The Professional Left Podcast with Driftglass and Blue Gal

Driftglass and Blue Gal bring their epic year-in-review series to a close, covering September through December and finally boxing up 2025 to send it to hell. The hosts examine the final months of a year that saw legacy media trapped in their own 'Both Sides Do It' prison, DOGE's promises evaporate into nothing, and the Epstein files get a (incompetent, but still) cover up.  But ther...

Driftglass and Blue Gal continue their review of 2025, covering May through August in this second part of their series.  The hosts show how the Republican Party's corruption and chaos isn't something new or unexpected—it's exactly what the party has been building toward for decades through right-wing talk radio and Fox News. They walk through major events from those months, includin...

Driftglass and Blue Gal reflect on what they call an "annus horribilis"—a genuinely awful year that fundamentally changed America as Trump's second term brought unprecedented corruption, chaos, and the erosion of democratic institutions. From Qatar's $400 million Boeing 747 bribe to Trump's crypto schemes and the $300 million White House ballroom boondoggle, they catalog t...

Trump's "affordability" tour crashes into reality, with the president telling struggling Americans to buy fewer pencils and dolls while his own supporters admit they can't afford groceries. David Brooks' embarrassing 2009 love letter to John Thune as the GOP's wholesome future collides with Thune today holding the biggest bag of political excrement in modern history a...

We examine the difference between political "weather" and "climate" this week, starting with Trump once again bribing farmers with $11 billion after his own tariffs destroyed their markets. We play audio demonstrating Trump's cognitive decline and discuss his increasingly unhinged Truth Social posts, including a bizarre rant about Marjorie Taylor Greene. The Republican Par...

The dangerous convergence of Trumpian immunity and media complicity creates for Trump an imaginary “kingdom” once reserved for anointed kings.  Our Constitutional form of “government of the people” has been corrupted by both MAGA's belief that Trump operates with divine authority above the law and a mainstream media that protects its own incompetent insiders at all costs.  As a side quest, wh...

No show today; we've had quite a weekend.   We'll be back to our regularly scheduled podcasting on Thursday.  See you then!  Support the show

In this week's episode, we experience the whipsaw—that aggressive, back-and-forth sawing motion that's now a perfect metaphor for what Republicans are doing to millions of American families over the Affordable Care Act. We watch in real time as Trump's promised two-year ACA subsidy extension is announced, then delayed, then killed by Mike Johnson—all within 48 hours. Why did Republi...

In this week's episode, we dive deep into the infrastructure project nobody wants to talk about: the construction of political lifeboats. What are we witnessing as Trump's administration unfolds? We're seeing the familiar pattern of those who enabled catastrophe beginning to build their escape routes—just as they did after the Bush administration collapsed, when the "Fake Tea P...

GOP rats are slowly but surely abandoning the sinking Trump ship, and we have to ask: Will "Republican Lifeboats" once again successfully allow the MAGA/Tea Party faithful to escape accountability? We analyze Marjorie Taylor Greene's masterful deployment of the "Magic Words" to blame "both sides of the aisle," framing her slow-motion exit from the Trump pandemoni...

This week, we're talking about the Epstein Files, the shutdown that wasn't really about the shutdown, and why six words might just end a presidency. Meanwhile, some privileged podcasters are dismissing angry "online" Democrats as if losing our healthcare is just a theoretical concern.   Plus:  The increasingly evident mental decline of a president: Trump goes from "inventi...

This week, we're celebrating our first post-Blue Tsunami show! Democrats won across the board on Tuesday, and we're sleeping a little better. To quote Churchill: "This is not the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." Happy 21st blogiversary to the amazing Fran Blue Gal! Zohran Mamdani won NYC mayor with over 50% of the vote. And yet the Wall Street Journal immedia...

This week, we're recording on election day while awaiting results to find out which version of "Democrats are doing it wrong!" the pundits will run with tomorrow. We open with words of wisdom from Illinois Governor JB Pritzker to the American Federation of Teachers. Then we come to bury Dick Cheney, not to praise him. We'll explore our "12 Rules for Staying Fing Sane,&quot...

