Timothy Pate

I stopped listening to Pod Save America a long time ago. Their goal (other than to make a ton of money on ads), is to get Democrats elected—and that’s a goal I no longer share. (I think electing Democrats can sometimes still be a means to the broader aspiration of improving the material conditions of working people, but electing Democrats for the sake of electing Democrats is not a venture I’m interested in pursuing.) However, I do listen to a number of other left-leaning podcasts, so Spotify is constantly suggesting Pod Save America based on my listening history.

This is how I came to find that mega-successful Twitch streamer and YouTube personality, Hasan Piker, had dropped by the Pod studios. I decided to listen this morning on a bike ride, and thought I’d gather my reactions here rather than try to cram them into a long Bluesky post.

Overall, Piker does a great job calmly conveying his vision for a progressive future while laying the blame for the second devastating loss to Donald Trump squarely at the feet of the Democrats. Jon Lovett, who hosted the conversation and clearly does not like Piker, barely contains his disdain throughout the discussion and frequently comes across as petty in their interactions. I’m not sure why, but Lovett seemed to hope that Piker would come on the show and tell him that the Democrats had done everything right.

My frustration with the conversation is that Piker and Lovett spend a lot of time talking about what Democrats need to do to improve their messaging around the Democratic promise. What I wish Piker would have pointed out is that you can have all the great messaging in the world and it won’t make a bit of difference if the messenger is unbelievable as a champion of the working class. And in its current form, the Democratic Party is incapable of producing such a messenger.

At one point in the show, Piker suggests a massive jobs program based around building public housing to bring down the cost of rent. Lovett scoffs at the notion of public housing at this scale, and in doing so exposes the limits of the Democratic establishment’s imagination. When Piker rightly points out that nobody but the Democrats care about “institutions” and “norms,” Lovett doubles down—despite the fact that our institutions and norms have produced conditions so dire that an angry populace elected Donald Trump to a second term.

As I mentioned at the top of this post, solving the electability problem for Democrats doesn’t interest me. I’m more focused on figuring out how to get workers across the political spectrum to recognize that they have more in common with each other than with either party’s favorite elites, and that only through mass collective action will we be able to build a future that offers peace, fulfillment, and dignity for all workers. I hope that my fellow leftists will focus more energy on the pursuit of that goal, and less time trying to bail the Democrats out of a sinking ship.