The Professional Left Podcast with Driftglass and Blue Gal

Episode 1020 opens with a deep dive into the Snoopy vs. the Red Baron novelty songs — where continuity gets rewritten and enemies become "friends" who never have to answer for their body counts — before turning that fairy tale into a warning about how Republican history keeps getting whitewashed the same way. Snoopy shoots down the Red Baron, then toasts him as a "friend" — no accountability, no memory. Sound familiar? Bush's real damage to America's reputation got erased, replaced by the fictional Obama "Apology Tour" lie. Now ask: who fixes what Trump broke, and how? More at proleftpod.com. Links for this episode: Driftglass on The Bob Cesca Show https://www.bobcesca.com/the-bob-cesca-interview-driftglass-day-9-2-26/ Driftglass on The Nicole Sandler Show https://nicolesandler.com/9-2-26/ Stay in Touch! Email: proleftpodcast@gmail.com Website: proleftpod.com Support via Patreon: patreon.com/proleftpod or Donate in the Venmo App @proleftpod Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791 Support the show

Episode 1019 asks the question rarely posed — "Is our Republicans learning?" — and finds them relearning the exact same 2006 playbook: distance yourself from an unpopular president, rebrand as "independent," and blame everyone but yourselves. Driftglass and Blue Gal line up MAGA voters furious about tariff-driven beef prices, ICE snatching their own spouses, and grocery costs, all while insisting none of it is their fault after voting for Trump three times. The episode traces the eerie parallel between Bush's 2006 collapse — GOP candidates scrubbing his name from campaign ads and a mass rebranding into "independents" that eventually became the Tea Party and then MAGA — and today's Illinois Republicans barely mentioning Trump's name at the state fair. It's about pattern recognition as the Left's greatest weapon, and why this time "the lifeboats" need to burn. Stay in Touch! Email: proleftpodcast@gmail.com Website: proleftpod.com Support via Patreon: patreon.com/proleftpod or Donate in the Venmo App @proleftpod Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791 Support the show

Episode 1018 features Driftglass in conversation with Dr. Cinde Wirth, the Democrat running to flip Indiana's 6th Congressional District. A seventh-generation Bartholomew County Hoosier, high school science teacher, and first-generation college graduate with a Ph.D. in cultural and educational policy, Wirth brings an unusual résumé to the race — including a stint as a congressional fellow writing science and education policy. The conversation covers what drove her to run for office, her priorities around working families, public education, healthcare access, and the environment, and what it takes to flip a seat in deep-red Indiana. It's a chance to hear directly from a candidate who says Hoosiers are worth the fight. Her website: Wirth For Congress: https://wirth4congress.com/ Stay in Touch! Email: proleftpodcast@gmail.com Website: proleftpod.com Support via Patreon: patreon.com/proleftpod or Donate in the Venmo App @proleftpod Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791 Support the show

Episode 1017 puts a decade of Never Trump confessions on trial, dissecting this unusual week where Tim Miller, Stuart Stevens, Rick Wilson, and Joe Scarborough all admitted, in various roundabout ways, that they'd known the Republican base was rotten all along. Driftglass and Blue Gal ask the only question that matters — did they know, or were they delusional? — and prove with two decades of receipts that they knew, they profited from it, and now they're profiting again by pretending to be "the first ones brave enough to say so." (Fun Fact: Rick can't even get the timeline right.) The episode also honors Dolly Parton, contrasts a manosphere UFC event (that may have killed the manosphere) with Zohran Mamdani's genuinely joyful "bro culture," and shows Abdul El-Sayed outmaneuvering Jesse Watters by refusing the culture-war bait entirely. It's about judgment as a moral obligation, not a sin, and why remembering things accurately is the one thing the Never Trump grift can never survive. Links for this episode: GQ Link: https://www.gq.com/story/ufc-at-the-white-house Mamdani’s Bro Culture https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/14/nyregion/mamdani-bro-culture-sports.html Stay in Touch! Email: proleftpodcast@gmail.com Website: proleftpod.com Support via Patreon: patreon.com/proleftpod or Donate in the Venmo App @proleftpod Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791 Support the show

