Graham Platner, Jon Ossoff and the New Rules of Political Attention

How to Graham Platner, a political unony ego, come from nowhere, to so thoroughly dominate the primary that Janet Mills, the sitting governor of Maine, dropped out or suspended her campaign, I should say, and didn't even come back in, as Platner was rocked by even more scandals. Now, the National Pundits, the political establishment, they keep looking for that one story, that one headline, that one moment in my life that they can define the campaign by.

But in trying so hard, understand me, they failed to understand that this is not about me at all. This is a movement about us.

The answer is that he had the most important political resource right now, and she was not able to grab any of it.

“That resource is a constant theme now for me on the show that you need to see attention as its own”

substrate of American politics, and attention is working in really unusual ways this year. In the Michigan Democratic primary for Senate, where Bill Alsaid is now in the lead. Who here believes in Medicare for all? [Applause] [Applause]

In Texas, where James Tolerico, another person who doesn't really heard of a couple years ago,

is now the Democratic nominee for Senate.

One thing is clear today, we're about to take back Texas. In Los Angeles, where we actually saw it fail in the mayoral candidacy of Spencer Pratt. Reality TV star Spencer Pratt's insurgent campaign for LA mayor has officially run its course. These corrupt crooks really do look out for each other, don't think. What's happening with John Osset, from the sudden rise in interest in what he's doing.

“All of it has a lot of lessons, I think, for how attention is working right now in American politics.”

To help me unpack them, I want to have on my favorite person to talk about this particular topic with. Our friend Chris Hayes, host of all in with Chris Hayes, and author of the great book on attention in the modern moment. The silence call, how attention became the world's most endangered resource.

As always, my email, if you need our attention, as a client show at atmytimes.com.

[Music] Because Hayes, welcome back to the show. Always great to be back. So I want to have you here for one of our every so often check-ins on how attention is working in American politics. And I want to start with a Wall Street Journal interview that was with the people who recruited Grand Planner. How did you find Grand Planner?

Well, so, I mean, we went through thousands and thousands of prospects. We, you know, through a number of names, you know, assess just a huge amount of people then, you know, play and pull it up this video of this guy with an oyster farm. My name is Grand Planner, and I live in Sullivan, Maine, the owner of French from Bay Oyster Company. And then, she pulled up his FEC history and saw the money given to Bernie Sanders and, you know, some other people. That was enough information to know that we had the best prospects that we'd maybe ever seen.

Okay, I want to flesh this out, because I've been told this story by multiple people that have this played out.

“This group, like, they were like, who could run in Maine?”

Like, lobster farmer, oyster farmer, some kind of fisherman. And so when he says we looked at thousands of people, like, the computer looked through occupational and other forms of records. There was like, which lobster farmers, or is it like, who is donated to a populist candidate? Which is to say that, you know, we normally think of candidates as being, you know, recruited because they're important in their communities or a lawyer. They run a hospital, something like that.

A lot of people grow up wanting to run for office. But Grand Planner was cast, right? It was, like, the Hollywood looking for somebody to fill a role. There's a long history there. I mean, the Democrats are running someone in Tom King's district who's a, like, helicopter pilot.

Mikey Cheryl is a helicopter pilot. They're like, you know, that's, that's a bio that's called Spanberger or a former CAA officer.

So like, that part of it is an interesting version of a sort of grassroots, lefty populist group doing what the detriple do or the DSCC.

But the reason this worked was because of the charisma. And charisma at one level, it's like, I do think there's a kind of full circle thing happening in politics, which is like, of course, charisma is important to politics.

“But I think particularly at the level of scale, there was a period where the formula really didn't take into account charisma.”

Yes. It was like bio, social capital, connections, ability to raise money, all that stuff. And then like, whatever, we'll cut some ads for them, we'll get them a good team and they'll be fine. I think charisma matters much more now because attention matters more and charisma is the talent for grabbing and holding attention. So I want to hold on what you just said about the detriple C because I think we both know a fair amount about the way they recruit.

And one of the grim realities of how they recruit is they very heavily emphasize how much money you can raise. One, they will force you to sit on the phone. Yep. Six hours a day. Yep.

Six hours a day.

And they will punish you if you don't, right, you want to be on things like they're red to blue lists.

And so I know candidates who are just a row beaten into being on the phone raising money for hours and hours and hours a day. And the detriple C, which is the sort of democratic congressional campaign committee, isn't doing that because they're cynics. Right. Or you finish for them. They love money.

You need money. Right. But the thing money is buying largely is attention. I mean, it also buys field and organizing those things. That buys attention.

Is it buys TV? And so what what this group is doing when they they cast platinum, he's not a person who you go to and think, "Can you raise the money to buy attention?" He's a person you go to and think, "Can you unleash the charisma to earn attention?" Yes, exactly.

Which then we'll bring in money. Yes. But even if it doesn't, attention.

“This is the point is that you have to, I think you have to have a theory of attention for a successful campaign right now.”

In a way that when that formula was as dead set as it was in the kind of, you know, high point of broadcast TV ads, right? Like, raise as much money as possible. Hit the airways with a ton of broadcast TV. And that's the, that's the recipe. That's 90% of a campaign.

As broadcast TV, particularly, and as broadcast TV ads decline in their salience, right? You have to have some alternate theory of how you're going to get to people. In some places, like in North Carolina with Roy Cooper, like everyone in the state knows who Rick Cooper is, right? He doesn't have the same problem. Because I've been elected statewide.

I think five times at this point, something like that. So he doesn't have to do that. But if you're running another race, you do have to come up with some theory of how you're going to do it. In this case, it was casting. And then it was finding a person who genuinely has real obvious, raw political talent and course.

Okay, but we're underselling here the accomplishment of Platner.

Because they are running in that race ultimately against a Roy Cooper-like figure.

Yes, in Janet Mills. Yes. This is not a situation where there is an open primary of nobody's. It's not a situation where they're going into a place like Nebraska where they recruited Dan Osborne, the independent who ran, you know, a cycle go and is running again this cycle.

“This is a situation where Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Senate campaign committee had a candidate in mind, right?”

They have a Democratic governor of Maine and they're going to run the Democratic governor of Maine against Mills to pick up that seat. And what happens just very, very, very quickly is that Platner squeezes Mills out intentionally. She just the charisma gap between them and the ability that he has to command attention, particularly online. But that then translates into all other forms of attention because like the newspapers follow it, the cable news follows it, he's on your show. He also, he knocks out a sitting governor, right?

But he also, I mean, this is the other part of it is he out campaigns are in that state on the ground. Like, it's not just the online part of it. And again, this is part of attention too, Maine is a small state. Right. I mean, Maine is a state where, you know, Susan Collins at this point knows like literally knows a shockingly high percentage of manners.

Right. Yeah. This is just the way it works when you're in institution like her. It's the kind of state where you can make inroads in retail politics in a way that you can't the California government. Right.

Right. So part of it, too, is that he just outworks her, but I think that much younger than she is. I mean, that mills is a 78 year old candidates. Yes. And I think there's actually an interesting relation here between attention and risk appetite because I think the two are so related.

Don't get negative press.

