How We Win the Civil War

Show Transcript

Steve Phillips: How We Win the Civil War

[00:00:00] Bob Gatty: The 2024 presidential race is set as a rematch of 2020. And even though Donald Trump faces 91 federal state and felony charges, his grip on the Republican Party has never been stronger. In the new edition of How We Win the Civil War, author and political thought leader Steve Phillips discusses the new American majority, which consists of people of color plus progressive whites, a coalition of people who want to see America become a multiracial democracy.

[00:00:35] Phillips believes that with the new American majority, Democrats could and should keep the White House, flip the House, and hold the Senate, thereby defending the multiracial democracy from attacks by modern day Confederates.

[00:00:50] All of this, however, comes at a time when, according to Phillips, we already are in a Civil War. 

[00:00:59] Stay with us to meet Steve Phillips and hear what he has to say.

[00:01:03] Now, in his book, How We Win the Civil War, Steve Phillips analyzes the 2022 midterm elections, including why there was no red wave, and why Stacey Abrams lost, but Reverend Raphael Warnock won in Georgia.

[00:01:21] Democrats, he contends, must recognize that we're in a contest. between democracy and white supremacy left unresolved after the Civil War. And he says Trump's entire agenda is focused on making America white again. His work serves as a roadmap towards securing a multiracial democracy. And provides a stepping stone towards ending white supremacy for good.

[00:01:49] Phillips is a New York Times bestselling author, columnist, and the author of the New York Times and Washington Post bestselling, Brown is the New White, How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority. He is also the founder of Democracy in Color, a political media organization dedicated to race, politics, and the multicultural progressive New American majority.

[00:02:17] Steve hosts Democracy in Color with Steve Phillips, a color conscious podcast on politics, and he's a regular columnist for The Nation and The Guardian, the updated paperback edition of his book, How We Win the Civil War was just published on March 12th. Steve Phillips, thanks so much for joining us on the Lean to the Left podcast.

[00:00:00] Bob Gatty: Steve Phillips, thanks so much for joining us on the Lean to the Left podcast. 

[00:00:04] Steve Phillips: Thanks for having me, glad to be here. 

[00:00:06] Bob Gatty: Hey, in your new book you warn that the confederates never stop fighting the Civil War, that conservatives are taking full advantage of this reality, and that those in denial imperil our democracy.

[00:00:20] Is this election more about defending and preserving than anything else, Steve? 

[00:00:26] Steve Phillips: It very much is . In the new preface to the new edition of the book, I talk about how this election is very akin to 1876, which was after 10 years of Reconstruction, and so it really was a referendum around were we going to continue to move forward to try to make this country a multiracial democracy, or were we going to go backwards and, in essence, hand the country back to the slaveholders. And that's exactly what happened in that election, plunging the country back into legalized white supremacy for almost a hundred years. And with the cornerstones of what Trump's appeal has been, the xenophobia, attacking immigrants, Fanning the flames of the fears of white racial resentment within this country.

[00:01:16] This is very much what is driving this election in terms of where we're going to go. Which direction are we going to continue to move forward towards being a multiracial democracy, or are we going to go back to what I titled a Trump chapter as making America white again. 

[00:01:32] Bob Gatty: Yeah, we should get a hat that says that, right?

[00:01:37] How did Trump manage to become so damn powerful within the Republican Party, Steve? He's got so many flaws that run counter to traditional Republican beliefs. 

[00:01:48] Steve Phillips: So that is the, that's the point is that the, you see the hypocrisy or certainly how little they actually subscribe to those core values, whereas the single most important thing is the fear and the anger and the anxiety that he uses as the cornerstones of his appeal. When he first ran for when he first entered the race in in, in May, 2015, he was only at 4 percent in the polls in that since then he When he got into the race and then he started calling Mexicans rapists and murderers and really scaring people that these dark skinned people from south of the border were going to come in and change our composition of our country, he zoomed up in the polls.

[00:02:38] And so this notion about him as the defender of the way the country used to be, is core and is paramount and more important than anything than their values, than the policies, than 91 felony charges against him, as long as he will defend the view of what this country Once was, they're going to back him forever.