Episode 1016 puts Tone Policing on trial, tracing the long history of the powerful lecturing the powerless about civility while dodging the actual substance of their protests — from abolitionists to MLK to anti-war marchers, memory-holed by CNN in 2005. Driftglass and Blue Gal revisit David Brooks' unhinged 2005 meltdown over Harry Reid daring to question the Iraq War intelligence, proving that the Tone Police always overreact hardest exactly when someone hits a nerve. That pattern plays out live this week when Jon Ossoff makes one factually accurate remark about Trump's laziness and his aide, Natalie Harp, triggering a Fox News meltdown, a Newt Gingrich tantrum, and a media firestorm that made "Natalie Harp" the most-searched name in Washington. The episode's verdict is simple: until Democrats are out from under MAGA fascism, f**k Courtesy Class. Links for this episode: The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/19/trump-white-house-attacks 2005 NBC Transcript: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna9438988 The Hill: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6036115-ossoff-calls-trump-crook/ Stay in Touch! Email: proleftpodcast@gmail.com Website: proleftpod.com Support via Patreon: patreon.com/proleftpod or Donate in the Venmo App @proleftpod Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791 Support the show

Episode 1015 takes apart James Carville, the "rusted-out antique device" who trashes progressives on Fox News over a single deleted Thanksgiving tweet and then pivots to backing the very candidate he just attacked, all while forgetting his own most famous line ("It's the economy, stupid"). Driftglass and Blue Gal do the math on his supposed DSA takeover panic — two national officeholders versus 257 mainline Democrats — and coin a new verb, "Carvilling," for pundits who tantrum toward MAGA cameras whenever Democrats won't chase imaginary hippies. The episode also solves a year-and-a-half mystery: why Jamelle Bouie waited so long to demolish a David Brooks column, tracing it back through Bob Herbert, Paul Krugman, and Reagan's Neshoba County dog whistle to an unwritten New York Times rule against columnists attacking colleagues in print. It's about faithless allies, decibels versus messaging, and the actual math behind a manufactured crisis. Links for this episode: Driftglass on The Bob Cesca Show – https://www.bobcesca.com/the-bob-cesca-interview-driftglass-day-8-12-26/ Driftglass on The Nicole Sandler Show – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyneHDGQkr8 Carville on CNN https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/05/politics/james-carville-election-what-matters Jamelle Bouie, full video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46tpqFxfomI More at proleftpod.com. Stay in Touch! Email: proleftpodcast@gmail.com Website: proleftpod.com Support via Patreon: patreon.com/proleftpod or Donate in the Venmo App @proleftpod Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791 Support the show

Episode 1014 dismantles the "Democrats in Disarray" panic after Dr. Abdul El-Sayed's progressive primary win in Michigan, tracing Third Way's $15 million war chest against democratic socialism back to nearly identical Red Scare rhetoric almost a century ago. Driftglass and Blue Gal prove that the same "socialism!" screeching Republicans threw at Obama just two weeks into his presidency in 2009 is word-for-word the same panic thrown at another Democrat facing deep economic crises a century earlier. That "Red Scare" was funded then by Hearst's media empire and is now funded by Big Pharma, Big Banks, and Big Tech. The episode also indulges in a little well-earned schadenfreude over a solar-industry-funded super PAC quietly picking off the Republicans who sabotaged clean energy, one primary at a time. It's about corporate "centrist Democrats" manufacturing a crisis, media amnesia as a weapon, and why the same lies have been recycled for 100 years. Links for this episode: https://www.newsweek.com/we-are-all-socialists-now-82577 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/06/us/politics/democratic-party-socialists-moderates.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/06/03/centrist-democrats-launch-new-pledge-moderate-party/ https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/brooks-and-capehart-on-what-progressive-primary-wins-mean-for-democrats https://www.commondreams.org/news/cheri-bustos-next-american-era https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/29/fema-democratic-disaster-requests-trump-01013938 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/30/us/politics/kennedy-center-tours.html https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-07-31/alaska-road-permit-shows-how-trump-upends-business-norms https://crooksandliars.com/2026/08/theres-nothing-we-could-do-cornyn-concedes https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/10/white-house-max-miller-pressure-campaign-01031353 https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/10/trump-vaccine-executive-order-autism.html https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/07/how-solar-donors-helped-take-down-a-trump-backed-republican-01028209 More at proleftpod.com. Stay in Touch! Email: proleftpodcast@gmail.com Website: proleftpod.com Support via Patreon: patreon.com/proleftpod or Donate in the Venmo App @proleftpod Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791 Support the show