“If you're choosing between no press and negative press, minimize downsides.”

Other people could have run that primary. They knew that she was trying to recruit mills. She actually got in after Platinum officially. Almost all of the big name politicians in the state of Maine went for the governor's race. Right.

Which was going to be vacated. It wasn't going to have a sitting incumbent. And you weren't going to take on the electoral colossus of Susan Collins. That's a lower risk choice. Platinum made a high risk bet.

And I do think there's a relationship between risk appetite and attention. That's very much part of democratic politics, which is there is a kind of institutional low risk appetite. I want to pick up on the word institution there.

So then we're going to party.

The Republican party pre-trap is like this too. They choose people who succeed in institutions. So I mean, if you think about the candidates after Barack Obama, right, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden. In different way, Comwell Harris, right, they're all people. They were not electoral juggernauts, right, Clinton lost to Barack Obama.

But she was beloved within the Democratic Party at that time. Joe Biden was Barack Obama's vice president. And it kind of goes down like this.

“I think that there is an inverse relationship between the personality type.”

Yes. It succeeds institutionally. And the personality type that succeeds intentionally. That's true. I think it is related to what you're talking about with risk. Yeah.

But I think it is created an almost structural problem in party recruiting. Because parties, as you were noting, they look for all these signals that are fundamentally Signals of institutional capacity. Yeah. Social capital, right, ability to raise money.

Jobs that tend to have risen through the institutions. I mean, platinum is a downwardly mobile oyster farmer who's oyster firm doesn't really Make money and sells to his mom's fancy restaurant, right? He is not. You wouldn't just look at it and think that guy is the most impressive person in

Main, right? Right. It's not like Mikey Cheryl as a MP pilot. Yeah. You know, but the people who succeed in institutions are often do not have personalities

that are spiky in the way. Yeah. It's an intentional moment currently rewards. So I think that's true. I think there's a few things going on.

One is we should talk about success institutions in credentialing, which are sort of two different things, right? You know, it means a lot in the world of democratic progress of politics is someone went to Yale law. So there's the credential part of it.

There's actual success institutions. There's relationships to those institutions. And then there's the kind of personalities that succeed in those institutions. The old term that you would use in the 50s and 60s, right? In a different era was like a company man.

Right? And like a company man is someone that gets along well with others in an organizational setting. Does it make ways, doesn't upset people? And I think the idea of a company man is kind of what has been the template. Again, almost necessarily, right?

I mean, if you like as you said at the beginning of this part of the conversation, the democratic party is an institution. One thing that Plattener is able to carry in a way that feels authentic is a genuine feeling that the system is hollow at its core. You know, people talk about, which is not a put on with him.

I'm which is he part of this.

“I think that's really, yes, I think that's important.”

I mean, you can say a lot about his life and what he has done or has not done. And we're talking about some of that too. But he is somebody who believes the institutions have failed because they have failed. And he has failed out of them, right? The hostility is authentic.

Yes. And when you listen to him on the stump, more than he is carrying a message about single pair, healthcare or a green new deal, he is carrying a message about, you know, in very different way than the Bernie did, but using some language about an unspecified political revolution. He is carrying a message about this is all wrong somehow.

And what you need is somebody who fundamentally believes it is all wrong somehow. The world that we live in today is not natural. We do not live in a political and economic reality that is organic. It is a system that is built by policy decisions. Policy that is written by establishment politicians in Washington, D.C.

at the behest of their donors and their supporters. And it is a system that was made to make sure that no matter how hard you work,

you will never feel like you have power.

They have the pedigree.

They have the background.

They're the ones that are allowed to make decisions for us. Don't worry ourselves. Let them take care of it. What I'm going to tell you right now, that story is bullshit. And you can look across a lot of the candidates who are succeeding right now.

Here I do think mom Donnie is a, if it's in, we'll talk about it. I'll say Donald Trump was obviously like this. A large number of the candidates who have broken through are breaking through with a, with a message more even than in a agenda of like genuine disillusionment. Yes, and anger.

“Yeah, I mean, I think there's a few related questions.”

So one, I think people use to turn populism, which I think gets probably as close as any,

to what we're describing as a tendency.

You know, disillusionment frustration with the failed status quo, elite failure, particularly. So there's a few interesting questions I've thought of that. One is, does that have a specific ideological valence? Can you be a moderate populist? Yes, right?

Can you be a centrist populist? Is one interesting question. Another is, can you channel the intentional politics when you are suddenly in the incumbent position? I want to pick up on something you said about being a moderate populist? You can be a moderate populist, and you know how we know that?

Because there was one in Maine, right? The Democrat in the House representing the reddest district in the country. Yes, is Jared Golden.

He's a main member of Congress.

“He's a populist who is a Bernie Sanders supporter.”

He is also a moderate. You know, he's kind of familiar with this. I'll bet about how Donald Trump would be the end of the world. He supported Donald Trump on tariffs. But he is also very, very pro labor.

He's very, you know, disgusted with politics. And he has existed in a kind of politically miserable existence. Yes. He's been holding a seat, probably no other Democrat could hold. And in fact, he's leaving now.

And he is, this year, getting primary from the left. And he said, "I'm done. I'm retiring." You know, you could have imagined a world where the Democratic Party fell in love with this guy, embraced him, and elevated him to run against Susan Collins. And in that world, I'd be like, Susan Collins is gone, like she is gone.

“But I think the issue you see with Jared Golden and moderate populism”

is that you become very vulnerable in primaries. Yes, because on both the right, but now on the left, I mean, the polling on this is really fascinating. If you look at the number of Democrats who said they were very liberal and say 1995, right, you know, most Democrats were not liberal or very liberal in 1995. Like they self described this moderate.

And now it's like very liberal. It's very hard to survive. And it's also just very unpleasant. Yes, that part of it is a big part of it. Even if you consider the day-to-day of being like yelled at by the advocacy groups on your side,

by your own friends, the thing that you cannot seem to do right now, is hold that together with being a successful candidate in primaries, where you're having to appeal to a high-attention electorate with very, very, very sorted political opinions. And you have, right, particularly in this sort of nationalized, intentional atmosphere. I mean, that's part of it, too. Like in another universe,

people no one online is paying attention to what Jared Golden's do. If, right, like you could be Jared Golden for your district and like the local news would cover you. And the, you know, the local TV news newspapers may be some, you know, some nerds would read about you in roll call, because we're all operating in one intentional sphere. There's, there's little, there's less and less room for that sort of variation.

That used to just come about because like people just didn't pay attention to what the main two question can it was doing. I gave my brother, uh, New York Times subscription. She said New York long subscription, so I've actually saw all the games. We'll do word old, mini spelling bee. It has given us a personal connection.

We change articles. And so having read the same article, we can discuss it. The coverage, the options, not just news. That should diversify the desk. I was really excited to give him a New York Times cooking subscription so that we could share recipes. And we even just shared a recipe the other day.

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“I think it's like brings up some of the flip set of partner.”

