Speaker 1: Today's percentI sponsor is Simply Safe Home security. Every political
Speaker 1: consultant will tell you hope is not a strategy. You
Speaker 1: don't wait until election night to see if your ground
Speaker 1: game works. But traditional security systems do exactly that. They
Speaker 1: play defense only after someone is already inside your house.
Speaker 1: Like not going a Way, Wisconsin.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean.
Speaker 3: That's exactly what it is.
Speaker 1: It's the traditional security system to Unlike traditional security systems
Speaker 1: that only alert you after a break in is already underway,
Speaker 1: simply Safe is designed to help stop intruders before they
Speaker 1: get inside. They got smart AI powered outdoor cameras that
Speaker 1: detect suspicious activity the perimeter in alert live US based
Speaker 1: agents to step in. Simply safes agents assess the threat
Speaker 1: intervening through the outdoor camera to scare off trespassers and
Speaker 1: call nine to one one for dispatch. Our CEO Lucinda
Speaker 1: recently the simply Safe system installed at her house. She
Speaker 1: got the indoor and outdoor cameras, the motion sensors, the
Speaker 1: windows and the door centers and soil. Her home is
Speaker 1: fully protected.
Speaker 2: She said. Installation was super easy.
Speaker 1: Everything has worked seamlessly since the day got done, and
Speaker 1: it gives her peace of mind knowing that her home
Speaker 1: is now protected by the good people over at simply Safe.
Speaker 1: Simply Safe has been protecting your world for twenty years.
Speaker 1: Right now you can get fifty percent off a new
Speaker 1: simply Safe system. Go to simplysafe dot com slash crooked.
Speaker 1: That's simplysafe dot com slash crooked for fifty percent off.
Speaker 1: There's no safe like simply Safe.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Podze of America. I'm Alex Wagner on today's show,
Speaker 4: MS Now is Chris Hayes dot By to talk about
Speaker 4: recent progressive wins, how Democrats find their path to victory
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty six and beyond, and who is winning
Speaker 4: the war for American attention. Chris and I dug into
Speaker 4: candidates strategies as the midterms draw ever closer, as well
Speaker 4: as how the Democratic Party can rally around its new
Speaker 4: Senate candidate in Michigan.
Speaker 3: Abdul al Saied.
Speaker 4: We also talk twenty twenty eight and how these midterms
Speaker 4: this November might influence the party in the wild ride ahead.
Speaker 4: It was a great conversation and we're going to get
Speaker 4: to it in just a minute, But first a little housekeeping.
Speaker 3: If you have not gotten tickets for Crooked Con. Yet,
Speaker 3: what are you doing?
Speaker 4: Here's another reason why you should at Crooked We believe
Speaker 4: the answer to right wing authoritarianism is a big, welcoming,
Speaker 4: fun pro democracy movement, So we have invited some of
Speaker 4: the biggest funniest voices online to all day Crooked Con.
Speaker 4: At Crooked Con, you will have the chance to meet
Speaker 4: creators and new media personalities who make sense of the
Speaker 4: news with humor and hot takes. They'll be popping around
Speaker 4: the Washington Convention Center hosting happy hours, q and as
Speaker 4: and workshops for attendees. They will also, be, of course,
Speaker 4: making content, because what happens at Crooked Con ends up
Speaker 4: online for every political nerd to see. Check out which
Speaker 4: creators are joining us so far at Crookedcon dot com
Speaker 4: and grab your tickets today post haste.
Speaker 3: See you in d C.
Speaker 4: Here's my conversation with ms now is Chris Hayes joining
Speaker 4: me now in a tank top. For those of you
Speaker 4: who are not watching on YouTube, you should be, Please
Speaker 4: hit subscribe while you're at it.
Speaker 3: Is the one. Oh look at those gun season What
Speaker 3: does it say? Suns out, guns out, guns suns out,
Speaker 3: guns out.
Speaker 4: Is the great Chris Hayes, buddy, It's always great to
Speaker 4: see you, especially in the summer.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's pure August right now, so I'm.
Speaker 3: Not it's giving real Friday.
Speaker 2: It's also on Friday in August, sure.
Speaker 4: Are so you know if you if you didn't think
Speaker 4: he was wearing a hot pink tank top and a
Speaker 4: gold chain drinking Celsius like there's no Sunday. Okay, I
Speaker 4: was hoping it was Celsius. That would have just been
Speaker 4: a little bit more on pros tonight.
Speaker 2: And that's that's a hard rule.
Speaker 3: Got It's a hard rule.
Speaker 2: One has had to enforce.
Speaker 3: Learn the hard way.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I was really excited when when we had a big
Speaker 4: primary on Tuesday and we thought, who can help us
Speaker 4: unpack what the fuck happens now? Who is wise but
Speaker 4: also just ballsy enough to say what they really think?
Speaker 4: And Chris Hayes, you're up on you won. Let's start
Speaker 4: with kind of where we sit, as you say, on
Speaker 4: Friday after the Michigan primary ahead of the Wisconsin primary,
Speaker 4: our progressives having a moment yes or no?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I think it's a huge you know,
Speaker 5: one of the weird things that happened in elections is
Speaker 5: we interpret the results against the benchmark of polls as
Speaker 5: opposed to the benchmark of like fundamentals. So, like, you know,
Speaker 5: I remember twenty twenty people, that was a disappointing election
Speaker 5: night for Democrats in twenty twenty because.
Speaker 2: It was all much closer than the polls had predicted.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Sarah Gideon was going to beat Susan Collins and
Speaker 5: she lost by twelve points.
Speaker 2: And you know, there's a bunch of races like that.
Speaker 5: So but you got to take a step back and say,
Speaker 5: what happy here was that the polling was wrong, right,
Speaker 5: the polling was a miss. So just look at the results.
Speaker 5: And the fact of the matter is you had a
Speaker 5: unabashed progressive candidate who has run statewide and primaries before
Speaker 5: and lost by twenty points. He ran against Gresham Whitner,
Speaker 5: win a narrow victory over a candidate who I think
Speaker 5: is not a great candidate, as like politicians go, not
Speaker 5: a great but did have the backing of the state
Speaker 5: party essentially behind her, both the incumbent Center Gary Peters
Speaker 5: and the incumbent govern Whitmer. You had sixty million dollars
Speaker 5: in outside spending on her side against Abdul Sayed and
Speaker 5: he emerged victorious in a swing state in which, look,
Speaker 5: there's a theory of the case here why a progressive
Speaker 5: outspook and progressive candidate can win a statewide swing state race.
Speaker 5: They have a theory of the case, and I think
Speaker 5: it's actually a relatively persuasive one. But it's also like
Speaker 5: there's real to be worried about it, and just like
Speaker 5: there is, I mean, there just is, like and despite
Speaker 5: all that, he did emerge victorious, and I just think
Speaker 5: there's no universe in which he would have emerged victorious
Speaker 5: two four six years ago. Like something is obviously happening
Speaker 5: among and let's be clear here the democratic primary electorate,
Speaker 5: which is a different electorate than the general electorate, right,
Speaker 5: and a different electorate than the presidential general electorate. We're
Speaker 5: talking about concentric circles. But yes, it was a huge
Speaker 5: win for progressives for sure.
Speaker 4: At the risk of sounding like I'm glazing for some
Speaker 4: of you use that term, Abdul also I had I
Speaker 4: do think there's really something to be said, like the
Speaker 4: redefinition of what electable means is changing, and the issues
Speaker 4: that he's talking about.
Speaker 3: It's the first time I've seen a glimmer.
Speaker 4: Of an authentic answer to what it means to be
Speaker 4: a populist and to be on the left and take
Speaker 4: rightfully the mantle of economic populism and like really appeal
Speaker 4: to working class voters in an authentically progressive way. That's
Speaker 4: like really steals it from Maga convincingly. Like I felt
Speaker 4: like he was very like, you know, abdul I, say,
Speaker 4: we'll talk about Israel on the second, but just on
Speaker 4: the economic issues, on healthcare, on jobs, Like he was
Speaker 4: relentless on beating this drum in a way that felt
Speaker 4: utterly authentic and very much in line with what democrats
Speaker 4: maybe should have been talking about for decades, for years now,
Speaker 4: if not a decade.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think that points to what the theory
Speaker 5: of the case for the progressive left is about how
Speaker 5: to win cross pressured swing state elections, right, is that
Speaker 5: people are pissed off of the status quo. They don't
Speaker 5: like foreign wars and money going abroad. Again, these are
Speaker 5: like the cross pressured voters you can win. They're pissed
Speaker 5: off with the economic status quo. Things are too expensive,
Speaker 5: and they are enraged at the billionaires and the corporations
Speaker 5: and the tech lords that want to put data centers
Speaker 5: in their backyards. And this is a cluster of issues
Speaker 5: that are both squarely in the kind of progressive populist
Speaker 5: wheelhouse and also can win people who aren't just down
Speaker 5: the line progressives, right, And if you focus that, that's
Speaker 5: the theory here and they I mean again, it's going
Speaker 5: to get tested.
Speaker 4: Oh, it's sure, it sure is both both and not
Speaker 4: just in Michigan. I mean I think also it's this
Speaker 4: is we're talking. These are precursors to national debates that
Speaker 4: we're going to be having for the next two years,
Speaker 4: and what.
Speaker 5: Happens here is going to have a huge impact on
Speaker 5: those national bates, particularly the presidential primary, about who and
Speaker 5: what is electable.