Driftglass sits down with Blue Rep in a Red State! Democratic State Representative Gregg Bush of Missouri is in the superminority in the Missouri State Legislature. We go over Tuesday's Missouri ballot initiative and how Missouri voters turned back a Republican attempt to take their power away. Also, the future of the Democratic Party, and how a Covid-era nurse got elected to the State House. All this and more in this truly fascinating conversation. More at proleftpod.com. Stay in Touch! Email: proleftpodcast@gmail.com Website: proleftpod.com Support via Patreon: patreon.com/proleftpod or Donate in the Venmo App @proleftpod Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791 Support the show

In a special crossover episode, Driftglass sits down with Matthew Sheffield of Flux and the Theory of Change podcast — a journalist with a genuinely unusual vantage point on American radicalization. Sheffield grew up in a fundamentalist Mormon family, left that world, then spent years as one of the internet's first conservative bloggers before walking away from that movement too, disillusioned by its hostility to facts and to people. The conversation explores why things are happening the way they are in politics, religion, and media, rather than just chasing the next news cycle. It's a rare chance to hear two people compare notes from opposite sides of the same long road out of, and against, movement conservatism. More at proleftpod.com. Stay in Touch! Email: proleftpodcast@gmail.com Website: proleftpod.com Support via Patreon: patreon.com/proleftpod or Donate in the Venmo App @proleftpod Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791 Support the show

Episode 1011 argues that the Fauci witch hunt and the White House Correspondents' Dinner were the same show: theater staged to give a cult desperate for a villain someone new to hate. Driftglass and Blue Gal use Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" to describe legacy media pundits partying safely behind castle walls while the plague of modern Republican fascism finally breaks through the door. The episode names the psychological trap keeping disengaged voters stuck in "Yeah, but Democrats..." thinking, and exposes how devastating SNAP cuts are quietly starving hundreds of thousands of Illinoisans while being sold as "reform." It's about who the real cavalry is, why nobody's coming to save us but us, and why the midterms are the only thing that can pull the brakes on a car that no longer has any. Links for this Episode: Driftglass on The BradCast https://bradblog.com/?p=18314 Driftglass on the Nicole Sandler Show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozwmgb421eI Stay in Touch! Email: proleftpodcast@gmail.com Website: proleftpod.com Support via Patreon: patreon.com/proleftpod or Donate in the Venmo App @proleftpod Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791 Support the show

Episode 1010 dissects the White House Correspondents' Dinner disaster, where Trump used his own celebration of press freedom to attack the journalists in the room with vile personal insults. Driftglass and Blue Gal replay a decade-old clip from their own archives—recorded the week Trump effectively won the 2016 nomination—to prove that Liberals saw this coming while the legacy media obsessed over Hillary's emails. The episode argues the real scandal isn't Trump's cruelty, which was never a mystery, but a media class that keeps getting blindsided by exactly what it refuses to honestly examine. It's about pattern recognition, receipts a decade old, and why nothing about the GOP or its media enablers has gotten better—only worse. Link for this episode: Status. https://www.status.news/ Stay in Touch! Email: proleftpodcast@gmail.com Website: proleftpod.com Support via Patreon: patreon.com/proleftpod or Donate in the Venmo App @proleftpod Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791 Support the show

Episode 1009 asks what happens when you're 20 miles into the political marathon and there's no cavalry coming over the hill to save the day. Driftglass and Blue Gal explore the difference between American "hero arrives just in time" storytelling and the harder truth found in movies like Spotlight and Lincoln—where victory comes from grinding, patient work, not a last-minute miracle. The episode confronts what it feels like to hit The Wall after decades of activism that moved the needle but not nearly far enough, while also finding real hope in how DSA ideas about time, freedom, and healthcare are quietly winning the battle of ideas. It's about exhaustion, endurance, and why you should never take political advice from your enemies. This week, thanks again to Hal Sparks who had Driftglass on Monday. Bob Cesca and Nicole Sandler who put up with him for an hour each, back to back, on Wednesday. Hal Sparks https://www.youtube.com/live/QPVAxnKjtV4 Bob Cesca show https://www.bobcesca.com/the-bob-cesca-interview-driftglass-day-7-22-26/ Nicole Sandler show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2acNSp9cNVg More links from the episode: https://patricemersault.substack.com/p/part-2-i-went-to-a-meeting-of-young https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/dont-take-advice-from-your-enemies https://campaign-trails.ghost.io/punching-left/ The Internet Kitty’s book, “Futura” https://www.amazon.com/Futura-Michael-Laser/dp/B0G9Q9GSTF/ref=sr_1_9 Stay in Touch! Email: proleftpodcast@gmail.com Website: proleftpod.com Support via Patreon: patreon.com/proleftpod or Donate in the Venmo App @proleftpod Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791 Support the show