[00:03:04] Bob Gatty: I have to ask you, Steve. Why in the hell would any person of color support this guy? Here in South Carolina, we have a black U. S. Senator, Tim Scott who's one of Trump's chief sycophants. And he apparently hopes to be Trump's vice presidential running mate. I just don't understand, though, how any serious person of color c could have any Degree of support for this man.

[00:03:33] Steve Phillips: We've never had Universal. So there were 6 percent of African Americans who voted against Barack Obama, right? And so I always want to know, who were those people? What were they actually? What were they thinking? I talk about Tim Scott in my book, and I say that I hope he doesn't think he's in the Senate because he's smart. He may be smart, but he's in the Senate because he's black. He was appointed to the December 2012 after Obama's reelection. And the Republicans were like, Oh guess this black thing is a powerful force. We got to figure out what to do. And so Nikki Haley appointed him. He had very little experience.

[00:04:13] He was like, what? It's like a state legislator. He'd only gotten like 6, 000 votes total before he had was appointed to the U. S. Senate. So he's clearly an affirmative action hire propelled to that position. So it's worked out well for him personally to be over, be on the Republican side. So that's a whole different thing then.

[00:04:35] His values and the values of his party, which is something, I don't know, he just has to ignore be in denial about, in order to sleep at night. 

[00:04:43] Bob Gatty: I just do not understand. I've talked to I was talking to an African American friend of mine the other day at dinner, and he was telling me that he's got friends here.

[00:04:55] Now I live in South Carolina, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. He's got friends here African American friends who are going to vote for Trump. And I just do not understand why anybody would vote against their own self interest. And that's what they're doing. 

[00:05:08] Steve Phillips: Yeah I think that part of the, this, I talk in the book about how the, or part of the, there's a Confederate battle plan, and part of it is distorting public opinion.

[00:05:17] And they try to downplay and distance themselves from the things that are actually hostile to the interests of people of color, and sometimes, and play up other issues. That's as part of their immigration appeal is to try to split people of color and try to tell African Americans. Oh those Mexicans are going to take your jobs.

[00:05:33] So therefore you should be against them. So it's, it is perplexing, but at the same time, there's never been any Democratic nominee has gotten less than 80 percent of the black vote, and Biden got close to 90 percent last time, and I suspect that's going to be the same this time around. 

[00:05:54] Bob Gatty: He's continuing his tirade against Democrats.

[00:05:57] You mentioned Mexicans a minute ago, and he even sabotaged what turned out to be a bipartisan immigration reform bill that would have helped end some of the problems at the southern border. That's part of his Make America White Again plan, right? 

[00:06:14] Steve Phillips: Yeah, no, they have no interest in governance.

[00:06:19] And they have no interest in things working well, particularly when it's a question of the, when Democrats are in power, they think it's going to accrue to their benefit. So they're very much trying to just create as much chaos and confusion and then try to blame all of that on Biden. And so they don't have any actual interest in solving real problems because the essence of their appeal is, grievance.

[00:06:44] And so you have to have, continue to have problems in order to stoke the flames of the grievance that they're relying upon. 

[00:06:52] Bob Gatty: Hey, do you think that most Americans want to see a multiracial democracy, or do you believe that's a pipe dream?

[00:07:00] Steve Phillips: but no, I ate very clear to me that the majority of people do want that.

[00:07:06] Yeah. In that it, it's what I talked about my first book. Brown is the new White. It was trying to quantify and give context and background to the Obama coalition so that The, what I call it, what I call a meaningful minority of whites have always wanted this country to be more abolitionists, you've got people in the civil rights movement, but they were not the majority, and frankly, they're still not the majority, but it's a meaningful enough minority around 38, 40 percent of whites allied with people of color.

[00:07:38] That's the majority of people in the country, and that majority is growing every day, and that's the other aspect of what is driving Republican politics, is stoking fears around this changing composition. People can see it and they feel it in their bones that the nature of the country is going to change in terms of its racial composition.

[00:08:00] But quantitatively, it's pretty clear. And now you look at the presidential elections, the closest thing we have to a national referendum, With the exception of the 2004 election of Kerry versus Bush, the Democrats have won the popular vote in every single presidential election since 1992. So that further shows that the raw numbers are on the progressive side, which is why the Republicans on the right are so ferociously determined to try to suppress the vote.

