John Fetterman and Graham Platner both flailed into adulthood, living off their affluent parents while not amounting to much. Why have leftists decided this is a good resume for the U.S. Senate?
Pete Buttigieg followed a clear track into politics. Go to Harvard, work in consulting, join the military, run for mayor with clear ambitions for higher office. Why is this ambition inherently bad? I don't care if my electrician authentically wants to rewire my house; I want him to be predictable and competent. Similarly I want my politicians to be predictable and competent. Does it really matter if they are also "authentic"? As you wrote so eloquently, this authenticity is often predictive of unreliability.
On the other hand, as someone with academic and professional success in elite circles, I find Pete Buttigieg very legible. I find it relatively easy to listen to him and understand his priorities. I think I can tell when his support for a position is genuine versus a calculated political bid, and judge him accordingly. I think most Americans find his archetype much more illegible. That's fine, and it's why other bios can be great for political candidates. The problem is when voters find the "angry loser" archetype legible and compelling.
This is a problem with the dirtbag left. They seem to resent a certain type of professional meritocratic success, and view those who succeed this way with deep distrust. Many leftists in elite circles chose to avoid the private sector and instead work in academia, nonprofits, or activism, which creates a real blind spot to the reality that private sector success is typically positive-sum, not theft. It is also correlated with competence and perfectly compatible with progressive policy preferences.
Finally, I hope that everyone learns a lesson here, not just the left. Plenty of moderate democrats are losers who engage in destructive factional warfare, often appealing to diversity in extraordinarily cynical ways (e.g. the Equality PAC recently, the congressional hispanic caucus with Xavier Becerra). And why the fuck did Schumer decide to recruit an unpopular 80 year old governor instead of any other Maine politician under 60 years old?
Really like the point about private sector success often being positive sum. One result of that is that it generates a lot more opportunities for satisfying professional employment and remuneration than the public/non profit sector. There’s nothing inherently wrong with activism, academia or nonprofits, but because all of these areas end up being funded by some other part of the economy, it puts some hard limits on the number of jobs available, especially well paid ones. I think that really does contribute to many of the crabs in a bucket dynamics you see in some of those circles.
My most Barro-pilled take is that progressives and leftists just want to find candidates who they think code working class (Platner) or Midwestern male (Tim Walz) or whatever without sacrificing any policy commitments.
Yeah, the consensus among most Democrats is that they can pivot tough questions back to "affordability" and billionaires. Planter does this. Quoting him from NPR this week:
"What we need in this country is a clear political message about who is to blame, because it isn't immigrants. It's not trans kids. It's billionaires. It's corporations."
This does numbers at town hall meetings but it's a little facile and it doesn't make Democrats robust against Republican attacks. Which billionaires have convinced voters to become more critical of immigration? Ten years ago, the Kochs were the Democrats' most powerful villains; they opposed Trump in part because they supported liberal immigration policies. Which corporations told voters that "trans kids" were an issue? Even more recently, as any conservative activist can tell you, corporate America was extremely pro-LGBT, so much so that Ron DeSantis took on risk by fighting Disney over his "parental rights" bill.
I’d love it is a reporter asked Platner, “Retail Oyster prices have risen x% since 20xx. Explain the value chain of oysters from farmer to wholesaler to transportation to restaurant/retailer to me and which parts of that are charging too much to screw people?”
Not sure how big of a motivator something like this is in Maine (although it is a much older state), but the larger point is that constantly pivoting away from issues that some voters clearly are concerned about is not necessarily an amazing strategy.
My sense of the issue in Democratic politics is that, quietly (I hate that word), they have adopted Sarah McBride's evolved position that to win rights long-term, they can't call people bigots for not being on board. I talked to her about this in 2024 and she's expanded on it since. (I say "evolved" because ten years ago she was a bit more radical about this.)
There hasn't been real thinking about what the correct position is, and in blue states, you see Democrats get accused of "throwing trans folks under the bus" if they say what McBride says.
This is absolutely it. They are desperate to avoid having to moderate on any cultural commitments (trans, immigration) and think so poorly of the rubes that they can throw a bit of misdirection their way: “Look! He wears a hoodie! Look ! He’s a sports-ball coach! Look! He’s a (pretend) farmer!” It’s all downstream from Trump which made any candidate seem possible, but Trump has severely weakened the Republican Party, not to mention the country. It’s not a playbook we should be implementing.
