Why Men Are Fleeing the Democratic Party

Summary

Summary of "Why Men Are Fleeing the Democratic Party" — The Commentary Magazine Podcast

Release Date: June 4, 2025
Host/Author: Commentary Magazine
Episode Title: Why Men Are Fleeing the Democratic Party

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Introduction

In this episode of The Commentary Magazine Podcast, host John Potter Horiz engages in a frank and incisive discussion with executive editor Abe Greenwald, Washington Commentary columnist Matthew Carnetti, and senior editor Seth Mandel. The conversation delves into the multifaceted reasons behind the declining support among men for the Democratic Party, highlighting a surge in antisemitism, institutional ideological battles, and shifting political landscapes.

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Key Discussions

1. Rising Antisemitism and Its Institutional Impact

The discussion opens with a critical examination of antisemitism's resurgence within American institutions. The panelists highlight recent incidents where Jewish individuals face discriminatory practices, particularly in the medical field.

• New York Times Op-Ed Controversy:
  Matthew Carnetti references an op-ed by Sheila Katz of the National Council of Jewish Women, initially titled "American Jews Are Paying for the War in Gaza," which was later amended to "Jews Are Afraid" within an hour of publication. This change underscores the sensitivity and volatility surrounding Jewish security concerns.

  John Potter Horiz (00:46): "The New York Times or the copy desk... put the headline on it, 'American Jews are paying for the war in Gaza.' And then about an hour later, they changed it to 'Jews are afraid.'"

• Antisemitism in the Medical Community:
  Seth Mandel brings attention to an alarming trend where Jewish patients receive differential treatment once their religious identity is recognized. This issue is not isolated to the U.S.; similar patterns are observed in Europe, prompting the emergence of Jewish-friendly transportation services.

  Seth Mandel (07:29): "Many analysts are tracking a rise in antisemitism in medicine... It's something that the writers of Tablet have been talking about for a while."

• Personal Anecdotes and Institutional Responses:
  John Potter Horiz shares firsthand accounts from doctors discussing antisemitic behaviors within hospital networks, emphasizing the breach of the Hippocratic oath and the infiltration of extremist ideologies into healthcare.

  John Potter Horiz (04:00): "Doctors saying on their private... that they will not treat Jews or... have a little fantasy about doing the Jew in those."

2. Political Shifts and Party Dynamics

The episode explores the declining allegiance of men, particularly young men, to the Democratic Party, attributing it to the party's internal struggles with antisemitism and ideological rigidity.

• Polling Data Insights:
  Seth Mandel presents recent poll data indicating significant Republican advantages in areas traditionally dominated by Democrats, such as crime, economy, and immigration. The data also reveals a stark perception gap where Republicans are viewed as the party of strong leaders, while Democrats grapple with being labeled as extremist.

  Seth Mandel (30:48): "The Republican Party is the party of strong leaders by a margin of 40% for Republicans versus 16% for Democrats."

• Impact of Ilhan Omar and Other Figures:
  The discussion touches upon Ilhan Omar's role in the Democratic Party, portraying her as a figure whose actions may be contributing to the party's internal conflicts and loss of support among male demographics.

  John Potter Horiz (22:49): "Ilhan Omar... bringing over his wife and five children who have remained in the United States... their daughter... It's a very big issue."

3. Harvard and University Ideological Conflicts

The panel critiques the ideological homogeneity within prestigious institutions like Harvard, arguing that the lack of conservative voices fosters environments where antisemitic and anti-Zionist sentiments can thrive unchecked.

• Harvard's Response to Antisemitism:
  John Potter Horiz criticizes Harvard's handling of antisemitic incidents, suggesting that institutional responses are insufficient in addressing the root causes of discrimination.

  John Potter Horiz (05:07): "It's a very big issue... export of terrorist ideology into the United States."

• University as a Vortex for Liberal Ideologies:
  The conversation underscores how universities have become bastions of liberal thought, often at the expense of diverse viewpoints, leading to increased polarization and alienation of Jewish communities.

  John Potter Horiz (22:49): "No conservative thought on campus, no American opinion on campus... if you do activism against Jews, you have to pay the price."

4. New York Mayoral Race and Democratic Party Crisis

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to analyzing the New York City mayoral primary, illustrating the broader issues within the Democratic Party.

• Ranked Choice Voting and Radical Candidates:
  The mayoral race features candidates like Zoram Mandani, a left-wing communist advocating for state-run services, and Andrew Cuomo, portrayed as a highly controversial figure. The use of ranked choice voting is criticized for enabling extremist candidates to gain traction.

  John Potter Horiz (55:06): "Zoram Mandani is running on a communist platform... Andrew Cuomo... a very unstable person."

• Democratic Party's Decline in Broader America:
  Seth Mandel highlights how the Democratic Party has become insular, losing its appeal in regions outside affluent urban centers. The party's inability to adapt to shifting demographics and ideological demands is seen as a primary reason for men abandoning its ranks.

  Seth Mandel (30:48): "The Republican Party is the party of strong leaders... Democrats are being left behind."

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Notable Quotes

• John Potter Horiz (00:22): "Hope for the best, expect the worst."

• Seth Mandel (05:07): "You don't have a right to a visa here if you have views that are hostile to Jews, hostile to America."

• John Potter Horiz (22:49): "Ilhan Omar... is trying to lead people to deny rights and lives because they disagree with her on the nature of the state of Israel."

• Abe Greenwald (24:41): "It's the beginning of a new liberal understanding that these guys are bad."

• John Potter Horiz (66:16): "Columbia professors live in rent-free apartments, very nice ones."

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Conclusions

The panel concludes that the Democratic Party is facing a profound crisis driven by internal antisemitism, ideological rigidity, and a failure to resonate with male demographics, especially young men. The insular nature of liberal institutions, exemplified by universities like Harvard, exacerbates these issues, fostering environments where extremist views can flourish. Additionally, political strategies, such as ranked choice voting in mayoral races, may inadvertently empower radical candidates, further destabilizing the party's standing. To reverse this trend, the panelists suggest a need for the Democratic Party to embrace internal reforms, enforce diverse viewpoints, and address antisemitic behaviors proactively.

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This episode offers a critical lens on the current state of the Democratic Party, emphasizing the urgent need for introspection and reform to reclaim lost support and address the rising tide of antisemitism within its ranks.