And one reason I think Platinum is such an interesting figure to start with here is he represents both sides of the gamble being made. Right? The high risk, high attention, care that Chris M on the one hand. On the other hand, the point of getting this high risk candidate with a sort of anti-institutional life story is you're not getting somebody who has been watching a step for a long time. And you're getting somebody who's maybe misstep quite a lot. So you've got the Nazi Tonkov tattoo on the chest and this kind of pulsing question about whether or not he knew about that.

I'm honestly a little skeptical that he did not know about it for as long as he says he didn't.

I sure that's got to say something. You have him sexting. It seems like about a half dozen women during this marriage or at least texting with them in an effort to set up some kind of relationship. Also there'd be some claims from an ex-girlfriend, the one who works in Republican politics, that he was borderline abusive when they fought. I've had this trouble with Platinum because on the one hand, I had a very charismatic much of what he says.

I like, no particular thing that has come out about him has been, I mean, he's also typically very politically incorrect. Reddit posts. Right. Right. Nothing that's coming out about him on its own has been disqualifying for me.

Yeah. I don't think he's in it.

“He's so politically incorrect on Reddit that if he weren't anti-Semite, I think we would know.”

I think that one would have come out pretty quickly. I think that's well. I think he knew what the tattoo was earlier. And I think the spirit in which this is my view of him. Right.

This is not based on anything but my read a situation. The spirit in which he and his friends got it was Edge Lordy. It was about it as a signal of a kind of vicious bad assory, not a signal about Jews or Nazis. That's my view. I don't have, I cannot prove it, but I'm telling you what I think.

The thing that worries me about Platinum or is in any one thing. It is the sense that there is just bad judgment in the guy. I mean, the sexting with like the women, it's like it's early in a marriage and that's pretty recent. Yeah. Right.

The thing that worries me about Platinum or isn't kind of any one of these things individually. It's that, you know, one thing about a guy who's filled out of a bunch of institutions and has kind of been down really mobile and has made a bunch of weird decisions and how to kind of Nazi tattoo. Is you might think, yeah, I want the best for him. I hope for all the best for him. Should he be a US senator is a very different question than that. Right.

Yes.

“I mean, what I, if I were appointing people from Maine, would I point for him Platinum?”

Like, I would not, but that's also not how well right elections work. Yeah. We have the 17th Amendment, right? Yes. But so that I think is, but here's like the thing.

He's not running a general election yet. Susan Collins overperforms and polls. He has been totally generating attention and energy among Democrats and among particularly like the online left. And whether or not it creates an attack surface that, you know, you can attack this guy is fundamentally unreliable, which is what they will do, which is what they are doing, are doing with a lot of money. If Democrats win that seat, maybe this all looks genius, if they lose that seat, I think there is going to be like a level of factual helipay.

So let me say that I basically share, essentially share everything you said.

Like, could and have made those arguments. Let me just for the sake of this conversation, take the other side for a second. One is they did run someone in 2020 who was the most standard possible state legislator. No scandal to speak of raised a ton of money a woman. And she got her bucket.

In fact, she lost by like, I think nine points right when she was up in all the polls. She was up in all part of why people are so nervous about this race. They're nervous about the race, but the other thing is it's not like that was not tried against Susan Collins. It was tried, it didn't work. The second thing I would say, and this goes back to our risk thing, is there were like five people in that Cuban or total primary. They could have run for Senate.

Like, the big names of Maine all ran for governor. So part of this is a little like everyone sort of bringing the hands like,

They didn't run. He ran.

“What do you want it like, what is the magic wand that makes them run?”

And they didn't run because that was a harder race.

The third thing I would say is, I think there's a theory of the case here, and I'm not saying this is true.

I'm just presenting it as a possibility. Is that part of the brand problem for the Democrats has been excessive conscientiousness. Yes. That this is the party of essentially kind of like school, marm, tisk, tisking. Now, that's extremely gendered.

I want to be very clear about that. And I think a lot of the conversation about platinum on both sides of the very intense polarized debate within the Democratic coalition is very gendered. That said, I think it's, you know, there is a kind of post-COVID hangover of the sort of idea that the Democrats are just this like, Again, this kind of like quick to cancel, tell you what you can and can't do kicking people out who talk a little salty, et cetera. I think there's something to that, I think there's a particularly something to that with a certain subset of cross-pressure and swing voters.

And maybe this is a kind of antidote to it. Yeah, maybe none of this is negative for him. Right. And I said like the right post, people join the show. The Reddit posts are the median voter.

Right. That's the joke people would mean. When I said the Reddit posts, I was like, that's a asset. Right. I don't have to agree with them or like them to be like, that's a political asset.

“Yeah. I mean, this is a line. I say all the time, but it's something you need to like spin out into an essay.”

But the person I type of the left is bureaucratic and the person I type of right is autocratic. Yeah. And those are failures, right? The left is another version of it that I use is the left is overformed by institutions and the right is underformed by institutions. Yeah. But you can imagine a world where platinum loses or doesn't win by as much as you could of.

And the answer is simply, you kind of almost got it right with him.

Yeah. You know, you just pick somebody like a little too. Underformed, right? You don't want the straightest student. And you don't want the kids smoking pot in the parking lot. Right.

Right. You need to mix it in between there. But, but, but the question is really. We're going to see a test of whether or not this works in. Of whether this works in Maine.

It's going to be very, very interesting. Totally to see how that plays out. You guys have two more things about them. So one is I think the way that I also think there's something interesting and how he is handled last year. He has handled last few weeks.

He has been doing a lot of press.

“And I think this is another thing where you have to, if you're going to do it,”

you got to be all in, which is you're going to go in your face questions and you're going to talk to people. And that is, I think, one of the lessons of our new era of the dynamics of scandal, whatever they are, is that attention moves very quickly. And if you embrace that and you're, like, talk to people, you can move through things in a way that used to be very difficult.

Yeah. And then the last thing I'll say about platinum, I think this is a really important aspect of his appeal. People have talked about the fact, oh, he went to a private school and his grandfather was this famous architect. And his mom has his restaurant, dad bought his house, dad bought his house. This is a guy who, it was enlisted.

And enlisted marine during the global war on terror, in multiple tours fighting in really brutal circumstances.

And here's what I, why I think that's politically salient.

He has an ability to, for lack of a better word, code switch. I think code switching is actually like one of the superpowers of a successful democratic politician. Because the democratic party is so varied and diverse and pluralistic, you have to move between different groups. And it's hard to learn how to do that without some organic experience in different worlds.

Graham Platner really genuinely has that. It gives him that thing where he's able to talk to different audiences. Barack Obama really had it. Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton, Alexander Ocasio-Cortez.

All of these people, you know, Bill Clinton was like, that's interesting. Does Ocasio-Cortez have code switching at that level? I think she does, actually. And I think one of the things that you see also, you saw this with Obama. You saw it with, you know, they used to call Barack Obama in the right wing press berry. Because he was berry in high school at a certain point.

The idea being, this guy's in authentic. He's not really who you think he is. He's pretending to be this thing. The flip side of that is this is a person who's had many different experiences in radically different life worlds that has given this person an organic ability to connect across different. That proves to be the super power and democratic politics.

Take a beat on Ocasio-Cortez here. Because it's something I'm really interested to see with her. I think nobody knows if she's going to run for president. I'm not sure she knows if she's going to run for president. She is a tremendous political talent by any measure.