The really sad part is that Maine had a great potential candidate- Jared Golden, the top Democratic electoral over-performer and who would have made a fantastic candidate for this senate seat. But rather than rally around him, many Democrats have attacked him for his moderate views and he’s now retiring from politics.
I would have serious concerns about Golden defecting to the Republican Party at some point. I wish he hadn't been pushed out of his House seat but I think for me and a lot of Democratic voters, writing an op-ed saying "a 2nd Trump term will be absolutely fine" is pretty disqualifying for statewide office in a state Kamala Harris won by 7 points.
I would like to know how hard Schumer or DNC tried to actually recruit Golden.
Something MattY noted on his substack is that a lot of plausible Dem candidates who are a) more moderate than Platner b) likely don't carry the same personal baggage basically didn't want to even try to run against Collins because they think she's a political superwoman given her previous election overperformances.
Like true enough, but seriously do these people on staff who reads Nate Silver or Nate Cohn or anyone who does any data drive electoral analysis? Because it was really easy to see that a) Maine has only gotten more Democratic in the last 6 years b) parties out of power almost always do better in the midterms (2002 is an exception that proves the rule. And that took a "Black Swan" event in 2001) c) Trump was persuing policies very likely to tank his approval rating as early as spring, 2025 (see liberation day). Meaning even if Collins overperforms by say 8 points the national average, Platner still wins (or any Dem candidate).
Sort of feels like a version of 1991/1992 where GWHB was thought to be unbeatable (there was even an SNL sketch that made this argument) post Persian Gulf War, so a lot of plausible Dem candidates didn't run which is an underrated reason a flawed philander was able to win the nomination and then win the general. The extent to which politicians seemingly can't think ahead more than 3-6 months is kind of astonishing.
That is why I pay for your substack, Josh. No bullshit here.
Yet Democrats are yearning for an alternative to, say, serious, responsible Chuck Schumer who writes strongly worded letters, or serious, responsible Elissa Slotkin who whines with "alpha energy" about the Iran war, "Oh, the president needs to *explain* to the American people why we should do this" instead of denouncing it outright from the start.
So you are spot on. Somehow the movement has to figure out how to recognize and elevate the rare combination: character, charisma, strength, and wisdom. The discourse of outrage becomes chaotic and works against this.
Long way to go for sure on this. If nothing else, I'm totally ok with "lets focus on the midterms first".
But I'm leaning increasingly towards Jon Ossoff for the reasons you're laying out. Again, long way to go, who knows what sort of issue positions he starts taking in 2027 or what person "catches" fire in 2027/2028 or heck what issue we're not thinking of starts dominating conversation in 2027/2028 (Israel/Gaza was on no one's radar this time in 2022). But I'm getting more impressed with what I'm seeing.
Schumer writes strong letters? Huh? The ones I get are written by his desk. Barro's piece here is an eye opener. What was I thinking? I think it was that here in Florida we'll need the votes of people who voted for Trump last time and the ones I know loathe "elites" And until the sexting bit surfaced I thought Platner a good fit for "clearly not elite." Well he still is but probably not much more than a political outlier, if that makes any sense..... not sure
OK blame the "geniuses in the progressive consultant class." But what about the geniuses in the mainstream/DNC class who couldn't come up with anyone better than Janet Mills, who I believe is 197 years old?
Maine will re-elect Collins because Maine has a high percentage of older people who like her and, outside of Portland and a few small college towns, the state doesn't lean left. It wasn't that long ago that they had 2 GOP senators, and Angus King has always insisted on being independent.
Platner is a terrible candidate (and, it seems, a terrible person, too). This was a huge wasted opportunity to take back the Senate.
Conscientiousness is a valuable asset in this life with all of its tripwires and disappointments. Those who lack this asset often are f*uck ups or cynics.
I guess I prefer the former over the latter, but can’t we find candidates who are neither? That seems a low bar to me.
Yup. This is what the fringes admire. (Keep in mind the Right's admiration for a guy who was handed millions by Daddy and proceeded to bankrupt six businesses.)
