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- [00:08]
A
Well, we're going to talk for a minute about the, the backlash against the Sydney Sweeney American Eagle jeans ad campaign in which the actress and model poses in American Eagle jeans. She was actually, she's wearing what I understand to refer to as a Canadian tuxedo, which is jeans on the bottom, jeans on the top. And then for the record, I have never owned a Canadian tuxedo, but there's a series of puns about jeans, G E N E S and jeans. And this serve a surprisingly 2025 backlash. Many people on the Internet were talking about the white supremacist, dog whistles and eugenicism because she was talking about jeans and she's blonde and blue eyed and attractive and has good genes and apparently that's, you know, reinforcing Ted Cruz has Ted Cruz had an apt one liner about this. Democrats or the radical left are now coming out against hot women. Yeah, they should run with that.
- [01:05]
B
Okay.
- [01:06]
A
Yeah. So like, so you know, I think, I think everyone was convinced that this was like a significant cultural moment. And even our colleague and sometime panelist Rob Henderson had some interesting commentary on this. So maybe, you know, this. Is there more to this story than just like people are being. And the story is interesting just so far insofar as like people are still trying to do this kind of backlash in 2025. That's interesting. But then is there more to the story here? I don't know. Is this the last gasp of wokeism? Because all of these critiques, the so called backlash is being laughed at and American Eagle stock price has jumped. I don't know how many millions were up. Hundreds of millions. We're up to now. I mean, best money invented. I want to talk to MI's director of marketing, Ilana Grossman about what made this, what captured this lightning in a bottle. It was just the most perfect thing. I've watched a few of these short actual video ads. Not just the, not just the billboards or you know, photos, but the video clips. They're really good. They're tongue in cheek, like she's not taking herself seriously. They're not taking the brand's not taking itself seriously. Very effective. And hey, made me go out and buy some AE jeans with some shirts on clearance as well. One of my next one that arrives, I'll do one of my next podcast appearances here in the new get up.
- [02:17]
B
What's also interesting about this is like if this happened in 2020, we would sort of expect the brand to. Even if, you know, we've seen for example with ESG that even when it's monetarily detrimental to the company, sometimes they'll just, you know, try to make, you know, to take a quote from Mean Girls, since we're kind of in this realm, to try to make fetch happen, even though it's, it fiscally makes no sense.
- [02:42]
A
Sequel to no, not Mean Girls. Freaky Friday is coming out. Freakier Friday anyway. Not relevant.
- [02:47]
B
Sorry, I'll be at the midnight premiere for that. But anyway, you know, in 2020, we would expect a brand to sort of, sort of backtrack. Issued this public apology. What I saw this morning is that, you know, some of the senior leadership over at American Eagle, not they not only pointed to, you know, the increased value of their stock, but they also said the Internet is not reality in the sense that there's sort of this left wing backlash on social media to this ad. But within our own polling on this, within our own focus group groups we conducted, over 70% of our customers that we pulled said that they loved this ad, that they love Sydney Sweeney, that they want to buy more of our, our product, and they released a statement saying that. So to your earlier point, Charles, it's, you know, this is 2025. It's reminiscent of 2020. But in 2020, I would have expected American Eagle to issue, you know, a groveling apology to everyone on social media that's upset by this, primarily, you know, left wing women. But that doesn't seem to be the case. They're sort of, you know, standing their ground. NBC News decision desk ran a poll with Gen Z asking Trump and Kamala Harris voters in Gen Z what their definition of personal success is. I actually, I think he retweeted this or something to that effect. But men who voted for Trump said that having children, about 34% said having children is their definition. But if we take a look at women who voted for Kamala Harris, 51% said that a fulfilling job, career is their idea of success. But the surprising part in all of this was that women who voted for Trump, their top category with 40% saying what their personal definition of success is, was financial independence. I think there's a lot there. But it seems that no matter the political leanings amongst Gen Z women, career, financial independence, sort of the traits of girl boss culture seem to be the definition of success. Why do you think that is? 30 seconds each, if we can.
- [05:03]
A
Well, I think one possibility here is, and this is like a charitable view, is that, you know, they're looking at the word success and, um, maybe the young women are thinking like Is it like, it's. It's not especially hard to have a child if you're. I mean, it's a hard thing, but it's well within the realm of possibility for a young woman, For a young man, it's much harder because you have to convince someone to like you and then convince someone to, like, let you marry them and then have a baby. And it's just there's a lot going on there. And so they might think, like, that's this huge, like, insurmountable obstacle.