Transcript

[Abe Greenwald]

Hope for the best, expect the worst.

[Matthew Carnetti]

Some preach and pain Some die of.

[John Potter Horiz]

Thirst the way of knowing which way it's going. Hope for the best, expect the worst.

[Abe Greenwald]

Hope for the best.

[John Potter Horiz]

Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is Wednesday, June 4, 2025. I am John Potter Horiz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.

[Abe Greenwald]

Hi, John.

[John Potter Horiz]

Washington Commentary columnist Matthew Carnetti. Hi, Matt.

[Seth Mandel]

Hi, John.

[John Potter Horiz]

And senior editor Seth Mandel.

[Matthew Carnetti]

Hi, Seth.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Hi, John.

[John Potter Horiz]

So much to talk about today. Elon Musk coming out against the big beautiful bill, calling it an atrocity or a monstrosity or some something rel saucity and basically going directly to war with Trump literally, you know, five minutes after, you know, leaving his semi employee. One thing continuing issues involving the distribution of food aid in Gaza. As this operation has proved staggeringly successful, the effort to delegitimize it and to make it appear as though the act of distributing a million meals a day is a war crime continues apace, with Western useful idiots, propagandists and just generally in bad faith actors contributing to this atmosphere. We have one quick detail from the New York Times, an op ed, a quite startling op ed from a very liberal, the head of a very liberal organization which presents itself as a Jewish organization, but is actually simply a sort of Democratic Party subgroup called the National Council of Jewish Women. Sheila Katz published an op ed in the New York Times about how all Jews now feel threatened. Jews have felt threatened since October 7th. It is snowballing. And that for people on the left, the experience of having their allies and colleagues say nothing to them and say nothing about the threat to Jews and all of that is something that is extremely distressing to her. And the New York Times or the copy desk or the virtual online copy desk of the New York Times, when it released this piece yesterday morning, put the headline on it, american Jews are paying for the war in Gaza.

[Seth Mandel]

I didn't see that.

[John Potter Horiz]

And then about an hour later, they changed it to Jews are afraid Right now. Somebody said what?

[Seth Mandel]

Yeah, but was it a member of the Suleiman family who was running the copy desk when they brought it up?

[John Potter Horiz]

No, because the Suleiman family, they only want to be doctors. Matt, the five children of the guy who overstayed his tourist visa so that he could be here to throw firebombs at Jews, also managed to bring over his wife and five children who have remained in the United States. And one of them, his daughter, is very sad because, you know, it's her dream to be a Doctor. So let her go be a doctor in Egypt. They have medical schools in Egypt. Let those people out. Get out of this country in which they were illegally in which their father set. Set. You know, four Jews on eight people on fire. Get out of here. Go the hell back where you came from and go find somebody to kill with your scalpel because we don't need you here.

[Seth Mandel]

Well, you know, there is another point related to that, by the way, which is many analysts are tracking a rise in antisemitism in medicine. This has been the anecdotes are pouring in about doctors who treat Jewish patients differently or aggressively once they understand their religious identity. This is something that the writers of Tablet have been talking about for a while. But we've somehow imported the sectarian politics of the Middle east into this country. And as I was saying yesterday on the podcast, we just need to stop it. And the first way to stop it is by making sure our immigration laws are enforced and by also pursuing what the Trump administration is doing, saying that you don't have a. You don't have a right to a visa here. If you have views that are hostile to Jews, that are hostile to America, that are against the west, there's no reason to grant you a visa. Like you say, go some study somewhere else.

[John Potter Horiz]

I think, you know, I'm glad you mentioned the medical, the issue in the medical community. I have several friends who are doctors who have been screaming about this to me for years in their chat groups at their hospitals, at the diverse. The diversity initiatives at the hospitals for which they work. In the hospital hospitals are now no longer, for the most part, individual buildings with individual managements. They're part of networks, larger networks. So, of course, they have much larger HR departments and things like that, all of which, of course, have been subject to the same ideological capture as other institutions. And the demand that is made by these HR departments and the like to express solidarity with the suffering people of Gaza, with the hospitals in Gaza that are being unfairly bombed for the distinct reason that they are command centers for the war against Israel controlled by Hamas. All of that, that this is a very big thing. It's a very big issue. And it does get to the Hippocratic oath because we do have doctors saying on their private, on their Facebook pages and elsewhere that they will not treat Jews or that, you know, when they are treating a Jew, they have a little fantasy about doing the Jew in those. Because of the eagle eye of people who have decided to take this on as a cause, to look through social media platforms of people who appear to be act involved in activism. A lot of these people have been spotted and their misbehavior has been reported to the institutions and they have been relieved of their jobs. Whether or not their medical licenses will be removed for actually advocating the notion that they can use their life and death skills to create death instead of preserving life, I'm not quite sure of. But this is a very, very serious issue and as you say, is a form of the export of terrorist ideology into the United States.

[Abe Greenwald]

By the way, as such, it's worse in England too. The doctor issue. Yeah, there's, there's so many doctors that making videos about how they won't treat Zionists. And so there was one case of.

[Unnamed Speaker]

A boy who has to get a nine year old boy, I think who has to get blood transfusions or something. Every so often he has a, you know, a condition where he's treated at the same hospital, the same treatment every so often, every couple months maybe. And he's, he went in wearing his yarmulke and with the fringes of his tzitzit out, his strings out and was, was taken off a bed and made to lay on the floor and you know, not treated well whatever by nurses with Palestine flag pins. And then a couple months later they went back and he, he, they went back shorn of all so Jewish look and presentation and he was treated well and, and all this. So the family was saying, you know, we've had this experience about, you know, that they make my sick 9 year old boy lie on the floor if he comes in wearing a yarmulke in London.

[Seth Mandel]

I just want to connect that back to the op ed you mentioned in the New York Times with the initial awful headline which is, you know, it's one thing for Jewish organizations to say anti Semitism is rising in the United States. American Jews feel insecure. There is an an about what's happening in the world. Okay, what are you going to do about it? Maybe write the op ed about anti Semitic doctors treating Jewish children like animals because they are quote unquote Zionists. Right. We need more attention on specifics. I have to say I'm getting a little bit annoyed at all these articles I'm reading saying I feel so insecure. Yeah, duh. What do you have to do about it? How about Jewish self defense? How about encouraging gun ownership among Jews? How about making sure we have armed security everywhere? Right. And how about we actually support policies that are trying to address the problem rather than the New York Times running a Front page article today on how Trump is an anti Semite.