I do not see this as a bug, but rather as a feature.
Liberalism, although we do not often think of it this way, is built upon a foundation of print culture, which vastly expanded the portion of the population prone to reflection, reason, facts, planning, calculation, and so on.
The ugly truth is that technological advances have been hammering away at that foundation for over a century, with television and social media doing the most obvious damage.
With the result that pop culture and pop psychology has been nudging people into rebellion against print culture for years. Don't reflect, live in the moment. Don't overthink it, go with your gut. Narratives trump facts. Just do it!
Not so surprisingly, then, there's resentment towards the people who get ahead by going to university, excelling there, getting a good job, excelling there, building their resume, controlling their mouths, and so on.
When I hear the Left talk about generational change and then champion the likes of Platner, this is what comes to mind. They are piggy backing on the fact that yes, we really do have to quit with the elderly candidates, but they are slyly messaging that it's not just age, it's that now it's all about charisma and attention grabbing. Not foresight or responsibility or rationality or respect for facts or reason.
If these people ever succeed in taking over the Democratic Party (and make no mistake about it, much of the media aches for them to do so, because they grab eyeballs), I suspect I will be no more willing to vote for them than I am willing to vote for their counterparts on the Right.
Love the point about nepo-babies. Say what you will about how John David Washington or Bronny James got to where they are, but now that they are there they actually work- hard. Fetterman? Not so much.
I don't think I'm going out on a limb to say the thing unites people who read this substack and listeners of Hasan Piker is a loathing of DJT (though given Piker's, let's call it "idiosyncratic" far left views, not 100% sure his listeners all dislike DJT, but I digress). My point is, I think a lot of us are very loathe to want to overstate or even acknowledge his influence. But its hard to explain the elevation of Fetterman, Platner and Spencer Pratt (more on him in a second) as "serious" candidates without bringing up the political success of Orange Man.
But I brought up Pratt, because what I really wanted to discuss The Central Air conversation with Reihan Salam. Look I am a Progressive neoliberal schill likely to the left of you, so putting that out there that I'm really trying to interrogate my biases, but honestly I found Salam wildly disappointing. I wasn't expecting him to be some Mamdani super fan by any means, but honestly it felt like he suffers from Mamdani derangement syndrome. He basically dismissed Mamdani's decision to keep Tisch on board as police commissioner by saying a version of "it won't last". Like sure maybe, politicians fall out with allies all the time just for internal ego driven reasons. But absent any sign this is going to occur, talk about taking a leap as to what the future holds. He also pivoted to saying Mamdani is not doing enough on crime because felony assaults are up. If you want to say he should do more, sure (feel like building subway faregates that SF just built is a huge low hanging fruit here). But wow is bringing up felony assaults a real "nutpicking" stat. Felony is up...0.4%. Literally everything else is way down (https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/PR009/nypd-fewest-murders-shooting-incidents-shooting-victims-recorded-history-the). Not a fan of Mamdani kicking the can down the road on the city budget deficit and pensions, but honestly we think Cuomo or just "normie politician" was unlikely to do the same? Reason we know it's unlikely is a big reason the fiscal hole exists is "normie politicians" kicking the can down the road years ago. Lastly, he criticized the left and embrace of Unions. Like not wrong, but as Josh astutely pointed out, the biggest backers of the recent LIRR were local GOP!*. Honestly, the last part of your conversation was clarifying. I'm with you in thinking Israel/Gaza is talked about way way more than it should be not just in local races but in national races. And yet Salam not only disagreed, but basically kind of confirmed to me his beef about Mamdani is really Isreal/Gaza.
Which brings us to Pratt. This is where I really had major disappointment with Salam. Given his stated position to be non-partisan (I'm sorry, lol), he wouldn't come out and endorse Spencer Pratt, but clearly he boosted his candidacy. And his reason was Pratt was "directionally" right on the issues. A big "Wut??!!" from me on that. Josh correctly brought up Pratt's opposition to SB-79, but honestly did not press Salam enough on this. The three biggest issues facing LA (and CA) are housing, housing, housing. The other issues (like homelessness) is downstream of this issue. Karen Bass is terrible on this issue...Spencer Pratt based on his statements would even worse! Like it's literally the opposite of being "directionally" right. Also, to bring it back to this post...Pratt is a reality show clown. He has no business having a relatively powerful political position in America (I thought Ben clowned too boosting Pratt himself, but he is correct to note that an underrated issue with the LA mayor is it's actually not a powerful mayoralty. Having said that, it's powerful enough that a reality show star shouldn't hold the office. Seriously, have we not learned anything the past 2, let alone 10 years?).