- [05:32]
B
It's out of their control.
- [05:33]
A
Yeah. And so that would be success because it would just. It's so hard versus, like, getting a job and that kind of thing. Whereas, yeah, maybe for women it's, you know, having, know, some kids, that's more possible, whereas financial independence and those kinds of things seem more. More remote.
- [05:51]
B
I mean, I think that's interesting. Yeah, Men have a lot more agency and in dating in a way, no matter, you know, if you're feminist or not. I think a lot of women want to be pursued. So men can kind of decide, okay, I'm ready to get married, I'm ready to have family. Women have pursued perhaps less control over that and probably more control over a career, do you think?
- [06:13]
A
You know, one thing that's interesting there is that their. Their number one priority for. Or definition of success, it's. It. I mean, at least historically, it's required the opposite sex. Yeah. Right. And so if you're a man and you want kids, you need to have a woman to find. And if you're a woman and you want financial independence and you want to live a comfortable life, you got to find a man who's earning money. And so, you know, another way to look at it is like, men and women need each other and they maybe have not. Yeah, we lost that kind of wisdom along the way.
- [06:41]
B
There's a division between the sex is what I'm hearing. I think that's really interesting, actually, the way you frame that sort of like how the question was framed might have affected the answers because of just what we associate the word success with. Just associate the word success with professional success. Whereas maybe if the question asked had been something like, what do you want to have happen in your life? Or, you know, 10 years from now, what would you like in your life that might. The answers to those questions might be a little bit different. They might be, well, I'd like to have a family and have kids at that point. Whereas success might be associated more with, like, the professional.
- [07:19]
A
Oh, I see.
- [07:19]
B
The Professional world.
- [07:20]
A
Yeah, there's like, yeah, the occupational, there's a connotation to success. Success.
- [07:24]
B
That's more.
- [07:24]
A
Yeah. Versus, yeah, yeah. If you use like a word like, like meaning or fulfillment or something like that, then maybe the answers would have been different. But, but still, I still think those differences were, were fascinating that, that, that, you know, the differences seemed much more of gender rather than politics. Regardless of who you supported.
- [07:44]
B
Right.
- [07:45]
A
Yeah. So I want to, I want to, you know, I assume everybody heard this news, but Taylor Swift and her enfil boyfriend Trish Kelser are engaged to marry some people. Here's my question that I'm very interested in is some have predicted that this will induce a minor marriage and baby boom as millions of Taylor Swift fans follow her lead. Do we think that's going to happen or is that all hot air, Ralph? Ralph is very invested in this topic. Ralph, I want to hear your extended opinion, please start with Taylor's early work. Wait, you're invested? Ralph? No, I could care less.
- [08:22]
C
I could care less. I think most normal Americans could care less. No, I don't think that it's going to cause a boom in marriage or procreation or anything like that. I mean, you know, it's not as if Taylor Swift doesn't have a sort of ideological like tenor to her. Right. I mean, so that I think is already kind of taking care of whatever potential effect it would have had on marriage. It's not like, you know, this is a person just who's adopting conservative lifestyle. You know, it's just someone marrying another famous person, potentially even just for the sake of publicity. Right. Like, I mean, who knows how cynical these people are whether they're actually in love. But, but yeah, I don't know. I. Celebrity gossip culture is just not a world that I ever want to be a part of. It's not one I claim to understand. And if you are looking to people like Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift for cues about how to live your life, let me suggest to you that you have a problem. There are likely much better standards against which you can measure yourself in your immediate life. Your parents, your family members, your teachers, your mentors. Start there, end there.
- [09:51]
A
Daniel? Yes. I don't think we should ever look up to celebrities, Hollywood singers, or really any of that industry generally for examples. They generally are much worse off than the average person person in their personal lives, as you can observe. And I'll say if anything, because they were probably majority of fans of Taylor Swift. Let's, you know, the stats are it's women, right? It's detail, anything. It could actually like set a standard that, you know, she got engaged at 35. Like, maybe for them it's like, oh, then I can wait. Like Taylor Swift.
