The King of the Great American Songbook, Michael Feinstein is a player, a singer and an archivist, he’s born to and dedicated to the music. A legend with numerous albums and TV shows, you should listen to this even if only modern music floats your boat, hear how an outcast followed the music to success, how a true original was accepted by Ira Gershwin and the public at large. From the piano bar to the Hollywood Bowl, it’s a mighty long way down not only rock and roll, but all music, to the TOP!

This was one of my favorite podcasts to do, I hadn’t realized how similar Michael Feinstein and I are. I’ve known Michael for five years, whenever I encounter him he’s testifying about some find, some music discovered in the archives that he will pore over and digest. Like film preservationists, Michael is single-handedly keeping the old music alive. Hell, he found the original “Over The Rainbow” and performed it with the Pasadena Pops! Michael challenges authority and has a sense of humor about himself. He’s really a rock and roll artist, just playing different music, and I didn’t know that until we did this podcast. We start off with conducting, but then we move into Michael’s history and you’ll see the parallel to other popular artists, people who couldn’t find their way in the conventional world, who were square pegs in a round hole and then when they were true to themselves their careers blossomed. It’s quite a story.

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The Democrats have to get ahead of the story.

If you were listening to the news today, and who wasn’t, you heard about two things, Trump’s impeachment and how this action will negatively impact the Democrats in 2020.

Now let’s wait to see what the whistleblower has to say, what the transcript and ultimately the tape say, but if we’re gonna grant a green light on impeachment after that, we’ve got to get on the same page. I’m speaking about Democrats here, the Republicans learned this lesson decades ago. In 2016 the Republican candidates were all against Trump, until he won the nomination, then they solidly got behind him. The Democrats? All they can talk about is losing, they’re so busy arguing amongst themselves that they can’t see the bigger picture.

Number one, timing. You never know what the future will bring, forgoing impeachment and waiting for 2020… A Democratic candidate could commit a faux pas, Trump could have a great victory, almost anything is possible, which is why you play the game instead of waiting to run out the clock. Only the aggressor wins in the end, no matter how good your defense is, you’ve got to put points on the board.

Number two, perspective, as in the Democrats have to agree on a story and continue to sell it. They must say impeachment is less about Trump than the Presidency, how they’re defining the rules for administrations to come. That when someone tries to break the rules, an umpire must come in and cry foul! That’s what they’re doing here, in the name of justice, this is not Democrat versus Republican, this is about America versus fascism. Sure, use a softer word than fascism, but that’s the point, we’re doing this to preserve our American government and our American way of life. This message should be sold over and over again, it should trump Trump. If you make it about Trump, it’s immediately partisan, if you make it about ethics, behavior, laws…that’s hard to argue.

And the Democrats should all be saying how impeachment is gonna HELP their chances in 2020. That the public has been waiting for action in D.C. and now they’re getting it. That the Republicans have thwarted movement for years and now the Democrats have to take singular action.

As for the election, Democrats have to say this is what people want, the aforementioned action, Representatives voting their conscience as opposed to triangulating and playing the insider game. After all, if you commit a crime in public the police don’t refrain from arresting you because it might hurt their image, especially if you’re a nobody. In this flattened, social media world, people feel equal to elected officials. Elected officials should be held to the same standard normal people employ.

The Democrats should say victory in 2020 is a foregone conclusion, that no matter who they nominate in 2020, they’ll emerge victorious. You play like a winner or else you end up a loser.

You can define yourself to victory. Look at the Rolling Stones, the self-professed “World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band.” Is that true? Who knows? But certainly after their contemporaries broke up and died, it was a self-defining prophecy, you had to see the Stones, they were the WORLD’S GREATEST! Michael Jackson tried to do the same thing, calling himself the “King of Pop.” Although no one ever liked the word “pop.” It never truly resonated with the audience, never mind MJ’s questionable behavior.