I don't think Salam is some Sean Hannity or Mark Levin or even Marc Thiessan figure. Someone who is just a blind partisan or willing to throw their intellectual integrity away to be "close to power". But also means I hold him to a higher standard. And man on man did he NOT mean my standard on the podcast.
* This whole discussion felt like a version of "Murc's Law" coming to life with the exception of Josh who pointed out that one issue in NYC is the "insiders"/"centrists"/GOP rallied around Cuomo or Curtis Silwa. Like an underrated reason that Hochul and now Mamdani have moderated is that Hochul only won in 5 points and Trump made big gains in NYC vis a vis 2020. Point being, if you want Dems (or really any party who's dominant in one area) to change and not be far left, helps to have an actual candidate that's not a clown/sex pest who non super lefties might actually at least consider voting for.
I too was a bit disappointed with that conversation with Salam. It didn’t strike me as being as thoughtful as he usually is. Always dangerous to remote psycho-analyze so take this with a whole carton of salt but here goes: I think Salam really dislikes Mamdani on a personal level that goes way beyond ideological differences. Salam comes from a family background that is significantly less privileged than Mamdani, and Salam’s views on many issues (but likely not Israel) are probably a lot closer to the typical immigrant view than Mamdani’s are. Just look at the neighborhoods where Mamdani got most of his votes. I think he thinks Mamdani is a poseur dilettante. And to be really spicy… if I were Salam it would annoy me that someone (Mamdani) who could basically pass as white going around talking about how “someone who looks like me has been shut out of power” when Salam has never been able to present as anything but the child of immigrants.
Again- super unfair to put thoughts in other people’s heads so I’ll just stress that’s just my speculation. For me personally, while I’ve liked and respected Salam for a long time I’m much closer to you and Josh on Mamdani. My expectations were low, and he’s far surpassed them. The first blizzard was a little rough, but he learned and was ready and improved for the second. He didn’t just keep Tisch around he fully apologized to the police for his past statements- something that many other leftists with problematic past positions could learn from <cough> AOC <cough>. He’s pushing out a lot of really good housing policy ideas - we’ll see how well they get implemented, but 🤞🏻. The anti-Israel stuff does make me a bit uncomfortable- NYC mayor is not a foreign policy position - but he has forcefully denounced anti-Semitic vandalism, which has angered some of his erstwhile allies. So yeah, overall a pretty good job, and I agree that Salam is way too negative on the policy merits, which leads me to (probably unfairly) speculate on other things.
"I think Salam really dislikes Mamdani on a personal level that goes way beyond ideological differences." If there one part that I don't think there needs to be too much psychoanalyzing, it's that there just seems to be something very personal with Salam and Mamdani. Maybe it's the class thing as you say (I think plausible) or some deep seated Indian beef (speaking as an Indian, I can see that being a possibility) or maybe a mixture of both (whispers it very quietly, maybe the "intersection" of class and ethnicity) or something else entirely (agree that there there is lot of psychoanalyzing speculation; everything you and I just cited I could see not being it all), the personal animosity is just palpable and yeah possibly influenced why he didn't come across as well as might have otherwise.
As someone who was initially enamored with Fetterman, I had to eat a lot of crow. The comparison between him and Platner is insightful; excellent article.
Pete Buttigieg followed a clear track into politics. Go to Harvard, work in consulting, join the military, run for mayor with clear ambitions for higher office. Why is this ambition inherently bad? I don't care if my electrician authentically wants to rewire my house; I want him to be predictable and competent. Similarly I want my politicians to be predictable and competent. Does it really matter if they are also "authentic"? As you wrote so eloquently, this authenticity is often predictive of unreliability.