She stays away from disagreement.

You do not see her doing what Bernie does. She's not on flagrant. She's not out there with Lex Friedman. She just did a thing with more perfect union, which is a lefty content producer.

“You know, talking to Trump voters, but in a very controlled environment, right?”

She's not on Jubilee, which Rokana and for that matter James Telereco went on. And I think one of the biggest questions for her is actually whether she is comfortable.

Yeah, that's interesting. Either switching into places that are not natural alliances for her or being herself in those places.

Gavin Newsom is doing this everywhere, right? He will go anywhere he has asked. And he particularly wants to go to places where it's going to be unusual to see him there. She runs a very, very, very, very careful operation. Yes, and often when she is in spaces where she's not comfortable, like the mutants against security conference, it can get hairy for her. She can sort of fumble.

In Congress, most of it with you would and should the U.S. actually commit U.S. troops to defend Taiwan if China were to move. So I think that this is such a, you know, I think that this is a, this is a, this is of course a very long standing policy.

I mean, if I were her advisor and I'm not, I'm the problem is she's not doing enough.

So she's not getting the sea legs that's not getting comfortable with things going wrong and also not getting the sort of like swiftness to sort of rescue them when they do.

“Right, you remember that Gavin Newsom thing a couple months ago where he's doing a book talk and he's like, I'm just like you to a mostly black audience.”

I'm like you. I'm no better than you, you know, I'm a 960 SAT guy. It's like, my SAT sucked. I can barely really read it. Yeah. Like it looked really bad. It was every for where for a couple days. But then you just go do something. He just moved forward partly though. I think all of these calculations about risk reward control lack of control. How much you're going in is is what your own personal position is with respect to attention, right? Because she is so commanding of it.

She has the luxury to take much more sort of conservative stances about what press she does. And I think that's a trade off. I agree with you that like there's probably a degree to which more would we do that. Tell us where she doesn't need to do a lot of interviews. Exactly. That's exactly it. But she just doesn't have to go. Yeah, where is real chasing around we believe. Yeah, real honest everywhere because he is trying to build exactly like intentional strength.

I want to move to Michigan.

“Let's start here. Do you want to just give a overview of the Michigan Senate Democratic primary?”

I mean, you have a situation which you have a departing incumbent Democratic senator. Gary Peters, who's retiring. So you have an open seat. You have a very, I would say from the Republican perspective, high quality recruit for the Republican side who is Republican congress and microgers who is truly out of like normie Republican kind of central casting. Like if you're trying to win a swing state, he is not, you know, he's not some Peter Tiel weirdo who's going to do an ad with his gun silencer. This is designed to kill people.

I'm Blake Masters. I'm running for the US Senate in Arizona. And then on the Democratic side, you've got Abdul Sayed, who is a really fascinating dude who was public health official on Detroit. He's a he's a Rhodes scholar. MD, MD PhD incredibly credential has run has date wide and lost for governor exactly and but it's very, very charismatic. Extremely bright to a crooked media podcast had a crooked media podcast. I don't know if you've, you know, I'd spoken to him at length.

He's an incredibly impressive dude. Yeah, incredibly impressive. He's a really smart guy who knows a lot of stuff. You have a state senator, Miller McMoro, who has been kind of like a, I would say like a charismatic up and come or a national politics even when she was a relatively obscure. Yeah, starting with this big speech, she gave after being accused of being a groomer. Yes. So I want to be very clear right now. Call me whatever you want.

I hope you brought in a few dollars. I hope it made you sleep good last night. I know who I am. I know what faith and service means and what it calls for in this moment. We will not let hate win. But she also says good like good video content. She's very charismatic. You know, like a year ago, if I were doing this, I'd be like Mallory McMoro, one of the big attentional, like emerging attentional stars.

And then you have the person who I think there's reporting to indicate that I think, and it's probably sure that Haley Stavins, who's a sitting congresswoman, who is I think probably the establishment choice.

And what's happened is she has not taken off. And she's not of the three candidates. Whatever you think about Haley Stavins issue positions for qualifications was she would be good center. Like I think she's the least, potentially gifted of the three. And I think the polling indicates that right now Abdul Elsaid is probably in the lead. He's gotten a huge amount of benefit from the sort of the the Bernie faction of the party. And he's not a son, Piker who did it came and did a rally with him, which was both controversial, but got a ton of attention.

“And in a first pass to post again, first pass to post primary split field, what do you have to get? You got to get 30% 35% of the vote.”

38% of the vote. So I want to talk about this primary because first in one way.

Abilsaid is like the opposite candidate from Grand Platner, right? He is intentionally capable, but he is not a outside the institution, right? Like is a guy who taught a Columbia. The road's gone. Road's gone. It's like the ultimate rastering of credentials in the American meritocracy is worn on his hands. Yes.

He has run before and lost. When people talk about candidates who have wanted to be in public office for a very long time, he is one of those candidates. And if you look at the polling in this race, you look at Pauli market or calcium this race. You can see that he did not walk in and start dominating it. What happened was that he started centering Israel and Gaza.

Hasan Pekar coming was part of this. And the role Pekar played in this, to me, when the way at least I observed it happening, it's not that it was Pekar's endorsement or something that mattered.

It's at Pekar himself was so controversial that outside groups like third way and then the other two candidates attacked.

And in attacking the centered Israel and Gaza, which turned the -- like Israel and Gaza is like an intentional superconductor. It is like no other issue with the exception of David Donald Trump himself and American life. And for an engaged Democratic primary electorate, Abdul Al-Saiad is more on the right side of that issue.

“And so I think you're seeing something that's going to be very important about attention.”

There are certain issues in any moment. Like his background, the way I came to know him as a political figure is Medicare for all. He emerges in politics, Bernie Sanders guy, and his whole thing is Medicare for all. And he still believes in that. From a public perspective.

But what has happened here is that there, like a lot of attention on Israel and Gaza and it has become like the defining issue. And Michigan obviously very big Arab population, right? And also the Haley Stevens component of this, right? Because I mean, we should give the backstory here, which is that, you know, Haley Stevens primary and 11. Anyway, it was this, you know, labor organizer and very kind of two state solution.

Israel, critical Jewish lefty state guard president.

Senegal president.

“Who was who had like a ton of a pack money dumped on his head?”

Yeah. Because he was insufficiently loyal to the essentially the Netanyahu line. And Stevens knocked him off as part of that effort. Another thing I would say is, and I think this is incredibly dangerous for the folks who spend their time worrying about America's relationship to Israel and defense of Israel. You have a situation in which you have kind of stacked these different things atop each other, where it's like money and politics.

The establishment, the failed status quo, the pro Israel lobby, are all stacked atop each other and very hard to disentangle. And so being the populist insurgent against the status quo, your criticism as Israel, your criticism of the war on Gaza, your views on that, put you across these incredibly selling divides that sort of reach up and down from the actual issue of Gaza. I wrote a piece on this when all the attacks were centering on Piker. And one of the points of that piece was it, it is going to be very, very, very important to break the effort to conflate anti-Semitism and designism.