Speaker 4: So when you hear when we talk about Abdulph sai
Speaker 4: ed and to some degree where we talk about like
Speaker 4: Zora Mum Donnie, how do you square that with Abigail
Speaker 4: Spanberger and Mikey Cheryl and Corey Bush being beaten in
Speaker 4: Missouri by Wesley Bell, who was backed by Apak in
Speaker 4: the state and Marie Glusing camp Perez, who handily wins
Speaker 4: her primary and is one of the most centrist moderate
Speaker 4: Democrats in the House. Like, how do you just kind
Speaker 4: of say, I mean all politics is local, And if
Speaker 4: that's the case, then what does that portend for the
Speaker 4: national reckoning that's a foot come next year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think one is. Yes.
Speaker 5: I mean it's sort of a boring and deflating thing
Speaker 5: to say all politics is local, but that is a
Speaker 5: big part of it. Like we're talking about very different
Speaker 5: constituencies in very different places, with different electorates and different
Speaker 5: issue profiles.
Speaker 2: That's one. Two.
Speaker 5: None of this stuff is linear, right, So it's like
Speaker 5: in the it's like the stock market goes up, but
Speaker 5: it goes down.
Speaker 2: It goes up, and it goes down.
Speaker 5: Over a thirty year period, it's gone up, right, So
Speaker 5: it's like, if you sort of take a step back,
Speaker 5: it's like, is the progressive left growing in strength inside
Speaker 5: the Democratic Party in the aggregate over the last ten years? Yes,
Speaker 5: like pretty clearly yes, right, Like since twenty sixteen. I
Speaker 5: think the answer is since the Bernie primary, you know, defeat.
Speaker 5: I think the answer is very clearly yes. Now in
Speaker 5: individual cases, that doesn't mean like they're winning everything, and no.
Speaker 2: There's there's a lot of variation.
Speaker 5: The last thing I would say here about Abdul said
Speaker 5: and Mom Donnie and this was true of Platner two
Speaker 5: before he dropped out.
Speaker 2: So think about what are the.
Speaker 5: Gates that you go to go through to become a
Speaker 5: candidate through the traditional what people call it establishment, let's
Speaker 5: say traditional channels. Right, It's like constituency relationships, relationships with
Speaker 5: mentors and other elected officials, endorsements from local groups, right,
Speaker 5: being good at navigating the politics of the coalition. Right,
Speaker 5: these are all things that you have.
Speaker 2: To be good at.
Speaker 5: Being a really, really great communicator is nice to have,
Speaker 5: but not necessary to ascend up the ranks in the
Speaker 5: traditional politics. So like Troy Jackson, yes exactly, who got
Speaker 5: pretty high in main politics. Or even Abigail Spaenberger is
Speaker 5: a perfectly good communicator, but she's not.
Speaker 3: Like electric electric.
Speaker 5: Right, If you were not going that route and you
Speaker 5: are going to have success, you have to be a
Speaker 5: really dazzling communicator. So you've got a different set of
Speaker 5: features that are being selected for. So the reason that
Speaker 5: you get Platiner lighting up Man on fire, and the
Speaker 5: reason that Mom Donnie is able to win that primary
Speaker 5: coming out of nowhere, and the reason I think Abdul
Speaker 5: said ends up winning a very hard fought split vote
Speaker 5: win is that they're just extremely gifted communicators. Now that's
Speaker 5: not all that matters in politics, because another thing that
Speaker 5: happens through the gate checking, that happens through the normal
Speaker 5: assent in.
Speaker 2: Politics is some vetting, is some like is this person
Speaker 2: got some stuff in their past, it's gonna blow up?
Speaker 5: And we saw like a rocket ascendency via tremendous charisma
Speaker 5: and political talent in grand Platner completely blowing up.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: So, but I think that distills down a little bit
Speaker 5: when you point to Mom Donnie and abdols I said,
Speaker 5: it's it's both and right. The ideological ferment has to
Speaker 5: be there, but you have.
Speaker 2: To be really good to capture.
Speaker 4: It because they well, okay, so where does that leave
Speaker 4: you on we're saying this, you're going to be hearing
Speaker 4: this episode on the eve of the Wisconsin primary where
Speaker 4: Francesca hang Well, who is not a dazzling communicator, no,
Speaker 4: and who Bernie Sanders, who's been kind of like a
Speaker 4: mini king maker in this primary series, is not on
Speaker 4: Pods of America with my colleague John Favor did not
Speaker 4: specifically endorse her. Do you have a theory of the
Speaker 4: case on that is that because there's a sense that
Speaker 4: she's going to lose, and she's actually one of the
Speaker 4: future stars of the party of the left of the party.
Speaker 5: There's a few things going on. One is the sort
Speaker 5: of there has been a sort of comedy of errors
Speaker 5: among the sort of establishment or the Democratic Party that
Speaker 5: has led to this moment in terms of Mandela Barnes
Speaker 5: drops out, Sarah Rodriguez, who is going to be who
Speaker 5: was kind of the sort of consensus pick but had
Speaker 5: an enormous kind of basically her finance director get a
Speaker 5: whole bunch of stuff she shouldn't have.
Speaker 2: It's unclear like the extent of it, but she drops out.
Speaker 5: So one is just like one of these kind of
Speaker 5: you know, a kind of car crash that happens that
Speaker 5: you're sort of around for. The other thing is, yes,
Speaker 5: there is a desire for there is the primary base,
Speaker 5: the primary voting Democratic base is to the left of
Speaker 5: both the median voter and the median Democratic politician. In
Speaker 5: a lot of cases, Hang is taking advantage of that.
Speaker 5: The other thing that's really important here is no one
Speaker 5: in that primary has gone up with tv ads but
Speaker 5: for the Republican super pac that spent five million dollars
Speaker 5: boosting home This is part of the thing that people
Speaker 5: have not talked about, but is a big part of
Speaker 5: the story there.
Speaker 2: No one else is spending.
Speaker 5: The state party in Wisconsin has a lot of money,
Speaker 5: partly because of how good a job Ben Wickler has
Speaker 5: done through the years. They won't spend until the general.
Speaker 5: They're not spending the primary. The primary candidates have been spending.
Speaker 5: There has been five million about dollars of outside money
Speaker 5: spent to boost Tong by Republican interests because they think
Speaker 5: she's she's beatable. And the last thing I'll say here
Speaker 5: what you see in Sanders not endorsing Hong and even
Speaker 5: Hassan Piker wrapping her on the knuckles for her Thanksgiving
Speaker 5: answer God, is that everyone actually understands that there's a
Speaker 5: penalty for ideological extremism.
Speaker 3: And that's good, but people kind of.
Speaker 2: Pretend not to.
Speaker 5: It's like we all get that there is kind of
Speaker 5: a bell curve of political views, and you do you
Speaker 5: don't want to be too far from the center, and
Speaker 5: everyone gets that, and everyone loves a winner. No one
Speaker 5: wants to be associated with a loser. So this sort
Speaker 5: of ascendant movement doesn't want to feel like Hong disproves
Speaker 5: their theory if and when she loses, because I don't
Speaker 5: think she's yes exactly.
Speaker 4: That people who like fireworks, yes, bad on people who
Speaker 4: like The Fourth of July.
Speaker 6: Positive America is brought to you by cook Unity. I
Speaker 6: love COO Community. I've been a Community customer for years,
Speaker 6: long before they ever sponsored this podcast. Just had a
Speaker 6: bunch this week. I had a great chicken seschuan salad.
Speaker 6: I had a Thai beef and rice dish that was really,
Speaker 6: really good, and I'm going to have it again tonight.
Speaker 2: Probably.
Speaker 6: Cook Unity is the first chef led meal delivery service
Speaker 6: that makes your meals and small batches inside local micro
Speaker 6: kitchens across the US, not factories, so every dish arrives
Speaker 6: with the kind of freshness you'd get at the restaurant itself.
Speaker 6: Meals from Michelin starred chefs, James Beard winners, and Food
Speaker 6: Network stars. Go to cookunity dot com slash crooked or
Speaker 6: use code crooked before check out for fifty percent off
Speaker 6: your first week. Cook Unity works with some of the
Speaker 6: best chefs in the country to bring creative, delicious meals
Speaker 6: to your door. There are hundreds of dishes to choose from,
Speaker 6: and the menu is updated constantly over ten different dietary preferences,
Speaker 6: high protein, low sodium, GLP one, pescatarian, gluten free, and more.
Speaker 6: Over twenty five global cuisines Mediterranean, Korean, Thai, Mexican, Italian,
Speaker 6: and more. Taste what happens when real award winning chefs
Speaker 6: make fresh, small, batched meals just for you. Go to
Speaker 6: Cookunity dot com slash crooked, or enter code crooked before
Speaker 6: checkout to get fifty percent off your first order. That's
Speaker 6: fifty percent off your first order by using code crooked
Speaker 6: or going to cookunity dot com slash crooked.
Speaker 1: This episode is sponsored by better Help. Better help as
Speaker 1: an average live therapy session rating of four point nine
Speaker 1: out of five based on over one point seven million
Speaker 1: client session reviews, The feedback from real people who have
Speaker 1: actually used the service speaks for itself. More than six
Speaker 1: million people have used better Help globally. Better Help therapists
Speaker 1: have at least three years and one thousand hours of
Speaker 1: hands on experience. They also hold all required education, training
Speaker 1: and certifications across a range of mental health specialties, meaning
Speaker 1: the perfect therapist for you could be just a few
Speaker 1: clicks away. Better Help makes it easy to get started.
