I'm now joined by the host of the David Pacman show on YouTube and the author of the new book The Echo machine how right-wing extremism created a post truth America David Pacman David thanks for joining me thanks for having me so we're in a moment right now where obviously the Democratic party is dealing with a lot of issues within the party um it new polling is showing that the party more broadly is as unpopular as a lot of polling has ever shown it to be and so in a moment where you know your job is
to talk to folks about what's happening in this country um especially as it relates to the worst successes of the Trump Administration how do you kind of keep the faith when there really seems to be backsliding against what what you know you've been advocating for couple different things I mean number one when parties have lost everything and the robust opposition phase is only beginning it's not a huge shock that support would be low I think the continuing resolution Fiasco probably did help certainly uh but for me the light at the end of the tunnel is
that people do seem to be connecting now how policy leads to events in people's lives and a couple of the stories were almost really gifts from Trump's deportation plan you know there was this uh man votes Trump trump deports his wife story and then we had this other one man votes Trump Trump's ice imprisons his wife story and I do think that these stories are really starting to tell that the left needs to connect policy to real world consequences so it seems less like Sport and less about whether you like certain personalities and then finally
the other thing that I've been talking about and and I think to some degree you know you and I have spoken about it which is figuring out which candidates genuinely are what voters want rather than taking a candidate and trying to change them into what voters want which comes off as so ingenuous I'm hoping that the search for 2028 and 2026 is going to focus more on finding someone that's the right person already are there any names that you've seen floated and I know that for example before Barack Obama came onto the scene nobody really
knew who Barack Obama was I mean other than the folks who knew that he was a junior senator from Illinois but right now I mean it does feel like we have the same cast of characters that just kind of get recycled into different spots is anybody you're looking at whether it's big names for 2026 or bigger names for 2028 somebody who already exists in the Zeitgeist or do you presume that we're going to see folks come in that we don't even know necessarily yet you know I'm not big on predictions cuz they're usually worth what
you pay for them but a couple things I will say is I'm I'm very interested in seeing how the future of folks like Josh Shapiro and very separately congresswoman AOC develop over the next two years and I don't say that because I think these are the leaders of the democratic party right now but what I'm curious to see is how does public perception of their role on the political Spectrum develop over the next couple of years because there was a period where AOC was oh she's way too far left and extreme and all of a
sudden she's become more politically Savvy she has become more familiar with the way politics Works some don't like it but she's much more seriously being thought of as someone who now understands how you get power and I think that's what's been missing to a degree Brian which is how do you actually win elections and get power has become secondary or tertiary right to to to the the adoption of maximalist positions or Purity politics which I think is I mean this is just my opinion I think has has kind of taken over from actual just politics
making sure to get the most people in your tent and and just find you know I think there is this sense within the Democratic party that we have to find people who really hit every single every single bucket every single point that we need to hit if not we're perfectly content to attack them to the ends of the Earth but that's not going to help us win elections if we're just you know chasing people by virtue of uh of finding the the politician who who most closely aeds to all of our individual positions I am
curious though as we talk about this what your thoughts are on on left and right like of the spectrum of progressive versus moderate versus whether whether you think that's going to be the main thing or something that I've been thinking about more which is that it's not necessarily about Progressive versus moderate but more this idea of fighters versus non-fighters I'm curious your thoughts on that well you're picking up on something I've been talking about which is the political Spectrum using the terms left and right to describe what it is people believe their principles and values
is pretty broken and it's broken for a bunch of reasons one Maga has totally broken it by taking the these shapeshifting positions that if you applied them to the political standards of 30 years ago some of the stuff would kind of qualify as left some of it would qualify as right you've got the populist angle where the populist rhetoric can be subverted by Republicans Or democrats so as a way of describing people's beliefs left and right just fall so short right now and I think like a sort of Matrix of where are you on economic
populism and where are you on authoritarianism versus libertarianism in terms of how involved do you want government in different functions seems better and more dynamic in terms of describing people's beliefs to your point I don't think that there is really a world right now in which a list of 40 policy positions is the way to figure out who's the right candidate at least not for the Democratic party and you know we go back and look at those first two weeks of KLA Harris's campaign the speeches had energy it was a different speech every day they