[Matthew Carnetti]

Yeah.

[John Potter Horiz]

Written. Yes, Peter.

[Seth Mandel]

Written by Peter Baker, husband of Susan Glasser, who, and this is an achievement, is possibly the most Trump deranged person on the face of the earth right now.

[John Potter Horiz]

I think what's you make are making a very important specific recommendation because sort of the generalized, you should support guns and stuff like that. What do Jews do for a living in overwhelming numbers? They work in professions, right? They work in, they're not, you know, they work in professions, in larger institutions so that what they can do is police them. In other words, if you're a doctor, like my friends, the doctors, you look and see what's going on there and you do something about what's going on inside your hospital. If you're a lawyer, you do something about what's going on in your law firm or in the courthouse or in the bar association or something like that, and on and on, your insurance company, your whatever, the Fortune 500 company you're working for, the investment bank you're working for. That is your obligation. Your obligation is to police your own institutions and try to make it clear that what is going on, as we have been taught we're supposed to say, is making you feel unsafe, only actually it is making you unsafe. It's not just making you feel. It's not publishing Tom Cotton's op ed. So that's Mara Gay, who hasn't felt unsafe a day in her life, feels unsafe from rhetoric that she doesn't like it. Is that actually the behavior of people who argue before the bar, who have licenses from the state that allow them to administer medications and perform operations that could kill you? All of that. If they express views that suggest that they are willing to entertain the idea of violence against other people, then this is something that needs to be surfaced and known. And let's go back to the universities for a second because we've had this issue over the last week. MIT's commencement featured the president of the class of 2025 handing MIT a speech that she said she was going to deliver. And then instead she delivered a broadside against Israel and genocide and all this. And I saw various people who were graduating that day, not only undergraduates, but PhD candidates, saying, I had my family there and this was very disheartening to us. My kids said to me, as one PhD candidate or one successful PhD said, why do they hate us? This is so awful. Well, let me ask you a different question about the person who was the president of the class of 2025. Who made that speech? Why is she the president of the class of 2025? Why was the Harvard Law School student who know responsible for the contratomp with the Jewish business school student that is now, you know, the subject of massive litigation and complex litigation? Why was he the president of the Law Review? Because of their views. It's not in spite of. It's not because they were just great students who put their nose to the grindstone and really wonderful editors who commissioned brilliant articles on the seventh Amendment. They were chosen and they are there because they are expressing anti Israel, anti Zionist and anti Semitic views and they are being elevated because of it. That is the institutional rot in the United States. And again, if you do the thing where you pluck out little bits of things and say, oh, I feel so bad, I feel so sorry, this was really hard on me, and if I were Anne Frank, would you hide me in your attic? You can't just hide in an attic. This is the United States. You don't have to hide in an attic. Go at them. Go for their jugular. Be Shabbos Kestenbaum. Be, you know, stand with us. Be Canary Mission. Be the people on Twitter stop anti Semitism who literally find out who these people are and report them to their places of work. That is the only. The idea that there have to be consequences and costs for these views that will include not only possible loss of job and possible loss of standing and public exposure, but Moving on to Mr. Suleiman, deportation, arrest and deportation, or arrest and jail for life because of what you did in the United States. And let's see how much you enjoy being in prison as somebody who throws firebombs at American citizens.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah, well, and that's the two sides of this thing. I once called it in a post the. I think it was Dr. Snowflake and Mr. Intifada, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of the pro Palestine movement, which is, on the one hand, it's like, oh, you feel unsafe from words, you poor Jews. Oh, you poor Jews, you're burning children alive in Gaza and you're worried about people being mean to you at a protest or whatever. And then in the next breath it's, I don't feel safe with a former IDF soldier in my class. I don't feel safe with an Israeli in my class. And, you know, this and that. And it's the two sides of it. It's the. There's. They're playing, you know, the snowflake game and then making the snowflake accusation when in fact people should just say, like, then clean up your act. You know, it's like, when I watch these things happen. The firebombing, the Baltov cocktail attack at the Colorado Walk, which again, was for hostages, right? Again, like the people who tear down hostage posters. This is. This was not a. This is, you know, not that it would. It would justify it in any way, shape or form, but this is, you know, the most anodyne thing you could possibly think of. But when they do this, you know, then I kind of think, like, there's so many people right now worried about backlash against Harvard. Right? It used to be I'm worried about a backlash against Muslims. There's going to be Islamophobia and there's still that stuff. But now it's like, oh, but what will happen to Harvard? Because now Trump's going to be even meaner to Harvard. It's like, get your act together and fix your problems. I'm sorry, but it's. You're just like, I can't bring myself to feel much sympathy for the institutions that have become Intifada factories and putting this stuff out into the world. And then there are consequences. And it's like, well, but the real process should be. Trump should give 30 days notice for the funding of this and that. It's like, well, maybe, but, you know, I'm tired of hearing it. You know, I like the 30. The 30 days notice. Don't give me process arguments when we're seeing Molotov cocktails, like, fix your Intifada factory and stop playing the victim. Harvard University, which has more money than God and, you know, seems impregnable.

[Matthew Carnetti]

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[John Potter Horiz]

See whether what I am wearing is.

[Matthew Carnetti]

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[John Potter Horiz]

More often than not, in fact, it is.

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[John Potter Horiz]

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[John Potter Horiz]

Well, look, that was one of the key points. Another astounding New York Times piece in the last week or two weeks about how after 18 months of division and torturous conflict, ideological conflict on the campus of Harvard, Harvard community has finally come together against Trump because they're very worried about Harvard. You know what they should be worried about? They should be worried about barbarism on our shores in the United States, which is infectious and in which there are people and have been people here for 25 years or 30 years who do not have the best interests of the United States at heart. A couple of them, one Palestinian and one Somali, are leading figures of the Democratic left in the House of Representatives. One of them, the Somali Ilhan Omar, brought here as a humanitarian mission because her country was wracked by civil war and is now an elected official from Minnesota trying to destroy the United States from within. So grateful is she for the salvation of her life and the liberties and freedoms that she was granted by being granted asylum and then citizenship in the United States that she is attempting to lead people to deny rights and lives because they disagree with her on the nature of the state of Israel.