And it is going to only become more important as Israel's actual actions make anti-Semitism a more popular and like morally compelling position. And I'm unprogressively minded people. Look, you can look at polling of young Jews. Right, how many of them want to one state solution? It's pretty high now.

What do you say to the Jewish community who you're going to want to vote for you about your positions on Israel, on a pack funding, et cetera?

“And how they shouldn't feel alienated by a candidate like you?”

Okay, I'd say this. Nobody understands what it's like to be discriminated against for how you pray, like someone who gets discriminated against for how we pray. And most of the time we don't ask how we pray, most people are asking what you pray for. And I pray for peace and dignity and basic goodness for all of our kids, whether they're Jewish kids who are neighboring a couple of houses down from me or my kids who are Muslim. And I'll tell you that it's really important for us to be able to differentiate between Judaism, the Jewish people, Jewish culture, Jewish contributions to this country, which are vast and a pack in Israel. Those are two different things.

I, when I'm elected, will be the chief opposition to what the Egyptian government does. Now my family immigrated from Egypt. That doesn't make me anti-Egyptian. That just means that I want my tax dollars to be spent here rather than sent over there to cement the chokehold of a military dictatorship on its own people. And I play the same exact principles to Israel. I don't want my tax dollars being spent the back top, backstop apartheid and genocide when they could be used to provide things like glasses or healthcare or schools for our own kids.

And I worry that a lot of times people want to use the word anti-Semitism to spread to defend a foreign government.

“And I think it's really important for us to differentiate between those two because I don't want to be held accountable to what another government does simply because I share ethnicity with the people who live there.”

And I know the same for my Jewish sisters and brothers. I remember a sign that was put up in Los Angeles. I saw a picture of in 2008. It was on a lamp post and it was during the Hillary rock primary. And the sign was a campaign sign. And I had one sentence and it said she voted for the war. And it was like, that's all you need to know. Like that vote for the Iraq war. That was the thing. That was the reason Hillary Clinton lost that primary.

And ultimately there's a million reasons and she came very close and talk up, re-litigate it. But that was the thing.

I know a lot of pretty good old Jews who was in me. I don't understand why he's looking so much attention. You know, look at what China's doing to the weekers are. And one of the things I say is that they're making themselves a center of attention, right? They really pushed hard to have America join them in a war. They've expanded the scope of that war.

They have allowed just constant, you know, in addition to Netanyahu saying he wants now 70% of Gaza. They have, like, allowed and enabled and protected and caused a constant stream of atrocities out of the West Bank. You can, it is, you can support what Israel is doing. But I don't think you can deny that it's going to come with a tremendous cost.

“And if you're not willing to have Israel pay the cost of its actual actions, I don't think you should be supporting its actions.”

Let's, let's talk about what happened in the Israel day parade here in New York in terms of attention. So you've got this, you've got the Israel day parade. It's happened every year. And in, in the context of New York, it has been a kind of, you know, cross ideological day of Jewish unity and solidarity.

Now this year, it's controversial for reasons. The mayor's not going to attend for the first time.

In a long time, other politicians will be there. What, what happens in that parade? Bezel Smottrich. The most, one of the most far-right ministers who's in the Israeli government, who is, you know, pushed for along with Ben Gavier, the, law to execute people by hanging, who has been, you know, component of the settlers and more than that has put out a functional plan for the expulsion of Palestinians.

But I think it is reasonable, called the ethic cleansing of the West Bank. Yes. He shows up at the Israel parade with a bunch of, like, also hardcore extremist right wingers and the, his potential politics, his potential politics. And they do a bunch of interviews and he even says to one of the interviewers, I love this parade. It reminds me of Jerusalem day, which, of course, is like the far-right parade that happens every year in Jerusalem, where, like, all very extremist right wing Israelis march through Jerusalem in an act of, like, very clear provocation.

Like chanting horrifying things. I mean, death to Arizona parade is a, but Smottrich says this, because he's playing his own potential politics. But you can't, and it's like, so then after that, it's like, well, who's falses it? The people are paying attention at the parade. Yeah. You know, and you could say, well, he's an extremist. He doesn't represent, he's in the Israeli government.

He's got authority over the West Bank. Yeah, it actually drives me completely insane.

cabinet ministers in Israel are doing is irrelevant or their controversial or it is what it is.

There is power. There's also there's a Southern expression I love this throwing rocks and hiding hands, which I love. And there's just also I feel like this, this isn't the Israeli government, but A pack and sort of groups around them and associated superfacts. There's a lot of throwing rocks and hiding hands. You've just played in a succession of the most expensive congressional races in history, like a set of record setting ones where you have spent the money that have made them the most expensive.

That's fine. It's America in the post citizens United era. People get to do that.

What you can't do is be like, "Why is everyone focused on us?"

It's like you spend tens of millions of dollars to knock people out. Like you could do one of the other. You play in these races, you play in these races, but then you get to be criticized for it. I'm Paul Tenorio, I cover soccer for the athletic. And I'm Amy Lawrence, I cover football for the athletic. Whatever you call it, the biggest competition in the sport is happening right now.

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“James Calarico, because I think he, he reflects maybe something different than what we've been talking about.”

He is the one case in which I think you can really see an intentional superstar who rose during this cycle. But did not rise because he was so far left or so far right. He has, I mean, I had him here on the show. It's a great interview. People should go check it out. He has bog stand or progressive politics. Now, it is connected to a beautifully articulated Christian moral framework. But but he's somebody who is broken through intentionally, not by being very far left or very far right, not by choosing a highly controversial issue.

But actually by, front loading a religiously rooted decency that in part got him on Joe Rogan's podcast and became the signal that maybe he could do something other than what's couldn't. And when Texas, so I'm curious what you've made of him. Again, I would start with the thing that we've been saying about a number of these people, including Platinum, and I think I would say it is that he's he's charismatic in again in the ancient Greek sense. And I think obviously the sort of pastoral tradition that he's coming out of means that he's both naturally charismatic and also has access to a set of rhetorical tools that have been developed literally over thousands of years.

It's a grab and hold people's attention. Right. So I think that's a huge part of what's going on and again. I think that connects to this back to the future theme that we keep coming back to, which is like, you can't just raise money and run ads.

“Right. If you want to be successful, you got to have something going on about how you grab people and he clearly has that.”

I think you're totally right that he's a unicorn and that it's not connected to that kind of populist message in the same way. He is a, I think, a populist and I think he's very much framing himself as a sort of insurgent outside the status quo. But he's not he's really not relying on any kind of us versus them framework.

I mean, he does a little bit of a million billionaires, but it's rhetorical flourishing.

It's not the flour in the way the partner, a partner is like, that is partners thing. It's what this guy is a former president of his college Democrats. He is a different type. He is a person who is totally run for, he's a teach for America kit. Right. He's not a great person who has been failed by American institutions.

And I think that's an interesting dimension of him, but he also has a quality the partner does in a different way, which is it.

Well, I don't, I'm not saying he was cast in the sense that somebody came out and found him the way they came out and found a partner. He does look like what he is. And to say with a partner looks like what he is. I mean, a lot of people are oyster farmers or lobster men, but they don't, like you wouldn't see them on the street. And think well, you definitely spend all your time on the water. Right. Yes. And like, you know, partner looks like a cement. Yes. And. Toleriko, like you would cast him as a pastor to play the idealistic young pastor.

