The Professional Left Podcast with Driftglass and Blue Gal

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  Ep 1022: The Hearts of Men 15.09.2026 55分

  Episode 1022 asks what history's hardest lessons — Reconstruction's collapse, the Allies' insistence on unconditional German surrender — have to teach about defeating a movement built on grievance and racial resentment rather than "economic anxiety." Driftglass and Blue Gal make the case for treating the whole GOP as an enemy of democracy, not a rival to reconcile with, and for why repetition of hard truths may be the only weapon the Left has left. Stay in Touch! Email: proleftpodcast@g...
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  Ep 1021: The Coal Ash Of Politics 10.09.2026 1時間 1分

  Episode 1021 exposes a $6 million Republican ad campaign that manipulated grieving parents of murder victims into unknowingly slandering North Carolina Senate candidate Roy Cooper with lies their own children's killers had nothing to do with. Driftglass and Blue Gal trace how this fits a decades-old pattern — Fox News and Hate Radio building a toxic "coal ash pond" of propaganda so complete that facts bounce off true believers, illustrated by journalist Barton Gellman's failed attempt to fact...
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  Ep 1020: Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word 03.09.2026 50分

  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 t...
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  Ep 1019: Where's The Beef? 01.09.2026 49分

  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 parall...
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  Ep 1018 Meet Dem Candidate Dr. Cinde Wirth (IN-06) 27.08.2026 1時間 5分

  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...
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  Ep 1017: Judgment Day 25.08.2026 55分

  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 "t...
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  Ep 1016: F**k Civility 20.08.2026 1時間 1分

  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 ...
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  Ep 1015: James and the Giant Screech 13.08.2026 55分

  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 cam...
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  Ep 1014: The New Red Scare 11.08.2026 1時間 1分

  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...
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  Ep 1013 Talking Dem Politics with a Dem Politician 06.08.2026 1時間 14分

  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 pr...
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  Ep 1012: A Convo With Matthew Sheffield 04.08.2026 1時間 3分

  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 ...
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  Ep 1011: Not Sending Their Best 30.07.2026 44分

  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..." ...
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  Ep 1010: WHCD WTF? 28.07.2026 1時間

  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 my...
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  Ep 1009 The Wall 23.07.2026 1時間 11分

  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 no...
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  Ep 1008: Reality Remains Undefeated 21.07.2026 56分

  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 radicaliza...
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  Ep 1007: Happy Birthday Blue Gal Retrospective, Part I 16.07.2026 1時間 16分

  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 Republ...
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  Ep 1006: Pump Up The Venom 09.07.2026 1時間 5分

  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 pr...
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  Ep 1005: Meanwhile, In Local News... 07.07.2026 1時間 4分

  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. Dri...
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  Ep 1004: The MAGA Merry-Go-Round 02.07.2026 1時間 7分

  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: [email protected] 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
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  Ep 1003: Science Fiction University - Trust 30.06.2026 1時間 4分

  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 ...