Biden is Not on the Left, But There is a Difference That Matters - Abby Martin

This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.

Abby Martin, host of the Empire Files, and Paul Jay discuss how working people and the Left should respond to the presidential election; also Paul's take on Glen Greenwald's resignation from The Intercept.

Transcript

Paul Jay

Hi, welcome to theAnalysis.news podcast, this time with full video. I'm Paul Jay, and thanks for joining us. Please don't forget there's a donate button at the top of the website.

Now joining us is a friend of the show and a longtime, independent, and to my mind, very courageous journalist one of the more courageous journalists on the scene Abby Martin. She's the host and producer of The Empire Files. She's also the host of Media Roots Radio.

Thanks for joining us, Abby.

Abby Martin

Thanks so much for having me. Paul, I've missed you. We used to work closely together, so it's fun to be back with you.

Paul Jay

Well, I guess people that know you, know that you had a kid, and I think that's super. And I've got two eight-year-olds, and now we could do parent-talking.

Abby Martin

Yeah.

Paul Jay

And I hope we get to a lot of this more political chatting now, too. So, let's move on.

So, Biden-Trump, the elections coming up on the 3rd. Of course, there's a lot more at stake than just the presidency here. The Senate battle is critical. And there are quite a few progressives running in different districts and places.

But let's start with the Biden-Trump issue. What's your general take in terms of how the left should respond on November 3rd?

Abby Martin

I think it's completely false to have this equivalency between the two parties. Let's be honest here. Despite calling Biden and Kamala far-left communists and kind of running his whole campaign on that, there are substantial differences between the two parties, especially when it comes to domestic policy. Having a child recently, Paul, as I'm sure that you can relate to, the climate crisis certainly is looming. Other eras of history seem like nothing compared to what we're facing now, which is a dire, cataclysmic environmental crisis. And there are no second chances that we have here in terms of the climate.

So that really does add another layer of urgency in this election and every election moving forward, I think. But also, it's the pandemic. I think that Trump literally, after contracting Covid, downplayed the pandemic. He said, don't worry about it. We'll all get the best doctors and health care. Well, no one has health care, Trump; certainly not the same level of top-tier health care that you got.

And millions, tens of millions of people are losing access to health care. We know that the Affordable Care Act is set to be overturned, especially with Amy Coney Barrett set to be the ninth judge, who has been sworn in.

So, it is very scary. There are things that can really shift this country in a dangerous direction, more so than it already has been for the last four years. And on the foreign policy front, which I know we're going to go into, certainly completely unpredictable things [loom] there, especially war with Iran. These crazy neocon outliers that Trump has surrounded himself with: they want war.

Next Page  1  |  2  |  3  |  4  |  5  |  6

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).