- [10:28]
C
Yeah, no, don't do it.
- [10:29]
A
The people who are like waiting or.
- [10:31]
B
Like getting married just like Ralph said.
- [10:33]
A
Because Taylor Swift did, they have bigger problems. But for those people, I think it might even have a negative effect. Right, because they, they might wait too long. Me too. Are you more of a, more of an optimist? Are you more a believer than these guys?
- [10:46]
B
Okay, let me say this. So the day her engagement was announced, my phone was blowing up because I was in several group chats. Like, some people were super excited, mainly the women. And then some people, like, it was kind of split. Like some men are. Don't really care. And some were like, oh, great. Like I'm going to have a headache about this now because now we're going to hear about the marriage. And you know, her album's coming out October 3rd, you know, so like, not that I'm endorsed by Taylor Swift, but no, it was just like blowing up. And all of us were joking that, you know, we're going to see a baby boom because of the marriage. But I wholeheartedly agree with both Ralph and Daniel that I think if you're making big life decisions based on what celebrities do or don't do, you have a problem. You know, marriage is a great thing. Having children is a great thing. But I don't think you should be looking to celebrities. And I, in general, I don't like this whole idea of making celebrities into these idols or as role models because they're people, at the end of the day, they make their own decisions. And I don't know, I think placing too much pressure on them is not really good for anyone. I mean, I think it's been a warning sign for a long time. I mean, even since the election results in November. I mean, right after the election, everyone was talking about the Hispanic vote shifting to the right. And I looked into the Asian vote shifting to the right. You know, major cities, even New York shift. A lot of the Asian voters had shifted by 30 points to the right. And I went and talked to those voters and I think what I would characterize what they told me, like, it was like the Democrats were pushing policies that were very. It was like toxic compassion because they want to support affirmative action. They want to support, you know, making, making it easier to get into some of these high quality schools and competitive schools. But it's often at the expense of people who worked really hard. You know, they, when it came to crime, they weren't addressing those issues very well. And there were real effects on people. They were changing their behavior and whether they took a subway to work or not. So I think there were some real effects on people, and they were tired of the extremes of their party. And I think many, many just, you know, they were not happy with the Democrats. And so we saw that with the election results. And I think when you're seeing decrease in voter reg, you're seeing people who are sending a message to the party they're not happy.
- [13:34]
C
Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with former New York Democrats who have sort of consistently voted with the left their entire lives, who were just completely mugged by the reality of 2020, particularly on the crime issue. So obviously that's not a representative sample. But I think the other thing going on here, too is just the demographic problem that Democrats face. I mean, Gen Z is significant. More conservative than previous generations, specifically Millennials.
- [14:07]
A
Not by every measure. Right. It depends on which cohort. You sure. It sounds like part of it is Covid exposure. There's a, there's some polling says there's juncture there. Yeah.
- [14:15]
C
But there's also like a big gender dynamic there as well. Right. Like Gen Z men are significantly more conservative than Gen Z women and significantly more conservative than millennial men. And so that that political gender gap is going to grow. Is growing, has grown. And I think that's, that's got to going up here in some way. And it's going to be interesting to see, you know, what happens over the long term. I mean, you know, I'm certainly not an expert on relationship dynamics, but, but when you have, you know, that big of a political shift, you have to imagine that at some point the genders are going to come together on, on issues because they can't hate each other forever.