were doing the these guys are weird stuff which was working well they were attacking on all fronts and all of a sudden it was either the Consultants or the strategists or the focus groups or who knows what and it became two generic of a campaign and that's where things went wrong so I think that really needs to be a major area of f yeah I mean well to to that point I mean that that really does kind of just there are a lot of voices I think that really don't have a ton to show for
show for themselves in the political era that we're living in right now and those seem to be the people who have the ears of the folks who are who working in politics but again you know you and I have the luxury of being able to talk to people where we get instant feedback and you spoke about this in the book as well um and and I think that we're in a different era now where where you know what's what's worked in the past isn't necessarily working now in this social media era so can you talk
a little bit about what you've kind of what you've seen from our Democratic politics versus like what you've seen from your own Channel online well listen there's been a major sea change right if we were if we were talking six months ago maybe even four months ago we I believe had a different situation with regard to the engagement on platforms like ours I'm cautiously optimistic that the Democratic Party is now starting to see the value not of engaging with us October 20th or later of election years right but actually building an ecosystem not that mirrors
the disinformation that Trump so successfully spread in the last six months of the election but of creating a community people want to be a part of and we we've talked about this with a lot of our co-creators as well there was something about seeing Trump in this unstructured hangout format with the ne boys with Rogan with whoever where it didn't matter that he told a hundred lies an hour it was more interesting as a community to be a part of than the hyper structured 9 minute and someone's off camera saying you got to wrap up
format which a lot on the left have taken to so I'm glad we're having this conversation today because I do see a change happening and I think Democrats are getting that the community media aspect has to be built to keep people engaged so the the Democrats are obviously seeing that it has to that this has to be built have you seen um some a difference in how they are actually and whether they're actually abiding by that like have you seen the Democrats kind of embrace this or do you still think that there's a way to
go to get to the point where they're willing to take that risk because I mean this is a big problem you can't fix a lot of a lot of what we do see to your exact point is behavior that is safe that is uncont controversial that is you know maybe P tested to reach the the biggest swath of people while while you know um uh upsetting no one and so and so that kind of has been ingrained in democrat's thinking and democrat's behavior for as long as I can remember Republicans left that left that by
the wayside back in 2016 and so we're almost a decade into this experiment on the right where they are willing to be you know controversial and un I mean we've seen that to the nth degree but Democrats largely won't so I am curious then now I'll let you speak what you think about that listen as you pointed out the right's been dabbling in this for nearly a decade yeah maybe since December Democrats are trying a different approach so no it hasn't all been fixed and you know without naming names some of my conversations with staffers
still are we want to talk to you three times before you do the interview we're going to limit it to 10 and a half minutes here are the things we want you to talk about will you give us the questions in advance which of course I do I'm being super upfront with these folks Brian and I know to a degree you are as well in saying let it happen get out of the way these are these are professionals these are elected officials they're big boys and big girls allow them to just be part of the
ecos system allow them to actually have the freedom to say what's on their minds half of them are sort of acknowledging that this is what needs to happen which listen it's it's way better than where we were six months ago but the risk aversion is very much still there one of the the first things that I read in your book was why you hate politics can you speak on that yeah it it's the introduction it's a little tongue and cheek but the point I make is when I think about engaging with politics I think about
the stuff that we talk about off air of how can we solve real problems there are economic problems there are issues with health care there are infrastructure issues these are the issues I would like to be grappling with when I say hey I care about what's happening politically in my community and my country because of the debasement of who we are up against here politics has become something deplorable which is we're arguing with people over facts we're arguing with people over do human activities impact the climate and I give a bunch of examples in the
book and the what I hate about it is that you have to engage on that level first to even have a shot at any progress and it's a really depressing place to be and so that's the aspect of it that I hate and so how do you how do you have the the the faith to keep on going knowing that that and this goes back to my first question a little bit but rather than being able to engage with with you know with everybody online on topics that actually matter the fact that we're regressing I