Yeah. Like rooting a corruption. Yes. In a complicated church. Yes. Exactly. He just has the hole. You're putting him in a scene and there will be blood. And he, right. Exactly. And he rises, you know, by running his social media strategy,

“which you know, eventually gets him on, on Rogan. And I think that he also reflects this yearning people that I think is really powerful.”

And I was underplayed, which is not just for populism or radicalism or even inspiration, but in the Trump era for decency. Totally. And there's a yearning for public virtue, which I think is a sort of funny inversion of some of the politics of our, you know, our, you know, are youth. I'm trying to talk a lot about virtue on the show. Yeah. And I'm thinking about a lot about virtue. I think that's partly the experience of Trump. It's partly that I'm a middle-aged dad with three kids. And I think a lot about moral instruction.

And particularly a moral instruction, you know, world in which like the most powerful and famous figure in the country is a moral genera.

The other thing I would say is there's these different. There's different kind of vibratory levels that. Different coalitions play on. And I do think that like the appeal for connection. Brother and sisterhood solidarity unity, you know, that was the thing that Barack Obama was able to martial. And that's still deep in the progressive soul. I think I think it's deep in the American soul.

It's the not what Donald Trump is totally incapable of playing in that register. I think the Republican party increasingly in his era is incapable of playing that register. And then the last thing I'll say, and I think this, this applies to John Ossoff as well. Where we're going next. Oh, good.

“When you think about like what's the opposite of Trump?”

One typology of the opposite of Trump is a nice young man.

Like what's the opposite of Trump? It's like a nice young man.

Let me hold before I go to John Ossoff and the different Obama registers. The nice young man, the what it means to be nice, the weakness of being nice has been the main form of attack. The Pakistan campaign has decided to release. Like low tea, tele Rico, tofu, tele Rico, tele Rico, which now the telecom campaign has tele Rico shirts. I think that one was a Pakistan mistake. But the weakness they think they have sensed is that people want strength.

Yeah. And a nice young man who wants you to like him and speaks often of his own humility. And as a vegan girlfriend is not strong enough for Texas. I mean, that's a charitable version. They're calling him the f-ler is what they're doing. Yes.

You're giving a charitable version of what the action is.

“Well, and I mean, and actually quite literally, like, you know, you have Stephen Miller saying the first transgender candidate, right?”

You know, he's a queer. Yes. It's very school yard all of this. Yes. When we take a step back.

Because it's just like cruelty versus kindness. Yes. They're really, they're really playing into the campaign telecom wanted to set up. So I once heard that somebody around the mom Donnie, Cuomo, can't be like, they both got the exact antagonist they wanted. Yeah. That's great point.

Right. And they just turned out mom Donnie was right about which antagonist he wanted and Cuomo wasn't. In terms of that race and who's making the right tactical calls, we should just take a step back and say, You know, Texas is Texas for a reason. And if you run a moderately competent campaign with a moderately competent candidate, you will win by five points.

Like, as a Republican. As a Republican, it's just structurally there. So you really got to screw things up. If not more than five points. Yes.

I mean, ten. Ten to five. Right. You run a bad campaign. It's five.

You run a miserable campaign. Like Ted Cruz didn't 2018 in a really, really good year for Democrats. You win by two. What I would say is about Paxton is that he's kind of the worst of all worlds in this way, which is that Ken Paxton is someone with a lot of baggage.

He was impeached by a super majority Republican state legislature for corruption. And he was indicted for securities crimes, although not convicted. He was also not convicted on his impeachment.

There were a number of his ex-staffers who came out with a statement where they talked about just how awful he was as a boss and in his public positions. I've covered Ken Paxton a ton of my journalism career. You don't hear him talk that much. This is not a super charismatic guy. Yeah.

He's got all the baggage and none of the charisma. Weird combination of things.

But he's there's it's not like there's some amazing magnetism on the other side of it.

So if you were setting up the worst kind of candidate in this era who's got the kind of all the negatives of sort of high risk attentional strategies and none of the positives, he kind of is Ken Paxton. Yes.

“But this is where I think there's like just something genuinely interesting about Tolerco because he to me shows.”

There's actually a lot of pathways in to breaking up intentionally. It's generally interesting that Tolerco is able to beat Jasmine Crocket, who is also like big MSNBC figure. Jasmine Crocket. Yes. Big on viral video and it's not super guarded and talky pointsy.

You know that and I think that's a good attribute and it you know he beat her in that primer. But it goes to show I think that there's probably a lot of different angles. Yes. You can play here. I think one thing that these platforms sniff out and I don't know why but podcasting video etc.

I think they sniff out in authenticity that in a way that was not true when you were giving quotes and newspapers or going on meet the press or being on the nightly news. I think actually in authentic figures could do perfectly well there. Some how institutions could go back to what we're talking about institutions don't care about authenticity. They actually want you to change who you are to conform to what they need. Yes.

But these sort of anti institutional spaces. They do. There's something about them where people I was feeling from people on the show.

The first thing the audience can sense is in authenticity.

The first thing they can sense is you not telling them what you really think.

“Yeah and you got to be that I think that's such a good point that you have to be.”

You have to be some version of your actual self to figure it out and to do it right. Where I'm a manual is not in my view likely to be the Democrats 2020 and how many. But his somewhat unlikely presidential campaign is going to do better than I think people realize it's going to do in being a sort of force in the primary. Because he is fundamentally himself totally in all places. And so that allows him to just sort of attack and run plays and be compelling.

And also he's got to go back to the risk calculation. He's got nothing to lose. He can say yes to everything. And he's a high risk personality. He's got high risk personality.

He's got high risk personality.

He's an unusual highly institutional figure. Yeah. Very, very, very high risk. Yes. Speaking of 2020.

“We talked about AOC a little bit ago and I think she's one of the big figures here.”

But what if you made of John Osser's emergence as like a across ideological. Twenty twenty eight Dark Horse a person who I've been talking about for a while. But has some piker is talking about, you know, the, you know, Madaglace is talking, right? Like, you know, Michelle Goldberg just did a great piece on him. There's something interesting in in what people are projecting on to John Osser.

I have been jokingly calling him in our team Slack. And he's on our guy Eve. Which is it. Do you reference to to the like the, you know, the, the shallow may figure who is essentially the kind of chosen one, right? But the, the for told profit.

This is a joke. Just to be clear. And the reason that I use that is Jewish Kennedy men. There is something about the way that he is performing his candidacy. The social media videos that putting out the fact that he is.

Very conventionally handsome and young and could be in a movie. Like AOC, he's very controlled in his media. Yeah, he's not playing a volume game. Laptop. Don't see him on podcast interviews right now.

No, that not playing a volume game. I think that he has figured out a way. In a broadly palatable ideological fashion to leverage a populist moral critique of the rot of Trump. That can appeal across the different democratic factions, which is important. But also he's rubbing for reelection in a swing state and is right now polling.