Speaker 1: Answer a few questions, get matched with a therapist based
Speaker 1: on your needs, and switch therapists at any time if
Speaker 1: it's not the right fit. Listen, you guys have a
Speaker 1: lot going on your lives. You had family stuff, work stuff,
Speaker 1: just the news, country stot off, country stuff. The worst
Speaker 1: person in our country happens to be the president of
Speaker 1: our country. You should probably talk to somebody. Would benefit
Speaker 1: you to talk to somebody. Check out Better Help, see
Speaker 1: the reviews, see what stands out, and see if Betterhelp
Speaker 1: is right for you. Visit betterhelp dot com slash PSA
Speaker 1: that's better HGLP dot com slash PSA.
Speaker 3: I bet I know where you sit on this.
Speaker 4: But like Ram Emmanuel, who's probably running from president in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty eight, is very worried about the DSAY the
Speaker 4: Democratic Socialist of America and Rights in a Wall Street
Speaker 4: Journal op ed this week. When the DSA attempts to
Speaker 4: turn safe democratic states and districts a darker shade of blue,
Speaker 4: Democratic candidates and swing districts are put at a distinct disadvantage.
Speaker 4: Should twenty twenty eight ers just shut the fuck up
Speaker 4: about the DSA.
Speaker 3: For right now?
Speaker 4: Like, what is the answer there? How would you like
Speaker 4: to see them grapple with this dynamic.
Speaker 5: Well, part of the thing I would say is that
Speaker 5: I think there's a like there is there's a kernel
Speaker 5: of truth to it, But also are you helping by
Speaker 5: putting your attention on it? If the whole.
Speaker 4: Process, if you're wrong, you've alienated a crucial part of
Speaker 4: the base that you're going to actually need to try
Speaker 4: and win over.
Speaker 5: This is a real and this is a real paradox.
Speaker 5: I think of what we might call like this term
Speaker 5: that got start used as popularism, right, which is a
Speaker 5: broad term that Democrats had to sort of move back
Speaker 5: to center, align themselves with the with views that had
Speaker 5: majority support. And there's a certain weak version of that
Speaker 5: argument that's almost tautologically true, like yeah, when you run
Speaker 5: for office, you want to be nearish the center of
Speaker 5: the voters that you're appealing to. Now, the question of
Speaker 5: like what is the center and what's the issue space
Speaker 5: and what's salient and how you get it as a
Speaker 5: whole complicated thing, and it's harder than it looks. But
Speaker 5: one of the things that we saw happened with the
Speaker 5: Labor Party in the UK, which tested this theory. They
Speaker 5: came into office and they're like we're going to engage
Speaker 5: in a bunch of high salience, high profile fire heights
Speaker 5: with the left flank of our party, which meant we're
Speaker 5: going to put immigration and trans issues in the paper
Speaker 5: all the time. There are worst issues, we know that
Speaker 5: from the polling, but we're going to pick a bunch
Speaker 5: of high profile fights. So everyone's constantly talking about it
Speaker 5: all the time.
Speaker 2: And guess what. It didn't work now, because why would
Speaker 2: you want to talk about the things Even if you're
Speaker 2: trying to get to the center on it, you end
Speaker 2: up raising the salient.
Speaker 3: So it's like, don't workshop it.
Speaker 2: In problem Rom thinks.
Speaker 5: That Josh Turik is being hurt at the margin by
Speaker 5: Daria Lisa Chevalier winning her primary in Washington Heights, which
Speaker 5: is not a crazy idea. Why does talking about that
Speaker 5: in the Wall Street Journal help it?
Speaker 3: She already won, she won, Hey the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 5: At this point, how are you helping him by being like, boy,
Speaker 5: these people are really a problem and they're going to
Speaker 5: be a problem for the Josh Cheriks of the world.
Speaker 2: Just talk about something else. That's not helping Josh.
Speaker 4: Uric, right, and it's nor is it dissuading people in
Speaker 4: the DSA from mounting like making their case right, because
Speaker 4: the other.
Speaker 2: Thing is she won that election, right. The voters are
Speaker 2: the voters. Now, Can I argue against myself for a second? Two?
Speaker 4: Sure? I mean that's why we thought you would do
Speaker 4: both of these things. This is why we only need
Speaker 4: one booking today.
Speaker 5: Because I do think there's a little bit of this.
Speaker 5: I want to say to my friends on the progressive left,
Speaker 5: let's all just concede the fundamental idea that a primary
Speaker 5: electorate can select a candidate who is poorly optimized for
Speaker 5: a general election.
Speaker 3: Yes, which we've.
Speaker 4: Seemed literally this many many years now under Donald Trump.
Speaker 5: Of course, so it's like the idea of like, well,
Speaker 5: who's electable now we just won the primary. It's like, no, no, no,
Speaker 5: that's a different electorate. That doesn't mean anything like And
Speaker 5: I again, I think most people thinking more sophisticated fashion
Speaker 5: clearly that folks in Michigan do like like we said earlier,
Speaker 5: I'll say it has a theory of the case, but
Speaker 5: I do think there's a little bit of this. Like
Speaker 5: the way I think about it is, in order to
Speaker 5: get to the NBA, a basketball player has to have
Speaker 5: a completely delusional sense of their own ability or they
Speaker 5: won't make it. That is an adaptive quality in the player,
Speaker 5: but the scouts can't have that, and the other people
Speaker 5: have to be clear eyed to win as a candidate,
Speaker 5: to be Zora Mom Downey, you have to have a
Speaker 5: kind of delusion of your own ability, but everyone else
Speaker 5: should be pretty clear eyede that like, yeah, you're there's
Speaker 5: a trade off about where you are on the ideological spectrum.
Speaker 5: That that and it is possible that you engineer a
Speaker 5: very motivated, disproportionately highly educated Democratic primary electorate that selects
Speaker 5: for candidates who are too ideologically extreme to win generals.
Speaker 2: This is just obviously a true.
Speaker 4: Thing, right, So just because you're winning the primary doesn't
Speaker 4: mean the taildr is primaries aren't generals.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Blake Master won the primary. You know, Robinson won
Speaker 5: the primary down North Carolina.
Speaker 3: Christeam I'm Christine m o witch o'donald.
Speaker 4: I wonder I'm always like galled by this, and I
Speaker 4: kind of wonder where you sit because Donald Trump's making
Speaker 4: hay as every single Republican in the party about the
Speaker 4: fact that Democratic socialists are in the vanguard and they're
Speaker 4: all commies and they're going to be coming for your
Speaker 4: money and your children should they win in twenty twenty
Speaker 4: six and twenty twenty eight. At the same time that
Speaker 4: Donald Trump is like nationalizing private enterprise and has these
Speaker 4: like federally run gas stations up and down the East
Speaker 4: coat like he's practicing socialism, and like, I'm not going
Speaker 4: to art, like maybe it's time for the federal government
Speaker 4: to like gas subsidies. I mean, there's a case to
Speaker 4: be made for a lot of this intervention. And I'm
Speaker 4: not saying we should be nationalizing private enterprise. But should
Speaker 4: Democrats point out the sort of socialist tendencies of this
Speaker 4: administration as hypocrisy or is it just too fraught to
Speaker 4: be aligning yourself in any way with the most questionable
Speaker 4: parts of the Trump agenda.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a great question. I mean it's a really
Speaker 5: important intellectual point where which is that I have never
Speaker 5: seen a president in my lifetime who was more antagonistic
Speaker 5: to free markets, to the fundamental sort.
Speaker 4: Of like he's like gas is too high, Chevron and
Speaker 4: ex un are making too much profit.
Speaker 5: He does he truly does not believe in free markets,
Speaker 5: and he truly is illiberal on that sense.
Speaker 2: In the old classical like sense of.
Speaker 5: The word, like remember Adam Smith Wels of Nations is
Speaker 5: written as a polemic against what tarriffs and mercantilism like.
Speaker 5: Donald Trump is fundamentally authoritarian, illiberal, and believes in a
Speaker 5: personalist controlled economy in which he makes all the choices,
Speaker 5: and also believes like as a fund as one of
Speaker 5: his core ideological commitments. Bizarrely, along with like women and
Speaker 5: people of color inferior, is that like tarriffs are how
Speaker 5: everything works.
Speaker 2: Like truly believes to his heart, like.
Speaker 5: In his like the deepest part of him. So he's
Speaker 5: a mess. Ideologically, he is totally hot. Still the free markets.
Speaker 5: One of the things you've seen that's interesting in actually
Speaker 5: in the polling is that if you ask people about
Speaker 5: socialism and capitalism, socialism is gaining over capitalism, but people
Speaker 5: like the notion of free markets, and they also increasingly
Speaker 5: like the notion of free trade, including people who consider
Speaker 5: themselves the most sympathetic DSA, which is fascinating. I don't
Speaker 5: think the hypocrisy thing matters as much as just being
Speaker 5: like everything's expensive and he doesn't care about you.
Speaker 2: He's corrupt.
Speaker 5: No, I'm serious, Like, yeah, there's no point in making
Speaker 5: an ideological argument against him.
Speaker 4: I just mean as a rejoinder to like they're all
Speaker 4: commedis and socialists. It's like, well, actually, you're the fucking socialist.