On the other hand, as someone with academic and professional success in elite circles, I find Pete Buttigieg very legible. I find it relatively easy to listen to him and understand his priorities. I think I can tell when his support for a position is genuine versus a calculated political bid, and judge him accordingly. I think most Americans find his archetype much more illegible. That's fine, and it's why other bios can be great for political candidates. The problem is when voters find the "angry loser" archetype legible and compelling.
This is a problem with the dirtbag left. They seem to resent a certain type of professional meritocratic success, and view those who succeed this way with deep distrust. Many leftists in elite circles chose to avoid the private sector and instead work in academia, nonprofits, or activism, which creates a real blind spot to the reality that private sector success is typically positive-sum, not theft. It is also correlated with competence and perfectly compatible with progressive policy preferences.
Finally, I hope that everyone learns a lesson here, not just the left. Plenty of moderate democrats are losers who engage in destructive factional warfare, often appealing to diversity in extraordinarily cynical ways (e.g. the Equality PAC recently, the congressional hispanic caucus with Xavier Becerra). And why the fuck did Schumer decide to recruit an unpopular 80 year old governor instead of any other Maine politician under 60 years old?
Really like the point about private sector success often being positive sum. One result of that is that it generates a lot more opportunities for satisfying professional employment and remuneration than the public/non profit sector. There’s nothing inherently wrong with activism, academia or nonprofits, but because all of these areas end up being funded by some other part of the economy, it puts some hard limits on the number of jobs available, especially well paid ones. I think that really does contribute to many of the crabs in a bucket dynamics you see in some of those circles.
My most Barro-pilled take is that progressives and leftists just want to find candidates who they think code working class (Platner) or Midwestern male (Tim Walz) or whatever without sacrificing any policy commitments.
Yeah, the consensus among most Democrats is that they can pivot tough questions back to "affordability" and billionaires. Planter does this. Quoting him from NPR this week:
"What we need in this country is a clear political message about who is to blame, because it isn't immigrants. It's not trans kids. It's billionaires. It's corporations."
This does numbers at town hall meetings but it's a little facile and it doesn't make Democrats robust against Republican attacks. Which billionaires have convinced voters to become more critical of immigration? Ten years ago, the Kochs were the Democrats' most powerful villains; they opposed Trump in part because they supported liberal immigration policies. Which corporations told voters that "trans kids" were an issue? Even more recently, as any conservative activist can tell you, corporate America was extremely pro-LGBT, so much so that Ron DeSantis took on risk by fighting Disney over his "parental rights" bill.
I’d love it is a reporter asked Platner, “Retail Oyster prices have risen x% since 20xx. Explain the value chain of oysters from farmer to wholesaler to transportation to restaurant/retailer to me and which parts of that are charging too much to screw people?”
I believe he also called trans issues a manufactured issue, which is insulting to voters who care about the ways in which gender norms are changing. Jesse Singal wrote about those comments: https://thedispatch.com/article/trans-issues-activists-gay-marriage/
Not sure how big of a motivator something like this is in Maine (although it is a much older state), but the larger point is that constantly pivoting away from issues that some voters clearly are concerned about is not necessarily an amazing strategy.
My sense of the issue in Democratic politics is that, quietly (I hate that word), they have adopted Sarah McBride's evolved position that to win rights long-term, they can't call people bigots for not being on board. I talked to her about this in 2024 and she's expanded on it since. (I say "evolved" because ten years ago she was a bit more radical about this.)
https://www.semafor.com/article/09/13/2024/sarah-mcbride-reflects-on-becoming-the-first-trans-member-of-congress
There hasn't been real thinking about what the correct position is, and in blue states, you see Democrats get accused of "throwing trans folks under the bus" if they say what McBride says.
So are they going to turn down Alex Soros’ dirty dirty billionaire money now?
This is absolutely it. They are desperate to avoid having to moderate on any cultural commitments (trans, immigration) and think so poorly of the rubes that they can throw a bit of misdirection their way: “Look! He wears a hoodie! Look ! He’s a sports-ball coach! Look! He’s a (pretend) farmer!” It’s all downstream from Trump which made any candidate seem possible, but Trump has severely weakened the Republican Party, not to mention the country. It’s not a playbook we should be implementing.