Very well. We'll see what happens. But if you back up a couple years, if I said to you in 2024. Which of the or 2022 or whatever. Which of George is democratic senators is everybody going to be talking about in 2026 as a 2028 savior.

100%. And instead. Awesome.

Yes, is a one people are talking about.

“And I was looking at Rafael Warnock's YouTube page because he's doing content.”

But it doesn't have any of the visual grammar. Something that you see in a mongon, you see in a John Ossov, you see in a James Tolerico. This is not just like an age of algorithms. It's visual. Very visual.

And you'll see Warnock and he's talking in the Senate press conference set up. He's just like in front of American flags. And also. They figured out you know the clip like immediately when you see it. And Ossov used to be a documentary and who did documentaries on international corruption.

So there's a background here. This guy actually knows how to create TV about corruption. But there's something really interesting to me about. Yeah, first of the scarcity that the creating want. This who is John Ossov, this building anticipation. Plus this figuring out.

Other visual grammar. That's distinct and wholly your own. And looks like Obama. Yes. It looks like like Obama.

It's like the hero shot.

It's always the hero shot.

It was a constant. You remember there was an idea. You got to be skinny for that to work.

“I just want it for anyone else who's taking notes out there in production.”

You got to be pretty thin for that hero shot. There was a great. The hero shot being this sort of three quarters upwards. Yeah. And otherwise you get a lot of chance.

Yes. You get a lot of chance. And there was this great. The an article on Obama. Something like.

Obama accidentally says too far into future. Because he was very good at this. I've shot is always. It's always like this. Yeah.

He's looking at a crowd. Yeah. He's losing out to us. The crowd. No, you're right.

And I do think it's true that kind of visual branding is so interesting.

“There's one other dimension of Ossov that I think is really worth mentioning in terms of 2028.”

And which is that he's Jewish. Yes. And end of genuine Israel. Correct. This is so I think to go back to what we're saying about that Michigan race.

There's no way of getting around the fractures in the party on Gaza is real perceptions of antisemitism. Perceptions of undo influence by the Israel lobby. Like the coalition contains both elements. And someone's going to have to figure out how to thread that needle. And if I were.

If you were asking me what that person might look like.

I would say the first Jewish nominee in history.

Who is also a critic of Israel. Would be one recipe to thread a very difficult needle for the coalition. Yeah. And the point here is that Ossov has substance on this. So he early on sent on to a Bernie Sanders letter that I think he only had 19.

It's very like with a small group, it was all yours. That was against sending more arms to Israel. Given the level of humanitarian devastation that was currently being inflicted by Israel upon Gaza. You know, my colleague Michelle Goldberg had a great profile of him. And you know, she she mentions like a harrots piece, which is like the liberal Israeli newspaper saying,

Well, this position is going to make a much harder for Ossov to win in in Georgia. And no, it put Ossov in position to actually navigate this in a way. The others are going to have a lot of trouble with. Yep. Josh appears going to have a lot of trouble here.

It's already having a lot of trouble here. And you know, but if you go too far to the other side, you're going to have. Right. You're going to need somebody who can stretch that both sides of the divide at once. And Ossov, who is one centering on a corruption story.

Who is two centering on a, he moves a corruption critique into an argument for liberal pluralism. Yes. Right. It's sort of a populist critique with a liberal pluralist answer. Right.

Talks a lot about values. Talks a lot about being rooted in the civil rights movement. And then is able to navigate this dimension of the parties. Excuse him. He's also done something on corruption that I have struggled to do, and I don't know if you've felt the same way. The corruption is so overwhelming.

And you can hear my voice right now, like so. It leaves me speechless. It's so breezy. It's so insane. Every single day I discover some new story that is like would have been the end of any other politician I've covered.

Ossov has figured out how to tell that story very, very well. One reason is that he often, he moves it to be as about Donald Trump and also about the democratic party. Also about the existing institutions, right?

Because even before he came on the scene, America had the most corrupt political system in the Western world. It's been running on corporate money, secret money, billionaire money, both sides. And it's worse than ever now. Citizens United was the worst court decision in modern American history.

And when members of Congress aren't begging for money from lobbyists, they're trying to dodge getting carpet bomb by these superpacks. And see, this is why nothing works for ordinary people. It's not because of woke college kids or trans students or because there are interracial couples and serial commercials. It's because the people's elected representatives don't represent the people. They represent the donors.

There's credibility.

He's very careful always to do this, which again is another Obama move.

Obama would always include an argument from the other side. Yes, in the argument he was making. Always always. People say. Right?

And he does that, right? You know, both sides. And he's very, very careful to make this a critique of the system itself. Of which Donald Trump is taking advantage of it. But it's not it's originating cause.

Yeah.

“And I think that's also a part of again.”

It does help to. I've.

It helps to be getting your reps before the Georgia electorate.

Yeah. You know, it's like comedians. Politicians are like comedians. You work the room. You see where your laugh lines are.

You work different rooms. You work larger and larger rooms. The room matters a lot. And what you with a feedback you get from the room is it matters a lot. It helps to be in a context where the room that you're working is a Georgia electorate.

I think this was true of Bernie Sanders in in Vermont where, you know, he only got to where he was after. Many failures, many electoral failures, many years in the electoral wilderness.

By figuring out how to talk to the median Vermont voter who was not a committed ideological social.

It's why Barack Obama was as good as he was because he was a black politician to work white rooms. Yeah. You know, and he's talked about that. How much you do in, you know, to win statewide in Illinois, to to win in these rural areas, where people were very skeptical of a person named Barack who sang Obama in 2004.

“The other thing that I think is worth touching here.”

One thing I see among the Democrats right now is are all competing to prove they're the fighter. And relatively few are working in the more inspirational side of the tradition. That you look at Newsam, you look at AOC, you look at Pritzker, right? Like they're all like I am your brawler, right? I will rip their throats out for you.

And also, even though what we sort of attacking corruption, he is not in that mode at all. It's a different register. There's a, there's a type of Democrat who, even if they have learned to suppress it, their fundamental feeling at all levels is a disbelief.

I can't believe this happening. I literally can't believe that anybody's like this guy. The things aren't sinking him. Yes. And he has formed in races.

Exactly. Where that is not a register that works and you cannot. A lot of Democrats have to kind of abstractly come to the view that there are people in this world who like Donald Trump. But they don't know any of them. Yes.

And if they do, they maybe cut them out of their lives. Right. And that is not, yeah, John Osis world. That's what I mean. So he's formed fully, he's formed fully in an environment in which the appeal of Trump

and Trump's power over the electorate and trans power over specific people that are, that he has to win over or who's family members he has to win over is present from the beginning.

“And I think there's something really useful and powerful about that.”

For just again, how you train. But if you look at polling and if you part of you now look at the prediction markets, polling, Kamala Harris has a lead. I think people are skeptical that lead. We'll lead to primary dominance, but I guess we'll see if she runs.

But if you look at prediction markets, the lead is Gavin Newsom. And we all knew Gavin Newsom wanted to run for president. I would say six years ago. I was pretty dismissive of how that was likely to go. You know, he had some white guy with a bunch of scandals from California. It was like not the, not what the Democratic Party seemed to be looking for.