- [14:53]
A
I think you know how personality traits like agreeableness and neuroticism, both of which skew higher in women. They don't necessarily just shape political attitudes, but they shape political tone. And Silver has made this point. Well, a lot of young men aren't necessarily turned off by policies associated with the Democratic Party so much as, like an overall vibe. The left feels very anxious, rules obsessed, overly therapeutic. And it's not that these guys are the young voters who are becoming more Republican. It's not that they're necessarily angry or broken. Like the picture we see painted of a lot of them who are angry and broken and maybe are disproportionately representative on platforms like Twitter, it's that they don't see themselves in a culture that increasingly pathologizes risk and competition. So when Rob points out that psychological sex differences widen in freer societies, you start to understand why this divide is growing rather than shrinking. And if anything, more freedom just lets people lean harder into their default wiring. And politically, I do think that's showing up as a sharp gender split. I had a. I had a conversation a couple months ago with a notable left leaning commentator, let's put it that way, who said to me something to the effect of like, you know, look, this person is male and prone to disagreeableness and prone to argumentation. He was like, many people who look like me are just sort of alienated from a large portion of the Democratic Party. And that is, that is a gendered thing. It's just like, I don't argue like a woman, and women don't like it when I argue with them in democratic spaces. And democratic spaces are increasingly run by women, which is hostile to someone who makes arguments like me. And I was like, yeah, I'm not a Democrat, so I don't have that problem. But I understand your argument. People also lie. I mean, they say they don't care about crime or they say they subscribe to what Rob Henderson has described as luxury beliefs like defunding the police or cutting crime. Defunding the police in order to cut crime. As backwardly as that sounds, they hold these beliefs in theory and then they go back to Georgetown townhouse or whatever and, you know, live removed from all of that disorder because they live in a part of town that doesn't have a Metro stop at it. But more realistically and to the point, I think that, I don't know, these folks get on the Metro and just like I did literally yesterday, I wrote, I texted you about this, Charles, and a number of you guys. When there's a mentally disturbed person on the train blasting music very loudly from their phone, one transit say, I didn't see any National Guardsmen as much as I would liked them in that moment. But one transit safety officer walks up and says, please turn that down. He does it for like half a second and then walks to another part of the train and continues blaring his music. That transit safety officer sees him, does that, but doesn't want to engage further. Another transit safety officer gets on the same car a little while later, asks the guy Once, turn down your music. He does it for half a second, turns it right back up. Transit safety officer presses him again, and this guy blows up, explodes f. Donald Trump, f the president, and a totally unhinged breakdown. And then what do I watch? All the kind of white Washingtonian people reading their book, close up their books, get up, move to another part of the train, or get off the train entirely.
- [18:32]
B
The last thing I'll just say, I think to Charles, to something that Charles was talking about is one big problem in mental health policy is that we don't distinguish enough between different things, like people with serious mental illness, people with substance use disorder or addiction, and people who are what we call the worry. Well, and if you don't sort of disaggregate groups that are pretty clearly different in. In subs, in substantive ways, you sort of assume that the same solution works for everyone. And then you get people saying, oh, my gosh, we should never institutionalize anyone, or, oh, my gosh, we should never involuntarily commit anyone, because they assume that the person who is getting that intervention is someone like you or I, who might get stressed out. Because we, like, have a deadline that we have, not that we're not going to meet. I mean, we are just fundamentally different as people, as the homeless schizophrenic. And the homeless schizophrenic is fundamentally different than the homeless addict, even. And so the question is sort of, what is the right system? What is the right process? And process really matters. So.
- [19:41]
C
So, I mean, news of the day, right? The big story. Zoran Mamdani wins the Democratic primary in the mayoral contest here in New York. What do we make of the. How did this happen? Why did this happen? You know, I think that is the obvious place to start here. I mean, it's the thing that everyone's wondering about. Some people are dismayed, some people are elated. Nicole, you probably have the best read on New York City politics than anyone I've ever met. And so I'm going to throw that.
- [20:15]
A
That.
- [20:15]
C
That series of questions to you. I mean, you know, what's the how and why of. Of his victory here?