Episode 1008 continues the "No Fair Remembering Stuff" retrospective: Driftglass and Blue Gal trace the throughline from Biden's early economic wins and Republican obstruction, through the January 6th hearings, to broke state GOP parties and Bari Weiss's billionaire-funded "anti-woke" grift. This sad yet hilarious episode reveals how the same media failures—perpetual surprise at good economic news, endless both-siderism, and refusal to name who actually funds Republican radicalization—keep repeating no matter the year. It's proof that the receipts have been there all along, for anyone willing to look. Link for this episode: Driftglass on Hal Sparks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPVAxnKjtV4 Stay in Touch! Email: proleftpodcast@gmail.com Website: proleftpod.com Support via Patreon: patreon.com/proleftpod or Donate in the Venmo App @proleftpod Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791 Support the show

Episode 1007 celebrates Blue Gal's birthday with a nostalgic trip through 16 years of podcast archives, revisiting what was happening in politics on or around her birthday each year since 2010. Driftglass and Blue Gal trace a remarkable through-line from the Tea Party's rise and the "Evil, Stupid, or Crazy" game, through Obama-era both-siderism, Trump's 2016 takeover, and the pandemic's collapse of conservative respectability. The episode reveals how the same cast of media enablers and Republican radicals keeps reappearing decade after decade, proving some patterns never change even as the crises get bigger. It's part one of a two-part birthday retrospective, with 2021 through 2026 still to come. Stay in Touch! Email: proleftpodcast@gmail.com Website: proleftpod.com Support via Patreon: patreon.com/proleftpod or Donate in the Venmo App @proleftpod Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791 Support the show

Episode 1006 uses the beloved 1990 teen rebellion movie "Pump Up the Volume" to ask a deeper question: what happens when you take "Truth is a virus" and unrestricted free speech into the real world, where the fascists aren't outsiders trying to break in—they're already running the show? Driftglass and Blue Gal trace the death of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 through the rise of Hate Radio, Gingrich's language wars, Citizens United, and the collapse of every institution that was supposed to protect democracy from tyranny. The episode explains why lying became profitable, why corporate media's "Both Sides" obsession taught citizens that democracy was somebody else's job, and why an uninformed public is the only thing tyranny has ever needed. It's about how free speech got inverted, and why the FCC villain in a 1990 teen movie may have been onto something after all. Links for this episode: The movie “Pump Up The Volume” (1990) is streaming ($) on Amazon Video, Apple TV Store, and Fandango At Home. Clips are available on YouTube. Music from the “Pump Up The Volume” soundtrack can be found at this YouTube playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjDvaXwceFJTg_uhw4cymaJGtBdJZT7OJ&si=RxUS9h7X1OeGsbY2 Music clips from this episode: Was Not Was: Dad, I’m In Jail https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MZKkz4xefk Above the Law: Freedom of Speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q338zPrnwGw The movie “Pump Up The Volume” (1990) is streaming ($) on Amazon Video, Apple TV Store, and Fandango At Home. Clips are available on YouTube. Driftglass on other podcasts! Nicole Sandler https://nicolesandler.com/7-8-26/ Stay in Touch! Email: proleftpodcast@gmail.com Website: proleftpod.com Support via Patreon: patreon.com/proleftpod or Donate in the Venmo App @proleftpod Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791 Support the show

Episode 1005 of The Professional Left makes the case that if you really want to understand America — not a focus group of twelve Trump voters in Florida, not three congressional primaries in Brooklyn, not the punditocracy's endless parade of confident predictions about things they fundamentally don't understand — you should probably be paying attention to Illinois, the most statistically representative state in the country, which the elite media treats as flyover country and nothing more. Driftglass and Blue Gal dispatch the Maine Senate mess quickly and cleanly, remind everyone of the crucial difference between how Democrats handle scandal and how Republicans do, and then spend the bulk of the episode doing what almost no one else in political media bothers to do — reporting on what an actual Democratic majority government looks like when it's governing well. The episode also takes a long, hard look at the prediction industrial complex and why mistaking a focus group for a national trend, or a New York City primary for a Democratic Party revelation, is not journalism — it's just filling airtime between mattress ads. Illinois, it turns out, has all the answers. Too bad nobody's asking. Stay in Touch! Email: proleftpodcast@gmail.com Website: proleftpod.com Support via Patreon: patreon.com/proleftpod or Donate in the Venmo App @proleftpod Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791 Support the show

