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Matt and Danny are joined by Meagan Day of Jacobin to answer the question: What if Bernie won?

This is the last of this season of Hinge Points, thanks for listening. If you have any topic requests for if/when we do more of these, let us know!

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Greg Newton

what if henry clay did not turn down the vice presidency when it was offered to him in 1840 and he becomes president after harrison dies immediately? how does the sectional conflict play out?

Mike Loudin

Love my HingePoints slop! 🐷🐷🐷

Miles

Oh dear

Isaac Jones

WE LOVE OUR SILLY INTRO, LET'S HEAR IT FOR OUR GOOFY LITTLE INTRO MUSIC!

B.C.

Haven't listened, but gonna bet Bessner predicts the climate crisis would have already been averted, national Healthcare, and no war in Ukraine

Stewart Robertson

Don't need to listen to the ep beyond the intro. It's back baby. The intro is back. Hinge-poooointa!

etienne

the media meltdown about Biden getting out of Afghanistan only about everything, every day

Marduk

In the HPU (Hinge Points Universe) Hillary died of laughter on 9/11

Sean Orr

Don’t break my heart

Matthew Goldman

1. All women become they / them. 2. Uvalde kids still alive but the cops are dead. 3. Jeff Bezos donates all his money to curing baldness. I have hair again. 4. Twitter becomes owned by Donald Trump rather than Elon Musk. Results are similar. 5. Florida is the trans capital of the world. 6. Drag shows in every school. 7. Communism sold in ice cream shops.

Steve D

Would a Bernie presidency slow down Hollywood’s use computer-generated squibs?

Sparky

I guess this topic was inevitable but no less exhausting. Let it go, boys.

Marduk

The “Bernie Would’ve/Should’ve Won” lamentations shall continue until morale improves

Josh Saad

There would certainly be fewer Chris Matthews in the world.

Karl

Uhh, where'd the old intro go?

Jeremy Hathcock

People still like bernie? I was a huge fan in 2016. Reluctant supporter in 2020. Outright detractor in 2022. Dude and his "friend joe" are enemies of the working class.

Jeremy O

Almost all the comments on here seem to hate the show... but keep listening folks!

Tim O'Connor

You say this on the day that they finally bring back the fun ragtimey theme music?

Tim O'Connor

In my view, American workuhs should not have to face the prospect of losing their livelihood and their health insurance because squib factories are closing down.

Ty

Cringe points

William

Not done yet but I think this is the best executed hinge point in this season so far: you have Matt as the pessimist arguing the prosecution (bear with the shitty metaphor) and Megan the optimist (relatively speaking) arguing the defense. Danny is a good moderator because, in my opinion, he's just not good at presenting material to regular people. No offense, Danny, but there's too much of some kind of barrier. If I had to guess probably due to the academic/institutional training, which instructs you to communicate in a way that is by nature more archaic and inscrutable. Wild ass guess though Anyways, I feel like we're getting some good synthesis shit going on. Too often in other hinge points you have an overriding narrative, or a pre-determined outcome, or the sense of one. Here, so far, it's an open question for the most part. Two people are allowed to set up a risk board and speculate about who has the better opening position because of what they might do

Nathan Baker

Who is this Bernie Sanders fella

Este

Thanks for bringing the song back guys!

David

Where’s the Green New Deal and M4A in all this? Meghan as fawning cap hill journalist and Matt as cranky White House spokesperson. These are your fantasies? Lame

saysthemachine

Americans don’t want to pay to fund another bureaucracy, they want the one to whom they pay 30% of their salaries to arbitrate on their behalf. Unions suck for all but like 4 trades (including the cops) and professional athletes

William

The discussion in the last 15min or so has a sort of realism that I haven't seen in popular discourse. People act like the FBI, the CIA, and other elite power centers don't intervene in domestic affairs, like cointelpro stopped, Ferguson activists didn't end up mysteriously killed in the same way, and rank and file members of the bureaucratic machine don't do things to keep us divided and infighting. Gerrymandering is a good "clean" example of this. Suggesting any sort of covert activity of any kind is always countered with, "oh so everything's an op?" Even when there's fucking evidence of a precedent. There's no way the CIA would help sell heroin and crack to millions of Americans right? Does anyone understand just how much money we're playing for here?