Who he is in some ways has changed or actually in some ways maybe come closer to a core of him?

Into one, attentionally capable in a way he wasn't always.

“But two, into I think it is the fairly wide consensus right now that he is a Democratic front runner for 2028.”

I think I have complicated feelings. I mean, I think that there's some part of me that just thinks. Governor California's tough. A tough thing to do to win national. To be the president.

Of course, New York real estate developed. There's also pretty tough to do so. What do I know? Yes, I think that I think the choice he's made intentionally is one of the most interesting, which is.

He was always a charismatic guy, but he was not.

He has chosen omnipresence. He's chosen to say yes to everything. He's chosen to go everywhere. He's chosen to host his own podcast. He's chosen to host his own podcast, he's chosen to host his own podcast.

He just has like Ashley's thing clear on it. Yeah. Right.

“Ben Shapiro and not long ago. He's doing things he would not expect exactly and I think it is produced.”

A comfort. That is really, really useful in the world that we live in. I think there's a question of both what. The Democratic primary electorate wants and what the general electorate wants in relation to Donald Trump.

And here's what I mean by this. You were talking about like being a fighter.

And I think there's a little bit of. Freddie Hampton said you don't fight fire with fire. You fight fire with water. And there's a little bit of a question between do you want to fight fire with fire or do you want to fight fire with water? And the our fighter version like our brawler, our Trump essentially, which I think is appealing to some people in the Democratic electorate, is sort of the mode that some Democratic politicians have gone.

And in some almost sort of parotic ways that Newsom has gone by doing the whole like Trump's stick online. Okay. But let me complicate this in one way because it's why I find Newsom really interesting because he is doing more than that. I agree. Yes. There are two things. So one is the number of reps he's getting places he's going.

I mean, you and I just saw him at the cap ideas conference. He's just got in better. Yeah. He's got better faster than the other staff.

“But the other thing, I think a really big problem, Democrats have faced since Obama, is about describing a kind of unity that we can find as a country,”

a way of living here together despite our disagreements, despite our history, despite our differences. And Bill Clinton did a lot in this register, right? He wrote scholar, but poor Arkansas boy, you know, New South, Obama. I mean, the master, the orchestra. Yes, but because he was a master of this register, he's somewhat destroyed the ability of anybody to use it because if he couldn't achieve it, right? That's a good point. If what the Obama era cashed out into was Donald Trump and the division and dissolution of like the shared moral and Democratic framework we had,

then to speak like Obama did in '04, to speak like he did in '08 becomes naive. Nobody's going to believe you, right? But the weird thing Newsom is doing is containing these two opposite ideas on himself, which is one like, I'll be your brawler. But two, we will just disagree honestly and in public and continue the relationship with each other under those terms. You know, he'll talk to Charlie Kirk, you know, before Charlie Kirk was killed, he'll talk to Michael Savage, he'll talk to Ben Shapiro, he'll go to the left.

And Newsom is sort of, it almost seems to be making this argument that is not that we can live here together in some way where our differences it is all. It's that our fights with each other can be productive. Yeah, I mean, I think that's I hadn't thought of it in those terms of four. It's a very as a reclinist approach. I do wonder whether there's also a kind of incoherence in that narratively that makes it a little difficult to pull off. I don't think he's been able to synthesize him yet.

Yeah, I'm not sure you can. It's why I find his campaign very interesting. He'll often talk about the place right now in his rhetoric that follows the most flat for me. He'll start talking about they need to be a repairer of the breach, right, or a parer of the breach, the biblical line. And you don't feel it, like you don't feel how he's going to repair the breach, right?

I want to end here on the big attentional campaign that kind of ended in failure, which was Spencer Pratt. So into us, because if you were online, it was like this former reality star is coming out of nowhere. He's got the greatest ads. You can't be on X for five minutes without seeing something from him.

But then it didn't pen out to the hander performed on the Trump.

“And I think it's a great counterpoint to many of the theories.”

I was saying, so I'm glad we're talking about it because I mean, it was a very successful campaign, potentially. I do think there's something going on. We should just say, there's something going on with X right now under Elon Musk. That is a little distinct to that platform, which is that it's become a kind of her medically sealed hot house of insanity. That when you enter it, when you're not in it all the time you enter it, you're like, you guys are nuts. And that's exactly the way many people felt about like what we might call kind of peak woke Twitter.

So part of it, I think, is a product of how much that was in X candidacy. Yeah, there's no question of what's real there, right? What's being clipped on totally. What has a lot of bots pushing it.

But the other lesson I think here, it is never going to be the case that attention is the entire story.

There has to be something else happening. And I think with Pratt, there was nothing else happening. There was no reason for that man to be mayor, first of all, why that guy.

“I do think the Pratt campaign to me really is an object lesson in what X is at this point that I think would be very useful for everyone who internalized because you and I both remember back in the day when people would say Twitter is not real life.”

And weirdly, I think that's even more of the case now under the algorithmic empire of one Elon Musk. I think one of the greatest advantages Democrats have going into 2020 is not being as it Elon Musk has control of Twitter. I think people think of this as a problem for Democrats, it's the opposite. Because it must be something to that, warping Twitter towards a hard-right conspiratorial, hermedic nature. And in the way that when Democrats had dominance over Twitter, when the Wilson Progressives and leftists had dominance over Twitter,

they convince themselves of a bunch of ideas that were politically lethal. But they didn't understand that because where they were, it's like to have normian opinions was politically lethal. That's how it is for the right answer to Twitter. And J.D. Vance is there and all of their staffers are there. Whereas the little girls in Democrats and leftists are split and broke in across different platforms.

And that is genuinely an advantage. I have come to this exact same conclusion.

“Yeah, like Twitter, it's like, it's a kind of a curse, right?”

It makes you feel very powerful and you pay for it. Yeah. Let's end there.

Always our final question.

What are through books? So, I'm going to espere you my, all my reading on Italian history, which I think is probably not particularly relevant. I read and loved Ben Lerner's newest transcription. I will say as someone who went to Brown and he was in my class there. And I just went to my 20th.

There's reunion with Kate who I met there. It had a particular potency for me. It may not happen to the general audience. I recently read.

And I can't believe I had never read this book.

But I read the Godfather. The original novel by Mary Opposite. It's a combination of some really weird and truly awfully misogynistic stuff. But it is incredible how good that book is in some ways. And also, it kind of makes you understand why the movie is a masterpiece.

Like, I didn't quite realize how faithful the movie was to the original source material. And the last one is a new novel that I just am about halfway through through someone else. So, I know Courtney Mom called Allen Opsout, which is a great kind of really insightful, searing comedic look at a grand-age advertising executive who goes to live in the playhouse in his backyard. Chris Hayes, thank you very much.

Thank you. This episode of The Asurclanches Proost by Roland Hoot, fact-checking my Michelle Harris, our senior audio engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Johnny Simon. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show's production team also includes Marie Cassion, Annie Galvin, Kristen Lynn,

Emma Kelback, Jack McCordic, Marina King, and Yon Kobel. Original music by Alman Sahota and Pat McCusker. Audience tragedy by Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times opinion audio is Annie Rose Strasser.