[00:08:30] They don't want people to actually come out. 

[00:08:33] Bob Gatty: How is it in in Georgia that Stacey Abrams lost her bid for governor, but Reverend Ralph Warnock won that Senate seat? 

[00:08:42] Steve Phillips: Yeah. So I talk about that in the book, and I think that's one of the big questions people have in national politics. And so it's important to people, of course why did Stacey lose?

[00:08:51] People say it's that, mobile people of color doesn't work, Stacey lost. And first of all, it is important, as you were saying, to not skip over Warnock winning. Warnock was was not supposed to be, and I, my whole Georgia chapter opens up talking about Warnock and his family, and how the origins of this runoff election system are designed to prevent somebody like Warnock winning.

[00:09:12] Yeah. The fact that the literal successor to Martin Luther King, the man who stands in the pulpit where King used to preach in Ebenezer Baptist Church is now in the U. S. Senate and has won, I think, five elections now, over a number of years, in terms of all the different runoffs, that's powerful, and we shouldn't skip that.

[00:09:33] So then, what about Stacey? Why isn't Stacey in, why didn't she also win? Clear difference between the two of them is gender. And we don't like to talk about that, but there has never been in this country, black woman elected governor. And so that's a long data set. That's pretty, it's not because we haven't had talented, smart, qualified people.

[00:09:55] It has to do with the electorate. And then the other part of what happened was in Georgia Stacey was a victim of her own success because of the work that she had done that, that got Biden elected and it got Warnock and Ossoff elected and flipped the U S Senate. The Senate moved trillions of dollars out into the country, including billions to Georgia.

[00:10:15] So Brian Kemp could take billions of dollars from the federal government, go around the state and hand it out and do projects and burnish his own credentials. So that also support you. So incumbency and one of my friends is going to use this phrase, a misogynoir of not wanting a black woman to be governor.

[00:10:35] Stacey and Warnock got the same percent of the black vote, but she got five percent less of the white vote, and that is what the difference was. 

[00:10:42] Bob Gatty: That's what the difference was, yeah. Okay. Now, in your book, which, by the way, I just have to say I thoroughly enjoyed. I haven't finished all of it, but it's a good read.

[00:10:53] It really is. It's packed with great information and insight. In your book, you write that modern day conservatives and many liberals promote the idea that black people are poor because they lack the resources. the necessary skills, training, and character to get good jobs or run businesses that can generate wealth.

[00:11:13] What's your response to that? 

[00:11:15] Steve Phillips: So that's a very critical piece. I'll talk about it in this book and then also my previous book Brown is the New White. And I talk about why do white people have all the money. And eventually it was Ben Carson, right? He ran for president 2016 African American surgeon.

[00:11:30] And he would talk about, He says since my mom was poor and she was, we were disciplined and we had and I always wanted to ask him, why was your mom poor? How did she get poor? Was it, what did this actually come about? And so that's where it's helpful to take a clear look at this history of this country, that in its most, elemental.

[00:11:54] You had Europeans take people from Africa to come over to work this land, which was taken from its indigenous inhabitants, and then work the land for free. And so there's a lot of documentation around how slavery, and particularly in terms of the rise of cotton, created the wealth within this country.

[00:12:19] Some of the different large insurance companies got their start insuring black bodies to slave owners, and that's how they get that. I was thinking about this the other day. That was their startup capital. That was the seed funding for these companies to actually become successful. So you have that. And so then you have slavery running up to 1865, overthrowing it, and so we've only even had the pretense of democracy and equality since 1964, the year I was born and so then you look at how would people have gotten, how would they have caught up, and I talk in the previous book about the GI Bill, which a lot of people don't understand, that the government handed billions of dollars to largely whites, also through the New Deal, who was excluded from the New Deal domestic workers and farm workers, African Americans and Latinos, and so we have structurally created this racial wealth gap.

[00:13:23] Yeah. And then if you have that big a gap, how do you overcome it? You have to, if you each had a stock portfolio, one person's got a hundred thousand, one person has 10, 000, you've got to outperform like by 10 times, which is really an impossible thing to do. So that this, the racial wealth gap in this country was created by the government and has been perpetuated by the government. And so that is what we have to lift up and not just say Oh it's just the fault, the behavioral traits of people in poverty is why they're poor. 