It goes in circles but never gets anywhere It’s all horses’ asses And there is no brass ring. Driftglass on the Bob Cesca Show : https://www.bobcesca.com/the-bob-cesca-interview-driftglass-day-7-1-26/ Stay in Touch! Email: proleftpodcast@gmail.com Website: proleftpod.com Support via Patreon: patreon.com/proleftpod or Donate in the Venmo App @proleftpod Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791 Support the show

Science Fiction University returns at long last, with an extended deep dive into one of the oldest and most unsettling questions in the genre — who can you trust when the threat is wearing a human face? The episode traces the theme of trust through three very different versions of the same story: John W. Campbell's 1938 novella "Who Goes There?", Howard Hawks' 1951 Cold War-era adaptation "The Thing from Another World", and John Carpenter's 1982 masterpiece "The Thing" — showing how the same basic plot was transformed by the very different Americas that produced each version. Along the way there are detours through the nature of storytelling itself, the difference between trust and faith, the rise of the "mad scientist" trope, and why Carpenter's bleak, exhausted ending hits so differently than Campbell's optimistic one. If you've ever wondered why the 1982 version of The Thing feels so much more modern and unsettling than its predecessors, this episode will explain exactly why — and the answer has everything to do with Vietnam, Watergate, and the slow collapse of American institutional trust. Links for this episode: John W. Campbell’s book/novella "Who Goes There?" (1938) is available from major ebook retailers. Also, many libraries offer a physical or digital borrowing option. "The Thing from Another World" (1951) is currently streaming on Criterion Channel, Tubi, The Roku Channel, YouTube, Amazon, and Apple TV. "The Thing" (1982) is currently streaming on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and YouTube. Answers to our QUIZ! Terminator 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ8nofcN1gI Dr. Who: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQvn5sWNVtk Star Trek – Picard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsDg01EuniQ Batman Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a71VqHpza58 The Thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmqVrB1TTGo Stay in Touch! Email: proleftpodcast@gmail.com Website: proleftpod.com Support via Patreon: patreon.com/proleftpod or Donate in the Venmo App @proleftpod Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791 Support the show

No rebranding! They cashed all those checks with the Tea Party. Episode 1002 of The Professional Left opens with a pop quiz, and the reveal says everything you need to know about how this particular cycle always ends. Driftglass and Blue Gal trace the long, depressing, and darkly funny history of Republicans who were "done with Trump" until they weren't — Beck, Cruz, Graham, Vance, Ingraham, and a cast of dozens — making the case that what looks like a new political reckoning is actually just the same old rebranding operation being assembled from the same wreckage by the same people. Two classic films provide the episode's organizing metaphors: one about building a new plane out of the pieces of the one that crashed, and one about the uncomfortable truth that you can't put an entire party into a lifeboat when the entire party is the problem. The Republican Party didn't get captured by its worst impulses — it revealed them. Driftglass was also on two other podcasts this week! The Nicole Sandler Show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NlPMu5Y29Q The Brad Cast with Desi and Digby: https://bradblog.com/?p=17822 Stay in Touch! Email: proleftpodcast@gmail.com Website: proleftpod.com Support via Patreon: patreon.com/proleftpod or Donate in the Venmo App @proleftpod Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791 Support the show

Episode 1001 of The Professional Left kicks off the post-1000 era with a reading from Octavia Butler — written in 1993, about a fictional America that looks uncomfortably like the one outside your window right now — and uses it as the jumping-off point for a clear-eyed reckoning with why the country got here and who is responsible. The opening of the Obama Presidential Center was a wonderful occasion by almost any measure, but the sight of a certain former president celebrated as a beloved elder statesman on that stage is something Driftglass and Blue Gal simply cannot let pass without comment — because the problem with the Republican party was never Trump, and it didn't start in 2016, and pretending otherwise is just the next chapter of the same lie. The episode traces a straight, unbroken line from the failures and crimes of the Bush years through the racist primal scream of the Obama era to the inevitable arrival of Trump, making the case that every institution now preparing to rehabilitate the post-Trump Republican party is getting ready to run the exact same con all over again. Our job, as it has always been, is to remember — and to keep saying so out loud. Stay in Touch! Email: proleftpodcast@gmail.com Website: proleftpod.com Support via Patreon: patreon.com/proleftpod or Donate in the Venmo App @proleftpod Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791 Support the show