What do they say on “American Idol,” “fake it till you make it?” Everybody in America employs this aphorism, but not Democrats, they’re never qualified enough, the odds are stacked against them, who in hell could vote for these losers? You want people of strength. Kinda like Hillary back in 2016, she called some of Trump’s base “deplorables.” The REPUBLICANS latched on to this and bullied her into apologizing, demonstrating weakness, Hillary should have doubled-down on her statement, showed her cojones, that would have made people believe in her, as for those who didn’t, they never would.

This was the problem with Obama, he was looking for kumbaya. There’s no kumbaya in America today, and the Republicans know this. They stole the Supreme Court pick, they gerrymandered, and when they lose, they pass laws hobbling the winner before he or she takes office. The Republicans fight dirty, the Democrats don’t fight at all, they just whine.

So Pelosi and her pals, the entire DNC, the left wing bloviators, from now on they must say that Trump’s impeachment is the best thing that ever happened to this country. That the government was built on checks and balances, that no branch of the government should be stronger than another, that to refuse to obey the law Trump is breaking the system. The Democrats should say they’re leading, that this is what the country wants! Of course the Republicans will squirm, just ignore them, it’s your spin against theirs, and there are more Democrats than Republicans.

I don’t know about you, but my parents always told me to stand up to bullies, that unless you did they’d know you were afraid and never stop badgering you.

Unfortunately, today’s left wing parents believe their kids should be immune from negativity and can’t stop complaining to the authorities that their children are being bullied, even in private schools! People have to learn to fight for themselves, otherwise their entire lives will be compromised. Oh, don’t get your knickers in a twist, this is why the Republicans dominate the conversation, they keep calling out the insane identity politics of the left. Meanwhile, the left is busy fighting amongst itself, arguing about transgender rights, all kinds of things that are important but irrelevant if you don’t have power in government. First you get the power, then you institute change.

This is not hard. Hell, you even come up with a slogan like “Death Tax” to define the impeachment. Yup, Frank Luntz pwns the Democrats on a regular basis, by utilizing words to spin meaning and belief. The Democrats did a good job calling their abortion position “Pro Choice,” can’t they call impeachment “Pro Government,” or the “People’s Position,” or some cute phrase that will become common language, uttered all the time until those who hear it are spun in the right direction?

The Republicans have laid out the playbook, it’s in plain sight. You fight a long war, like with the Federalist Society. You keep hammering and hammering until you get the other side questioning its beliefs.

I know the Democrats can do it.

They’ve got to start NOW!

Tune in today, Tuesday September 24th, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

Phone #: 844-6-VOLUME, 844-686-5863

Twitter: @lefsetz or @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive

Hear the episode live on SiriusXM VOLUME: HearLefsetzLive

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app: LefsetzLive

What are the Democrats afraid of?

This is what happens when you’ve been inside the Beltway, in the game for far too long, you get disrupted. That’s right, Trump disrupted the Democrats who were so busy studying history that they didn’t realize the country had changed.

Well, it’s changed again.

What we’ve learned is that 30% of the people will vote for Trump no matter what. There’s no way in hell you can convince them otherwise, write them off.

As far as those people in the middle, swayable, the canard is that if you make one false move they’re gonna vote Republican again. But the Democratic leaders just don’t get it. Those people voted for Trump because the Democrats weren’t servicing them, the left was beholden to the nouveau riche, those who benefited from the system and globalization, and this sector believed, unfortunately correctly, that not only did the left wing elite not care about them, they had contempt for them. So they decided to flip the script, throw over the table, anything to wake the Democrats up and hopefully generate change.

Oh boy, they got it with Trump. And most of America doesn’t like what he’s done. But don’t ask Nancy Pelosi to do anything about it.