[00:13:54] Bob Gatty: Yeah. You mentioned that the coalition that is, is moving forward are white Democrats who care, and African Americans.

[00:14:07] Do you believe that Democrats have been strong enough in refuting the Republican effort to overthrow the government? And why, and what should they do? 

[00:14:20] Steve Phillips: In general, I think the Democrats are too timid and that they're they really have this fear that they're going to lose support if they take too strong a stand or on any kind of equality or justice issues.

[00:14:32] And what they don't understand is that actually, the way to increase white support is to take strong stands and summon white people to their highest and best selves. Empirically, looking at electoral results, the Democrats have did the best among getting white voters when they challenged the country to elect a black president.

[00:14:56] And white people responded to that. And but there's that has not permeated the top levels of progressive and democratic politics. And you somewhat, unfortunately still see it in the, some of the Biden administration efforts around, I don't know if you use the word pandering, but maybe around the border piece trying to show they're also tough on the border, et cetera.

[00:15:16] And it's, there's a reluctance to be too strongly a lot identified. As supporting, particularly people of color, they think they're going to lose white support and don't understand that's actually a way to increase white support is by challenging white folks to embrace the concept that this is a multiracial country.

[00:15:38] But that's not conventional wisdom at the top levels of Democratic Party, unfortunately. 

[00:15:43] Bob Gatty: Yeah, no, it's not. Do you feel like there's been enough clarity in terms of what Biden has accomplished, though in his three plus years as president? 

[00:15:58] Steve Phillips: No, not at all. It's actually it's interesting because he's his, historically, Biden has never been a progressive figure. His political roots and identity has always been very, moderate, et cetera. But he's actually been a far more progressive president than people realized, and they'd have, they've not done that great job really of telling that story. So everything from the economy, 14 million new jobs being created, Tonti Brown Jackson on the Supreme court the two trillion dollars in relief those past in 2021. Yeah. So there's been a lot they've done, but they haven't done a very good job of telling the story. I did think, I do think he started to do better with the state of the union and being, more unapologetic and challenging the opposition.

[00:16:46] And so that was a step in the right direction. Yeah. But for the past three years, it's been not nearly as effective or high volume as it really should be. 

[00:16:56] Bob Gatty: Yeah, I thought the State of the Union address was a good job by Biden. And I thought that he came out of his, I don't know, you call it a shell or whatever, but he was much more pointed than he's been in the past and much more direct.

[00:17:10] And I don't know, I thought that it was a positive step and I hope that it translates into that. I've seen some press reports that seem to indicate that may be the case. 

[00:17:19] Steve Phillips: Yeah, no, I thought it was a very good speech. I was very pleasantly surprised how strong, how unapologetic, how much he stood up and fought, articulated what it is actually for.

[00:17:29] And even just one of the things that was driving me crazy was As Ezra Klein at the New York times had, done two podcasts and written a column saying that Biden should drop out. And which was, absurd as I wrote a column for The Nation saying that I think that Biden actually is the front runner if you look at the underlying trends here, but after the state of the union, Klein's written a column saying basically a mea culpa say no, this is different now. Maybe he shouldn't drop out. So what are you going to do? Yeah. 

[00:17:56] Bob Gatty: That's true. Hey, what would be the consequence, though, if Trump should defeat Biden and return to the presidency?

[00:18:05] Steve Phillips: It's going to be, it's going to be, it would be, I don't know, cataclysmic is quite the right word, but I was just actually just rereading some again today, what they're, the level, see Trump was an accidental president and that he was really only running to build up his own fame and his own adulation.

[00:18:25] He had no plans and intention to win. Nobody thought he was going to win, including anybody on his side. And then, so he stumbled into this and then he, in some ways to our benefit spent a year or two years fumbling around. And plus he's fairly lazy. So he didn't have a lot of, energy to try to, it's like things like the they could have really messed with the census a lot more than they actually did.

[00:18:48] And they were too late to do that. So there are things like that, but they're ready now. They've been laying the groundwork. And one of the most alarming parts of what they're talking about doing is actively trying to make the country whiter by deporting as many people of color as possible.