[Abe Greenwald]

I think the D.C. shooting and the firebombing have changed some of those minds that weren't yet changed on the nature of the protesters, or at least started to. It's, it's, it makes Trump's case very gruesomely, perfectly. And there's no one that can now say, oh, yeah, those hordes who have been chanting globalize the intifada for 20 months in every city and on every campus and wearing keffiyehs and yelling, free Palestine. Oh, yeah, they have nothing to do with that guy who just killed two young people, whipped out a keffiyeh and said free Palestine. Or the guy with the flamethrower who said, he's doing it for Palestine. Like, the line between connecting the protesters and the actual domestic terrorism has been drawn. And it's bright, it's clear, everyone sees it. And I think it's the beginning, the very beginning. I, believe me, I am not, I'm not expecting people to rush to our side here. It is the very beginning of a kind of a new liberal understanding of, I think these guys are bad. I think we went a little bit out on a limb here, as we did with BLM and defund the police and gender affirming care for kids. It takes them. They have to see the real world horror happen before they go, oh, I could have sworn I was on the right side, but maybe I wasn't.

[John Potter Horiz]

So let me tell you two quick things. So I'm in a group chat with a bunch of friends of mine from my kids Jewish day school. And when Suleiman was. It was revealed that Suleiman was, as his profession, an Uber driver. I said, in a kind of thing that I would never have said after 9, 11. And I have never said before. I said, I'm not sure I'm going to take Ubers anymore. People if, you know, particularly in New York, if you order an Uber, and I do it rarely because I prefer the subway, but if you order an Uber, you will often have a driver named Mohammed. Just. Okay, so am I racially profiling by saying that I really maybe right now wouldn't want an Uber driver named Mohamed? Yes. Is that crazy? Maybe it sounds a little crazy. How many Uber drivers are there? Tens of thousands of Uber drivers. You know, and now I'm just saying every Uber driver could be a potential terrorist. As somebody in the group chat said to me. I mean, why are you focusing on this? And I was like. And then I remembered what it was that I had forgotten that triggered this idea, which was that in Amsterdam, when the pogrom happened after the soccer game with the Israelis, the message went out to go hunt down Israelis over the Uber system through the. Through some kind of. Through the Uber app. The drivers had some communications network and it was go to X neighborhood and start doing something. So I don't know if the app works like that in the United States. I have no idea how that would work. But I didn't make it up in my head. This is something that was done six months ago. It's just there's so much news and there are so many anti Semitic events in the world that I had forgotten this, this, this thing that obviously was the trigger in my memory. And the second thing to say about this is, as you say, Abe, like, people need to see the horror for them to know. Well, one of the reasons to oppose anti Semitism, if you are not a Jew and you don't really care, and you got your own problems, is that Jews are the canary in the coal mine. They come at us first, and when they are feeling their oats, they come at everybody else. So Palestinian terrorism came at Jews first, and then they started hijacking planes in Europe, right? And then. And then 911 happened in the United States because of Jewish support for Israel.

[Matthew Carnetti]

As.

[John Potter Horiz]

As Osama bin Laden in part said, we are the canary in the coal mine. If you're going to fire, but you're going to throw Molotov cocktails on the street in Boulder in 2025, that is going to turn into the Weather Underground. And they're not going to stop by bombing Jewish sites because it's not just Jews they hate. They hate the West. If you're Elon Omar, you hate Jews, you hate America more. Possibly you've Gone into the innards of the US Government to destroy it from within. I don't think I'm saying anything that is too extreme.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Well, can I add, just for your Uber point, just so people don't think that you're hysterical, here's a headline from the Times of Israel in April, A French taxi app for visiting Israelis is gaining popularity amid rising anti Semitism. So in Europe, they are talking about, you know, like an Uber version of Hatzala, because Israelis especially, who are identifiable.

[John Potter Horiz]

As you should say is a Hatzala is a private ambulance service run by Orthodox Jews.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Anybody can call, you don't have to.

[John Potter Horiz]

Be Jewish, but anyone can call them. But it's a private ambulance and medical transport service. So if you're, if you need a cab in Paris now and you got a Yamulka, you're going to try to use this app because you will, you will get a driver whom you are reasonably assured will not drive you into an Obama. You throw you out and then have you set on fire.

[Unnamed Speaker]

That's right. And especially in Europe where, especially if you're Israeli because you have to show your passport at various places where you go. And so if the hotel calls a cab for you or whatever, they're sort of nervous. And I'll read one more headline. This is from the Canadian Jewish News in March. So these are all the past couple months. A new wave of companies are hoping to meet the growing demand for Jewish friendly taxi drivers. There's something called Yid Ride here. There's like, also there's, there's several companies that like, they're, they're calling it colloquially just as a joke, they're calling it like Jubers instead of Ubers. But this is, I mean, so you know, Canada and France are places with a lot of Jews and these are places that are Western countries. And whatever the fact that there's even.

[John Potter Horiz]

This way more Muslims, if you're an.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Israeli traveling, you, you have to sort of be like, well, do you know a good taxi driver that won't dump me in the Vistula river in Europe or something? You know, like this is a thing that people are dealing with in practical ways now.

[Abe Greenwald]

It's not like we're sealed off from this. You know, if it's here to some extent and it will be here to a larger extent. But I just have to say I have a slightly different approach. Everyone should do what they need to do for themselves. I'm in a different position. John, you have kids. I get, personally, I'm not curtailing one action in my life for these thugs, nothing. I will, I will, I will not, not go anywhere. I will not, not take an Uber. I'll be vigilant. But I am, I am not going to attenuate my life in any way, shape or form and make it smaller to accommodate.

[Seth Mandel]

Then, John, maybe we should move to the Democratic Party and right. I've already mentioned Ilhan Omar, as you know, one of the faces of the left in the Democratic Party. But there's been all this poll data coming out that you've highlighted that shows just how deep a hole the party is in, partly because of its affiliation with institutional anti Semitism.