- [20:23]
A
Sure. And I don't think this is as big of an earthquake in terms of New York deciding collectively that it wants to embrace socialism. As people from outside may think, this was a very idiosyncratic election. And there's just a number of factors here that made it very strange. You know, first of all, Assemblyman Mamdani just ran the best campaign. If you want to win a campaign launch and run a competent campaign. I think that's the first lesson for any potential elected official. He started his get out the vote ground game really six months ago when he launched the campaign. He took advantage of early voting and mail in voting in a way that other candidates did not do. He had a very simple message. You could just take away three things from his campaign, whereas all of his opponents had very muddled, confused and sometimes self contradictory messages. There's a backlash against President Trump in New York similar to how AOC was elected in 2018, just ahead of the midterms in Trump, Trump's first term. The new York voters just sort of found someone who was the exact opposite of Trump in every way and went with that person. And Mamdani's chief opponent, former Governor Cuomo, was just a terrible candidate on many, many levels. He actually wasn't a bad governor, at least for his first two terms. But the way in which Governor Cuomo left office four years ago left, he didn't run a compelling campaign. There were some questions of how long he had even lived in New York City before the past few months. He hadn't lived in New York City for 30 years and his heart just did not seem in it in many ways. So yes, of course Mandani won the election. That's very clear and that has certain implications. But this is before we declare socialism victory over one election, there's a lot of other things to keep in mind. And of course we have the general election in November where we will have a broader, more moderate electorate to have another chance to make this decision or not. Yes, I want to take us right into the news. Recent reporting indicates that after their victory in the New York City mayoral primary, members of the Democratic Socialists of America have aimed their sights higher with CNN reporting that they're looking to primary, among other Democrats, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Which to me raises the interesting question that I want to kick to the panel. Are they going to be successful? Is Democratic socialism the future of the Democratic Party? You know, I think we've seen in the rise of Zoram Doni renewed energy around this as sort of an alternative model for the Democrats. Do they have the chance to take power? Is AOC the next speaker of the House? Discuss. Well, I just want to say first that as a an aging Gen X middle aged dad, that Hakeem Jeffries is demonstrating that he's in it to win it. He's aggressive, he's fighting because he Photoshopped an image of himself on Instagram to make his waist slimmer. So that shows that he understands that we live in an aesthetic age and that, you know, he might have to cut down on carbs, you know, something like that. We've all been there, but, you know, that shows that this is a fight to the death and we'll see how it unfolds. I need his program. But this raises an ancillary question of how sui generis is New York City. Right? So we have a closed partisan primary in New York City where only about 1.1 million voters participated. Mamdani got about, you know, 550,000 or so votes. There are 5 million registered voters in New York City. So that's about 11ish percent of all registered voters. I don't know if that necessarily translates to a sweeping mandate even in a expanded general electorate. And that's the big question heading into November. But then there's also this question of is New York unique in the sense that people frequently believe that it's the place where everybody wants to be, that there's always going to be demand for it? So. So it's this exceptional place that public policy decisions don't affect in quite the same way as other cities, just because you're going to have talent that wants to live in New York and you're going to have firms that seek that talent. But, John, let's get just very specifically on the political point. You know, one way to understand the New York City electorate is that literally the people who were too left wing for the politics of Colorado or Ohio or Iowa actually collect in New York City. Literally. Brad Lander, one of the Democratic mayoral candidates who has attached himself to the hip of Mamdani, is desperate to become his deputy. His lieutenant is from the suburbs of St. Louis. Right. And that's not a crime. And he's been in New York City for a long time, but he literally moved to New York City to, you know, become part of this vast, sprawling, nonprofit, progressive apparatus. Now, that's not unique to New York, but New York is a concentration not just of the kind of professional talent you're describing, but literally of a certain kind of, you know, political cadre type person who wants to build socialism in one city. So that is another backdrop here. One way to think about this question of what's the broader trajectory for socialism is you have had those concentrations of deep blue people for a long time. Yes. And in some contexts, you do get socialists. Kasham Sawant in Seattle is the obvious example. Who's the socialist member of the Seattle City Council, infamous For a variety of reasons, she has not as a general rule been able to translate that into a House seat, for example. Some of that has to do with the drawing of maps. But I think the question is, you know, are, are we at this moment where. Not really, for the first time in history, there have been socialists in the US House before, mostly from new, from New York City. But are we at a point in our history where there is some opportunity for a socialist alternative in the Democratic Party to look at these safe blue seats and go, okay, we can push them 20, 30 points to the left and still win? So we're going to do that. Well, I think the goal of the Democratic Socialists of America is ultimately to work to make themselves obsolete. Right. Like any faction in a party, the goal is to eventually take it over and then effectively dissolve because you've accumulated enough power to be the party. I mean, to one, one extent, that's what the Democratic Study Group did in the late 1950s. They said, hey, we have this, this conservative coalition of the south and the North. We want the north to win. We want to kick out the Southerners. You know, the class of 74 comes into Congress, they change the rules, they kick out four of the old chairman. They do it effectively. The Democratic Study Group becomes the Democratic Party by the late 1980s, they win the battle. To a lesser extent, you could say the Democratic Leadership Council does that in the 1980s and 1990s. Now is the DSA going to take over the party? Effectively? No. But how much of their program can get incorporated into the general party? I mean, I think a lot. I was looking at poll from data for progress that shows in the Democratic Party you're going to see about, well, this, who, who have their own agenda. Who have their own agenda, but I'm not sure necessarily socialism per se. What they show is 35% approval rating for socialism, about equal plus approval rating over capitalism in the Democratic Party, which is Nowhere near. Sorry, 35% point, 35% quotes more sympathetic socialism. Yes. Than the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party into capital. What this is these actually polls have been going back for years. Inside the Democratic Party. Capitalism does not have an amazing positive image. Socialism does. Now what does socialism mean is certainly open to debate, but it's certainly a broad swath of party thinks. Socialism, however defined, is an important part of the future.