Peter Fishbeast

The sad truth is that Bessner is a tedious nerd who talks too much and I haven’t listened to a single Hinge Points sadly

Saga

They wouldn't have coup'd Bernie. Maybe just pulled a Gough Whitlam on him.

Matthew Black

I really like the idea that American party politics have the libidinal/emotional structure of a messy divorce.

Drake Myers

Jan 6 would've been allowed to work, Trump would've quoted intel about Chinese and Venezuelan voter interference, possibly declared some emergency like ground invasion on Venezuela idk. I saw that powerpoint where that was a narrative they had prepped.

Hector Jaime

Maybe Mastodon would suck less if it was named Behemoth but pronounced how Megan and Matt pronounce it

NYCM&AHole

Matt Suss would’ve continued the nato expansionist policy into Ukraine so he could complete his vision of banderastan

Ian McShane

giving felix an update on my camo grind. 30 gold weapons and 15 platinum

soldiermighty

thank you for the Season 1 theme/intro chris

Kamran Husain

the only banger podcast intro in the game

Joe

We got the Sanders episode, now how about that SANTA episode?

Greg

Hearing that old theme this morning really made my day!

Yup

please unlock this one

T

My fantasy in 2020 was that I would have gone to work in the sanders treasury department.

Rich Gaschnig

Love that the old theme is back

TangiePower

This might hurt too bad to listen to… for me

SJ

I wonder if they'd release a program consisting of only the theme for a few hours. Maybe with Matt doing a "shut up! shut up! shut up!" from a Megan McArdle segment in the background.

Emil Torok

About time you got the old HP intro music back.

Jordon E Perez

It seems pretty obvious to me that a few minutes after Bernie somehow managed to secure the Democratic party nomination, which I still believe would have been denied to him at all costs, some helpful spook would have arrived with the heart attack gun to finish the old man off. He had already had a highly publicized heart attack, plausible that a well timed second heart attack would have resolved the problem altogether. Difficult to imagine any chain of events that would have led to Bernie actually being sworn in as president.

Eric Herde

What happened to the majestic Season 2 theme song?

Anthony Taylor

You’d think this would be a phenomenal episode but it absolutely was not This lady doesn’t know much about unions let alone working in the US As soon as she starts talking about why ppl aren’t unionizing it’s so cringey

Stinkamus

Woman is annoying.

Jonny confuse by corndog

"If you have any topic requests for if/when we do more of these, let us know!" I would like to see a deep dive into "what if Hinkley had used a .44 Colt Anaconda w/ hollow points instead of that .22 he used?" When Danny and Matt teased that, what a year ago, I was immediately hooked on the idea. How would it have affected: -Iran Contra & other CIA classic hits -Evangelicals -The Reagan/O'neill chumminess -Deindustrialization, abandonment of working class peoples, crime wave/hysteria -The ebb and flow of Neoliberalism -Democratic challenges to the milquetoast George H. W. Bush -Would it have affected events of the early 90's? (Gulf War, Rodney King Riots, Pogs, etc.) -The fragile American psyche coming out of the 70's and Carter/Ford -Pacts with the Soviets

mmckay

I liked the new season 2 music. What if the Ottomans has lightsabers?

Justin Martin

Haven't listened yet and I already hate it.

Ang

The take on the politics of the initial covid crisis is so ridiculous - total no clue stuff.