[John Potter Horiz]

So if you people remember that it was maybe 25 years ago that Chris Matthews came up with this formulation that the Republicans were the daddy party and the Democrats were the mommy party. So you know, on the playground a kid gets injured, the mother runs over and says, are you hurt? And like takes a band aid and puts some Neosporin on it and like hugs the kid and, and the daddy says, you're fine, go back out and play. Right? This was his formulation of the nascent differences between the parties as the gender gap widened and things like that. And it was always a pretty interesting descriptive approach. Now, in the wake of three decades of this, we have polling data after the 2024 election, a lot of it highlighted by our friend Harry Anton CNN poll that shows that the Democratic advantage on issues that have typically been there, bailiwick, or at least you know, part of their bailiwick, are fading astoundingly. So, for example, which party is closer to your views on so in the world? In this poll there are seven issues. Crime, policing, economy, immigration, US role in world affairs, education, abortion and climate change. And as now has been typical since 2023, November of 2023, interestingly enough, a month after October 7th on crime and policing, Republicans have a 13 point advantage. On the economy, Republicans now have a 7 point advantage. They had a 10 point advantage in November 2023. But remember, Trump has been president now for almost six months. On immigration, they have a 6 point advantage. They had a 14 point advantage in 23. Nonetheless, they are still, you know, very highly. That's because I think Democrats have been triggered to pay attention on the US Role, world role. In world affairs, the parties are tied. Education, abortion and climate change are the only ones that Democrats lead on. Here's the most important polling matter, which is better described as the party with strong leaders. The public says that the Republican Party is the party of strong leaders by a margin of 40% for Republicans versus 16% for Democrats. Strong leaders gets things done. Republican Party 36% versus 19% for Democrats. Party of extremism. That is the one thing that Democrats have an advantage on the Republicans. On Republicans 41% Democrats 30 party of change. Republicans are 32%, Democrats 25. And the party of the middle class. And this is the killer. Basically even 3432 party of the middle class was a Democratic strong, has been a Democratic stronghold number for, I don't know, 20 years, something like that. That the Republicans are the party of the rich and the Democrats are the party of the middle class. At the same time that all this is going on, we have this panic among Democrats that I assume is the result of massive amounts of voter file data collected by Catalyst and others, according to political analysts, that there is a complete cratering of support among Democrats from men, and not just men, but young men. And those numbers are double digit to like multiples of double digits. And I look at everything that we're talking about here and I look at that crime number and the immigration number and other things and I say that an ordinary person looking at the order of battle in the United States says that the Democratic Party is on the side of people who want to use violence and racial threats and redefinitions of what it means to be human and all of that against me personally. It's okay to come at me saying I'm a sexual predator. It's okay to come at me saying I'm a homophobe. It's okay to come at me saying that because I like guns, I'm a sociopathic monster. And it's okay to come at me because I think that boys are boys and girls are girls and that girls should be allowed to play sports without boys with long hair and in dragon taking their trophies away from them. And I'm not saying this is a problem. Democrats are saying this is a problem. They are panicking to the extent that we got that hilarious story last week about meetings to try to spend $20 million to find a leftist Joe Rogan. There are plenty of leftist Joe Rogans. Joe Rogan was once a leftist Joe Rogan. Why do you think Joe Rogan isn't the leftist Joe Rogan anymore?

[Seth Mandel]

Just to interrupt, we should mention that one of the podcasters that the left is trying to promote as their version of the current Joe Rogan is Hassan Piker, a video game streamer who is a rapid anti Semite. So the, the attempted solutions are only making the problem worse.

[John Potter Horiz]

So let's. Right, so. But top down, the whole thing about podcasting, talk radio, populist media is that they are grassroots. They develop their own followings in real time, over time, as a result of word of mouth. Every time Republicans have succeeded in punching through the media bubble to get to communicate with the American people, the Democrats say, well, we have a lot of money and we have a lot of famous people, and let's spend our money and do something about it. So Rush Limbaugh comes along, revolutionizes talk radio, and then suddenly it's like, we need our Rush Limbaugh. Let's pay Al Franken $6 million because he wrote a book called Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot to be on our radio network. But that's not organic. That's not how success happens in media. Joe Rogan becomes Joe Rogan with 190 million downloads a month, because he came out of nowhere. And with this complex of issues, bodybuilding, you know, extreme fighting or whatever, you know, whatever you. Mixed martial arts fighting and smoking dope and saying, you know what? All of this talk about how, you know, me too, or this or that, like they're doing something. They're trying to do something to me and suppress me and you, and we better do something about it.

[Seth Mandel]

Can I go highbrow, please? There's, of course, the literary critic and philosopher Rene Girard, who is very celebrated in certain conservative circles for his theory of mimesis, his idea that at root, human beings are imitative creatures. We always want to emulate people that we see doing or being the. What we want to be. Often that's being a success. And I'm simplifying Gerard's theory. And of course, he also thinks that this kind of ratcheting of imitation often leads to catastrophe and scapegoating. But this is also a great way to see human behavior in media and in politics, right? Because everyone now, when they see the success of substack media companies, want to say, well, how can we imitate that? How can we use that? Podcasting, right? Podcasting blows up. Everyone needs to have their own podcast. And in politics, once a party loses bigly, as their president would say, the opposite party immediately says, well, let's imitate what they did to win in 2012 when Romney Ryan went down quickly to Obama Biden. What was the result? The GOP autopsy. What did the GOP autopsy, Counsel? It counseled that the Republican Party basically become more liberal, more like Obama's party. It said the Republican Party needed to moderate its stance on social Issues. The Republican Party needed to embrace an immigration amnesty. The Republican Party needed to take affirmative steps, so to speak, to diversify its ranks. Now, as it happened, the man who emerged from the presidential primary in 2016 rejected all of those.

[Abe Greenwald]

Not really.

[John Potter Horiz]

Not all of them, no. I think, I think what is the.

[Abe Greenwald]

More like the Democratic Party.

[Seth Mandel]

Did he embrace an immigration amnesty?

[John Potter Horiz]

No.

[Abe Greenwald]

No.

[Seth Mandel]

Go out of his way to be?

[John Potter Horiz]

No, no, no. But there is.

[Seth Mandel]

Did he become pro Choice? Not in 2016. Every single thing. He ran to the right and he won. Okay. And then here we have, eight years later, Republican Party wins and the Democrats are saying, oh, how did Trump win? Trump won because of Joe Rogan. Trump won because he has these huge majorities among men and most dangerous for the Democrats, long term success among young men. Hence, we need to do everything we can to imitate Trump's success. And what I'm saying is the next successful Democratic candidate for president will win on his own basis. He may actually end up rejecting woke. Right. He may end up reaffirming the Democratic Party's tradition of being the party of the working class, but he's going to do it on his own. It's not going to be John, as you say, this top down, fighting the last war. Let's try to imitate what worked last time because what works last time has no bearing really on what will work next time.