Speaker 4: But then that's sort of painting Donald Trump with a
Speaker 4: socialist brush, which is a turn off to every It's
Speaker 4: like a boner killer for everybody.
Speaker 5: That's right, he's something totally different, you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: Like he's in his own category. He's like a psycht
Speaker 5: pre Adam Smith monarch.
Speaker 4: Okay, well then that settles that. No more mention of
Speaker 4: Donald Trump's socialist policies. I do. We have to get
Speaker 4: to the thing that is actually like that.
Speaker 3: It's not the third rail.
Speaker 4: I don't know, It's like it is the thing that
Speaker 4: I think this week has taught us, and maybe this
Speaker 4: season is teaching us, which is Israel. And I want
Speaker 4: to get at something that Ryan Broderck over at Garbage
Speaker 4: Day Rights. The Democratic twenty twenty six Democratic Civil War
Speaker 4: is a rat's nest of different schisms. It's young versus old,
Speaker 4: labor versus capital, maybe progressivism versus the status quo, populism
Speaker 4: versus elitism. Perhaps more than anything though, it is a
Speaker 4: conflict between the Democrats that are willing to accept money
Speaker 4: from pro Israel organizations and those who aren't.
Speaker 3: Is that fair, Chris.
Speaker 5: I think it's been one of the biggest fissures. And
Speaker 5: I do think that there's something about There's a few things.
Speaker 5: One is that I think Apak has made and they
Speaker 5: don't care what I think enormous tactical error.
Speaker 3: I know, I agree, you're in service of their goals.
Speaker 5: Yes, And here's the argument I'm going to make. They
Speaker 5: have relied on a strategy of attempting to trick voters
Speaker 5: as opposed to making their case. So what they have
Speaker 5: done in all these cases, and it happened to me
Speaker 5: and the New York Times ran an analysis of this
Speaker 5: is they have spent enormous amounts of money. Some of
Speaker 5: the most expensive primaries in history are all Apec primaries.
Speaker 5: Jamal Bowman, you know before that the Cordy Bush one
Speaker 5: was very expensive. The Cory Bush was abelt when this
Speaker 5: time was spent five million in a relatively small, uh
Speaker 5: you know house race. They spent thirty here, there's another
Speaker 5: thirty that we still don't know what it was because
Speaker 5: we don't have the disclosures yet. So like, maybe was
Speaker 5: that maybe not and in all the cases, the vast
Speaker 5: majority of the ads they ran were not about Israel.
Speaker 5: They were attempts to paint the person that they were
Speaker 5: attacking as often insufficiently loyal to the Democratic Party. Yeah,
Speaker 5: that's not what they actually believe, and it's not the
Speaker 5: case they're trying to make to the public. I think
Speaker 5: it is both toxic for the discourse and also self
Speaker 5: defeating to spend tons of money in the attempt to
Speaker 5: essentially trick the voters. I think it would have been
Speaker 5: better to spend the money being like, we think Israel
Speaker 5: is a good hall I what Hamasta was horrible. They're
Speaker 5: defending themselves or whatever you want to say, right right,
Speaker 5: here's why iron Dome is important, and in fact, having
Speaker 5: Iron Dome leads to less Israeli fatalities, which also does
Speaker 5: lead to better outcomes in the region. Whatever argument you
Speaker 5: want to make, they're not making that argument. And there
Speaker 5: is something insidious about the combination of all of this
Speaker 5: money where you're trying to trick the voters, and then
Speaker 5: when people call the money out, you're like, that's out
Speaker 5: of line.
Speaker 3: That's anti semic.
Speaker 5: It's like there's this old expression I love, which is
Speaker 5: like throwing rocks and hiding hands. It is a lot
Speaker 5: of throwing rocks and hiding hands for me back at
Speaker 5: this point, and I sort of feel like, look, it's
Speaker 5: a free country, and you've got a view, and that
Speaker 5: view is shared. There's a lot of Democrats that share
Speaker 5: that view. There's a lot of particularly Jewish Democrats in
Speaker 5: my life who share that view, who are defensive of
Speaker 5: the state of Israel, and they think it's under season,
Speaker 5: under threat, and they don't like the direction the Democratic
Speaker 5: Party is going on it. You have to make that
Speaker 5: argument and have the argument on its terms and not
Speaker 5: attempt to use the catastrophic Citizens United's decision to pour
Speaker 5: a ton of money into races in the hopes of
Speaker 5: tricking voters into electing a person allied with you, but
Speaker 5: not on the terms of.
Speaker 2: The thing you actually agree in.
Speaker 5: And I think that has been an absolutely poisonous toxic
Speaker 5: And it's not I want to be clear, it's not
Speaker 5: just them. Crypto has been doing the same thing. AI
Speaker 5: is doing the same thing. This idea that you're going
Speaker 5: to come in in primaries with this agenda and try
Speaker 5: to get voters to vote for your candidate, not by
Speaker 5: making an argument that crypto is good or AI shouldn't
Speaker 5: be regulated, but rather that like that person is not
Speaker 5: didn't vote for Kamala Harris or whatever you think is
Speaker 5: going to get the primary voter. I just think it's
Speaker 5: a really toxic way of doing politics that's been incredibly destructive.
Speaker 4: It really pushes the debate off into completely different territory.
Speaker 5: Well, and it also it also ends up it has
Speaker 5: ended up connecting in the minds of people the Israel
Speaker 5: lobb the Israel interests and big money yes and big
Speaker 5: dark night, which is not a connection that you want
Speaker 5: to create.
Speaker 3: You know, it's not a good connection for israry.
Speaker 5: You want to say is like, look, there's actually a
Speaker 5: lot of people in the Democratic Party who agree with us,
Speaker 5: like we're representing them. And again that's fine, Like I
Speaker 5: I have different views than APEC does on the conduct
Speaker 5: of the war in Gaza and a bunch of other stuff,
Speaker 5: but it's true that there's a lot of Democrats who
Speaker 5: agree with them, right.
Speaker 4: Totally that case you gotta make that No one's yes,
Speaker 4: no one's making that case. And instead APAC is aligned
Speaker 4: with like nefarious outside spending and trick trickery effectively, and
Speaker 4: so I guess So the inversion of that is Abdul
Speaker 4: al say, yeah, you know, to great effect, talked about
Speaker 4: all the APAC money that was flooding his race. They
Speaker 4: overwhelmingly supported Hailey Stevens. The APAC is now considering pouring
Speaker 4: millions of dollars into the general election race between Mike
Speaker 4: Rogers and Abdul al Sayed. Do you think that for
Speaker 4: a general election campaigning against APAX outside spending is a
Speaker 4: useful tool.
Speaker 3: For Abdul al Sayed?
Speaker 4: Or like where is the benefits get the who gets
Speaker 4: the upper hand?
Speaker 3: And I think it probably is.
Speaker 5: Actually, and again I want to express some sympathy with
Speaker 5: the critique that there is something oogie about the like
Speaker 5: constant invocation of the.
Speaker 3: Dark yes, very dark Jewish money.
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally, there is an latent anti Semitism or explicit people.
Speaker 5: Getting uncomfortable with that. I don't think it's crazy. The
Speaker 5: problem is that it is a fact of the matter.
Speaker 5: That and the other thing is if you're gonna have
Speaker 5: sixty million dollars or thirty million dollars dropped on your head, the.
Speaker 2: Only thing that you could do is call it out.
Speaker 3: So it's like, do you think it meaningfully?
Speaker 4: Do you think else, I AD's ability to use a
Speaker 4: pack's sort of weaponization against him is more useful to
Speaker 4: him in the general than the money that Mike Rodgers
Speaker 4: could actually get from a pack.
Speaker 5: Well, I think because there's going to be an enormous
Speaker 5: amount of money dropped on his head in that race.
Speaker 2: That's going to be across the board.
Speaker 5: It's not like APAC won't be a small fraction of it,
Speaker 5: because it's gonna be a ton of that Senate Majority
Speaker 5: pack stuff like the the you know, I think calling
Speaker 5: out that is actually very useful, like just as a
Speaker 5: general thing. And in the general most of the money
Speaker 5: won't be you know, buy and large is going to
Speaker 5: be outside money from corporate interests that have all given
Speaker 5: money to Donald Trump or to Mitch McConnell's pack or whatever.
Speaker 5: And in that case, I think just taking the same line,
Speaker 5: which is like these people want to like jack up
Speaker 5: your oil prices, and they want to put data centers
Speaker 5: in your backyard, and they close down your hospitals so
Speaker 5: you can get cast tax cuts, and they're spending one
Speaker 5: hundred and fifty two hundred million dollars to beat me.
Speaker 5: And I think that's you know, you use the same
Speaker 5: line there, because again, what else can you do other
Speaker 5: than you know, he's not he's He's probably going to
Speaker 5: be outspent from the outside in this race because Republicans
Speaker 5: are going to put you know, a lot of money
Speaker 5: into that race.
Speaker 3: Well, it could be the rate.
Speaker 4: I mean that in main, God forbid you are a
Speaker 4: television viewer in either one of those states in the
Speaker 4: coming months.
