2022. And he [00:21:00] said that Netanyahu uses the American Left and critics like a OC or Rashida Tali or Bernie to say, look, look how under Siege Israel is. Everybody hates us. We're being isolated. You need to stand behind Laud and, and the Israeli, right? Because we're the ones that are gonna fight back against this. So he's set aside his analysis he's saying that his work in the United States is for the benefit. of Yesha, the, his, his like client in Israel. So that does seem to me a case where you could make a plausible argument. Well then, okay, you're, you're working on behalf of Y lipid here in, in these elections. 'cause Yerba lipid has a direct interest in seeing the left beaten, so there's no Israeli critics. And therefore then, and then he can go and criticize Netanyahu and be, and be taken more seriously in, in Israel. In the book, yer Lapid even calls [00:22:00] Stenny Hoyer amid the Iron Dome vote. Like the reason they had that iron dome vote that became this kind of flashpoint was because yer Lapid, who was the foreign minister called Steny Hoyer. And, and demanded it. So you can imagine why people from the outside would be like, wait a minute, don't you have to register here? Don't you have to register as a foreign agent in this, in these cases? And I think one answer is like, there's an exception. It's not an illegal exception, but there's kind of a cultural exception to the question of Israel.

Ryan Grim: It's like, how dare you? Are you suggesting that Israel is a foreign country? Like, Like I think it is, isn't it? I think technically it is, right? so Yeah, that, that's a really interesting question. But I think who, who on earth in our political system is in Department of Justice or wherever else is gonna like, take that up. 

Kevin Maley: Yeah, that's a good point.

Ryan Grim: imagine trying to put that on a, on a Zoom [00:23:00] schedule inside the DOJ.

Kevin Maley: Probably will not go well.

Ryan Grim: no.

Kevin Maley: I was trying to do the math on a lot of the figures that you reported in the book about the the money that APAC and DMFI spent on going up against the squad members in 2018, which is probably not that much. 2020, which a bit more in 2022, which was a lot in 2024. I'm sure you, you've seen recently.

Kevin Maley: They're pledging, I think APAC alone pledging upwards of a hundred. million dollars, which seems to far outweigh what they had spent previously against a relatively low number

Kevin Maley: of elected officials. And I know that the numbers in the squad are kind of wishy-washy. There's the core four, and then, you know, Jamal Bowman, who APAC seems to really have it out for.

Ryan Grim: Yes.

Kevin Maley: But does that, is your sense just from . I know you talked to them and have a sense of what they're, or may have [00:24:00] a sense of what they're thinking. Is that scaring anyone? I mean, it feels like that would.

Ryan Grim: They're definitely scared. At some point it becomes marginal, like the amount of money. 'cause I think you count everything you could, you're easily at 40 million plus in in 2022. And so the difference, the difference between 40 million and a hundred million is, it's a lot. But like if you're facing 40 million, you're already facing like It just absolute avalanche of, of money. And so it's, it's only marginally more difficult in some ways to beat a hundred million than to beat 40 million. The a hundred million is actually dicey when it comes to the sourcing. If you, the original article, I think it was in Slate said that informed observers, you know, thought there, there could be, they could spend up to a hundred million dollars, which I think is plausible. And if you, you know, they'd have to spend, you know, if you know, 20, you know, if they pick 20 races and spend 5 [00:25:00] million in each race, like you're at a hundred million dollars. And they, and there's certainly 20, 20 races I could imagine them spending in. But no, that, that, that money has not, that, that has not been confirmed.

Ryan Grim: We haven't seen that. Y but it's certainly plausible given that they spent nearly half that the cycle before, and that's before October 7th and before this war. And so, yes, the answer is that Pete, they are very much paying attention. I mean, they're already paying very close attention now that now they're expecting, you know, this wave of money.

Ryan Grim: So you know, they're, they're are organized efforts among Justice Democrats and the, and the squad and, and the constellation of kind of allied groups to figure out how they can fend this off.

Ryan Grim: And are they 

Kevin Maley: do, do you know if they're being strategic about who they're going against? Because my assumption would be that A OC, for example, seems to have a pretty. A tight lock on her district where someone like Jamal Bowman straddles both the Bronx and Westchester [00:26:00] County, which is a a bit more Jewish than the Bronx, and so it feels like it would have

Kevin Maley: a little more fertile ground.