The really sad part is that Maine had a great potential candidate- Jared Golden, the top Democratic electoral over-performer and who would have made a fantastic candidate for this senate seat. But rather than rally around him, many Democrats have attacked him for his moderate views and he’s now retiring from politics.
I would have serious concerns about Golden defecting to the Republican Party at some point. I wish he hadn't been pushed out of his House seat but I think for me and a lot of Democratic voters, writing an op-ed saying "a 2nd Trump term will be absolutely fine" is pretty disqualifying for statewide office in a state Kamala Harris won by 7 points.
I would like to know how hard Schumer or DNC tried to actually recruit Golden.
Something MattY noted on his substack is that a lot of plausible Dem candidates who are a) more moderate than Platner b) likely don't carry the same personal baggage basically didn't want to even try to run against Collins because they think she's a political superwoman given her previous election overperformances.
Like true enough, but seriously do these people on staff who reads Nate Silver or Nate Cohn or anyone who does any data drive electoral analysis? Because it was really easy to see that a) Maine has only gotten more Democratic in the last 6 years b) parties out of power almost always do better in the midterms (2002 is an exception that proves the rule. And that took a "Black Swan" event in 2001) c) Trump was persuing policies very likely to tank his approval rating as early as spring, 2025 (see liberation day). Meaning even if Collins overperforms by say 8 points the national average, Platner still wins (or any Dem candidate).
Sort of feels like a version of 1991/1992 where GWHB was thought to be unbeatable (there was even an SNL sketch that made this argument) post Persian Gulf War, so a lot of plausible Dem candidates didn't run which is an underrated reason a flawed philander was able to win the nomination and then win the general. The extent to which politicians seemingly can't think ahead more than 3-6 months is kind of astonishing.
Wham! Pow! Bang! (Batman fighting words)
That is why I pay for your substack, Josh. No bullshit here.
Yet Democrats are yearning for an alternative to, say, serious, responsible Chuck Schumer who writes strongly worded letters, or serious, responsible Elissa Slotkin who whines with "alpha energy" about the Iran war, "Oh, the president needs to *explain* to the American people why we should do this" instead of denouncing it outright from the start.
So you are spot on. Somehow the movement has to figure out how to recognize and elevate the rare combination: character, charisma, strength, and wisdom. The discourse of outrage becomes chaotic and works against this.
Long way to go for sure on this. If nothing else, I'm totally ok with "lets focus on the midterms first".
But I'm leaning increasingly towards Jon Ossoff for the reasons you're laying out. Again, long way to go, who knows what sort of issue positions he starts taking in 2027 or what person "catches" fire in 2027/2028 or heck what issue we're not thinking of starts dominating conversation in 2027/2028 (Israel/Gaza was on no one's radar this time in 2022). But I'm getting more impressed with what I'm seeing.
Schumer writes strong letters? Huh? The ones I get are written by his desk. Barro's piece here is an eye opener. What was I thinking? I think it was that here in Florida we'll need the votes of people who voted for Trump last time and the ones I know loathe "elites" And until the sexting bit surfaced I thought Platner a good fit for "clearly not elite." Well he still is but probably not much more than a political outlier, if that makes any sense..... not sure
OK blame the "geniuses in the progressive consultant class." But what about the geniuses in the mainstream/DNC class who couldn't come up with anyone better than Janet Mills, who I believe is 197 years old?
As a moderate Pennsylvania Democrat, I lament daily that Lamb is not our senator. I hope he primaries Fetterman next time.
But will Conor Lamb wear a hoodie Jocelyn? WILL HE?
Maine will re-elect Collins because Maine has a high percentage of older people who like her and, outside of Portland and a few small college towns, the state doesn't lean left. It wasn't that long ago that they had 2 GOP senators, and Angus King has always insisted on being independent.
Platner is a terrible candidate (and, it seems, a terrible person, too). This was a huge wasted opportunity to take back the Senate.
Yes.
Conscientiousness is a valuable asset in this life with all of its tripwires and disappointments. Those who lack this asset often are f*uck ups or cynics.
I guess I prefer the former over the latter, but can’t we find candidates who are neither? That seems a low bar to me.
Thanks Josh.