[John Potter Horiz]

Hey everybody, it's John here. And you know what I really hate is sleeping hot.

[Matthew Carnetti]

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[Dr. Rob Williams]

Hello, this is Dr. Rob Williams, executive director of the USC Shoah Foundation. Survivors of the Holocaust have long been the bravest voices speaking out against antisemitism and all forms of hate around the world, whether it's European antisemitism of the 1930s and 1940s or the anti Semitism we see on our streets and campuses today. We'll explore it on the USC Shoah Foundation's new podcast, Searching for Never Again. We'll hear stories that are heartbreaking and stories that are inspiring every Tuesday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever fine podcasts can be found.

[John Potter Horiz]

Harold Rosenberg, not to get a highbrow again, of course, came up with this hilarious phrase, the herd of independent minds. So the Democratic Party prides itself on its diversity. Supposedly it's intellectual and ideological diversity, but they all think that exactly the same thing. That's actually not true on the right. To some of our regrets that we have about how reckless and crazy and irresponsible a lot of ideas are that are not on the left side of the ledger that we are having to contend with. But the drawing of ideological barriers and corners and the creation of a set list of ideological principles that you have to believe otherwise you will be excommunicated from polite society does not really exist on the right. And as a result there is a lot more febrile activity, some of it very bad, but nonetheless creative, that does not exist on the left. You don't have to incept creative ideas about how to succeed in politics by having mass meetings and saying we need to, you know, cook up Joe Rogan in a lab. What you need to do is look and say, what were the conditions that led to Joe Rogan and one of the conditions that led to Joe Rogan was the calcification of free thought on the left. Rogan is a sort of liberty, was a libertarian person with leanings that are certainly very liberal because he wouldn't like social conservatism and the idea that you need to restrain your behavior and, you know, control and contain yourself because people need that order, structure, all of that. It's like, you don't have the right to tell me what to do. That is Joe Rogan. You don't have the right to tell me what to do. And suddenly it's liberals who are telling you what to do. You can't talk like this to a woman. You can't say this. You can't do that. Oh, 12 years ago, you asked someone out on a date and she was uncomfortable. We're going to expose that and get you fired, and you're not going to work for another five years. That's the world that Joe Rogan was responding to. And the Democrats show absolutely no understanding that it is that calcified creation of these impermissible and permissible boundaries that have pushed people to the right, pushed people toward, let's not even say to the right, but have pushed. People are repelling, actively repelling people. And when they stand there and they see people saying that Joe Biden is not mentally unfit and that the entire media are supporting that with their, you know, cover stories and that boys are girls and girls are boys and there's no such thing as gender and all that, they're like, I'm sorry, you're not describing. You are making me crazy. You're not describing the world as it is great.

[Seth Mandel]

I mean, what's required is a brain transplant, and it takes a long time. It took the Democrats 12 years from Reagan's election in 80 to 92 to get in a position where Bill Clinton could kind of eke out a primary win. Right. It was not. He was the comeback kid for a reason. In 92, people didn't really give him a chance. But Clinton was the candidate, and this. And the president who said when he was running for elections both times, that we needed to be tough on crime, that we needed to reform welfare, that we needed to mend, not end, affirmative action, and that we needed to make abortion safe, legal and rare, and that.

[John Potter Horiz]

Government had gotten too big.

[Seth Mandel]

Of course, yes. I mean, in the 1996 State of the Union, the era of big government is over. Right. So that's. That's a long process. And here's why I think it's more Difficult this time in 1992 and in the 80s, we didn't have the political sectarianism we have today. The party, the parties were much more diverse in ideology. In, in both cases, there were plenty of liberal Republicans still left and there were plenty of conservative Democrats and Southern Democrats. And that's, that was Clinton's milieu. That's how he had survived as the governor of Arkansas throughout the 1980s. He understood what it meant to be a conservative Democrat. Look at today. We have two countries. We have Red America and we have Blue America. Two teams. They are vastly different in worldview. And the Democratic Party has almost been obliterated in the south outside of the racial gerrymandered districts. I know you could look at Georgia. That's an interesting example. Georgia has two Democratic senators. And maybe they, they understand or, you know, they both got in through interesting circumstances, but maybe they might understand what it would mean to actually appeal to a majority. But instead the Democratic Party has been kind of reduced to its academic media kind of, you know, affluent suburban strongholds. And that is not how they are going to come back from defeat.

[John Potter Horiz]

Tonight here in New York City will be the one and only Democratic mayoral primary debate. It's an interesting race because New York City in the primary has ranked choice voting. I'm not going to go into the whole details of how ranked choice voting works, but it means that you actually list candidates in order of preference and if a candidate does not get 50%, you retaliate. Knock off the bottom, the person at the bottom of the list reallocate their voters based on how the people who voted to put them at the top of the list chose second, third and fourth. And it goes on and on and on until you finally get somebody who goes over 50%. So there's a lot of weird politics that results from this. People are bidding for second place or they want to convince people that not only should they vote for them, but that they should list this person second or this person third because when they drop off, they, those votes will go to them. It's complicated. I bring this up not to focus on New York, but to say that the Democratic Party has gone so far in the direction of madness in the city that from this liberal city with a 4 to 5 to 6 to 1 Democratic nominal registration advantage has since 1977, with a couple of exceptions, voted to the right. Ed Koch, who then only was ousted from office in 1980 as a result of a series of political scandals by David Dinkins, who was a left wing black Democrat who was Ousted after one term during the crime wave by Rudy Giuliani, who had two terms because there was now term limits. And then Michael Bloomberg, who served three terms, having bought his way to end term limits so he could have a third term. And then, then the wall, then, then the roof caved in and left it.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And the Bloomberg terrible guy, the Bloomberg's. Bloomberg's purchasing of that third term, by the way, is not unconnected from the roof falling in, from the way that the, the moderates around him that normally get votes. Christian, Justine Quinn and others were now associated with this kind of, you know, dirty game he was playing and ended up with de Blasio getting.