Ryan Grim: and also there's gonna be redistricting. So if they can And that's gonna be a fight between you know, his opponents and his allies. You could, you could see that race decided based on how the lines are drawn one way or the other. There, yes. But they're going after co bush, you know, so it looks like Wesley Bell was persuaded one way or another to drop his Senate run and run for Congress instead against her.

Ryan Grim: He is a fairly progressive guy. And so, and well, you know, a known, known quantity in, in St. Louis. So that's a really tough race for her. Have been those reports from two different people in Michigan, that they were offered $20 million to drop out of races to run against Rashida to leave, and both said no. I think it's gonna be a little bit of a challenge for them to find, for them to beat Rashida. 'cause in order to beat her, they'd have to say a lot of things that are super unpopular. In her district [00:27:00] they almost beat Ilhan Omar in 2022. She held on by like four points. has two opponents now, so unless they coalesce behind one. And now that she, and she's, she got caught off guard, she's paying much closer attention in 2024. I Think Presley doesn't have a race Summer Lee. You know, they're gonna, they're gonna come for Summer Lee in Pittsburgh really hard. it'd be interesting to see if they try to come after Greg Cassar down in Austin.

Ryan Grim: It doesn't look like they will. And then you've got other candidates that they've kind of Other member incumbents who they've kind of said things about and you're wondering like, are they gonna expand it to this? Like Hank Johnson, I think in Georgia, fairly rank and file member Bonnie Watson Coleman of rank and file democrat in New Jersey, who, you know, they've been somewhat critical of Israel recently and you've seen DMFI make statements about them. It'd be very interesting to see if they. It went so far as to come after kind of rank and file Democrats who were critical of Israel. We'll see [00:28:00] like, but if you have that kind of money, you can, it becomes easier to just take a shot at it. Yeah.

Kevin Maley: and just I think one more question about apac, and it's similar to a previous question, but we talked about APAC kind of moving the party to the right on domestic. Issues as well as foreign policy. But you also talk about in the book that APAC had instances where it would jump into a Democratic primary to get its preferred candidate, but then either not participate, participate in the general election altogether, or potentially support the Republican candidate.

Kevin Maley: And I, I would assume this would be something that would bother Democratic party leadership, that it, you know, in some examples it's just putting in a more centrist . Sort of Israel Hawk, who's a Democrat, but in some cases it's taking out the Democrat and putting in a Republican.

Kevin Maley: I mean, are there any phone calls between Biden or Jefferies or Schumer?

Kevin Maley: Anyone in APAC weighing in on this?[00:29:00] 

Ryan Grim: Not that I've heard of, but you're right that, that, that's crossing a new line. And Summer Lee was the Kind of funniest example because the entire, they, they spent millions trying to beat Summer Lee in a Democratic primary in Pittsburgh, and their whole argument was that summer Lee was not a, a good enough Democrat.

Ryan Grim: They're, they're questioning her, her Democratic bonafides, like she's been critical of Biden in the past. You know, she ran with the DSA in 2018, she'd since abandoned you know, her, her allegiance with them. But yeah, so she's, she's not a good Democrat, so she wins. Primary and then in the general they spent money for the Republican trying, trying to beat her in the general. It was like, wait a minute. You just spent the last several months telling us that your problem with her was that she wasn't a good enough Democrat. And now you're gonna try to elect the Republican against her. I Mean, not that anybody took, took their like[00:30:00] .Their like passion for the integrity of the Democratic brand seriously to begin with, since they endorsed like 110 Republicans who voted to nullify the election.

Ryan Grim: Like, so it's not exactly like they're a big democratic partisan player to begin with, but yeah, no, I don't, I'm not aware of any phone calls, but I think if they did that. aT a, at more scale they would hear about it. But yeah. The other funny, funny one was Elaine Luria is this she won a seat in 2018, flipped the Republican seat in, in kinda Norfolk, Virginia, and was one of the most outspoken like defenders of Israel in her time in Congress, constantly, you know, going after the squad or Rashida, Rashida or Ilhan sponsoring resolutions to condemn them or Writing letters to the editor going on CNN and, you know, bashing them was her, her main thing. And then she had a very tight race in 2022 [00:31:00] and APAC did not lift a finger for her beyond just endorsing her. Didn't spend a dime. And she lost. And so it did you did see a lot of Democrats noticing that and being like, well. I don't wanna be on their bad side, but apparently there's not a whole lot of upside in being on their good side.

