Episode

4/8 Casual Friday w/ Pascal Robert

April 8, 2022
It’s Casual Friday! Sam and Emma host Pascal Robert, co-host of the This Is Revolution podcast, to wrap up the week in news.
Pascal first takes on the meaning of yesterday’s successful nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, first walking through her qualifications, as the first justice with public defense experience since Thurgood Marshall, and why Biden’s reduction of her nomination to identity politics undermines the incredible progressive victory her confirmation provides. He, Emma, and Sam then dive into how her confirmation impacts the ideology of the court, as the first seat replacement that actually shifts the court slightly to the left (despite its otherwise far-right makeup), before Pascal walks through his view of the Right’s counter-revolution of the last half-century and the Court’s role as a counter-majoritarian conservative institution throughout US history, save the New Deal period. Then reflecting on KBJ’s history, they discuss the minimal critiques from the left, alongside her willingness to fight for the underdog, using her early-career experience to practice law from myriad perspectives (rather than just the corporate one), before Pascal wraps up by walking through the last fifty-year progression of the Black political class, from the mayors of the early Civil Rights era that supported redistributive policy despite their neoliberal alignment, through the urban regimes of the ’80s that began to fully embrace the neoliberal policies, and into the ‘90s’ complete marketization and embrace of DLC politics, as Robert assesses the mayorship of PR expert Eric Adams. Sam and Emma also touch on stalling peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, Puerto Rico’s continuing power outage, and Lindsay Graham’s and Rand Paul’s insistence on disrespecting KBJ on the Senate floor.
And in the Fun Half, the MR Crew checks out Ron DeSantis’s new campaign track “Sweet Florida”, then flash to the past to the all-time classic “Bush Was Right”, they check in on Ben Shapiro melting down over milestone appointments like KBJ’s, Morning Consult shows how much the Child Tax Credit lapse torpedoed Congressional Dems’ standing, Judge Jeanine goes ballistic over the concept of student loan debt forgiveness, Steven Crowder sticks to his morals (being against tardiness) and cancels on Matt Gaetz, Jonathan Swan pisses off Mitch McConnell by asking him “do you have morals?”, and the Fox & Friends crew go off on Austin, Texas for being *checks notes* “pro-homeless” (???). Plus, your IM’s!
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