Speaker 7: Pod Save America's brought you by blinds dot Com. There's
Speaker 7: a version of your home you haven't lived in yet,
Speaker 7: where the light behaves, where the rooms feel finished, where
Speaker 7: you sleep until you decide to wake up. Blinds dot
Speaker 7: Com is spent thirty years making it easy to find
Speaker 7: the perfect fit. With over twenty five million windows covered
Speaker 7: and fifty thousand five star reviews, you can feel confident
Speaker 7: you are in good hands. Whether you want to go
Speaker 7: full DIY, bring in licenses that it pros to handle,
Speaker 7: the measure and install, or land somewhere in between, You're
Speaker 7: always in control. They make it simple to choose the
Speaker 7: level of support that works best for you, with flexibility
Speaker 7: every step of the way. No pushy salespeople, no awkward
Speaker 7: and home visits, just real advice on your schedule. They'll
Speaker 7: even ship samples to your door fast and free. Choose
Speaker 7: from a huge variety of style options at prices that
Speaker 7: fit any budget. Everything is backed by blinds dot COM's
Speaker 7: one hundred percent satisfaction guaranteed. Because at blinds dot Com,
Speaker 7: the only thing they treat better than windows, it's you.
Speaker 7: We have Blinds dot Com great. We installed these electric shades.
Speaker 7: I don't even know what the term is. We operate
Speaker 7: it with a button or remote, so that because it
Speaker 7: gets super snyt different times of the day, it's super
Speaker 7: hot in the office. It's made a huge difference. It
Speaker 7: made the office much better. They're great Blinds. They came in,
Speaker 7: they installed them, took basically no time, and they're great.
Speaker 7: And right now, blinds dot Com is giving our listeners
Speaker 7: an exclusive fifty dollars off when you spend five hundred
Speaker 7: dollars or more. Just use code Crooked at checkout. Limited time.
Speaker 7: Offer rules and restrictions apply. See blinds dot Com for details.
Speaker 4: I want to ask about the flip side of all this,
Speaker 4: which is, let's talk about it, Hassan Piker. This is
Speaker 4: what Hassan Piker had to say after Abdulla Al said
Speaker 4: one Michigan and people began talking about what he needed
Speaker 4: to do next.
Speaker 8: Here's that clip, like everyone being like Abdullah is a
Speaker 8: fuck ton of work to do, mending bridges. Here's the
Speaker 8: fucking take nuke for you.
Speaker 2: Okay, you are all.
Speaker 8: Unbelievably islamophobic pieces of shit. Okay, you literally called the
Speaker 8: dude a fucking terrorist for months on end, and like
Speaker 8: called him a sexist, misogynist terrorist. Bad candidate doesn't fake
Speaker 8: doctor when he has like two fucking degrees. And now
Speaker 8: you're gonna sit there and be like, well, you know,
Speaker 8: you've really got to come to me now, like what
Speaker 8: are you talking about? Do you want to fucking win
Speaker 8: or not? Lock the fucking Okay, lock the fucking And
Speaker 8: I do worry that there are some out there who,
Speaker 8: in an effort to make sure that they that this
Speaker 8: narrative that a p can win in a state like
Speaker 8: Michigan doesn't take root, will literally either subtly or you know,
Speaker 8: not so secretively endorse Mike Rogers.
Speaker 4: Okay, it is some deep paranoia that people democrats so
Speaker 4: so threatened by the rise of democratic socialists and hardcore
Speaker 4: progressives on the left wing would support Mike Rogers over
Speaker 4: Abdul alsai Ad we can unpack that in a second,
Speaker 4: but just more broadly, like what the fuck should happen
Speaker 4: here with Hassan Piker? Like what should Democrats do? I mean,
Speaker 4: is this the case where it's like, don't talk about it?
Speaker 4: Should abdul elsiad continue to campaign with him? We're going
Speaker 4: to get to like his reach in a second, but
Speaker 4: just as a specific political actor, like should other.
Speaker 3: Democrats be talking about him?
Speaker 4: I was on Deadline White House with Nicole Wallace and
Speaker 4: she wanted to ask Mallory mcmorro about Hassan Piker, and
Speaker 4: I was just like, this just is not good for
Speaker 4: anybody on like what should happen here?
Speaker 3: Chris?
Speaker 2: I don't really know.
Speaker 5: I mean one level, like I think there's a little
Speaker 5: irony in like every the whole discourse being like the
Speaker 5: left needs of Joe Rogan and then like getting the
Speaker 5: closest thing to it and being like not like that,
Speaker 5: not like that, not like that.
Speaker 4: No, no, no, note who says it's things.
Speaker 5: It's like do you ever watch Joe Rogan's show and
Speaker 5: says he says crazy stuff all the time, Like it's
Speaker 5: like and I do think I mean the difference in
Speaker 5: this case. I think there's a difference between going on
Speaker 5: someone's show and campaigning with them hugely, right, So, like,
Speaker 5: I think you can go on lots of people shows.
Speaker 5: I've been on Bill Marshaw, Bill Marsais all sort.
Speaker 7: Of You know that.
Speaker 2: Not only do I disagree with he says some things
Speaker 2: I really like find Oh yeah, pretty pretty brong like.
Speaker 3: And more of and more more often with greater frequency.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so but I'll you know, again, it's a free like,
Speaker 5: it's a free country. So the big question is campaigning
Speaker 5: with I don't think it makes a ton of sense
Speaker 5: in a general election, frankly to campaign with a sun biker.
Speaker 5: I think you also can't control what a thirty five
Speaker 5: year old streamer is gonna say. I also think that
Speaker 5: he is learning the lesson that like, with great power
Speaker 5: comes great responsibility and like, no, seriously, I mean it's
Speaker 5: one thing. It's one thing to be like, Look, this
Speaker 5: is a dude who streams like seven days a week
Speaker 5: for years. Do you know the amount of words he said, Like,
Speaker 5: you're gonna say some stuff, and part of the part
Speaker 5: of the genre of what he's doing is saying stuff.
Speaker 5: I'm reminded a lot of Marcos Malita Sniga, who was
Speaker 5: who played a somewhat similar rule a generation ago.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Dai.
Speaker 5: Daily cos and was would say pretty like you know,
Speaker 5: provocative things and would would curse and be like f
Speaker 5: these people don't, And there was also an attempt to
Speaker 5: sort of tie him. I also sort of feel like
Speaker 5: I don't know how much the guilt by association works
Speaker 5: in the era of Donald Trump. Like the man had
Speaker 5: dinner with Nick Flentes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like not even for any purpose other than like,
Speaker 4: let's break bread.
Speaker 3: I just think, let's hang out.
Speaker 2: I want to hear what.
Speaker 4: You're trying to get his kids thinking about these days, Nick,
Speaker 4: in your point of view, Nick, so I do think
Speaker 4: there's a little bit of like the associational politics have
Speaker 4: have lost a little bit of their sting.
Speaker 5: But the other thing is like, if Hassan Piker wants
Speaker 5: to contribute to the success of the movement, like he's
Speaker 5: probably gonna have to watch what he says a lot
Speaker 5: more and like that that's not that fun for him.
Speaker 5: And I get that, like he's been in a different lane.
Speaker 5: But one of the things that all of us, I think,
Speaker 5: with public platforms start to learn is that like your
Speaker 5: words of consequences yeah, And it doesn't mean that you
Speaker 5: like say things you don't believe. It doesn't mean you
Speaker 5: don't say things you do believe. But it does mean
Speaker 5: that like how you select your words and the way
Speaker 5: that you communicate really does matter. And I think that's
Speaker 5: going to be true across the board. The other thing
Speaker 5: I'll just say on the substance of what he was
Speaker 5: saying was I don't kind of party's not dumbe. They
Speaker 5: need him to win so they could have power, Like
Speaker 5: they're all gonna they've all consolidated behind him.
Speaker 4: They're not so anti DSA that they would literally see control.
Speaker 2: Of this They want to control of the United States Senate.
Speaker 2: But believe me, like very badly believe him, they truly
Speaker 2: do want that.
Speaker 3: So so probably not.
Speaker 5: But the other thing I'll say too, in the same
Speaker 5: way that I said, it's like a little bit of
Speaker 5: buy the ticket, take the ride, where it's like APAX
Speaker 5: spent that money. And the cost of that is that
Speaker 5: you're going to get called out. Ye, like Abdul said,
Speaker 5: made a choice to campaign with the House on Piker.
Speaker 5: I think it probably helped in the primary. And the
Speaker 5: cost of that is people are going to criticize that
Speaker 5: and you got to like, that's by the ticket, take
Speaker 5: the ride, and you got to come up with the
Speaker 5: way you're gonna talk about it. I thought that I
Speaker 5: thought the two best responses this was Debbie. Did you
Speaker 5: see Debbie Dingell talking to Credit Vancester.
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 5: Or she's just like he's a way to reach a
Speaker 5: lot of young people who we have a hard time reaching.
Speaker 5: And he looks good when he works out.
Speaker 2: This is this is the Devytingle take.
Speaker 5: And I was like, you know what, this is a
Speaker 5: person who is a conduit to reach people who are
Speaker 5: outside the system that I want to reach. And that's
Speaker 5: and that's important to me. And that doesn't mean that
Speaker 5: I agree with everything he says. They doesn't send things
Speaker 5: I think are really gross and wrong.
Speaker 4: Right, you do not have to endorse and turn the
Speaker 4: values of every person that interviews you.
Speaker 2: That's right, or endorses you or even works you know
Speaker 2: what I mean.
Speaker 5: Like, And I also thought that the AOC's response to
Speaker 5: the TMZ's reporter, I can't believe I just said that
Speaker 5: that sentence.
Speaker 2: Who said the AOC's response.
