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-check a January 6th supporter into reality. The episode contrasts that with Illinois' actual record — credit rating upgrades, record tourism, real economic gains — that MAGA voters refuse to acknowledge no matter how much evidence piles up. It's about what happens when lies become load-bearing walls in people's minds, and why no amount of truth can dislodge them once they're structural.

Links for this episode:  

Question Everything Link:  https://www.kcrw.com/shows/question-everything/stories/3-the-journalist-and-the-firefighter

Gellman Atlantic Link: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/01/january-6-insurrection-trump-coup-2024-election/620843/

News and Observer Link:  https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/election/article317086926.html

Capitol News Link: https://capitolnewsillinois.com/news/sp-global-upgrades-illinois-credit-rating/

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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/

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Website: proleftpod.com 

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Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791

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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.

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Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791

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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/

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Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791

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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 

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Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791

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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/

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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

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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 

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Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791

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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. 

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Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791

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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. 

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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! 

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Website: proleftpod.com 

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Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791

Support the show