Yup. This is what the fringes admire. (Keep in mind the Right's admiration for a guy who was handed millions by Daddy and proceeded to bankrupt six businesses.)
I do not see this as a bug, but rather as a feature.
Liberalism, although we do not often think of it this way, is built upon a foundation of print culture, which vastly expanded the portion of the population prone to reflection, reason, facts, planning, calculation, and so on.
The ugly truth is that technological advances have been hammering away at that foundation for over a century, with television and social media doing the most obvious damage.
With the result that pop culture and pop psychology has been nudging people into rebellion against print culture for years. Don't reflect, live in the moment. Don't overthink it, go with your gut. Narratives trump facts. Just do it!
Not so surprisingly, then, there's resentment towards the people who get ahead by going to university, excelling there, getting a good job, excelling there, building their resume, controlling their mouths, and so on.
When I hear the Left talk about generational change and then champion the likes of Platner, this is what comes to mind. They are piggy backing on the fact that yes, we really do have to quit with the elderly candidates, but they are slyly messaging that it's not just age, it's that now it's all about charisma and attention grabbing. Not foresight or responsibility or rationality or respect for facts or reason.
If these people ever succeed in taking over the Democratic Party (and make no mistake about it, much of the media aches for them to do so, because they grab eyeballs), I suspect I will be no more willing to vote for them than I am willing to vote for their counterparts on the Right.
I just subscribed so I could comment and say I’m not sure I’ve ever agreed with anything more than this article. Thanks for writing it
I’ve been independent of my parents since I was 17. I feel sure I’d be a better Senator than this guy.
Love the point about nepo-babies. Say what you will about how John David Washington or Bronny James got to where they are, but now that they are there they actually work- hard. Fetterman? Not so much.
This aged very well, Josh!
I don't think I'm going out on a limb to say the thing unites people who read this substack and listeners of Hasan Piker is a loathing of DJT (though given Piker's, let's call it "idiosyncratic" far left views, not 100% sure his listeners all dislike DJT, but I digress). My point is, I think a lot of us are very loathe to want to overstate or even acknowledge his influence. But its hard to explain the elevation of Fetterman, Platner and Spencer Pratt (more on him in a second) as "serious" candidates without bringing up the political success of Orange Man.
But I brought up Pratt, because what I really wanted to discuss The Central Air conversation with Reihan Salam. Look I am a Progressive neoliberal schill likely to the left of you, so putting that out there that I'm really trying to interrogate my biases, but honestly I found Salam wildly disappointing. I wasn't expecting him to be some Mamdani super fan by any means, but honestly it felt like he suffers from Mamdani derangement syndrome. He basically dismissed Mamdani's decision to keep Tisch on board as police commissioner by saying a version of "it won't last". Like sure maybe, politicians fall out with allies all the time just for internal ego driven reasons. But absent any sign this is going to occur, talk about taking a leap as to what the future holds. He also pivoted to saying Mamdani is not doing enough on crime because felony assaults are up. If you want to say he should do more, sure (feel like building subway faregates that SF just built is a huge low hanging fruit here). But wow is bringing up felony assaults a real "nutpicking" stat. Felony is up...0.4%. Literally everything else is way down (https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/PR009/nypd-fewest-murders-shooting-incidents-shooting-victims-recorded-history-the). Not a fan of Mamdani kicking the can down the road on the city budget deficit and pensions, but honestly we think Cuomo or just "normie politician" was unlikely to do the same? Reason we know it's unlikely is a big reason the fiscal hole exists is "normie politicians" kicking the can down the road years ago. Lastly, he criticized the left and embrace of Unions. Like not wrong, but as Josh astutely pointed out, the biggest backers of the recent LIRR were local GOP!*. Honestly, the last part of your conversation was clarifying. I'm with you in thinking Israel/Gaza is talked about way way more than it should be not just in local races but in national races. And yet Salam not only disagreed, but basically kind of confirmed to me his beef about Mamdani is really Isreal/Gaza.