Kevin Maley: So, you know, one of the other themes in the book, obviously it's the title is The Squad, is about the, the rise of the squad and this energy from that activist base that was connected to the Sanders campaign and a few other movements. The, the kind of youth Gen Z vote right now is one of the most liberal generations we've ever seen on paper.

Kevin Maley: And as I'm sure you know, there's this kind of false assumption that the youth is always liberal, but it, it isn't historically the case. I think Bush v Gore, I think the youth vote went split down evenly. They were pro Reagan. So we have, you know, if you're progressive and hoping for a [00:32:00] better future, this seems to be very, very good news.

Kevin Maley: But on the other hand, we've seen a lot of dysfunction within the youth. We talked about the kind of left eating its own institutionally among these organizations. And there also seems to be this kind of alienation from at least the Biden administration, which I think had preceded . Israel, Gaza that sort of drop off on support for the Biden administration.

Kevin Maley: So I'm just wondering your thoughts on what do you see in the next couple of years with, you know, gen Z, starting to get to that age where you vote more, which I guess is probably into your thirties and that sort of thing. It, does this pretend a, a leftward shift for the Democratic Party more than we've already seen, or is that.

Ryan Grim: It definitely shows that the structures are in place for a leftward shift. And a lot of that I think is material in the way, in the way that material and cultural like not, not only does the Republican party seem like [00:33:00] against the material interests of a, of a, a An entire cohort that is having a much harder time getting ahead by, you know, paying off student loans and owning a house and, you know, doing just the basics of being able to create a, start a family and like live a decent life. At the same time they see 'em as a bunch of bigots. Know, they're even hostile to marriage equality it seems like at some po at some level. And so

Kevin Maley: The youth photos.

Ryan Grim: no, the republicans, the youth

Kevin Maley: Oh, they're, I'm sorry. 

Ryan Grim: the youth voter, the youth voters look at Republicans and they're like, these people are like ridiculous.

Ryan Grim: Like, know. But we'll, you know, we'll see how this the Gaza campaign that, that Israel is waging plays into that. Since you asked about, you know, a couple years down the road, I think a, a lot remains to be seen like If, if Trump wins and brings in some, you know, reactionary dystopia, then, then, then you'll see a ma a massive swing, [00:34:00] you know, back toward Democrats. We'll, so, but you know, like, because the structures are already there for it. But we'll see. It, you know, a lot's still up for grabs. You know, Joe Biden has managed to kind of squander historic amount of goodwill.

Kevin Maley: How do you think he's done that On, on Israel?

Ryan Grim: I think s some of it's Israel some of it I think is bad luck around the way that the inflation played. And and I think he can recover from if the economy continues to produce wage growth with inflation staying low and unemployment staying under 4%, I think he would eventually get rewarded for that. But, but nobody's gonna wanna reward him when A, he's doing what he is doing with Israel. And B, he looks like he's 150 years old. Like, I think that's a real thing. Like I, and he can't do anything about that except step aside. And it'd be interesting to see how a generic democrat, like a JB Pritzker or somebody you know, would, would be [00:35:00] received instead.

Kevin Maley: Yeah. Another billionaire coming in to, to rescue the Democratic party.

Kevin Maley: Do you think the the Gaza War will, will impact Biden in the election? I mean, on the one hand, the, the parallels to LBJ feel pretty. Strong with, I mean, his accomplishments, Biden's accomplishments legislatively. And then you talk in the book about, you know, Elizabeth Warren's mantra, that personnel's policy.

Kevin Maley: And he's done a great job, arguably with Lena Kahn and a lot of the antitrust work, which has been really successful lately. You know, just stacking the NLRB obviously, and then the IRA, the infrastructure bill you know, his initial COVID bill. So just arguably one of the most accomplished Democrats of the, the post sixties period, which I guess we've only had three Democrats excluding him since.

Kevin Maley: But on [00:36:00] the other hand, I mean, it's just a disaster on foreign policy, specifically Israel and Gaza, and it's hard to think. This is all just gonna be gone by Q1 or Q2 next year. I mean, even if Israel stops the slaughter

Kevin Maley: Could wor, right? 

Ryan Grim: The conditions could continue to just get worse. Like the, the big problem comes in the fact that the people who are most likely to Be outraged about this are the ones who are following, who follow politics the closest, who follow Global Affairs.