[00:19:06] And so in this label of, illegal and illegal immigrants or whatever, they're talking about trying to deport millions of people and making plans, logistical plans for how you would go about doing this in ways that are very evocative of the Japanese American internment. And we rounded up people of Japanese descent.

[00:19:24] And so this country very much could be in for that type of struggle and battle in terms of if he were to actually get back into the White House, as well as the question of people have been saying, would this be our last election? You don't really have elections about. Are you going to have a dictatorship?

[00:19:42] You have an election, and then the person who gets into power refuses to leave. And that, I think, is also a very real danger. And he would just say we don't need to have another election. And everyone's gone along with him for everything so far. So that's another reality of what we would be facing.

[00:19:59] So the stakes are enormous. 

[00:20:02] Bob Gatty: What about for the African American community itself? 

[00:20:05] Steve Phillips: Well, It's, I mean, it's, it's hard to even uh, well, first of all, I try not to spend too much time going down that line. Yeah. And, it's all contextual. I've been getting more into art recently. And so I'm, I've gotten this painting of this artist, John Biggers, and it's of African American working in the field, picking cotton.

[00:20:29] And the way that I, the reason I got this, I was at I was at an event once with Jesse Jackson in the late eighties, and then someone said, Oh, Jesse, you must be very tired. You're flying all over the country. And Jesse says, without missing a beat. It beats picking cotton and I thought it was such a good contextualization of what we would be, facing and up against.

[00:20:50] And so I think holding that level of framework and that, we've had a lot of tough fights within this country over the past 400 years, and this would be a dark period. But I still believe, ultimately, that, fundamentally, because of these underlying demographic changes, that the trend is in our favor.

[00:21:11] And so we need to keep organizing and keep fighting and keep translating that population majority into a governing majority. 

[00:21:18] Bob Gatty: I know that your book has the premise that we are still fighting a civil war. But do you believe that if Trump should be convicted and ultimately loses the election, that we will indeed face a civil war?

[00:21:40] Steve Phillips: What will be interesting to see, and this is what was interesting, I went back and looked at the terms of, like we talked about before, in terms of the, how the succession happened, that It was after the election in which people refused to accept the results. And then South Carolina leading the way and then, the other seven states, all 11 states left the union and then that led to the civil war.

[00:22:09] So it wasn't like it was an immediate declaration of war on the country. It was, I don't belong to this country anymore. I could certainly see, and we're already seeing elements of it. And when there was the, FBI went into Mar a Lago to get the documents had the governor talking about not honoring the request of the federal government.

[00:22:38] I think we've got all these anti FBI, formerly the law and order party now is all against the FBI. And so I could easily see a, we're already seeing this. And what was January 6th, but a refusal to accept the legitimate will of the majority of people and to honor the democratic institutions in this country.

[00:23:04] So they've already come under attack. And that would, I think would just. I don't, in a world where we only have so much time, energy, and effort, I prefer to spend our time around how do we win than the contingency planning around if we don't. Okay. But it is something we do need to think about sometimes.

[00:23:23] Bob Gatty: Well, speaking of how do we win, what should progressives and Democrats do to defeat Trump, hold the Senate majority, and regain the House? 

[00:23:32] Steve Phillips: So the fundamental reality is that there is a multiracial progressive majority, and that's why the right is so obsessed with trying to stop people from voting, and trying to make it as hard as possible to vote.

[00:23:50] So that's the fundamental issue, you need to get as many people as possible to vote, find the groups and the leaders who are doing the work to help people overcome the obstacles of voting. Back those groups, champion voting, talk up the elections, because when there is high turnout, we win, which is why they're trying to make it there to be low turnout as much as possible.

[00:24:12] Bob Gatty: Yeah, exactly. Okay, Steve, listen where can people find your book? It's just been published today, right? 

[00:24:19] Steve Phillips: Yeah, the paperback is out today. Get it wherever you get books on, on Amazon, Barnes Noble Indie press also as well and then I've got links and all that on my website, stevephillips. com. 

[00:24:32] Bob Gatty: Okay, great. All right, Steve. Listen, I really do appreciate you taking the time to be with us today on the Lean to Live podcast. I know you've had a busy day and I'm grateful that we were included in your round of podcast appearances today. So thanks so much. 

[00:24:48] Steve Phillips: Thanks for having me. I enjoyed it.