Speaker 5: To the TMZ reporter, who is like, aren't you worried
Speaker 5: about Like it's not just socialists and there's going to
Speaker 5: be communists. And she's like, I'm not the belief police.
Speaker 5: People can believe they want to believe. I believe what
Speaker 5: I believe. I'm going to try to do what I'm
Speaker 5: going to do, like and I do think that like
Speaker 5: that's another way of sort of threading the needle here.
Speaker 4: I think it's also just I think what I'm hearing
Speaker 4: in your response is it's like about frankness. It's about honesty.
Speaker 4: It's about not apologizing but also not glossing over the
Speaker 4: rougher parts.
Speaker 2: And don't get defensive.
Speaker 5: The other thing, though, too is and this is the
Speaker 5: thing Momdannie's good about, is like you gotta pivot to
Speaker 5: what you.
Speaker 2: Want the election to be about. Yeah, And right.
Speaker 5: Now there's like both the both the sort of mainstream
Speaker 5: media and the right wing media are like, this is
Speaker 5: an election about what Hassan Piker said about nine to
Speaker 5: eleven seven years ago. By the way, can I just
Speaker 5: say this, Ron Johnson, the sitting senator from Wisconsin, is
Speaker 5: a fully avowed nine to eleven truther, And somehow this
Speaker 5: is like not a score I'm gonna do. I think
Speaker 5: I'm gonna do it either day or soon, because I've
Speaker 5: had a whole thing about this. It's the craziest thing
Speaker 5: his He has gone to conferences. He has said basically
Speaker 5: he thinks Building seven was a controlled demo, like the
Speaker 5: full one. Yeah, jet fuel doesn't milt steel like all
Speaker 5: the stuff that you and I twenty years ago we're
Speaker 5: hearing from like KOOKI people outside like an anti war rally,
Speaker 5: like and I mean certainly legit, like straight down the line,
Speaker 5: like and people have been run out of public life,
Speaker 5: they have been hounded. Van Jones had to leave his
Speaker 5: job in the White House because he signed something that
Speaker 5: was like very tangentially related to nine to eleven Truth
Speaker 5: about we need an investigation, YadA YadA, and Ron Johnson's
Speaker 5: like sitting center just being like, yeah, we I think
Speaker 5: probably I don't know, but looks like it might have
Speaker 5: been an inside job. It's like and they want to
Speaker 5: like have these crazy nine to eleven discussions anyway.
Speaker 2: It's just I can't get over that.
Speaker 4: A good note, good note, just I mean, as a reminder,
Speaker 4: the depravity and delusion on the right far out weighs
Speaker 4: literally anything.
Speaker 5: Ron Johnson's on nine to eleven Truth or someone talked
Speaker 5: to him about that, Like Mike Rodgers was talking about this,
Speaker 5: I'm like, go call up Ron Johnson and get his
Speaker 5: takes on nine to eleven.
Speaker 2: It totally like, what do you think about that?
Speaker 4: Speaking of alternative facts, No, not alternative facts, but alternative egos.
Speaker 4: We were talking about Hassan Piker largely because of his
Speaker 4: sphere of influence, and there is a real kind of
Speaker 4: gut check happening inside democratic politics right now about what
Speaker 4: kind of media matters, what kind of messaging is resonant.
Speaker 3: Ryan Broderck, who I quoted.
Speaker 4: Before from Garbage Day, is like lays out the two
Speaker 4: axes as he sees them. One is the institutional axis,
Speaker 4: which includes cable news podcasts hosted by former Obama and
Speaker 4: Biden bros. So we are guilty as charged, the New
Speaker 4: York Times, Axios, Politico, the Washington Post blah blah blah,
Speaker 4: the related substacks and x accounts with those folks. And
Speaker 4: then new media, which is leftist streamers like a San
Speaker 4: Piker YouTube essayss. He calls them dark woke podcasters, Ryan
Speaker 4: Grimm and drop site news, Blue Sky users, short from
Speaker 4: form video content from the DSA random shit posters. You
Speaker 4: are an expert in the attention economy, where do you see,
Speaker 4: like if you're mapping out in your twenty twenty eight
Speaker 4: presidential campaign or even your next three months in your
Speaker 4: midterm election campaign, like where who matters? Where is the
Speaker 4: like what is most relevant in terms of, you know,
Speaker 4: speaking to the voter.
Speaker 5: I do think one frustration that I had that I
Speaker 5: expressed in one of the chapters in The Sirens Call,
Speaker 5: my book about the attention economy that had a chapter
Speaker 5: of politics, and that I said a lot when I
Speaker 5: was doing the book tour when it came out, is
Speaker 5: the risk aversion of democratic political class, consultant class, and
Speaker 5: around interviews had to go away Like Hailey Stevens.
Speaker 3: She never came and got her interview. Thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Well, she was a good example, right, It.
Speaker 4: Was a great example. Like repeated entreaties begging, what can
Speaker 4: we make work?
Speaker 3: Nothing? Nothing can ever work.
Speaker 2: Go talk to people. I think that is actually a
Speaker 2: big thing. You got to go talk to people.
Speaker 5: And I think actually that's it actually connects to one
Speaker 5: of the things we're seeing in the Democratic primary electorate,
Speaker 5: which is that people want good talkers because they felt
Speaker 5: like they didn't get them. And I like Joe Biden,
Speaker 5: who in his prime was a great I mean a
Speaker 5: truly Fidel Castro level talker, right, I mean the man,
Speaker 5: the man good talk, truly the gift of gab.
Speaker 2: That was not the case of the Joe Biden that
Speaker 2: was you know, in the White.
Speaker 4: House basement or basement Joe the campaigner.
Speaker 5: And like Kamala Harris is I would say, a perfectly
Speaker 5: proficient communicator as a politician, but she is not a
Speaker 5: particularly great one.
Speaker 3: I would I would go one step further.
Speaker 4: I think she's remarkably risk averse and that she wants
Speaker 4: very very controlled environments and that's and that's not politics.
Speaker 3: That's just not politics.
Speaker 5: Very risk averse and very wary in extemporaneous settings, and
Speaker 5: so I think there is a desire. Dave Weigel has
Speaker 5: made this point. I think I even I sort of
Speaker 5: thought of this, but he's kind of articulated of.
Speaker 2: Like, we want a really good talker, and it's.
Speaker 3: Like Barack Obama, great talker, really.
Speaker 2: Good at talking, And again talking is not I talk
Speaker 2: for a living. So I rate it.
Speaker 5: I sort of both rate it highly and I also
Speaker 5: look for it because I, you know, literally this phrase
Speaker 5: good talkers. I think that we use in.
Speaker 3: Our booking, meeting booking, and it's like, is.
Speaker 2: Good talker correlated with Donald Trump?
Speaker 5: I hate to say it in his own weird way,
Speaker 5: isn't good talk great less?
Speaker 4: So now? But I mean I went to so many
Speaker 4: Trump rallies and that guy could just do a routine
Speaker 4: for an hour and a half like and loved it.
Speaker 5: So does it mean that the person is like gonna
Speaker 5: be good at the job. No, Unfortunately those two things
Speaker 5: don't have a great correlation. But it's also the case
Speaker 5: that and so the reason this all relates back to
Speaker 5: your question about where you go is I think you
Speaker 5: got to be willing to go everywhere, and I think
Speaker 5: you've got to get your reps in and you got
Speaker 5: to be good at talking. And I think you've got
Speaker 5: to be good at talking. I mean, this is one
Speaker 5: of the things that gotta you know, dvance, dvance will
Speaker 5: go goes everywhere. He liked, and he liked, he likes
Speaker 5: to mix it up up with th goes on the
Speaker 5: view he got like. All of that I think is
Speaker 5: actually really important. And again, the other thing about volume
Speaker 5: is the more of it there is, the less people
Speaker 5: obsess over a single gaff, like you just go do
Speaker 5: another inter because like, remember when he said the dumb
Speaker 5: thing about you know, cat ladies, like and that was
Speaker 5: you know, he's.
Speaker 4: Still talking about the cat ladies, and that lady hurt him.
Speaker 5: For sure, that hurt him, but also it kind of
Speaker 5: ended up being swallowed by the sheer volume.
Speaker 2: I mean, Trump is.
Speaker 4: The sheer volume of shit that's coming out of his mouth.
Speaker 5: Well, well true, but I also think that like that's
Speaker 5: kind of partly the way it works. So I do
Speaker 5: think that I don't know like how you rank. But
Speaker 5: the other thing I would say is I talked to
Speaker 5: someone the other day. He said, of an electorate that
Speaker 5: you're dealing with, the sort of operative rule of thumb
Speaker 5: these days is about fifty percent you can reach through
Speaker 5: TV and fifty percent or just like completely off TV.
Speaker 5: And that to me is like the fundamental structural thing
Speaker 5: that people have to reckon with. And part of what
Speaker 5: I wrote about in my book is that in the
Speaker 5: kind of TV dominant era that sort of starts really
Speaker 5: in the sixties and sort of extends, I think all
Speaker 5: the way through for like the next forty or fift
Speaker 5: years American politics, it's like you raise money and the
Speaker 5: money is used to buy TV ads. Yeah, and that
Speaker 5: is most of what a campaign is, raising money running
Speaker 5: the ads. And when you're down to fifth only fifty
Speaker 5: percent of the electure its being reached that way, you.
Speaker 2: Still got to do that part.