- [28:19]
C
So I wanted to talk to you guys. I mean, we've kind of had a few days to decompress post Mamdani's election. And I think one of the stories that hasn't gotten enough attention is the influence of the political apparatus around him, namely the dsa, the Democratic Socialists of America. Now, I, when I was coming up politically, the word socialism was very much a dirty word. People didn't want to be associated with it. It seems like there has been a shift somewhere along the way to the point where it seems like the DSA is growing in influence, in popularity, in mainstream acceptability. And Stu, I know you have been covering radical political move for a really long time and probably better than anyone else. And so I want to start with you to just kind of give us a little bit of an inside scoop into how the DSA kind of works, how it's grown over the years and what you attribute its recent successes to.
- [29:19]
A
Yes. So an important thing to go back to is back to the Bernie revolution. Pretty much before that, the DSA was a group where the average age was probably in the 60s or 70s. And then you have Bernie run for president.
- [29:35]
C
And this is 2016, right?
- [29:37]
A
Yeah, yeah, in 2016. And the age lowers to 30 some. Now, I imagine post Mamdani, it's probably somewhere in the high 20s. But that is, you have this youth wing now, and the DSA is internally a little bit divided right now because you have a faction that believes that electoral politics is the way forward. And then you have another faction that is all about being on the streets doing political organizing. And they. They want to be in the bleachers constantly criticizing and mobilizing people to act against mainstream electoral politics. And so I think a whole. And. And they call this multi tendency. So you have Bernie Bros, you have Maoists, you have Marxist Leninists, you have Communists, and they all work together with a lot of infighting. But we are really starting to see these two heads butt when it comes to what is the path forward. Is it electoral politics and winning there, or is it their organizing strength and that?
- [30:50]
C
Well, I mean, as an outsider looking in, it would seem to me to be that, you know, the decision's kind of been made, right, that the electoral political strategy is going to be the one that they pursue in part just because they've had some success. Right. I mean, like, for the first time in my life, I can think of, you know, several names of people that are either endorsed by the DSA or members of the DSA just in my state alone. Right. You've got people like Zorramdani, obviously, Jabari Brisport, Julia Salazar, you know, Tiffany Caban. You've got people all throughout the city council, aoc, you know, at the federal level. Rashida Tlaib. Right. I don't think Bernie Sanders was actually ever a DSA member, but I know he got their endorsement and enthusiastic support. So, you know, given that they've now won one of the most visible local elections in the country, you would think that this is going to be the case. But then again, political movements have been known to step on their own toes. Right?
- [31:51]
A
So.
- [31:51]
C
So what's your read on this, dude? What do you think the DSA is going to do in terms of the direction that they go?
- [31:58]
A
Yeah, so like a very vocal critic would be like the Liberation Caucus who were releasing all kinds of craziness leading up to Mom Donnie's election, condemning Mom Donnie for being, you know, too, too much of a moderate. So even after he won, they. They started to kind of rally behind him and release some comments that were a lot more favorable towards him. So I think you're right where, you know, they see that electoral politics is a. Is a massive place to be. It's how you get power. But I do think they are very cognizant of the fact that you need internal power within the system and external. And how do you, how do you deal with, you know, as they put it, governing the capitalist state. So I think they are going to have to kind of figure out what they're going to do with that, where they're always going to frame it as, you know, the capitalists are preventing them from putting forward their agenda. I think we see some real obvious kind of. With Hokul and Mamdani and Albany factoring all in together, there's a lot there where I think there's gonna be a lot of finger pointing. It's gonna be like. It's gonna be like the Spider man meme of them pointing at each other as who's at fault.