The Squad

They don't want them to just give speeches.

I mean, obviously that's mostly what they do, when you think about The Squad.

Hmm.

Or Bernie.

... rather than for the legislation.

Right.

And currently that seems to be what The Squad is known for, you know?

Right.

And there are so many possibilities with a true socialist bloc in Congress.

It's worth noting that we had this thing, The Squad, in 2018, made up of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and a couple of others.

But that was really an informal group that largely became known because of how the media framed it.

We're doing something much more intentional this time, and DSA is much bigger and much more like a party.

maybe an arms embargo to Israel.

We've seen attempts at this in the past.

The squad, you know, kind of tried to do this under Biden, but they squandered a lot of their bargaining power.

And so this time it's really important that DSA electeds work closely with DSA's Federal Socialists in Office Committee to coordinate their votes.

Yeah.

So I wanted to bring you on first to talk about that book sitting over your shoulder right there, The Squad, and then talk about 2024 election and what Democrats are going to do and how Republicans are going to either support Trump or burn everything down trying to.

So why don't we...

An excellent book, The Squad, AOC, and the Hope of a Political Revolution.

And I actually read it.

We read the audio book.

was small at the time it's like nobody hates wall street let's go get it's an insight yeah let's go get wall street money that's before the snl crisis and obviously before the great financial crisis and there were people at the time who were warning okay this is nice right now because they still controlled the house so like we control the house you know you want to you want to build through here you got it but at some point yeah at some point you're gonna um You're going to owe Wall Street your entire agenda.

And so that book is about the pushback to this effort, which runs from the 1980s.

He's the nominee for Congress.

So this guy i- is running against a Republican, Brent Taylor, who's a good friend of this program, and, um, this could get pretty interesting, uh, because this guy's generating a lot of excitement, and, uh, the, the radical progressives, AOC, The Squad, they've all been down here to campaign for this guy.

So Justin Pearson comes out and says that...

And again, the National Weather Service says what happened over the weekend in Memphis was just, like, a freak storm.

I mean, obviously it represented a, a pro-Israel stance, but what more can you say about that?

Yeah, I mean, I was, uh, endorsed, I was recruited by and endorsed by the Justice Democrats, right? The Justice Democrats were the same organization, are the same organization that endorsed the Squad in 2018 and AOC.

And so I trusted them, uh, to guide me on this particular issue, right? And on this, uh, on helping me to understand who AIPAC was.

You, you know, understand, like in 2018, in 2019, I'm running for office, but I don't really know how to run for office, right? So I'm following what, what JD is telling me.

There's a lot you don't know, but there's certain things you do know and, like, you know, you, you, you live based on some stereotypes and some other things.

But it was like, it was like you couldn't talk about it.

And then when the Squad got in and Ilhan was like, "It's all about the Benjamins," and the shit that happened to her, like, after she said that, you're like, "Oh, this is like, this is a, this is a tipping point here." Right? Because her saying that, like, shattered the glass ceiling, like shattered the...

It was an emperor has no clothes moment, you know? Um, because now we're, now we're digging deep.