This week, we're recording on Driftglass's birthday while he's still battling a cold and sounding disturbingly like RFK Jr. meets Broderick Crawford—so we're keeping it simple and direct. Why should Democrats stop accommodating Republican sociopaths who inflict pain on their own base as leverage? And what happens when Democrats finally say "let them burn" instead of r...

Does Driftglass with laryngitis sound like Brenda Vaccaro?  The podcasters disagree, YOU be the judge!  (See you on Thursday, which is also Driftglass's 65th birthday!  Woot!)  Stay in Touch!  Email: proleftpodcast@gmail.com Website: proleftpod.com Support via Patreon: patreon.com/proleftpod Donate via PayPal:   https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/proleftpodcast or Donate in the Venmo App @prolef...

This week, we're examining the legacy media's desperate attempt to plug a 20-foot hole in their Both Sides narrative—and why their favorite solution won't work. The New York Times Editorial Board insists that "moving to the center is the way to win," but the data show that this strategy is already exhausted. Talking of compromise with an enemy who wants no reconciliation i...

Find your No Kings Protest March/Rally at https://www.nokings.org/  This week, we're asking the only question that matters: Will what we do actually help? What does it mean to be "effective" in the fight to save democracy? Did throwing pies at Bill Kristol, Rupert Murdoch, or Newt Gingrich ever change anything? And why should we always ask ourselves the Bridge of Spies question: &qu...

This week, we're watching the media scramble for survival as tectonic forces fracture the landscape—and the billionaires are building lifeboats while Mount Vesuvius smokes overhead. Why is The Bulwark declaring itself "the future" while The Washington Post and CBS News die?  And what does it mean that CBS just hired Bari Weiss to, let's face it, manage the death of broadcast TV...

In this week's episode, we tackle the concept of "ethos"—what people actually stand for versus what they claim to believe. Drawing parallels from the Cornerstone Speech of 1861 to George Wallace's segregationist campaign, we explore how America's ugliest movements had clear, comprehensible (if abhorrent) belief systems. But what about today's MAGA movement? Beyond rag...

Welcome to Book Club Day at the Professional Left, where we're spoiling a 141-year-old novel that remains the undisputed champ of American literature—and revealing why it's more relevant than ever. What does Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn teach us about the struggle for America's soul in the age of Trump?  Huck faces an agonizing choice: turn in his friend Jim and save his soul,...

This week, we're unpacking a tale of two shutdowns—and spoiler alert: they're both Trump's. First, the government shutdown:  Why are Republicans celebrating a government shutdown while simultaneously blaming Democrats for it? How can they claim it's the "Schumer Shutdown" when they control all three branches of government? And why can't they keep their messaging...

This week, we're delving deep into a question that's been making the rounds on those very large political never-Trump websites: Why don't Democrats have their own Charlie Kirk network? What's the real secret behind the conservative propaganda machine's success? Spoiler alert: it's not "moxie," fearlessness, or bootstraps. Surprise!  It's billions in oli...

What does it mean when the government exists primarily to entertain the MAGA base rather than serve the people?  We examine how Conservative media have adopted a "Tell, Don't Show" approach to cover Trump's increasingly erratic performances, particularly his rambling United Nations speech that foreign diplomats called "stark, raving mad."  Everything is a show in Trum...

We missed the rapture! This week we're diving deep into the political machine playbook - because understanding the past is the only way to make sense of the insanity we're witnessing today. Why are Republicans frantically trying to turn a dead podcaster into the next Confederate monument? And what does it mean when your political strategy depends on keeping your base at a "full boil...

A wide-ranging conversation with the incomparable Charlie Pierce of Esquire Magazine.  What should the Democratic base be doing now?  What should Democrats in Congress be doing now?  And what for which NFL team should Blue Gal and her daughter go all in?  (Driftglass has an opinion, and it starts with Da and ends with Bears.)  More at proleftpod.com.  Charlie Pierce image is a screenshot from, YES...