mean far from being able to have actually you know informed conversations about what's going on obviously with a shared sense of reality we're now regressing to the point where that the basic sense of reality just just truth fact reality doesn't even exist anymore and so how do you move forward in an environment that seems to be pulling pulling you backwards my Approach is to see the voters that have fallen for it really as victims and when you see someone as a victim you kind of feel bad for them right they they have been victimized by
a Republican party that has chosen to contrive issues on which they feel they can get the upper hand you know uh men in women's sports an issue that affects a fraction of a fraction of a fraction which they've weaponized and the left has been a little clumsy in dealing with it right they take that and all of a sudden no one's talking about the fact that there's a thing called medical bill bankruptcy in the United States that shouldn't exist that there are kids who are hungry in the United States that doesn't need to exist that's
optional so the way I remain engaged is by realizing that there's a lot of people who have completely Fallen for this propaganda and in order to get them back we we've just got to connect with them how what they vote for impacts what happens in their immediate communities and that men and women's sports are CRT Dei right who who he's about CRT now it's just Dei this stuff is meant to pit us against each other and it puts not a single Dollar in their pocket have you seen any difference in terms of the effectiveness of
your message since you've been you know since you've been a attempting this tack I mean I know look I know that you probably among everybody else has always been the one of the most thoughtful um people on the left in terms of what you're doing um and and I think I mean look when I when I first started you you were one of the only channels that I watched when I was first getting into uh political commentary on on YouTube so this is you know to your credit you've always been consistently um I think pushing
a more measured reasonable nuanced take which the internet doesn't uh always um reward I I don't know if the the the internet is best known for for nuance these days but have you found that it that it's been effective even in anecdotal dealings with folks with viewers who who consume your content um in terms of bringing bringing people over who you know may be independent may have voted for Trump himself I think that anecdotally that's absolutely happening and you know one of the things that can be difficult is filtering out the noise for the signal
as your audience grows the amount feedback starts to go up and it becomes difficult to really figure out what's the signal here and what is the noise but one of the things that I try to do is I really see the platform I've built and I know you know with with your platform you see it the same way there is a level of responsibility that comes with it and so what I find myself doing is really thinking zooming out a little bit and saying what is the important message you know whenever I capture someone's attention
even if it's for 15 seconds on Tik Tok or a couple of minutes on YouTube or whatever it is what's the really important takeaway here and and what is the takeaway that will get this person now to maybe take an action to improve their community and really thinking about the platform I've built as a tool with which to affect that kind of change that's not the way it was eight years ago you know when I was much earlier in doing this with a much smaller audience yeah what was uh what was the most what's the
most memorable part of of the book in your opinion well there there's an entire section of countries that have figured out a lot of the things we struggle with here yeah and the cliche is always Scandinavia right okay yeah Denmark things are fine in Denmark fine but there there's more stories in the book we look at Uruguay in South America we look at Portugal in Europe during the 2010s we look at the Carol estate in India and there's this idea that sometimes people fall for in the US when Republicans go we're too big of a
country to use this sort of solution we're too diverse of a country to use the solution that Sweden used and I debunk each of those and basically tell people worst case as States we can do all the stuff that these other countries are doing even if you fall for 340 million people it's too big a country to do some of this stuff approach a lot of these things at the state level and they are doable and they are solvable and I think that's one of the strongest parts of the book David where can people who
are watching right now grab the book so limited number of signed copies are available at Brookline booksmith where people can go to davidpakman.com booksmith but of course the book as well as the audio book and the Kindle book are available everywhere any local bookstore can get it Barnes & Noble Amazon well I highly highly highly recommend that everybody who is watching right now grab a copy of the echo machine the book itself is fantastic and also look again to my earlier Point David has been David is one of the reasons that I am doing what
I do right now um I think one of the most important voices that we have on YouTube right now that we have in in the on the left more broadly right now so highly recommend that you support good people who are doing good work and uh and fearless journalism at a time when we need it most David thank you so much for taking the time thanks Brian keep up the good work