Now the Democrats missed their chance. Like they have for decades, they’ve allowed the right wing to control the narrative, this time with the Mueller Report, Barr got out ahead and the Democrats never conceived of a viable strategy to get rid of the President. Then, way too late, they decided they would do so, slowly, like a record company transitioning from physical to digital…better not go too fast, you might piss off some of your old partners. But this appeal to everybody approach appeals to nobody! You’ve got to lead. That’s what was wrong with Obama, he was so fearful of being labeled an angry African-American he stayed calm in the face of right wing shenanigans, he didn’t call them out, he didn’t get aggressive, he just squirmed like a five year old when they stole his Supreme Court pick. Hell, Obama could have shut down the government, done his best to bring the Republicans to their knees, but NO, you’ve just got to toss your hands in the air and then point to the other guy and say he’s bad. Hell, Bill Belichick is bad, the Patriots keep testing the rules, but the Patriots consistently win, over and over again.

Trump has handed the Democrats a gift. He’s admitted he discussed Biden with Ukraine and withheld aid. If not now, when?

What the Democrats don’t realize is no one wants to vote for a pussy. Pussies are pissed on. You’ve got to bring out the dog in you, snarl, take action, it’s a fight but the Democrats refuse to put up their dukes.

The Squad has urged them to, to drag themselves into the twenty first century, but movement has to be slow in government, so slow that Amazon, Google and Facebook became monopolies and D.C. was caught flat-footed, they didn’t even understand what was going on, never mind the stakes. What do you expect from a leader like Chuck Schumer who still uses a flip phone?

This is not about getting Trump out of office, it’s about the law and institutions. Trump keeps saying no…no tax returns, no testimony, no info and the Democrats roll over. Trump’s turning the government into a monarchy and the Democrats are acting like serfs, thankful they can live at all.

Today the “Wall Street Journal” said the Biden claims had no merit, never mind the “New York Times.” THAT’S THE RIGHT WING PAPER OF RECORD!

And if you’d gone to the Fox News website over the weekend you would have seen truth about what Trump did, albeit countered with a false narrative about Biden. You see when behavior is not only egregious but fact, you can’t argue it. This is what the country has been waiting for, what the Democrats thought would never happen, Trump not only has been caught red-handed, but admitted it!

As for impeachment… If the Democrats play their cards right, Trump will be gone. History, the one the Dems don’t pay attention to, demonstrates that the Republicans were against the impeachment of Richard Nixon before they were for it. The plethora of evidence turned them. Today, it looks like the Republicans in the Senate are solidly behind Trump, that’s patently untrue! They’re just afraid of him, but if he’s gone, they’ve got nothing to be afraid of.

This is about getting the facts out in front of the public. If there is an impeachment process it will be featured not only across network and cable, but all over the web, where Trump’s behavior will be delineated, the only thing open for discussion is the spin, but the facts remain. I mean you can tell somebody that a person has been mislabeled, that he’s truthful and honorable, but when confronted with bad behavior again and again, you change your opinion.

Yes, if you’re worried about the game, run out the clock, don’t impeach Trump, wait to beat him in the next election. But who says Trump is gonna honor that election? Haven’t the Republicans been screaming about voter fraud again and again as they purge the rolls of legal voters? And just like Trump keeps pushing the envelope now, who’s to say he’s gonna stop? This guy is enriching himself at the country’s expense, the facts are there, but no one can blow the whistle because they’re afraid the public will pooh-pooh their choices and in the past this hasn’t worked?

It’s a brand new country, in so many ways. Income inequality is rampant. The rich are richer and have more power and influence. The American Dream has faded, literally, even the aforementioned WSJ said so. Do you think the public is gonna behave like it always did?

NO WAY!

Yes, history will teach you a lot, but sometimes you have to throw away the books and do the right thing. Everybody knows what the right thing is. Then again, we live in such a b.s. country that you’re better off denying your bad behavior than admitting it. Trump gets a pass, no one else does.

So just like I have no doubt that Warren will win the nomination and the election, I’ve got no doubt that if Trump’s behavior was revealed in an impeachment process not only the public, but the Senate will turn against him. They’ll have to. And the only way to get rid of this cancer on the Presidency is…

To get rid of Trump.