Which brings us to Pratt. This is where I really had major disappointment with Salam. Given his stated position to be non-partisan (I'm sorry, lol), he wouldn't come out and endorse Spencer Pratt, but clearly he boosted his candidacy. And his reason was Pratt was "directionally" right on the issues. A big "Wut??!!" from me on that. Josh correctly brought up Pratt's opposition to SB-79, but honestly did not press Salam enough on this. The three biggest issues facing LA (and CA) are housing, housing, housing. The other issues (like homelessness) is downstream of this issue. Karen Bass is terrible on this issue...Spencer Pratt based on his statements would even worse! Like it's literally the opposite of being "directionally" right. Also, to bring it back to this post...Pratt is a reality show clown. He has no business having a relatively powerful political position in America (I thought Ben clowned too boosting Pratt himself, but he is correct to note that an underrated issue with the LA mayor is it's actually not a powerful mayoralty. Having said that, it's powerful enough that a reality show star shouldn't hold the office. Seriously, have we not learned anything the past 2, let alone 10 years?).
I don't think Salam is some Sean Hannity or Mark Levin or even Marc Thiessan figure. Someone who is just a blind partisan or willing to throw their intellectual integrity away to be "close to power". But also means I hold him to a higher standard. And man on man did he NOT mean my standard on the podcast.
* This whole discussion felt like a version of "Murc's Law" coming to life with the exception of Josh who pointed out that one issue in NYC is the "insiders"/"centrists"/GOP rallied around Cuomo or Curtis Silwa. Like an underrated reason that Hochul and now Mamdani have moderated is that Hochul only won in 5 points and Trump made big gains in NYC vis a vis 2020. Point being, if you want Dems (or really any party who's dominant in one area) to change and not be far left, helps to have an actual candidate that's not a clown/sex pest who non super lefties might actually at least consider voting for.
I too was a bit disappointed with that conversation with Salam. It didn’t strike me as being as thoughtful as he usually is. Always dangerous to remote psycho-analyze so take this with a whole carton of salt but here goes: I think Salam really dislikes Mamdani on a personal level that goes way beyond ideological differences. Salam comes from a family background that is significantly less privileged than Mamdani, and Salam’s views on many issues (but likely not Israel) are probably a lot closer to the typical immigrant view than Mamdani’s are. Just look at the neighborhoods where Mamdani got most of his votes. I think he thinks Mamdani is a poseur dilettante. And to be really spicy… if I were Salam it would annoy me that someone (Mamdani) who could basically pass as white going around talking about how “someone who looks like me has been shut out of power” when Salam has never been able to present as anything but the child of immigrants.
Again- super unfair to put thoughts in other people’s heads so I’ll just stress that’s just my speculation. For me personally, while I’ve liked and respected Salam for a long time I’m much closer to you and Josh on Mamdani. My expectations were low, and he’s far surpassed them. The first blizzard was a little rough, but he learned and was ready and improved for the second. He didn’t just keep Tisch around he fully apologized to the police for his past statements- something that many other leftists with problematic past positions could learn from <cough> AOC <cough>. He’s pushing out a lot of really good housing policy ideas - we’ll see how well they get implemented, but 🤞🏻. The anti-Israel stuff does make me a bit uncomfortable- NYC mayor is not a foreign policy position - but he has forcefully denounced anti-Semitic vandalism, which has angered some of his erstwhile allies. So yeah, overall a pretty good job, and I agree that Salam is way too negative on the policy merits, which leads me to (probably unfairly) speculate on other things.
"I think Salam really dislikes Mamdani on a personal level that goes way beyond ideological differences." If there one part that I don't think there needs to be too much psychoanalyzing, it's that there just seems to be something very personal with Salam and Mamdani. Maybe it's the class thing as you say (I think plausible) or some deep seated Indian beef (speaking as an Indian, I can see that being a possibility) or maybe a mixture of both (whispers it very quietly, maybe the "intersection" of class and ethnicity) or something else entirely (agree that there there is lot of psychoanalyzing speculation; everything you and I just cited I could see not being it all), the personal animosity is just palpable and yeah possibly influenced why he didn't come across as well as might have otherwise.
As someone who was initially enamored with Fetterman, I had to eat a lot of crow. The comparison between him and Platner is insightful; excellent article.
The fact that you’re focusing on Graham Platner’s inability to dress himself only shows how corrupt the DC establishment is.
What are you talking about?
Just a joke