Speaker 5: Like we saw this actually, I think with the Stevens race,
Speaker 5: I mean, I think part of the reason those numbers,
Speaker 5: there's a bunch of reasons that her numbers in rural
Speaker 5: areas were.
Speaker 3: Not as bad as they should have been.
Speaker 2: Well, no, they were.
Speaker 5: They were higher than anticipated, partly because that was the
Speaker 5: place that was getting TV.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like those are the people that are watching TV too,
Speaker 4: I mean.
Speaker 5: Both older, Like you're not doing a lot of there's
Speaker 5: not like a bunch of local press there.
Speaker 2: You're not doing a bunch of events there, and so.
Speaker 5: It's like there's huge swaths of your life that like
Speaker 5: the way they're going to learn about this race is
Speaker 5: like they're watching TV and they're getting that. So you
Speaker 5: can't give up on that. But you've got to have
Speaker 5: a theory of the case to the other fifty percent.
Speaker 4: I'm going to I'm going to interpret what you're saying
Speaker 4: slightly differently because what I'm hearing is and I would
Speaker 4: probably put it more like sixty forty, like forty percent
Speaker 4: of the people are getting it on TV, just because
Speaker 4: if you look at those numbers, which I'm I'm sure
Speaker 4: you don't actually in order to survive your day, like
Speaker 4: the demographic numbers are. It's just an increasingly old audience, right,
Speaker 4: But that social media and shit posting and shit posters
Speaker 4: and those accounts are now equally as important as broadcast television,
Speaker 4: and that is actually a sea change from even like
Speaker 4: eight years ago or four years ago, and that that
Speaker 4: actually really does matter, and that doing more media is
Speaker 4: in some ways less impactful, but also is a little
Speaker 4: bit of an insurance policy against the mistakes that you're
Speaker 4: inevitably going to make by doing long form interviews, which
Speaker 4: I think the real essential fear. It's not that I'm
Speaker 4: going to do an interview that doesn't matter. It's like, oh,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna fucking how do I throw an hour and
Speaker 4: a half with Alex Cooper without having to talk about whatever?
Speaker 4: Willie Brown, I don't fucking know, you know something that's
Speaker 4: like uncomfortable for me?
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, But also.
Speaker 5: Learning how to talk about uncomfortable things is kind of
Speaker 5: an important skill.
Speaker 4: Well, and if anybody's shown you I mean, if there's
Speaker 4: one lesson for Democrats to take away from the Trump years,
Speaker 4: it's like, you can do some crazy shit and as
Speaker 4: long as you are.
Speaker 3: Authentic about it.
Speaker 4: And I'm not saying anybody should try and model Donald
Speaker 4: Trump's fucking behavior, but.
Speaker 5: It's like, how many bad interviews did that guy give that,
Speaker 5: Like we're like these, I mean the moment where you know,
Speaker 5: Hilman and Alpernd ask him for his favorite passage, the
Speaker 5: Bible of them, kim telling Chris Matthews that you got
Speaker 5: to punish the woman on a board. I mean, you know,
Speaker 5: there's a million.
Speaker 4: And they don't even like those aren't even at my fingertips.
Speaker 4: In terms of his worst moments, Like, there's so many
Speaker 4: I'm reaching there, like.
Speaker 5: The archives of course, the like I like people that
Speaker 5: weren't captured, like which was the original one.
Speaker 4: Or I don't really care about American's financial situation. That
Speaker 4: was some podcast interview, but anyway, that's just him fucking talking.
Speaker 6: Poddave America is brought to you by mint Mobile. Summer
Speaker 6: means a well deserved break, some extra time to stretch
Speaker 6: out and relax. Mint Mobile thinks you deserve a break, too,
Speaker 6: which is why they created the Mint Mobile Summer Sale.
Speaker 6: Right now, all of Mint's plans are fifteen dollars per month,
Speaker 6: even unlimited. So free yourself from big wireless and their
Speaker 6: gimmicks and gotcha's and switched to Mint for high speed
Speaker 6: data and coverage on the T mobile five G network.
Speaker 6: Mintmobile took what's wrong with wireless and made it right
Speaker 6: with premium wireless for fifteen bucks a month on America's
Speaker 6: largest five G network. You can even bring your current
Speaker 6: phone and your number, choose from three, six or twelve
Speaker 6: month plans and say goodbye to a monthly bill. Ditch
Speaker 6: overpriced wireless with Mint Mobile. It's so easy. Sign up
Speaker 6: online and get three months of premium wireless service for
Speaker 6: fifteen bucks a month. To get your new wireless plan
Speaker 6: for just fifteen bucks a month, go to mintmobile dot
Speaker 6: com slash crooked. That's mintmobile dot com slash crooked. Cut
Speaker 6: your wireless bill to fifteen bucks a month at mintmobile
Speaker 6: dot com comm slash crooked. That's it.
Speaker 7: There's no catch up front payment of forty five dollars
Speaker 7: or three months, ninety dollars for six months, or one
Speaker 7: hundred and eighty dollars for twelve months. Plan required fifteen
Speaker 7: dollars per month equivalent taxes and fees extra initial plan
Speaker 7: term only greater than fifty gigabytes may slow when network
Speaker 7: is busy. Includes up to twenty gigabyte hotspot capable device
Speaker 7: required availability, speeding, coverage veries mint mobile dot com.
Speaker 3: All right, I have two more for you.
Speaker 4: One is, you know, we began this conversation talking about
Speaker 4: expectation setting and how if you're trying to understand where
Speaker 4: the sort of zeitgeist is at in terms of democratic politics,
Speaker 4: like maybe leave the polling out of it, because polling
Speaker 4: storts expectations and therefore also results. You know, Nate Silver,
Speaker 4: the great Statisian, was talking about the polling that led
Speaker 4: up to primary day in Michigan that showed Abdul I'll say,
Speaker 4: ed with like a very very healthy lead. He of
Speaker 4: course goes on to win by like a point, and
Speaker 4: I think everybody had flashbacks to the An Saltzer poll
Speaker 4: which was off in twenty twenty four by a whopping
Speaker 4: sixteen points and had showed Kamala Harris winning the state.
Speaker 4: Abdulla is now saying he's going to beat Mike Rogers
Speaker 4: by seven points. His campaign has a history of releasing
Speaker 4: internal polling. All of this seems like highly sus maybe
Speaker 4: something you don't want to do if you're you know,
Speaker 4: as someone who follows this all this stuff closely. Should
Speaker 4: everybody just shut the fuck up about polling? Should we
Speaker 4: stop looking at polling numbers entirely? Like what do we
Speaker 4: do about polling?
Speaker 2: Well? I think that primary.
Speaker 5: I think primary polling is always hard, and particularly Michigan
Speaker 5: where people don't register for a party, We've seen a
Speaker 5: bunch of these cases that both the Obama Clinton one
Speaker 5: was a surprise and then the Bernie Hillary one was
Speaker 5: a big surprise. So there there's been a real history
Speaker 5: of specifically Michigan Democratic primary polling misses. Yeah, so I
Speaker 5: think there's partly that. Again, I think it's like the
Speaker 5: the thing about pulling is it's best in just.
Speaker 2: The general aggregate as like a directional point.
Speaker 4: Is it though like sixteen points Abdul was up by
Speaker 4: a seventeen points, it's not wasn't good for his support? Like,
Speaker 4: just what is the utility of it? That's a lot off?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I think when right, when something's off
Speaker 5: by that much, there's no utility. But I don't think
Speaker 5: that's usually the standard miss you know, I mean, like
Speaker 5: even like if you look at what the you know,
Speaker 5: what was the twenty twenty four presidential like a close
Speaker 5: race decided by a few points in either direction.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, fine, there was, right, I mean, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean.
Speaker 5: Like part of the problem is, here's my general thing
Speaker 5: about pulling, and this doesn't really respond to Michigan. This
Speaker 5: is more about broader stuff from presidential pulling. In a
Speaker 5: country as polarized as ours it, we want a level
Speaker 5: of specificity that it can't deliver because in our country,
Speaker 5: a point or two matters a ton in frontline swing races,
Speaker 5: in the state senate, in the statewide senate races, a
Speaker 5: point or two is probably determinative.
Speaker 2: Polling is not gonna be great at telling you a point.
Speaker 5: So, like, my general takeaway is that, like the Paxton
Speaker 5: Tall Rico race right now is close in anyone's race.
Speaker 5: My general takeaway of the polling that we've seen is
Speaker 5: that Michigan's going to.
Speaker 2: Be close, very close. You know that Maine is going
Speaker 2: to be really close. Nothing more than that.
Speaker 4: So so like like ignore the numbers, take the vibe
Speaker 4: like yeah, like generalized.
Speaker 5: Yes, and like yes, now again, if it's off by thirteen,
Speaker 5: there's nothing you can do with it.
Speaker 2: But it is rare. That is a pretty rare pollingness.
Speaker 4: Okay, fine, So whoever commissioned that poll does not need
Speaker 4: to leave their job like the poor and Seltzer.