Ang

Only someone completely delusional would take themselves back to the start of the covid crisis and consider the reaction to it to be nothing more than ‘crazy making’ by political parties. If this is the attitude that prevails the left will simple never be able to take advantage of a crisis — necessary to make any actual bloody change

Robby Gross

Do hollow points ricochet though? Is the implication that Reagan wouldn’t have been shot?

Ewka

Bernie would win the popular vote but the electoral college would choose trump T_T

JV

the new intro was so good why revert back for the last ep like this? odd

Owen Urech

Came for bad historical analysis, stayed for bad political analysis: holy shit that part about executive orders on checks was so laughable

Hector Jaime

Topic request: Have Adam Curtis on to discuss how TraumaZone would be different if the communists had taken control again.

Jonny confuse by corndog

Could be HP, could be FMJ, but I feel like this is getting away from the main point: Reagan ending up (like mentioned in the Hinge Points S2 teaser) like Goldie Hawn in "Death Becomes Her." Reagan is *traumatically* removed from the American game board, so what happens next? Is he around long enough to be Deified by the right from the 80's to today (arguably Trump has taken that mantle as most of those who deified Reagan then are dead now and the right has more or less moved on)? Do the Neocons of the 90's and 2000's get their foot in the door? Reagan, whether we like it or not, was a pivotal figure in the American psyche...but what if he never had the chance to be? Would we get a proto-Trump in a President Limbaugh (ugh)? It's a concept I've found myself thinking back to every now and then and since Danny and Matt put this interesting mind virus in my head, I haven't been able to shake it. I'd love to see them explore this way more.

CeeDeeWai

You pay these guys $5 a month to leave snide comments they likely don't read?

Pope Francis

well you could always do your own podcast so everyone can hear your own galaxy brain analysis

Isaac Salazar

You can’t go this hardcore in the patreon comments. It’s too dangerous

bigboyseason

Old intro is a big improvement

Antipaganda

Absolutely love the old theme song. I also think the next season could benefit from more of a structure. The hinges aren't quite deep enough to get to the points! The homework done in the Hell of Presidents was stellar, and I think this deserves something close to that.

MG

Disappointed they didn't get to "what would Bernie do about Ukraine?"

DS

Matt: Please turn CushVlog into a coffee table book/series of essays w/ digital companion. Start with all the episodes about feudalism to neofeudalism. Tie the Jackson and Trump episodes on Chapo and Hell of Presidents. Bring in the Carter/Nixon/Reagan episodes on working class decline. Tie in the voteball and American Sunset episodes and the COVID solidarity episodes. I would buy that for my mom and boss.

J.P. McD.

The “attitude that prevails” among podcasters and the online left is completely irrelevant to any actual bloody change

Marcus Wrightus

It would have been interesting to how Bernie would have dealt with the railworkers strike. That's a key point in recent labour and government relationships.

Jethro Mojave

Election of 1912: Wilson strokes the fuck out and Teddy gets back in there

Matelda

I love Meagan Day

Sean

I'm glad that the season 1 theme song came back

EZ

This is prob one of the worst episodes of chapo ever. White socialist crying over Bernie in 2022 is so damn cringe

EZ

It’s as garbage as you imagine. It’s only good for how cringe it is

EZ

If Bernie won Jacobin would be so popular bruh. They’d be making big bucks. Sad times , need more hinge points

M.R. Alchemist

A good topic would be if Allende wasn't couped

Micah

I can’t bring myself to listen to this one

Romulus V. Snakehead

Im looking into finding an english translation of Jorge Baradit's Synco. Its an alternate history novel where Allende replaces Prats with Pinochet in the General Staff and brings him into the government. Coup.never happens and Allende is able to use Cybersyn to create the first cybernetic state.