[Seth Mandel]

Well, you could argue that Adams was a reaction to.

[John Potter Horiz]

No, that's right. So here's the thing that I was gonna. The reason I started in this potted history is to say that New York, largest city in America, had this interesting ideological makeup. It was very democratic, but it was a city of neighborhoods and a city of boroughs. And what kept it from becoming what Chicago became in the late 1980s after the Daily Machine fell apart though, then a daily came in and was mayor for a long time. All these other cities that we see was white ethnics, white outer borough ethnics who were like, what are you crazy? Everything you're doing is making the subways unsafe or we're unsafe. We need somebody who likes cops, likes economic development and is going to stand up to these race hustlers like Al Sharpton and others. And those white ethnics kept the city in balance. It was still a liberal city, but it was a. Even though Giuliani, remember, was a socially liberal Republican, pro gay rights, you know, but he was, it was all crime, all crime, all the time. Bloomberg also very.

[Unnamed Speaker]

When he ran for president, people pulled up like SNL sketches with Rudy in drag. He wasn't just like policy wise.

[John Potter Horiz]

Rudy was walking. Yeah, he's walking the walk. He wasn't just talking the talk. Bloomberg, you know. Anyway, the polling. So the race has now come down. It's a two man race, it appears. And there is a candidate, there is a left wing candidate. His name is Zoram Mamdani. He is not a native born American. He became a citizen in 2018. His mother is a movie director named Mira Nair. His father is a professor at Columbia, I believe.

[Seth Mandel]

Great.

[John Potter Horiz]

Excuse me.

[Matthew Carnetti]

Yeah, I know.

[John Potter Horiz]

And he is running on a communist platform. State run grocery stores with set prices, freezing all rents, various other things. It's socialism to communism. And he's very naked and open about it. And he is polling at around 22%. The conservative right wing candidate who is now tasked with the job of saving New York City because he isn't crazy is among the craziest people who has ever been in American politics. And that is Andrew Cuomo, a crazy person. A person with psychopathic rage against his enemies who, like, you know, self centered, you know, horrible. Covid Governor, totalitarian setting numbers of people who could be in stores closing churches, you know, saying even before COVID like, if you're a Republican, you have no place in my state, get out of my state. Stuff like that. Very unstable person ousted from the governorship by what I consider pretty lame sexual misconduct charges or sexual harassment charges, but nonetheless, so egregious a person was he as governor for so long, despite a pretty successful record as an infrastructure developer and producer, that he had to be kind of ousted. So here's where the Democratic Party is.

[Unnamed Speaker]

The hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs. Or the opposite. The one it needs, but not the one it deserves.

[Seth Mandel]

Certainly they're leaving out another that you're leaving out another candidate. The incumbent.

[John Potter Horiz]

Well, the incumbent is running as a. Is not in the Democratic primary.

[Seth Mandel]

Right, right.

[John Potter Horiz]

He's running.

[Seth Mandel]

I mean, if Mamdani, who I just, you just reminded me actually is the son of Mahmoud Mamdani, who is a far left anthropologist at Columbia, who actually I helped move him into his apartment back in my work study days.

[John Potter Horiz]

Wow.

[Seth Mandel]

Yeah.

[John Potter Horiz]

Did he have many copies?

[Seth Mandel]

Little did he know. Little did he know.

[John Potter Horiz]

Shelf.

[Seth Mandel]

He's a very sophisticated anthropologist. Very, very academic. Not surprised. I did not realize that he was married to Mira Nair. And so that's why it took me a while to get that. But in any case, that just shows how Mamdani, the son is a limousine liberal, socialist, anti colonialist. To bring up a term back from the Obama days, it reaffirms my opposition to him. But if he wins because of the idiocy of ranked choice voting, I think we have no choice but to support Eric Adams, flawed as he is.

[John Potter Horiz]

I mean, I don't think he's going to win. I don't think. I think he's out. But the reason I even bring him up to get back to where we were is that what's astounding about Mandani is that he is winning among whites. His entire electoral base is white. In Manhattan, in Manhattan and in Brooklyn and in the neighborhoods of Brooklyn, he has 58% among whites in New York City who no longer who make up in the category of white, about 33 or 34% of the voters in New York City compared to blacks and Hispanics. Hispanics actually make up the largest single contingent of voters in New York City. I believe I would need to look that up. He's probably over polling and is showing strength he doesn't really possess. And of course, there are many reasons to vote against Cuomo, which is why he only has 36%. He was a disgraced governor. People, people, but people who hate Cuomo the most, for example, Orthodox Jews whose yeshivas his education department went after and whose religious gatherings he criminalized during COVID and acted as though they were, you know, pathological spreaders of disease. Because Jews are communitarian and cannot pray unless they are 10 men strong at the very least, and whose entire lives are based and constructed around living as a community. He criminalized. They're going to vote for him because they have no choice in order to prevent the. And Mamdani, by the way, is somebody who says that Israel does not have a right to exist in its as a Jewish state.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right. I mean, we should make clear why especially Orthodox Jews are so, you know, why they, why they would need someone to defeat Mamdani. And that's because he, you know, he was, he, he says that he's going to arrest Bibi Netanyahu if he comes to New York. I mean, he's, he's not just, you know, he doesn't even try to blend in to the more, you know, center left critique of Israel. He, you know, says, I'm going to arrest the Israeli prime Minister. But he also, you know, last week he gave, he made a campaign stop at this, at this mosque and Islamic center. And he gave a retelling of the pager plot, Israel's pager plot. And he did not mention the word Hezbollah. He just said that the pager plot was Israel blowing up thousands of pagers and killing scores of innocent people in Lebanon.

[Seth Mandel]

He would be, it would be like having the child of Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago and Congresswoman Rashida Talaib as mayor of New York City.

[John Potter Horiz]

Right.

[Seth Mandel]

It would be a disaster for the world's greatest city if this guy were to become mayor.

[John Potter Horiz]

But I think it is indicative. Look at Zoram Dani. And you are seeing the European, even though he's not a European, you are seeing the European future of the United States in his very person, hostile to the Jewish state, hostile to Judaism without quite saying he's hostile to Judaism, Socialist in economic views, you know, hatred of American foreign policy. And you ask me why the Democratic Party is in crisis. This is not where America is, but it is increasingly where the Democratic Party located, as it is in 10 hotspots in a gigantic continental country where I keep talking about this map. Go look at it. It's 90% red with dots of blue. The dots of blue are highly populated and they are, you know, there are cities and they are. But it is if the Democratic Party cannot awaken itself or pull itself out of this death spiral, either it's a death spiral of some kind or we're in a lot of trouble because they're going to take power again and this is the vanguard.

