The Weekly season 1 episode 8 recap: Hard Left

This episode of The Weekly examines the Democratic party heading into the 2020 election and asks whether or not the party is moving too far to the left for its own good.

Continuing it’s efforts to shed light on different aspects of the upcoming presidential election, The Weekly uses this episode to take a look at the Democratic party and the younger generation of socially conscious activists that is pulling the party further and further left.

We follow national politics reporter Astead Herndon through this episode. He opens the episode showing the viral video of Dianne Feinstein telling children who had come to voice their opinions about climate change that they don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s used to show the disconnect between the old guard Democrats and the new direction of the party. The question he poses: will this divide tear the party apart and ensure a 2020 Trump victory?

To examine this question, Herndon first presents us with the Sunrise Movement, a group focused on climate change who believes the Green New Deal could energize voters heading into the 2020 election. The group, Herndon says, was virtually unknown a year ago, but now has a multi-million dollar budget and is working to get all of the presidential hopefuls to sign on to the Green New Deal.

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His first interview of the episode is with Varshini Prakash, the executive director of Sunrise Movement. Even she didn’t expect the group to get so big so quickly.

Herndon traces their growth back to a sit in at Nancy Pelosi’s office in 2018, after a report came out saying there’d be catastrophic climate change by 2030. It’s an event, he says, that wouldn’t have gotten any traction…except that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came through. Then, the news picked it up and their group’s name (and mission) went national.

This transitions to Herndon’s interview with Rhiana Gunn-Wright, the 29-year-old policy director for New Consensus, the group actually working to turn the Green New Deal from theoretical concept into a concrete policy proposal. Gunn-Wright says she recognizes the pressure to get this policy right—it really is life or death.

After highlighting a few aspects of the Green New Deal that its supporters are excited about, Herndon turns The Weekly toward the immediate attacks lodged by the Republicans. He makes sure to highlight the exaggerations made about the deal—including the president claiming it’d shut down air travel.