Zach Pierce

Yep. It wasn’t an executive order. It was actual legislation

Zach Pierce

You know there isn’t even a plaque or a marker or anything outside the DC Hilton to even acknowledge that a president was SHOT there on the sidewalk. Even though Hinkley f’ed up. I dig his music career

Zach Pierce

Mine was nailing a hot blonde T-bill portfolio manager named Kristi with an “e” on her desk after the Treasury Dept closed for July 4 2021 in the Sanders Administration

Zach Pierce

Central Park would be so wild in the annual summer cleansing

DS

Her husband died about 8 years ago so it's probably been a while and she has seemed a bit sad lately. I'd really appreciate you doing her that solid or semi-solid.

John S

Chris Matthews in the bear suit from Midsommar burning alive

scott heins

Matt and Megan's focus on what was more deeply at stake with Bernie--the changing of people's political subjectivity--is a crucial takeaway in this episode. Really, really good stuff! A reminder that fixating on Bernie himself during his campaigns, whether it was supporters or haters, was a trap: it was always about how his runs represented a challenge to the status quo that was actually big enough hand coordinated enough to pose a serious threat. Something most of us haven't seen in our lifetimes and something we will hopefully have again asap.

Hilary is Pant-suited Syphilis

I think we just witnessed a what a Sanders presidency would have looked like in Peru. A very undemocratic constitution in a true sense and a system of government and institutions (armed forces, right wing courts) designed to limit democracy and prevent a government from being able to lift the great mass of people out of abject poverty . Being totally obstructed by both the neo reactionary right wing party and neoliberals within your own coalition. A news media totally opposed to everything you do and trying to clown on you at every moment. In order to win you need a durable mass based movement like MAS in Bolivia, who even when the leader was overthrown in an imperialist backed military coup and barred from running, was able to win.

Luke Rybuck

I’m sure you are capable of cogently explaining why it was laughable

J Fitz (edited)

Comment edits

2023-01-19 23:00:40 I swear I don't mean to be a tedious hater... but boy am I tired of Danny Bessner. Beyond the nasal nerdluck voice, he's every single obnoxious grad school seminar blowhard cliche rolled into one. Concerned above all with never appearing not to know something, he cuts his co-hosts off to finish their thoughts, as if he has to reach every conclusion first. He repeats points others made earlier in the show, showing he's often not really listening when the others are talking. He reaches for theory cliches and keywords that don't add to the conversation, merely alluding to to irrelevant syllabus assigned reading, and prefers vague and abstract terms (drink every time he says "polity" in the previous episodes). If you listen to one of the Los Culture Boil episodes he did, you can hear him cut off and literally "Well, actually..." one of the hosts (his own gf, I think?).
2023-01-10 04:26:25 I swear I don't mean to be a tedious hater... but boy am I tired of Danny Bessner. Beyond the nasal nerdluck voice, he's every single obnoxious grad school seminar blowhard cliche rolled into one. Concerned above all with never appearing not to know something, he cuts his co-hosts off to finish their thoughts, as if he has to reach every conclusion first. He repeats points others made earlier in the show, showing he's often not really listening when the others are talking. He reaches for theory cliches and keywords that don't add to the conversation, merely alluding to to irrelevant syllabus assigned reading, and prefers vague and abstract terms (drink every time he says "polity" in the previous episodes). If you listen to one of the Low Culture Boil episodes he did, you can hear him cut off and literally "Well, actually..." one of the hosts (his own gf, I think?).

I swear I don't mean to be a tedious hater... but boy am I tired of Danny Bessner. Beyond the nasal nerdluck voice, he's every single obnoxious grad school seminar blowhard cliche rolled into one. Concerned above all with never appearing not to know something, he cuts his co-hosts off to finish their thoughts, as if he has to reach every conclusion first. He repeats points others made earlier in the show, showing he's often not really listening when the others are talking. He reaches for theory cliches and keywords that don't add to the conversation, merely alluding to to irrelevant syllabus assigned reading, and prefers vague and abstract terms (drink every time he says "polity" in the previous episodes). If you listen to one of the Low Culture Boil episodes he did, you can hear him cut off and literally "Well, actually..." one of the hosts (his own gf, I think?).