[Seth Mandel]

Well, you're making me feel guilty because now I've just put myself back into that time in 99 when I was being a mover and I could have dropped, you know, copies of the Road to Serfdom or a Conflict of visions in little Mamdani's bedroom, just kind of tossed them in there, you know, surreptitiously, and maybe this terrible outcome we're foreseeing would have been avoided.

[John Potter Horiz]

I, by the way, he's all in favor of freezing rents. Would you like to know why? Because Columbia professors live in rent free.

[Seth Mandel]

Apartments, very nice ones.

[John Potter Horiz]

The one very nice Avenue, Riverside Drive. I mean, I have a friend who is a Columbia professor, was a dean of one of Columbia schools. I mean, you should have seen this play. You should see this place. Views of the river right there on the corner in the building that's in the movie Enchanted. Like, you know, astounding.

[Seth Mandel]

Huey Long's slogan was every man a king. And the new slogan of the Democratic Party is every man Columbia professor. It's not a man. Yeah, every, every two spirit. A Columbia University professor.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Columbia owns as about as much of Manhattan as the city of New York does.

[John Potter Horiz]

But look, if I said to you in 2022 when Cuomo found himself bounced after becoming this elevated figure, right, the king of, you know, the daily briefings and he's wonderful and my God, what a hero. If I had said that he is a marker of the potential salvation of the Democratic Party from its own madness, I would have thought you were a crazy person. But this is how bad things have gotten and also how one of the reasons that they're so ineffectual in opposing Trump, because they're not using the language of common sense, of the common man to go at Trump, they're using the language of the academy to go at Trump and say, you know what Trump's real problem is? He's being too mean to Harvard. You know, who cares about Harvard? People who went to Harvard, none of us went to Harvard. Harvard can go. I mean, I don't know how else to put it. Is Harvard the canary in the coal mine for, you know, Americans, the denial of academic integrity and academic freedom? I don't like the look of academic integrity and academic freedom after the last two decades and after the treatment of my people in the last two years. That's not a positive argument for me.

[Seth Mandel]

What academic freedom exists when it's a monoculture and there are no conservative professors.

[John Potter Horiz]

But I mean, it's not just that. Look, eight centuries of the tradition of, you know, of academic freedom and tenure and town gown separation and the idea that intellectual inquiry needs to be protected from governmental depredations. That's an, as I say, that's, you know, Oxford and Cambridge, that's where they emerge from and the modern academic system emerged from in its eight centuries. And where it has devolved to is no conservative thought on campus, no conservative opinion on campus. Schools elevating to their leadership positions among students, people, no American, no Americans on campus and no Americans on campus. So, yes, I believe that probably the Trump administration is being way too heavy handed in how it's handling Harvard. But Harvard can go sink into the Charles and only the crew will be able to save themselves because they know how to row in the head of the Charles. So everybody get on the crew team so you can learn how to row in one of those boats so you can save yourself as it sinks as it deserves into the Charles. I'm going to make a quick recommendation and it's an expensive one if you can do it. People know I'm very, very much a fan or a consumer.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Is it rowing lessons?

[John Potter Horiz]

My daughter did rowing for several years and it is actually a wonderful sport. So rowing lessons are, I think crew is a very noble thing, as I say. That's why I want all the crew people to get out to make their way down the river to Worcester or wherever the hell they can get to from Cambridge to save themselves. I'm sorry, but I'm a connoisseur of the theater. I was just thinking as I saw a show last night, that my first real experience of art as something that took my breath away. I was seven years old, taken to see the show 1776, which might also account for my extreme patriotism. But I saw a show last night called Just in Time, the Bobby Darin musical. And it is essentially kind of concert. It's a bio, it's a, it's a sort of a bio show. Jukebox show about Bobby Darin, the.

[Matthew Carnetti]

Rock.

[John Potter Horiz]

And roll singer turned standard singer turned actor who died at the age of 37 in 1974. And it is staged as a kind of. As a concert and a biopic live.

[Seth Mandel]

It's a trend, you know, there's many of them Temptations. Mj, Alicia Keys.

[John Potter Horiz]

Yeah. You know, and Jersey Boys and stuff like that. Anyway. But Just in Time is essentially a showcase for a Broadway performer named Jonathan Groff. People would know Jonathan Groff if they'd watched Glee. He was on Gleesum. And then he was also on a show called Mindhunter on Netflix, which was about the FBI's effort to track serial killers in the 1970s and 1980s. But he has been for the last 15 years one of the two or three leading musical performers on Broadway.

[Seth Mandel]

You're leaving out his most famous role.

[John Potter Horiz]

Which one?

[Seth Mandel]

King George iii.

[John Potter Horiz]

Oh, and of course. Well, I was gonna get to that.

[Seth Mandel]

So that's how my children know him.

[John Potter Horiz]

So Jonathan Groff was in Hamilton in the flashiest part in Broadway history. Literally on stage for about 8 minutes.

[Seth Mandel]

2 scenes, 2 scenes.

[John Potter Horiz]

Sings, you'll be back. Astounding little performance. And. And is on Disney plus. You can watch him there. But he has been in a series of shows. A revival of Little Shop of Horrors. He won a Tony last year for this brilliant revival of a flop Sondheim show called Merrily We Roll Along. Anyway, he is Bobby Darin in the show and it is one of the most dazzling live performances I have ever seen. It's absolutely jaw droppingly astounding to see him occupy, take the stage. Likable, lovable, sings, dances his heart out, sings rock, sings standards. Is touching, is arrogant. It's almost beyond belief what he pulls off on this stage. The show is called Just in Time. It's a small theater and from what I gather, you're gonna pay through the note. We got tickets months ago, but you're, you know, it's. You'll pay through the nose to go see it. But if you want a transcendent experience, stand there right in front of you in a Broadway theater, that would be just in time with Jonathan Groff as Bobby Darin. We'll be back tomorrow. So for Matt, Seth and Abe, I'm John Pot Horitz. Keep the candle bur.