Ryan Grim: Closest. Those people are the ones that you know, then kind of transmit vibes and, and political information in their social circles. In know, it's like, oh yeah, my cousin, who's the social, who's the junkie is sharing this and, and so people then kind of absorb absorb that, you know, through. So even if they're, if, even if they only add up to a million or two people, know, they influence tens of [00:37:00] millions of people in a, in a kind of nebulous way. So it, I, and, and it, and I, and I think it also makes it harder for other people to try trumpet like some of his other achievements because it's very hard for people to say to celebrate like wage gains on while. On the other hand, a genocide. Like that's, it's just a, it's just a very difficult thing for so many people to get past.

Kevin Maley: Going back to the the squad, one of the things that you talked about specifically with a OC was this kind of tension between, between being the outsider who's pushing and the insider who's kind of following the rules and doing procedural votes that might annoy the base and things like that. dO you think there's a risk given how young a lot of them are, especially a OC, that the longer you stay in office, the more kind of

Kevin Maley: Compromised you become [00:38:00] and less in touch with what the base is pushing on.

Ryan Grim: I think that's, that's a risk for everybody. Including journalists and politicians and everybody. And I think that they're probably aware of that and you know, constantly, you know, trying to, you know, you have, you have to fight to, know, remind yourself of where you came from and who you represent.

Ryan Grim: And, and I think they, they try to do that. It's, you know, it's difficult when you're in that, when you be, when you start moving in these rarefied circles. Constantly. But so yeah, I think that, I think that's a real thing.

Kevin Maley: It is there a chance that a OC could . Be elected statewide to ASC senate seat in New York. Do you think she has that kind of support upstate?

Ryan Grim: I think, I think she could, and also like our system is so partisan that if she can just win the nomination then she's gonna win the general Even people upstate who don't like her would probably prefer her to a [00:39:00] Republican. aNd, and Bernie I think showed that if you can push past some of the misogyny or the racism, that his agenda can be successful with working class people. But she, you know, he was always more popular upstate than she was, even though their politics were like identical. And so, but, so it shows that there's a path but that, you know, it's, it's laden with difficulties. Another

Kevin Maley: other

Kevin Maley: interesting.

Kevin Maley: thing I thought about the, the squad is especially it was talked about in your book was again, going back to the beginning of that Sanders versus Clinton class versus identity. I. The squad seemed to marry the two that they could talk about identity politics, about racial and gender politics, while also advocating for class-based issues.

Kevin Maley: And they all kind of came from the Sanders wing of the party. But you had also talked about, and we had talked about a little bit earlier of the kind of downfalls of overly woke [00:40:00] politics. The, the way that . Certain voters are turned off by overstressing identity that kind of almost like vote woke language that becomes very insular and almost a signal of a, a kind of class on its own, and that connects to the educational polarization.

Kevin Maley: And so I wonder, is there a chance that the squad, I don't know, kind of . Sinks on its own because if it's over it, it sort of loses touch with that working class element because it falls too much into the, the woke. You know what Carville call the fa Harvard Faculty Lounge Language, where they're, they're, they're more conversant with university officials than they are with working class voters in Vermont or Texas or West Virginia.

Ryan Grim: I think that's always a risk, but I also think that these are politicians and [00:41:00] they're going to follow, like they're not the only, you know, we are not the only ones we. Who are aware of this phenomenon, and I think that you are seeing some of that element of the party in, in retreat a little bit in the last couple of years. And, you know, to the extent that some of that language is useful to advancing their, their broader kind of left agenda, they're gonna embrace it. The second that it gets in the way of it, I, they're not gonna embrace it for the sake of just embracing it. And so, you know, I think that the more talented among them are gonna be able to kind of, re reinvent the language that's needed to do what I think really is their, end goal, which is building a genuine kind of multiracial working class, you know, movements coalition that it's capable of taking on big money. I, I don't think that, I think some institutions [00:42:00] and some activists, you know, could get dragged down to the bottom of the sea by that stuff. But I, but in general, I think politicians won't because they're just in, politicians just in general are more deaf, that kind of riding, riding waves rather, rather than being kind of smashed by them.

Kevin Maley: Well, let's hope so. RyAn, thank you for, for joining the program. I know you've got a very busy

Kevin Maley: schedule, probably a very busy day. But really appreciate it. I appreciate the book. 

Ryan Grim: Excellent. All right. Thanks man.

Kevin Maley: All right. Thanks Ryan. Take care.