Speaker 5: Let me just say that there were multiple internals they released,
Speaker 5: which I think was like a weird sigh up that
Speaker 5: I think blew back and was yeah, not a good
Speaker 5: But there were also public independent polls, including Emerson, which
Speaker 5: is a highly rated pulster that has that double digits,
Speaker 5: and I still haven't seen the full autopsy of what
Speaker 5: went wrong there. The Seltzer one is that she just
Speaker 5: completely modeled the elect Here's a big problem to something
Speaker 5: that pulsters have been dealing with since twenty sixteen is
Speaker 5: that the kinds of people who are highly involved and
Speaker 5: highly educated are the most likely to respond to polls,
Speaker 5: and those people are also the most liberal, right, And
Speaker 5: this is a fact about the world that every polster
Speaker 5: has been trying to model and methodologically get their way
Speaker 5: out of. But it is a fact about the world
Speaker 5: that wasn't true in the past. It was not true
Speaker 5: in the past that your likelihood to respond to a
Speaker 5: poll correlated with your ideology in any way, it is
Speaker 5: increasingly the case it is, and so now you have
Speaker 5: to model your way out of that, and that leads
Speaker 5: to a lot of modeling assumptions that introduce a lot
Speaker 5: of uncertainty.
Speaker 4: That was very judicious, that assessment, Chris, We're going to
Speaker 4: return to the man who sits before me in a
Speaker 4: gold chain and a pink tank top for this last one,
Speaker 4: which is we're sitting at this moment. I feel like
Speaker 4: so much of this season of democratic politics has been
Speaker 4: defined by the questions around masculinity and power. Right, there's Platner, yep,
Speaker 4: there's Swallwell in California gubernatorial race. Obviously main senate race.
Speaker 4: Max Miller is currently in a house race, refuses to
Speaker 4: drop out despite like very serious allegations of abuse, and
Speaker 4: otherwise Representative Chuck Edwards is out with some ridiculous reporting
Speaker 4: about what he's been doing. We went to Brown University,
Speaker 4: which we're prone to bring up all the time, and
Speaker 4: I think I sound like a Brown graduate when I
Speaker 4: start talking about the essence of sort of like the
Speaker 4: fall of the patriarchy, defining the kind of chaos in
Speaker 4: the political landscape. But I do think it has a
Speaker 4: lot to do with why we had Barack Obama and
Speaker 4: then Donald Trump and then Donald Trump again, and this
Speaker 4: sort of crisis of like how to be a man?
Speaker 4: And like Donald Trump has come up with one modality
Speaker 4: of masculinity which is real fucking vile if you ask me,
Speaker 4: but is intoxicating to both men and women, especially if
Speaker 4: they're white. And Democrats have had a really hard time
Speaker 4: figuring out, like what is what is man who had
Speaker 4: look like coming from the left, and like you see
Speaker 4: these attempts at finding new models, whether it's hasan Piker
Speaker 4: or I guess to some degree, Gavin Newsom or Grand Platner,
Speaker 4: and like it hasn't really they haven't found the.
Speaker 3: Shoe that fits.
Speaker 4: I don't think yeah, And I'm not saying that Gavin
Speaker 4: Nusen's chances aren't significant, but like, do you have a
Speaker 4: theory about how the Democrats should begin to try and answer,
Speaker 4: like what is the rejoinder to like the vile masculinity
Speaker 4: of the right, because that's going to be I think
Speaker 4: essential and figuring out who should leave the party or
Speaker 4: be part of the leadership of the party in the
Speaker 4: coming years.
Speaker 2: I don't have a good answer to that, But it's
Speaker 2: something that I puzzle over a lot. I do think.
Speaker 2: I'll say it is kind of interesting because.
Speaker 4: He is he has been charged with being a misogynt
Speaker 4: though in talking the way that he did about Hailey
Speaker 4: ste Oh, he rolls his eyes in his pink tank top. Well,
Speaker 4: but I think that there are women that don't agree
Speaker 4: with you, even on the left, that like the way
Speaker 4: he talked about Hailey Stevens was misogynistic and you know
Speaker 4: some of his attitudes.
Speaker 3: Listen, I'm just a vessel for Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that charge.
Speaker 5: I guess what I would say is, I think it's
Speaker 5: probably useful to separate out charges that happen in the
Speaker 5: context of a heated primary. Yeah, with broader things about
Speaker 5: the person's like life stuff, you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: Like sure, this is a different thing than like Platner,
Speaker 5: you know, like, well, oh, yes, I'm just saying that, Like,
Speaker 5: there's just different categories of what people say against each
Speaker 5: other when they're running gainst each other in a primary.
Speaker 5: There was a lot of allegations that Barack Obama was
Speaker 5: being sexist towards Aleen or Hillary Clinton, and I don't
Speaker 5: think it was true of Sarah Palin. I don't really
Speaker 5: think it was true to Hailey Clinton. Some people maybe
Speaker 5: felt that it was, but I think those exist in
Speaker 5: a different space then people that are testing to your character,
Speaker 5: who have been with you outside a campaign, you know,
Speaker 5: the whole, Like he can bench three fifteen and he's
Speaker 5: but he's also like a doctor, and he also seems
Speaker 5: like a person who you know that I don't know.
Speaker 5: You said the internew view he did with his mother
Speaker 5: that I thought was really interesting, who is an engineer,
Speaker 5: came here from Egypt, was often the only woman in
Speaker 5: a room, sort of talking to her about what that
Speaker 5: felt like, which I thought was interesting, and also I
Speaker 5: think speaks to them recognizing they have some work to
Speaker 5: do on that front. The way that I solve for
Speaker 5: this is the same way that I think about how
Speaker 5: to think about patriotism and how to talk about patriotism
Speaker 5: from a center left progressive standpoint, which is like my version.
Speaker 5: I think Barack Obama is the best example of this.
Speaker 5: But I also felt this way about the World War
Speaker 5: II Museum in New Orleans, which is a great museum
Speaker 5: if anyone ever goes, which is a sort of like progressive,
Speaker 5: pluralistic patriotism, Like we are a great country because we
Speaker 5: are this place that is built out of all these
Speaker 5: different people from all these different experiences, and we've screwed
Speaker 5: it up a million different ways in a million times,
Speaker 5: but we have also kept trying to figure out how
Speaker 5: to make all these people together work. And I think
Speaker 5: that the version of masculinity is to be a man,
Speaker 5: is to be a person who is strong in a
Speaker 5: sort of inner and deep.
Speaker 3: Sense and who like that and can bench three fifty and.
Speaker 5: Looks out for people and does the right thing and
Speaker 5: people can look towards and depend on And to me,
Speaker 5: it's like in the same way that like, you take
Speaker 5: this ven diagram of some of the attributes that we
Speaker 5: learn in our civic culture about America, with the attributes
Speaker 5: that we as progress as cherish, and you're like, that's
Speaker 5: the thing I'm going for. I think you take the
Speaker 5: aspects of masculinity that I do think have a root
Speaker 5: in the culture, which is like strength, or leadership or dependability,
Speaker 5: or you know, looking out for people, even protecting people
Speaker 5: that like that, you cultivate those in a broader sense
Speaker 5: of like looking out for people, looking out for people
Speaker 5: that are being bullied or being marginalized, like being the
Speaker 5: one that stands up for them. That to me is
Speaker 5: like the vision of what of where you kind of
Speaker 5: find the sweet spot to this answer? And I don't
Speaker 5: know how you communicate that, but that's the way my
Speaker 5: own conception of it is.
Speaker 4: I think one of the things that Democrats could really
Speaker 4: do is kind of wrap their arms around like someone
Speaker 4: who's loving, like and has shown themselves capable of great love,
Speaker 4: whether for children or their mother, or their spouse or
Speaker 4: their partner, because that's something that Trump doesn't have at all,
Speaker 4: and that is I think really aspirational, especially to see
Speaker 4: if we're talking about a guy like men being comfortable
Speaker 4: showing the fact that they can be lovers.
Speaker 3: And I don't mean that in like a sexy way.
Speaker 2: No, no, but it's a real point.
Speaker 4: Important reminder that like, that's what most people are looking
Speaker 4: for in life, is to be loved and to feel
Speaker 4: loved and to belong. And Trump's found the inverse of that,
Speaker 4: like he's found unity through hate, and like love and
Speaker 4: affection is always in season. Sometimes it might come arrive
Speaker 4: at your doorstep and a hot pink tank top and
Speaker 4: a gold chain Kate Shaw.
Speaker 3: Sometimes not.
Speaker 4: You are one of my favorite people on the planet.
Speaker 4: We have known each other for thirty fucking years. Out
Speaker 4: it's wild and every conversation is better than the last.
Speaker 2: Oh that's sweet. That was really fun. I'm so glad
Speaker 2: we did it.
Speaker 3: You're the best. Chris Hayes.
Speaker 4: Everybody watch Chris Hayes on MS now, Always listen to
Speaker 4: his podcast Why Is This Happening? And consume all books
Speaker 4: he writes, because they're really good.
Speaker 2: Working on the next one. I'm very excited about this
Speaker 2: next one.
Speaker 3: O course you are. Oh my Jesus.
Speaker 4: Okay, Well, thank you for doing this in between writing drafts,
Speaker 4: and thanks to everybody for listening.
Speaker 9: Podsave America is a Crooked media production. Our show is
Speaker 9: produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Ruben, McKenna Roberts, and Faris Safari,
Speaker 9: with re Jerlin, Elijah Cone and Adrian Hill. Our team
Speaker 9: includes Matt to Grote, Ben Hefcot, Jordan Canter, Charlottelandis Krol
Speaker 9: pell Avieve, David Toles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single.
Speaker 9: Our staff is probably unionized with the Writer's Guild of
Speaker 9: America East.
Speaker 2: You